Reading & Leeds: To those that Rock, I salute you...

I don't do getting old all that gracefully but if I have to admit one thing it is that I have no desire whatsoever to brave is Reading/Leeds Festival as it is now. Enjoy your GCSE and A-level results, the music, the freedom, and don't even think about next week...  We only get so many trips round the sun.

Here is the poster from Reading festival 1979.

Be aware that you are becoming a part of history...  history is defined by the things that are much older than you are. History is more interestingly perhaps also defined by the custom type and fonts that were used for the poster.
Think about that...  and the deal on weekend tickets too - available in advance and only by post, of course!

The End of Summer?

Most in Britain might reasonably tell you that 2008 was the summer that didn't happen. The weather was fairly rubbish, the credit crunch suddenly seemed more real than anyone realised, and then there would be that disappointment that comes around only every fourth year...
The first two came to pass but Team GB in the Olympics, something that we tend to regard as an affirmation of our poor record in sport, proved anything but that and a launch pad for London 2012. Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, accepted the Olympic flag and he is possibly the only recipient who, had he felt inclined to do so, could have quite easily made his acceptance speech in classical Greek!
You might well ask why I mention this here and also 'What does that have to do with music?' It has a lot in common - music has for years usually been regarded as a team GB thing, regardless of where the artists come from or their ethnic background and now sport has, apparently quite suddenly, become seen in much the same light. That the Olympians were played off-stage in Beijing by Leona Lewis, only for her to arrive back in her home city in the midst of the Notting Hill Carnival - the world's largest Carribean festival - is something of which both London, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in general, can be justifiably proud.

The thing is that, despite all the global uncertainties, Britain seems more comfortable with its place in the world. I don't think that music is going to let us down between now and 2012 - innovate, adopt, adapt and export will probably accelerate the recent trends, but I suspect that we will also become more receptive to those from overseas.
The main festivals have now come to an end, with Leeds/Reading this weekend, but the pre-sales for 2009 are now on offer, except for those for which the limited allocation has already sold out, and that is most of them.
If one thing is certain, despite several summers of poor weather, Britons remain in thrall to outdoor live music and now there are some out-of-season indoor festivals too. I''m planning to go to Sŵn 2008.

Glastonbury 2008 and other festivals.

The tickets for Glastonbury 2008 went on sale at 9am (BST) today only to those who had pre-registered earlier in the year. If you were in the running then I hope that you were one of the lucky ones!

The weather here in Somerset is always a matter for conjecture when it comes to the Festival but the one thing it is unlikely to do in late June is snow. In fact it rarely does that here at any time of year, and I live barely more than ten miles away from the site, but for the first time this winter it did so last night. Not much admittedly but at 8am there was the better part of 1" of the white stuff on the ground; by 10 am it had almost all vanished.
I've not posted anything here for the last week as I've been away in the hills of NW England pursuing other interests that leave little time for listening and no possibility for blogging. That said I have returned with some new ideas and a long list of things to do or hear. It is going to take some time to put some of these plans in place if indeed they even prove practicable.

On the subject of 2008 Festivals the programme for Leeds/Reading 2008 is now available and the calendar of events continues to grow in response to the apparently inexorable rise of live music to the extent that now there is often more than one taking place on any given weekend. While Cowell et al are apparently hell-bent on finding new talent what Britain really needs right now is more summer weekends and better weather for those we already have. If only we could have a climate rather than mere weather!

I was lucky last year. It rained very little at Latitude 2007 and one of the heaviest showers was this one, just after I had pitched my tent (the red one in the foreground) on the evening of Thursday 12th July. Let's hope for a long, warm and dry summer in 2008!

Underage Girl Thrown Out of Gig!

Getting thrown out of a gig is, at best, very embarrassing but to have this happen to you when you are the headline act is almost unbelievable. The Soho Review Bar in London is strictly for over 18s only and takes this matter very seriously, under pain of losing their public performance license, and an astute worker had remembered that the Evening Standard had said that Laura Marling is still seventeen. No arguments are possible: a singer-songwriter she may be, but age is simply a fact. I have this idea that 'artist management' is supposed to mean such things don't happen but if I'm wrong then please feel free to explain just what actually happened and why.

At least it wasn't raining and so over a hundred concert goers remained outside to hear her perform some of her set, totally acoustically, on the pavement outside the original venue! There is no rule against seventeen-year-olds busking, even for an artist newly signed to a major label (EMI/Virgin).
Within an hour there was an incredibly hastily arranged gig at The Exchange in Gerrard Street and she simply started all over again, at first solo but slowly joined by the rest of her band. They had been busy supporting the other artists who still continued to play in the original venue. In due course she was joined on stage in The Exchange by those bands as well!

This curious saga, which took place on 1st October, involved the artist behind the My Manic and I EP (Virgin/EMI) . The least I can do is review the My Manic And I EP (the 7" vinyl version, of course) for you.
(See here for a review of her London Town EP that was released in spring 2007.)
She has also said in a radio interview that she didn't much like the songs on her first EP but simply had to get them out of her system. Now that sounds ever so slightly disingenuous to me, or am I being overly suspicious here?

This is a review of the 7" vinyl version that has four tracks...

• A1 New Romantic (recorded live)
  
• A2 Night Terror
• B1 My Manic And I
• B2 Typical (recorded live)

Actually it matters not: 'My Manic And I' sounds little like the last EP and so the question has changed. All four tracks are good and I really like the change of direction, which I think is towards the more realistic side of alt-indie-folk; it is I think actually no bad thing at all but not everyone likes it one little bit perhaps because it is actually rather disconcerting.

That is their choice but who can blame her from wanting to try - given that she was clearly able to do so - to put some clear ground between herself and the anti-folk artists (that I also like and quite unashamedly so) however popular they currently may be?
'My Manic and I' is truly impressive but probably not what most would have expected it to sound like. Not me either - I was surprised too - but I'll surely play it more than 'London Town EP'.
If you can find it on 7" vinyl then do so and if you can find the "London Town EP" on 7" vinyl (MoshiMoshi Records, 2007) then just jump at the opportunity!