My favourite artist at Glastonbury. Forget the Pyramid stage and the Gorillaz, there was a great little party going on at the West Holts world music stage – with much more interesting messages in the music. Nneka is entirely new to me. Nigerian born, now lives in Germany, and making some great political hip-hop influenced…
Category Archives: Gigs
Glastonbury Revelations: Two Door Cinema Club
Two Door Cinema Club were the band that kicked off the music at Glastonbury for me, on the Thursday afternoon. I was dragged along to see Boy George of all artists the night before, which was actually quite a fun flashback to the 80s, but not exactly what I’m hoping for at a rock festival….
Volunteering for Shelter at Glastonbury
Volunteering for Shelter at Glastonbury was a lot of fun. Hard on the feet and earned one quite impressive blister, but the crowd was incredibly friendly and chatty and the eight hour shifts didn’t seem that long at all. Although it’s been a long time since I’ve done shift work – I’d forgotten how the…
Melody Gardot at Union Chapel
Melody Gardot is a wonderful new discovery to me. Laid back, smooth-to-the-point-of-seductive jazz. The vast majority of her repertoire is apparently her own material, and its definitely of a more jazz vein than, say, Norah Jones who I’ve noticed she’s compared to in a few online reviews. I was very glad to have read about…
Franz Ferdinand at the Hammersmith Apollo
Excellent gig! Even allowing for bias in favour of a band from my beloved Glasgow, this was top banana. Not much dead time, only enough talking (rather than playing) to be friendly, good lighting and visuals without going OTT, and of course cracking tunes. Art rock with a hint of dance, pumping and pulsing beats…
The Average Chalky White Band
Chalky’s a friend of mine at work .. this is his rather wonderful nine-piece soul band at The Old Ticket Hall in Windsor. The female singer, Sissy, was on guest vocals for the evening – fantastic, full bodied voice.
No Shame’s 10th Birthday
No Shame is a fun, down-to-earth covers band in Glasgow I used to play drums for. Extremely entertaining, and very tight after ten years of playing together. I drove up to Glasgow “for one night only” to celebrate their 10th anniversary gig, chipping in on a few songs on either keys or guitar. Used the…