Category: Personal

  • Roadside 03-12-09

    number eight in the series of very occasional roadside photos. I suppose strictly this is an under the roadside photo as it was taken on floor one of the Arcadian Centre car park on Bromsgrove Street in Birmingham.

    Roadside 03-12-09

  • The Colour out of Space redux

    Brighton Palace Pier

    w ell, I dare say I’ve built up enough quite enough suspense around my trip to the Royal Albion Hotel and the Colour out of Space festival weekend in Brighton.

    The verdict? Well, I was happy enough with what we got for the money on the hotel front. I would have been less than happy if we’d paid the listed price for the rooms, some £200 over what we did pay. However for £30 a night you could put up with the stained carpet, damaged furniture and the hole in the wall ‘repaired’ by someone stuffing toilet paper in it – not that successful a substitute for Polyfilla it transpires. To be fair the breakfast there was good, the bar much as I remembered, I think it was even the same mostly absentee mute barman there and it was well placed for the Sallis Benney Theatre / University of Brighton where the fourth Colour out of Space was being held…

    This was my first Colour out of Space, described as ‘three days of unstructured, experimental sound and art drawn from an international subculture of musicians, artists and filmmakers’ I suppose I should have noticed that there was no ‘music’ as such included in the description and adjusted my expectations appropriately.

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  • Taxi!

    i was just looking to book two tickets for the Alexandra Theatre Birmingham, ticket price is fine, then on booking I get a Service Charge of £5.75 x 2 and then a charge of £3.25 for ticket postage or the same amount to collect them at the door. So I’m looking at £15 in charges just to book the two tickets. This is even worse than the Wolverhampton Civic Box Office charges of a couple of years ago, actually as this is split between two people its only about the same, either way its way OTT. I guess I could always get a taxi to into Brum and book them on the door, as it stands at the moment thats probably going to cost about the same.

  • The Colour Out of Space…

    i ‘m not sure if they did get the name from the lovecraft short story but I’m off to Brighton’s fourth annual COLOUR OUT OF SPACE weekend/festival/unstructured event period.

    Booked a room in The Royal Albion Hotel in Brighton. I had a very pleasant time in the bar there with several late afternoon drinks a few years ago and remember it being a nice bar in a swish looking hotel right by the pier. Some of the reviews and room photos I’ve seen since I booked have me a little worried. Fingers crossed and all that…

  • Dirty Water Records presents…

    a hugely enjoyable show from Billy Childish and the Musicians of the British Empire at the Boston last month. It seems to be going through a quiet period there at the moment so well worth a trip along. He’s playing on Friday 18th and again next month on the 16th(That ones off apparently), In fact pretty much every month, the newsletter from www.dirtywaterclub.com is probably the best way to follow the dates.

    Billy Childish and the Musicians of the British Empire at the Boston

    Also I see The Wildebeests have their much anticipated (Certainly by me) album launch party there on the 25th September. Might try to make it along to that.

    I’ve been seeing shows there on and off for, well, quite a few years now. Ever since a good friend of mine used to phone me drunkenly from the phone box up the road, pre mobile phone era, to say what a great show he’d just seen. Actually I was only thinking this morning how nobody phones me drunkenly from gigs anymore. Is this a sign of fast approaching middle age?