This has been a good week for seeing well-known people in unusual settings doing interesting things.

On Friday, d_floorlandmine and I took ourselves off to the Barbican to see Bright Phoebus Revisited.

A bit of backstory required here - Bright Phoebus was a seminal modern folk album released in 1972 by The Watersons and friends. The songs were written mostly by ( Read more... )

Radio 6 chose to wake me up this morning with 'Beautiful Ones' by Suede, with which I have now been heinously earwormed. The main problem with this is that I don't have a scooby what Brett Anderson is actually singing in the first line. It's not so much that it's unclear, it's just that I seem to be incapable of actually holding the lyric in my ( Read more... )

Bored and home alone for Valentine's Day evening. I plan on eating my legendary bolognese (once it's cooked), drinking Californian Shiraz and  listening to Ten New Songs on repeat, with possible interludes of watching repeats of Doctor Who, and checking for updated filth on LJ Valentine's Darkroom.  Who says romance is dead? 

Oh yes, thing I forgot to write about today:

This year's Turner Prize (note to foreigners and Philistines: the Turner Prize is the UK's most prestigious award for art) was won by Susan Phillipsz, for a sound installation of three recordings of herself singing the Scottish lament "Lowlands Away", played concurrently in an empty room.

Now, I'm not ( Read more... )

So, most importantly, what are we thinking of the new Human League single, then? I like it - it sounds just like old Human League. Actually when I first heard it played on the radio yesterday, I assumed it was old, and just a B-side or album track that I didn't know, and wondered aloud why it didn't get played more in clubs as it was pretty good!

( Read more... )

Chancellor George Osborne has described Ireland as "a friend in need ( Read more... )

Yay! My new concertina has come ( Read more... )

Fascinating conversation on the origins of traditional songs and jazz standards over on venta 's LJ

http://venta.livejournal.com/358372.html

Thanks to steer  having a ticket going begging, last night after work I had a pleasant walk across Hyde Park and went to the Proms.

I'd never been to the Royal Albert Hall - I don't think you appreciate the sheer scale of it from pictures, or even from the swooping aerial shots that the BBC favours in its Proms coverage. It's a great big overwrought ( Read more... )

I do love Speak Your Branes, but sometimes the level of ignorance, misappropriation and bile is overwhelming.

Dear fascists: do fuck right off, there's good chaps. Oh, and I hear that morris bells are surprisingly hard to extract from one's anus.