Liz Simcock

Myself and Graham went to see Liz Simcock and her band at Orpington Friday Folk last Friday. This is a lovely little folk club. I am always amazed at the number of quality guest acts this club manages to put on during the course of the year, for such a small club. This is thanks to Sue Tuckey who runs the club herself! There you go, a committee of ONE, so there are no arguments or disagreements. Liz Simcock was her usual faultless self and we enjoyed two outstanding sets. Floor spots came from the unbelievable glam-folk pioneers Tone Deaf Leopard who were augmented with Ian on double bass & Warwick on lead guitar, Liz looked a bit concerned that her band may leave her to pursue a career of fortune & fame! Big Trevor Little also did a solo joiny-in gospel song which was outstanding. My old mate Peter Twiddle gave a cracking couple of numbers as did Ralph Henning. The beer tasted good the company was great - what more could you want on a friday night!

Sky Saxon

Everybody is talking about the recent death of that Michael Jackson bloke, and Farah Fawcett , but sadly the death of one of my heroes on 25th June went by unreported in the mainstream media.

The great SKY SAXON (later Sky Sunlight) leader of sixties psychedelic punk/garage band died aged 71 on Thursday 25th June 2009. His early song "Can't Seem To Make You Mine" was recently used on a TV ad ( don't know which one) but surely he will always be associated with that brilliant anthem "Pushin' To Hard"

I first came across Sky's music during the early seventies on Lenny Kaye's wonderful compilation NUGGETS. I then managed to get hold of some of the early Seeds albums including an original copy of WEB OF SOUND album on a stall in Portobello Market for 30P! Their early stuff was solid proto-punk but they later developed a more pastoral psychedelic sound and Sky in true weighed in fashion Sky went off his head and joined a hippie commune and changing his name from Saxon to Sunlight. During the Punk/New wave boom of the late seventies I remember buying a record by Sky Sunlight and The New Seeds - but for me he never recaptured that raw innocent sound of the early Seeds records.
RIP

Ramsgate

What a dump. We drove down there to take my grandson Lucien to see the sea, as he has never been there before. After a 2 hour journey then £2 to park in the carpark near the beach. The public toilets were closed, The swings and other children's things were also closed!!! This is at 2pm on a sunny afternoon in late June!!! Some dodgy looking crook types sitting outside a "seafood" bar selling imported, defrosted, prawnshit & factory compressed fishmeal from some cesspit in the far east as "local seafood" No wonder this country is on it's knees. Bloody lazy bastards "can't be bothered to open up, think I'll go back to bed" attitude that made this country what it is. We then went on to Herne bay, at least some stuff was open there - but all very tacky, gimme-your-money-for-shit type stuff. funny that these beaches all have signs saying NO DOGS ON BEACH between May & Sept yet there were hordes of those arseholes with baseball caps on their peanut, brainless sculls, sporting cheap gold toilet chains on their scrawny necks, with crap tattoos on their idiotic arms grinning at each other whilst excercising their ugly mutt shit-machine bull terriers, rot-while-errrs and other fierce mad dogs. Yeah we'll be rushing back there!

Knockholt

Here is some video footage of this year's Knockholt This Is Summer. The footage isn't much good and it has been compressed, which means on top of crap footage you have poor quality. However It was just a bit of fun. I will try and upload a shorter uncompressed version when I get time.

Blob From Shanghai

Got back from Knockholt on Saturday morning knackered. Not sure if I am fit enough anymore to endure 3 or 4 days in a field drinking beer! Anyway when I got back I lay there on my bed and turned on the TV. There was a movie on called The Lady From Shanghai, I vaguely remember seeing the last 15 or so minutes of this film about 30 years ago and being impressed by the pschedelic/surreal sequence at a closed fun fair. I thought then, that I must see the complete film at the next opportunity, I soon forgot all about it. Anyway, all these years later I finally decided to watch it. Well what can I say, that Orsen Welles bloke is a genius. The movie site IMDB say that this film is great but flawed! They are talking through their bottoms - it is a brilliant film and I urge anyone who appreciates good movies to see it.

On a completely different subject, I came across a strange phenomenon the other day called Quantum Lyman-Alpha Blobs - these are pulsating blobs of plama/matter about 8 quadzillion miles across and they are like huge jellyfish wandering around our universe zipping in and out of reality eating galaxies for breakfast. I looked through my telesope last night and saw one with it's hungry eye on me!

Movie Update

Here is an update version of the latest Pete The Hat blockbuster. The earlier upload to Youtube contained some encoding errors so lets try again:

Barbeque

Linda Smith had a barbeque yesterday. These BBQs are set in Linda's lovely garden in sunny Mottingham are an occasion that I always look forward to. Thanks Linda for once again hosting a great afternoon. The beer was brewed by Linda herself for the event and it tasted fantastic (as did the botted lager, and the bottle of wine ...) Here are a few pictures that I took:

Solitary Electron Soul

I've got a couple of weeks off work coming up soon. Knockholt is on the horizon. I'm getting worried about my leg, it is more painful now than it was before the operation in February - I could hardly walk yesterday and the pain is stopping me from sleeping - whinge, whinge, moan, groan ...

Did you know that in the whole universe there is only one electron. It zips from location to location in and out of reality and time. All of every thing is everything and nothing at the same time and time does not exist! Blimey where does that leave me?

Well I reckon that this particular quantum mechanical theory could be applied to the "soul" That would mean that there is actually only one "soul" in all of space and time and it zips instantaniously from person to person across time and space covering every human that ever lived or ever will be. This happens in a never ending continuum that takes less than billionth of quadrillionth of a nanosecond for each cycle. So that means that you are everybody. So you better be nice to your fellow man because he/she is, or will be you!!!

Pig's Ear

I went to the Pig's ear Folk Ale festival Friday through to Monday camping with a load of musicians, next to a pub in scorching hot Kent! Isn't life hard! Pig's Ear are a fantastic folk band based in Edenbridge, Kent. Each year they organise this small friendly festival at the Kentish Horse Pub in Markbeech. The Pub Landlady own's the three adjoining beautiful fields, which are surrounded by some of the most beautiful countryside in England. There is a mixture of Rock, Country, Americana, Folk Song & Folk Tunes on the main PA stage, a singaround in the pub every night and loads of small sessions going on in varous parts of the camp and certainly something there to please everybody. There was maypole dancing, Childrens entertainment, great pub food at reasonable prices and a huge choice of real ales.