It'll Either Rain Or Go Dark Before Morning....

One of the many pearls of wisdom from Charlie Cross , a farmer I had a weekend job with many man years ago. Very true of today , withich is National Record Store Day , World Book Night and High Bridge Festival in Newcastle.

The Box of Books

First task today was to hand write the front pieces of my twenty four copies of Bill Bryson's "Notes From a Small Island" with my name , where I picked it up from and a unique id so that the book can be tracked if the person I give it to wishes to log it on the web site.

Anyway I picked up the books and had panned to just print out the labels , unfortunately non of the shops I went in had anything suitable , so had to use my versatile printer , ie a biro!!

There is a flagship event in London on Monday night details here

Tickets are £10 but I think it is free after 7:30 pm , but check out the website.

Alan Reed's High Bridge

Anyway today I am going along to the record shops to pick up a coule of limited editions if they are available and enjoy  the delights of the High Bridge Quarter Festival with street food , entertainers music and the like. I'll be taking photographs and posting again on here after the event.

Hoping the rain keeps a way and we have a gorgeous day

Not Dead .... You Just Have To Look

With National Record Shop Day approaching I wandered down Northumberland to check out HMV, until recently your only source of music on the high street unless theres a Tesco , or you go for the rack in the Pound Shops that are proliferating in in our relatively affluent society.  Time was when WH Smith and Boots has a sizeable music section but that's no more . HMV themselves are losing their identity with football shirts , Apple Product displays and DVDs and games taking a huge part of the display despite the fact that streaming media is negating the need for recorded films. How man do you watch more than once.

I Shrewsbury I found an HMV buried deep in a shopping centre. The shop was quite big , but the only new music was the new Madonna album and the metal section consisted of multiple copes of Black Sabbath Volume IV , Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and something by Avenged Sevenfold. Newcastle store is over three floors but the music side seems to be contracting by the second,

A surprise and welcome addition to the high street is the Thats Entertainment shops , outlets for Music Magpie. Their music is arranged by price and I picked up several limited editions (Crowded House Recurring Dream and Annie Lennox Medusa) for a couple of quid each. Second hand but excellent condition and the staff are helpful. I was suuprised to see a fair few Shirehorses albums which I thought were hard to get , well Fat Harry White is , so you you can pick up some decent stuff and they have more new stock than the Shrewsbury HMV!!

The Independents are doing well , there'll be queues outside from midnight on Friday but it's good to see there is now a choice of music on the high street.

Though of course you can always go to your local independent record shop !!

You Wait Ages For A Bus .....

.. and then three come along at once. Well it's not quite that but nearly. Last year on World Book Night I gave away my books on the Tyneside Metro , if you click on the labels below you will see what happened then.

Initially this year I was going to do the same thing with Bill Bryson's "Notes From A Small Island", but this year World Book Night is on the 21st of April which is coincidentally National Record Shop Day as well as being the first High Bridge Quarter Festival.

So the idea is that I'm going to join in the festivities at High Bridge concentrating on  RPM records and giving away my books at the festival . I've been joining in National Record Shop Day for the last couple of years and had a great time seeing some great bands , getting ice cream great food and meeting great people.

This year looks like it's going to be the best ever and if you catch me you might get a copy of the book. Check out the High Bridge Festival site by clicking on the poster.

Reflex in Nunn Street and Beatdown up near The Five Swans will also be having lots of events and special stuff for sale so get yourself down and have a wonderful day. Great music , great company , great books , great food all guaranteed!!

There Are Lies , Damned Lies and Mobile Phone Contracts

Not long ago I thingk it was Talk Talk who won a case allowing them to advertise ridiculously low ceilings as "unlimited" . More and more companies are offering seemingly unlimited all inclusive packages. Oftenthese are based on two year contracts , with a "free" phone that of course just carries a one year guarantee. To protect this you have to take out a care package that will cost at least £150 for the duration of the contract.

O2's Best Ever Contract

Today I saw O2's latest foray into the arena. O2 are a market leader and have their "On and On" Best Ever Tariff that offers a "massive" 1Gb a month data, from £36 a month . This also doesnt include picture messaging and lets face it everyone picture messages so that could add a tidy sum to your all inclusive rates . 1 Gb is about a weeks normal web browsing with no downloads of MP3s or films. A single DIVX movie will be almost a Gb , and when you that that watching Youtube , streaming radio as data , you could use up that "massive" 1 Gb in a couple of days. T-Mobile used to have an excellent Flext plan that included everything with a limit where you started paying but everything came out of the same pot. It annoys me that so many companies hide behingd the small print almost getting like insurance!



I have my Mobile Wifi with 3 , who charge me £15 for 5 Gb on a monthly rolling contract which is more than adequate . I seldom come anywhere near that but its a good data package. Another company offers unlimited data on a similar rolling contract except in the small print is capped at 1 Gb per month.

So when you are taking out a new contract ensure you check the small print. Probably one of the most honest I've encoutered is Orange and as I say 3 offer excellent value for money , but a lot of companies are still trying to take you for a ride . Be wary!!

Rock Is Not A Musical

The other day I saw an advertisement for a new musical called East End Babylon with the tag line "There are Three ways out of the East End - Football, Boxing and Rock and Roll" , like the East End of London is a bad place to be. Worse still it's the story of the Cockney Rejects - what next JLS , One Direction , Simon Cowell , Patrick Fitxgerald? But a musical ... no way , a film documentary I can live with:


Then I heard there's on about Susan Boyle, again Susan Boyle is a fine singer , but a musical about her life - surely not. Maybe she's had her fifteen minutes of fame , but I hope not.

Then we have Green Day's American Idiot . If I want to see Green Day I want to see Green Day , not a musical based on their songs. We have had the potential abberation of Queen being fronted by an American Idol contestant . That is not the way to honour Mr Bulsara's memory .. and of course the blockbusting Ben Elton scripted horror that is "We Will Rock You".

I don't mind concept album's finding their way on to celluloid , Tommy and Quadrophenia are excellent albums transformed into excellent films - and Tommy was transferred to an all star stage show.

When your heroes end up as musicals they are sanitised fro mass consumption , the danger and outrage  is removed like when Biffy Clyro's "Many A Horror" was renamed "When We Collide" for it's X-Factor cover release.

I bet you won't get a musical about the life of Rage Against The Machine!!

National Cleavage Day 2012

Apparently instigated by a bra manufacturer such as Playtex or Wonderbra , denigrated by women's groups , embraced by both men and women as fun, is this much different to Guinness appropriating St. Patrick's Day?

You could say that it objectifies women , but women are attractive to men . That's genetic. I wouldnt want any woman to feel threatened by this but really it's a bit of fun intended to seel underwear , in particular bras . If more are sold then that helps the economy , and I'd rather women were having fun that preparing the Sunday lunch in the kitchen .

More fizz , more wine , more bacchanalian fun , and if you wish to display your cleavage feel fee to do so,

Not sure which day it is , whether it was yesterday today or tomorrow, but I don't thingk it does any harm.

HMV - How Much Longer

I visited HMV in Shrewsbury yesterday . I've pointed out about the drought of record shops in Salop , but found HMV in a shopping centre. I also managed to buy six CDs and Trojan Mento compilatopn , a Carribean Compilations and Terry Hall Retrospective , and The Stereophonics singles and something else.

Anyway the HMV seemed to be mainly selling DVDs and Blu-Rays along with a big section for Apple i-Things . The CD section was miniscule , the only contempory CD on display was Madonna's new album . No Black Keys El Camino or Jack White Bluderbuss. No singles , no chart display, and certainly no vinyl. I may have missed something but they had quite a lot of floor space and very little devoted to music.

HMV's looking like it hasn't a clue what it's doing . It's logo is a dog listening to a record player. It's looking like the only appropriate part of that is the dog!