Village Pump

It's the Village Pump Festival this week which I'm kind of looking forward to and trying desperately not to compare it with Glastonbury. Everybody I know who goes says it's a really relaxed affair and it certainly seems to have local support. Good thing I suppose is that you're not tied there for the duration and can come and go. Must say the lineup looks slightly uninspiring so maybe I'll have to make a real effort to watch things I'd otherwise give a miss and join in the various workshops etc etc. Maybe I'll come across something really great....

Making it Real

Spent the day in School today helping out with the Year 6 Induction Day. More soon....

Community Play

Went to a really interesting meeting last night on the Community Play. I think I'll see how I can contribute. Might be worth seeing if there's any writing input I can give.

Woolley Festival

And so it was that Woolley "Festival" happened. A weekend of rock bands in a pub, kicked off on Friday night by the much better than expected Old Man's Hat who I thought would be some folk 'n fiddle group but turned out to be an excellent and tight blues covers band with a scrawny bearded frontman with a really good voice.
Saturday started off with The Saboteurs with the voice-to-die-for of Steve Loudon and the professor of guitar Paul Hartshorn. Carnaby Street followed - a 60s tribute band with a housewife on guitar. The Volt followed them and gave what I thought was a competant performance which could have been improved by the odd smile or two. While technically and musically they are obviously better than before they have lost that performance edge and connection with the audience that they once had which was what set them apart before and now are in danger of melding into that mass of indie bands. Hell of a lead guitarist though!! Talking of the melding mass, Patchway Theft had most people scurrying to the bar as refuge from the flat singing and dour songs. Finally and worth waiting for were The Nots - already blues pros with Will Southward's sublime guitar playing and Mike overacting as usual - at one point joined by Steve Loudon for the incredible rendition of "Red House". It's a pity they are now just an occasional band. Maybe now Will has finished his course he might be in the market for forming a new more regular band???

Woolley Festival this weekend

Looking forward to seeing The Volt play their third successive Woolley Street Party. It will be an interesting progression for them from that obviously young and inexperienced "novelty" school band that played two years ago through the more assured and gig-experienced set they played last year (see pic above) to the more mature indie/blues sound they are on to now that Sam has joined (see right). They've been billed as "great young originals" and the fact they are playing fewer and fewer covers should stand them in good stead. Local papers have also been publicising. Should be good if the weather holds out.

So - who's in the header and why??

These are all pics of people or things that mean something now or have meant a lot to me in the past. I'll periodically update the header as and when it occurs to me and I'll post short pieces about why. There's my favourite film, author, footballer, piece of art plus a few more heroes and villains.

New modified template

After two or three nights fiddling with the template and groping my way around Cascading Style Sheets and Websafe colours, I think I've got to a look that will do for now. all I've got to do is finish the header picture with a few more heroes and that'll do for now.

The wonder of Napster

The more I think about it, the more I wonder how it is that Apple and iTunes have got themselves into such a dominant position in the download market. All I can see is a marketing rip-off.

Napster's basic proposition is that you don't necessarily have to own the music you listen to so why not rent it? iTunes meanwhile expects you to pay the same price as you paid before for outdated formats (ie CDs) for something you can only play on their own proprietory hardware and software. When they launched the latest iPod, they said you could get around 20,000 songs on it. Do the maths - 20,000 x £0.79 = £15,800 to fill up your iPod. Same price from Napster - £15.99 per month. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

I've been downloading legal Napster-to-Go tracks for about a year now and still am yet to see the catch. OK, I have to use a Zen Micro or Toshiba Gigabeat but both are OK players and I still have a further 3 PCs on which I can download music to or listen to streams on. I've started to explore artists and genres I hadn't thought of before at minimal cost and every so often I find I need to actually own an album so i go out and buy it on CD (eg Springsteen's Seeger Sessions or Ryan Adams' 29).

I don't care that it might not be the coolest way to listen to music. It works for me.