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Spend all morning sorting out Benicassim passes and the line up for itm?'s Musicworks show on August 31st. I manage to confirm FMM, Satellite Dub and the Aphrodisiacs in the space of 30 minutes which wasn’t bad. (Calvin confirm next day, sadly too late to go in the conference programme). Errors can’t play but they have already confirmed with our Dunfermline arm for the show there on the 5th August. Cool.

I unwisely agree to stand in for John Clarke on his BT Broadband Chart show (to give it its full name, as the sponsor's' rules demand I do regularly). I say unwisely because I have no time., not if I have any aspirations to getthis magazine out on time. Anyway, the chart looks frankly pretty poor but in fact some of the tunes are ok-female - one 'R&B' tune turns out to be old skool ska. Aviator Shades and Catcher do reliable guitar pop. I chat to a few people and unable to find a gig to attend, head home… and catch Biffy Clyro on the replacement for Vic Galloway’s show. They’re live in George Square! Honestly, you’d think our licence fees would maybe cover the cost of paying someone to updating their website.

the darkness of the Swamp

Despite a good run of top Edinburgh bands emerging, I still expect the worst, which is probably the best way to avoid disappointment. So with Private Jackson I was expecting the usual laddish plod (apologies, guys/gal) but was pleasantly surprised at their angular and slightly noisy indie guitar rock (more apologies for the lacklustre description). X-vectors – I'd had described to me and was expecting something much more electro, but their sole contribution to that genre seems to be is a computer which is largely inaudible. In all, they're like a all-guitar version of the Magnificents. So to Psydoll. Basically, a tiny Japanese goth woman (on 6-inch platforms) and a guitarist wearing goggles and a rather wizened stand-up drummer. All the goths in Edinburgh seemto have come to the gig to do some strange dancing, and musically it’s very much to their liking somewhere between Xmal Deutschland and Test Department et al. Entertaining for sure.

TotT (T on the telly)

Being unable to be in more than one place at once has meant my having to choose between a Half Man Half Biscuit gig and T in the Park (it seems that a press pass for one day is just too complicated to organise). Following DF's continued refusal to book the Biscuits for the main stage at "the new Glastonbury", I am consigned to catching up on the highlights on telly. Well, in fact, there's a live broadcast on BBC3 as I get home on the Sunday.
Heartened by the announcement that 4 stages will be covered, I am - from a Scottish indie point of view - immediately disappointed as I recall that these are stages where few Scottish bands will tread. The Tbreak stage acts as our own wee indie ghetto once again, pitching Malcolm Middleton and other sizeable names in front of a small audience and praying for rain. (I’m told later that many revelers miss his set believing that ‘headliner’ suggests that he’ll be closing the stage). A few days late I'm chatting to someone who's played the wee tent in the past. Seems that you really are a second-class citizen - not allowed to the artists' village, given a 'sticky' pass as opposed to a laminate. With Malcolm backed by 3/4 of The Delgados, you see that despite the big changes made to the Secret Stage recently (flooring, a bar) it's still a long way from being what it could, and should, be.
Look in any dictionary at the word 'ubiquitous' and you’ll see “Gill Mills”. Not this year. Ms Mills and her usual sidekick, Craig Hill, have been usurped by Edith Bowman and Dougie Anderson (refugees from Radio One, and, er…). Edith seems likeable enough but the interviews seem stilted, while Dougie doesn’t seem to be much into the music greeting one performance with “that wasn’t bad”.
Oh, the bands on telly were all rubbish. Indie snobbery ahoy!

terror

On the subject of the bombings, I noted that the local news (where the news goes to the studios in the regions) the big news was “commuters have problems getting home from London due to mass deaths”. We often talk about the Scots "putting a kilt on" the news, and I wonder how they’re reporting it at home…

HMHB at the edge of the world

Conveniently, Half Man Half Biscuit are playing just down the road, in Penzance, the high point of cold and wet (and occasionally scorching) week in Cornwall. The town has a look of a place that the 1970s forgot, with a main street partly boarded up, littered with charity shops and bicycle repair emporia. The Acorn is apparently an old cinema, though I’d imagined it was a church in a previous life. Either way I head upstairs as I have the missus with me – she’s not a big fan, so I should make her ordeal as comfortable as possible.
The band really take a while to get going. I’m not sure of the reason for this and I initially imagine it’s that I’ve usually seen them in a rammed Scottish venue with general adulation surrounding them. Here we have 200 or so souls, many of whom aren’t hard-core fans (though a few regulars in Dukla Prague tops have gathered down the front to go eyeball-to-eyeball with the band.) Another observation: there were no posters at all in town for the show; indeed, the only sign of something amiss in the place was someone heading for the gig in a 'Matt Bianco Are Wankers' t-shirt. In Falmouth, 30 miles up the road, people have flyered for shows in Exeter, Taunton, Penzance… and I recall the Tigerfest guys getting criticised on here for not advertising enough last August!
The band pick up the pace midway into the show and some banter with the audience ensues and 'Wrong Grave' sees them turn the corner with Nigel explaining how it was a true story, despite vocally expressed doubts from the audience.
Sue enjoys this and 24 Hour most, quite simply because she can hear the words as there’s less backing, but isn’t getting many of the jokes (I also fail to hear some of the new lyrics). The sound isn’t good enough really. Shame, she enjoys them, being impressed by their ‘tightness’. Though she never mentioned the light show's excellence.
There’s a ‘salute’ from Nigel to Luther van Dross on 'Everything’s AOR' and it suddenly occurs to me – the London bombings were earlier in the day. For a band legendarily glued to the telly all day, and being reluctant appointees as comedians for the rock generation, performing might be quite a lot to expect.
Course, it might just be the audience.
Either way, they don’t do an second encore.

Retro

Having been on holiday for a week and not blogged I intended to take some notes and construct a retrospective blog, if there's any point in that. Sadly, I can't recall that far back. I was going to wibble on at great length about Live 8 but it all seems to have merged into one big blur (sic) with no particularly outstanding performances. Youssou N'dour's voice sounded good, Dido's really really didn't, er, Pink Floyd were really dull (maybe down to song choice but they do have a lot of dull songs to choose from), Razorlight seemed to grab the marketing potential of the event with both bands (though I was informed by someone that the singer's been a big supporter of MPH for ages, so there you go). I think I might have missed Pete Doherty's performance by flicking onto the tennis, or packing for my holidays.
Zzz.