blackhead

The Rec

DQUE


red


BBM


scouting is fun


no girls?

EBK1 Lamborghini

Happy Birthday

Sketchers

It's all mine, all mine...

The Millennium Bridge, the Sage and the Tyne Bridge

Heat magazine moments

Last Saturday PP and I got in our hotel lift to be joined by a short haired, greying man in a black leather jacket. He looked like a jazz musician. Actually, he looked like jazz saxophonist Andy Sheppard. In fact, he was Andy Sheppard! (Given that we were bang in the middle of the Gateshead International Jazz Festival I guess it wasn't really that surprising...) I resisted the temptation to declare, 'You Are Andy Sheppard' as not only would that be stating the obvious, but given that I lacked any kind of truthful follow-up line ('You do good jazz/I like your saxophone/my, your hair looks pretty/where did you get your leather jacket/you can go up and you can go down but you can't go sideways/nice/have you ever met Jackson Jeffrey Jackson?'), I thought it best to keep my mouth tightly shut. We trooped out of the lift in knowing silence.

Later that afternoon we caught Andy hanging out by the bar at the Sage with beers and fans. Here is the 'Caught on Camera' photo which I'm considering sending to Heat magazine. They're sure to use it, don't you think?!

Andy Sheppard having a beer at the Sage, Gateshead

Nurse's cup

Rodney

Assistant at the Pressure Point, Monday 14 March

Wake

smile

Daniel Kitson, Pavilion Theatre, Brighton

Daniel Kitson (photo from www.danielkitson.com)

Oh yes. Surrounded by well-seasoned Kitson fans I came, I listened, I laughed.

M, now do you know who I'm talking about??! The bloke from Phoenix Nights...

Hem, Komedia, Brighton

Vocalist Sally Ellyson (from the Hem website)

Awesome. (They completely made up for the overly priced drinks and infliction of Rufus leg (see previous RW entry). Warm vocals and harmonies, lovely pedal steel guitar. What a band! PP loved them, too and bought their albums Rabbit Songs and Eveningland - they're ace.
Thanks to NP for the preview snippet! Brill!

http://www.eveningland.com/

Jazz

Stonesfield prison

ah, poor bird

Middle Farm

Pantone universe

Pantone universe


Thank goodness for escalators

"But you don't really care for music, do ya?"Rufus Wainwright, Islington Academy, Tuesday 1st March

Rufus bathed in blue at the piano

Mesmerising. I love his drawly voice, his humour, his stage presence, his songs and arrangements, his buffness, his band. He's in a class of his own.

The Islington Academy is a small venue tucked away in a shopping centre. You need to have a strong bladder and good calf muscles to listen to drawly Doofus and stand in one place for so long (god bless the desperate soul who needed the toilet midway and couldn't face fighting through the crowd). I hate those venues that just pack the audience in and care not for the vertically challenged or those who actually want to hear the music. It wasn't the right place for Doofy's music at all, and generally attracts those irritating people who insist on talking throughout the set. Fortunately, the irritants restrained themselves, Doof was brilliant, and my companion such a lovely mantelpiece that I just didn't care! Hallelujah, indeed!

please bolt the door

snowcat

Kelly Joe Phelps (plus Paul Curreri)Pavilion Theatre, 26 February

Kelly Joe Phelps (from www.kellyjoephelps.net)

Paul Curreri: lisping yet charismatic bearded young John Martyn lookylikey.
Kelly Joe Phelps: warm voice, engrossing guitar. Gorgeous cover of Skip James' 'Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues'.
Pavilion Theatre: good acoustics, terrible chairs.

(Did you know that Skip James wrote 'I'm so Glad'? I didn't know that. I just thought it was a crap song by Cream. I was wrong.)

travel sweets


the selfish few

The fruits of my labour