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Archive for the 'events' Category

Some events that may interest you

Posted: July 24th, 2008, by Marceline Smith

EDINBURGH ZINE FAIR
I think I may have to go to this as I have never actually been to a zine fair despite writing and buying zines for the last 15 years, or something. They promise “a celebration of underground, independent and small press publishing in all its forms be it art, comics literature, politics or other weirdness.” plus workshops, films and stalls. It takes place from 12pm this very Saturday (26th July) at the Forest Cafe in Edinburgh. More info on Facebook here.

FOREST OF SOUND IN THE FELL FOOT WOOD
Leeds’ experimental DIY promoters Forest of Sound (verging on Centaurgyism there) are organising a nice two day festival at the end of August in the woods near Lake Windermere in Cumbria. Over the weekend you can catch the likes of RandomNumber, Wintermute, Lake Me, Hub and The Declining Winter. Admirably, it only costs £16 for a weekend ticket with camping. More info on Myspace here.

Does no-one have a real website any more? Next person to email me a plug for their event with an actual website gets a mention. One day I am going to do an article on bands with their own websites that have been updated more than once in the last six months.

Tennents Mutual line-up vote

Posted: July 22nd, 2008, by Marceline Smith

Well, the votes have been added up for who WE THE FANS want to play at the new Triptych replacement event(s).  Here are the results (complete with pie charts!!). As expected, it looks exactly like the average festival but without the experimental/local stuff of Triptych. Ho hum. I appreciate they’re trying to do something different here but give some indie kids a voting form and they will just write Muse, Belle and Sebastian, Arcade Fire without even looking.

The next stage should be interesting, and one we are getting no say in, as they take the band list, locations and type of event votes and go and book all the events. As they say here, “We’ll feature as broad a selection of talent from the final Top 40 within this year’s full line-up as possible…budget and artist availability permitting.” (my italics). If one were to be cynical, one would think they will just book whatever they damn well like, considering that at least 50% of these bands will refuse or be unable to play, especially since the kids also voted for “A series of smaller site-specific gigs”.

ATP’s version seemed a lot more transparent, and they were pretty quick to get unavailable bands crossed off so people could move their votes elsewhere. The Tennents version is turning out a lot more behind closed doors, despite being ‘shaped’ by the fans.

I await further news with interest.

diskant party update

Posted: July 17th, 2008, by Marceline Smith

diskant 080808 gig poster

Poster time! Sadly we were too late for Summerlin poster action so flag-waving cupcakes is where it’s at. Who doesn’t like happy party cupcakes?

I have also made some diskant and pie-related badges which we’ll be giving away FREE until they run out so get there early. If you miss out, or can’t make it to Glasgow, you can buy a set right here for just £1.50.

diskant badges

Are you excited yet? More info here of course.

Synchronise diaries!

Posted: July 5th, 2008, by Marceline Smith

I am back now and have some exciting news. diskant will soon be TEN YEARS OLD and thus we are having an extravaganza on the eighth of the eighth of the eighth. This is not the actual date of diskant’s anniversary as I didn’t think it an event worth noting at the time but it’s the right month and it does tie in nicely with the only other diskant event, our gig on 02/02/02. However, that was a complete coincidence as I only noticed what date it was the other week.

Anyway, it will involve bands, tunes from the glory days of diskant, secret surprise guests*, PIE, free badges, an INDIE TOMBOLA with AMAZING PRIZES** and some other awesome stuff. I will announce more details soon but get your diaries out and make sure you’re in Glasgow that weekend.

*No, The Oedipus will not be reforming. OR WILL THEY? (No)
**If you would like to donate an amazing prize, or just some tat, get in touch.

Summer catch-up: Places and events

Posted: June 30th, 2008, by Marceline Smith

Gustav Klimt, Painting Design & Modern Life in Vienna – Tate Liverpool
A showcase event in Liverpool’s City of Culture calendar is the first major exhibition of Austrian Symbolist painter Gustav Klimt ever staged in the UK.  One of the most prominent members of the Vienna Art Nouveau movement, his major works include paintings, murals, sketches, and other art objects. Klimt’s primary subject was the female body, and his works are marked by eroticism. The exhibition includes most of his major works and is presented alongside the work of the architect and designer Josef Hoffman, co founder of the Wiener Werkstatte and close friend of the artist. Hoffman’s extravagant interiors created for Klimt’s patrons compliment the gorgeous decorative paintings. If you like pretty things you will be attracted like a magpie to the work on show here. Hoffman expressed the ethos of the exhibition perfectly ‘It just isn’t enough to buy paintings. As long as our towns, our houses, our furniture, our clothes and our language and feelings do not reflect – elegantly and simply and beautifully the spirit of our own time we are living at a level far beneath that of our forefathers.’ Link [Mandy Williams]

London
I still love LONDON.  After the mistake that was the job on Baker Street, I now work in St John’s Wood around the corner from Abbey Road, I am continually finding new haunts and exciting things to do all across the capital. [JGram]

My House
Well, I’m certainly enjoying living in the house I bought with my other half recently. To hell with property prices spiralling all over the place; we’re happy and that’s that. [Simon Minter]

Wollaton Park, Nottingham
I have spent lots of time recently in the lovely Wollaton Park in Nottingham. A Council-owned beautiful stately home set in acres of lush meadows, lakes and with wild deer roaming free, it’s a blissful place to spend a weekday afternoon. Weekends are a bit more ice cream and screaming in summer but roll on winter when the deer are a bit more friendly and no one is around.  Photos. Also went up to sneak into Riber Castle (talking of Dead Man’s Shoes, the Shane Meadows film). [Chris Summerlin]

Belfast
Any kind of open space with greenery is good enough for me these days. I hopped over to Belfast the other weekend and spent a trundling up and down the coast, which was suitably spectacular. [Dave Stockwell]

Baby McChesney
The birth of our child sometime in the next few weeks is likely to be the biggest event I’m likely to attend… well… ever.   I am excited and terrified in equal measure. [Alex McChesney]

Bangkok, Thailand
Thanks to the wonder of future scheduled posts, I can say HA HA, I’m in Thailand just now, shopping in the markets, swimming in the sea and stuffing myself with curry-filled pancakes and Mr Bun. How’s Glasgow? Is it raining? Just wondering…. [Marceline Smith]

For music fans, by (alcohol drinking) music fans.

Posted: May 2nd, 2008, by Marceline Smith

Further to our cynical Triptych post below, the successor – Tennents Mutual – has now been launched. Providing you are of alcohol drinking age*, you can help “devise and programme a series of live shows in Scotland in October / November this year”; from what bands get to play, which venues (presumably only ones that sell Tennents) and even which bank gets to sponsor the event. Hasn’t this been done already (ATP etc.) with increasingly obvious choices? The fact that Belle and Sebastian are ruling the board at present is so inevitable, it’s almost funny. Anyway, if you sign up before 30 June, you too can add your votes and suggest new bands for everyone else to vote for. Get to it!

*If you’re under 18 you can’t even LOOK at the website, lest you be driven to underage drinking. Let alone go to any of the gigs. Exactly why is sponsorship of live music by makers of alcohol a good thing?

And the wee boy says “I can see Triptych’s arse”

Posted: April 28th, 2008, by Stan Tontas

I”m baffled by the praise lavished on pish-merchants Tenants and their soon-to-be-forgotten Triptych festival recently. Lots of ill-advised adjectives like “innovative” and “avantgarde”. One Stockhausen gig doesn’t make for an avant garde festival, and all that’s innovative about Tenant’s music sponsorship is their opportunism.

From a corporate eyeball whore point-of-view, they were there first. Other overpriced pint-size poisoners are still playing catch-up in Glasgow. Fair play for that.

Musically, though, they were always second, never innovating. As soon as any independent promoters demonstrated a musical appetite, there’d be Tenants the next year with a less adventurous music bill and much increased ticket price.

Case 1: Planet Pop in August in Edinburgh. After years of the Edinburgh Festival as a musical desert, Planet Pop brought a full bill of indie goodness to scuzzy venues like the Cas Rock and some legendary gigs were had. The Fall in a bar the size of your living room. Sleater-Kinney and Prolapse: were they on the same bill? I can’t remember, but I know they were the best show I’d seen up to that time.

Then what? Tenants think “ooh we’ll have some of that” and bring us T on the Fringe. More mainstream acts, with a nod towards “indie” tastes and a trebling of ticket prices. Cue lots of publicity claiming that there had been no music before Tenants and PlanetPop is written out of music history.

Case 2: Le Weekend in Stirling launches with a proper avant-garde line-up, in the 2nd half of April. That’ll never work. Oh, it did? Here comes Triptych. Less of the avant-garde though, let’s go for hipster. What are young “creatives” listening to? Ticket prices leap again. Beer company praised for innovation and bringing music to cities that never had it so good. Like, er Glasgow. Stuart B of Mogwai takes the piss out of Tenants onstage at STAR, finds himself the subject of a peeved letter from a Tenant PR hack for his ingratitude. (As we know, no-one knew who Mogwai were before Tenants gave them a gig).

It goes on. T-Break. Tenants invents the battle of the bands. Like  X-Factor, but your prize is to be bottled off of a foot-high stage in a derelict army base at the arse-end of Scotland. In front of your schoolmates.

T in the Park! Tenants invents the music festival. Let’s take 50,000 Scots out of their cities to get shit-faced, bleary-eyed and aggresive in the countryside. Take our Buckfast away at the gate, make us drink Tenants at £3 a pint. Like Glasgow Green without the fresh air and sense of space.

It’s all about market segmentation and demographics. T in the Park is your buy-it-by-the-crate lager and Triptych was their attempt to launch an upmarket “aspirational” brand. They actually did use Triptych to launch a new beer but I’m buggered if I can remember what it was called. Epic Fail.

…and coincidentally, the next year, Triptych is canned. Funny that.

Butlins go all out for ATP

Posted: April 21st, 2008, by Marceline Smith

Does anyone really think ATP was better at Pontins? The info for Butlins ATP has just been emailed out including these gems:

What WE Provide!
Butlins Minehead looks out across a superb sandy beach. The site not only has a supermarket, newsagent and cash points, it also has Burger King, Pizza Hut, Finnegan’s fish and chips, Sun and Moon, Skyline Cafe and Yacht Club Dining room. Onsite facilities include a cinema, Splash Water World – a sub-tropical environment that has a huge wave pool, a swimming pool, 3 flumes and also a flume based raft ride – Ten-pin bowling and amusement arcade. Sports include Archery, Football, Basketball, Darts, Petanque, Fencing, Kwik Cricket, Netball, Rounders, Table Tennis, Outdoor Bowls and Crazy Golf.

Meal Deals:
For those of you who have purchased room only accommodation or don’t feel like cooking over the weekend Butlins have put together a breakfast and dinner package at £34.95.

What you get: Full Traditional English Breakfast, Continental Style Breakfast Buffet, Selection of Cereals and Pastries, Fruit, Toast and Tea, Coffee and Fruit Juices. 3 Course Dinner, served buffet style, including Soup, Hot Buffet, Salad Bar, Desserts and Ice Cream, with Hot Drinks and Juices

Amazing. They don’t even brag about the widescreen TVs, framed pictures, complimentary Butlins chocolate and pyramid of single serving milk either.

So, who else is going to Butlins?

Soundhaus 10th Birthday

Posted: April 9th, 2008, by Stan Tontas

The Soundhaus is celebrating it’s 10th birthday this weekend with DJs from (it looks like) all of the nights it hosts and a load of bands playing as well.

Why should you care? Read on… Continue reading »

Triptych 08 – The final fling

Posted: March 13th, 2008, by Marceline Smith

The line-up for everyone’s favourite Scottish, lager-sponsored, city-hopping music festival has been announced and it’s a good one, and so it should be since this is to be the last Triptych ever, nooo! However, they seem determined to make it a Triptych to remember and there’s promises of a new type of event to replace it. Whether this will be a good or a bad thing remains to be seen – it does have the terrible name of The Tennent’s Mutual. This just makes me think of that episode of The Prisoner where everyone starts shouting UNMUTUAL at Number 6. Hopefully it will be just like that.

Anyway, the usual range of excellent bands, DJs and films will making their jaunty way round Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen over the weekend of 25th-27th April. I’m particularly looking forward to the Tramway extravaganza featuring Mogwai, Clinic, Dirty Projectors, Malcolm Middleton, Errors, Frightened Rabbit, Magik Markers, Correcto and RememberRemember all in one place. Tremendous.

Here’s the full list of artists taking part:

Mogwai, The RZA, Candi Staton, Sebadoh, Alela Diane, Clinic, Michael Hurley, Jamie Lidell, Gilles Peterson, José James, Flying Lotus, Theo Parrish, Derrick May, Model 500, Four Tet, Andrew Bird, Malcolm Middleton, Pram, James Blackshaw, Mikel Rouse, Dirty Projectors, Frightened Rabbit, Chrome Hoof, Aidan Moffat & Bill Wells, The Fence Collective, 1990s, Magik Markers, JD73, Buraka Som Sistema, Jah Shaka, Krafty Kuts, A.Skills, Annie Nightingale, JD Twitch & JG Wilkes, The Bays, Skeletons & The Kings Of All Cities, Correcto, Errors, Found, Neil Cowley Trio, Human Bell, Bass Clef, Kitchen Cynics, RememberRemember, Rustie Hudson, Mohawke, Mr Velcro Fastener, DJ Skurge, Harri & Domenic, Mungo’s Hi Fi, Messenger Soundsystem, Dirty Hospital DJs, Orgue Electronique, Four Corners DJs, Norman Blake (DJ Set), Miso DJs, Dee J A’la Fu, Funky Transport, Rub-A-Dub DJs, The Parsonage, David Shrigley (DJ Set), Gerard Love (DJ Set), Zilla / King Cannibal, Joe Acheson Quartet, Mweslee, Grant Campbell, Andrew Divine, Octogen, Sushil Dade, Copy Haho, Pastel DJs, Syntheme, Chris “Beans” Geddes, Paul Cawley, Laurence Hughes, Sace, Departure Lounge DJs, Kinky Afro.

Find out more and have a listen to some of the artists over at the Triptych website.