Kylie in Manchester

Kylie was fantastic and so were the colourfully and creatively dressed members of the audience - but what a shame that there were too many men and women in yellow jackets stalking around and stopping anyone from taking photos.

The venue website was even at pains to point out that even photos taken with mobile phones were unacceptable - I mean, please, come on... will someone tell me what harm it does to let people enjoy their night out (which was hardly cheap at £50 a ticket) by taking a couple of photos away with them to show friends and family?

Satchel Blue start recording

At long last we ('we' being the band, Satchel Blue) have started recording our next album with the first session last weekend.

Despite a long and varied back catalogue of material ranging from the first release in 1999, this will in fact be the first full album release with the full band line-up - let's hope it lives up to its' promise then!

Provisionally titled 'February' it will feature a complete set of previously un-recorded material, some of which has been featured in recent gigs and some of which is still unheard.

Further pictures are available on the Satchel Blue Flickr group.

Ye Olde Record Shop

There I was (or rather, here I am) vacantly gazing around this enormous wealth of information called the web and trying to work out if there is anything of particular interest or importance going on around me that I need to pay attention to when, oh, shock horror, I read a post on recently launched Brum Blog which says:

"Jon Bounds of Birmingham: It's Not Shit has had a productive couple of weeks. His review of the year is a must read and the Brummie of the Year award went to Jason Furnell, a cricketer by all accounts, with Danny Reddington of the recently closed Reddington Rare Records came in second."

Reddington Rare Records has closed!!
(photo from sfb_dot_com on Flickr)

Damn.

...and I think it's partly my fault. Ok, maybe not me as an individual, but certainly people like me, people that act in the same way that I do... ...and I reckon there are definitely a few of you out there.

To a music fan/collector/listener/whatever-you-are there is something warm, friendly, enjoyable and special about whiling away your time in a small, independent music shop that still has the word 'record' in the name above the front door.

Something that simply isn't present during a trip into the bright lights and clean spaces of an HMV or a Virgin Megastore - the name itself 'megastore', what's enjoyable or friendly about that?

But, and this is the problem, did I make an effort to visit Danny at Reddingtons? Did I make sure that for every pound I spent on Amazon or in HMV, I saved a few pennies and spent them at 'Rare Records? No, I did not.

And why not? Now that it's closed and the option is no longer open to me it's hard to understand why I didn't go more often. Yes, I visited once or twice, but definitely, absolutely not enough.

There are plenty of excuses waiting in the aisles - convenience, not enough time, too busy and so on and so on, but ultimately I just didn't stop to think about what I should be doing until it was too late.

Don't worry, this isn't a crusade to get you all to spend more at Danny's online music store, but rather a reminder... whatever your thing, whatever you enjoy, whatever you value, don't wait until it's gone to realise how much you enjoyed having it around.

Blakeney Red Perry

Another variety from Gwatkin Cider, Herefordshire - and this time one that is going to seriously confuse the scoring system.

It's a perry, otherwise known as pear cider. Yep, that's right, it's made from pears, not apples.

Worst of all, I didn't actually realise this until after I had initially scored the drink thinking it was an apple cider, and it scored 10 out of 20 for having a too sweet, slightly strange taste. Now I understand why.

So, fair's fair, I decided to re-taste and re-score the Blakeney Red Perry bearing in mind that it quite rightly should taste different to an apple cider.

The label is clearly up there with the best (horse, farmer, old fashioned machinery, etc etc), and the rest is kind of ok... not bad, but not great. Far too sweet for my own tastes, although once you remember it's produced from pears then the taste does explain itself, the texture is also a bit light and fizzy.

Still, an easy to drink beverage for those who prefer something sweet, and let's not forget that it is 7.5% so you won't need many! (Um, drink responsibly ok course)

Name: Blakeney Red Perry, (7.5%)
Label: 4/5
Looks: 3/5
Flavour: 3/5
Texture: 3/5
Total: 13/20

So, the league table now looks like this.

My new camera

I've finally given in and bought myself a digital SLR camera - namely the Nikon D80 (left).

As I've already got a few Nikon lenses from my current film SLR (Nikon F50) and didn't fancy any of the kit options I also purchased a nice looking Tamron 28-300m zoom lens to go with my new toy.

Sadly the weather has been too awful, and I've been too busy watching football on the tele, to actually take this outside yet and put it's through it's paces.

In the absence of any new photos (and the pressure is certainly on after spending all that money) I've been uploading some more random photos to Flickr from a visit to Torquay on Boxing Day and previous pics from Selly Park and London.

I've also decided, call it a New Year's Resolution if you like, that I should spend more time browsing other people's photos on Flickr and taking more notice of what everyone else is doing - maybe I might even learn something.

For example, did you know that there are 1,528 photos on Flickr tagged with 'armadillo'?