Sunday 15th March

Weekend In Wales
Sunday 15th March 2015

Sunday was a write-off. Apart from driving down to Southgate to find a shop that had The Observer before lunch (lovely chicken and roast potatoes, with lemon tart and Joe's ice cream + a helping of homemade trifle for desert),

spent all day sat in the armchair next to Dad's bed - reading the paper, reading The Last Gang In Town, half-watching the Australian Grand Prix and the France/Italy game, and mostly snoozing.
Caught the end of the MUFC/THFC game and watched highlights of the other matches then caught up on work emails before crashing out at a respectable time.
Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Saturday 14th March

Weekend In Wales
Saturday 14th March 2015

Nice morning. Nice big semi-healthy breakfast again before the nice ladies from the Social Services come round to get Dad out of his bed and,using some amazing hoist contraption, into a wheelchair. Kathy arrived with her friend's 'popemobile' and we got the ramps out, maneouvered the wheelchair into it, and set off for Langland Bay.

Lovely day for the beach and we had a nice latte with toasted coconut bread looking out at the sea and chatting with cousin Gareth's father-in-law and an old friend from the Golf Club. After an hour it was time to head back to Bish, stopping off in Newton to get the paper.

well-preserved relic from the 60's at Jenkins Bros. garage on Northway

 

 

 

The old Langland Bay Hotel - home of "Amanda's"

Newton 'high street'

   Then back home to spend all afternoon and evening watching the rugby, followed by some nice quiche and salad for tea. Tidy.

 Out at 9:30 to pick Griff up and visit Jez for a couple of hours of 70's rock and Match Of The Day. Started with a classic Man 'Rockpalast' performance on DVD (Micky/Deke/Martin/Terry line-up) and going through Jez's collection of original vinyl.

 

 

Watched the football, then finished the sesh with some Necromandus-like heavy prog from Captain Beyond. Back to Bish across a deserted Clyne Common again. Spooky, but nicely familiar.

Friday 13th March

Weekend In Wales
Friday 13th March 2015

Friday morning, healthy breakfast, check on emails and Lou's uni, then over to Derwen Fawr at 11:30 to drop off the C-E singles at Gabalfa.

Quick chat with Mr.H then back to Bishopston to meet Kathy and take mum round to the Plough - which has gone all posh, less a gastropub, more a restaurant with a small bar area now. Top notch food and you know it will be heaving on Sunday for Mothers Day.

 

 

Murton Post Office, Chemist, popped back home then I headed into town at 3:30 to get time for a peek at the Man exhibition in Swansea Museum before it shut at 5:00. Cold and drizzly out but very happy once I got in the Museum - had the whole place to myself for an hour and loved seeing all the classic posters, singles and memorabilia. Dissapointing that the exhibition programme was sold out, but they said they'd hunt one out and call me. In the meantime, picked up Deke's 'Maximum Darkness' book. His 'Rhinos, Winos....' is one of my favourite Rock biogs.
Check out some exhibition photos and vids here.

Had a quick walk around past 'Old Nick's', now the Mission Gallery, then a look at the guitars and the Pictures Of Lily drum kit in Cranes, popped in HMV - horrible shop (and a completely empty Man section despite exhibition across the road) - and found a new Beck book in Waterstones, apparently just delivered that morning.

So back to the car and round to Griff's with his birthday present - The Damned 'Black Album' box set - plus a couple of Damned 12"'s, a Rods white label, and a 'Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle' book. In return, I got the 'gold deluxe' edition of the "Jack To A King" DVD, signed by Ashley, Leon Britton  and 'Magic Daps' Lee Trundle.

Quick cup of tea then in the car up past Dyfatty Flats, round Cwmbwrla Roundabout, over the top of Brynhyfryd and to the land of grey and pinks in Morriston. Quick turnaround and back to Sandfields to get chips and curry sauce from the Argyle Fish Bar before going out again up Mount Pleasant to Chrissy's house. Quick chat about plans for the rugby tomorrow then back down past The Heathcliffe  and the Carlton Terrace punkhouse back to Argyle Street to pick up the records and off to Jonathan Bowen's in The Uplands.

Chrissy's scarves from all the away games

The Griffiths Brothers swap presents - the Cockney Rejects DVD for Chrissy's 40th and a Czech flag brought back for Griff from a stag do in Prague

What an incredible place, looks like it hasn't changed since the 19th Century. Had a look out in the garden at the bee hives and associated equipment before a cup of tea round the Aga and a tasting of the different batches of this season's honey. JB had been out on the Llanmorlais walk with Jams and met Sib, The Great Voltini, and we talked a bit about the old medical equipment that was in the house that Jonathan was aiming to try and repair. Griff was itching to repair to the music room so JB chopped some kindling and got the fire going. Griff was in ecstasy, working through all 6 sides and singing along to every word while JB and I played backgammon. Then time ran out and after a final blast of "The Crown" to end the evening we said goodbye and it was back down Mumbles Road. An adventurous hedgehog crossed the road in front of the car at the bottom of The Mayals, but not another soul in sight across Clyne Common and back to Bishopston for 1 a.m.

a Victorian TENS machine

Thursday 12th March

Weekend In Wales
12-16 March 2015

Hour on the tube to Hammersmith. Finished the book I started on Monday "The KLF: Chaos, Magic and The Band Who Burned A Million Pounds" by John Higgs - full of Discordianism, Ideaspace and magic. Got the car back to Kingston to load up for the journey and then off to Oswestry at 10:45 with exactly 1,000 miles on the tripometer.
M3 - M25 - M40 - quick stop at Cherwell services for coffee and emails - M6 - M54 - A5 and arrived at Bowie Bowson's at 14:45. Pot of tea, chatting about Ad Edwards, CKDCF 2015, and touring Carbon/Silicon around the US and Europe. An exclusive preview of 2 pre-mixing backing tracks from 'Vampires, then to the warehouse for the real purpose of the trip - 2 car seats and 1,200 Clayton-Ellis singles. By 16:00, everything was in the car and it was time to set off through mid-Wales.
Beautiful countryside, lots of sheep, waiting for open road to get past slow traffic, and plenty of time to work my way through Man, SFA, Phish, New Boots & Panties and Potato Land. Somewhere after Nowtown I missed a turning and spent an hour through winding hillside roads behind a vokswagen tourer. It was quite a while before I noticed its number plate - cosmic Ideaspace indeed.

B(ill)D(rummond) 06 KLF

Back in Bishopston at 8pm, something to eat, and a chance to Chill Out.
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Thursday Playlist

Thursday dinner

Back On The Train - 2012

ok... Summer Tour 2012 is coming down fast and it's time for me to brush up my blogging. Must make a better effort on this trip. In the meantime, here's my piece for the My First Show feature in the latest issue of Surrender To The Flow (#34) - available on lot now!

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I hadn’t even known about Phish for long. My mate Stuart had given me a compilation tape “1 Hour Of Phish” that I listened to in my car a few times on my daily commute to work and found it strangely growing on me - despite not being at all like my usual preference for all things Brit Invasion-influenced and power-pop. The songs were long, and veered dangerously close to unhip prog, and where there were lyrics I found them a bit silly if not to say embarrassing. Oh, and the singer didn’t have much of a voice either.... but still I kept being drawn back to this tape and particularly the longest track “You Enjoy Myself”. How do you describe this music? It’s not really a ‘song’ is it – certainly not in the classic verse/chorus/middle eight/chorus sense.

I was unaware that they had already played in London twice in the preceding 12 months and was again (and eternally) indebted to Stuart who bought prime location box tickets for their Summer Tour ’97 show at the Royal Albert Hall. I still knew nothing really about the band although by now I had copies of Billy Breathes and Hoist.

My memory of the night has faded over time – of course we were pretty smoked up by showtime – but what stuck in my head was.... 
- An unusual (but nice) vibe outside the venue. An earlier start time than I was used to – still light outside on a pleasant Summer evening – and a ‘different’ crowd milling around. A lot of American accents , a lot of college kids on tour, plenty of girls, and a smattering of ‘hippies’
- A great vantage point from our box on stage right. Box 32 is recognised as one of the best tickets in the Albert Hall - perfect for a group of friends to see all the action, in comfort, without distraction

- I recognised almost none of the songs, didn’t get the YEM or Stash that I’d been hoping for, and my concentration drifted for long periods at a time as I looked around the hall and just thought how strangely different this was to the last time I was there, or to a typical gig experience of the time which would have been something like Oasis or Primal Scream.

- I strongly remember the red-uniformed old men and ladies trying to make everyone sit down in their seats and how unjust it was when they occasionally escorted someone out for smoking in the hallowed hall. What a pisser to miss the gig just for smoking a bowl – at a Phish concert… c’mon… 
- I came away thinking that I’d seen something I’d never seen before. Now, I would describe it in terms of the ‘tension and release’ and I would have much more of a sense of the song selection, and the crowd’s awareness of old classics, bustouts, debuts, and the general flow of the set, but then I was left fascinated by what it was that the band were doing that caused a song to slowly and almost imperceptibly rise up in intensity, carrying the audience mood with it, with the band and the audience feeding off each other, until hitting an orgasmic peak... then calming again until at some point later slowly building again. How did they know to come back in from a jam at just the right moment? They seemed to have a telepathic understanding with each other.
- I tried to describe to people afterwards how this was such an unlikely band to have such a devoted following. This was not a hot-looking NME band of trend-setters. This was 4 scruffy, bearded, relatively-old (or old-looking) musos, with very little ‘show’ and virtually no spoken interaction with the audience.... yet there seemed to be an unusually high percentage of females in the audience. The thing I find most strange now is that I don’t particularly remember anything regarding the lightshow. Was CK5 around for that tour?

Looking back on it now with the benefit of another fifteen years and an audience tape of that night, what an amazing show to be at.... and a stat collector’s dream. 19 songs – 8 of which hadn’t been played before the two Dublin shows a few days earlier. The first (and there has only been 1 other ever) performance of ‘I Don’t Care’, the second-ever performances of ‘Water In The Sky’, ‘Olivia’s Pool’ (or ‘Oblivious Fool’ at this point), Ghost’, ‘Wading In The Velvet Sea’ and ‘Dirt’, and the third-ever performances of ‘Dogs Stole Things’ and ‘Limb By Limb’ – not to mention only the seventh-ever performance of ‘Beauty Of My Dreams’. Have there ever been shows with anything like the number of bustouts/debuts as those first three Summer ’97 shows?!?

Highlight of the show is a Reba, which is just beautiful and is the jewel of a second set of all new songs before closing with a majestic Hood. Everyone was convinced they would encore with ‘A Day In The Life’ but having done that at the Shepherds Bush show the previous July they went for Cities instead - “Think of London...” - before a romp through Poor Heart to close.

A review on Phish.net says “….Overall not a bad show, playing was good I just thought it lacked inspiration which I thought would be the easy part being in Royal Albert Hall”...... and it does feel slightly lacklustre, which may actually have had something to do with the setting. The Albert Hall is an amazing venue in many ways –– after ‘Taste’, Trey says “Thank you, what a beautiful room, thank you for being here, it’s just incredible...” - but it can also be a bit intimidating and sterile. It is also almost always a sellout, but for this show was only half-full (max capacity 5,250 – on return to the States, Phish would go back to playing to 20,000 every night).

Outside afterwards, I scored a Doniac Schvice – very impressed that this ‘unknown’ band had such a cool publication. I don’t think we hung around long and I don’t remember us talking with any of the heads thereabouts so I didn’t really appreciate how many of them must have already been to the two Dublin shows and would be setting off in the morning for the next show, 3 days later in Vienna. I was also unaware at that point that I was on my way down the rabbit hole towards a full-scale addiction to the Phish

Doniac Schvice - Summer 1997

http://www.mediafire.com/?y41n9i74udpgu

Mansfield 2004 - my show #2

So.... I was having so much fun in Philly, Camden, Merriweather & DC that I never finished blogging my last trip.... but here's my quick Phish.net post of the 2004 Mansfield night one:
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10 August 2004 - Tweeter Centre (Great Woods), Mansfield, Mass

This was my 2nd Phish show. My first was at the Royal Albert Hall in London and that's what changed things for me from quite interested... enjoying the compilation tape my mate had done for me about 6 months before that was starting to be in regular rotation in my car... to full-on 'this band is absolutely fascinating and I want to know and hear more'. I signed up for the Schvice that night and would look longingly when they arrived in the post at the tour dates - wondering when the next UK tour would be. I didn't realise that any shows outside the US were rare even then and were soon to become non-existent. So by 2004 I was getting desperate and, realising I had to somehow get to America to make it happen, the planets came into alignment and it turned out I had to make a business trip to Rhode Island in August. I paid way too much money on ebay for a couple of tickets and then worried for weeks that they wouldn't get to the UK in time before I had to fly out to Boston.

But everything went perfectly to plan and there I was on a Tuesday afternoon in August driving into a Phish lot for the first time. What an experience. I had no prior knowledge of the lot scene or Shakedown Street and I was blown away by it all. I just felt immediately comfortable (apart from the heat which I was really not used to) and at home with like-minded people. I bought some nice-looking chocolate brownies and spent the afternoon in a pleasant semi-daze, wandering round and round the lot thrilled at all the crazy and cool sights and the endless stream of cars full of happy people being slowly marshalled in.

Eventually it was showtime and I passed on my spare ticket for a fraction of what it cost me to someone who didn't even want to go in the pav - I hadn't realised that anyone would actually prefer to be on the lawn. In fact the idea of 'the lawn' was completely alien to me. There are no venues in the UK remotely like the pavilions that Phish play on Summer Tour.

My recollection of the show was that I was so excited in the first set - thrilled that they started with an extended Bag, played PYITE 3rd song in, and all in all dropped a nice first set which seemed to be over in a flash.

Set break gave a breath of fresh air and I queued to get a nice Mansfield shirt then watched everyone milling round meeting up with their friends and sharing thoughts on what would be in Set 2. Back in my (good, Page-side, halfway down) seat I chatted with the people next to me who had heard my accent and were amazed that someone had flown from the UK for the gig. I was super-thrilled and touched that they shared their bowl with me which only further convinced me that this whole experience was like if I'd imagined what my perfect gig experience could be and here it was - band, music, atmosphere, people, lights, vibe everything....

Set 2 started how I expected a Phish gig to be - Mike's Groove into some laid back jamming and then for me halfway through it all went a bit flat. I wasn't familiar with Makisupa at the time and have always had a bit of a thing against white boy reggae (I'm over it Phish-wise btw), Dog Faced Boy was ok but Friday really bummed me and as much as I liked Hood I felt a bit 'is that it?' as Set 2 ended.

Was very happy that Possum was the encore but all too soon it was back to the car and one of the longest waits I've ever had to get out of a car park. Plenty of time to reflect on an amazing day and how pleased I was with myself and how I'd made it happen.

Next day I had to get back to Boston for my flight back to the UK and kept thinking why hadn't I swapped my spare ticket for one for the second night - surely I could have changed my flight and taken an extra day off work? - but that was it, 2 more shows, then Coventry, then the end and I would never get to see Phish again.

Listening back to the show now, Set 1 is still very good and a 6 song first set is pretty unusual (especially from a 2011 perspective). Set 2 has its moments but I still get a bit bummed by Friday and Trey is clearly not fully on his game at various points in the show. All the same, this show brings back very special memories for me and proved that if you want it enough a little travelling shouldn't get in the way. I'm now up to 13 more shows in 3.0 so have a different warmer perspective on everything... and I love Phish, every day.