Who ever heard of a concert starting at the time stated on the ticket?Originally uploaded by bounder

Who ever heard of a concert starting at the time stated on the ticket? This is the view of the uke guys doing Splodgenessabounds’ ‘Two Pint of Lager’ - it’s the last song in the first half and I’m outside waiting for a ’suitable break in performance’ before being able to get in. Gah.

On top of this, my mood isn’t improved when the usher tells me to put my phone away as I get in - it was the bloody interval, and I only had it out to see just how late I was. Git.

So anyways The Ukulele Orchestra - a lot more cabaret that I expected, I mean skits in between and during some songs. This distracted from some superb musicianship and some great songs. They also seemed to pick obvious covers, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ - when they pulled something truly unexpected out Chic’s’Le Feak’ in the encore, for example they were a real joy.

Still could of done with a touch of George Formby.

I did a quick interview with the Bostin website, if you have five minutes spare and are intrigued by the concept of bjornborgbaggiesbaggies.net then it may be worth your time.

Weeeeeeellllll, I’d like to ask you ladiesungentlemun do you feeel allllright Cenyewrockunroll inthuhareundhoundz?
Thankyewvurymuch.

Mailbox - Bang and Olufsen Originally uploaded by bounder

I know they only seem to sell kit to professional footballers (a guy that worked there once told me that that month they’d only sold one system to Lee Hendrie) - but a big advert featuring Ken Bates?

Gwen Stefani (yes, I know, not my usual thing, a return of a longstanding agreement from the last time I dragged my other half to watch Belle & Sebastian or somesuch) is not averse to using the odd bit of popular culture - in the first half hour she’s played songs that piggy-back on Topol and Julie Andrews - so when she tells us she went to the zoo yesterday, I’m immediately thinking a hip-hop mash-up of Julie Felix is on the cards.

Turns out she really had gone to the zoo, held a baby monkey and fed the elephants. She tells the crowd this and is a bit nonplussed that we don’t cheer the zoo (and all the staff she’s invited to concert) loudly. What she doesn’t realise is a lot of us are trying to work out which zoo she’s been to. Dudley Zoo, for a start doesn’t have any elephants.

While she’s off for another costume change, leaving vocal duties to Bowie’s long-time bassist Gail-Ann Dorsey, I’m thinking Drayton Manor? No elephants there either.

While she’s fitting in an incongruous ballad, but refusing to sing anything from No Doubt, I’m thinking Wipsnade? She can’t think that’s in Birmingham.

While she’s rampaging through the audience, scaring the shit out of security (she got right up the back of the arena), running while singing the one that goes “You know we’re cool” that sounds like Belinda Carlile, I’m thinking Chester Zoo? Nah.

While the fibre glass goats (I’m not kiding) are put away and another lacklustre ballad stutters with breakdance interludes, and you start to wish for the return of The Go Go’s (actually I pretty much aways think that), I’m thinking - surely not London Zoo? No elephants I don’t think, and wouldn’t she have invited the keepers to the Wembley Arena gig.

While she encores with What You Waiting For and I remember why for all the GIRL, GIRL, GIRL fake hip-hop posturing and the sad demotion of ska in her affections she’s still a cut above most pop acts, I’m thinking Twycross.

Twycross. It has to be.

An f’in big duck

Originally uploaded by bounder

One of my favourite showbiz anecdotes refers to the wondrous Vic and Bob becoming personas-non-grata on the charity fundrasing circuit after a routine about “a fucking big duck” at a Stephen Fry organised AIDS do.

It wasn’t the routine, in which they made continued references to an offstage “fucking big duck” so much, as that Bob decided to shout “and a fucking big duck” during the endispiece where Stephen was listing those to whom the night was dedicated.

So when I saw this bloody large fowl today, I just stood there laughing. (Sorry about the Delilah quote there.)

It had to happen eventually. I posted a kitten to BiNS by mistake. I got rid, but if you get feeds… well that’s why there was a bonus ginger cat in a box for you.

I wanted to write something in order to solidify my thoughts on why blog comments seemingly are more likely to be negative rather than positive, this isn’t going to be interesting or original. Probably it’s something to do with how if there’s something you don’t like it’s more important to “vocalise” it than when you like it. But there’s more to it than that.

No more so than with buildings and design, as they are subjects everyone can have an opinion on. As a sometime professional graphic designer (well, more layout really, but unless you’re a design star that’s prety much all you get to do) I detest showing artwork to clients as they have opinions which they can’t back up with anything but a gut feeling. You end up trying to explain design theory, or just giving up and doing whatever they want - so guess what happens more often. The best you can hope for in these cases is that you end up with all the graphics at the right resolution and things spelt correctly without Comic Sans.

As for commenting myself I try to be as polite as possible, sometimes even not saying things I mean in order not to offend. While not quite “if you can’t say anything good…”, you’ve at least got a chance of getting your point across.

Birmingham Beach, originally uploaded by MartianMarvin.

People can hate as much as they like, I still think that this is an interesting juxtaposition between technology, history and frivolity.

up yer Brum is my latest project, the idea originally was simply a sort of ‘Brum Blogs’ aggregator, but it’s got a lot more complicated. The front page shows items on the web (technorati, dell.icio.us, flickr, youtube )tagged ‘upyerbrum’ - as well as the most popular links already submitted - and lets people vote on them or submit them to the ‘digg’ part of the site.

It uses Pligg, an open source digg clone, Magpie RSS as well as some nice php and css that I’ve got to grips with specially for this project. I really hope that it’ll take off, although the ‘launch’ is making me a bit nervous - I think it’s the thing that I’ve invested most time in for ages.

Try it, carefully now…

up yer Brum :: promoting the best of Birmingham on the web