North Shields Fish Quay Festival comes round each year and generally get worse and worse. The smell of fish the washed up bands of yesterday headlining  to promote their best ofs (see Aswad/Cockney Rebel). The highlight is usually a portion of Noodles from the Japanese Noodle bar a water down pint and good raining on…..if your lucky! But you would miss it if it wasn’t on, kind of like Lost, an addiction but so far utterly pointless and unfulfilling.

Scowering papers in May of this year for Fish Quay Fest details led to a dead-end, it was true, no local festival to rip to shreds this year. What would Osibisia or The Real Thing do to promote their best ofs….Enter The Mouth of the Tyne Festival taking place in South Shields and Tynemouth (The UK’s equivalent to Malibu) Similtaineously, initial thoughts of this event were that it would be a small scale Fish Quay Festival spread over a broader area. I was happy to find out I was wrong, okay we had all the same trappings, street performers, jazz bands, stalls selling hippy jewellery, overpriced beer, icecream vans, fish n chips and stalls selling Clown scarecrows on sticks of course (honest! wot the f**k was that all about eh?). Weirdness aside, the festival was great down to four main factors.

1. There were no Charvers

2. It was well organised

3. The priory ruins was one of the best ever venues to see any kind of music, even if it is The Wildcats of Kilkenny and The Real Thing

4. The weather was sensational

 Okay I never went to South Shields, which could have been full of charvers, and let’s face it – often is, however, my theory behind the no charvers thing is, that firstly the festival wasn’t overly advertised, secondly the chavers probably thought that as you had to pay for the music on the first night the same applied on the second. It didn’t (que Simpson’s style ha-ha). The music was free on the second night (not great but free anyway). Stick on some salsa and the Chavers won’t know what the hell to do, if it hasn’t got a 4/4 beat then they’re in trouble!

You can only imagine what Spinal Tap live in this arena would be like, there always next year, I hope anyway.

Rockin, well Salsarin’ the UK’s  very own seventeenth wonder of the world

Can you believe it yet more of it! local bands that is, not bulls**t. I remembered over the weekend I’d forgotten to plug, yet another local band. Facia are from the costal region, and although I have yet to see them live, as they arealways playing when I’ve got other plans (not an excuse!), they sound pretty damn good on their my space site which you can check out by clicking here

Keep me posted on up on coming gigs lads I will make it one of these days!

 When not making cracking mid-field performances for club and country local lad makes nice tunage………

Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes plus another Yes! N0rthern B0y rocks well lounges at least. N0rthern B0y is a project by Gary Bell well, is him really. Another local lad, but this will appeal to anyone with a touch of Royksopp here and a dash of Air there.  His slinky grooves should don films, adverts, TV screens and elevators across the globe like a fine feathered chapeau (or is it chapeaux? A f**kin bad-ass flamboyant hat anyway). Really, Really great check him out by clicking here.

 

           Free Diamonds!                                                   Expensive ones!

More Shameless, tasteless promotion, this time on behalf of old friends. Free Diamonds are a band from Newcastle, Uk who have recently got snapped up by the well-respected Deep Elm Records in the US. They have possibly the most manic and unique sounding singer in Scott…..that alone is worth the admission fee. Free Diamonds? maybe not, but quite cheap on I-Tunes, Their debut Album “There should be more dancing” is oot noo. Check them out by clicking here.

Well, I suppose it’s about time I blogged on about my own personal bands for a bit of shameless self-promotion. I’ll try to make it short though and feel free to post comments about what you think of the tracks.

 Luminaries Demos Cover

I’ve got two music projects on the go: firstly I’ve got a kind of indie/alternative pop/ rock style project called Luminaries, which consists of me on keyboards ,vocals and guitars, the studio engineer, Dave Curle on drums and my friend Lee Dolman plays most of the bass. Ross “rooster” Foster plays aditional guitar too! (thanks mate). The second is kOMPUTa bANd which is a solo effort (well dave does his percussion magic, I’m poor at percussion!) more “mature” for want of a better word, it’s quite gentle a bit loungey etc.

I have a third act, Luminaries of Golf,which is now defunked, but still “funky” (sorry) this is electronica mixed with live music two of the tracks were written by a robot!

To check out any of the bands click on the band names above.

enjoy……or not! Wasn’t a very good promo that really……was it?

I’ll blog about the official website when that’s up and running in the next few weeks.

The Motorettes from Tynemouth, a sleepy sea-side village in the north east, (apart from sunday night when it’s full of charvers, or chavs if your southern) have been hard working under various AKAs for some years now.

Check out the cool graphics/axe on that!

They’ve finally struck a deal with Kitchenware Records and singer/guitar player Robin and co. are releasing a debut album in the next few days. Even if they’re not everyone’s cuppa I can’t help but feel blasting out their punky-pop cover of The Boss’s “I’m on fire” would bring a grin to even the sourest of pusses. There single “You gotta look the parts” is out now, you can watch the video here.

I feel congratulations are in order as well as good luck wishing for these aimiable chaps.

If you don’t click on the link you’ll never know what your missing!

Luminaries is me, but I’d like to think that one day it could be us……. Why? Imagine you had a 200 piece Anglo/Asian/African orchestra with a cajun band, DJ, MC, gospel choir, female and male singers of all kinds, guitar players, bass (double, upright, accoustic), drumers, drum machines (from 303s to sampled loops ). Oh and Keyboards, I mean seas of them; grand piano to Fender Rhodes, Clavinova to hammond, SH101 to Moog. How about percussion, doesn’t really bare thinking about, I’m talking about acess to all of Bongolia here. Kazoos, maybe? Stylophones, theremins…..Oh…..Oh….FX units Wah-Wah, Delay, Reverb, Phaser….Flanger. What songs could you create with this type of musical kit and musicians at your and their disposal, what would you create? All playing at once, how about the asian orchestra, the DJ, kazoos and some wah-wah porn action?!

I think we should try it don’t you?……

Apart from some blogging about music and movies and stuff , my aim is also to get musicians from different backgrounds together to create some interesting music drawing on people’s individual skills and talents and the diverse music they make and the wide range of instruments they play.

 

Imagine the different fomulae and combinations you could come up with. Example fomular follows:

  +  + =

Imagine that album!!!!!!!!!