I’ve started typing this entry at 05:46 in the morning, so you’ll have to decide where it’s early or late. For me, it’s late, but that doesn’t really matter. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted anything reasonable. In fact, the last post was regarding the Tall ships, which have come and gone. In something that’s becoming a bit of a tradition, here’s a partial post I wrote…

The residents of the quaint little fishing village of Hartlepool can breathe a sigh of releif, as the town slowly returns back to normal following the Tall Ships “festival”. Regular viewers will notice the lack of updates regarding this particular event, that’s because, as I mentioned, I was in Employment Palace 3 of the 4 days, meaning I was only able to pick up one of the 4 main days. No fireworks for me!

The weather actually began to change. the gloomy skies were, for the first time, being replaced with bright sunshine. Of course, this didn’t last long, and before we knew it, we were once again running for the shelter of the vacant tents. It was at this point I noticed Craig had texted me

…. and, that’s where I left it, suspension fans! You’ll never find what the text contained, or whether Craig made it. Actually, he didn’t. I’ll cut to the end of the day, as it was weeks ago now, but after most of the ships had sailed out of the port, me and Gary headed up to Crimdon for a view up there…

A unique view that will probably never be repeated again.

Right, that’s the end of my Tall Ships coverage. Well, OK, not quite. I’ve got possession of Andy The Iridium Fan’s “Tall Ships” archive. He was lucky enough to be down there all four days, and also get hold of a photography pass, meaning there’s 3,768 photos for me to go through… watch this space.

Photo opportinities have been few and far between, thanks to a few reasons. My complete laziness, “Just Cause 2″, and the weather. I’ve not even been out to get any sunsets recently, though I did attempt a bit of sunset photography with ATIF the other week. Unfortunately, the sunset was an abortion, so we just hung around until it got dark, and tried a bit of long exposure in a field… wait, that sounds wrong… we sat in a field and took photos of each others equipment…. hang on, that sounds worse… look, this is what I mean…

Actually, the rest of the set turned out quite good too, you can have a look here

20th August saw me obtain a few plastic crates from work, in the vain hope of being able to sort something out of my record, CD and tape collection This is something that is ongoing (i.e. not started yet). though one of the crates has already been filled with old videotapes.

The 22nd August saw the end of an era. Yes, it was the last ever gig of “Accidents By Design”. I wouldn’t say I was their only fan, but I’ve been to as many gigs as I could possibly attend, fighting my way through rain, hail and snow. Here’s some video of their last ever gig.

Part 1
Part 2
Part3
Part 4

Parts 1+4 have feedback noise on them, unfortunately, thanks to a dodgy guitar pedal left by a previous band. Had a great day overall, and the sunburn I thought I’d end up getting wasn’t as bad as I’d feared.

Two sets of photos on this one, firstly, mine hosted on flickr, and ATIF’s which are hosted on here. Despite the lure of cheap beer, with some of the money going to charity, I didn’t touch a drop.

EDIT: Ooooh, seems I missed a couple of things out of this post. Just had a comment from Jamie S, as I failed to mention he actually turned up for Pitch Invasion. I mentioned he didn’t turn up for the Tall Ships, but he broke his 100% record for not turning up to stuff, by er… actually turning up.

The first time he didn’t turn up for something was when we were going to Middlesbrough to see Wheatus. Which, in some type of weird juxtaposition of the present and the past, I received this email from someone who you may remember as “Poolieboydave”…

Alright

Odd how these things crop up! I still check the blog weekly!

Bloody hell, three readers!

Looks like the site is having database issues at the moment. Might have to restore from the last backup, which was yesterday. I’ll investiage shortly when I’ve got the tools for the job. It might just need a repair, it might need more.

Or I might just stick it on the “Can’t be arsed” pile.

Edit: From what I can gather, the server restarted about 6 hours ago and the stats table was goosed since then. The repair on the database took longer than expected, mainly due to the size of this stats table, but it appears to have survived with only a tiny amount of data being written off, certainly not enough to warrant restoring from a backup.

The site lives to fight another day! I bet you can’t wait for my next installation of shit music and lamp posts.

I don’t do this often, but I have another “unknown” song I’d like someone to name. This one’s different as I have the ENTIRE song, but have no idea what it’s called, or who it’s by.

Unknown song

I really don’t know much about this song, though I did actually buy it, or at least the magazine it was given away on. It came part of a free tape on the front of a music magazine from around 1989, possibly 1990. I can tell you I bought it from King Oswy shops, the original tape was black, and came in a slipcase. It may have featured “Inner City Mama” by Nenah Cherry on the tape too.

Not that it helps much.

Unfortunately, the original tape came from a manufacturer who made tapes that didn’t agree with my tape deck, and it probably got chewed up and binned. I certainly don’t have it anymore.

With the borrowment of Andrew’s cassette deck, I’ve been able to source one of my old C90s which had a copy of this song on it. Unfortunately, it was copied in high-speed mode, meaning the above track sounds tinny as hell. Just for old times sake, I’d like to know who it is and who by. Don’t bother googling the “lyrics”. “Blip Blipiddy Blop Bleep” doesn’t bring up any usefull results.

Feel free to comment / email. If it sounds familar, that’s great, but unless you’ve got a *really* good idea of who it is, then don’t! Also ,comments about my questionable taste in music, then, you know that already.

Oh, I’ve not done one of these for a while. It just so happened to coincide with my latest “digital music” purchase in a way that simply hasn’t happened before. Did any of you watch that “Unforgettable Jeremy Beadle” thing that was on ITV tonight? No? Anyone find it odd that the obituary programme was shown at roughly the same time slot as many of his programmes? No again? Well, I’m going to continue anyway.

Chris was round tonight, so a night of vegetation in front of the telly was in order. The afore mentioned programme sparked enough interest in the room to warrant its watching. On the other hand (ho ho), there wasn’t much else on.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable look back at the man’s life, with clips from shows I didn’t even think existed anymore. The end theme, however, made me shout of with amazement.

Let me take you back to 1992, 1993ish. My record collection was still at a minimal level. Few singles, fewer albums. This was boosted by an old relative clearing out her cupboards, and a stack of mainly uninteresting LPs were given to me. Out of all of the albums played, two tracks stood out. One of them featured on a scratchy old Telstar compilation album named “More Green Velvet”, and was entitled “The Lonesome Boatman” by The Fureys + Davey Arthur. It was a short, flutey, instrumental with a great guitar track and very 80s sounding seagull samples.

Now, thanks to the tinternet, I was able to find many different recordings of this, but not the one featured on the More Green Velvet album. The online stores only stocked the same CDs which had a different version. Even Spotify didn’t have it. Thankfully, I managed to find a version of it on youtube. It was longer than my vinyl version, though it would appear that the disc it came from was long out of print, and therefore went for an absolute fortune on ebay. Sigh. This was the only time I’d heard it coming from a source other than my own record collection.

Years pass, and on Friday, I’m awoken with the tune in my head, and the realisation I’d not tried any of the digital download sites. Within minutes, I was 69p lighter, and downloading “The Lonesome Boatman” My long search was over! In fact, I tweeted about it…

Finally got a digital version of “The Lonesome Boatman” by The Fureys for 69p… had it on vinyl, given to me by a long dead relative. 11:45 AM Aug 13th via web

All was not right, however, when I played it through headphones for the first time…

Ugh. Disregard my earlier “Lonesome Boatman” tweet. Awful analogue tape damage on this version all the way through. 69p wasted. Grrrrr. 1:48 AM Aug 14th via web

If you’re listening through speakers, it’s not too bad, but on headphones, the right channel is terrible! This version is taken from a “greatest hits”, so I’m hoping for a better version out there somewhere.

Er, anyway, back to the telly theme link…. two days after purchasing it, the very same version was used as the closing credits for the Jeremy Beadle thing. I find it really a bit spooky and coincidental that I would buy this tune almost immediately after waking up thinking about it, and two days later, for the first time in ~18 years, actually hear it broadcast on TV. It’s just weird, and a little too concidental.

Oh, and, to end this posting with yet another “death” announcement, according to the UKGameshows mailing list, Jack Parnell, one of the two composers of the original “Family Fortunes” theme (Bob Monkhouse / Max Bygraves era), has died. The other composer, Dave Lindup, died in 1992. Lindup’s son, Mark, is the keyboard player from Level 42.

For those of you who followed twitter/facebook/flickr, you’ll have seen I attended the tall ships buildup today. It’s not even officially started, yet the jovialities have already started. There are a few things which became quite clearly appearent, which may help you, should you visit. I type the following in a clearly vain attempt to help anyone before they attend…

Firstly, and most importantly…

1) Wear good footwear. Seriously. None of this sandal / high heel shit. Big, thick trainers are the order of the day. The “village” is set on derelict dock area, meaning that there is not a smooth surface in sight. I’m suffering at the moment because I wore “normal” shoes, as in, not trainers (no, not high heels either.. someone is bound to comment on that) but didn’t realise just how bad the ground was.
It is a “working surface”. Thousands of cars were parked there once. It’s a mixutre of dolomite and broken tarmac. You probably weren’t allowed in there without a hard hat until today.

2) Asda is open normally. It is 0.45 miles from the entrance to the “village”. If you’re talking the family, do one of two things. Take them there first of all, get as much packed lunch material as you can possibly carry, and use that. Should they stop you carrying bags of shopping onto the site, a McDonalds is close, along with a Burger King and a Pizza Hut. Promise the kids one of those. I normally wouldn’t notice this, but thought I’d better mention it when I noticed one place was charging £6.50 for a portion of noodles.

3. Bikes. I saw many people taking their family on a “bike ride” around the area. Look, just don’t. It’s too crowded. You’re going to hit more people than you avoid. Little Jimmy will complain that the ground is too uneven, and before you know it, he’s fallen off his bike, and you’re rubbing Savlon into his badly scratched knee, whilst hoards of confused tourists question why you brought the bike in the first place. Andy the Iridium fan left his bike parked up, and explored the site on foot. Ten million bonus points instantly earned.

4. Umbrella. The site is huge, and there’s not much cover. It is Hartlepool, and something interesting is happening. It’s going to piss down.

5. Asthma / other respirotary diseases. If it fails to rain, the uneven dolomite / tarmac surface turns into a dust bowl the second a breeze hits it, so beware. But, we have the Headland carnival on Saturday, so we’re practically guaranteed a thunderstorm. Wear a mask, just in case. You can pretend you’re in Japan, and purchase some ridiculously priced noodles!

6. Alcohol. There is beer onsite. You can’t take your own in, whcih means it’s probably very expensive.

7. Bikes. Seriously. I’m not going to be there, but I’ll be hoping for an accidental shower of tyre-puncturing needles.

8. Shoes. Please take my earlier advice seriously. Failing that, I’ll be happy to book an appointment with anyone willing to suck the liquid out of the blisters I’ve accumulated from “normal footwear”

9. Food. Seriously, Supernoodles are 50p a pack, if that? You could buy those, a dish, and a fucking kettle for £6.50

I’m a bit gutted I’m going to miss the majority of it, especially after the temporary bombshell “Employment Palace” dumped on me earlier in the week. It’ll be interesting to see the legacy it leaves, unfortunately, I have a feeling it won’t be very much… seriously though, I’ve been a little tongue-in-cheek, but I’m serious. Your feet will hurt, everything is expensive (despite shops nearby), it’s a bit dusty, and bike riders will struggle.

And I can’t go. Grrrrr.