Tag / Music

by Gareth

Summer of Soul

Last night I was at the Savoy Cinema in Heaton Moor – it’s a single-screen independent boutique cinema just near the border to Manchester, and I’ve been there a few times to see films that haven’t been given a showing at Cineworld (where I normally go because I have an Unlimited card).

Anyway, I went yesterday to see a new documentary film about the Harlem Cultural Festival from 1969 called ‘Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)’, which at the time was recorded with a multi-camera set-up onto videotape, but after it was done, no TV network was interested in showing it, despite there being some pretty big names performing at it. So over 50 years later, these recorded performances are finally being seen, along with talking heads of those that either performed, or were in the audience.

It was a really interesting film, with some great music and restoration of the video footage really held up well on the big screen. It was also pretty educational seeing all this in the context of the racial tensions taking place in the US at the same time, which the documentary showed using archive news footage from the 60s.

The other reason for going to last night’s showing is that the Savoy preceded it with some live music, which made the evening more of an event. A local singer called Jermaine Peterson along with Troy his guitarist performed a set of soul covers and some original songs, and it was really good. It was basically just the guitar plugged into an amp and the vocal mic straight into the PA, and the only thing missing was a bit of reverb on the voice, but it sounded surprisingly good since no-one was actually mixing it!

Troy the guitarist & Jermaine Peterson

One bizarre thing about the night was who I was sitting next to… I’d had to buy a luxury seat because all the regular seats had sold out, so I was directed to a block of 4 seats, where two women were already sitting at the aisle end, so I went past them and sat in the end seat, leaving the single seat in-between for social distancing. After sitting down, I had the slight feeling that I’d recognised the older lady as I passed, and a couple of minutes later I overheard her say that she’d written an article for the Daily Mail that week, and at that point I also placed the voice and realised I was sitting next to former Conservative MP and Government minister, Edwina Currie!

Strangely, I actually met her way back in the 90s when I had to film an interview with her at some conference – I think it might have been the WI – but the one thing I remember about it is that she really wasn’t very nice! We were backstage in a small room at the venue, and she was all smiles when the camera was rolling, but I thought she was very rude to everyone the rest of the time!

by Gareth

Recent gigs

Just thought I’d do a bit of a catch-up on some gigs and shows I’ve been to so far this year.

Last night I was at the Manchester Arena to see the Stereophonics. I had a seated ticket, and I was in a block quite near to the stage, so had a pretty good view. With the current situation regarding Coronavirus, I was a bit concerned about being in such a big crowd, but luckily there was no-one nearby coughing crazily(!), and I tried to make sure I didn’t touch my face, or touch too many doors or bannisters! It made me feel glad I’d only been able to get a seated ticket when I saw how much the people down on the main floor were squashed up against each other!

Stereophonics.

Stereophonics.

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by Gareth

Live music and comedy 2019

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be posting a list of all the films I’ve seen this year, so I thought I’d also do a round-up of all the live music and comedy gigs I’ve been to in 2019.

January

Snow Patrol at Manchester Arena (with support from Roe and Kodaline). Last minute ticket purchase!

June

Mumford and Sons at Manchester Arena (with support from Villagers). In the accessible area with a crutch because I’d only just got out of hospital!

Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott at Edgeley Park (with support from Richard Hawley). Really last minute – went with Lee & Katie because they had a spare ticket!

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by Gareth

Holidays 2019

I thought I’d post about my holidays this year – I’ve not done it sooner because I’ve been a bit pre-occupied with health stuff!

First off, over Easter I went camping with my sister’s family in Wales. We stayed at Abererch Sands, which is on the Llyn Peninsula, just between Pwllheli and Criccieth.

We all arrived at the campsite at lunchtime on the Thursday, and went on a part of the site where both caravans and tents could be pitched. It took me quite a while to get my tent up – I’d recently been getting tired really quickly (which I later discovered to be because of heart failure!), so I paced myself with it, and Brandon and Chloe occasionally broke away from playing frisbee to help a little bit when an extra pair of hands were needed. Vikky and Andy set up their caravan on one side of the field so they could plug into a heavy-duty electrical hook-up, whereas I pitched up on the opposite side, and made use of the electrical hook-up for tents. It was the first time I’d had electricity whilst camping, and it really does make a difference! I’d bought a small powered fridge to use for the week, plus a camping kettle which mean I could boil water much quicker than usual!

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by Gareth

Edgeley Park gigs

So this week, I’ve been to 2 different gigs at Edgeley Park stadium – handily just up the road from where I live!

The first one was Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott, and it was very last minute that I got a ticket for it. I saw Lee post on Facebook that he had a spare ticket available for the gig that night, so, having been a big Beautiful South fan back in the day, bought the ticket off his friend who couldn’t make it.

Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott.

I thought about walking up to the stadium, but with my health situation, took the bus instead! I met Lee outside the ground, and we went in to grab a drink, before his wife Katie and her friend turned up. It was nice to catch up with Lee having not seen him since the beginning of February, and hopefully I didn’t bore him too much talking about my heart stuff!

So back to the music, and they were really good – there are so many songs you just know all the words to! I was worried it might rain, but even though it was quite cloudy, it stayed dry. I had to have a sit down for about 10 minutes half way through because I was starting to tire a bit, but then I was fine for the rest of the gig. I only had one beer – I don’t normally drink that much alcohol anyway, but at the moment I can’t have more that 1½ – 2 litres of liquid a day, which is a lot harder than you’d think!

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by Gareth

Gigs plus studio shoots

It’s been an eventful few weeks – and I’m not even including Christmas in that!

Last night I was at Manchester Arena to see Snow Patrol in concert, and it was a really great gig. It was quite a last minute thing… I decided to look on Monday to see whether there were any tickets left, and I managed to get a seat on one of the sides, which meant I had to sit at a bit of an angle to see the stage!

They had two supports – the first was Roe, who I’d not heard of before, but the second was Kodaline, and I’ve got one of their albums so knew some of the songs they did.

Snow Patrol.

Snow Patrol took to the stage around 9pm, and they played all the classics – ‘Take Back The City’, ‘Chocolate’, ‘Run’, ‘Open Your Eyes’, ‘You’re All I Have’, ‘Cars’ – and even the ones I couldn’t name still sounded familiar… with an encore ending with ‘Just Say Yes’.

Also, just before Christmas, I saw Travis play at the O2 Apollo, and because it’s almost 20 years years since it was released, they played the entire ‘The Man Who’ album from start to finish, followed by a selection of other tracks to wrap up the set.

Travis.

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by Gareth

Birthday U2!

So, it was my birthday on Saturday, and at the start of this year I’d tried to buy a ticket to see U2 in Manchester on their eXPERIENCE + INNOCENCE tour, which fell on the same date, but within seconds of the tickets going on sale, they were already sold out which was really annoying since the only ones then available we being sold at massively inflated prices on secondary ticket sites – and I’d pretty much forgotten about it.

Then, first thing in the morning, I was looking on Twitter and saw a post from the Manchester Evening News linking to an article about the U2 gig later that day. I then remembered that someone had recently told me that with gigs like this, production ticket returns are often released for sale on the day of the gig, so I thought I’d quickly check on the Manchester Arena website, and I was able to buy a ticket at the price they originally went on sale!

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by Gareth

Jess’ music video

I spent last Saturday with Jess Torry and loads of her friends making a music video! It was her birthday last month, but rather than have a regular birthday party, she had a music video party, which involved them all dancing and singing along to Justin Timberlake’s ‘September’ track from Trolls.

James directed and operated the main FS5 camera, and I had the Sony A7s on a gimble rig to get some smooth moving shots (although I’m not that practiced in using the gimble, so it was a bit of a steep learning curve!).

We filmed them in a nearby park, then in a cul-de-sac of an industrial estate, and finally back in their back garden where they performed in various bits of fancy dress.

It was quite chaotic at times, but the kids had a blast, and James even edited it overnight so that they could all watch it the next day!

by Gareth

The Joshua Tree

On Sunday I was down in Twickenham for an amazing gig – U2 celebrating 30 years since The Joshua Tree was released! I’d bought a few extra tickets, so Tom Musgrove travelled down with me (we drove down to Feltham and then got a train from Feltham to Twickenham), and then met my Bristol friends Ali and Chelly nearby, before all heading to the stadium.

As we arrived around 7pm, the support act was already playing – Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds! They were really good, but it was kind of weird seeing Noel Gallagher playing as an opening act, because the stadium was still filling up and not everyone was paying attention!

U2 came on stage around 8.15pm, and opened with a few songs from earlier albums (including ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ and ‘Pride’), then launched into all the songs in order from The Joshua Tree.

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by Gareth

Malta with Annie Mac!

Me, Annie Mac and James.

The last week has been a really busy one, producing a video trailer for next year’s Lost & Found festival in Malta, hosted by Radio 1’s Annie Mac. The job came in pretty last minute, and with very little time for planning, last weekend me and James were on a plane leaving Manchester at 6.30am, heading to Malta! We met up at the airport in Malta with Oli from The Warehouse Project, and Wilf who’s a Manchester-based promoter who I think runs and produces a lot of the stuff for the festival.

Oli and Will were staying in a hotel in Sliema, whereas we carried on in the taxi for about another 40 minutes to Bugibba, where we checked into the Topaz Hotel. What with it being early afternoon, it was now incredibly hot, and since we had to wait for our room, we ended up sitting in the shade by the pool, eating ice lollies for lunch!
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by Gareth

Summer Holidays and stuff

It’s been a couple of months or so since I last posted, so I thought it was time to remedy that! I’ve been away a few times this summer – twice camping, and also a weekend away for a wedding!

I got back this week from Greenbelt in Cheltenham at the racecourse, and it was so wet and muddy! I’ve been to it quite a few times now, but the conditions were never this bad before!

There’d already been quite a bit of rain during the week, so they weren’t letting cars driving up to the camping pitches as they had in previous years, and the last couple of times I’d been, I was with Ali who was working on site, so we’d been able to camp really close to the main areas, but this time we were a long way away!

Amy, Rosie, Sharon, Claire and Michelle.

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by Gareth

Coldplay at the Ethiad

On Sunday, I was at one of the most amazing gigs I’ve been to – Coldplay at the Etihad Stadium! I bought 6 tickets on a bit of a whim last year, so have spent the last few months trying to find people to come with me! I only got rid of the last 2 tickets a couple of weeks ago!

I went with Dave Bateman, John Cieszynski, Jon Scruby, and met up outside with my brother Steve and his mate Dan.

We were in the standing area to the right of the stage, and my legs were quite achy but the time we’d got through the 2 support acts, Rita Ora and Robyn. Not overly impressed with Rita Ora – she’s had a few songs out, but mainly vocals on someone else’s track, so it felt a bit strange, and it’s really not my kind of thing… but Robyn was a lot more to my taste!

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by Gareth

Coldplay gig

Seriously, wow!

Last night I was at the MEN Arena with Joel to see Coldplay, and it was flippin’ awesome! We were really close to the stage (literally just a few metres away!), and it was such a brilliant atmosphere.

When we got into the arena, we were actually led to where the stewards wanted us to be, and because we were near the front of the queue, we ended up really close! They made everyone sit down on the floor until they’d got everyone in (I guess it was to stop people rushing to the stage and pushing their way forward), but it certainly worked in our favour!

Coldplay.

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by Gareth

AFC video shoot

Last weekend, I was down in Gloucester filming with the Austin Francis Connection to produce a music video for one of their tracks! I first met Edi from the group a couple of years ago at Greenbelt, and have seen them at various events since then, and we’ve often got around to talking about the possibility of working together, and it’s now finally happened!

Edi.

I drove down really early on Saturday morning, and met the guys on the top of a multi-storey car park… they’d had an idea to shoot some of it on there, but I discovered they hadn’t got any permissions so we quickly looked for a plan B! Since we were going to have to shoot mostly guerrilla-style, we decided to stick to public places where we were unlikely to encounter security guards, and drove around to a park in the city centre and unloaded the jib and camera gear.

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