- Podcast 3 Due Any Week Soon!

If you're one of the tens of people who've downloaded the first 2 podcasts then thank you very much for the lack of death threats thus far received. I'm full of excuses as to why I haven't been able to stick to a more regular schedule but most of these excuses are genuine.

After the roaring not total failure of the 'live from the judo class' podcast, I started recording my segways whilst walking home along a busy Istanbul highway. The results are spectacular, if not necessarily specatular in a good way. Anyhows, the memory ran out half way through (I use one of those nifty little hand-held digital voice recorders) so half of the tracks on the podcast aren't introduced, so you'll have to refer to the blog while listening.

It should be available for download in the next couple of days. Thanks for sticking with me and sharing my love of music.

Adam

- Solving the Headache of Buying Tickets Online

Like one of my favourite bloggers, Steve over at Teenage Kicks, I love the old vinyl to death but have a hideously poor record of gig attendance. That’s not to say that I’ve never done Glastonbury or Reading, just nowhere near as often as I’d like. Moving abroad seemed to be a bit of a killer for me, as it coincided with A) moving into my thirties, B) having kids, C) the mega commercialization of festivals in Turkey, and D) the advent of online booking agencies. That last one, above all others, has been the big stumbling block. I remember ye olden days when you had to phone up and give your credit card number to some stranger and hope for the best. It worked, but it was very archaic. My brother, eight years my junior, assures me that booking online is now very easy if you choose the right site, citing the case of the Leeds Festival tickets that he recently purchased from the viagogo website. Go online, click a couple of buttons and Bob is very much your uncle.

My brother, being a bit more tech-savvy than me, tends to dish out sound advice when it comes to the internet, so knowing my skepticism for online booking, I’m really glad he put me onto Viagogo. While browsing the other day, I found out that the legendary Stevie Wonder is active this year and being a bit of a Stevie head, I thought I’d look up the availability of Stevie Wonder tickets. Lamentably, he’s not playing anywhere near Istanbul this summer, but if I wanted to buy tickets for one of his gigs, it’d be a darn sight easier on this website than in my previous attempts.

Now, let me tell you, a lot of Turkish websites are very poorly designed, leading you down a series of dead ends from which there’s seemingly no escape. Ticketing websites in this country are the worst of the bunch, asking you to give so much detail about the event you want to attend, from the day, venue, price you want to pay, to your trouser size, blood type and bloody star sign. All in all, trying to buy tickets from such sites put you off going to gigs completely. Consequently, when you have a site as clearly laid out as Viagogo, where all artists available are clearly laid out in alphabetical order in the left sidebar, it’s something of a Godsend. You can even sell back unneeded tickets. You can probably tell by now that I’m a bit of a fan of well designed websites such as this. In fact, I can’t wait for Janet Jackson tickets to go on sale!

- The 6 Strangest World Festivals

The world is, as most travelers will say, a very diverse and colorful place. What passes as normal for you may be completely absurd somewhere else on this planet. Once you've lived abroad for a while, you come to realise that culture develops differently in many places, even ones close to where you live. Combined with our love of a good piss up, it has resulted in a lot of festivals. And since the world is diverse, some festivals are, to us at least, wellstrange. When you go to one of these, be sure to take a camera!

1. Mike the Headless Chicken Day

A festival about a headless chicken? Sounds silly, right? The people of Fruita, Colorado, don’t think so. This festival celebrates Mike, a chicken who had his head chopped off but remained living since his brain stem was still there. He lived for 18 months without a head. The festival contains the Chicken Games, a Chicken Recipe Contest, Run Like a Headless Chicken, Chicken Dance, and more! This is celebrated on May 18th and 19th.

2. El Colacho

Celebrated on June 8th and 9th in Calacho, Spain, this is otherwise known as the Baby-Jumping Festival and has been around since 1620. Like the name implies, grown men jump over newborn babies to remove evil from them, with the eager parents looking on, giving full approval. They wear costumes similar to what a matador (or perhaps Elvis Presley) would wear. Onlookers are also made to participate in the event, so don't bring your baby along.

3. Pulilan Carabao Festival

This mid-May celebration (14th and 15th of the month) is all about carabaos, or better known as the water buffalo. In a town in the province of Bulacan in the Philippines, carabaos are shaven, oiled, perfumed, decorated, and paraded around town. The day after, they participate in a race. A fitting tribute to these hardworking beasts of burden.

4. Monkey Buffet Festival

This November festival takes place in the Pra Prang Sam Yot temple in Lopburi, Thailand. All of the province's monkeys are given a huge buffet of fruits and vegetables, to honor Rama, the hero of an epic, who is said to have awarded the province to the Monkey King Hanuman. It's an all-you-can-eat monkey orgy.

5. Wisconsin State Chip Throw

A festival about throwing cow dung. That's right, these people from Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin, spend the Labor Day weekend flinging shit - dried cow dung, to be exact. Gloves are prohibited, licking your fingers is not.

6. The Testicle Festival

It sounds gross to you, I hope. In Clinton, Montana, the citizens (21 and up only, no kids allowed) drink a lot of beer and munch on Rocky Mountain Oysters. This is just a better name for deep-fried bull testicles. I don't think I can eat that, although they are on the menu here in turkey. They also bet on when a bull is going to poop. This is celebrated for five days, August 1st to 5th.

- Best Videos Ever #2: Ashes to Ashes - David Bowie

I've never done good things

I've never done bad things
I never did anything out of the blue

The video clip for "Ashes to Ashes" was one of the most iconic of the 1980s and with good reason. Costing £250,000, it was at the time the most expensive music video ever made, although I’d always though it’d been made on the cheap for about a tennerbefore I did my research for this post. It incorporated scenes both in solarised colour and in stark black-and-white, featuring Bowie in the gaudy Pierrot costume that became the dominant visual representation of his Scary Monsters phase. Also making an appearance were Steve Strange and other members of the London Blitz scene, including Judith Franklin and Darla Jane Gilroy, forerunners of the New Romantic movement that was heavily influenced by Bowie's music and image.

Bowie has described the shot of himself and the Blitz Kids marching towards the camera in front of a bulldozer as symbolising "oncoming violence". Although it appears that two of the Blitz Kids bow at intervals, they were actually trying to pull their gowns away from the bulldozer in an effort to avoid them getting caught.

Scenes of the singer in a space suit - that suggested a hospital life-support system - and others showing him locked in what appeared to be a padded room, made reference to both Major Tom and to Bowie's new, rueful interpretation of him. Contrary to myth and legend, the elderly woman lecturing Bowie at the end of the clip was, sadly, not his real mum. Is this the best song ever made? Depending on my mood on a given day I’d argue that yes, it is.

- Portishead Live on the Beeb

Portishead's session, recorded at BBC's Maida Vale studios was broadcast last night, Tuesday 10th June, on Zane Lowe's Radio One show.

On air between 7pm & 9pm, the show is also be available to listen again to online for a week.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/zanelowe/

- A ghost at the feast: The Magic Band at Maida Vale, 7th July, 2004

You wait for ages then two posts come along at once. By the way, it's my youngest son Ozan's first birthday today, so leave a comment or he'll be very grizzly.

A bunch of old men in 2004

Does Ludwig Van have to be conducting to make a performance of his music valid? Does he bollocks, although we’d all rather have Captain Beefheart singing these songs, naturally. Having said that, this is a belter of a performance which yielded 2 festive fifty entries for 2004.

Legend has it that Peel was initially sceptical about this reformed Magic Band but, having played a live recording of the band recorded at an All Tomorrows Parties festival on his show some time in 2003, he found himself so overcome with emotion that couldn't speak and had to play a record to regain his composure. A year or so later the band did a live session for Peel.

Track list:

Diddy wah diddy
Circumstances
Hit a man
Rockette Morton bass solo
Steal softly through sunshine
Abba zabba
My human gets me blues
Alice in blunderland
Hair pie bake 4
The evening bell
Electricity
The floppy boot stomp
Mirror man
Moonlight on Vermont
Bug* eyed beans from Venus

Glaring errors to be rectified, as ever, in the comments section below.


Length: 63 mins
File size: 76 mb

*As noted on the BBC website which is absolutely jam-packed with lack of information.

- Latest 'no post for ages' Apology

Work has been an absolute bugger recently although there is light at the end of the tunnel. I'm looking forward to being able to commit on a more regular basis to the blog in the next month or so. Thanks for everyone who dropped by during the first year and sharing your appreciation of Peel with me. I'll also be podcasting on a much more regular basis - from July onwards if all goes to plan.

Please keep dropping by, the comments mean a lot.

Adam