No Direction Home 2012 - a rambling remembrance

A new kid on the block this, but one with a fine heritage.  End of the Road has established itself as one of the best small festivals around, and this year the organisers of that fine fest inaugurated a young sibling known as No Direction Home.  Set within the extensive and picturesque estate of Welbeck Abbey on the fringes of Worksop, NDH promised a variant take on EOTR's brand of easy-going boutique festivalling.

Nice Chopper, Mr Wet Nuns Drummer

First impressions were encouraging - a beautiful drive up from the main road reminiscent of the track into Latitude, but then, what is this?  A queue?  Yes, and one that took an hour to clear into the car park.  Something to work on for next year methinks, though the sight of a flock of scythe-winged swifts buzzing over the fields provided a pleasing distraction.  The weather conspired to refuse to turn dry until the last tent peg was in the ground, so sodden and seeking shelter we spent much of Friday in the comedy tent.  This turned out to be an inspired choice, as it offered us the sight of John Robins failing to chat up a girl with his encyclopaedic knowledge of Captain Beefheart, followed by Josie Long's brilliant impression of the "real" Ed Milliband and Robin Ince's inimitable brand of resigned anger.  But that was just the start...

As we left the comedy tent, Robins and Long had taken over the mics after the formal comedy session had ended, to engage in some random karaoke.  They had decided to keep going until they had driven everyone out of the tent, but many were hanging around just for the fun of it. We left them belting out Toto's Africa for at least the second time, as we had an assignation with Wet Nuns.  A Sheffield two-piece who make a glorious blues-rock racket and are a lot of fun into the bargain, who could not love a band who weild a huge denim axe on stage?

I Want Your Sax: Ms Green's Right Hand Man

Much of the rest of the Friday evening was spent aimlessly rambling, exploring the site and getting our bearings, in the company of two women we met at the Wet Nuns show, one of whom directed a video for them and the other was there to run fabric bird making workshops, and who had some splendid magpies on display in a tree.  In the meantime we caught snatches of Django Django, Eyes and No Eyes, Dirty Three, Veronica Falls and The Low Anthem, but somehow Friday didn't seem to be about the music.

We closed the day out back in the comedy tent, where - you guessed it - the Robins and Long Karaoke Marathon was still in full swing.  In time enough order was restored to run a bit of a comedy session.  By this time Josie Long was very much in her cups and proved a hilariously ramshackle host, and frequently riffed off brilliantly.  We were finally herded out at the end of the night to the sound of - full marks again - Africa.

Saturday began with a touch of Laish on the main stage.  Brightonian, with lashings of the Miserable Rich and Divine Comedy, they held my attention for long enough until it was time for cheese tasting at the School of Artisan Food. This felt like something that would fit in well at Latitiude, and was popular enough that there wasn't enough cheese to go round!  After that what else is there but to listen to the jazz-blues inflexions of Liz Green?  Accompanied by an oddly-attired band including a turbanned saxophonist and double bassist in misguided silken shorts, Green's easy charm and rapport was an instant winner.  Good to see her after so many failed attempts.

Martin Simpson, possibly in DADGAD mode

First revelation of the weekend was Martin Simpson.  His was a name I'd heard of, but it suggested yet another of those those yeah-yeah folk singers.  Imagine my surprise to hear some exquisite, intricate bluesy picking and inventive re-tuning, not to mention heart-rending songs and delightful chat.  I enjoyed it so much I was happy to watch him give a half-hour gutar techniques demonstration later in the day.

Over to the Electric Dustbowl - the main tented stage, and not a name I particularly took to - for the Cornshed Sisters.  They have become one of my favourite live acts of this year, though they seemed a little ill at ease on this occasion, displaying less of their customary wit and bonhomie and harmonies not always hitting the spot.  Shame, because on their day they can be utterly beguiling.

This tent became the default venue for most of the rest of the day's entertainment.  Firstly, Joe Gideon and the Shark.  Bathed in a dark light, which did little for their highly visual show, and majoring on new, unreleased songs, they didn't come over as well as they had done at EOTR a few years back.  Then there was Moon Duo, whose psych-rock workouts had me swaying and threatening to drop off, trance-like, in a very good way indeed.  A tighter proposition than Ripley Johnson's other outfit, Wooden Shijps, and arguably better for it.

It's the Shark.  It says so on the luminous xylophone.

A brief relocation to the main stage for Andrew Bird.  Great showmanship, brilliant musicality and some superb tunes.  Shame the weather wasn't ideal, which took some of the sheen off, but hey, I'll be seeing him at the Roundhouse later in the year, which should be a more intimate affair.  Heading back to the Electric Dustbowl, we encountered Pyramids.  Like the Archie Bronson Outfit?  Of course you do.  Well, you'd like Pyramids.  Because they're the same thing.  Although in their Pyramids incarnation they're a looser, sleazier, bluesier take on their usual persona, locking into the riffs until they scream to be let go again.  Mesmerising.

So on to Sunday, and a noontime encounter with Ned The Kids Dylan at the Rough Trade stall.  This junior singer/guitarist was a revelation at last year's End of the Road with his self-penned tunes, many of which draw on his experiences - though some, like the cocaine lament Emily, hopefully don't - and he clearly has oodles of confidence and has been honing his stagecraft at such a tender age.  It'll be interesting to see how he develops.

A Moon Mono.  Brudenell t-shirt not featured.

A short hop to the main stage for Trembling Bells.  I'd seen them at Union Chapel with Bonnie Prince Billy and while it was good, it felt like there was something missing.  That something was volume.  On their own, and with a much better sound system, turned up to 11, the same songs came alive with bristling guitar and creative drumming that didn't overpower the rest of the sound.  A truly stunning set.

Sunday afternoon?  A sunny Sunday afternoon at that?  What's needed is a bit of gospel on the main stage.  Cue Cold Specks.  For a little lady, Al Spx has an amazingly powerful voice, almost overpowering at times, but perfect for kicking back on a blanket to.  Then the Wave Pictures come along to wake us up, to bop around to their beaty tunes full of cheeky and intricate guitar licks.

No mention has been made yet of the Flying Boating Club.  This is a stage at the edge of the beautiful lake, which has the feel of a pub beer garden, and with the best bar on site (mostly) well-stocked with a range of regional ales (a nice touch being a focus on different cities' beers on each day).  Here we saw Dog Ears, an acoustic three-piece combining the vocal harmonies of the Leisure Society with the guitar stylings of Nick Drake, and with an endearing and warm stage presence.

No age restriction here for Ned the Kids Dylan

Back to the main stage for Slow Club.  A recurring theme of NDH is the high quality of the sound, particularly at the main stage.  As with Trembling Bells, Slow Club benefitted massively from the improvement in sound quality compared to my previous experience of them in Guildford.  There's nothing particularly original about them - most of their songs remind me of something else - but they deliver them with boundless energy and sense of fun, and in Rebecca they have one of the finest vocalists around.

Like a shuttle train we headed back to the Flying Boating Club, where Laura J Martin was displaying her impressive multi-instrumentalism.  I wasn't totally tuned in for all of this but what did grab me was some gutsy flute playing reminiscent of Ian Anderson.  After that it was one last venture to the main stage for Richard Hawley's headline set.  He was debilitated by a leg injury and wheeled onto stage where he conducted his set from a seated position.  Having only ever seen him asa walk-on guest for Elbow and Pulp, it was good to see him engage the audience on his own terms and deliver a much more varied set than what I've heard of his recorded output suggested.

Trembling Bells Almost Killed Me

So, that was it. Except it wasn't.  Off to the Electric Dustbowl to see Mikal Cronin.  And what a way to round off the festival.  A set brimming with jangly surf-punk brilliance that might just have been one of the best hours of the whole weekend.

So, what of the festival overall?  How does it shape up?  Well, EOTR is a hard act to follow, and clearly NDH will always struggle to shake off the shackles of its elder sibling, and doesn't have some of the features that make EOTR so special, but features like the Flying Boating Club and many of the craft tents bring something different to the feast.  There is plenty of room to move, in fact it is clear that it was laid out with future expansion in mind.  And the excellent comedy tent seems more accessible than those at EOTR that tend to be hidden away somewhat.  The sound quality is excellent, especially on the main stage, and there is a good range of stalls including an excellent pie stall (yes, better than Pie Minister).  The local farm shop and range of local beers available were welcomed, although they did tend to run out of beers a little early on.

All in all, a good start for No Direction Home.  Next year's festival is confirmed, and I expect it to be busier than this year's.  It's already likely to win over Glastonbury for us next year, and that's no mean feat.

Living In The Past?

How do you fancy looking through my holiday snaps?  The phrase fills you with dread, doesn't it?  Hours of trawling through pictures of places you've never been to, and may never go to, depicting experiences you've never had and never will have.  They're moments after all, and very personal.  So why would anyone else be remotely interested in them?

The same could be said of one's family history.  It's personal.  It's about who I am and where I've come from, genetically and environmentally speaking.  It's about, God forgive me for using this phrase, my journey.  It's of no relevance to anyone else, nor can I expect anyone else to be interested in it.  After all, everyone else has their own families to worry about, their own ancestries to concern themselves with, or not as the case may be.  For some it's an area they have no interest in at all.  And that's fine.  Nobody expects you to care who your 3x great-uncle was or what he did in the Boer War.

A Tree.  Doesn't matter whose it is.

And yet, genealogy, or more specifically family history, has gone stellar in the last ten years or so.  I make that distinction in the light of an enlightening talk commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Society of Genealogists, in which genealogy was very definitely identified with research methods, lineage at the most aggregate level, and the place of familial connections in broader society.  It certainly wasn't about where my great granny Nell was living in 1881, which is what family history is about; the detail, the flesh on the skeleton of a family tree, the minutiae that distinguish your ancestors from someone else's.  You know, the stuff that bores everyone else.

Two factors can be identified as key in the widespread increase in popularity of family history.  They are That Internet and That Telly.  Who would imagine that, by 2012, one of the most popular uses of That Internet - besides looking at cats that look like dictators, and naughty stuff - is doing family history research.  The amount of historical information now available for a handful of Google searches is mindblowing.  So, unfortunately, is the amount of potential for error, misuse and misunderstanding of this information.  It's hard enough when you're trying to look for a specific name in a 200 year old, hand written document - harder still when you're being paid peanuts or less to make sense of pages of badly scrawled names for which you have no reference points.  So it is no surprise that, even when you pay good money to access websites that offer transcribed records, often what you get is bobbins, requiring often Heculean lateral shifts in thinking to find what you're looking for.

The trouble with That Internet is that people tend to believe what they see on it.  I mean there are still people - not to mention journalists - who use Wikipedia as a reliable source.  So you type in Smith and instantly you have a family of millions, even though there's no proof that any of them are connected.  There's a phenomenon known as Pacman Genealogy, whereby people aim to get a high score of number of people in their tree, without any effort to verify facts, establish relationships etc.  These are the people who will find your tree on a website, latch onto a random surname that happens to be in both your tree and theirs, link to your tree and hang on to it for dear life, even though in reality none of your or their ancestors came within 100 miles of each other.

Then there's That Telly.  Programmes like Who Do You Think You Are - which has become the average person in the street's buy-in to all things genealogical - perpetuate the myth that doing your family history is a slice of Battenberg.  You can turn up at some random library and a member of staff is there, ready with all the records you need.  Stuff comes through the post while you're driving to the place where uncle Sid was buried.  Genealogy while you wait.

Two men who died a very very long time ago

Of course, these programmes take months to put together.  And the key imperative is an interesting story that makes for good telly.  What was, at one point, a programme that actually was focused on helping people do research (the first series even included a how-to session at the end of each show with the go-to media genealogist Nick Barrett) has been known to drop slebs from the roster when they find their history is full of dull ag labs.  And the recent trend has been to focus on a small number of heart-tugging stories from a relatively shallow generational range.  Oh yes, and tears.  The ability of actors to shed a tear over something that happened in 1742 is both impressive and lamentable; I bet they never shed any at the time.  It's all part of the trend cultivated by those excruciating back-stories on reality karaoke programmes, and does little to enhance genealogy as a discipline.

So now family history research is something that we fit in around the other activities we indulge our copious free time in, like football and birdwatching.  Because we can do it quickly.  No interminable days spent in dusty records offices with scant return, when we can pay a tenner and get what we're looking for in our lunch break.  This perception of instantness can tend towards a lackadaisical attitude to verification.  It's important to remain cycnical - just about any historical document could include inaccuracies, lies and misinformation.  Just because it's official, don't mean it's right.

Maybe in some future blog I'll bore you with details of my own family history.  They're a fascinating bunch, but then I would say that. They're my holiday snaps.

Warning - May Contain Traces Of Football

If that isn't the subtitle of this year's Aston Villa season DVD, then it should be.  For this has been soccer Jim, but not as we know it.

Yesterday saw the end of an error, with the great and the good of B6 finally seeing sense - or maybe just stringing out for good timing effect - and getting rid of Alex McLeish.  Sure, there have been mitigating circumstances.  The wage bill of the O'Neill era - which brought great football but no real success - was proving crippling, and wasn't helped by worthy but financially disastrous sideshows like charity shirt sponsorships and pub refurbs, all of which now smack of Lerner buying the fans' affections.  So, big names had to go.  Milner had already gone the season before, which appears to have been the impetus for MON to throw his dummy in the dirt when the promised transfer war chest was sunk - not for the first time either, eh Norwich fans. So it was inevitable that further big sales would go through, and so Ashley Young and Downing went, to be replaced by the relatively cut-price N'Zogbia who, despite impressing for Wigan in the previous season, was never going to be an adequate replacement for two wide midfielders.

And yes, we've had players unavailable for long periods.  Dunne, Bent, Petrov, not to mention Jenas whose loan spell didn't even get started, and McLeish can't be blamed for those.  Neither can he be blamed for his signings, with the notable exception of Hutton, probably the worst right-back to pull on a Villa shirt since Darius Kubicki, but again he was a cheaper option than keeping Luke Young on.  N'Zogbia has been solid if uninspiring, while Given must be wondering what he has to do to become the fans' player of the year.  It's certainly far more down to him than Stephen Ireland that we are still playing Premiership football next season.  And McLeish can take the credit for bringing in Robbie Keane for a couple of months in which we actually looked capable of scoring goals and winning games.

But the poor guy was onto a loser from the start.  Notwithstanding the fact that he came fresh from over the other side of town, which in the eyes of some of the Holte End meant he could have won every game until the Second Coming and still not curried any favour, the fact that the paint hadn't dried on his second relegation in three years in spite of winning a major trophy sent alarm bells ringing across Aston.  Arguably he may have felt he wasn't particularly wanted anyway - he was seventh on Lerner's list, even lower than Steve MacLaren who had been shooed away when the fans rumbled discontent at the prospect.  But equally, he may have felt it was his best opportunity of employment, and in principle it was a three-year deal, better then his successor at St Andrews got.  No compunction to overstretch in the first year in order to convince the top brass to keep him on, drop in words like 'transitional' in post-match interviews, Rab's Yer Uncle.

Much as Villa fans listen to anything that the blue half of the city says, they got the message from the start that Eck was a purveyor of negative football.  Yes they won the Carling Cup, but mostly as a result of a strong rearguard action - if we're honest, their Wembley win owed a lot to stout defending and a couple of lucky breaks.  Good luck to them, that's how we won it against Man United in 1994.  This should have been the season where, depleted by big-name sales and relatively few newcomers, pereviously promising players like Bannan, Delfouneso and Albrighton should have been given an extended run in the side and the opportunity to express themselves, gain regular big-game experience and learn how to pace themselves - Albrighton in particular, who showed patches of brilliance but didn't always sustain through 90 minutes.  I remember similar accusations being levelled at a young Dwight Yorke.

But those three in particular have been, in the main, sidelined.  Some of the young players such as Herd and Clarke have grabbed the opportunity and increased their stock, but Bannan and Albrighton have been reduced mainly to the sub's bench, while Fons was pointlessly loaned out to Leicester.  This left us with pretty limited attacking options, with Ireland and N'Zogbia filling in the wide roles.  In fact, the number of times players have been played out of position this season has left us wondering whether McLeish actually knew where half of his squad were supposed to play.

No wonder the football has been turgid.  No shape, no structure, no game plan.  The stats speak for themselves: worst home record ever, no goals scored from corners, only two games won after going 1-0 down.  Three away wins, two of which were against relegated clubs.  Okay, the third was a stunningly incongruous 3-1 win at Chelsea, but that's not enough to outweigh the negatives.  A pretty indefensible record for a club that three years ago was knocking on the Champions League door.

We've been here before of course - back in 1994-5, two seasons after - for my money - the best season I've ever seen (typified by Dalian Atkinson's wonder goal away to Wimbledon) and one season after besting Man U in the Coca-Cola Cup, we went to Norwich City for the last game needing a point to stay up.  Sounds horribly familiar.  However, that time Brian Little had taken over and the next season brought about changes that led to further good times.  Ironically the front runner to take up Lerner's poisoned chalice is the boss of the renovated Norwich, who we condemned to second tier football on that day.  We can only hope that a change at the helm can herald a new era, though whoever comes in will have an uphill battle and may need to do some canny shopping around.

There were times this season when you wondered if we would ever score again.  Even in the dark days of Josef Venglos and David O'Dreary there was hope.  By the end of this season everybody just seemed to want it over, done with and forgotten about, and the manager got shot of.  I don't expect the DVD to be a big seller.

Three Albums

For my latest blog I thought I'd pick three albums that have made a significant impression on me.  Two in particular were albums that I didn't get, or simply didn't like when I first heard them, but had "grower" stamped all over them.  You may hate them, you may love them, you may have never heard of them, it doesn't really matter, what's important is that you'll read this and think yeah, I've had that relationship with an album.

The Drum - Diskin

For those who don't know, The Drum used to be China Drum, and released two albums of adrenalised pop-punk, typified by their breakneck version of Wuthering Heights. Then they took one of those musical right-turns that sends a band occasionally in such a different direction that not only the fans but the band themselves didn't seem able to deal with it, and it proved to be the band's downfall.

The change of name from China Drum to The Drum coincided with a change of emphasis to a studio wizardry approach, involving loops, cut-ups, drop-outs and a host of other techniques more suited to the world of DJ mixing than a traditional rock production. Apparently they had recorded the album initially as a more coventional rock album, but then decided they didn't like it and decided to essentialy remix the whole thing. Part of their ultimate downfall was that the resultant album was almost impossible to play live.

Having become a massive fan of CD's second album Self Made Maniac - which was a more polished rock beast than the punkier debut Goosefair - I bought the new album with great anticipation, having read that they'd taken an "interesting" new approach. The first time I listened to it, in bed with the lights off and through my headphones (the best way to listen to all music, of course), I was quite frankly baffled. On first listening there was absolutely nothing to suggest this was even the same band. I even went as far as to think I'd been given the wrong CD in the shop - it was in truth like nothing I'd ever listened to before, it was so far away from my expectations I literally did not know what to make of it.

In place of the punky riffs and wordy vocals of old, there was a melange of looped guitar figures, pitch shifting, weird synthy sounds, vocal samples, sparse lyrics and heavily distorted shouting. It was an album that sounded fractured to the point of insanity. There weren't even any clues to link the lyrics to the inscrutable song titles - which fuelled my initial suspicion that I had the wrong disc. Did I hate it? I don't know - at first I didn't even know if I would stomach trying it again. But as is my wont, I persevered and slowly it began to worm its way in.

What attracted me was that the album seemed to be a completely self-contained world, having seemingly no connection to any other music, including the band's previous work. It stood as a definite musical statement, in spite of the lyrics being mostly ambiguous and often impenetrable.  This is part of its pull - to this day there are lyrics I still can't work out and I hear new things in it every time I hear it.

But the bottom line, and what keeps me coming back to it, is the thrill of hearing the first kick-ass drum beat and spidery guitar figure, before all Hell breaks loose. From then on it's a 40 minute rollercoaster ride of outrageous and relentless strangeness, right up until the final scratchy minor seventh chord and faint drumroll. That's the point at which I want to hit play again. This album is like a drug you don't know how on earth you could have got hooked on. It would walk into my all time top 10 with ease.

The Dismemberment Plan - Emergency & I

Sometimes the albums you grow to adore are ones you're not always that keen on when you first hear it. As it was with Diskin, so it was with the Dismemberment Plan. A mate lent it to me for a month - first impressions from the cover were that it was going to be some kind of 80s electro pop throwback - New Musik sprang to mind, or something Wire forgot to release. He had played me the pivotal track, You Are Invited, which was bizarrely sparse. A deadpan vocal over a simple electronic drumbeat, but with the occasional stab of guitar. Interesting, but not exceptional.

I played the whole album and was similarly non-plussed. It sounded to me as if they were trying as hard as possible to be as difficult as possible. With time signatures all over the place, many of the songs were, on first listen, pretty hard to follow. Plus there were some creepily industrial keyboard sounds which lent the album an eerie feel.

But as is the way, repeated listens began to establish a grip. While in some ways the first half of the album still doesn't totally grab me, there are enough good moments in there to keep you listening, and anyway it's only the starter - the main course begins with You Are Invited. A strange tale about a fantastical invite which would get the holder into any party anywhere, but ultimately proves nothing other than that most parties are ultimately unsatisfying - he ends up giving it away - the song brilliantly builds real drums on top of the synth rhythms until suddenly the whole band bangs in with 45 seconds of riffage that most bands would be happy to build an entire song around. Then as soon as it arrives it is gone, and the simplistic beat is back.

From there the album grows in its scope and sense of ambition, with vocals ranging from heart-rending via crazily stuttering to desperate wailing, with the music become increasingly frenetic and fractious. In the final track, Back and Forth, it feels like the world is tumbling towards an inevitable and terrible climax, the singer spewing out apocalyptic poetry at breakneck speed, as if there isn't enough time left in the world to say them all. And when it comes, the ending is as abrupt and sudden as any I've heard.

Their other albums are often more awkwardly angular, not to mention witty, but nowhere else did they capture the pre-millennial sense of fear and desperation than the last twenty minutes of this album. But then again, neither has anyone else.

Electrasy - In Here We Fall

I love it when you're listening to the radio and a song comes on that stops you in your tracks. BYOB by System of a Down and Creeping Up The Back Stairs by the Fratellis spring to mind, but I cast myself further back to one Sunday afternoon many moons ago, when I was stuck in traffic on the M40. I was listening to the chart show and, in the lower reaches of the hit parade came a song called Morning Afterglow by Electrasy. I was stunned by the beauty and simplicity of this song (one verse and one chorus, repeated) and knew instantly that it would be an all-time favourite.

So spin forward to a couple of years. Electrasy had released one album, Beautiful Insane, which was an often very good but patchy affair, swinging wildly from one musical style to another and not really knowing which way it wanted to go. So the band decide they want to try and crack the US market and streamline their sound into an expansive, melodic and often noisy rock style with an occasional hint of hip-hop. Melding into this was the best of their earlier material, including Morning Afterglow and two other re-worked songs, plus a pretty brave, left-field version of Dazed and Confused.

This album for me sees the band fulfilling their musical potential with some of their most beautiful ballads nestling comfortably among the sturm und drang of attention-seeking rap-rock. Sadly the gamble never paid off, the band were dropped by their label and promptly turned their back on the industry. One of the great lost bands of the 90's.  Shame really, because Morning Afterglow remains one of my all-time favourite songs, and has a cracking video too.

Classic Gig Reviews #1: Whole Lotta Crap

Now that I've got a blog, I should keep adding things to it. Though very often I don't have the inspiration to pick up on a subject, it's important to keep the traffic flowing as it were. So on occasion I will be putting on here things I've written elsewhere, elsewhen. The first of these is a review of probably the most annoying gig I've ever been to. It happened in April 2010, and it still smarts now. Most of my gig reviews aren't like this, they're generally (a) quite positive about the band, as they're usually acts I actively want to see, and (b) shorter. So here goes...

They say if you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do a job, wait until you’ve hired an amateur. Whole Lotta Led are, allegedly, the only professional Led Zeppelin tribute band on the circuit. If this is the case, then I’m willing to pay way over the odds to watch the amateurs.

I came to this gig at Tamworth Assembly Rooms with few preconceptions about the band, but having already seen three Zeppelin tribute bands. So I was quite prepared for an enjoyable evening of being transported to the mid 1970s and being given a taste of what listening to Zep in full live flow would have been like. After all, their blurb promised much – no wigs, no gimmicks, just the music. Excellent – no silly posturing or half-hearted attempts to actually BE Zeppelin (US4/U2 please take note), I was expecting something along the lines of Gaga, who do Queen as if they were a three-piece from the accounts department, as opposed to the admittedly brilliant soundalike frontman of Mercury.

But something didn’t ring true about this lot. For a start, the guitarist and bassist were at least ten years older than the singer and drummer. It turns out the older pair were in a covers band who got such a good reception when doing Zep numbers in pubs that they decided to go all-out and jump on the burgeoning tribute bandwagon. The guitarist, surprisingly for a band keen to claim it’s not about the look, bore a passing resemblance to Page, wore his Les Paul and Gibson double-necks in the same low-slung manner and lifted his guitar skywards, Magus- like, whenever there were a few easy hammer-ons to toss off. His playing was competent but rarely did he stray far into full-on Pagular frottage. He clearly wasn’t comfortable playing slide in In My Time of Dying – his solo was basic to say the least, and he got the diminished chords in the fast bit wrong, making it sound completely flat. In fact that song, which had been whipped off with consummate ease and flair by the Rubber Plants, was stuffy, lacking in dynamism and frankly was slowing down so much toward the end I thought it, or maybe I, was going to die.

The singer was chosen at an audition, and all I can say is he must have put in a career performance that day, or the rest of auditionees were banshees. Coming across as the unfortunate lovechild of Roger Daltrey and a hamster, he seemed to have an inflated sense of his own adequacy. Even from the first number, his flat delivery and gratingly rounded vowel sounds which would have given Liam Gallagher a run for his money, at the very least irritated. Combine this with an unceasing procession of hand gestures more reminiscent of Will Young than Percy, an annoying tendency to provide intense discographical detail about every song (which had similarly spoiled my experience of the otherwise fine John Coughlan’s Quo) and that unwavering overtoothed grin that spoke of extreme self-satisfaction meant it was virtually impossible to warm to the man. One review says they don’t indulge in the sort of drinking and drugging that Zep were famed for, as it would impair their performance. I disagree. I think it might improve it. Or maybe I should.

Oh yeah, the bassist. There was one. He played bass.

A previous review of a WLL gig had said that the lack of violin bow in Dazed and Confused was “disappointing.” I would call it unforgivable. Apart from the fact that this song (like so many) was essentially a retread of the studio version, the omission of one of Page’s centrepiece elements was laughable. Perhaps it was just too difficult for the guitarist to attempt, but it leaves you feeling short-changed when watching a band that claims to be all about Zep’s music. If you want to see how Page used to entertain the crowds with his violin bow bit, Fred Zeppelin are the band to see.

They make a big thing about doing 2½ hour sets – which is fair enough, they did that at Tamworth, but when you do straight retreads of In My Time, Achilles Last Stand, Stairway and When The Levee Breaks, that’s probably about 45 minutes done and dusted straight off. They covered a lot of Zep’s repertoire, but somehow that’s not really the point. The overall impresion was of Zep By Numbers, a CD jukebox playing the album tracks in random order. One reviewer, who shall remain shameless, referred to them as “hits”, and also referred to a song called “Days Of My Youth”, so their opinion of the WLL experience cannot be that of an informed Zep fan.

The point with Zep is that the album versions were never meant to be the definitive versions. They were always the foundations – tracks like Dazed and Confused and Whole Lotta Love were pretty rapidly extended from those recorded versions, to become different beasts altogether. As with the lack of violin bow, there was no attempt to cover any of the extended bits of Whole Lotta Love – no Let That Boy Boogie section for example. There was some theremin work which was ok, and he did use his teeth on it – but this will always pale next to the Rubber Plants lasciviously licking theirs.

I’ve deliberately left the drummer till last, mainly because I did want to try and end on a high note (which is more than the singer managed). Moby Dick was probably my highlight of the evening, (a) because it meant the rest of the band left the stage for ten minutes and (b) he’s actually a good drummer, probably the only really talented member of the band, all that might elevate them above being merely a decent pub band.

The acid test for any tribute band is how the original act reacts to you. Robert Plant can often be spotted at Fred Zeppelin gigs. WLL have a quote from Jimmy Page saying “you’re getting great reviews, I wish you all the best”. Don’t hold back with the gushing praise there, Jim. Would it be terribly cynical of me to suggest that the band got involved with the ABC charity (set up by Page’s wife) in order to get in with him and obtain a soundbite quote? If this is the case then they got the quote they deserve.

So, the fourth Zep tribute act I’ve seen, and I would rank them fifth. Maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe I should end with a few positive statements, so here’s three:

1. They have a good drummer;
2. Some songs they did quite well – Stairway was ok, Achilles was decent, and some of the acoustic set sounded good from the bar;
3. They didn’t do my favourite song of all time – if they had then I would have been going home from Tamworth in the back of a police car. Babel I’m Gonna Leave You, if you will.

I Like Birds

I've become a bit of a birdwatcher. How did this happen? I mean I've always liked observing birds, the little sparrows and blue tits buzzing around the garden, and I've been to Birdworld with its crazy prehistoric-looking hornbills and the penguin feeding sessions, but taking an active interest? Not me, guv. Waste of time. Couldn't grow the beard for it anyway.

I blame Chile. Spending three weeks touring South America in the company of people who can point at something and say what it is, meant you either got into the groove with it or rapidly lost interest. Interestingly we had the full spectrum, from

what Simon Barnes would term a bad birdwatcher (this is a good thing), someone who knows their stuff but is pretty laid back about it, to the all-out twitcher who rapidly gets bored with what they've just seen and is already looking for the next rarity. This wasn't even a bird watching holiday - why would I ever go on one of those? - it just happened to be a small group thrown together, most of whom happened to have an interest in birds. Of course it helped that there were, to the untrained eye at least, exotic birds aplenty - from the ubiquitous ibis to oystercatchers, flocks of flamingos and the mighty condor. And of course penguins. Funny, cute, waddling penguins en masse in their natural habitat.

So from that holiday, the seed of a new interest was sown. Bolstered by getting an RSPB pocket book for Christmas and the prospect of adding an extra dimension to country walks, a new adventure was embarked upon. One thing I like about taking an interest in birds is that my entry level knowledge is pretty poor - I didn't even know what a chaffinch looked like, and they're common as muck - so almost everything is a new discovery at this stage. I've learned quick, aided and abetted by having feeders in the garden, and by having an excellent nature reserve up the road, which was already our favourite local walk. So we joined the conservation group and

now have access to their hides, which have already proved bountiful. I love the fact that, just the other week, somebody pointed out a snipe, which apparently is quite an unusual site round these parts, but not knowing this meant I was just as interested in seeing a brace of more common redshanks. In fact I was probably just as excited at seeing a jay in the garden yesterday. I'm at what might be termed the "int everything brilliant" phase (Paul Whitehouse, Fast Show, natch). I hope I never lose the excitement of seeing something commonplace. If you ever hear me saying "oh, that's just a hoopoe", have a quiet word in my shell-like.

There's something satisfying about taking on a new interest at this time in my life. It would be easy to just bowl along, paying little attention to anything outside of music and football, but these interests - while still strong - place few new challenges in my path. Birds, on the other hand, as well as being worth two in the bush before you say it, provide a gateway to a whole new area of knowledge about nature as a whole, and have opened up my eyes and ears a lot more to my surroundings. I don't listen to my iPod while out in the open now - I'm listening out for bird song. Now that's a difficult area. Distinguishing one call from another at the moment is like trying to discern the playing style of an individual Boredoms guitarist. Unless he was a blackbird or a great tit, they're easy. But I'll get there.

There is obviously a frustration as with any area in which you're a novice - coupled with the desire not to embarrass yourself by not knowing what a dunnock looks like - but that's part of the joy, part of the challenge of learning.

I feel like I've learned loads already in the last three months or so, and already have a fairly impressive list of spots. Of course I have a list, I'm a geek. But there's so much yet to learn. Not only song, but all the other dimensions like the differences between male and female, juvenile and adult, where and when you might expect to see them, there's a lot to take in. I'll never master the subject, but then I wouldn't want to as there'd be nothing new to learn. But I'll have a go. Though I still wouldn't go on a birdwatching holiday. And I still couldn't grow the beard.

Dipping my toes in the water....and the Game's up

Hello. This is a blog. Those of you with computer savviness will be thinking, yeah right. Been there, done that, worn a hole in the armpit of the t-shirt and am now using it as a shoe buffing cloth. Fair enough. I'm not so much a late adopter as an old spinster taking in lodgers when it comes to things ITular. Which is where the first topic of bloggery comes in. By the way, don't go expecting frequent updates or anything - this is my opportunity to occasionally brain-dump and vaguely arrange thoughts into grammatically acceptable sequences.

Anyway, to the subject of the impending adminstration-going-intoness of the high street perpetual teenager's electronic entertainment shop, Game. Apparently the playing of video games is, or as now appears to be the case, was big business. This has always been a source of amusement to me, seeing that I left home computer gaming behind in around 1985 when it became increasingly difficult to play games without having an extra hand, or the patience to read a small novel before being able to kill anything. Having grown up with games of a left-right-fire, or up-down-left-right-jump level of complexity, there came a point at which the effort required to simply come to terms with the basics of a game was greater than the effort required to complete others. Why would I want to spend an evening dicking around in the practice zone of a skateboarding game when I could spend that time getting halfway through Jet Set Willy?

And this is coming from someone who was at one point seriously addicted to video games. Back in the day it was a joy to find a random bin of Mastertronic tapes stuck away at the back of a short-lease Grey's department store, or on a never-before-seen stall down the Rag Market. I recognise the escapism value of games - I distinctly remember the morning I failed my first driving test, getting home and engaging in a marathon Son of Blagger session that saw me eventually stagger red-eyed into bed at 3am. And who knows how many of the dodgy chippies and taxi offices of Birmingham I would, without fear, stride into in the hope they had a decent

video machine - maybe a Scramble, Rally-X or, joy upon joy, Crazy Climber. This was the acme of games - a unique two-joystick affair wherein you scaled a series of skyscrapers and avoided plantpots, dumbells, pooping gulls and the occasional random gorilla, for no other reason than to be airlifted off by helicopter at the top. A brilliantly futile expedition, available to view in all its glory at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKIoIx9XPO0&feature=related

But there came a time when, as the Apostle Paul pompously had it, I put away childish things, boxed the Commodore 64 up in the loft and left the house between school bell and bed times. Since which time I have had but the fleetingest dalliances with the world of gamery - playing Crash Bandicoot very badly in a vain attempt to impress a girl; tinkering with that wax-on-wax-off window cleaning affair (a strange concept, why would I want to relax by pretending to do housework?); even dipping my toes into the world of consoles by buying a Dreamcast. Come on, I thought, Sega, internet connectivity, how can it fail? Simple - it had no good games. Along with buying a Fiat Stilo, this was my Betamax moment, my Laserdisc folly.

Which brings us to the present. I still have the Dreamcast, though its destiny is clearly eBay. And I still have the Commodore, which I dig out once every five years to remind myself how naff the synthesised voice was on Arabian Nights, and how easy it was to score goals in International Football by running with the ball bouncing on your head. But I just don't see the role of computer games in my life. I've played on Wii, which is a neat bit of kit, but all that does for me is remind me how bad I am at darts and golf in real life.

So the possible passing of Game will have no effect on me. I don't do games. What? iPhone games? Oh well, yes Angry Birds. And Doodle Jump. And Cut The Rope. And Harbourmaster. But they're not proper games are they? They don't really count. I mean, they're a bit simple aren't they? Oh...