Wired Nomad

Carlops Jazz Band

Half work, half fun - I was asked to go and film the annual Summer (they're still hopeful) Concert for the Carlops Jazz Band. They're an 8 piece band (impressive given Carlops doesn't have much more than that in numbers of houses!) doing everything from Gershwin, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin to Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Dizzy Gillespie.

Over 80 people packed the Carlops Village Hall for a 2 hour set, climaxing with the un-jazzy but audience pleasing Mustang Sally (featuring the Carlopettes, 4 ladies in black dresses on backing vocals).

Now I need to see if they will let me post something on YouTube...

That Led Zeppelin Gig

No, I didn't get tickets although I applied along with 1 million others, wanted to take my fifteen year old daughter to show her a rock concert to contrast with her goth/emo leanings. And yes she would have been up for it!

Just wanted to note two things the day after the big night.

1) You can watch clips of whole songs on YouTube already, granted it's not 16:9 widescreen with Dolby Digital surround but you get the feeling of the event. And I'm sure a Collector's Edition DVD in 16:9 etc etc will be with us soon.

2) If you watch the link above (Whole Lotta Love) I think it's hilarious the amount of balding heads in front of the camera phone. Makes Jimmy Page's silver mop look very stylish in an aging rocker way.

The NME have gathered a good collection on their blog.

Bill Wyman in Peebles!

We never did quite discover why Bill Wyman was having a UK exclusive photographic show and series of talks in Peebles, but we were extremely grateful to him! We went to the third night tonight which was also a fundraiser for the Eastgate Theatre, called 'An Audience with Bill Wyman'. This combined a chance to view the photographs (being there is half the secret to catching shots of Lennon, Clapton and Jagger) and an interview conducted by BBC Radio Scotland's Edi Stark, to be broadcast later this month, plus some (limited) audience participation.

Bill came across as a very unassuming man seemingly liberated after leaving the Stones (Keith - "You can't leave the Stones, the only way to do it is in a coffin"), settling down in personal life and branching out in terms of music and other interests (archaeology, photography, astronomy). His 10 year old daughter was with him, afterwards my wife tried to elicit what she thought of the old man's music and didn't she prefer Britney or something - she loyally said yes, then said "Well maybe not all of it..."

Generally not a very rock'n'roll (or even swing) audience, we were definitely in the lowest age bracket (I mean within the 5 youngest) but caught up with Kenny and Alistair from Villeneuve Wines and Gerry Farrell from the Leith Agency.

Having fun with music

While I was listening to the Guardian Newsdesk podcast on my iPod this morning I came across an item on the changing face of the music industry (no, not downloads). Last.fm logs all the music you play on iTunes via a small download, and the Guardian notes "Music Week, the influential trade title, will this week publish a chart based on the internet listening habits of the social networking site Last.fm, the first time the magazine has included data from an online supplier."

Gordon Brown had better take note (I could never believe the spin that he listened to the Arctic Monkeys on his iPod, for goodness sake). People power again.

So I've signed up for my account and I've got iTunes running as I work, making the rash decision to let it use the Party Shuffle feature so it's logging all sorts of things I might not have immediately chosen (particularly as I still have some of my 14 year old daughter's metal tracks on there).

Which also makes me note the apparent non-randomness of the iTunes shuffle - it's already picked 3 Thin Lizzy tracks, of which I have very little, but only 1 Led Zeppelin (of which I have most up until 1975) and no Beatles (fairly completist here) and very little of anything from the last 5 years. Oh, and no Dylan.