The last 2 nights have seen me at a couple of comedy sessions – as usual, a testimony to my alertness & awareness…  I was mainly looking for an opportunity to see Daniel Kitson without having to trek out into the middle of nowhere, and both gigs turned out to be multi-comic showcases of which Kitson was but a small part.  Thankfully, both nights were excellent – one was a fundraiser for mental health charity MIND, and the other was a new club night at Proud Gallery, “The Invisible Dot …

Ordinarily being beaten to the punch on a piece of commentary would probably render me apathetic enough to let it go through to the keeper, however this one’s worth throwing in just because it crinkles my brain so much.
At the beginning of the month some likeminded bold musical adventurers & I set forth to Barbican Hall to spend an evening in the presence of the amazing Herbie Hancock & associates.  In this case, Herbie’s associates were trumpet guru Terence Blanchard, expert harmonica wrangler Gregoire Maret, bass machine James Genus, drummer …

It’s not as often as I’d like that I get the chance to do a random quick dash out to Europe based on a wafer-thin premise, however Big Pete’s insistence that we go to an Iron Maiden gig provided just that impetus! Admittedly we could have gone to Twickenham, but they only had shite seats left and it takes about the same time to get from Camden to Twickenham as it does to get to Paris, so the decision was practically made for us!
The whole getting up (extremely) early …

I’m a big fan of careering off on illogical adventures at relatively short notice, so when my housemate James asked me about a fortnight ago if I wanted to come to Reykjavik for a free Bjork gig I mightily hit the “YES” button with mahoosive portions of enthusiasm.
The first thing to hit me about Iceland upon landing was the sunshine. Not because I live in England and there is none, but more that there was a late-dawn/early-dusk level of light about and our plane had landed at 1:30am. …