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Last week I was asked to recommend a local band, and believe me it is never an easy question. I love my music and I love my local music. There is just so much good music about this land that I have to think very hard before coming up with an answer. But there can only be one this time around.
The chosen band is Boathouse, a Belfast-based five-piece with a host of instruments including a shaker and glockenspiel.
Unfortunately, with the current lineup, they have no official releases other than the session which was broadcase on Across the Line for BBC Radio Ulster in June of this year. The three tracks ‘Johnny and Ruth Story’, ‘What I Remember’ and ‘Don’t Knock’ are rarely far from the currently playing song in my playlist.
The review was published today on the Music Blog over at Unrealitytv.co.uk. The blog, which was launched in August 2005 by Lisa McGarry, is perfect for those who need the latest gossip, opinion and news on the latest UK reality TV shows.
On the other hand, Gerard McGarry has been writing the music section of the blog since March 2007 and manages to update plenty of times a day with the latest news and updates to satisfy anyone’s music needs.
Together they make a great team!
So rumour has it the people of the UK and Ireland like to talk about the weather a lot. I would agree with this. When its sunny, its beautiful. Most of the time its not. I don’t want to whine on about it too much, ‘cos I’m going to the sun soon anyway.
The Guardian yesterday posed the question: Is summer over? It seems that already conkers have been spotted, as well as holly berries, its cold and wet and the shops are full of summer clothes. I am still undecided on this ’summer over’ thing, though correct me if I’m wrong, is it not always cold and wet here? And since when did we determine the seasons according to when shops bring in new stock?
Plants have been tricked into thinking winter is on the way because of record high temperatures in spring, followed by a dismal wet summer and cool conditions.
If this is true is spring now the new summer? Are all the seasons coming earlier? That was a great spring we had, and I’m still waiting for summer. It reminds me of a really bad movie, the one where you’re just waiting for something to happen and it never does; think War of the Worlds or Solaris.
I only got a chance to use my sun screen once.
The crazy weather and threat of snow must have too many people to the BBC’s Weather site lately. The default is London, though I want to change it to Belfast, but when I try to do so I get a nasty 502 error.
Unfortunately a server error occured whilst trying to retrieve this page:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/weather/search/new_search.pl?
search_query=belfast&go.x=0&go.y=0
We are currently working to correct this
I hope they do ‘cos I wanna know how cold its gonna be.
update
Just remembered I have one of the best Firefox extensions: ForecastFox.
(I’m not dumb I wanted to check the weather in work and forgot I don’t need to do it at home…)
Thankfully it doesn’t look like there will be much snow if anyway in these parts this week, unlike in England.
Today the images of Richard Hammond’s high speed crash have been released by the BBC.
He was making an attempt at the British land speed (currently 300.3mph) record in the Thule Vampire, a 30-foot Rolls-Royce jet-powered dragster made in Sweden capable of reaching 272 mph in six seconds en route to a theoretical top speed of 370. The crash took place at over 280 mph.
I find it interesting that the BBC put this in the Entertainment section of the News site.
Richard is returning to the show when the new series starts on 28th Jan, and apparently the crash is going to be shown in full.
HMV spokesman Gennaro Castaldo is reported to have said that a “top 10 made up entirely of their [Beatles] music would be almost guaranteed”. This came about after it was rumoured that EMI is considering releasing The Beatles’ back catalogue as downloads for the first time.
According to the BBC, this is due to the change in the UK charts which allows any song purchased online to go towards the singles chart.
“Until now downloads only counted towards chart positions if they were purchased within a week of the physical single being released and two weeks of it being deleted. But this week’s Top 40 sees several deleted songs re-entering the chart, including Crazy by Gnarls Barkley which was the biggest selling single of 2006, and is now at number 30.”
Industry experts believe the charts will never be the same again. “Under the new rules, anything and everything is eligible,” Castaldo.
I have become a regular reader of The Guardian over the last month or so. I read in last saturdays edition that they will be giving away a free copy of Supersize me today. It is a great movie, and after watching Morgan Spurlock’s 30 Days series a few weeks ago followed closely by the documentary itself, it has rekindled my respect for the guy and for what he is does.
Though the free dvd with newspapers thing. I read an article in relation to this not so long ago citing the fact that many newspapers still do it to increase sales, especially the tabloids (or my preferred title, red tops). Over the course of this week I have seen a TV advertisement for this free dvd many times - and I hardly watch any TV.
This won’t be the deciding factor in my continued reading of The Guardian, I made that decision a few weeks ago. Though are you going to buy it now as a result of hearing of this free giveaway?
Morgan Spurlock also has a blog which makes for some good reading if you want to keep up-to-date.
I read today that two men, aged 20 and 18, from England were jailed for the manslaughter of a man they attacked, all in the name of ‘happy slapping‘. To top it off, they only got 13 and 12 months. respectively. Something has gone horribly wrong when this happens. The question is, will it happen again, or how many times?
This is no “fad” or “craze” as the media seems to enjoy labelling it. Kids beatin’ the shit outta other kids and adults is no game. I have seen one or two of these videos from the phones of some friends, and I don’t find it funny - but im not a 14-17 year old.
How do you stay ahead of the latest trend now?