Archive for the 'News' Category

Bloggerpalooza Rocks the Manchester Blog Awards 2009

That’s right folks, Bloggerpalooza is back, this time to make sure that the good folks attending the Manchester Blog Awards ceremony at Band on the Wall on 21st October will have some good tunes in between readings and awards. That is to say, a few local DJ’s, as organised by the Cahoona boys, have brought a motley crüe (ha ha, see what I did there?) of local MP3 bloggers together to play some songs for you.

You’ll be treated to the (not so) smooth DJ stylings of:

We might even treat you to an airing of “Girls Girls Girls.” We also might not.

If you can’t make it down on the night, we’re told the whole thing will be webcast so you can give us a listen anyway. More details when we have them.

Posted by JustHipper on 19th October 2009 at 9:58 pm | comments (41)
File under bloggerpalooza,News.

My Morning Jacket Cancel European Tour

There must be something about October because this time last year The Decemberists cancelled two tours. Then it was The Hold Steady a couple of weeks ago and now, it seems, My Morning Jacket won’t be gracing our shores with their presence, due to an injury.

Rough Trade emailed the following statement from My Morning Jacket to the fans:

It is with great regret that we have to announce the cancellation of My Morning Jacket’s up-coming tour to Europe due to injuries suffered by Jim James in Iowa City. For the fans who have purchased tickets, we would like to extend our gratitude for your support and understanding. Our hope was to merely postpone the tour, but as our scheduling does not allow that to happen in the immediate future, we feel it is best to cancel this tour in hopes of re-scheduling at some point. We would also like to say ‘thank you’ to all the fans who have reached out to Jim with their well-wishes as we all hope for his speedy and full recovery.

We hope that Jim’s not done too much harm to himself and he has a speedy recovery.

We also hope bad news only ever travels in threes and this will be the last October gig cancellation because somebody’s sick or injured!

Posted by JustHipper on 16th October 2008 at 6:57 pm | comments (1)
File under cancelled shows,manchester gigs,my morning jacket,News.

The Hold Steady Reschedule UK Tour for December

According to an email from Rough Trade, The Hold Steady have rescheduled their UK tour for December. Hurrah!

October dates were cancelled when guitarist Tad Kubler contracted Pancreatitis (ouch!), but he’s on the mend and they’re coming back once they’ve completed the rounds in North America. Here’s the dates:

  • 7-Dec Sheffield Leadmill
  • 8-Dec Oxford Academy
  • 9-Dec Nottingham Rock City
  • 10-Dec Manchester Academy
  • 12-Dec Bristol Anson Rooms
  • 14-Dec Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms
  • 15-Dec Wolverhampton Wulfrun Hall
  • 17-Dec London Roundhouse
  • 18-Dec Glasgow Glasgow SECC
  • 20-Dec Dublin The O2
  • 21-Dec Belfast Odyssey Arena

And just for fun, so you too can celebrate, a couple of songs:

The Hold Steady – Knuckles

The Hold Steady – Killer Parties

Posted by JustHipper on 4th October 2008 at 3:15 pm | comments (0)
File under mp3,News,the hold steady.

The Hold Steady UK Tour – CANCELLED

Craig Finn of The Hold Steady live in Manchester UKIn case you haven’t heard, The Hold Steady have cancelled their entire UK tour to have started tonight, 29th September. Apparently all dates will be rescheduled. The email from Ticketline regarding the cancellation states:

Ref: The Hold Steady at Manchester Academy 29th September
> ’08
>
>
>
> Unfortunately this gig has been postponed due to one of the
> band members
> being ill. If you wish to attend a new date when it is
> announced, please
> keep hold of the tickets you have received. We will advise
> you of a new
> date when it becomes available however we also advise you
> to keep an eye
> on the website for further information. Alternatively
> please return your
> tickets by secure mail to the address below for a face
> value refund.
>
>
>
> On behalf of the promoters of the event and the band, we
> apologise for
> any inconvenience caused.
>

Pity, as we’ve been looking forward to this for months!

If you’re reading this lads, get well soon, and please don’t reschedule on a really awkward night…..

For those of you who are gutted at having to wait, here’s a teaser:

Posted by JustHipper on 29th September 2008 at 5:57 pm | comments (4)
File under CD Reviews,hold steady,manchester gigs,News,Rant.

Manchester’s MP3 Bloggers Takeover Futuresonic

Well, it looks like Manchester’s bloggerati are throwing their own event at Futuresonic on Sunday, 4th May at the Contact Theatre on Oxford Road, lovingly titled Bloggerpalooza. We’ll be down there, for a while anyway, in between watching sets at Sounds from the Other City. So, log in or come down, either way it looks set to be great!

Cheers to Black Country Grammar and his contacts at Futuresonic for sorting it out.

Posted by JustHipper on 28th April 2008 at 8:39 pm | comments (4)
File under mp3,News,salford.

Gig Posters: Jay Ryan & Diana Sudyka: Un-natural Selection @ The Richard Goodall Gallery, Manchester until 5th January 2008

Jay Ryan Decemberists PosterCurrently showing at the Richard Goodall Underground Gallery in Manchester is an exhibition of posters by Jay Ryan and Diana Sudyka. We’ve been fans of Jay’s work for ages and there are a fair few Jay Ryans adorning the walls of the Indie Credential residence. However, his wife, Diana Sudyka, has been quietly building her own impressive portfolio of gig posters over the last couple of years and, though we went to the exhibition opening on December 1st with the express intention of not buying anything, we were quite taken aback by the quality of her work and ended up splashing out on her beautiful Low poster (below) for their Nottingham Rescue Rooms gig earlier in the year and getting it personalised by the artist herself. It was either that or the typically brilliant Jay Ryan Decemberists poster to your left but then we’ve already got three Decemberists posters in our collection.

Diana Sudyka Low PosterThe images on this page don’t remotely do justice to the posters themselves so if you’re in Manchester at any time over Christmas then get along to the Richard Goodall Underground Gallery on Thomas Street in the Northern Quarter and see them in the flesh.

Links:

The Bird Machine

Jay Ryan at Gigposters.com

Diana Sudyka at Gigposters.com

Low – Just Like Christmas

The Decemberists – Shankill Butchers

Posted by The Ledge on 14th December 2007 at 7:22 pm | comments (7)
File under diana sudyka,Gig Posters,jay ryan,News,richard goodall gallery.

News: Fopp Manchester Re-opens

Fopp RecordsA couple of months after the chain went bust with the loss of hundreds of jobs, Fopp Manchester re-opened at the weekend and, despite the fact that the Manchester store and stores in Glasgow, Cambridge, Nottingham and Edinburgh, were bought up by corporate giants HMV, it was pretty much business as usual when we were in there yesterday. Stocks seemed a bit low with no vinyl yet and plenty of empty jewel cases padding out the racks, plus we were unable to find the new Richard Hawley and New Pornographers CDs, but I’m sure this is only a temporary thing. Also, I don’t remember there being quite so many new releases being offered for £13 rather than the usual tenner. There were, of course, plenty of bargains to be had in the £5 racks and I ended up walking out with 10,000 Maniacs’ The Wishing Chair, Warren Zevon’s live album Stand In The Fire and the recent Replacements compilation, Do You Know Who I Think I Was?. Fifteen Quid well spent. Welcome back, Fopp.

The Replacements – Here Comes A Regular

Warren Zevon – Excitable Boy

10,000 Maniacs – Scorpio Rising

Posted by The Ledge on 28th August 2007 at 6:09 pm | comments (3)
File under mp3,News.

News: Anthony Wilson, R.I.P.

It’s truly a sad day for culture and music in Manchester, and around the world. On Friday evening Anthony Wilson, a founder of Factory Records and the Hacienda, passed away in Christies Hospital in Manchester from a heart attack. He had been undergoing treatment for cancer.

Wilson was a true patron of music, encouraging young bands at a financial loss to himself. He is responsible for bringing us Joy Division, The Happy Mondays and New Order, amongst others. He was the founder of In the City, a festival of music devoted to giving rising talent the chance to perform in front of the country’s media and music industry. He helped make Manchester the cultural centre is is today and he will be sorely missed.

Manchester Confidential has a full obituary, complete with comments.

Posted by JustHipper on 12th August 2007 at 1:15 pm | comments (0)
File under News.

News: The 2007 Manchester Blog Awards

It’s not music specifically, it’s local bloggerati fun and games, but The Manchizzle is now taking nominations for the 2007 Manchester Blog awards, to be held at the same time The Decemberists are playing in Liverpool. Boo! Hiss!

Seriously though, it’s great to see local bloggers supporting each other and if you’re in the area and not otherwise engaged watching a really great band over in Liverpool, you should first nominate your favourite music blog and then make plans to attend the ceremony and watch and cheer as a more deserving blog wins the category.

Posted by JustHipper on 6th August 2007 at 8:50 pm | comments (3)
File under News,Random comment.

Oldness comes with a smile…

old old old

Things seem to have ground to a halt around here. It’s not that we’ve run out of gigs to review – we’ve got a huge backlog – it’s just that both of us have been suffering from a serious lack of motivation. JustHipper has a decent excuse: she started a new job last month and it’s longer hours and a much longer drive so she’s exhausted most of the time. I, on the other hand, had the dubious distinction of turning forty a couple of weeks ago and I can’t say I enjoyed it very much.

Turning thirty was something I did quite enjoy. I felt that I’d drifted through my twenties waiting for my life to get started and I knew on my thirtieth birthday that the next decade would be infinitely better. Just over six months later I met JustHipper and the next ten years were the best of my life, our 4th wedding anniversary the day after my birthday was a considerable consolation. But at forty I’m starting to feel old, conscious of the likelihood that I’ve passed the halfway line on the great football pitch of life. I spent the first week of my forties initiating a program of home improvements, getting people in to install a new garden fence, replace the garage roof, cut down trees. I’m slowing down, settling in, taking stock. I think I’m starting to enjoy gardening. If only it would stop raining.

Despite my disappointment at reaching such a grand old age (not that I had much choice) I can’t really think of a better year to be born than 1967, from a musical point of view at least. There can’t be many people around who have had the good fortune to see live the likes of The Jam, The Smiths, R.E.M. (in their 80s heyday), The Replacements, Hüsker Dü, My Bloody Valentine, The Go-Betweens, The Triffids, Pixies, Nirvana, Galaxie 500, Ride, The Field Mice, Stereolab, Radiohead, Neil Young and more recently The Hold Steady, Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene and, er, Pixies. If I stopped going to gigs now I could look back on my gig-going life with a great satisfaction, R.E.M. at the Gallery in 1984 and the Pixies/Throwing Muses double header at the Manchester International in 1988 are the only two gigs I can think of that I really regret missing out on. I won’t stop though – I can’t. On more than one occasion I found myself in a tent at a festival standing next to the great John Peel watching someone like Hefner or The Delgados. If John Peel could attend gigs in his sixties then there’s no reason why I, or anyone else, can’t.

I’ve felt old at gigs before: as long ago as 1995 I found myself surrounded by small children, seemingly no older than twelve, at the much missed Duchess Of York in Leeds waiting for Feeder to take the stage. Moments after they had I was making my way back to the bar, head bowed, wearing the majority of my pint of Tetleys over my Sonic Youth t-shirt. I’ve never forgiven Feeder for that. At a CSS gig earlier this year I stood among people my own age: parents of the screaming teenagers at the front.

Hopefully normal service on this blog will resume fairly soon, not that we ever had anything you could call “normal service”. I’m almost over my mini mid-life crisis. I’m off to Fopp with a spring in my step for a bit of musical retail therapy. Bugger.

The Clean – Getting Older

Red House Painters – 24 (Only Mark Kozelek could be this miserable about turning 24)

Green On Red – Time Ain’t Nothing

The Jam – When You’re Young

Posted by The Ledge on 30th June 2007 at 4:25 pm | comments (16)
File under mp3,News,Random comment.