Departure lounge ramblings on music, places, climate change and stuff outdoors

Tramlines 2026

Tramlines is a knowingly northern festival, celebrating all things Sheffield and Yorkshire (except Leeds). Spread over three days in spacious Hillsborough park setting, across the road from Sheffield Wednesday football ground, Tramlines is more north’s answer to British Summer Time in London’s Hyde Park, and so much better. Here follows markontour’s review of Tramlines 2026.

Fast and Furious – the Gwalchglas

In his rousing book, Raptors, James Macdonald Lockhart describes the moment an unremarkable afternoon walk transformed into a never-to-be-forgotten moment: “Rising out of the bramble thicket beside a gate was a female Sparrowhawk. Wings spread, tail open in a fan as she rose..appearing as if from nowhere and then [she] was gone.” For Macdonald Lockhart, Sparrowhawks “operate in a different dimension to other birds of prey”. Having last week experienced an almost identical encounter with the lightning-fast aerial hunter that the Welsh call ‘Gwlchglas’, I know what he means.

Festive Fifteen 2025

I had to miss Glastonbury this year, which is usually my best introduction to new bands, but it has still been as difficult as ever to choose my fifteen favourite songs released in the last twelve months. If I get time there will be a B-Sides collection too, but for now herewith markontour’s Festive Fifteen 2025, in everlasting homage to DJ-supreme, John Peel.

Green Man 2025

This was a sun-drenched, chilled-out Green Man festival, which reverberated to Free Palestine chants, celebrated tolerance and diversity, and delivered joyous moment after joyous moment. As always, the line-up was full of wonderful introductions as well as old favourites. The food and drink were next level compared with most festivals (the variety of cakes on the Llangattock School stall making up for the lack of mango ale or cider this year) and the rolling hills of the Bannau Brycheniog providing the ultimate framing.

Brown bear country

Slovenia, where markontour was holidaying recently, has the distinction of being both one of the most materially equal societies in the world (a 2nd placed Gini coefficient of 0.24, which is incidentally the same score Britain enjoyed in 1979 prior to Thatcherism. The UK’s score of 0.34 now puts us outside the top 40), but also has enshrined the rights of nature in its constitution. The result is a country that is visibly thriving (although I am sure there are a thousand problems not visible to the casual tourists’ eye) and brimming with biodiversity.

Latitude 2025

Four music-filled days in the idyllic grounds of a Suffolk hall, spent with many of my oldest and dearest friends – Latitude 2025 was, unsurprisingly, a joy-filled experienced. This was a year to particularly enjoy discovering new bands (a large chunk of the best of whom hailed from Ireland), although one headline act served up surprise euphoria. As usual, Latitude also delivered so much more than music, including stimulating nature and science stages, world-class acrobatics, and a space-faring puppet dog. Here follows markontour’s review of Latitude 2025.

A little bit of bread and no cheese

We know spring is imminent where I live in the Bannau Brycheiniog not just from the growing warmth of the sun throughout the day, but because of the return of the familiar, high-pitched refrain of “a little bit of bread and no cheese’ whistling around the hills. It is, of course, the call of the Yellowhammer – Melyn yr Eithin in Welsh – and it’s a song to brighten any day.

Bees: A Story of Survival

I’m probably kidding myself, but I like to think I know a little bit about the birds after 5 years escaping to the Welsh countryside, but an uplifting visit to the Liverpool World Museum revealed that I didn’t even know what I didn’t know about the bees. Fortunately, from the fact that these industrious little creatures have survived since the time of the dinosaurs, to the highly endearing knowledge that they have a honey stomach, “Bees: A Story of Survival” had the answers. Sadly, unlike the Bass Museum of Brewing History (now much missed), where you used to get beer tokens to round off your visit, there was no honey at the end of the exhibition, but in all other ways it was a fact-filled, sweet delight.

The Festive Fifteen 2024

Just in time for Xmas, it’s markontour’s annual Festive Fifteen – my favourite songs released in 2024. Not festive. Not fifteen. All as usual. It seems quite a laidback, reflective playlist, which hardly reflects my year, but if music is therapy.. And it leaves out some of the bands whose albums I have listened to most in the last twelve months (Public Service Broadcasting’s typically epic ‘The Last Flight’; Nick Cave’s cathartic ‘Wild God’; Jamie Webster mixing pop and politics on ‘Ten For The People’) but which I couldn’t identify an individual track that would work in the compilation. And Bruce didn’t release anything new this year. I hope you enjoy (at least some of them).

Murmuration over Llyn Syfaddan

Last weekend I stood mouth agape on the shore of Llyn Syfaddan gazing in wonder at one of nature’s greatest glories – a vast murmuration of birds. Flying in east to west over the space of an hour tens of thousands of starlings wheeled and reeled towards their winter home, pulsating like a single living organism stretching across an arms-length of sky and then, as one, dived to roost in the reed beds that line Lake Llangorse’s shore. It was simply breathtaking and to paraphrase Robert Smith in ‘A Forest’, which I have heard on repeat this week (thank Radio 6 Music), I want to see them do it again, and again, and again, and again.

Panda research base

Everyone knows the panda from the multitude of iconic images that this loveable-looking bear has inspired around the world. But surely there is nowhere where the panda’s image can be more ubiquitous than in Chengdu, an enormous city of 21 million residents in south-western China and home to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, which I was privileged to visit this week.

Green Man 2024

Given tickets for Green Man sold out in 2 hours for this year’s event, I am hesitant about adding to the growing list of rave reviews for this carnival of music, comedy, crafts and beer that consistently delivers the best vibes of the British festival scene. But Green Man 2024 was SO good.

Glastonbury 2024

I used to do an annual review of the world’s greatest musical festival with gig ratings and everything, but reading through this year’s blog I realise it has become more of a diary to remind me why I enjoyed my Glastonbury week so much. In any case, here follows markontour’s Glastonbury experience 2024.

Fighters for Freedom

Robert H. Johnson’s ‘Three Great Abolitionists’ unites Abraham Lincoln, John Brown and Frederick Douglas in a hand-clasp that eluded these three leaders of the abolition of US slavery in their lifetimes. It is an arresting start to a rousing exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C. – all vibrant colours and stylised imagery in celebration of American freedom fighters, liberationists, emancipators, socialists, mostly people of colour.

It’s all about Siff-Siaff

It’s all about Chiffchaff (Siff-Siaff in Welsh) in my little corner of the Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons national park) at the moment. Their noisy onomatopoeiac chiff-chaff call dominates the hedgerow airwaves, relegating the robins and blackbirds that have kept singing all winter to the sidelines. This is as it should be, Siff-Siaff is one of the first migrants to arrive back in Britain and start singing and is, thus, a reliable indicator that spring is really here.

Hu Gadarn’s plough

The changing of the seasons on earth also marks a shift in the ascendancy in the skies, with Bootes taking over from Orion as the most prominent constellation in the heavens. In Welsh mythology, Bootes represents Hu Gadarn, the first farmer to use oxen to pull a plough. The moment at which Hu Gadarn, his yoke (the Roman constellation of Auriga), and ox (Taurus, the bull) first line up after sunset was a reminder to ancient Celts that it was time to plough the fields and sow seeds.

Britta Marakatt-Labba’s Moving the Needle

Sami artist, Britta Marakatt-Labba, campaigns for environmental protection and indigenous rights in Norway through the medium of embroidered landscapes and maps of epic beauty and subtle detail. The two hours I spent viewing a large retrospective of her work – ‘Moving the Needle’ – at the Nasjonal Museet in Oslo last weekend counts as my most enjoyable 2 hours wait for a hotel check-in. Sometimes delay really does generate pleasure.

Hotel Lux at the Molotov

I lucked-out last night travelling back by train from Stockholm to London by way of Hamburg – getting to see Portsmouth band, Hotel Lux, at the Molotov Musikbar on the Reeperbahn.

The Pennal Letter

The inspiration for today’s blog is ‘The Pennal Letter’ – a double-A3 sized piece of parchment, penned in Latin in March 1406 by Welsh hero, Owain Glyndwr, and addressed to Charles VI, King of France. Last weekend I spent a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon viewing a replica of the manuscript in the Canolfan Owain Glyndwr, and then following a trail around Machyllneth and beyond which charts the 10 year period when Glyndwr threw off English colonial shackles and briefly established Wales as an independent nation. (Nb there is an accompanying podcast for this blog).

Do You Like Rock Music?

I had the privilege of seeing my favourite band, Sea Power, twice this week. First in Bristol’s Trinity community arts centre and then, closer to home, at the Islington Assembly Halls. There were no moshing polar bears on this occasion, but everything else was as it ought to be: lyrics welcoming Eastern European migrants (“Are you of legal drinking age? On minimum wage? Well welcome in”), a stage full of trees, stirring instrumentals of pounding drums, jangling guitars, hypnotic violin and rousing brass, celebration of the night’s sky, and an open-armed salutation from the stage that had everyone in their dedicated fanbase smiling all evening.

The Lost Rainforests of Britain

In the winter months I look for lichen. That habit, which I started because my binoculars are made temporarily redundant by reduced bird numbers on the uplands of the Bannau Brycheiniog during January, has developed new purpose since reading Guy Shrubsole’s magnificent ‘The Lost Rainforests of Britain’. Now I understand that the abundant varieties of these plant/fungi collaborations across the Welsh hills are not just distraction from the absence of something more exciting, but something incredible and historic in their own right – evidence of the last remaining fragments of the temperatre rainfrorests which once covered these isles.

The Festive Fifteen 2023

As the year draws to a close it’s time for markontour’s annual homage to John Peel’s ‘Festive Fifty’. As usual, my list is not festive and doesn’t even manage the fifteen tracks I habitual aim for and fail to achieve. But these are my favourite songs released in 2023. Given how much I have travelled this year, there’s a paucity of bands from beyond the Anglo-Saxon world, so that’s by New Year’s Resolution sorted, but I hope you enjoy them as much I have just the same.

Transcendence, Excalibur and how Britons forgot how to make steel

I like to have at least a couple of books on the go at all times and two of my current crop – ‘Transcendence’ by Gaia Vince and Bernard Cornwell’s ‘Enemy of God’ – have provoked an unlikely fusion of ideas: was King Arthur’s unbreakable sword, Excalibur, a mythic expression of the lost art of Roman steel-making? Did Merlin wield ‘magic’ by exploiting the human brain’s ability to convert mental anticipation into physical reality?

Ladies and gentlemen we are floating through the Bannau Brycheiniog: Green Man 2023

A festival that merely by virtue of its stunning location is as much a celebration of Cymru/Wales as it is the glorious music that drifts out around Bannau Brycheiniog national park for four days at the end of August. 2023 was a year of discovering lots of exciting new bands, mixed with a bit of eye-misting nostalgia, the largest selection of beers of any festival markontour has ever been too (and thanks to the wonderful staff at the Mantle/Brecon end of the bar, who put up with our chat-filled procrastination for another year), and that gorgeous, gorgeous Welsh hill scenery for a backdrop. Here follows markontour’s round-up of Green Man Festival 2023:

Federico Garcia Lorca and the duende

Despite part-inspiring one of my favourite Clash songs, ‘Spanish Bombs’, until visiting Andulucia this summer I knew nothing about the legendary Spanish poet and playwright, Federica Garcia Lorca, other than the intriguing reference in Joe Strummer’s lyric: “Oh please leave the ventana open / Federico Garcia Lorca is dead and gone”. Today in the small tourist village of Pampaneira, a dense huddle of whitewashed stone houses cramped onto impossibly steep terraces on the southern edge of an escarpment of the Sierra Nevada, I was intrigued again by Lorca – this time generating enough impetus to read up a bit.

Barcelona

This is going to need some fleshing out on subsequent visits, but getting back to the original roots of markontour.com, here are fragmentary reflections on Barcleona, from three days working there and one day of leisure.

Native New York and Shelley Niro’s 500 Year Itch

A day off in New York meant the chance to return to the Museum of the American Indian and two fascinating exhibitions: ‘Native New York’s’ half-millennial history of indigenous people on the east coast, and Mowhawk artist, Shelley Niro’s, extraordinary retrospective, ‘500 Year Itch’.

Welcome to Paradise: Krankenhaus 2023

“Welcome to paradise” proclaimed Sea Power frontman, Jan, during their Saturday night set. It could have seemed an incongruous statement, being made from atop a scaffolding-constructed stage in a cow-barn, and yet Krankenhaus 2023 has a good claim to be festival perfection.

Latitude 2023

There was sunshine, there was rain, bands I’ve loved for 30 years, amazing bands I’d never seen before, top-notch comedy, and plenty of opportunity to dance and sing. I loved Latitude! Herewith the markontour guide to one festival goer’s Latitude 2023.

The thorn bush is the mother of the oak

Ms Markontour and I have been enjoying a blissful bank holiday weekend at Knepp Wildland Safari in southern England. We’ve been wanting to visit since reading Isabella Tree’s ‘Wilding’ a few years ago – an account of how she and her husband, Charlie Burrell, decided to see what happened if nature was permitted to manage itself on their 3,000 acre loss-making farm. The result is the most exhilarating nature site in Britain. A place that echoes all day and night to bird-song, has welcomed back multiple species that were on the brink of extinction in Britain from the Turtle Dove to the Nightingale, and where bramble and scrub have proven to be the catalyst for abundance, variety and beauty, rather than a nuisance to be cleared away. I could have happily stayed forever.

Carried Away with Caitlin

I’m not sure I’ve ever laughed so much at a music gig. Caitlin Rose self-deprecatingly protested that half her act was comedy and it was almost true. Almost except the most compelling voice in alt-country back on stage for the first time in seven years, to the delight of a sell-out crowd at Bristol’s The Fleece.

O What A Beautiful Mornin’

The Museum of Broadway made for educative departure-day lunch break after a busy week in New York. Charting the genesis of the world’s most famous theatre district, on what an opening frame recognises as Lenape land, the museum takes the visitor on a chronological entertainment journey filled with song, costume and, less expectedly, mirrors.

Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea

Swansea’s Dylan Thomas Centre pays fitting homage to the unique talent of Wales’ greatest writer. While the exhibition space is modest in comparison to the depth of Thomas’ literary contribution, it is so wonderfully curated, with Thomas’ sonorous voice regaling visitors with excerpts of his poems, letters and plays at every turn, that a full afternoon was necessary for our visit.

Merlin

Cycling down a wooded cut through to Groesffordd yesterday we disturbed a sleek, grey raptor, who wheeled suddenly in front of us and then swept up the path at high speed, flying just inches above the ground. It was a breathtaking display and with such characteristics could only have been one bird – the usually elusive Merlin​.

The Festive Fifteen 2022

It is the season of lists and best-of-the-year’s, so here’s my annual contribution: the fifteen songs released in 2022 which have most inspired and uplifted me. In keeping with precedent, there are more than fifteen songs in the list and none of them are festive. I am indebted as always to the late, great John Peel and the inspiration of his Festive Fifty.

Green Man Festival 2022

Nestled between the west bank of the river Usk and the eastern side of the Monmouth and Brecon canal, protected by the gently rolling hulk of the Black Mountains, and boasting the best selection of beers and ciders at any festival I’ve ever been too, Green Man is much more than a music event. Here follows markontour’s review of the bliss that was Green Man 2022.

The last forest and the future of life on Earth

Part adventure travelogue, part popular science journalism, part conveyor of big truths, Ben Rawlence‘s The Treeline is a beautifully written, mind-opening account of how trees are migrating north in response to climate breakdown. It’s a page-turner and yet also book I lingered over, because there were so many passages that necessitated an intake of breath, followed by a solemn stare into the distance, and then a re-read to make sure I had fully understood the devastating implications of the new information just imbibed.

Latitude 2022

What a perfect weekend. Despite the late nights, I always come away from Latitude feeling relaxed rather than tired. This was a largely hot one and so we managed to spend most of Sunday just lounging in the wooded shade of the Sunrise stage, watching great new band after great new band. Elsewhere, alongside all the music, there was Disco Yoga, Maseoke, street dance, performance poetry, decent vegan/veggie food, and swimming in the lake. Couldn’t ask for more.

Glastonbury returns

Aah – what a feeling it was to be back. The first Glastonbury in three years and everyone was well up for it, including the weather gods, who were enjoying the spectacle so much they forgot to send rain. Unlike 2010, when consecutive sunny days seemed to dampen the hedonism a bit, Glastonbury 2022 was one of the liveliest, loudest and happiest I can remember in 30 years. Here follows the markontour review of the bands I saw at Glastonbury 2022.

Broken Greek

I’ve read a lot of music biographies, but Broken Greek is in a league of its own. For a start the author, Pete Paphides, writes about music for a living rather than performing it. More importantly, while Broken Greek’s timeline begins, quite traditionally, in the author’s infancy, six hundred pages later it ends with Paphides still in his early teens – an age at which many people are only just discovering bands. It is a measure of the authors’ precocious music obsessiveness that despite mostly relying on Paphides’ pre-pubescent experience of rock n roll his autobiography nevertheless provides a wonderfully evocative revisiting of punk, pop and rock, alongside a tender, sometimes poignant, and consistently laugh out loud funny examination of what it was like to be a young immigrant in 1970s and 1980s Britain.

How Goldcrests wear their flatcaps

Yesterday I saw a Goldcrest, Europe’s smallest bird. There are 600,000 breeding pairs in Britain and they are reasonably commonplace in the coniferous woods which they make home, but it is the first time I have spotted one in the Brecon Beacons. More to the point, they are stunningly attired- “a tiny bird with a big hairdo” according to the Wildlife Trusts – and so make a big impression, first with a flash of green on the wing and then the bright yellow mohican on the head (orange in the male).

Inequality kills

Oxfam’s annual wealth report, Inequality Kills, has rightly attracted attention for revealing how the incomes of the world’s ten richest people have doubled during the pandemic, while the incomes of 99% of people have effectively reduced during the same period. But the report, along with other recent analysis, also provides further critical evidence of how economic inequality is driving climate breakdown. As such, it is a problem that is not just confined to a handful of billionaires but the excessive consumption patterns of the wealthiest few hundred million of us, who compromise under 10 per cent of humanity but cause over half of its greenhouse gas pollution.

The Cranes Return

Cranes, large white wetland birds, standing 1.3 metres tall with flamboyant tail-feathers that bob about as they graze, were hunted to extinction in Britain four hundred years ago. But last weekend we went to visit a now thriving resident population at the Slimbridge Wetland Centre on the Severn Estuary near Bristol. It was a magical and uplifting experience, and it turned out that the Cranes shared the billing with an astonishing cast of other beautiful wildfowl.

Why we still have to fight the greenwash

Revisiting a half-finished blog from the end of 2021, I was reminded how angry I was hearing Shell’s CEO proclaim green credentials one minute, and in the next breath complain that being told to cut his company’s emissions in line with national targets was “unreasonable”. The job of the climate movement is to make it unacceptable to enrich yourself through destroying the eco-systems on which we all depend, and rally the majority of people behind political and economic approaches that instead enable human civilisation to survive and thrive.

Festive Fifteen 2021

A few days ago I was feeling good with myself, having polished my annual markontour favourite songs of the year list down to the fifteen tracks that would befit its title, and then Rough Trade went and sold me The Felice Brothers’ new album. Ah well. Herewith the sixteen tracks of the Festive Fifteen 2021. The usual rules apply: all songs must have been released this calendar year, one song per band, no re-releases, plus an indeterminate number of bonus tracks, usually commemorating an artist who passed away during the year. The full playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify.

Doers, not delayers – what the world needs post COP26

As the dust settles on COP26 it is clearer than ever that the climate crisis is not going to be averted by inter-governmental negotiation. That’s not to ignore the momentum generated by COP26, or the incremental progress made in Glasgow. But the commitments on the table from national governments when the gavel came down fell well short of locking in action to halve global emissions this decade, and that was the ultimate indicator of success or failure. As a result there is an even more urgent need for cities and other non-state actors to lead immediate science-based climate action, and increase the impetus on national leaders.

Green Man Festival 2021

Fontaines DC were the stand-out band at Green Man this year, with one of the most intense sets I’ve ever had the privilege of witnessing. But they could have run an open-mic session on the main stage and it would still have been a wonderful festival, such was the anticipation for Green Man 2021 in the markontour household. As it was, this was a bumper year, with many great performances from a mostly British and Irish line up, particularly from bands who have yet to get an album under their belts. Here follows markontour’s review of Green Man Festival 2021

Latitude 2021

s focused on enjoying themselves. This isn’t really a blog as much as a list for the memory banks, but herewith the markontour review of Latitude 2021:

A fizzing atom, bombarding the sky

I bought Raptor: A Journey Through Birds by James Macdonald Lockhart because spending a pandemic year in Wales has afforded the privilege of seeing birds of prey on a daily basis, and I wanted to learn my hawks from my falcons. Raptor has certainly helped with that, but much more besides, with Lockhart’s lyrical descriptions of avian behaviour making my own experience of seeing raptors in the wild even more magical.

On the trail of the standing stones

Five thousand years ago the people living in what is now the Brecon Beacons National Park, the area of Wales where markontour currently resides, were into megaliths, big time. This much we know because over thirty of them survive to this day, still marking out the valley roads and high passes in this lush, undulating landscape. They are extraordinary things to get out and see in situ, stubbornly remaining on the spot they have inhabited through so many human generations, and in many cases accessible enough to be able to get right up close and touch.

The Ministry for the Future

I approached The Ministry for the Future, eco sci-fi master, Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest book, with some trepidation. I was anticipating a grim imagining of a near future in which human civilisation descends into chaos as a result of failure to respond to the climate crisis, something I am generally trying to escape when I find time to pick up a novel. But while there is plenty that is frighteningly real in Robinson’s narrative – from millions dying in droughts, floods and fires, to the rise of global eco-terrorism as a generation realises that the one-percent really are willing to sacrifice their futures for short-term profit – ultimately ‘The Ministry of the Future’ is a manifesto of hope.

I’m a peach and you’re a plum – Album of the Week

I have become somewhat addicted in recent weeks to Widowspeak’s new album, ‘Plum’. The gateway drug was the Brooklyn duo’s dreamy, hypnotic cover of Dire Straits’ ‘Romeo and Juliet’ from a recent EP, ‘Honeychurch’. But now I am hooked on their own compositions, particularly the album’s title track.

Sunshine over Goosegog Lane

“To begin at the beginning” – there’s really no other way to start a blog about Laughrne, the small former cockle-fishing town on the Carmarthenshire coast which I visited this week to pay homage to its most famous son, Dylan Thomas.

A Dark Murmuration of Words

Emily Barkers’ mesmerising ‘A Dark Murmuration of Words’ has been the soundtrack to my 2021 lockdown mornings. There’s both beauty and sadness in these songs that describe the natural world and what humanity has done to it, while bridging from nature to mull over human emotions.

Dewi Sant was a vegetarian Glastonbury fan

Some might question why an atheistic internationalist has chosen to write a blog about a day of national religious celebration, but St David (Dewi Sant in the Welsh) was a vegetarian who spent some time at Glastonbury and established his first hermitage in Llanthony, a few miles down the road from where I sit writing this blog. Moreover, it’s an excuse to make use of my shelf of Welsh history books and then pretend I know something about it.

The Corona Crash

In ‘The Corona Crash: how the pandemic will change capitalism’, British economist and journalist, Grace Blakeley, argues that COVID-19 has heralded a new age of “state monopoly capitalism”. But while massive state intervention in the economy is completely justified, instead of propping up the owners of the old polluting economy, our money should be directed into a huge programme of investment in a green and just recovery. Along the way, in a highly readable and concise pamphlet, Blakeley dissects the reality of globalisation, the legacy of financialisation, and the arguments for a Green New Deal. Indeed, her writing is so quotable that what follows is more of a ‘Corona Crash’ pass notes than a review..

Humankind: A Hopeful History

‘Humankind: A Hopeful History’, by the Dutch historian, Rutger Bregman, has given me philosophical reason for optimism in a bleak year, alongside reinforcing my view that neo-liberalism is the biggest threat to human prosperity, while challenging other deeply ingrained perspectives. In a highly compelling, research-based narrative, he demonstrates that the underpinning dogma of neo-liberalism is false: human beings are not “naturally” selfish and competitive. In fact, if you look at the historical evidence, the basis of our success has been collaboration.

The Festive Fifteen 2020

December is here, which means it is time for the annual markontour Festive Fifteen. As usual, there’s nothing to do with Xmas in this compilation, just my favourite songs released in this very strange year and put together in homage to the much missed John Peel and his alternative Festive Fifty. The full playlist is available on my YouTube and Spotify channels.

The first big test of President Biden’s climate policy will be to invest in a green and just recovery from the pandemic

Analysis for C40’s Mayors’ COVID Recovery Taskforce shows this clearly – a big, fast global programme of green stimulus will create 50 million good new jobs in C40 cities alone, while also being the best route to protect health and enable us to get on track to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and make it to zero by 2050. So while we should rightly celebrate the moment when President Biden takes the USA back into the Paris Agreement, what is really going to matter in his first year in office is whether or not he is able to push through a green and just COVID recovery stimulus.

Landmarks

Robert Macfarlane is the nature writer of choice in markontour’s household, and so reading Landmarks, Macfarlane’s linguistic exploration of landscape, has been a deliberately drawn out affair – a book that we have read out loud over several months in order to savour every word.

Lockdown tapes #3

Lockdown has proved just as busy as pre-COVID times, just with opportunities for discovering new music shifting from seeing live bands to listening to the radio. Favourites on the markontour playlist of late have included:

Starting to know redstarts

I didn’t know a redstart from a robin a year ago, but thanks to lockdown I’ve been getting to know a pair of them that have taken residence half way up the bridleway at the back of our house. The size of robin but with longer wings and tail, and with a similarly arresting, but slightly more rusty, splash of red on their breast, the male redstart also sports a white crown, black throat and boisterous, insistent call. One might call them noisy neighbours, but I have loved having them nearby.

A cloud of unidentified leafish objects

Hearing unforecasted rain hitting the tarmac the other evening, I ventured outside anyway, having been looking forward to a nightwalk. Beyond the sound-proofing of the door the noise was cacophanous and I almost retreated back inside. But, belatedly, I noted the absence of moisture in the air and, slowly, realised that what I had assumed to be the patter of raindrops was in fact the flutter of a thousand leaves being blown up the drive. Venturing further out, I spent a pleasant but futile few minutes trying to catch some, before settling for scooping up a handful from the floor. They were unlike any leaf I had ever seen and it has taken me a week of stolen minutes with the markontour “library” to derive their origin, such is my city-boy lack of basic wildlife knowledge. But it has been fun learning and, in the end, it turned out that buried deep in my brain was my Mum introducing me to the parent-tree as a boy.

The Nanny State Made Me

If the COVID-19 crisis has taught us anything it is the life-saving difference between good and bad government, and why the foundation of a successful society is strong, well-funded and universal public services. This, of course, shouldn’t have needed reaffirming. As Stuart Maconie points out in ‘The Nanny State Made Me’, a book that is both wonderfully entertaining and annotate-every-page informative, “The people who complain about the ‘nanny state’ are the people who had nannies”. Nevertheless, in most parts of the western world the public sector has been on the receiving end of a forty year battering. Perhaps this pandemic will be the moment when it bounces back off the ropes.

In celebration of cuckoos – Britain’s naughtiest bird

Our neighbourhood cuckoo returned on 16 April and has been rewarding us with his song ever since, which reminded me of a blog post Ms Markontour wrote last year about Britain’s naughtiest bird which I never got around to publishing. One of the upsides of lockdown is having time to be in one place and appreciate the changing of the seasons, so it was lovely to read this again today and I hope you enjoy it too.

Cities unite to tackle COVID-19 as Trump attacks the WHO

The COVID-19 crisis has again laid bare the current inability of nation states to work with each other to solve global problems in the face of President Trump’s continuing assaults on international institutions. In stark contrast, the world’s mayors leading cities worst affected by the COVID-19 crisis have been strengthening collaboration based on good science, robust data and common human interest, building off a decade of co-operation to tackle climate change.

The Housemartins reform

Yesterday at Ty Cerrig we celebrated the return of the House martins. Not the reforming of Hull’s finest indie band, but the arrival of the little blue-backed, white-fronted birds that live in our eaves from spring to late summer.

Isolation playlist #2

As we enter a third week of lock-down in Britain, markontour’s isolation playlist is growing nicely, now topped up by some wonderful on-line live sessions, Jarvis dj-ing from his living room, and the daily pleasure of Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin’s ‘Nature Livestreams’. The whole playlist is available here.

How environmental destruction increases the risk of pandemics

“We disrupt eco-systems, and we shake viruses loose from their natural hosts. When that happens, they need a new host. Often, we are it.” So argues David Quammen in We Made the Coronavirus Epidemic, New York Times, 28 January. There have been a number of similar articles pointing out the link between human destruction of biodiversity and the prevalence of viruses that cross the barrier between wild animals and humans. I have found it useful to summarise them and so am sharing here in case it is helpful for others also.

Why is the skylark shouting?

We’re doing a daily bird-watching hour as part of our family coronavirus WhatsApp group. Obviously there’s quite a big risk of repetition of sightings of sparrows, or the Groundhog Day magpie who learns anew each morning that it can’t hang onto the fat ball feeder long enough to get a bite in, so I was dead pleased yesterday to see a lark rising vertically up into the blue sky from the moorlands on the ascent of Tor y Foel (social distancing of at least 200m from the four other people I saw also out for a bit of exercise).

Isolation playlist

One of the upsides of Coronavirus home isolation is an increased chance to listen to music. In more normal times, I mostly discover new bands from chance attendance at concerts, and hear new tunes in record shops. In what might become a temporary/regular markontour feature, I offer up for collective enjoyment the bands and songs I have instead been introduced to in the last week via radio (mostly BBC Radio 6 Music and KEXP), Spotify and YouTube:

Sierra Ferrell at the Teragram Ballroom

It’s been a markontour rule to always make an effort to see the support act, ever since I ill-advisedly bought tickets to see Simply Red (it was about 1988) but was rewarded by being introduced to The La’s. It is an approach to gig-going that reaped rewards again on Friday night, when Sierra Ferrell stole the show at the Teragram Ballroom, Los Angeles.

Stargazing in Hollywood

I have long intended to start a blog site dedicated to reviews of planetariums and observatories. It would have been even more niche than markontour’s usual output, so perhaps it’s just as well it never happened. But if I were to start such a stargazers blog, the Griffith Observatory and park in Los Angeles, which I visited this weekend, would have to be the first entry.

The Black Pumas

It has always been a markontour rule that while it is clearly wrong to assess a person by their looks, and generally an error to judge a book by its cover, it is completely acceptable to buy music on the basis of the album artwork alone. It is an approach that has stood me in good stead from London Calling to the Stone Roses, and is thoroughly vindicated in the case of the Black Pumas.

Gazing on the cosmic plughole

I wonder if Brandon Yoshizawa knew that the exhaust plume of a Falcon 9 rocket would take on the shape of a flower as its hot discharge made contact with colder air of the upper atmosphere? He was certainly in the right place at the right time and with the requisite skill to capture an extraordinary image. The result, Flower Power, is a perfect example of the blend of art and science that makes the annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Greenwich National Maritime Museum so special. 

The Festive Fifteen 2019

December is here, which means it is time for the annual markontour Festive Fifteen.  As usual, there’s nothing to do with Xmas here, and there has been so much great music this year that I have yet again failed to whittle my list down to fifteen tracks. But, caveats aside, herewith The Festive Fifteen of 2019..

London’s still calling forty years on

In a vital and captivating free new exhibition the Museum of London is celebrating forty-years since the release of London Calling by The Clash. It’s an album that is both precisely of its time and yet timeless, a spirit that the curators (working with the surviving members of the band) have managed to capture perfectly. Markontour has visited twice already in its first week and I’m sure I will be back a few more times before it closes in April.

Becoming the Forest

On the top floor of a Tudor hunting lodge at the edge of Epping Forest, something both strange and enlightening happened this weekend. “On All Hallows Eve, when the veil between the living and dead is at its thinnest” Becoming the Forest, and installation by Norwegian artist, Una Hamilton Helle, invited visitors to “take part in an audio journey celebrating the oncoming winter, populated by the voices of forest dwellers past and present, including the trees themselves.”

Destination Moon

“If you want to write a song about the human race / Write a song about the Moon” sang Paul Simon, a decade after Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on land beyond the Earth, and so begins the National Maritime Museum’s ‘Moon’ exhibition. Despite having much sympathy with Gil Scott Heron’s more contemporaneous lyrical critique (“I can’t pay no doctor’s bill / But whitey’s on the Moon”), I can’t help continuing a life-long fascination with the Moon and the 1960s Space Race, and so a trip to this exhibition was somewhat inevitable. And it was worth it…

Green-robed senators of mighty woods

This week has been all about oaks, Keats’ “green-robed senators of mighty woods”. In Richard Powers’ extraordinary novel, ‘The Overstory’, the collaborative endurance of the quercus genus is counterposed to the transient destruction of homo sapiens. I had been eking the book so that I could finish it on holiday surrounded by trees, rather than tower blocks, and so yesterday I allowed myself to turn the last page after a wonderful autumnal stroll around the Glanusk Estate in the Brecon Beacons, made all the more magical by being able to enjoy it with my parents.

Colours of the hills and fields in Hamburg

I have become a regular visitor to Hamburg this year, as it is a convenient stopping off point on the train journey from London through to Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo, where work takes me frequently. Usually I arrive late and leave early, but recently I discovered what I had been missing, after an early doors trip to the Hamburger Kuntshalle gallery. Most exciting were the landscapes of Caspar Friederich, an artist I had never previously encountered, but whose ‘Hill and Ploughed Field Near Dresden’ now lights up my soul every time I turn on my iPad.

Fighting for Mother Earth

“We, the children of nature, fight for Mother Earth” said the young Brazilian climate activist at the FridaysForFuture rally in Manhattan last week. Earlier, New York’s Peace Poets advised the large crowd of which I was part to make common cause with indigenous leaders, whose ancestors have been fighting for environmental justice for hundreds of years.  It was with those thoughts in mind that I returned to Battery Park the following day, enjoying an exhilarating cycle across the Brooklyn Bridge to visit the Museum of the American Indian.

Swarm: what the bee said to the daffodil

Prior to the anthropocene, a daffodil’s message that it was ready to be pollinated might have drifted many miles, attracting thriving populations of bees and ladybirds from a wide neighbourhood. Today a flower’s range is likely to be restricted to a couple of hundred metres, as dirty air dampens their scent and mobile phone traffic messes up the subtle electronic signals that pollinators use to identify and map the right flowers to visit. This and so much more I learned at wonderful ‘Swarm: artists respond to the pollinator crisis’ exhibition at the little Vestry House Museum in Walthamstow this weekend.

Green Man 2019

Having the hills and mountains of Wales as a backdrop helps make Green Man the most beautiful of British music festivals, a visual winning card that was matched this year by a gorgeous programme of folk-influenced performers, surely the largest array of decent ales and ciders outside of a beer festival, and the ritual of burning the eponymous green man, taking with it to the skies hand-written messages of the festival-goers hopes and dreams.

Krankenhaus in Muncaster

This weekend’s British Sea Power curated Krankenhaus festival on the Cumbrian coast has been pure joy. Housed in a barn on the Muncaster Castle estate, it felt like a legal rave curated by a nature-loving art-school band. Where else would you get hear everything from folk to tree-people trance, alongside a reading from the poet laureate, late night DJ-ing from a snooker legend, and musically enhanced bingo from Japanese punk band?

Will China save the planet?

A recent blog by my colleague, Luke Sherlock, comes highly recommended by markontour and is well worth a read for anyone still wondering if China is serious about building an ‘ecological civilisation’. Reviewing Barbara Finamore’s recent book, ‘Will China Save the Planet?’, Luke highlights that China’s federal government is quietly delivering something like the Green New Deal that a growing climate emergency movement is demanding in the USA and Europe (and is already being delivered in cities like Los Angeles and New York).

Make the polluter pay

During a London Climate Week event at Chatham House* last week an audience member asked the panel of which I was a member “How are we going to make people pay for climate action?” Given that the questioner had introduced herself as representing the oil company, Shell, my flippant response was that I knew where to start – by taxing those who have done the most to cause a climate crisis, namely fossil fuel companies like Shell. In fact we should tax them out of business, because companies that continue to put short term profit before the continued existence of the human race don’t have a place in a climate-safe world.

I saw The Tallest Man on Earth

An incident at Malmo station yesterday meant my train to Stockholm was cancelled. I took advantage of an extra night in Copenhagen by going to see The Tallest Man on Earth at the extraordinary new DR Koncerthuset, a venue that looks like a giant cave, hewn out of granite and lined with oak. It turned out to be a magical experience, witnessing a unique performer entertaining with verve and panache.

The Bells of Rhymney

For a quick trip to radio heaven, listen to Cerys Matthews’ show from 9 June 2019. Jeff Towns of Dylan’s Mobile Bookstore joins Cerys to discuss Idris Davies’ poem ‘The Bells of Rhymney’, which may be the most influential poem you’ve never heard. Documenting life in the South Wales mining villages of the 1920s, and based on Davies’ own experiences of following his father down the pits aged 14, the poem clearly influenced Dylan Thomas’ ‘Under Milkwood’ (just listen to the start), inspired Woody Guthrie’s ‘Talking Centralia’ (or ‘Talking Miner’), and was put to music by Pete Seeger, only to be covered first by Bob Dylan and then The Byrds.

Have you heard George’s podcast?

George The Poet just won several British Podcast of the Year plaudits and deservedly so. “Everything you know is a story”, he explains in episode one of ‘Have you heard George’s podcast?’, “like how when I was at school Pluto was a planet”. The main story-tellers of his community – young, black, poor and urban – are rappers. Collectively they now provide the content for a multi-billion pound global enterprise and yet, he laments, their stories of poverty, violence and exclusion aren’t much different from those told by N.W.A. back when George was growing up. Why?

What am I doing in Dubai?

“What am I doing in Dubai?”, asks Aldous Harding at the start of ‘Zoo Eyes’, the third track on her third album, ‘Designer’. It would be a good question for almost anyone, but seems particularly pertinent for a New Zeland born avant-garde singer-songwriter. We never find out the answer, it being Harding’s practice to sing in riddles (a latter section of the song goes something like “I drove my inner child to a show / We talked all the way home / In the nectar”). But if that’s a problem then it is the only one with this perfectly wonderful, constantly inventive, total ear-worm of a record.

Smoke and mirrors

I was briefly into performing magic as a kid, inspired by Paul Daniels on the telly if truth be told. A visit to the Wellcome Collection’s fascinating new exhibition, ‘Smoke and Mirrors – The Psychology of Magic’, has re-ignited my interest and reminded me just how malleable the human mind can be.

Goes West – an Album of the Week

On Thursday night I found myself in church. As someone who has been an atheist since starting to read science fiction at the age of twelve, St John’s in Bethnal Green was an unlikely venue for an evening’s entertainment, but William Tyler was playing and a church turned out to be the perfect venue for his beautiful acoustic guitar finger-picking. @williamtylertn

The Extinction Rebellion and an Uninhabitable Earth

Today and for the rest of the week normal business in London will be disrupted by Extinction Rebellion protestors trying to rouse their fellow citizens to face the climate emergency into which we have sleep-walked. Their tactics aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but if shutting down a few streets is what it takes to draw attention to the fact that we are now in a battle against the clock to prevent the (still entirely avoidable) destruction of the eco-system that makes possible human life on Earth, then that seems like an entirely rational response to me.

The Three Body Problem

In The Three Body Problem trilogy, Cixin Liu has created an extraordinarily compelling vision of humanity’s near future, underpinned by a narrative that is as rich in philosophy as it is in science. While paced like a thriller, Liu’s prose is as packed with multi-layered insight as the plots of most other works of that genre are filled with holes. Perhaps it is the effect of altitude, as my old-technology airship glides over the Black Sea at 35,000 feet, but despite having only just finished reading the second in the series, The Dark Forest, I am ready to declare Cixin Liu the most exciting author of the twenty-first century so far.

“You’ll die of old age. I’ll die of climate change”

Last Friday I was inspired and shamed in equal measure by attending the huge ‘School Strike for Climate’ in Oslo. “You’ll die of old age, but I’ll die of climate change” accused one placard. “System change, not climate change” read many more. Thousands of children thronged, chanting into the square outside Parliament to try and make their parents’ generation, of which I am a member in denial, wake up and stop destroying the eco-system that enables humanity to thrive on the only planet we have access to.

Hedgerows – a natural history

Today a rare treat – a guest blog from Ms Markontour, reviewing ‘A natural history of the hedgerow and ditches, dykes and dry stone walls’, by John Wright: When I think of hedgerows I think of nature, green leaves, fragrant May blossom and noisy, busy birds. John Wright puts the hedgerow in historical context starting with pre-history which turns out to be fascinating. Piecing together archaeological and ancient written records, he walks us through time from the last ice age 10,000 years ago.

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind

“Overcoming poverty is not an act of charity, it is an act of justice”, said Nelson Mandela, in a quote that closes ‘Mandela: The Official Exhibition” on London’s southbank. He went on to explain how poverty can be overcome: “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural, it is man-made and it can be eradicated by the actions of human beings”.

Brian Cox’s Universe

Professor Brian Cox told us all about the universe in Nottingham last night. It wasn’t a lecture because we were drinking cosmic beer and no-one fell asleep, but an awful lot of information poured out in fast-flowing Mancunian, devoid of pauses and punctuated by lots of smiles. At one point half way through I thought I understood Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. But this morning I realise that with every passing second more of that knowledge is slipping away into the space-time continuum and so I need to get this blog down fast.

Inclusive climate action and the Green New Deal

There has been so much said and written about the Green New Deal put before the United States’ Congress by the remarkable New York Representative, Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez, that I hesitate to add anything more. However, it really is worth noting how coherently the Green New Deal Resolution melds action to tackle climate change, with measures to counteract the obscene inequality and wage stagnation that has built up over decades of neo-liberal political supremacy in the USA (and my home country of Great Britain).

A wren in the bush

This afternoon we were captivated by a little Wren, busying itself in the undergrowth of a hedge that lines the bridleway from the Welsh Venison Centre (we prefer to think of it as The Deer Sanctuary) to Tal-y-bryn. We had stopped to listen to a Robin singing his heart out / fiercely claiming his territory, but the noisy harrumphing of the Wren drew our attention away. These tiny birds are barely the size of a child’s hand but make a real racket. Indeed, my twitcher app tells me in a Top Trumps sort of way that “weight for weight the Wren’s song is ten times louder than a crowing cockerel”.

Sunshine on Mynydd Llangorse

Yesterday morning I was out with the dawn in order to catch the sun rising over the snow covered hills that surround our new Welsh home. At the peak of Mynnd Langorse a couple of hours later I met a man called Steve, who had fulfilled a thirty-year ambition to move here after first becoming enchanted with these Welsh hills after spending time in the valleys in 1984 as part of Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners (an uplifting experience that was so brilliantly portrayed in the film ‘Pride’).

The East Pointers

All I knew about the East Pointers upon entering the Lexington last night was that, according to my friend, the lead singer is the most beautiful man she’s ever seen. I don’t feel qualified to give a definitive view on that, although he did have a great hat, but the band were straight out of the top drawer.

The Great Food Transformation

A superb report, ‘Food in the Anthropocene’, published last week by EAT and The Lancet sets out with tremendous clarity how “global food production constitutes the single largest driver of environmental degradation” in the world today. Moreover, it explains how “a diet rich in plant-based foods and with fewer animal sourced foods confers both improved health and environmental benefits”. It is a must-read for policy-makers everywhere, but if you don’t have time even to peruse the hard-hitting executive summary, these are the key points:

No country can call itself civilised if a sick person is denied healthcare because of lack of money

Last week, the Mayor of New York, Bill De Blasio, announced free access to health care for all New Yorkers. For British citizens a universal right to free health care might not sound radical – it is something those of us under the age of seventy have enjoyed our entire lives. But medical bills are the single biggest cause of bankruptcy in the USA. Having witnessed some of those closest to me requiring urgent access to our free British National Health Service over three successive New Years, I am in full agreement with the Mayor when he says that “[h]ealthcare is a right not a privilege reserved for those who can afford it”, but also reminded that it is a “right” that most global citizens do not actually enjoy.

Curious Under The Stars

Ms Markontour has not been well in the New Year, but the one upside is that we have had lots of time to discover and catch up on Curious Under The Stars, a magical and uplifting BBC radio drama. Having the privilege of sitting listening to it while gazing out on to the ever-beautiful landscape of the Brecon Beacons has made it all the more enchanting.

Today I awoke to a frost hollow

Earlier this week I awoke to see a field of lost clouds, a huge bank of them, gently swirling in the valley beyond our front window, separated from their brethren who were floating in their rightful places in the sky above the Welsh hills.

The Festive Fifteen 2018

This year’s Festive Fifteen, my annual round-up of the best new songs I have had the pleasure of hearing this year, is the product of a multitude of influences. I discovered three of the artists at the wonderful Green Man Festival in Wales. Five tracks reached my ears courtesy of the ever-wonderful BBC Radio 6 (6 Music if you must). Only three were record shop recommendations, probably the smallest total in my decade of Festive Fifteens, and a sure sign that I am not spending enough time in those educational establishments. But that is balanced by the fact that I have enjoyed live shows by more than half of the featured artists – a very healthy state of affairs.

The joys of litter picking

I had a litter picker for my birthday – the grabber thing that means you don’t have to bend down to pick things up. It’s not a sign of premature ageing (I’m still in my late youth, you know), but Ms Markontour had noted the rising frequency with which I come through the front door grumbling about all the mess in our street and decided to provide me with the means to do something about it. Today I tried it out for the first time and now Bakers Avenue is going to win Britain’s Cleanest Street!

The Devil’s Arse

Just above the Peak District village of Castleton there lurks a very large cave. So large, in fact, that it would take several days of crawling in the dark if one were foolhardy enough to try and traverse its entire thirteen mile extent. Those, like markontour, who regard such exploits as very much for other people to enjoy, can nevertheless experience some of the beauty of the caves from the relative safety of an entrance known as The Devil’s Arse.

Babelsberg – a journey to Gruff Rhys’ frontiers

Gruff Rhys is an artist who specialises in creating something new, unique and wonderful at least once a year. Markontour and other fans of the band which brought him to indie-fame were distraught when the Super Furry Animals went on hiatus in 2010, but left to his own devices Gruff Rhys ventured off in all kinds of interesting directions. Last night we had the pleasure of seeing him in his latest incarnation, a seer of dystopia, performing his new album, Babelsberg, in front of a rapt Oxford audience.

Peterloo

Peterloo, Mike Leigh’s masterful new film, is a dramatic account of the massacre by drunken Yeomanry of unarmed families meeting in Manchester in August 2019, to call for working class men to have the right to vote. It was a formative moment in modern British history and, as the historian E.P. Thompson put it “Within two days of Peterloo, all England knew of the event”, yet it is barely know about today. Leigh’s film ought to do something to redress the balance.

Save Lea Marshes

The Leyton Marshes, part of the Lea Valley which flows down from the Chiltern Hills all the way through London to disgorge into the Thames near Poplar, is a rare haven for wildlife and tranquility in the great metropolis in which markontour lives. Indeed, the beauty of the Lea Valley’s parks, canal and marshes is the main reason we moved to Walthamstow fifteen years ago. Yet now it is threatened by a badly conceived development put forward by the very authority that was created to protect it. It has to be stopped.

Taking inspiration from The Planets

This year marks the centenary of the first performance of Holsts’ epic symphony, ‘The Planets’, and a few Saturday’s ago I was lucky enough to enjoy a celebratory performance at the London Barbican. It was magical experience, giving this amazing work new life and, courtesy of Professor Brian Cox’s enthusiastic presence, introducing the latest scientific thinking to a piece of music whose creation owed more to astrology than astronomy.

Day train to Copenhagen

I am spending a whole day on trains today, as I seek to find a lower carbon route from London to Copenhagen. I visit that wonderful city regularly for work and am likely to need to do so more in the future. In a previous job I used to take the night train, but time pressures pushed me into flying – a bad habit that I am now trying to break. Well aware of the hypocrisy of a climate change professional spending so much time inside a kerosene-fuelled metal bird, I am very much hoping that the day-time rail route proves viable.

Drinking from Israel Nash’s Sweet Springs

I haven’t written any ‘Album of the Week’ reviews for a while, primarily because every time I put on my headphones I just want to listen to Israel Nash. His latest offering, ‘Lifted’, is a hippy Americana chill-out album, that inspires relaxed smiles. I saw him perform at Rough Trade in Brooklyn a few weeks ago and it was an equally blissed experience, despite the inspiration for much of the album coming from Nash’s despair at the state of American politics.

Size and the Big Apple

I love New York and visit regularly, but there are many things I still don’t understand about the Big Apple/Big Oyster, and size is one of them. Yesterday I was wedged in so tight between two ample sized pairs of buttocks on either side of me on the subway that I almost missed my stop, so difficult was it to extract myself. In the end one of my fellow passengers had to give me a push.

Ottawa’s Grand Hall

I was in Ottawa for just under 24 hours, but it made a great impression, particularly the Canadian Museum of History. The quality of First Nation artwork on display is extraordinary, utilising vibrant colour and strongly tied to nature infused with human imagination. Thus, adorning totem poles are variously Thunderbirds, Lightning Snakes, and even Supernatural Codfish. And while the totems were statements of power and, thus, perhaps it is not surprising that they were made ornate, echoing the philosophy of British nineteenth century designer, William Morris, practical function appears not to have been an obstacle to imbuing even the most commonplace objects with beauty. The head-baskets used daily to carry crops are designed with grace, and clubs used to stun seals and fish are shaped and decorated in homage to the fellow animals they are designed to kill. A jet-black, jewel encrusted bowl on display is one of the most beautiful objects I have ever seen.

Be Seeing You, Festival No.6

After six glorious season, Festival No.6’s North Wales run appears to have come to an end. It’s a musical tragedy because there is no other festival quite like it. Hosted in the bizarre mock-Italianate village of Port Meirion, with the peaks of Snowdonia as a back-drop and a schedule liberally dotted with Welsh acts, including a male voice choir as the top attraction – outshining even superb headline acts like New Order, Noel Gallagher, The Manic Street Preachers, and The Pet Shop Boys, Festival No.6 has had a spirit all of its own.

Mountains, music & mirth – Green Man 2018

Ah, Green Man. A dreamy festival bursting with beguiling folk and indie music, where the views of Table Mountain (original Welsh version) compete for attention with the bands on the main stage; where the range of craft beers is so extensive they required a menu the length of a short novel; where there’s more vegan food than you could shake a tofu skewer at; and which this year was dedicated to the National Health Service (NHS), whose founder, Nye Bevan, grew up and developed his twin passions for social justice, song and art in nearby Tredegar.

Are guitar shops as good as record stores?

What I love about record stores is that you can walk in just to pass the time, get transfixed by a new tune, and walk out clutching the best new music you’ve heard in ages. Guitar shops are different. You’d have to be both very wealthy and obsessed to buy a new instrument on every visit. But the chat is often just as illuminating.

Economics with Subtitles

Radio Four’s new series, ‘Economics with Subtitles’, got off to a great start with a programme explaining why GDP growth is not a useful indicator of the success of a society. “Economics is the only discipline where endless growth is regarded as a good thing”, says presenter Steve Bugeja, quoting a character in a Jonathan Frantzen novel, ”In biology there’s a word for that – and it’s cancer.”

To Provide All People

If anyone has yet to see ‘To Provide All People’, Owen Sheers’ incredible ‘poem in the voice of the NHS’, dramatised by the BBC, then you are missing out on the television event of the year.

Big Pit

Over 300 million years have passed since coal seams were laid down in the valleys from where I write this blog, when Wales sat astride the Earth’s equator and plants ruled the planet. The Big Pit National Coal Museum’s focuses on the last two hundred of those years and the ferocious drive of homo sapiens to dig out and burn this bounty of the Carboniferous. It is a tale of exploitation and degradation, but also of pride and ingenuity.

Loving Vincent

‘Loving Vincent’ is stunning animated oil painting, with every scene lovingly reproduced in the style of its subject and featuring many of the characters from Van Gogh’s greatest works. It is like the artist had painted his own life story, except had this been an autobiography one suspects that the subject would not have been treated so sympathetically. For Vincent, we learn, inspired much love, but never quite enough to overcome his own lack of self-worth.

Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks

Seven days after seeing The National I still have ‘Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks’ on repeat in my head. London does a nice line in chilled-out summer festivals these days and last Saturday The National were the perfect headliners in Victoria Park, somehow invoking audience euphoria from a set-list that veritably wallowed in melancholy. The previous night I had enjoyed a different kind up uplift in Brixton, with Loyle Carner singing about his mum again and Erykah Badu suitably eccentric in a stetson.

The Lonely Shepherd

Standing tall and bereft on an escarpment near Llangattock, the Lonely Shepherd has endured many centuries of regret. Below his spike of limestone, fields fed by Welsh rain sparkle in the post-thunderstorm sunshine, their emerald splendour liberally flecked with pure white Hawthorn blossom. It’s not a bad place to face an eternity of penance, nor indeed to pause midway on a May bank-holiday walk.

Waiting for Bob Dylan

This isn’t really a blog, more of a link to Bill Drummond’s hilarious new work ‘Another Side of Bob Dylan – Part Two’, courtesy of the ever-wonderful Caught By The River website. I don’t want to spoil a word, but it involves a former Timelord explaining why he has been waiting for Bob Dylan for thirty-five years, with the proposition that “he should quit his Great American Song Book shit that he has been doing, and hit the road with me, and that we should – over a period of time  – go to all the places in the British Isles where nine different languages were spoken 200 years ago, and find a song from each of those places, and then he should record them and I will produce it.” It’s pure genius and has enlivened what should have been a dull three hour stop-over in Joburg airport. Follow the link and enjoy!

A Thousands Splendid Suns

Mariam is tarred from birth as a ‘harami’, an illegitimate daughter of a rich, weak man. She lives a life of pain and loss, in which she grows to believe that no-one cares for her, except the mother whose love she couldn’t properly comprehend as a child. Yet Mariam will live forever in Laila’s heart “where she shines with the bursting radiance of a thousands suns”. So goes the poignant, lyrical story of Khaled Hosseini’s second novel, and what an engrossing, and ultimately uplifting, tale it is.

Curiosity killed the Kite

Yesterdsay Ms Markontour and I caused a tail-back on the route down Mynydd Llangyndir, bringing our bikes to a halt in the middle of the road to stand awestruck as a majestic Red Kite circled directly overhead. It was a great display, but it turns out that the kite’s desire to check out all and any movement on the ground was almost its undoing. These massive birds, with their black and white wings and unmistakable orange/red breasts made themselves easy prey for farmers armed with guns, and there was only one breeding female left in Britain in my lifetime.

Last Trip To Tulsa

It’s probably not reasonable to review a thirty year old classic album, but nevertheless I have a few things to say about Neil Young’s eponymous solo debut. Like so many other record purchases over the years I bought it because of the beautiful cover. But inside is a record of rare brilliance and it’s not even one of Neil Young’s best. Somehow, despite being a fan for over thirty years, I’ve never heard it before. Not a single track. As the needle hits the groove again there’s no question what I’m doing for the rest of the night…

Fatberg!

It feels slightly odd to be voluntarily spending a Saturday morning going to see the remnants of a 130 tonne, 250 metre long fatberg, but it is the Museum of London’s new star attraction and I fancied a bit of local tourism. 

Every Valley

Every Valley, Public Service Broadcasting’s third album, is a cleverly crafted concept album about the rise and fall of Welsh coal mining. That is going to sound quite niche, but trust me, Every Valley is worth forty-five minutes of any music-lover’s time. Moreover, not least because like it says on the tin, the band take inspiration for their songs from public service broadcasting, the album is even better seen performed live. Markontour had this pleasure in Leicester last week and was completely riveted by the combination of film and music.

The Great British Seaside

International readers of this blog may already be sneering at the concept of the ‘The Great British Seaside’, but as the Greenwich National Maritime Museum’s nostalgic exhibition shows, there’s plenty that’s wonderful and interesting about a British beach – it just rarely includes sunshine.

Rediscovering the Eight Legged Groove Machine

Following a cracking gig at Shepherd’s Bush Empire last Friday, with some time off this week I’ve been rediscovering The Wonder Stuff via Miles Hunt’s engaging ‘Diaries 86-89′, accompanied by a trip through my vinyl back catalogue, and the Stuffies’ sparking, hard-edged indie-pop.

In the Waiting Room with Middle Kids

Another great gig from Middle Kids this week makes me thinks these Aussie newcomers are going to be special. On Wednesday night sixty or so privileged punters squeezed into The Waiting Room, a nicely refurbished box of a venue below the Three Crowns in Stoke Newington. Limited space meant bassist, Tim Fitz, was curtailed in his usual stage prowling, but the band showed no such constraint in delivering a powerful collection of indie-pop songs.

Addressing an accolade deficit – mills, peace & community radio in Bradford

Bradford, a northern English boomtown in the industrial revolution, has suffered a two century accolade deficit. Very few outsiders have ever had anything good to say about the place and yet on a recent visit markontour discovered fascinating history, great bars, a unique peace museum, thriving community radio and, above all, huge energy and optimism. Thus follows a very partial markontour guide to Bradford.

South By South West

Austin lives up to its own billing as the live music capital of the world. Admittedly, markontour was visiting during the legendary South By South West (SXSW) tech/film/music festival, but you can only make judgements based on available data. On this basis Sixth Street is a gig-goers dream, where every bar and almost every restaurant has constant live bands from 4pm until past the midnight hour. If the evidence that I am alive wasn’t so overwhelming, a few nights in Austin might have convinced me that I had died and gone to heaven (putting to one side the anthropocene nightmare that is urban American traffic).

Take a risk, it’s the most Edmonton thing you can do

I have to be honest, I had low expectations of Edmonton, a sprawling, million-plus city in oil-rich Alberta, Canada. But a week there was full of surprises, from great record shops, a fantastic gallery, incisive improv-comedy, tasty vegetarian restaurants, an introduction to ice-hockey, and guitar rental, all the way through to ultra-friendly people. I almost don’t mind not seeing the promised Northern Lights. Here follows the markontour guide to Edmonton.

Songs for Pythagoras & Undaunted Women

Peter Von Tiesenhausen is an ecologically-minded artist, who salvages to create. His extraordinary ‘Relief’ – a mountain-scape sculpted from the clapperboards of an abandoned community hall – conveys beauty and sadness in equal quantities and is going to stay in my mind for a long time. As will the Art Gallery of Alberta’s retrospective exhibition ‘Undaunted: Canadian Women Painters of the 19th Century”. Who knew there was such a great gallery in Edmonton!

Dancing with bears – BSP at Koko

I’ve seen a LOT of brilliant British Sea Power gigs, but last at Koko was one of the very best. Amidst the anthemic tunes, hymns to libraries and protest, odes to nature, and celebration of bicycles, there was also a birthday cake launched into the crowd, and two bears dancing in the middle of the most-pit, along with the usual foliage adorned stage. The night ended with the band variously stage diving and leading the moves to Kelis’ ‘Milkshake’. Heaven.

Tredegar House

Tredegar House in Newport is where the National Trust are experimenting with allowing visitors to touch and feel history, rather than pointing from behind a rope. As it stands, I would wager that Tredegar House is the only place in Britain where in a single morning one can be tutored in the art of brushing up a top-hat, put on a shadow puppet show, study Elizabethan art, dress up as 1920’s housemaid, enjoy Elizabethan portraiture and sit down to dinner with a Russian princess.

Welcome to the spiritual dark age

A week after enjoying To Kill A King’s end of tour blow-out at Islington Assembly Hall, I finally have some time to properly get to know their new album. It’s dark and snowing in Paris and climate change has helped swell the Seine to nearly bank-bursting proportions, so Welcome To The Spiritual Dark Age’s twelve tracks all feel appropriate. Yet the band’s live performance of the record was full of life and joy. Maybe they are just the kind of band who get pleasure out of singing about melancholy – not unlike my eternal favourites, Elbow.

Dropping in on Dr Johnson of Lichfield

I do love a good dictionary and Dr Johnson remains the master of the genre, three hundred years after he compiled his first such tome. This is why markontour and friends took a short detour to Lichfield on our long drive back to London from the English Lake District, for it was in this little Staffordshire city that Samuel Johnson was born in 1709 and his childhood home has be turned into a lovely museum and bookshop.

Once a town, now a city

Once a town, now a city, Newport is where markontour’s parents were born and bred. They fell in love in the sixth form of Newport Grammar and fifty-six years later the three of us plus Mum’s older brother, my Uncle Malcolm, undertook a pre-Xmas tour of the haunts of their youth. Along the way I learned a thing or two about the Newport Uprising of 1839, how the snow fell so deep in 1947 that schools were closed for three blissful months, how the New Year was celebrated in the 1950s, and what constitutes a dingle.

Sunlight on the Welsh Dragon

Markontour is taking a week away from the office to read, think and plan, stimulated by early morning hikes in the Brecon Beacons, and book-ended by late evening blogging. Today’s inspiration comes from a cracking walk up Hay Bluff to see the red dragon cairn (above) that proudly marks the summit. To the east lies England, to the west is Wales. The dragon watches in all directions.

The Festive Fifteen 2017

Herewith markontour’s annual homage to John Peel – a round-up of the best songs released in the last twelve months, or at least the best that I have manage to hear at gigs, in record shops and, most frequently, on headphones at 35,000 feet. Available on YouTube and Spotify. Enjoy!

The Fabulous Barr Brothers

Markontour had never heard of the Barr Brothers before their extraordinary gig at the Music Hall of Williamsburg last night. Now I’m sitting in La Guardia airport, mapping the intersections of my 2018 travel itinerary and their world tour.

A birthday postcard from Freemans

I was feeling a little homesick the other night. It was my Dad’s 75th birthday and the family were celebrating back home, while I was across the Atlantic in New York. Worse. But then, in Freemans, I met four friendly Australian artists on a gallery tour of the USA. Every night they gather to create beautiful postcards from the day’s ticket stubs, subway maps and restaurant menus to send back home. And so, while it will be arriving closer to Xmas than 30 November, my wonderful father now has a bespoke three-quarter-centenary card winging its way back to beer town. Happy Birthday Dad!

A hat restored

Thanks to the wonderful woman at Worth & Worth hatters, New York City, who restored my favourite pork-pie hat to full glory, after it was defiled by an airport security machine at Heathrow!

The John Bramwell approach

Last time markontour had the pleasure of catching John Bramwell at the Union Chapel he’d lost his front teeth and was singing with a lisp. A year later and our hero has his dentures back, although the set-list still seems to have been scrawled on the back of an envelope in the pub a few minutes before coming on stage and there are numerous pauses while he delves deep to remember which of three guitars is needed for which song. Apparently. It is hard to tell where the show stops and the real-life semi-functioning alcoholic musical savant begins. Nevermind, it’s a wonderfully entertaining night for us lucky audience members and Bramwell himself seems like the happiest person in the congregation.

Wolf Alice & a new vocabulary

Markontour is getting used to being in the older quartile of any given concert audience, but on the Overground to Ally Pally to see Wolf Alice last Friday I realised that most of the other gig-goers were still at school. In between discussing their university choices and what time they needed to be home, a mock argument broke out about who had bagged the most impressive selfie with a celebrity. A lad who had an Instagram account laden with images of himself sharing a beer with Theo from the nights headline act appeared to be top dog, until a girl casually mentioned that she had gained a hug from Jeremy Corbyn. Silence ensued for a second, followed by a chorus of “wow!” and general agreement that nothing could beat that.

Happy Happy Coma

After the disappointment of watching Wales lose to the All Blacks in a game of rugby that was enthralling despite the result, I needed to write something positive about the motherland while I wait for Ms Markontour to meet me at the Slaughtered Lamb for a bit of Saturday night indie-folk. So, six days late, here follows a homage to Euros Childs and his idiosyncratic gig last week at Hoxton’s Seabright Arms.

Painting the fog – Impressionists in London

Tate Britain’s latest exhibition, ‘Impressionists in London – French artists in exile 1870-1904’, would be as much at home in a museum as in a gallery. My companion wanted more information about the brush-strokes, but markontour was happy to explore the social history of late nineteenth century London through the medium of some wonderful paintings inspired by fog. I wonder if a modern-day Monet is painting Delhi, Beijing, or even diesel-blackened London?

Peggy Seeger and the joy of living

The defining moment of a wonderful gig at Cecil Sharp House on Thursday night was when Peggy Seeger introduced one of the last songs penned by her late companion, Ewan MacColl. Written as he ambled round the lower reaches of a Peak District escarpment, watching Peggy and his daughter, Kitty, make a much-loved climb that he was now unable to undertake, MacColl wrote ‘The Joy of Living’. “Farewell you northern hills, you mountains all goodbye.. Farewell to you, my love, my time is almost done.. Give me your hand and love and join your voice with mine / And we’ll sing of the hurt and the pain and the joy of living”. Despite its poignancy it seems to perfectly sum up the live-life-to-the-full approach of this incredible woman, even if she didn’t write it herself.

Kingfishers – making the everyday sparkle

Yesterday markontour and the crew of the Burton Library Astronomical Survey Team (Marine Division) enjoyed the rare pleasure of following two kingfishers in succession, their electric colours lighting up the afternoon as they bobbed and weaved their way along the banks of the Trent and Mersey canal. Earlier my Dad and I had been going through a box of my sixth form poetry essays in a vain attempt to clear space in my parent’s loft (all that got ditched were a few surplus copies of ‘Funding London Underground’ – a campaign publication I had worked on in the late 1990s). Thus inspired, I spent the afternoon, when not at the tiller, trying to find a poem about my favourite bird.

A midwest farmer’s daughter in Brooklyn

“How does a lead singer change a lightbulb?”, asks Margo Price’s harmonica blowing husband during a break between songs. “She just holds the damn thing up and waits for the world to spin round her and screw it in” he explains, to his wife’s visible delight. For this is a night of smiles for Margo Price, who despite introducing a new album full of true-life tales of bad men, worse choices, and trouble with the bottle, looks and sounds like there isn’t a happier person on Earth.

John Kemp Starley and the two wheeled revolution

The ever-wonderful Vestry House Museum is currently showing a great little exhibition about the development of the modern bicycle and the Walthamstow man who invented it. As Walthamstow successfully experiments with mini-Hollands – neighbourhoods designed for pedestrians and cyclists – it’s fantastic to know that the bike itself has its roots in E17.

Roots, Radicals and Rockers

Thanks to Billy Bragg’s first foray into non-fiction, ‘Roots Radicals and Rockers’, markontour is currently listening to Lonnie Donegan. Although I’m sceptical that ‘Rock Island Line’ would induce the same excitement in twenty-first century kids as it seemingly did in 1957, as Bragg turns out to be as eloquent in prose as he is in lyrical verse, I am nevertheless both highly entertained from taking the book’s journey and prepared to believe that skiffle did indeed change the musical world.

Middle Kids

I landed in New York just in time to catch a band last night, and my pot-luck choice turned out to be a blinder – Sydney indie-poppers, Middle Kids, at the Williamsburg Music Hall. Last time I was there it was to see a stunning set by Matthew E. Smith, a joy I inexplicably shared with only a half full audotorium. Last night it was pretty full, so presumably Middle Kids are already pretty established on the live-scene, despite only having a single EP for sale at the gig. Singer/songwriter, Hannah Joy, is a ready-made star. Time to find out a little more about them.

Be Seeing You – Festival No.6 2017

Ah – the last festival of the season, for markontour at least, and there couldn’t be a better conclusion than Festival No.6. This year’s festival was slimmed down a little and was all the better for it. The Port Meirion setting is so exquisite – Clough William Ellis’ faux Italian village, nestled between the mountains of Snowdonia and the Irish sea – it needs a little space to be enjoyed properly. Some of my favourite moments this year included sunrise over the beach as the estuary tide powered in, wandering around the woods trying to find the Ghost Gardens, and finishing the festival on a moon-lit Stone Boat. You don’t get so many of those moments with 20,000 people knocking around.

Tim Book Two

Charlatans singer, Tim Burgess, has swapped drink and drugs for coffee and tweets, but his record buying obsession remains. Tim Book Two finds our hero feeding his crate-digging addiction in pursuit of vinyl targets set by a host of music luminaries over the course of a Charlatans world tour. It’s all an excuse to write with passion and depth about music and record shops and for anyone who loves either Tim Book Two is 257 pages of pure joy.

Britain’s third longest river

It’s a wet holiday morning and so I’ve been browsing the bookshelves of our little narrowboat. The first one I picked up, ‘Heritage of Britain’, is shakily inscribed by my late grandma “To Ruth and Rob from Mum, 18.12.86”. But there were too many kings and queens in that volume and so I have settled instead on ‘Exploring Britain: Rivers, Lakes and Canals’. More specifically, today’s story is of the Trent, the river upon which I grew up and along whose adjacent canal markontour now floats.

Perseids over gearbox trouble

Yesterday afternoon we had a little gearbox trouble on our narrowboat and were forced into harbour at a local marina. Further disappointment followed when we realised that access to dry land was barred by electronic gates. With the boatyard likely to be observing Sunday closing the following day, a holiday scenario that is only useful for blogging material was unfolding. But then karma intervened.

Tears at the Castle for a man called Ove

What a beautiful film, what a gorgeous little cinema! Londoners who want a cinematic treat need to head to the beautiful Castle cinema on Chatsworth Road in Homerton, and catch ‘A Man Called Ove’. There are proper armchairs, a great range of drinks and food, and friendly staff in this recently restored old picture house. And if you loved Frederik Backman’s wonderful book (previously reviewed on markontour), then you’ll adore the film. But bring a big box of hankies, because there was a lot of sniffling on Friday night, although it is ultimately a hugely uplifting tale of a man with an outsized heart.

When Jeremy headlined Glastonbury 

The western world’s greatest music festival is over for another year and 2017 was undoubtedly defined by the way that Glastonbury embraced Jeremy Corbyn. I’ve been going to this magical festival for 25 years and have experienced countless ‘Glastonbury moments’, when an entire crowd is moved to euphoria as one under the power of extraordinary musical performance, but I’ve never witnessed anything like this.

The laughing GP

Yesterday I visited my local doctor (General Practitioner, or GP, in the British vernacular) about a hypochondria based toe-injury, and got a lesson in psychological medicine.

The Booth of Truth

Last weekend I made my first ever record – an improbable mash-up of Dylan Thomas and Steve Earle – recorded straight to vinyl via a 1950s BBC-issue ‘Record Lathe’. This means, of course, that all markontour’s dreams have now come true and I didn’t even need to leave my own neighbourhood to achieve them, courtesy of the wonderful people at 42 Pearl Road and the E17 Art Trail.

Toronto

Toronto is one of my favourite cities, with its beautiful lake, vibrant music scene, laid-back attitude (for a big city) and ultra-friendly people. I visited four or…

The Rainbow Star

It was a pleasure to sneak into the Astronomy of Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Greenwich Royal Observatory yesterday and see Steve Brown’s wonderful…

A nasty black eye had my poor Uncle Jim

My Mum and I have been promising each other we will do the family history for most of the last decade. Apps have been purchased, magazines subscribed to, even a few interviews undertaken, but the roots of the Watts/Collins family tree stubbornly refuse to extend further than the mid-nineteenth century. Thus, in an effort to stimulate greater endeavour, the markontour Matriach and I have agreed to write a monthly blog that is in some way stimulated by our geneological pursuits. Episode One starts with my Granddad singing from his armchair about a man who got a black eye from being hit with a tomato.

Magnificent – it was

Seeing Elbow perform songs from ‘Little Fictions‘ at the Hammersmith Apollo last night confirmed the strength of the new album. ‘Magnificent’, in particular, lived up to…

RIP Leonard Cohen

Bloody hell – what a terrible week. RIP Leonard Cohen. It’s going to be a day of sad songs, but something’s a bit more uplifting have a listen to this incredible interview between Jarvis Cocker and Leonard Cohen just a few weeks ago, in which he seemed so full of life and ideas. There is also a transcript.

The Snow Leopard

It is the reader, I suspect, and not the author that determines what is the subject of Peter Mathieson’s captivating thirty-year old book, The Snow Leopard. It is variously a travelogue (on which the author accompanies a famed naturalist to study the Nepalese wild blue sheep), a tale of spiritual search (for Mathieson lost his wife to cancer shortly before setting off), or an exploration of the natural beauty of a last wildnerness. For markontour, it was all about the majesty of mountains and a certain kind of welcome solitude.

Festival No. 6 2016

This quirky, boutique festival is teetering on the brink of becoming too successful for its own good, but still has lots of charm and the wonderful Port Meirion setting keeping it extraordinary. And the food at Clough’s restaurant was almost worth the price of the ticket itself – not something you can say about most music festivals.

The Fat Mermaid, The Hague

Last night I was surprised by The Hague. Not just discovering that what I thought was just the dull home to international criminal courts is actually a thriving beach town, but also by a DJ at The Fat Mermaid who interspersed black-power tracks with Kim Wilde and the Beastie Boys.

Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind

How do you write a 500 word review of a tome that surveys the entire history of the human race? It maybe holiday-induced laziness, but distracted by the early morning activity of fish plopping up for air, noisy geese swooping down to trim the grass in a farmers field, and a showy kingfisher wooshing past looking for breakfast, I have concluded that this is a task beyond markontour’s capabilities. Thus follows 16 interesting facts in chronological order, which I learned from Yuval Noah Harari’s highly thought provoking book, ‘Sapiens’.

Wild running, wild swimming, and tree climbing – Port Eliot 2016

When I say that swimming in the river, a talk about tree climbing, and dancing with mine and Ms markontour’s parents were the among the highlights of this year’s Port Eliot Festival, don’t think it wasn’t a vintage year for this little, eclectic Cornish festival. Almost everything we saw hit the spot. But for this big-city-hopper, you can’t beat combining great music with the lovely British outdoors, especially if your nearest and (wonderfully eccentric) dearest are in tow.

Glastonbury 2016 – not that muddy really

The British music festival season is in full so swing and so it is time for the first of many markontour reviews, starting with what remains the greatest of them all – Glastonbury. As usual the acts I saw will be scored based on what I scribbled down at the time and with a tendency to allocate extra stars to the new and unusual.

Amanda Palmer and her Dad

“I’m exactly the person I wanted to be” sang Amanda Palmer as she strummed a battered ukelele, prior to be joined on stage by her Dad, Jack Palmer. By the end of their incredible, powerful, and moving show at Le Poisson Rouge in New York this week, the audience as one was thinking “and what an extraordinary person Amanda Palmer has grown up to be”. Markontour is going to be in music-tip debt for quite some time to the two friends who took me to this incredible gig.

Flowers at Hampton

I can’t quite believe that I am writing a blog about the Hampton Court Flower Show. This is not markontour’s natural territory. But having failed on the promise to learn how to salsa that was the mainstay of my 40th birthday present to Ms markontour, I felt compelled to follow through with sharing an Xmas present of tickets to the aforementioned floral festival. I have to admit, I rather enjoyed it.

The Sheffield Tap

It’s not often that I’m pleased when my train or plane is delayed (and I write this while languishing in Luxembourg thanks to a re-routed flight), but had the 16.57 from St Pancras arrived on schedule then I would never have experienced The Sheffield Tap and life would be the lesser.

Melbourne – city of music

Melbourne is a music town and thus makes markontour feel very much at home. In particular, I love Brunswick, Melbourne’s Dalston/Greenpoint; I love its vibrant community radio; I love the free tramway service in the centre of town; I was surprised to find Theakston’s Old Peculiar costs $16 a pint. Most of all I love the chance to catch up with old friends from Nottingham days and that’s probably why there’s an even higher than usual markontour quota of references to bars and record shops in this very incomplete city guide!

The Sugarloaf Vineyards

Who’d have thought they could make wine in Wales? God’s own country is green and pleasant because of the frequency with which the atmosphere turns moist, a weather condition not usually associated with good terroir. Yet, hot on the heels of a truly tremendous valleys’ whiskey distillery at Penderyn, Cymru now also boasts the Sugarloaf Vineyard just outside of Abergavenny. Markontour had the pleasure of trying the tasting menu in the spring bank holiday sunshine.

Folk songs are on their way in

I have already used an excerpt from the sleeve notes to Woody Guthrie’s ‘Poor Boy’, but having just had the chance to experience at first hand what Woody was singing about when he reminded his compatriots that ‘This Land Is Your Land’, and because Guthrie’s words are so darn good, I have decided to reproduce the whole thing..

Love Vinyl – Record Store Day 2016

Record Store Day, the annual celebration of musical discs, has a big red star by it on the markontour calendar. So I bounced out of bed this morning and listened to Mary Anne Hobbs read out tweeted dispatches from the early morning queues outside Britain’s remaining vinyl emporiums, while compiling a wishlist of the special releases about to go on sale.

Artists and Empire

The best bit of the Tate Britain’s compelling ‘Artists and Empire’ exhibition comes right at the end, in the ‘Legacies of Empire’ room. Here, Hew Locke’s clever guerilla art sees him adorn a statue of Bristol’s founding father, Edward Colston, in cheap plastic gold trinkets, a modern equivalent of the tat that imperial traders exchanged for slaves. For, as Locke explains in an accompanying Restoration, Colston and Bristol’s wealth was built on human trafficking.

Sydney

Looking down on Sydney from one of its many skyscrapers, what is most striking is the sheer extent of the harbour. It seems to twist and turn forever in an endless melee of coves and bays. Having checked it out on Wikipedia, I note it is indeed “the world’s largest natural harbour”.

Indian Ocean – Album of the Week #11

There’s nothing better than the right song at the right time and so it was for me flying back home over the Indian Ocean, listening to Frazey Ford’s reflective song of the same name. The lyrics suggest a sleepless night mulling over the enormity of the world, which well-suited markontour’s restless mind as we traversed the globe at 35,000 feet, the Indian Ocean an unknown quantity in the blackness below and Ford’s voice simply a reminder of beauty in the world. Sleep came as the track faded out to a gentle trumpet.

I Believe in Miracles

For a Nottingham Forest fan of a certain age it is impossible to watch Jonny Owen’s loving tribute to the Clough-era European conquerors without getting a little misty eyed. The best moment is when Clough faces the media after a disappointing semi-final draw with Cologne. “I hope there isn’t anybody stupid enough to write us off” he drawls, as a smile of supreme self-confidence spread across his face. The Forest players knew at that moment they were going to go on to win. The rest of the world had a few weeks to catch up.

Auckland – a city in a forest

The visionary Mayor of Auckland has taken to describing his domain as “a city in a forest”. It’s a lovely idea and from what markontour saw on a brief work visit it is not far off being realised. So while Auckland has its challenges, particularly constraining the urban sprawl that comes from the New Zealand dream of a single-storey house and half an acre for everyone, the great attraction of this growing city is its proximity to the natural world beyond.

The Martian

I was intending to use breaks between work on a long flight to New Zeland to have a proper listen to George the Poet, and to read The Interpretation of Dreams as background towards a blog about the Freud Museum. But, after what should have been a day-long journey turned into 40 hours of queueing and cramp thanks to fog over Dubai, my time-zone challenged brain needed a Plan B. Thus as we zoom through an Australian night, markontour is preparing to blog about The Martian, while listening to Taylor Swift.

The Welsh Sing Rugby Songs – Album of the Week #10

I thought I’d better do something Welsh for St David’s Day and what could be more Cymreig than an album of rugby songs? Released in 1968 by a presumably long-defunct record label, Sportsdisc, ‘The Welsh Sing Rugby Songs” was a gift from my wonderful cousin. According to Harry Morgan’s sleeve notes, the “intention all along has been to put on record Rugger songs exactly as they are sung by players the world over.”

The Museum of Tomorrow

Sited on an archipelago in the port district of Rio de Janeiro, on approach the Museum of Tomorrow looks like some kind of spaceship, perhaps an inter-galactic freighter. Once inside and looking out, however, the feeling is of being in the belly of a whale, its huge skeletal frame exposed to the burning sun. It is an extraordinary structure housing a truly unique museum, that invites the visitor to ponder human existence in way that is progressively profound, disturbing, and uplifting.

Kevin Allen’s ‘Under Milk Wood’

Written for radio, Under Milk Wood has been widely considered impossible to translate into film, such is the profusion of two-line characters and surrealism of the content. Kevin Allen, however, supported by Michael Breen, performance poet Murray Lachlan-Young and actor Rhys Ifans, has done just that and done so magnificently.

West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song

The British Library’s ‘West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song’ is an engrossing and rewarding introduction to this vast region of 340 million people, 1,000 languages and 17 nations. Despite loving the music of Fela Kuti, Toumani Diabate, and Ali Fark Toure, markontour had hitherto failed to understand the regional and cultural connections between these great artists. This exhibition shows how their West African homelands share a love of story-telling, of which these great artists are simply modern expressions.

Marc Riley’s tribute to David Bowie

Marc Riley’s heartfelt tribute to David Bowie on Monday night was incredibly powerful radio, and should be on the unmissable list for anyone fortunate enough to be in a country where you can access BBC i-player and listen again. The last half hour features archive recording of the equally lamented John Peel introducing a pre-Hunky Dory ‘Bowie and Friends’ concert in typical style, and is pure radio heaven.

Cromford – birthplace of the factory system

There are three good reasons to visit Cromford in Derbyshire. First, Richard Arkwright’s cotton mills on the edge of the hamlet were the birthplace of the factory system. Second, the nearby John Smedley shop, itself a survivor from the late eighteenth century, sells the finest woollen and cotton pullovers in the world. Third, the Scarthin bookshop boasts a cafe hidden behind a revolving bookshelf. Finally, my old history professor has edited a cracking volume of essays about Cromford’s role in the Industrial Revolution.

Marrakech – a game of carpet selling

The souks of Marrakech are buzzing – the annual Best Carpet Seller prize is soon to be announced and markontour has made it to the shortlist. Well, not really, but this is the premise of Marrakech, the tactile game of rug trading that I enjoyed as bank holiday evening entertainment yesterday, and which boast both simple rules and tactical challenges.

Cosmonauts

Despite having no aptitude for science, I have been fascinated by space travel and the stars since I was a teenager. So I had to borrow a friend’s son for an excuse to visit the Science Museum’s nostalgic tribute to the Soviet space programme – Cosmonauts.

Festive Fifteen 2015

It’s time again for my annual round-up of markontour’s favourite new songs of the year – the Festive Fifteen 2015. As usual, they music isn’t festive and there aren’t 15 tracks, and it remains a tribute to John Peel’s wonderful annual Festive Fifty.

The Blue Remembered Earth (or Why We Need Science-Fiction)

Put your finger up to the night sky and there are 15,000 galaxies under your fingernail. Earth may be an extraordinary and unique combination of the universal elements found across all those galaxies, & it contains enough variety in nature to astound & intrigue the average human mind for a lifetime. But 15,000 galaxies under one fingernail? You can’t help but want to explore it. That’s why we need sci-fi & Alastair Reynolds is the best living purveyor of it.

Euros Childs’ Sweetheart – Album of the Week #9

A fellow punter at recent Lexington gig tweeted afterwards “I defy anyone to go to a Euros Childs gig and go home without a smile on their face”. That is generally true about any performance by the former Gorkys Zygotic Mynci frontman, but the back-in-love exuberance of Sweetheart means that this tour is likely to be particularly grin inducing.

Celts: art and identity

It turns out that the ancient Greeks coined the label Keltoi to categorise non-Mediterranean Europeans. Plato and his intellectual mates regarded the Keltoi as war-mad alcoholics with a penchant for fancy jewellery. But as the British Museum’s exhibition shows, the Celts were far from shallow. The Greeks might have corneed the early market in naturalistic art, but the Celts were already well into abstractionism 2,500 years ago.

The Stone Roses: War and Peace

Being a creature of habit, every year on our summer holiday I read a biography of a favourite band. It tends to drive my partner mad, because serial playing of their entire back catalogue accompanies the historical investigation. This year, I’m pleased to say, conflict was avoided, because while The Stone Roses: War and Peace was an engrossing read, the band only knocked out two albums, the first of which was of such sublime, epoch-defining quality that it is what the ‘Repeat All’ button was invented for.

Port Eliot 2015

A festival that I come home from feeling stimulated but relaxed. We were first attracted by the Caught By The River stage, and that is still the main draw, but there is also a cracking roster of book talks, great poets and comedians, the best festival food you are ever going to eat, beautiful grounds to enjoy, the Idler Academy for some casual education, and a bracing swim in the estuary to set yourself up for the day.

Out Stealing Horses

I was introduced to Per Petterson’s ‘Out Stealing Horses’ by the inventive organisers of ‘Future Built 2015′, who provided gifts of Norwegian literature to all the foreign speakers at their wonderful event in Drammen a few months ago. Based on a sample of eight natives at the pre-conference dinner table, the novel has been read by about four fifths of the country’s population. I’m not surprised – it is a wonderful book, combining a glimpse into the simultaneously dark and uplifting history of Norway’s’ Second World War, alongside a subtle exploration of family, adolescence and loss as the ageing narrator seeks to come to terms with a defining event in his childhood.

Wolf Alice – Album of the Week #8

Last night, thanks to Wolf Alice, I did something I haven’t done for a long time – sat down and listened to a new album all the way through, following the lyrics on the sleeve, and giving the songs my undivided attention. The much-missed DJ, John Peel, used to explain his undimmed enthusiasm for ploughing through the endless promo-tapes sent to him by hopeful aspiring bands with the thought that any one of them might just be the new Smiths. I don’t know if Wolf Alice are that, but I’m on my fifth listen in 24 hours..

Peter Kennard: Unofficial War Artist

For anyone lucky enough to live in London, thanks to the Imperial War Museum you have a full year to be inspired by a fifty-year retrospective of Peter Kennard’s work, under the fitting title of “Unofficial War Artist”. Unlike the political-grafitti of younger artists inspired by Kennard, particularly Banksy, Unofficial War Artist is not an exhibition for laughs, and yet I came out uplifted by the sheer integrity of an artist who for five decades has used his incisive wit and imagination to further the causes of peace and equity.

Sorry! The lifestyle you ordered is currently out of stock

It’s E17 Art Trail time again, the annual community-led arts programme where the good people of Walthamstow turn their homes, shops and pubs into temporary art galleries. This weekend we only had time to sample of a few of the highlights in the Village, but the Art Trail runs until 14 June so there’s a bit of time to explore more. Here follows markontour’s highlights written, in keeping with the departure lounge ethos of this blog, on a train to Stoke for a Sunday of boating.

Car Share

I’ve been thinking that it’s about time I wrote something serious about saving the world on this blog, and the benefits of car sharing to reducing traffic congestion and pollution would be a worthy subject, but that’s for another day. Today I simply want to ask am I alone in thinking that Peter Kay’s Car Share has been the best comedy on British television since Outnumbered last graced our screens?

Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage

‘Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage’ compellingly interweaves the true stories of troubled teenagers in late 1990s Brigend, with hometown hero Gareth Thomas becoming the first rugby union star to come out as gay. Both stories are told matter of factly, but powerfully enough to stir plenty of emotion in the audience. And this being a National Theatre of Wales co-production (with Out of Joint), there is singing at the points when your hearts strings are being tugged most strongly.

Salvador, Brazil

Salvador on Brazil’s north-eastern coast was the first capital of Portugal’s new colony in the sixteenth century, until it surrendered that privilege to Rio de Janeiro in 1763 (it wasn’t until 1960 that the plans to build a new capital in the centre of the country, Brasilia, came to fruition). But if this was once the entry point for European culture (and guns, germs and steel) into Brazil, today it is Salvador’s African heritage, a product of three hundred years as a major slave port, that gives the city its distinctive flavour.

Paris

Paris is likely to end up as markontour’s most visited metropolis of 2015, although I suspect the city has won greater accolades. I just wish I had more time to explore on my regular work trips, not least because there must be more museums per square mile in central Paris than anywhere else on Earth. Let’s call this Paris guide work in progress and I look forward to further investigation.

Brassed Off on the Eurostar

Well this is embarrassing: I just found myself whimpering on the Eurostar while watching Brassed Off, the stirring Pete Postlethwaite film about pit closures and colliery bands. Some slightly perplexed French people observed. I’m not sure it is a moment that is really deserving of a blog, but as I am clearly feeling unusually emotional I will grant myself an exception. The moment when the late lamented Pete Postlethwaite, lungs full of coal dust, refuses the trophy his Grimley Colliery Band have just won at the Albert Hall, and launches into an excoriating dissection of the inhumanity of Margaret Thatcher’s annihalation of the pit villages, should be in the book of Great British Speeches. I don’t have the French to explain that though..

The Caldon Canal

The object of this week’s travel blog is a thoroughfare that connects Stoke to Uttoxeter. On first reaction this might make some readers question markontour’s choice of weekend break, but now that its days as a raw material provider to the potteries are over the Caldon Canal is a place of natural beauty, tranquility and history and the perfect spot for a bit of bank holiday boating.

Sometimes I sit and think, sometimes I just sit

Courtney Barnett won my musical heart last year with her witty tale of a horticulturally-induced asthma attack (Avant Gardener) and now she’s back with an equally punchy LP, ‘Sometimes I sit and think, sometimes I just sit’. Offering wry musings on moving to the suburbs, palmistry and new-found environmentalism, amidst jagged guitars and continuing references to breathing difficulties, this is an early contender for markontour’s album of the year – but for now it is Album of the Week.

Rio – city of music, beaches and vegan restaurants (honest)

Rio, which has become one of my adopted homes for four or five weeks of the year, is quite simply the most beautiful city I have every visited. Undoubtedly it has many problems, but a walk along the Copacobana as the morning sun is rising is enough to make you forget about anything bad. From the crashing waves, to the vista of rocky mountain outcrops port and sideboard, and rain-forest behind, Rio is a reminder that it is possible for nature and urbanism to live happily side by side.

If you’re feeling glum

In markontour’s view music is essential to life at all times, but it is especially in the dark hours of defeat and disappointment that a great tune really makes the difference. And so as I fly away from the prospect of another five years of deepening inequality and division back home, I have been searching for those songs that speak to my currently despondent mood, and might also start the process of renewed fight for a better future. Here follows my personal General Election Blues compilation, also available on Spotify.

The Golden Valley

I have been visiting the Golden Valley, a sliver of countryside beauty astride the Welsh/English border, for over twenty five years, mostly to stay at the beautiful parental home of one of my closest friends. It has become one of my favourite places on Earth and so I am breaking the markontour mould of departure lounge ramblings to send this despatch from the relaxed idyll of Vowchurch in Herefordshire.

Sleep No More

Sleep Alone at the McKittrick Hotel in New York is a theatre experience that is both a multi-sensory treat and somewhat impossible describe, at least without ruining the effect for anyone who hasn’t yet had the pleasure.

I Am Kloot at Concorde 2

Arriving at Brighton’s Concorde 2 from the Kemptown side, we were greeted by I Am Kloot* and friends warming up backstage, door open to the beach and singing their hearts out to Elton John’s ‘Your Song’. If that was a surprise, the ensuing gig was predictably brilliant. This is a band without a weak spot, aside from two thirds of the trio’s need to pop off mid-set for a fag.

Record Store Day 2015

Record Store Day, the celebration of music imprinted on vinyl in shops staffed by people who still make mix-tapes, heaven in another word, goes from strength to strength. The high street music retailers may have gone, but a hardy nucleus of independent traders continue to survive and, on at least one day a year, to thrive.

Glastonbury 2000

As part of my attempt to catalogue all my music festival experiences, I am today trying to remember the first Glastonbury of the 21st century. John Peel was still the compere, the Park Stage did not yet exist, and neither did Shangri La. Doves were playing their debut album in the New Bands Tent. The Pyramid Stage, making a return for the first time since a previous incarnation burned down “in mysterious circumstances” before the 1994 festival, had been baptised by Robert Plant with a pail of milk from Michael Eavis’ herd. And hardly anyone had a tattoo.

H is for Hawk

‘H is for Hawk’ won many “Best Non-Fiction” garlands last year and so there are no shortages of reviews, yet it is just so good that markontour would not be complete without adding to the eulogies. I have never had an interest in falconry, or any desire to train a wild animal of any kind, but ultimately ‘H is for Hawk’ simply made me want to be outside and enjoying our wonderful planet while it is still a place of extraordinary diversity and beauty.

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is beautiful city of green spaces and white, colonial buildings and, while I can only draw on a couple of days worth of evidence, it is clearly a place to have fun. Here follows the initial markontour guide, hopefully to be substantially updated at some point:

Why does Mr Universe always come from Earth?

Half Man Half Biscuit’s ‘Urge for Offal’ is my Album of the Week #5. I have been addicted to the music of these lads from the Wirral peninsular since first hearing ‘Trumpton Riots’ on John Peel in about 1986. 2014’s offering, ‘Urge for Offal’, get’s all literary with ‘Baguette dilemma for the Booker Prize Guy’, but it would win my Album of the Week award on the strength of a single line in ‘This One’s For Now’: “Why does Mr Universe always come from Earth?”. Now there’s a question that has always bothered me. Aural joy.

Scarecrow

“Scarecrow on a wooden cross / blackbird in the barn / Four hundred empty acres / that used to be my farm / I grew up…

Do It For Your Mum

‘Do It For Your Mum‘ is the biography of Britain’s most exciting and endlessly creative band, British Sea Power. Passionately and cheerily told by their amateur…

Album of the Week

Thanks to my wonderful cousin, Lis (of ejengland-art.com), I have a picture frame that snugly fits and LP and, even better, levers open to allow regular…

Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi is not really my kind of town – I like cities made for people, not cars. But after two visits I will concede that…

Hops and Glory

“It’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at”, advised Ian Brown of the Stone Roses. But, according to another Brown – Pete Brown, author of…

Broadstairs

I had no particular expectations of Broadstairs, visiting only to be with friends for the New Year, but it turns out to be a rather nice…

Beijing

My asthma-addled lungs don’t react too well to Beijing’s extreme air pollution, so it’s not on my tourist list. But as this is where the twenty…

Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum is one of those places where I would like to hide behind an exhibit and get locked in overnight. Clocking in at New York’s…

Festival No. 6 2014

Wales, sunshine, swimming in the estuary on the set of ‘The Prisoner’ – why can’t it be Festival No.6 every weekend? 2013 Headline acts: London Grammar;…

Tangled Yarns

The William Morris Gallery has done it again, with another great guest exhibition. This time Alke Schmidt’s Tangled Yarns has taken over the space at the…

Under Milk Wood

Radio 4’s Saturday Drama was a real treat yesterday – a re-run of the 2003 adaptation of Under Milk Wood, in which Richard Burton’s unbeatable 1963…

Pride

Pride is a life-affirming blast of political drama. It joyously, and sometimes poignantly, tells the true story of how a group of gay and lesbian activists…

Latitude 2014

Ah, Latitude again, for what is becoming an annual pilgramage with my lifetime best friends. The performances don’t really matter when you are with the your…

Glastonbury 2014

If 2013 was the year the Stones came to Glastonbury, then 2014 was the year that Dolly Parton charmed the world’s greatest music festival. Here follows…

Here on Earth

A decade ago, Tim Flannery’s ‘The Weathermakers‘ was one of a handful of rapidly-read books that inspired me to understand the true enormity of the climate…

Walthamstow

Somehow, in eighteen months of blogging about my favourite things I have managed to omit Walthamstow. In my defence, there didn’t seem to be much of…

Contemporary Nottingham

An Easter weekend glide through Nottingham on our narrowboat to catch up with close friends who recently moved back here, has reminded me how much I like the city where I went to university and where my football team continues to inflict pain on its loyal fans.

The Old Ways

I finished reading 'The Old Ways', Robert Macfarlane's joyous account of journeys on foot, on a plane to South Africa in January. But such is the…

Souk Secrets

Marrakech is one of those places that has probably always been a market town. Certainly I learned enough on this trip to know that it has…

English Magic

Jeremy Deller’s exhibition for the British Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale, English Magic, is subversively witty and political, but most importantly it is currently on…

The Museum of London

I have a rule of always visiting the city museum everywhere I go, as a way of gaining an understanding of a new place, and so I spent a lot of time in the Museum of London when I first moved to the Big Smoke. Thus, below is the first entry in what I intend will be a gallery by gallery guide to my favourite bits of said museum of my favourite city.

Yr Wyddfa

Snowdonia is without doubt my favourite holiday destination and not just because Cyrmu is the Watts family’s motherland. The Scottish highlands are bigger but Welsh mountain…

Cape Town

Just about every South African I know has told me Cape Town is the place to go, so I had been looking forward to last week's…

Glastonbury 2013

Glastonbury is without doubt the highlight of every year. I love it unequivocally and never want to stop going. 2013 was quite simply ‘The Year of…

Made of Stone

Shane Meadows' latest film, Made of Stone, is a eulogy to the Stone Roses advertised with the warning that it 'will make grown men cry', and…

Field Day fiesta

I knew yesterday was going to be all about Ginger Baker, but a wonderful London Field Day also delivered the excitement of seeing Palma Violets at…

British Sea Power

Shepherd's Bush Empire, 17 April 2013 I first stumbled across British Sea Power at the Reading Festival when on a 20 minute break from working behind…

Spring has sprung

British Sea Power provided the soundtrack to the weekend, with ‘Spring Has Sprung’ proving the perfect accompaniment to the first t-shirt-weather day of the year. It got its first play while I woke the off-road bikes from their winter slumber, and the joyous refrain “birdsong sings in the atmosphere; spring has sprung out of nothing” kept popping back into my head throughout the day as Liz and I followed the River Lea from our home in Walthamstow down to the Thames at Limehouse.