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

Posts from the ‘Music’ category

Music

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.

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.

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.