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.
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.
Hannah Peel loves the stars, synthesizers and Barnsley, although she’s slightly in denial about the latter. Mary Casio dreams of inter-stellar travel to Cassiopeia, the ‘W’-shaped…
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.
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.
I have made numerous trips to the beautiful city of Stockholm over the last decade, yet somehow I have never translated the experience into a markontour…
Ten Fe’s debut album, ‘Hit The Light’ has provided entrancing holiday listening and a host of instant ear-worms. It’s proper indie-pop, full of allusions to great songs of earlier days – although I still don’t get why The Guardian likened them to Springsteen.
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.
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.
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.
markontour 