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.
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.
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.
Until a few weeks ago the only other things I knew about Margate was that it was where J.M. Turner painted many of his greatest seascapes…
Martha are “a pop band from Durham” and they are wonderful. If you are not already addicted to their fast paced, jagged guitar music and sparkling…
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…
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…
I heard a lot of great music in 2016 and so it was hard to settle on just 15 tracks for the annual markontour ‘Festive Fifteen’.…
I know should be writing about Chuck Berry RIP, but after a weekend vinyl discovery in the Hornbeam cafe on the corner of my street, the…
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.
markontour 