Drive By Truckers –Kafe Antzokia, Bilbao Spain

A visit from my crazy brother Andy prompted a week long trip to Spain (Bilba and San Sebastian) planned around the kick-off show for the Drive By Truckers European tour in Bilbao on 23 March – before Andy flew home to Australia the next day.

Non-musical highlights out of the way first – how good is Spain? Buying meat over the bar…. mmmmmmm Jamon Iberico (“the rolls Royce of meat!”) mmmmmm. Ok so onto the show –

The venue itself was fantastic. One large room – that appears to be a restaurant during the day – with a very high raised stage, that has steps leading up to it (handy for sitting on before and after the show).

Andy is the Drive By Truckers afficianado – I only know a few songs – but they played a bunch from the brand new album “A Blessing And A Curse” – plus a few “classics” – of which I really liked ‘Carl Perkins Cadillac’. I was surprised how hard rocking the show was – I was thinking it might be a bit more country – but the boys (and girl) rock hard. The ended with an encore cover of Jim Carrol’s ‘People Who Died’. After the show fans (including my brother!) mingled pretty freely with the band, and they were extremely happy to pose for photos.

Berwick st, Soho UK

I've been extremely slack in updating the blog for a while - so I thought I'd return with probably the most embarassing entry thus far - a re-creation by my brother Andy and I of the Oasis (What's The Story) Morning Glory? album cover.
The photo itself is taken in Berwick street Soho - just outside the old Select-A-Disc (now Sister Ray) record store. This is just one of about half a dozen record stores in Berwick street (mostly secondhand or discount) so I make a regular trip down there most Sunday afternoons. It was only after I'd been going there for a few months that someone pointed out to me it was used for the Oasis cover.

All credit for this one should really go to Kim who took the picture - after a quick check of a thumbnail in Sister Ray, she nailed the framing almost perfectly. Nice work. I imagine most people will want to compare with the original so I've included that for reference.

The Album Chart Show

Special guest post from Kimbo's far more eliqouent 500 Reasons Why blog:

Nick found a site online where you basically enter your details and preferences, and every so often, they will send you tickets to the taping of a TV show. On Monday night we went to the taping of Channel 4's The Album Chart Show at Koko in Camden where they were pre-recording appearances for the show. We saw Kila Kela, The Kooks and Placebo - all ok - and were looking to make an early exit to avoid Craig David, however were pleasantly suprised when they announced the final act would actually be Franz Ferdinand. Awesome.

After taking the piss out of the host all night (Nick & Andy, that is), we ended up in the very spot where he (Joe Mace) was going to make his final link to Franz Ferdinand. Never shy of missing an opportunity (Nick & Andy, that is), they insisted on a photo, and he played them like a pro. What a sport.