Category: music

This could be amazing.

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Or…

Look, let me preface this by saying that I won’t be going along to this anyway. But as a 90s raver and a long(ish)-time resident of Oxford, I might give it a go if I was still there.

Because it could be amazing.

The words “Tribute to” could be doing an awful lot of heavy lifting here. But they seem to have lined the best tribute acts up for the four weekend shows this summer, and if it wasn’t terrible, and if you were in the right frame of mind for some potentially iffy music and some fun, AND you had nothing else on that weekend – well, I’d probably give it a go.

I mean, how bad could it be? OK. It could be very bad.

But equally, it could be amazing.

Kevin and Perry is a bit of an odd inclusion, as is “Special Guest – Gladiators Jet”:

Jet from Gladiators to host a millennium barn dance at Yeovil Aerodrome.
Properly policed. It must not, repeat, not turn into an all-night rave.

IYKYK.

Jet will be 56 years old when this event happens. It’s 30 years since her run on Gladiators ended. That’s over half her life. She’s a fully-qualified pyschotherapist now. It won’t be the same.

But the whole thing? Overall? It could be amazing.

Get a few friends together. £40 gets you 18 hours of entertainment with full weekend access, and… well… it could be amazing.

New Phone – who dis?

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I was lucky enough to get a new phone for Christmas. It’s sleeker, faster and – most significantly – has a much better camera than my trusted old Poco F3, which lasted a whole 4 years.

The only issue with the new sparkly phone is its smaller memory size. I could have got one with a larger memory size, but that would have added a whole 50% to the price of the device.

So rather than throwing money away, I decided to use this as a downsizing, streamlining opportunity.

I use a lot of apps. But a lot of the lot, I don’t use very often. And so – and yes, it’s a work in progress – I have chosen not to load a lot of those occasionally used apps onto the new phone.

It’s actually rather liberating. Goodbye, UberEats. Goodbye, DJI Go 4 and Marine Traffic.

And several (or more) others.

And goodbye heaps of unnecessary music on my music streaming app. I’ve been unknowingly hoarding. And why? I’ll keep a couple of playlists, and I’ll ditch downloading the rest. I can always choose to grab the odd album on mobile data, and we all spend a lot of time in and around WiFi these days.

I’ll manage.

So this phone (and by extrapolation, probably my whole life going forward), will be faster, sleeker, speedier and just better than previously. Happy days.

Driving home

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I prewrote a post for today. I prewrote it at about lunchtime on Monday 22nd.

I… er… I won’t be continuing with that post now, because about an hour after I hit the SCHEDULE button, this sad news broke.

British singer Chris Rea, known for hits including the Yuletide classic ‘Driving Home For Christmas’, has died after a short illness… three days before Christmas.
British rock and blues singer-songwriter Chris Rea, known for songs including perennial Yuletide favourite ‘Driving Home For Christmas’ and the hit ‘The Road To Hell’, has died at the age of 74.

I thought that the spoof news article I’d linked to originally was actually rather funny. Having seen Chris Rea on a TV programmes and doing a few interviews, I think he’d have liked it too.

But wow. I’ve always said that I might miss something important or put my foot in it when scheduling posts while I’m away.

This was nearly a huge faux pas.

Good job I managed to spot it before it had got too far.

Old Keane, New James

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Wow. It’s like the 1990s and the early 2000s never went away, because:

I dunno. But lying on a tropical beach overlooking the Indian Ocean took me back – way back – to our honeymoon several (or more) years ago. And I’d just got my first ever iPod, brought over from the UK by one of the wedding party. Sadly though, there wasn’t the time, the knowledge or the bandwidth to get much on there before we headed off to Mozambique, and so I ended up listening to Keane’s Hopes And Fears on repeat.

That sort of thing could drive a man mad, but a) I was so chuffed to have an iPod, b) I was so chuffed to just have married the girl of my dreams, and c) it’s actually a rather good album.

In fact, they toured it on its twentieth anniversary last year.

And so, I downloaded it while I was away in Mauritius last week (the resort wifi was incredible) and did it all over again. It’s still very good.

In fact, I need to re-revisit it because it may actually be one of those very rare albums with no bad tracks at all (I can only think of three off the top of my head).

Watch this space.

And…

James have a new album out tomorrow. It’s a greatest hits with a couple of new additions and a live version one. I heard one of the new additions – Hallelujah Anyhow – this morning on 6Music and it was really decent stuff.

Always enjoyed a bit of James. I even went to see them back in 2018. Yeah, that’s less of a concert review and more of a social commentary the likes of which you might well have noted on other 6000 miles… posts about concerts. Sorry about that.

But I digress. Often.

Looking forward to the new album. Might review it.

Watch this space.

Bum bum

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Warning: Juvenile post ahead!
(As if you hadn’t guessed from the title.)

But seriously, Little Miss 6000 recently did her Grade 7 vocal exam. And the natural progression is now to Grade 8, although there’s a consensus that there’s not going to be too much hard work towards that in the remainder of this year.

Just a look.

And so the books were brought home last week. And… well… I was honestly expecting something a little more grown-up and challenging than this:

The rest of the piece (and this bit too, I suppose) is in German.

And I’m sure that it’s going to sound beautiful. But if you can read music, then you’ll note (no pun intended) just how bars 29 and 30 are going to sound, and you’ll understand that I’m going to struggle to keep a straight face.