Ladytron - Academy

The wonderful support act Asobi Seksu - who sounded liked they swallowed the back catalogue of My Bloody Valentine and the Cocteau Twins.

Bust's Craftacular - London

Bust Magazine are hosting their first across the pond 'Craftacular' in London on Dec 6th from midday until 11pm at the St. Aloysius Social Club in Euston. Very exciting!

I was very excited to see Made by Milla will be hosting a workshop too, to keep the South West massive visible, and I'm hoping to be there in some form too.

Sweeney Todd

It’s cold, it’s dark in the evenings this must mean it’s time to get the DVD collections out…
I’ve finally got Carnivale Series II, so I’m feeling dark and macabre, and so to finish a dark Sunday afternoon what better than toast, hot chocolate and Sweeney Todd (with all the extras!). This is so far my favourite movie of the year, so with one month to go, I’m starting my 2008 review early.

I’m so pleased I saw this in the cinema, because the attention to detail is quite something. The title sequence is classic Tim Burton, which lays the ground for the delights of blood dripping in the most creative and beautiful of ways. The costumes are just divine, leather coats made in Italy especially for Mr Todd, and straw embroidered lace tops for Mrs Lovett – it is worth watching the extras to see the detail and effort Colleen Atwood brought to them.

I’m sure you know this is a musical, and Cameron Macintosh is certainly not my cup of cha, but a brooding and dark Johnny Depp totally took my mind off the ‘cor blimey love a duck’ singy thing after the first 5 minutes, and then you are immersed into the world of throat cutting barbers.

Something a little bit special in this movie is the light and dark shades of the movie, (please see seaside picture), so please don’t dismiss this movie - Tim Burton is the master of macabre and grand guignol!

Just an excuse...

Happy Halloween!

I love this time of the year! Skulls, Day of the Dead, blood splattered windows. Or is that just my house fully decorated.

Here's some fantastic pictures to celebrate as shown on the wonderful photographique vintage blog Susi a
Ed Wood's leading lady!

Goldfrapp

Now that it's too cold to leave the house, it's gig season. At least I don't have to put the heating on when I'm at a gig (bahhh humbug). And the first one for me is Goldfrapp at the Colston Hall. She was all 'hey nony noo' and aran jumpers, with this album. And the audience certainly represented this with very few people being under the age of 45! The backdrop was fencing and school fete bunting.

On a style note, her accessories were pom poms - very similar ethos to Bjork earlier in the year. So I will be getting my wool out and doning some fluffy balls soon.

UpFest at the Baccy Factory

I'll be posting more images soon

Opening of Gallery 8 - Friend & Co

We've been to about 5 street art events this month, and as I've mentioned before, I'm quite behind on uploading my blog pix, so here's one we went to last week.

It was a cold dark autumnal evening, and the gallery is big enough to hold around 3 people at a push. It's a possibly the smallest gallery ever, but it's quite adorable. It's on the site of an old shop that used to sell garden pots on a Sunday morning and has been empty for many years. Geoff Barrow (he of Portishead) told us he bought the shop 2 1/2 years ago, and didn't really know what to do with it. Rather interestingly he told us he's not a very 'visual' sort of person, which is interesting as he part owns a gallery! It's the facade to a new venture selling prints www.friend-and-co.com.

And here's.........Grace!

I have seen some truly fantastic shows this year and one of the highlights was Grace Jones. (I’m so behind on my blogging pictures that I’m just going to have to drip feed them in the wrong order).

What has prompted this particular piece is the purchase of Grace Jones tickets at the Colston Hall (front row!). I can’t tell you how excited I am about seeing her again. We saw her at the Massive Attack Meltdown experience in the enormous symphonic hall they have, and I thought it was going to be a dull affair as we were up in the gods of the balcony, but she truly rocked the place. She managed to connect to every aspect of the audience, with her many many hat changes, and some signature John-Paul Goude style backgrounds. She also treated the front rows to some very scary leaping into the audience moments with very little on.

The introduction of the show was the very dark ‘corporate cannibal’ video (which I urge you to watch), where you were forced into the darkness she can turn herself into. A black and white simplified morph of an image, with a Massive Attack style backbone. And when she finally appeared onstage she chatted to the audience as if we were long lost friends and you couldn’t help but wonder why she hasn’t been doing this for the last decade.

The last time I saw her was at the Brixton Academy while I was at college, where she appeared over an hour late, and then sang to backing tapes. She kept her traditional changing of outfits and walking down an over exaggerated staircase, but the show lacked something. But her presence is something you never forget.

Roll on January!

Corporate Cannibal

Moss and Roy

These have been made for our new BF's Moss and Roy, so have subsequently been christened with their names.

Please love us! We'll fight for you!

Hmmmm...cake

Have some cake on me - tis my birthday!

I found this lovely image on etsy, and you can purchase it here - Lesophie etsy check her beautiful photos of petticoats too.

Poor blogger

Apologies for being an absent blogger – and totally disrespectful to the faith of the blog (I bring shame upon my keyboard) but my procrastination tells me that ‘the daily grind’ has been absorbing too much of my time and energy. I hope to recoup over this bank holiday (and after Madonna’s tour opening night she-bang in Cardiff). Especially as I’ve got a load of Lucky Luchie’s to finish. One particular important one for a lovely Miss Eva, and two for Roy and Moss.

I’m so behind in posting pix, I’ve been to some amazing gigs this year, and I have some blurry charms to post and gushing to do. Hopefully when I get a moment.

Do you look at webmagazines? I’m not overly fond of them, especially if they’re of the kind where you have to turn the pages with a mouse (if you’ve got a slow computer, it takes ages). (Yes, Cheekbone Boosh zine, talking about you!). But I found a fresh little offering (http://www.smallmagazine.net/) which is full of lovely photography and illustratory goodness. If you’re part of the crafty/etsy circle of internet explorers you’ll know some of the stuff featured well. But the styling is quite lovely. Apparently its concerns are around ‘small design’ not just children just in case you were wondering.

Being Johnny Ramone

I love it when you accidentally stumble on an idea.

I found these all on FlickR. Just typing in one subject, and seeing what it brings. When you've cleared the obvious and dross of an idea, these were the more interesting pictures surrounding the search. I'm sure I've got one to contribute, but I'll have to go and find it (maybe I'll post later).
Photo by 'girl with the golden gun'

I love this photo, because you rarely see JohnnyRamone in a candid shot, he was immensely professional, and knew image was everything. He was a big horror flick fan, so I'm presuming this was taken at a horror fair (where I bumped into him once), as the ladies in question are actresses of this genre. Photo by Eddie Mika
A more interesting take on the Ramones cartoon image. Just cute. Photo by Cusco.

This is an insight to the Ramones before the show from the bassist's perspective. Alas Johnny has his back to us.

I love this photo it was taken on an Kodak Instamatic. A classic shot of 1979. Focus on the stylish guy on your left and the guy between Johnny and the fan (it's Monte Melnick - loving the face). Photo by EFSB.

We think this guy looks a little like the creepy coupe from the Wacky Races.

A sad day for Weston

A sad day indeed for us who have many memories at Weston 'Grand Pier'.

I have spent much of my childhood in Weston, and many hours nagging my poor parents to give me money so I could go on the helter skelter, or penny slides. A couple of summers ago I revisited the same amusements and felt like I was '5' again. We still go to Weston regularly, as the pooches love to run the length of the beach (the banner photo was taken there).

If you have ever visited Brighton and seen the demise of one of their beloved piers, you just hope that this will never happen to Weston.
photo by G Bloomfield

Mighty Boosh Festival

A wonderfully insane weekend. Dolly Parton on Friday night (who was fantastic - well she would be). And on Saturday screaming down to Kent at 85 mph to catch Peaches, Gary Numan, Har Mar Superstar, Jarvis and Robots in Disguise booshing it up at the Hop Farm with the Boosh boys at the end of the night. Fantastic!

Vince Noir and Howard Moon

(BTW, Mini-Howard is not my son who I have hidden away from you for the past 6 years!, he was with his father who was dressed as Bolo the Gorilla)

Lucha at the Expo

So pleased to see my little Lucky Lucha's arrive safely for the exhibition 'Crammed Organisms'. (He's on the right hand side next to the orange cat geezer.

To see the rest of the exhibition and all the good works they did, check out their FlickR pix.

BooshFest

Yay! Heading off to the BooshFest in Kent - A festival entirely devoted to the wonderful world of the Boosh. For one day only you can be 'the hitcher' or 'old greg' with his mangina (euuyueck). I think this is the first festival I've been to where it's entirely devoted to one idea, which everyone buys into (does going to a Wurzels gig count?).

So in short, with 3 weeks to go, and in my true Virgo way, I have a lot of research to do to find my outfit which involves watching DVD's - oh the hardship.

I've currently whittled it down to a 'zoo keeper' from the 1st series, an outfit involving a lot of silver, but with my figure I don't think this will be doing me any favours. Or a Mod Wolf. Any suggestions grateful received.

Naboo : "don't mess with the occult"
Noel: "I thought it was good for you!"
Naboo: "No, that's Yakult"

Crammed Organisms

Hard at work - ready to ship!

Manchester

When I picked up my camera recently and saw on my viewer lots of lovely graff pix from Manchester, I realised I haven’t blogged in a while.

We’ve been to London, Manchester and 2 art exhibs (both on the same night) in the last month, so I though I’d start with a run down of the Manchester trip as it was the most photogenic.


Lovely Matthew Williamson at the Urbis.

Tado!

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We stayed in the very centrally based Travelodge, which was not bad at all for the money. When we got there, we were met by a large bunch of jazz musicians, and this was apparent by the heavy rimmed glasses, jaunty caps, and dashing little beardies. I was super curious to see who they were, and finally found out when I turned on to BBC2 last night to watch 'Later' and was greeted by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings (the guys who helped Mark Ronson with his 'sound' - the Dap Kings have been hired for Amy's album and 'Version' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharon_Jones_&_The_Dap-Kings). I screamed down the phone to my better half, who I was on the phone to at the time, those were the guys in the Travelodge! Shame to the promotor of the tour who lazily stuck them in minimal hotel splendour!

David Wilkie, what more can I say!

Inner city Manchester.

And these guys were just 'Non-Stop'

Most adorable 'big breakfast establishment'.