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'.

Crammed Organisms - Exhibition

Text to follow!

Massive Attack - Meltdown @ SouthBank Centre

It's getting closer....We're excited!

We love Grant and Delj. Meltdown should be more than a music festival, and hopefully very visual. I can't wait to hear who's playing on Sunday.If you live in Bristol you'll encounter Massive Attack in one form or another, whether you see Grant driving around in his Westfalia VW or DJing at a venue in the city. If you keep your eyes open, they're very much part of the city I've been part of too, and they're never predictable and corporate.

My first big gig thing with them was I think in '94 at Ashton Court house, where you were greeted by a 5ft model of 'EuroChild' in all it's vinyl glory, and you then had a choice of going to the chill out room, where Grant was DJing or going to another room where there was a buffet (complete with vol-au-vents and things on sticks). It was a pretty strange gig, but at least it was memorable.

Roll on Sunday!

Spring-ey, Summer-ey Happy List

With Spring comes renewed interest in doing happy, summery things (it’s sort of like a New Year’s resolution list, but in April - here’s my list)

- give up my morning coffee which has 2 sugars in it – (replaced with lemon & honey teabags)

- cycle to work (which is getting to be a 2-3 day a week thing)

- Sort my blondish hair out (it’s got weird dark blonde stripes in it – I have such a love/hate relationship with it)

- Not spend so much money on buying lunch

- Draw something, anything every day, instead of reading about it – (it’s more like 2-3 times a week – I painted some mini Marshall amps the other day)

- Start a blog about famous Jack Russells (a Heat magazine blog for Dxtr and Dsy)

It's sunny, it's spring!

Lovely Ashton Court with the lovely Miss Daisy.

Weather's been a little weird at the moment, but it seems to be predominantly sunny (freezing as well), but this means very happy poochs.

Smorkin' Labbit - Kozik

I sooooo want this. Kozik is still producing fabulous toy-related artifacts even though he's changed direction in his work. The smokin' rabbit still lives on in this stool.




Get your smorkin' labbit sit-ey down thing here from KidRobot for $1000.

Loving the Etsy - Ramones Window Shades

I love Etsy, it brings together creative peoples mad ideas and finds homes for them all over the world.
I particularly like this little find. They also do Johnny and June Cash! (cute Boston Terrier too!)

The Seller is Drinkanddream.