Building the towers, belongs to the sky*

Have just returned from two weeks’ holiday, taking in the fresh – at times startlingly fresh – air of Purbeck (in Dorset? yes I’d heartily recommend it)**, and very pleasant it’s been to be away from work and the accompanying twice daily squash on the Piccadilly Line.

Instead: long country walks in the Purbeck countryside, many of them along the scenic and surprisingly hilly Dorset coastline; cream teas at the Worth Matravers tea room (a-ma-zing, if you’ll forgive the Craig Revel Horword-ism)***; squirrel watching on Brownsea Island; log fires in an old stonemason’s cottage; visiting Saxon and Norman churches.

A red squizzer, earlier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whispered songs inside the wind

Autumn is the season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and Pearl Jam North American tours. With the band’s latest tour now well underway,* it’s a chance to look back at last autumn’s tour posters.

July over here in the UK can often be autumnal, so I’ve included the two July dates in London, Ontario (I was initially very excited when I saw they’d announced a London date…) and Wrigley Field, Chicago (home of Eddie Vedder’s beloved and perennially under-achieving Chicago Cubs).

Support on the latter dates came from Mudhoney, and the tour finished in Seattle, their first hometown gig in four years.

PJ, London, ON, 16 July 2013.

You could do anything

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The August Bank Holiday has swung round with its usual, startling annual regularity, so that means it’s time again for the Reading Festival (these days strictly the Reading and Leeds festival, doubtless brought to you by some bland and ubiquitous corporate lager – the spirit of alt rock endures). This year’s main stage headliners are Queens of the Stone Age, Arctic Monkeys and Blink 182. (Blink 182 headlining? For the second time?!?)

Inevitably, as a greying fortysomething nostalgist blogging about music that was most in vogue twenty years ago, without even a madeleine moment my mind drifts back to Readings past. I’ve just spent a few minutes losing myself in these old line-ups, both the festivals I attended (92, 94, 98, 03) and those I missed (err, the others).

Put that mike in my hand

Pearl Jam finished off the North American leg of their Lightning Bolt tour back in their home town last Friday: the band’s first Seattle show in four years. The Seattle Great Wheel was lit up with artwork from the new album to celebrate the event.

Open up a gas can

The Melvins

Been getting back into The Melvins recently, a significant influence on the Seattle grunge scene – they could boast four tracks on Deep Six, C/Z’s famed 1985 compilation – and many other bands since (QotSA, anyone?).

Part-Black Sabbath, part-Black Flag, part-Kiss (!?), The Melvins’ early fans included Kurt Cobain, who hung out with them back in Aberdeen when he was still getting Nirvana together. Dale Crover played drums on a 10-track Nirvana demo in 1988, and Matt Lukin join Mark Arm and Steve Turner in forming Mudhoney later that year when the Melvins relocated to San Fransisco.

Waves roll in my thoughts

Back in the summer, when we put the band together, one of the first things we had to figure out was, well, what would we play? As a grunge covers band, which bands and which songs would we cover: who were the bona fide flannel-wearers and who were the bandwagon jumpers with stick-on goatees and a dodgy metal past?

Since then, the five of us have been kicking these questions round, gathering groups, selecting songs. Some choices are gimmes: the leading Seattle bands of the early 90s, or, to be precise, Washington state bands, as Nirvana hailed from Aberdeen up the road. But how deep should we delve into the Seattle scene (can’t touch the bottom), and how far from Seattle could we stray?