Plimptons final show bootleg

It was the final ever Plimptons show last Saturday, and it was great, I know cos I was there with my digital recorder. I didn't record all the set mind, cos that would detract from the fragility and transience of the live music environment, if you wanted to hear it all, you should have been there.

Anyhoo, here are the tracks I did bootleg, have y'self a rightclick save as

Drink Y'self Sober
I Learned to Dance
Help the State
Animals and Rockin in 99
Pride comes before a fall
Everyone knows everyone else

If you listen carefully you'll hear in the background me, the missus and Alan speculating on the nature of the universe.

Thick Creamy Podcast 08-09-2012

For possibly the second time ever, legendary Glasgow band The Plimptons played London. I was at a bit of a loose end last Saturday night, so I happened upon The Buffalo Bar in Islington and popped into to catch the Guided Missile night.

I had my recorder with me so I've put together a podcast of the gig. The four bands playing were Summer Hunter, The Plimptons, Keith Top of the Pops and his UK Minor Indie Celebrity Band and Dream Themes.

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Awesomeness all round then. The first act were Summer Hunter, two girls from Shrag and a chap from the Fire Dept, that's a female band there. I only caught their last two songs, but they were pretty exciting sounding, lots of reverb on the vocals, you can never have too much reverb on the vox.

The Plimptons were on second, the Buffalo Bar was packed to the rafters which was quite a relief cos they were getting a bit worried. They were absolutely electric, the songs thoughtful pieces examining the drinking and music culture of their home towns of Glasgow and Motherwell, illustrated with cartoons, costumes and set pieces that had to be seen to be believed.

I was recruited for videographer duties so I didn't get to take any photies, not sure when the video will surface, but I have faith.

Next were Keith TOTP and his UK Minor Indie Celebrity Band, who were up to their usual high standards. Some might say that three guitarists is one too many, but Keith cranks it up to levels not seen since the Reindeer Section played the QMU with a mighty six guitars, only one bass player though. Maybe they could get together with FreeBase and it would all balance out.

That said, its quite possible that the fifth and sixth guitarists weren't plugged in, how would anyone know?

And headlining were Dream Themes. You know that episode of the IT Crowd where they go to the underground Countdown place, well, Dream Themes play live covers of popular TV theme tunes, and they rock. Highlights would be the Addams Family, Blockbusters and of course the sawing epic vistas of Bergerac.

Anyhoo, after spend around three hours trying to upload the podcast to SoundCloud, I gave up and went with another podcast provider, you should be able to download the mp3 from here with a trusty right click and save link as...

About 1 minute and 50 seconds in you can hear Martin from the Plimptons asking where the toilets are. Rock and Roll!!!!

The Return...

Sky have hooked up broadband in the flat, its costing £10 a month for Sky for unlimited downloady and £13.50 a month from BT. Sure the whole thing could be cheaper, but £23.50 a month between two people ain't so bad, heck its's barely two beers.

In the weeks and months since I've had such bandwidth, I've had loads of ideas of stuff to blog about in detail, such as:-

• That advert where the girl makes whale noises and says she's like a 'fish out of water', with no idea what 'fish out of water' means
• How the Housing Benefit cap affects very few people and just those in London, and possibly proposing a lower cap for other parts of the country, based on regional average rents.
• More videos of me playing cover versions on guitar and dreaming of being in a band
• Madcap money making schemes
• Drawings
• Reviews of stuff
• Photies of the dinner I cooked today

But really my heart isn't in it so much.

I went to The Plimptons first ever London gig last Thursday night, it was the first time I'd since them in about two years, maybe more. I took lots of photies. Its taken me a few days to get round to putting them through Photoshop and upload to Flickr and Songkick.

Actually, there's a wee gap in the website market there, maybe its been filled by various applications and more recent version of stuff, but the gap in the market is this:- to upload a batch of around fifty photos to Flickr, Songkick, Facebook, blog and MySpace, I need to upload them five times, I'd rather like to just upload them once, fill in the titles and tags and descriptions once, and some web app/service copies them to each of the aforementioned social networks.

Sure, you can share Flickr photies on Facebook, but its much better to have natively hosted photies there, and you can't link photies into Songkick, they host their own.

I don't care about all those network's server space, not my problem if they all hold duplicate photies, I just don't want to have to upload it all five times.

Anyhoo, so I slung up a few dozen photies, and I'm quite proud of them. My style is black and white, blurry, dark and high-contrast.

I feel very self-conscious using the flash on my camera, its not that I think people will mind, its more of that they'll see it at all. By raising the black level and lowering the white level, its brings out more detail in what would otherwise be dark shots in dark venues.

It was only after I'd taken a few photies that I realised the candle in the shot would just be a big white spot rather than anything recognisable.

Cropping shots so that they are wide and narrow, I like those too, it makes up for if I've accidentally cut someone's head off in the original shot, I just cut everyone up, and it helps draw the viewer's attention to stuff like the pint Martin's holding.

I'm also quite fond of crowd shots, not only to show that there are actually other people at the gigs I go to, but also, the type of person, whether they're paying attention to the band on stage or talking amongst themselves, how many other photographers there are.

I like to think that this sort of photo is iconic, the act of the singer being photographed is more important than the shot itself.

Sometimes the shots are so blurry, there's nothing for it but to crank up the cropping and the levels so much, and it kind of ends up looking good. This could be an album cover, or a t-shirt or wallpaper or something.

So, The Plimptons third album "00s Nostalgia with The Plimptons" is launched 20th November 2010 at Nice n Sleazy in Glasgow, and its great, I know, cos I've heard it.