Canada booked, more gigs and a lack of sleep

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Had a pretty hectic couple of weeks but this isn’t the place to whinge so I will concentrate on the fun things.

Firstly, I’ve finally booked my flight to Canada, I leave London on 15 June and fly directly into Vancouver. Still need to find myself accommodation (hostel booked for now) and start the job searching fun.

On the gossip/news front, congratulations to both Karen and Craig and Lisa and Robin who got married recently, naturally Karen and Lisa both looked beautiful - wish I could have been! And congrats to Tam who is pregnant with her first baby.

Took a quick trip to Leeds the other week to see Youthmovies, one of my fav bands (I am stalking the band having seen them 6 or 7 times now). Leeds is a lovely uni town and so close to Manchester, just an hour by bus and the scenery on the way was pretty special.

Also been to London twice, both for quick weekend trips for gigs. I’ve moved up in the world and have started to go by train. One trip went smooth as (just on 3 hours from my desk at work to Vaughan’s place), the other trip was a horror ride involving unexpectedly stopping half way, catching another unbelievably packed train and then another before arriving over two hours late!!!

This weekend I’m off to Oslo for the weekend (yes for a gig and another band I’m stalking), then a mid week trip to London, a weekend ‘off’ (my only one until I leave), a weekend festival the week after that, then a weekend later I leave for London and then its off to Barcelona, Paris, Madrid, Berlin and back to London before heading to Vancouver.

Hope you all got that, I can barely cope with it all (and in between all that I still have more than 20 gigs …).

Speaking of which, naturally I’ve been to a heap of gigs over the past month:

The Twilight Sad - awesome Glaswegian band
Midnight Juggernauts - Aussie dance act, a so so set
Efterklang - brilliant offer (again) from these Danes
Holy F%$% - confronting band name, confronting sounds but an awesome gig
Get Cape.Wear Cape.Fly - fairly boring set from this preachy folk singer
Youthmovies - my band of choice to stalk, a brilliant set in Leeds
Bjork - Iceland’s first and biggest celeb put on a blistering set that turned into a mini rave
Jose Gonzalez - Swedish folk singer famous for his covers (including Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’ and Kylie’s ‘Can’t Get You Out of my Head’)
Elbow - local rockers had the big crowd eating out of their hands
65daysofstatic - fourth time seeing these guys, awesome set combining heavy rock and doof doof techno although not as mental as the last time I saw them in Manchester (my neck thanks me for that)
Peter Moren - solo set from lead singer from Peter Bjorn & John put on a great gig to a small crowd (about 25 in total)
Camden Crawl - a pub crawl but for gigs involving a variety of venues in trendy, bohemian Camden, London, saw new comers Fanfarlo, strange Leeds band Wild Beasts and my favourite Youthmovies and they rather embarrassingly dedicated their set closer to me!!!
Low - Mormon band, very slow, depressing music but stunning venue (a chapel as in sitting on pews and all!) and a lovely performance
Boris - mental Japanese rockers
Denis Jones - awesome local sample folk
Simon Amstell - harsh UK comedian that hosts a show that Spicks n Speck is based on (he is like Adam Hills’s evil twin, where Adam is nice, Simon thing is to be mean and insult to his guests),
Youthmovies - yet another gig for these guys, sadly possibly the last time I get to see them for a long, long time
iForwardRussia - moshing with the 16yo’s, getting too old for it but had a blast!
White Rabbits - funky NY rock

Not bad for a month’s worth of gigs …

Pete

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Comments

[Margaret]

Hi Pete, well it is good to catch up on all your news. Just finished off an EOM - I can tell you are not missing Mallies. Great to hear you are travelling lots and enjoying all the GIG and evena soccer match - wow . I learnt more gos from your site than I heard here at MSJ ! cheers - keep well - enjoy Canada. Margaret

[pqc]

Thanks Margaret, been pretty busy work wise but still nothing like EOM so sure don't miss that! Man Utd just got into the final for the European Cup so things are mental around here! Hope all is well.