no8

I like travis

I don't care what anyone says, I like Travis and, although possibly quite dull, their new single, Reoffender, is very good. And the video is funny.
Maybe I'm getting old. I like the Delgados too. They could be dull (ish, I'm not sure) but they have cracking, fully formed tunes and are equally from Scotland. Hey, Scotland turns out some decent bands eh?

Ten VERY GOOD Scottish bands, in no particular order:
(please feel free to point out those I missed)

1. Teenage Fanclub
2. Mogwai
3. Urusel Yatsura
4. Jesus and Mary Chain
5. The Delgados
6. The Vaselines
7. The Pastels
8. Eugenius
9. Soup Dragons (the early stuff)
10. Primal Scream

awwww - we should be in blackpool

This weekend me and my friends were supposed to go to Leeds to visit our friend Fiona, and from there take a trip to Blackpool.
But Fiona fell ill and we couldn't go. This is just life of course, and I hope Fiona gets better real quick (go Fiona!). So today I've been lost and somewhat confused? Me and Kev wandered around Camden in the Paté (ask a french person), drank coffee, ate 'forced on us' thai food and generally kept mentioning how 'we should be in Leeds' by now.
Its a weird mental thing; when you're so expecting to be going on a trip, or doing some certain something, and then suddenly you're not. I like to think I'm flexible, and was quite surprised by how vague I felt today. In fact I'd spent the week building myself up to go on the Pepsi Max Big One rollercoaster in Blackpool. Now that we've rescheduled, I have all this preparedness stored up, and nothing to do with it. It makes me wonder how an understudy must feel at the theatre. All that fear and suspense around whether you'll be called upon or not, just to end with you going home at the end of each night having done nothing - is that how it works? A life of disappointment...?

clean living

If cleaning is supposed to be therapeutic, does that means that people who clean for a living save on the shrink bills (cleaning ladies are sound of mind)?

Isn't cleaning just a mundane manual task, like working in factory (or atleast the cliche of working in a factory)? If so, would I be more mentally healthy if I did some repetitive manual labor job?

New tyre service track

A new track, they happen every so often, is on the Holloway Tyre Service site (this site, kinda). It is called Uh Oh (I think David Bryne did a song called this and it is much better than mine) and at the time of writing the mix is very slightly wrong - the vocal is just a little too low in the mix. This is more noticeable on speakers than headphones. It could be a product of the processing.
Once I have a mix set up in Deck I mix down to disk then play the mix from Soundedit back into Deck via the mixing desk - where I do what I think of as a mastering (although some professional geek with probably tell me I'm wrong) which passes the song through a 7 band graphic eq. Then I mix down the two tracks from Deck again to a stereo mix. And then I run it through Mpegger to make a 192kbps MP3 file. Phew. No wonder then that a bit of vocal can get lost. Although its more likely that the mix was a little wrong in the first place.

The end of the track is the computers contribution. The file was a little corrupt on the end of the Deck files. On mix down it revealed a whole heap of white noise and stuff - which had come from the drums somehow - so I left some of this on. I couldn't get that noise if I wanted. Oh, and the mix is a touch quiet. I'll fix this tonight, so chances are by the time you read this, the new improved mix will be there. Look out for the lesser mix too - just the acoustic guitar and beeps.

www.hollowaytyreservice.com/music.html

PostScript (22.29):
The new file is mixed and in placed, and an altogether better mix. I tried to make the lesser, acoustic mix, but it didn't sound very good. Less is more.

Lowlands - the set up

Bettie Serveert were listed as playing Lowlands - and not touring their new album in the uk. So I thought it'd be good to go see them at the Netherlands premier music festival, Lowlands.
I'm not really a fan of festivals - too many people, to congested - and my experiences at Reading and Glastonbury in the early 90's didn't really make me want to go again, unless I went with Farzana and her VIP pass to Reading.
But I reasoned that a Dutch festival would be well organised, relaxed and a good deal more fun that the English chip fight, beer and mud.
A quick rustle up of some mates, with Beaton in charge of travel arrangements, got us the unbelieveably cheap price of £50 return from London to any Dutch station - try doing that on normal uk rail.
Leaving London at 9am, we travelled to Harwich, crossed 225km of sea to the Hoek of Holland and trained it to Lelystad where a bus took us to the festival. The only (and I mean ONLY) bummer of the entire festival was that we had to queue 5 or 6 hours to actually get into the festival. Everybody showed on thursday night, and we sat, tired after travelling all day, in a huge field waiting for the entrance queue to go down. This was very very grim. We said that we wouldn't come again - this was too badly organised. It'd have to be a very VERY good festival to excuse this queueing - and we are all english!
After clearing security and getting our wristbands at around 3am (the security and sheer weight of people being the holding factor) we progressed into the camp ground, where we pitched in a bad place for the night, slept, and moved in the morning. If 45,000 people came to the festival (down from last years 60,000), I'd say around 90% came on the thursday night. Thats around 40,000 people going through 8 entrances. Over 40,000 security checks in 8 hours.

We got the combo ticket which let us into the neighbouring Six Flags theme park, a ten minute walk from the festival. This was fantastic. We spent our days in the park riding coasters and our nights watching bands. Believe me. It does not get much better than this. It really doesn't.

The set up at Lowlands is phenomonally good. Unlike the uk festivals, they have actually thought about how people watch bands and move around a festival. Atleast, we figure they have thought about it, but it could just be coincidence. Heres my list of why the Lowlands Festival is so good (apart from it being in the Netherlands, the tolerance of gear, and the Six Flags next door):
1 the stages are really high, so everyone can see the bands cleared - even if you're small like Fiona.
2 there is no real 'main stage' like Reading/Glastonbury. about six stages house the bands. Yes, there is the Alpha stage which is kinda the biggest, but it is not a so overt thing as a main stage at Reading. This means that people do not by default congregate to this 'main' stage, but choose from who is playing
3 all stages are in tents - there is no outdoor, exposed to the rain, stage
4 the tents all have wooden floorboarding - no mud, more comfort, you can sit down more cleanly
5 crush barriers seperate the front area of the audience from the back. It was never difficult to get to the front, and it was never crushed - you could stand with your own space, comfortably. And it you're not so keen on the band, you can watch from further back, with even more space, and a good view, as the stages are high! Security can limited access to this front space if needed, avoiding any problems with people dying from being crushed at the front of 10,000 people.
6 the six stages weren't really themed as such. Sure, Alpha stage was for the biggest acts. But then Staind played in the Dommelsch stage / tent. Grandaddy played in Golf and Bettie Serveert in India. This meant that after each act, the tents more or less completely emptied out. You could turn up for the next band, let everyone leave and walk right to the front where your favourite band would be playing in half an hour. Over that half hour the tent would fill up. At Reading, by contract, people seemed to fix themselves in the Essential tent (or whatever wanky name it has) and stay there all day - meaning that to see a band you either have to crawl and push through the crowd or stand on tip toes from the back to view the criminally low stage. This method of not themeing tents kept the crowds moving around and worked very well indeed. Even getting in to watch Beck was a piece of cake.
7 the bands started exactly on time, and played for one hour. The sound check was muted and when the band came on, they did just that. Came on and played. The sound and lighting setup was so professional, it put most London venues to shame. Vocals were crystal clear, technical problems didn't seem to exist and we didn't have to witness bands or roadies fucking around with equipment, making loads of noise, and we didn't have to wait an age and a day for the bands to come on. What a sheer pleasure that was.
8 the festival was full of Dutch people. Not that surprising, but these guys are super friendly, not a hint of aggro or agression. And they all speak perfect english.
9 there was plenty of space for everyone - in the food tents, the arenas, never a jam or crowd.
10 the general design of the festival was really nice. for example, there was a rocket ship meeting place, completed with dry ice coming out the 'engine', big hands invited you towards the Alpha tent, and moon like blimps floated above the festival, shining light down. Oh, and the budda on the lake. Real nice little touches add to the whole thing.

Lowlands

I just got back from Lowlands - hold on while I sort my head out and give a full report....