Sunday, February 18, 2007

Original Showcase Sunday 18th Feb

Every Sunday evening at 18:00 on Original 106fm I present the Original Showcase which plays the best music from our region - Hampshire, Dorset, West Sussex and the Isle of Wight.

These are the acts from last Sunday's show...

MOZYDARE - a fun packed Pop/Rock band from Gosport
www.myspace.com/mozydare

SARAH SAVILLE – excellent singer/songwriter from Southampton
www.sarahsaville.com

BIRDPEN – dark and mysterious indi sound from Southampton
http://www.birdpen.com/

LOS FANTASMAS (above) – Latin and reggae sounds from the isle of Wight
www.myspace.com/losfantasmas

BRIAN HOOPER – Long standing folk musician from Southampton
www.focsle.org.uk/SCoFF/brianhooper/

ILZE – Singer from Latvia now living in Southsea
www.myspace.com/ilzemusic

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

They'll come in peace

In a recent posting Mr Meadows has rightly pointed out that ‘the people of Earth’ have been conditioned to think that any alien invasion would be a violent one.

I’m not surprised. Our history of discovery has always been a marred by bloodshed.

Newly discovered countries were always ripe for plundering and pillaging: from the Romans onwards it has been a succession of conquests.

Consequently people think aliens will mirror our base actions and motives and so they’ll take Earth by force.

But as far as I’m aware there aren’t space ships on the White House lawn, so this can only mean one of two things…

Aliens don’t exist or they have a policy of making themselves known when the time is right.

Look at it this way. Would you land on a planet that had millions of people starving to death, which was moving towards an environmental disaster and still used war as a method of solving an argument?

This planet is a beautiful place, and has enough for every one, but until we live in balance with ourselves and nature I don’t think we’ll be receiving visitors from afar.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

UFOs Over London

If you see something flying in the sky and you don’t know what it is, then it’s quite legitimate to call it a UFO – an unidentified flying object.



About 15 UFO’s were seen over London on Thursday 1st February 2007 (See above) It is reported some 40 people saw them and someone had a video camera.

On the Islington Gazette’s web site Alix McAlister, 34, a market stall trader from Archway gave this description:

"They were coming from the north and moving south. And then they kind of stopped and they were hovering. There was no sound. They seemed to fade away and I saw more coming and then they stopped. It lasted about 10 minutes."

And then there’s Tom Cull, of Summerlee Gardens, Fortis Green, 27, who had just finished a guitar lesson when he noticed a crowd of people staring up at the sky in Magdala Avenue.

He said: "There were at least 30 people watching. Cars had stopped. It was kind of eerie.

"What I found strange about these things was the way they moved. The fact that they were so high would suggest they were quite big."

You can read the full report and more importantly see the video at the Islington Gazette web site.

SEE: ARCHWAY UFO VIDEO: YOU DECIDE


There have been quite a few reports of UFO activity over the past couple of months.

The most interesting one was last year when many employees of O'Hare Airport in Chicago came forward and described a round gray object hovering just below cloud level around 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 7.

But this is the weird thing as the Exponent Online points out … “These employees are well-trained mechanics, managers and pilots whose main motivation for reporting the sighting was the safety of airline passengers. But even after such a large amount of people risked their livelihoods and reputations to report a UFO, nobody has taken them seriously.”

Government fails to look into O’Hare UFO

Friday, February 09, 2007

The Smell of Smoke

Apart from the audience and the band what makes a good gig? Well most people would say the atmosphere, the smell of years of sweat, spilt beer and the smoke.

I disagree. After seeing two bands, in two days, this is my second night of sitting in the office stinking of cigarettes. As a nonsmoker it isn’t the greatest of smells.*

So I can’t wait for the smoking ban to begin on July 1st. In my opinion it won’t make gigs any worse and we’ll only be taking home memories of songs and not morsels of smog.

Rant over. Two bands from this region in two nights. It’s not a record (and that’s not a pun) but having heard their music on the Original Showcase I thought it was time to hear them in the flesh.



On Wednesday night I was at The Brook in Southampton to see Recreation support The Bluetones. On Thursday it was the same city to see Birdpen (above) at The Joiners.

Both bands have the potential to make it and I can see Recreation being at success in this country while Birdpen have a sound which will make them a hit in Europe.

If you were to ask which of the two groups would succeed first then I would have to say Birdpen.

Recreation have a great summer sound and are likely to appeal to the thinking public but they are in transition and have to find a new guitarist which always takes a few months to sort out.

While Birdpen have the advantage of their frontman, Dave ‘Pen’. He is also in a group called Archive who recently sold out the 6000 capacity Zenith in Paris. It must be strange to go from that to 100 people at The Joiners.

But he didn’t see too phased and the conversation we had after the show was punctuated with punters telling him how good the gig was. A sure sign of success.

They both gave me some new recordings and we’ll be playing them over the next couple of weeks on Sunday’s Original Showcase.

*As a former smoker I do appreciate the irony.