Watching Ella Guru last Thursday was a much more satisfying than the other event taking place on the same day – the General Election. With Richard Caborne in our constituency there was not much chance of anything changing. He got in with a much reduced majority – might give him a kick to actually reply to his constituents emails (According to theyworkforyou.com he only responded to 17% of messages sent via FaxYourMP.com during 2004.. Which is 564th out of 590 MPs…..)
It took about 2 hours 45 minutes to get to Liverpool from Sheffield in the rush hour (how do these people cope with commuting every day… Sat in a car twiddling your fingers in amongst lanes of traffic and pollution.. what a waste). The gig was in the barfly which, luckily, was not too far from the car as a gale was blowing in from the North Sea (Sheffield’s unique micro climate lured me into a false sense of warm weather – I was only wearing a light jacket). I forget who supported Ella Guru, they were nice enough to listen to.
Ella Guru (all 8 of them) came on stage just after 10 accompanied by a huge amount of instruments. They played a range of album tracks, old tracks I’d not heard and some new stuff. The slide guitar sounded incredible, the vocals were breathtaking and some of the crazy instruments are indescribable as I don’t know what they are called. The only downside was drunken scousers talking throughout (not many and Ella Guru play very quiet songs).. I noticed the lead singer of the Coral in the crowd too.
Amazingly it only took 1 hour 20 minutes to get back. There was hardly a car on the road. I sat up til 4.30am watching Labour win the election – I don’t know why and I was knackered for the whole weekend. But I suppose it only happens every few years. I have a horrible feeling that in 4 years the country won’t be as economically rosy as Mr. Brown makes out, but time will tell.
Quite a bit of my new musical finds more recently have come from mp3 blogs. They sometimes contain a couple of (probably illegal) album tracks for you to download, as well as new and live recordings. I would argue that discovering new music is only more likely to make you go out and discover more of a band that you would never have had the opportunity of listening to. Well for starters try kingblind.com and the tofu hut. Also these 2 – Ska for the Skeptical and Bollywood for the Skeptical (Skeptical in an Alanis Morissette ‘ironic’ way I think..) – The bollywood one especially is very good.
Finally, for some great veggie restaurants, you could do worse than try these (thanks Rach!) from the Eighth Day Cafe in Manchester. I’ve never actually been there but next time I’m in Manc-ville, I’ll give it a try. We’ve had the Minestrone soup (very nice), Spinach & Potato Bake (Yes Nick it was much better than the infamous Potato Bake of Heavygate Road) and this thai soup in the last couple of weeks. All turned out very nicely indeed!