Tag: Southend
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What Have Music Festivals (Like The Village Green) Ever Done For Us?
With a thousand music and performing arts festivals reportedly taking place in the U.K. every year you would be forgiven if the annual bash at Chalkwell Park, within touching distance of Southend-on-Sea, had passed you by. But this omission would be a shame, because Chalkwell’s Village Green, celebrating its tenth year, is a hub of…
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Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Busted At Essex Village Green Festival
The Festival season. While Spanish music fans fret about how to stay hydrated in Barcelona and Portuguese music fans research online reviews of sun hat stores in Lisbon, British music fans research which pop up tents are least likely to be washed away in a flood, and bookmark the NHS online page for trenchfoot remedies…
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Every Record Tells A Story Hits The Airwaves!
A mile and a half from the Kentish coast and five miles from Southend in Essex lies the wreck of SS Richard Montgomery, an American Liberty ship built during World War II. The ship ran adrift onto sandbanks while carrying around 1,400 tonnes of TNT which remain on board. The wreck remains such a threat…
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Ten Things We Learned At The Village Green Festival.
It’s in Essex, it’s about the size of the kid’s field at Glastonbury, and it only costs £15 to get in (take that, austerity Britain!) but this weekend 16,500 festival goers experienced a mellow, friendly atmosphere and saw some great bands at The Village Green in Chalkwell Park, near Southend on Sea. Here’s what we…
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Breaking News: It Will Be Sunny on Saturday. The Village Green Music Festival Awaits!
Ah, the British summer. As elusive as a politician’s answer. In days of yore, at the slightest sniff of a sunny weekend, the Great British Public would, in a futile attempt to keep the kids quiet for five minutes, hop into their cars and happily spend four hours in a traffic jam, overloaded with bucket,…
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Brian Wilson Brings Pet Sounds To Southend
It is fifty years since Brian Wilson famously set the young Paul McCartney’s hair on end with the release of Pet Sounds. It was a remarkable, almost impossible achievement – the musical equivalent of you or me writing a maths equation that might get Professor Stephen Hawkins to up his game. A sequence of music…
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How Asylums and South Record Shop Are Making Southend Rock
On a day when that august (and indeed August) celebration of the best albums of the year, the Mercury Prize nominations list, was released, a small part of Southend-on-Sea was showing what a bit of DIY spirit and grit and determination can do. At the start of 2014 Richard and Stephen Onslow decided to open up…
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Operation: Mindcrime – live at Chinnerys, Southend on Sea
The best concept album ever? There’s no contest. *plays the theme tune to Hong Kong Phooey* Is it “The Wall”? No. is it “Tommy”? No. Is it “Operation: Mindcrime” by the mild mannered Queensryche? “….Could be…” I realise that anyone reading this who is unfamiliar with a) Operation Mindcrime b) Queensryche or c) Eighties…
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Here Comes Johnny Marr – With A Lust For Life, Live at Southend – Review
It has been quite a year so far for Johnny Marr. Just as he was getting over racking up a half century of birthdays, in April Marr found himself in a New York post office performing his new soundtrack to The Amazing Spider-Man 2 alongside Alicia Keys and Pharrell Williams. It was a surreal contrast…
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See Beth Orton, The Hosts and Scroobius Pip for £10 At Essex Festival The Village Green
As summer approaches, thoughts turn to the summer season. Whilst for the landed gentry this means the quiet civility of Ascot, Henley and The Hurlingham Club, for the rest of us it can only mean the sheer joy of mud, rain, noise, plastic cups filled with various unidentified warm bodily fluids, chemical toilets and the…
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Alison Moyet – Live At Southend Cliff’s Pavillion
It was something of a homecoming for Alison Moyet last night as the Billericay-born and Basildon-schooled vocalist played nearby Southend to promote her 2013 album The Minutes. The last time I saw Moyet she briefly joined another Essex dweller Wilko Johnson and his band onstage for a joyous encore at the latter’s “farewell” concerts. This…
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Elvis Costello and The Imposters – Live at Southend
What a show! Go-Go dancers, angry anti-establishment songs and a ton of energy coming from the stage. No, it’s not The Beastie Boys‘ first tour again, it’s…Elvis Costello and The Imposters. Believe it: Elvis Costello brought his Spectacular Spinning Songbook tour to Southend last night, and rattled off a hugely entertaining and enjoyable – positively…
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Jake Bugg Live!
With a number one debut album to his name, Jake Bugg‘s success has been quite something to behold, especially as it has come at a time in his life when a boy of his age should be outside kicking a ball around: he’s still only nineteen years old. His Dylan-and-Simon-and-Garfunkel-tinged debut album earned him plaudits and support…
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More Pictures of The Horrors and The Black Belles
Following my earlier Horrors post, here are a couple more photos of Wednesday night’s gig at Chinnerys in Southend, including a couple of support band The Black Belles. The Black Belles are signed to Jack White‘s label Third Man Records and this is their first UK tour. They play The Barfly in Camden tonight and…
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The Horrors! The Horrors! Southend’s Chinnerys shakes to secret JD Roots homecoming gig by The Horrors.
Seeing The Horrors play live at their home town of Southend was a special moment. Chris Martin’s campaign against tinnitus had a setback last night as Southend on Sea got to welcome home The Horrors at a special gig at tiny local venue / sweat pit Chinnerys prior to the band’s UK tour later this…
Every record tells a story 