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So as expected Tenacious D weren’t playing Glastonbury, always suspected that Jack Black may have been mistaken, after all it would be smack bang in the middle of the promotion of Kung Fu Panda, unrealistic for him and Rage Cage to strap on an oversized guitar and rock the asses off the Somerset faithful.
I heard rumours of Jables appearance on stage with some band or other, turned out it was Har Mar Superstar. In the end we were in Greece and not lording it up with the Primrose Hill set with Pimms in a field. August will be hard, knowing that the D are rocking up a storm with Metallica supporting them. No way I can do it, none at all, we are definitely going to Shambala.

So the D documentary (I am fully aware of why people come to my blog, it’s the D, I have figures to support this, 80 percent of people that come to my site, hundreds of you, come for the D.) nothing more on it at the moment, Imdb and Amazon don’t have a release date and I couldn’t see anything over at TenaciousJoes, which by the way is the best D website on the web, also check out a fan  messageboard http://z10.invisionfree.com/Tenacious_D_forum/index.php? as they are far more likely to have any news.

So what else has been happening in Pete World, well lets go back to yesterday, I bought my first car! My first car, its a Corsa, it looks lovely, here…

Up to now I have been having 2 hours a week with the driving instructor, but with this me and Lisa will both be on the insurance and the world is my oyster. We dont pick it up until Saturday but its fair to say I am rather excited.

Did I mention that we are going to Greece? We arent going to Glastonbury, we came to our senses, neither of us like it and after all it is a holiday camp for the middle classes, but with far too many people and faux hippys. So we got a refund and decided to spend the week in Kefalonia, away from Jo Whiley bleating over the coverage how special the Glastonbury vibe is man.

Big Brother and as expected we are watching it in the early stages, some very likeable people in it, some horrible people, already want to punch alexandra and Staphanie, but think at this early stage I like Luke and Kat and want either one of them to win. This may change.

We went to a festival this weekend, our first of the summer, Off the tracks festival. In a nutshell, it was barely OK. But let me elaborate on the whole weekend.

Our first time to Off The Tracks, it is as the name implies, just off the tracks of Donington Park race track, its at a campsite next door. The line up is essentially a folk and roots festival, with occasional dance acts that fill into that category, Banco De Gaia and Transglobal Underground.

So anyway we turn up on Friday and we are trying out a new bell tent, we get pitched and upon realising we had not bought some essentials we hightail off site to get them.

Friday night we watch Hayokee, a rock band that have a hurdy gurdy player, lisa likes the hurdy gurdy and the rock band knock out some Zepellin styled tunes, very bombastic, and very polished, they have some electronic wibbling going on in the background and on the whole they are pretty great.

Lisa is knocking back the cider and I am trying my best to make a dent in the wine. They are the only band we see that night its back to the tent for a sleep and to frown disapprovingly at the group of chavs camped near us. At around midnight I am jolted awake by Lisa kindly informing me that she has been sick in her sleeping bag, that will be the cider. We clear that  and off to sleep, again.

Saturday and our sleep is interrupted by a howling wind, planes coming over regularly into East Midlands airport and what appears to be the British Superbikes Championships happening next door, the overall effect of the noise is that it is deafening and it is unrelenting, a massive contributory factor towards this weekend, not being much cop. This will all be sorted out though as Los Albertos are playing and they bring the sunshine, guaranteed. Los Albertos don’t play in the end.

Saturday we watch a little live music, Hazah which are two men and backing tapes, I despise backing tapes. They also appear to have the campest on stage dancer I have ever witnessed, he made John Inman look butch, and they also get on stage a young beatboxer they met in the campsite, Scrags is his name and he makes some farting noises over one of their tracks, they end with ace of spades and lisas frown says it all.

After them is a Bhangra band Achanak, is possibly their name, the programme says that they are possibly the best Bhangra band they have ever seen, Christ, cant wait.

Achanak are without doubt the best band we see all weekend, they were fantastic, they really should be at more festivals this weekend, we loved them and the crowd loved them, absolutely superb. After that we head off back to the tent for a cuppa and a kip.

The next day we get up early and have a shiatsu massage, Lisa is disappointed that it has nothing to do with a small dog and it does nothing for her. I love my festival massage though and Joyce my massager is fantastic.

After that we nip back and try and sleep through the planes, motorbikes and the wind only getting up for 3 Daft Monkeys, they were ace, genuinely great and they bought the sunshine out. Also in the barn stage some young punk band played and lisa was happy for a moment.

Later on was the paperboys and apart from one or two forgettable bands and singers that was it.

We didn’t see many bands, we had 3 daft monkeys camped next to us, the motorbikes made the festival intolerable, and all in all the few pluses, 3DM, Bhangra band outweighed the negatives, really really expensive drinks, 3.60 for a glass of wine, motorbikes and cancellation of the band we bought a ticket for, means that Lisa definitely wont be going back, the jury is still out for me.

A little update from Off The Tracks. We dont like the new tent, the campsite is nice, Hayokee were fairly pleasant to listen to and Lisa threw up, we think, and this isnt a joke, she had a bad pint of cider.

Well the lure of Los Campasinos, Ballboy, Darren Hayman and Town Bike was too much to resist and me and the hobbit are off to Indie Tracks festival in Derbyshire. Town Bike were the clincher, at last some pop punk on this bill, very much in the Helen Love school, which is a great thing in my opinion, couple that with Ballboy, possibly my favourite UK band and that’s the recipe for a fantastic weekend. Darren Hayman is former member of Hefner who releases fantastic records now as a solo artist and as a member of Bluegrass quartet, Hayman Watkins Trout and Lee. If you want to check him out his website is Hefnet.com, sample the new stuff, its very very good and although he does do hefner songs, you got to progress and his new stuff does that.

As for Los Campasinos, Lisa likes them, they have that shouty exuberance she likes and she likes a bit of Town Bike as well.

You don’t have to search to far for my disparaging comments regarding Indie Tracks, the organiser of this is a fantastic man though that had a dream of putting a festival on of music he likes, that is how it should be done and the line up is solid. Should be a good one.

Its been around 10 years since we went to Glastonbury Festival, we said that we would never go back, we are going back.

We registered for tickets, “just in case”, and this morning I thought, OK, lets see if we can get some, and we did get some. I hope I don’t regret it, I really didnt like the place last time we were there, but I am different now, so time will tell.

The NME is reporting the results of a survey I have a feeling that I was one of the people that were surveyed regarding this.

I said sometime back that I would probably never go to Indie Tracks festival again. You wont know as all entries prior to 2008 are now marked Private but this is what I said at the time.

“Thats another festival out of the way, bit different this one difficult to explain how it was different, but essentially camping was at a proper campsite around a half a mile away. The campsite itself was lovely, Golden Valley near Ripley, certainly would recommend it to people who like camping, very friendly and good facilities, set in beautiful surroundings. The actual festival site was reached via a long narrow country lane which led to the midlands railway centre, hold on I hear you exclaim, a music festival at a railway centre??? Yes and they had steam locomotives that you could go on as part of your entrance fee,
So then, the festival, well I saw a few bands, singers etc and I will be brief here, The felt tips, drummerless sarah records type indie, Pete Green, pretty good and he did an acoustic version of blitzkrieg bop, The Hermit Crabs, very much like camera obscura, the loves, the first good band of the day, excellent, bearsuit, nestled between the happy mondays and badly drawn boy as one of the worst bands I have ever seen, friends of the bride, pretty good stuff, the school, similar to heavenly, pretty good, persil, shouty nonsense but again ok, elctric pop group, appallingly bad, darren hayman, always a pleasure never a chore.
The festival, I would have loved this twenty years ago, and I daresay the same people would have been in attendance twenty years ago. It  as
full of indie snobs that still hanker after a field mice reformation and are stuck in 1987. The audience and the band that were in attendance for bearsuit made me actually leave the venue prior to the orchids coming on. Really really do not want to go back to this, and instead of getting people that are trying their best to impersonate ballboy (the felt tips), camera obscura (the hermit crabs) and belle and sebastian (practically everyone) book the originals.”

Well, they have booked one of the originals for this year, www.indietracks.co.uk is telling me that Ballboy are making a rare journey out of Scotland to play it, also The Wedding Present are playing it too, along with Darren Hayman and if rumours are true Ant Harding is also playing. So what do I do, the festival was nice and really well  organised but the people got on my tits. Will I get to see Ballboy again close to home? I think I will have to go to this.

Jeremy Beadle has died. I quite liked him, I like those kinds of shows, You’ve been framed, Watch out beadles about etc. Let me briefly tell you my Beadle story.In 1992 or 3 I was working at Butlins at Skegness and me, Katie, my friend Adam and his sister were going to Glastonbury festival. We finished work at midnight (this all has nothing to do with what is essentially a non story, but I am setting the scene) and we drove initially up to Lincoln to collect Adams sister, then from there we were going through the night to Glastonbury. So as we are driving, I think it was Adam produces this full sized Jeremy Beadle face mask, fashioned from part of a poster for a circus Beadle was advertising. So armed with said facemask we are on the motorway and much hilarity ensued as we held it up and saw other drivers double take as the head of Jeremy Beadle stared at them, eyeless. I said it was a non story.

Time for me to get all Arkwright, its been a funny old year,  first of all festival wise. I made the move away from Leeds and Reading and if it hadnt have been for Latitude it would have been a break from Mean Fiddler and their ilk. 2008 is shaping up to be more like 2007 but certainly not the major ones that depressed me so much.
It was a really enjoyable year for festivals, the rain hardly effected me and when it should have, it didnt, it never bothered us at all. The festivals we did attend, we met some lovely people who I hope I will see at some point in 2008, they not only made me feel welcomed, but also my wife.
Musically, away from festivals at the start of the year I spoke about a gig hiatus, well we almost stuck to it, we saw Hips like cinderella twice, the cribs once and nofx once, which for us is pretty good going. Outside of gigs, the cribs or the view produced my favourite new albums of the year, the evangenitals and pullover did as well, 4 albums I have played considerably. Best festival performance could be the glitzy baghags at Workhouse or Camera obscura at Latitude, just because they played almost the entirety of their last album.

Favourite festival this year would be workhouse or shambala, the line up for the former, everything else at the latter.

Personally 2007 was a really bad year outside of festivals and music, but its only bad in my world, my dog got ill and cost us a couple of thousand to put right and the small print of the insurance policy meant that we could only claim 250. Lisas mum went into hospital for alcohol related illness, where she remains to this day, and you know a few other things. But in the end, its all ok really.

Found out in November that I could be redundant in the new year, so I am realtively focused these days.

And thats about it, an ok 2007, lots of room for improvement, a few highs, shambala, workhouse, my kid starting uni, pullover recording a new album. A fair few lows, but all in all, a good 2007.

Here’s to 2008, hope you and yours have a good Christmas and a fairly stunning 2008.