a wee bit of sanity over greed.
 a heartening thing to behold

Lucky indeed, David.  

I regret having missed those oportunities (although I did see Alex back in the '80s before the reboot).  

Honestly, while I liked Big Star from the first listen, I've grown evermore fond of them as time has passed. Nostalgia for being 13 out in the streets certainly plays a part, but its also for the Replacements, REM, Let's Active and the whole used record store culture that served it all. And once "I got" Third, there was turning back.

I just happened to have been listening to the Thank You, Friends tribute show, and on a whimsy, did a search on the web and found these shows!  Hearing Ira sing Take Care might have trigger the whole process towards my devotion.

That'll be fun.  I was lucky enough to see Big Star - basically Alex and Jodie plus The Posies at the Mean Fiddler in London in 2001.  And, despite being one of the most scarily overfull gigs I've ever been to, it was brilliant.

Happy feet!!!!

A discussion yesterday evening about ways to dissuade biting insects included liberal consumption of either Marmite or raki...

A combination made in heaven for The Toast?!

The legendary Sly Stone, 82.

Jules

John and his sons play together as a ceilidh band called Kirkophany (not sure if that's the correct spelling)

I saw John Kirkpatrick at Towersey a couple of years back. I think he sometimes performs with Benji and other members of his family. I was trying to remember if Benji joined him at the festival as he was playing with Seth Lakeman but checking my gigs list, Seth played there last year.

At the Flook gig Brian mentioned a project Sarah had taken part in with Phil Cunningham and the opening track on Sanju titled The Farther Shore, she co-wrote with Phil. It's about those from SW Scotland and Northern Ireland who travelled across "the Narrow Sea" between the two countries to seek work. If you're interested, the resulting performance was filmed and is on iPlayer.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m0013xtc/the-narrow-sea-the-farther-shore-with-phil-cunningham

Interesting, I was playing Ancora on the way to/from seeing John Kirkpatrick last night.  I know Flook played at Cropredy one year, but I have no memory of it, and only discovered them some years later.

JK was great - it was in a small narrow room, seating only about 50 people, and I can imagine that in some ways was probably like the experience of some of the early folk clubs in the 60s (with probably some of the same people in the audience too  ).  He must be the same sort of age as Ashley H and Martin Carthy, but shows no signs of age slowing him down - his voice is as strong as ever, as is his mastery of the various squeezy boxes.  We got a good mixture of tunes and songs - original and traditional, as well as some surprising choices, finishing up with Leiber & Stoller's I’ve Got Them Feelin’ Too Good Today Blues from an obscure Peggy Lee album (blues singer complains because life is going too well for them!).