Four cough ..

Ok .. Queens of the Stone Age. Dateline 20 November 2013. It was good to see them again. At least, I think I saw them! It was hard to tell through all the cigarette smoke!..

What did you say, Martin? Cigarette smoke? But surely the MEN Arena - or whatever it's called now - is a No-Smoking venue! Well yes it is .. of course! .. but you don't think that's going to stop those crazy, hard-rock, rebel music fans from doing what they want, do you? No chance! Ha ha ha ....

Man, it was disgusting! Sorry to sound like my Dad - again - but the second the lights went down the arena filled with the sound of a zillion Zippos sparking up, and within minutes the place was a fug of spliff smoke and ciggy stink! One clever tw*t even thought it would be fun to smoke whilst sitting on the shoulders of his mate and then flick the butt forward into the audience.

Crazy, hard-rock rebels? Selfish, moronic d*ckheads, I call 'em! Thank God the smoking ban came in 'cos it wasn't so long back that any venue would have been this foul and unhealthy! Perhaps it was good to be reminded what it was like .. back in the stone-age!  

Music, food ..

A great week for music this week with the new Queens of the Stone Age album coming out today, and The Meat Puppets playing in Manchester on Friday night. All that, and the discovery of a cracking band that .. erm, split up thirty years ago! (I'm blushing, I promise!) How the hell did I miss Bad Brains? It's so weird! I mean, I love American hard-core music, and they are so just that, but somehow I've never come across them! Anyway, I'm making up for it now as I've not stopped playing them for the last 48 hours! And what do you mean, you've never heard of The Meat Puppets?

I launched the June installment of Twelve for '13 on Saturday, and was delighted to see that the shots had already been viewed 41 times by 8am this morning. Don't forget that you can see another part of my archive - the exhibition called 'Photography - it's food and drink to me' at Smiths restaurant in Eccles. All the shots have something to do with .. well, food and drink - and, as you can see, I have very cleverly combined eating and music in today's blog shot, a picture from a summer fair in about 1979.

Speaking of Smiths, I posted a print of Morrissey to a girl in New York, and she emailed me this weekend to say she loved the print and was "so proud to own it". Now that is music to my ears...