I spent the weekend in Melbourne celebrating my birthday with friends. Saw Paul Collins (US Beat) at The Tote on Saturday night and at The Caravan Music Club on Sunday afternoon. Both were great shows (I wouldn't have expected anything different). Had a few chats to Paul on Saturday night and Sunday - really nice guy. He will be coming out to Australia again and is really keen to get down to Phillip Island next trip and check out the wildlife.

Paul Collins has just posted that he will be supporting Chuck Prophet at Cafe Nine in New Haven (I assume on the US east coast?) on May 23rd. If you get the chance check him out - he has written some classic rock / pop songs over the years. The first Beat album is a classic and his latest 'King Of Power Pop' is highly recommended.

One could not really ask for much more - a free Chuck Prophet gig @ the Haight Street Fair June 10th.

Should be a classic San Francisco day!

http://chuckprophet.com/

Watch out for the brown acid!!!

I will, but I hear what they have in mind is breakfeast in bed for 400,000!

Andy - If you see Chuck, tell 'im the guy in Lex who interrogated him about the Scruggs tuner on his low E, says hey. Should be a real innaresting street party...

Will do.

I've been to the Haight Ashbury Street Fair before - including a couple of years ago with the Hookways. As with most things SF, it's quite an experience.

A great day of free music on the street. I've been to several Haight St Fairs.

I wonder who else is playing that day? Nothing is mentioned on the HSF web site.

I've been trying to find out who else is playing but have had no luck. I only know about Chuck Prophet because it's listed on his gig page.

Macabre, this weekend. From Chicago, a band that writes their songs based on serial killers. More interesting is the Macabre Minstrels, same band, doing acoustic versions of childrens songs as well folk sound songs again, based on serial killers.

Christ, you're scary sometimes! Where do you find these bands?
Hey, did you ever make to Schenker?

here ya go Rick
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... BbXZohp94U

and no, never made the Schenker show, I was at another til the daylight hours the nt before.

Too much. I like this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw2Pgypo ... re=related

Merry Hell, a band I've never seen but love their album and loved the band the in their previous incarnation called 'The Tansads', are playing at the Stockport Beer & Cider Festival on Saturday - it's at the football ground so my Stockport based friends should be able to find it.

This is a video of Drunken Serenade, one of the tracks on their debut album. If you like folky-rocky-poppy-punky stuff you might like these
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcEX3dzPqbg&feature=fvwrel

Drunken serendae is a great song. Really liked that one. How did you hear of them?

I first heard of them about 20 years ago when I heard a song called 'Up The Revolution' by 'The Tansads' on a late night radio show - it was punky-folk song with rough gravelly singing - it sounded decent so I went to see the band a few weeks later in Leeds. The band came on and had a female singer with a great voice but it wasn't the gravelly punk voice I expected. A couple of songs in to the set I realised they had 2 singers, one who could sing and one who couldn't really sing but had the right attitude. Turned out to be a great gig and I was them many times over the next 5 or 6 years.

They split up towards the end of the 90's but reformed for 3 gigs in 2010. From these gigs, the 'new' band, Merry Hell was formed as Janet, the original female singer couldn't/didn't want to be in a 'proper' band again and a couple of others couldn't commit to it so the main 3 members (brothers John (guitar), Bob (mandolin) & Andrew (vocals) Kettle) formed the new band.

Both bands have done some great stuff (and the odd not so great stuff) and I loved the Tansads gigs and albums and look forward to getting to see Merry Hell someday soon. They only play small gigs, mainly around Lancashire where they live, but word is spreading about them so hopefully they'll do more gigs over the next year or so.

Links below to the websites if you want to find out a bit more about them

http://www.tansads.com/index.html

http://www.merryhell.co.uk/index.html