Live

Tommy Omega - Lymeswold Empire
Born in the year 3346, Tommy Omega regularly travels back to our time to delight audiences with his bittersweet brand of acoustic confessional songwriting. Although many of his reference points are lost on the audience (what's a 'frippleblisset', for instance? No walk with one's lover is complete without one in the 34th century, it seems) his personal charm and weirdly overdeveloped cranium and forearms kept the crowd happy throughout the entire set. "I read a review of this gig on Windypops before I came here tonight," he tells us. "It seemed pretty positive except for that crack about my cranium."

Phil Stanley - Wembley Stadium
Van driver and ex-Night Shadows front man Phil “Stan The Man” Stanley played a one-off concert to a packed crowd at Wembley Stadium last night. With a brand new backing band – made up from members of Peterborough’s most popular covers act The Mysteries – Phil wowed the crowd with workmanlike renditions of Born To Be Wild, All Right Now and Jumping Jack Flash. However, the best was yet to come, and the second half of the show saw Phil bring out the big guns. Not only did he treat us to such upliftingly average classics as Mustang Sally, Proud Mary and Sunny Afternoon, he also surprised everyone by performing 20th Century Boy, I Saw Her Standing There and a truly inspirational rendition of Sweet Home Alabama.

Only one grumble, though. Why no House Of The Rising Sun?

10/10! Come back soon, Phil!

HAVEN - Castlerigg Stone Circle, Keswick
One of Europe's oldest stone circles (dating back to approximately 3200 BC) Castlerigg in Keswick, Cumbria provides not just an awe-inspiring venue for this performance by conceptual maverick HAVEN, but the actual musical instrument too. HAVEN has lashed up the entire circle of stones with an elastic-like substance of his own devising called Boinginium, turning Castlerigg into an immense stringed instrument. Using a two-foot-long whale-bristle bow, he produces a sound deep and mournful that seems to resonate from the very Neolithic era itself. Several of the notes he produced were so low as to cause certain audience members to lose control of their bowels, but the whole evening was so beautiful that no-one seemed to mind.