March 13th - Day 329

Early Saturday afternoon at The Union Chapel in Islington. At the piano is Hannah Peel (I've just realised that this was the sixth day in a row featuring piano). Hannah, however, also played another instrument. From a distance it looked like she had a lute resting on her lap. It was in fact a customised music-box. A ream of paper threaded through it as Hannah sang. Kind of experimental folk in an 80's electronica pop base. Really cool.

More about Hannah at myspace.com/hanpeel

March 18th - Day 334

"Who've you come to see?" asked the woman taking money at the bottom of the stairs. "No-one in particular," I told her. She didn't have a section on her piece of paper for that, so started a new one. The Hope and Anchor pub in Islington, for a time in the mid-late 70's a sweaty, smokey hotbed venue of live pub/punk/new wave rock, is still extremely active. Twenty bands a week play here over five nights, each taking their cut of the door money dependant, I guess, on how many punters they pull in. Tonight's first band, Paper Soldiers, a group with a big rock sound from near Cambridge would probably have had more punters had they been playing near Cambridge. The photo below continues yesterday's theme of "photos of a band with some of them behind pillars or stacks of speakers". 

The audience swelled three-fold for the second band, an all female folk-rock outfit called Greymatter, who since 2004 have built up a dedicated following.

wearepapersoldiers.com

greymatter-music.co.uk

April 5th - Day 352

The guy performing is Joe Smee, one of the organisers of today's heaving all day folk music festival upstairs, downstairs and outside of The Old Queen's Head in Islington. Joe was upstairs. I also saw...

...downstairs, these guys, bluegrass psychobilly-esque Pete David and The Payroll Union....

...and also downstairs, in the distance, a bit of gypsy jazz from, I thought, Pete David and the Payroll Union, until I found out that the other guys were Pete David and the Payroll Union (see comment below - thanks Banjo Fett), so now not sure from who...

...and upstairs again, harmonic folky blues from Little Robots ...meanwhile...

...outside, The Dog Roses warmed up.

On the way home, with less than two weeks to go, I finally encountered my first tube buskers. And I'd had sufficient beers to not feel shy about taking a photo...

...and another one of the tube clientele...

And just to round off the day, here's a picture of a band rehearsal underneath platform 3 of Peckham Rye Station. I was standing on platform 2. The last time I stood here watching a band rehearsal (I was also waiting for a train) the train was delayed so I saw about twenty minutes worth. About halfway through, the bloke next to me said, "They've played this one already!" like it was a gig.

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themagpiesnest.co.uk