Wakey Wakey!

The final vid from the Virtually Alive EP...

Filmed mainly from the top of a 110 bus to Wakey from Leeds (it's all glamour being an international artiste y'know...)  When I say 'top' I clearly mean from the top deck, not from the actual top of the bus...Just so as you know...

It's the 'Sapphire Service' by the way - run by Arriva, the state-owned / nationalised company that are allowed to run (some of) our transport.  Every half hour or so from Leeds to Wakey btw...

Treating you once more...

And here's the 5th video for the 5th song on the Virtually Alive EP for your perusal - Treatwise.  Please feel free to put it abart...

Treatwise on the Tube of You...

Armistice Day...

11th November...quite pleased with this song - which is still free from Bandcamp if you'd like to download it. 

 
https://johnparkes.bandcamp.com/track/the-fields

And yet again...

Blimey, another video - this is for Unicorns - live in the studio as they say - take 4 I believe.  But it is a bit odd seeing a video of me actually playing the actual version that appears on the actual EP - because that doesn't happen very often, actually.

The video for Unicorns

Yes, we have got a video!

And almost before you'd seen the last video 500 times here comes the new one - for 'News' from the new Virtually Alive EP. 

Here's the link...

The new video - 'News' from the Virtually Alive EP

That's me old mate Simon Smith on the sort of looped drums...and me on swinging singing and guitar...

Hope you like it - feel free to send everyone to the John Parkes 61 channel on the Tube of You to watch it and t'others.

And the second video is...out now!

And here's the link to the second song on the Virtually Alive EP - 'The Devil Takes'.  I think this is probably the best one - starring Simon Smith and Alaric Lewis as well as me in various unflattering and disrespectful guises...

'The Devil Takes' video on YouTube

Bookings Fees? - I'm out

Here's a mad idea for you.  If a ticket has a price on it how about there being a way to buy that ticket for that amount?  I think it should be illegal to advertise a price for something that is actually not the price and that you can't actually buy it for.  Call me a crazy muddle-headed fool  but the price to me is the amount you actually pay to get the actual thing.  No ifs, no buts, the price of a ticket should be the amount it says on the ticket.  Totally at odds with modern business practice I know. 

Here's a small example, I turned up to the 02 Academy in Leeds recently.  I took a special trip to the box office.  I didn't even want to pay by card (which incidentally is usually free except in the world of concert tickets) - and there was still a fee of a pound - to print the damned ticket!  The man pressed a button on his computer next to the ticket window and the roll of cardboard blank tickets rolled through the machine - that's a quid then - and the possibility of paying the face value of a ticket gone.

Another example - you used to be able to turn up to the First Direct Arena booking office and not pay a booking fee.  They've now introduced one - to keep them in line with others or some such we-saw-you-coming-you massive-mug nonsense.  It's several quid a ticket.  My back of the fag-packet calculation tells me they're adding a cool 15% and helping themselves to an extra up to about £75,000 for a sell-out concert - and the chance of buying a ticket at what is still euphemistically called (and I quote) 'the full ticket price' an impossibility.  Presumably the poor sod in the booth is getting minimum wage or something close...

So...that's me done.  I'm not going anywhere unless I can buy a ticket for the ticket price.  The rip off set of ****s 

Roll up Roll up etc - New video

The Hoam Maid video for The World's End (from the Virtually Alive EP) is now 'live' / available / watchable etc on YouTube:

The World's End video...

Updates, just updates...

It's all about updates this week at AAZ Records (North) as we change and update stuff on here ready for the release of the Virtually Alive EP.  We've discovered that Blogger isn't perfect at saving font sizes and changing colours and whatnot so you'll find the odd inconsistency on here that we may have spotted and  unsuccessfully tried to fix.  There may of course also be some user error.  At some point we may re-design this whole thing but for now it's got stuff crammed on and it's sort of organised though you may find the odd bit of information in more than one place.

So...we're directing everyone to Bandcamp to buy stuff initially - this is certainly the best way to buy a CD rather than a download.  Hopefully everything will pop up in iTunes etc. soon.  Between you and me the release date is a bit flexible.  It's available quicker in Bandcamp and you get a free bonus track there (though that's download only it's not on the CD) and that money comes fairly directly to those of us who need it to feed hungry studio bills and manufacturing costs etc. though the Orchard do get things around globally which is marvellous of course.  They're our digital distributors, the people (or bots probably) who get things to iTunes and the rest.  

Damn you Helen Lederer

Somehow, wading through the swamp of shite that is  MSN or somewhere I came across a mention of Celebrity Big Brother.  You'd think they'd have a new one of these every year but it seems to be every few weeks.

As ahem, 'regular readers' will know I'm a fan of the contention that the modern definition of a 'celebrity' or celebriddy as I prefer (to honour Smashie and Nicey) is a person that hasn't done anything, isn't famous and no-one has heard of.  So I'm always slightly disappointed when I see a list of who's on 'Celebrity' Big Brother to find out I know who they are.  I feel I'm getting closer and that my definition of celebrity is also getting closer to reality - but still not quite there.

But today I mistakenly clicked on a link to a list of the latest Celebrity Big Brother contestants - and Helen Lederer has come along to spoil it - the one person on CBB who I've heard of.  Damn!  To be fair I had heard the name Derek Acorah though I couldn't have told you what he did - not much by the looks of it, but then that is part of the definition.  And to be fair I recognised that bloke who used to be in Eastenders when I saw the picture, though I didn't know his name.

But if it wasn't for Helen L I could (sort of) have claimed my 100% prize.  It is a bit depressing though.  Apart from her the others are mainly an assortment of teeth, jaws, stubble and suits (the men) and teeth, cleavage, hair and make-up (the women).

Presumably some people know who they are and some of them must have done something or other if nothing productive or interesting - and I expect some of them are good people.  Who have stumbled into a swamp full of shite.  Which is where I came in.

Damn you Helen Lederer...

PS am |I being patronising and sniffy and needlessly dismissive - you're damned right I am! 

The advertising agency, the whole advertising agency and nothing but the advertising agency

KFC.  The chicken they sell in their takeaways is full of claws, combs, beaks and feathers.  I didn't think it was but they tell me it is.  Who does?  The eco-green left?  Anti-capitalist protesters?  Internet click-bait spreaders?  No, KFC themselves.  I saw a poster - It had their logo all over it and everything - and a picture of a 'colonel' as I recall.  The advert said "The chicken, the whole chicken and nothing but the chicken".  They even had a massive picture of a chicken on the poster to illustrate the point.

So...KFC tell me via their ad agency that they use the whole chicken.  They didn't say 'except for some of it', 'except for the nasty bits' or anything.  No they're clear.  It's 100%.  The whole thing.  The whole chicken.  Anyone out there that thinks that the concept of 'a chicken' doesn't include beaks and claws and feathers etc?  Thought not...

Also - it's 'nothing but' the chicken.  So presumably there are no added special secret herbs and spices and battery stuff (battery stuff, see what I did there?!)*

So...KFC tell me that their chicken has got all the inedible bits in as well as the bits I thought might be in included and that it's only the whole chicken.

Their advert told me.  Presumably their advert actually meant something other than what it says.  But I take them at their word.  Actually I don't, but I do wonder yet again how this got past the most junior member of staff saying 'er, hang on a minute, that gives a really shit impression of our product'.
I'm told not to take it literally by people I know but I don't have time for thinking about what on earth KFC thought they were trying to get at only what they actually said.      


*If you did miss it I meant 'battery' as in 'like batter' i.e. the coating on the chicken bits but clearly the word 'battery is associated with battery farming of chickens.  I hope you're grateful to me for going to the trouble to explain this - I could have left you in the dark - the whole dark and nothing but the dark...

A Festival ad and nowt else this post...

Normally my posts are moans about things.  This one is just to say that I'm playing at the Staxtonbury Festival near Scarborough on Saturday (8th July) at 5pm on t'acoustic stage.  And that's not a moan

Btw if you go round to rob my house you will find people in so don't bother.  Ta.

http://www.staxtonbury.com/

Maintaining an election at 65 grand a year plus expenses?

Just a quick question...since the BBC has been telling us all day that from today there are "no MPs but only candidates" until the election presumably they don't get paid until and unless they get elected to the paid job of MP? Just a thought...

No need to run out of toilet paper...

Tescos today.  18 items bought.  Receipt is 80cm long.  Didn't even need a receipt really.  Waste paper.  Planet doomed.  Tescos fault...

Flowers solved! Cognitive dissonance dissolves...

Phew...flower mystery solved!  The answer to the question I posed re International Women's Day turned out to be...(opens correct envelope and pauses for effect for 30 seconds)... 'Polish wife'...

So, yes, it's an old Soviet / Eastern European tradition thing this giving flowers to women on IWD and not some weird commercial warping take over of feminism by Interflora or whoever...For once cognitive dissonance dissolves.

International keep 'er indoors sweet wiv a banch a flaars?

Well, here's a thing.  I came across a bloke taking flowers home for his wife today as it's International Women's Day.  Took me aback a bit.  I did make some sort of joke, though it wasn't quite as neat as what I might have said.  That would have been something along the lines of 'you're not going to bring down the Patriarchy with them mate'.

I've always associated IWD with equality and women's rights and feminism.  When I were a lad the idea of buying a woman flowers was suspect to say the least - trying to buy women off with 'I know you don't have rights and equal pay and whatever but there you go love, here's some pretty flowers to occupy the space in your fluffy little head'.  Something like that anyway.  And it seems to me that flowers in this country have been the traditional attempted get out of jail free card of choice for the male chauvinist - so he does something dreadful but it's all fine again after he presents her with a bunch of flowers from the petrol station in 1970s sitcom style.

Have I missed something?

Suite 6 Phase 2 - Mind the doors please...

I do like a good bit of bureaucracy.  And a meeting of dubious necessity.  Here's a recent (and real) email: 

Dear Tenants

Xxxxx Xxxx will be  holding  a meeting in Suite 6 phase two building at 10.00am  on the 9^th February -  regarding the new front doors phase two

Could you please arrange for one member of staff to attend the meeting – this person can then pass any information on to the other members of staff

Thanks you for your cooperation 

Thanks  

Get there early I guess!  I don't think these doors are like new doors to Westminster Abbey or anything btw (btw stands for 'by the way' btw - someone asked me what it meant by email today.  When I told them they said 'I'd never have got that'! - Just goes to show...)