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