Advantages: The broadness of the music kept my interest throughout, they enjoyed being there! Disadvantages: None for me.
As much as people like to mock my part of London, it does have some good points, and one of the diamonds in the rough is The Fairfield Halls.
An eclectic mix of ?artistes? have passed through the corridors of this Concert Hall since it opened in 1962, ranging from Robert Cray to Mott the Hoople. A quick check of their website tells me that both The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Curtis Stigers are also due to perform here in the near future. Okay, so it?s not exactly the O2 arena, or even the Brixton Academy, but it?s not bad.
It was here that I came to see The Soweto GospelChoir recently. My friend had been more keen than I to attend, but I was interested enough to agree to go. I didn?t appreciate, until we saw the concert, that the Choir had such diverse musical scope. They mixed traditional African gospel and hymns ...
Advantages: Opens up a whole world of music listening Disadvantages: Suggestions can be both predictable and wildly off-target. Some data errors
or takes on uneasy Big Brotherish overtones remains to be seen.
In the meantime I shall continue to enjoy the dozens of new acts I've discovered via Audioscrobbler. After all, where else would I ever have learned that there's a Chicago indie band arrestingly named the Scotland Yard GospelChoir?
UPDATE: typically, within a few weeks of me writing this, Audioscrobbler disappeared. It has now been subsumed within the above-mentioned Last.fm. This is merely 'powered by audioscrobbler', although most of the features mentioned above do remain, and in a far more attractive format too.
(In the unlikely event that you want like to see what I've been listening to lately, go to http://www.audioscrobbler.com/user/Bullhassocks). Oh, go on, laugh. ...
When I say that my grandmother's maiden name was Davies, and that she was the last person in the family who had any understanding of the Welsh language, you will probably understand why I love Welsh choral music so much. Well, apart from the fact that Wales is truly the land of song, with the best history of choral music in the entire world., that is!
This CD (produced by EMI and Music for Pleasure) has a wide range of Welsh Male voice Choirs from all over Wales. The competition between the different choirs and indeed the different parts of Wales are fiercely competitive. But the strong, intense rivalry is always friendly. Well, MOST of the time, that is!
The songs on this CD (I am ,of course, listening to it as I write this review!) are all perfectly sung and perfectly accompanied, as the producers have chosen the cream of Welsh ...
