commafruit.co.uk. welcome.

Schmap^w have seen fit to include a photo I took in the summer of St. Charles station in their latest online travel guide. Neat! No compensation, but credit is given, and a link back to the original on Flickr. Check out the guide, or see the original.

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Gig last Sunday at Manchester Academy.

Sonic Boom Six opened promptly with an energetic set. I wasn’t familiar with their music before, but being a local band they received plenty of good feedback from the crowd. Taking elements from punk/ska, but also in places rapping like House of Pain or a far-more-aggressive Massive Attack. Definitely to be checked out.

Next, Streetlight Manifesto provided some high-quality (if slightly generic) ska/punk. I got the impression afterwards that these were expected to deliver more (they’d been hyped up to me no end), but they just struck me as a competent ska outfit.

Finally, Reel Big Fish took the stage. Opening with Sell Out, the crowd were immediately responsive, though the band came off as incredibly tame to begin with, especially compared to SB6. Later, SB6’s lead (female) vocalist Laila Khan returned to sing on She Has A Girlfriend Now, much to everyone’s delight.

I’ve been waiting a long time to see RBF live, and they didn’t disappoint. For the second time in a week, I was also reminded of what a great punk crowd there is in Manchester - the previous week’s Bomb Ibiza was also a great success.

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Audio from George Galloway’s speech this afternoon at Luther King House in Manchester.
Some elements are taken from from his confrontation with the US senate in 2005 (video is well worth watching, despite it’s length - Galloway is unshaken and resolute throughout).

MP3 audio (40kbps, 11.1MB download) / Ogg Vorbis (32kbps, 5.5MB download)
Note that quality is similar in both files, go with Ogg Vorbis if you can to save on bandwidth.

Apologies for the poor audio quality, the recording was made on my mobile phone, which saves to the AMR format. I cleaned it up (or tried to) using Audacity.

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Just got back from this - not a bad turn-out, maybe 100 people. Police were actually pretty pleasant from what I could tell, got a little aggressive about use being on public property at the start but nothing remarkable.
We basically stood and chanted for about an hour, then left, nothing eventful since she’d apparently been in the hotel the whole day.

The only thing that riled me was that there were nearly as many people from the Manchester SU (who I went with) as there were from Liverpool! I realise the populations are different, but if Manchester can transport that many, where were the Liverpudlians?

Once the police had pushed us off the Liner Hotel’s property.

Placards and horses.

The placards were supplied by the SWP. The one on the right reads “get your rosaries off my ovaries” - great slogan.

Sorry the pictures are so blurry - not much light and being in the middle of a crowd makes it hard to frame a shot properly.

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