Blackfoot Circle

Going back to ten years ago I remember working with lead singer Jake in Fareham. He introduced me to his band the Elements, they had a strong and loyal following within Fareham and Gosport. Since those days there are a few new faces and they go by the name of Blackfoot Circle.

Fresh off the back of winning Hard Rock Cafe’s UK Battle of The Bands competition, where they received glowing reviews from judges James Curran (Absolute Radio), Jemma Downey (Live Nation) and James Walsh (Starsailor), The band’s belief and reputation is growing fast. This and their recent appearance at Bestival being covered by ITV’s Meridian News has created a real buzz in and around their local area.

The band are starting to gain a strong following in London and have gigs there on the 2nd and 9th Feb. You can see the band playing around Hampshire on…
Fri 27 Jan @ 147 Club, Gosport
Sat 18 Feb @ The Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth
Sat 24 March @ Unit, Southampton (supporting Sound Of Guns)

The band love their social networking and you can keep up to date with them via their YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Soundcloud pages. To sign up to their mailing list click here.

If you like the video below you can buy four tracks on iTunes.

(L-R) Barrie Hardman (Guitar), Jake Bezzina (Vocals), Jack Greenfield (Drums), Grant Melin (Bass) and James Hill (Guitar)

Have Fun Over There

This week and this weekend in particular sees our unique and much loved hovercraft hit one of it’s most busiest times shuttling Bestivalites from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight and back again. Photographer Stephen Forster took a bunch of photos of some of the travellers and sent them over.

Have an amazing weekend everyone!

Bestival – Strong Island Meeting Point

Pretty standard since they moved the stage from Bollywood is the pylon at the top of the incline in front of the Main Stage. I’ll sticker it up as always. Maybe see you there. No time for any special words. Involved. Click ‘em for bigger.

Don’t forget to visit Handsome Dave Rocker who’s DJing at the Red Bull tent at midnight on Friday and represent in your various Southsea and Strong Island tees. Hopefully I’ll remember as well and get a photo.

Southsea Represent at Bestival

Everyone going to Bestival this weekend, we have a request from Handsome Dave Rocker to pass on to you, Dave is DJing the Red Bull tent at midnight on Friday and would like everyone to represent Southsea with either a MF Southsea, Canoe Lakes, Bronx or Strong Island tee. Would be amazing to see a sea of Southsea representing hard. Would love to see a photo of this too!

Have a good one.

Bjork to Headline Bestival

Word dropped today that Bjork will headline the final evening of this year’s Bestival. The new album Biophilia is set to drop in September too so expect some new work in the set too. Very jealous of everyone going!

Hear her new song ‘Crystalline’ below:

Bestival is just round the corner, literally.

Okay, so it’s not this island, but for 3 days of the year a huge amount of Strong Islanders head over to the Isle of Wight for Rob Da Banks Bestival extravaganza. For the past 6 years the Southsea contingency has gone from strength to strength, and this year is no exception. Dozens of us will be taking to the ferrys next Friday to get well and truly involved.

Local mad cats Brendon & Morgan will be closing the Bestival up nicely in The Cabaret Tent at 1.30am playing a Silent Disco alongside New Young Pony Club. If you’ve got any strength left get yourself down there and finish up nicely with some local reppin’. Also to boot Krywolf are playing. I don’t have the full details on that, but check it once you get your timetable and make sure to head over.

Rob Da Bank posted a little clip the other day showing the lay of the land over at Robin Hill. The Main Stage has moved again, and the old Bollywood set up has returned. The Rizla Arena has now gone, but is made up for with the extended Arcadia Presents where the original Main Stage used to be. There are also some brand new fields and areas that are typically Bestival. Can’t wait. check the video out HERE.

Photo : Hellomatt

Howard Jones at Bestival? Yep.

One of the more surprising names on the latest line up announcement for the annual hoe down that is Bestival on the Isle of Wight, which includes The Prodigy, Dizzee Rascal, LCD Soundsystem and The Flaming Lips is the long forgotten synth pop man Howard Jones. Jones had a string of hits in the 1980’s including New Song, What Is Love, Things Can Only Get Better, Life in One Day and Hide and Seek and then faded away to obscurity. But following a four year campaign on the official Bestival website forum, Bestival head-honcho and curator Rob da Bank has wilted under the pressure and finally agreed to book the keyboard wizard to play the festival.

The leader of this campaign is one Robin Seamer, writer of one of Portsmouth’s most prolific music blogs – Breaking More Waves. But why Howard Jones? Looking at his blog Robins own tastes seem to be far more modern – the campaign for a long forgotten pop star seems somewhat at odds with his blog, which was named as one of the Tastemakers of 2010 in the annual BBC Sound Of 2010 poll. “It all started as a bit of a joke really,” Robin explains. “Then it just escalated, and before I knew it I was obsessing about getting Howard booked for Bestival. Part of the appeal is that he has never been seen as a hip or cool artist, yet Bestival always attracts such an eclectic and cool mix of bands and punters I thought it would be funny to campaign for a man who once sang the words ‘I don’t want to be hip or cool’, in one of his biggest hits.”

The campaign has now paid off, and Bestival regulars are delighted. “I finally got to meet Rob da Bank in London a few weeks ago and when he confirmed to me that Howard had been booked to play Bestival. I almost kissed him,” he laughs. “It’s going to be a right old party when Howard takes to the stage,” says Robin. If you want to join the party, get your tickets now before Bestival sells out.

Bestival Lost Children…

Some people say I take this all to seriously, and they’re probably right. This year as they’ve moved the site around and in doing so changed a lot of the regular Southsea meeting points I’ve made up some big Strong Island stickers. Just for fun of course.

Keep you eyes peeled and you might see people gathered you didn’t even know were going. But mainly it’s for us to meet up at random times to head off into the unknown. See you all really soon.

Bestival 2005

Most of you know I’m a bit of a self proclaimed tour operator for both the Isle of Wight and Bestival, enlightening many in the ways of Rob Da Banks execution of no doubt the best festival there is. See, here I go already. You can leave all your Radio and Corporate festivals behind. Just don’t even bother, unless you like Radio 1 and listen to the charts.

Many of you are gearing up already and some are even lucky enough to be going over Thursday to set up early camp. For any of you that went all those years ago I found the original map on my computer from 2005. It was Röyksopp, Soulwax & 2 Many DJs, I remember that much…

Any long lost memories from 2005 out there?

Limited Bestival Tickets Available

Don’t sleep on this if you missed out last time. Get your tickets HERE and I’ll see you all there when we get back from our travels.

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PRIMARY – Extended & Improved

We have some great news about our PRIMARY phonography exhibition (find out all the details here) that we can now announce:

- The deadline for submissions has now been extended to Sunday 4th March. We have had some incredible submissions but want to set aside more time to make the exhibition something really special.

- The competition is now open to up to 10 submissions from each individual. With the ability to capture many photos on your phone over the next two months we we want you to not feel restricted to just three. The same rules apply about the photos conforming to compositions using the primary colours though. If you have already submitted feel free to send more photos over as and when you please.

- The exhibition will be hosted by Albert Road’s own Bonzo Studio who are also partnering up with us in the creation of the exhibition space. More news on this soon!

- Finally, we will be running a competition as part of the exhibition where the best three photos submitted will win some incredible prizes. We will be announcing the prizes available very soon but got to say, these will be the best prize haul we have ever offered.

- We will be putting together a poster for the exhibition that will be on sale on the opening night. The poster will feature some of the best submissions and all profits from the sales will go to a local charity (details to follow soon). Due to this we need to say that any photos submitted to PRIMARY will involve you giving us permission to use them for commercial purposes, if you do not want your photo used in this way simply let us know via email.

Well, that is it for now! We really hope to drum up as much coverage locally for PRIMARY in the next couple of months so if you could Facebook/Tweet/+1 about the exhibition we would really appreciate it. We would love this exhibition to be a real reflection of the whole population of Portsmouth with everyone taking part and feeling involved.

It’s going to be a Strong Movember – Closed at £725

Righto chaps, it’s time to clean shave your boat race and get that mighty moustache on the grow in support of Movember for The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. For 30 days of November you can help support and raise awareness through selflessly parading your top lip for charity.

You can sign up yourself, as I’m sure many of you already have, or you can join the Strong Island team and seek out sponsorship as a team. Through the Strong Island Movember page you can ask people to join the group, make donations, upload photos and post updates via the MoSpace page, Facebook and Twitter.

Head over to www.mobro.co/StrongIsland if you would like to get involved and grow a Strong Moustache to help raise awareness, or simply head over to www.uk.movember.com and sign up to personally raise money.

The funds raised in the UK support the number one and two male specific cancers – prostate and testicular cancer. The funds raised are directed to programmes run directly by Movember and our men’s health partners, The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. Together, these channels work together to ensure that Movember funds are supporting a broad range of innovative, world-class programmes in line with our strategic goals in the areas of awareness and education, survivorship and research.

Poster: Tristan Savage