Cutting Edge

So I'm only about 20 years behind the times... I've just started a blog. I think this XKCD captures my attitude nicely:

For ages I've wanted a place to publish things that other people might conceivably want to read, but some annoying mix of perfectionism, poor organisation and inertia has meant I never did it. Well, here it is. I might well migrate the content somewhere else eventually, once I get my ideal setup sorted. But as the saying goes: "the best is the enemy of the good".

Andrew.

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Whit Friday brass band contests: an explainer

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[UPDATE: next Whit Friday date added: 13th June 2025] While I've been finishing off my reviews of the Eurovision 2024 Grand Final acts, it occurred to me that the *other* competitive music event that I like to geek out over happens this week, and that perhaps it's worth a few words in this blog. What am I talking about? It's the annual Whit Friday march contests . I'm fascinated by this because it's such a local and specific cultural phenomenon, something genuinely unique, and something I've participated in before as a player, albeit 3 decades ago. If you've never heard of this event (or rather, collection of events) it definitely needs some explaining, and so that's what this post is for. I've adapted some text that I wrote a few years back in order to explain these contests to my choir friends. That means it was originally aimed at a musically knowledgeable audience who aren't familiar with brass bands, but honestly you don't need to be a m...
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Eurovision 2025 song (p)reviews: part 2/7 (Luxembourg, Greece, Slovenia, Belgium, Spain)

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Another batch of countries have decided who and what they are sending to Basel in May 2025! Since I did my last reviews , we've sadly lost one of the more interesting Eurovision countries, as Moldova has dropped out of the contest, meaning we are back down to 37 countries in total. So without further delay, here's my next batch of reviews covering 5 more countries (scoring system explained below*): Luxembourg: Laura Thorn - " La Poupée Monte Le Son " I can't feign a massive dislike over this song: it's not offensively awful: it does try to harness a little nostalgia by using orchestral instruments, and harking back to Luxembourg's previous 1965 winning entry with its title and subject matter. However, I can't award it a single star because the chorus is just so annoying to my ears. The meaningless "na na na"s are obvious, too often repeated and feel trivially tied to the chord sequence (Dm - B ♭ - C - A7) which again is repeated to the point...
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Eurovision 2025 song (p)reviews: part 3/7 (Ireland, Ukraine, Finland, Latvia, Malta, Czechia)

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Last weekend, 5 more countries held national finals to decide who and what they are sending to Eurovision 2025, with 1 further country having premiered the song for their internally-selected artist. So here's my next batch of reviews! (scoring system explained below*): Ireland: Emmy - " Laika Party " ★ I appreciate a song text which is about a specific theme, avoiding the classic Eurovision "Love, Love, Peace, Peace" lyrical nonsense ( thanks again, Malmö 2016! ). Bonus points too if the act can manage to avoid similarly clich é d sentiments in the "I'm strong" / I'm brave" / "I'm gonna do it my way" vein. Ireland have certainly avoided all those clich és in 2025, by choosing a song about Soviet space dog, Laika , who in 1957 became the first earthling to orbit her planet. Instead of a hyperthermic death after orbiting Earth 4 times, Emmy's song imagines Laika is still alive and partying in space - on the one hand, oddba...
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