Carefully Planned (+ an exciting competition!)

Carefully Planned, a festival across six different venues in Manchester, is usually flipping brilliant. But this year the lineup is even better than usual! We're so excited about it that we thought we'd better write something about the five bands/artists we're most looking forward to seeing this weekend. Here they are, in no particular order:

Mat Riviere
Obvs! We've already told you how great his most recent 10" is, so it's almost inevitable that we'd be really jazzed about seeing him at Carefully Planned. That's not all, though: he's playing at Bakerie wine store, the fancy bread (and wine) place next to the fancy pie place. Jackpot! I'm going to be stuffing my face with still-warm focaccia while he does his thing.
(Saturday @ Bakerie)

ONSIND
Either we really like bread (and wine) or Bakerie is just the place to be on Saturday. Actually, it's both. But straight after Mat Riviere's done, you can stick around and see ONSIND. Acoustic pop punk from Durham, featuring people from Martha.
(Saturday @ Bakerie)

Well Weezer
It's Well Wisher doing Weezer covers, obviously. And it's in the swanky new room upstairs at the newly refurbished Gullivers. Can't blumming wait!
(Saturday @ Gullivers)

Good Grief
Excellent noisy pop fun from Liverpool. I have never seen them irl before but am pretty sure it'll be ace.
(Sunday @ Gullivers)

Johnny Foreigner
Unlike Good Grief, I have seen Johnny Foreigner lots of times, although I think the last time was probably about three years ago. Dead frenetic pop-punk that will be a joy to get re-acquainted with.Yeah!!!
(Sunday @ Soup Kitchen)

There's loads of other super duper bands (Honourable mention to It Hugs Back who did one of my favourite songs ever) playing over the weekend, too. You can get all the information from the Carefully Planned website and there are still a few tickets left (You can get them from the website 'n all).

Competition time!
Would you and someone you know/love like to go to the festival this weekend? Well, have we got a prize for you. £12.50's worth of prime festival admission (more on the door) for the whole weekend for you and A.N Other. All you have to do is Tweet something like: "I would like to enter the @_YoungExplorer competition to win tickets for @ACPFestival, please!". Or comment on this post with a way for us to contact you if you win. The winner will be announced on Thursday! Good luck everyone!

Haiku Salut and Sausage Gloves

Some people who read this blog mighn't even know that it's the online face of the Young Explorer zine (Buy here or here), which we aim to "publish" every 3-4 months or so. We've made three issues so far and we're currently in the final stages of preparing a fourth one, which is going to be about "the past".

The second issue, with the theme "collecting", is pretty much sold out now. I think we have one spare copy knocking about if you're quick. It had some good stuff in it! Phil Elverum talking about his book collection and swearing (once) and some nice illustrations and the world famous Haiku Salut talking about collecting gloves.

As we no longer have (m)any copies of the second issue to flog, we thought we'd post up the Haiku Salut bit so you can all see what you missed out on.Bits in []s are where we've changed the print article slightly so that it makes sense/reflects the fact that time has passed since the thing was written. Here it is! (Under the line!)

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Haiku Salut are a Matlock based trio who make vaguely French sounding instrumental pop songs. Their wonderful debut EP 'How We Got Along After the Yarn Bomb' was released on 3" CD by Team Strikeforce last year and their first ever full length album 'Tricolore' [was released a few months ago and is a thing of beauty.]

They're well worth seeing live, too. The entire performance seems to be on the edge of catastrophe much of the time, which makes it even more exciting. I'm sure there's never any danger of anything actually going wrong, but there's so much instrument swapping and general excitement that their music seems almost unbelievable. Keep an eye on their website and go and see them if you can!

Anyway, as the theme of this issue of Young Explorer is about collecting, we asked them if they had any collections that they'd like to talk about. A couple of weeks later I received this in our email inbox.

A short tale of Haiku Salut and their journey of collecting things, or lack of, accordingly

We had initial reservations about writing a piece about a subject we felt little kinship with. Yeah, we have a collection of books - the Murakami books, the books that smell of old people and Sophie's selection of philosophical books about Mars, robots and time travel. We also have a small band collection of vinyl, The Beach Boys, Shirley Bassey, The Shins. There is also Louise's minor gaggle of bumbags and the extensive gallery of pictures of our dog in woolly jumpers[*please see below for picture of amazing dog], sunglasses and/or goggles. 

But... something wasn't quite right. It felt contrived. Worthless. These small collections wouldn't really tell a story about us. They would pale into insignificance beside other collections of it's kind. It was then that Gemma remembered the triumphant age of the sausage glove years and everything fell in to place. 

The story begins early spring, or late autumn of any year you'd care to choose. On the way home from the pub Sophie noticed a lone abandoned sausage glove (A workmans' glove with sausage sized fingers). This sparked a discussion regarding the absent owner's possible loves, fears and hopes. We passed the sausage glove by and wandered on home. 

It was then we started noticing sausage gloves everywhere, the clock was always 11:11. Soon the sausage gloves began to come home with us. Eventually the collection was getting slightly overwhelming and laws were passed to curb its growth. If two sausage gloves were found within ten feet of one another they would be considered a pair with the potential of being found by their previous owner and were not to be touched. We agreed that enough was enough when Louise brought a sausage glove back from Japan. The ultimate sausage glove.