Subject: [manchesterfreecycle] WANTED: CAROL VORDERMAN: M5

I know this is a really bizarre request and will probably tax Freecycle to its limit but….

Does anyone have a Life Sized Cardboard Ex Shop Display Picture of Carol Vorderman, or something similar, going spare? Or even someone who looks like Carol Vorderman but must be wearing clothes!

Its for some work related challenge for a relative and at some point funds raised, if any, will go to some charities. So any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

I am happy to travel anywhere within about 50 miles from Manchester so it does give some scope and hopefully increases the chance of success.

Let the fun begin!

I’ll keep you up-to-date with with the poster’s progress…

Where else can you find an upright piano, an old iMac, wings, even the proverbial kitchen sink in your locality? About 50 such items are ‘offered’ each day, and the majority are taken within 24 hours.

All you need to do is pay attention, reply quickly and arrange to collect the items. Oh, and stick to your word – no one likes someone who asks for something they don’t actually want. The community, thankfully, is fully moderated.

I’ve recommended Freecycle Manchester to a few friends and everyone who has subsequently joined has raved about it the following week. If you have access to email at least daily, try it out.

And don’t forget: if you’re about to scrap something of possible value, Freecycle it instead.

One of just three UK music festivals I give serious consideration to attending each year, I took the plunge and went to All Tomorrow’s Parties a couple of weekends ago.

My system of going every other year (because the ones in-between are always rubbish) worked once again.

I ended up seeing Broken Social Scene, The Lilys, Mt Eerie/The Microphones, Teenage Fanclub, Sleater Kinney, Joanna Newsom, Radar Bros, Black Heart Procession, The Shins, New Pornographers, Destroyer, Clinic and Electrelane, among others.

The biggest surprise of the weekend, however, was that Japanese noise quartet The Boredoms weren’t the music-less waste of space I expected them to be. Quite the opposite: I was hooked from the first minute of their set.

Any band with 75% of their members simultaneously playing drums were always going to be a totally different experience live, but after hearing just the odd track, their performance’s energy still came as a great surprise.

If you don’t believe me, here are a couple of clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV8qO6OE3SA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=457nNdODQx0

A few days after coming back, my long-term patience with Manchester’s Freecycle community paid off when someone delivered a box of The Wire magazine back-issues right to my door.

The first one I picked up has an interview with The Boredoms from September 2002. It talks about the band’s early days and some of Yamataka Eye’s more erratic performances:

“Another time, Eye took an electric saw to a dead cat which he had found in an alley just before going onstage.

“The live reviews read more like despatches from a war zone: ‘Ten minutes after the show begins, the room is full of broken glass,’ describes the shaken reviewer.

“‘The fence set up to protect the audience was the first thing to be destroyed, and they are throwing pieces of the fence around. The audience are huddled like refugees in the corners of the hall. A broken pipe spewed water into the room. A gas burner was flaming. So much metal and glass and concrete was being thrown against the walls that I got cut just watching. The fire extinguishers were smashed. There was no applause, or indeed any sound from the audience. The fire alarm went off. The room was getting too smoky to see. There were little bits of dead, dry meat stuck to the walls and ceiling from the animal cutting.’”

Though Eye has thankfully calmed in recent years (this account was from way back in the late 80s/early 90s) The Boredoms are a band I’m now very keen to put on in Manchester. Watch this space.