What's been happening over on my 'drinking blog' lately? Well, quite a lot...
The end of December traditionally sees a HUGE post on my picks of the best and worst from the year's bar and music scene happenings, The Froog Bar Awards (2011). As a prelude to that, I did a couple of my 'Top Five' roundups (slightly overlapping), on the year's most interesting new openings and on the nearly-but-not-quite bars that failed to establish 'Bar of the Year' credentials for themselves.
I have huffily renounced the Blue Frog 'restaurant' and its over-rated burgers, declined to lament the passing of up-itself music bar D-22, mocked the world's worst designed business card, been briefly suckered by one of China's notorious 'Shanzhai' copycat brands, shared yet more of my wisdom on hangovers, and discovered some rather wonderful gift ideas (one of which led me, at the end of the same post, to ask readers to nominate their favourite tippling authors - alas, there has been no response so far).
Thanks to new blog discovery booksandmusicandstuff, I have in the past couple of weeks been getting very nostalgic about my long-lost record collection, and about my musical 'education' in general. I was also inspired to produce a post - likely to be merely the first in a long, ongoing series - on some of my favourite basslines.
Other musical treats have included a couple of 'Christmas songs' from Tom Waits (well, one of them is actually by a cheeky soundalike), a blast of Chicago blues guitarist Jnr Boy Jones (who played the gig of the year in Beijing just before Christmas), some Johnny Cash (on the 44th anniversary of his celebrated Folsom Prison concerts), and just yesterday a tribute to the wonderful Janis Joplin (it would have been her 69th birthday).
You see why it's worth taking regular trips over to the 'dark side'? There's lots of good stuff over there.
No comments:
Post a Comment