Wasting Time
Ale, music and enjoying life.
The Stranglers – Bradford St Georges Hall 2nd March 1990
This is where I check in. My first gig of many. 14 years old. I had no fecking idea what I was getting myself into.
Even then I’d been a Stranglers fan for a few years – They were due to play this in Oct 1989 but they pushed back due to recording issues. Bradford was part of the UK 10 Tour and it was pretty serious. By today’s standards this was a mammoth UK tour which saw bomb scares and mass stage invasions (just fan love really).
It was winter. I had to go with my mother. I was 14. Here’s what I wrote for Robert Endecott’s excellent Peaches book.
Setlist: Shah Shah a Go Go, I Feel Like a Wog, Straighten Out, Shakin’ Like a Leaf, 96 Tears, Someone Like You, Sweet Smell of Success, Always the Sun, Ships That Pass in the Night, Peaches, Where I Live, School Mam, Let’s Celebrate, Tank, Uptown, Was It You?/Down in the Sewer
Although I would see many more gigs in my lifetime this one will always resonate. Not just because it was my first but because a Hugh Cornwell fronted Stranglers was quite simply the best live band in the world.
Savages Leeds Cockpit (upstairs venue) 28th July 2012
Here’s one I posted on the Burning Up Time forums which I stumbled upon – Don’t think Savages had played many gigs at this point and I also don’t think they had any material out.
It’s not very often I’d drag myself along to a gig for a band that I know fewer than 3 songs for (which is not as bad as it sounds as the band have yet to release their first album). But last night I’m glad I did.
Arriving at The Cockpit in Leeds last night me and Lammy (along with most of the staff it would seem) were very confused as to what was going on – The bottom room was rammed with a lot of punters watching 1 of around 5 bands appearing on the 2nd stage in the venue. I knew there was a “venue” upstairs that holds about 150 people max but just assumed the Savages would be in the larger room.
Luckily within about 5 mins we both realised (with the help of one punter showing us his ticket with 5 different bands billed!) we were in the wrong room. A quick stroll upstairs and there we were with around 30 other punters and the smallest stage you’ve probably ever seen. We’d missed the support act but we weren’t too bothered. Watching the venue fill up (probably got to around 100 strong in the end) the Savages made an appearance through the dry ice looking quite intense, and with a touch of 80s goth I guess. They came across very well, the lead singer is quite the performer her voice had a very strong edge to it, the bass sounding very tasty and has touches of early Joy Division kicks of most of the songs and drives them along nicely. The 2 songs I did know “Husbands” (think Patti Smith’s “Horses” but performed by The Slits) and “Flying to Berlin” coming across incredibly well live.
British Sea Power – Louth Town Hall 16th July 2016
British Sea Power again following on from yesterday’s fun.
A wooden owl is passed from the front of the town hall down to the crowd. The crowd graciously receive the owl and it is held aloft and passed down to the back of the town hall. The owl is eventually passed back to the front and it is placed back to it’s original spot. Music is playing.
Two bears are wandering freely throughout the crowd. People stop to pet the bears whilst the music continues to play. Some people from the crowd hoist themselves higher onto a stage and begin cheering and waving.
After the event some of us, including key members of the earlier event, retreat to a nearby drinking establishment and watch ladies dancing and undressing whilst we drink many drinks of ale and wine. Pictures below capture the event.
Azure App Service Deployment Slots
With the Standard App Service service plan upwards you get 5 Deployment slots to play with. These are essentially staging slots that can be used to progress from Dev to Pre-Prod to Live. There’s lots of guidance online about deployment slots but here’s my personal experience and headlines….
1. Add new deployment slot name accordingly (i.e “Pre-Prod” or “UAT”).
2. When prompted select the “Clone” option to clone all existing settings from your Production App Service.
3. You now have a self contained instance of a site with a separate Azure url.
4. Change Application Settings from Production accordingly. Any settings that are only specific to that slot need to be ticked as a “Slot Setting” and changed with the deployment slot setting value.
5. Download the Publish Profile. Should any developers here have the Production publish settings they can now be blown away from any local dev environments. Obviously being a quality developer, you won’t have pushed these up to Source Control right!.
6. Fire up VS then Build and Deploy site using new Publish Profile. (This step should be automated – see below).
7. Check your new deployment slot site url and wave at your site.
Your New Route To Live/Production Deployment
Click “Swap” to swap deployment slots from Pre-Prod to Production. You can always switch back should you need to (if you’ve configured correctly and tested!).
One Click Deployment?
The above used in conjunction with a one click deployment script gives you a very quick and simple route to Pre-Prod then an even quicker deployment to Production. App Service deployments now take seconds. In a further blog post I intend to outline how Powershell can be used to interact with Azure’s APIs.
Custom Domains?
As mentioned in point 3 above, each deployment slot is a self contained instance of a site. Therefore, you can assign it a custom domain just as you would with the production site. Once you’ve assign your domain’s CName and confirmed tie the domain up in Azure by navigating to your deployment slot, heading to “Custom Domains and SSL” and enter the custom domain you intend to use (i.e www.uat-mysite.com). There’s no propagation to worry about here and domain should be allocated in seconds.
British Sea Power – Hebden Bridge – 15th June 2016
British Sea Power playing a packed sweaty Hebden Bridge Trades Club we’ve been here before right? It had all the ingredients for a classic gig and it didn’t disappoint.
Darren Hayman
I usually turn up too late for the support band but I made the effort to see Darren Hayman who I’ve caught live a few times before. When we arrive Darren walks past and waves his wristband at my wife thinking she works there as she’s stood near the door waiting for me. Pretty funny. He’s supporting BSP on a few dates promoting his “Thankful Villages” album. Interesting concept, great songs. He ends with the classic “I Know I Fucked Up”.
British Sea Power
It’s always a bold move for a band to try out unreleased new material and BSP tonight are testing out 9 new songs. That’s pretty much half the set.
There’s some interesting working titles for the new songs “Barry The Goldfish” to which Yan declares “this one’s about my goldfish”.
The crowd are very receptive considering the setlist but the new songs all sounding really good. If this is anything to go by then the new album is going to be another classic.
There’s enough classics to keep everyone happy. “Larsen B”, “No Lucifers” and “Mongk” get the crowd moving.
The chaotic “Rock In A” moves us into the encores with “Skua” ending the set.