Danes Scoop Furniture Award

Denmark’s reputation for innovation and quality are secure after KIRCODAN redefined the process of designing and producing a new range of exotic garden furniture  all without ever leaving the office!

   by Alex Pithie

As Europe’s leading producer of teakwood garden furniture you are always under pressure to keep your designs contemporary, modern and functional as well as useful and representing the highest quality in manufacturing too.
        A tall order for any product line producer and even tougher when you are in Denmark and your manufacturing base is in Thailand, where the teak grows! You need the best designer you can find for the new range, and he has to work very closely with the manufacturing end to ensure his designs work and look as good as his blueprints – at the very least.

The Pixies?

We mentioned The Pixies earlier, which got us to asking whatever happened to…? Well they did cave in on an least a couple of occasions but ain’t dead and such an influential band should always be kept in the sights so to speak. Here’s a great biography that will keep you entirely up to date with their discography and where they and their various members and offshoots are today. The Pixies.

Got The Blues?

Exclusive Interview: Mekong Doctor Blues

There are men who live and die by their swords and others who claim to live on their wits. But few are as crazy to attempt survival in this day and age with nothing more than a Fender guitar between them and the devil and the deep blue sea. And The Blues Doctor says his LIVE consultations relieve stress too!

But Bangkok’s Doctor Blues is one who wields his trusty guitar to survive, carving a loyal local fan base while at the same time filling local venues as he delivers some very fine blues music in the process. The Doctor also fronts his band, the very tight and always entertaining MERCY STREET BLUES BAND.

Billy The Mountain Scale The Heights

First Bangkok Band To Break Big On The Net?

           by Rita Fargo                                 

BANGKOK: Drifting to Valhalla, the new Billy The Mountain CD has enjoyed a ‘phenomenal’ reception on the Internet since its release April 1, band manager Tom Gray told FAME magazine. Billy The Mountain are based in Bangkok.

Venezuela Blows In To Town

Sometimes there is no substitute for an early night..especially when your crazy daughter arrives…and the script is yet again re-written!

 

D

oomed as I am to trawl the length of Sukhumvit looking for suitable venues to trash…err…visit, I am thankful I never have to normally consider the trendy puff- and blouse-baths that are the posh and powdered nightclubs of Soi 11 – I mean Q-Bar and the like.

 

But I forgot my quasi-intelligent, darling offspring – the fragrant and blissfully retarded Venezuela – was coming to town on her annual visit to fleece Daddy.

 

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: High Flying DJ

The demands on the high flying DJs who ply the international club circuit, jetting from one part of the world to the next to lay down their critically cool grooves and often their very own ‘tunes’ are many. It’s a world of high-tech decks and fast-developing sound equipment, computerisation, complex mixes as well as mastering the complexities of the studio and broadcast environment.

 

We caught up with Birmingham’s hot spinner DJ Grunge Divot here in town to play Club SloBlo and he graciously agreed to an interview telling us about the life of a DJ…from the inside.

 

STOCKWATCH: Starbucks The Trend?

Not Just Coffee Keeping Starbucks Shareholders Awake

 

I must admit I hardly believed it myself when I wrote a sarcastic piece back in the mid-1990s about the fantastic growth of the Starbucks group. I thought the global expansion was vastly overdone and almost criminally aggressive.

 

Tongs Ya Bass

 

a Scottish poem by Alex Pithie

 

Newport Revisits Hendrix With A Smile

Jim Newport’s latest novel ‘Chasing Jimi’ takes the reader back to the days of Jimi Hendrix’s discovery and recalls the Swinging Sixties better than most…!

 

“It seems like just a lifetime ago since I was sprawled out at my house on Laurell Canyon in California chuckling as my buddy, the affable Geordie rock star Eric Burdon recalled the smallest details of life with Jimi Hendrix – the man at the centre of his often hilarious recollections of the monster mash that was London in the sixties.”

 

“Like the others hanging on every word, I was enthralled. Burdon fascinated his then herbally-aware audience with his ‘I-was-actually-there’ account of just what went on when Jimi hit London, the place where the spell-binding guitarist was brought to launch his career by his new manager ex-Animal Chas Chandler. Eric, as front man of The Animals and best mate of Chas soon became fast friends with Jimi too, and the pair were soon sharing digs, essential remedies and hanging out in the fastest city on the planet that was Planet Rock at the time,” Newport recalls.