Just in from Mr Martin Percival...

Today is the Ramones 30th Birthday celebration in LA. They'll be repeating this on Oct 7th in New York City at a 1,200 capacity club called "Spirit" on W.27th St. Blondie and the Strokes are confirmed to play. There'll be a mini "Ramones Museum" that Arturo is doing with lots of his and Johnny's memorabilia on display. Tickets go on sale next week.

Saw Adrienne Young last night at the Fallen Angels Club in Glasgow. Saddled with the albatross of supposedly being tipped to become "the next Gillian Welch", she ambled through a decent enough set with her group, Little Sadie. Fine players all. What concerned me about it was that it bears little resemblance to what GW is doing. These people play mountain music soaked in bluegrass to the point of folkie. There's no dust bowl chic involved as far as I can see. These kinda overblown expressions can really hurt an artist. They need to build and looking at their website they seem to be well organised, although there's a worrying link to the Phish site. Everything is expected to happen overnight now. This is ultimately the undoing of all "next big things". They did a live session on Radio Scotland's Brand New Opry just prior to the gig so I'll reserve any further judgement until I clock that.