First of all, a huge and heartfelt thank you to everyone who’s had a listen to or downloaded my releases from Bandcamp. I’ve had a lot of positive feedback about these collections of tunes. There will be more of them to follow throughout the year. Check out what I’ve done so far at http://andylewisuk.bandcamp.com/.

Secondly, there’s been a lot of love shown towards the remix I did of “Carry On” by Lisa Stansfield. It’s available on a limited-edition 7″ right now from Soul Brother, Soulstacks and a variety of other places on the Web. But hurry!

Thirdly, I’ll be DJing at The Boom Boom Room in Bideford, Devon on Saturday May 3rd. Info HERE . It’ll be something of a Locomotion reunion in the sense that I’ll be sharing DJing duties with Wendy May for the first time in ages. Also guesting will be Tom Crawford from those splendid scenes in Worthing that I’ve been lucky enough to take part in recently. On Sunday May 4th, I’ll be a guest DJ at the Stockholm Soul Party at Brixton’s Jamm club. Info from HERE and also HERE.

Fourthly, I’m sure you’re all by now aware that Paul Weller’s releasing “Modern Classics Volume 2” in a couple of months. What you might not have noticed is that if you pre-order the album from his website, you get put into a draw to win tickets to some very intimate London shows. You should investigate this link for further details. Also, if you haven’t seen it already, the video to “Brand New Toy” can be viewed in all it’s glory here. I’d no idea that you could have so much fun with a giant Toblerone made out of mirrors.

Finally for now, a bit more on the whole Britpop thing. I’m pretty sure that the journalists currently enjoying themselves finding ever more creative ways to express their displeasure at the events of twenty years ago are doing this less from the point of view of historical accuracy and more from the point of view of having had twenty years to get their stories straight. I broadly agree with them that our current troubled pop culture world is a desperate and benighted place. I can’t agree that it’s all the fault of people who chose The Bluetones over Orlando. The trouble with being a futurist is that sometimes the future arrives, and it’s not what you personally hoped for. Thus it was at the end of the Eighties. Lest we forget that some publications were excitedly anticipating a Nineties brimming with New Age mysticism. While not everything about what became known as Britpop was brilliant, it was at any rate better than that.