Festival Previews Video Blog

Every year in the small town of Bellegarde-en-Marche in France a festival takes place that is both fun and intriguing for all involved. This small town has a fascination about goats, and celebrates this festival every November without fail. It is a festival that is completely free to go to and it begins at five o’clock in the evening. The Brotherhood of Goat Eaters Festival is a very happy occasion, and one that you may be interested in checking out if you are going to be in the area in November this year.

Once every year, you will find The Brotherhood of Goat Eaters Festival outside on the streets of Bellegarde-en-Marche, and it is there that new members become inducted to the brotherhood. This brotherhood always welcomes new members, and if you enjoy goat meat and would like to be part of the celebrations, you are definitely invited to become a member as well. The goat fraternity wears costumes as they parade on the streets with great pride. It is a very fun festival and people of all ages head to the streets to watch the parade as it passes through town.

There is a legend associated with this small village that centers on the goat. As the legend goes, the people that lived in this small town used goat horns that had been sharpened in one of their battles against the English. This took place during the Middle Ages. It is for this reason that goat meat is somewhat of a passion for those that live in Bellegarde-en-Marche. The Brotherhood of Goat Eaters Festival is something you really don’t want to miss if you are going to be in the area at the time. Although all the taste of goat meat is sometimes considered an acquired taste, you may find that you actually love it once you try it.

If you go to The Brotherhood of Goat Eaters Festival in November you will be able to partake in a lovely banquet that has goat meat as its main focus. You will be able to party through the streets with your fellow brothers at The Brotherhood of Goat Eaters Festival, and feel a sense of pride in being a member of such a distinguished group. You should definitely mark your calendar for this festival and you will be able to say that you have been there and experienced it.

Having enjoyed the recent BBC documentary on “The Story of the Guitar” I happened upon the immensely talented guitarist and composer, Clive Carroll.  To say he reminds me of a superb “slight-of-hand magician” is not an understatement.  The attached video hopefully shows you my strange turn of phrase, it’s just WOW!  You can see lots more of Clive in action below and after that we’ll speak with Clive to learn more about him…

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1.    What inspired your love of the guitar?

My parents are musicians and my Dad repaired guitars and banjos. There were always instruments lying around the house and I learnt trad tunes from my Dad when I was a kid. I realise now that I used the guitar as a form of escape from the real world and I got to meet lots of other musicians and play gigs from a very early age. It was an addiction.

2.    What’s your new CD about and how long did it take to produce?

The new CD ‘Life in Colour’ is a collection of pieces written in various countries whilst on tour over the past four years. Quite often people write an album much more quickly at a certain place personally so the album has a distinctive feel.  I’ve written like this too in the past but this time there are pieces written whilst on a complete high in Memphis for example, to times when I was feeling very different somewhere else!!

3.    What was the last Festival you performed at and what was it like?It was the Ullapool Guitar Festival in the Highlands this October and for me it’s like coming home. The organisers here gave me my first solo gig in 1999 which I will be eternally grateful for as I have met many great friends there. This year there were lots of really good impromptu sessions too and I played a duo set with Stefan Grossman which was a bit surreal because up ‘til then I’d only heard him on vinyl!

4.    What are your funniest and worst experiences performing in front of an audience?

Once I played a show in a Lincolnshire village and the presenter didn’t know who was coming on. Before I was asked on stage he asked the audience for a minutes silence after a death in the village and then he mistook the C for and O at the beginning of my name so I got announced as “Ladies and Gentleman, please welcome to the stage, Olive Carroll” …  And this 6 ft fella walks on… That was pretty funny…

5.    What are you most proud of and what dreams or goals would you like to fulfill?

Currently it’s this new album. In the future I want to write some more orchestral music and I would love to get that played live. I’ve been on the road since 1999 and there hasn’t been a lot of time to write larger works but now I feel I have to make time.

6.    What’s the best and worst advice you have ever been given? And did you follow it?

Hmmm… I was told once that if I was going to succeed in the music business I had to play stuff that people know and not play my own music….  maybe just ‘slip one of my pieces in’ half way through the set. I didn’t follow that advice and although I haven’t made zillions of spondoolicks I get a huge amount of satisfaction knowing that people have come to the concert to hear my music.

7.    Which three famous people would you invite to dinner and why?

How about the head of the RSPCA, the head of the Pro Hunting lot and Basil Brush. Maybe just leave them in the kitchen and see what they produce….

8.    What is the best book or books you have read and why?

I read a lot of books on planes and if they’re not page turners I’ll drift off. So, with that in mind the last few I really enjoyed were, Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy), Life of Pi (Yann Martel), Witch of Portobello (Paulo Coelho) and Hard Times (Charles Dickens).

9.    Tell us 5 interesting and unknown facts about yourself?

I have a sister who is a fantastic guitar player and singer. I write all my music on paper first before learning it on the guitar. I listen to all the CDs that people send me. I can’t play after 15 pints of Guinness…. But I know some people who can. I’m currently driving everyone around me crazy because I’m learning the Fiddle.

10.    If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?

I would like it to be compulsory that every child learns a musical instrument at school.

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To see lots more of Clive in action check out his website, his  MySpace and his YouTube web pages - just superb!

They say blogs are “word of mouth on steroids!”  Just like conversation it is a two way process albeit with a global audience.

Earlier in the year I signed up to Yaro Starak’s excellent Blog Mastermind course.  Crammed full of superb detail, Yaro skillfully sends out weekly lessons over a period of  six months.  The editorial process was spot on and I learned much about the technical details of SEO and monitisation.

Around this time, joy ‘o  joy, Gideon Shalwick with Yaro Starak set up their superbly timed website called, BecomeaBlogger.com.   Gideon as the creative talent behind this idea, leads you step-by-step through the  technical detail and visually shows you the  simple ABCs of it all.  Like a pig in mud, this was an absolute blessing to me!  I watched each of his 10 superb free video tutorials, from Setting up WordPress to How to use Feedburner for Supercharging your RSS capabilities.  For a technical numptie like myself, this was just awesome!

Haven spoken with Gideon recently, I know he is actively busy preparing for the launch of  Become a Blogger Premium, a membership site, planned for the first week of December.  This will offer customers more video tutorials using Gideon’s very simple style of online teaching.  As a regular customer of Become a Blogger, these video tutorials have been profoundly helpful to me as a blogging newbie.

If you are interested in learning more about blogging, I would highly recommend Gideon’s Become a Blogger Premium membership site and of course, Yaro’s Blog Mastermind Programe.

I have to confess to a sneaking admiration of Bollywood movies.  Growing up in the Pacific, the cinema in those days was a couple of Hindi trailers, a B Film, (an Australian short) and then the latest feature, an American movie. Where else could you get three continents of artistic creativity all in one movie house? Alas these days are gone, but those melodramatic and colourful dance musicals, with beautiful lip-syncing stars, made a lasting impression on me.

When I came across an article about the creation of a Bollywood version of YouTube - www.rajshri.com, I was somewhat surprised that this had not been done sooner.  As the world’s most prolific movie industry, Bollywood produces approximately 1,000 films each year which are watched in over 100 countries by 25 million Indians working abroad.   As it still takes weeks for newly released Bollywood movies to reach all their foreign markets, piracy continues to fill the demand/supply gap costing the industry 33% of its revenues.  While there are a handful of third-party sites offering digital downloads, the Rajshri Group and Eros Entertainment have taken things a step further by releasing new Bollywood movies simultaneously online allowing fans to watch thousands of movies, videos and TV shows for free.  It is perhaps little wonder that 90% of Rajshri’s viewers are overseas customers.

This also opens up new opportunities for independent Indian movie makers who can release their films into the market via Rajshri without all those distribution costs.  While this model is the future for Bollywood - and what a future it is - we may yet have a long wait for Hollywood to do likewise!

There’s luck out there and it’s good to see competition winners receive their much deserved rewards.  Since my article on the 2008 Bermuda Music Festival I received a wonderful Review with images from Tim Minter, the Evian Competition winner who won tickets to see Beyoncé perform at the Bermuda Music Festival.  Take it away Tim…

“Putting a music festival slap bang in the middle of one of the most conservative\outrageous, opulent\humblest, organized\laid back places, must surely create something quite unique. Think Wembley shrunken into a little English village where every bus driver, ticket person and seat wiper (yes someone actually had a cloth to wipe our seats!) is a familiar face.

Try and buy a ticket for this event though and you’d better be quick. When we tried, from the UK they’d all well and truly been snapped up. The only ones remaining were allotted to a single travel company who was selling them as packages including hotel and hospitality at US$800 and over when I last looked. The only way we managed to get tickets was to win them!

Because of the money flying around this place I think they have managed to put on something only possible on a much, much bigger scale anywhere else in the world. From the tiny queue for the entrance, the handful of good food stalls (check out the huge veggie curry portions at the completely quiet curry stall rather than the queues for the fried chicken or fish and chips) to the neat rows of cable tied garden seats and the queueless toilets this probably wouldn’t be possible anywhere else with these acts. Although sold out, this place definitely wasn’t crowded. Production was great too with a second smaller stage while the main stage was changed over. Huge video screens and a massive main stage meant you felt like you could be any world class festival. It’s all outside except for some seats right at the back on the raised seating in the Hamilton sports stadium and in living memory it has always rained to some degree no matter what the rest of the day has been like. For the high rollers there are quite a few enclosed, raised, private boxes in hospitality type cabins in the arena which I assume pay for most of the event. No amount of rain will dampen the crowd though, just expect some brollies in the way! We got about 15 mins of rain then it was all good again!

We sat out the support acts except for some pretty cool street dance on the second stage. The others included a famous local comedian and what turned out to be Beyoncé’s sister.

As soon as the main act started, the non existent stage security couldn’t handle the small crowd, including us who pushed forward for a mosh pit view and they gave up shortly after, content with just making sure there was a gangway of some description here and there. If you’d paid upwards of US$1000 for a front row seat you’d be sorely disappointed (just a tip there!) If you have a ticket for the arena seating you’re free to move around. If you’ve got one for the cheaper stadium seating at the back you’re not allowed into the main arena.

Beyoncé herself was amazing. I’ve never really considered going to see Beyoncé I have to say. But if she was playing at Glastonbury one day I might consider toddling along now! She filled the huge stage not only with her sizable all girl band but with proper star quality.

Two costume designer\seamstress friends of the people we were staying with in Bermuda had been roped into this for two days straight before the big night as none of the costumes had been used before and they had done a good job for sure. Not sure how many costume changes there were but they were all fantastic. Apart from some stage mopping after the rain and some showbiz fanning of Beyoncé by a stage hand (maybe one day I’ll get someone to do that for me!) the weather was great and performance spot on. I’ll leave the rest to some pictures…”.