Pretty Shitty City

Welcome to the Swansea Newcomer Guide ‘07.

This is the first issue of what promises to become THE annual guide to Swansea; full of well researched articles, insightful anecdotes and tips on how to conduct one’s self.

So if you are new here, and you don’t know any better, read on…

Best Pub - The Uplands Tavern

Best Club - Monkey Cafe

Best Live Music Venue - Sin City

Best Shop - Hobos / Exist

Best Late Night Watering Hole - Mozarts

Best Place to Avoid the Mindless Banality of Wind Street - Bar,Co

Best Place to Go if its Nice - The Gower

According to the Derricks Music website; Kanye West will be playing Sin City in Swansea on the 27th November.

This would surely be the biggest act that the club has booked so far, and probably the biggest act to play Swansea since the Stereophonics went shit.

Lets hope it gets officially announced soon.

Boo! Looks like it was just a typo.

Its comes as no real surprise, but its still unfortunate; Fflam festival has been officially cancelled.

http://www.fflamfestival2007.co.uk/ 

Sin City are trying to put on a weekend of live music for those of you who have booked hotels / trains / time off work etc. this weekend.

Friday
Face/Off as usual with no bands booked as of yet, but you can pick up free tickets at the usual spots.

Saturday
Suns of Thunder, Lethargy, Bomb The Sun, Prosperina, Johnny Thrash, Marshland Massacre Screaming Eagle & Maria Owen. It all kicks of at 9pm with Skint DJ’s taking it through until 3.30am. Entry is £3.

Sunday
The Bloodhound Gang, Viva Machine, Illegal Amigoz, Kiddo 360 & Thirty Second Echo J.J. Sinatra. Doors are at 6pm and you can get tickets from Derricks for £10.

This should lessen the pain for those of you who were looking forward to Fflam, and hopefuly it will be a success; Something for the Weekend has a nice ring to it.

http://www.myspace.com/sincityclub

According to the press release below, Fflam has been postponed until a later date, due to poor weather conditions.

Due to consistently bad weather conditions over the last few weeks, we regret that the Fflam Festival has been postponed. This has been a hard, but well considered decision and we believe it is the best one for all concerned. Due to the bad weather, we have been delayed in putting the infrastructure in place and it is a big concern that the weather conditions will hugely dampen the experience we want to give all our festival goers. Postponing the festival will mean that we can give everyone the Fflam festival experience they deserve, bands, organisers and festivalgoers alike. We expect the new date to be at the end of the summer and are doing all we can do get everything reorganised as quickly and efficiently as possible so that we can confirm the date within the week. Full refunds will shortly be available from point of purchase for anyone who wishes to take this option, but we would like to reassure everyone that the festival WILL take place and encourage them to await further information on the new date before making this decision.

Fair enough, but it rains a lot in Swansea and festivals are meant to be muddy.

http://www.fflamfestival2007.co.uk/

If you’re in a welsh unsigned band and would like the chance to play at Fflam this summer, then get in touch with Sin City.

They’re holding a series of heats throughout June and the top 3 bands will be chosen to play on the main stage at Fflam, and runner ups will get a chance to play on the Sin City Cymru stage.

Bands wishing to apply should send their cds and biography by post to:

Fflam Unsigned, PO Box 3, Newport, NP20 3YB

or by email to: fflam@sincityclub.co.uk

Also, check out Sin City’s website for more news on this and their summer line-up including The Holloways, The Thrills, Antibalas, Pendulum, Killing for Company, Napalm Death, Easy Star All-Stars & Ozric Tentacles.

After the dissapointing Fflam news for anyone with camping tickets last week (A.K.A amazing Fflam news for peace-loving local residents) there is finally some really solid news on the line-up.

The early differentiation between the three days (rock, indie and dance) seems to be out the window in favour of a straight-forward rock line-up:

Friday 13 July

Keane
The Feeling
Levellers
The Stranglers
New Model Army
Alabama 3

Saturday 14 July

Placebo
Feeder
Biffy Clyro
Cold War Kids
Howling Bells
White Rose Movement
Enter Shikari
Fightstar
yourcodenameis:milo
Oceansize

Sunday 15 July

Manic Street Preachers
Dirty Pretty Things
The Ordinary Boys
The Hold Steady
Carbon/Silicon
Dropkick Murphys
Bloodhound Gang
Buzzcocks
InMe

The official Fflam website is promising a large announcement tomorrow (Wednesday 23rd May) and has a link to Clyne Farm’s Website for alternative camping information.

Pretty Shitty City now has a dedicated Fflam Festival category, check it out for all the past articles and news.

UPDATE: Lost Vagueness, famous for bringing its ‘warped decadence’ to Glastonbury, and now a festival in its own right, will be bringing its ‘culturally twisted’ happenings to the festival.

It’s certainely not a proper birthday, but today is 6 months since I started Pretty Shitty City.

Although actually, the Pretty Shitty City idea has been floating around in some shape or form since around 2000, when I was in the late and great Swansea punk band No Talent. Inspired by the More Music Swansea Guide me and Ioan (No Talent’s guitarist and vocalist) set out to create an alternative guide to Swansea’s pubs, clubs and other areas of interest to 16 year old boys (e.g. good hedge jumping locations).

You can even see No Talent’s very old and very broken website hosted at prettyshittycity.tripod.com. It was unfortunately hacked by ‘rival’ band My Little Eskimo and never fixed, but it will certainly bring back some cringe-worthy memories for anyone who was there!

Anyway, the point is, that even in a short space of time I feel that Pretty Shitty City has come a long way.

My original idea of rounding up a small group of regular contributers is slowly but surely coming true thanks to work from Basheera Khan, Stephen Ready & Tyron Francis and I should also take this opportunity to thank anyone who has supported Pretty Shitty City by supplying designs, emailing news, leaving a comment or linking to us.

Feel free to leave a comment at the end of this article, I’d love to hear how you feel about Pretty Shitty City, and any ideas for the future are most welcome!

The Fflam Line-up is slowly growing and thanks to a heads-up from reader Terry Bigdog, I’ve decided to post a little catch up article.

According to the wise and mighty eFestivals, the line-up so far is:-

Read the rest of this entry »

Even though I live in Swansea, theres something strangely tempting about camping at the Fflam festival.

The campsite which will be situated on Swansea Airport land, on the Gower, will have a free shuttle service to the main festival site at Singleton Park.

See handy Google route map here

A press release on the Fflam website states that…

“Late night entertainment will be provided on the campsite (subject to licence). There will be 24hr shops, refreshments and welfare facilities.”

Could be fun! The best memories I’ve got of festivals are almost always after dark, when all the bands are finished !

Theres also a promise of a new bi-lingual Fflam website coming soon.