I've got a bit of a thing for wine gums at the moment and imagine my despair on Saturday night when my local supermarket had sold out of my favourite treat. Nevertheless I enjoyed 4 great gigs with midget gems making a passable stand in..just not the liquorice ones which are 'orrible.

First up I was invited to be the first musical act to grace the new entertainment evening "Saturdays Wild" at The Forum Club on Broadway Live Islands ( http://slurl.com/secondlife/Broadway%20Live%20Island/80/63/36 ). Comedienne Lauren Weyland did a 30 mins stand up act first of all and warmed up the crowd for me to have alot of fun with the fine crowd. We all finished up the evening there with a dance before I moved on to my next show at another opening. Lilly's Irish Pub Club also had a full sim and a lovely audience made for really happy experience ( http://slurl.com/secondlife/Southlands/66/82/22 ).

I had another double on Sunday starting at the beautifully styled La Scala Theatre at Milano Italia ( http://slurl.com/secondlife/Milano%20Italia/209/198/26 ) hosted by Throughthesewalls Moody and Templar Merlin. The detail on that place is amazing as is the whole sim. Finally I wrapped up my weekend at ASD Studios Hollywood where Rocky Merosi dedicates himself to gerenously supporting many liev acts. He is a true gentleman ( http://slurl.com/secondlife/ASD%20Studios/112/135/27 ).

I am looking forward to tomorrow with great gusto as I have the priviledge of tackling two new ventures on the same day. At 12.30pm SLT I am providing part of the entertainment for what will be the first of many Saturday Wild shows at the Forum Nightclub on Broadway Live Island. These nights will consist of a full night of variety with both comedy and music all professionally hosted by the Jilly Kidd. Jilly was the brains behind the recent AWE Written Word festival and has now been asked to run what is sure to become SL's hottest Saturday night ticket.

Then 2.30pm SLT marks the opening of brand new venue Lilly's Irish Pub Club with a beautifullly put together pub and arena hosted by Lilly25 Connelly. Having lived in RL Dublin for 18 months this one is particularly going to be fun for me.

Just had to put down a few lines about what a fantastic weekend I just had.

Saturday night saw me at the new location for Club Therapy. Run by fellow Brit Raven Skall, his RL partner Evie DeVinna and Blaize Benelli they have a welcoming group of psycho punk music appreciaters. It was packed out despite group IM issues that night and I really enjoyed it.

On Sunday I was lucky enough to play at 4 sim venue Haven's Paradise. Haven Colville and his partner Samantha Lamont have built a fabulous beach based collection of sims and put on a lively program of events for their residents and visitors. If you are looking for somewhere to live this really is a fine location full of friendly people. By placing the stage over a crossing of 4 sims Haven has created a potential audience capacity of 160 which is one of the best if not the best in SL.

Some exciting enquiries came in after those shows. Check out the upcoming shows page for some new entries there (hope you like the new google calendar btw). :)

Ok so the title here is a little over the top to describe what is occurring in SL at the moment but a couple of new ventures have caused a minor flutter amoung those in the SL music scene.

The deadline for entries to the Best Of Live SL competition came this week. Like many of the Best Of SL competitions (there have been best avatar amoung others in the past), this will compile a list of the top 10 music acts in SL and then pick a best from those. The competition is based on the best singer and nothing else is being judged. I have entered because I thought it looked like a bit of fun. I never entered SL on the basis of my singing but instead as an original songwriter. The way I figured it was that this would be a laugh and a little extra exposure wouldn't hurt. Not everyone seems to feel exactly that way however as some folks are against the idea of introducing any kind of competition into SL music.

I can see their point of view, it is up to SL audiences who they like and they show this by attending, tipping, buying recordings, howling etc. The fact is though that SL music is suffering a crisis through supposed lack of exposure and anything that can offer even a partial remedy to that situation has got to be good. If you are not up for it then there is no need to slate the organisers efforts, simply dont take part and dont attend.

Here is the website for Best Of Sl Live if you like to keep up with the competition. See you later :)

http://www.bestofsllive.com/

Sunday night was a great gig at Crystal Sands with a good audience considering the crazy number of events that are all on at once these days. I have heard it said by several of the top venue owners that the audience numbers across the board are not keeping up with the number of acts now playing in SL. This is a concern for everybody as there are plenty of people logged into SL...they just dont seem to know music is going on. There is talk at high levels about raising the profile of music in SL so that the wider community of SL know what events are on. Let's hope a plan is formulated as otherwise the music scene will not be quite as healthy as everyone thinks.

I am not expecting to be faced with murderous supercomputer Hal when I play at fabulous new venue Space Odessy tonight but the name is certainly fitting as a Universe of stars await you there.

A couple of shows over the weekend are worth a mention for a variety of reason. On Friday night I was booked to play at The Cube in Berlin only to find that I not realised that a confirmation email I was supposed to get had not been sent and I was not in the calendar! It was a bit my fault and a bit Cruci Halberd's who runs things but being the perfect gentleman like he is....Cruci sent a couple of hasty IMs and before you know it he had boked me to play a slot only an hour later than has thought I was going to play! The night went really well and at the end of the show had a great conversation with fine singer Jaynine Scarborough.

On Sunday night I played the final night of the Written Word festivsl in Cookie. Unfortunately an unscrupulous neighbour in the same sim arranged a party to start 1 hour before the days activities which attracted a substantial number of people. For every person there it was one less who could get to the festival in the same sim. The lovely Jilly Kidd, who has done a fantastic job of organising the festival, spoke to him regarding the clash and he said he had forgotten what date it was. The next thing we knew the muscian at this party (who was probably innocent in all this) announced that this was the party to mark the end of the festival!!! Looks like they didn't get their dates mixed up and had just decided to hijack the festival. Neighbours...what can you do with them?!?!?!