Well, what do you think?

We’ve been struggling slightly with the website for a while now, trying to see how we can improve things. It’s been a bit difficult ’cause some of us have wanted to post stuff up that’s not really got anything to do with Ballagroove, we just think it’s cool, but have felt we couldn’t as it’d detract from the important main page news & general info on the label. So this is the solution:

The Ballagroove Blog

All the random musings, links to bands we like, rants on the state of the music industry and assorted general weirdness go onto the blog while all the Ballagroove-related stuff goes onto the front page. Easy! In effect nothing’s really changed — I just renamed the “latest news” page to “blog” 😉 — but hopefully it’ll motivate the rest of the crew to start using it as a place to put their thoughts.

We will see… 🙂

See below for details of Chris’s session on Radio 1 tonight (Tue 24th Jan), congratulations Chris from all at Ballagroove!! Here’s part of an e-mail Chris sent us :-

(hope he doesn’t mind us putting it up)

“Just before Christmas I did a session for Radio 1. If you’re interested in hearing it, it’s being broadcast tonight (Tuesday evening) from 11pm on Huw Stephens’ OneMusic programme.

We did 4 songs live at Maida Vale on December 21st. The band was Steve Gilchrist on drums, Jen Macro and Tim Victor on guitars, Jon Clayton on bass, Gill Sandell on piano & keys and me playing guitar and singing. Tim played harmonica on one and everybody sang, including Lucy Parnell, who only came to hang out.

It’s a bittersweet thing, though. I’m excited to hear the songs, I think we nailed them. But this is what would’ve been a ‘Peel Session’ so it’s both the fulfilment – and not the fulfilment at all – of a lifelong dream.

Anyway, if you’re not asleep, out partying or watching Big Brother, listen to Radio 1 tonight and hear me tick off another box. Or use the BBC’s fantastic online ‘Listen Again‘ facility.” (EDIT: 1st is around 0:25:30 in, then 1:03:00, 1:25:30 and lastly at 1:46:00)

Chris’s bandmates for the session are from the following acts:

Stuffy & the Fuses (Drums, Guitar)

The Broken Family Band (Piano)

Timothy Victor (Guitar, Harmonica)

More info on Chris T-T himself:

http://www.christt.com/

http://www.myspace.com/christtuk

Just a quick post to wish all our friends and family a Happy New Year and all the best for 2006! Fingers-crossed it’s going to be an exciting year for Ballagroove with a few very special gigs on the cards as well as new albums from ‘ingie, Cocahiba, the Tholtan Builders, Gratiz 3, and Rhysical Pheck, maybe even a few others! Looking forward to it already 🙂