setting a bench mark

We spotted our Jess in Time Out last night, in the bit about benches that are dedicated to people. Jess has a bench dedicated to her in Regent's Park (near the penguins at London zoo) in honour of her sterling work helping us to organise fruitstock a few years ago.

Read all about it...

And find even more bench poetry here.

talent scouts

The last we heard of Scouting for Girls they had just signed a big big record deal (after we hand picked them from unsigned obscurity as joint winners of our 2006 fruitstock talent search).

Well would you know it they've now got into the top ten with their new single 'She's So Lovely' (video above). How good is that?

Their debut album is out next week. Keep on going boys, top of the pops next. Oh they stopped showing that didn't they. Popworld on T4?

whisky cats - the debut album

We like the Whisky Cats - they won our battle of the bands thing a couple of years ago and played at Fruitstock. They were great, so we invited them back again last year, and they were great again.

They've finally got around to making a debut album and are offering people the chance to get hold of a very special limited edition. In their own words:

"We are finally doing an album.

The band are going into The Charlatans studio on Monday 19th March with the producer Jim Spencer who has previously worked with New Order, Black Grape, Johnny Marr and The Charlatans. The album will be released in early July. To finance the recording we have put together a limited edition package that we are selling prior to release. You will get:

• Your name inside the album booklet
• A copy of the album
• A framed, personalised album artwork print signed by the band
• The CD and the artwork recorded delivery to your door a week before the release.

This offer is limited to 500 people and costs £16.99. To pay for the album you can go to:

http://www.whiskycats.co.uk/album.htm

Fill in your details and it will take you through the Paypal process. If you don't have a Paypal account you can still pay this way. We are going to be publicising this to the general public in the next few days and hope to sell out quickly."

Buy now to avoid disappointment.

scouting for success

Long time readers of our blog and early arrivals at last year's Fruitstock may remember the 3 piece musical ensemble 'Scouting For Girls'. They were the winners of our 2006 Fruitstock Talent Search and as joint winners got to open the main stage performances at our free festival in the park. We were very pleased to hear on the grapevine that lifelong friends Roy, Greg and Pete have just signed a big record deal with Epic/Sony BMG.

Have a look at their 'Airplane Song' video above and see how many fruit references you can spot in the lyrics. (This isn't why we choose them as winners of our talent search by the way. We're far more fickle than that...they won because all of the girls here fancied the singer.)

Anyway congratulations to Scouting For Girls, we'll look out for you in HMV next time we go.

well hung fun

Congratulations to our friends at the Well Hung Meat Company. Not only did they sell a lot of well hung meat at Fruitstock, but they also just won a gold award at the Soil Association Organic Food Awards.

Even better - they got their prize from everyone's favourite curly haired pig rearer, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

true love

We had a Flirting Tent at Fruitstock. Speed dating in the park. I went and spied on it for a bit and even got some video. Very funny watching people being coy.

Anyway, it seem like the Flirting Tent worked. A woman called Jenny mailed us - she's started a blog all about how she met a nice man there. And she's documenting their trials, tribulations and trembles. Like an online soap opera.

Needless to say, we are hooked.

This is how they met, and this is the blog, with many more posts about the burgeoning relationship. Please note, her blog contains some strong language. And kissing.

Romeo and Juliet by Frank Dicksee, 1884

Fruitstock - an apology

Some bits of Fruitstock went really well. The weather was good, the bands were brilliant and loads of the new bits, especially the new, improved kids' area, went down a treat. Lots of people went away having had a fine (and free) weekend.

But there were some things that didn't work so well, as visitors to the Fruitstock site will have read in the message we posted on its front page when we got to work on Monday. Namely...

"We'd like to make a couple of quick apologies. First up, the toilets. The queues were too long and we're sorry that you had to wait in line. We're also sorry about starting late on Sunday. The amount of people that turned up the day before meant that sorting the rubbish took longer than expected. We also had to make sure that any broken glass was cleared up so that the site was safe. Anyway, hope this didn't spoil things for you."

Anyway, thought we should post this message on here as well, seeing as people who read this might not have read it on the Fruitstock site. Rest assured, we are sitting here working out how to make it all work perfectly next time.

[picture at the top by hoen, whose friends cycled from Oxford to come to Fruitstock]

 

a slide show

The Fruitstock flickr group is going well. Almost up to 300 pictures from 48 different people. And someone called stpiduko has even made a slide show from his photos.

PS above picture posted to the group by jar0n

win big prizes

Seems like a few people have started posting their Fruitstock photos to the flickr group. They're better than ours, which we figured would be the case.

To encourage even more pics to be posted, we are offering three prizes of £250 to each of our favourite three photos. We'll keep checking the group and pick our favourites in a week or two, so if you haven't posted some up there already, now's your chance.

Good luck.

more fine pictures from Fruitstock

It's 17.23 and people are starting to wilt in the office. But it was a busy weekend - Monday was never going to be easy. Anyway, pictures are starting to arrive - keep posting yours to the flickr group if you get a chance.

And a big final thanks to Daisy, Jenny and Jess for organising the whole darned thing. Jess is sadly not in the pic above, but the other two are - if you had a good time at Fruitstock, it's them you should be thanking.