Tiny Dancer

This month has brought with it some very intense days, and it's not even half way through! I still haven't come to terms with the 7/7 London bombings and it looks like it'll be a while until Central London returns to any semblance of normality. I'll be going through there in a couple of weeks and I must admit that I'm not exactly thrilled to be part of the city's subdued chaos so soon after the disaster.

Live 8 and the apparently "defiant" G8 seem like a distant memory already. All this has also overshadowed the terrible epic tragedy at the Zebbug Fireworks Factory. So, in a desperate attempt to clear the air (short of burning an olive branch or a bunch of sage) I'm turning my attention to something more trivial.

Tonight Ira Losco is the opening act at Elton John's only stadium concert in Germany this year. The show takes place in Bielefeld. This must be quite thrilling for her, not least because Elton John is still a major act, so opening for him at a stadium gig is possibly the largest non-Maltese and non-Eurovision audience Ira Losco has ever had. I liked much of the work she did with her band Tiara before her Eurovision supernova. I also liked the show she gave at the Malta Song for Europe festival the year after she was Miss Eurovision. But I don't have personal copies of any of her songs; except for a bootleg of a very bluesy live TV appearance she did with Tiara a year or two before the Eurovision adventure.

Following the storm in a teacup raised over my comments after this year's Eurovision Song Contest, I don't feel like getting into another fruitless wrangle about Maltese pop music. I admire my former student and occasional-interviewer Matthew Vella for speaking his mind about Winter Moods, even though I think his words were probably more brutal than any write-up I could ever muster. Maybe that's because I've been raised to believe that you should say nothing if you can't say anything positive. I know, I don't always hold myself to that belief.

A few months ago I received a CD from Luigi Pellegrini: Beangrowers' Dance Dance Baby. Luigi is someone I've know for many years. He has been involved in the band's management since they started out, but I knew him about 10 years before that. Back in the mid-1980s, he was one of the many teenage listeners I drew to my radio shows like a UV lamp fly-trap attracts tiny insects. I have great respect for the man as a promoter, so I do whatever I can to help him whenever I can. It would be even easier if I liked the music of the Beangrowers as much as I like that of say the Subverts or even Freddie Portelli. Still, the Beanies have done quite well for themselves: a multitude of gigs outside Malta, making their CDs available for sale at record shops in various countries, two appearances at the SXSW festival in Texas, and featuring on a Wim Wenders' movie soundtrack. If only they had the sort of spark I just heard in newcomers Xtruppaw.

Meanwhile, the underground train tunnel between Russell Square and Kings Cross remains a disaster zone, every day 30,000 children continue to die from preventable causes in Africa, the aid gap in post-tsunami SE Asia rages on, Birmingham is under "a real and very credible threat" and somewhere in some other fireworks factory another fatal accident is just waiting to happen.

So far it's been a cruel summer, but then again I'm just a madman across the water.