We meet up with Florence last summer at Standon Calling, possibly one of the poshest and poorly attended Young Conservative’s Outdoor Discos that I’ve ever been to. This is the kind of festival that when Super Fury Animals take to the stage on Sunday evening, there’s roughly 400 people left on site. I say site, it was a sweeping expanse of back garden owned by Lord Such & Such, father to the Ra-Ra Rupert who’d organised the party.

Anyway, Florence. Clever girl. But offish, but I’ll readily admit that I occasionally have that effect on people. What I regret the most is not getting her Old Man on camera. Picture this:

The day of filming finished, we decide to load up on contraband and give Friday night a tickle in the undergarments. Flo & The Mach’s (now ex) tour manager gets himself comfy in the beige innards of our beautiful aluminium bullet bus and keeps us entertained with his ‘brick through a window’ banter. We laugh, we drink, we sneeze… it’s jokes. Then, out of nowhere, this older gentleman in a kind of psychedelic Chairman Mao get up wanders in, his halo of white hair catching the lights of the leisure battery. He’s wide eyed and looks like he may have escaped the attention of matron.

“Oh fellas, this is Florence’s dad, say hello…”

“Hello Mr Machine”

“Oh guys, yah. Yah, yah, yah… this bus is bus is absolutely fntaaaastic. I love it!”

“Well thank you very much”

“You know, the middle classes are crying out for a bus like this. I should know, I’m as middle class as it gets and our bus is very, very bland”.

We laughed a lot. A lot.

I saw him again recently at the Brit Awards launch party, where his daughter was given the full compliment of the Emperors New Clothes. He asked after the bus, then ummed and ahhed his way in to another conversation. Still, bloody good chap, what?

Straight out of nowhere, The Porter Report pops out of the ether with two brand new installments. There’s no escaping the fact that they’re heavily biased towards the ladies, but let’s be reasonable about this… if you look at the last few intermittent posts, they’ve been well laddish. I for one say, let’s stop the sausage party right here, and bring out the women folk.

First up is Micachu. Without hyperbole, she is the most exciting thing happening in the UK, will save the beleaguered Music Industry using nothing but a screwdriver, a pair of castanets and a chipped copy of Garage Band. I reckon she could probably do something about the credit crunch too [did you know that David Bowie started the credit crunch? He bloody did you know, he did].

We caught up with her at this years Loop Festival in Brighton, and filmed it for those ‘bonne ouefs’ at Boing Boing TV.
Micachu & The Shapes

Ben Lamdin is a Jazzer of no shameful provenance. Like a syncopated freedom fighter he dons the modal Balaklava and launches a stream of unprovoked aural attacks all in the name of Jazz Jihad! Aside from the Nostalgia 77 Militia Octet, Ben is also one of the driving forces behind Impossible Ark Records (Max Grunhard Quintet, Plumstead Radicals, Examples Of Twelve… you need to get this stuff right up you, trust me) and has just put the finishing touches to an album with British Jazz legends Kieth and Julie Tippets

He popped round El Kapitan’s Cattery during the Loop Festival this summer. Here’s the charts…

Good lads, The Rumble Strips. They loose teeth, smoke roll ups, wander around with carrier bags full of Kestrel and see a flat tyre as a good opportunity to have right old bloody hoot!

We grabbed this interview at Kent’s juvenile thug fest, Zoo8… arguably the least fun you can have outside.

Yeah, I know. Over two months. This is beginning to make me look bad. I’ve been looking at other blog sites and they’re all fairly regular in their updates, every couple of days there’ll be some roughly hewn nugget of internet-based information polished up and presented in a manner thats both easy to digest and at least vaguely interesting. You look through the Porter Report and every other month there’s some inpeneterable diatribe that’s littered with jokes so ‘in’ it’s generally only me laughing. But oh, how I do love to laugh on my own.

I’ve moved to London and I’ve started a new job, that’s about the size of it. It was all so easy when i was giving it the old Bonne Hommie around the winding lanes of Bum Town, El kapitan prodding me with a sharp stick whenever an update were needed, but it aint so easy when you bring commuting and corporate responsibilites into it. When Braintax spat ‘You won’t catch me on commuter trains at half past eight, A free line at half nine and yo, I’m still not late’ I’m guessing he never got the 0923 overland from Dalston Kingsland.

Anyway, I’m going to spend the next day or two amending my lackadaisical ways.

And that is how spell it, yes.

Over.

I’m sorry. Really, I am. I know I’ve been bad, I’ve negated my digital duties and left the Porter Report unattended like a babby at a bus stop. I know it’s inexcusable, I realise it’s going to take a lot to win back the tens of people who check back to the site on a literally bi-monthly basis, I know the blame lies squarely at my feet like a rabid mutt, I’m aware that I have a lot to atone for… but as the string of failed relationships that trail behind me like tin cans tied to a wedding car will testify, I’m a really, really selfish guy, so don’t hold your breath for too long ’cause you might just faint.

I’ve been busy, you see. The days of Leisure Piracy seem to have met with something of cease point; I can’t even remember what daytime TV looks like, let alone know what’s been happening on Deal or No Deal… it’s a sorry state of affairs.

“So what have you been doing?” I imagine you whispering across the pillow, your breath stale like an ashtray full of brine, pools of acrid milk collecting in the corners of your bitter, twisted mouth. I pretend to be asleep for a little while longer, then after releasing a resonant blast of warm morning air I realise I can’t maintain the charade so I peel back my eyelids ad tell you exactly what’s been shaking my bacon:

The Nationwide Mercury Prize rolled into life for 2008, and once again we were there amongst the flashbulbs as the shortlist was announced. The fist of our podcasts features interviews with Neon Neon, British Sea Power, Portico Quartet, Lauren Laverne, Portico Quartet and Rachel Unthank and her sister Becky, and can be found here in the exclusives section.

The video we made for Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip’s ‘Letter From God To Man’ has been getting some favourable responses from all kinds of folk, most notably the people behind BUG, a bi-monthly event hosted by the BFI that showcases a “stimulating selection of the most inventive, inspiring music promos from around the globe”. That’s us apparently. Hosted by Adam and Joe’s Adam Buxton, BUG will also be making an appearance at this years Big Chill, with ‘Letter From God To Man’ featuring in the running order.

When you look at it written down it doesn’t look like that much, but it really has taken up hella time. Aside from that I’ve (finally) started the move uptown, and will be London Ranking within the next fortnight. I also went to the Secret Garden Party, which was the most fun I’ve had at a festival in the past 18 months, probably because I didn’t have a load of cameras jammed up my harris and I got to spend some quality time with The Artful Dozzer

So there you have it, that’s why I’ve been neglecting you. I know you what you’re thinking, you’re thinking “That lying bastard’s been seeing other websites, I can tell by the blisters on his fingertips”, but I haven’t been doing anything of the sort, honest.

I’m just a guy, a lazy guy who’s accidentally got himself really busy. A naturally lazy, accidentally busy guy who just wants to down tools and run wild through the field of dreams.

In between these two Reports going up, we got a message forwarded in our general direction from David Silverman, director of The Simpsons. Turns out he’s mad keen on a bit of brass action, so if in years to come there’s a cameo appearance from Big Pete, Swamp Thang and Shotgungun Joe you’ll know which boggle eyed chancer to tip the nod to.

New Orleans very own Hot 8 Brass Band take to the streets of Brighton in a parade we organised especially for the Porter Report. I’ve always had a soft spot for brass bands, largely because of an aged uncle who used to play for the local colliery band. It was quite a sad story really; the band he played in got picked to represent the UK in an international competition in New York, so they dry cleaned their blazers and packed up their cases then boarded a long-haul flight to JFK. Unfortunately during the flight my aged Uncle was accosted in the toilets by a pair of over friendly sailors and he couldn’t bring himself to pick up his instrument again. After much careful scrutiny the Doctors diagnosed him with an acute case of Deep Throat Trombonist.

Boom Boom.

The second part of our sidewalk assignation with Toby and Tom, courtesy of Boing Boing TV

Toby and Tom, from Trangressive Records and Rockfeedback respectively, were stumbling around Brighton with hangovers. The last thing they needed was an idiot in a grey suit waving a microphone under their noses!