Not too well, and not too planned, but Goulburn rocked

I was away for the weekend in Goulburn, for the Blues Festival, which totally rocked. Or bluesed. Or something. Canberra's own Jonno Zilber was one of the real standouts. It was an amazing weekend. Goulburn is definitely the best Blues festival of all that I've been to in Australia. They specialise in Australian acts, and there's a good range of styles. Acoustic, electric, jazzy, rootsy, big band, small band, solos - and not too many that weren't really blues at all... And you do get that at some so-called blues & roots festivals. Hint: modern R&B is neither blues nor roots, and indeed modern R&B as a genre sucks. There's an interesting program running on ABC now on black American music - apparently R&B was originally coined as a term to replace "race music". That stuff, I do like. Jumpy jazzy gospelly bluesy swing, you can't go wrong.

Back to Goulburn - you can usually find a seat, as the venues are mostly large and there's a lot of different acts running parallel in the lineup. These venues are local pubs and clubs, with a set of outdoor gigs in Belmore Park on Saturday. The outdoor day gigs are usually interspersed with dances from the local kids' dance teachers, whose real name I can never remember, but I think of them as Sparkle Motion. It adds a delightfully wrong and surreal note to the proceedings. Sadly, last Saturday it was quite cold and drizzly, so that wasn't as much fun as usual. We heard some of it from the verandah of the Rose Cafe, which does a very nice line in coffee and breakfast, but was closed on Sunday (why?!). But then we went off to find warmth and dry down at the Tatts with Jonno.

Other acts I really enjoyed included The Blues Preachers, Diana Wolfe and the Wolfe Gang, The Young Guns, and Beachhead. Lloyd Spiegel wasn't there, but he's at the Old Canberra Inn tonight, so that's where I'm off to this evening.

On the blogging front, I was not very well last week, and didn't get round to it much. Except for that one essential non-food post, after listening to Kev's sorry on the radio. I did manage to organise food from the freezer and pantry - we had defrosted lamb & black bean chilli, with baked potatoes and chopped salads. And I made a three-tins dhal, and bought a pack of nice Country Pride sausages. We had those to accompany dhal (look, just pretend it's a kofta curry) and for sandwiches. The fridge is pretty bare now, though. Better go to market tomorrow.