BELFAST YES, CORK NO!!

At this website they're listing me as giving an In Search of Blind Willie McTell talk in Cork this Saturday: not true! There was some initial discussion about the possibility of a talk at Cork's excellent Triskel Arts Centre (where I've done two gigs in the past) but in the end it couldn't be clinched. So just to repeat, I am giving that talk at the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival in Belfast (Details previous posting) next Thursday, May 1st, but I am not appearing at Cork this month.

BELFAST FESTIVAL TALK ON WILLIE McTELL

I'm giving a DVD-illustrated talk, In Search of Blind Willie McTell, IN BELFAST on Thursday week, MAY 1st , the opening day of the 9th Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival.

Details are here:

and here:

Michael Gray: In Search of Blind Willie McTell
Thursday May 1, 8pm
McHugh's Bar
High Street
Belfast
tickets £5 online here (closes 24 hours beforehand)
or from Belfast Welcome Centre, tel: 028 9024 6609.

ENCYCLOPEDIA WINS AWARD

I'm very pleased to be able to report that The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia has just won this year's C.B. Oldman Prize, awarded annually by the International Association of Music Libraries "for an outstanding work of music bibliography, music reference or music librarianship".

The other books on the shortlist were The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia / edited by Cliff Eisen and Simon P. Keefe (Cambridge University Press) and a study of Handel's operas by Winton Dean (Boyden Press).

I picked up the award at the University of Kent at Canterbury at the weekend, on a very brief trip back to the UK, starting with a flight from Pau that halted at the last possible moment as the plane thundered down the runway - the brakes and reverse-thrust came on and we returned to the airport building area: we had hit an eagle, and they had to check for damage to the plane. There was none. That took an engineer about ten minutes to ascertain... but the paperwork took another hour.

Meanwhile back in France yesterday's post brought a copy of the newly-published 2008 reprint of Song & Dance Man III, with a slightly amended and redesigned jacket. Now I'm waiting to see the new paperback of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, which I hope is on its way from New York.

I'M BACK ON THE TRACK...

... having now settled into the new house in France. Getting internet connection is a slow business, though - obviously you can't get ADSL till you have a phone line but you can't get a phone line till you have a bank account, and you can't get a bank account without an appointment made quite some time in advance; and then when you have achieved a phone line you have to wait the best part of a week before your new phone number is "on the system" - and only then can you enter into a contract for internet provision... and then it can take as little as two more weeks before they actually come and install it. We're doing well: we're about halfway through this process already. Meanwhile I'm blogging from a computer in a shop in the lovely little market town of Mirande, which is less than 20 miles from the house. So thanks to the people who have sent in comments recently; I've now uploaded them and will try to offer responses next time I'm in front of this computer.

... which is more than I can say for the distribution of copies of the new Bob Dylan Encyclopedia paperback in the UK. Sadly these are delayed till early June, because they are being shipped - quite literally shipped - from the USA, so that while US readers will find the book available later this month, as announced, UK and other European readers will not. Not my fault but I'm sorry all the same.