The 2025 London International Ska Festival

What are you doing this Easter? If you have no plans, why not go to the 2025 London International Ska Festival? My company, Mill Hill Music Complex has been proudly been festival sponsors for many years. When we started the business in 1979, it was always a key part of what we did to support promoters, venues and artists making great music and staging amazing events. The Ska festival is the best known, longest lasting and most internationally recognised of the many festivals we support. 

This years sees an amazing line up of artists and events, as you'll see from the poster >>>>>

15 events across 4 days over Easter Weekend 17-20 April 2025. 

Here is the full line up. Of you fancy going, please buy your tickets early. The festival is independenly run and itr eally helps organisers balance the books and get a good nights sleep to see the tickets selling and the bilills being paid!

Day 1 - Thursday 17th April 2025

MAROON TOWN

Celebrating the 35th anniversary of their debut album - High & Dry

+ Hugo Lobo (Argentina)

+ Travelers All Stars (Mexico)

+ DJ Alan Handscombe

+ DJ Ronnie King

+ DJ Anna Vodka (Netherlands)

+ DJ Henry Mack

At Camden Assembly, NW1. 7pm-late.

Free entry downstairs (all night)

Tickets for live acts (upstairs) available https://buytickets.at/hotshotscorcher/1369934

Day 2 - Good Friday 18th April

1000 VOLTS OF HOLT LIVE THAMES CRUISE

An unbeatable tribute to John Holt starring

WINSTON REEDY (The Cimarons)

+ Natty Bo (Ska Cubano/Top Cats)

+ True Identity

+ DJ Keith Lawrence (Mi-Soul)

+ DJ Sean Flowerdew (Pama Int'l)

On the Dixie Queen paddle steamer, EC3N. 1pm-5pm.

Tickets available at https://buytickets.at/hotshotscorcher/1385710

THE BEAT ft. RANKING JNR

+ The Kubricks Just announced!

+ DJ Nanker P (Time Tunnel)

At The 100 Club, W1. 7.30pm-11pm

Tickets available at https://buytickets.at/hotshotscorcher/1515532

ZION TRAIN album launch

+ DJ NFinnerty & more

At Camden Assembly, NW1. 6pm-10pm.

Tickets available at https://buytickets.at/hotshotscorcher/1515532

Buy now and save £10 per ticket (only 10 available at this price)

Day 3 - Saturday 19th April

2 TONE THAMES CRUISE

DJ Liam Curtin

DJ Skanking Steve

On the Dutch Master party boat, EC3N. 1pm-5pm

Tickets available at https://buytickets.at/hotshotscorcher/1450998

Buy now and save £10 per ticket (only 10 available at this price)

PAULINE BLACK: A 2 TONE STORY film

at London's iconic 100 Club on Saturday 19th April 2025 (1pm)

Followed by a Q&A with Pauline Black, presented in partnership with Doc’n Roll Film Festival.

PAMA INT’L TROJAN SONGBOOK

+ THE CHOSEN FEW (Jamaica)

+ MARCIA AITKEN (I'm Still In Love With You Boy)

+ ROY PANTON & YVONNE HARRISON (Jamaica)

+ Hugo Lobo (Argentina)

+ Travelers All Stars (Mexico)

+ DJ Melvina Moves

At Electric Ballroom, NW1. 7pm-11pm.

Tickets available at https://buytickets.at/hotshotscorcher/1334090

JAH WOBBLE METAL BOX IN DUB

DJ Wrongtom

At The 100 Club, W1. 7.30pm-11pm

SOLD OUT

Day 4 - Easter Sunday 20th April

LISF's social club & record shop

POTATO 5 meets INTENSIFIED

+ Poisonivies & The Steady

+ Horsebox

+ DJ Rikette Genesis

+ DJ Madam Scorcher

+ DJ Baba (Singapore)

+ DJ Sally Brown

At Camden Assembly, NW1.

Free entry downstairs (all day/night) from 1pm-late

Tickets for live acts (upstairs from 6pm) available at https://buytickets.at/hotshotscorcher/1547832

MACKA B & DENNIS BOVELL

+ Roots Ragga Band

+ Open The Gate sound

At The 100 Club, W1. 7.30pm-11pm

Tickets available at https://buytickets.at/hotshotscorcher/1501360

Ticket box office fromhttps://www.skiddle.com/.../the-london-international-ska.../

I will be at most of the events, so why not come down and have a beer and a skank with me!

Announcement: Station Road, Edgware to be renamed

 The Barnet Eye has learned through sources at Barnet Council, that following the passing of the Edgware development plan, Barnet Council has decided to rename Station Road Edgware to Edgware Towers Way. The council believes this reflects the changing face of Edgware and is a more modern and marketable name, as there is more to Edgware than a tube station. More to follow.

*** Noon update ***

For the absence of doubt, this is an April Fool Joke (for the moment)

The Sunday Reflection #48 - My favourite day of the year!

 What were you doing at 7.30pm on Friday? I can tell you exactly what I was doing. We were just about to jump in the car, to drive to the Builders Arms, to watch my mate Andy and The Peace and Love Reggae band at The Builders Arms. Andy has been a studio customer for almost as long as I can remember, at least 20 years, if not longer. Andy is my favourite sort of musician. He does it because he loves it. He keeps going. I've no idea how many musicians he's played with over the years, but he keeps doing what he's doing. He is the embodiment of what a grassroots musician should be.

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But anyway, that's not the point I was really discussing here. At 7.30 on Friday, it was a beautiful evening. Our road, Millway runs North to South and as we got in the car and looked northwards, I commented to Clare that the sky in the north still had some daylight in it. Above our heads, we had the Plough constellation. It was quite beautiful. My observation was that spring is here and things are getting better. Today is the day the clocks go forward. Much as I hate getting up an hour earlier, I love the fact that there will still be some light in the sky at 8,30pm. As I write this, the sun is shining. The cherry blossoms are out on the cherry trees in Millway. On days like this, all seems right with the world. I know that if I switch on the news, I will be rudely awakened, but it is nice to be in my little bubble, pretending that all is good. 

I bumped into one of the readers of the blog yesterday, who had a bit of a moan at me. He was saying that I don't spend enough time slagging off Barnet Council anymore. He suggested that since the Tories were booted out, I've gone easy on the Labour administration, who are probably worse than the Tories. He is right on this account. Yes, I spend far less time writing about Barnet Council and yes, Barnet Labour are probably worse than the Tories in some ways. They are as incompetent and they are far less willing to engage than even the Tories were. The reason why I am less inclined to moan is nothing to do with the politics. The events in my life over the last five years have changed me. I am no longer motivated to spend hours trawling obscure committee papers to write blogs showing how mean spirited and useless the council are.  If there is a specific issue that concerns me I will, but right now, the things in my life that I want to spend the time on are my family, my band and my business. I enjoy writing blogs and I think it is time well spent, but given the choice in local politics is between a weak, useless and incompetent Labour party or a mean spirited and bumbling Conservative party, I can see little point simply ranting in the wind like a looney. 

I realised, around the time that I was recovering from cancer surgery, that whilst it is almost pointless trying to pursuade the council to be competent, there are plenty of things that interest me enough to blog about and if I am interested, surely other people will be? So, if the fact that there was a bit of light in the sky and a beautiful constellation above our heads on Friday makes me happy, maybe it will make you happy as well. So yes, the fact that today is my favourite day of the year interests me, maybe it will interest you. So if you were wondering why this blog is about a bit of light in the sky, rather than why Barry Rawlings, Leader of Barnet Council wants to bulldoze Edgware and transform it into a new Moscow, this is why.

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I'm officially a fat B@st@rd - Time to celebrate!

My first Saturday list of the year was a list of my aspirations for 2025. Two of these concerned weight and fitness

6. Sort out my weight. Until now, all of the plans have been for music and business. Now we are on to personal goals and objectives. My weight is the biggest problem in my life right now. I weighed myself yesterday and following the Xmas and New Year excesses, I am 17 stone and 2 pounds. This is too heavy. I was also showing as pre-diabetic in a blood test in November. I rather stupidly decided to  put off the surgeries request to go to the diabetic clinic. In November I was actually 17st 13lbs. I started doing a 20+4 diet three days a week and it dropped a stone. Sadly Xmas derailed it, but I am back on track now. I will go in the second week of January and we'll see what happens then,. My target is 14st 7lbs in April. I believe this is achievable

7. Meet my gym targets. My weight has caused problems with my ankles and knees. I believe that if I can get down to 14st 7lbs, I'll be able to run again without pain. If this works, I might even start playing five a side football again. A pipedream maybe, but I am pretty convinced that I can at least get back to running. Last year, I set a gym target of doing more than 1,000km in the gym. I beat this by 80km, with a mixture of exercise bike and rowing. This was almost derailed when I damaged my shoulder in July last year, I couldn't row for nearly two months. This year my target is 1,500km. That will be 400km rowing, 1000km cycling and 100km running. The running will most likely start in April or May. I hope to start doing 5km  a week then.

So first the bad news. I think I'll miss my target of hitting 14st 7lbs in April. I've got down to 16st 2lbs so far. I've lost well over a stone and half, but by the end of April, if I maintain my current progress, I'll be around 15st 7lbs, so still a stone off. Losing a stone and a half is solid progress. Friday is the day I weigh myself. Yesterday, I hit a major milestone! I am now officially FAT! MY BMI has slid under obese!

This is great news. I was obese last week! Of course, in this day and age, the term is overweight. Doing the 20+4 diet is really horrible, but it does work. I did it for three days this week, which is the target and dropped nearly 1kg. A kilogram is 2.2lbs. I expect Easter to be a difficult week to keep up, but I think 15st 7 is achieveable. One thing I've learned is to set realistic goals. 

Which brings us on to the exercise goals. It is clear that I won't be running in April. This week, I had a setback on the exercise front. I hurt my knee and had to scale back the intensity of my workouts. I am actually smashing my targets, I am up to 581km, with 157km rowing and 431 on the bike. I am regularly rowing 10km a session. If I keep this up, I'll blow 1500km in September and do over 2,000km by year end. I am not sure that running as actually a reasonable or sensible aspiration, given the state of me knee and ankle, but I didn't actually think I'd be rowing 10km in under 48 minutes by now. 

So how am I feeling, other than delighted to be a reborn fat git? Well I think the fact that I can do a 10km row at moderate intensity and feel like still doing a bike ride after is great. I had a bug this week, so I have actually been feeling under the weather. Before it struck on Monday, was feeling pretty good.

One hidden benefit of the gym, is that I pass the time on the rowing machine memorising the songs of the False Dots. It is working really well. I've never been the main singer in the band until the post covid period. It took me a couple of years to properly mentally commit to the role. I've come to realise that being the singer in a band is a lot harder than I thought. I've also realised that most guitarists who sing in bands do a rotten job of it. They don't commit to singing. It was only when I started to enjoy singing that I realised that singing guitarists often hid behind the guitar, whilst dedicated vocalists lay themselves bear. I will explore this more, but what I will say is that spending time on the rower and practicing the lyrics has given me dedicated time to concentrate on my singing delivery.

People say to me "Don't you find it boring rowing for 50 minutes without a break". The answer is "No, it is perhaps the best time in the day, it lets me sort thngs out properly that I don't normally have the time or the commitment to do". Performing mental tasks whilst exercising is actually brilliant. Your blood is pumping hard, getting oxygen around the body. I think people who simply get engrossed in listening to a playlist or watching Catchphrase on the cycling machine are really missing something. 

You can see if it's worked at our next gig! 

DETAILS HERE >>>>>>>>

 

Friday Fun March 28th 2025 - Local music news and fun!

 As ever we start with a rib tickler! Once agains thanks to our X rated friend (he's rated on X!) Mr Robert Wilkinson. 

A geordie lass went to the hairdresser, and asked for a perm.
The hairdresser replied.
"I wandered lernly as a clood…"

— Robert Wilkinson (@robertwlk) March 24, 2025

Local Music Round up

Dates for your diary!

Click for details

Other gigs this week

Friday 28th

East Barnet RBLegion 8pm - Midnight DJ King Rebska ska reggae

The Lord Kitchener 8.30pm – late Jamie Callis

The Builders Arms, 8.45pm - 11pm Peace and Love UK (Reggae Ska blues rock)

The Butchers Arms 9pm - midnight The Tailfeathers 70s, soul, funk, disco duo)

Barrington 8.30-midnight Karaoke with Johnno

The Three Wishes, Edgware 9.30pm - 11pm DJ Debbie & Karaoke

Saturday 29th

Dr Realgood (Covers, 5 piece) at The Three Wishes, Edgware 

8.30pm - 11.30pm

The Builders Arms, 8pm - 11pm Rangoon (Soul Rock Blues)

Butchers Arms 9pm – 11.30pm Xspired (60 - 90s Covers)

East Barnet RBLegion 9pm – midnight Primal Replay (pop/rock covers, 5 piece)

The Arkley Club 9pm – 11.30pm £5 cash on door The Harmonica Lewinsky Band (pop/rock)

Ye Olde Monken Holt 9.30pm – midnight Mike Gill (Acoustic)

The Cavalier 8.30pm – 11pm Blue North (covers, 6 piece)

Maddens 9pm – 11.30pm Undercovered (pop/rock/funk, 5 piece)

Sunday 30th

Ye Olde Monken Holt 7pm – 9pm Redwood Rose (country)

Maddens 7.30 – 11pm Interfunk (70s Soul, Funk and Disco)

Butchers 8.30pm – 11.30pm Butchers Arms Jam Electric/Blues/Rock (Full backline available)

The Bohemia 7.30pm – 10pm £10 online or at bar B3 Lounge

Monday 31st

Jan's North London Jam at The Three Wishes, Edgware 9pm - 11pm

 Ye Olde Mitre Inn, High Street 8pm – 11pm (stables room) Barnet Acoustics Sessions

~APRIL~

Tuesday 1st April @ The Builders Arms 8pm – 11pm Open Mic Night

Wednesday 2nd

Ye Olde Monken Holt 8.30pm – 11pm Open Mic Night

Thursday 3rd

Ye Olde Monken Holt 8.30pm – 10.30pm Irish Session