Good News Bad News and a busy Time Ahead

It was, especially for those of us who suffer as Sheffield Wednesday supporters a remarkable week.

In fact many of us are walking around in a completely different World to most of you lot. But three wins in eight days!! Three wins on the trot!! Well it’s almost reminiscent of those heady days when Wednesday for two very short weeks stood at the top of the Premiership.

Sorry to open what is primarily a music Blog with a footy note, but it is such a rare occurrence that it deserves a mention. And I know you won’t mind me indulging myself.

By contrast though the shocking News coverage from Haiti should be of great concern to us all. It so clearly magnifies what can happen when a Country already living on the edge of what we in the West would call Law and Order is beset with a natural disaster which is certainly beyond the understanding of those of us lucky enough to have our feet firmly based on the European Continent.

The delays in getting aid into the Country, and dare I say, some questionable editorial content on some of the ITV News Reports, some of which suggest an agenda beyond the disaster, is of major concern. But faced with such devastation what more could the Aid authorities have done? It’s clear from the reporting that an ordered distribution of food would be impossible, and that normal scatter methods would just end up with more people dying, and the strong out doing the weak and children.

But as always the Appeals go up from all the major Charities, which of course just adds more confusion to the situation. Everyone from Save the Children to Christian Aid, Oxfam and The Red Cross. It might be my age but I’m just a little cynical about all this.

So for Acoustic Rotherham / The Mashers we would like to draw your attention to the Unicef Fund. We do so because Unicef are not one of the ambulance following Charties, they have been working in Haiti since 1949, through all the civil wars and violence that the Country has inflicted upon itself. Because of their experience Unicef will know where the money and aid should go and the best way of investing it in the rebuilding of the Country.

THIS LINK IS AVAILABLE ON THE JMUCREATE WEBSITE ON MANY OF THE KEY PAGES. HERE

So football and World events to start us off this week.

Let’s get to some music.

This week we’ve added a CD from Fools Gold to the CD Shop. Over The Sky is we believe their debut CD and features some lovely tracks. Is it my ears or do I detect the sound of The Seekers here. I’ll leave it to you to decide.
You can find out what’s hot in the CD Shop by going HERE

Fools Gold are just one of thirteen + brilliant acts appearing at Acoustic Rotherham 6 on 31st January. Full details HERE. For the lazy **** it’s at The Queen’s Hotel, Rawmarsh and starts at 1:00pm.

Artists who have not yet checked out their on stage time should head HERE and the Acoustic Rotherham Blog which has all the details. And new Acts should go HERE for your orders, if you know what I mean.

We’ve added Google Maps to the page so now you have no excuse for not knowing where it is.

Don’t forget if you want your CD listed then find out HERE. The Special Offers on registration have just one more week to run including the double buy offer, both of Phill Hartley’s CDs for only £12.99 + PP in the Shop.

Barbara Helen’s CD A Familiar Place is our MP3 Down Load of the week at £6.99 from our Amazon Associate Shop HERE. This was Barbara’s debut CD and her great songs and voice are showcased at their very best. You can read David Kidman’s Review HERE.

The site itself has not undergone any major work this week, mainly because I’ve wanted to get the new version of the Introduction to Getting Publicity Ebook finished. I can now tell you that it’s currently being checked over and I hope to have this all singing / dancing version up before the end of the week.

If you’ve signed up for the News letter you could be amongst the first to find out.

We use the News letters to announce things that happen late in the week, so if you want to keep in touch and be ahead of the pack just add your Email in the box.





There are a couple of new features planned.

The Web Site is going really well. The number of hits is improving each week, while over the past three weeks we have improved our position on the Alexa monitor from 156,0000,000yes that’s million, to within the 3,000,000 mark. Doesn’t sound impressive? Well that means that we are within the top 100,000 of all sites visited in the UK and one of the most visited Folk / Acoustic Music sites.
In other words the site is beginning to make an impact.

We could do with more of you using the services though, especially by placing your CDs in the Shop or sending us your Demo Disc to go up. The more of our supporters that take advantage of the service, the more interesting it becomes and the more people are likely to visit the site.

And now to some sad news. The Flat Cap Folk Club in it’s current form is no more.
The Mashers, as many will know were a little reticent at committing ourselves to hosting a regular Club venture, but thought that the offer made by the Transport Club in Rotherham was just too good to turn down.

The experiment allowed us to bring some top names from the Region to The Club, and we had four super nights of music. Unfortunately the number of folks making their way to the club were disappointing. Personally I think disappointing is an under statement.

It’s strange, everything possible was done to attract an audience in terms of publicity, £300 in the local paper alone yet I still get people telling me that they knew nothing about it. Sad.

The Mashers are disappointed because we like to make events work but clearly the addition of a monthly Folk Club to the Rotherham calendar was not wanted by the Folk community, even one that was prepared to bring top acts to the Club.

The turn out for the “Come All Ye” did it for The Transport Club who like so many similar Clubs are under extreme financial pressure.

Our thanks to the Management Committee of the Rotherham Transport Club for at least giving Folk a chance and having the guts to invest.



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But The Mashers play on. We’ll be at:

The Bridge, Rotherham on Monday Night for Nellie Folk. The fun starts at around 8:45pm

Tuesday 26th you’ll find us doing an extended spot at Hillsborough Folk Club, Burton Street Foundation. From 8;00pm

Thursday I think we’re be at The Bridge Session, once we’ve put the World to rights at a Left Coalition meeting in the same Pub.

Saturday we’ll be at a Private Party.

Sunday 31st it’s ACOUSTIC ROTHERHAM 6 ………… need I say more?

Don’t forget it’s Last Friday Folk at The Venue, Stocksbridge on the 30th January – we’re going to try to get there.

The Three Tuns at Stainton is coming up in the first week of February and on the 5th February there is the Charity Band night at the Rotherham Rugby Club, full details HERE