Kettering Rocks

I've been away... I'm back. A lot of time was taken up arranging the KettStock festival, son of the eight-year-old Tootstock festival.

KettStock in Kettering recreated the spirit of south London's Tootstock – and then some. We had a bigger venue, an audience twice the size, and we raised four times the amount for charity.

So, a major success and a night packed with poignancy, emotion and good music.

And as with all good things... everyone wants to do it again.

Many thanks to Russ Payne and Unison Bends, the Shark Dentists, Bill Deacon, Pete Derbyshire, Mez, Mark Turner, Olli Turner, Dave Part and Nevada Summerley, the musicians who made KettStock happen.

Now, who wants to play at KettStock 2?

Dylan Unlikely To Play Tootstock

Having organised the Tootstock festival for June 30, 2012, so that it didn't coincide with the Olympics, other gigs and everybody's holidays, I now find that Bob Dylan has announced his one and only UK date for the year is, yes, you guessed...

This is frustrating since I always go to see Dylan whenever possible. If you're alive at the same time as the greatest of all singer/songwriters, you have to make the most of it.

Mind you, Dylan has been known to add on extra dates around his "one-off" gigs. When he played the Feis last summer, it was supposed to be his only 2011 UK appearance, but he managed to sneak back into the country twice in the autumn for two more legs of his Never Ending Tour.

The only certainties are that I won't be going to see Dylan on June 30, and Dylan won't be playing Tootstock. But I'm willing to bet he'll announce more UK dates this summer...

No Sleep Till Tooting

For six years, with the help of many people, I've organised a modest little music festival in Tooting, south London. Its original name was SummerFest but it soon became known to regular attenders as Tootstock.

Last year's event was the best ever, thanks to some great musical performances, and thanks to my teenage daughter's friends who provided a new, younger, bigger audience. Despite the success, it had been so stressful to organise that I put a note at the end of my diary for 2011 saying: "Do NOT organise Tootstock 2012... "

But so many people asked when it was going to be and said they wanted to take part that, well, it's more or less set for Saturday June 30, 2012. And I also noticed that just after that diary entry was a PS that I had written to myself. It read: "But if you do, here's a suggested line-up... "