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At the bottom on the left is an alphabetical list of the pages in this web site, to help you navigate if you feel so inclined. A guide to our family journal from 2008 on is here. A guide to the photo album covering 1994-2007 is here. A guide to our family time-line is here.
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2009: Tom at the Isle of Wight Festival 
On the left, the center of gravity of a rock festival, the stage ringed in lights at night. In 2009, the Isle of Wight Festival was headlined by Neil Young, whom some present complained was too old. We beg to differ! Tom and Maureen spent the long weekend away from Paris to see him and the other rock and rollers playing all weekend long, morning till night.
They spent the nights in their tent in the tent village provided by the organizers, and spent their days watching the acts and exploring the English countryside. There they found an English country breakfast which was good enough to photograph!  As lovers of English country breakfasts, cruelly deprived of them by years of self-imposed exile, we feel compelled to include this one here, to make our mouths water again and again! We sent Tom and Maureen to the Isle of Wight to give him a holiday, a break from his schoolwork and work. It was a busman's holiday for him, with music everywhere in his life (his schoolwork is principally music). But rock festivals have their own aura, and Tom was more than psyched. Here are Maureen and Tom below, looking a little posed but hey, it was a rock festival! Ian had attended the second or third Isle of Wight Festival, held in 1970 and featuring the Who playing Tommy from beginning to end, the Doors and Jimi Hendrix, among others on the list of great rockers of the time. He couldn't share that festival with Tom, then eighteen years unborn, but he could show him something similar. Neil Young, one of Ian's favorites since about 1970 but a rocker who Tom had never seen play, was an added bonus.  The stage in daylight, showing the giant screens that show the musicians to the bulk of the audience. These photos came from Maureen and Tom, as a thank you for inviting them. As I write this later in the year, they are still in Tom's photo albums on Facebook.
My guess is that the Razorlight shot was taken of the screen next to the stage: very few in a rock festival stand close enough to the stage to capture a close-up of the musicians.  The photo on the left shows two typical rock festival attendees, between concerts. The photo below sneaks in a shot of Tom in Paris, playing with Leo and another friend.  |
