who'd have believed it? we've finally got a new night sorted! it's at Parker Place, about a minute from holborn tube, on Wednesday 25th June and it's FREE. drop me a line for info.
Firstly apologies for the slight delay in getting this typed up but I’m sure you’ll agree it was worth the wait…
sensible reviews and directions to almost all the bars mentioned here on the Time Out site.
Last weekend, to celebrate publog regular and all-round good chap Tim Hopkins’ thirty three and a third birthday, we took a trip to Brussels in lovely Belgium where we undertook to drink thirty three and a third* different beers between five of us in the space of one day.
*thirty three beers would be drunk, a favourite decided upon and then a second and a third drunk of that, DYS?
As the junior publogger amongst us I was given the task of scribe using the very handy beer mats which only have adverts on one side. Tasting notes were written against each beer, at least where there was something interesting to say and whilst we were still capable of coherent speech…
NB: although the word "bar" is used throughout Brussels bars are generally a lot more pub-like than, say, their French counterparts.
We started the day in the very lovely Mort Subite bar, which has retained it’s belle epoque interior, not to mention it’s own range of beers. The following beers were tasted:
Mort Subite Faro: [TE & PB] reminiscent of brothers bar perry (a good thing)
Mort Subite Blanche: [TH] cheesecake hairspray
Mort Subite Peche: [MH] mmm, peachy
Palm (draught): [PB] metallic, like out of date Skol
Maes (draught): [TE] poly-blend
Chimay Blanche (draught)
From there we moved on to a brusselois institution Toone, the puppet theatre (seemingly run by south western so-called comedian Jethro) which handily is also a bar.
Leffe Blonde
Atomium: [TH] beer of the future!
Rodenbach: [PB] lairy lucozade
Barbar: [TE] honey goodness
As the service was a little slow (not to blame the barmaid who was on her own and having to deal with a lot of punters) we moved on to a bar we had visited before called Bon Vieux Temps (I think), which is hidden away down a little alley.
Westmalle Triple: [TH] blond beer gravy
Framboise
Borgogne des Flanders: [SH] probably my favourite, dark and meaty
Vieux Temps
Corsendonk Blanche: [TE] g’donk a donk donk
We then made the first trip of the day to our spiritual home in Brussels, The Lop Lop is an anglophone bar which shows Sky Sports and has a beer list as long as your arm, oh and a piano which can be played by random punters.
Piraat: [TE] aaaarrrrr(gh)
Leffe Triple: [PB] church
Lindemanns Peche
Roquefort 10
Judas: [PB] didn’t make me cross
Orval: [TH] gooseberry perfume
Hlecht Blanche (sp?)
Vitkap Pater: [SH] ruin…
We then went for some food in a Cameroonian place which was nummy.
Biere Gingimbre: [TE &TH & PB] overwhelming favourite of the day. However, on thinking about it later, this was almost certainly a blonde biere mixed with ginger beer, ie SHANDY…
Brugs (or possibly Hooegaarden)
at this point there were also cocktails based on RHUM (yes, really spelt like that!!) and, indeed, just RHUM, drunk…
Tim had been suggesting all weekend that we visited our next bar, La Fleur en Papier Dore, which Time Out informs me was once home to surrealists, hmm, makes sense...
Duvel Blanche
Chimay Bleu
Here, at the bottom of the second beer mat, I have simply written "RUIN!" and indeed this is where we encountered the ghost of ruin present.
In order to escape we returned to Lop Lop where we were subjected to a rather awful "jam session" and pointed at a young courting couple.
Caracole
Guldendraak
Jacobin (gueze)
Quintine
Satan Gold
Moving swiftly on to Bar Da Da, another weekend favourite, we reached (and passed) the magical 33 that had been our target.
Tuborg: [PB] NB: this does not count towards the target as it is danish.
Jupiler: [SH] tasty for a cooking lager
Bush: [TE] ha ha, mouthful of bush (this is paraphrasing)
Gueze Boon Lembeek
Here, the ghost of ruin past, the first FACKIN PANK in Brussels, was encountered, and a nicer nutter one couldn’t hope to meet.
As a responsible reporter it was at this point (after another round including deux genivevres (belgian gin), rather than the vieux genivevre I had asked for…) that I made my excuses and left. Hardier souls than I returned to Lop Lop in an attempt to reach the third of any particular drink had so far. Although this mission was eventually unsuccessful, the ghost of ruin yet to come was met and thus, along with three visits to Lop Lop, there was also a third nutter.
what's that you say? an update? with my reputation? anyway here is a basic glasto review/list of things we did. certain bits of this may be expanded on in various other fora over the next few weeks...
sliding scale goes grebt > monkey chews > rub by the way, not that i'd want to alienate peoople with in jokes or anything...
Thursday:
brothers bar: grebt perry: grebt singing random song words over dance records: monkey chews bbc rave thingy in middle of markets: RUB x 10,000
Friday Shibusashirazu Orchestra: grebt x lots bettina motive (saw in error): rub goldblade: GREBT Telepop musik: monkey chews British sea power: monkey chews Iddly-widdly: monkey chews sitting by the beer tent in the markets in the sunshine for three hours watching the world go by: super grebt nice ginger man giving me some spf 45 suncream: grebt hearing nelly furtado doing get ur freak on whilst eating pie and peas: rub (pie and peas grebt though) mercury rev: rub (apart from pete's singing) osymyso in the rizla cafe: super extra grebt glitchcore 3 lions: fortunately absent... racialist glasto cutting off blak twang after abt 15 mins: SUPER RUB dancing in the rizla cafe for abt three hours waiting for freelance hellraiser: grebt, via monkey chews to rub when he didn't show (well not before 1.30 anyway...)
Saturday monster breakfast baguettes: grebt baby genius (heard from tent): rub valentine (also heard from tent): also rub perry for breakfast: no comment Seckou Keita: grebt reading the saturday grauniad whilst listening to "world" music: islington parkinsons: missed due to perry/senegalese shennanigans DAD STOOLS: BEST THING EVAH sitting for another three hours in front of the beer tent in the markets: still grebt brendan burns: grebt dreadful drag act recommended by alang: well rub seafood: monkey chews white stripes: somewhat surprisingly grebt beta band: monkey chews mis-teeq: grebtgrebtgrebt dancing outside a stall selling wine to 3 cds of 60s/70s hits with abt 100 other pissed people til 5am: grebt (according to mypete)
Sunday Amy Newton (heard from tent): very very rub The Maker (heard from tent): monkey chews the maker proclaiming that they'll be headlining the pyramid next year: risible rolf harris: grubt (ie old classics grebt, sub midnite oil songs abt conservation rub) seeing the second half of the footy: grebt brazil winning: grebt also tompaulin: grebt sitting by the dance tent drinking beer: monkey chews (quite windy) article in the observer by a "glastonbury widow": grebt elbow: ar$e more like belle and sebby: grebtgrebtgrebt gorkys: zygotic monkey chews rod (FOUR SONGS ONLY i hasten to add): rub air (walking past): prog noncesense oddessey to cabaret tent: worth it charlie chuck doing EXACTLY the same act as ever: DONK-EH
Monday
peeing it down JUST as we'd finished taking the tens down: RUBRUBRUB coming home: rub ;) shower: grebt
Those of you who were at the last sussed may have noticed a large number of unusual mixes. This is because me and Tom have recently become obsessed with the nascent BOOTLEG craze that is sweeping the nation. The link there is to boomselection, the leading (only?) website devoted to such classics as Stroke of Genie-us, Smells like Booty, and the seemingly ever expanding "Intro Inspection" by Osymyso (12 minutes and counting). It also has a fan site/archive which makes it lots easier to find the tracks to download.
Meanwhile, work continues apace on my own contribution "Get Ur Jumper On"...
for some reason i seem to have become altavista's favourite site, which has led to some bizzare referals. i'm fourth on the list for marilyn manson stuff, third for velvet goldmine pics and, 38th for, ahem, crack lego...
I suppose more bizzare is that people have clicked on the link...
Sunday is the new Thursday, oh yesh. On 10 February sussed returns at its new venue, The Cellar, just off Cornmarket. There is a 12.30 license, which is nice, and prolly cheap drinks if you come early. still finalising costs/start times, but it's likely to be no more than 2 squid and has a quote from nunununa on the flyer.
In other sad sussed news, it seems likely that dear old Latinos may be no more. Awwwww.
Hi kids, thanks for keeping coming back on the off chance there might be an update. I dunno, weblogs seem *so* last year daaaarlinks... Anyway, Club Sussed is taking a Christmas sabbatical, and will hopefully return somewhere exciting and new in the new year, due to the fact that wednesdays at latinos sucked serious ass. Any offers, suggestions greatfully received.
not that i've got much to say or anything, tum ti tum. have i told you about friends reunited yet? I mean, clearly i have if we've been in the pub, but a link seems appropriate. hello people from school/college looking at this. I've actually met someone i hadn't seen for a couple of years, and got an email off someone else, which is nice. still haven't actually got round to paying the fiver yet though, reliance on free things on the interweb, hmmm...
Am now placing bets on when yahoo will buy FR and also on when ILE overtakes ILM.
it's only taken 6 months to reach what freakytrigger gets in an average afternoon, but i still feel warm and fuzzy inside. If you were looking at this site at about half 5 today at some sort of educational establishment , you were the lucky fousandth viewer and you may win a prize, perhaps.
To celebrate here are some game to play, as it's pretty much the end of term anyway:
bring you, not "the only rhyme that bites", but SUSSED 2 - "i've lost my indie nite, can i have yours?", although despite Tom's campaigning, there will be NO SLOW DANCING, oh no that's right out!
Details:
Thursday 5 July
10pm til 2am
Club Latinos, The Plain, Oxford
Possibly competitions, special guest djs and stuff, not to mention things...
So I was talking to these socialist guys on saturday afternoon, can't even
remember which faction they were from, i think it was the Judean People's
Front, although it could have been the People's Front of Judea, and this guy
was trying to convince me that not voting was a serious political statement,
that because parliamentary democracy isn't working too well at the moment we
should ignore it til it goes away. Well I'm sorry but I don't really fall
for that, I *like* parliamentary democracy, in a perverse way i also like
first past the post as an election system cos you get the results almost
straight away, rather than three days later as you do with PR, but that's
just the waffling punditry junkie in me talking :)
Anyway, let us drift back in time to see where this all came from...
83, dad was the returning officer for the local polling station which, as it
happened, was directly opposite our house. The only thing i remember really
was watching him doing the seals on the boxes as it finished, and having
home made corned beef pie for tea, which was to become an election staple,
due to the fact that it could be eaten at any point of the day and the fact
that mother was rather good at making it. It was also the day a young toothsome chap with wayward hair become our MP...
87, by this point dad was a leading member of the local party, at
this time I was constantly been given 50p to shove leaflets through the
doors in our street, and had developed the seemingly de rigour hatred of
thatch. I remember vividly the crushing disappointment of waking up the
next morning (after a relatively early nite, come on i was 13 and it was a
school nite) and the first thing i heard was the telly downstairs saying SHE
was still in charge.
The late 80s were basically the labour party in our house, it was great, cos
it was the north east we didn't have to worry about losing local elections
of any kind. Dad did offer me party membership for my 14th birthday, but
mother was against, I think she was still holding vague dreams that i'd end
up at oxbridge and then be blackballed for being some sort of lefty...
At this point having Tony as an MP didn't mean much, obviously we thought
he'd do alright in the party, but he and his wife "Sherry" seemed like nice
enough people. Another image that I recall from this time was about the
social chapter. HER and major were obviously dead against it but the
socialist group in the eurpoean parliament had A4 flyers printed up with all
the details of what we'd get and lovely they were too, nice shiny posh paper. Now I don't know how
much you know about the size of european constituencies, but they are HUGE
and I'm sure we had the entire north east's supply of these bludy things
stacked in our garage, they were never delivered to anyone, there's probably
still some there now and we haven't lived in the house for 10 years...
92, a glorious sunny day if i remember, and annoyingly I was just a month too young to vote, but i thought, this is it, surely, can't everyone see
they are a bunch of incompetant useless bastards!!! I went to bed once the
best result was a hung parliament, hopes dashed... (although according to this maybe that sheffield rally wasn't entirely to blame)
now, was it 94 or 95? Anyway, I woke in my grotty student bedsit to the news
that John Smith had had a massive heart attack, and within, ooh, quarter of
an hour Dennis Healey had said Tony should be the new leader, which i
thought was cool, if a little premature. That all the work that had been
done by my dad and john regan and anty birbeck and micky terrance (all sadly
no longer with us) would get some sort of expression if tony was in charge,
these were the blokes who supported him when he had nowt (well apart from
that healthy barrister salary and the private education, but you know what i
mean, *politically* nowt), taught him about the local area, all that sort of
stuff.
97, things *had* to get better really didn't they? It was my
first vote in a general election, and the first one i knew we could win,
that if we didn't we mayaswell just drown ourselves in our own shit to save
the tories the bother of doing it to us. I voted labour. Not sure why, they
stood no chance in Cheltenham, Lib Dem would've been sensible, there was
always a chance that after the John Taylor debacle of '92 that it would go blue
again, but i had to vote Labour, 18 years of hate had been leading to
this...
And now, well, Oxford East has *always, always* been labour, due to the
Cowley Motor factory being slap bang in the middle of the constituency. I'm
voting Socialist Alliance, mainly due to the work of one man, step forward
the man who makes Michael Howard look like a hippy, yes it's Jack Straw. I
cannot belive the indignities they put tortured and repressed people through
just to get a chance to live in a county like this. Yes it's a protest
vote, it'll make very little difference, I doubt they'll even keep their
deposit, but it's just something about labour that makes me want to slap
their wrists and say, come on! sort yourselves out!!
So i'll go and put my cross on the bit of paper, but frankly it'll
be with a heavy heart that things haven't really got that much better, after
all.
As Tom so graciously points out, Thursday June 21 sees the start of our fantastic new indie nite SUSSED. I'll link to the flyer once I've got a decent one to scan (does anyone know why my version of quark wont save our flyer as jpegs?) but for now, here's the blurb off it, innit.
Thursday 21 June 10pm-2am @ Club Latino, The Plain, Oxford.
£3 to get in, fun and frolics, djs carsmile, cabbage & cockfarmer on the decks
An evening of indie loveliness, featuring all yr favourites, including belle & sebastian, pulp, hefner,
the smiths, weddoes, baxendale, arab strap, mbv, delgados, suede, charlatans, badly drawn boy, hmhb, britney, kenickie, dinosaur jr, flaming lips, helen love, earl brutus, elastica, blur, dexys, ash, beck, ricky spontane, yoyos, jam, kinks, small faces, t-rex, bowie, a bit of northern soul,
y’know, good stuff you can dance to...
News of cheating in the polls is already under way. Apparently those pesky Danes are trying to fix it for the Greeks. Whatever next? The baltic states not voting for each other? The site also features the SCARIEST INTERNET GAME EVER. LOOK AT HER SCARY MOUTH!!
Rumours of Terry Wogan providing a sarcastic voice over as Hague gets his arse kicked, John Snow in a revealing sequinned number and Hothouse Flowers playing between the polls closing and the first results have yet to be made up...
Also had my first rather odd search engine referral today, not including strange italians searching for "hipsters", ITALIANS, IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR TROUSERS GO HERE!! Anyway, someone visited the site having searched for "adreena sex", whatever that may be...
Just read this in G2, which seems to prove the (admittedly rather tenuous) link between The Scene that Celebrated itself and Dubya's Artic oil exploration (it's about halfway through the article). What next, Chapterhouse responsible for foot and mouth??
Write up the last three gigs I've been to Write something humourous about being/not being a geek Find out about the socialist alliance and write about it for to the polls Have a bath Worry about whether the parisian connection is going to turn up tomorrow nite Sort clothes etc out for the weekend Record tapes for people Eat Bounce around getting excited about the weekend Et-bleeding-cetera......
More excitement from the wibbly wobbly web. Need to Know pointed me to this, a fantastic translation device for the 21st century, which translates through 5 languages with the usual impeccable accuracy of babelfish and turns the first two lines of the song that inspired this weblog's title into:
Sebastian, you in a dispersion are, you you were a sleepy that she has
king of the atendimentos all the hippies. Applicable or has distilled
the instruments the queen?
the phrase "hours of fun" springs immediately to mind...
part-tay peeeepuul
Paul Morley adds this rambling, downright confused piece to the rising tide of hype surrounding the film of the Factory empire. From what Morley says it seems to be a sort of Velvet Goldmine-type job except without the name changes, based on the "legends" rather than the "truth". And he keeps seeing ian curtis everywhere...
So i went for a shitty job interview at the Fabian Society that was the epitome of bad interviews, me "uuuurrrrmmming" and failing to finish sentences, them giving me NOTHING and asking what i think i'll be doing in ten years time. Anyway, once it was over i met Meg on Oxford Street and we went to see some fantastic ART in the old C&A of all places, where Michael Landy is reducing everything he owns to little bits, FANTASTIC it is, i could have stood and stared at the conveyor belt going round all day, looking at all the stuff he has, and watching the blue boiler suit clad art students cataloguing, smashing and breaking all of this STUFF. It finishes on Saturday, but if you are reading this in London or you are going to London, GO AND SEE IT!
Also that baxendale band have put several songs on their website for downloading. Both Fascination and Ghetto Fabulous are, erm, fabulous, innit :)
Annoyed? Too fucking right I'm annoyed. For the past two nights I've had to walk past a bunch of students who are at risk of being expelled from Oxford Uni for failing to pay their tuition fees. I say SHUT THE FUCK UP AND PAY you middle class WANKERS. Fact: 50% of oxford students have been to public school, so their parents are used to paying for education. Fact: those on a very low income pay NO tuition fees, in fact only those whose parents have an income over around 30k have to pay the full amount. Surely this is the most self centred student protest ever. "Oh mummy and daddy won't be able to have that extra week in Provence now that they have to pay for something they've been paying for the last 13 years".
I suppose what really pisses me off about this is I've had to sit with people in their early twenties who failed to perform at school, for whatever reason, and explain to them that if they want to come and do A-levels or an access course, or even learn to read and write, now that they're a bit older they will receive FUCK ALL support from the state, whereas 18 year old mummy's boy who has just fallen out of a public school and on to a Uni course gets three years of free money to piss up the wall in the student's union.
Listen, you can't have expansion in higher ed and keep it free, because if you do those who missed out first time will have even less support than they currently do, these twats complaining about having to pay are effectively denying those who missed out first time of any kind of chance. They are saying that's it's more important for them to ponce about for three years than it is for some poor bugger to get GCSE Maths and English so they're not pushing trollies or flipping burgers for the rest of their equally valuable lives.
Education IS a right and not a privilege, but surely the right to be able to read and write is more important than three years of social anthropology for a bunch of privileged wankers...
Following last week's nightclub assignation, rising internet superstar Tom Ewing, 27, has found himself the focus of a bizzarre impersonation attempt on "cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" Sinister.
After minutes of highly investigative reporting by this reporter*, this post was found conclusively NOT to be by handsome, man about town Ewing but by some sad git who had: SET UP a fake hotmail address JOINED the faddish cult of sinister WAITED AROUND for two weeks in the nursery POSTED a slightly-out-of-date-by-this-point piece of satirical writing (first brought to the list's attention by this reporter) in an attempt to besmirch the reputation of this fine upstanding member of the web community.
Rumours of queues forming for this week's Strange Fruit already, on the possibility that debonair Tom may put in an appearance have yet to be denied...
Some time ago on I Love Music, I wondered aloud as to what David Quantick was doing these days, following the demise of Select. Well he sent me an e-mail today to inform me that he's going to be on xfm soon and has been writing The Junkies, an internet sitcom with Peter "Chicken Lollies" Baynham and Sally "mmmmmmmmmmmm" Philips, which is quite humourous, but takes pissing ages download, as these things tend to do...
Still, could be worse, he could have turned into Stuart "another funny thing about the 70s/80s/christmas records/please give me some more money to be smug and annoying" Maconie.
Oh I've started this as well, suggestions for a decent name for it and/or free gig tickets greatfully appreciated.
Whilst compiling a really sad list, one of the contributors confused the hell out of me by saying that Hopkins had name-checked me. I had to read it about five times before i got the rather confusing reference, I'm only little.
Tom very generously links to me following much consumption of cheap shitty lager at studey disco, but fails to mention the young lady who came up to him and said "excuse me, are you Tom from Freaky Trigger", surely fame of a Martha Lane Fox-type level can only be around the corner...
OK, so it didn't take me long to crack, i went to NME to listen to the new manics song, I couldn't stop myself. After the relative return to form of "masses" and talk of gigs in Cuba, could like probably my favourite band ever squeeze something half descent from their pie-inflated frames? Could they finally become the New Order to their pre-holy bible joy division? Or could they record the only song of theirs to make me laugh out loud in disbelief...
Oh dear, it's the latter. All the little quotes on the site say "spector blahblah beach boys blah" but to me the one overarching influence on this is Joe BLOODY Meek! the organ bit in the middle is excrutiating. Lazy and turgid, two words i never thought i'd find myself associating with the manics. If Simon Price wasn't handing out flyers for shitty midweek clubs outside marilyn manson gigs, he'd be turning in his grave...
Dancing about Architecture features this review of nme.com, which praises the site to the skies.
However (i bet you knew that was coming), when i were but an internet virgin about three and a bit years ago, it was so much better. Tim comments on the site still building it's community, but back then there really was a feeling of community, you'd see the same ppl in the chat room, who also posted on the msg board, and conversation was actually fun, rather than just 16 year olds swearing at you. I met loads of lovely fluffy people there, who i've kind of lost contact with now due to my disillusionment with the site.
On buying this week's nme i discovered that they had reinstated holly's demo hell from the maker, unfortunately they haven't got it on the website yet, so if i could point you to the bottom of page 50 and the following "review":
Zipgun
"firing on 8"
"Formed in the summer of 1999, Zipgun set about turning music back to the decadent side." Fancy. This would appear to entail the emulation of nasty 80's rock bands, vocals gruff and sneering, guitars sullied. Sex may or may not have been had. There are also some choice screechy female backing vocals. Oh, and some funky bits. You don't, therefore, need me to tell you that the effect is one of muted, short-lived hilarity and ultimately, sleep.
Why do I care, you ask. Why type out this demolition of some poor little unsigned band? Because, BECAUSE, zipgun are the blokes i used to be in Carsmile with, back in the day, and it warms my heart to see their first national press, honest...
I'd be surprised if anyone reading this doesn't already know about the wonders of LEGO PORN. If fact, I'd just be surprised if anyone was reading this, to be brutally honest. Go on, make my day, send me a mail, someone? anyone? anyone?
bueller?bueller?
Out on Saturday nite at Strange Fruit, when a noise came from the speakers. "Arurr rur, arurr rur, tickety tick ter tick, tick tick" it went, and suddenly a shiver went down my spine, as i thought "Oh BUGGER, I've left Cannonball out of the overplayed records of the 90s list." I guess it must be the six months i've had with very few indie disco nite's out, with the exception of the ever-terrible-in-a-really-good-way-ee-i-remember-when-i-were-18 panic, which frankly is the 20somethings version of talking about the blitz, "we had nowt but neds atomic dustbin when i were a lad, AND we were happy" etc.
So I'm bored and trying to see if anyone on n*pster has got any songs by old cheltenham bands. Failing in this, I go for the inevitable google search, which throws up The Ideal Home Page, last updated about a zillion years ago, in fact shortly before they did their infamous gig at JD Peppers, the night the floor collapsed. It also includes very very very short audio snippets, that are about 10 seconds long, and all their reviews and stuff.
There She Goes - The Las
Killing in the Name of - Rage Against the Machine
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
Step On - Happy Mondays (followed by)
There's No Other Way - Blur (followed by)
The Only One I Know - The Charlatans
Fools Gold (9.53 mix) - The Stone Roses
Loaded - Primal Scream
Song 2 - Blur
ANY SONG from "The Stone Roses"
I worked out about a year ago that having been at (on average) an indie disco once a week for the previous seven years, I had spent A DAY OF MY LIFE listening to killing in the bastard name of, a record i do not, and have never considered, owning. As you can see, with the exception of Song 2, these are all records from the start of the decade, and which have all become (ahem) classics, but i would happily never listen to any of them again, especially the mondays/charlatans/blur megamix which indie djs seem to be incapable of NOT playing in close proximity to each other. Maybe it's the provincal nature of Cheltenham's indie djs, the need to get the crowd of people dancing, where the majority have more mainstream tastes, but it does seem to be rather endemic at indie events i have attended around the country, even in that London.
Perhaps, as Tom suggested the other night, it's because there have been no dancable indie records released in the last 5 years...
I also received the ltle bk of txt msgs for christmas, which includes such classics as MHOTY (my hat's off to you), WUCIWUG (what you see is what you get, rather than the more traditional WYSIWYG) and PITA (pain in the ass), which gives a whole new meaning to the hosts of this lovely weblog... if you have any exciting txt msgs or emoticons you can send them to jokes@michaelomarabooks.com apparently. Personally i think i'l just send them abuse ;) (oh dear)
Some CHEEKY french automobile type company has registered carsmile.com, the bastards...
I found out when starry was webstalking me the other nite. I also found lots of random mentions of carsmile via the wonders of google search. Here are some pics i found (only one of them is me, can you guess which?)
Where were you when you heard? Yes, after seemingly hours of rumour, the maker becomes the latest casualty in the music paper wars, merging with the NME after next week, mind you they're both shite now, but i think a lot of my musical loves and prejudices were formed by reading the music press during my formative years.
I know it might be cool or hip to say that one's musical tastes are the result of scouring rack after rack of mouldy vinyl in smelly indie shops or reading cutting edge fanzines, but for a kid growing up in the sticks (like me) the music papers used to be my only link to the outside world, this was when mark goodybags was doing the evening session, and madchester had just been invented. I'm sure i'm not the only one with a large pile of NMEs and MMs in their mum's attic/garage/cupboard under the stairs...
so effectively this is the end of, well something, possibly an era, especially as the word brand is mentioned heavily in the statement, wonder what swells will have to say about that...
Saturday, December 9, 2000
So I'm meant to be writing up last weekend for this diary project i said i'd do, and i've had a terrible attack of deadlineophobia, which i suffered from constantly through college, but which i thought i'd probably got over by now, but it turns out i haven't which is a right pain in the arse, and means any plans i had to attempt to launch any kind of journalistic flights of fancy are probably incredibly unlikely.
sigh
I suppose i'm meant to put links and stuff in here, but i always get the feeling that i'm the last to know about things, anyway, here's my favourite ranting forum of the moment I Love Music. There are lots of different questions to rant about, and some of my more eloquent friends contribute quite regularly, which is nice, cos they rarely post to the list any more.
Oh, and S Club 7 are the tools of satan, obviously.
Thursday, November 30, 2000
Oh dear, seems to be rather a long time since i updated this, oh well here i am now.
Lots of things have happened too, been to New York (which was well cool)(and which there will be pics of soon, once i finish the last film), been to gigs, lost out on winning members of belle and sebastian in on line auctions and generally sat in pubs and stuff.
This weekend I'm writing a diary of my weekend along with about 15 other people, most of whom i don't know, and then we'll put it all together an see what it looks like. Fortunately I intend to have a rather exciting weekend exploring what the muppets at NME have decided to christen NAM, possibly the worst acronym since NWONW. Completely co-incidentally i will be seeing a whole swathe of bands who are mainly acoustic, so i will use this opportunity to see if any of them are any cop, and if it's any more of a scene than any of the last half dozen NME constructs.
Tonite we have tompaulin and vigilance black special, saturday brings the genital waves, and sunday lowgold and alfie. I shall be drowning in lightly strummed acoustics by next week, and probably railling against the fools at kings reach towers who lazily hump these groups together, that's the plan anyway, lets see how it goes...
Yes, children, I have seen a band sooo atrocious, so utterly lacking in anything that even vaguely interested me at any level, that I am officially declaring them WORST BAND EVER. And let those who have reckoning understand the name of this beast, and it is QUEEN ADREENA.
So basically you've got this horrendous turgid chuga chuga tune free industro-prog-goth-metal trying to sound ever so important and doom laden, whilst some entirely uninteresting, virtually naked woman screams "oh i'm mad, look at me everyone, look at me and feel my pain, oh oh i'm sooooooooo artistic and sad, wearing hardly any clothes cos i'm so artistic and i think i'm going to pretend to fight the guitarist whilst he plays the guitar behind his head as though that will impress us. then i'll wrap the mike wire round my neck lots of times cos that'll make me look fucked up wont it. oh and if i bang the mike against my head that'll be even better oh is it time for another 5 minute chugachuga solo"
To be honest i think i'm making it sound rather more interesting than it was... I think my main difficulty here is not so much that these people actually think they are doing something exciting, important and challenging, a thousand art school/6th form bands have been guilty of that. But these people are GROWN UPS, for fucks sake, none of them will see their mid 20s again. They used to be daisy chainsaw. They were quite funny then. "Love your money" even had a tune. To call this sludge is to be rather disrespectful to primordial gloop.
Should know better are the three words that immediately spring to mind, too many drugs are another three. The funny thing is, the venue was rather busy, and although i suspect there was a proportion of the audience who are the sort of people who slow down to watch car crashes, there were people who were clapping and cheering, to my utmost amazement. I just wanted to go up to each and every person who was applauding this care in the community as entertainment and ask them why, why WHY?????? but by the time they finished alcoholic stupor was approaching and i just wanted to dance and forget about it...
I seem to be spending a disproportionate amount of time lately watching bands that could only really be described as RAWK. With the exception of Broadcast, all my recent gigs have been of the loud guitar/large distortion/small children jumping up and down in ridiculously large trousers genre. One of these (The YoYos) could even be described as BLOODY GREAT. Am I, in fact, reverting to my teen years of rockness, or is this just a passing trend, because all the indie bands are sat on their arses staring at their navels whereas rock bands compulsively feel the need to tour shitty little venues thinking that if the combined capacity of all the gigs they do in one year equals 70000 it's the same as playing one night at wembley...
I mean, it's not like i'm listening to this stuff at home, unless mrs carsmile puts it on, it's very much badly drawn boy, the delgados and wheat hogging the d drive at the moment.
The next week seems set to continue this trend, Queen Adreena and Little Hell tonite and an actual RAWK disco for halloween.
Maybe it's time to get the denim jacket out again and see if i can find the old guns n roses t-shirt...
