(Only kidding Glenn! I like your rambling long blog entries. Dave doesn't though. He slagged them off like he slagged off my Indietron reviews. Sometimes Dave makes me sad)
Well the last couple of months have seen some interesting events in the world both outside and inside my social life. Quite a few of my friends had birthdays that involved us going out or staying in and generally having a grand old time. But in the real world John Peel kicked the bucket and that hick fuck got back in Office in the US of A, apparently on a popular wave of torch-waving peasants intent on burning down Castle Pinko. Ah well. Some of my friends are entirely blase about the whole thing, like Dave, others like Paul are paranoid as fuck about it. I guess I'm sort of in the middle. I don't think it's necessarily the end of the world, but it'd be stupid for me to think that economic and military decisions made by the oil-hungry monsters in the Whitehouse can't have actual direct effects on our lives here.
Despite both my life and the wide world generally being a bit monotonous and dislocated at the moment, the last couple months have been livened up by a series of exciting (and cash-draining) events following on from Glenn's birthday.
A few weeks ago Paul won tickets to see the mighty Goldie Lookin Chain in Manchester so he invited me along. Noel was visiting from London at the same time so I ended up going out with them both on the Thursday before GLC Friday. This proved to be something of an error as I felt like shit on the Friday. Not to mention that we got kicked out of the Mill by that fucking witch whose boyfriend runs it. Ah well, I guess that makes it official, I am barred from the Mill. No loss really seeing as Thursday Friday and Saturday nights all appear to be wank. Still, it's a shame that I've lost it as an option for a night out, not to mention the various gigs that go on there.
Aaaanyway, we went to Manchester to see them and predictably there was a fuck-up and they didn't have Paul's name down! Cue a fun-packed half hour of Paul desperately trying to track down the guy who was meant to sort the tickets out as we wondered if we'd have to turn round and get back on the train. Luckily it all got sorted and we got our tickets and, excitingly, passes to the after-show party.
The gig itself was ace. I rarely get carried away watching bands, but the hilarious madness of it combined with Paul's (and everyone else's) enthusiasm had me jumping up and down with my hands in the air by the end. Sadly the after-show party didn't materialise, we just hung around at the nightclub thing they had on at the Academy afterwards (which turned out to be a really bad R&B affair). My illness from the night before had stopped me from drinking too much earlier, I had pretty much recovered by the time the gig finished but by then Paul was fucking wasted. Heehee. We ended up leaving and staggering to the train station, which turned out to be closed, so we dicked about in Manc for a couple of hours as Paul slowly sobered up. Anyway despite the various stumbling blocks we managed to have fun and get home. Safe as fuck!
Basement Music returned after the summer holidays. Due to some zany late licensing fuck ups (which seem all the rage in Lancaster at the moment) they have to close at pub times, giving a weird 7-11 evening out. It makes me all nostalgic about Indie-Go at H20, the proto-Basement. Funnily enough the school-disco-hours mean it's been easier than usual to persuade people to go there with me, what with the more work-friendly bedtime involved.
My first guest slot this year was organised at a bit of a late notice (the night before), as was the second one I ended up doing, so I'll hopefully do another one some time in the New Year. Still, I thought the first one went okay. Quite a few of my friends turned up, and I even got some random people dancing to my songs! This is what I played:
Moldy Peaches - Downloading Porn With Davo
Blonde Redhead - Equus
Fiery Furnaces - Crystal Clear
The Walkmen - Revenge Wears No Wristwatch
Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland 1945
Modest Mouse - The View
The Futureheads - Meantime
The International Noise Conspiracy - The Reproduction of Death
The Shins - Fighting In A Sack
Sleater-Kinney - Oh!
Guided By Voices - I Am A Scientist
Okkervil River - Song About A Star
Interpol - C'Mere
Ikara Colt - Sink Venice
Mclusky - Undress For Success
Ladytron - Blue Jeans 2.0
Frank Black - Men In Black
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Art Star
The Walkmen - Little House of Savages
The Magnetic Fields - Absolutely Cuckoo
Death Cab For Cutie - The Sound of Settling
Belle & Sebastian - Lazy Line Painter Jane
The Futureheads - Hounds of Love
It was a very enjoyable night actually, I found the actual DJing bit slightly nerve-wracking but satisfying. But afterwards I drank booze and danced to some very good music played by Joe. I was also amazed by the dancing skills of Pete SK which included doing a forward roll onto the dancefloor. Respect is due.
Also this term saw the start of Feedback, a new indie night in Lancaster. Again I had fun drinking vodka and dancing to nice songs. The Feedback people have made a point of saying they're not trying to fill the dance floor but just play stuff they like, as someone who's often been accused of "music nazism" I approve of this approach. However I do wonder if with such a willfully obscurist style they'll be able to draw in enough people to make it worth doing in the long term. It'd be nice to think so (especially with mine and Glenn's shady DJ-deck-related plans). Feedback seems to be skipping about the week depending on what venue they play in, I've only been able to make it to the two nights they did on a Friday. It looks like they're going to become a permanent Friday thing in the New Year though, which would be ace as there's fuck all to do in Lancaster at the weekend (assuming you don't like fightpubs and meatmarkets). Also it looks like I might be doing a guest DJ there at some point, which'd be fun.
We went down to Bedworth for John's birthday. The plucky scamp had managed to survive the rockstar-deathyear of 27 and make it to 28, something me and Paul have yet to achieve, so perhaps thinking of this victory over death he made it a zombie fancy dress party. So we all dressed up as the living dead, with varying degrees of success, as you can see in some photos here from the evening. The next day the makeup had mostly rubbed off and yet strangely enough we looked even more like shuffling corpses. Booze is the devil!
The next week it was a weekend of earth-shattering import - Halloween, the Nexus Awards and Christian's birthday. Surely such momentous advents hadn't coincided since giants roamed the earth (while, aside from Christian's birthday and Halloween, which coincide every year). As you can see from the photos the Nexus Awards were pretty fun, despite Crows being unusually a bit of a disappointment food-wise. I suspect actually they may have made deliberately shoddy main courses in revenge for John Hudson almost setting fire to the table. I was quite pleased to walk away with the Best Section and Funniest User awards, though seeing as I was the one who organised all the voting it wasn't much of a surprise on the night for me. Some of us ended up in The Dark Place afterwards, where I danced to a couple of songs played by The Worst DJ Ever before watching Mike and Karl engage in some homoerotic foreplay-fighting. Christian seemed to enjoy himself though, which is the important thing, though as he'd just started drinking again after two months of abstaining from booze he probably would have had fun in a launderette (Martin Fowler style!).
God my memory is bad. I'm trying to remember what other things happened now. I can remember stuff but not what order it happened...
I invited people over to my new house for a meal. I ended up having to cook for like 12 people, which is a bit mad as the most I've ever done before was maybe 6, but it seemed to come out okay. I'll never be Chris Onstad, but I did go as far as to actually look up a proper recipe to use rather than just make stuff up like I usually do. I decided to invite people because I thought it might be nice to have a social gathering that wasn't based around going out somewhere and getting hammered. Not that I'm turning into some sort of Dave-style anti-drinker, just that I think a bit of variety could help. Also it was the first time I was actually inviting people over to hang out at mine since I'd moved and it was a chance to see how the small living room handled a gang of people. The answer was - not very well. Still, I had a nice time and people seemed to enjoy the food and predictably most of us ended up getting pissed anyway.
Marie and Glenn took me to see Modest Mouse in Manchester Academy (last seen by my eyes hosting a dozen Welsh monkeys) which was pretty ace, in a sort of sporadic way. Modest Mouse are a band I've only gotten into over the last year really. They were always one of those names that popped up as a "if you like this, you'll probably also like this!" regular on Amazon and Audiogalaxy and the like in the past, but I'd just never got round to listening to them. Well, as I'm sure you're aware they turn out to be pretty fucking good. Live they were exciting but also shambolic as fuck, the change between each song seemed to be punctuated by a five minute gap while they fiddled with various instruments trying to get them to play right. Now I may not be an expert on this sort of thing, but don't bands normally do soundchecks to sort out that stuff before a gig? Anyway it killed the mood a bit but while they were playing the band was dead good.
I did my second guest slot at Basement Music, which was another last minute warning job as I replaced Dave, who had originally meant to be playing with the Superkings but had then switched to doing a DJ set and had then sacked that off too. Dave's reasons for pulling out seemed to be a mixture of apathy, technical problems, and paranoia. I'm not sure which one was the primary factor, like one of Marie's cocktails you could kind of taste the ingredients but weren't sure of the measures. Anyway, I filled in for Dave and had a bit of a panic-attack-inducing session due to the CD players at the Crypt fucking up with half the CDs I was trying to play. I kind of scraped through, I doubt many people even noticed the fuck ups as it was early in the evening and no one was dancing anyway. It was like a direct prod in my neurosis gland though. Here's what I played.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Our Time
DJ Shadow - High Noon
The Fiery Furnaces - Don't Dance Her Down
The Concretes - Can't Hurry Love
AC Newman - The Town Halo
Jonathan FireEater - Station Coffee
The Shins - So Says I
Death From Above 1979 - Romantic Rights
The Streets & The Futureheads - Fit But You Know It
The Futureheads - Carnival Kids
Interpol - Evil
Mclusky - You Are My Sun
Razorlight - Rip It Up
Ladytron - Oops Oh My
Sleater-Kinney - Little Mouth
Kaito - Should I
Okkervil River - Blanket and Crib
The Dresden Dolls - Girl Anachronism
Pulp - Seconds
Modest Mouse - Ocean Breathes Salty
Death Cab For Cutie - Expo 86
The Magnetic Fields - (Crazy For You But) Not That Crazy
Pavement - Here
The Walkmen - Thinking of a Dream I Had
The Go! Team - Huddle Formation
Speaking of the Superkings, we recently attended a couple of Dave's gigs. The first was at the Night & Day in Manchester, where they played with the Baker Street Irregulars. You can see some photos of the evening here (though as I was taking them with a crappy camera it's all photos of us at the gig rather than the bands themselves). The BSIs are something of a Preston institution, and Dave's a big fan, but I'd actually never seen them play before. Luckily they didn't disappoint. It was the first time as well that I saw the SKs play with their new cellist lady, and it was fucking ace, though the sound there seemed a bit muddy to me (which has happened before with them at the Night & Day) and the vocals suffered.
The next week the SKs were playing at the 12 Bar in Preston with Star27 and Condor Moments, two local acts of which I am particularly fond. Dave & co did a relatively quiet acoustic set that had to fight against a hubbub of semi-interested people at the bar all talking to each other. Still, a chunk of people did seem into it and there were appreciative comments on Prestone afterwards, which is nice. Not that Prestone matters, but it's good to see that the band made some sort of impression on local gig-goers what with the infrequency of their appearances there. We ended up staying at the 12 Bar till late, a bit of an error on a Thursday work night. I've had too many days self-invalided from WORK recently so I forced myself in the next morning, even though it involved getting up at half 7 after about four hours sleep (kept awake by Dave and Marie bitching about people) and getting a train back to Lancaster so I could stagger straight into work. At the time it seemed a fate worse than rape-death, but of course in hindsight the horror seems worth the fun we had the night before.
Well that's about it really. I'm sure there's things I would have mentioned that I've forgotten, but I can always mention them later. At least this fucking David Copperfield-esque entry is finally finished.
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