Week ending today.
Apr. 18th, 2002 04:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zotzWell, it's about the middle of the month and I'm seven down, which is good. News access from work has disintegrated, though, so I'll have to pester W. Dave on my own time. As the server belongs to the people who are responsible for the bionet groups, I'm probably not one of their major problems.
My room has now been comprehensively extended, and the nice builders have left me a present, sitting in the middle of it - a cement mixer. Just what I've always wanted. There's dust over everything, of course, but apparently I'll probably be able to move back into my room next week sometime.
On Friday I went into London to see Ballboy at the Barfly on Chalk Farm Road. I left work a touch early to make sure I didn't miss anything, and by the time I left Chalk farm tube it was still only seven. This turned out to be a bit foolish, as the place didn't open until eight. It wasn't even open as a pub downstairs, so I hung around in the fading sunshine waiting for something to happen. At about twenty-to SL Records turned up, so I said hello to him. It's almost a full-time job for him now, apparently, although not involving full-time money at this point, so he's got a propr job too. This was to be the third gig of a tour of ten. Birmingham hadn't apparently been what they'd hoped, but Oxford was good, so he was optimistic about this one. He then popped inside to check on the records and shirts he'd be selling, and reappeared a little later to slope off to the pub. A few minutes after that, the doors opened and we trooped in. The place had been done out with lots of pictures of Gagarin and old Soviet emblems. This was in aid of Yuri's night, celebrating the anniversary of Gagarin's flight. I suppose Ballboy were the natural choice for this.
There were three bands on the bill. The first was Maker, a punkish three-piece who'd been hanging around outside while I was waiting. I liked the first song until the widdly guitar break right at the end. The second was OK, but not as good. A little prog for my liking. Never mind, there was always the merchandise stall . . . so i went to chat to Ed again, and relieve him of a couple of copies of the new EP "All the records on the radio are shite" and what was apparently the very last of the accompanying Tshirts. Maker played on, and were energetic, but not amazingly to my taste. They didn't really do anything to grab me - unlike, say, Nancy's Dead, who supported Queen Adreena in Chelmsford a couple of years ago and were also snotty punks, but much more entertaining (The first time I saw them, they finished their set with the singer diving into the drumkit, breaking the drummer's ringpiece. I saw them a bit later in Cambridge supporting someone else. Apparently they've broken up now. Maybe the drummer found it a bit too much).
The second band were Canteen. (What is it with the names? In the early nineties we had all the monosyllabic indie bands - Curve, Swerve, Verve and so on - and now we've got the bisyllabic ones : Ballboy, Maker and Canteen. Does this mean that Sugar were ten years ahead of their time? Or does even mentioning them in this company make me guilty of saccharilege?) They had a very respectable lineup - as far as the instruments went, at least. Les Paul, Fender Jag, Rickenbacker bass and a couple of (admittedly fairly generic) keyboards with an E-Mu expander (look, I ended up standing next to it while Ballboy were setting up, OK? I didn't actually go over for a look). Clearly a brand-aware bunch. It was quite amusing at the end of their set seeing the big Marshall boxes being lifted off the obligatory milk-crates to reveal Ballboy's teeny little amps hidden behind them. As for the music . . . well, they were good if you like that sort of thing. Very much a "We are a indie-rock singer-songwriter and band" kind of band. Relationships, angst, done fairly seriously and tastefully. The singer reminded me of someone, but I couldn't work out who. To be honest, I spent a lot of the set looking at the audience. Teeny indie-kids are wearing some odd combinations at the moment, but some of the stuff hasn't changed since the mid-eighties. This is quite reassuring in a way. I wonder how many of them have heard of Talulah Gosh?
Ballboy were pleased to be there. I know they were, because they said so. "It's lovely to be here. It is, really. I know that sounds like something Robbie Williams would say, but it's true. It's lovely to be in the city that produces the NME."
[FX: Laughter]
"I'd like to dedicate this set to the NME journalist who took time out from his busy schedule of snorting cocaine and hangin' out with big-titted hoors to gie our record a doin'."
[More laughter]
"It's alright, though. It's alright, because he'll get his."
I hope he doesn't talk that way at work.
Anyway, it was a fine set (in my [cough] entirely unbiassed opinion). They played All The Songs On The Radio Are Shite, and they played I Lost You But I Found Country Music, and they played Are You Drunk Enough To Sleep With Me Tonight?
No sign of Olympic Cyclist or Sex is Boring, and they finished with Public Park instead of They'll Hang Flags From Cranes, but it was very good in a wimpy indie kind of way, with patter between. And then home, of course, clutching shirt and records.
Saturday was the book sale again, and getting my watchstrap replaced, and going to the pub to see people, especially![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lhiss, who was back in town for the weekend. After several hours in the pub, I went back with a few people to razornet's for another drink, followed by a taxi back to the right side of town with a couple of people including alixandrea. Sunday was quiet, but later involved a different pub to see Patrick again.
The week has been quiet at work, but I've been keeping myself (fairly) busy. The building work has been ongoing, and is now mostly done. There's some new floor needed, and some plastering, and a bit of ceiling, but most of the heavy work is finished. We've got a new cable box, which we need because NTL has chosen its period of maximal financial uncertainty to replace everyone's analogue boxes with digital ones. The new remote is appalling. It's covered in obscure buttons with bizarre and often somewhat duplicated functions, and it looks like one of the weirder sex toys. But we've got Film4 back, which is the main thing. Jack and Sarah was on, so Karen watched Richard E Grant while Mark and I watched Samantha Mathis. Life is so difficult sometimes.
Tuesday was the Calling. We got fewer people (75) than last time (105) but more than the time before that (65), so we're doing OK. It being the holidays for all the little Stunteds may have something to do with it. I was on first (no setlist ths time - it'll crop up in due course on the website) and played a lot of slow stuff, probably due to Richard having slipped Lambchop's version of This Corrosion (!!) on before I started. John "The DJ of Bath and Wells" Sullivan was on second, and had a nasty glitch because I'd left the mixer in an unusable state due to flicking a few of the wrong switches on the way out (Oops - sorry, John). Richard was on last, and played some excellent and some bizarrely cheesy stuff (a technoid version of The Phantom Of the Opera?). I had a good time, in spite of the CD players being jumpy all night and one of the turntables feeding back. I could fix the turntable probem, but as ever the CD players were unhelpful and inscrutable. Remember, kids - if anyone offers you digital audio, Just Say No.
I've finished the third part of George R Martin's fat fantasy, as well. Now, I know what you're going to say. "Graham," you will ask me, "You do realise that the high fantasy polyology is the lowest form of literature yet invented, don't you?" Well, yes I do. And I also know that getting involved with one while it's still unfinished is venturing past folly into blatant idiocy. I am, though, a fan of Martin's work and he's one of the few writers I'd follow into such a thing. Gene Wolfe does polyologies as well, these days, but most of the writers I rate steer clear of them. Thankfully.
And what's it like? Well . . . it's rather good. The attrition rate is frightening - every couple of chapters Karen would hear me say "And another one bites the dust" and shake her head. I should point out that the chapters aren't very long and as it's an absolute doorstop there are quite a lot of them. The way this man treats his characters, he doesn't deserve to have any. There are at least two more parts to come, and I've no idea how he's planning on keeping any of them alive that long. Maybe that's the secret plot twist at the end.
Anyway, he's been working quite hard at making everyone's point of view understandable, including all of the notable villains. Several of these have become quite sympathetic characters. I expect a couple of them to survive. I also expect the heroes to keep dropping like flies, getting hideously maimed, breaking promises, killing friends and relatives . . . all good cheery stuff. And I suspect the nastiness has hardly started yet.
Today the car's in getting the speedo fixed. It's been broken since before christmas, but it's taken this long to find a replacement. I'll be glad to get that out of the way. After that I have to fix one of the mirrors, tidy up inside and it'll be nice and presentable. I got a mail from MBE yesterday, saying she's going back to do her diploma and be a lawyer. It's about time, frankly. She's been underwhelmed about her publishing jobs for a fair while now - unless she's just taken to only ever moaning about things. I suppose I don't hear from her often enough now to really know. This stems from listening to 6music a lot - a very entertaining station that I've been listening to streamed off the website for the last week or so. They played a Smoking Popes song that MBE got given a copy of by a mutual friend some years ago. This was very strange - I met very few people who've ever heard of them, so I certainly wouldn't expect to hear them on a national radio station. Unless it was John Peel, obviously.
My room has now been comprehensively extended, and the nice builders have left me a present, sitting in the middle of it - a cement mixer. Just what I've always wanted. There's dust over everything, of course, but apparently I'll probably be able to move back into my room next week sometime.
On Friday I went into London to see Ballboy at the Barfly on Chalk Farm Road. I left work a touch early to make sure I didn't miss anything, and by the time I left Chalk farm tube it was still only seven. This turned out to be a bit foolish, as the place didn't open until eight. It wasn't even open as a pub downstairs, so I hung around in the fading sunshine waiting for something to happen. At about twenty-to SL Records turned up, so I said hello to him. It's almost a full-time job for him now, apparently, although not involving full-time money at this point, so he's got a propr job too. This was to be the third gig of a tour of ten. Birmingham hadn't apparently been what they'd hoped, but Oxford was good, so he was optimistic about this one. He then popped inside to check on the records and shirts he'd be selling, and reappeared a little later to slope off to the pub. A few minutes after that, the doors opened and we trooped in. The place had been done out with lots of pictures of Gagarin and old Soviet emblems. This was in aid of Yuri's night, celebrating the anniversary of Gagarin's flight. I suppose Ballboy were the natural choice for this.
There were three bands on the bill. The first was Maker, a punkish three-piece who'd been hanging around outside while I was waiting. I liked the first song until the widdly guitar break right at the end. The second was OK, but not as good. A little prog for my liking. Never mind, there was always the merchandise stall . . . so i went to chat to Ed again, and relieve him of a couple of copies of the new EP "All the records on the radio are shite" and what was apparently the very last of the accompanying Tshirts. Maker played on, and were energetic, but not amazingly to my taste. They didn't really do anything to grab me - unlike, say, Nancy's Dead, who supported Queen Adreena in Chelmsford a couple of years ago and were also snotty punks, but much more entertaining (The first time I saw them, they finished their set with the singer diving into the drumkit, breaking the drummer's ringpiece. I saw them a bit later in Cambridge supporting someone else. Apparently they've broken up now. Maybe the drummer found it a bit too much).
The second band were Canteen. (What is it with the names? In the early nineties we had all the monosyllabic indie bands - Curve, Swerve, Verve and so on - and now we've got the bisyllabic ones : Ballboy, Maker and Canteen. Does this mean that Sugar were ten years ahead of their time? Or does even mentioning them in this company make me guilty of saccharilege?) They had a very respectable lineup - as far as the instruments went, at least. Les Paul, Fender Jag, Rickenbacker bass and a couple of (admittedly fairly generic) keyboards with an E-Mu expander (look, I ended up standing next to it while Ballboy were setting up, OK? I didn't actually go over for a look). Clearly a brand-aware bunch. It was quite amusing at the end of their set seeing the big Marshall boxes being lifted off the obligatory milk-crates to reveal Ballboy's teeny little amps hidden behind them. As for the music . . . well, they were good if you like that sort of thing. Very much a "We are a indie-rock singer-songwriter and band" kind of band. Relationships, angst, done fairly seriously and tastefully. The singer reminded me of someone, but I couldn't work out who. To be honest, I spent a lot of the set looking at the audience. Teeny indie-kids are wearing some odd combinations at the moment, but some of the stuff hasn't changed since the mid-eighties. This is quite reassuring in a way. I wonder how many of them have heard of Talulah Gosh?
Ballboy were pleased to be there. I know they were, because they said so. "It's lovely to be here. It is, really. I know that sounds like something Robbie Williams would say, but it's true. It's lovely to be in the city that produces the NME."
[FX: Laughter]
"I'd like to dedicate this set to the NME journalist who took time out from his busy schedule of snorting cocaine and hangin' out with big-titted hoors to gie our record a doin'."
[More laughter]
"It's alright, though. It's alright, because he'll get his."
I hope he doesn't talk that way at work.
Anyway, it was a fine set (in my [cough] entirely unbiassed opinion). They played All The Songs On The Radio Are Shite, and they played I Lost You But I Found Country Music, and they played Are You Drunk Enough To Sleep With Me Tonight?
No sign of Olympic Cyclist or Sex is Boring, and they finished with Public Park instead of They'll Hang Flags From Cranes, but it was very good in a wimpy indie kind of way, with patter between. And then home, of course, clutching shirt and records.
Saturday was the book sale again, and getting my watchstrap replaced, and going to the pub to see people, especially
lhiss, who was back in town for the weekend. After several hours in the pub, I went back with a few people to razornet's for another drink, followed by a taxi back to the right side of town with a couple of people including alixandrea. Sunday was quiet, but later involved a different pub to see Patrick again. The week has been quiet at work, but I've been keeping myself (fairly) busy. The building work has been ongoing, and is now mostly done. There's some new floor needed, and some plastering, and a bit of ceiling, but most of the heavy work is finished. We've got a new cable box, which we need because NTL has chosen its period of maximal financial uncertainty to replace everyone's analogue boxes with digital ones. The new remote is appalling. It's covered in obscure buttons with bizarre and often somewhat duplicated functions, and it looks like one of the weirder sex toys. But we've got Film4 back, which is the main thing. Jack and Sarah was on, so Karen watched Richard E Grant while Mark and I watched Samantha Mathis. Life is so difficult sometimes.
Tuesday was the Calling. We got fewer people (75) than last time (105) but more than the time before that (65), so we're doing OK. It being the holidays for all the little Stunteds may have something to do with it. I was on first (no setlist ths time - it'll crop up in due course on the website) and played a lot of slow stuff, probably due to Richard having slipped Lambchop's version of This Corrosion (!!) on before I started. John "The DJ of Bath and Wells" Sullivan was on second, and had a nasty glitch because I'd left the mixer in an unusable state due to flicking a few of the wrong switches on the way out (Oops - sorry, John). Richard was on last, and played some excellent and some bizarrely cheesy stuff (a technoid version of The Phantom Of the Opera?). I had a good time, in spite of the CD players being jumpy all night and one of the turntables feeding back. I could fix the turntable probem, but as ever the CD players were unhelpful and inscrutable. Remember, kids - if anyone offers you digital audio, Just Say No.
I've finished the third part of George R Martin's fat fantasy, as well. Now, I know what you're going to say. "Graham," you will ask me, "You do realise that the high fantasy polyology is the lowest form of literature yet invented, don't you?" Well, yes I do. And I also know that getting involved with one while it's still unfinished is venturing past folly into blatant idiocy. I am, though, a fan of Martin's work and he's one of the few writers I'd follow into such a thing. Gene Wolfe does polyologies as well, these days, but most of the writers I rate steer clear of them. Thankfully.
And what's it like? Well . . . it's rather good. The attrition rate is frightening - every couple of chapters Karen would hear me say "And another one bites the dust" and shake her head. I should point out that the chapters aren't very long and as it's an absolute doorstop there are quite a lot of them. The way this man treats his characters, he doesn't deserve to have any. There are at least two more parts to come, and I've no idea how he's planning on keeping any of them alive that long. Maybe that's the secret plot twist at the end.
Anyway, he's been working quite hard at making everyone's point of view understandable, including all of the notable villains. Several of these have become quite sympathetic characters. I expect a couple of them to survive. I also expect the heroes to keep dropping like flies, getting hideously maimed, breaking promises, killing friends and relatives . . . all good cheery stuff. And I suspect the nastiness has hardly started yet.
Today the car's in getting the speedo fixed. It's been broken since before christmas, but it's taken this long to find a replacement. I'll be glad to get that out of the way. After that I have to fix one of the mirrors, tidy up inside and it'll be nice and presentable. I got a mail from MBE yesterday, saying she's going back to do her diploma and be a lawyer. It's about time, frankly. She's been underwhelmed about her publishing jobs for a fair while now - unless she's just taken to only ever moaning about things. I suppose I don't hear from her often enough now to really know. This stems from listening to 6music a lot - a very entertaining station that I've been listening to streamed off the website for the last week or so. They played a Smoking Popes song that MBE got given a copy of by a mutual friend some years ago. This was very strange - I met very few people who've ever heard of them, so I certainly wouldn't expect to hear them on a national radio station. Unless it was John Peel, obviously.
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Date: 2002-04-18 05:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-04-18 05:41 am (UTC)