Do You Come Here Often?

It Was 20 Years Ago Today, ish

2009-06-23T10:25:03Z

It's June 1989. In the aftermath of the Tianenmen Square massacre, London indie nothings The Keatons decide to record and release a 7" single all by themselves, partly because it would be a gloriously independent gesture in the spirit of post-punk DIY, but more because no other bastard was ever going to ever pay for them to do it. I wasn't in the band by this point; I was struggling manfully through a clutch of A Levels, including an Economics paper which asked me to write an essay about the monopoly enjoyed by the Severn Bridge, not that the Severn Bridge itself was able to smugly revel in its enviable position. By the time the record came out I had joined the band, however, and I've spent the last 20 years pretending that the record had something to do with me whenever I imagined that would be advantageous to me in some way, i.e. never. Anyway, I may as well keep up the pretence.

This is what it looked like; I've just swiped this image from eBay because I can't find my copy anywhere, which is annoying, in fact I might even have to buy the bastard off eBay.

Two things struck me when I got my hands on it for the first time. First of them was: "Hang on... Isn't recidivist spelt with a 'c', not an 's'?" To which the answer is "yes", and the explanation is "Steve the bass player didn't know that when he sorted out the artwork". Of course, there's no such word as "recidivistish", although there should be, so I suppose we could have got away with "residivistish", because that isn't a word either. The word "recidivistish" doesn't appear in the song, either, which further complicates, some might say trivializes the issue still further. Certain band members could never be bothered to say "recidivistish" if the song ever came up for discussion, and they'd say "recid", which would be responded to with withering scorn and laughter by pedants within the group, who would insist on saying it in full.

The second thing struck me when I put it on the turntable. It's slow. I mean, horrifically slow. You need to play it at about 50rpm for it to be at the same pitch and speed it was recorded at. I've still no idea how this happened, and when I rang Steve in a panic and mentioned it, he said "yeah, I noticed that at the cut, but I was more interested in getting the record made to be honest." The b-sides are slow, too, play at about 47rpm for best results. Fortunately, thanks to the onward march of technology, I can use magic computers to restore them to Concert Pitch, which is what I've done.

(I should add at this point that if you find post-punk angular guitars in the mould of Wire and The Fall to be deeply annoying, you should probably stop reading, although you probably have already.)

Residivistish

This was the glorious A-side which received a glowing review in Sounds from Andy Ross, head of Food Records, not that he was sufficiently moved to give us any money, or indeed hookers. An anti-verse consisting of grown men bellowing "pick a vice", followed by an unusually chirpy chorus:

Oh I bless you, such a recidivist fish
Up to the blue deep lake, the feelers twitch
Tote en hiver
Scrawl what's on my mind

Gibberish. I remember John Peel playing it one night and the excitement being so intense that I almost did a little wee.

Toys

Neil, the singer, would write the songs on a battered acoustic guitar. They'd often consist of a nothingy two-string riff repeated ad infinitum followed by a slighly more exciting chorus. "Toys" is a good example. The longevity of this tune was quite remarkable, by which I mean vaguely interesting to about 8 people. We played it at most gigs we did, and were still playing it 6 years later at a shit outdoor festival in Jena, East Germany, when it became clear that no-one really wanted to be in the band any more and we all went home, arguing as we went. Sounds mighty, though, I think. I reiterate that I'm not on it, but I could easily have been, if I'd been in the band.

Dark Sudden Something

God, there's a lot of flanging and chorusing on all this stuff. It's a bit disorientating, like having a blindfold on in a small rowing boat and two jam jars each containing a bee sellotaped to the sides of your head. This was a song that got louder and sped up towards the end, ending in chaos and general thrashing about; 20-something men are under the erroneous impression that this makes a fantastic ending to a live set, so that's what we often did. Extraordinary bass riff from a man who pronounced fussy, flashing guitar playing to be evil incarnate, but still. A reference in the lyrics to someone called "Jenny Ginsberg". No idea who that might be, although there's a Jenny Ginsberg on MySpace these days, who has written a song called "Do I Subtract or Divide to get to I?", to which the answer is "Hahaha, no idea love, sorry."

No idea why I did the above. Sheer nostalgia, I guess. Back to work.

Oh, Space Angel, say it's not true

2009-06-05T06:27:07Z

So I received a text message at 9.42pm last night, saying the following: "I think Nick's ex-wife is on Big Brother." And while this was something of a surprise, actually, when I thought about it, it made perfect sense.

I've posted on here about Angel, aka Space Angel, aka Sadko, aka Helen Sadko, aka Helen Hobbs, aka Elena Tchebotareva a few times before. She's one of the most extraordinary people I've ever met, which isn't to say that we're great mates, in fact quite the opposite: she probably thinks I'm a tedious pessimist, while I've always been utterly terrified and slightly contemptuous of her unwilting belief in her imminent fame. This is someone who could never be criticised for not throwing herself wholeheartedly into everything she does. Her effort levels are strangely inspiring. But her music is disorientating and a bit upsetting (as is her web design), her boxing career has been marked by an incredible series of straight defeats, and while she once claimed to be a "world famous visual artist whose paintings can be seen all over Europe," I only ever saw them all over her house.

My ex-boss fell for her in a big way while he was working in Moscow, and began a long-distance pursuit which eventually paid off. She came to live in London in the mid 1990s at the house where I went to work every day, and the two of them got married at Brixton Registry Office while wearing garb so hilariously outlandish that the registrar seemed slightly concerned that the whole thing might be being filmed for You've Been Framed. She began to pursue a career in, uh, music and general larking about, while I worked like a bastard in an adjoining room to help my boss earn the money that would pay for it all. From an earlier blog entry:

The latter years of working for aforementioned boss were liberally dotted with instances of me having to run errands for her, and my boss claiming that, as he was paying me by the hour, this formed an integral part of my job. The tasks could range from teaching her how to use Macromedia Flash, to phoning people on her behalf, to debugging her MIDI setup, to just fixing her computer when it became "stoned". "Rhodri, help me. My computer is stoned." You mean it has crashed? "Yes, yes. Help me." I became wearily resentful of her, and, as it was a 2-person business, increasingly annoyed at the amount of money she was leeching out of it (she had a credit card which was paid off automatically by my boss's bank accounts.) In early 2001 I did some sums, and worked out that she was pocketing way more than I was, and all she did everyday was paint nude portraits of my boss and leave them lying around the house, and then make sub-Pet Shop Boys pop music with heavily accented English lyrics. "I want to fly," I remember her singing. "Fly away, away, away." I quit the job shortly afterwards.

Thing is, she's not unpleasant. Far from it. She's lovely. It's a shame that she was roundly booed by the crowd on entering Big Brother last night, and I get no pleasure from the fact that she's already getting hammered on various online forums, but I'm not surprised. I don't think she'll last a month in there, if the public have anything to do with it. They'll see her as a grandstanding fake, but actually, she's just wildly eccentric. So eccentric that she didn't even consider removing her phone number from her website before going on one of the most popular shows on British telly. Older blog post, continued:

Since I quit the job, she has embarked on a short lived career as a rapper, including a memorable appearance on Living TV ("I want to fly, f-f-ffly") and then began boxing. "I am the top lady fighter in the UK," she told me. "I make a lot of money. I fight another lady, I get paid 2,000 pounds. I go to the Olympic Games, America, I become very famous." She appears to have married the owner of a "boxercise" studio in Herne Hill [actually, it turns out, she just adopted him as her father, whatever that means] and she turned up yesterday at my flat in a swanky car, carrying a brand new iMac (unopened). "Rhodri, put some software on this computer for me." I spent an hour updating her system, at which point she chucked £50 on my desk. "Here you are, fifty pounds," she trilled. "I love money, you know. I make lots of money. I fight other ladies, make lots of money." She looked bruised, battered and as hard as nails. I wasn't going to argue. I pocketed the money. "And you know when everything change, for me? When I give up music. I give away guitars, keyboards, I don't play music anymore. Then suddenly I make money. Music is a curse, Rhodri. A curse. You must stop making music. Then you make money."

I've never met anyone so utterly driven by the pursuit of fame. I'm glad she made it onto BB; I imagine it's probably been an ambition of hers for some time. It's terrible to say this, but she's probably perfect for the format, because a) she's unpredictable, b) has an unquenchable desire to be famous, but c) doesn't really have the raw talent to back it up. Although, having said that, she's a bloody amazing set builder. If you want scenery, she's your girl. Last blogcerpt:

She's very good with powertools, making stuff, being creative with wood and paint. So, imagine my horror while coming down Herne Hill the other day, to see an enormous, garish sign [outside the boxing studio] above the Half Moon. Even from a couple of hundred yards, I could tell immediately that it was Angel's handiwork. The name of the studio has been cut out of plywood, painted bright pink and stuck on the outside of the building. To the right of the sign is a 2D plywood figurine, in a boxing stance, black, wearing shorts and vest, and presumably represents Angel's [father]. And to the left, another figurine, female, also in a boxing stance, with 2 bloody great enormous wings sprouting out of her back. No guesses as to who that might represent. Highly incongruous, garish, utterly inappropriate for a boxing studio, but somehow rather marvellous nonetheless. If you're in the Herne Hill area, do go and have a look. I believe that it might become a tourist attraction.

Sadly it's not there any more. Angel, Elena, whatever your bloody name is, good luck, and for god's sake don't pay any attention to the British public.

Furlong

2009-05-28T21:53:45Z

Sorry if you've already seen this on Twitter. I was bored today, and ended up – almost inevitably – at omegle.com. Again.

Book

2009-05-10T10:10:49Z

I'd quite like to look like this.

Anyway, it's funny to see a book listed on Amazon before I've actually finished writing it. It appears to be coming out on my birthday. Again.

Clement Freud

2009-04-16T07:21:49Z

The news that Clement Freud has died gives me an excellent excuse to repost the best joke known to mankind.

You've got to define "more teas"

2009-02-14T13:30:06Z

I know I've posted this before, so sorry about that, but I've just spent 2 hours giving it some much-needed annotation.

It's Not Me, It's You

2009-02-13T22:02:01Z

As many people have pointed out to me over the past few weeks, Lily Allen is releasing an album by the name of It's Not Me, It's You. Back on the 19th May 2003, I released a record of my own called "It's Not Me, It's You". Compare, contrast.

Those were the days when I still felt moderately excited about the possibility of selling lots of records and people thinking I was great as a result. Nowadays, I want people to just think that I'm great without me having to write any songs, which is a hopeful supposition , but hey, that's the kind of hulking brute that I am. It was the second album by The Free French; the first was kind of an accident, a home project that ended up morphing into a record that suddenly required a band to be formed in order to play it. So this one already had a band formed to play it, but I played everything myself – except the drums – because that's the kind of controlling, hulking brute that I am.

I think it's better than Lily Allen's record, although I haven't heard Lily Allen's record, and I made this one myself, so who am I to say. I have this small hope that fat-fingered simpletons on Amazon will buy my record instead of hers by accident, but as Pinnacle Distribution has gone bust, I feel fairly certain that no money will leak back into my fluff-laden pockets. Oh well. As per Momus and Vichy Government, here's my track-by-track recollection. Cos I'm in, on a Friday, on my own.

Scatterbrain

Courageous opening to an album, I know. No drums, just me being slightly lovelorn, a wailing saw, some Prefab Sprouty chord-shifts and an overcompressed vocal. One webzine reviewed the album and didn't get any further than this track, just gave the record a monumental slagging for being "poofy" or something, although I know I'm misquoting. Thing is, it just didn't seem to fit anywhere else on the record, so I thought putting it first would be a good idea. In retrospect, I can honestly say that this was not the most important decision I've ever had to make in my life.

One thing about this album is that many of the songs are about various women. I'm sorry about that. It was shortly after splitting up with my wife, and a few months before I met Jenny. And hey, if you can't use members of the opposite sex for inspiration, what can you use? What's that? Corporation tax? I don't think so, sir. This was about a just-about-platonic relationship with someone who had a boyfriend – hence the line, uh, "the like that dare not speak its name", or whatever it was. I performed this live on BBC 6 Music. It sounded fucking awful. This, however, is pretty good. I like it.

Vowels

Bookended by a Gershwin-esque piano figure, it's a rollocking tune about someone who I went on an internet date with. She'd just been sacked as a copywriter for a big ad agency. She had dual US / UK nationality. The evening was an utter, utter disaster on every level. The "A E I O Yeah" chorus is remarkably stupid, and I'm curiously proud of it. Good drumming from Ken. I wish I'd known more about mixing music at this stage in my life, I'd have done a much better job of it.

It's Not Me, It's You

Title track. I remember coming up with the idea when I was getting drunk with Keith. He laughed. He said "I bet someone's already used that." His girlfriend at the time rolled her eyes, and said something about there being nothing intrinsically amusing about just turning well known phrases inside out. She was probably right.

Anyway. This isn't really about anyone or anything. I bloody love the middle section. The backing vocals – "Isle Of Wight", "torrential rain" – always made us piss ourselves laughing in rehearsals. Yum. Rare attempt by myself at playing something akin to a guitar solo.

oh, you and i should have a talk
we used to be like knife and fork
but now we're more like pizza and glue

Making A List

This was a really half-arsed last-minute inclusion, but ended up being one of the best things on here, at least, that's what spoombung said at the time. A friend of mine who worked for, er, Reuters, was talking about her recent history of dozens of utterly appalling boyfriends, and as someone who was in a fairly lean period, I found that interesting verging on unbelievable. So yeah, the usual compare, contrast. "The crossword girl in the Festival Hall with the wit so dry" – she was sitting at the bar doing the crossword in the Evening Standard, and this was on September 13th 2001, when basically everyone thought the world was ending. "I'm surprised you could even get through that newspaper and still feel like doing a crossword," I said. "I wasn't so much reading it," she said, "as collecting words to put into the crossword at the end of it." I was stupefied by this. If you're reading this, don't contact me, I've got a girlfriend now, goddamnyou.

Metaphorically

Everyone's favourite, it seems. (I say "everyone", by which I mean "2 people".) I can see why. I mean, it's a great tune, and it's a nice lyric, and when I was writing it I kind of knew that I was rounding off edges that would otherwise have been left in, just to make it very Squeeze-like and uncomplicated. "I wouldn't exactly call myself a doctor" was nicked off a Danny Baker broadcast that made me laugh.

Because I've had half a bottle of wine to myself at this stage, I should just say as an aside that I'm amazed I came up with some of this stuff. I honestly don't really know how I did it. Not cos it's amazing, just that I can't imagine doing it now. Hm. Anyway. I'm proud of rhyming "vagueness" with "Vegas". Is all.

Plastic Stars

Ah, yes. Good chorus coming up, I think. Someone said to me once that it reminded him of The Smiths, and that he imagined me performing it at Brixton Academy while people threw flowers at me. Stupid idiot. This was another internet date, I'm afraid. "Strange assessment of the speed that they drive" – we were walking up Balham High Road, and I was floundering for conversation, so I pointed at a passing car that was gently rolling past, and said "how fast do you think that car is going?" She said "I dunno, perhaps 60mph". There was a long silence, followed by childish giggling. Good moment. We're still friends. Oh god, I've just heard the arpeggiator at the end of the last chorus. Yamaha CS2X. Erk.

Talking Nepalese

Same person that Plastic Stars was about. For her 30th birthday, she decided to go trekking in the Himalayas on her own. Self-explanatory. I'd decided to do a song with this ludicrously brash 6/8 swing after hearing a song by Shudder To Think, I forget which one. So I combined their swaggering cock-rock with a far larger dose of disgustingly English whimsy. Sorry about that. Again, quite proud of getting the word "dungarees" in there.

Oh! My favourite line: "Hilariously unprepared but, crucially, prepared to have a go." That almost makes me sigh. My sis, who played keyboards in the band, said that she was on the bus when she was listening to this for the first time, and she burst out laughing in the big guitar solo at the end, which isn't like her at all.

Ghost Writer

This was always one of my favourites. It's odd, when you get into a compositional groove, you just seem to stumble across good ideas without even trying. The cycle of chords in the chorus is just hilarious, the kind of thing you want to keep going for bloody ages, which is eventually what I try doing at the end. A friend of mine wrote (and still writes) books which are credited to a more famous author, so I pondered on a scenario where the ghost writer just buggered off and left the celeb to try shoehorning a book together. I wince at some of the rhymes, but hey, I was young, it was OK. And a big "Nantucket Sleighride" final chord, too. BOOSH!

Swigging Echinacea

This suffered a bit from us playing it so bloody often at gigs, but it's a lovely slow-burner thing. I honestly have no idea how I could possibly have come up with this. Sorry, I think I'm repeating myself.

Am I the only person who absolutely dreads getting a cold, or a stomach bug, or whatever, mainly because I'm appalled that I'll miss out on perhaps one evening of pleasant chat and diverting distraction? That's what I'm on about here, I think.

Didn't Want To Get Involved
If You Say So

I'm bracketing these two together for two reasons – a) because I've written 1700 words so far, which seems a tad excessive, and b) because if I'd put the record together today, I'd probably have left them out. Thing is, when you're making music and excited about it, it's very difficult to exercise quality control and leave stuff out. Especially if you're an anal completist like me who believes in documenting absolutely everything. They're not bad songs, at all – Ken the drummer was persistently irritated that I never wanted to play "Didn't Want" at gigs – but the thing is, both songs aren't really about anything. They're from the Oasis school of lyric writing (albeit with a slightly more imaginative turn of phrase) that forces you to just piece a song together from scraps of words that vaguely sound meaningful, even though they aren't. And that kind of lack of commitment to a song just filters through to the music, too. Still. Oh! "My crystal ball's wrapped in Sellotape" is quite good.

One interesting thing: if there were suddenly people clamouring for us to reform, I wouldn't be able to sing half these songs, they're just too high. Alcohol and general manliness has forced my range down a good 8 semitones. Cough.

How Vicious We Are

The finale. This is about my friend Vic, who I went with to watch Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer the other night. When we met in 2001 via a mutual friend, I was feeling shite, I think she was too, we got on famously. We're both grumpy bastards with sharp tongues, so I wrote her this song as a Christmas present. It's my favourite on the record. 7-bar loops are good. Take note, pop-kids. You don't have to do 8-bar loops. People will still keep jumping up and down, you know. Take some risks, if they're as pathetic as just chopping out one bar.

So, there you go. It sold virtually nothing. We pressed thousands. Many of them ended up being recycled. Fortunately, thanks to the mp3, this odd document of me being 30 years old will live on, at least for the next twenty minutes.

Everywhere we go the GTO must go

2009-02-02T10:21:36Z

There's an odd rehearsal room next to Borough tube station. It's odd for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's a former home of PWL, Pete Waterman's classy, high-concept 1980s label that brought us such thought-provoking concerti as "Big Red GTO" by Sinitta. Secondly, it's cheap. I mean, ridiculously cheap. You're hard pushed to get a four hour rehearsal in London for much less than £40, particularly when all the extras have been added in – ride cymbals, speaker cabinets, Ayurvedic massage and so on – but here it's five quid an hour. Desperate to arrange a last minute practice with Dream Themes for our gig tomorrow night (slick, indie-jazz versions of Bergerac don't rehearse themselves you know) I was told about this place. So I rang them, and they said that they'd be delighted to offer us four cut-price hours on Saturday afternoon, from 2 until 6.

Friday night they rang me to say that there'd been a bit of a cockup, and they'd double booked us. I expressed mild fury, as there's not much a bloke answering the phone in a rehearsal studio has to do, over and above write the names of slightly shit bands in a diary and ensure that they don't overlap. After a 5-minute call that wasn't so much a conversation as a stand-off, he said that he could find a room for us from 4 until 6, if that would be OK. I considered the musicianship of the band, the complexity of the TV theme tunes we were due to play, realised that we were screwed, and just said "yeah alright" because there wasn't a lot else I could do.

Saturday afternoon I tried giving them a call to check on a minor technical issue; no answer. Tried again; no answer. I left for the studio; sexyworld was already there, and couldn't get in. I arrived; we only managed to get in because someone else happened to be leaving the building. We found a spare room; I went off to try and find a cashpoint.

(Sorry about all this – can I stress that anyone persevering with reading this is unlikely to be rewarded by any kind of payoff.)

There's a convenience store next door with one of those machines that charges you £1.99 for giving you £20; for that kind of level of commission I'd be expecting the machine to do more than spit out money, I'd want it to help me secure long-term work contracts and touch me on the bottom. But it still only charges you £1.99 if you take out £50, so I tried to take out £50. It accepted my card, accepted my PIN, made the whirring sound of counting money, but no money appeared. Then it just said "Hardware Fault". I looked at the guy behind the counter. "Do people often have trouble with this machine?" I said. He looked at me, blankly. "Does this machine usually work?" I asked. He just smiled at me, as if I was a bit-part character in "As Time Goes By" (starring Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer) who had just delivered a barely amusing punchline. "The machine is broken," I said, "it might be an idea to get a bit of paper and stick it on there, warning people that it doesn't work." He carried on smiling. "The machine is fine," he said, smugly, "I suggest you check your account to see if there's any money in it." At this point my splenetic juices exploded, and I'm ashamed to say that I started raising my voice at him in fury. Luckily, the two customers who were waiting to be served weighed in on my side, and didn't start attacking me with Pot Noodles and cans of fizzy guava juice. The manager eventually appeared, got out his own card, put it in the machine, and took out £20 with no problem, which was my cue to leave the shop looking like a sweary, poverty-stricken idiot who tries to take out money he hasn't got from cashpoints.

Back in the studio, none of the guitar amps were functioning, and the sole employee of the studio – who had miraculously appeared by this stage – was pressing buttons randomly on the front of said amps in a lame attempt to get them working. "Don't worry," we said, although not in unison, "we'll sort it out." We did. We rehearsed for the remaining 90 minutes or so, knocked out a staggering version of Bergerac, packed up, and attempted to find the guy to give him some money. He was nowhere to be found. We explored the building. All we could find were rooms in which lights didn't work, in which were sat youthful members of up and coming bands, the stars of tomorrow if you will, all patiently waiting for someone to turn up and take some money off them. "Bollocks," I said, "let's just go." Paul said that doing a runner wasn't really on. I was adamant that I wasn't going to hang around to hand over ten quid to someone who'd probably forget that I'd given him ten quid, and that I'd send them a cheque. After 15 minutes more loitering, we agreed to do a bunk.

At about 8pm I had a call from the studio. "Hi – did you call the studio earlier?" Um... yes, I said, about 7 hours ago, before the rehearsal. And that since then we'd been to the studio, and gone, but there was no-one to take our money. "Oh..." I could send them the money. "Um... no, it's OK." But you're running a business, right? I'm happy to give you the cash. "Uh... no, it doesn't matter. Something... something must have gone wrong earlier. The guy... uh... oh, never mind." As I say, it's an odd place. Cheap, though. Free, in fact.

If the weather doesn't get any worse, Dream Themes are playing tomorrow night at the Buffalo Bar with imomus favourites The Chap. Only five quid. Highly recommended.

Endless Fun and Pleasure

2009-01-23T13:03:11Z

This tweet led me to this review of White Lightning:

On the night, I drank very little. My cousin and a female friend got really stuck in to the White Lightning however. After approximately 5 pints (he was drinking out of the bottle so it's hard to tell!) he was unable to stand up nor make much sense. The female friend was falling over in to trees and bushes as well, after approximately 3 pints.

I had to drag my cousin out of the woods, during which we had to stop for him to be sick at least 5 times. He was wearing a trench coat and by the time I got him back to the main road he had dried cider and sick all over it, his trousers and his face. Squashed hamburger meet from the BBQ had also wedged itself in the zip tracks of his coat.

Contrast this with the second review:

Vibrant and Fresh: The passionate edge you desire

Advantages: Will give you endless Fun and Pleasure
Disadvantages: Can leave you feeling Hot and Flustered...

White Lightning is a vibrant, fresh cider with a passionate edge. People often complain of dull unimaginative drinks – so look no further than this sexy, yet beautifully mature cider. You will not be disappointed.

Oh, man

2009-01-23T09:47:45Z

I'm in my flat. On my own. Tears are running down my face, and I've been screeching with laughter for the last two minutes. This doesn't happen often.

Oh, and while we're at it, there's this, which is just wonderfully poetic and gets better with subsequent viewings.

Apologies if you've seen either of them before.

Careful, Now

2009-01-19T09:36:08Z

Here's a stunning picture from elysesewell that deserves to be seen by slightly more people than the four billion who already read her blog.

Jaipur Foot

2009-01-14T16:45:26Z

You might remember this entry where I told you that my chum sheridanski was off to India to buy as many artificial legs for as many one-legged people as possible. Loads of you gave money, you lovely people. Anyway, Mick and Julie have posted an update and some photos of the trip.

http://www.thelast.org.uk/jaipurfoot.htm

Thanks again to everyone who donated.

Season 2008-9

2009-01-02T16:48:04Z

It's a bit of a trial, being on Twitter and following various people who are either high achievers, or who give the impression of being high achievers. While I post mundane updates about the state of my intenstines, my Twittering chums will be recounting the meeting they just had with the Pope or how they've just been given £30,000 to draw likenesses of themselves with a crayon or something. But for all my whining, you know, I'm doing alright. Everything I do tends to be refracted through a hideous prism of anxiety which makes me think that I'm just treading water and just-about coping. And then I think well, there's nothing wrong with treading water in any case, is there, I mean, what would be the point of being a crusading semi-humorous writer? Indeed, what's the point of anything? (It's at this stage, where I get all philosophical, that I stop thinking about anything and start playing World Of Warcraft.)

So yeah, 2008. I wrote about World Of Warcraft for The Independent in November. They asked me to sign up and play and get a feel for it. I reluctantly agreed. rawrphotography and pageantmalarkey showed me the ropes. It's quite addictive, isn't it. I'm on level 30 now; I've just had a haircut that cost me about 70 pieces of silver, and if you find me some spider silk, I can make you a mean pair of slippers. And so on.

I spent February, March and April writing a book. More because of the trouble-free nature of the book's production than any astounding sales figures, I've been asked to write another one starting next week, so if any of you have the slightest knowledge about social history – any period from Ancient Greece to the present day – I may come beseeching you for a bit of help, ransack your brains and pass off your own painstakingly acquired knowledge as my own whimsical observations. I must have written about 30 features for The Independent this year, and somewhere between 40 and 50 columns. It's a terrible move to put the majority of ones eggs in one freelancing basket – especially with the media in the state it's in at the moment – but I am very fond of that newspaper, and I hope it weathers the storm... I was also delighted to get a regular gig with Olive, the tiptop BBC food mag, especially as it doesn't require me to actually eat any food over and above the food I already eat. Burp.

Best gigs of 2008 were Desalvo, School Of Language and Dirty Projectors.

I went to the races and to the circus for the first time in my life during 2008. 2009 will not see me bungee jumping, however.

I played gigs with Frank Sidebottom, Keith John Adams, Dream Themes and martylog. No Scritti action, unfortunately. I nearly joined Mr Solo's band, but got cold feet. I'm hoping to get a band called "Gentleman's Agreement" off the ground, in which my ambition to make music sounding like Hall & Oates or Bob James won't be hamstrung by some half-baked indie pissing about. Smooth is the watchword for 2009. Smooth and peaty.

Tris King

2008-12-26T11:29:49Z

Sad news for fans of niche late-1980s music. Tris King, the drummer of Bogshed, Jackdaw With Crowbar, A Witness and many others, died this week.

Guess my teenage self can now rule out any possibility of highly-unlikely reformations. Sniff.

A Witness – I Love You, Mr Disposable Razors

Bogshed – Excellent Girl

Frank? Yes? Aa-aahhh

2008-12-19T17:50:28Z

Just to mention that I'm playing keyboards (I mean keyboard) with Frank Sidebottom tomorrow night at the Lexington. Full details are here:

http://www.wegottickets.com/event/39293

We were rehearsing yesterday evening – I think it's going to be splendid. Especially "Xmas Is Really Fantastic", which has been stabbing at the interior of my head all day.

indie pop of yesteryear

2008-12-19T06:34:27Z

Look. Camden Falcon flyer discovered on Flickr

A small amount of sleuthing has narrowed this down to 1989. I was at the last gig on the list – The Shrubs & The Keatons one. It was the second gig I'd ever been to in London; some bloke called Nigel who put on gigs in Bedford picked me up from Dunstable in his car and gave me a lift. The lift was arranged by POST (I don't think he even had a telephone) and I remember being incredibly excited and incredibly worried that he just wouldn't turn up. He did, although he was 45 minutes late. Perhaps all my nervousness surrounding tardiness stems from this moment, although probably not.

Who else do we have here? Cud. They'd just put out Lola as a single and had just recorded When In Rome, Kill Me. Thrilled Skinny, Luton's finest, although the competition was far from stiff. A load of bloody awful jangly indie groups that are widely feted nowadays, but believe me, at the time St Christopher prompted nothing but yawning and disinterest in my younger self. (Of course, a member of St Christoper will probably have a Google Alert set up and will be here in a matter of hours reminding me that their musical legacy exterted a substantial influence over Bjork or something.)

Anyway, here's The Shrubs, who were my favourite band at the time, and who I'd never seen up until that night. (I don't expect to anyone to get through the full 4'30"; if bands weren't awkward, petulant and prone to dancing as if their arse was on fire, I wasn't interested.) The evening had a disproportionate effect on my life; I ended up joining The Keatons about 9 months later, and about 3 years later the singer of The Shrubs would become my first employer. Both these quirks of fate would make the 1990s considerably more delightful and stressful than they would otherwise have been. And if you're wondering why I'm posting this kind of tediousness at 6.30am, it's because I can't bloody sleep, alright?

Whoah

2008-12-02T11:00:08Z

And if you like the look of them, get this lot.

EDIT: I'm imagining them, about 2 minutes before the picture was taken, having a discussion along the lines of "Do you reckon we should tuck them in? Yeah? OK then, let's do it."

Mainly about death

2008-11-24T13:20:16Z

I played a gig with Keith on Saturday night, at my friend Helen's party in a front room in Homerton. I believe it was the wonderful Hatfield And The North who once said that there's no place like Homerton, and while that isn't quite true (Hackney and Dalston are fairly similar, for a start) it was as good a place to spend the evening. Gigs in people's houses are almost always awful – mainly due to concern about noise levels and concern about what the neighbours might think; Helen dealt with that by inviting the neighbours, so we knew what they thought, because they stayed in the kitchen getting drunk while we played. Fair enough.

I've spent the last three days compiling an enormous document of musical genres to help a friend with a book project he's working on. Describe the genre in 10-15 words, a couple of example acts, and then give the relationship to other genres, so he can put it all into a gigantic diagrammatic representation of musical styles. It sounds easy, but I ended up with about 120 genres to do – and that was after slimming it down considerably by knocking out the genres that were made up by one band in order to contain them, and them alone, thus giving the impression that they somehow operate outside the normal conventions of rock and roll but actually sound exactly like Shed Seven.

Anyway, it was an interesting exercise – I now know the difference between Black Metal and Doom Metal, for example – and indeed Epic Doom, Drone Doom and Deathdoom. I was just daydreaming about going on Mastermind to answer questions about Drone Doom, and John Humphries asking a question about Lacuna Coil, and me refusing to answer, saying "No, sorry, John, that shit is Deathdoom, not Drone Doom", and then only getting 2 points in the first round because of the ignorance of the Mastermind researchers, but then being equally appalling in the general knowledge round and being laughed off the set by the cameraman, who by coincidence was a big fan of Deathdoom.

One chain of influence I particularly liked was the list of genres that goes Hardcore Techno > Gabber > Speedcore > Splittercore > Extratone: each one is faster than the one before, so Speedcore is about 250bpm, Splittercore 500bpm, and Extratone is above and beyond 1000bpm. If you wondered what that might sound like, YouTube offers us this helpful selection (warning, these songs do not in any way sound like "Albatross" by Fleetwood Mac. They make Napalm Death sound like Flanders & Swann.)

I wrote about World of Warcraft in The Independent last week, and ended the feature by saying that I'd moved the game to the trash because I couldn't trust myself not to fritter my life away playing it. Well, in a moment of weakness I got it out of the trash again, and my troll mage, Kohntarkosz, has now reached level 19. If anyone would like to help me vanquish some marines in Northwatch Hold, please come and give me a hand, because when those bastards gang up on me I die in about 5 seconds flat.

Jaipur Foot

2008-11-06T08:37:32Z

My friend Mick, who wrote this highly amusing travelogue (or should that be workalogue) about India, is back off to Jaipur for an away-break with his wife Julie at the end of this year. While he's out there, he's hoping to buy as many of these as possible:

As Mick says:

"They only cost twenty pounds. If you saw the Paul Merton programme on TV you will have seen a one-legged child strap one on and immediately run off. They are free to the legless. So if you give us twenty pounds, we'll buy someone a foot on your behalf. We will try to take some photos of people with them so you can say "I gave that person the ability to walk", which is the cheapest philanthropic option you'll ever get."

If you're in a position to chip in and feel good about yourself, you could send me £20 by Paypal, cos I'm sending a cheque off to Mick at the weekend. Obviously I'm not a registered charity, so you'll have to take my word for it that a) I won't spend the money on pies, and b) that Mick won't spend the money on pies. But I'm off pies at the moment. And Mick's a thoroughly wonderful chap whose love of India is only matched by his love of fishing.

EDIT: Wow. £240 and counting. Massively, hugely appreciated.

No! No! No!

2008-11-05T13:41:50Z

For those of you who remember this:

I have just stumbled across this:

rhodri @ 2008-11-05T09:45:00

2008-11-05T09:45:29Z

All that scratching is making me itch

2008-11-03T13:28:25Z

Jenny started a new job a few weeks ago, but she's still privileged enough to be invited to the odd opening of a new bar or restaurant, and sometimes I get to go along, too. I have to say that if I'd been planning to open a new bar or a new restaurant in the closing months of 2008, I'd probably have set fire to my plans by now, extinguished the flames with a now totally redundant soda syphon, and sought a part time job in a stable industry, like undertaking or something. But we did attend a bar launch the other day, which was notable for the free drinks having been evidently watered down, or certainly diluted with a non-alcoholic substance. As a grown adult, I find that I can detect alcohol in drinks. Even the most offensively sweet alcopop beverages (and I include Southern Comfort plus lemonade, or indeed Malibu plus pineapple here) have an unmistakable boozy note about them. These drinks, though, were like Panda Pops shandy, or cider ice lollies or something. I mean, I'm not in a position to complain – firstly because they're free, secondly because getting drunk was certainly not the aim – but I did think it was weird that a high-class bar should choose to promote itself by giving distinguished guests like myself the equivalent of Robinsons Barley Water.

So we left, and went to find something to eat, and couldn't find anywhere we fancied, but then we realised we were standing outside a Scandinavian restaurant. We looked at the menu outside, and there was a bloke standing next to it, smoking, and he said to us "It's quite good in there, actually", and Jenny asked him if he had a controlling stake in the company that owned the restaurant, and he said no, so we went in. I had some kind of Norwegian chicken, which looks incredibly amusing when you type it out, but it was just chicken, with some kind of sauce, and some spuds. The whole meal was laughably bland, but hey, we were in a Scandinavian restaurant. If you buy a cheese sandwich from Sainsbury's, you don't take a bite, march up to the information desk and complain about the pathetically absent note of chilli and coriander, do you? No. Towards the end of the meal, at about 10.45pm, two 7 year old boys marched in to the restaurant wearing ghoulish masks and plastic bowls, and demanded "trick or treat". I used my dad's trick of saying "I'd like a treat, please", in a stern voice, but they weren't remotely impressed, or scared, or non-plussed, they just walked out in the search for someone who might give them ten quid, I guess.

I don't want to make this all about me eating food in restaurants, but on Saturday night I ended up eating food in a restaurant, so what am I supposed to do? It was Vietnamese. Two people at the table found themselves confronting some alarming looking slabs of jelly-like substance on their respective plates, and when they asked the waiter what on earth it was, they were told it was pork scratchings. Not the pork scratchings I'm aware of, which you get out of a bag and could break your fillings on. These looked more suitable for wiping down surfaces, or frightening small children with. Astonishing.

Yesterday we had the first Dream Themes rehearsal for a gig at the Buffalo Bar this coming Saturday. (It seems that sexyworld has put up my terrible half-baked demos of Terry & June and This Is Your Life on that MySpace page for people's amusement. Rest assured that the band versions are far, far worse.) sexyworld had a terrible hangover, and seemed unable to remember any bassline for longer than twenty seconds. I ended up getting quite narked with him, until it was pointed out to me that I was getting angry with someone in a front room in Leytonstone for not being able to remember the bassline to the theme from The Rockford Files, at which point everything seemed much funnier. I then went to the Barbican Cinema to watch Quantum Of Solace, which I couldn't make head nor tail of, but felt faintly exhilarated by. A bit like those wobbly pork scratchings.

Thanks to Will

2008-10-22T17:08:01Z

This is stunning:

And this is appalling:

The Game

2008-10-21T10:03:16Z

I've started to find any man who buys his clothing in the environs de Camden Town preposterously funny. Girls, for some reason, are still getting away with it. But men who strut down the street in pointy shoes, ripped t-shirts, leather jackets and ironic hats just make me snort. It wasn't always this way. I'm sure, when I was 17 or so, I'd have found them incredibly alluring. But these days, I have nothing but loathing. I suppose I'm getting old. Anyway, a way to defuse this burning hatred is to play "The Game":

1. Go up to man in question.

2. Say "I'm sorry to bother you, but... aren't you in a band?"

3. They will invariably say yes, and be delighted that they've been recognised.

4. Have a conversation about where you might have seen them play. They will inevitably lead said conversation, because they bloody love being in this band of theirs, so when they say "The Dublin Castle", say "Yes, that was it! You were great. I mean, really great."

5. There's an incredibly slim chance that they're not in a band, but if that's the case they'll be delighted that you think that they are.

6. The end. They feel good about themselves, you feel good about making them feel good about themselves, while retaining massive levels of contempt.

Anyway, there was a chap like this at the gig I went to last night, strutting around the (packed) venue while wearing a trilby and holding hands with his girlfriend, somehow managing to make his way through the throng by raising his arm aloft and moving ahead purposefully, like a cross between a German tourist guide and the bass player from Kula Shaker. Anyway, I refused to move, and I actually heard him say in the direction of Will and myself: "Excuse me, kids."

I would have played "The Game", but I was too busy harumphing and giggling, alternately.

Dream Themes

2008-10-17T09:07:54Z

On November 8th, which is a Saturday, sexyworld and myself and Dicky and Rob from Scritti (i.e. Frank Sidebottom's current Oh Blimey Big Band for the London area) will be presenting our incredibly high-concept offshoot project, Dream Themes, in which we play slightly shit versions of TV theme tunes. (We're first on at the Buffalo Bar, probably onstage before the doors open, and will play for approximately 20 minutes, so dont' get too excited. Oh, you weren't.) Now, I agreed to this in a drunken moment, probably realising in the back of my head that when sexyworld said to me "Yeah, we'll do the Rockford Files, it'll be a piece of piss" that what he actually meant was "it'll be a piece of piss cos you'll work out the difficult middle section, you've got a bloody music degree after all, haven't you?"

Anyway, for the last two months it's been an annoying niggle in the back of my head, that I should probably crack on and work out how some of these things actually go. So this morning I got up and tackled The A Team, that Mike Post orchestral spectacular, in our bass / drums / guitar organ style. It sounds better than I thought it would.