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Is my life one long party or what? Last night I went all the way to Bournemouth Opera House to see Less Than Jake in concert, supported by Capdown and Jesse James. This means that I’ve seen approximately 35 bands live since May.
How did I get all the way to Bournemouth? Somehow, I managed to convince my family to take a one day holiday, as all of my “punk” friends are either at festivals or celebrating anniversaries.
The trip wasn’t without its problems. When we reached the ‘travel tavern’ (and briefly making life even closer to that of Alan Partridge), it turns out that we had booked two double rooms. This presents a problem, because although I was planning to share a room with my sister Lucy, I wasn’t willing to share a bed. In the end we turned one double bed into two makeshift beds, by moving a matress about and reconfiguring some sheets (I’m not entirely sure how, mind, because I’m male).
Yesterday afternoon, we went to find the venue, just so we knew where it was. Bizarrely, there was already a group of people queueing outside. As there was another five hours to go until the gig, they’d taken with them a jigsaw of a German or Polish looking castle, and were piecing it together on the street outside the Opera House. When we returned later in the evening, disappointly it had been destroyed and scattered all over the pedestrianised area. I was hoping it would have been completed.
As you might have read in previous blog updates, I thought I was going to have to go to a gig with my dad. Thankfully, I eventually managed to coerce my marginally-cooler and 32 years younger sister to come with me instead, although she made no firm decision until ten minutes before, leaving me wondering if my style would be cramped or not.
This new arrangement actually worked out better- when LTJ were on stage, they asked everyone who is over 30 to put their hands up… about four people did, and they all looked as if they were in their early thirties.
It turned out that Bournemouth Opera House is in fact in Boscombe- the latter piggy-backing on the name of its more successful neighbour, to try and disguise the fact that its a shit hole. Just like ‘London Luton’ Airport. when queueing outside, the guy in the queue behind us remarked “What a lovely family outing in Bos-Vegas… the mother with a can of special brew and the two daughters with a fag on each”.
We finally got in after what felt like a lifetime of waiting, and much to my distress and Lucy’s indifference, the first band had already started.
Jesse James were excellent, to the extent that I bought their album at the end. Next up were the incredible Capdown, who I last saw in June. They played a similar set to last time- opening on what I believe was An A-Political Stand for Reasons, ending on Ska Wars, as well as Cousin Cleotis. They also played a bit of Dub #1, before launching into another song. If you’re not a Capdown fan, then this will understandably mean nothing to you. Annoyingly, like in the Milton Keynes gig, they insisted on playing a couple of new as-yet unreleased songs, which didn’t get the crowd going as well as they didn’t know them. Still excellent though.
I think it was at this point that Lucy looked most terrified, as we were on the periphery of the mosh pit, and occasionally a large crowd of people came running towards us. Hilariously, she gestured much like how Wallace from Wallace & Gromit does when he is scared: she raised her palms at me, curled her fingers around, and shook her hands a bit, whilst making her mouth wider than her face.
Less Than Jake came on stage at about 10pm. 24 hours beforehand, they’d played at the Reading Festival, which I’d watched on the interactive on BBC Three. They opened the same way both times- a medley of Look What Happend and Gainsville, Rock City. I can’t really remember that many specific details about what they played and so on, suffice to say that it was incredible. From what I can remember, the setlist was, in no particular order:
Look What Happend/Gainsville Rock City medley
The Science of Selling Yourself Short
Plastic Cup Politics
Ghosts of Me and You (I think)
How’s my driving Doug Hastings?
History of a Boring Town
Overrated (everything is)
A Still Life Franchise (after getting the audience to choose between this and Don’t Fall Asleep on the Subway)
Automatic
Johnny Quest thinks we’re sellouts
My very own flag
All my best friends are Metalheads (Encore)
Suburban Myth (Encore)
Amazing. Although they didn’t play one of my favourite songs, 9th at Pine.
Before the “proper” songs of the encore kicked in, vocalist and guitarist Chris, came back on stage on his own, and played a short solo song about how he hates his band and how he “quits”. I think that it might be a cover, as it sounds like something NOFX would do, but I can’t remember any of the lyrics in order to Google it and find out. Damn.
Unusually, they seemed to admit that their latest album is slightly underwhelming (read: too emo)- Chris referred to it as “our shitty new record”, and claimed that they had to play a song from it for “contractual reasons”.
At one point during the gig, I felt a sudden pain in the side of my head, and then my shoulder. Suddenly I felt slightly dazed and confused as to what had caused the pain… Lucy and I looked down at the same time and saw a shoe on the floor. Someone has thrown a shoe at me! The bastard. A shoe was thrown at Chris a few minutes beforehand, and he dealt with it in a much more effective way… he caught it with one hand, and shouted “Fuck you, cock-sucker“.
But other than the shoe thing, it was an incredible gig. I can’t wait until I go to see them again in November- they’re co-gigging with the Dropkick Murphys. Its going to be excellent.
I can’t figure out if I’ve turned into the person who takes a running joke just too far, or whether I genuinely enjoyed the film or not. When the I Love Horses catchphrase was the hilarious in-joke a couple of years ago, I exhusted it to the point where I’d interrupt my friends before they could finish their sentence and say something like “because you love horses”. I was clearly the king of comedy. I even went horse riding.
As you might well know, (especially if you’re my cousin David, who rather scarily, it turns out is a regular reader), I went to see SNAKES ON A PLANE, just over a week ago, and gave it a rave review. The other day I went to see it again, with Matt and Beth, and I’m pleased to say that it is just as good second time around!
Knowing what was going to happen, it allowed me to take the time to appreciate the finer points of the film, as I didn’t have to concentrate on the multilayered and complex plot. Like the sporks line.
The audience reaction was much the same as the first time- Matt and Beth both gasped, laughed and cried “Oooh”, in the right places. Matt claims that Beth leaped out of her seat at one point. Wimp.
One thing that I did notice was that during the (SPOILER ALERT!) closing few minutes when Samuel L Jackson had shot open two windows and all of the motherfucking snakes were flying out… why wern’t the corpses of the dead passengers? They weren’t tied down or anything.
But on the whole, it was just as excellent second time around. I’d go again if anyone is organising a SOAP trip in the near future. Any offers? Anyone? Go on.
As you might know, the Middle East ‘issue’ annoys me- I don’t like the way its full of moral grey areas, and there’s no goodies and baddies. A bit like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Carribean 2. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians (and the other actors) make some pretty valid points. I prefer my international territorial conflicts to be more like how Snakes on a Plane was: Samuel L Jackson versus some motherfucking snakes.
One thing that continues to baffle me about the whole thing though is that some countries don’t recognise Israel. Now, this might be a bit nieve of me, but if you had a police line up of countries consisting of a fat bloke in a cowboy hat, a smelly man wearing a beret, with a handlebar moustache and a blue & white horizontally striped shirt, and a bearded Jewish man with a kippah (the hat, not the fish) and a star of David tattoo, acting as a personification of different countries, it wouldn’t be that hard to recognise Israel. (Satire: though the Israeli would no doubt occupy a couple of extra seats too. Ho-ho.)
Does this mean that whenever the king of Saudi Arabia looks north, he covers his eyes with his hands and cry, “What Israel? I can’t see an Israel?!”. Just like he does whenever he sees human rights abuses. Zing.
Surely denying that Israel exists is the equivilent of avoiding one’s problems? Like the alcoholic who doesn’t think he drinks too much, or the (in-joke alert!) desperate and lonely online gamer who phones his friends at 1:30 in the morning seeing if they want to go out, having lost all track of time, having spent the last 12 hours in a virtual world.
Those six million Jews don’t live in the sea- there is a country there.
In an effort to sympathise with the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah and David Blunkett, I’ve spent the day not recognising something that means a lot to me: human emotions and the mood of a conversation. This has lead to me accusing my bank manager of being a part of a “zionist conspiracy” to control the world when I went to Natwest to pay in a cheque, and spend some of the afternoon in the town centre shouting like a madman, to slightly unnerved but nonplussed pedestrians. I just looked like a nutter on the lunatic fringe of conventional thought. Oh!
I suppose the funniest thing is that with all of these various “militant factions”, “freedom fighters” not recognising Israel, they’re essentially firing bullets and missiles wildly into the air with no defined target to hit, like someone who is mental would do.
Yesterday was the most incredible of days. It was completely unexpected, yet had the most amazing turn of events.
The day before yesterday, I was at the pub with Bouff, JD, Matt and Beth (this all sounds very normal so far), when Matt recieved a phone call from Radio 1’s The Lock Up, telling him that’d he’d won tickets to a SECRET GIG of emocore band ALEXISONFIRE, that was an ALBUM LAUNCH and was taking place ON A BOAT IN THE THAMES. Seriously.
“Unfortunately”, Beth couldn’t go with him, so it was up to me to fill her small feminine shoes. No! Not in that way, sicko.
The plan was simple: drive to London, catch the tube, then catch a boat full of celebrities and party harder than Andrew WK on his birthday.
We started out at about half two in the afternoon, and we just had to head straight down the M1. After a small hitch that involved, erm, going northbound, we eventually got going towards London. The most exciting part of the motorway leg of the journey was Matt’s car going over the 89,000 miles mark, and a woman who kept going slowly and moving lanes erratically just to piss us off.
(Matt and James in a moving vehicle, yesterday)
We didn’t have a satnav, as Matt’s car doesn’t have a cigarette lighter to provide power, nor did we have a paper map of the Mill Hill area of London close up. Matt claimed it was alright as he “used to live there”. I asked the 19 and a half year old how long ago he lived there… “about 19 years ago”. Great.
Against all odds, we found the station.
Next, we got the tube from Mill Hill East on the Northern Line. For a while, we sat opposite a man.. or at least I think he was a man. Assume ‘he’ to be the neutral gender ‘he’, as opposed to an endorsement of the opinion that he was of that gender. He was wearing earrings. Like proper women’s earrings, not just pirates or homosexual’s earrings. He had one of those faces where the gender is completely impossible to distinguish too. Having been in the area for literally only a few minutes though, and having already encountered a nutter, we knew we were in London.
We took the Nothern line to Embankment, which is right next to the Thames, only down a bit from Parliament and the London Eye. It was here I bought a bottle of Coke- central London is that exciting. We (figuratively) hopped back on to the Tube and took the circle line to Monument.
The boat was moored up nearby, and after waiting about half an hour, we were finally allowed on board.
The bar on the boat had a tab, meaning that we got free drinks… at least for the first few minutes until it ran out. Then we had to pay. The boat set sail and went east along the Thames- past all of the famous landmarks…. St Paul’s, The London Assembly, some sort of warship, the Tower of London, and Canary Wharf. It even went under Tower Bridge. I thought it was incredible- and I took hundreds of pictures like some sort of awful tourist. Matt meanwhile was less impressed. “LOOK!“, I’d cry, “it’s the London Assembly! That’s where they present the London opt-out on the Politics Show from!”, “so?”, he said with a look of disdain.
(Background: an emo crying at the futility of life in front of Tower Bridge. Foreground: James O’Malley!)
At the back of the stage there was a pile of guitar cases and other musical things- it was so tempting to throw them overboard, as it would muck up their excellent plans.
(A man on a boat, shouting.)
Just after we passed Canary Wharf, Alexisonfire took the makeshift stage. “This will either be one of the best things we’ve ever done, or one of the worst mistakes we’ve ever made”, the lead singer said.
(Action shot of James O’Malley in the audience on a boat)
24 hours earlier I never thought that I would be rocking out on a boat in central London to some excellent hardcore. It was very excellent. Because of the smallness of the “venue”, there was no barrier or anything, and the band were quite couped up, but incredibly close to the audience. I was only the other side of quite a modest speaker (by gig standards) to the lead guitarist. During the last song, one of the members in the approximately 50-strong audience started crowd surfing. It was pretty incredible given the confines of the boat. This means that I’ve seen both Snakes on a Plane and Crowdsurfing on a Boat within a week of each other.
(Crowdsurfing on a boat)
They only played a relatively short set, but it was damn good. And it was on a boat. On the The Thames. I feel the need to repeat it: I was at a celebrity boat party. Dashboard Confessional was also there, apparently.
The funniest thing was, that despite me never having met any of the people on the boat before, all of the emokids there still looked familiar, because they all look the same. It was very odd- a bit like the football cunts phenomenon, I think.
It was amazing. Have I said that yet?
On the way home, there was a man on the tube who it was unclear whether he was a proper nutter, or whether he worked at some sort of tourist attraction. He was dressed up like an old-timey man, from perhaps the 16th century, and had feathers in his hat. Excellently, he paid careful attention to detail, and kept his money and mobile phone in a old-fashioned pouch rather than a wallet. The only hints of modernity about him were the Haribo he was eating, and the magazine he was reading.
We had quite a scare on the way back. The Northern Line, for some insane reason, has several branches. We discovered that the Northern Line can be caught from Bank station… which is actually connected to Monument station. All of the trains coming through were destined for Edgware, but we needed ones heading to Mill Hill East. In the end, we got on anyway and decided to change later, when we’d be at least nearer our destination. We got out at Euston and caught the next train along, which was going to High Barnet. We’d still have to change at Finchley Central, just one stop away from where we wanted to be.
When we reached Finchley central, none of the trains coming through seemed to be heading for Mill Hill East, and we (I) started to panic. I thought Mill Hill East would be closed. It’s not just that we were in the wrong part of London, but even if we got back to Mill Hill, because it was closed, the car park would be closed and we’d be stranded in London overnight. After a few scary minutes of me saying “fuck” a lot, and Matt explaining that he knew people in the area who could “put us up”, I began to worry more. Matt was remaining much more levelheaded and rational.
Thankfully, minutes later a Mill Hill train pulled up, and we got on as fast as possible. It had been a panic over nothing.
It was a pretty incredible day, all in all. Thanks for taking me as your bonus person, Matt!
Here’s a video I filmed of the first song. The one thing you want to hear in a musical performance, the sound, is buggered, because my camera has a rubbish microphone:
Two nights ago, I risked life and limb in order to get a new blog entry. On something of a whim, JD and myself took a perilous journey to a place with more crime lords, guns and supervillains than nearby Gotham: NOTTINGHAM.
The city is famous for having the highest gun crime statistics in the country, as well as being a generally awful crime hole. I drove there fully expecting to leave the city with a cap popped in me.
Why was I putting myself through this? We were were going to see Presidents of the United States of America at Rock City. Despite having a name like that, they’re not at all political, and prefer to songs about frogs taking drugs and peaches and things.
It was a good gig- the band were enthusiastic, and were wearing shirts and ties, which added a bit of class to the evening. One of the most bizarre things they did was get the whole audience to sit down on the floor. I’m not sure why they did this.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t heard any of their stuff before the gig, so I suppose a lot of it was lost on me- although they did do some covers of songs I recognised. They opened with a cover of Video Killed the Radio Star, and closed on a medley of songs including Kick Out The Jams, which I recognised from the Rage Against the Machine cover.
Overall they were very good, and I’m glad I went. The best bit was that I didn’t get shot! I was in a multi-storey car park after 11pm in the geographic equivilent of a gangster rap, and I survived with only minor head injuries! Excellent.
Tonight, I very nearly solved a complex murder case. We (Fundar, JD and Heggs) were so sickeningly close, we were practically licking the blood off of the murder weapon and discussing its texture.
Yeah, I was playing Cluedo on an itBox quiz machine in a pub. I love games that trivialise murder.
The trouble is, we’re essentially playing a game of chance that has variable odds, against a computer that knows how good we are.
For the unitiated: you work your way around an on-screen board, answering questions on a variety of topics, and if you land on a room you get a chance to guess the murderer, the weapon and the room you’re in acts as the room you’ve guessed.
This means that you find yourself shouting things like “It’s the GINGER WOMAN with the DAGGER IN THE BACK” rather more loudly and frequently than you might have really liked to. On the plus side, my ability to explain hundreds of years of half remembered history in 15 seconds in order to suggest an answer has improved this much: a bit.
This game has also meant that my wallet has become much more managable and is no longer weighing me down. This is basically a euphenism for “it’s taking my money faster than an industrial sized vacuum cleaner pointed directly into my bank account”.
I’d say on average we’re spending collectively about 50 pence a minute in this machine. The horrible thing is that for the same price I could:
Phone a premium rate competition
Telephone someone in New Zealand
Get approximately 9.6 seconds of satellite uplink from America (assuming £8/minute is what I remember reading, and I didn’t just make this up)
Buy a can of Coke in 1998.
Determine the outcome of a ‘heads or tails’
All five are things I’d love to do. But alas, this machine has taken over my life.
One day I’ll solve the murder. Colonel Mustard looks mighty suspicious with his big moustache and claims that he was helping kids with diseases during the time of the murder.
Last night after going to see some motherfucking snakes on a motherfucking plane, I went to the pub. I’m a young person so I can do this. Backstory: JD and Bouff were also with me.
One thing I didn’t realise that yesterday was the day of an apparently big football match between Leicester and Coventry (a friendly between two division one teams), so on entering the pub, looking down the stairs, all I could see was perhaps 300 identikit football cunts staring at a projector screen to my right.
It wasn’t so much the inconsequential friendly that got to me, so much as the fact that most of the people in the pub could have been developed by using a simple algorithm to determine the tiny differences between them. Their skin heads and designer striped shirts or pink t-shirts with meaningless numbers printed on them designed to look like a branding iron had created it gave me nothing but contempt for the lifestyle that I assume they have. I’m essentially Topman-racist.
I’ve said it before, but I just don’t understand football or why it deserves the success it has as a past time. Its the opium of the masses distracting them from a government complicit in the extradition of suspects for torture, a government who will sell top of the range Eurofighters to regimes with a non-existant human rights record, and a government who will kick you in the face whilst wearing a boot wrapped in barbed wire and smoothered in dog mess.
More specifically: I dislike the fact that the people who prove evolution as the missing link spend their time watching sport rather than tackling issues.
I admit, going into a pub like this was probably a questionable move on my part- and in fairness, none of the people there actually did anything to warrant this unprovoked attack… but why on earth would you cheer and shout at a TV screen? It’s like people who clap at the end of a film… why?! Its not like they can hear you all the way in Coventry… or indeed, all the way in Hollywood in the past.
Yeah, I’ve been to see SNAKES ON A PLANE with Bouff and JD. My motivation behind this was purely because of the internet hype- I expected it to be a let down because I was expecting so much (like the Matrix Reloaded), but my god, SNAKES ON A PLANE did not disappoint.
You could tell it was directed by the guy who did Final Destination 2, purely because of the gory hilarious death scenes. You could see where the plot was going every inch of the way: the first part of the film is spent building up some backstory for each of the passengers, which makes the inevitable all the more tragic, especially as you know exactly what is coming. There was motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane.
Without a doubt it is Samuel L Jackson that makes this film- without him (and perhaps the excellent title), it’d just be boring Final Destination 3, but with him, and the motherfucking snakes, it becomes something else.
The film is laced with humour, which mostly works, although you find yourself laughing more at the over the top action and the snakes… that are on the plane. Kenan from Kenan and Kel is in it- it was nice to see him as I thought he was dead.
The whole film builds to a point where Jackson says the immortal line: “ENOUGH is ENOUGH. I have HAD IT with these MOTHERFUCKING SNAKES on this MOTHERFUCKING PLANE“. A guy on the row in front of me had practically leaped out of his seat and was punching the air in time to arguably the greatest line in cinema history.
The audience in the cinema made it better- they laughed, shrieked and even clapped along with bits of the film like it was happening live in front of them. The audience collectively gasped and laughed when there was a man using the toilet, and a snake was seen slitering up through the toilet bowl… you can see where that was going.It was excellent.
Last night I went to see Pirates of the Carribean 2 with JD, Nikki and Craig. I was expecting it to be terrible for the following reasons:
Its a Disney film
Its a kids film
My sister who’s seen it said that it is rubbish
My dad claimed that it is rubbish
I’m an intelligent student and not a slack jawed moron.
I havn’t seen the first film
Surprisingly, I was only half right.
I’ll start with the positives: the special effects were spectacular. It was genuinely impossible to tell what was CG and what wasn’t- although common sense dictates that huge tentacles obviously wern’t created by Jim Henderson. The main bad guy, who has a face with tentacles on, is entirely computer generated. Spectacular.
There’s also some impressive sequences involving Johnny Depp’s character pole vaulting across a large gorge. The budget must have been huge, as practically every shot must have had some form of expensive post-production, even if it was just keying in a CG ship.
Unfortunately, the plot doesn’t live up to this. It’s something about a thing, that does something, leading to something else. Basically some faux-colonial bollocks and monster pirates, who despite being a band of ugly monsters who have a ship that works underwater and answer to no one, they seem to respect maritime ettiquette and speak like pirates.
I’m sure there was some historical inaccuracies too. I mean, aside from the pirates, magic and giant tentacles. I might be wrong, but didn’t the East India Trading Company, erm, operate in India?
I think my main problem with it is that I want to hate this film more than I did. Since the first film, I’ve made a point of complaining about the franchise, primarily to piss off my friends. I’m not a massive fan of glorifying pirates in films- back in the day, they were essentially terrorists. Yes, they might have a hilarious repertoire of catchphrases and symbolism, but so do Al Quaeda. Instead of “Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum”, its “Death to the infidel”, and instead of walking the plank they car bomb a nightclub. I think I’ve said it before: in 200 years time, will terrorists of today be suitable characters for childrens films?
Yeah, so overall, and I say this through gritted teeth, it wasn’t bad. Maybe this is because I had such low expectations?
Snakes on a Plane is going to blow it out of the water.
My parents are currently on holiday in Torquay, for some reason, and I’ve been left at home in charge of Lucy (despite having the 5th most popular dog’s name, she’s my sister) and the car. Unfortunately I’ve managed to successfully break one of them. The one that’s more valuable, and the one that the family need to continue our daily lives. The one who provides the parents with a legacy and makes up the numbers at family occasions.
The car.
I was just about the pull off of the drive, Propagandhi already playing loudly, headlights already on. I put the car into reverse, and then took the handbrake off. Literally.
It made an enormous creaking noise and then it made what I can most technically describe as “bad car noises”.
The annoying thing is that it’s going to be hard to deny that it was me.
The funny thing is - for months there’s been a little blinking light on the dashboard, the purpose of which was unknown to me. I’m guessing it was indicating that the handbrake was buggered. I just assumed it meant that the car was powered up, or something.
On the plus side, it turns out that it now looks like I’ve got superhuman strength, as I can push the car along the drive way, just like Superman would. I’m just a bit worried that it’s going to roll into the house overnight.
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