We’re now six weeks into my new Podcast, The Pod Delusion, and I’ve finally got around to recording my second proper contributions (I present the links between reports every week, mainly). I put together a report on the question of “What is music?” – which you can hear fourth on the player below:
Also on this week’s show are:
The Ethics of Formula 1 by Duncan Stephen
Ubuntu and open source by Owen Duffy
The problem with conventional medicine by Simon Howard
Poor journalists. It must be a pain in the arse when a story breaks at around midnight, so you have to cut them some slack for, perhaps, not living entirely up to proper Woodward & Bernstein-esque journalistic practice at such an hour. Especially on a showbiz story…
The King of Pop is dead, with no immediately obvious heir to the throne. I imagine in the next few days we’ll see the different pretenders to the crown emerge, each sounding things out and making their case – this, however, terrifies me. If a candidate can capture the public’s imagination they could take power quickly and we could – god forbid – end up with a situation where Bono is in a position of power, rather than just pushing his nose up to the backside of it. The other possible outcome is that of civil war if no one contender takes the lead – and this would be dreadful for society, as can we really cope with another King Richard vs Prince John, or Oasis vs Blur during a recession?
It is for these reasons that I have decided to submit myself as an independent candidate for the new King of Pop. And I hope that you, zeitgeist, will support me.
Sure, I may not have the superficial qualities associated with the office: musical talent, a back catalogue of hits or even a likeable personality, but I believe I am the candidate to steer popular culture through these serious times, because of my political and managerial skills.
Here are my manifesto pledges that, if elected, I will enact to radically reform the entire pop music landscape:
1) Blanket ban on interviews with music professionals.
There’s nothing worse than hearing a musician be interviewed, be it their uninformed opinions or ability to talk shit. No, your new record isn’t a journey, it isn’t “saying something” and I think things are slightly more complicated than your song implies. No, we can’t just solve all of the world’s problems with “love”.
This ruling will also apply to appearances on Nevermind the Buzzcocks, unless the musician demonstrably has anything resembling charisma (unlikely).
2) Politics banned unless the musician knows what they are talking about, and ideally, have a degree in a relevant subject
Don’t get me wrong, I love political music – but far too often is politics used by mainstream acts to boost flailing careers, or to behave sanctimoniously towards the public despite their private jet ownership. I realise this is a tired observation, but the pop world needs a King who will prevent the Bonos, Geldofs and Madonnas from preaching until they’ve written theses on the economics of debt reduction.
3) Only political music will be allowed
This may sound contradictory to the above – but it is not. This will narrow the range of artists and cut all of the crap and waste out of popular culture. Overnight, superficial acts who only sing about feelings and emotions, and who are inherently selfish and inward-looking, will be wiped out. Pop will be forced to look outwards at things that really matter, and fight for and raise awareness of issues in a genuine way. There will be a dispensation made available for songs that are about social and scientific issues, but these will have to be justified in a political context.
4) No sell-outs
The four-big-labels oligarchy will be dismanted and replaced with DIY independent labels – and acts will be banned from performing in venues bigger than, say, Islington Academy. All albums will have to be bought from the merch stand. In additional, file sharing will be fine – but people will pay back the artists by going to gigs and supporting the scene.
5) James Blunt will be banned from music.
I don’t think I need to explain this one.
So that’s my manifesto – so, zeitgeisty readers, I implore you to elect me, James O’Malley, as the new King of Pop.
I had an amazing day on Saturday, of the type which could only really take place in London. I spent the day at the Centre for Inquiry’s ‘Weird Science’ lectures with my friend Eve. It was pretty excellent – basically Dawkinistas preaching to the choir about how excellent rational inquiry is and how shit creationism is, which is just the sort of thing I like.
The line-up was immense too – there was Richard Wiseman talking about psychic dogs, Chris French talking about psychology and conspiracy theories, Stephen Law, author of the superb Philosophy Gym, explaining how creationism is unscientific and talking about the philosophy of evidence based reason, and ended with Ben Goldacre telling us stories about bullshit science that appears in the newspapers and how I think my job actually makes me partially complicit in it.
This was held at the Conway Hall near Holborn… but it wasn’t the only event being hosted there that day. There was also this:
I assure you that this is 100% real.
The reason I give all of this exposition is because it juxtaposes brilliantly with what I did yesterday evening. Having spent the day surrounded by the most rational people in London, in the evening we – Eve and myself, joined by our friend Sinead – went to a party organised by Eve’s aunt in Peckham, to celebrate the end of the Bush administration. It was a ‘Bush Burning’ party and was being held at a squat. In Peckham.
It was certainly something that a few months ago I’d never have thought I’d do – I mean, a squat… in Peckham? I’d have to be a right plonker to go, right? The chances of being murdered would be ridiculously high.
The bus to Peckham was quite ominous. As we descended further into the depths of the (dare I say) slightly Birmingham-esque south London things became a whole lot bleaker. They say where the trains go prosperity will follow, citing the trans-American railroad or London’s own Metroland metropolitan railway as an example – the opposite seems to be true too. The tube rarely dips south of the river, and as a consequence, Peckham seems pretty grim.
We knew we’d got to the squat when we saw some metal gates that had been hand painted and covered in pictures of sunbeams and the sort of hippy tat that allows a place to be described as unique or having ‘character’. The trouble was the gates were locked. So how else could we get in? On the wall adjoining the gates there was a wooden doorway – like a shed door complete with shed door handle – and we could see the glow of light eminating from behind it. After dithering for a while, we determined that this must be the way in.
Opening the door was quite a shock. Rather than seeing unemployed wasters with scented candles doing some collectivised farming like you might expect at a squat, we instead saw what looked like a very close approximation of a third world sweatshop. Hidden away in darkest Peckham in a building partially constructed inside a railway arch, there were Chinese people manufacturing clothes on large industrial machinery in a rudimentary factory. It didn’t look like the sort of place that would allow the workers to take breaks or unionise. When a rather angry looking manager came over to the three of us, we discovered that his dodgy factory was not in fact part of the squat.
So we waited around outside and just as we were planning to leave, Eve’s aunt, the organiser of the party, turned up to let us through the gates.
I don’t think she was the most “conventional” of aunts. I get the impression that she’s probably never been to a WI bake sale or that sort of thing. What was a little surprising was that she was much, much cooler than her niece (or me, for that matter). Despite obviously being about twice my or Eve’s age, she goths up considerably – big boots, black chains and all – she wouldn’t look out of place in Camden.
She opened up the gates and led us to the squat building. To get there we had to walk through what you might generously describe as a “garden” or “car park”. There were parked cars, caravans and greenhouses (I wonder what they were growing…). Of course, it was unlit – the perfect place for committing murder (we were in Peckham).
The squat itself is a former community centre that was abandoned by the council so the squatters moved in. If you want to get a feel for it, imagine basically a cross between Byker Grove and a crack den.
Taking a deep breath, and with a great sense of trepidation, we stepped inside. And what we saw was a shock: It was actually pretty cool looking inside. There was a stage, a bar and a proper sound system setup – all without having to go the trouble of worrying about things like live music performance licenses, permits and fire exit that The Man tries to force them to have. Screw the law requiring fire exits to be clearly labelled and lit at all times… that’s just The Man trying to tell us where to go in the event of a fire.
There were sofas around the edge of the room and hanging from the ceiling was a spinning yellow polystyrene “smiley face” on one side of the stage and, bizarrely, a cut-out of the word “innit” spiinning on the other. I’m probably not selling this very well, but essentially it came across as cool and trendy, and untainted by the commercialism of, er, legitimate musical venues. Basically it was punk as fuck. This was underlined by the soundman having a mug that had the Starbucks logo modified to say “Fuck off” on the side.
As you might imagine, it was like a different era – not only were there mentions of the miners strike and the struggle of workers, but people were flouting the ban and smoking indoors. I don’t think they were just smoking tobacco either – there was a horrible stench of drugs that wafted across us with some regularity, and I’m about 60% sure there was a man there who was casually toking on his crackpipe. I don’t know what a crackpipe specifically looks like, but there was a young man smoking a pipe, and he didn’t strike me as the Tony Benn type.
The first act on stage merely confirmed the punk credentials of the squat, as if being a legal-grey area, grassroots organisation full of crackpipes and crackpots was not enough. He was a “punk poet”. Attila the Stockbroker, as he called himself, performed some poems that totally stuck it to the man. I’m not normally a fan of poetry – in fact, I like to think that I’ve built my reputation on the back of my loathing of the so-called “artform”, but Attila won himself an awful lot of goodwill from me when right at the start of the set he denounced literature student-esque poetry as being rubbish (confirming my opinions) and then launching into some good old fashioned left-wingery:
The next people on stage were a succession of acoustic artists who had a common theme linking their songs: they were all about the Bush administration. Much like Attila’s poetry, these hard lefties were not familiar with allegories or metaphors, so the songs were pretty transparently political. Excellent.
After this came the main event of the evening: the purpose of the party. The Bush Burning.
In the garden area a bonfire had been constructed close to a wooden frame containing effigies of Bush, Blair and Brown. As you’ll see in the video, it was actually a lot more disturbing than we were expecting. Whilst burning a Guy on bonfire night is all good fun, there’s something that seems slightly more sinister about implying the death of still living people. What’s more, given the ramshackle nature of the squat, there were a lot of visual echoes of mob justice and lynchings and the like – for people who minutes earlier were singing songs about how international law had been broken and the like, they seemed awfully keen on the extra-judicial killing of these effigies. Sure, it was only symbolism, but it still left something of a nasty taste in your mouth.
That said, the taste could have been the embers raining down on us from the fire that looked as though it could get out of control. I’m no council bureaucrat (though I’d love to be), but I’m pretty sure there must be some rules on starting big fires like that, without so much as a fire extinguisher or healthy and safety officer to hand – London doesn’t have a particularly good record with fires, after all. (This said, if the fire had spread, this blog could make me the new Samuel Pepys).
After this, we all traipsed back inside the squat to see an old-fashioned sounding punk band play some songs. I say “old fashioned” because the members of the band were my parents age, played three chords and had one song where the only lyrics were “money talks” shouted over and over again. It was punk as fuck.
We left shortly after this on the basis that going home any later than midnight in Peckham is almost definitely going to get us murdered. Over all it was an amazing, bewildering and bizarre experience – similar to the rap battle in that respect.
A few weeks ago I was joking with my trendy new London friends, Eve and Hel, about wanting to go to a rap battle after watching a few on YouTube. For the uninitiated, a rap battle is when two rappers get up on stage and slag each other off whilst “freestyling”. I never actually expected to end up going to a rap battle, but then that’s what happens when you live in a city which has everything.
So we decided to go to The Jump Off, at The Astoria, which is a monthly festival of hip-hoppery, which pleasingly, is almost exactly how you would imagine it to be, as it turns out that every hip-hop stereotype is true.
What made this all the more interesting is that immediately prior to going here, we attended a Skeptics in the Pub debate on UFOs with psychologist Chris French from Goldsmiths Uni and UFO crackpot Nick Pope. It was very much the antithesis of hip-hop: you’d need a collective noun for Guardian readers to describe the demographics there. This was actually superb – both French and Pope swapped sides and argued using each others arguments, just for the intellectual challenge. The best bit though, was that it provided an interesting contrast.
We weren’t really sure what to expect at the Jump Off, because to be honest, we’re all a bit middle class (Hel especially – she went to grammar school). This is something of a disadvantage in the hip-hop scene because if you don’t have an unpleasant back-story you’re not considered to have much credibility. We did plan to hip-hop up our appearances a bit – the others bought baseball caps and so on, but we didn’t care wear them in the end. We did try to modify our personalities slightly though – for example, Hel had to change her intonation when mentioning her Estate, to being merely ‘the estate’, and I if asked, planned to respond that my degree is from the “University of Life” (it was a BA (dishons) Stabbin’ with Beatboxin’).
We joined the queue for the Astoria and within seconds, a man said to us “Want some weed?”, so we immediately knew this could get interesting. This was only confirmed whem the man on the door asked us what gig we were here for, as we clearly didn’t look like the hip-hop demographic.
Walking through the door frame, I was subject to a rather ominous frisking. Though having your bag searched is quite a regular occurence at London gig venues, usually it’s just a case of the bouncers taking a half-hearted glance at your bag and saying “that’s fine”, though in this case, my arms and legs were thoroughly patted-down and I had to turn out all of my pockets. This certainly exacerbated any anxiety I had about getting murdered.
What struck me on entering the venue was not, thankfully, a knife or some stray bullets, but just how out of place we looked. Not because we were three white people at a gig for a genre with a predominantly black fanbase, but because everyone else looked like they knew about hip-hop and rap and stuff – they all decorated themselves with chains and knives and sportswear. My hip-hop knowledge extends as far as The Beastie Boys and Flobots. Also, I probably have more hair than every other man who was in that room put together.
Interestingly, they were filming it all for YouTube and presumably the telly at some point – so look forward to seeing my face looking slightly bewildered in the background of some promotional material soon!
The bill was an interesting one – it seemed to cover all of the hip-hop bases. We got there a little late, so the first act that we saw was comedian Toju, who was apparently on the dire Balls of Steel, who was described on the poster as being a “militant black guy” – so as you might imagine, his set had some uncomfortable moments for the three people with probably the pastiest skin there, as I’m sure we all collectively prayed “please don’t pick on me”. Thankfully, he wasn’t that sort of comedian, but did enter the stage saying “all the black people in the audience say ‘yeah’” to a humungous cheer, followed by “all of the white people in the audience say ‘yeah’” which led to a few weak grunts from around the room. The rest of his set was jokes and an awful lot of libel about various hip-hop celebrities which I’m sure would be excellent if you understood the references and didn’t just listen to ska.
Afterwards, and in-between acts, a DJ played some tunes (laid down some beats?), in which most of the songs sampled sound effects of gunshots. They songs also sounded more-or-less the same. Unlike ska. Ahem.
Next up was what could best be described as a Whores Fashion Show. Presumably at the behest of one of the corporate sponsors, the apparent finalists for “Miss Hip-Hop” paraded around the stage for a few minutes in what could best be described as clothing designed by the colourblind. In a few cases, it appeared that they’d forgotten to finish getting fully dressed before entering the stage – I assume it was because of time pressure, as the event was running slightly behind the published schedule.
There were also some men on stage (I don’t think there was a corresponding “Mr Hip-Hop” competition), who didn’t seem to know much about fashion either. A lot of the costumes consisted of a hoodie and trousers with the same pattern on. I’m dimly aware that it’s embarassing for women if two women show up for something wearing the same dress, and I experience similar anxiety if I see people wearing the same t-shirt (complete with witty slogan/logo/etc) as me – so I’d assume turning up wearing the same patterned trousers and hoodie are the ultimate embarassment. Not that they seemed too bothered.
The next segment was called “Got Talent”, in which members of the audience demonstrated their hip-hop skill to the audience in a bid to win fifty quid. This was pretty entertaining. There was a mixture of beatboxing, rapping (both with a beat and acapella) and normal singing. Like with any talent contest, the calibre of the talent was varied, and the audience were encouraged to cheer or boo the contestants. Whilst it was harrowing and a little heartbreaking to see people get shot down and their dreams smashed in front of their eyes by a few hundred people booing, this was offset slightly by hearing people in the audience “brap” the rubbish performers. I first learnt this from my mate Dan:”brapping” is when you make a gun shape with your fingers and shout “brap, brap” – it’s gunfire, you see. Way to dispell the stereotypes, hip-hoppers.
My favourite thing about this segment was that most of the contestants were the sort of people I’d cross the road to avoid walking past, and that all of the rappers had given themselves rap names. One contestant, who called himself ‘Stabs’ (no, really), was surprisingly threatening in a Wolf-from-Gladiators sort of way, getting moody when he was knocked out of the competition. As it turned out, most of the raps people did were about how difficult it is living in South London. I’m glad I live north of the river.
In the end the winner though, was a singer who we speculate won only because he was singing in a very heartfelt way about his mother. How much he liked her, I mean, rather than implying that she was a prostitute that he would like to shoot.
After the talent segment, it finally reached the point in the evening we’d all been waiting for – the rap battle. It was a special ‘grudge rematch’ between Micky Negro and Arkaic – who had duelled previously. It was phenomenal.
Obviously, all previously held values we had about racism, sexism and homophobia being bad had to be suspended – not an easy task when you’re there with two fairly militant feminists, but it was an incredible sight to see. Arkaic got served. And it totally made the whole evening worthwhile. The audience were really into it to, reacting to every rhyme with great enthusiasm. The freestyling was genuinely impressive too – the rappers reacted to what was going on around them and to what their opponent was saying. There was, of course, a lot of lazy rhymes calling their opponent “gay” or “whack” but there were also a lot of clever ones too.
I think the battle could have gone either way until Arkaic, a white guy, made the mistake of bringing racial matters to the forum. When he claimed that Micky Negro had a face that looked like it had been “hit by a frying pan” because he was black, he seemed to lose the audience’s sympathy, leading to Micky Negro’s final knock-out line of “This is like Barack Obama versus John McCain”, at which point the audience went wild, leading to a crescendo in which the DJ weighed in with some dramatic scratching, even though he still had time on the clock – it was clear who the winner was going to be.
Content, we left soon after this, not bothering to stay for the final “pillow fight” segment, which surprisingly, was literally just a pillow fight – there wasn’t a hidden hip-hop meaning, such as ‘pillow’ being slang for ‘gun’ or something. It was just people fighting with pillows, which seems a bit tame, really.
It was all pretty incredible really – the sort of thing that we all agreed was well worth going to, but that we should never go to again.
If you’re reading a blog then chances are that you think you’re pretty tech savvy – you know your way around the internet, you can tell your lolcats from your RSS feeds, and you’ve probably become a bit complacent with your security-conscious mind.
“I don’t need anti-virus software, I’ll just be careful… I’d never fall for an internet phishing scam, I can spot a bogus deal from a mile off”, you’re smugly thinking right now, perhaps knowingly stroking your chin as you do so.
Unfortunately, this was my line of thinking until about two and a half hours ago when I discovered that I’ve unwittingly fell victim to an internet scam.
Months ago when tickets for the Reading Festival went on sale, I wasn’t quick enough to get a ticket from the initial sale, but my love of Rage Against The Machine and <i>sticking it to the man</i> by listening to politically-charged rock music caused me to look elsewhere for tickets. I’m sure you can see where this story is heading.
After not being able to find a Nigerian Prince to supply me with some tickets, I ended up the community trading sites, like eBay and Gumtree. On Gumtree I found a woman who was selling a couple of Reading weekend tickets at almost cost-price. Her story was that she’d bought them in the sale immediately after last year’s festival but now couldn’t go. So I sent her an e-mail enquiring.
Obviously I did all of the important checks before handing over the cash, and the signs were good: her e-mail address was at a proper domain and not just at Yahoo or Hotmail or something, the website associated with her domain appeared to be a real company with a real address, and she came across as a friendly person via e-mail.
Having used eBay with success in the past I was of the mindset that people are innately good, and people on the internet are honest. Unfortunately I would later be disproved.
So I sent “Emma” a £100 “deposit” via Paypal-alike service NOCHEX and then waited for four months until earlier this week when I e-mailed her to remind her I’d bought the tickets and to arrange when I can collect them from her (as they only post them out a week before to stop, er, people selling them on). It didn’t exactly fill me with confidence when she wrote back signing off her e-mail as “Gemma”.
Then this morning, I got an e-mail where she claimed that because the card she bought the tickets on had been stolen just after she bought the tickets (<i>hmm</i>), the transaction might not have gone through so she won’t be getting the tickets.
Then the penny dropped and I realised that I’ve probably been scammed.
Checking the domain, the website lists an address in Weybridge, Surrey. The phone number listed is a London number even though Weybridge is outside of the London area codes, and phoning it sends you straight to an answerphone… Googling the address implies that a number of vastly different businesses operate from the same building, and googling the company name results in an eBay shop listing (eBay rating zero) claiming to be based in Northamptonshire.
This is especially frustrating, as it seems the scammers are more sophisticated than I gave them (£100) credit for – and indeed, I’m much more fallible than I suspected (I thought I was infallible)… and now I’m £100 down and not going to the Reading festival. You can probably imagine the stream of swearwords that left my mouth this morning.
So the lesson here that I want to get across is simply: internet scams are real… and it isn’t just your mum who is likely to fall for them. Consider yourself warned.
And if you’ve got any spare tickets for Reading (or indeed, Leeds), for the weekend or the Rage day… please get in touch with me!
Yesterday, I went to London with my friend Bouff. Why? Because London is excellent. And it certainly proved that yesterday.
After faffing about around Oxford Street and Speaker’s Corner, we decided to head to the Science and Natural History Museums – which as every good Londoner knows, are next door to each other on Exhibition Road. Unfortunately, when changing tubes at Notting Hill Gate, we discovered that the Circles and District line were both closed – so we were faced with the choice of either trekking across Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to get there, or going to David Cameron’s Notting Hill home to see if he wants to come out to play and ride bikes with us. We chose the former, obviously, because even if Cameron did commit himself to a policy of coming out to play (unlikely), the car following us on our bikes would cramp our style a bit. Also, Cameron’s a dick.
As we approached the Royal Albert Hall, we heard what sounded like some jazz fusion. Intrigued, we stumbled upon a great big stage with a band on, where the jazz fusion was being emitted from. Ace.
I did stop to wonder who was bankrolling this? Was it one of Ken’s ideas that Boris didn’t have time to cancel in his new role as fun-spoiler? As it turns out, excellently, it was being partially funded by the EU (yet another reason not to hate them). The thing that gave this away was not the EU flags, but the incredibly clunkily name that had clearly been thought up by some top-class Eurocrats: “European Year of Intercultural Dialogue” – which presumably follows on from last year’s successful European Year of Macro-Economic Indicators or something equally dry.
We walked on down on to Exhibition Road itself, which had been closed off, and encountered a couple of men who took the “there’s always a weird old guy at a gig who’s too old for it” tradition to giddy new heights. Witness the following video of them rocking out to a devastatingly average band:
After having a look around the Science Museum for a bit, and wondering why the credit crunch hasn’t done the noble thing and prevented American tourists from entering Britain (I mean, really, who goes to a museum and films everything if they’re not making a stupid satirical video? Are they really going to watch it back?), we headed back outside to perhaps the greatest thing ever.
We stumbled on some ska.
An apparently unsigned band called Brothers Bab were getting a decent reaction from the crowds outside (and the two old guys were down at the front skanking their old, weary hearts out). Surely this only makes the summer of ska all the more imminent?
Museums… ska gigs… being able to namedrop streetnames without having to specify the city… this is why I want to live in London.
The last week has been pretty spectacular – I’ve been to three gigs, and not just any old gig, but three big name gigs.
Last ever Capdown gig at the Pitz, Milton Keynes
Depressingly, one of my favourite bands, Capdown have split up – though they did one last show in Milton Keynes, their home town. And like the other four times I’ve seen them live, it was amazing. What made things even better – aside from getting free merch from the stall as it was the last gig – was that I somehow managed to position myself right at the front, on the barrier, dead centre, meaning I had the best possible view of the show, and got to experience the full intensity of the set, without worrying about being knocked over in a violent pit. Because I’m a big wimp.
From what I can tell, I think their split is fairly amicable – their official excuse is something about needing stability or something totally unpunk like that. Because of this, I’m pretty sure it was the lead singer who caused the split – whereas the rest of the band still looked suitably punk, he was wearing a shirt with a collar. And, er, apparently he has a kid too.
Amazing gig though. I can’t wait until the reunion tour.
The Sex Pistols at Birmingham Academy
I went with my dad, uncle and cousin to see the Sex Pistols again. Billed as an “intimate warm-up show” for their tour of festivals… it was only as intimate as one can reasonably be with something like four thousand people (mostly, bald old men) in the audience.
To be honest, I didn’t think they were as good this time as they were the first time I saw them in Brixton – I’m not sure if they were technically any worse – and it was definitely a smaller venue, which should have been better, but it became uncomfortably nationalistic and right-leaning at a few points. Like in Brixton, the Pistols came on stage to an old-timey song singing “They’ll always be an England”, and between songs the set was littered with patriotic nonsense, with John Lydon saying at one point “there’s only one thing better than the English abroad… and that’s the English at home”, and at another point seemed to stick it to the Muslims by getting the audience to sing a chorus of “Allah”, like the Muslim call for prayer.
Don’t get me wrong – I love sticking it to the religions, but when this was contextualised as coming from a man who doesn’t strike you as the sort to have intellectually examined religion and politics, and lumped in with the pro-”English” stuff, it just came across as a bit racist. It didn’t help that most of the audience were skinheads… although I guess a lot of them just lost their hair due to age.
Maybe I got the wrong end of the shtick?
Less Than Jake at Camden Barfly
I bloody love Less Than Jake. To the extent that a couple of years ago I got my family to take a short trip to Bournemouth specifically so I could go to their one-off gig there. I nearly went to see them a few months later, but made the mistake of smashing my car up, so I couldn’t get there. So I’d been waiting nearly two years to see them again when they announced that they were playing Reading this year, which I hopefully have tickets for. Horrifyingly though, it looks like they’re going to clash with Rage Against the Machine, so I’m going to miss it. So I was slightly gutted until they announced they were going to play an “intimate show” in Camden as a warm up for their tour.
It turns out that getting up early and pressing F5 a lot to get tickets for last night’s show was totally worth. It really was something you could term an “intimate” gig. The venue was tiny. Maybe about 200 capacity. And I was there to see a band who can play Opera Houses, ice rinks and the main stage at Reading. And once again, I somehow managed to end up standing right at the front, against the barrier, dead in the centre.
I’d bought my friend Katy along as she had heard one LTJ album (Borders & Boundaries) something like five years ago, so I slightly worried she’d moan that I’d taken her to a rubbish gig, but in producing this worry, I forgot to factor in that the gig would be amazing. Which it was.
Here’s some songs I can remember that were on the setlist:
Does the Lion City still roar?
Plastic Cup Politics
Johnny Quest Thinks We’re Sell Outs
Look What Happened
Ghosts of Me and You
Great American Sharpshooter
History of a Boring Town
Science of Selling Yourself Short
Rest of my life
Al’s War
Krazy Glue
Last one out of Liberty City
Gainsville Rock City
All my best friends are Metalheads
The only dodgy bit was when one girl behind us (who reminded me of an anthropomorphic Miss Piggy) who had been complaining and fighting throughout the whole gig, was invited up on stage by Chris, the singer and guitarist, where when asked what was wrong, she moaned about the people in the pit. This was, predictably, met with a chorus of booing – the band simply said “Welcome to punk rock”. That told her.
But that bizarre moment aside, it was an incredible gig.
