Herald & Post Columns The Herald & Post, and anyone related to them take no responsibility for anything I write on here. This is all my own work, and consequently, my own fault.
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.
Parliament had a vote last week to decide whether or not there will be a referendum on whether we ratify the thrilling new European Reform Treaty. The parties all had their positions cler - Labour didn’t want a referendum, the Tories did, and the LibDems got the wrong end of the stick entirely, and thought they were discussing whether to actually be in the EU or not. Idiots.
Nick Clegg really has baffled me with his party’s ridiculous stance: “forget the treaty, lets have a referendum on whether to stay in the EU or not”… which is mental. Its like the LibDems have seen the polls and have thought “the public want to vote on something… so lets give them a poll on any old question, just not the important one”. It’s a bit odd to say the least, as no one (apart from some crackpots on the lunatic fringe) have actually said that being in the EU in general is a bad idea… its like two people arguing over whether they prefer Adam Hart Davis’s science programmes or his history programmes, only for a third person to suggest that rather than pick science or history, everyone decide whether they like Adam Hart-Davis in the first place or not… which is stupid, because that’s not up for discussion, as it goes without saying that everyone thinks he’s great.
I’m quite pleased with the result though - I don’t think there should be a referendum. I hate to agree with Ken Clarke because agreeing with a Tory is like intellectual self-harm, but having actually watched a bit of the debate-on-whether-to-have-a-referendum on BBC Parliament (because I was trying to do literally the most boring thing I could have been doing at that time), he said that people elect politicians to make the important decisions for them*, because lets face it… why should we listen to the man on the street? What does the Sun reading white-van driver know about the finer points and technicalities of managing European integration? If the man on the street was in charge, we’d have bought back the death penalty and would have constructed a giant wall around Britain with robotic lasers that automatically target immigrants. The general public are idiots.
I can, however, sympathise, with the crackpots who think more highly of the general public than I do, and think that the ignorant masses should get a say, as that’s what democracy is all about, isn’t it? If I was deciding whether we should have a referendum or not then, I’d have a caveat that the public should be informed. And if they want the public to be informed, then the general public must be engaged and interested. Which is more difficult than it sounds.
European-level politics are supremely tedious to all but the most enthusiastic technocrats. What do the public care about? The Common Agricultural Policy? Nah. Trade tariffs? Nah. Representation and democratic deficits? Not even that. There’s literally nothing in the new treaty that is even slightly interesting. Being partially colour-blind and only able to see beige and being partially deaf and only being able to hear Heart FM are the only things analogous to the contents of the treaty.
Hell, I’m a politics student and I haven’t read the new treaty, nor really know what it contains, because its so supremely dull, and I imagine I’m in the tiny minority who might stand a chance of being interested in this sort of thing.
I think if they want a referendum, they need to change the treaty to engage the people and reflect things they’re actually interested in. Which is why I think if there is going to be a referendum, the treaty needs to have provisions for reforming the Eurovision voting system**. Fuck qualified majority voting thresholds, that’s what the general public really care about.
Lets face it - the only European political issue that can really get people worked up is the annual outrage over the political voting during the Eurovision Song Contest - when Cyprus always give Greece 12 points, and the ethnic mish-mash of former-Yugoslavia all voting for their respective mother countries, and the Balkan bloc-vote, and so on. This is obviously in greater need of reform than the European Parliament, because how can it be fair that Malta, population approximately 4, have the same voting weight as Germany, population 82 million? Especially on an issue as important as who has the best song.
If the government wanted a referendum on the treaty that they’d be guaranteed to win, all they have to do is get into the treaty a clause weighting each country’s voting weight to be relative to their populations make up 75% of the points, and then satisfy the small countries by making the final 25% of the points awarded come from an equal number from each individual state - pretty much the same system as you have in the US government, with the House of Representatives having congressmen from each state relative to their respective populations and then the Senate having two senators from each state.
This could be a revolution in European politics as what goes on Brussels will become relevant to the people of Europe - come May 2009 they’ll be a tangible event that people can associate with an EU decision. So who’s with me?
(* Chomsky, in the introduction to Media Control, also gives barring the public from managing their own affairs as a definition of the concept of democracy… which makes me feel a bit better about things)
(** I know Eurovision has nothing to do with the EU, but the EU should take it on board as a core competency)
I went to another gig yesterday evening, to see Anti-Flag play at Birmingham Academy. Predictably, it was really good. I say “predictably” because I also saw them playing in Peterborough a week ago, so knew what to expect.
For the uninitiated, Anti-Flag are a highly politicised punk band: all of their songs stick it to the man in one way or another, and are effectively protest songs, with the choruses just being chants that you chant along with in agreement. As luck would have it, I agree with most of their politics.
So they have a pretty agreeable message - anti-war, politicians are bad, racism and sexism are bad, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, towards the end of the gig, one of the band had to go and sour the whole gig experience by revealing where the band’s philosophy comes from.
“Have you guys heard of David Icke?”, one of them asked in a bizarre bit of stage banter. The room fell silent, apart from me, who let out a rather loud laugh at the very notion of Icke being mentioned. “He’s a bit weird… but he writes some really good books”, they continued. “No… I didn’t hear that right did I? They can’t be talking about celebrity-crackpot-who-thinks-that-the-royal-family-are-lizards David Icke… can they?”
It wasn’t even a “Haha, he’s a crackpot” angle. They were mentioning him as if he were a credible source of… well, anything. They could have mentioned anyone else and my respect wouldn’t have dropped as much. They could have logically cited, say, Noam Chomsky or John Pilger as a good writer who reflects their political views… or could have gone back further to Kant or Marx… hell, they could have said that their political views are derived from the work of Kerry Katona and their credibility wouldn’t have nosedived so quickly.
Mortified, I tried to put this behind me and enjoy the rest of the gig… although it all felt a little tainted.
At the end of the gig, I saw one of the band milling around and meeting fans, so I decided to confront him. At this point, I was on a post-gig high, so I was rather animated, loud and sweaty, so rather than construct a well thought out academic argument, I ended up approaching Chris Barker, the bassist and, waving my arms in the air, cried “David Icke?! He’s MENTAL“.
Slightly taken aback, Sane replied, to my relief, “Yeah… I don’t know why we mentioned him… he’s pretty crazy!”. My respect for the band rose slightly.
Meeting fans is a necessary part of being a celebrity. Look how excited Chris Barker from Anti-Flag is at meeting me.
So… I guess it was all okay in the end, and the band aren’t hopefully that mental… although I now get a feeling my admiration of Anti-Flag and their music is going to be a lot more difficult to defend when confronted by critics moaning about my favourite bands. I imagine its a bit like a Mark Speight fan feeling obliged to defend Speight in the face of murder allegations.
My car’s cassette tape adapter finally broke the other day, meaning that I can no longer rock out listening to my iPod whilst driving along. This means that rather than listen to Reel Big Fish, or, er, The Economist Podcast, I’ve instead had to endure the radio.
As a young, cool trendsetter, I first decided to turn to Radio 1. I tried listening to this on a couple of journeys, but it made me feel old and depressed. The DJs spoke about the most asinine garbage: on Saturday afternoon - I’m not making this up - there was a phone-in discussion about what biscuits the listeners were eating at that point in time. The DJ read out texts from people who were (thrillingly) eating digestives, rich teas, custard cremes and so on, and then upped the ante by inviting a caller to speak live on air about the biscuits she was eating. Spoiler: it was a chocolate digestive.
The music was strange too. I didn’t realise I was so hopelessly out of touch - listening to the last part of the Top 40 yesterday was a bewildering experience, as I didn’t know any of the songs, or even recognise the names of any of the artists. Why had I never heard of the number one artist (”Duffy”) before yesterday? Surely if someone is famous enough to be number one they’d at least be a part of the public conciousness?
So for the past couple of days I’ve been trying a different tactic: I’ve been listening to Classic FM instead. Its significantly better because Chris Moyles isn’t anywhere near it. It clearly takes a populist stance, as despite knowing nothing about classical music, I’ve so far recognised about half the tracks I’ve listened to on there. Driving along to the James Bond theme tune is quite exciting, even if subconsciously it is urging you to drive fast and womanise.
The funniest thing though was listening to the Classic FM Chart Show on Saturday night. It was just like Radio 1 - there was a presenter playing the top selling singles, they even had jingles to introduce each track with the number of its chart position. The crucial difference with radio one though, was that whereas Radio 1’s jingles are something like “Number One… one… one…”, with lots of echo, over production and laid on top of a several sound effects, like most radio jingles are, to sound exciting, Classic FM’s jingle was just a man’s voice saying in the Queen’s English “Number One”. Classy.
I’ve had a rather hectic eight days - I hesitate to claim that I’ve been “busy”, because that would imply that I’ve been doing something worthwhile. I’ve been over-indulging in a hallmark of popular culture: I’ve been to see one of my favourite bands, Reel Big Fish, three times. Yeah, that’s right, three times.
I’ve travelled all around the country to see them - to the Cresset in Peterborough, the Academy in Birmingham and Rock City in Nottingham. Each gig had almost the same set list - starting with Sell Out, about half way through having “Good Thing” and “Your Guts (I hate ‘em)” segue together (just live the live album), finishing the main set on “Beer”, then having “Trendy” and their cover of “Take On Me” in the encore. They also played at some point: “Everything Sucks”, “Ban the Tube Top”, a cover of “Enter Sandman” and “She’s got a girlfriend now” (sung with the singer from Sonic Boom Six, introduced in almost the same way as the live album), “Where have you been?”, “Somebody hates me”, “Don’t start a band” and “Kiss Me Deadly” (just like the live album, introduced by saying “Here’s a song!”, before launching into it). One notable difference in the set lists was that in Peterborough they played “She’s Famous Now”, whereas at the other two gigs they replaced it with “A little doubt goes a long way”. They played some other songs too, but I was too busy rocking out to remember them. Last night in Nottingham, right at the very end, just as they were going off stage, Aaron played an impromptu riff from “Rock You Like a Hurricane” by the Scorpians, bizarrely.
The support were good too. Sonic Boom Six are pretty cool - they stuck to the same “script” at all three gigs, getting the audience going by doing a “When I say ‘Reel Big’, you say ‘FISH’”, bit - and mixing in a couple of hip-hop bits. Streetlight Manifesto, who were also supporting, are also rather excellent - and rather ska.
So it will come as no surprise to you that I think they’re the best thing since sliced bread, and one of the best live acts around. And I’m still on the post-gig high right now.
One of the best bits, aside from meeting Aaron Barrett, the main bloke in the band last night, was knowing all of the words to all of the songs, and being right down in the pit for most of the three gigs, surrounded by hundreds of people all saying the same thing, in time, appreciating a charismatic group on a stage in front of us… without any fascistic undertones.
Contrary to popular belief, celebrities actually enjoy fans harassing them for photos and autographs.
It was excellent. Go and see Reel Big Fish, readers.
Last night I went to see a thrash metal band who’s name inadvertently sums up the city they were playing in: Municipal Waste.
Long time readers of this blog will know that I thoroughly detest Birmingham - almost everything about it is revolting, from its Escher inspired road network, to its grimy, litter-strewn exterior to the cretinous drawl of its inhabitants. We did have a minor victory this time, though. I successfully managed to flawlessly navigate my way in to the Academy, where the band were playing, without so much the aid of the satellite navigation. As we pulled into the multi-storey car park, the putrid smell of stale urine that follows you wherever you go in Birmingham, became the smell of sweet victory, even if it was accompanied by involuntary retching. As insane as it is to say, maybe I only now hate Birmingham for its people and not its infrastructure?
Despite arriving with plenty of time to spare, we neglected not to go for a drink in the nearby pub that was built into the corner of the multi-storey car park. Classy, is Birmingham.
“Welcome to the Metal Asylum”, said the vocalist from the first band, Toxic Holocaust, which pretty much set the tone for the night. They, and the next support band, Mutant, then proceeded to play their guitars, hit their drums and whatever it is that thrash metal bands do.
Municipal Waste came on stage at about 9pm - pretty early by gig standards, so I guess they wanted to get away from Birmingham as fast as possible too. I’m not terribly familiar with their music, having only known of their existence for about two weeks, but Bouff informed me that they were going to be “brutal” and they were going to “slay”. He wasn’t wrong.
Now, I’ve been to a fair few rowdy punk shows in my time - but this was thrash metal. The crowd surfers didn’t just crowd surf… they literally bought along body boards. There was also a horrendously brutal looking wall of death. I say “brutal looking”, because by this point I’d retreated back to just in front of the sound desk, as I’d reasoned that I needed my limbs to drive home.
The band were really good - I can’t really say more than that, as I don’t know the songs well enough to identify them, but the atmosphere generated made it decent. I think the band were incredibly clever for having a “theme tune” song that includes their name - there’s a chant of just “Municipal Waste is gonna fuck you up!“. Which gives the audience something to chant before the encore too.
The next gig I’m going to see is Reel Big Fish. Followed by Reel Big Fish. Followed by Reel Big Fish. I can’t wait.
I went to a gig last night. No, wait, don’t scroll down! Its not one of those blog entries - there’s actually a story attached to this! I went to see veteran punk band The Damned with my dad (with whom I’d been to see the Sex Pistols a few weeks ago). I reasoned that I like punk, and I like my dad… what could possibly go wrong?
So the first of two support bands finish their (terrible) set and I ask my dad who the next band are. Casually as anything, he tells me that they’re a bunch of strippers.
“What the fuck, dad?”
Needless to say, it was going to be literally the most awful and awkward thing in the world. So I spent the duration of the “act” browsing the internet on my snazzy new phone, trying to forget that I was with my dad, technically watching what is apparently described as a “burlesque” act.
It wasn’t entirely seedy - well, sort of, anyway. It was compared by a piano-playing woman with an irritating voice, which she used to emit sub-Norton innuendo interspersed with dreadful songs. She also had a glove puppet of a sheep.
It was terrible on so many levels.
It reminded me a lot of when you get TV personalities who are inexplicably famous for being fun characters, despite not actually being comedians. Like Ant & Dec or Vernon Kaye - have all of the enthusiasm and bravado required for their job, but negligible actual talent.
Terrible.
Luckily, the actual band, The Damned, were pretty good, and inadvertently hilarious. Despite being arguably the originators of punk, they did the most un-punk thing and got a member of the audience ejected for throwing his drink at the stage. Excellently, thanks to the magic of technology, I got most of this incident on film - check out the video below. Things kick off about 30 seconds in when you see some liquid enter the screen from the left. The keyboardist, Monty Oxymoron, goes mental. The security had to restrain him, as you’ll see on the video. He then spends the remainder of the song drying his keyboards:
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