Ah, I had a great time on my little mini TOD tour of London and Nottingham. I ended up seeing Trail of Dead twice, WolvesofGreece twice and The Faint twice which is always good for forming opinions. I’m not saying any more about pie on this weblog so I’ll skim over the meeting up with Greg and Kat. We soon ditched them to hang out in our VIP balcony anyway where half the population of Scotland was situated. The Faint were pretty enjoyable with really loud bouncy pop songs but it all got a bit 80s sub-goth after a while. I bet they sound weedy as hell on record. Clinic were BORING and I don’t get them at all. I watched Trail of Dead‘s first song from the balcony and it all looked wonderful but the incessant chatter pissed me off so I once again took up residence on the stage where I had a nice sit down view of the band and the audience. It still all looked amazing and the songs were sounding clear and good but it was all a bit too clean with little in the way of riot antics and noise. I wanted to cheer when Jason gave that awful guitar of his away. Always good when Jason kicks the drums across the stage though and Neil throwing his bass at David’s head was pretty funny as well. Afterwards we had fun with fruit, wee stuart Mogwai and lots of fans before leaving to get stuck behind a burning truck on the M1 for hours.

The next day I bought lots of records in Nottingham and then went to see WolvesofGreece play at a basement party. They were insanely good that night, Simon knocking everything over and Neil having to be forcibly coerced back onstage. The songs [and they sound so much more like songs now] are just expertly structured yet chaotic power noise and it’s exhilarating as anything you want to mention.

Thus I was very much looking forward to seeing what the Nottingham TOD kids would make of the Wolves experience. Much fun was had watching their little faces change from initial support band boredom through wide-eyed confusion to eventual enjoyment. It was ace. The Faint were again enjoyable but unsatisfying. Trail of Dead however played a complete stormer of a set, possibly the best I’ve seen them do. Obviously hyped up by the tiny venue and enthusiastic audience, TOD brought out everything we love about them and had me laughing out loud in glee. Teenage girls desperately fondling Conrad’s knee; Jason clambering on top of a free standing tower of speakers, Neil hanging off the ceiling, Jason trading his disgustingly sweat-sodden shirt with a fan’s; Conrad shaking that hair; someone pulling the plug out of the stage lights. It was all just hilarious fun. Songs were sounding fantastic too with loads from the first two albums and a few choice moments from the new one. Sadly no breaking of stuff but I think someone would have definitely got hurt if they’d tried since it was so mobbed. I was not happy to see the stagediving/crowdsurfing revival is upon us. Seriously, GROW UP and let everyone enjoy themselves at a gig, not just you kicking small people in the face.

Afterwards was the usual CRAZY Trail of Dead backstage rock activities we’ve come to expect. Chocolate Hobnobs, New Tropical Fruit flavour Fanta [containing Brilliant Blue colouring but actually orange], lessons on How To Eat A Cadbury’s Flake Seductively, Neil wearing pyjamas, Jason teaching me and Matt Gringo how to start conversations with Drunken Ladies and Tycoons. Then they tried to convince me to come to Paris with them on their enormous sleeperbus complete with white leather seats but I thought that might be too much Fanta-filled rock for the likes of me. Back around May. I can’t wait. New album is really damn good too. I advise you to purchase it.

I’ve been on a bit of a reminiscing trip this past week. It all started in Avalanche last week when I found a copy of the second Drop Nineteens album for £3. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’ve been searching for this record all my life but it is a record I’ve always wanted and never got round to buying. Their first album Delaware is an american indie shoegazing classic that I still listen to regularly but sadly this second one isn’t half as good. It’s still got some top tunes on it though with a more 70s rock element to the fuzzy shoegazing. Then I started rummaging in my wardrobe and today I’ve been listening to The Pastels on a compilation tape my old lost friend Alex made me. He used to make me all these tapes on his record player that goes hisssssssssssCLUNK at the beginning of every song and I’m getting all sentimental hearing it again. I also bought the Ride boxset last week which I’m very much looking forward to hearing, Ride being my favourite band as a teenager. Yes, I am Getting Old. Still, I’m off to live the rock with Trail of Dead this week so don’t give up on me yet.

I’m now replacing the 60% IrnBru content of my body and eating pie. It would be completely self-obsessed and nepotistic of me to write about my own gig so that’s pretty much what I’m going to do. It all went pretty much to plan really. The Sunnyvale Fun Bus arrived only 5 hours later than expected, 2 members of The Starries broke their trousers beyond repair, we stamped Bubbles from the Powerpuff Girls on lots of hands and almost everyone joined in our amusing plan to get Sunnyvale’s name misprinted in as many different ways as possible. The Starries were very much the noisy but tuneful melodic hardcore band they were claiming to be, Sunnyvale Noise Sub-Element were mighty electronic confusion and Fighting Red Adair wrapped the whole night up with an absolute frenzy of ROCK. Even the ‘water dripping from ceiling’ incident only added an air of anticipation and danger to the night. It was a triumph I tell you!

I need to lie down now.

I went down to Nice’n’Sleazy’s last night to witness this new Emo craze I read about in the NME. Actually I haven’t seen this infamous article yet but I intend to pick up a copy today. I find it hilarious that the NME will be seeing a sales increase this week as previous readers like myself will buy a copy purely for the amusement of laughing at how out of touch the NME is. Maybe they should relaunch the NME as some kind of music satire publication.

Anyway, I did go out last night in some horrific weather conditions to see Death Cab for Cutie. I’ve still not gotten over Ian Scanlon calling me a wuss for not coming out to see Econoline during a blizzard and hey, I only got partially drenched. Wouldn’t have wanted to miss this gig anyway – it was an emo-fest like I’d never seen before. Never have I been in a room with so many people wearing emo jumpers [hang on, surely all jumpers are intrinsically emo?] and with unbelievable haircuts. It was kinda fun really.

So the support band was Roads To Siam who were pretty good indie rock. They reminded me of Colin’s songs in Eska. Which is probably why Colin from Eska was right down the front with his emo jumper on. hoho. sorry Colin…

I love Death Cab for Cutie and I’ve been listening to their last album way too much recently so I was hoping for great things. And they were perky and cute and the songs were great and they rocked out but the sound was so appalling that it wasn’t really that enjoyable. Hero of the night award to the guy in the audience who shouted for, and got, the vocals to be turned up. After that, it got along a good bit better with them playing the new single and the classic ‘Company Calls’ double song. Songs from the new album were sounding cool as well but the night was a little bit disappointing all round. Shame.

I went to see My Neighbour Totoro yesterday and it was the best thing I’ve seen in ages. Japanese anime but the charmingly cute kind. Basically the story of 2 sisters who move to a new house in the country where they wait for their mother to be allowed out of hospital. And they discover all these spirits of the forest: sooty dustbunnies in the attic and a family of Totoro in the forest who live in a camphor tree. There’s two little Totoro who collect acorns and a big enormous Totoro who appears at various times and helps the older sister Satsuki to find her little sister Mei when she gets lost. There’s just lots of really funny bits and the big Totoro has the most fantastic beaming grin. There’s also a huge fluffy catbus with torchlight eyes which the Totoro travel on. And the animation looked amazing and really brightly coloured. I just loved it all. I want a Totoro now!

I went to see Lord of the Rings last night on Simon’s recommendation. I’d been quite keen on the idea of it about eight months ago but once all the hyper-publicity got going it went a bit ‘just another Hollywood blockbuster’ in my eyes. I should maybe mention here that I’ve never read Lord of the Rings and the nearest I get to fantasy is Star Wars and the Narnia books, having as I do a horror of faeries and goblins and all that nonsense. However, I was drawn in really quickly and found myself totally believing it: because they’ve made the film in such a historical way it’s as easy to believe in as cavemen and dinosours [heh, dinosours, they’d be a new type of sour fizzy sweet in the shape of a dinosaur], dinosaurs and giant squid. They just managed to keep away from most of the cliches of fantasy stuff like magic potions and talking trees and instead focused on the characters who acted for the most part like humans, having no supernatural powers [except for the power of good etc.]. And though the story was basically a group of good people delivering an important item to a faraway place while hordes of bad people tried to kill them and take it, every new event still felt exciting as they travel through some of the most astounding locations imaginable. That’s the other strength of the film, that they mostly use real locations with the CGI effects used only to add spectacular and believable touches or to build the complex cities. There was a slight reliance on near death [every good character nearly dies about 12 times in the film] and knife edge thin pathways for thrills but it sure worked. The one thing that would have made the film better would have been to not have a ten minute intermission half way though. I’m sorry, but are they allowed to do this? I know it’s a long film but it totally broke my concentration and reminded me that it’s not real. I’d definitely recommend you go see it soon, not least because it won’t look even half as good on your little tv screen.

There’s also something to be said for walking home at night eating half a packet of LoveHearts so thanks to Orange Splifffish for those. Let’s hope your demo is better than your name but at least you have good taste in confectionary bribery.

I went to see Mulholland Drive last night with Chris and his friend whose name I don’t want to spell wrongly. I really liked the film but the idea was initially supposed to be for a tv series and I think that’s the major flaw in the film. Everything happens too fast and it’s all a bit too condensed. There’s all these great characters that you don’t get introduced to properly and who only get maybe one proper scene before they disappear and they could have almost been the main character in the film. Even the actual main three characters you don’t feel you get to know much about them. I just felt that almost everything in the film could have been built up into something much longer and when it finished I was kind of expecting more. But other than that there’s some really beautifully shot bits and it’s intriguing and as long as you don’t struggle to keep hold of everything so you can feel clever when it all starts to tie together at the end then it’s really enjoyably odd and a bit scary.

Also nice to know that it takes 18 minutes to walk from the 13th Note to the GFT as long as you don’t mind tearing some ligaments.

When I got home I found a newly-delivered box of Careless Talk Costs Lives magazines sitting on my bed. It weighs an absolute ton and must have cost a fortune to post. I was too tired to think of opening it though so opinions will come later.

I did go to London and I did see Part Chimp, Reynolds and Fixit Kid in the company of 10 diskant-related persons. I’d forgotten how tall Ollie is. Fixit Kid were enjoyably noisy but I didn’t hear enough of them to find that over-exciting. Reynolds, however, pulled out some old songs and were quite fantastically brilliant. I’d not heard ‘Stopper’ live before and it was awesome. Disappointing that ex-vocalist Matt Tagney didn’t get onstage though. Some people might say going to London for a day to see Reynolds was insane but those people obviously aren’t suffering from a 15 month Reynolds withdrawal situation. Anyway, Part Chimp were also in the house and almost worth the trip themselves. In case you haven’t seen them yet, Part Chimp are ex-Ligament and have lots of deafeningly great riffs. Tunes as well. Including one they stole off ‘Little Drummer Boy’. I truly had a trouser flapping rock moment while standing in front of the speakers. Only downside to this is that after three songs you’ve gone deaf and can’t hear the rest of the set. But, words don’t do Part Chimp justice so go to Vitaminic and get their MP3 and then email them and demand they release a record. I assume the reason this hasn’t happened yet is because they’re picking out the heaviest vinyl known to man and inventing something that prevents you listening to the record if the volume is set any lower than max power.

Kitten Towers is a most hospitable place. I recommend it. Greg omits to point out below that we actually had a pie eating contest which he lost spectacularly. I’d also like to recommend apple pie as a good breakfast food.

During our five hour stay in Borders bookshop I was reading Future Electronic Music Technology magazine [or something] and apparently you can now buy a program for Palm organiser things that turns them into a metronome! Now that‘s useful technology…

My glasses broke today and I had to stick them back together with superglue. Well, it was either that or go about wearing my prescription sunglasses and even I’m not cool enough to get away with that in winter. Although I could maybe have gone with risk of snow blindness. Except there isn’t much snow here.

I’ve been trying to overdose on films, Haribo and the 13th Note this last week and all three going very well. for some odd reason NTL have given us all the extra Film Four channels for free. we may not have the actual Film Four channel but we do have the Film Four repeated one hour later channel. so I’ve been watching all manner of films while eating the bucket full of sweets that Greg sent me and doing the incredibly difficult jigsaw he also sent me. Greg should never have got me started on jigsaws, I’m too determined and HAVE TO FINISH THEM or I feel like it’s an insult to my intelligence. or something. and then David came to save me from jigsaws and instead we tried to spend an entire 48 hours in the 13th Note before I sent him home with pockets filled with Haribo.

I’ve got a £10 voucher for Woolworths or HMV. suggestions on how I should spend it please. best suggestion so far is to buy £10 of pick’n’mix [thanks Ollie]. I tried really hard in HMV but I just cannot spend £15 on a cd even if I am getting £10 off.