We went to check out the first gig by Glasgow supergroup John’s Not Mad on Friday. They’ve got people from Lapsus Linguae, Akira and Peeps Into Fairyland on board and had the 13th Note absolutely mobbed. Queues to get in! I’ve never seen the like. Possibly.

Anyway, they were pretty good. Seemed to be aiming for a Joy Division/Mogwai kind of thing but with an added country feel. When it was slow and sad with interacting girl/boy vocals it was great, when they tried to rock out [or, painfully, cover Love Will Tear Us Apart] it went a little awry. Considering it was a first gig it was good stuff although considering they all play in other bands so it should be. Aye, keep an eye out. They’ll be coming to an independently-minded website you know very well rather soon.

After that I finally got to see The Boy Cartographer, which is most of Pentothal’s other band. I really liked them – open and friendly and heartfelt. A bit like a sleepy Spare Snare.

The headliners were Homescience from Edinburgh and they were highly amusing. All their songs were about writing songs and girls and September being crap so I had much fun trying to guess what the obvious rhyme would be. They had some charm though with their slightly wobbly voices and jangly indie guitars. If they were more interesting they could be the new Pastels but sadly they’re more likely to be the new Travis. If they’re not Steve Lamacq’s favourite band already then they soon will be. They’re never going to run out of subjects for songs either since they’ve still not covered how it can be fun in the sun or how a car can drive far or having a dream about ice cream. They had a xylophone though, that was good.

Went to see Fridge last night. Very good. Forgave them some freejazzy noodlings I wasn’t in the mood for when they finished by building up this driving track over about 20 minutes at the end. Highest marks go to the bass player’s Tshirt with blood under the armpits, though.

Having lots of fun playing with this cutup machine that The Morning News pointed me at. Sometimes it’s like a truth machine, sometimes just funny. I used it on a message* from the man who owns me for 8 hours a day and he says “I look forward to $7.8 billion.”

[* if anyone can tell me what “leverage” is supposed to mean as a verb, I’d love to know…]

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 an excitement fest this past week. well, by my standards, anyways. on thursday i met up with marceline in london to go see trail of dead. i also met david for the first time. surprisingly, pie was eaten. trail of dead were fantastic. i’d not seen them since Reading 2000. damn, that seems so long ago. lesson learned that day: don’t trust rock stars to pass messages on for you. i’m sure marceline will have more elaborate tales of rock on the TOD front, so i’ll not go on about it.

last night i saw ghostworld, and you know, it’s as good as everyone else said it was. the reason i’m seeing it so late is because my local odeon only show non-blockbuster types on special screening events. it’s been southend projection month or something these last few weeks. ghostworld, unfortunately, is the last in the series, but i did see the pledge with jack nicholson the other week, which was equally good – a touching story with a surprising ending. jack was on top form.

i’ve also been making a skateboarding video on a digital camera which has been fun.

and today is my birthday. so yay. i’m Getting Old too. i give up.

heh

I played at that gig mentioned below (on 020202) so I’ll continue the self-obsessed and nepotistic theme by mentioning it here. For us (that is, Sunnyvale Noise Sub-Element (or Sunnyville…, Sunnyvale Noise Experiment, etc)) part of the fun of the night, nay the whole weekend, was travelling up for 10 hours in our little van, and picking the Starries up along the way, thinking we were on some kind of rock voyage, like if Summer Holiday was set in 2002 and featured a bunch of Shellac and Ninja Tune fans.

Anyway, setting aside the wonderful diskant hospitality and the general feeling of warmth and happiness to be experienced in Glasgow (my new choice of place to live – as these feelings quickly wore off as we returned to the miserable south), the gig was a success. And not just ‘cos we thought we played well – we thought we played quite well, incidentally – but because the place was pretty packed, the people were good, the pie was tasty and the Irn Bru was flowing. The Starries played more confidently and raucously than I remember them playing before, and with a top Husker Du / melodic hardcore blah blah edge, and were good and LOUD. Fighting Red Adair were an incredibly pleasant surprise, the description of them on the flyers as some kind of Shellac / Oxes fight hybrid being spot on, as they cranked it up and let rip with their sharply-honed vicious barrage of structured noise.

There will be more of these diskant gigs, i hear. And that news is A GOOD THING.

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.

Now once again it’s been a while. But the main reason for this is that I haven’t doing anything sufficiently exciting to blog. However last Saturday I went to see Check Engine. Purported to be a poppier Sweep the Leg Jonny I was a little dubious as I wasn’t sure what that would be like. Anyhow went along and was amazed. Firstly by a solo chellist who was the only support act going by the name Mrs Pilgrimm. She managed to create this whole sound with various effect pedals and loops with a kinda odd vocal. Not quite haunting but definitely unusual. After that Check Engine wander on the stage and start up with a disjointed shouty number with a noodley sax playing over the top of two guitars, a bass and some great drumming. While one of the guitar amp’s packed up, this continued all the way through the set. Ending up sounding a bit like a poppier Sweep the Leg Jonny. Anyhow go see them if you get the chance, come on you know you want to, besides you should trust me I am the event handler after;)

Here I was going to write about going to see Glasgow’s finest purveyors of good time Rock (that’s The Cherrykicks, by the way). BUT I’m not in the mood. Some evil chav who must live in the same building as me has took half my bike from the landing outside my door while I slept, never mind the security door or anything.

I hope the seat gives you piles and the wheels burst on a corner.

And if I find out you are who I think you are I’m going to superglue your front door closed.

On the plus side, my U -lock obviously works but has anyone got any ideas what to do with a naked bike frame? I think I’m going to turn it into a voodoo doll.

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.