This was my main reason for being in London this particular weekend as it was the last chance to see this theatre production of Philip Pullman’s ace fantasy trilogy which is something of an Elidor/Tolkien anti Narnia and thus much beloved in my house. I’m not going to try and summarise the plot for you but its epic plotline encompassing a myriad of alternate worlds and the death of God and featuring a cast of humans, witches, “daemons” and ARMOURED BEARS, it was obvious this was something I really had to see live. It’s also unable to tour as it needs the stage at the National Theatre which rotates and has all manner of rising platforms making it both incredibly exciting to watch and easy to show the passage between alternate worlds.I was in the crap seats but this meant being three rows from the front at the same height as the stage which was actually amazing. I may have missed some of the overall picture but seeing the actors 3ft away gave it a whole extra level of realism. The stage was used brilliantly throughout the show with characters able to cut through doors and walk into another world or climb up from underneath. It also meant they could have 3 different sets on different levels and move them up and down to show the action in different places.

Even more impressive than this was the way they brought the non-human characters to life. Some of the major characters in the book are the daemons of humans – basically their spirit in animal form which can interact with other peoples’ daemons and generally act like another character. These were done with puppets made of translucent material and lit with lights. It was astonishing how a puppet being obviously moved and voiced by a visible actor dressed in black could feel as emotionally affecting as the human characters. At other times this was done for laughs with the tiny Gallivespians being marionette style puppets moving in very obvious jerky puppet movements. The armoured bears were also great – despite just being men dressed in shaggy clothes and armour with a puppet style bear head and plastic claw they were quite believable as the bears.

The real life actors were also generally very good although some were overacting a little too much. Lyra even had a perfect annoying accent which made me accept her immediately as the book Lyra (whose annoying accent took a long time to love in the book).

I’d pick out my highlights but it was all just wonderful and even all the major changes to the book (mainly for length reasons) worked really well. I wish I could see it again, especially since the film versions sound like they’re going to cut so much stuff out they’ll hardly be the same story. My only fear now is that any future visits to the theatre will be nowhere near as exciting as this.

Hopefully I will get some of the new diskant stuff online tonight. I’ve been very busy lately for once and it is only going to continue what with it being MY 30TH BIRTHDAY ON FRIDAY, HINT HINT. All cutesy Japanese things, books and birthday greetings happily accepted.

Anyway, Trail of Dead on Sunday which was fun despite the shambles of trying to find a band member for interviewing purposes. Seems TOD don’t even soundcheck themselves any more! Is this the height of lazy rock star madness? We cornered Jason later with our buddies from Beard so look out for that in the next issue (haha, great photo of Jason and Conrad on Beardblog there). The TOD show was way better than the wee Tuts show last year. The album really does take a good few listens for its tuneful prog mentalism to take hold. Onstage fighting always good too. Sad I missed Conrad’s violin playing with The Black though. My highlight of the evening was definitely wee stuart singing an Uter song to me when describing how much they enjoyed listening to it through their huge PA. Yay.

Last night I went to see my workmates Fraser and Tom in their comedy sketch show You Owe Me Glue. I’m not a big fan of live comedy, particularly sketches but this was pretty funny. Certainly proved that running gags, ridiculous costumes and especially cuddly bunnies being evil is always funny.

So was I the only one who was massively disappointed by Boris last night? It was certainly far from the crushingly heavy festival of death I was hoping for. It was all high-end and cymbals and spangly guitar, with no real beef to the sound whatsoever. Granted this possibly wasn’t their fault, but no band with an album called Amplifier Worship should ever sound like that.

MEGADETH – Nottingham Rock City, February 5 2005

And so it is that on a Saturday night I find myself squeezed into the cosy shed-esque surroundings of Rocko staring at a huge piece of black cloth.
What’s more it’s 8.15 in the evening. I don’t know if there was a support tonight but if there was they probably played at about ten past three in the afternoon.
When I was about 16 I went to a house party in the middle of nowhere at a guy’s house. Said guy would later impregnate and eventually marry a lady who would wander the streets of our hometown asking people if they wanted to see her rat. She was called “Rat Woman”. She did actually have a live rat in her pocket that you could look at if you wanted. When I got to the party in a slightly crumbling mansion-style house, all the lights were out save for a strobe and around 5 or so guys were stomping around the front room with long hair and leather jackets listening to Corrosion Of Conformity really loud. Later all of us would lock ourselves in the bathroom while the host rampaged through the house with a hedge strimmer.
Next to me are about 10 young men who look exactly like rat-woman-marrying strimmer-violence boy. They are all shouting “ME-GA-DETH! ME-GA-DETH!”.
Roadies are running around on the stage making crazy hand gestures like bookies at the racetrack. It is very tense. One goes to pull off the black sheet on the stage and is severely reprimanded by what appears to be the supreme roadie. Supreme roadie stares intently at his watch with his other hand raised to the assembled crew clutching the black sheet, holding them back from revealing the secrets of what it is covering. It is agony. Then finally he drops his hand and the sheet is whipped off to reveal the Megadeth back line and a drum riser so high that the drummer will spend the next 2 hours basting like a pork joint 6 inches under the Rock City lighting rig.
Everyone is excited. My compadres Phillip and Neil are excited.
“They best play Holy War” says Phil.
I don’t really know much about Megadeth’s music. I have an open mind, I like metal.
The lights drop and they walk out, Dave Mustaine last. I think they dropped the lights to lessen the impact because as soon as they start playing and the lights come on the visual shock of Megadeth 2005 is quite arresting. Last week Steven J Kirk of the non-rock band The Chemistry Experiment was wearing a heavy metal wig at a party. The guitarist from Megadeth looks exactly like that. The bassist has emerged from the 1990s unscathed and sports a tight perm that’d stand him in good stead for selling knock off videos at Colwick car boot on a Sunday. I can’t see the drummer as his head is somewhere in the rafters, filled with nut stuffing and about half done at Gas Mark 6. Mustaine though, Mustaine looks sort of well, motherly in a kind of council estate mum-of-5 way. Time has not dealt Dave a good hand as anyone who’s seen Some Kind Of Monster can vouch for. I mention this to Neil who looks to the stage with a surprising tenderness.
“Come on man, he’s been on the piss for 20 years. Give him a break”.
The sound is so insane I can’t work out what the hell is going on for the first 3 minutes. Megadeth sound like Wolves Of Greece.
To their credit it’s stupidly loud but all I can hear from the drummer is the bass drum and he hits the drums like such a pussy that it’s all mush. Like all great metal bands from the 1980s the bass is inaudible and the guitars sound fucking hideous.
Like I said I’m not a Megadeth aficionado but their songs seem to be split into 3 categories: one is a sort of mid paced, multi sectioned affair that basically sounds like Black Album era Metallica. The second is a more direct simple sort of tune that’s a loose copy of a decent classic rock band. I reckon these are the new ones. My friend Metal Ben reckons the new Deth album is a killer return to form and he described it to me as a loose concept album about how shit nu-metal is and how it’s time for the real deal. So I figure these celebrations of rock history in song form are the new ones. The third is fast, tricky 80s thrash with high-pitched divebomb solos. It is also way, way better.
So, yeah, they go on a bit. They play for a while. Phil gets a round of 3 CANS of Red Stripe (the only choice of beer available) that comes to TEN POUNDS FIFTY. That’s THREE FIFTY A CAN. That’s over 200% profit on shop price let alone trade price. I guess no one forced us to buy them though.
There are good bits – tasty Lizzy harmony leads. There are bad bits – mercifully brief bass solo. Occasionally Mustaine affects a crazy childish whine style of vocal that I presume represents the demons in his head. Or his inner child. He delivers a speech about Dimebag Darrell where he tells us he lost a friend (“though we never exchanged spit or Christmas cards”) and what he has learned from the experience, which is to “play every show like it’s your last”. I appreciate the sentiment but I have to be truthful and say I am not sure I believe him.
90 minutes in and no Holy War. Phil is restless. A stunningly beautiful black haired girl times her crowd surf perfectly and lands at the feet of Mustaine and gives him a wave. Dave turns to his guitarist and mouths something that I hope was “Still got it”. I am momentarily jealous of Dave.
The young man in front of us is busting out an air guitar solo. Seems like Megadeth are too as I can’t see a single microphone on their speaker cabs and more to the point I can’t see the speakers moving in them. I conclude the cabs are for show and they are plugged into crazy amp simulators. Either that or they are plugged into 5 watt Gorilla practice amps hidden at the back which would explain the sound.
They play a medley of older songs that simply serves to make you wish they’d played the whole songs, as they’re far superior, in comparison at any rate. Neil muses that
“We’re losing some solid gold in this medley” and shakes his head.
He informs me that the song we’re listening to has the same music as a Metallica tune that Mustaine reckons he wrote in his spell with the band before being kicked out for being a human pint glass. Neil and Phil explain in detail why the Megadeth song is superior. The Metallica version is about “horses and dungeons and dragons and knights and bullshit like that” whereas the Megadeth version examines how Mustaine is a mechanic and through his profession meets a lady mechanic who is better than him. A proto feminist anthem apparently, albeit one that uses piston crankshaft penis metaphors.
Some old dudes come on stage and sing backing vocals and even Mustaine looks a little puzzled and sheepish and it’s all over. No Holy War.
Phil looks sad.
But wait. An encore surely.
Mustaine thanks us even though he believes they played badly. Choice of band and material Dave, don’t worry. He informs us that he has only ever written one song in the UK and what’s more he wrote it in Rock City the day after “I shot my mouth off about Northern Ireland”. They play Holy War and it’s the best of the night by a mile.
I guess metal fans are easily pleased though. It was a fun night, I love big rock shows more for the spectacle and the hilarity of the way the performers and audience abide to set laws in an environment supposedly notorious for giving the finger to convention (the solos for each member, the thanking of the crowd for the band; the monotonous circle from back to front via crowdsurfing then back around again etc etc) but as a newcomer to Megadeth all I can think is what a gulf there is between their good and bad songs and how that gulf is either not noticed or very well ignored by the fans. More simply, how the fuck can you throw a devil horn pinky salute up for a BALLAD? And not even a good one. If the kids with the peach fuzz moustaches saw High On Fire they’d spontaneously combust. I get to thinking about how if Mustaine wants to give the finger to false metal he could do better than a band of ponces playing mid tempo rubbish. I reckon he has it in him to do it. He needs to see past the rock show world though.
I am snapped out of this by a sudden 360 degree stereo backing vocal onslaught. I turn around to see where the extra speakers are and think of how amazing it sounds and find Phil wailing the backing vocals in my ear.
The song ends and they take bows at the front of the stage before we’re ushered out so the club night can start.
Phil and Neil have got their coats on already. “Fuck this, let’s go”.
So we did.

Went to see Panda Bear and pals last night, and it were right good. More exciting than any of the bands though, was the fact that it SOLD OUT. Like, it was RAMMED and there were people outside who couldn’t get in! Anyone who’s ever visited or played at Cambridge’s illustrious Portland Arms will know how insane this is, in fact in all the years I’ve been going to gigs there this is the first time I’ve known it to happen. The apocalypse is surely upon us.

Comets on Fire and Kid Commando this evening, lovely stuff. Also, please check out my pal’s blog. Lots of random MP3 goodness.

Sooooo…moving on.

I went to see Trail of Dead the other night for the first time in ages. I went along with some trepidation since I had heard rumours the new album wasn’t very great (and thus avoided hearing it til after I had seen them to avoid any difficult conversations, hah). Luckily they played lots and lots of old stuff which sounded better than ever, thanks to new two drummer action (is there any band that hasn’t sounded better with two drummers?). Some of the new songs sounded okay but they seem very unmelodic which has always been TOD’s strong point for me, I’m listening to the new album just now and, well, hmmm. The first single off it is shocking bad. Oh dear. I then managed to get lost in the fog during a 4 block walk home. It was very thick fog and it was dark and I had been supplied with beer, what can I say?

I was more successful going to see The Incredibles the next night, apart from the six hours of adverts and Disney trailers beforehand. Not to mention the horrifically awful short film beforehand which I can’t bear to remember enough to describe. Pixar, what were you thinking? Luckily the proper film was good enough to block out the horror so that I’d forgotten about it until reminded by Nic after. Arrive 30 minutes late and you should be okay to catch the beginning. There was even a trailer for a CGI film called ROBOTS which sadly looked rubbish. What a wasted opportunity.

But, aye, The Incredibles was fantastic fun with some amazing animation. The plotline was pretty good, if a little cliched, a kind of Spy Kids (if it was good) meets Spiderman. And stay for the credits which are brilliantly stylised snapshots of various points in the film. I was agape at them.

I’m now half way through the TOD album and the best thing yet is still the stupidly fun Lord of the Rings epic intro music. Fred Durst, I’m blaming YOU.

I went to London to see Scout Niblett open for Giant Sand at the beautiful Bush Hall. The beer cost a fortune and Scout played early but she floored me. She lived here in Nottingham for a while and up round these parts she seems to divide people’s opinion into polar opposites. An idiot that I know practically spits fire at her name. Seems to be mainly the ladies that have problems too. But jealousy is a green eyed monster and all that. Tonight John Parish formerly of PJ Harveys band plays drums on a couple of unrehearsed things, but its really just about Emma. The choice of songs is fairly dark and is centred around the noisy distorted guitar stuff she’s been doing more of and at times it’s really harsh and bare and a little uncomfortable. She plays the song about cheerleaders and when she gets to the part about wanting a cheerleader to “cheer me up, cheer me on” I was struck dumb by an urge to cry my guts out and had to hold my breath to make it pass and in doing so a large piece of snot squirted down my face. I think if you know anybody who dismisses Scout as a rip off of (for example) Cat Power then you should not be their friend anymore. They are reducing two people’s art to the lowest denominator – in this case tonal similarities and the fact they’re both women. See, Chan Marshall makes narratives and Scout plays with words until they’re the most simple statement they can be and thats why her songs knock you dead. This is the most minimal music there is, no words are wasted. It’s straight to the gut and whether she’s playing loud guitar or bashing the drums it still has the same effect because its always that sharp and that clear.

We are blessed!

Scout Niblett

Yesterday I got to play guitar for Damo Suzuki as part of his Network for the 2nd time at the Audioscope Festival in Oxford. I think this in itself sets up the day as being fairly weird but the day was just that. Weird. In post-gig-comedown-stroke-depression-at-going-back-to-work-coupled-with-boredom I thought I would write about what it was like.

When Damo recorded “Mother Sky” with Can I was minus 7 years old. Playing with him is a huge headfuck for that reason alone. The other colossal reason that doing this fries your brain is that it is totally spontaneous and unplanned. You literally get up there and play. Damo does this night in and night out as part of his “Never Ending Tour” where he goes around the world hooking up with groups of musicians to improvise with. When he booked his Nottingham show the promoter Anton got in touch and forwarded an email from Damo outlining what would be required by his band for the evening. I think it was along the lines of being “sound carriers” prepared to engage in “Metaphysical Transfer”. That Anton thought I would be the man to ask is something I am eternally grateful to him for.

So I got in touch with as many people as I thought would be into this that I knew and we ended up with Neil from Bilge Pump, Elvis from Twinkie on drums together with Phil, Neil and myself from Wolves Of Greece.

We went and had a get together the weekend before the Nottingham gig and just worked out what sounds we wanted to use but mainly we just jammed a bit and chatted. We couldn’t preplan anything because I think Damo would have sussed us out and tripped us up if he could so we just tried to have fun and get comfy.

The gig itself was nuts. I think we all individually freaked out at soundcheck and had to take some sort of huge breather to calm down. We had lots of equipment problems when we got there so we were quite fraught when we met Damo out of his cab from the station. Soundcheck was a combination of normal boring muso shit like “Is my amp sounding good?” and “Can I have some more drums?” coupled to “FUCKING HELL I’M PLAYING WITH DAMO SUZUKI FROM CAN. AND HE SOUNDS JUST LIKE DAMO SUZUKI“.

Like he wouldn’t…

The gig was twice as crazy. Damo had found a willing co-conspirator in Elvis and had managed to get most of us fairly well stoned beforehand so there was much giggling and good humour before we went on which I was really thankful for as I was shitting it. We’d been out watching the support band earlier and had been speaking to some of the older local music fans we know and they had no idea we were playing and were actually quite surprised to see us there as though Damo and Can were out of our listening league let alone our playing league. So I was fairly nervous that I was not worthy.

Damo asked us beforehand if we had any plans for starting. We didn’t. He told us

“I will jump. When I am in air: SILENCE. When I land: SOUND”.

Which we all immediately forgot.

And then it was over. We got signalled we had 5 minutes left and I was like “Shit, we’ve only played 30 minutes”. In fact we played 75.

People seemed to dig it. One internet commentator expressed an opinion that we weren’t local and were blatantly his backing band and had rehearsed it all. I take that as a compliment. I thought it was OK after playing but listening back to the bootleg that Ian Scanlon made I am pretty chuffed.

So we got signed up to Audioscope as well which was yesterday. A soundcheck at 12 o clock meant leaving Nottingham at 8am to go via breakfast at Elvis’ in Derby. We drove round Oxford for ages looking for the Cowley Road and the Zodiac and cursing about Oxford in general.

We finally got there and Damo was already there so it was a case of getting the gear in and almost immediately running through a quick check minus Neil on drums as he was getting the train later. It was all really cool and relaxed and we hung out blowing up Shelter balloons and getting reacquainted with Damo before heading for food and some guitar shop browsing with Damo in tow. Sonic Youth were on the TV in one shop and Elvis asked him if he dug the Youth to which he replied that Thurston is a good friend of his. Eeek.

We got back to the Zodiac in time to see Sunnyvale Noise Sub Element who were very, very loud. My personal taste in music means I always like human drummers but then again my personal taste in music means I like anything thats very, very loud so SVNSE were a good way to kick things off.

The atmosphere was cool all day and we spent most of the day milling about munching on nibbles and drinking body temperature Carlsberg Export and chatting to the other bands.

The room backstage was rammed all day with people and equipment. I think for the 5 of us it was just different to be headlining something and to have this kind of atmosphere. It was fun. We’re all used to rushing to gigs, playing first and getting drunk. This was like a weekend excursion to the country, plenty of food and loads of time to spare.

All the bands were cool, Vibracathedral Orchestra stood out and they seemed like awesome people too. Ditto for The Telescopes who finished their set by drilling through an amplified electric guitar.

We decided to go for a stroll and ended up on the roof of the Zodiac at one point, the 5 of us and Damo sitting in plastic school chairs, staring at the night sky while Elvis ran around drumming on anything that would make a sound. Until we got kicked off by security that is as the roof is unsafe. Could have been a serious way to make an entrance.

Oxes really got the place going, it seemed like they were the natural headliners in terms of being a draw for people. This just served to make me more nervous and I’d been drinking since about 12 and it was now 10pm and was also entering into the cosmic mindset by being mashed out of my brain causing me to walk round and round in circles with my guitar case working out what the hell I was doing instead of setting my equipment up.

When I got round to this I was freaked by people snapping pictures of my pedals and hollering at Damo.

He pulled a surprise on us and jumped in the air when no one was looking apart from the drummers so our big, tight entrance was a mess of us all coming in at different times which doesn’t bode well seeings thats the only planned part of the set.

I don’t remember much about it except it was LOUD. My ears are ringing still, we were much more ROCK than in Nottingham. Elvis and Neil cooked up some insane rhythms that just fucked with my head and left me, Phil and Neil just hoping we could make sense out of them. It was like some Afrobeat polyrhythm thing and it killed my brain at times where I almost lost my balance. That may have been the Carlsberg, mind.

We listened to Queens Of The Stone Age, Mudhoney and Soundgarden on the way up in the car and every time I tried to play something subtle and cool it just came out like some Stooges rock riff. In the end I went with it and Damo seemed to dig the volume as he really wailed.

I’m not sure if people had te patience to be into 45 mins of improvised rock after such a long day but it was fun for me.

And then, immediately the day stopped being fun for an hour at least. We got bundled out into the street with our gear as the Zodiac had a club night on. Then a van with 12 police people in it pulled up. About 8 of them got out and with no real effort to understand why we were parked on double yellows (I’d have said me carrying a huge amp was their clue and the venue we were parked outside maybe?) they began shouting at us to move. I tried to ask where Gareth (our long suffering driver) and Elvis where there going to move to (you know, so I could actually FIND them and get home) and was told to “SHUT UP” by one particularly prickish copper. It seems in Oxford they have such an over subscription of applicants to the police force that they can go out of their way to hand select the most evil, inconsiderate, retarded fuckwits to make the grade.

But it worked out, we went back to Simon and Stuarts and had some more drinks with Damo and Marceline who runs some webzine or another and our mate Brum who’d come up from London.

Got in at 4am. Am knackered.

Had to share that with you so thanks.

What I wanted to say most of all is that we all had our doubts about the idea of doing these 2 improvised gigs. Damo’s attitude is if we communicate then it is a success and the people playing can truly transcend the band environment if they let themselves. Sounds like total hippy nonsense but he’s completely right, it was such uplifting fun. I want to do it again!

Thanks for the nice comments about the Sonic Youth piece. I think everyone should email them and suggest they reply or I get to properly interview them.

Last weeks Brixton gig perfectly illustrated my problems. The songs rocked, the improv noise was bollocks. Not because I don’t like improvised noise, just that it wasn’t any good.

Talking of improvised noise on Tuesday this week I’m playing with Damo Suzuki from Can. This weekend I spent 4 hours in a very smelly room in Leeds jamming my brain into the ground with the other people playing this show. By the end of it we were cooking, this should be a really good one. Thats kind of a plug so sorry.

In the last week we continued our policy of “weird gigs or seaside towns” with Lords and played 2 very strange gigs. On Thursday we played Club NME at the Stealth club in Nottingham which is kind of like the set of Tron. It was most un-Lordy but yet the gig was a great laugh even if we did have to wait till 11.30 to play. On a school night too. I made a first class ass out of myself by standing on the monitor and it falling over and me ending up on my face. Oops.

Then last night we played a pub on a river outside of Leeds. It was weird. It rained in Biblical proportions and we were outside under a tarpauling kind of affair so rain was lashing the electrics. Very harsh. But fun. I suggest everyone in bands follows the Lordy policy.

I went to see Sonic Youth last night and they were great! Despite having borrowed my first Sonic Youth album in about 1990 (EVOL from Elgin Library, if you’re interested), I never got the chance to see them live until the disaster that was ATP2000. So I was very very very excited to get a chance to see them play a proper set.

Due to the Barrowlands usual early doors nonsense, I arrived to find Decaer Pinga finishing off their set. It was certainly intriguing and fun to see about 6 people onstage at the Barras making layered drones with tape recorders, clicky things, dansettes and things with lots of knobs to fiddle with. There was an element of the audience who were not impressed but either the majority were enjoying it or that was a very loud sarcastic applause. I’m not sure if I liked it but I sure enjoyed it.

As soon as they left, two tiny Japanese girls ran about on stage setting up some drums and then reappeared 10 minutes later dressed in identical red outfits with mini skirts and tinsel and proceeded to yelp and squeal and batter the hell out of their drums and guitar, respectively. They were Afri Rampo and the whole audience was bewitched with adoration immediately. I’ve never seen a band having so much fun, running around, standing on the drums and beaming with sheer happiness. If they were playing on a trampoline under a shower of glitter and sweets they still couldn’t have looked happier.

And then it were time for Sonic Youth. Due to the No Pit Access rule, I was unable to take any photos ‘cos of my smallness, so I wandered over to my usual spot, a slightly raised bit beside the stage door. Means I also got to see SY up close and Kim is smaller then I expected and Thurston really does look like a stretched, aged toddler.

But, aye, Sonic Youth were awesome. Almost entirely stuff from the most recent couple of albums with lots from Sonic Nurse which suits me as that’s what I’ve been listening to a lot. And it all sounded great – lots of pop tunes and big swathes of noise mentalism. Thurston was running around like mad, rubbing his guitar up against speakers and bouncers and his own head, and even licking the strings. Mmm. Kim was looking amazing in a glittery black dress, ditching the guitars for a few songs to just sing and shimmy. And Lee looks like someone’s dad wandered on stage but his songs were two of my favourites of the night.

See this thread at Plan B for some ace photos taken by my mate Mark who is much taller than me.

Thanks Sonic Youth for not being terrible again! We’ll call this slightly in your favour. Next good set and I’ll stop moaning about ATP2000. Deal?