Postscript to the original Dizzy Tiger blog.

The preceding Blog entries (all 68 or so of them) cover a period in my life in Hastings (October 2005 - Jun 2007) from a few months after splitting up with one long term on/off partner, to a few months before moving to Brighton with another.
It was a fairly difficult period, when writing a Blog (amongst other things) at least gave me some focus and sense of worth, even if, skim-reading it back, both the writing and my state of mind appear to be all over the place.
The earlier entries are all grouped fairly closely together in time, often several chapters a week, whereas by the end of it I was struggling to get online long enough to write a chapter more than once every month or two.
To bring the Hastings tale to it's conclusion (or, at least, up to the point at which I moved away from the town finally - not necessarily for ever though), I've got my Gig Log (some notes in the back of my address book) to hand. Without going too far into each event, the rest of the Summer of 2007 ran as follows...

20th June. Matt & Bonj gig at The Street. One of a series of acoustic Regular John gigs around that time.
22nd June. OMD at the Dome, Brighton, supported by an Australian boy-girl duo Lovers Electric. As you can see if you buy the live DVD from this tour (actually their London date), OMD did half a gig of the entirety of Architecture & Morality (not in tracklist order), followed by half a gig of their hits. Carolyn & I liked it more than Lee, Michael & Caroline, I think.
3rd July. Dean & Simon Shaw at Smugglers, Don't remember much about this night, but there's a photo on my Facebook.
4th August. The Flesh Happening at Brass Monkey (with The Consortium DJs, including Benn Akehurst, who was possibly still seeing my housemate Kirsty, while I was definitely still working with his Mum in Bexhill Gamleys). Photos of Oli's body-painted writhing turned up in East Magazine, along with a few words I'd sent into the music news section.
8th August. Del Vegas with Sophie Nadine (vocals) and Michael (keyboards, circuit-bent Speak & Spell), supported by Jamie Smart, at The Street. My review of this gig was printed in East Magazine, and appears on their website.
10th August. Regular John, Stake-Off The Witch and This Project at Smugglers. There's a photo of Stake-Off The Witch on my Facebook. Probably also one of This Project's final gigs.
16th August. The Logan Wilson Band at the FILO. First chance I'd had to see Logan play for ages, possibly years.
17th August. Ashtray Navigations, I'm Being Good, Deepkiss720, Charlie Uniform November Tango, at The Gildredge, Eastbourne. Fantastic line-up pulled together by Deepkiss720's Jason Williams, who I'd later get to know. The Ashtray Navigations set was issued as part of a very limited CD-R box set of live recordings. First time I'd seen Charlie Uniform... (who I'd encountered when helping with East Magazine's Top 25 Bands feature earlier that year). Adam from East made it along to the gig and handed me loads of back issues of the mag, and it was a bit of a reunion with Michael and Daniel making the gig too. Reuben kept getting chucked out by the Gildredge security - he wasn't under age, but he'd not brought any ID to help that fact.
21st August. Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell & Jimi Riddle at Smugglers. Another great Smugglers gig at the height of Hastings Old Town Carnival week Summer madness (or thereabouts), probably ending up, as many nights did that around that time, in mass skinny-dipping. It was a time of great nudity & alcoholism.
29th August. Matt & Bonj at The Street again. I'd finally managed to get the Dizzy Tiger Music Co compilation CD-R called Anti finished that week, and this was the night I handed loads and loads out.
31st August. Mumm-Ra & Youngplan at the Redstack Playhouse, Bexhill. I was meant to be packing my bags that evening, in preparation for moving to Brighton with Carolyn the next day, but a late chance to use a spare ticket and go to the gig with Lucy & Zoe Armfield (and family) was too good to pass up. This celebratory Rotherbeat gig (one of the last times that phrase was used) was widely reported on locally: I think there's photos and YouTube video clips knocking around, and certainly a review on the East site. In many senses this was the end of an era, not just for myself: the gig was arranged by Pulse Magazine (now defunct); the Redstack closed at the end of that year; Youngplan slowed to a halt not long after (they were a going concern at Christmas when we took part in an East podcast together, but 2008 was a complete non-starter for them); and Mumm-Ra were just starting to dip (this was around the time that Starlight - whose video had also been shot at Redstack - got canned as a single. The band split after a smattering of gigs the following Spring).

As I said, I moved to Brighton that weekend - living first in a house-share with Carolyn & a guy called Simeon in Westbourne Street, Hove, for six months, before Carolyn & I (and my cats, of course) moved here - York Road, Hove - in February 2008. I transferred my Gamleys work to the Brighton Churchill Centre branch, before eventually handing in my notice in September 2008 once I realised I wasn't going to get on very well with go-getting toy chain The Entertainer, who'd purchased the last of the Gamleys stores (Brighton and Maidstone) a month before.
Dizzy Tiger Music Co is still going, just about, at exactly the same low level (a Frontier Telegraph double CD-R came out in 2008, with a rushed compilation On The Town issued in 2009 in time for The Breeders' ATP in Minehead). A 2-track CD-R single by Spirit Of Gravity's Noteherder & McCloud is sitting in my boxes, awaiting a release as soon as I can afford it.
After quitting Gamleys/The Entertainer, I had to sign on in Brighton. All this time I'd been contributing occasional columns and reviews to East, and this actually stepped-up once I'd moved from Hastings to Brighton. East employed me on a very part-time basis late in 2008 as an Editorial Assistant, and in Spring 2009 I started some Sunday hours in another Brighton High Street shop chain. Things are slowly picking up on those scores...
Everything else can pretty much be gleaned from MySpace, Facebook and Twitter now. Funny how none of those social networking sites were really a big thing back in October '05 when I began this Blog. Their present ubiquity explains partly why I don't keep a Blog going nowadays anyway, there's just not really the need to communicate this was as well when so much information about everyone's lives is already out there, and growing.

Anyway... This Dizzy Tiger blog remains open, and at some point I may try picking up the story again from Sep '07. The Brighton Years. Maybe.

See you round and all that,
stu x

As I get less & less access to any computers at the moment, this Blog has fallen further & further behind. I think I've got time this morning to try and bring it slightly more up to date, but there's gonna be some vagueness and omissions by now.
In recent years, Alfie has celebrated his birthday by arranging Neil Young Day at Smugglers, but this year he decided to put on a gig at Joogleberry in Brighton on 27th April (a Thursday). I travelled over after work, and met Carolyn at Brighton Station, and we wandered down to get slices of pizza each from outside the Churchill Square shops. We'd got advance tickets, at Alfie's insistence, for the Joogleberry gig, which left us time to get a pint beforehand in some rather posh pub in The Lanes. When we then got to Joogleberry, we found Rumiko Jr dotted about upstairs with various friends from Hastings and Brighton, including Lee, and Paul and his newish girlfriend. We sat and caught up with Lee, chatting about the usual stuff (OMD, 'Doctor Who', his comedy career, etc) until the downstairs part of the venue was open and filling up. This lower floor of Joogleberry is very cosy, all low ceilings and candles, and we grabbed drinks and stood near the back of the venue, as the many tables were all full. There was a band called Sweet Sweet Lies playing first, who had brought a big wodge of the audience with them I think, and who gave a rather mannered performance, in a jaunty way, all cravats and professionalism: this isn't meant to be negatively critical, I just don't remember much else. Alfie had handed Petra's advance ticket to me, so I did some texting and phone calls back and forth, and got her in when she made it down (I kept having to pop up the stairs to answer the phone and send texts to Reuben too, who was eventually unable to make it over, as I think he'd been up in London trying to arrange a University place that day). Alfie's band The Long Goodbye played next, already, by their own admission, a bit worse for wear on birthday drinks. Ben from Leicester was guesting on drums for this gig, and both Josie and Gail had come along from Hastings to add some vocals, so it became one of the typically ragged and open-ended sets that we'd normally see in places like Smugglers, which didn't seem genteel enough for some of the Joogleberry punters (though we grabbed a vacated table), but I really enjoyed it, and was pleased to recognise Jake's chiming guitar intro to 'Changin The Guard' when it came. I also must have been getting drunk, as I was equally as pleased that he resembled John Simm that evening, though this may only have been in my head, as it didn't make as much sense when I told Carolyn and Petra this. Marcus' sister had turned up unexpectedly, which was a good suprise for Rumiko, although Lee didn't get to see so much of their final appearance, as he had to leave and sort out more stuff for his work (the perils of being on call). Once Rumiko were on stage, Paul and his partner came down and joined the rest of us at the table we'd found, whilst Alfie and Robert and the rest of The Long Goodbye watched the band from the posher tables at the far end of the venue (first come, first served). Rumiko played loud and strong, even though one of our corner kept mentioning the phrase 'pub rock', albeit affectionately. We stuck around for drinks a little while longer, and at least Carolyn and Petra were still there when I eventually helped get Rumiko's gear out and into their van, and hitched a sleepy ride back to Hastings with them.
The following day, Rumiko Jr were playing again, this time back down Smugglers, for Jimmy's birthday. My recall for this night is pretty poor, partly 'cos so many people played, and I didn't know who half of them were (and they weren't all much cop). Hayley did a few songs first, with help from Danielle on additional vocals, which was good to hear, though I remember saying that there's an unfortunate gender-divide in the local musicians in our scene, which still seems to dictate that the women stick to acoustic-guitar and folksong, and the men are all amped-up with electric ones, as if it was still 1970 or something. I thought we should set aside a month where everyone is forced to swap instruments for a change just to shatter the cliches a bit (ridiculous and unfair, of course, but as I already said, a lot of the music that was being played this evening really wasn't very good). After some forgotten performances by people I don't know, Jimmy sat astride his drumbox for his other band Superdog, with that guy Adam who'd been doing bluesy stuff in the late days of The Heaters once. Rufus and Bonj also helped out with a few of the songs, but I'm still not much into it. Rumiko played last, and were probably very similar to how they were the previous night, and I'm sure I was very drunk.
Deano actually performed another gig the day after, at dDb Paul's birthday party outside of town, and to make it four-in-a-row, he'd also agreed to play at the inaugral night of open-mic live music at a newish bar in Robertson Street called Frenz Connection. I wandered along and popped my head in the door, and there was some guy playing Stevie Wonder songs on an electric piano there, which didn't seem right, so I went along to the Basement, where I found Deano, Rufus and Reuben just heading along to the bar. We went in and sat at the top of some stairs at the back or the bar, as the same pianist regaled a rapt and packed venue with some Oasis covers too. I think we all realised at once and simultaneously that this wasn't really the sort of gig any of us were gonna enjoy, a fact confirmed by seeing other musicians wandering up and down the stairs with their instruments in one hand, and songbooks in the other. A young and nervous lad tried his hand next with some self-written, emo-ish songs and an electric guitar, and got sarcastically heckled by some guy below us, until he left the stage, whereupon, by a staggering coincidence, the heckler's girlfriend was then up on stage with her band, playing Eva Cassidy songs, telling us about Eva Cassidy's tragic life, playing Cyndi Lauper songs and erroneously crediting them as being written by Eva Cassidy, and generally getting right on my nerves. The crowd (who would appear to have included a lot of relations) loved it, but fortunately Kim had arrived with Leowin, so we just took the piss from our vantage point of bitterness. Once another musician (was it Gendun?) had started playing some very downbeat songs, a handful of the audience drifted away, so we decided to wander down the stairs and sit at the opposite end of a large low table to a couple of women who, upon seeing us approach, glared at us and snatched their mobiles off the table and put them in their bags, so I gave them my most withering Paddington Bear-style Very Hard Stare. Fortunately, the stroppy idiots then fucked off, presumably to get plenty of sleep in readiness for another rewarding day of ripping off pensioners' insurance claims at Pittsville Direkt (this is the only other way I'm gonna shoehorn The Fall into this review, as despite the bar's name including the word 'Frenz' it was clear that this had been chosen as a phonetic reference to the American sitcom, rather than The Fall's song, and certainly the punters were under the illusion that they actually were in Central Perk) . I was really pleased to see the emo-boy have another stab at playing a few more songs, 'cos it was good that he hadn't let the dreadful people from earlier ruin his confidence, and he did seem to have a few ideas of his own in his songs, and then finally it was Deano's turn to rip through some of his songs, though even an acoustic Dean was too much for some of the late-stayers from the Eva Cassidy fanclub, who stood up, pulled a face, and exited the venue with their hands clasped theatrically over their ears. Fair play to the bar staff, who were unfailingly polite, enthusiastic and friendly to us throughout the evening, but I doubt I'll be rushing down there on a Sunday evening again in a hurry.
The next gig we got to was one that Carolyn organised at The Hope in Brighton on Friday 4th May, for her 30th birthday, and which was technically a private party, so by my own self-imposed conditions for this Blog, I won't dwell too long on it here, suffice to say that it was the first time I'd been back to the venue since it's days as The Lift (gigs by Trembling Blue Stars/Fosca; Life Without Buildings - without Sue Tompkins on that occasion/Aerogramme; and Ellen Cherry/The Downs aka Jeff Disastronaut), and it didn't seem to have changed at all. I DJ'd the majority of the evening, Lee did a few minutes of his stand-up routine, Rumiko Jr played another great gig, and Monster Bobby made it along to finish the Djing for the end of the evening. Loads of us stayed at Carolyn's, whilst Rumiko crashed at Petra's, but we met up again outside The Hope the next day to help the band pack their gear away in another hired white van, before coming back over to Hastings again, to prepare for Jack-In-The-Green weekend.
The only actual bit of live music we saw over that weekend was a very sloppy Pugwash appearance in the Pump House on the washout Bank Holiday Monday - although the pub was so busy that we couldn't actually see the group, and had to content ourselves with sitting up the back and round the corner with Oliva and his boyfriend, Caroline and Carolyn's Brighton friends, until we realised we'd be better off hitting The FILO instead. Despite the rain, the typically large amounts of alcohol ensured that our visitors had some pleasant Jack-In-The-Green memories anyway.
Dean had a Le Pattie Cafe session the next day, but the rain was continuing to come down heavily, so in the end there was just him, Matt, Michael & Caroline and myself in the bar. We kept the beer and crisps going steadily, and both Dean and Matt just sat at the end of our table and played whatever songs we or the bar staff asked for. Evenutally, we all just chatted, and talk turned to the current state of the local music scene, and we made some decisions to try and pull a few ideas together down the Basement the next day (which we did, which co-incided with a trip I took out to Eastbourne earlier that Wednesday afternoon, to discuss writing for East Magazine with Adam and his cousin Ruth-Ellen).
Trying to get various things pulled together for East took up a fair bit of my time over the next couple of weeks, so the next time I saw any live music was a random appearance by Colonel Mustard at The FILO on Thursday 24th May, the beginning of another Bank Holiday weekend, although I'd actually gone along 'cos it was Tim Hoyte's birthday, so we spent most of the evening in the beer garden instead. The following day, however, both Rumiko Jr and Regular John had a gig at The Carlisle, which co-incided with the publication of East's 'Top 25 Bands' issue, which I'd contributed to, as well as writing a column on the Hastings scene, so I was a bit nervous about how that would go down with the various musician friends of ours, who had either got into the magazine, or, worse, hadn't. The people who saw it at the gig that night, including Billy (who made the cut with both Gorilla and Cloudesley Shovell), the Ch3vy duo, Southernwood, Rumiko and the 'John, were nice enough about it, although there was some suprise that Regular John didn't make the Top 25, and once again their gig that evening proved that, in reality, they're actually up in the area's Top 2... The usual Carlisle punters generally hung back and let Rumiko and the 'John's mates take-over the main part of the downstairs bar, which was good as this was one of those occasional nights when just about everyone seemed to have come along for the gig. Both bands played strongly again, and we hung around for ages afterwards, before pulling together to lug all the gear back along the seafront to the Basement for more beer. Matt thought I'd been avoiding him all evening, which was a bit weird, unless I'd been unconciously ashamed that I'd not succeeded in getting them higher up in the East article after all. A few Myspace bulletins fired-off by Bonj over subsequent weeks certainly showed no love lost towards East on Regular John's part. Gah, you can't please everyone!
Later in the weekend, I went over to see Carolyn in Brighton, and on the Bank Holiday Monday we went into the city centre as Mumm-Ra's album came out that day, and they were launching it with an instore at Resident Records in North Laine. As in NORTH LAINE. Not 'The North Laines', you illiterate DFL's (I'm looking at you and your boyfriend, Julie Burchill). We popped into the jewellry shop and caught up with Laura for the first time in months, which was quite emotional, especially when I went to hug her goodbye, and the radio in the background, which I'd barely noticed, suddenly swelled up with the crescendo of 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', which was funny. Carolyn and I then checked with Resident what the deal with the instore was, and were told that although they'd given away all their reserve tickets, we should turn up just before the advertised time and they'd try and get everyone in if possible (again, it was still raining, as it did throughout May, so there was an expectation that not all the reservations would be taken up). We went a little further up Kensington Gardens and got some food in a pub, where we were joined by Alfie, Robert and Jake, and a couple of Carolyn's friends. After several drinks, the lot of us went back down the street and into Resident, where I decided I might as well pick up the album anyway, and got given a poster too. The staff were setting up mic-stands in front of the counter, and then came around checking people's tickets. As we didn't have any, and despite Alfie's assertion that he "knew the band" ('cos that always works!), we had to wait outside with a handful of other stragglers, including some European and Japanese students who'd got wind of it somehow, while they did a head-count. Fortunately, we all then got counted back in and out of the rain, and squashed ourselves up at the back of the shop, and Noo got up to do 'Light Up This Room' acoustically, then gradually was joined by other members of the band for a short, off-the-cuff set of songs from the new album, and one or two B-sides too. The members of Mumm-Ra who couldn't fit in front of the counter stood behind it instead, and possibly drummed their hands along on the worksurface or something. After half-a-dozen songs the band were ready to conclude, but there was encore shouts, so they said they'd take requests. I punted for 'Without You' (on the off-chance that Alfie would suddenly produce a harmonica from his pocket and play along, as he'd apparently done with them at the Black Horse Festival one year - an event we were currently missing by being in Brighton), but someone else got their shout for 'What Would Steve Do?' played instead, which was fair enough, before the band started a signing-session. Reuben had texted to see if I'd get him a copy of the album and get it signed, but I'm not really one for meet & greets, so I didn't bother, although Alfie went up and had a quick congratulatory chat. Instead, we all went up to the Prince Albert for a few more drinks, before it really was time for me to get back home to Hastings on the train, which left me just enough time to run full-pelt along to The FILO to join Michael & Caroline, Jamie and a mate of his, and Reuben and Muz (the latter also just back, from Manchester's 'Strummercamp' event) there.
The following weekend, Carolyn and I had booked tickets for one of Throbbing Gristle's 'The Desertshore Installation' at the ICA. These 'Public Recording Sessions' involved the group recording a full-length cover of Nico's album 'Desertshore' (which I've not heard) in front of an audience, at six two-hour sessions over the weekend of 1st-3rd June. Our tickets were for the final recording block, so we travelled up on the train on the Sunday, getting off early at London Bridge Station in order to take in some sightseeing before the ICA. It was a glorious sunny day, for a change, and we weaved amongst the crowds on the South Bank of the Thames, past many of the locations (whether real or faked) of the current series of 'Doctor Who', which I was pleased by, including Southwark Cathedral and The Globe theatre. We also discovered The Clink prison, the Golden Hinde moored in a dock, and the ruin of Winchester Abbey (was it?), not all of which were genuine, of course. Reaching Tate Modern for the first time, we popped inside and headed for the Turbine Hall, but this was between installations (in fact, Throbbing Gristle had played there the previous weekend to accompany some Derek Jarman Super-8 films, as part of the Tate's Long Weekend event: we'd also found out the previous evening, at my Uncle's suprise 60th birthday meal, that my sister-in-law Emma had been along to that event in order to catch part of a projection of Warhol's lengthy film 'Sleep') so there was nothing other than a big empty room full of wandering sightseers there. So we pressed onwards, past the Royal Festival Hall etc, then over the river beside the railway line into Charing Cross, and over The Strand into Trafalgar Square. Having indicated to Carolyn the location of Admiralty Arch, beyond which the ICA sat beside The Mall, we found an Irish pub in William IV Street that not only sold real ale, including Harveys, but knew how to keep and serve it too, which was unexpected (I've banged-on about this in a previous Blog entry, the last time we were in London for a TG-related event). After relaxing there, we headed-out to grab sandwiches from a nearby foodstore, and sat in St Martin's Place to eat them. Carolyn's roll had a bit of mould on the salad, but we threw that bit away and ate them anyway. Then we made our way through the brilliant sunshine into The Mall, and located the ICA easily enough, with the help of a printout Carolyn had made. We milled about in it's bookshop until our tickets were checked, then waited beside its cafe with the rest of the punters and, briefly, Peter Christopherson, until the Theatre part of the venue was opened. We sat halfway up on the seating that resembled a lecture theatre, whilst Throbbing Gristle prepared their equipment on the stage, upon which a temporary recording studio (vocal booth, table of snacks & a kettle, etc) had been built. With the aid of a radio-mic, Christopherson played master-of-ceremonies, explaining the group's intentions and working methods for the weekend, recapping what they'd achieved in the previous sessions, and indicating what remained for them to attempt in this final session. He and Cosey Fanni Tutti were seated behind tables to the left of the stage as we faced it, whilst Chris Carter crossed back & forth to a position on the right, and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge moved between the vocal booth at the rear, and a stool at the front, from where she could play additional instruments. The method generally involved playback of Nico's original vocals, which had been previously extracted from the Desertshore album, to which TG would work up a new musical background (largely electronic, though also with Cosey's cornet or guitar, or Genesis' bass or violin), whilst Genesis familiarised herself with the songs, until eventually Nico's disembodied lines would be mixed-down so that Genesis could perform the vocals in her place. Occasionally, the group would stop and listen to playbacks of other pieces they'd recorded over the weekend's sessions, or they would stop and discuss (amongst themselves, and also via Christopherson the audience) where to take the session next. After an hour there was a 'teabreak' and a chance to stretch one's legs with a trip to the cafe's bar, the toilets, or to have a browse at a merchandise table by the door, which is what I did. There followed a second hour of recordings and playbacks, as we sat there and relaxed in the warm darkness of the auditorium, listening to the music and occasionally watching the live-projection on an overhanging screen that one of two photographers was filming of the group at work onstage. Afterwards, the group came and sat stagefront, and invited the audience to come down and discuss the sessions with them, although Carolyn & I decided just to take our free posters and head out into the fresh air to get some food. In a Tesco Express (irony!) off Trafalgar Square, we bought snacks, and I recieved a phone call from a guy setting up a forum online for East Magazine, but as I couldn't hear him over the noise of the traffic (and what happened to the dreaded 'bendy' buses? All I saw were Routemasters still) I couldn't really have a coherent conversation at the time. We went back over the road and into Charing Cross Station, where we had a little while to wait for the train, so we grabbed heart-stoppingly unhealthy double cheese & bacon-burgers from the Burger King there, and ate them on the train before it pulled-out. Kim rang me to see if we were out in Hastings that evenin, and turned out to be on his way towards Charing Cross to get the train home himself, although ours left before he arrived. Back in Hastings, we went quickly via my house (getting my laundry in) to The FILO for the quiz, with loads of our friends including (he made it...) Kim. And we won! Kind-of.
Carolyn stuck around for a few days, and on the Tuesday we went along to Le Pattie Cafe again to see Dean play, and generally to begin celebrating my birthday. Michael and Caroline, Kim, Reuben, Jamie, Wookie, Ollie and Danielle (amongst others) were all out with us (half of whom had been at the quiz too), and for some reason almost everyone was taking photographs that evening, of Dean, us lot, or each other. Dean asked if I had a request, so I got him to play 'Wave Of Mutilation', as I'd seen Rumiko trying to rehearse it down the Basement a couple of months before. I drank a lot, and got Kim to do a couple of songs after Deano's two sets, which included a very brief birthday song he made up on the spot about me, which was probably not complimentary, as usual! So that was nice.
The next day was my actual birthday, and Carolyn & I went back over to Brighton, as there was a chance to catch up with some of my Brighton friends at a gig at a bar called Zuma in Seven Dials. That evening, we went and collected some of Carolyn's friends, and made our way up to the bar, where we met Lee, Chris (who was playing) and more of Carolyn's friends, who'd been swung into coming along 'cos Britch was playing too. First, though, was Bela Emerson doing her cello & loops things, which held my attention less than the previous time I'd seen her, mainly I think 'cos I was chatting about birthday stuff, but also 'cos Zuma didn't appear to be set-up for live music (in fact I got the impression they book live music there in much the same way as they hang artworks on the walls, or serve particular drinks, ie: as an upmarket feature, without bothering with the logistics of sight-lines and acoustics). I hadn't seen any of Stuart Flynn's incarnations as either Britch or The Dirty Cakes before, and despite all the recommendations from Carolyn's friends, Chris etc, I was rather underwhelmed, but again the venue didn't help, as Britch was performing on a stool along to pre-recorded musics, and I just couldn't hear him. Chris played last in his guise as Same Actor, looping and fragmenting his sitar and acoustic guitar, and from what I could hear he was playing interesting pieces, but by this point I was also just chatting with Geoff from Spirit Of Gravity, amongst other people, so my attention wasn't all there. Afterwards, we said goodbye to some people, then a few of us walked each other back to their various houses or onto the night bus, and Carolyn and I made drunken decisions to purchase kebabs to have with more drink back at her place, yum!
Back in Hastings later in the week, and it was Michael's turn to celebrate his birthday, this time with a Rumiko Jr gig at Smugglers on the Saturday. Although there were quite a lot of our friends there, the pub felt unusually unattended that night. Even though the band played two excellent sets, there was a weird atmosphere (I had similar reports the next day from people who'd gone to the Brass Monkey where Reuben was DJing after Smugglers), and I got drunk very quickly, so can't remember quite which conversations I had with whom, but someone did ask whether I was still gonna be writing this Blog, and I said I would try to whenever I got the time to catch up with it - and as I've had time today, here you are.

Right, I've got loads to catch up on, so if some of the following is mis-typed, contains inaccuracies, or is lacking in essential details, please indulge me!
A few hours after writing that last Blog entry, Rufus sent a text around, saying that Dean and Marcus were playing at The Street that evening. I had been thinking of staying home, but I thought I might as well see if there was any other music to face after my online admission of CD-R stealing (nb: there wasn't). I wandered along the The Street, and sat down with Danielle, at a couple of tables shared with the local journalism gang (as I'm now thinking of them) ie Alice and Naomi, and some of their respective friends (who I was introduced to, but instantly forgot the names of). Rufus and Jimmy James were around too, as their Rumiko mates played a couple of sets semi-acoustically, in between the drinking. Reuben made it along with a camera he'd recently acquired, and started taking photos, though it struck me that the camera was lacking a flash, unless it's appearance was deceptive and it was actually digital, or cameras are more advanced than I'd kept up with. Whatever, he said they came out ok! I took a picture on my phone too, which was a bit dark. The Street was fairly busy and noisy, and some people like Ollie appeared to have been there for hours - they were that merry, but Dean & Marcus maintained people's attention, and eventually (after several old and brand new songs) started taking requests, within reason. I asked for Sebadoh, which cued Marcus to swap stools (possibly chairs...) with Dean, as this was his speciality. What with much drinking and chatting, the bar seemed to be swiftly closing, so I finished off and made my way home to the Old Town safely.
The following Saturday, Rumiko Jr had a full-band gig at Smugglers, for the first time in a while, so I dutifully went along, and took up my favoured position on the pool table, with Caroline and Michael to one side (him scribbling last-minute set-lists with Rufus on pages I'd torn from my notebook), and Lisa, Marcus and Helen to the other, at least until the boys had to join the band at the front. Aside from an unsuccessful, under-attended gig at Brass Monkey back on Shrove Tuesday, this was Rumiko's first proper gig with Jimmy on drums, and they'd clearly been putting in a lot of work rehearsing and working on new songs and developing new arrangements for some of the more familiar ones. In fact, rather than Dean opening up with an acoustic set, the whole band took positions for a semi-acoustic inital set, with Jimmy sitting astride what looked like an oblong tea-chest, but was evidently a fairly hi-tech rhythm box, which he beat with his palms and generated various different drum sounds from. It was also during this set that I realised that broad stripes are this season's fashion, or else half the group were dressing as smugglers themselves. Gradually, this first set became more electric, and once they'd built the sound up for a few songs, the group took a break. We drank and chatted noisily, then concentrated a bit more once Rumiko were back up the front for their second, much more full-on set, with heaps of new and dynamic songs (there seems to be two or three more every time they or Dean plays... No wonder he forgets so many). I remember having a drunken catch up with Helen about the state of our relationships (both good, it seems), but by the time Rumiko peaked and finished (no encore, I recall) my ability to talk to any of our late-arriving friends (Jonathan, I think, and Maya, and many more I've now forgotten) was a bit diminished, so I didn't stick around to the bitter end.
The following Tuesday, Dean was back with another session at Le Pattie Cafe, attended by such regulars as Reuben and his mates Jimmy and Tim; Kim and Jamie too, I think. Del had come along to play for a change, which was good news, and he tried out mainly new stuff he was working on, as well as nostalgic runs through 'The Weekend's Ashes', and, at Dean's request (he used to play on it), that very catchy Candys song I don't know the name of ('cos it never quite got released, unfortunately). Dean fitted his set in next, and managed a mix of old and brand new tunes again, completely solo this time. Rufus had a little time at the end for some of his own, which I think again included some newish ones, before he and Dean closed-off together with their cover of 'Get Up Jake'. I'd spent most of the evening chatting with Michael and Caroline (I think: this was a few weeks ago now, so correct me if I'm mixing my evening up), and messing around a bit with Reuben etc (this is definitely correct, as we took photos of each other, um, taking photos of each other!), before getting into lengthy drunken discussion with Dean, Rufus and Del about 'Raising Arizona', which included some very off-key yodelling of the soundtrack music. Eventually, I walked back home with Dean and Danielle, still very drunk, and yammering on about the music industry, as usual. Blah!
The next day, I got the train over to Brighton to catch up with Carolyn, 'cos she'd got a couple of tickets off someone she worked with to go and see The Fall on the Thursday, at the sold-out Hove Old Market gig (their first of two in Brighton that weekend). I picked up a cd copy of their new album 'Reformation Post TLC' in Resident before I met her (and, incidentally, an old vinyl copy of 'The Early Years' from Rounder), so we were able to get a couple of plays in before the gig, although it turned out that most of the new songs they ended up playing were ones I'd heard from various YouTube postings already. On the evening of the gig, we got a bus down to the Old Market, arriving not long after the doors had opened, so we went and had a drink in the bar area, and quietly sized-up the fans who had also made it down early. We headed into the main venue area, and checked out the merchandise stall (very well stocked with vinyl, cds, t-shirts, badges, lighters etc, evidently courtesy of Preston's legendary Action Records shop - and, for a time, record label of The Fall). Keeping ourselves topped up with cans from the little bar that had been set up inside, which was staffed by a very exiteable, but confused, barman, we stood and looked around until the first support, Pope Joan, came onstage. I'm not the first person to suggest that The Fall deliberately choose mediocre support bands (to reflect better on their own performance, the rumour would go), but I really didn't enjoy Pope Joan, partly 'cos they looked exactly like you'd imagine a basic four-piece band to look these days (big-haired bassist, floppy-fringed guitarist etc), and also 'cos not only did they plug their t-shirts, but they also plugged their mailing list (which I, hopefully politely, declined to sign up to when it was offered round later), their Myspace URL, etc. Their actual band-sound was ok though, even if it was a bit rock-school for me, but lyrically they were pretty cringeworthy. Fortunately, the between-bands DJ was playing loads of records we liked ('I Want More', 'Godstar', 'Outdoor Miner', 'Nag Nag Nag' etc), which helped pass the time too. There was another support, with the rather forgettable name Make Good Your Escape, which I tried very hard to remember only for the sake of this Blog, as again they weren't much cop: all dressed in black, and would be epic guitar histrionics, that only put me in mind of Geneva (who I'm sure they've never heard of, and no-one else remembers either). Though the gig was sold out, the hall didn't fill up uncomfortably, but it was too dark for me to identify if anyone else I knew had come to the gig (or, as I found out in the days afterwards, to notice either Marc Riley or Frank Skinner... I did see Alan Wise sitting out in the foyer, though that was only to be expected really). Once Make Good Your Escape (see? catchy, eh?) were over with, we'd both got pleasantly drunk, and were looking forward to The Fall, when, with ten minutes to go before their advertised start-time, the fire alarms went off, the lights came on, and we had to evacuate the building. As the entire crowd milled around outside the doors, Mark E Smith and another fellow arrived at the venue (probably very suprised by the crowd that had seemingly waited outside to greet them), and they were ushered inside in a parting-of-the-Red-Sea style, amongst much handshakes from the punters and sheepish grins from Smith. Fortunately, it had only been a false alarm (later, The Argus' journalist claimed it was his cigarette that had accidentally set the smoke detectors off, though this may be invention), so people were soon back inside in time for, oh yeah, Safi Sniper: The Fall's ever-present laptop image-manipulator, and unpopular warm-up merchant. With the clock ticking well into The Fall's advertised playing-time, there wasn't much enthusiasm from the crowd for his looping and stretching of musical celebrities (Elvis, Freddie Mercury, Barbara Streisand, et al), but this was ultimately a canny move in order to build up tension for release when The Fall finally started up. Aside from Smith and his wife Eleanor Poulou(on keyboards), this was a drums/guitar/2-basses line-up of The Fall, and (for a change, in the times I've seen them play) the sound was very loud and cleanly mixed, with even Smith's vocals coming through clearly. The set was largely made up of music from the current album ('Over! Over!', 'Fall Sound', 'My Door'), with one new song at the start (with the chanted line "Senior Twilight Stock Controller" - do that over and over and you can easily imagine how it goes, I'm sure), and the odd old single ('Wrong Place, Right Time', 'White Lightning', 'Theme From Sparta FC') or previous-album track ('Pacifying Joint', 'What About Us?') chucked in. This was The Fall on strong form, rolling and churning through bass-heavy, repetitive extensions, and Smith staying focussed at the front, without getting distracted by too much amp or mic abuse. After Poulou's central performance of 'The Wright Stuff', the band concluded with a mighty loud run at 'Blindness', pushing their set a good half hour beyond the credited stage-time. We did think that may be all they could fit in, but there was still time for an encore, and the lenghty and rapid 'Reformation' before the audience were thrown the mics, and the band took themselves offstage whilst a venue bouncer tried to get things sorted between the audience and the stage (there was othewise no barrier or security measures throughout the gig: good move!) Afterwards, Carolyn and I retired to a nearby pub (along with dozens more of the audience) for some happy post-mortem pints, which I don't remember much of at all! Ah, mighty mighty Fall.
I had to go straight back to work in Bexhill on the first train the following morning, so I was safely back in Hastings the day after that for Alfie's new band The Long Goodbye, once more at Smugglers. During that Saturday, Carolyn had followed on from Brighton, so that we could be up and attempting to buy Glastonbury tickets on the Sunday morning after (yes, we failed to get any) and had got to my place after I'd finished work, so we ate pizza and watched the opening episode of the new series of Doctor Who (yay!) before heading down to the Smugs. Once there, we said hello to Alfie and Robert, before again climbing up onto the, now rather wobbly, pool table to spend the evening watching the band play. Aside from Alfie, and his shit-hot guitarist Jake, the new band's rhythm section are two very young teenage lads, both of whom were energetic players. We were sitting with Caroline and various Rumiko's again, and I was really enjoying the sound The Long Goodbye have reached now: no longer the slower, country-influenced music I was familiar with from Alfie's music, but much more down the Crazy Horse route, occasionally landing on a classic mid-Eighties indiepop sound (I suppose you end up sounding like The Chesterf!elds more by accident than design these days), which was fine by me! I grabbed the occasional chat with people such as Richard Hart, Jonny Russell, and Reuben in between trips to the bar and the loos, but mostly nodded along and talked to my friends on the table. Alfie and Jake did a song or two without the younger guys, and then Josie duetted with Alfie on another tune (oh, my vague memory..); then, once it seemed the band had played as many of their own songs as they were going to, they coasted through some duelling guitar versions of some familar covers such as 'For What It's Worth' and 'Cortez The Killer', with Josie rejoining them at the mic occasionally to ad-lib her own lines or harmonies over them (unrehearsed, I think, and therefore with some contributions working better than others). They all encored with 'What Goes On' (and on, of course, but in a good way!) before hitting their final chord and getting stuck into the serious business of drinking with, um whoever else was around, whilst Carolyn and I made drunken farewells to everyone before weaving our way back to mine.
It was another week until the next gig came along, and once again it was Rumiko Jr, this time at a Festival Of Nu Blues at the Brass Monkey, promoted by the Not The Same Old Blues Crap mob. The evening started earlier than I was expecting, and after I'd watched Doctor Who and had a listen to my just-arrived copy of the new Throbbing Gristle album (really getting in the country-blues mood then!) I felt I had to run along to the Monkey if I was gonna catch Rumiko. I paid on the door, and was handed a couple of event programmes (one for this evening, and another for the month-long series of events that Not the Same Old Blues Crap are promoting at the Spitz), then got inside where fortunately The Jooks Of Kent were still onstage, playing very Crampsy blues-trash, which I really liked, but none of my friends seemed to! I was hoping to have a cheap evening, but soon I found myself helping to get people in, buying others' drinks, and generally getting very drunk myself. Marcus and Lisa were at the bar with Lisa's friend, and after the Jooks had finished I sat around the corner with Caroline, Kate & Oliva Speer, and Lou and James. We moved back around to the main stagefront area to watch when Rumiko started up, sounding a lot cleaner, and possibly a bit out of place amongst the other blues acts that evening. They played valiantly again, though, with those few new tunes standing out, though they may have been either too rock, or not blues enough, for some folk who took the opportunity to leave, um! We all took the vacated seats though, and were soon joined by Kim and Reuben; Shara - making a reciprocal visit after a bunch of the Hastings crew had crashed at hers for a recent Flesh Happening gig; a very drunk Del at the bar; and Helen and Sally, who'd been stargazing and studying Saturn through telescopes out at Norman's Bay. Initially, I thought headliner Scott H Biram had taken the stage next, but it turned out to be the frontman for the band Black Diamond Heavies, playing distorted dirty blues to his own overdriven organ accompaniment, plus one improvised head-to-head wth Mudlow's saxophonist. He remained onstage to guest during Mudlow's set proper, and they churned away awesomely in the filth. Despite the early start, the evening had been stretching on by this point, so that when Scott H Biram evenutally got onstage to headline, the guy was far gone on his booze. He started up hacking away at his electric guitar, growling distorted blues through two metallic, overdriven mics, taped together, and then proceeded to continue doing this for song after song after song. We stuck it out watching, as friends gradually grew tired from the music, the drink or the lateness of the hour and headed off. Things got hazy: we kept buying more pints, thinking that Biram would conclude his set eventually, whereas the man himself seemed determined to start another song as soon as he'd finish one, with no pauses for breath. Then we noticed vaguely that he was flashing his cock occasionally behind his guitar, and eventually we were turning to one another, asking "Did he just drop his trousers again?" and "How long has this guy been onstage now?" and such like. Finally, one of the Wilkes' gave the nod to Rufus and Bill in the sound booth just to stick a record on and have done with it, upon which Biram looked disgusted, threw his guitar down, and started hurling the mic-stands across the stage: which activity was quickly halted by some swift jabs to the head from a Wilkes. Kim, Reuben, Sally, Helen and I were agog, and I ran to the booth to see if it might be a better plan to hit the lights on and calm things down (this normally works at house parties...) but Rufus assured me that everything was under control, and sure enough Biram had calmed down onstage and was packing his gear up with Rufus' help shortly afterwards. I still felt that the evening had turned sour, so when Sally said she wanted to head off, I said my goodbyes and took her across the road, where she instantly found a vacant taxi, and I wandered back home (throwing the last of my change down for the guy in the underpass who sits with all the toys), texting the evening's events to Carolyn.
If Dean was back at Le Pattie Cafe the following Tuesday I missed it, because I was close to skint, and saving what money I could for Thursday's Mumm-Ra gig at The Crypt, kicking-off their new national tour. Fortunately, I'd picked up a ticket in advance, and after sending a few texts to try and get people to join me there, I went along to The Crypt, where (although it was an all-ages gig) unsuprisingly I wasn't ID'd. I headed downstairs and met Del's girlfriend Anna at the bar, and we chatted as we got drinks. She was taking some through for Del, who was doing the sound that evening, but I wasn't allowed to follow her into the main part of The Crypt, which was strictly soft drinks only, for the (over 14's) kids, some of whom were with a parent (including a guy called Ben who once did work experience in the shop I suffer in)... So I stood on my own drinking my pint as quick as I could, and when Youngplan started up onstage I downed it all, and went through to watch. Since we'd seen them (again supporting Mumm-Ra) in Brighton a few months ago, they'd added a new bassist to the band, freeing up the singer to, well, sing - though I reckoned this diminished their intensity a bit (though this may have just been the ambience of The Crypt, which was still filling up, as this was an early gig). The more rapid and angular Youngplan songs came across better than some of the midtempo ones, which veered a bit close to ska-punk on occasion, and it felt odd seeing a band from Hastings doing the whole "Thank you, Hastings!" thing between songs. I bought their 7" (launched that night, I think, and both sides played, naturally) anyway, along with the remaining Mumm-Ra coloured vinyl 7" I'd not so-far bought, from the merchandise stall that was jam-packed with all their vinyl, cd-singles and t-shirts. After Youngplan, I went back to the grown-ups bar, and grabbed another pint, where I met Sally and (I think) her brother-in-law, so I drank and chatted with them about local music etc, until very soon Mumm-Ra were onstage too, whereupon we all downed our drinks to go and watch. Mumm-Ra were also playing with a slightly-altered line-up to the Brighton gig, in that there was no guest guitar from Youngplan's Dale, but there was an additional keyboard player who I'd not noticed previously. They had a huge sound tonight, starting with 'Song B' and 'What Would Steve Do?', and getting the (now full) crowd bounding up and down straight away (aah, it could well have been so many of the kids' first gig!)... Reuben popped up, as did Mark Rodrigues, and then I saw Michael, Marcus and Rufus watching to the right of the stage, whilst Dean was somewhere to the left, so we had a full-deck of local pop contemporaries down there. Mumm-Ra threw in new songs, old songs ('Cute As'), tracks from next month's album ('She Got You High', 'These Things Come In Threes') and B-sides ('Song E', 'Clocks Tick Louder At The Dead Of Night'); they bigged up Youngplan some more ("You've just had the pleasure of watching the best unsigned band in Britain..." - dunno how that went down with Del, Mark ,Dean etc) and enthused to the crowd generally; Noo scaled the lighting rig; and cameras swept through the crowd (I guess it was the BBC, as the gig ended up on Newsroom South East, or whatever it's currently called, apparently); before the band peaked with 'Out Of The Question' and I decided that I do sometimes still really like that guitarpop sound! The Crypt had to empty out afterwards, so that all the kids were out before the rest of the night's actual clubbing could start, so we made our way up the stairs (saying goodbye to a hugely excited Ben on the way) and into The Street, for more drinks and chat with all our friends (as did the rest of the audience, and the various band members, past and present). As well as Youngplan and Mumm-Ra, we gassed about our friends bands, and other mainstream indiepop groups who find our favour (Mark and I were in agreement on the positive merits of Maximo Park's comeback single, and as he correctly identified Mumm-Ra's kinship with the early Blur, we swapped Blur stories too)... Although I'd declined one, Sally's brother-in-law came back from the bar with a half for me, so I hopefully-not-rudely had to pass on it, as by this point Reuben and I were on our way out of The Street, and pressing-on to fulfill Dean's invite to join Rumiko down The Basement for their rehearsal, which we did; and we drank their booze, and chatted, and watched and applauded and made positive comment where appropriate, and I didn't actually nick anything this time. End!

I finally got a full week off work last week, but various social commitments kept me from catching too much live music. At the start of my holiday, I was in Bexhill on the Saturday night, for Sarah-Jane's thirtieth birthday party at The Harp pub. She'd booked a live band called Rumboogie to play, and I'm only mentioning this because at least one of the three guys in the band was at school with us, and had been playing in pub-blues-rock groups even then (it was Nik Le Saux - was he in Full Frontal Nudity? PJ Blue & The Players? I can't really remember who was who by now...), and fifteen years of playing blues-rock meant that at least his current group were very tight and very good at what they do (Ok, no-one except Hendrix is ever gonna be able to justice to Jimi Hendrix Experience songs, but they made an excellent stab at more-coverable songs like 'Baby Please Don't Go'). I congratulated Nik afterwards, but I don't think he recognised me by now, so that's about that! Because of this night, I missed Deano playing at the Eat@ cafe; and I subsequently missed his Le Pattie Cafe booking the following Tuesday by being in Brighton, where the closest I came to any relevant musical experiences was seeing Rachel Fisher's drag-king band Hotfrollicks get a full-page feature in that day's Argus newspaper (I'd imagine the photos are on or near her Myspace). I found out later in the week that the Pattie Cafe pulled Dean's gig quite late, and he'd ended up entertaining would-be punters (ie. our friends) with some songs in their Music Xchange shop instead - sounded fun, if awkward. I finally caught up properly with some live music again on the Sunday afternoon, at the end of my week's holiday, back in Hastings, when at the last minute I decided to go along to The Hastings Arms to catch a bit of a fundraiser for Giles' forthcoming sponsored run across the Sahara Desert. When I arrived, Dean was on his first song, and I got a pint off Katherine and sat a table next to the one seating Rufus, Danielle and, um, someone who's name I couldn't remember to be honest. Now, I had promised I'd try and take more notice of what songs Dean and Rufus are playing at the moment (and I only actually had one pint - I couldn't afford more), but aside from a handful of familiar covers ('We're Going To Be Friends', 'Get Up Jake', Blister In The Sun' in Dean's case; 'Higher And Higher' in Rufus', though he may have done others) almost the whole of Dean's current set, and around half of Rufus', is made up of unreleased songs that I don't know the titles to. What with not having a copy of the unreleased 2nd Rumiko album for reference (I taped Michael's copy and lent it to Gill at work, and I think she assumed I'd given her the tape - it's difficult to ask for things back in those situations), and the 3rd one still undergoing recording (see below) I'm lacking in titles to apply to the tunes. Rufus did play several from his, also, I think, unreleased, album, but my copy of that is at home, and I'm currently in the library typing this. Journalism, eh? Anyhow, when Rufus played, I joined Dean & Danielle at their table, and people like Billy and Reuben (and their friends who I'd not met) arrived and said Hi. Both Dean and Rufus went down brilliantly with the Hastings Arms' Sunday drinkers, though once Rufus had knocked it on the head they said they were off to rehearse down the Basement, if I wanted to join them. First, though, I popped back home and re-opened a bottle of white wine that Carolyn & I had started the night before, and I drank a bit of that and watched one of several Doctor Who videos I'd picked-up that week in Old & Gold in Bexhill. After that, I wandered along to the Basement with the remainder of the wine, and sat in the control room (is that what they term it?) while the full Rumiko line-up played through some new songs for the new album, and Rufus used his remote-control to point into the room occasionally to record live takes (I think this is how the 3rd album is being put together, more from live takes than built-up multitrack recordings). as well as losing my tape copy of their 2nd album, I recently lost my CD-R of their Myspace tracks from last Spring (that I'd received from them at ATP) during the process of Rufus' mastering of the (hey, unreleased!) new Dizzy Tiger compilation album. In my slightly drunked state I thought I'd spotted my lost CD-R under a desk in the corner of the room, and after scrutinising the scratchy disc, and umming and ahing for a while, I convinced myself that it had to be the lost disc, so I took it home (or, in another sense, stole it) afterwards, whereupon I put it in my cd-player, and, lo & behold, the display lit-up with it containing 3 tracks, the first of which was indeed 'Some Days', in the Myspace version. I was relieved that I'd picked up the right disc, but then it reached tracks 2 and 3, and rather than containing 'Carve My Way' and 'Mountain Song', it held a few seconds of glitch, followed by 'Keep It Going On', so I had to return to the shop at the earliest opportunity (this morning, in fact) and shamefacedly 'fess-up to Rufus that I'd secretly grabbed the wrong disc (which, to be vaguely fair, he'd lost in the first place). In conclusion, I'd suggest searching my pockets whenever I leave a recording studio, or maybe just not letting me in if I've been drinking... What an undignified end to the week. Apologies all, I'm usually much more honest.

Last Tuesday evening I was getting ready to go to Le Pattie Cafe (well, not so much getting ready, more navigating through a dvd of 'The Invasion' that Lee had given me in Brighton at the weekend; looking for Easter Eggs, and finding none), when Reuben rang, and popped round, to pick up a complete set of Mumm-Ra 7"s that I'd picked up for him while I was in Brighton (yellow and orange vinyl 'What Would Steve Do?' singles from Virgin - where I'd also bought my own copies earlier, brown vinyl 'Out Of The Question' from Borderline, and possibly Brighton's last pink vinyl copy of the same from Rounder). We listened to a little bit of the cd single I had, and Reu agreed that their song 'Without You' could well be Rumiko Jr-inspired - he had already heard it on a solo CD-R Noo had given him once (incidentally, if anyone wants to lend me their old Mumm-Ra et al CD-R demos, I'd quite like to tape them, ta). So, we then went outside and picked up Jimmy in George Street, and went along to Le Pattie Cafe. I had a quick chat about pictures for Create/South with Alice, who was sitting in journalism-corner with Rufus and some of their friends, then sat to watch Dean and Jim do their first set, alongside Reuben, Wookie, Leowin, Jimmy and his girlfriend. Michael and Caroline arrived, as did Kim and Jamie. I gave Kim my 2nd (of 2) demo CD-R of the almost-ready Dizzy Tiger compilation, and passed the actual Rufus-mastered CD-R on to Alice to assist with her article. After Dean and Jim had run through some of their songs, they handed over to young Nathan, and I'm afraid to say that his subtle, low-voiced songs got rather drowned-out by our table doing that whole "Do you remember [Insert old children's TV programme here]?" conversation (kicked into life 'cos Danielle had got Dean to pass on to me a couple of Cartoon Network compilation DVDs - Johnny Bravo, Powerpuff Girls etc - which turned out to have been the background to Reuben's childhood, so I gave them to him instead). Rufus took a break from being interviewed (or whatever they were doing) to play some of his songs next, whilst we continued not really to pay attention, by chatting admiringly about Spider Webb from The Horrors' hair (as pictured in their NME album review that Reuben had brought along for Jimmy and his partner). As usual, Dean and Jim finished off the evening with another smart set of Rumiko Jr songs and covers, and the rest of us carried on downing Stella. I guess I got home safely afterwards, but I don't exactly recall. Hopefully next time I write about Le Pattie Cafe, I'll have remembered more about what music was actually played, and less about the peripheral details of cartoons, coloured vinyl and haircuts, but I can't promise.

Just a very short entry: Blogger have shifted all their accounts over to Google-mail, which is hellishly slow on broadband, and nigh on impossible to access on dial-up, so again I may have to lay off the Blog soon. All I've been up to really in the meantime was go out last week to Le Pattie Cafe on Tuesday evening, to see Dean and Jim play another couple of sets of great new songs (I missed the following week's actual Rumiko Jr gig at Brass Monkey, where some of these new tunes were promised, partly 'cos of the entry fee, but mainly 'cos we'd gone along to see Kim and Liam's installation at Bar Blue instead - see below). Carolyn came over and went to Pattie Cafe with me, we met Michael and Caroline there, and Kim sat with us too. I had the impression all evening that Kim was on good form, but I gather he may have been a bit different towards some of our lot when I was out of earshot, naughty sod. Jamie, Wookie and Ollie were at one table; Lily, Christa, Alice and some othere were at the next (taking photos); one table down from us were Helen, Jo and Sally; and Danielle stayed down the front near Deano. Mainly we all just drank and chatted and ate bar snacks (I think we may have worked our way through the entire bar-snack menu, of nuts, nachos, and huge salty olives, during the course of the evening), and as I was facing away from Dean and Jim, not a lot of their performance sank in (in retrospect, I ought to have paid them some closer attention). I tried chatting to Christa briefly, but she was more interested in listening to the music, so I left-off there, and soon Paul had come and collected her anyway. It was nice that everyone in the venue knew each other though, and after some last-minute drinks (for those of us who reached the bar in time for last orders, at least: there was some confusion over this), everyone disappeared quite quick to get on with whatever it was they were planning on doing (preparing for Valentine's Day the next day, if they were lucky). I chatted quickly to Alice about her forthcoming Create/South article, ideas for accompanying pictures, etc, but that was about it.
The aforementioned installation at Bar Blue the following Tuesday was titled Escalate, and featured various items that belonged to Rockabilly Liam (toy cars, bits of musical instruments, junked cassettes etc), which he'd unsuccessfully offered for sale previously on Ebay, apparently, and that Kim had arranged in piles of orange-painted crates, with one corner made up of back-lit gutted wirelesses. Kim's biography from the Saachi website had been printed-off and displayed along one wall, and attendees were free to rummage through the boxes, play with different items, and possibly attempt to purchase them off Kim (Liam was absent for the evening). I'd gone along with Caroline, and when we arrived Wookie was Djing. Reuben came along, as he was DJing too that evening (as was Kim's friend Dave), and we were joined by the backroom installation by Xanten, Leofwin, Jamie, Helen and Ollie (at different times, and in different stages of sobriety). At one point, Kim stopped Dave's DJing in order to plug some Casio or Yamaha keyboard in, for an arpeggiated version of 'Chicken In A Box' (which Dave then tempo-matched on the decks with The Normal's 'TVOD', which may help you imagine Kim's performance). Good on Dave, he even played The Fall later on, and eschewed any obvious, vaguely crowd-pleasing tunes in favour of 'The NWRA'. Kim did the electro to Kraftwerk's 'Pocket Calculator', and I surreptitously filmed him doing so on my phone. Ollie had already had a spin round the bar in Liam's large plastic toy car, and I then did the same for Xanten, but I don't think even she was light enough not to give it some engine trouble. Jamie chatted about his recent discovery that the band Killing Moon, who he had been a member of a couple of years back at the University of Kent, had now become minor chart-contenders Battle, and shed some unofficial light on the coincidence of their name to our nearby Keane-spawning village. And, as you would be, he was only mildly put-out that he'd failed to stick with the band long enough to share in their Top 40 hits (I took his chart research on trust, 'cos I didn't bother to research exactly how high any of Battle's singles have charted over the last eighteen months or so). No-one who was down Bar Blue with us seemed too enthusiastic about heading into town afterwards to see Rumiko Jr playing, but only 'cos the tickets (for the whole afternoon & evening's Mardi Gras events in Frenchs and the Brass Monkey) were a prohibitive £7.50, so we all stuck to our St Leonards bar until time was called, before getting ourselves home again (where, I found out the next day, I fell asleep on the toilet, and had to be woken up by one unfortunate housemate). From the texts and posts I read the next day from various band members, it did look like Mardi Gras was a bit of a washout in the end (certainly the persistent rain and fog that cold Tuesday night can't have helped either). So, for a change, art won the day.

Alfie had flagged-up on our Message Boards http://dizzytigerstu.proboards58.com that Mumm-Ra had a gig at The Gloucester in Brighton at the end of Januray, as one of three low-key warm-up gigs for the forthcoming NME tour (upon which they'd be opening a bill otherwise consisting of The Automatic, The Horrors and The View, hmm). When the day (Thursday 25th) came, Alfie couldn't make it in the end, but I'd arranged to go straight over to Brighton from work and catch up with some more of our friends anyway. There had been a tiny amount of snow around on the Wednesday morning, and some of this had remained into the Thursday, but the train journey from Bexhill to Brighton was in the drakness of the January evening, so I could see nothing out the carriage windows, and when I reached Brighton there was nothing on the ground. I rang Carolyn when I got off at Brighton Station, and walked down Queens Road, to catch up with her in Borders by the Churchill Shopping Centre. My energy had been flagging when we met, so I grabbed a thick rectangle of hot pizza from a nearby stall, and we made our way via North Laine to the Battle Of Trafalgar, for a pint and a chat. Reuben had been texting to arrange coming over from Hastings too, and Carolyn was fielding messages from Lee and Charlie too, who were the first to find us there. The four of us went along to The Brighton Gloucester, as it turned out to be called, and met Lucy and her cousin Charlotte outside, where we waited in the cold for longer than we wished, feeling a little elderly and out of place compared to the Brighton sixth-form (they probably don't even have sixth-forms nowadays...) students also awaiting entry. The Gloucester turned out to be a cheap and charming venue, rather like Hastings Crypt, but roomier, slightly plusher, and with more angles, walkways and levels, all deep red and curtainy. We found a table and some drinks near the back, and discovered that Mumm-Ra were to be supported by Youngplan, who we'd only recently read about in the Hastings Observer, and a group called Restlesslist. The latter struck-up very shortly afterwards on stage, so we moved all our stuff down towards the front to watch: they turned out to be a pair of scarved Brighton lads (at the University possibly?) playing short, fun, instrumentals on guitars, keyboards, samplers and the like, a post-Go!Team outfit. They gave off the impression of this being their first gig, though there were cheap photocopied flyers scattered about promising a forthcoming single, so maybe they were merely self-deprecatingly shambolic. Reuben and Muz arrived from Hastings, as, unexpectedly, did Del, who'd decided to make the trip on his own. It was only us Hastings residents who had seen Mumm-Ra play before: the last gig all of us had seen them play was an unannounced, post-signing spot one summer Sunday afternoon at Frenchs bar in Hastings, the occasion of Reuben's 18th birthday, I recall. We were all quite curious to see Youngplan too, 'cos they'd fallen on their feet locally with some good reviews, partly helped by the members past-form in a number of regularly-gigging young Hastings bands. I was aware, also, that the Hastings Observer due out at the end of the following week was due to feature an article on both Youngplan and Mumm-Ra, pegging them both as part of an emergent (but clearly made-up) scene called, variously, Rovverbeat or Rotherbeat: terms that I'd initially assumed were invented by the local paper's correspondent Richard Morris, as he'd used them first in his Youngplan review, and then again in an email to me, promising to fit a few words on the forthcoming Dizzy Tiger compilation album in the same edition. (When that copy of the paper came out, on Friday 2nd Feb, it transpired that Rich must've been at the same gig, 'cos a review of it, more accurate than I'm gonna manage here, formed a large part of the article - I was unaware of this at the time.) Anyway, turned out that the paper's comparison of Youngplan to Futureheads (had any of the groups been at Futureheads barnstorming Crypt gig a few years back, alongside Del and I?) wasn't far off the mark, though I detected Maximo Park as a stronger influence, though we were suprised to see three professional photographers appear to the front and right of the stage, snapping away throughout Youngplan's set. The lightbulb of realisation went on in my head then, that there was some kind of management/publicity framework already in place for Youngplan, and that the Rotherbeat creation was going to be part of an attempt at selling a local scene to the national media. (This supposition was given more weight when I studied the copy of Good Meaure Magazine - aka GM! - that I'd picked up at the gig, and saw Mumm-Ra, Youngplan, and even our old mucker Adam from East Magzine, modelling and being interviewed throughout.) The Gloucester had filled-up with kids by this point, many of whom were down front watching the bands, others I'm sure just taking advantage of the seriously cheap drinks, and waiting for a dancefloor snogging moment to come along. Mumm-Ra took to the stage bolstered by Youngplan's Dale (on guitar & vocals) and, now, four professional photographers. Noo cheerily admitted to having them only just having invented Rotherbeat, and I shouted up that people could pretty much Read All About It in next week's Hastings Observer, if anyone was listening. The band whooshed through their now largely-familiar set of singles ('What Would Steve Do?', 'Song B', 'Out Of The Question', that one that came free with the NME, etc) along with presently-unreleased songs like 'She Got You High;', which we all remembered from the Frenchs gig. What Mumm-Ra have lost in ramshackle, sitar-embellished, somewhat prog-seriousness (as in every gig we saw them play prior to Frenchs, eg at The Crypt, The Ypresstock festival, various Smugglers gigs) they've made up for in a technicolour conciseness and abundance of tunes (for a taster of the 'old' Mumm-Ra, I could point you in the direction of the Basement studio back in Hastings, which still appeared to have a few copies of the Tsunami Appeal cd album knocking about - proceeds to the Disasters Emergency Committee - that featured Mumm-Ra alongside Del's Burn Burn Burn, and several other Hastings artists). They went down superbly with the crowd, but it didn't seem too long before the lights were back up and the following Indie Club night was beginning, at which point we all headed outside and scattered onto various nightbuses Westwards, and Mumm-Ra (by their onstage admission) went back to Behill to mark the 6th anniversary of their debut gig, up in the cold night on Galley Hill in Bexhill. The next morning, on the train back to Bexhill, I was able now to see the vast tracts of snow that had clung onto the North side of the South Downs, between Lewes and Eastbourne. As an Old Man, I can only say that those Mumm-Ra boys must've caught their death of cold.
A couple of days later, and I was back down the aforementioned Smugglers, this time to help celebrate our friend Xanten's birthday. She'd arranged with Ewen for Cloudesley Shovell to play, and so Billy, Louis and John were all soundchecking when I arrived. Aside from Xanten and her housemate, we were also jined by Jamie, Reuben and Wookie, whilst Marcus turned up and sat with Matt and his partner. I think I very breifly saw Rufus appear with Alice and some others, but they must've headed off elsewhere, 'cos I couldn't find them later. Meanwhile, Christa was stationed up the back with Paul and some of their friends, collaring me for the odd kiss as I passed to and from the toilets. Cloudesely Shovell powered through their denim-rock, stomping all over the line between taking the actual music very seriously, but taking the piss out of themselves and their mates relentlessly. A special treat had been word-of-mouth advertised for the evening, namely the debut gig of that Dickensian waif, 'Little' Jimmy (where Cloudesley Shovell hark back sartorailly to the 1970's, Jimmy actually harks back to the 1870's...). Things looked a bit dicey when a guy wandered into the bar (and, yes, he did have a Borat moustache, and responded to shouts of Bohemian Rhapsody!" by muttering a few lines from 'I Wan To Break Free') and wouldn't walk away from the microphone, until Ewen intervened (there had been some suspicion that this guy was gonna be some comical birthday stripogram-style treat for Xanten, but he was actually just a bit random). Thereupon, Jimmy plugged in his electric, requested "A bit of volume" and, brilliantly, howled through a non-stop 20 minute set of Mary Chain feedback and yelping at top speed. There was a bunch of rather long faces at the bar, and some very stupid grins from the rest of us down the front: and Marcus' assertion that Jimmy just might be the "new Dean" only took a battering if you conveniently ignored the fact that, even before The Ital Jets, Dean was a total teenage metaller. I dunno whether we'll ever see Jimmy onstage at Smugglers again after that, but, Jesus, he needs to be pushed back onstage again at as many other venues in the town as we can find, as soon and as often as possible, the feisty little fucker. After that interlude, Cloudesley Shovell's second set of thrilling stoner-boogie ("And this song's called 'Robot Colossus'...") was as a fair balm to soothe the ears. We'd agreed (also on the Boards) to Indie Stu that we were gonna go round to the Brass Monkey, to catch Tim Hoyte supporting the excellent I Am Kloot, but (possibly 'cos Kloot was down from Manchester?) a few texts, and a trip round the corner by Marcus, established that the Monkey had opened earlier than usual, and we'd missed them, so we stayed getting trolleyed in Smugglers instead. Happy Birthday, Xanten! God bless us, every one!