Kudos to Regular John for finally getting The Flesh Happening a return gig in Hastings, after a gap of a fair few years (during which time Oliva had sorted almost a whole new band). After downing half a bottle of red wine that I had left over, I went down to The Pig In Paradise to meet Michael and Caroline, and Helen turned up at the same time. As I got to the bar, Oliva, in a neat black suit, ran out from the back room and dragged us all back there to join him, with the rest of the group, and a few of their friends, including Shara (who'd once been out on the Hastings scene continuously for ages - I ended up at Glastonbury '97 once, with her and loads of others - then went away just as quickly). I caught up with her, and The Flesh Happening's guitarist Richard (who I'd met previously out in Brighton for Laura's 30th birthday earlier this year), but mainly gossipped with Helen, Caroline & Michael about various exes and misdemeanours. Oliva dragged us all out and along Robertson Street, singing the 'Happy Days' theme, but The Crypt wasn't open yet, so we had another drink in The Street. Helen regaled us with some left-field anecdotes, and we were met by Kim, Reuben, Lethwyn etc. When The Crypt opened, me, Caroline, Michael and Kim were first down, so we sat off to one side with our pints. Kim had brought a rubber ball with him, which he proceded to throw randomly at the walls of The Crypt, so that it bounced at unpredictable angles off the ceiling, arches and stage (unsuprisingly, he kept losing it, and I'd help scour the dark corners of the floor with him 'til it surfaced). Most of the people from The Street & The Pig made it downstairs to join us, as did Rufus, Marcus, Rebecca & Nicola, Christa, Dean & Danielle, and a whole bunch more. Regular John played first, determined to make a mark by playing sharp and concise: Oliva and Shara (seeing them play for the first time) got themselves very into it with much dancing and head-shaking. It was a shame they were time-constricted from really stretching out with some of their heavy epics too, though. I kept drinking steadily, and was doing quite a lot of flirting, then The Flesh Happening struck up onstage. Oliva was still looking dapper in his suit, with his hair styled in shades of black and red, while the rest of the group played solidly behind him: we stood and recognised loads of the songs from their demos (such as Kamikaze, Hitler & Jesus, Anal Joy - love those titles), and I barely noticed that Oliva was divesting himself gradually of his clothing, until towards the end of the set he was performing in a few strips of black leather or PVC, and fucking his arse with a handy beer-bottle. Possibly 'cos I've known him very well for quite a long time, this didn't strike me as being out of the ordinary behaviour: it was only the next day that I realised it was standard behaviour for him, but something more unusual for The Crypt (even taking into account Rockbitch, who I never went to see). Oliva was looking very sexy by the end of the gig, stripped and covered in sweat, beer and other fluids, but that was just part of the theme of the evening (was it 'cos of the full moon?) as by this point I was away snogging one of my friends, without paying any attention to what the rest of our lot must've been thinking. Eventually, people headed home or to the Brass Monkey: despite wanting to hang out more with the woman I'd been kissing, I knew nothing too much further was gonna happen that night, so I went home too, texted a pass at someone else, and passed-out. Classy.
The next day I had to be up and out early, to get over to Brighton to catch up with Petra and a bunch of our friends, which meant I didn't have time for a bath, so got over there still smelling of The Crypt (I thought of a new word to describe the state of being too old to go down the Crypt, and suffering the day after as a result: Decrypid). Most of the day in Brighton was spent at Petra's new(ish) flat with Mimi, Russell and, later, Carrie, before we headed out in the late afternoon, downhill through a stunning 360-degree surrounding sunset, and via the town centre and North Laine to The George for food. But they'd stopped serving, so we made-do in Grub's instead, before returning to The George for an evening of drinking, as more of our friends (including Michael & James, David, and several others) made it along to join us. We were going along to the Concorde 2 for an all-ages show by The Gossip, but none of the others were up for seeing the support bands (Panther, who no-one knew, and Comonechi, who hadn't impressed the others when they'd seen them sometime before), unfortunately, so we stuck around chatting away in the pub for hours. Eventually, it was getting towards time for The Gossip themselves, so we trailed along to the Marlborough Theatre, where we rendezvoused with Sock, Steph, Harry, Lucy and Rachel (plus more of their friends), who'd been drinking there for Rachel's birthday. The whole crowd of us snaked our way up towards Kemp Town, then down onto the seafront, with a big bright moon above, and countless firework displays (it was Guy Fawkes' Night) in the distance, below the arches, and towards the Concorde 2. I was near the back, and remembering how ghastly the loos in the venue had been last time I'd been there (a Stereolab gig, probably) I hung back and snuck off for a pee. Unsuprisingly, the Concorde 2, when we got in, was rather rammed (The Gossip currently riding a wave of press coverage, radio play, and tv appearances) so we got buffeted around the bar area as Comonechi climaxed their set onstage (I guess they sounded a bit Sonic Youth from that distance, which would've been fine with me). I knew I wouldn't get the chance later, so I said goodbye to Petra then, 'cos I had to get the last train home later (having spent all my money on train fares and drinks already I couldn't stick around and do the first train in on the Monday morning this time). Once I'd grabbed drinks from the bar and gone into the main hall, I'd already lost track of most of our friends, who'd made their way down to the front, so I hung back near the djs on the left of the venue keeping a 5-months pregnant Carrie company. Slightly unexpectedly, one of the Wilkes brothers pushed by with a load of empty glasses at one point - I hadn't realised they were working there as well as selling tickets for the venue's gigs through their Hastings bars - but it wasn't appropriate for Carrie or I to wave in that "We only vaguely know you" way. The Gossip were on after a while, straight into lots of their raw disco-soul songs, which I've been hearing loads of on the radio, tv and at people's flats this year, without actually committing the titles to memory). I'd seen them once at ATP this year, and this time took in more of the fact that, Beth Ditto's overpowering vocals aside, both the drummer woman and bass/guitar man (yes, I'm being lazy and not looking-up their names...) contribute huge blocks of sound and power to every one of The Gossip's songs: it's a real three-person construct. Rachel got her birthday mentioned, someone threw the group a back-scratcher, the venue djs (including, I recognised, Verity from Miss Pain) lit sparklers (which was sweet and apt, but a bit "Look at us!"), and then after about 20 minutes and 5 or 6 songs I had to leave and make my way back up to Brighton Station for that last train. Carolyn had also arranged (before I'd been asked by Petra) to go to the gig with her friends, but there hadn't been a chance of spotting them in the crowd, and my text once inside didn't get answered, so I missed them completely. On the way home I read the new issue of Plan B I'd hurriedly picked-up in North Laine, and I also gave some thought to Camilla, who couldn't be there. Then I remembered that vast panoramic sunset, the moon and the fireworks, and it felt ok in the end.

Last Friday I was on my way to London, to see New Order play Wembley Arena. Last time I'd been up there was to see Depeche Mode on their Violator tour (supported by Electribe 101), which was obviously a very long time ago. On that occasion I went on my own, using a ticket that Paul had bought for the wrong night, when our friends from Bexhill College were going the day after (or was it the day before?) - I ended up missing the last train back to Hastings, and ending up in Eastbourne instead in the middle of the night, with £15 to pay a taxi to drive me as far home as it could (Ultimately depositing me at the bottom of Filsham Road in the pouring rain in the early hours...)
This time, Carolyn and Lee had arranged to go up to the gig, and I'd been bought an additional ticket much later on. I took the end of the week off work, and went over to Brighton the evening before the gig, so that I could travel up with Carolyn during the day, whilst Lee would get to Wembley as soon as he could make it after his work in Crawley (or somewhere) had finished. I'd seen New Order twice before, both times at the Reading Festival (in 1993, their final gig before their sabbatical, and in 1998 soon after their comeback, whilst Gillian Gilbert was still in the group). Lee had also been at the '98 gig, and had made it to one or two more of their gigs thereafter (including having backstage-passes to their Move gig at Manchester Cricket Ground, the lucky lad). So Carolyn was the only one of our party to have never seen them play (though she met Barney and Hooky when they DJ'd in Brighton on a recent New Year's Eve), so she was particularly excited, but was also going under the assumption (partly assisted by their Finsbury Park dvd) that their best days were disappearing behind them. On the train up to London that afternoon, she told me also of her phobia about travelling on the London Underground (the result of a panic attack she experienced there several years ago), so when we got to Victoria we were quite cautious about entering the Underground. It was clear she was quite anxious both on the Tube platform, and then on the train itself, but she made it two stops up to Oxford Circus, where we got off to visit the shops on Oxford Street. We went straight into Borders, and on the ground floor I had a flick through a book that's going on my (non-existant) Christmas list: Pet Shop Boys - Catalogue, which is along the same lines (and from the same publishers) as the Factory Records graphics book I got during the summer. [As an aside, the day after the New Order gig, Carolyn and I went (at her friend Sara's invitation) to the private view of an exhibition at Brighton's Phoenix Gallery. The main exhibitor was a guy called Jeff Keen, who evidently makes himself extremely busy with multimedia mash-ups of pulp graphics and imagery, shown in numerous paintings, sculptures, comics and films. However, there were supporting displays from a sculptor called Pete Slight, illustrations from a woman called Lady Lucy - whose work was so familiar I must've seen it in Plan B or somewhere, and a load of reproduced fanzine pages from Stephen Drennan and Jo Hodson. Would it help you place the style of their fanzines if I told you there's a song called 'Letter From Stephen Drennan' on my Avocado Baby lp that I got off Paula? Like I said, this was the private view, and the artists were mostly present (though we declined Sara's offers of introductions, but not the free wine), as were a bunch of zine-scene men and women with bobs, sideburns, hair-slides, blazers and stripey socks. The uniformity of image partly reminded me why I never really bought into the fanzine scene (I genuinely disliked The Yummy Fur!) - and it has to be said that my own zines were atrocious - but I think the main reason could've been that my standards were set at an early age by the high-pop of Pet Shop Boys' music, opinions, design and theatricality, so I was unable to discard the hours spent poring over the 7" sleeve of 'Rent' in favour of a load of felt-pen drawings of cats and breathless reviews of I'm Being Good albums that I'd never hear...] Anyhow, we went up the escalator to check out the Fiction section (where I pulled a rarely-found copy of Iain Sinclair & Dave McKean's 'Slow Chocolate Autopsy' collaboration from the shelf), then went up a further two stories to visit the music-book section on the top floor. This is where I found out that Carolyn's Underground phobia also extended to the use of escalators themselves. I also found some dissing of the Hastings music scene in a book about the Mescaleros (not by Step, or Joe Strummer, of course), and that the index to the recent Rough Trade book from Black Dog Publishing is somewhat lacking (unless a collective decision was made to hide the fact that, originally, Rough Trade continued to release records beyond Galxie 500's ones, even if they were by the likes of Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine and My Jealous God...) Meanwhile, Carolyn was overjoyed by the contents of the Best Of Smash Hits hardback - Stephen 'Tea-Towel' Duffy present and correct - which helped re-focus her on normality again. [Actually, it was almost three years to the day that I'd visited the same Borders, on a mission to pick-up as many stray Fall cds as I'd missed out on over the years, prompted by the recent publishing of Dave Thompsons' 'A User's guide To The Fall' - his follow-up New Order book was there too today. Borders came up trumps that day, both in Oxford Street, Tottenham Court Road, and back in Brighton, but it was outside the former that I encountered a very-harrassed Bobby Gillespie doing some, possible, Christmas shopping.] Back on Oxford Street, we went along to HMV, where I got hold of the brown-vinyl 7" of Mumm-Ra's 'Out Of The Question' single (Carolyn got the pink-vinyl one in Brighton's Western Road HMV the next day, but it still froze at #45 in the Charts that week). As we fought our way along the street we also started to feel very harrassed (though not as harrassed as I got the next day, when I got stuck in North Laine behind a dithering family, and actually pushed them out of my way: Carolyn sensibly then drew us off on a side-street detour before I got thumped or caused anyone else any distress). We made a break into a Subway outlet, and sat upstairs eating dry, meaty baguettes until we felt able to resume our journey. After a brief duck into Virgin, we descended into Tottenham Court Road Underground station, to find our way up to Wembley. A very crowded train took us to Bond Street, but luckily a weird old fellow stood next to us until the first stop, and blessed everyone in the carriage with a large crucifix before he got out in Oxford Circus (not being religious, we just took this as a sign of good-luck). From Bond Street, another train took us northwards, overground after Baker Street (to some relief from Carolyn) and on to Willesden Green. We disembarked to change, and in the distance a truncated arc of bright white light marked the bow of the new Wembley Stadium (the span of the supsended semi-circle was only lit to the midpoint). A following tube-train took us the next few stops to Wembley Park, from which I tried to take us directly to the Arena, but got mislaid by traffic-islands and overpasses (in my defence, the whole area has been regenerated and redesigned since the early 90's), so that we ended up back where we'd started from before we struck on the straight route towards the new Stadium, and the Arena to its right (which looked very different to the long-box of a building I remembered, or possibly mis-remembered). Having worked out where we'd be going to later, we went back down the road towards the Underground station in the early-evening rain, and stopped in a wine-bar/restaurant for a pint of lager as we let ourselves get excited about the next few hours. Once ready, we wandered back up the road to Wembley Arena. A couple of guys in reflective jackets swapped our tickets for wristbands (we were a bit wary at first), but we were then able to walk straight into the building and start exploring. Carolyn sent several texts to Lee, arranging successive rendezvous points as our progress into the building changed: first we visited the merchandise stall (one of them anyway), where we admired the faithfully reproduced artworks (eg. Ceremony, Movement, Blue Monday) on the shirts, without actually buying any. We grabbed warm pints of Carling, and some gruesome long, lukewarm, cigar-flavoured hotdogs (I was coping OK until I bit down onto a chunk of bone-fragment), then got let into the main-arena itself. Straight away, I noticed that the back wall of the arena had been curtained off, probably due to unsold tickets (this was the only date of New Order's short tour that hadn't, it seemed, sold out), though I knew we'd benefit from the sound not echoing back to us a split second later throughout the forthcoming gig. There was a huge red&white Maximo Park banner suspended across the stage, and a hidden DJ (or a recording of one) was playing a good selection of records that you'd probably expect to hear(including 'Trans Europe Express', Hashim's 'Al Naayfish', A Certain Ratio's 'Waterline' and 'Be What You Wanna Be', Simian vs Justice, 'Pacific State') and a fair few I'd never heard. Lee finally caught up with us and we had more pints from the mobile barrel-carriers (I was amazed when one punter actually complained that his Carling tasted off, seeing as it was being carted around on the back of low-paid worker all evening - I think if you visit a major London venue, and almost every worker is either of immigrant origin, you can reasonably assume that there's some wage-exploitation going on). He seemed in a good mood since leaving work that afternoon, and we all chatted and took some photos (though not on my new cameraphone - my first, from a much-needed upgrade - which was switched-off back in Carolyn's flat, awaiting number-transference) until Maximo Park came onstage. My one concession to dressing up that evening had been to make sure I had my black Paul Smith t-shirt (that I'd got from Rob) on: normally I pretend it's 'cos I like Blast First, but tonight I was wearing it in honour of Maximo Park's frontman, who in turn was wearing a full white suit (including hat) that was fitted very tight at the crotch ("I think it was the trousers. They were very tight. You could see everything. Nothing left to the imagination" etc). I'd so-far been fairly indifferent to Maximo Park (filing them under 'You know, Alright'), but tonight really made me re-evaluate them positively, seeing them as a jerky Wedding Present style group (with fans to match) with all the lovelorn humanity and honesty that implies. Comically overwhelmed at the venue (Smith allowed himself a knowing "Hello, Wembley!" early on, 'cos he could), they played all the 'hits', I think, with 'Graffiti' coming early on (Lee, listening out for it, missed it somehow), plus lots of album tracks (I assume) and (definately) new songs, saving a monumental 'Apply Some Pressure' until last. I know it's easy to dismiss Maximo Park as elderly, post-Futureheads bandwagon-jumpers, but there's an ache in their songs that (cf: Wedding Present, Pulp) is the real-deal. Converted! Afterwards, the three of us chatted some more as we surveyed the arena with some concern: we all had standing-tickets, but the floor-area was still quite spacious, and there were certainly blocks of seating all around above us that no tickets had been sold for. Even the getting-there-after-work excuse wasn't covering the fact that the gig was notably undersold: would this therefore turn out to be the last occasion New Order played at a venue this size?
The Maximo Park banner was taken-down, records were played, pints were drunk, and equipment was moved, and gradually the venue filled-out some more (though not anywhere near to capacity), and eventually the lights dimmed and New Order wandered on stage. No backdrops, screens, special lighting (beyond the Arena's own rig) or additional musicians: just the three remaining New Order men and (now full-time) ex-Marion guitarist Phil Cunningham. The gig had been promoted as a Singles concert (in support of last year's compilation album), so we'd not expected much different, but straight-away Barney greeted the crowd with the info that they were gonna be Joy Division for a while, and they were into 'She's Lost Control', 'Shadowplay' (at one time my favourite Joy Division song; an album track of course) and, totally unexpectedly, 'These Days'. Most of the audience were getting it, but things took right off when they followed up with 'Transmission' and 'Love Will Tear us Apart' (the Joy Division songs that even those who don't know Joy Division have heard), and then (to Carolyn's pleasure) 'Atmosphere'. That opening twenty-or-so minutes already made the whole trip worthwhile: New Order then did the honourable and right thing of stating their intention of getting back up-to-date, and playing loads of recent (non-single, undersold) songs from their most recent (admittedly below-par) album, starting with the best (and title) track 'Waiting For The Siren's Call'. Despite a chime through 'Ceremony', this part of the gig ('Hey Joe', 'Crystal') seemed to underwhelm Lee (who Carolyn & I had become a few people seperated from in all the dancing), and the next thing we knew she'd had a text from him saying that he wasn't enjoying New Order's set at all, and had gone back to Brighton. This was really disappointing, but then neither of us had been working that day (and Lee's boss had, wrongly, been texting him work-related requests out-of-hours), so I'm sure he just took the decision he felt most-comfortable with by heading home (or, rather, the home he's staying in whilst his own room is redecorated..) Personally, I was loving-it, and sang all the way through 'Regret' (I may have got some words wrong, but not as many as Barney did), and then they slowed down for 'Guilt Is A Useless Emotion' and we both needed a piss and another beer. Re-entering the arena, New Order had started-up on 'Bizarre Love Triangle', and this was when they finally honoured the script on the advertising and hit a seam of classic singles ('Temptation', 'The Perfect Kiss' segueing into 'Blue Monday'). What we were really enjoying was the sheer (after all this time) raggedness of New Order, as sequences from one song got badly-transposed over others, cues were missed, and tracks rattled-on until someone thought about pressing Pause. After 25 years of being New Order (and despite the longstanding use of backing-tapes, whether as rhythm/sequence tracks, or to carry the backing-vocals) there's no slickness involved in their performance, just a mass of verbal 'OK's?' to one another, nods and overlaps. A long call for an encore ensued after those songs (I was doubtful that we'd even get one, remembering their on/off reticence to the form of encoring), until eventually the group returned. Barney explained that they'd spent that time trying to work out what to play next, then (oh yes!) he picked-up a melodica (I like to think he only packed it for the following 16-bars) and (giving the game-away as he positioned his fingers to find the right notes) they went into a heroic 'Love Vigilantes' ("A pro-war song", according to Barney). 'Turn' (second-best song from their last album) followed ("I know it's a new song, but be more enthusiastic, it's a fucking good song" Barney exclaimed, rightfully), then, finally, the (very 90's/House) re-jigged 'True Faith'.
Bootleg T-shirt sellers, crowded tube-trains, end-of-day pasties and pizza-slices from Victoria, fast-trains back to Hove. Even seeing a drunk lad jump on top of the bonnet of a speeding taxi in an idiotic attempt to hail it (reassuringly, we also witnessed the inter-cab emergency procedure come successfully into effect, whereby a taxi in trouble bring all the cabs in the area zooming down to help-out), failed to shake our benevolence towards everything, post-gig. Though Lee hadn't ultimately enjoyed himself, Carolyn & I were both happy that (studio-recordings notwithstanding) New Order still had enough vital-spark left to make going to future gigs a promising prospect. However many years away that might be.