I'd sorted out a couple of reservations for Carolyn & I to see a showing of the new Throbbing Gristle - Live At The Astoria film in London, a gig that we'd both attended a couple of years ago, with Carrie and Paul. So, last FridayI got the train up to London Bridge during the middle of the afternoon, checked the time of the last trains to Hastings, then made my way across the Underground to meet Carolyn at Victoria. If you ever make this journey, prepare yourself for the changeover between the Jubilee and the Central & District lines at Westminster station - it's like ascending throught the set of Metropolis, all echoing chasms of sprung steel walkways and escalators, really uncanny. Worth a visit in it's own right (I love the London Underground, it's like being in a gigantic adventure playground)! Anyhow, I got to Victoria and had a cheese salad baguette, then met Carolyn when she got off her train, and we got the Circle line all the way back round to Liverpool Street (fortunately Carolyn seems to be getting over her tube-phobia again now). Leaving the station under the shadows of the City, we settled quickly into the nearest pub full of bankers, and had a pint. I chose Greene King IPA, which tastes great back home in places like the Horse & Groom, but up here in London it's cold and antiseptic flavour made me remember that for some reason the majority of pubs and bars in London can't keep and serve a pint of bitter to save their lives. Slightly refreshed, we wove our way through the many Police patrolling the edge of the financial district (dozens of them on foot, on horseback, in cars and vans, hiding round corners and down cul de sacs) and turned down towards Christchurch in Spitalfields. I took a quick photo outside The Gun pub for our message boards' running advent calendar, then we ducked down Princelet Street so that I could show Carolyn some of the most unchanged streets in the area (which we'd first encountered with Lee & Chris Cook one night after one of the Placard Headphone festivals in State 51, off the top of Brick Lane). Once into Brick Lane itself, we decided to find the Brick Lane Gallery, where Kim would be taking part in a group exhibition later in the evening, so we headed up the street, past Truman's Brewery and a building where I'd once attended the book launch for 'K Foundation Burn A Million Quid' once, and discussed the bits of Banksy graffitti scattered around, 'til Carolyn spotted the gallery. We turned around and headed back in the other direction to find the Whictechapel Gallery, where we'd be going later for the Throbbing Gristle film, and bumped into Del, who happened to be up from Hastings, visiting a friend nearby. More co-incidentally, he'd spent the afternoon at the top of Tottenham Court Road, looking at a Banksy installation in some Oxford Street shop up there. Carolyn and I continued onwards, past a couple of guys pushing a supermarket trolley loaded up with the torsos of raw meat from the nearby market, and down into Whitechapel, where we bought a Big Issue and found the gallery easily. After a quick stop-off in the gallery bookshop, we went back the way we'd come to find another pub. I was hoping to visit the Seven Stars, where I'd also been before when I saw the film of 'K Foundation Burn A Million Quid' screened in the basement by their roadie Gimpo, and in fact had spent the hour before the screening upstairs in the pub in the same corner as the K Foundation themselves (there was photos of this moment, not including me, in an old issue of Muzik magazine at the time, though I never picked-up a copy). However, the place had closed down, so we went into The Archers opposite (which was more apt for Carolyn, as she listens to every episode of the Radio 4 soap without fail). The Archers was very cosy, and unpretentious, but I couldn't see any favourable bitters, so I remembered the Gherkin towering over us outside, and had a few pints of Fosters. Carolyn had rescued some bundles of old photographs from All Tomorrow's Parties, Shambolica, and her University days, and we looked at those and chatted until it was getting towards the time for Kim's private-view. Back up at the Brick Lane Gallery we struggled past the photographers, artists and students milling around outside, and pushed our way in. Grabbing a couple of complimentary beers from a bucket, we eased our way around the packed, tiny gallery spaces, trying to find Kim's work, or Kim, amongst the bodies and exhibits. The exhibition, entitled Peace Camp, featured anti-war artworks by dozens of artists (the most familiar name being Wolfgang Tillmans, though Kim had said to me on the phone a few days previously that Gavin Turk had also become involved since he'd emailed me about it), all of whom felt like they must have been squeezed in there with us. Neither the ground level, where we couldn't even crane our heads round to view Kim's painting straight-on, nor the basement, offered much repsite, and we couldn't spot Kim yet, so we decided to leave with our beers and grab a bite to eat. We both bought bagels over the road, filled with huge red slabs of salt-beef, and the hottest yellow mustard I'd ever tasted, and stood outside in the light rain chewing our way through them with helpful swigs from the beer. Rather than go back into the exhibition just yet, we found some kind of bar up on the top corner of Brick Lane, and sat down in there with more lager, and a platter of samosas, bhajis etc with a two-colour chilli dip. The decor of the dimly-lit venue was non-specific multicultural: tapestries celebrating the independence of various countries following the break-up of the USSR were hung alongside cinema hordings for Rocky, fightin for attention with all manner of throws, drapes and candles. We'd really eaten enough bagel already, so we didn't quite get through the platter we'd bought (which we'd ordered more out of politeness than actual hunger), and eventually we decided to head-out to to exhibition again. It was still packed, and we could see some guy performing a rather tuneless version of Auld Lang Syne at the back of the room, but we couldn't see Kim still (it turned out he was down the front at that time, though, and got up himself to perform 'Chicken In A Box' in the end), so we left and strode back down through the early hubbub of the evening to Whitechapel. It was still a little early to go to the film, so we found another busy pub and sat down with more lager and spirits in the large back room. This pub was one which was celebrating Jack The Ripper heritage in it's decor: various poorly-executed illustrations and script told us how "a suspect" and possible "contender for the identity of the Ripper" used to live in the pub, and was later found to have poisoned his wife, and how one of the Ripper's five victims was "believed to have had her last drink here" a few days before being murdered "near the rear of these premises", etc. None of this macabre and rather unconvincing detail seemed to be putting any of the young weekend drinkers off the start of their Friday night-out, but there was at least one bloke staring at us funny, so we were happy to drink-up and move back along to the Whitechapel Gallery. After a couple of minutes of hanging around the foyer, we were directed, along with a few dozen others, to a viewing room near the back of the gallery, which unfortunately smelt of raw sewage (apparently the recent rains had backed the drains up), where we settled ourselves down for the screening of the Throbbing Gristle film. Although I'd really enjoyed the gig itself, I had no clue as to how the subsequent, much-delayed film, would look, for instance it could have been swamped by graphics and cut-ups in post-production for all we knew. It was a pleasure, therefore, to discover that the director had assembled masses of close-up footage of both the performers and the audience from countless cameras, and had edited them tightly into one of the most involving live films either of us had see. It successfully pulled off the trick of making you feel you were there - even though, obviously, we had actually been there, as can be seen in the film by our presence in various cut-aways. It's gonna be a while 'til Mute get the dvd out (part of a 7-disc box-set for 2007), but part of the reason we'd gone this evening was to ascertain how urgently I'd be buying that release: as soon as it's on pre-order then! Afterwards, we both took trips to the loos there (though I didn't hear what Carolyn had done, namely a couple celebrating the end of the film by shagging in a cubicle), then rushed-off so we could get that last train. Aldgate East tube station had closed for the night, so we had to weave our way through the side-streets of Whitechapel in the general direction of Liverpool Street station; once we'd found the main entrance (the Underground entrances being gated by now) we ran for a Circle line train, did the Monument/Bank crossover on foot, then got the Northern line to reach London Bridge, in more than enough time to fit onto the crowded train back to Hastings.
A couple of days later, I finally had enough money, and was in the right place, to make it along to Revolver for one of Dean's gigs (I'd had to miss his last two there, and hadn't made it to many gigs during November at all, in fact). However, I'd been at home online and on the phone for quite a while before I left to go to Revolver, and during that time the odd glass of wine I'd been drinking from the half-bottle of red I'd had leftover from the weekend became the entire remaining contents of the bottle. I got a pint and sat down to chat with Rufus and Dean, before Dean played some songs, and then I had another pint and was talking to Jamie and Rob Dennis, and then I had another one and Rufus was playing and I bought some Christmas cards off Kim, and talked to him about his exhibition and the trip to London, then some other guy was playing and I chatted to Reuben, then I was talking to Jonathan Martin about upcoming gigs, and Rebecca and Nicola said hello, and Dean was playing again, and Kim plonked a large shot of vodka down in front of me, so I downed it, and I took a couple of photos on my camera, and they'd called time at the bar, and I hadn't taken very much in at all! Still, it was nice to be out...
Tim Hoyte (above) and Dean Adams (below) at Le Pattie Cafe, yesterday.
