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.