Hey All

Hey,

I finally managed to finish the review of that annoying band I saw on Thursday Night at about 0600 this morning. I'm pretty sure that it is up in the usual place my reviews turn up when they aren't in print. Thank God that is over. In case I didn't mention it, not only were the band I saw not what I wanted to be seeing, they were also amateurish and boring to-boot. Furthermore the mix was lousy.

Sometimes you do something just because you know that everytime you do it you're one step closer to never having to do it again.

Don't get me wrong, I like writing about music, I like reviewing bands and I like writing about bands that I like. It's just that in this situation my ambition and my ego had twisted into knots in my head, creating the emotional equivalent of a torsion of the intestine. I couldn't write what I wanted because of who was asking me to write it, and I couldn't say no because of what I want to be doing.

In any case, I am determined not to let myself either a) get into a situation where I'm faced with such questions or b) let such questions worry me, as if I'm a real journalist who has to worry about integrity and professional ethics. Given that b) is a place I'd much rather not be, I'm going to steer for a) as much as is humanly possilbe).

There was the rough, here comes the smooth: I just got an email from my editor with the word limit for the Bleeding Through feature: 650 words. Not much, but since I've been learning how to write in an evermore compact fashion, and since I got plenty of great material from Scott the Guitarist, it shouldn't be too hard.

And let it be said, as much as writing about music sometimes brings me into contact with some substandard bands, a band like Bleeding Through makes it all worth it.

Anyways, I've got to take care of some stuff in time for Life on Mars.

Over and out.

-J

Pulling Teeth

Hey All,

I'm having trouble writing the review of the band that I saw on Thursday night. I'm already a day later than I meant to be with this, but I'm having trouble finding the right words to write.

The problem is this: as I'm discovering, the band are great on disc, on video and especially on Paper. But they are shit live. So fucking dull you want to stab your eyes with forks. Hey, maybe I've just been permanently damaged by having a chance to see bands live SixFtHick, Dillinger Escape Plan, Bleeding Through, Shihad etc. Bands that actually have presence and make an effort. Fine Neurosis don't do a hell-of-a-lot on stage, but the music they make and the way they make it creates their own intensity.

But no. This band just stand there and deliver their off-key renditions of their Emperor's New Clothes songs, which when stripped of all the Studio Trickery, sound really fucking weak.

Furthermore, this whole New Rave subculture they started (as a joke, no less, but that doesn't make it right) is so far removed from the spirit of actual Raving that I can't come up with a suitable simile. Raving, at its best, is ecstatic and transcendental, this is smug and tedious.

However, because of the position I am in I would burn too many bridges if I were to write what I actually thought of the show, so I am going to damn them with faint praise instead.

In other news: Some time a week and a half ago Microsoft Word stopped working on my laptop. Which is annoying. Fortunately I managed to find an open-source freeware word processor called Abiword which I am using to write my pieces until a more permanent solution is found. As it is, right now it seems to be working okay for me.

Microsoft Word comes bundled with Microsoft Office, which cost £200, money which I would much rather spend elsewhere. As it is, the only reason I can't just use the Text Edit window in Freehand (which I did, for a really long time) is because it doesn't have a word counter. Which fortunately Abiword does.

Anyways, I've got to get back to making a boring band sound good. I keep reminding myself that I won't always be pawning my integrity like this, and that most of the time I do actually get to write about bands that I actually do like.

Over and out.

-J

Update:

Hey All,

Here's an update on my adventures:

Last night, for reasons I can't even remember, I was running late to get to the show that I was shilling covering for that website. When I got there I discovered that my name wasn't actually on the guest list. Good thing I didn't follow through on my idea of calling up my cousin Katie and seeing if she felt like seeing the show : /

Since I had gone that far, and it was too late to go back to Camden and see Cult of Luna, I found a nearby internet cafe, pulled up the message from the major label flack in Australia and copied down his home and mobile phone numbers. Important lesson: never go to cover a show without a number that you can call of stuff fucks up.

In any case, I added the Australian area code to the mobile number and gave it a bell. This was about 10Pm English time, so in all likelihood I might have woke up the poor chap. He was surprised as I was that my name wasn't where it should have been, so he told me that he would call me back once he had managed to get onto his opposite numbers in England.

When he called me back, he told me that he hadn't managed to reach them, but he did give me some names to drop, which I scribbled into the back of my copy of Catcher in the Rye.

The names drew a blank on the girl at the front desk, but for whatever reason she decided to send me through.

The show itself was pretty silly. Glowsticks and bright colours and off-key singing and the like (the glowsticks are a major clue as to which band it was). Hipsters on the dancefloor and journalists in the back scribbling notes. I wandered about, checking out the vibe and chatting to people about what they liked about the show.

I wound up chattinng to one of the journalists, who turned out to be a twenty year veteran who used to freelance for the NME in the 80s but quit over their editorial policy (ie arbitrary lists of what bands were good or bad completely divorced from the actual quality of the music).

After the show I made my way home.

***

Today I had a minor freakout because I had to be interviewing a member of Bleeding Through at 1730, and I wasn't sure that I had enough clever questions to fill the time in the interview.

I made it to the Mean Fiddler dead on time for the interview, called my contant (who I think was the tour Publicist or something) and was led into the empty Mean Fiddler to wait to do my interview. I was supposed to be interviewing the Bassist, but I wound up interviewing one of the guitarists instead.

The interview itself went surprisingly well, considering the it was the first interview that I had done since AFI last year, when I managed to accidently set my tape recorder on voice activation instead of continuous record. While I was doing the interview there were at least two other interviews going on, as well as a soundcheck in the background. So hopefully all the good quotes didn't get drowned out.

After the interview I hung about for a bit, watching people come and go, before I decided to head to Borders (to buy a copy of Perdido St Station by China Mieville) and then the Crobar to meet up with a friend that was going to pick up my +1. At about quarter past seven I got a message that my friend wouldn't be able to make it because of something that had come up. No matter.

When I returned to the Mean Fiddler the bouncer at the door didn't believe that I was actually on the guestlist, so wouldn't let me through ahead of the queue. I tried playing a piece of the interview for him, but he countered by saying that if my pass was to interview the band, that's all I was there for and I shouldn't have walked out. Miffed but undeterred, I walked all the way to the end of the queue (three corners around the block), secretly glad that I had actually bought a ticket to the show a fortnight ago, before I found out that I would be interviewing the band.

When I got to the entrance, the ticket got me in, but just for fun I checked the guestlist: Yours Truly + 1. Cocksucking bouncer.

While the supports played I mingled with the various other journalists, musicians and others. All good fun.

Finally Bleeding Through came on, and to my surprise they played everything even faster than I remembered it being on the CDs. The energy was incredible, the atmosphere was great and all in all it was an amazing set. Best I've seen them, and I see them pretty much every time they come to London.

I made the mistake of waiting until the end of the encore to join the queue to collect my stuff from the cloak room (I think it tied me up for something like half an hour), and after walking to Leicester Square to check the playing times for The Number 23 (the new Jim Carrey film) I decided that I would rather come home.

All in all pretty good.

Now to get some sleep.

-J

Ticked Off!

Hey All,

Tomorrow night I wanted to see Cult of Luna at the Underworld. But at this stage I can't. Yesterday I was contacted by the Australina Publicity Department of a Major Label about writing a live review for a show by one of their bands in Hammersmith tomorrow night.

I have next to no interest in the band they want me to see, Cult of Luna are a great band that I haven't seen in dogs years and it annoys me to be treated as a corporate shill, my payment being a ticket to a band I don't even care to see and probably another year before the label decides to jerk my chain

Plus I have that Bleeding Thing to worry about. Which I am not complaining about in the slightest, mind.

Grrr.

Over and out.

-Jason

News:

Here's some news:

Thee Ed just emailed me asking if I'd like to move up to interviewing and writing features for the magazine. Specifically, if I'd be available to interview Bleeding Through on Friday.

Bear in mind that Bleeding Through are a band that I try to catch everytime they play in London, I've been following their career for years, I've talked to them in the past and found them to be very friendly people and they are bringing some friends of mine on tour with them.

And I already have a ticket to see them. If I get guestlisted I'll think of someone to give the ticket to, which shouldn't be hard since I already know a bunch of goths who either love them already or would love them, but probably wouldn't already be going to the show.

In other news, last night I went to a club night that a friend was putting on at the Buffalo Bar outside Highbury Station. Which was a pretty relaxed affair. Also: it turns out that the manager of the place is a suprise grindcore buff.

After the club, as I waited for a bus a friend told me that I need to post my thoughts online more often, since she enjoys reading them. She said to me 'You're a writer, and you're a writer for a reason. What you have to say is interesting.'

Granted, she was drunk, but it was still a sweet thing to say.

And with that I am going to get back to the various pokers I have in the fire.

Over and out.

-J

I totally forgot...

I totally forgot to mention before that the new Alternative Magazine came throw the mail today.

It's got a neato photo of some violinist done up to the nines on the cover, with some impressive hair that I suspect was done by my pal Alex. In addition to various interesting bits and pieces inside.

Anyways, no less than five of my live reviews are in there (out of a total of thirteen) as well as the blurb about the Rock club night that I wrote in November or December. All good.

In any case, I do need to get onto scanning the reviews and bits and pieces so that I can put together a digital folio of writing.

As a side note, I'm toying with buying a scanner, since I discovered that I can pick one up for only £60 or £70 from the Mac Shop. It's something I'm going to think about, though I'd have to move a whole lot of crap off my desk first (most of which is crap that shouldn't be on my desk in the first place...).

In other news, in case it wasn't obvious, Stay At Home made a surprise victory, added and abetted by a late dash to Tesco's, feeling tired, gluggy ears and bad knee flare-ups.

Enough from me.

Over and out,

-J

Hey O!

Hey,

After much debating, I decided to stay home last night. I saw a little bit of Platoon, checked my messages and went to be at a disturbingly early hour.

Tonight I am having the same debate, but at this stage it looks like Going Out might win.

Left ear is still blocked, disappointingly so after yesterday's popping clear and then closing again.

Next week I will make sure that I sort out getting a new GP (which will probably involve the whole rigmarole of filling out forms and the like. But it will come in handy if my ears have to be syringed.

Other news: I got an SMS this afternoon from my Landlady saying she had just had her baby. Good for her.

Anyways, must start moving since I have to catch Tesco before they close: I am currently down to licking vegemite off a knife.

Over and out.

-J

Hey All

Hey All,

The other night I saw Pan's Labyrinth.

This afternoon I went to see Hot Fuzz. I haven't been to see too many movies lately, so I thought that I would go see some.

I did the Olive Oil thing last night. I did it again this morning, and it seems to be working. My left ear is still blocked, but sometimes it pops clear for a few seconds before closing again.

Debating whether to stay in or go out again tonight. Staying in looks like it is winning, though I may actually jump on a bus to get some food from Tesco's at some point.

I'm still chopping through Last Exit To Brooklyn. Which is good, because in case I didn't mention it, I set myself the challenge to read 50 books this year (or roughly one a week) and so far I am either four books or four weeks behind. Though on my pile of books to read I also have two books by Chuck Palahniuk, a copy of Catcher in the Rye and the first three books of the Michael Moorcock's Corum series, all of which I should be able to knock down quickly.

I'm waiting on the new Alternative Magazine to come out so that I can check how much of my material made the cut.

Apart from that, it is pretty much the same stuff.

Over and out,

-Jason

Ey Oop!

Hey All,

There was no time to go to the bank to pay my rent today, so instead I headed to Whipps Cross to get my ear looked at. It was starting to hurt, in any case.

At Whipps Cross they scowled at me over the counter when I explained that my Clinic had closed, but they told me to take a seat and wait to see a GP, though since my condition wan't terribly urgent, I might have a long wait. I didn't care, I still had Last Exit to Brooklyn to read and one good ear to listen to my iPod with.

While I waited I actually jotted down some ideas for short stories that have been bouncing around my head the last few days.

When I actually got to see the GP, he looked in my ear and told me that both ears were blocked with wax, but the left one was definitely worse. He told me to gently squirt some warm olive oil in there, and leave it there for a minute with my head tilted, to be repeated twice a day for seven days. That oughtta give me enough time to sign up to a GP, since if my ears weren't better by then they would have to have them syringed.

In any case, he gave me a 10ml syringe to squirt with, and at home I gave it a try while watching, curiously enough, a BBC show called Street Doctors.

Anyways, my ear does feel better, although having ears full of oil feels a little weirder than ears full of wax.

In any case, I'm just about to leap out the door to pass the copy of Canetrash by SixFtHick to the DJ I mentioned last week. (and I can't find my frakking marker pen!)

Over and out,

J

Update:

Here's a news update:

The Landlady finally got the green light from the insurance company to get the ceiling below the bathroom floor fixed, which is good because it means that we no longer have a hole above the front door.

The builders/plumbers/painters have been here for the past three days, but should be finished soon. The hole was fixed by yesterday afternoon, the hall is being repainted a cream colour, as opposed to the cloudy patterned blue we had before. Should be finished either today or tomorrow.

Saturday evening I had a bath, and when I put my head under the water some water got into my right ear. All attempts to shake it loose failed. Since then I've felt like I've had a lump of cotton wool in there, and I feel like sound is muffled on that side (though honestly, I can't be sure).

Yesterday I tried cleaning it with a cotton bud, and found that there is definitely no water left in there, but it does seem waxy. I can hear a faint ringing in there, but my ears have been ringing for years, and it may just be due to the faint muffling (ie it may be frequencies that are usually cancelled out by the ambient noise of London).

I'm trying to decide what to do: whether I got to Boots and buy a small bottle of Earwax Dissolving Stuff, or whether I go to the NHS and get them to have a look in my ears before I do anything. Despite the level of abuse they get, my ears are rather important to me and I would like to get this right.

Right now it isn't painful, but I am aware of it most of the time, and I notice it when I am trying to have a conversation with someone in an environment where there is music playing.

To add insult to injury, my knees are tag teaming over which one is going to be hurting at any given time. Usually they are okay when I set out each day, but after a couple of hours one of them usaully decides to hurt like fuck. It's hard to explain, but there is something in the bending which becomes painful and makes it hard to put any weight on the joint while bending; the bend becomes harder to control.

Which makes walking down stairs really fucking hard. Also means that I find it hard to run, not to mention to hunker down and pick something up if I've dropped it.

I'm thirty years old, and I look even younger than that. I shouldn't feel like an old man.

On an entirely different subject, Life on Mars last night was brilliant. It's only one episode in, but at this stage they have somehow managed to preserve the tone of the first season while simultaneously creating fresh mystery and messing with the characters. Humour and darkness both present and accounted for. And Jonathan Simm has just been cast to play The Master in the new season of Doctor Who (trying to imagine that, but I think that however I think of it they are going to surprise me).

Other than that, working on the usual.

Over and out.

-J

First Things First:

Happy Birthday Mum!!!

Hope you're having a wonderful day.

Yesterdays Snow Day was fun, now it's back to Me vs London again (as in thinking strategically about how I'm going to take over this city, not me feeling put upon by The City of Westminster and all the surronding Boroughs).

I've decided that from now on I'm going to dump images from my digital camera onto my harddrive at the end of every day, since it did miff me yesterday that I had to run back home at midday to clear the camera since the memory card was full.

Also: since my phone [mental note, insert photo of old faithful] is starting to reach the end of its useful life (keys sticking = equals texting nightmare, permanent message alert icon for no apparent reason) I've figured that it is time for me to actually start actively looking around for a new one. Me being the paragon of simplicity and practicality that I am (stop laughing, you at the back!), I'm not going to go straight for the most high-end, diamond encrusted piece of hardware that I can get, but I have decided that something that I can snap stupid little shots on ('what an interesting menu! *click*) would be useful.

Dumping photos as I type, give or take a short detour ensued while I surfed the net to find the right HTML to write "Happy Birthday Mum" in big text; I'm getting pretty good at spontaneous little HTML stuff. Watch Out Gus, I'm after your job! : )

Anyways, after coming home, dumping pictures and changing my boots (my other ones were soaking wet from wandering around in the snow) I jumped on the tube to Stratford to return some library books then headed into the Square Mile to wander around Hyde Park.

Of course, by this time the snow was pretty much melted (bearing in mind that the square mile is usually a degree or two warmer than the rest of the city, and that there would have been mad snow-man activity with the crowds in Hyde Park).

So I just wandered around, contemplating the transience of all things, eventually finding myself on Park Lane (the location of some of the most unlikely derelict buildings) and then Piccadilly.

From Leicester Square I headed up to Camden, where I cooled my heels at the Devonshire Arms as a DJ played some rough and rootsy rock'n'roll. Mental note, pimp the 'Hick to him. After some Su-doku So-Duku that weird puzzle game with the squares wot people play on the tube I decided to take myself home.

By this time my feet were aching and both my knees really hurt, making walking down stairs paradoxically difficult. Snow Damage? I'll have to ask someone who would know.

Today it is back into the trenches and once more into the breach.

Over and out.

-J

Snow!

Lots of Snow!

Dickensian levels of snow!

It's midday and it is still out there.

It's not too cold either.

I got up extra early, had a tramp around, came back, recharged my Camera and then tramped around even more.

Pics to follow.

Yay for show.

(I can already see some of it melting on rofftops from my window, but I still say yay!).

Pics to follow.

-J

Adventures South of the River

Hey All,

Thanks to Central Line Snafus and a rather ill-advised nap, I made it to the Psy-Trance party I had to cover just before the Guest-list cutoff.

After spending the obligatory 30 minutes in the Cloak Room Queue, I explored my surroundings and found something like five or six rooms of different kinds of electronic music being played at ear-splitting volumes. I also saw a surprising number of familiar faces, and none of the aggro chavs I was warned would be in attendance. I wandered around, danced about, took some notes and ended the night chilling with a flying squad of Swiss ravers who had come to see their DJ friend play.

The place turned out at 10 AM, and I had breakfast at a nearby cafe. Taking the tube to Stratford, I stopped in at a WH Smith and found the 2007 Writers Handbook, published by MacMillan, which I figured was something worth having, so I bought it.

The Central line was still under 'planned engineering works', so I stupidly took the Tube Replacement Bus instead of the 257, which meant that I got caught in a traffic jam at the north end of Leytonstone High Road, which wouldn't have been so bad if the bus I was riding wasn't a stinking diesel hulk they had pulled out of mothballs just for this route. It was all I could do not to throw up by the time I got back to Leytonstone Station.

Naturally, I had to catch at 257 in the other direction to get back to my flat.

Now I'm checking my messages before I jump in a shower, change into none club-stinking clothes and head to my office The Devonshire Arms to write out my notes and plan how I'm going to write the piece on the Antiworld Party.

The idea, of course, is that I don't nod off between now and then, because to do so would throw my sleeping patterns clean out of whack. And I need to keep it together this week. I have fat fish to fry.

*Must*
*not*
*lie*
*down*

Over and out,

-J

Hey all

Hey everyone,

Gross notes first: the coldsore has healed in pretty much record time (it was already looking much better by Monday, whereas in the past I've still had weeping horrors at the 14 day mark). Unfortunately, my morbid fear of cross-infection has meant that I've been washing my hands much more than usual, which combined with the cold, dry weather to make them crack and bleed in a most horrible fashion.

No matter, I'll moisturize the hell out of them at some point.

Anyways, this week I've been working on some design-ey stuff, as well as the usual reading and whatnot.

Here's something I posted somewhere else on the net that I figured I might as well put here:

>>>

Last week I saw Norma Jean, an American Noisecore Act, play a set at the Carling Academy.

I'm not actually that familiar with Norma Jean (Zao is as far as I go with the Christian Noisecore thing and fair play, they are bloody good), but I did enjoy the show. Especially since, for once, I wasn't actually up the back scribbling notes. Nope, I was in the pit, trying to throw myself far enough into the crowd that I wouldn't get punched in the kidneys by the circle pit behind me.

Here's the thing. As much as their basslines rumbled and their riffing ripped, the beats clattered and the vocalist shrieked, I just didn't get that feeling of being swept up by the show. Sometimes, something felt like it was starting to build, but it never picked up enough power to really sweep me off my feet.


I was, however, reminded of something. As with most Australian kids, I used to spend a lot of time at the beach when I was a child (yep, goth credibility flies out the window, but I care less). So much so that the feeling of being in the waves became imprinted on me, the same way other people might feel about skateboarding or skiing or something.

To draw some sweeping generalisations, other Australians on my fList would probably be able to relate, English people less so. Sure, English kids have probably seen surf off the West Coast of Spain (or even Cornwall), but that feeling wouldn't be hardwired into them, so I'm going to try to explain.

As insane as it sounds, the thing I loved, as a kid, about being in the sea was the way that waves would pick you up and throw you about. Knock you clean off your feet when you least expected it. The sense that you were in the midst of something exponentially more powerful than you, and it didn't care whether you lived or died. You were in the middle of this surging, roaring beast.

I don't know. Maybe I would be explaining this better if I hadn't been up all night re-teaching myself Freehand.

The point is, I don't get that feeling anywhere anymore.

Nowhere, that is, except for very occasionally when I'm at a truly amazing show. It isn't the violence of the mosh-pit or the overload of testosterone that does it, either (not only that, anyway). It's more to do with the sheer force of the sound and the way the rhythms and frequencies capture me. The power and the energy being transmitted that transforms from the sonic to the kinetic and back again. That's what I hunger for.

Maybe it's just me. I don't find other people have the same compulsion to stand in out in the street when there's a gale blowing or a storm rising.

But that is what I want from music: the feeling that I've been hit by a tidal wave of sound, and I'm going to ride it all the way to the shore.

<<<

In other windows I'm reading the Wikipedia entries on PostCyberPunk and Space Opera.

Like I've said before, I love Wikipedia. It's The Idiot's Guide to Pretty Much Anything.

This weekend I have to cover a Psy-Trance party in SE1, which should be interesting. My friends have suggested I get myself a pair of Cargo Pants to maybe blend in a little better, since my usual punk/goth/metal threads wouldn't really cut it.

Strange note: last time I was in the Charity Shop around the corner, I counted no less than three copies of Bridgette Jones' Diary. That's not counting the copy I bought a few months back. How many Chick Lit Fans can there be in one neighbourhood?

Anyways, gotta go.

Over and out.

-J