I dream of Floella Benjamin

So Kay was comparing my nephew Mick to Floella Benjamin and goading him that she was prettier than him. But that's not really important, because of this comparison, my mind harked back to Play School, the golden Era, with Derek Griffiths doing some oddball jazz / folk / ragtime crazy speed induced guitar and vocal mash up tunes about a goose, Hanbell, Humpty, Big Ted, Little Ted and Jemima. Shouting at the TV as a five year old, "The Arch window, choose the f*cking Arch Window you cock!", ah those were the days. And Brian Cant, what a nice man.
Anyway, Floella Benjamin corrupted my mind and I dreamt about her. It was really messed up.
Basically, and no sh*t I did dream this, my dreams are weird, she was some sort of Matrix/Blade style anti-hero, in an all in one black leather cat suit and cape. She had various weapons at her disposal which were secreted in concealed pockets, ninja death stars, daggers, acid squirters and poison darts. She was a one woman fighting machine. She also happened to be an England footballer (with the men) playing central midfield with Stephen Gerrard, she was so important she was exempt from wearing the England kit, she could wear her cat suit. And as she was so important she was allowed to kill people on the pitch, the ONLY footballer in the world given permission to do so by FIFA, Pele forced the motion through or something.
So England play the Czech Republic and she kills Tomas Repka playing centre half, the former West Ham player and I'm shouting at the TV, "What the f*ck is going on!" (in my dream). But then she comes out of the TV and says, "You got a f*cking problem?" and I say, "No Floella, you kill them all if you want." And then I woke up hyperventilating.
What does this mean?

Sonic Youth and Vashti Bunyan

Saw Sonic Youth last week (or was it the week before?) at their residency at the Roundhouse playing their "classic album" Daydream Nation.
They were good, I enjoyed it. I dabbled with grunge as a teenager, although strictly speaking Sonic Youth only dabbled with grunge themselves.... I would describe them more as Art Noise. Quite melodic, almost poppy but capable of roaring white noise which makes my heart leap,my eyebrows furrow and my smile gently twitch. I do look like a psycho when this happens to my face I hasten to add.
So on two scores I was happy.
1) I'd never been to the iconic venue the Roundhouse before, and I have to say I was impressed.
2) I've now seen Sonic Youth, one to stick on my gig CV.
Back in the day, whenever it was, maybe 1990, I had a chance to see Nirvana, all my mates from the comic shop in Tottenham were going to go and queue up and buy tickets. I was going to as well. But I was such a loser I slept in. One of the biggest regrets of my (gig) life. I heard afterwards people were knocking shit out of each other in the queue, but I'd have snuck in under the radar and I'm sure I would have got a ticket had I bothered to get up. Turns up not many of my other loser unemployed mates got a ticket either and decided to stay up late and watch open university or Kojak or some other bollocks of the era thus rendering them incapable of an early start!
Ah, those days. Never mind.
As for the Sonic Youth gig, as I said, I enjoyed it. I didn't enjoy the young buck trying to dry hump me from behind because he couldn't get through the crowd and get to the front. He was like one of those dogs ready for their nadgers to be cut off, all frisky and annoying. I swung round and gave him a Ray Winstone cockney volley and he backed off. I was so angry. During my favourite song as well!
Anyway, on to Vashti Bunyan, Ongey came round the other night and we had a very civilised evening (only punctuated occasionally by childish references to bumming) with Debbie and we stuck on the original Vashti Bunyan album from 1970. What a beautiful, sentimental and gorgeous piece of music. Her poetry is lush too and it recounts the songs she wrote on her long journey by horse and gypsy cart to the outer hebrides..... It could be described as twee folk, but knowing the backstory generates an enourmous warmth and nostalgia. Then, I unwrapped her second album (from 2005!) as I bought it and hadn't played it and we listened to that too. It followed the same vibe, but I felt it was overproduced, too clinical. Spoilt it for me somewhat, but again, worth a purchase for her poetry alone. Her song "Brother", the lyrics made me want to cry. But I didn't, cos I'm a hard bastard.

Rasputin and his alleged resistance to poison

I feel a bit sad tonight (or this morning), I have a feeling tonight was the first and last balmy night of the summer. That beautifully rare mild night where you can ponce around in a shirt and have drinks in London without fear of a sudden blizzard or passing shower.

Went to the XXXXXXX bar tonight. Always enjoy it there. A compact rock bar with good drinks and eccentric clientele.

Some interesting events, a bloke asked my mate Trigger if she'd look after his drink whilst he went for a smoke outside. He was the spitting image of a young Derek Jacobi. When he fucked off I was raging, "He looks like Derek Jacobi, a young Derek Jacobi! Look at him!" he even had the roman senator hairstyle with a flattened bouffant fringe and bowl cut. But no one knew who Derek Jacobi was, and my observation was wasted.

The lead singer of Lost Prophets walked in, sporting a trilby, white vest and a big shiner where I imaged someone smacked him in the head. Various randoms overheard whispering, "Is it him?", "Really?". Frankly I don't know anything about them, I suggested to the girl sitting next to me that we should approach him and ask for a photo, if he agreed we'd hand him the camera and say "well hurry up and take a picture of us then you prick!" oh the old ones are the best. She found it funny anyway and wandered off to find him to try that very line whilst I tried to convince her half heartedley that it wasn't a good idea.

Then to the toilets, visiting the toilets in the XXXX is an experience. Now rock bar toilets are usually grim, but these are the interesting side of grim. No seats, metal bowls with limescale protusions embedded with a new bacterial lifeform, bog roll on chains and no locks. Also, you need to tuck your trousers into your socks to avoid soiling your clothing with the bodily waste of a goth.

Really, you do need a police forensic suit to frequent them. When I got downstairs a couple was waiting for one of the badly ventilated hot piss and shit steamed cubicles to be vacated.

He went in first and exclaimed "Enjoy the smell!", I then started to explain that if you ingested small particles of toilet juice every day you will build up an immunity to poison....just like Rasputin.

The woman (while her man was pissing and groaning simultaneously from behind the rickety wooden door) asked me if eating shit was a good idea. A good response. So I continued deadpan. "It would depend on how much you ingest of course, and increasing your quantity over time will of course increase your resistance, leading to full immunity". She seemed fascinated, and asked me whether I would do it. I said of course not, but if I was the lover of the Russian queen, a massive powerful monk and a political activist then I would consider it. Her boyfriend had finished pissing and having listened to our brief and surreal conversation, shepherded her away, with the guilty look of a man who had convinced his girlfriend of an obscure lie to get his own filthy way at some other point in the past. Perhaps not a lie on a par with "eating shit is good for you" though.

Shaun Williamson and Pol Pot

Did anyone watch Shaun Williamson's tough gig, think it was on bbc2, where he had to explore the fashion industry, get to grips with the vibe, write a stand up gig and perform it to the fashionista's.....
Poor bastard. I have never felt such intense hatred for a group of people. I don't know whether it was deliberately cut so as to portray the fashion industry moguls, designers and models as a bunch of vacous, self serving, celery eating, coke snorting, narcissistic fuckwads but thats how they came across.
Oh how the mincing 6 foot 4 mens sales boutique expert laughed when Shaun told him he'll spend around £100 on a suit, when he himself was wearing a pencil thin electric blue number to make him look like a flourescent strip bulb. "Oh bring your suits in darling, we can have a laugh at them."
Like the British tommy in the first world war, Shaun took it all on the chin, with good humour and a generous warmth of spirit. He didn't understand these people, but he didn't want to offend them either. He was subservient, intimidated working class against these over the top caricatures of self indulgence.
"Want me to go over the top sir? I'm allowed to finish my tab first sir? Very generous sir. Thankyou sir. Run towards the barbed wire and german machine gun stronghold sir? Yes sir. I know I'm fat sir, but I promise to run fast, dodge the bullets sir"
Oh how they smirked at the podgy little man. They don't make clothes for him. They make clothes for men and women with no hips, no love handles, over 6 feet and faces like they've swallowed a stinging nettle covered in skunk juice. And apparantley these people are beautiful? Eat a pie!

For some reason, my mind drifted to my trip to Cambodia some years back. Here was a country recovering from the brink of extinction, one man's crazed vision, an agrarian ideal gone mad, where anyone with an education, government job or even for the crime of wearing glasses was considered an undesirable... and either executed, imprisoned or worked to death.

Perhaps Pol Pot, the once mild mannered Cambodian school teacher went to a fashion show, it drove him over the edge...

Come the revolution, I'm sure I'll be put up against the wall, but at least I'll have the pleasure of watching the fashion industry go first. Some of them may be too thin to shoot, so perhaps some sort of cake / chips execution would be appropriate.

And the finale. Was his stand up a hit... erm, No. it looked like Shaun's routine, based on dodgy carry on double entendres bombed in front of that audience... who disdainfully rolled their eyes at his attempts to make them laugh with his gentle observations and nob up the bum gags about the superflous qualities of the fashion industry. How dare this yokel tell us we aren't important!
But in his abject misery, as each jovial awful joke was met with a wall of silence, and his cheesy smile slowly dropped from his face till his body resembled a crushed big mac, sad, lonely and unloved, oozing special sauce, I knew that Shaun would still be a good person deep down, whearas his audience could drift around in their microcosm either telling each other how wonderful they are or bitching about how much weight (3 grammes) their mates have put on.

Aldeburgh and Sutton Hoo

Just spent half the bank holiday weekend in Suffolk. Despite Sizewell looming large over the flat landscape of East Anglia... what a beautiful part of the country. Ok ok, so first we went birdwatching, I grudgingly admit, I sort of like it now.

Once the lone pursuit of anorak wearing, bespectabled nerds, I give it an urban flair.... but I don't have any binoculars. I just sidle up to some studious old lady and say, "Yo ho! Lemme look thru da lens of yo telescopic device beeatch" and they recoil open mouthed and let me check out the Golden Plover sifting through the silt. I am P Diddy to them.... they look at me wide eyed, slightly frightened.

Anyway, on to Alderburgh. Lovely seaside town. Where fishing boats sell their wares direct onto the harbourside. It feeds my imagination, my psyche. I'd love to live by the sea, to know Ron the fisherman, who will reccomend the monkfish or the skate today sir.... but I know this ideal is something my mind has conjured up. I'm not Peter O'Toole on his 3 month summer sojourn to the West Coast of Ireland, resting between movies, roughing it with the lovable locals. Half drunk on dining and drinking. I'm just some squat greek boy from North London with delusions of grandeur.... maybe someday though.

I'm a skittish person, I can rarely just relax, physically or mentally. So while deb was sitting on the beach musing and enjoying the morning warmth as the sun rose gloriously into the sky, I was busy launching pebbles, sometimes rocks the size of my head into the north sea until my left arm was sore from repetitive chucking. That was relaxation to me. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and I was very careful to avoid the old lady having a swim. So I was socially conscious too.

Then onto Sutton Hoo... an ancient Anglo Saxon place of Kingly burial. Where Readwald was buried, along with his beautiful treasures. We did snigger at the name King Ethelbert... but it was educational, and I now am a member of the National Trust. Surely my first step towards becoming a country gent :)

Tube Journeys

Tube journeys always interest me. I like to observe. To see how people react when confined and squashed up against each other. Rather like the time my cousin in Cyprus put twenty neighbourhood cats in a rabbit hutch until it turned into a seething mass of thrashing fur and wailing cries of feline despair, humans are not designed to infiltrate each others sweaty auras in such close proximity.

If I have a seat on the tube, I'm fine. I can relax and watch everyone avoid each others eye contact. Those subtle non-verbal communications on the tube fascinate me. For some people it is all they can do to stop themselves flying into a ball of rage until they reach their stop.

If I don't have a seat, then I try to detach myself from reality, ignore the festering armpit from the lanky streak of piss standing in front of me, whilst also trying to ignore the hot conker in the pants of the fat man wedged up behind me. Tube journeys are not necessarily pleasant, but they are functional and always interesting. Especially if a gibbering madman gets on as well.

The other day I was on the tube, and I sat next to this bloke who had his legs akimbo, like some sort of Blind Date contestant, thrusting his horse like genitals in the general direction of female society. This to me is a challenge. His leg is at least 2 centimetres in my chair perimeter exclusion zone. So I wedge my leg up against his, much as this disgusts me, hoping he, rather than me gives up the physical contact challenge because of his realisation that my revulsion is blocked out by my sense of injustice that he is invading my personal space. And yes. I won! He moved his leg. I did a mental dance of victory. I knew he was angry. Motherf***er! Ha!

A small victory, but an important one.

Now what if an eldery person gets on? I would normally offer my seat. But what they were of borderline pensionable age? I'm all for chivalry and good manners, but I don't want to insult a 55 year old for instance by offering her a seat when she thinks she is a young Helen Mirren. Same goes for pregnant women. What if they are just fat? What do you do then? Humiliate yourself and the woman in question? I second guess myself all the time, procastinating over the right thing to do, 8 zillion computations per second and not making a decision. Whilst thinking like this, other functions collapse, my brain cannot take the strain, so like the starship enterprise, I have to divert life support power to thinking. I haven't stopped breathing in this state yet, but I do turn into a dribbling expressionless freak with a collapsed face, and then nobody wants to sit next to me or have my seat anyway. Such a cruel irony.

Oxegen 2007

In the year of our lord Two-thousand and seven, I Melly the first, fearless urban bubble explorer didst cross the sea to the isle of Hibernia. Here I witnessed many astounding sites, smells and sounds. The mud was unearthly, like nothing seen in the asphalted streets of London. I saw a man with the body of a hippo and the face of a man dry humpeth his girlfriend from behind, mounting her ferociously whilst she wailed like a banshee, I believe in mirth. A naked giant held an incredible hulk toy over his todger and flailed it in the general direction of his friends. Young men, like angry bucks did fly at each other in the mud, wrestling, their sinews popping. A crowd of scum splattered revellers clapping and cheering. I did avoid there revellry for fear of being drawn into combat I would surely lose. I am a scribe, not a warrior. A gentle waif, not a general. A weed, not an oak. A soft handed yellow belly etc.

The mud, such liquid I have never seen, kicked in faces. Mixed with the pisseth and shiteth of thousands, running down the hill from the portaloo's into the filthy mix. My white silk sarong was ruined, but it allowed me to blend in.

The rain lashed down upon me, like a raging torrent, however the glistening gold tin foil dress of the goddess Ditto did light my path to the stage.

Ok, enough verbose rubbish. here's the photos.

First up, a pre-festival gig by the Go! Team at Eleckrowerkz in Camden. I flew to Ireland the next day. What a great gig. I so love the Go! Team, their infection fun can make even the most miserable bastard smile and dance. including me. Unfortunately as we are short greeks, we needed to see above the numerous tall people, so we nabbed a podium to stand on at the side, therefore people assumed we were professional dancers I think. Oh how wrong they were. Although I was much better than Dora and Christina and people asked me who my loser mates were.

Photo taken from our podium. I have no idea why there is a giant Cyberman head looming above Ninja. Tiny stage for a band as plentiful as the go! team, but it worked. And it was fantastic. They played new material. I'm looking forward to their upcoming releases!

Onto Ireland. First up. The Gossip. Beth looks like a ferrero roche in that dress. Her voice is astounding, compelling. And old fashioned blues performer fronting a hard blues band. They sounded awesome. And she was great. They did a cover of Careless Whisper too.....!

Dress came off, and lime green bra came out. For viewers watching in black and white, the lime green bra is covering her tits.

Next up... Mika. I hate myself. But I liked him live. He's a great festival act. And he had 20 foot high massive blow up women which you can't diss. (based on beryl cook art I believe - I briefly sounded intelligent, but my other half told me they were, so if she's wrong, it's nothing to do with me as I'm blissfully ignorant of beryl cook)

Mika knocks over big lady while Mr Miyagi looks on. Wax on, Wax off. Poor Mika has a lot to wax off on that big girl.

The Noisette's in the new band tent... always a top live act! Shingai is a bouncing ball of energy and theatrical grandeur.

I was really looking forward to this next band. CSS, Brazillian electro-pop-punk nutters! Awesome album too. And they didn't fail to disappoint live. I was especially excited by their cover of L7's classic "Pretend we're dead". Lovefoxx bizarrely peeled off many layers of catsuits through the gig. She looks like she is about to hyperventilate through heat exhaustion in the first photo, but saves herself by stripping down to her last pair of leggings like a human pass the parcel. (eventually).

Ok, now onto a band I've seen twice before, Howling Bells. They were of course great! Juanita did dress up like Charlene from neighbours circa 1990 though (which worked for her). Hard to pigeon hole, but I would best describe them as haunting country rock, which is a pants description but the best I can muster.

I'd never heard of Jason Mraz, but he was also awesome, and the kids seemed to love him.

Finally... New Young Pony club, fantastic band, and much harder live than their polished studio work. Definately will see them again. I also liked that dudes checker board hoodie, but he was bigger than me so although I considered braining him with a brick, I didn't want blood on the hoodie, so left him alone. (He'd have probably smashed me in actually)

Special mention to Bright Eyes, Rufus Wainwright (although two Judy Garland songs was a piss take, the self indulgent git!).
And Kate Nash, she was cool too. That's it. By the end of the weekend, i did look like I'd shit myself and was soaked through, but it was fun.

Tried to avoid the main stage, as that is where the drunks congregated, and the feeling of being in a Crimean hospital backyard surrounded by zombie like mud infused drunks who would try to hug you took away from enjoying any music. So Kings of Leon, next time lads!