It's a Book? A Film? And a Song?

So, it's been a busy old week that's hardly seen me in the house. I don't normally like having so much stuff happening at once, but sometimes it's just unavoidable.

So, what've we had?

Monday : Band rehearsal ahead of the year's first gig later in the week. Blasted through the set first time with the energy of an erupting volcano...and left ourselves no juice for the second, decidedly limp run through. Left confident, however, that we'll put in a good performance - as long as we only have to play the songs the once.

Also, took delivery of the drum tracks from the previous weekend's recordings (though of course there's been no time to even listen to them yet).


Tuesday : Worked late and then met up with Em for an impromptu trip to GFT. Babel was not the tough, middle-eastern espionage actioner that I had surmised from the very little I knew about it. Instead it was a thoughtful but rather unremittingly grim study of human communication and language. And is heartily recommended...as long as your not expecting Brad Pitt to be rolling around in the dust blowing things up and shooting people.


Wednesday : Word Dogs day. The event went very well. The venue was well chosen and comfortably attended, the stories well selected and all the readers took the theme of Cry Havoc! to their breasts and did an excellent job. Highlights for me were Eliza Chan's piece of perplexed Austinian outrage, Rich Mosses' sleep deprived slice of contemporary bravura, and the ever entertaining Gav Inglis' tale of retail hell. And then there was Al... his reduced, prosified reworking of his now infamous 43 verse sea shanty was a veritable, joyful broadside of a performance. It was a red-lit Captain Jack Flash dolled up in red and black punk gear, patched with the Jolly Roger even, ranting in our faces like a force-ten and leering like the Pink Privateer hisself. Brilliant.

Me, I read a section from the novel. People liked the monkeys.


Thursday : Gig night, playing for the Pinup guys at their new Ambulance Station night at the Admiral, which if you happen to be in Glasgow, has a great wee venue downstairs from the main pub bit. These kind of multi-band nights are always a bit of a variety show, and this one was no exception. We followed the full-on power fuzz of Conscious Pilot, and after us the assembled audience got to chill and dance a bit to the happy, happy twee-indie (twindie? tweedie?**) songs of Mia Beane And The Asthmatic Scene. Afterwards we kicked back with a few drinks and enjoyed the unbelievable - and occasionally unmentionable - depths of Mr Paul Puppet's CD collection.

[** This sparked a conversational game. Assuming that any musical style can be performed in a twee manner, a whole new vista of sub-genre names are suddenly available to the music journalist: twee-folk might be "tweek", twee-pop is surely "twop", then we have "twazz", "twock", "twing", "twelectronica". And best of all improvised jazz singing performed with fey vocal delivery MUST be twee-scat. This I want to hear - not just for the juvenile appropriation of the name, yunnerstand - I really want to hear it.]


And there's more.

Tonight's extravaganza is a trip to the Academy to see Ben Folds abuse his piano. I'll watch, listen - possibly marvel even - and be grateful that I don't have to do anything but be there.

Word, Dog.

A date for yer diary, should you be interested in this sort of thing.

Wednesday 24th January, 8.30pm
13th Note, King Street, Glasgow
Word Dogs : Cry Havoc! An explosive evening of high-octane fiction readings on the subject of conflict, war, ruckuses, barneys and gentlemen's boxing brought to you by Word Dogs, the exhibitionist arm of GSFWC.

The format will be something like:
1/ grab a seat and a beer
2/ listen to two or three entertaining stories
3/ grab another beer and have a chat
4/ more stories
5/ more beer... and so on until closing time.

Easy, fun and quieter than Murnie. Come on down.


If noise is more your thing, however, I should also take the opportunity to point out that Murnie are rolling out the loudness guns the following night for Pin-up's Ambulance Station at the Admiral in Waterloo Street.

Aye well, at least it's never dull round here.

Beggars Belief

How is it even possible that anyone thought that this was a good idea, let alone neglected to take medical advice about it. Me, though, I don't really blame the idiot radio station, or the half-wits that entered the competition. I blame the Nintendo marketing geniuses that came up with product name in the first place.

People are puerile. That's just the way it is.

Nervous as all hell about what the general public will make of the second generation version undoubtedly in development as we speak.

The dreaded Puu.

It's a Swizz!

So, that's the holiday break almost over. I've got a couple of days yet til I go back to work, but as one of them will be spent having root treatment at the dentist, it doesn't really count. As you'll have gathered it's not been the most healthy or productive of breaks, but even so it rather surprises me to find that I'm actually looking forward to going back to work.

Meantime if anyone with kids is looking for something to do in the Newcastle area, we can heartily recommend Seven Stories which is a rather neat bookshop cum story telling centre.

Loads of fun.