Listings, Absinthe and Gay Bands (2008)

Another from The Fly archive. I used to compile the monthly gig listings as well as edit the live reviews. The listings was boring as hell but I used to do them drinking whisky, which helped, and I got paid, which helped me not have to get a real job. And, it wasn't til I'd been doing them for about four years that Harriet Gibsone showed me how to sort them alphabetically automatically. Up to then I'd been doing it all by hand like some kind of absolute twat.

Listings, Absinthe & Gay bands

Apr 15 2008 10:30 am, Joe Shooman

Putting together the gig listings for the mag is one of those jobs that’s so monstrous and time-consuming that it has within it a kind of masochistic magnificence. There’s nothing really quite like it. To start with that bright, white excel sheet is daunting, month after month. And month after month it feels like it’s never going to get finished. There are always new contacts to chase, people moving jobs from venue to venue, new small promoters to try and include and hour upon hour of tedious re-formatting, cutting and pasting and cross-checking to handle. But the only way to do it is to do it and in a very real way its very nature lends it an almost mantra-like quality. The minutes and hours tick by unnoticed almost in the face of the satisfaction of seeing that blank, blinking-cursored space begin to fill up. (It’s the same feeling, in a lot of ways, I used to have when I was cleaning out the stockroom at Halfords; putting things in tidy piles, making sense of the mess, seeing things all in their right place with a sense of piquant pride cause you knew that the next time you come in some lumpy-stomached twat will have knocked everything over again.) Anyway, I maintain that to do it’s a treasure and cause of its monotony small things snap into focus that would otherwise go completely unnoticed.

 The band names, for example, are guaranteed to bring a smile sometimes: there used to be a group touring called Jesus Of Spazzareth, who I vowed to go and see but never got round to (if you’re reading, get in touch), and more recently Arse Full Of Chips (likewise). This month, top marks go to the utter genius that is Kuppa Tea And The PGs. Amazing, also, how many homo references there are: the mighty Gay For Johnny Depp, of course, are a fucking great band, but also check Gay Against You, and this month, White Boys For Gay Jesus raise an eyebrow (they play Joseph’s Well in Leeds on 11 May).

Moreover, filling in that sheet requires a certain kind of concentration, a kind of concentration that enables a certain kind of focus. Because of the fact that it’s a long job that is best done in rather lengthy stretches, it also is best done when there are less distractions, less phonecalls and less emails to fend off – usually on the odd gig-free evening in fact. And cause it’s deadly boring, a glass of absinthe and milk tincture or frozen bison grass vodka helps pass the time away. But - and yeah, I know, but indulge this one, I don’t often wank about like this anymore - there’s some kind of Zen quality within the process too. Often it gives me a chance to catch up on some proper listening to music, without the chatter of the world to interfere. To really listen; like really really really listen. It’s even been known on occasion to be possible dig out some old Stax or Iron Maiden, as well as to snazzz through the new stuff.

And so it was that I whacked on The Presets’ LP, Apocalypso, an album that, in a sense, comes at the bookend of two strange years or so where people decided that Dance Was Good After All and that Drugs Were Also Good If They Were The Right Ones. Well, duuur, fucking well noticed. Whatever genre you like to fuck to, music ain’t actually all that different when you lego it down into its building blocks: tunes, and beats, and frequencies and feet. And The Presets have got it down pat here. There are hooks, crooks and mighty house beats to be had, of course. It feels and sounds a bit like a distillation of all that has come before and a vision maybe of the future – via Marty McFly. Bit of Underworld here, bits of Armin Van Buuren there, it’s an album so damned post-modern that sounds like it’s actually remixing itself as it goes along. It’s significant, I think, that it’s only when putting together a sheet full of gigs that these thoughts kinda come to the fore. Putting together a sheet that describes thousands of bands of various genres and qualities, a sheet that shows what’s happening, where and when – but one that offers few clues, aside from the names, as to any depth of artistic ideas involved. As such, it’s essentially superficial but nonetheless very useful as a reference point to a universe of artistry that lies beyond its conduit crash.

In absentia, veritas, maybe.

 

Keyring accessory of the month: my new one that plays the BIG RED X noise off of Family Fortunes. An argument winner, every time. (I’ve also got one that makes Elvis noises, and when I’m really lonely I pretend he’s talking to me.)

 

Revelation of the month: Never knew that gmail had daily sending quotas til now. Spam throttling, yeah, I understand that bit. Not being able to reply to messages is rather annoying, however.

 

Obvious thing of the month: label on my jar of peanut butter says, ‘contains peanuts’. No shit. Actually it doesn’t actually say that there’s no shit. Hmm.

 

Shit joke of the, well, since ever, and not even told properly I don’t think but fuck it: Absinthe is all very well but it gives you terrible wind that sounds like a motorbike revving its engine. Cos, as everyone knows, Absinthe makes the fart grow Honda.

 

This was gonna be all about going to Lithuania and standing somewhere that put everything into its real perspective, but I just can’t find any words and I don’t think that I should try either. Nelėk greičiau nei skrenda tavo angelas sargas. x