SCD13

 Today I have got rage at everything.

I would be planning to get drunk usually.

That adds to the rage.

But I will be strong and come through this a different way.

Sober Chronicles, Day 12

 God I am so fucking bored.

Seriously, this is the dangerous time. All the righteous energy has now completely dissipated and now I'm sat here, at the end of a nothing day, bored as shit.

What else is there to do? I can write, or try to: I've got a book to work on. I'm chipping away at that piece by piece cause it's an A-Z of Elvis and so quite self-contained narrative-wise. But I'm fucking bored of myself and that means the writing is uninspired and worthless.

I know when it's not uninspired. That's not now.

BLAH BLAH

I wrote loads more on this update and it was good and talked about Hunter Thompson and Elizabeth Wurtzel and all sorts of cool self-analysis THEN THE INTERNET BROKE AND I LOST IT ALL

fuck today

But I won't drink. 

Fucks sake.

Sober Chronicles, Day 1

I'm not drinking in August, 2020 for lots of reasons. One is that I can hopefully raise money for a prostate cancer charity, and that is a good reason in itself.

Secondly, and probably as important if not more so, I have been getting drunk at home for little reason aside from I can. This is not the fun drinks with mates, or at the footy, or anything. It's not even really a lovely glass of wine with a lovely meal, because that lovely glass turns into a bottle and another one and then asleep on the sofa with YouTube re-runs of Andy Kaufman blurbitating on unseen.

I dunno, it's easy to get preachy isn't it. There are lots and lots of 'reasons' to drink. I mean, look at the UK. Brek-fucking-shit, the Tories fucking everything up, lying and getting away with it, and blaming the people instead. AND PEOPLE IN TURN VOTING FOR THE TORIES ANYWAY. Jesus fuck. Pass the Motor Oil and Absinth, I want to get obliterated.

Aye, if only that meant that the hangover came with any change. Which it doesn't, does it? So that's not a valid reason.

I think hangovers are very interesting, psychologically, particularly if they're an aftermath-of-a-binge-toward-oblivion. What they do is make you feel ultra-shitty, maybe a bit paranoid, physically and mentally battered.

Now, considering all of that I wonder if, also, the hangover is the self-flaggelation that is acceptable to society here. Nothing else really is acceptable in the same way. And, so, the hangover is punishment for the drinking-to-forget-ness. It is part of the self-loathing deal, and serves as an avatar for the real issue, which in my case is probably something like "I could do more to change the narrative. Why am I not more politically active? Why have I not led my life more aggressively? When I was 17 I was convinced that I would, one way or another".

All of that is wrapped up in a headache and a tummy ache and a bravado that says, and I say regularly: "If you can't deal with a hangover don't drink". I castigate people for feeling shit in the mornings, and tell them to get the fuck on with it. I mean, that's kind of an arsehole attitude isn't it.

I've just read the Allen Carr 'Easy Way' stop drinking book. When I stopped smoking, his smoking book helped me reprogramme myself hugely, because I realised:

* If I really concentrated on smoking a cigarette, I could work out whether I enjoyed it or not.

That was basically it. And, I realised, no, I don't really like this all that much. So I stopped (with patches, and willpower, and writing a book, and splitting up with a reasonably long-term-ish girlfriend). Not exactly a calm period in my life, but I can say that the book has sold more than any of my other ones by miles, and is now in its third edition (I anticipate another update in the next 24 months). 

There is a difference here, though. The Carr/drinking book insists on diminishing booze as a poison. It does not acknowledge the difference between the epicural and the alcohol itself. What is difficult here is that I am not convinced that there are no benefits to be had from the taste - and the effect - of some high-quality drinks. Rioja and cheese. Wonderful. A tot of smoky Talisker, that burns on the way down in a way that warms and makes you shudder at the same time. It's a much more visceral thing than Carr insists.

There is a lot of truth in the ideas he recycles from the smoking book though, mostly:

* Think about the ritual of smoking (drinking). You have to go to the shop and buy it. Maybe getting freezing cold. It costs you a load of cash. And then you feel like shit and you stink.

In other words, it's easier not to go through all of that. To not go to the shop, to stay warm, to keep your dosh and to feel better, and not stink of smoke.

So there's something in that isn't there, which I am thinking about deeply. It's all about the logic here. And I know I stopped smoking after a 10-year binge of filterless rollies and a fair amount of weed now and then. So, y'know. This isn't unprecedented.

Actually the parallels with weed are stronger than with fags. I don't like the effects of being stoned and useless; there's a part of my brain that can't abandon itself to what really is an oblivion blanket, and it taunts and irritates me when I'm trying to slob about. So I don't really ever smoke weed. But there is also a subjective mind-altering side, which I think Carr completely underplays in his metaphors about drunken plane pilots and the like. 

There is something primal about altered states and I doubt sincerely whether there's anyone on the planet who hasn't spun round and round til they got dizzy and giggly as a kid. Or done yoga. Or meditated. Or whatever. Different ways to the same land is all they are. The land of not-this-one. 

I spose writing could be part of that too. Reading, and writing.

So that's Day 1 - it's 1pm and I've thought of nothing else for most of today. Inevitable and of course a bit tragic but I forgive myself for it cause it's absolutely part of the process. There's one part of the evening - about 6-8pm - where I need to change my behaviour the most. That's the dodgy part of the day when I have been going to the shop for some wine or whatever. And, well. Now I have to do something else don't I.

You're getting a lot for your buck if you sponsor me, I think. I'm not just stopping alcohol for a month, I'm thinking about my relationship to the world too. Yabadabadoooooooo.

Sound City 2009

From The Fly

Secret Songs And Sonic Snogs

May 22 2009 12:00 pm, Joe Shooman

Liverpool Sound City 2009 is now in full swing, now becoming an established part of the city’s musical consciousness and a conference, too, in the grand and honoured tradition. Why, even The Fly’s own Liverpool correspondent Stephen Kelly has been giving it large, appearing on panels about the state of the music biz even whilst constructing some fine reviews that shall appear both on this site and subsequently in the magazine itself.

There’s quite a few of us Fly-heads here which gives us an opportunity to see as many of the best acts as possible – given there’s so much damned great stuff to try and watch, it’s impossible for just one man to catch em all, like musical pokemons or some such.

 

Undeniably one of the pleasures of Liverpool Music Week – and events like it – is the fact that you can wander around in town, wristbanded-up, and just follow your ears. In every corner of every bar it seems there’s music going on, from the likes of Juliette Lewis and Metronomy in the bigger gigs to a host of exciting upcoming acts like Peter & The Wolf, Indica Ritual and loadsa others. See our fab Great Escape coverage for a prime example of fizzing around in the company of some of the greatest contemporary acts of our - and any other - era.

 

And even beyond the 'official' lineups, often there’s quite some fun to be had. Witness last night, for example, and an absolute treat.

 

So, hanging around in the back of a gig in the Leaf Café in the fab new Contemporary Urban Centre (CUC) we were, when a singer and songwriter called Chris and producer/collaborator Rob appeared and invited a few bods up to the studio on the sixth floor. Grolsch was promised so obviously we were happy to accept.

What we found was a surprise but a very welcome one, in the form of an unexpected warm-up performance from a brand new band called Hallo… I Love You! The predominately studio-crafted act is bolstered to a five-piece live who purvey a decidedly joyous line in sweet, but not sickly, loved-up pop. There’s an indie edge to matters, of course, with live bass and guitar boosting the Moogs, keyboards and close-harmony skippy vocals, but I guess the word is unabashed. They were great and support Little Boots in the O2 Academy tonight (Friday) so if you’re around try and catch them.

 

The CUC itself is something of a marvellous thing – a reimagined old factory in one of Liverpool’s slowly regenerating areas. A hop and skip from where the new Picket is, this multi-floor marvel has three ace bars and restaurants on the ground floor, and above that dance, film, recording studios and loads of cool stuff going on. It’s really one of the triumphs of the city (or to be more exact the people with the vision to get it off the ground) and quite possibly the first step in a proper regeneration of that area. It’s not difficult to imagine, or to dream, that in five – ten – fifteen years time the area down near the docks can slowly change from old car parts warehouses and dingy factories into something entirely more bohemian and café-life-ish. There’s space here waiting for ideas and investment and with a little foresight it could well kick Liverpool up yet another level. Now all that useless Capital Of Culture façade is over, the real work starts.

 

And as long as there are people like Liverpool Sound City involved, the future looks damned decent from here. Bring it on.

Iron Maiden win a Brit Award (2009)

The Fly blog post.

Great Brits

Feb 20 2009 12:57 pm, Joe Shooman

Amidst all the furore of the Brits there was one very significant - and might I add long-overdue – winner. For thirty years this band have consistently sold millions of albums, had top twenty hits and a number one, and toured to ever-expanding venues. Currently they’re packing out stadia in everywhere from Brazil to Bangalore; songwriters and musicians of the highest strata and they deserve every bit of respect we have.

People take the piss out of heavy metal because it is deemed as being faintly ridiculous; overblown guitar riffs, balls-out testosterone, daft hair and axe-weilding goons playing lead lines in harmonised fourths. The material’s epic, sexualised, rampant stuff. It is beyond doubt however that a metal band of the calibre of Iron Maiden in full flow stand alone as masters of their genre. Inheritors of the baton of rock n roll and it’s about time they were recognised properly. They’ve operated outside the establishment for so long that they’ve learned to live without it and although of late the media has softened in their attitude toward the growling roarers, since their heyday in the early-mid 1980s they’ve seen off any number of careers of other, lesser bands, several musical fads and, lest we forget, they've seen off several magazines.

Expect everyone to get on the bandwagon with Maiden from hereon in because with their Brit award they are now 'officially' UK Musical Treasures and they belong to us all. It wasn’t always like that; when Bruce Dickinson left in 1992 to pursue a critically-acclaimed solo career, the band’s time looked to be up. Even more so when grunge took the heavy-guitars-and-ridiculous-clothes mantle up and Steve Harris – driving force and bassist – kept his lads chugging along in the face of falling sales and all-round shrugs. In this dark period for heavy metal, Maiden sputtered along in ever-smaller college-sized venues with Blaze Bayley trying – and failing – to step into the mighty shoes of the impish genius of Bruce Dickinson.

 

Dickinson himself had only joined Maiden after previous vocalist Paul Di’Anno finally went off the rails in a satisfying haze of drug-fuelled mayhem. Dickinson, a history graduate, was probably glad to have shaken off his nickname from one of his previous bands, the also-excellent Samson. To whit: Bruce Bruce. (His girlfriend at the time, somewhat inevitably, came to be called Jane Jane.)

Surprisingly, Bruce rejoined the band in ’99 and their vast albums since then have been more notable for their expansive approach and, let’s face it, Classical Music technique. This is a band who have redefined heavy metal and what it means to be a musician in a rock group. For decades the UK has been ashamed of bands like Maiden, ghettoising them to specialist magazines and 2am rock shows. But now, with the power of the internet, the mobilising forces of the metal community have a more powerful voice than ever before. Or at lelast a more recognised one. This is somewhere that fans don't fall for the passing whim of johnny-come-lately fly-by-night instant gratification pop star faddishness; it's a lifestyle as much as a musical movement.

 

But let’s get one thing straight because it’s important.

Thsese guys didn’t need the acknowledgement or 'validation' of a Brit award because they’ve nothing to prove to anybody. It’s a triumph for metal, sure, but mostly for the influence and creativity and huge respect for their fans that the band themselves have always made central to their approach. Maiden were a great British band for twenty years before this pat-on-the-head was bestowed on them and they will continue to be so no matter how many awards or plaudits come their way. They rock today and they rocked on Tuesday. It’s what they’ve always done. Knighthoods would be more like it.

 

Wonder if Eddie slipped one up Duffy backstage?

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

 

Spiders and Chuckle Brothers (2008)

From the archive of The Fly magazine

Sep 08 2008 11:09 am, Joe Shooman

- Do you want to go to this Love Music Hate Racism gig, Shoobag?

- yeah definitely, who’s on?

- Roll Deep, The Courteeners, Reverend & The Makers, Kaiser Chiefs, loads of local bands and that. It’s an indoor carnival, really.

- yeah man sounds sound, la, which venue is it at?

- Magna

- Ah right, I don’t know that one, is it the new name for the Students’ Union?

- No mate, it’s not in Liverpool

- Ah. Manchester?

- Think more… Yorkshire

 

so I did, and this is how I ended up not in Sheffield, or Leeds, but in an old steelworks in an industrial estate in Rotherham this weekend. Not that I’ve got anything against that town whatsoever: the footy team are one of those perennial-underdog types that crop up on MOTD kicking the fuck out of the latest fancy dans in the FA Cup Third Round, for a start. Secondly, of course, it’s the home of the Chuckle Brothers (whose autobiography I wanted desperately to ghost-write til they went and did it with someone else) so it can’t be all bad.

 

Magna is an odd and rather wonderful place that, according to the blurb, is ‘the UK’s first Science Adventure Centre’, something that sounds vaguely Scientologist but has very little to do with Xenu, volcanoes and Operating Thetans and everything to do with getting kids to learn cool stuff by accident whilst they think they’re just lobbing things at each other in ball pools and giving people electric shocks with cattleprods and the like (I’m extrapolating here, I haven’t been there properly). Anyway from what I saw of it, it looks bloody ace, and has massive turbiney things and stuff to play with.

 

What it isn’t, is an obvious venue in which to set up a Love Music Hate Racism gig in response to recent BNP gains in the area.

 

But then Jon McClure, the politicised groove-monk(ey) behind Reverend & The Makers, doesn’t always take the most obvious path – for it is he who was catalyst for this event, and he who ensured that the Kaisers would headline, despite the fact that it fell on one of Ricky and the gang’s only days off, apparently, til 2010. They were fucking great and if this album doesn’t get them some US success I’ll probably shrug and say ‘ah well’ or something equally dull. The gig – a tenner for some of the UK’s top talent – was top and the atmosphere was rather excellent too. Even if it was a fiver for a double JD & coke, which took the piss.

 

I ain’t gonna write a review or owt cause Ruth Offord has, and she’s dead good at that sort of thing. Just worth reiterating, I think, that the inherent power of music to bring 4,500 people together here with no immediately obvious ways of getting home is and was a quite remarkable and beautiful thing, and hopefully next time the elections come around a similar amount of people can be arsed to get down the polling stations and make sure the BNP don’t get elected by dint of absent, apathetic voters. Democracy depends on participation a chunk of the time and though the right to not vote is a fundamental tenet of the concept, this is the kind of thing that can happen when nobody bothers to go and put their X on a piece of paper. Secondly, LMHR have some of the damned coolest T-shirts known to mankind so go and get one: www.lovemusichateracism.com

 

The journey to Liverpool the next day was long, and sweaty, and horrendously hungover, and happy, and got even better when I alighted at Lime Street straight into a crowd of several thousand people whose gaze was set upon a massive spider halfway up a derelict office block. No ordinary spider, neither: a massive, mechanical beast called La Machine, which was commissioned by Liverpool Culture Company from Artichoke who paraded a massive elephant round London a while back for some reason. Art, I think they called it, which is good enough for me cause I don’t know what that word means at the best of times. Anyway, the spider is fantastic, and realistic, and a little bit Ridley Scott/HR Giger-ish, and as several thousand people watched, and watched, and watched, this wonderful hybrid of animatronix, machinery and primal-fear perched on the side of the horrendous 60s office building that’s been set for demolition for ten years and the spider, with the power to shock, to break, to destroy, immediately set about doing… absolutely fuck all.

 

What had happened, we all soon found out from an errant security officer, was that a website had been put up online which indicated that the spider was to do some Mad Skillz Climbing at 3pm on Sunday, so everyone congregated outside St George Hall to watch it do its scampery thing. This not only brought traffic to a standstill, but necessitated a mass security and police operation just in case… well in case there were spider-related riots, or somesuch. Marvellously, however, piss all happened because, apparently, said website was an unofficial one, a hoax one, and had no relation to La Machine, Artichoke or anyone else. The spider wasn’t gonna do anything at all til 7pm that night, in actual fact.

 

You’d think that a spider of all fucking things would have a reliable web presence, but as befits the Liverpool Capital Of Culture, no such luck. Brilliantly, too, I heard over the weekend that most of the people working for the Culture Company have contracts that come to an end on December 31, 2008. So culture stops, officially.

 

All of which is academic cause we’re gonna all be eaten by black holes when they turn on that big massive Hardon Collider thing in Switzerland on Wednesday, but that’s another story. See you on the dark side.