Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Continuing my series of blogs about Stuff What Happened Weeks Ago, I’m relatively certain that next in the ongoing saga of me is the Manics gig. Oh yes it was. On the 30th of your Earth May. It’s hard not to be pleased by that. It’s fair to say the Manics have had a rough…decade, I guess, which culminated in an album so hated (Lifeblood) that even they barely played from it on the fucking ALBUM TOUR. No-one wants to hear that Richard Nixon song, thanks (though 1985 wasn’t bad.) However, there’s still part of me that remembers how much they once consumed my musical taste - since they were playing a club venue AND it was the Astoria, it seemed reasonable that we should turn up and hope that they didn’t play too much of the new stuff. Which is exactly what we did.

When we started queueing, it was a fair way back. Amusingly, I read on Popbitch that there were about 10 people outside at 7:45 am, and when I walked by at lunchtime, around 1:45 pm the queue was made up of about…10 people. The hardest of hardcore Manics fans are devoted, if not particularly smart. I had somehow caused myself an injury in the torso area which made it a very bad idea I should go into the mosh pit. Disappointing for me, but at since Nikki was there it didn’t ruin the experience. We grabbed ourselves a table on the balcony and waited for the band, first having to sit through The Enemy. Who were dire. I also broke out my book for the ultimate in Manics scene snobbery, reading Salinger at a Manics gig.

Eventually the Manics came and played a fucking great gig. Their new songs might be shit but the band’s about as tight as it’s ever been, and after a rather pointless arena gig on the best of tour where they ripped apart Faster, playing it ACOUSTICALLY (WHY? GOD WHY?!) this smaller venue seemed way more special. I was tempted to take a copy of Phonogram #6 and chuck it on-stage, but the previously mentioned injury meant I’d have been unable to get close enough. Ah well.

Here is the setlist, as annotated by me:

Stay Beautiful - Excellent opener, but given how far they’ve come from their roots, playing this song borders on irony.
Imperial Bodybags - shit.
Motorcycle Emptiness - Still got it! (See final page of Phonogram: Rue Britannia for details)
I’m Just A Patsy - shit.
Faster - FUCK YEAH. Dedicated to the venue by Wire, since they haven’t played there in like 13 years.
La Tristesse Durera - Hmm.
Send Away The Tigers - shit.
From Despair to Where - Double hmm. Could be worse, I suppose…
Winterlovers - shit.
Everything Must Go - Ooh, i remember this from the 90s!
Die in the Summertime - Best song of the whole fucking set.
Ocean Spray - Uhoh. Text received from Dan (who was downstairs) during the opening bars read simply: “WHY?”
Your Love Alone Is Not Enough - I prefer the version I can switch off.
If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next - During this some guy near us waved his lager and sang loudly. I think that says it all.
Let Robeson Sing (acoustic) - Kill me.
This Is Yesterday (acoustic) - And with this song, THB out-represents EMG in the set. Who’d have guessed?
You Love Us - We do! For about 2 song’s length.
Sleepflower - Apparently people were crowing for JDB to play this on his solo tour. My favourite song off GAtS. Never expected to hear it live
Autumnsong - We no longer love them. Fucking *horrible* AND it’s the next single!
You Stole The Sun From My Heart - Good moshpit song. EXCEPT I WASN’T IN IT.
Little Baby Nothing - JDB clearly too embarrassed to sing the “used, used, used by men” bit.
Condemned to Rock and Roll into Motown Junk - Crowd on the balcony seemed confused by these songs. Philistines.
A Design For Life - That old chestnut.

Still, despite my cynicism, it was a fun gig. Good enough that we bought tickets to go see them at Brixton this December. I do love Christmas gigs.

This has been sitting in my backend (ooh, computing double-entendre!) for some time so let’s get it posted, then later I’ll come back with some more stuff I did, lest it be stricken from the record forever, because christ knows I don’t remember anything if it isn’t written down on the Internet.

One of the weekends following Bristol, Nikki and I went to visit the Family Annett-Baker (There’s three of them now, so that counts as a Family) in Sunny Brighton. Only it wasn’t Sunny. It was fucking windy and raining and shit, which after the horrible heat of the previous week, was fucking great. Exactly the kind of weather I love. I drove down and met Nikki, Relly and (for the first time) Toby in HMV, and then we meandered around Brighton getting soaked. Had dinner at some grill place (I remembered the name. It was called Tootsies. Slang for “toes” as I recall, but I didn’t see any toes on the menu, unfortunately) that was very nice, then we slunk off to a small coffee house called “Star Bucks” - frankly I don’t think it’ll catch on - where we met Paul from a client meeting. And some guy nicked a copy of the Times by reaching in the door, grabbing a paper and running off again, but he did it so quickly no-one could believe it. This is clearly the way to thieve.

It was excellent to see Paul and Relly again. I suspect last time I said I wouldn’t leave it another year, only I think I left it longer this time. So, definitely, this time, I won’t leave it another year, if only because I believe there’s a joint Mother/Son birthday party coming up. Before we left, Relly and Paul proved their insanity by letting[making] me hold Toby. It was like holding a hamster, only one where it would matter a lot more if you dropped it. Toby, to his credit, didn’t do any of the things I hate so much about babies (screaming and vomiting) and he only crapped himself once, which I think is the average for people going out in Brighton. He seemed to like me but what does he know? He’s just a baby! Though he’s already got more charisma than me, and his slightest movement seems to be the subject of scrutiny and praise, so I should probably try and stay on his good side. Though, that said - “He lifted his head up!” “He’s got a tooth!” I mean, frankly I can do all the stuff he can and more but no-one’s even remotely as impressed by my lovable antics. He can’t even stand up and that’s one of the first things I do every morning! Well, on weekdays anyway. All I’m asking for is a little standardisation and continuity in the distribution of praise, and that some people not be discriminated against because they’re not babies. Is that so wrong?

It’s been an typically hectic couple of weeks (though thinking about it I am including, say, about 4 solid day’s worth of playing Pokemon in that so maybe it’s not quite as hectic as I’m making out) but I’ve been excessively busy by my standards. It all dates back a month when Seb, Cappsy, Josh and I went to Bristol. For the comic convention, that is, not just because we like Bristol, because I can assure you, we don’t. Or I don’t. Or rather, I don’t like the parts I’ve seen, but it could be alright, I suppose. Look, whether or not I like Bristol is far, far beyond the point, and I’d appreciate it if we could move on. The point is: Comics. Isn’t it always?

The drive to Bristol was remarkably pleasant. Allowing for 2 hours there and back, Josh and I had constructed a 4-hour playlist we believed would cover us nicely for the entire journey. You know what they say about the best laid plans, of course, and this wasn’t even a particularly well-laid plan. Not bad, but certainly not my best laid plan ever. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Pleasant it was, despite rapidly varying weather conditions, and even though the entrance to the car park in Bristol was unhelpfully blocked by an ambulance, prompting a 15-minute confused wander between Bristol centre and Temple Meads, we managed to get into the convention around midday without too much horror.

Inside the convention, I gave the place a pretty thorough going over. I got myself the issue of Ultimate Team Up I’ve been looking for for fucking years - the Clugston-Major issue where Spidey and the X-Men go to the mall, as well as a Captain Marvel “What If?” issue (What if Captain Marvel had lived? Answer, as with all What Ifs, is that there would have been lots of oddly pointless deaths and probably the Universe blowing up.) Josh and I also got Jeff Brown to sign some of our other books. In the evening, we went to the Eagle Awards dinner and saw the presentations. Now, I’m going to disseminate some information about the Awards that no-one told us, so hopefully anyone searching for terms like EAGLE AWARDS 2007 might end up here. The dinner is what you pay for. You are put on a table with a bunch of other people, though obviously not with Pros. The awards are FREE to enter. You DO NOT need a paid-for dinner ticket to get in. Had we known this, we probably would’ve just stayed in the local pubs/hotel bar which is where all the interesting action happens, unless you want to see the DC creators eating lunch on their big centre table. Which trust me, isn’t that interesting. Next year I suspect if we go, we’ll avoid the dinner. The awards were also a fucking powerpoint meets comic-sans mess, though Norman Lovett’s impressive genius manage to save it from being a total shambles. Might be nice if someone actually turned up to collect their own award once in a while too, especially since even Warren Ellis, who christ help up, lives in the UK couldn’t even make it down even though he might not have known he’d get, like SIX awards.

Phonogram didn’t win an Eagle, but they did win some time being interviewed by us for NTS. Between Josh’s pilfering of Uni equipment, my questions/transcription and Seb’s setting up of the whole thing, I’m remarkably proud of the resultant article, which I present here: Phonogram Interview

Following the awards, we went into the Bar and found McKelvie, who phoned Gillen to find him sitting outside on a bench. We started the interview around midnight, had a good hour of chatting, 45 minutes of which went into the interview. Given that they’re the creators of my favourite non-Brian Wood comic of the last 5 years, this was an intensely wonderful experience for me, and the slight surreality of the setting made it all the more enjoyable. Pre-recording comments: “Oh god, our voices aren’t going to go on the Internet are they?”

I was on the floor holding the mic, facing Seb, Gillen and McKelvie, and at one point during the proceedings, a spider the size of Wales started climbing the wall between Seb and Gillen. Cappsy and Josh also both spotted it and we exchanged some panicked looks, because truly it would’ve freaked the shit out of everyone involved had it leapt onto their faces and started to devour them, which I’m certain it would’ve done, but luckily the others didn’t spot it and we were spared a recording of arachnophobic screams. Post-recording they gave us a story about skanking in a club in San Francisco, and had Seb been quicker with the camera we could’ve had a really stupid picture of them to go with it. After this we packed up and began the drive back to London.

Somewhere down the A4 as we approached Slaughterford, I was coming to terms with the fact that we were going to take a bit longer on the way back than there. The M4 had been closed because SOMEone couldn’t wait before dying somehow, so we spent like and extra hour in the backroads of christ knows where between Bath and Swindon. A short pit-stop in the only services in the country where you can’t possibly buy a cup of tea, and we were back on our way, though by this point it was well past 2am. The playlist finally conked out on the M4 just as we re-entered outer inner-London, some time around 3am. Not that anyone else noticed, because they’d all gone to sleep. Despite our best efforts, I did have to spend some time driving in silence, but we made it home and, let’s face it, went to bed about the same time I usually do on a Saturday anyway.

Christ, I do go on, don’t I? I’ll cover the following couple of weeks tomorrow.