Don’t Stand Your Ground

Over the past couple of years I’ve experienced, and been told many stories, of what I can best describe as bullying at gigs. Without exception it always involves people who are my age (thirty-five) and older, and a majority of the time it is men that behave this way. It’s also worth noting that I only ever see and hear about women being on the receiving end of this. During the day I am sure they are all utterly polite and hold a door open for a colleague, step aside when someone says excuse me. At gigs this all goes out the window.  Let me give you a few examples.

Recently at a Matt Berry gig a woman who I’d guess is in her late thirties was so incensed at a girl of about seventeen wanting to squeeze past just to take one photo that she screamed “obese bitch” at her and refused to move. At a polite girl young enough to be her daughter who made it clear it was just to take one photo and she’d be gone. Friends suffered men constantly, and on purpose, crushing into them at an Arcade Fire gig whilst being told to stop pushing them.

At Glastonbury I was told I wasn’t allowed to stand here by a man who was actually in front of me which I am still puzzling over. I had an experience so awful at a Battles gig with my friend Priyam that I still frown about it two years on. Men in their forties were stood behind us on the balcony. When I went to the bar they barely let me past, when I returned they formed a solid wall and refused to let me through despite the fact that I asked politely to get back to my friend, even strangers asked them to let me past and they refused. At the end of the night one of them pushed me in the back of the head with force. For no reason.

Last night at Public Service Broadcasting my bladder gave out after too many pints so I decided to run to the toilet. A relatively short dash in the intimate upstairs of the Lexington. Grown men crossed their arms and adopted a military stance. I had to squeeze through gaps a mouse would have problems getting through.

Let’s be clear. When you buy a gig ticket you are not paying to rent an exclusive square metre. I understand that views can be frustrating but I’m talking about scenario’s when someone is trying to dash to the bar quickly, not suddenly arriving on stilts in front of you.

Music is actually like a religion to me (without the wars). Going to see a band should be a shared experience, one of those oh so rare moments that you can look around at everyone and think “we’re all here for the same reason”. When the entire crowd sank to their knees during Foals singing Spanish Sahara at Glastonbury in anticipation of the song building up I felt like I utterly belonged. These were my people. Sadly there seems to be a growing minority of adults who seem to think they’ve paid for a private experience and are disgusted other humans are in the same room/under the same sky wanting to have fun. The only person’s night that’s being ruined is those guilty of behaving this way. They always look so miserable.

When an unstoppable force (my need for a pint or a wee) meets an immovable object (an adult refusing to budge even an inch to let me pass) chances are I will be tempted to lightly touch your back on my way back through to wipe a boogie on you. Karma is unkind. What can I say.

Sunday Swoon. July 14th 2013.

1. The original Sugababes line up, now Mutya, Keisha, Siobhan have released the full length Dev Hynes produced track Flatlines to the world. My pop tart side definitely coming out.

2. Leaving aside the fact that the video creeps me out slightly Julia Holter has released another clever and complex track In The Green Wild.

3. Phoenix were a Glastonbury highlight for me. I couldn’t have asked for any other band to officially close the Sunday night and if I tell you how many times I’ve watched their set back on iPlayer in the space of two weeks you’d worry. The video for Trying to be Cool gets the point of the track entirely.

4. Time to bring out the inner hipster. Ariel Pink featuring Jorge Elbrecht track Hang on to Life. Track of the week for me.

5. I’m not a fan of the Manic Street Preachers but adore their latest track Rewind the Film featuring Richard Hawley (that man probably being the reason why I’ve connected with this). The video is beautifully shot, bleak and melancholy.

2013 So Far (In A Playlist)

My blog is now in its third year of posting the music that’s grabbed me the most, floated my boat, captured my heart during the first six months of the year, in a historically strict twenty-five tracks. (I fully expect the person who first made me think of doing this will, as usual, come up with a far superior list).

You can play my 2013 tracks so far via YouTube or Spotify.

1. Mount Kimbie – Made To Stray
2. Daft Punk – Lose Yourself To Dance
3. John Grant – GMF
4. Kurt Vile – Was All Talk
5. Public Service Broadcasting – ROYGBIV
6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Despair
7. Daughter – Youth
8. Suede – It Starts And Ends With You
9. Vampire Weekend – Diane Young
10. Boards Of Canada – Reach For The Dead
11. Haim – Falling
12. David Bowie – Where Are We Now?
13. Wolf Alice – Bros
14. Darwin Deez – You Can’t Be My Girl
15. Disclosure – Latch
16. Local Natives – Wooly Mammoth
17. Villagers – Passing A Message
18. Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds – Mermaids
19. Jessie Ware – Imagine It Was Us
20. Phoenix – Trying To Be Cool
21. Fuck Buttons – The Red Wing
22. Gaz Coombes Presents – One Of These Days
23. Foals – My Number
24. Kelis – Jerk Ribs
25. Queens Of The Stone Age – I Sat By The Ocean

Sunday Swoon. 9th June 2013.

1. I’ve had One Of These Days on constantly this week. This is such a stunning track. Gaz Coombes tracing time hauntingly, the man responsible for the care free soundtrack of my late teens with Supergrass now writing heartbreaking songs about loss eighteen years later.

2. Unexpected new Hot Chip track arrived this week, Dark & Stormy (one of my favourite rum based mixes). Consistently great and one of my favourite bands to see live.

3. For all the hipsters (and I mean the good sort of hipster, which does exist) into electronic music you’ll be as happy as I with the new Fuck Buttons track The Red Wing. Annoyingly clashing with the one band I’m determined to see at Glastonbury this year. Festival clash woes starting already.

4. Disclosure’s debut album Settle was released this week. Every track uplifting and instant. Such a great time for electronic music. So good that Boards of Canada even return next week.

5. My love for Tom Krell (How To Dress Well) grows deeper on Shlohmo’s track Don’t Say No. I didn’t think I could love him anymore after he covered Janet Jackson’s Again at Field Day. I suspect myself and Jo were the only ones in the audience that recognised the cover, or were willing to admit we did.

6. Finally Vampire Weekend released another video for Diane Young. Featuring Dirty Projectors, Santigold and The Walkmen. I especially appreciate naked tambourine playing.

Marylebone and Eton Mess

I won’t name the person in question as she’s far too modest and wrinkles her nose up at praise. Pay her a compliment and she accepts gracefully but always adds “funny how people see you isn’t it?”. I’ll leave it up to her if she wants to share this post. Today is her birthday and well, she’s truly been a bloody brilliant friend to me the past year.

She’s helped me move house on a Monday night straight from work, carrying boxes and boxes of books to the top floor of my building. Shared many a glass of wine and gin. Shared some special gigs. Reminded me I’m well loved during tough times. I remember a particularly low day last July she sat opposite me in a pub in Marylebone. Her expressions a complete mirror of my own, she was genuinely as upset as I was.  To me that’s a dear friend, someone whose very expressions show they’re going through it with you. She’s an amazing person.

So, this mixtape is for her, you can play it on Spotify or YouTube.

Happy Birthday and I’ll see you later so you can blow out the candles on your Eton Mess. ♥

1. Bonobo Feat. Andreya Triana – Stay The Same
2. The Knife – Heartbeats
3. Zulu Winter – You Deserve Better
4. Jessie Ware – Taking In Water
5. Polica – Lay Your Cards Out
6. How To Dress Well – & It Was U
7. Daft Punk – Get Lucky
8. Kindness – Swingin’ Party
9. Chromatics – Kill For Love
10. SBTRKT – Pharaohs

Sunday Swoon. 26th May 2013.

1. So I have a huge soft spot for Baz Luhrmann films. I’ve heard people niggling at his adaptation of The Great Gatsby, someone saying they walked out after ten minutes, but I loved it. The party scenes were visually breathtaking, made me feel like I am missing glittery ticker tape in life. The casting was perfect for the characters, Mulligan and DiCaprio as Daisy and Gatsby especially. It stuck close to the original book by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The soundtrack was perhaps a little too much vanity from Jay-Z.

2. The much talked about Parquet Courts played London’s historic The 100 Club last Sunday. Without getting drawn into the whole “is guitar music dead?” question what I will say is it was great to see a band who didn’t look like a Top Man advert, over groomed and too stiff for movement. There was a kid alone (he really was a kid, around 16) right at the front looking like he’d just discovered the greatest band of all time. Eyes unblinking, mouthing every word, rapt with attention. I love seeing that look on people.

3. I always get sucked into these “great summer read” books (I admit it, I even read Dan Brown). I read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn in about two days, staying up until the early hours to get to the end. It’s surprising and full of twists without over complicating the plot. I predict a film adaption will follow by the end of the year.

4. Field Day was utter brilliance on Saturday. Perfect weather, great company for the day and some real standout performances from the likes of How To Dress Well, Kurt Vile, Animal Collective and Bat for Lashes. I’ll opt to put a track of hers on here because it was the last crystal clear memory I have. Things after that got a bit gin hazy. The best day of 2013 so far, by far.

5. Lastly a new track this week from bare-footed, natty haired Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros – Better Days.

Field Day Mixtape 2013

The bands I’ll be aiming to see at Field Day this Saturday in a mixtape (I distinctly remember writing last years sitting in a park in the sunshine). Although, from my present mood I am considering rounding off the day watching John Cooper Clarke so I should have added poetry and spoken word into my list. With a cider in my hand, the smell of petrichor in the air and dirt on my knees. I do get goosebumps over that first festival of the year feeling.

You can play my mixtape on YouTube.

Sunday Swoon. 19th May 2013.

1.  Star Trek Into Darkness is perhaps not as light as the first installment of J.J. Abrams Star Trek but then the title suggests that anyway so it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Great cast, Benedict as a bastard works brilliantly and some scenes are so genuinely tender that I cried space tears. I saw this at The Aubin in Shoreditch which is now my favourite cinema, blog to follow.

2. Despite this track being uploaded to YouTube three weeks ago it only came to my attention this week thanks to Shaun Keaveny on 6 Music. Jerk Ribs by Kelis has to be a contender for best song title this year.

3. Despite the Lichtenstein: A Retrospective gracing Tate Modern since February I’ve only just managed to visit. I have seen this before (or a very close version of it) at The Guggenheim another lifetime ago. I love his wit and nod to other artists as well as his unique way of expressing what he see’s. Much needed inspiration as I’ve just purchased some acrylics to get back into painting. Oh, and now I want blue hair.

4. I always associate Vampire Weekend with the summer. It’s more their specific sound than a particular memory. So their third album release, Modern Vampires Of The City, is helping me cope with getting the winter coat back out of the cupboard earlier this week. Another solid album from the New Yorker’s.

Be Still My Fluttering Ovaries

If I shelve my hormones for a moment I have always been suspicious of Ryan Gosling’s level of perfection. I think he’s been genetically modified to brain wash us into what perfection should look and behave like. Recently I went to see the utterly breathtaking Place Beyond The Pines and left with my mind made up that the only men I’ll date from this moment will wear their t-shirts inside out for no reason, bleach their hair and have a dagger tattoo on their face. Such is the power of Gosling.

My suspicions were cemented for me at the weekend when I got a text from my friend Jo (who I am now in eternal debt to) asking me if I’d heard of Dead Man’s Bones.

Turns out, and we may be the last people on the planet to know about this but it’s my new obsession so I’m blogging anyway, Ryan Gosling along with Zach Shields wrote an album of love songs for ghosts, zombies, monsters and werewolves . With a children’s choir. With no experience of playing any instruments. Best concept album that’s come into my life since Metronomy’s The English Riviera.

The videos below are worth watching.

Be still my fluttering ovaries.

 

Sunday Swoon. May 12th 2013.

Due to gallivanting around Dartmoor and Brixham and lack of internet access this is more of a fortnightly round-up.

1. The first book I read as an East London resident was A Hoxton Childhood by A.S Jasper. An honest and frank account of growing up poor in 1920’s from the voice of an ordinary man. No romanticising the past. It could have been wrote by my Dad from the stories he’s told me and he read the entire book in a matter of hours when I passed it on to him. A beautiful message in the book and interesting to read about the streets that now surround me.

“Be thankful that you were born now and not then. Go forward, but try to be tolerant of your parents along the way”. A.S Jasper.

2. If you ever find yourself in Torbay the only place to have seafood is Simply Fish in Brixham. Menu is dictated by availability from the boats straight in from fishing at a quarter of the price you’d pay in London. Queues rival that of restaurants such as Meat Liquor. My favourite dish is their Tempura Cuttlefish (pictured above). Managed to fit three visits in during my visit home.

3. Janelle Monae is back with Q.U.E.E.N featuring Erykah Badu. Adore everything about this woman and still lament the day I got sidetracked by an ice cream van playing 90’s dance music at Glastonbury and missed her. Makes me want to quiff my hair and deal in monochrome only.

4. Before the Devon adventures and in between moving house I managed to sneak in a couple of trips to Pick Me Up London. Just as inspiring, inventive and batty as it was when I first attended last year. I’d highly recommend signing up to the mailing list so you don’t miss out on it next year.

5. Hot on the heels of (the superior, let’s face it) Daft Punk comes a new track from Basement Jaxx which really minds me of Friends Va Fan Gor Du. Getting my dance on.