13/01/2003 - Entry #55
Alright then, I'm back. Did you all miss me terribly? No? Fine then. Malbranque has been and gone (and look at that, two links in two consecutive entries. Positively obsessive), and now I can sleep, forever. Jesus I'm knackered. We really didn't do all that much, in fairness. We went a fair few places, but it was only one a night. Two at the most. It's not like we went on a weeklong binge. It was just general socialiting (sic). But it was enough to wear the living fuck out of me and make me wish I was hibernatory or whatever the word is for something which hibernates. Still, it was a very good week. I enjoy Mal. And the food was excellent!
Now that I'm back, can you all start, like, visiting the website again, please? The last few days hardly anyone has visited at all, which is very disconcerting. Yes, yes, I shouldn't care and so on, but everyone does, don't they? When you're proud of yourself for building up a regular audience, and then they suddenly disappear, it's disquieting. So in order to drum up some support, and get the consumers back in, I'm going to try and update at least once every day this week. Possibly more, if I'm lucky (and you're not). Cos I don't wanna lose the regular readers just because I went on holiday. This is, after all, one huge popularity contest. God knows what I'm gonna find to talk about, but that doesn't seem to have been an issue before now, so I don't see why it should be now. Anyway, yes, update-tastic, this week.
The 'The Music' gig was excellent, by the way. For many reasons, actually. The music they played was predictably brilliant, and the set featured the world's one and only working discoball. I mean, properly working. We've all seen discoballs before, but all they do is feebly sparkle once or twice, like an oversized novelty bauble. But this one was truly majestic. As the spotlights played off it it sent luminous shafts arcing through the air like piercing bolts of justice. It was the greatest thing I've ever seen. And I've come to realise that Robert Harvey is one of the best frontmen in music today. The Music aren't the most conceptual band of all time, but they really are good. Vaguely reminiscent of the Stone Roses, they're just damn good at making incredibly listenable rock with more thought than the vast majority of conventional bands. See for yourself here and hyar (as usual, they'll only be there til the end of the week or thereabouts. So download them now if you want them. And again, if you're reading this from in the future, then you're too late. Sorry). It's just good rock music. Very good, even. Download it and bop around your room like Stu. At the end of the concert Mal and I started playing football with some plastic bottles, and were forcibly ejected from the venue on pain of extreme violence. The venue happened to be Middlesbrough Town Hall, making us surely the only people in history to be (literally) thrown out of a municipal building for playing football in the middle of it. Score. Anyway, after that we went on to the official aftershow party, where they played all manner of old school britpop songs and so on, and we danced and danced and danced until we were dead. Or at least I was. I had at least three heart-attacks during the 6 hours of dancing we endured. But it was all in good fun, and it reminded me of just how good some britpop was. Seriously, some of it is pure quality. I grew out of the britpop scene long ago, when I discovered the likes of Led Zeppelin and embarked on an elitist road of dexterity-based music appreciation, which segued into the conceptual malarkey I'm rooted in now. But as The Music prove and the Red Hot Chili Peppers prove, sometimes it's good to just listen to fun and entertaining music. I probably wouldn't sit around listening to the Seahorses and (early) Oasis at home, but when you're out on a night, there really is nothing better to get you bopping along to. The DJ (who it turned out I knew) managed to mix nostalgia with long-forgotten and utterly compelling songs. When something like Hey Dude or Love Is The Law came on, I couldn't help but dance and sing along, it'd just been so long. Really good stuff. I had a bucket of fun.
Word of the week has been: "Inex-fucking-plicable"
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