3d for many p.

we began the week in the midst of another one of casey and ewan's video productions, this one for CATE LE BON. we were creating BONVILLE only to have her giant head destroy the town and setting us on fire. apparently. i'll wait till i see the finished product to know whether it was all nonsense from casey. i spent six frustrating but ultimately lovely hours making little paper houses. i completed a news stand and almost finished what we gathered by the end was a church (all the instructions, if we had them were in french) and steen made a donkey, a tank and a merry-go-round. sitting there listening to some brilliant 1920s jazz in le salon made it a perfect bank holiday monday, even if we didn't see much of the sun.

tuesday was the much anticipated MICACHU gig that was postponed from april. support came from the excellent THEM SQUIRRELS. i'd heard about this, a band with alex the cellist from FREDERICK STANLEY STAR doing a harder, madder sound and they didn't disappoint. the last song in particular went crazy and psychey with loops and screams and strobe lights, they left the stage and i felt exhilarated. unfortuntely they proved too difficult a band to follow, PICTURE BOOKS AT WINTER i've seen before and enjoyed but they left me a bit cold this evening, i was just bored after getting wound up into a frenzy. their tunes are good and i like all the things they have going on in their set, they're a well rehearsed band... but somehow it just seems a bit mannered and tame, or at least it did tonight. i was looking forward to MICACHU AND THE SHAPES, they did a great interview i'd read in plan b magazine and that brought up a painful subject for all of us. steen, the patti ladies and i loved plan b and we are all really upset at its demise. i have no idea how to find out about music now, i don't want to spend hours trailing through myspace or something, i want to open up a magazine and have someone i trust tell me what they sound like, no other magazine seems to describe things as perfectly and susinctly so i can hear them in my head. finally they came on and i went a bit giddy. the songs were great, stuttering, angular, wonky pop songs winningly delivered by a band of misfits. i must admit here to becoming completely infatuated by micachu whilst she was on stage for entirely non-objective un-serious unexplainable reasons. it was something about the way her lip curled and something about the way her hair curled around her ear or something about the way she held a guitar... i am quite aware that i sound like a tween talking about being at a jonas brothers gig. i haven't had a celebrity crush for ages, but here it is. i was drunk on infatuation for the rest of the evening and i think i made rather a fool of myself gushing to everyone around me how great she was afterwards. i don't think telling steen "she reminded me of you a bit" was particuarly comforting. oops.

wednesday i was the usher for CHERI, the new stephen frears film. it was reuniting him with christopher hampton and michelle pfeiffer who worked on one of my favourite movies DANGEROUS LIASONS so i was quite excited about seeing the film. it was similar in look to their previous film, but much lighter in tone. there was a jarringly odd fruity old man voice over that kept things from getting too serious and at each betrayal dismissed with a witty retort. michelle pfeiffer is wonderful as lea, a courtesan coming to the end of her career in fin de siecle paris. a fellow courtesan friend asks her to take care of her idle son and they begin an affair that lasts longer than anyone expects. although very happy, the match cannot last as his mother wants him to become a gentleman and have a family so arranges a marriage for him. they are both distraught but pretend to each other that they do not care and do more damage to each other. the film was a beautiful piece of fluff, i didn't care tremendously for the characters, especially the young man played by rupert friend, i just became irritated by them. it was saved, however, by a wonderful central performance by michelle pfeiffer, much of the film was discussing how a once reknowned beautiful woman can reconcile herself with old age and there is a fantastic lingering shot at the very end of her looking in the mirror noticing the lines on her face and the sagging skin. obviously, i wouldn't mind too much looking like michelle pfeiffer as she is now, let alone how she did at my age, she is still a very beautiful woman, but you could feel the pain of trying to remain dignified over something as undignified as losing your looks which has been regarded as your cache in life. i've never relied on my looks, such as they are, i spent years ignored and invisible due to my weight, so always tried to cultivate my brain and often even wished that i could just be a brain in a jar so not to have to deal with that side of myself at all. but we are all vain in our own way and this movie demonstrated the pain of losing something, whether it is the love of your life or your looks.

thursday we had a marathon day where we watched 3 movies. for me this isn't wholly unusual but for steen its a rare feat. when i finished work at 3pm we went to see CORALINE with our friend simon. we're going to miss it when it comes to chapter because we're away that week so we went to cineworld. i have a cineworld card but had left it at home. no problem i thought, for a treat, i'll pay for us, i'd looked it up and anything before 5pm had the matinee price of just over £5. this, however, was in 3D so it was £8.1o. i really wanted to see it so swallowed and gave the man my card. i am used to seeing films for free (staff comp at chapter and "free" being £13 per month subscription to cineworld) so paying over £16 for a movie for two made me blanche. however, as a treat it was worth it. it was a wonderful, genuinely creepy story about a feisty little girl who, bored in a new house investigates the papered up door and finds an alternate world where everything is perfect, her mother bakes delicious food, her father dotes on her and writes songs for her and the weirdos living in the other apartments are secret geniuses. she keeps creeping back and forth, visiting her "other mother" before realising, with help from the clever neighbourhood cat that something is wrong with this world. it was so beautiful to look at, so well animated. you could tell the difference between this older type of animation and CGI. the story was by neil gaiman, who will is familar with from his library work and i'd really love to read some of his books. when we got back later that night he remembered seeing my housemate benny have a copy of another neil gaiman story MIRRORMASK on dvd so we watched that. i liked this less but it was very differently handled. the heroine in mirrormask was an older teenage girl helena who sketches a world for herself and longs to escape the circus world that is her home and join the "real world". she argues with her mother who then collapses before her big top circus act and is taken to hospital. due to guilt or supernatural forces she falls into the world she has created with strange sphinx creatures where everyone wears a mask and is ruled by the queen of shadows. in order to escape and save the world of shadows from destruction she must find the mirrormask. the cast was amazing, gina mcgee and rob brydon playing her parents who also appear in the world of shadows and it was another feisty heroine. i was impressed with neil gaiman's ability and willingness to write such strong female roles, the men seemed impotent compared with the women.

we also saw TONY MANERO at chapter. we were looking forward to this, it won awards at the festivals late last year and was set in pinochet's chile. the story was a claustrophobic, disturbing look at that world where murder is not as questionable a crime as distributing political leaflets. we followed raul played by alfredo castro as he goes about his life, a nobody in a very real sense, he hardly seems there, he belongs in the shadows, only coming alive when he is living in the world of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. he creeps around in darkness, non descript and nothing, in fact the only time i recall him talking is when he is repeating the words in phonetic english from the movie. he moves rat-like around the city taking what he wanted by using violence with no hint of charisma but somehow manages to pull together a dance troupe with seemingly nothing but the power of his obsession for the movie. everyone in the dance troupe wants to know him, wants to possess him but he is not present enough to be possessed, he is not there, there is only tony manero. it was a brutal, unforgettable film leaving you feeling like you wanted to escape but knowing you couldn't, a wonderful example of what it was like to live under pinochet.

saturday i started my shift at chapter's SCREEN SCHOOL. i was tipped off about this by my friend matt beere who is running the education programme for chapter's cinema. it is a great little shift, that suits me down to the ground. it is an ushering shift but i also have to co-ordinate all the kids who are coming for their film education and help with the lectures. today was the buster keaton classic THE GENERAL. i dearly love silent film and made a special study of it at university so this was a real treat for me, the story of buster keaton's southern rail engineer in the civil war who is unable to enlist due to his usefulness to the cause but then gets the chance to thwart a northern attack whilst trying to rescue his beloved engine "the general" and his sweetheart at the same time. it includes the famous scene where he is sat on the engine axel and the engine starts, bobbing him up and down. i think the kids liked it, they were a little quiet but there were a laughs from the pratfalls. a few of them seemed really enthusiastic, one kid called kaya enthusiastically thrusting his hand up to try and explain how harold lloyd did his SAFETY LAST clock stunt. i think i'm going to really enjoy this shift! later that evening we went to a friends' house for yet another birthday bbq. the weather is fine, what a lovely week!

great insults of the 21st century

after coming back from atp on monday i had a much needed lazy morning and in the evening we went to see IN THE LOOP the new film by armando iannucci. as i don't watch much tv i'd missed IN THE THICK OF IT and a lot of the characters have been repeated in the movie but i don't think this distracts at all. it was great being in a movie theatre so full of laughter. maybe its my choice of movies but rarely have i been surrounded by people doing so much belly laughing. some of the unrepeatable insults spewed out by peter capaldi's character malcolm tucker were jaw dropping in their filth and ferociousity. it was a good little lesson in how things truly work in government, how the disasterous "sexed up" dossier got to prominance in thte iraq war and how to cuss someone out. brilliant.

on wednesday i was the usher for CADILLAC RECORDS, a film based on the trials and tribulations of chess records in chicago. before motown and stax there was chess, a label that specialised in brutal blues from muddy walters and little walter and later rock n roll with chuck berry. it was nicknamed cadillac records due to the boss dishing out cadillacs as a thank you for its biggest stars. now i have to declare an interest here, i grew up with these records, this was a subject very dear to me and i really didn't want them to fuck it up. when i was 11 something bad happened to radio and i wanted to stop watching top of the pops cos i hated pop so much. i spent a summer listening to nothing but my mum's old soul and blues records and found it difficult to go back with an uncritical eye again and the mid 1950s became my favourite era of music, i'll listen to pretty much anything from early rock and roll and enjoy it. i missed DREAMGIRLS, the motown biopic but caught RAY and WALK THE LINE and was a bit done in by all the early rock and roll movies so was worried this would be a bit music-biopic-by-numbers. happily it was really engaging and recreated that era well, i think this was mainly due to the strength of the music and the marvellous performances. muddy is appropriately serious and wise, howlin wolf is intimidating and etta james is a feisty sexy lady. i was interested to see what beyonce would do with the role, since etta is on my postcard of supposed dykes, how the vaguely prissy ms b would shape up, but she does crude surprisingly well and shows hidden acting chops. all the actors did their own songs, which astonished me. there was a moment over the credits that made me stop for a moment, all the way through beyonce made the audience cry (quite literally, people told me they were crying during "at last" and i was too) but the end song just seemed very bland and therein demonstrated everything you neeeded to know about chess records: the production was perfect. there is so much over egging of the pudding in records these days, sometimes to great effect (gotta love them neptunes) but generally to drown out the voice and dress it up so its too sweet, too pure. i really enjoyed this film and was happy that they'd done justice to the story.

on thursday it was the eagerly awaited HEAVENLY LOVE PROJECT, devised by anushiye yarnell. anushiye has been working for some time on this idea of what love is, what it does to us and how we can fall in love with anyone and anything and discover things about ourselves that we were not previously aware of and i'm a big fan of her investigations. previous attempts to answer the question have resulted in the achingly beautiful ANIMAL LOVE PROJECT that put the idea that the human and the bear fell in love, changing both of them and making them more than a sum of their parts. for heavenly love anushiye brought over the japanese performer shirotama hitsujiya and also worked with davida hewlett. in this episode of the love drama, anushiye and a shopping trolley fell in love. i saw an early version of this work last year as a concequence of anushiye working with the a japanese company from ga mitai dance. its a really ambitious beautiful piece. she always makes these alternative realities very true, by the end of the piece we'd been through the trauma of first love, argumentst, reconcilliation and defeat. the piece MASSIVE WATER by shirotama hitsujiya was in contrast loud, amusing and ungraceful. she came onstage dressed as a zombie bunny chopping up salad on the shopping trolley with a "RIP bunny" headstone. interspersed with scream sound effects and j-pop was bunny reeling at the end of her life and searching for love in heaven. after the interval came davida hewlett's lecture piece BUBBLE WRITING, an investigation about heavenly love and how events surrounding her investigations such as the birth of her daughter alba and the diagnosis of her partner sam's mother with cancer informed her search. the lecture was a bit chaotic and could have done with some organisation and editing but i found it utterlly engrossing and charming, i think if it had been more formal it would have lacked charm. it was broken up by a delightful video of her and her daughter copying the kate bush video "running up that hill" about making a "deal with god", which made me just giggle and put a massive grin on my face and then at the end, footage of sam's mother's 61st birthday, looking frail made everyone cry. some people left, daunted by the length of the piece but i could have stayed another hour!

the rest of the week was very lazy, i think still recovering from atp. saturday night i threw caution to the wind and went to a party. i have been a right old hag in the past year due to working such crazy early hours and bloody bodyclock won't let me stay up late these days. it was my friend caroline's birthday and i thought a bbq at her house sounded just the ticket, since everyone there would probably be lovely and i'd have good chats and it had the double extra special bonus of giving me the chance to meet caroline's cat elsie. it was a beautiful balmy evening. i'd stupidly agreed to do a favour for my boss and go in to cash up in chapter bar at midnight so couldn't drink for a bit. i was feeling a bit harrassed and annoyed with myself but as soon as i had my first sip of gorgeous red wine (p0ured by the drunken hand of lovely grace) the stresses of the day slipped away. that sounds like i have some sort of substance abuse problem, but it was so nice just to sit around with friends and listen to music and talk nonsense, i don't do it enough. the lloyd grossman in me was dying to see what caroline had done with her house, that she has mostly diy-ed herself and i was happy to see that it she'd done an enviously good job. we didn't get home till 2am and although i suffered for it the next day, having to get up at 6.3oam for work again the next day, i was really grateful to caroline for inviting me.

80p

i must be getting old cos the year is flying by and i'm sleeping in a proper bed and sitting watching tv over breakfast at a music festival. i've wanted to go to an ALL TOMORROWS PARTIES gig for years, i remember when i got sent a letter from the belle and sebastien fanclub telling me how they were taking over camber sands and thinking how lovely an idea that was. finances, fear and lack of likeminded friends have prevented me from going before so this is my first. although i've seen people's photos and heard stories nothing quite prepared me for the surreal experience of indie kids taking over a butlins. the chalets were quite modern and basic and inside was like a shopping centre, filled with slot machines and tacky eateries. it was however, ideal for a music festival. butlins being a place of "light entertainment for all ages" there are little stages everywhere. there is a jumpin' jaks, ferfuckssake, they are more than geared up to have people performing all over the place. its also amazing for the use of your time. rather than trekking back to your tent and putting half an hour aside for that and (often) raking through the mud it was a 5 min hop back to the chalet on proper pathways, the entire venue was indoors so the weekend's wet weather didn't have an effect on the ability to watch the acts and there were plenty of places to sit down (i am getting old). another plus point was the amount of stuff to do in the downtime, they had a proper little cinema (all curated by the breeders) and i found that if i was waning a little pop into the cinema was better than a kip to recharge the batteries. an amazing discovery was that not just the bands but the whole site had been curated by the breeders, including a breeders tv channel. this was not just the icing on the cake but the cherry on top and the silver ball balanced on the cherry. what's the betting that the deal sisters like some amazing things like psychadelic czech cartoons and soul train and feminist documentaries?! speaking of which, there was a massive dykey contingent at the festival which made me very happy indeed, it truly felt like one of those places we belonged. everyone seemed nice and there weren't too many trindies (trendy indies) dominating it all and we got to the front for everything. ace! anne and helen from PEPPERMINT PATTI were the facilititators to all this joy, they are our lovely generous friends and if they hadn't bought the tickets in a job lot we could not have thought about going. since all the horrible housemate craziness of a couple of years ago money has been tight, tighter now i'm just reliant on chapter for money so i am forever appreciative to them for helping us out like this. it just worked out brilliantly, not only do they have similar music tastes to us, but they also weren't up for too much ker-azy rocknroll partying behaviour and just really wanted to see the bands. they were pretty much the perfect holiday partners and i hope we get to go to many adventures with them in the future.

but on to the bands. my ATP raison d'etre was seeing THROWING MUSES. they had been one of those bands i'd got into when i was a teenager that no-one i knew liked, i bought an album from DIVERSE records in newport, the man there said it was good. i then bought every album by them and kirsten hersh i could find. back in t'day before t'splinternet this meant going to every record st0re i came across and looking through the racks and asking people. kirsten hersh's "hips and makers" album in particular got me through a rought spot and continues to elicit powerful emotions within a few chords to this day. they split before i had chance to see them so i was mighty excited. they were the first band we watched, on at 7.3opm on friday and naturally enough they were brilliant. her voice has this amazing power, she was so poised and they all seemed to be having fun. it was an early highlight for me. i could pretty much go home happy based on this moment alone so it boded well for a great festival. after this we ran upstairs to see YANN TIERSEN. steen was looking forward to seeing him but i recognised the name but didn't think i was familiar with his stuff, but he turned out to be the man who wrote the amelie soundtrack. pretty famous, then. i was mostly struck by the fact that MATT ELLIOTT, who we had seen last month in buffalo was on stage with him. later in the festival i embarrassed myself by going up to the merch desk and smugly pronounced "got it got it got it!" to his cds for sale. steen tapped me on the shoulder "he's right there...". we had a chat about the cardiff gig and he asked me if i was the mad fan who was yelling at him onstage. i wasn't. we then took a break and went down stairs to play a putting game and try and find an air hockey table that wasn't being used and heard a bit of BON IVER. meh. MR LIF on the way to PIT ER PAT, who i was a little disappointed with but still on the massive high from throwing muses it didn't phase anything. we went to bed happy and with loads to look forward to.

in the morning a quick jaunt to tesco to pick up things for an ace breakfast to eat whilst watching princess mononoke, catch up with some friends (charlotte, unlike idiot me, remembered her knitting and was going to kelley deal's knitting class) and then go and start watching bands i'd mostly not heard of. never a bad thing. WHISPERTOWN 2000 were a folky act with two ladies and ok, BLOOD RED SHOES were a boy and girl team in a sort of reverse white stripes and they were all right but seemed a bit dwarfed by the massive stage. we did better with TH' FAITH HEALERS, who apparently hadn't played together since they toured with the breeders in 1994. they were very of their time, a real ladyfesty 90s grunge band but, hey, i like that sort of thing and they were great to watch. it was the first great surprise of the day. we saw our friend beth there, who drunkenly informed us that her plan today was to "rape CSS" which was a good reminder that they were about to start downstairs. i had somehow completely forgotten about css. i'd liked their songs but never got the album, a fact that stuns me. i think i had worried they had been overhyped and some of the people who went on about them were the type who jump on any bandwagon that comes into town. whilst watching them i relinquished any kind of suspicion, they were great. they filled the stage with balloons and were a really nice change of pace to all the guitar and noise that was going on around the festival. we skipped upstairs, still dancing on the way to WIRE, who truly did typify all the noise and darkness, but they exemplified the style. they were amazingly intense and the bass throbbed right through me. after that it was time for a food break. we sat eating chips whilst listening to TEENAGE FANCLUB. their set reminded me why i liked them and i surprised myself by tearing up during "your love is the place where i come from". onwards, to THE BREEDERS themselves! we all went to the front, helen was especially excited, and they rewarded us by playing a wonderful set. the voices of the deal sisters were so pure, i was shocked that they could sound that good live. they were warm and gorgeous and made it feel like it was a tiny venue and we were all their mates. glorious. will ran upstairs to see TRICKY and i followed him up after. i've always found his voice very very sexy, he guested on WHALE's "we care" album that i played to death when i was at school, which is how i got into him and i've tried to buy everything since. clearly a man who looks after himself, he looked like a beautiful twisting snake, front of stage, goading the audience and giving in and diving into the baited mass. we had another break before going to see ZACH HILL. maybe it was the late hour, but boy did i find him tedious. i was really excited about seeing him but i arrived and it was just a bloke having a spinal tap moment ("hey won't it be great, right, if i just play drums for an hour." "an hour, zach?" "yeah, it'll be great"...). i fell asleep on a chair. we then dashed over to see THE FROGS play a very amusing set of silly punk songs. they were great but i didn't have the staying power and went back to zach hill for more of a kip. happily i awoke in time to see MARIACHI EL BRONX. we'd unhappily missed them do their punk set on friday but this was their version of a mariachi band and very good it was too. the lead singer was a bit of a crooner and they brought on the deal sisters to sing with them on at the end, which was a lovely treat. by this point i needed a little lay down but didn't want to go to bed and lose momentum so we decided to try out the cinema stage where THE EXORCIST was playing. i saw a great documentary about this years ago but the only time i'd seen it all the way through was when i was 18 and it was re-released after being banned for years and i thought it was dated and not scary at all. this time it was scary. we ended up unable to leave in order to get that feeling of resolution and good conquering evil back in our hearts and missed a lot of HOLY FUCK who we were really looking foward to. they did sound rather ace, a lot like the experience we had when we saw FUCK BUTTONS in venn last year. ahhh, bedtime. we decided to eschew the hours of dancing for a more productive sunday, i just wanted to fall asleep next to steen very happy.

on sunday we had a brunchy morning of sleeping in and eating pizza in front of more excellent deal sisters tv. we started with a bit of crazy golf and then TIMES NEW VIKING. we loved them when we saw them last year in clwb ifor bach and they were just as good here, if a little less intimate. we then headed downstairs for a bit of catching up with mates and watching a bit of HEARTLESS BASTARDS who belied their name by being very soft alt country. we then ran back for DINOGRAPH, who were really great and did great banter. this was all just a prelude to the exciting act of the day which was MELT BANANA. they came on illuminated by mere pit helmets and the lead singer ran around the stage screaming in japanese, only identifiable by the lights, they looked like two dogs fighting on stage. amazing! steen was especially pleased when they did the cover of a specials song. i think by this point we'd got a bit to a bit of a saturation point cos we didn't have much staying power for DEERHUNTER, it was very difficult to follow melt banana, even if they did have kim deal on stage with them for a bit and were very smiley. we went upstairs for some genuine heart and big grins with KIMYA DAWSON. i wasn't madly excited about this since i've seen her a few times but that quickly turned to butterflies when she came on stage. she sings brutally honest songs about raw emotions and was tonight showcasing a bunch of ditties she'd written for her baby daughter, all of which i'd seen before but it was still a brilliant lovely set. i am so in awe of her. she got 3 fans on stage with her (one of whom gushed "i love you, i love you so much" and did chunk-style dancing during her songs) and got everyone into a group hug at the end. kimya gigs always feel like group therapy and that is no bad thing. we took another break to see the brilliant documentary ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL in the cinema before heading down for FOALS. they were another band i had snobbily dismissed as "probably good but it seems only people who overegg the pudding like them". well, tan my hide for a second time cos i very much enjoyed them. they seemed to be exactly what i wanted at that point, a bit of dancey math rock. we just had chance to catch a bit of DISTORTION FELIX, who specialised in really good heavy sludge rock but were the politest band of the festival. onward! for the evening was late and it was decision time too, we had decided to leave in the night before the rush of the morning so we had to work out when. i'd managed to get someone to cover me in work on the monday but it was still probably the best way, we'd only have to get up early anyway to check out on time and then get stuck in traffic but we had to choose our moment. after much debate it was decided to be after X, missing TUNEYARDS but no drama there, we'd had an amazing time and apart from FUCK BUTTONS djing it was the last thing we wanted to see. X were worth staying for, a punk band from the 70s with a lady poet singer i'd not heard of before, for shame. steen described them spot on as a band formed from TWIN PEAKS, they were each a little odd. the guitarist's face was fixed on an unnerving grin staring out at audience members like a shark mouthing "hi" and making them freak out. it was great. at the end, trying to edge out helen spotted kelley deal knelt on the side of the stage watching excitedly. at the end she picked up the set list shouting "its mine! you're not having it!" playfully to the audience. a brilliant way to finish the festival. we trumped out giddy with happiness ready to hit the road back to cardiff. i tried to stay awake for the patti ladies to talk the journey away but my car narcolepsy got the better of me and i was out in minutes.

great fun under the sheets

i'll keep this one short, this being the middle of may, after devo but before atp, but still very worthy of keeping in my head. we did notverymuch due to lack of finances and resting up easy before the weekend's festival fun, however we had a big week anyhow. liz who runs LOOSE was looking to house CATS IN PARIS when they played on wednesday so mostly i was running about the house tidying and sorting out and pottering and staying in to watch TWIN PEAKS. steen only saw a few episodes of the show back in the day whereas i am a 20 year devotee, i remember making my brother watch it when he was 8 so i would have someone to talk to about it. possibly corrupting my little brother was one of the best things i ever did. we're trying to get through my box set at the moment and watching them again is a treat. i see so much more in it now than i did, before i was just rapt with the supernatural storyline and all the weird characters. when i watch it now i appreciate the humour in the soapy storylines and the references. i've seen FIRE WALK WITH ME hundreds of times, it being a bit more digestible in under 2 hours compared to the many many episodes of the series, but seeing the original tv show that came before it makes you appreciate what he was trying to do and makes it more frustrating that the bloody companies pulled it for being too weird.

my one busy non-worky day was wednesday. first up was an ushering shift for THE BOAT THAT ROCKED. i'd heard it had bad reviews but thought that it might just be people having a pop at richard curtis for being smug and middle class and sentimental but it was a truly bad film. it had bad bbc sit com style jokes and reeked of "weren't things good in the 60s" puerile observations. all the characters were sweet and /or glamourous and even someone stealing someone else's wife seemed to have a "oh never mind, he's just a sex god, i'll forgive him" resolution. it was dire. that said, a bunch of recent pensioners in the audience loved it, one man in front of me laughed all the way through but it didn't make me do anything other than groan.

i had a quick meeting (that incidentally i'd forgotten about and made me temporarily stressed out) then had to head home quick to buy breakfast for the cats and managed in my stress and haste to fall off my bike. it was the dumbest accident. i used one hand to scratch my face, then removed the other off the handlebars to fiddle with the light, realised in a beat "i can't cycle with no hands" and went down. i felt like luke not listening to the force and falling when he should have just trusted his instincts. i ignored the hurty chin and hurty hands and carried on to tesco. the bruises didn't show up till a couple of hours later. i wasn't going very fast, nothing bloody or broken, just a stupid purple chin face.

but the fun was about to begin. LOOSE had the best line up in recent memory. CATS IN PARIS (who headlined a night at SWN and were excellent) were the first band on. first band! this boded well. they began with a clip from jurassic park and had great visuals including a decapitated matthew mcconnahey head floating around psychey cartoons. the songs were great too. last time we saw them they had a lady with them and i think they lacked something in losing her but as i found out when chatting to them later this is a bit of a sore point. she went out with the drummer till very recently, plans to reform afoot i believe. the MAE SHI were on next, surprising everyone. they are sharing headline slots with ABE VIGODA on their tour which i think is a bit harsh on abe vigoda. the mae shi are the best band i've seen live for a long time, they had gimmicks without being gimmacky and the crowd were just mesmerised. try coming on after that... they played punky, noisy, shouty multi layered songs with lots going on and treated buffalo like a playground, running into the crowd, getting the audience to hold stuff for them whilst they played, the wackiest of these was getting the crowd under a piece of parachute silk and performing under it like a little mini tent covering the dire buffalo interior. it actually made an atmosphere in buffalo, something i didn't think possible. when ABE VIGODA came on, although they had a great delivery and a stuttering punky style it was a bit of a letdown after that quasi religious moment previously. we had a nice evening with CATS IN PARIS at the house after. us not being majorly rock and roll it was mainly drinking tea and eating biscuits until 2am and then eating lots of toast the morning after and watching the fresh prince of bel air. i felt like a student again and quite glad i wasn't in a band. i like my normal life too much!

we had a quiet thursday in preparation for the very busy weekend ahead! ayteepee!

are we not men?

sunday's JUNKET CLUB began the "week of amazing fun" TM. this month's junket club was in CARDIFF MUSEUM, we were given a tour by our unreliable guides ben and elis. unreliable as in pointing at a picture of a man in restoration garb and declaring "this picture is an early portrait of tom jones..." type tour content. the jokes were a lot better than that though. we were first given colour co-ordinated dinosaur stickers to designate which tour we would be going on, another lovely little touch from lisa and ben. shamefully enough i'd not actually been properly to the art gallery, only really to see the bi-annual artes mundi exhibitions. for shame! its actually a really good collection and the building is beautiful. we vowed to come back and do it proper. after this elis did a turn, mildly embarrassing me when i signalled that i'd been to the dino exhibit when i was a nipper in the 80s and talking a lot about oakwood park. he is a handsome, talented chap. next up were GINGER AND BLACK, a sort of flight of the concords-style duo comprising of a black man and a ginger lady. they were awkward and funny. we had a break where we were treated to lisa's ace cakes and had a chat with our friends chris evans and carl chappel and headed upstairs to the law courts, an imposing looking dark wooded room where we were treated to LLOYD WOLF, a proper comedian who travelled from london via neath to treat us to his potential edinburgh show which is rejected versions of his show. it was great and it got us doing games like texting the last person in our phone odd statements and seeing what their reaction was. mine was steen, so that was boring, but one girl had a bloke who didn't have her in his phone and he got quite aggressive. brilliant!

monday was movie night! we went to see LET THE RIGHT ONE IN with the patti ladies and our friend david deans and on our own went to THE DAMNED UNITED. let the right one in was one of those movies that i'd heard rave reviews about and was afraid that it would turn out to be a bit disappointing but i needn't have worried. it was one of the most haunting, beautiful, creepy films i've seen in a long time. it was about a teenage boy in 70s sweden who is getting routinely bullied and dealing with his parents' break up. along comes a neighbour with similar feelings of alienation and isolation to release him from this misery, unfortunately the neighbour comes with her own problems. rather than being 12 she is an unknowable age but has just been 12 for a very long time. this was a vampire story told very straight and full of beauty and sadness. rather than a glamourous fantastic life, you feel eli's hunger and loneliness. THE DAMNED UNITED was an enjoyable romp. i don't know much about football and i didn't really need to know much to enjoy the story, which was a relief. this was more about brian clough's relationship with his team manager and his rivalry with leeds united's manager who bred a team of dirty winners. i love timothy spall, he's always great to watch and michael sheen did a great version of clough. the only criticism i would have is that it seemed like almost exactly the same story as FROST NIXON in places, written as it was by peter morgan, there was even a late night phonecall which may or may not have actually happened.

on tuesday we went to an under-attended electronica gig at clwb with ANTONI MAIOVVI and ZOMBIE ZOMBIE. i think there was about 4 people there including us for antoni maiovvi. he played a set that sounded a bit old fashioned, it idled by well enough, if the crowd was right i'm sure it would go down well it really needed a massive field full of people to take off. ZOMBIE ZOMBIE came on and blew the boredom away. there was a bit more of a crowd for this, but still by no means full. one looked like a mad scientist and the other proto geeky indie boy but were both more interesting than that. indie boy was on the drums and mad scientist was tinkering behind a stack of synths and effects buttons that pleasingly reminded me of seeing pet shop boys and erasure on the tv as a nipper. the beats were erratic and urgent and the last song brought up thoughts of a zombie apocalypse with screams and paranoid synth sounds. they were great! they also had great merch. i really wanted to buy lots but funds being tight i just bought a bag that is so cool i might have to send it to the wife. i am developing a slow burning love of tote bags.

the next day was the day of DEVO! we caught an early bus to london and given the gift of nice weather decided to have a wander down to exhibition road, home of the NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM. steen hadn't been since he was a kid, which i was amazed by. the tate and the natural history museum are my most visited london landmarks, i always seem to incorporate them into my list of stuff to do every time i go. i showed him my favourite bit in the whole museum first, which is a tree from the petrified forest. i know it was created over millions of years but to me its still a work of magic. staring at the truck and counting the rings, all hardened minerals and a spectrum of reds just gives me goosebumps. we went into the dinosaur exhibit (which i still don't think is that great since they modernised it) and saw children crying at the animatronic t-rex. we then played in the hall of mirrors and went around the taxidermied mammals, ending up in the whale room and then up into the darwin exhibit. the animals are all great but the building itself is always my favourite, its so beautiful and i always notice something different, like the monkeys built into the rafters. amazing!

we then went to the VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM. to my shame i have never been inside before and we didn't have much time to look at it this time either. we did a quick look at the classical sculpture section, looked around the fashion exhibit and then spent proper time in the photography room. i was stunned to find the scream house, a bygone cardiff landmark in riverside, the first photograph when we entered the room.

but onward to DEVO! the gig was in the forum so we got off the tube and tried to find reasonably priced food. we were in london so presumed this would be impossible but found an amazing ichiban-style japanese restaurant with fantastic noodles for about the same price! then we went to the pub for a bit to see our friends jenny, jack and jenny and alex. it was lovely seeing them again and we had a good ol' natter. after a couple of pints and the sunny weather i was feeling warm and fuzzy and incredibly happy and all this was before devo! my excitement was growing and growing. we got to the venue, took our places and found it easy to get to the front. ROBOTS IN DISGUISE were the support and although they get criticised for being a bit inconcequencial and only famous for being involved with the mighty boosh but i've never seen the mighty boosh and i don't care, from what i saw they did a few ace pop songs and they had men dressed in cardboard robot outfits. surely, that's ace, right?! i enjoyed them. the crowd started to get burlier and drunker. these people are here for devo? i thought only geeks like us liked devo, there certainly was no-one who liked them when i was at school, only when i lived in the US did i find anyone who liked devo and again, they were geeks like me. this bunch of neanderthals seemed like they'd stumbled in from an oasis cocert. we were suddenly surrounded by 50 year old men on a devo trip like it was a rugby outing. ugh. i started to get a bit aggressive with one of them in particular when he started pushing me in an attempt to start an early mosh pit and resting his arm on my head, dislodging my glasses. this brought back horrendous memories of being at the front for ash in reading festival when i was almost crushed and i lost my glasses. not wanting to risk such a scarring moment a second time i relinquished my place at the front with steen and we hung back a bit, just in time to avoid a massive mosh pit. my expectations of the crowd shattered at least my expectations of devo were intact. they began with a video for an early single "secret agent man", one of my favourites that used to get played on oldies 101 fm in eastern washington! i was very excited. they played the entire album of "are we not men? we are devo!", an album i've heard over and over and so that made me very happy. there were lots of people wearing energy domes on their heads and i met two nice ladies in queues who were similarly excited about the gig. a very very very good night. we then went to meet jack at jenny's house and went to the west bank where he lives in a jewish area. i'm not kidding.

the next day we went with jack to check out the SAATCHI MUSEUM in sloane square. i'd read in the sunday glossies about the exhibition NEW MIDDLE EASTERN ART and thought it sounded interesting but wasn't prepared for how good it would be. it was on many different types of media, all expressing a myriad of ideas and emotions about what it is to be middle eastern, to be themselves, it was great. the list of favourites is long but the ones i couldn't get out of my mind were the out of focus photographs by halim al karim, the sculpture of women praying by kader attia and the sensual collage photographs by ramin haerzadeh.

we got on the bus back but didn't have much time to cwtch the cat before we had to head to buffalo to see some bands LOOSE and LESSON #1 were putting on EXPERIMENTAL DENTAL SCHOOL and a couple of other bands tba. the tba was due to the fact that both the supports had had to pull out, meinz heinz due to steve being in west wales working on euros childs' album and king alexander cos simon had a poorly throat. i was excited about the gig for the supports alone so was a bit disappointed but then we managed to help RIFFMONSTER on the bill, a new project with steve from zail, tom raybould (aliases are many but does electronic music and owns acoustic wallpaper) and andy fung from cymbient, no thee no ess and way back when derrero. they were very math rock and it became intense and interesting, a very good first gig. PRETTY GIRLS i didn't see much of but quite enjoyed their noisy lads-in-bad-drag act. EXPERIMENTAL DENTAL SCHOOL had good songs and a nice bit of twiddly mathy guitar and urgent beats but my interest waned a bit, but that might have been the tiredness from the already ace week.

the final bit of joy for the week was the CHAPTER MAIBOCK. twice a year chapter bar puts on a german beer festival and very popular it is too. this one rocked. it was so busy people were queueing out the door and around the corner and we had to have a one in-one out policy! for a space less than half the size we used to have we took about 80% of the money, a fact that all us staff were very happy about. it showed off chapter's bar at its buzzing best and all of us spent the night with massive grins, running around busy but happy. i am getting butterflies in my stomach thinking about how great things are going to be when the building work is finished.

and that ended our "week of amazing fun" TM but then these days i seem to have a lot of fun most weeks!

staying in is the new going out

after the magical holiday we were brought back down to earth with a gig in bristol. this was intended to be an exciting musical bang end to my birthday week but ended up being an expensive gig. two tickets for PJ HARVEY AND JOHN PARISH were £45 and the trains to bristol that day were being interrupted so we had to get a bus back so ended up paying twice for travelling, totalling another £40. with a £10 taxi to the anson rooms venue due to the trains being delayed and a drink each we waved bye bye to a hard earned £100! oof! it being my birthday week and it being pj harvey it was all forgiven, despite the anson rooms being a venue of peeling cardboard soundproof tiles and no air conditioning. but boy, did it make us appreciate what we have in cardiff. we have a bunch of hard working promoters putting on a tonne of gigs, the quality is usually excellent and its venues tend to be in the centre of town and fairly reasonable. i'm always appreciative on the fact that despite my miniscule income i still get to enjoy myself and see some great stuff. but getting back to pj, she was excellent. the night began with us getting there in time to see support who turned out to be HOWIE GELB from the band giant sand. i haven't been to a big gig for a while and it was very irritating to realise that many people just go to see the headliner and talk through the support. you've paid the same amount! why gab when you can discover something you've not heard before? pah, idiots. i had to throw a look at a set of posh lasses behind us who were talking loudly about how drunk they were at last night's party. it was really frustrating to be hearing the great howie gelb, hero of alt country, do some great acoustic numbers and reel off some amusing banter to a disinterested audience who would later hang off polly's ever word. its a good job they did shut up cos when she came on stage she was very quiet and nervous, looking glamourous in a lacy white dress and an amazing beaded headpiece with tassles that swung when she moved. i'd not heard the album they were performing from and wasn't sure what sort of set she would do but it was really strong. there was a few off the albums she had previously done with john parish, one that sounded VERY nick cave and a couple that sounded like david lynch scores. it was really good and worth the heat and the work of finding a window between the heads of the tall people of bristol.

things very quickly got back to normal after my birthday. since i'm trying to catch up i'll do this in a two week chunk. i saw a lot of movies in the next couple of weeks and not many gigs. the first one was TOKYO SONATA. i got the wrong idea about this from briefly reading the synopsis and just read that the director was a big name in j-horror. i kept expecting the ghosts to appear but the only ghosts were metaphorical. this was a beautiful, timely film, about the japanese recession. a family man in a managerial 9-5 gets fired and unable to express his career failure to his wife and children he carries on the routine of getting up and coming home to throw them off the scent but instead goes to the dole office and the free food queue at lunchtime. he befriends another man in a similar position who ends up killing himself and then to his shame finally finds a job as a cleaner, all the while becoming increasingly authoritarian at home in an attempt to have some sort of power over things in his life. the film quietly follows his wife and children as they rebel against his needless dominance, his youngest son discovering the joy of playing piano and his eldest hoping for a new life as an american citizen after joining the army. it was really delicately handled and believable, a scary portrait of what can happen when you cling to the past.

on friday will and i saw the FRANKLYN matinee. the write up sounded intruiging: a alternative futuristic world ruled by the church intertwines with contemporary london, but it wasn't quite as sci-fi as i thought it would be. it begins with the character of priest, explaining his godlessness in a world where everyone has one religion or another. he is a vigilante on the trail of a child killer and spends the movie coming into contact with various nefarious characters on the way. back in our london a set of characters, including sam riley and eva green are all trying to resurrect themselves from traumas in the past. eva green's character faking suicide attempts in the name of art and sam riley trying to find love after being jilted at the altar. their stories start to bleed into the same story and the world of priest also spills over, with characters being echoed. we see by the end how the two have been coexisting but one of the worlds needs to go in order for priest to be healed of his pain. it was a movie about how we deal with pain and the worlds we construct to take ourselves out of that. it was interesting but sometimes a little too much style over substance. the characters were not wholly believable and sometimes just plain irritating. however, it was a first movie and for a stab at it i think it was a good start.

on the monday it was time for something a little different. EUGENE ROBINSON from the band oxbow was doing a spoken word performance at chapter, organised by the brilliant blokes of LESSON #1. i was really intruiged by this, will had seen oxbow a few years ago and its in one of his top ever gigs: screaming, sweaty, aggressive punk where the singer got down to his tighty whiteys. eugene robinson has the reputation of being a frightening man, violent and confrontational. as well as the band he does a sideline in boxing and is actually very good. he has also written a book FIGHT. i went along to see what the fuss was about. i wanted to sit at the back but all the seats were taken so front row for us, i just hoped he didn't punch me. luckily for us, the brilliant D C GATES of GINDRINKER was on first. i love dc. i really do value and treasure that man, he should be fashionable and lauded with front page of the western mail or something as one of cardiff's landmarks but he would hate that and so would i. he brings a slab of intelligent bile to his work that is pregnant with disappointment and anger. his spoken word set was not different to a gindrinker gig but without the distraction of graf's razor-like guitar punctuating the sentences, it made you focus more on the delivery and the drama in the rants and observations. he came on stage, shabbily shambolic in his blazer and collection of notes, which included the back of microwave "meals for one" packets and discintegrating notebooks and read tirades about how "alan de botton is a cunt" and biblical passages denouncing capitalism. it was wonderful. my friend ash was in the audience and we just gushed "we're so lucky to have him in cardiff" to each other in the interval. he's a beligerent alcoholic but he's OUR beligerent alcoholic. long may he reign. next up was eugene robinson. the stage was dressed a single punchbag on stage and some sawdust. contrary to my expectations, eugene robinson turned out to be a graceful, literate, searingly intelligent gent with a slow drawl. he spoke eloquently about his childhood and his first fights and rites of passage to becoming handy with his fists. he was a wonderful speaker and gentle, genial soul who did a long q&a at the end where he explained how he tried to avoid violence unless it was truly necessary. a wonderful evening.

on the wednesday the film i ushered was the french documentary MODERN LIFE. maybe it was the late night i'd encountered the previous night but it did send me to sleep. it was beautifully shot and told the story of a community of hill farmers in the south of france whose way of life will probably die with them. they are men in their 80s who are still working the land and tending to their flocks each day out of neccessity, theirs is a tough life. it was good work from the director, sometimes getting a full sentence out of these men who don't often have full conversations from year to year. sometimes it was little hard going to have a question put to the interviewee a long, lingering shot on his lined face followed about 3 minutes later with a closed "yes" or "no" answer. it was worth seeing but it felt like a very long hour and a half.

later that day i went to see WENDY AND LUCY, the new picture from kelly reicthart who did the exquisite OLD JOY with will oldham. this film was similarly slow paced and prettily filmed in northwest 'burbs and again about friendship, but in this case it was between wendy (played by the brilliant michelle williams) and her dog lucy. they are travelling up the coast to alaska in her old car, hoping to start a new life, running away from whatever went before with no money but a lot of hope. early on wendy leaves lucy outside a shop, gets caught shoplifting and when she gets back finds lucy is gone. the guilt and relentless search for wendy's only friend makes up the majority of the film and her determination and devotion to lucy is heartbreaking. michelle williams is at the simultaeously vulnerable, one moment away from a flood of emotion and tough and purposeful. reichthart captures the people of the northwest perfectly and made me long to be there again.

thursday i was proud to be the usher for new theatre group zandeh's play POLITICS IN THE PARK, brought to the stage by becca knowles. it is the story of two elderly sisters who meet on a park bench and rib each other about their lives. it was a delightful, beautiful and simple play about domestic politics and what holds people and families together. i really enjoyed it and the performances were so good i felt like i would meet the old ladies downstairs for a drink afterwards.

a quiet couple of weeks all in, but it was about to get busy all over again!

myth making

i am catching up slowly with my posts here on the ol' diary. i don't want to get too behind and not remember what has happened. i am 30 now and blimey, did that go quick, i want a record for myself before the altzheimers starts. so these are retrospective posts covering the last month. i want to be done by the time i go to the ATP festival.

this post is about the holiday i had with will in cornwall. after an amazing birthday this was a sweet coda. i was born in tintagel in 1979 and we moved away just before school started in 1986. we still had family down there so till i was about 10 we'd go back for holidays but apart from a couple of drive-throughs i haven't spent time there since then. i was kind of nervous about going, anxious that it wouldn't be the same at all. in the 1980s it was going very commercialised with lots of day-glo signs and fibreglass statues of king arthur and merlin at every corner, there was a lot of tat. but strangely enough, it has gone the other way. we were also going there by public transport, a feat my dad was aghast that i was even attempting. it is hard to get around in cornwall without a car. i discovered from the online timetables that there were about 4 buses per day, which made the village impenetrable after 5pm. but it was a wonderful, surreal holiday.

we arrived in bodmin station and got the bus to tintagel, changing at wadebridge. as soon as we got towards the river camel my head started to spin as it looked so similar, i recognised buildings and the curve of a lane and it made the butterflies in my stomach flutter. we alighted in tintagel and stopped for some lunch. the high street was pretty much the same, a couple of shops had been replaced by other things and the road had been widened but apart from that it was ok. the weather was lovely so i checked with a barmaid whether you could still walk along the coast to treknow (an even smaller village half a mile away which is where our guesthouse was) and she assured me that you could, if you start from the church. this is the church where i was christened, i'm not sure how valid the ceremony was cos the vicar was very drunk apparently. i was quite pleased that we had to pass by here so i could have a little look. as soon as you get out of the high street you realise how remote and bleak the countryside is, you wonder how people chose to live here in the first place. it was a nice day so it looked bright and sunny but the bushes and trees bent over from the dominant wind demonstrated how wild it can get around these parts. we walked around the churchyard looking at the old gravestones that have been taken over by weeds and moss. i jokingly said to steen "i'll have a look at the newer ones and see if i recognise anyone my nan knows" and almost instantly i saw the name "jamie tremaine". jamie was the first (and only, i think) boy i gave a valentine to. i remember hearing that he'd died a few years ago but it was still a shock. i instantly teared up and couldn't speak. i just saw his face, the white blonde hair and big red lips playing with a car or chasing his best mate david around the park with me and climbing into our treehouse. i haven't seen him since i was 8 but the memories of him were very clear. i looked around and saw some dandelions and laid those on the grave and walked on, a little shook up.

we carried on towards the coast road and the rugged cliffs opened up. a feeling came over me that would last for the entire time we were there, i felt at home. we moved around a few times when i was a kid, i never felt very settled and when we did stay in chepstow for the long term i always rejected it as my home. i sulked around waiting for me to find my home. cardiff is a home of sorts, i feel very settled here, but there is a world of difference between feeling happy in a place and feeling at home. i tried to explain it to will like this: here, in tintagel was my first experiences of nature, of the world. here a wall is not just "a wall" but "the wall", my understanding of what a wall looks like. i've always loved the platonic idea of this world being a mere shadow on a cave wall and being in tintagel is like looking away from the wall and looking at the way the world truly is. everything in tintagel is authentic and real and outside feels fake.

we had a wonderful walk along the coast path to treknow. i was hoping instinct would kick in and i would remember the way back to the village and luckily it did. we were soon on the lane in treknow near the hotel my mum used to work. i was surprised that it was the same and it just looked smaller. i saw the town hall where i used to go to coffee mornings and brownies with my mum, the cavenous room was in reality the size of someone's living room. then i came to my nan's old house. for some reason this had a lot more resonance than when i saw the house i actually used to live in with my mum and dad. it too was smaller than i thought, despite the extension that made it two storeys and no longer just a bungalow. i used to think the garden was huge. it was still called tremallow, which made me happy, i used to think it was named after my nan's love of sweets. then we came to our guest house which i'd found on the internet and was one of the cheapest places to stay in tintagel but it certainly didn't feel cheap, it felt luxurious. it was a vegetarian bed and breakfast and we treated ourselves to a meal there in the evening too. amazing food! at the breakfast i kept on grinning like a loon, it was so tasty. the lady there was really nice and introduced us to her three mental dogs, it felt like home.

the first night set us up for a magical time. we went down to trebarwith cove, a little beach that used to be a couple of minutes walk over the fields from the house where i was born and the sun was setting. we had a meal at the port william pub on the cliffs and watched the sun set the sky on fire. it had been beautiful weather but a storm was coming so the waves crashed on the ragged rocks with great violence, it was exhilarating.

the next couple of days were spent wandering and wondering. it was a strange experience for me, having grown up there and to find most of it unchanged. the house where i was born had been changed only slightly, now being called "trebeth" rather than "trestebeth" as my parents called it (after the first part of their names) and the family living there were very posh (a massive contrast!). the main thing about the town i had seen changed i suppose is that there were not so many young people about, only the oldies. my parents generation and even some of my grandparents' were still there but apart from tourists there did not seem to be a lot of young families. but in fact it was so similar at times it made me dizzy, walking down a lane with flashes of then and now mingling in my vision. i spent most of the time floating about the place like a psychic picking up information from the dead, turning this corner and that hoping to find evidence of myself, a state i think steen had a lot of patience dealing with. will was wonderful, as usual. the fact that he made me feel comfortable enough to take him on this journey with me and then to completely understand the place, feel akin to it as i did made me very happy. magic things kept happening, like seeing a seal in the wild diving for food in boscastle, our coast walks and that sunset. it made it a birthday brimful of contentment.