Umbrella terror?

Sooo, It was pissing down with rain yesterday morning so I grabbed an umbrella that I'd picked up in the club the other day. ( The good thing about running a club is that you're never short of hats, scarfs, gloves and umbrellas. People are always leaving that shit behind. )

So this is one of these newfangled ( well not that new really! ) brollies that have a button that you press and they (as if by magic) spring into action. But...this umbrella is different...it's posh!

Posh, because upon a second push of the button, this thing retracts as well.

And... at great speed I must add.

Now, is this me, or is this like, a stupid fukin idea or wot?

Especially when you discover this by accident!!

Sooo, I'm walking along, in the rain, doing my thing, humming a tune, tapping out the beat with my thumb on the brolly handle, when all of a sudden I'm shrouded in complete fukin darkness.

Can't see a thing, no idea what's going on?

I'm being attacked in the Jaws of the polyester fukin brolly monster.

And he's winning!

I'm doing this kinda chicken impression down the street, just to get the damn thing off me.

But... I keep being re-clamped??

Fukin thing!!

Not being funny, but this wasn't actually funny!

Sooo, I did what any normal person would do in the same situation.

I fell over!!

Luckily [for me] the brellaterror discarded itself from my person, shooting skywards like some canvas death missile.

It scratched the fuck out of my arm on the way up too?

Thank gawd I wasn't crossing the road or something.

I just left the thing in the middle of the street.

And ran away...

Evil thing

I saw it on the way home and, quite frankly, crossed the fukin street out of harms way?

Evil satanic rain tool!!

Note to self: Thoroughly check all form of rain protection gear before leaving the house next time please.

What can you do?

Anyway, I'm having a bit of a Star Wars nostalgia trip at the moment, seeing as I don't have a Sunday girl, I guess watching all six episodes ( without getting winged at from the sidelines ) seems appropriate. I've done 1 and 2, which are 4 and 5 actually ( the blokes will know.) I'll do the rest on Saturday if L ain't around? Sunday I'm up North to headline some festival with the band.

Quote of the day [Darth Vader] : " Calrissian... take the Wookie and the Princess to my ship!"

You just can't make that shit up!

Talking of bands, I have a couple to do tomorrow night ( Thurs ), should be OK, bit of hip hop and beat boxing and stuff with some acts that I know will ram the venue, but a late finish so I'll be knackered Fri, bit of a sleep in I think, then the club Friday..

All go I guess.

Right, it's late so I'm gonna watch the end of 'The Empire Strikes Back' ( and he does! ) and turn in.

Complete fukin idiot, but sooo funny!

Very un-PC , but funny too!

Time to upgrade lol!

Laters

Engineer on call.

Sooo, bank holiday Monday and I'm chilling at home after working last night. I got a call Sat night around 7pm from the guy who owns Neighbourhood club in Ladbroke Grove. Their in-house engineer has gone off to work on a cruise ship somewhere and the guy sounded really desperate.

Anyway, he asked me would I work on Sunday and I kinda hummed and hared coz I was already out with a load of mates and I knew ( due to the amount of booze etc. we were consuming ) that Sunday was gonna be a complete right off. But... This guy was like, " Man, it's some party for Jade Jagger and I'm totally in the shit, I'll give you a big wad of cash if you help me out??" So ( on that preface ) I agreed and throttled back on booze a little ( you say that!).

Luckily for me my mate F ( female, BBC director ) said I could sleep at her house which is only ten minutes from the club. All good!

We then continued to do what we do best...

Sunday I woke up around 2Pm, crawled out of bed, and took myself for Lunch. I bumped into my mate C ( girl ) on Portobello road and invited her down to this party coz I figured I was gonna need some props as the night wore on. Finished lunch, feeling awake(ish) and then went down the club to work.

Turns out it was a superb night, three really good sorta dub, electro, rock bands ( you work it out!) some fukin excellent DJ's, a lot of great crack ( conversation not drugs!! ) and the women, I must say, were fukin spectacular!!! I was chatting to this blond girl who just came up to me out of the blue and I'm just thinking, " Babe, you are way way way out of my league honey??" Got her number though. I doubt I'll ring though as she was kinda " Why the fuck is everyone hitting on my new girlfriend?" territory. Not really what I need at the moment. Far too fukin expensive for little old me...

Also...I got an offer of a job as the new house engineer at the end of the night as well. I'm considering it (a lot).

I'm a little bored of my usual club at the moment. Although I've taken the place from being a shitty live venue to a state of the art 1500 people a night place over the last five years, I'm kinda feeling the need to move on. And...I'm getting a little fed up of engineering unsigned bollocks student indie bands ( noisy fuckers!!) . Neighbourhood gets a lot of classy signed bands which drift more toward the electronic side of the spectrum rather then the indie side.

And...it's smack bang in the middle of carnival and becomes the place to be for after parties.

Also the bar managers are pissing me off at my usual place, their inability to push the venue up a gear and their "We just wanna close early and get the fuck out without putting any effort in wotsoever" attitude is driving me up the fukin wall. On Friday nights I've noticed that the staff taxis are getting to the venue earlier and earlier to the point that you can't even sit down for five minutes and relax after a long night. I very nearly got locked in the place the other night, I was still finishing up while the other staff had been dispatched in haste, I had to ring the bar manager to return to the venue and let me the fuck out, he didn't even take the time to check if there was anyone left in the main room. Upon his return I was greeted with: " What you doing son, you gonna have to be faster than that!!" To which I replied: "Fuck you!!"

It was 2:30am, the club shuts at 2? I used to be still finishing up at 3???

Totally fukin shoddy!!

Note to all bar managers: If you've lost the passion for your job to the point where the rest of the staff are having their heads done-in by you: Don't you think it's about time you moved over and let somebody else do the job who actually gives a shit?

It's kinda bollocks really! I finished up at 3:30 last night and was still having a laugh at the bar at 5am this morning, which, to me, is one of the best things about doing this job!

I'll split the work between the two venues and see what happens from there I guess?

Sooo, I awoke this morning, day off, big pile of and cash feeling rather smug about the whole thing really.

All good.

Right I'm off out for a posh lunch then. (Ha!! not really.)

This is just utter madness??

Laters.

The people are speaking, it's about time you started listening??

Sooo, Rant alert!!

You know what, I don't even drive anymore and even I think that this is just another load of bollocks stealth tax. I mean, what the fuck do you pay road tax for? This country is becoming taxed to death. Anyone who's ever played civilisation, or anyone who has studied any amount of foreign economic history will tell you that if you tax your nation to bits, it will descend into mass chaos and eventually just fall apart. Just ask the Romans ( well actually you can't..but hey!)

Ridiculous!!

The people are speaking, it's about time you lot started to fukin listen??

I called L ( the girl I met at the weekend ) , she's OK. I kinda wanted to hook up with her at the weekend, but it turns out she's going away to the seaside for a week starting Saturday, and then it turns out that I'm going on tour the week after that, so I guess well try and hook up after that. Man I wanna see this girl again.

Nothing new there then eh!

Started a mix today for this rock band that my mate G manages. It's actually turning out really nicely, bit of a breeze considering I thought it would be hard work. The session came in Live from Pro tools, so there was a lot of tempo fluctuations to deal with. So in order to transfer to Logic Pro 7 I used the beat match facility to line up the kick drum track to tempo, took out their drums, then dropped in a load of new beats and other stuff over the top. The beat match thing makes it all tight as fuck. Top stuff!

Tomorrow I'm off down to the venue to do a bit of much needed maintenance on the rig.

Anyway

Top 20 unusual suicides?? (Sorry...homicides!!)

Shakespearean insult kit: Thou doust annoy me like a dissembling full-gorded maggot pie!!

Essential.

Although these are some of the best Breakdancing moves I've ever seen ( flares anyway) WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU PUT THEM WITH THAT MUSIC??????

You may have seen these before, but I still like em.

Laters

Mobile pumpkin chukin ex girlfriends!

Sooo, I got a new mobile phone the other day, a Nokia N73 pretty cool phone really, it's got web n walk which is an internet anytime connection for a fixed price ( £7.50/month) I kinda got it free for the first month and I thought " Well I'll give it a go for a month and then cancel" But... I'm addicted. The amount of times I've been in a pub talking to somebody who's needed the answer to a question, or needed a taxi in the middle of nowhere, or just wanted to check my emails or stats, and out comes the phone, onto the internet and off you trot. You could blitz a pub quiz with this thing ( wouldn't though ;0)

Also I downloaded Google maps mobile to the phone and now no matter where I am, I can call this thing up, enter an address and it just tells me where I need to be. It's a bit like having satnav in your pocket. Fukin marvelous! Wanna find a Thai restaurant or a KFC or the nearest pub, just type in the street you're standing on, then what you want, and it comes up with nearest 6 choices, click on a choice and up pops the details, click on the details and it phones the number for you. It has satellite views as well, and all this works at blistering speed.

Fukin top!!

Can't do without it now.

The guy in the phone shop put me on a better price plan as well so I'm getting all this shit for like £25/month less than I was paying before.

You can't go wrong.

Still not convinced, try this demo of it, it's exactly as it works in real life. ( And no, I'm not on commission. )

What else, oh yeah, my ex American girl S has made an appearance on one of my Myspace sites (again)? Fuck knows how she finds them?? Last time she started sending dodgy comments basically designed to be read by my writing partner. It worked. I ended up sending her a nasty message and barred her from the site. This time I received the message: "Remember Chicago?"

Err yeah, of course I remember fukin Chicago it was one of the best days in my life that led on to the some of the worst days of my life. What do want S a fukin medal?

I just hope that this ain't gonna lead onto another spate of dodgy messages? If you want to be friends, lets be friends. If you still hate me and just wanna annoy me, it's like, get over it honey it was seven fukin years ago!

Women!!

Nice selection of Pumpkin chukin machines ??

Google reader... Pretty cool stuff ( spotted a fair few people using it to check out my site and checked it out myself!!)

This has to be the coolest bandwidth speed tester on the net. Check to see if your actually getting the broadband speed your supposed to be. My results: Down speed 13913 kb/s, Up speed 1070 kb/s. Vroom ( I'm running a 24mg line before you ask!)

Funny aircraft tower announcements... Err funny!!

Toorgle... Tizz nice!!

Laters

Paradise lost ...and then found again!

Sooo, bit of a weekend that one, where do I start? Well Fridays gig was fun, great venue, great sound system ( Turbosound Aspect) good crowd, rocked it really. Met up with the girls, they turned out to be complete nutters, so I just went home in a cab with them and got the cab to drop me off at my place alone, then went to bed.

Anyway, I woke up Sat and thought "Right fuck it I'm going out out" ... And I did. Called my mate P (futures broker) P was buzzing around in some old Porsche that he's been restoring and he came and picked me up, we flew round the town for a bit, took the car home, went to see the dealer, then descended on Kensal Rise to watch the FA cup final ( fukin lame match by the way!!?)

There's great debate going on in 'The Rise' at the moment because the Paradise Pub ( one of my all time favorite pubs ) has been sold to some guy who used to work for Fabric nightclub. We all think he's gonna close the Pub down and gut it's interior ( in fact, we know he is??) This would be such a shame, cos it's the interior that kinda makes it what it is, a designer dive. But, what can you do? Time marches on, everything changes, blah blah blah!!

I digress!

So, we're all sat in the Regent pub ( cos we're boycotting the Paradise ) getting pissed, having a laugh etc. etc. when this blond girly comes over and sits next to me and she's like " You look exactly like some guy who used to teach me?" To which I reply: " I am the guy who used to teach you kid!" ( I used to lecture Music Technology for a while at a City Uni, absolutely hated it!!)

Anyway we start chatting on about stuff and this girl is hot, lovely figure! We're both flirting big time when... The fukin DJ starts his evening set at full volume and suddenly nobody can understand a word that anyone else is saying??

We go outside, I get chatting to some other mates and she starts to chat to three blokes that I thought she had arrived with. All good I guess?

The night goes on and I keep catching this girls eye and she's looking a bit stressed coz these three guys are fukin all over her and you can tell she's not the least bit happy about it, in fact, she looks completely hastled.

It's closing time and we all go off to a mate (H's ) house party, this girl tags along, complete with the three fukin stooges who are basically fighting for her affections. She looks even more hastled poor girl. We're standing in the kitchen drinking vodka, talking shit and I ( no idea why? ) just march up to the girly(L) pull her out of the way and announce " Sooo, have you met my girlfriend then??" and then stuck the lips on her?

We were still snogging three hours later, much to the dismay of the three pack animals who were trying to hunt her down.

Ha!! You lose!

I went back to her place and rolled around...a lot.

Sunday I left L and went home via the pub. I stumbled in at about 9pm and just wiped out.

Sooo, good weekend? I think so. I have L's number as well..Bonus!

I sent her a text last night " L, although an outstanding student, would definitely benefit some extra 1 to 1 tuition".

I won't tell you what she wrote back!

Tee hee!!

Sooo, Benny scale of fuckedness = Oh I'd say an 820 + another 20 for the snog!

Oh nooo!! Even more nanny state crap, listen Police people, you do your job, and let us do ours thanks?? This will make great air rifle fodder if nothing else though!

Superb frequency chart for anyone thinking of being a sound engineer, yes you do have to know all of this shit to be good at it. No excuses!

And... useless facts for Mondays ( or any other day of the week really )


Laters

Sorry Sir Bob!

Sooo, right, first things first, I must apologise to Sir Bob Geldof for basically laying into him on this post about the hypocrisy of such an unenvironmentally friendly waste of time gig.

Turns out that the Live Earth gig has absolutely nothing to do with him [Sir Bob] and is in fact the work of that global warming scandal money grabber Mr Al Gore??

Note to Al Gore: How many DVD's you shifted, how many leaflets printed, how many times up and down the Motorway/Freeway promoting your ideas?? Global warming, like you give a shit mate...you're off making a fortune!!

I'm not being funny Bob mate, but I would seriously have a go at Al Gore, cos this is pitched to look exactly like one of your gigs??

And here's little ole me thinking that you'd lost the plot or something.

How wrong can you be.

OK, we have a big central London gig of our own tonight so I won't waste time writing.

Plus I have a girly coming down who I kinda fancy.

All good

Mad cat bow and arrow game thing

Laters

Technorati tags: live Earth Bob Geldof Al Gore gigs bands London

Gig dates!

Sooo, I met up with my mate L (girl) last night for drinks , she's moved to Berlin and I hadn't seen her for about two years, so there was loads of catching up to do. We got hammered and went back to her place with her mum (who's also a friend) drank wine and I got a crash course in how to play the banjo. Now I want one [a banjo]

Today I have a day off, so I went for a business meeting with the record labels bank manager who, I must admit, I fancy the pants off. But nooo business and pleasure eh. Stoopid mix.

Now I'm sat in the house drinking tea and I'm gonna chill and watch a couple of movies.

Talking of movies, I watched the worst film I think I've ever seen in my life the other night: 'Epic Movie' It's the biggest pile of crap you can possibly imagine. Not even worthy of the film stock it was shot on, it parodies already funny movies in a totally non funny toilet humour way. Complete Rubbish toss !! Nuff said.

We start gigging again this weekend with a central London gig and then the calender sorta looks like this ( more gigs are being added all the time)




Busy busy beaver, If you're clever ( and can actually be arsed?? ) then you can probably work out the band from that list. Needless to say they're a superb band to engineer, and I'm kinda proud to be onboard.

Soooo...Roll on summer!

Woohoo!

What else, oh yeah I emailed Sweedy girl pissed last night, stoopid idea!! Don't feel good about it today really. Although it was nothing nasty, I should learn to never ever DUI!!

I'm a fukin idiot..

Right, I'm gonna cook a bacon sarny and drink more tea.

Interesting, the BBC posted a video link to a scientist who was basically debunking the whole climate change global warming thing, then pulled the link. No further comment on that really!

Laters

GO AWAY!!!

Sooo, That fukin Virgin company ( remember the ones I signed up to for my internet, and was then left unable to do anything for two months) just won't go the fuck away.

I got a letter in the post yesterday morning and my blood pressure went through the roof. Now (get this) they're taking me to court over monies they say I owe them??

VIRGIN...ARE YOU HAVING A FUCKING LAUGH OR WHAT?????

Seemingly I was contracted for a year, and they want the money for it?

In my book Virgin, a contract is a two-way street from a customer to a provider, for a service that actually fukin works?

Yours services unfortunately don't.

I contacted the collection agency yesterday and explained what had happened and although the girl I spoke to was very helpful, she said that I would have to explain the situation directly to Virgin, and to avoid ruining my credit rating it would be advisable to pay the amount owed and claim it back from Virgin.

HA... YOU FUCKING THINK!!

NOT!!!!

Sooo, I gets on the phone to Virgin and guess what, coz my account has been canceled, they have no reference to me.

NO SHIT BATMAN!!

Sooo...I gets back on the phone to the collection agency to tell them this and ( after explaining the whole story again to some other muppet ) I get told the same thing again?

Stalemate ( and guess who's paying for all these calls)

Shoddy!

So Virgin, not only did you fuck my business for a month, now you wanna fuck my credit rating as well??

Oh well, guess I'll have to counter claim.

Coz you ain't getting any more of my money... Period!!

Not a chance...

What a waste of my time.

No wonder you lost 46,900 customers in the first quarter of this year.

Get your bloody house in order eh!!

I've provided you with a new business model: Provide stuff that works, Collect money from happy customers.

Easy peazy lemon squeezy!!

My advice to anyone thinking of signing up to this shambolic company: Don't even fukin go there!!

Forum after forum after forum after forum after forum all saying the same shit!!

Shoddy!

Laters

Technorati tags: virgin broadband rubbish

Dog tired!!

Sooo, I don't really have time to write at the moment, apart from a zillion gigs, a big night out and watching a doggy getting splattered by a transit van on the way home the other night ( it got up, walked around a bit, keeled over and then promptly snuffed it!) , there's not a lot going on really...

Here's a couple of rants to be going on with:

So I finally watched 'This is England' Brilliant film, If you want a true representation of England in the 80's, then watch this film and stop taking reference from the Hugh Grant, Working title type of shit that the world seems to think this country is about.

When are these idiots gonna realize that if you sue YouTube you're actually suing the fans, it's the way the 'peoples choice' media works nowadays, sorry if it doesn't comply to your agenda, but tuff shit really !!

Also...are theses uproven "truths" ( with their fukin alternative agendas) really becoming part of our school curriculum? Hmmm. I'm becoming more and more disolutioned with force fed shit, day by day??

Laters

Yahoo! The TV people are in the house!!

Sooo... Yesterday was a pretty kickass day really.

Got up early and went to take some pictures under the Westway (West London bypass) for an album cover, I particularly like these two (but not really for an album cover)





I also got loads of pics of the gig but my new camera seems to have a real problem focusing when it's dark, so they've all come out shit??

Not good.

Anyway, I arrived at the venue at around 12 ( it was a huge rigging job ) walked through the door and I was like "Yeeeyyyy!!, the TV people are here!!" I personally love setting up gigs where there's a film crew in the house coz it means:

A. You will be spectacularly fed, unless there's on-site catering, in which case it'll be OK-ish food. We were [spectacularly fed] by the way. A full Thai and British menu, on demand, and as much as you can eat.

and

B. There will be runners in the house, who will basically get you anything you want ( Ciggies, newspapers, coffee, food etc. etc. etc. ) and you don't have to pay a penny for it.

Happy days.

Yep if there's a film crew in the house, it means somebody is chucking money off the wall. Sony and Yahoo at this particular gig.

Again, all good.

So yeah, we basically ripped out the in-house system ( mixing desk, looms, FX etc. ) and spent the day replacing it with a state of the art digital mixing system which would have cost a bloody fortune. Load of fun.

We soundchecked the band at around 5pm for an 8pm gig and then sat back and watched the punters arrive.

Sooo... At this gig we had several types of punter. We had:

1. The Sony/Yahoo competition winners ( a bunch of fairly young kids) who all looked sooo pleased to be mixing it ( and pretending to be with) the VIPs. Bless!!
2. The film and sound people ( basically the techies and the directors ) all doing a job.
3. The random VIPs and hangers on.
4. The Sony VIPs and product demonstrators giving it the " Oh we seen it all before " vibe ( and they probably have)
5. The Yahoo VIPs. These people you can spot a mile off by the Yes..yes we're in the music business attitude ( your not by the way) and, to be honest, they're all a bunch of hi-tech librarians. Nothing wrong with that really, you do get some very sexy librarians. But... just coz you put money into an industry, it don't make you part of it. Gawd that sounded sooo snobby, but... Yahoo is not ( and never will be) a cool company, please stop trying.

The actual gig ( Calvin Harris ) was OK I guess, I've seen much much better Electropop acts on the scene and the guy only played for like, 40mins? A whole day of rigging for a fukin 40min gig??

I did enjoy the Calvin Harris production team though, bunch of absolute nutters and their sound engineer did a spectacular job with the band ( Strange though, it sounded shit in the soundcheck?)

What did stand out though was the DJ playing before the gig. I didn't catch the guys name and there's no reference to him on any of the up and coming tour blurb, but the guy was pretty fukin good. He was DJ'ing from a Laptop using Ableton Live and a small controller, playing sorta Housey Electro stuff, but really dubbing it all out with huge delay FX.

Very cool, I could've listened to the guy all night. The DJ's on after Calvin were pretty run of the mill. Nothing worth writing home about really.

The gig ended at about 10pm and we de-rigged everything and were out the door by 11:20.

I decided go have a pint in the Market bar on Portobello Road my old stomping ground before they released that Nottinghill film and all the twats moved into the area and fucked it up? (You just can't buy class can you ?) Of course this is where all the Yahoo mob had descended post-gig as well ( probably the first open bar they came to.) So I had a couple and decided enough was enough, so I went to the shop, bought a bottle of Rum and then came home. Had a little dwinky and went to bed.

And that was that, pretty wicked day all round really, and...I got paid for it.

All good

All good indeedy.

Laters

Technorati tags: Calvin Harris gig Sony Yahoo Market bar Portobello Road Ableton live Rum Bed

Bethere...still there!

Sooo, I thought I 'd give you an update on how the BeThere broadband connection is going. Well it's been up and running for well over a month now and I've had zero time-outs, zero disconnects, zero downtime and only one router crash ( but I was sending a file at just over 1Mb/sec whilst downloading at full speed) Considering that this thing runs at half the speed of an OC1 optical line I'm pretty damn impressed to be honest. You could easily run a 20 node internet cafe of this thing with room to spare, so you can imagine what it's like on it's todd with only one machine on the network (My Mac)

The Japanese bloke next door ( new guy ) shares the line sometimes and I only know he's online if I actually check the router.

No longer am I waiting around to upload tracks to the various FTP servers of pressing plants etc. One track of 12oMB uploads in 120 secs. Lightning fast. I can set a download away ( Say Doctor Who or 24 or something ) then go to the shop and the thing will be ready when I get back.

Brilliant service, excellent customer care ( they even emailed me to tell me they were updating the router software, I didn't even notice them doing it) and the fastest domestic broadband in Britain by far at 24Mb. What more can you possibly need ( 48Mb line maybe?)

Basically this service shits all over BT or Bulldog or Carphone Warehouse or Tiscalli ( I won't mention Virgin Broadband, it's a non starter )

Top!!

So yeah, happy broadband.

Highly highly highly recommended....

I'm filling in for a mate of mine D tomorrow engineering a Sony/BMG/Yahoo showcase in Notting Hill for this electro artist ( can't remember his name, he's kinda famous I think, oh yeah, Calvin Harris? ) D is in Poland touring at the moment, he'll be returning the favour filling in for me at the club when I start the festival season in a couple of weeks time.

Anyway, early start tomorrow so I'm off to bed.

Fucksticks!!



Laters

Technorati tags: Bethere Broadband Bands BMG/Sony Clavin Harris Electro showcase