Musics I done

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

a qwik catch up

as i'm approaching the point where what i'm writing about happened three weeks ago, i thought i'd better do a whirlwind tour of the recent past to get myself up to speed. hey, i'm reading this too.

that sunday - the 28th - i met dan and ed in a pub on great portland street. ed had brought a massive stack of computer games with him from home, more than you could really sit through every day after work. but some classics from the golden era of the mid 90's. ed and dan argued about semantics, then i went back to his for dinner. a more than somewhat unusual combination, but all i remember was falafels and cream corn fritters. i stayed over since it was closer to work than where i live. like everything.

monday night i went home, grabbed my guitar, et, and headed back out to a different back of beyond, tottenham (actual tottenham, not the street in town) for to practice with the girls girls girls for their acoustic gig. jez was to move over to piano for it and i filled in on guitar. it felt like being back at youth theatre, doing fiddler. someone else's material, bashing stuff out to be heard and add rhythm and an occasional flourish. we played for about an hour, then back to finsbury park to the pub for a bit. home late.

the gig itself, on thursday, was really good. i did a solo set first (whenever i can) and my good friend sam had the good fortune to turn up just while i was sitting down. i played through some songs, i forget what, other than pregtard's acoustic debut. love i think, and purple milk... i dunno what else. being mic'ed up was difficult, feedback and volume issues, so i switched to plectrum for the show. it went very well, i forgot a few chords, getting mixed up between 'dreams' and 'the sweeny'.

after wards, sam, ed, and i went up to primrose hill with some martini and i woke up with a hang over.

the next day i was off to rugby to see laurence for the weekend. we got up to all sorts of mischief. played a silly boardgame about cheese that would have lasted forever if people hadn't conspired to let someone win. having too many players unbalanced it, and when we played it again later in the weekend with only four players it was fine. the 'party' )more of a gathering( was fun and lasted forever. it was a shame rachel couldn't come up - part of me really wants to take her round all my old haunts - favourite films, best friends, exes - as i feel it says even more than just being around me, about myself. but we've been going out 6 months now, so it's getting a bit late for that kind of thing. anyway, ben++, corey, martin++, aimee, and nicola (who i'd not met before; ++politics that i'm not going into here) a big pot of curry, and mr and mrs ashmore, and yashi, made for a grand old time. plus a man who's name i i forget, but he kept getting confused between scifi books and i knew which one he was talking about everytime. just don't get me started on 'stranger...'.

the next wednesday i had the good fortune to two tickets to the guitar hero 3 launch. i don't really like guitar hero - it's explicitly not as much fun as playing the guitar. but i got to meet up with log again, which was fun, and bring sam. the free beer was great, but the free jaegermeister was a killer. both bands - funeral for a friend and maximo park - were dull, and sam and i ended the evening sat back on a couch complaining loudly about the music industry.

the next day i had a hangover. then rachel and i met up at oval and went to see my old friend debora in a piece of physical theatre - i don't suppose you'd call it a play as such. a terrific piece of loony-tunes inflected mime, riffing on the mirror sketch from duck soup and taking it beyond. it just shows you can do so much more with mime than with props. like radio. the sound effects, all from the mouth too, were great. and to top it off, there was george mann, from the old youth theatre days. what a nostalgic couple of weeks i was having.

the night after, lizzie was having congratulatory drinks, on behalf of her being crowned european champion of her chosen martial (made sure i typed that correctly) art. here's the vid. there was a nice man there, who won his silver medal, a raw food vegan. we had a good old natter.

then was alison's house party. big fireworks. dj grilly on the deck, getting the complaints for not playing anything from beyond the 80's, which was obviously when alison and alan stopped buying records. plenty of specials, and blimey, i never knew, chas 'n' dave are actually good! that's worth an exclamation mark, you see. ed fell asleep from too much drink and was carted off in a taxi with vic (also asleep) to hampstead at about 5.

the next day i got up about 12, went home to sort myself out, then got a train north - a slow, slow train - up to my dad's in stockport.

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