34 posts tagged “new malden”

Hello chaps and chapettes,

I'm at work and I'm so tired I'm giggling with despair. The day started badly, with South West Trains - in their infinite mysterious wisdom - deciding to replace trains from New Malden with buses that don't turn up. It took me half an hour to get to Wimbledon, and when I finally arrived my train wouldn't leave until I'd helped the guard find his glasses, which he'd dropped on the tracks:

"They just slipped off. They should be down there somewhere"
"It's too early in the morning. I can't see yet"

And the memory of how the previous evening ended has just come back to me in glorious supermarionation: namely, with my reassuring a lovely gay man from Truro about London gay life. He'd just had a disconcerting moment with another guy on the bus, who had been flirting with him incessantly, then suddenly got up and shouted:

"Mate, you're gay, innit. You are, don't fucking lie. You're a gay boy".

Then stormed off the bus.

I turned to the shell-shocked guy in question and, in finest Spaced tradition, said: "what a prick". We had a bit of a chat and Truro chap explained that the guy had been very friendly - and by friendly I suppose I mean he was fondling his bottom - but then when one of his mates noticed he went all defensive and then offensive. We talked about closets, and how much people enjoy living in them.

Right, I'm off to find soup and to avoid gypsies.

J x

I should love Wednesdays. I work from home on Wednesdays, and therefore Wednesdays are theoretically always sunny and full of love and joy. So why do I feel like fried cockfosters on a stick? For some reason I find Wednesday's commute (from my bed to the computer) to be the most harrowing of the week. I wake up too late, then stagger down the stairs, with a hacking cough, slapping myself about the face in an attempt to get the old circulation going. Clearly, due to not needing to rush out and get a train, my brain is tricked into thinking that on Wednesdays there is no need to wake up WHATSOEVER. That's the thing with getting what you want - it's never enough, is it? The secret to eternal happiness is always over that next cow pat. I need wireless so I can work from my bed. Then things will be fine.

I said 'Wednesdays' far too many times in that paragraph. I'm never saying 'Wednesdays' again.

Anyway, look at some pop videos. My sister and I went to see the Pipettes' Chrimbo spectacular last year, and they were as charming as ever. They were, however, totally blown off stage by the support act, a bunch of Brummie chancers called Misty's Big Adventure. Aren't they great? They have a big blue man who dances around on stage and looks to be constantly on the verge of killing someone. They made me grin and dance involuntarily, the bastards. How dare they trick me into having fun.

Confusingly, the band who star in this first video are another band called the Retro Spankees. They're great too. I like pop music at the moment. Indie-pop!

Well,

The dentist was uneventful. I hadn't been in two years, after leaving my last dentist in a huff due to him being all gruff and bluff and rugger-bugger and crap. He was clearly of the ones who drunk his own vomit and stuck root vegetables up his arse while at uni.

I explained all this to my new dentist, but he seemed most disinterested. He just flung me down in the chair (positioning his nurse behind me, in a crouching position, so I tripped and fell - he'd clearly done it a thousand times before), had a bit of a scratch and feel around, told me what I needed doing and how much, and got rid of me. Can't have taken more than two minutes. Then I ran away.

Why do all my stories end with me running away?

I went to four festivals last year - All Tomorrow's parties, Summer Sundae, Bestival, and the Green Man festival. The latter two I reviewed for the Morning Star, so I thought I'd belatedly post what I had to say. I am King of Zeitgeist! First up comes the Green Man festival, which was my FAVE festival of the year, despite the rain, getting marooned in Abervgavenny, and various other comedy mishaps. In fact, I'd say that this festival was the highlight of my 2006 full stop, or 'peroid' as the Yanks say when they're not shoving fried chicken down their neck while shooting children.

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Green Man

The journey to the Green Man festival was portentous: a midnight mini-bus journey through the Welsh countryside in the pouring rain, while a bearded gentleman with an unnerving smile played sinister glockenspiel music on a wind-up radio.

As an introduction to the festival it was an eerily appropriate one. Taking place in a new location this year – a beautiful old estate encircled by the foothills of the Brecon Beacons – the Green Man is like holidaying in a slightly skewed parallel musical universe; one where Dylan never went electric, Donavan is still alive, and where the beards have inherited the earth.

The festival begins wonderfully on Friday lunchtime with angry nu-folk superstar Chris T-T, who juxtaposes bitingly angry political songs - on one strikingly relevant song on the fate of civilians caught up in international ‘situations’, he spits: “What kind of Christian are you? What kind of Jew are you? What kind of Muslim are you?” - with charming ditties about dying hedgehogs and giraffes plotting their escape from captivity.

In the lovely courtyard of the Green Man Café, the sun briefly emerges from the Welsh mist to greet Benjamin Weatherill, an impeccably dressed young chap who woos the hushed throng with covers of old music-hall favourites, like old gramophone records with the hiss digitally removed. His own songs are atmospheric, Simon & Garfunkel affairs of heartbreak and murder, but he truly enchants the crowd with a Gorge Formby medley, his voice as sweet as gently shattering sugar glass.

“We’ve done dragons, we’ve done pixies – now it’s time for scarecrows”. Featuring flutes, kaftans, bongos, plastic swords and far-out apparel, the pre-industrial prog of Circulus is an uplifting and unpretentious melange that gets the long hairs skipping. But behind the cod-wackiness, the tunes hark back to driving 70s rock: Eagles in sheep’s clothing, perhaps?

Following on from the pagan rave, The Aliens provoke a shout of ‘Who Are You?’ from one cidered-up member of the crowd. Sadly, the answer is that they’re The Beta Band without genius main-man Steve Mason, and their disappointing, straight-ahead psychedelic rock sends the vast majority of the crowd off in search of ale and pies.

Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys comes onstage dressed as a monk to a moog version of ‘Venus’, sits next to a table of plastic budgies, and throws a keyboard into the crowd. Playing songs from last year’s solo album, he helpfully translates songs into English for the crowd, introduces us to Synthia the keyboard and Trevor the portable bagpipe machine, and sings with heart-breaking beauty and soul. The finest moment comes with “Yr Atal Genhedlaeth”, which he builds, live, tape loop by tape loop: first laying down beatbox percussion, then adding several vocal lines and harmonies, then Trevor, then further percussion with a matchbox, before sitting back, cigar in hand, as his voice and song echo back around him. Gruff seems to have rediscovered the sparky, make-it-up-as-you-go-along spirit the Super Furries lost when their studio budget got too comfortable.

Speaking of errant Welsh genius, ’s Zygotic Mynci would have been fitting headliners for this festival, seeing as they were crazed folk wizards from the Welsh mountains. But we get ex-frontman Euros Childs in the Saturday afternoon drizzle instead, and it’s a fair substitute: Euros has survived the break-up of Gorkys with his knack for uplifting, Brian Wilson pop-psychedelia intact, and song-of-the-summer ‘Costa Rica’ nearly – but nearly – entices the sun out from behind the clouds.

Micah P. Hinson trades in world-weary noir-country – his life is a rich tapestry of jail, drugs and bankruptcy. His desperately sad, barely-alt country songs are sung with unquestionably sincerity, but he’s a tad too trad and unengaging for one to really feel his pain.

Silver Jews are a different proposition. Hitherto reclusive Dave Berman has his unfeasibly beautiful wife on bass for emotional support, and he drawls out his songs with true sadness: this is country-rock salvation sung with the exhausted sigh of a belatedly reprieved death-row drifter.

As the weekend pagans pack up their love beads and head back to their jobs in advertising, Juana Molina helps the Sunday afternoon doze drift past with folksy coffee table inoffensiveness. The following Archie Bronson Outfit offer an interesting contrast; their urgent scuzzy garage-blues does its best to stir the monged-out crowd, but the singer’s voice strains like the flooded engines of the departing VW camper vans.

Festival organisers It’s Jo & Danny are an unexpected treat. It’s good to see the bedroom folk couple still going strong – Lemon Jelly, for one, owe plenty to Jo & Danny’s maudlin, mandolin-led love-folk groove.

Ex-Gorky’s man #2 of the weekend comes in the form of Richard James, whose new songs show the gifts he brought to his previous band: beautifully arranged, driving, Welsh country soul pop songs interspersed with gentle, finger-picking balladry.

The smiles are also wide at the main stage for ex-Catatonia front-woman Cerys Matthews, recently returned to the motherland after her post-fame breakdown and retreat to , with a suitcase full of country-tinged folksy sketches of love and regret.

Calexico kick off their festival-closing set with a lullaby for ‘all the little perishes’, which is fitting for a weekend so dominated by increasingly feral children. Their tex-mex trumpet-laden sound is as beguiling as ever, but they seem to have been shoe-horned into every festival line-up this summer. A more appropriate finale takes place at the Green Man café, where the ancient, legendary Wizz Jones plays traditional, sax-sodden folk to a traditional, drink-sozzled crowd.

Nu-Hippy Musings

Overheard at Green Man…

“I don’t see what’s so great about organic chicken”

“You know, I think everyone’s a little bit telepathic…”

“Of course man, we’re all programmed for procreation…”

“They found this spot on my back, and they press it… and all the pain disappears. It’s amazing.”

Ostensibly a folk festival, Green Man caters for eclectic music lovers who think that has sold out, beards of every description, hippie parents who want to catch some vibes while letting their brood run free and become one with the mud, and anyone who appreciates a laid-back and respectful festival in a beautiful setting.

Excellent and totally magnificent fellow New Malden resident Mr Erudite Baboon has a comic strip, which I enjoy muchly. It rocks my world the way monkeys dressed as children (or indeed, children dressed as monkeys) rock Michael Jackson's.

Over the years, I have done my bit to support this comic. I have bought a book, some badges, a pro-meat t-shirt, and now, my latest "fans are idiots, they'll buy anything" purchase is yet another t-shirt. This one says "SHOES, they're like hats for feet", only with more SPARKLE. Here's me modelling it:

Doing my bit for the baboon

2 comments

My only caveat: they're from America, so for Geoff's sake get a small. They come in small, medium, large, extra large, extra extra large, and extra extra extra large. So I thought, being six foot tall but skinny, I'd fit in the 'medium' category. Hella no. A man with twice the pie intake of me could easily sleep in a tent made out of this t-shirt. That's how big it is.

I went to a party on Friday night. It was a 30s/40s themed party, and the only things I could think of to go as were Adolf Hitler and George Formby. I went for the latter, as ukeleles were going cheap on ebay whereas Nazi Uniforms cost at least twenty quid. I saw an impossibly young Swedish chap doing a Formby medley at the Green Man festival last summer, and since then I've been a total Formby apologist. Which is better than being a Nazi apologist, I suppose.

The party was good, anyway, though I was somewhat shamed by the staggering quality of the other costumes on offer. I combined my two costume ideas by playing some anti-semitic songs on my ukulele - hey hey! - and talked and laughed and drank and hugged and generally had a wonderful time.

It was a party hosted by some members of the indie-pop mafia, and as such they're all shy and twee, but have an almost incomprehensible capacity for alcohol. I went to bed / lay down on the floor at around 6am, then when I went to get a glass of water at 8am or so the party was still going strong. Although by 'going strong' I suppose I mean 'Ken was wandering around the house on his own in a dapper hat, attempting to offer sleeping people cocktails'.

Today I went for lunch with a rather lovely fellow party survivor and spent the whole time talking non-stop about banal things. When I'm massively over-tired my internal monologue becomes very external. I was going:

'ok, I'm going to eat some pizza now. Yes, that pizza tasted nice. I wonder whether my friend managed to get me a ticket for that gig. Your hair's very pouffy. God I haven't been here in ages. Hey, that guy over there looks like a Christian'

Very silly.

I then fell asleep at about 4pm, woke up three hours ago, and so that's my sleeping pattern totally, categorically buggered, then. Ah well, it was worth it. I think. I now feel very empty and strange and feel like I'll never be hungry or lonely again.
 
Right, I'm off for a doomed attempt at further sleep. Boing!

p.s. I started thinking, belatedly, that maybe James Blunt is one big, stinking metaphor for the futility of existence. I'd quite like to write a musical called 'James Blunt', in which the eponymous hero meanders along on a massive search for truth, then ends up finding a jam jar buried in a beautifully kept suburban garden, and in that jam jar is a key, and the key opens a door in the sky that leads to an eternal truth, and that truth turns out to be something really banal like 'You get what you deserve, people of earth, and what the people of earth deserve is James Blunt'. And then he'd turn to the audience and play 'You're Beautiful', and everyone would go home happy, because that was their favourite song.

Blogging mode #1: What I did last night

Last night I went to see a couple of bands from the album with my face on. The headliners were called ‘I’m From Barcelona’, which is a lie. They’re from Sweden. They’re sort of like a 29 member strong Scandanavian version of The Flaming Lips (childlike joy! Balloons! Confetti!), and their lead singer looks like a seventies porn star version of Wayne Coyne. A lot of the members of the band don’t actually do anything, as far as I can make out, other than jump around and hit the occasional tambourine and generally add to the ridiculously gleeful atmosphere. For their last encore, they played an electro-pop version of their most famous song and invited everyone up onto the stage to dance with them. Chaos ensued. I haven’t danced and sweated and grinned so much at a gig for ages. I was suffused with endorphins. It was GREAT.

Before the gig something even more GREAT happened: I met Ed Chesters, out of third division Britpop superstars The Bluetones. He was the only Bluetone that I hadn’t met, so I went up to him and said “You’re the only Bluetone I haven’t met”. I also told him that I hadn’t bothered to buy their new album but my friend Paul had – I pointed to Paul at this stage – and Ed told me that I should copy it off him.

“What, not buy it?”

“Nah, just burn it”

That’s the problem with drummers. They have poor business sense.

I also told him about the embarrassing time that I met Bluetones bassist and artwork designer (artwork Ed clearly doesn’t think much of seeing as he suggests I just copy the album) Scott Morris at a bar:

Me:  “I met him after hours at a bar in Soho. Incidentally, After Hours is the name of one of your band’s singles!”

Ed Chesters: “I can’t believe you just said that. But go on…”

Me: Yeah, I chatted to him for an hour or so, then realized I was wearing a t-shirt that featured HIS FACE.

Finally, I explained that, many years ago, I’d started (but never completed) an online choose-your-own-adventure website based on The Bluetones, and how in one bit they both get sued by JK Rowling and get sentenced to death for race crimes at Nuremburg. He ran away at this stage. Fair enough, really.

Eds1

I can't work out what I want to blog about, and I don't know how I want to blog. It's all over the place, and so lacks satisfying thematic coherence. I don't know whether this should be a platform for New Malden-based stuff,  a diary/journal type thing of the day-to-day events of my life; whether I should reveal my hopes and fears and crazy dreams, or whether it should be a place for spewing crazy rants of odious anti-semitism.

So here's the plan: over the next few weeks I plan to write entries in a different style / idiom / way, and you - my valued and cherished handful of readers - can give me feedback on what mode of blogging you prefer. Jibbery heck, you could even make a few suggestions of your own. You know, if you want to.

Tonight, I shall write the first of these entries. It will be written in 'what I did today' mode, and you will gasp and swoon at the thrilling things I've been up to. Exciting!