cha0tic stuff

Traveling on Sunday is a pain in the hole, what with Bus replacements, reduced services etc. So I end up in Nuneaton not knowing when the next train to Nottingham is, but I do see two blokes in Motorhead t-shirts. They've got to be going to the gig. A quick enquiry of them & I find there is a train shortly & I should be Chez Mish in time for tea. Hurrah.

A Taxi ride from the station with a driver who's geographical knowledge of Nottingham seems even scanter than mine & I'm at Miss Mish towers, drinking Wine & chatting with the lady herself, hubby & Russ, another devotee of loud music.

Mr Mish drops us off up town on his way to see 'Borat' & we head off down the pub spotting a Dwarf, so we know that the signs are good¹

The bar is noisy, Which makes chatting difficult. As Russ & I need to talk beards we head to a quieter bar. Beards? Yes, both being facially hirsute gentlemen, we're contemplating entering the world beard & mustache championships next year & have to discuss strategy.

Ciders drunk, we head off to the gig round the corner & that little knot of nerves forms in my stomach. I know I'm meant to be on the guest list +2, but people have forgotten before & you can end up hanging round the door looking like a right twat until it's sorted. It's sorted & we're in. The place is rammed & we make for the bar. I text The Scottish Chef thanking him & say I'll see him later.

We make for a view of the stage & end up Stage left. That's the right hand side of the stage as you look at it from the punters point of view. I begin to suspect that Mish may have something about Bass players, as we always stand Stage Right when watching The Stranglers, the side their Bass player stands. Tonight we're on the same side as Motorheads Bass player. (That'd be Lemmy) The band fire up & I last about 3 songs before having to retreat to the bar & ask using sign language if they've got ear plugs. Russ & Mish having thought ahead & brought their own. As I'm at the bar I purchase more drinks along with the ear plugs. Incase you didn't know Motorhead are a very loud band.

In the Mosh a short creepy looking bloke in front of me has just made a blonde lass next to him look nervous. I don't know what he's done. I suspect a Tokyo subway frotting attempt though. The Mosh is not there for creeps to rub up against women they don't know. I move forward to act as a buffer between them. He looks up at me & give me one of those smiles that expects me to be complicit with what ever it is he's done. I give him the dead eye back & it's his turn to look nervous. He moves to one side & tries to ingratiate himself with a couple, they're not really interested. He glances back & catches my (dead) eye again. He fucks off.

The gig is great. They don't play 'We are the road crew' though. Ah well. The lights come up at the end of the show & the crowd starts to clear. We end up chatting with a Hells Angel. I'm kind of worried as being slightly deafened by the gig & him having a somewhat incomprehensible accent I keep having to ask him to repeat what he's saying. I've seen fights start for that sort of thing. It's cool though.

We start heading towards the exit & I give The Scottish Chef a bell to see if he's got time to pop out for a drink.

"I'm not going to the cunting Rescue Rooms ya cunt, come see me in ma Kitchen"

We head round to catering & get admitted backstage.

Now for a lot of people this is the holy of holies, a chance to meet their idols & worship them. Well much as I like Motorhead I'm not really a hero worshipper, I work in the business & know how human the Stars are. I've been to my fair share of aftershow parties & the band rarely really want to chat with strangers. Well not unless they're good looking loose moraled strangers, or they've brought drugs with them. Plus aftershows tend to be full of twats that think they're important. So we hang out in the kitchen drinking & chatting with The Scottish Chef, a very drunk catering assistant, an even drunker Geordie & various assorted misfits. It is the cool place to be. It must be. We're there :) Just as we're about to leave the guitarist pops into the kitchen, probably to hang out with the cool kids & receives a peck on the cheek from Mish, who is amazed at how short he is.

It's late. The party is still going on backstage, but as Michelle Shocked said "The secret of a long life is knowing when it's time to go". Russ has to be in work at 08:00 & dealing with Sue Pollard. He needs at least some sleep. Mish & I head back to Miss Mish towers & a bottle of bubbly.

Traditions aren't all hundreds of years old. We all create new traditions all the time. The bottle of bubbly after a gig is a tradition that Mish & myself have established. It's a nice way to wind down from the excitement of the evening, chillout, discuss the evening & do a bit of catching up. Now Mish had made a Note to herself concerning this tradition & had obviously forgot to read it. We polished off the Bubbly, whilst chatting & being entertained by some music TV. Once that was all gone there was a bit of Red left from tea, then, well by that time of the morning Brandy seemed to be in order & they'd just announced that there was going to be a special on Blondie at 05:00. Only another hour away & I do have a special place in my heart for Miss Harry. OK I admit it, areas further down the body as well. So we had to watch that. Mr Mish left for work at 06:00 & I was drifting off on the settee...

...15:00 saw me surfacing with a hangover. Not too bad as we'd not got really legless, just drank steadily. Tea & an omlette acted as an excellent restorative & I could've started all over again, I had to head back to Wolves though. A home made Christmas cake & Lemmys Autobiography to keep me company on the train. Ah well. There's always next time. I think it's my turn to buy the bubbly then though.

1. See here for an explanation of the significance of the sighting of a dwarf.

...I had a day out in Bournemouth. A good drive down in two and a half hours, with a tinge of guilt bypassing Newbury, remembering the road protests there. The Barrier was in & up in no time & we were off to the pub for a pint & a slap up feed. Orange finder told me that the nearest Cinema was a couple of hundred yards away & 'Casino Royale' was playing. So that was the evening sorted out. Well I don't want to watch the 'Scissor Sisters' do I. I want to torture them to death over the course of five years because of the way they ruined 'Comfortably Numb'. Throw the barrier out & head back home. Via Weston-Super-Mare, as we have to pick up my colleagues cousin who's got a week off from Pontins. This means I arrive home at 05:30, get to bed by 06:30 & have my Friday buggered.

Friday I get into the office very late & dash the Wages off, load the club night in & do some more office nonsense. Around 21:00 I head off to Brum to do a ground rigging job for a mates company.

"Should be easy, just pickle a few motors in & you'll be away"

Well that's what he said. So I'm leaving there at 02:00 in the morning. *sigh* to come back to Wolves to load the Friday night Clubnight out at 03:00. This takes 'til 04:30, so as I'm in again at 08:00 I'm sleeping in the tech store aren't I. It's not worth going home is it?

Load 'The Killers" in at 08:00 Dick about all day making sure the gig is OK.

At 20:00 Change the downstairs venue from an Evangelical meeting into the re-loacted Clubnight. Cunts, your gig is over, now fuck off, stop hanging around chatting & let us get on with our work.

22:30 Start loading 'The Killers' out. Finish that around 01:30 or so. Hang around some more until it's 03:00 until it's time to load the Clubnight out downstairs. That get's done by 05:00 I'm home & in bed by 06:30. I should be up by lunchtime really to catch a train to Nottingham & the Next Blog entry.

Downloading music is not a function I require. I am happy to go to the shop, browse, buy the CD & import it into iTunes myself. It's a music player, not a fucking shop.

YOU CUNTING FUCKS! I SAID I DIDN'T WANT THE STORE ON. I THEN STARTED TYPING A SEARCH IN THE SEARCH BOX & YOU TOOK ME TO THE STORE. Twats.

Yes I am angry.

A chance to fire up the GPS toy attached to my phone & track myself then upload a track to Google Earth. Trialing some video software on the 6600, so I might even upload a vlog to Youtube.

So a fun day out & they'll pay me for it :)

Is The Led Zeppelin II Disc in Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. 'Absolutely Freak Out (Zap Your Mind!!) Case? And where the hell is that CD case?

I've not changed any of the genre definitions yet, but might do that if I don't agree with them.

So I have a question. Does anyone know how to get stats off iTunes? Is there any way to find out how many of each track by genre I have. Obviously without having to scroll down the library list & counting every track.

I've been stuffing music CDs into the new 'puter & sucking the noises off them into iTunes. As one of the aims of the new puter is to act as a 'media server' as the parlance of the day has it. I've been grabbing stuff that's just laying around. This sort of helps me tidy up, as I got a new bookcase/shelf thing that is built for CDs. This is helping me tidy the flat. As each disc has the noises sucked off it into the 'puter it gets put on the new shelf.

Curiously I'm stuffing the 'Hawkwind' discs in first. Though an 'Ozric Tentacles', 'Mistys Big Adventure' & 'Beastie Boys' disc have found their way in there.

Science. It's great.

"Excuse me where are the computer keyboards please? I rang earlier about USB Keyboards & the lass said you sold them"

Helpful bloke asks who I spoke to earlier.

"Sorry I forgot her name, the first lass had to put me through to her department when I rang."

The helpful bloke suggests that I follow him to see the lass that he thinks it is. I explain that I rang earlier & she remembers me & leads me to a USB Keyboard THAT IS WIRELESS & HAS NO INDICATION IF IT CAN BE LINKED TO A MAC!"

The worst thing about it was when I asked if it could be linked to a Mac' she said:

"What's a Mac? It is UBS though" 

As it's a public terminal I didn't want to log on to anything, my net paranoia being what it is. So I mooched around the blogosphere by following links from blog to blog.

I visted various countries such as Belgium. A place I've not checked for a while, but found that a Royal court I knew & loved on 20six was alive & well.

I won't Mention... Well as soon as there is a topic that can't be mentioned, Switzerland springs to mind :)

After that I mooched around North America. In a geographical sense. Rather than a political sense. This involved a visit to various places in Canada. Then a virtual journey South & an easy exploration across a continent that Lewis & Clarke took a long time over & I did in an afternoon. South America wasn't ignored.

After that it was back to the UK & the experiences of various bloggers & their offspring. People I'd not checked up on for a while.

Then on to people I read about nearly every day.

If you're a blogger & reading this, next time you've got a drink in your hand, even if you're with none bloggers, raise that glass in silent toast to the people all around the world that you 'know'

As the title says, a little bit maudlin.

Cheers!