Monday 27 May 2013

Early morning drives are perfect


After indescribably idyllic drive to and from Devon I find perfect parking opposite flat behind a gorgeous black Lambo. If the TT is an inanimate object how do I know it's grinning?

Best thing about London flat is I arrive and leave when I want. Saturday I morning left at 3.30am from North London, drove straight to Woolacombe beach beneath a rubenesque moon and a magnificent sunrise, arrived at beach in perfect sunshine for 7.30. Barely saw another car. Sunrise over the empty M4 listening to the 6 Music freakzone is quickly becoming my favourite thing.

Beach with the Goodes excellent, as was Ben and Johans roast Sunday dinner

Just left Parracombe at 5am to get in London for a much more leisurely 10am.

Since deciding to use the time I would otherwise have been struggling to sleep I estimate I have avoid 15-20 hours of just sitting in traffic. I don't know what I'm more happy to see the back off, car jams or insomnia

Sunday 5 May 2013

Yeah Yeah Yeahs Film and Book recommendations from I'll Be Your Mirror 2013 program

Thank you Yeah Yeah Yeahs for making me aware of Slints the Locust and .. various over acts I would never have otherwise come across.

Anyway - to pay you back, for the benefit of other fans back  : here are your book and film
recommendations from the festival program. I'll be looking out for these.








I'll Be Your Mirror 2013

This is my previous experience of this festival - I may have been
optimistic expecting to get treated like this a second time

Perhaps reflecting the rest of the country, and the fact that ATP is
very sadly coming to an end, this festival was a shadow of its former
self.

It was much smaller for a start. What amounted to the 2nd Stage last
time was completely closed this time around, leaving only a much
smaller room as well as the main hall which often featured queues to
get in and out. The ability to wander around nearly all of Ally Pally
was a major feature of last time. I NEARLY convinced someone else to
come along this time just based on seeing Ally Pally itself. For half
a century is magnificent venue has been looking for an event which
exploits it's run down Victorian splendour to the full - seeing PJ
Harvey perform Let England Shake in here before seemed to briefly
capture that potential - is there a promoter out the with the
imagination to do it again?

First shock - no Mojito bar :-(
And mojitos orders at the standard bars were about the worst I've ever
had. As to the other booze, I don't mind paying through the nose for
good beer at a festival, but paying £4.50 to see someone pour beer out
of a can is downright insulting.

Food was heavily cut back to about four or five overused stalls - I bought two (ok) burritos during the day down to lack of choice and they came out with a pungeant vengeance later.

To be fair the venue never looks full to capacity, perhaps because they are careful with hype - not wanting to attract a mass market and go the way of Glastonbury..

Glastonbury Festival moaning
Crazy that people are still fighting for tickets to Pilton when events like I'll Be Your Mirror are being ignored - but then 100,000's of people turn up to Glastonbury just to stagger around drunk for for days, piss on someone else's tent and then go back and claim they are interesting because of it. From being the festival that made me feel like the most boring straight in the world in 1992, Glastonbury now is 90% comprised of people dressed like they've just come back from back packing around Thailand,  and today makes me feel like the drug dealer in Withnail and I.



So maybe ATP are smart to keep it small and we were all just lucky to be treated like royalty last time.

Saturday 4 May 2013

I'll Be Your Mirror : Main Hall between bands

I'll Be Your Mirror : Palm Court

I'll Be Your Mirror : The Locust

Jah Shaka is 40 mins+ late and next band on that stage is tuning up so..

Back to Main Hall for supposedly uncompromising noise terrorists The Locust. Maybe it's the whiskey but this band really make ultra short and loud tunes work in a surprisingly melodic way. Not normally my cup of tea but this is best band so far. They got the band back together for this gig. Thanks.

*Update
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion was the band on immediately after and before the headliners. I've never got into this band despite some heavy recommendations and in this company they seemed tuneless, toneless and regressive. They made The Locusts seem like Sergeant Pepper era Beatles....

I'll Be Your Mirror : Yeah Yeah Yeahs live updates

Yeah Yeah Yeahs have imported a container load of New York freakzone to Alexandra Palace

Prince Rama: infectious tribal good natured trippy dance that featured and produced smiles all round.

Not far off pure entertainment, they looked like children's television presenters immersed in a swimming pool full of LSD, though to be fair " the wide open spaces put a zap on their heads" (to paraphrase Apocslypse Now) ... playing a colossal crumbling mostly empty Victorian palace would probably do your head in even when straight.
Climaxed with a zombie apocalypse onstage and off stage with a collection of Zombie Bez's to help with the dancing..

All The Majesty Of. City Landscape 2

London skyline featuring Canary Warf on left and Shard on right - From Alexander Palace

I'll Be Your Mirror 2013 live updates

Alexandra Palace : best music festival venue I've ever been at by some distance...

First at the bar, team of bar kids practically cheered when I ordered my lunchtime Mojito - the first of 2013. Managed to sneak in my festival hip flask full of Jamesons also - my liver has already put in a request to leave early

I'll Be Your Mirror @ Alexandra Palace 2013

Just about to spend my Bank Holiday Saturday at this, got my New York Playlist on right now

I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR 2013 CURATED BY THE YEAH YEAH YEAHS

Film program has two of my favourite movies on it: The Devils and Rumblefish .. Karen O obviously knows how to make me happy

But much as I like Mosquito, the new YYY's album the band I'm really thinking about right now, The Curfew, never actually existed.

I'm listening to the audio book of William Gibson's Spook Country and enjoying it a lot more this time around, even if it feels more like Brett Easton Elli's doing a pastiche of Jerry Cornelius than the other of the other books Blue Ant trilogy (Pattern Recognition and Zero History)

The Curfew only appear in the second book of the Blue Ant Trilogy and without hearing any of their music, as even in this fictional 2005 they have long since split up (they seem to be a cross between Curve and Sonic Youth) they are hugely entertaining as dysfunctional soap characters wandering through a dysfunctional spy story. They are or were, in this other 2005. partly based in New York and seem to be very cool in a lovably dorky way.. much like the YYYs.

Pics to follow

Pics from Portishead and PJ Harvey at I'll Be Your Mirror

https://plus.google.com/photos/103317081647591150319/albums/5651574827233869265
This was the words
http://corben-dallas.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/ill-be-your-mirror-alexandra-palace.html