So, what's happened?
Well, Saturday was interesting. I went to see Fixers and Rhosyn at the Modern Art Museum in Oxford (or MAO as they like to call themselves). Rhosyn was good. A string quartet who do songs rather than classical pieces. The originals are good, clearly they know how to write with a subtlety appropriate to their set-up and they know what works dynamically very well (wow, that sounds really wanky), and their covers lack any whiff of novelty and are handled very well. Good stuff. Apparently they normally have a drummer too, but for noise restrictions or something he couldn't play with them tonight.
Those restrictions are the same reason that Jack from Fixers ended up doing a set that consisted mostly of him doing karaoke. James Bond themes and other 80's songs, with a karaoke version of Fixers 'Amsterdam' stuck in the middle. It splits opinion. Some people find it funny that he's doing a karaoke set to a crowd of 'scenesters', others find it tedious (one person walked past me saying 'He's taking the piss. I'm going.'). He then followed that with about 3 or 4 songs solo on a very nice sounding organ that I can't remember the name of.
Oh, the basement of MAO really needs some better air conditioning.
Then after brief pubbage, me and a couple of mates went to the Hospitality night at the Regal.
It's been a while since I've been to a drum 'n' bass night and I was looking forward to having a good old mental dance for a couple of/few hours. Two problems though. One: The soundguy had no idea what he was doing and created a painfully bass heavy sludge of sound that was almost impossible to listen to, let alone actually enjoy. Two: I had forgotten that drum 'n' bass nights are mostly populated by chavs, and the ones who aren't chavs tend to be arseholes. Seriously, why do most drum 'n' bass fans seem to be total dickheads?
I was at the bar, waiting for bloody ages, as was everyone else, and these two started kicking off. One was a chav, one was wearing a shirt and had a stupid haircut. This guy had obviously said something that the chav didn't like because he was trying to intimidate the shirt guy, who instead of being intimidated or just ignoring him, was being really patronising. When the chav finally got his drink and was walking off, shirt said "See you outside, yeah?" to which chav decided to throw the drink he'd been waiting at least 15 minutes for at shirt's head (It's a bloody good job they only use plastic glasses at the Regal). Chav got chucked out by security. It wasn't over for shirt though. Some slightly trampy looking guy behind him had got some of the thrown drink on him, and so started having a go at shirt for it. It was about to kick off again, so shirt decided to give trampy one of the 16 shots of tequila he was buying (seriously, no exaggeration, he was actually buying 16 shots of tequila). Suddenly they were best mates and shirt was 'alright, actually.'
High Contrast was alright, would've been nice to have been able to hear it properly, and we had some dancing fun, then Danny Byrd was alright too, until he started doing that 'rewind' thing which I just find tedious. 'Hey, I know what would be a good idea. I'll stop this track just as everyone's getting into it and then start it again from the beginning.' Let it flow, damnit! It's as if certain dj's don't have faith in what they're playing anymore so have to try and force some enthusiasm. It's the equivalent of holding a sweet just out of a child's reach and saying 'Do you want this sweet? Do you want this sweet? Huh? Do you? Do you want this do you?' Dear dj's, please please PLEASE stop doing this. It's annoying and stupid.
So annoying that me and my friends left.
And we all had headaches due to that dreadful soundman.
Sigh.
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