Mr Axl's Lovely Potato Farm

BBC Sound Of 2012.

2011-12-05T17:31:00.004Z

Is it really that time of year again already? It would seem so, therefore, in one the few remaining traditions of this blog that I still have left, I will be casting my opinionated ears on this years list. Expect snap judgments, rash statements and generally me trying to prove how clever I am and how much I know about music. Get it? Got it? Good.

On looking at the list, my first impressions are:

a) Everyone looks really stylised.

b) I already think I know who my favourite is going to be.

Right. Let's get this party started.

1. A$AP Rocky

Song listened to: 'Purple Swag'

BBC Sound Of 2012 Tagline: 'Harlem's hottest rap talent.'

This guy has already been signed on a $3 million deal. That's crazy.

This song sounds exactly like a compilation someone I used to work with once played me of hip hop that had deliberately been slowed down to make it some sort of laid back, sexy thing. I remember thinking it was a little weird initially, but then I kind of got into the groove of it and could see how it could work if it was instrumental. The slowed down deeper vocals sounded really annoying though, like when a white middle class man tries to talk in a Barry White voice. Eurgh.

Here, it is an effect clearly used to try and recreate the feeling of being stoned. The thing is though, I feel the same way about it that I felt about that compilation. The beat and the groove are really good. The vocal totally ruins it. Even when he's rapping in his "normal" voice, it's really quite dull and unimaginative. I'm not particularly impressed. It's kind of like a cross between early Cypress Hill and something on Tri Angle records. But not as good as that sounds.

2. Azealia Banks

Song listened to: '212'

BBC Sound Of 2012 tagline: 'Little Miss Naughty.'

Okay, when I said I thought I knew who would be my favourite on this list, this is who I was referring to. I know she just came top of that NME Cool List bullshit, but don't let that put you off. This song is really REALLY fucking good. Electro hip hop awesome beat with a sassy, FILTHY woman rapping over the top. WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE?! WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE?! I FUCKING LOVE THIS!!

Yes. Just yes.

3. Don Rotten

Song listened to: 'Keep It On A Low'

BBC Sound of 2012 tagline: 'South Londoner, ripe for success.'

The problem I have with most modern London poets is that a lot of them sort of just sound the same and say the same thing in the same way with the same metre and rhyme scheme. There is just a lack of variety. I find the same thing with a lot of UK hip hop. There is nothing in this song that makes me think I will remember it when it's finished. It just sounds generic. No imagination. A bit dull.

Apparently he made a mixtape when he was nine years old with beats he made on an Amiga. Now that would be quite interesting to hear. This song, sadly, wasn't.

I just saw that he's doing a tour with Dappy. Well there you go.

4. Dry The River

Song listened to: 'No Rest'

BBC Sound Of 2012 tagline: 'Folk infused post-punk.'

This song has got one Hell of a terrible intro. An overly earnest man singing about, well, fuck knows, I couldn't make out any actual words in his singing. I imagine listening to that intro is like looking down the road when you're short-sighted and aren't wearing your glasses. You know there are people there, but you couldn't mention anything about them. Yeah. That's the intro to this song.

Okay, that tagline is bullshit. This isn't 'Folk infused post-punk,' this is Noah & The Whale doing American College rock. This is the kind of dreary toss that makes you want to slay public school children so they can't grow up to make earnest ear cancer like this.

URGH. GOD THIS SONG JUST GETS WORSE AS IT GOES ON.

Apparently they take their inspiration from 'Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and At The Drive In.' I fail to see how. If any of those people heard this utter gash, they would probably give these boys a slap.

5. Flux Pavilion

Song listened to: 'I Can't Stop'

BBC Sound Of 2012 tagline: 'Bass Cannon gunner.'

Oh, this guy. 'Bass Cannon' guy. 'The filthiest bassline in dubstep' guy. Well, I've heard 'Bass Cannon' many times, so that feels like cheating.

'I Can't Stop' essentially follows the same formula as 'Bass Cannon.' Weak but building intro leading into cranked up synth bassline that just sort of repeats with a little variation here and there to justify its being considered something more than it actually is.

There is a phenomenal lack of imagination here. Seriously.

You can't JUST repeat everything over and over again, you have to be able to justify it. This is just weak. It sounds weak. It sounds dull. It's the musical equivalent of the guy who wins an argument purely because he shouts the loudest and doesn't give you a chance to respond, and when he's finished you feel a bit drained and therefore can't be bothered to try.

That's what listening to this song is like, having an argument with a tedious meathead.

NEXT.

6. Frank Ocean

Song listened to: 'Swim Good'

BBC Sound Of 2012 tagline: 'Bright future for Mr Odd Future.'

Again, I feel like this is cheating, this time because I already have an album by this guy, so I know what he's like. He sings fairly decent modern soul.

Which is the problem. It's fairly decent. It's kind of a little bit nothing. It sort of just sounds a little generic in the same way that Don Rotten did. It's all tried, tested, done before, nothing new to bring to the table stuff. Fine enough, but instantly forgettable.

7. Friends

Song listened to: 'I'm His Man'

BBC Sound Of 2012 tagline: 'Bushwick's brightest multi-instrumentalists.'

Why does that band name and that tagline make me instantly hate them?

Why does this line, 'Brooklyn five-piece Friends formed in 2010 after a bedbug infestation forced a group of vegan restaurant co-workers to cohabitate for a week,' make me instantly hate them even more?

Why does the intro to the video for 'I'm His Man,' a hand fumbling dozily for a cassette tape, finding it then putting it into a cassette player and pressing play, make me hate them EVEN more?

I can't remember a time I pre-hated a band as much as I do this collection of total tosspots.

Which is a bit of a shame, because their song is actually pretty good. It's got a nice kind of laid back US indie groove to it, and the lyrics are a pretty good declaration of remaining independent while still being in a relationship, written in a simple, refreshing way.

But it's all a bit too lo-fi in a deliberately not-actually-lo-fi way. Which sort of makes me hate them.

I just get the impression that they're a bunch of fucking posers. If it weren't for the image they portray, I probably wouldn't have any problem with the sound of their song. I just can't shake the feeling that it's all just a bit too smug and knowing. The song is good, but it leaves a bitter taste.

8. Jamie N Commons

Song listened to: 'The Preacher'

BBC Sound Of 2012 tagline: 'The whiskey growl.'

This is a very odd song. Well, it isn't ACTUALLY weird, it's actually pretty straightforward. What's weird is that I can't decide whether I like it or not. This guy has clearly listened to a lot of Nick Cave and a lot of Americana and has combined the two to make something that sounds individual but also like everything it's been influenced by at the same time. I can't quite work it out.

I have no idea what my opinion of this guy is. I might try and come back to this again later.

9. Lianne La Havas

Song listened to: 'No Room For Doubt'

BBC Sound Of 2012 tagline: 'Bon Iver's favourite Brit.'

Oh, that's nice. The most interesting thing you can think of as a tagline about someone is that someone else likes them. That fills me with confidence. Jesus, at least make an effort, tagline writer person.

If I worked for the BBC, my tagline for this song would be something like 'Woozy, soul drenched, dream pop.'

I quite like this song. It's nice. The guitar is nice and reverb-y, the vocals are nice and there's never the need felt for it to 'Kick into gear,' and add anything else to over egg the pudding. It's just a nice song that its makers have allowed to be a nice song. I like it.

10. Micahel Kiwanuka

Song listened to: 'Tell Me A Tale'

BBC Sound Of 2012 tagline: 'Soul's new voice.'

This sounds like it was recorded in the 70's. This sounds like Bill Withers. Or someone like that. There is an unavoidably 70's, slightly psychedelic soul atmosphere to this. It almost sounds too much like someone trying to recreate that sound, but the song is good and there's a really nice lack of pretension to it that makes it feel natural, rather than forced, in the same way that that Aloe Blacc song 'I Need A Dollar' does. Yeah, this is good stuff. I like this.

11. Niki & The Dove

Song listened to: 'DJ Ease My Mind'

BBC Sound Of 2012 tagline: 'Sweden's stylish electro-pop.'

Song intro sounds like someone covering a song by The Knife. When the bass drum beat kicks in, it sounds like someone remixing a song by The Knife. Chorus sounds like a remix of someone covering a song by The Knife. Second verse goes back to sounding like someone covering a song by The Knife. Then the chorus comes back and... I think you get where this is going.

n.b. They're nowhere near as good as The Knife.

12. Ren Harvieu

Song listened to: 'Through The Night'

BBC Sound Of 2012 tagline: 'Lancashire lullabies.'

Okay. Reread what I wrote for the Michael Kiwanuka song, but replace 'Bill Withers,' with 'Dusty Springfield,' and replace the word 'Psychedelic,' with the word 'Cinematic.' That's my opinion of this song.

13. Skrillex

Song listened to: 'First Of The Year (Equinox)'

BBC Sound Of 2012 tagline: 'The brostep pioneer.'

Brostep? BROSTEP?! SERIOUSLY?! That makes me sick. As a word to describe a sub-genre of music that is worse than fucking 'Chillwave.' Brostep? Fuck. Right. Off. You. Massive. Douches.

I'm actually quite interested to hear Skrillex. Skrillex is a name I've read and heard many many times, but I've never actually heard any of his stuff. I know he's considered some sort of 'Next big thing,' or whatever, but I've never actually encountered his work.

Here goes.

Okay, firstly the director of the video needs to realise that he isn't Chris Cunningham.

Secondly, there is a phenomenal lack of imagination here. Seriously.

That's what listening to this song is like, having an argument with a tedious meathead.

Yes. I did just cut and paste that from what I wrote about Flux Pavilion. Quite frankly, this song doesn't deserve anything better than that.

I genuinely don't understand what all the fuss about this guy is.

14. Spector

Song listened to: 'Grey Shirt & Tie'

BBC Sound Of 2012 tagline: 'Dalston superstars.'

Again, why does that band name and that tagline make me instantly hate them?

The photo of them on the BBC Sound... list makes them look like absolute tossers too, which makes me hate them even more.

Apparently, 'They've been dubbed East London's answer to The Strokes.' If by that, you mean that they take a sound older than they are and attempt to recreate that for a modern audience but don't add ANYTHING to it, then whoever it was who dubbed them 'East London's answer to The Strokes,' is absolutely correct.

They sound to me like Tears For Fears.

Tears For Fears had two members and actual talent for songwriting.

Spector have five members and sound like they listened to Tears For Fears one day and went 'Cool, that sounds easy,' and then for some reason no-one ever told them they were wrong. I don't know why, maybe all their friends secretly hate them or something.

15. Stooshe

Song listened to: 'Betty Woz Gone'

BBC Sound Of 2012 tagline: 'Pottymouth pop.'

Remember that band Cartoons who did that song that went 'Ooh ee ooh ah aah, ting tang walla walla bing bang'? Stooshe look like a trendy London version of them.

Apparently, 'A line in Stooshe's bio describes them as 'Salt N' Pepa meet Odd Future' while the Guardian recently pegged the London trio as an 'X Rated En Vogue'.'

Neither of these statements are true.

Remember Shampoo?

Stooshe sound like a modern day version of Shampoo.

And no, that is not a good thing.

It really isn't.

And that's it. Well, it's been fun. Sort of. And in the tradition of the end of this tradition, I will list my personal top three:

1. Azealia Banks.

2. Michael Kiwanuka.

3. A tie between Lianne La Havas and Ren Harvieu.

Although, I should mention that Friends might have been in that top three list, if I could separate their song from them.

Also, Jamie N Commons may have made my top three, if I could actually figure out what my opinion of him is.

Overall though, I have to say that this list has been better and more interesting than the last three years lists have. That's pretty encouraging, no?

"Is it so different now, or is it just the way I feel?"

2011-11-21T01:18:00.000Z

I've started reading this.

Hopefully this will lead to me never writing another blog post like the last one ever again.

Basically, something is wrong and I need to sort it out, so I'm trying.

My meltdown was pretty public, so I figure I may as well make the attempted recovery public too.

P.S. If anyone is wondering "Why doesn't Axl just get some therapy?" I have seen three councillors in my life. The first tried to blame everything on my parents getting divorced when I was five years old, which is bullshit. The second seemed normal until he started going on about how "Traumas that happen to us when we're in the womb can have an effect on us much later on in our lives," which, I'm sorry, is just a bunch of total arse. The third actually did help for a few weeks, but it got to the point where we were just saying the same things over and over again and it wasn't actually helping because nothing was moving forward.

That's why I'm reading this book rather than go to more councelling. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that it works for some people, but it just doesn't for me.

Oh, Axl... You Silly, Silly Boy...

2011-11-18T16:34:00.001Z

WARNING: This is a very personal, self indulgent post. If you don't particularly fancy reading about my shit, I'd suggest giving this one a miss.

So... Something bad happened, only it wasn't really bad because it was necessary, but it still felt really bad. Then something really good (and I mean, like, amazing) happened, only it wasn't really good because it ended fucking horribly. Then something good happened, which then also became something bad. Now, this last bad thing really was very minor in the grand scheme of things, but it happened to be the thing that tipped me over the edge and I sort of had a total fucking meltdown.

(Seriously. It was SO undignified.)

There are other things that have also been bad. These things have not helped.

And that's as much detail as you're getting I'm afraid, because if I've learned one thing while doing this blog, it's that writing personal things about other people is almost always a really fucking bad idea.

Which is surprising really, as the one thing I have forgotten how to do is behave like a normal person. I seem to have become unable to deal with anything in a rational, reasonable way.

Which is why, after this latest bad thing, I threw my phone onto the roof of a nightclub and had to buy a new one.

Which highlights the one big problem that has come of all this.

I appear to have become determined to lose all of my friends.

See, you throw away your phone, you throw away your sim and memory cards too.

Which means you have to ask people to give you back their numbers.

Which is fine, IF you haven't become such a grumpy old curmudgeon that no-one actually wants you to have their number anymore.

Because the thing is, if you continuously get really drunk and tell everyone to fuck off, eventually they actually do just fuck off.

And why wouldn't they?

I would.

So, the way things are going, I won't have any friends left by the end of the year. I am currently not talking to at least two of my very best friends, and neither of those are about to be sorted anytime soon, and a good few recent good friends aren't talking to me, and most of my not so good friends just can't be bothered with me anymore.

"Oh boo fucking hoo, Axl."

Yeah, that's pretty much the appropriate response, because virtually all of this is my own stupid fault.

And none of it's about to change anytime soon.

So come new year's, I'll probably be doing exactly what I'm doing now.

Listening to Tom Waits and writing some pathetic little self pitying blog post about my stupid little life.

Hmmm... I don't really like the sound of that. Maybe I should just stop being such a dick instead.

We'll see.

I Appear To Be Watching The X Factor.

2011-10-15T21:13:00.000+01:00

Why am I doing this?

A bunch of boring boys just sang a boring and now it's adverts already.

Now it's attempting to make me care about someone because they used to be in a relationship and are a little overweight. She is not fat, but has probably been called fat in her lifetime, because people have a tendency to be fucking dickheads.

And now she is singing a boring song boringly too.

She looks like Edvard Munch's "The Scream" when she sings.

Apparently it was a "Massive song." Sounded boring to me. Apparently she "Sang the heck out of that song."

Okay, maybe she is a little fat, but seriously, who gives a fuck?

And now it's adverts again?! Do they have an ad break after every song now? That's gonna get real fucking annoying.

I was on the loo. Who's this guy? In the rehearsal clips he looked like a cross between Matt Cardle and Chad Valley. Now he looks odd. And he is singing a boring song in a boring way. Is it boring week on The X Factor this week, or is every week boring week?

I don't know, I haven't seen any of this series. I've been avoiding it. Why am I watching this?

Oh God, he just did something really horrible with his lips that made me feel a little bit sick.

Apparently he's in a league of his own. I agree, if that league is a league of people who've made me feel physical ill purely by the power of lip quivers. Then he is definitely in a league of his own.

Why would you want to be in a league of your own? Surely that would be defeating the point of being in a league in the first place. Also, if you're in a league of your own, then technically it can't be a league, surely.

Wow! No advert break!

Who's this girl? She looks Irish. Is she Irish? She sounds Irish too. I think she's Irish.

Oh, and now we have a sob story. Yeah, go on X Factor, exploit this girls misery, why don't you?

She has a very odd singing voice. She sounds like a cross between a very lonely girl and an Icelandic wood imp. A bit like a childish version of Björk without any of Björk's vocal power.

The one out of N-Dubz just said one of the most trite things I think I've ever heard in my life.

Gary Barlow just sounded really creepy, like he's a teacher trying to fuck one of his pupils.

More adverts.

I stated cooking food and have come back to find a boy who looks like a cross between a Thundercat and a member of The Horrors singing very badly.

This is truly fucking horrible. I'm going back to the kitchen.

Back briefly. Oh, is this guy this year comedy entry? Okay, thing about Jedward and Wagner was that they were fun. This guy's just shit. It's kind of embarrassing.

Back now. Adverts. Did I miss them all doing that "Oooh, ha ha, I don't quite know how to react to the comedy act!" thing? I bet it was HILARIOUS.

OH MY GOD! STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT! I DON'T WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU! HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE? PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE!

Oh no, sorry, just the next singer. Thought some really creepy guy had broken into my flat.

Mate, if I could see my heart beating thru my chest, I'd be straight on the phone to NHS Direct rather than singing some slushy love shite about it.

*Enter generic judge comments here. Same things all tv judges have been saying for years.*

I'm sorry, but he looks so fucking creepy.

(Dermot, this guy isn't going to understand a Hades reference. He looks like he barely understands his own underwear.)

Girl band. Let me guess, everyone hates them, right?

Apparently, yeah.

It would help if they didn't look like total idiots.

Oooh, graffiti. Is this going to be "Edgy"?

No.

But they're not bad actually.

Oh. They just got to the chorus. Oh dear.

Yeah, this lot will not be bucking the "No-one likes the girl bands" trend.

The judges don't agree with me.

Oh God, please stop with the clichés, judges.

Adverts.

OH LOOK, MEN CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO COOK, HA HA HA.

(Actually, I am pretty lazy when it comes to cooking, so I myself do just reinforce this stereotype and am therefore in no real position to complain.)

WOAH, WHO IS THIS CRAZY CHICK? SHE IS MENTAL.

That's what I'm supposed to think about her, right?

Right.

OH MY GOD, SHE'S, LIKE, REALLY UNIQUE AND SHIT.

To be fair though, she can actually sing. She is clearly a better singer than any of the others.

Okay, there are more to come but I've had enough of this now. I'm going to the pub. I'm going to get drunk.

Bye bye X Factor.

National Poetry Day, Tuesday 6th October 2011.

2011-10-07T16:28:00.001+01:00

Yes, I lied. This post isn't going to be the one I said I would write in my last post, because, well, just because. Instead, for my 500th Potato Farm post (yes, that's right, 500), I'm going to write a little bit about my experiences of National Poetry Day yesterday. I'll try to keep it brief, because, as I said in an intro to a poetry performance I did recently, who likes poetry? No-one likes poetry.

("My experiences" makes me sound like such a tosser, but I couldn't think how to word it better.)

Well, firstly I suppose it started with me writing some drafts in Tate Modern as I was waiting for everything at the Southbank Centre to kick off.

Actually, no. The day kicked off with me walking down a street called The Cut and seeing a man buying a doner kebab at about 9.30am, followed a couple of minutes later by someone in Prét A Manger feeling my hand and saying "Wow... You have a cold heart." (Yes, she definitely did say heart, not hand.) But after that I suppose it started with me writing some drafts in Tate Modern as I was waiting for everything at the Southbank Centre to kick off.

I like Tate Modern. I didn't just write stuff there, I had a look round first obviously. Tate Modern has one of my favourite paintings in it, Picasso's "Seated Nude."

I'm one of those people who likes art but knows cock all about it, so it's probably due to a lack of imagination that I always end up going to Tate Modern. Also, that thing that makes people tend to eat the same thing when you eat out at or get takeaway from a certain place regularly. That "Well, I know I like that, so I'll just have that again," feeling. I suppose that's covered in the phrase "Lack of imagination" really, isn't it.

So, yes. Worked on some poems of my own, then went to Southbank Centre for 1pm to see Michael Rosen kick things off, as the first section was aimed more at children (though there were a fair few adults there too, not just me). Michael Rosen, for those who don't know, used to be the Children's Laureate, and it's easy to see why. He is extremely good at performing to and engaging children. It helps that his poems are very funny too.

Anyway, I don't want this to turn into some sort of review. But there were four names I did note in my phone, of poets I hadn't seen/read before who I thought were good.

Glyn Maxwell:- Oh, that's bad. I can't remember Glyn Maxwell now, but I must've thought he was good, otherwise I wouldn't have made a note of his name (and no, I wouldn't have made a note of him because I didn't like him. I saw a poet who I didn't like, whose poems were pretty much all about the same thing and were delivered in a really dull durr-durr-durr-durr-durr manner, and I didn't make a note of his name, so there).

Catherine Labiran:- Now, I do remember this woman. She was introduced as a new, upcoming young London poet, and I remember thinking when she started her first poem "Oh God, she's just going to sound tediously like about 90% of all other modern London poets, isn't she?" BUT, after the set up of the first four lines, she turned the poem on it's head and was really, really good and didn't fall into the boring traps of so many other London poets. She actually had something really interesting to say about women's perception of themselves and said it in a really engaging way.

(Didn't I say I didn't want this to be a "review"? I guess sometimes it can't be helped.)

I had a similar feeling about Joelle Taylor when she started. That of "Oh God, here's yet another joyless social commentary. Quick, where's the knife to cut my ears off, coz I don't think I can stand yet another droning London poem." I mean, if I were from London this may be interesting, but I'm not so it's kind of like when you have friends who are younger than you who say the same things that you were saying years ago as if they're new and insightful when in fact what they don't realise, and what you didn't realise when you were that age and saying them, is that it's just the same old rehashed, clichéd annoying arse that everyone's been saying for years and years and no, it really isn't interesting to someone who has "been there and done that" as it were. BUT, then about halfway through her first poem, she also managed to start saying something genuinely interesting and in enough of a different way to make you think, "Oh, okay. Yeah, that IS shit. I'm with you now."

The last name I wrote down was Jo Bell. Jo Bell is a well known name in "The poetry world" but I had never read any of her work before. I definitely will be now though, as she was absolutely brilliant.

Rounding things off were three poets I am already a fan of, who were all great. Jo Shapcott, Jackie Kay and Simon Armitage.

Jo Shapcott was a "Consumate professional" as they say (I must admit that I don't entirely know what that means, but it feels appropriate to use it here), delivering her poems flawlessly, but without any sense of perfectionism. It was more that she seemed to be really enjoying being on stage in front of us, which was nice.

Likewise, Jackie Kay seemed to be having the time of her life. She was hilarious. Really fun delivery of her poems and genuinely funny banter in between. Looked like she wasn't even trying. My highlight of the day, for sure.

Simon Armitage by contrast, very dry, but then that's what you've got to expect from him and you either like it or you don't (NOW who's saying the same things that have been going round for years and years, Axl, HMMMMM?). I know people who don't. I do, and I enjoyed him.

The only bad thing was that the Poetry Takeaway was there and EVERY time I walked past there was a long queue, so I didn't get a poem, which was annoying as John Osbourne was on the stall yesterday and I think he's brilliant. I really wanted a poem by him.

Really nice to see a unique and such a good idea as that taking off though. The Poetry Takeaway really is a very cool thing.

AND seeing as it was a Thursday, what better way than to finish off the day than by going to The Roebuck pub in Borough, for my favourite poetry night, "Bang Said The Gun."

This was the third time I've been and I've loved it every time. It is the most fun and atmospheric poetry night I've been to. Those guys really know what they're doing. It ALMOST makes me wish I lived in London so I could go every week. Seriously, I actually like it that much.

AND one of the poets performing made me cry. I told him he nearly made me cry, but that was a lie. There were tears in my eyes and on my cheeks. His name was Oli Foster, and he did a poem that really resonated with how I'm feeling about things in my life at the moment. It was one of those "Oh my God, it's as if they're speaking directly to ME," moments. I am envious of his delivery too. He seemed to get every single word pitch perfect, and could flick between feelings instantly. He was my other highlight of the day.

The featured act was a guy called Tshaka Campbell, who was good, but did slip a little bit into an "All women are goddesses and all men are sacks of faeces" mentality, which was a little annoying.

I entered the open mic contest. Didn't win, but I don't mind. It's just fun to be part of it. Genuinely.

And then home. It was a good day. Despite my "Cold heart."

Hello Mark, Gareth & The Soup Emu.

2011-09-08T18:56:00.003+01:00

Wow! At least three other people still look at my blog! Awesome!

This is just a short one. My next blog post will be a long, rambling and tediously introspective one about me and the act of writing. Woopee. It will also be my 500th post on this blog.

For my 499th post, I just want to share this poem I saw on YouTube which makes me laugh every time I watch it. It's called "Rude Bastards" and is by a guy called Martin Galton. I think it's flippin' great and I hope you do too.

Enjoy.

UPDATE: This is also really good, in my opinion. It's called "Father & Son" and is by Richard Auton. Enjoy this too.

Hello Jamie.

2011-08-08T19:07:00.000+01:00

Jamie, I'm addressing this blog post to you personally, as I am pretty sure you are the only person who still ever looks at my blog. Just in case there is still someone else who ever looks at this, I will still be writing about things in a fairly vague manner.

I worked some shifts last week covering for someone who was on holiday. This included Tuesday. I'd forgotten how weird Tuesday's are in that shop. When I worked full time, a theory I had was that Tuesday was the day you would get the weirdest people in, and the highest volume of weird people. The Tuesday just gone showed me that in fact not a theory but actual fact.

Exhibit 1:
I was serving a woman who was looking at me a little strangely. She eventually asked,
"Do you have a sore throat?"
"No," I replied.
"You sound like you have a sore throat."
"No, this is just how my voice sounds. I do get that a lot though." (This is true. A lot of people who don't know me assume that I have a sore throat when they first encounter me.)
"Oh... Well, maybe you have a prolapsed vocal chord or something then."
Cue stunned silence from me as I literally had no idea how to respond to that.

Exhibit 2:
A man came up to me and asked if I could help him. I said yes, but it turns out that was a lie, as he asked:
"Do you have anything like Pink Floyd but made for babies?"
Cue a very long "Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..." from me as I try to figure out how to tell him that just because he's made something up in his head, it doesn't mean that it exists, without being rude. I'm not sure I succeeded.

Exhibit 3:
I was serving someone at the till and their friend/daughter/whatever was on the phone to someone. The phone person then said, very loudly,
"By law, I have to have credit and texts on my phone at all times."
Cue me being baffled for the next couple of hours as I try to work out what the fuck she was on about.

And those are just the ones I can remember/remembered to note down at the time.

Verdict:
If you want to meet the absolute most crazy crazies in Oxford, hang out in the basement of hmv for a day. Dress lightly tho, as the air conditioning still doesn't work.

The Album "Total" by Sebastian.

2011-06-16T00:33:00.000+01:00

Someone, I can't remember who it was now, mentioned that I never review anything on here anymore. Well, that's because I hate music reviews. Or rather, I hate what they have become.

Almost all music reviews now fall into two categories:-

1) The Empty Review: Smug reviews that serve only to show how clever/trendy/relevant the reviewer thinks they are and barely say anything about the music itself.

2) The Boring Review: Smug reviews written by people who see themselves as being about that trivial stuff and write purely functional reviews that are lacking in any sort of joy or interest.

Music journalism has become stale and filled with people who have no interest in anything past their own egos and seem to have forgotten that people are supposed to actually want to read what you write/publish. If I went out in the street and started handing people cards that just said "Look at me! I'm great, I am!" people would think I were a total dickhead, but dress it up as a music review and it's somehow alright.

Now, my plan for this post was to try and write something that was both fun and informative. This however has the drawback of me seeing myself as above both categories of reviewer and therefore DOUBLE SMUG. However, the fact that I'm even writing this post could be seen as me being obnoxious and smug anyway, so I'm just gonna go with it.

I've become a little obsessed with the new Sebastian album, "Total." I fucking love it, and here is my review of it:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Sebastian - "Total"

Kate looked at her watch. Thomas was thirteen minutes late. He was always late.

She took her phone out of her handbag. To kill time she looked at Facebook. Someone had put up a video of a cat supposedly saying the words "I love you." Kate remembered the video she saw a while ago of a dog doing the same thing. It occurred to her that many of the videos of animals on the internet are utterly pointless. Still, they made those boring moments at work much easier to deal with.

Another friend of hers had put as their status, "Go to Wikipedia and click "Random article". This is the name of your genitals."

Kate was surprised to find out that her genitals were in fact Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos. Kate was shocked at the thought that her vagina could have initiated the Trojan War. It hadn't of course, but she momentarily imagined that her vagina was the reincarnation of Eris and had done this in a past life. Kate felt both guilty and powerful.

Thomas arrived with no apology, simply a "Get in."

Thomas drove Kate back to his house.

Once in his bedroom, Thomas told Kate he had something to play her. He took a cd of the new Sebastian album "Total" out of his bag and put it on his stereo. "I love that you still buy cd's," Kate said to him.

The album was a masterpiece of "The French Touch," a particular form of house music synonymous with French dance acts, most famously Daft Punk and Justice. Samples, dirty sounding synths, with beats you just can't help but bounce your head to.

Kate was mesmerised. The music was infectious. She couldn't help but dance.

"Thomas, this is really good!"

"I know, right?"

"This album is so good, it makes me want to take my clothes off!"

"Well, I'm not gonna stop you!"

Kate, feeling the power of a Greek goddess coursing through her body, with a feeling of reckless abandon tore her clothes off and pounced on Thomas. Thomas wasn't used to Kate being so forward. It excited him. He ran his hands over every curve of her body as she kissed his neck and undid his shirt. When she stroked the bulge in his trousers with her thigh, he felt like he was going to come instantly, but he managed to control himself.

They made love. It was the most passionate love either of them had ever had.

Afterwards, as they held each other in a sweaty, post-coital embrace, Thomas said to Kate,

"I think we should always fuck to that album."

Kate agreed.

"Paul, what kind of review is this?"

"Well, I was going for something a little different."

"It certainly is that. What's it saying about the album though?"
"That it's a French house album that's really good, that you can't help but move to. It's exciting. It's primal. And it's really sexy."

"Sexy?"

"Yeah, sexy! There's a kind of filth element to the sounds he's using that along with creating some hard sounding tracks, makes you want to take your clothes off and fuck."

"So it's a sexy, dirty, dance album?"

"Yeah!"

"Why not just say that then?"

"I dunno, I just thought it would be fun to do it like this."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Erm... That went in a completely different direction to what I had planned. Hmmm...

Hello Blogger, My Old Friend...

2011-06-15T18:54:00.000+01:00

Hi. How've you been? Sorry I've been away for a while. Here is a brief explanation why:

I've been writing my dissertation. It's a creative writing dissertation. I'm writing a play. It's a comedy about three men who kidnap their local MP. What I have learned from doing this is that writing a play is actually really fucking difficult. Every single word I write sounds unconvincing and stale. I didn't think this would be a problem as normally I am told that my ability to write dialogue is rather good, some even say it is one of my strongest points.

I just had to lick Ribena off my laptop keyboard. It tasted like hot pebbles.

But no, turns out that writing a play is an entirely different beast. Dialogue that would be fine in a story, is often awful in a play. You have to almost completely rethink what it is that dialogue is actually doing, and it seems virtually impossible to write good play dialogue the more I try it.

But my tutor likes my ideas. Which is good.

But I have no idea what I'm going to do for my essay.

And every bit of work I do on my play/dissertation creates about three times as much work still to do.

And I have just over three weeks now to get it all done.

Which is nowhere near enough time to get everything done to a good standard.

I'm totally screwed and will probably end up only getting a 2:2 now.

(I am borderline 2:1 at the moment because I am really shit at writing essays.)

If I don't get a 2:1, I will hate myself. I will see myself as a failure.

I am competing in the Hammer & Tongue Oxford Slam Poetry Final next week. I am crapping myself even more than I normally would be due to the fact that Simon Munnery is headlining the event. Simon Munnery is one of my favourite comedians.

I am writing a poem for someone to use in an art project they are doing. It's an awesome idea, but I've gone for something stylistically different to what I normally do and I have no idea if what I'm doing is any good or not.

And I've just been asked to be involved in something I can't tell you about yet. It's a fairly small thing, but it's quite exciting and I'm looking forward to it. It's gonna be happening after all this other stuff is done too, so I'll actually be able to enjoy it.

Whereas right now, I'm going "AAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!!" quite a lot.

NaPoWriMo 2011.

2011-05-01T18:23:00.000+01:00

April is finished and so therefore is "National Poetry Writing Month."

Out of the 30 days of April, I only missed one; the 16th.

That's 29 poems in 30 days.

(Well, I see it more as being 28&1/2 due to the fact that I only got halfway thru my idea for the 30th poem, but that's just me being picky really.)

Sure, a lot of them need quite a bit of editing and rewriting if I'm gonna use them going forward, but looking at it in that way, I now have a bank of drafts and ideas that I can work on and hopefully make into some pretty decent poems. I'm really looking forward to seeing where some of these go.

(I've done some of them as they are in performances and they seem to have gone down pretty well already, so fingers crossed...)

I'm actually really proud of myself for having done it. Whenever I decide I'm gonna do one of these challenges, I never seem to make it more than a third of the way thru. The fact that I actually stuck with this to the end is pretty awesome for me.

If you fancy having a read of them, they are at my tumblr blog here: http://paulaskew.tumblr.com/

Some of them are humourous, some aren't supposed to be. Some are pretty bad, but others are alright actually. And there are only 2 or 3 that I really hate.

Go on, shoo. There's a good reader.

30 Day Song Challenge: 30

2011-04-30T23:11:00.000+01:00

Day 30: Your favourite song at this time last year.

Oneohtrix Point Never - "Hyperdawn"

I was actually sad enough to go into my last.fm page and look up what I was listening to in April last year because I couldn't think of what to put for this one. There wasn't really any one artist or song I listened to significantly more than any other. So I looked at what I listened to on April 30th last year, just to be really pedantic. Turns out I listened to a lot of Oneohtrix Point Never that day, so I've picked my favourite song from the album "Rifts." Enjoy.

(Sadly the sound quality of tis vid isn't great, but it's the only vid I can find on YouTube for it, so it has to do. Listen anyway, it's a fucking great track.)

and with that, we are done. Sorry if this whole thing got tedious. I hope there were enough songs you liked to make it worth it.

30 Day Song Challenge: 29

2011-04-29T08:41:00.000+01:00

Day 29: A song from your childhood.

MC Hammer - "U Can't Touch This"

The first album I ever bought was MC Hammer's "Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em" when I was about 9 or 10 years old. I got it on cassette. The album has a song on it called "She's Soft And Wet." I had no idea what it meant, I genuinely thought it must be about someone who was caught out in the rain or something. People always think I'm joking when I say that, but I was 9 or 10. What else was I gonna think it was about?

Anyway, I played that album a hell of a lot. I loved it, and of course this was the song I loved the most off it. Still makes me smile a bit when I hear it.

30 Day Song Challenge: 26, 27 & 28.

2011-04-28T19:57:00.000+01:00

Day 26: A song that you can play on an instrument.

Day 27: A song that you wish you could play.

Day 28: A song that makes you feel guilty.

Okay. I can't play an instrument, which means that pretty much every song I like is one I wish I could play.

And, a song that makes me feel guilty?! What?! That is one of the most stupid things I have ever read.

30 Day Song Challenge: 25

2011-04-25T22:48:00.000+01:00

Day 25: A song that makes you laugh.

Ivor Cutler - "Bicarbonate Of Chicken"

I love Ivor Cutler. Poet, humourist, musician, etc, he is a legend and an idol of mine. This song is possibly my favourite of his. My poetry tutor at college in an effort to get me into poetry lent me some Ivor Cutler albums. The first one I listened to was 'Jammy Smears' which this is the first track of. The rest as they say, is history. Enjoy.

30 Day Song Challenge: 23 & 24.

2011-04-24T15:57:00.000+01:00

Day 23: A song that you want to play at your wedding.

Day 24: A song that you want to play at your funeral.

I'm really getting quite bored of this "Challenge" right now. The categories have just become annoying and vague. I don't know the answers to these.

30 Day Song Challenge: 20, 21 & 22.

2011-04-22T23:49:00.001+01:00

Day 20: A song you listen to when you're angry.
Day 21: A song you listen to when you're happy.

Day 22: A song you listen to when you're sad.

These would be pretty subjective and depending on what mood I was in at the time. Especially angry and sad. my choice would depend on whether I wanted to stay angry or sad, or whether I was trying to cheer myself up. I can't seem to answer these at the moment.

30 Day Song Challenge: 19

2011-04-19T02:29:00.003+01:00

Day 19: A song from your favourite album.

Spiritualized - "Broken Heart"

I could never decide on one definite album that I preferred over all others. I would answer differently depending on what day you asked me. One of my favourites was Spiritualized's "Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space." When Sweet G took me to see them performing this album at the Barbican about a year and a half ago now, it was pretty much the best gig ever and cemented this album as the one above all others in my mind. I adore this album. Utterly adore it. I don't think I have a favourite song from it, I think the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and it's the album as a whole taken as one piece of work that is simply phenomenal, but I think this probably works best as a song to be singled out of the context of the rest of the album.

30 Day Song Challenge: 18

2011-04-18T23:44:00.001+01:00

Day 18: A song that you wish you heard on the radio.

The Unthanks - "Gan To The Kye"

What? That's a really dumb category. Okay, well I'm just gonna say this because I'm a little obsessed with this song at the moment. It's the first song from their new album 'Last' and I think it's an absolutely beautiful song. I especially love the strings.

I have no idea what happened with the previous posts. I appear to have been saving them rather than publishing them, like some sort of massive eejit. They're all up now anyway.

30 Day Song Challenge: 17

2011-04-17T20:21:00.001+01:00

Day 17: A song that you hear often on the radio.

Cee-Lo Green - "Bright Lights Bigger City"

I don't listen to the radio very often, but I seem to hear this quite a lot when I do. I quite like it, but the chorus really reminds me of the chorus of the song "In The Crossfire" by Starsailor. Can anyone else hear it or is it just me?

30 Day Song Challenge: 16

2011-04-16T08:35:00.001+01:00

Day 16: A song that you used to love but now hate.

Can't think of one for this either. I'll have to come back to this aswell.

Two days in a row. That's not very good, is it?

30 Day Song Challenge: 15

2011-04-15T14:01:00.001+01:00

Day 15: A song that describes you.

I genuinely can't think of one. I'll have to come back to this one.

30 Day Song Challenge: 14

2011-04-14T11:17:00.001+01:00

Day 14: A song that no one would expect you to love.

Mariah Carey - "Vision Of Love"

Pretty sure I covered this yesterday, but okay.

I don't care what anyone says, this song is AWESOME. THAT FINAL THIRD! LISTEN TO THAT! IT'S GREAT!

I shouldn't have started this challenge. I'm in serious danger of losing all my followers.

30 Day Song Challenge: 13

2011-04-13T12:12:00.001+01:00

Day 13: A song that is a guilty pleasure.

Katy Perry - "Teenage Dream"

I try not to have guilty pleasures as I don't really see why I should be embarrassed by liking something. I still have them though, as it's a state of mind I can't quite get out of. And I think Katy Perry can't write lyrics for shit, but I love the chorus of this song, especially when she sings the line "Don't ever look back." I dunno, there's just something about it that I really like.

30 Day Song Challenge: 12

2011-04-12T11:07:00.001+01:00

Day 12: A song form a band you hate.

Status Quo - "In The Army Now"

I fucking hate Status Quo. I fucking hate this song. Don't listen to it. It's horrible.

30 Day Song Challenge: 11

2011-04-11T11:24:00.002+01:00

Day 11: A song from your favourite band.

Radiohead - "Pyramid Song"

Bloody Hell. I have a fair few favourite bands, but I've gone for the band that have probably most consistently been one of my favourite bands since I was about 15. I think this is my favourite song by them. Although now I say that I'm not certain. It's definitely one of my favourites. I just love the slightly haunting quality of it. I think it's really powerful.

30 Day Song Challenge: 10

2011-04-10T22:09:00.001+01:00

Day 10: A song that makes you fall asleep.

Bill Hicks - "Gays In The Military"

I don't really have a song that makes me fall asleep. If I'm on my own, and especially when I was growing up, I wouldn't be able to get to sleep because my mind would become full of weird and often morbid thoughts. That makes me sound like a psycho, but trust me, I'm not. Anyway, to stop me from thinking, I would usually fall asleep listening to comedy, so although it's not a song, it's something that helps me to sleep. I wouldn't say it makes me sleep though; It just helps.

30 Day Song Challenge: 9

2011-04-09T09:01:00.000+01:00

Day 9: A song that you can dance to.

Duck Sauce - "aNYway"

I sort of already covered this with Day 3, but I didn't want to repeat myself, so chose this instead.

I LOVE this track. The first time I heard it was on my birthday in 2009 at the Youthmovies last ever gig afterparty when Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs was djing in the basement at Foals' old house in Jericho (fucking check me out name-dropping like a total wanker) and I danced so hard. On a chair. It was totally awesome. That was a great night.

30 Day Song Challenge: 8

2011-04-08T22:50:00.000+01:00

Day 8: A song that you know all the words to.

Pulp - "Seductive Barry"

There are probably a few others, but I chose this song because a) it is one of my all time favourite songs, and b) it contains my favourite song lyric of all time:

"I will light your cigarette with a star that has fallen from the sky.

Breathe in, breathe out, I love the way you move,

don't let anyone tell you any different tonight.

You are beauty, you are class, yeah you showed it all,

but you still kept a little piece back just for me."

Gets me every time. That is just phenomenal.

Anyway, here's the song.

30 Day Song Challenge: 7

2011-04-07T18:30:00.000+01:00

Day 7: A song that reminds you of a certain event.

Flight of the Conchords - "The Most Beautiful Girl (In The Room)"

This song reminds me of mine and Sweet G's mates Hamu & Naomi's wedding. Me and the G had a right old comedy dance to this that made our mates laugh quite a lot. It was fun. Godd wedding, that one.

30 Day Song Challenge: 6

2011-04-06T22:48:00.000+01:00

Day 6: A song that reminds you of somewhere.
Beth Orton - 'I Wish I Never Saw The Sunshine'
This song reminds me of Grenoble in France. I went there when I was 17 for a trip when I was involved with the Pegasus Theatre's youth group. We devised a piece and went to perform it in Grenoble. We spent about 8 days there. At that time I was pretty much constantly listening to either 'Kind Of Blue' by Miles Davis, or 'Trailer Park' by Beth Orton. This song was the one I kept getting stuck in my head. It was kind of stuck in my head for the whole visit. I simultaneously loved and hated that trip for various reasons, but as an experience it is something that will always stay with me. Every time I hear this song, I remember Grenoble.

(This is the least obnoxious fan video I could find for it on YouTube)

30 Day Song Challenge: 5

2011-04-05T22:50:00.004+01:00

Day 5: A song that reminds you of someone.

"The Girl Is Mine" by Michael Jackson featuring Paul McCartney.

Reminds me of my old best friend from primary and middle school, David Savage. He had the "Thriller" album on tape and when I went round to his house, we would often act out some of the songs, specifically this song and "Thriller" itself. David would always be Michael Jackson and I was always Paul McCartney, and we would mime the song to each other pretending we were arguing over a woman.

So when you listen to this song now, imagine two boys aged between about 8 and 10 pretending to fight over a girl who doesn't exist. Awww, how cute.

P.S. For the song "Thriller" I had to be the guy who does the narration bit. As he only really appears at the end, for the bulk of the song I had to pretend to be someone who was really scared of David/Michael Jackson.

30 Day Song Challenge: 4

2011-04-04T23:57:00.001+01:00

As I'm doing NaPoWriMo on my other blog (http://paulaskew.tumblr.com/), I'm doing this on here so this blog doesn't get ignored for a month.

Day 4: A song that makes you sad.

'Selective Memory' by Eels.

I find this song absolutely heartbreaking.

30 Day Song Challenge: 3

2011-04-03T13:46:00.004+01:00

As I'm doing NaPoWriMo on my other blog (http://paulaskew.tumblr.com/) , I'm doing this on here.

Day 3: A song that makes you happy.

'House Of Jealous Lovers' by The Rapture.

This song never fails to put a smile on my face. I once danced so hard to this song that I gave myself a really bad asthma attack and had to sit down for about 20 minutes until I could breathe again. And that was with the use of my Ventolin. THAT is how happy this song makes me; it turns me into a health hazzard.

30 Day Song Challenge: 2

2011-04-02T13:13:00.002+01:00

As I'm doing NaPoWriMo on my other blog (http://paulaskew.tumblr.com/) , I'm doing this on here.

Day 2: Your least favourite song.

'Stop The Cavalry' by Jona Lewie.

Every Christmas, this gets played everywhere, and I FUCKING HATE IT!! There is not one single good thing about this song. It has no redeeming feature whatsoever. I REALLY FUCKING HATE IT!!!!

30 Day Song Challenge: 1

2011-04-01T19:31:00.002+01:00

There's a thing called the '30 Day Song Challenge' that loads of people are clogging up Facebook with. I wanted to do it when only about one or two people were doing it, but now so many people are doing it that about half of my news feed is people putting up music videos. Which is kind of annoying.

On my other blog (http://paulaskew.tumblr.com/), I'm trying to take part in NaPoWriMo, which means I probably won't be writing anything on here for the whole of April, so I thought I would do the 30 Day Song Challenge on here.

Day 1: Your Favourite Song.

'Dayvan Cowboy' by Boards Of Canada.

This is a song I never get bored of. In my mind it is perfect. I love the video for it too (even if it does cut about half a minute out of the song).

Haiku.

2011-03-27T03:00:00.001+01:00

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,
fucking fuck fuck fucking fuck,
oh fuck, I’m 30.

Old Phone Notes #6.

2011-03-23T17:05:00.003Z

Yes, I'm picking this back up. Been quiet for a couple of weeks coz of college deadlines, getting issue 2 of my zine sorted and helping with bits of an event a mate of mine is organising.

The next lot are from when I went to Tate Modern a while ago. They're things I particularly liked.

One was the piece "How It Is" by Miroslaw Balka. This was basically a massive box which you could walk into. When you did, you found yourself in almost absolute darkness. It was something that caused a quite intense physical reaction, as all other senses suddenly became heightened and you shuffled your way through this box not seeing people until you were just about to walk into them. Even then, you sometimes did. I went in there about 4 times, and the first time I did it was completely disorientating. By the fourth time I was sort of used to it. It was odd though. Each time made me feel something different. By the end I was really enjoying the sensory depravation. I don't want to sound like a total wanker, though I am aware that I probably already do, but it really made me think about perception and also what it is each of the senses does.

Okay I'll stop that now. Sorry about that.

Next one is the name Ed Ruscha. The work I saw of his was photos, I think of Los Angeles and mountains, with text written over the top of them. I can't remember what I specifically liked or wanted to say about him, but I have enjoyed looking at his stuff on Google Images, so that's fine by me.

Same goes for Georges Braque, who I also noted down but can't specifically remember why.

Next, "Ghost Without A Shell."

This is a multimedia project in which a series of artists were given a character from a Japanese manga (NOT "Ghost In The Shell" though, so don't get fooled by the title) that the people behind the project had bought the rights to. The artists each created a piece of artwork which were then compiled into the exhibit. The people behind the project then signed the rights of the character over to the character itself, effectively killing the character off. The pieces then work as a sort of epitaph. I found the idea really interesting. I seem to remember a couple of the pieces not working for me at all, but generally really liking it.

Sorry for a lack of basic info. I dunno, if you think it sounds interesting, look it up.

Lastly, Picasso - "Seated Nude."

This is a painting that I particularly liked and couldn't get a postcard of in the gift shop.

Here it is. I love it. I think there's something really striking and interesting about it.

(image taken from tate.org.uk)

And with that, I end this post.

Guilty Pleasures.

2011-03-23T16:23:00.000Z

Now, in theory I don't believe in guilty pleasures. Surely with everyone having different tastes and points of view, anyone should be allowed to like pretty much anything, right? (I say "pretty much," because I think there are a couple of things, murder being one example, that it is not okay for people to like doing.)

However, in practice this just isn't so. I find myself reacting to things that people like with a sneer. If someone says to me, for example, that they like the band Scouting For Girls, my immediate reaction is "Why the fuck do you like those talentless, irritating wankers?"

But really, who am I to talk? I like Simply Red, for God's sake! I, like every single other person in the world, am really in no position to judge.

And yet I do. I can't help it.

Generally speaking I've become better at this. Not just in terms of not judging others for their terrible tastes, but also being okay with admitting my own to others.

There is one thing that never ceases to cause embarrassment though.

Disco.

I love disco.

Proper, tacky, 80's disco.

You say this to people, and they laugh. They think your taking the piss or, even worse, you like it ironically. Eurgh.

Well, I do not like disco ironically. I like disco full stop. There are few genres of music that make me smile the way that disco does. It is seriously fun. When done well, disco makes it impossible to not in some way move to.

This must be part of why I love it like I do, because I absolutely love dancing.

Anyway, I'm not going to waffle on about this, because all I will do is repeat myself quite a lot. I will just leave you with one of my favourite 80's disco songs. This makes me happy. It also makes me want it to be one o'clock in a dark room with me getting my dance on to it. It is really tacky and really fun and I love it.

Whatever.

Olde Phone Notes #5

2011-03-10T13:07:00.000Z

This one is a bunch of place names I noted down on the way back to Oxford from Sweet G's 30th Birthday weekend. It's not that I found them funny or cute or anything like that. I just, slightly patronisingly, found something really charming and quaint about them. Like they were stuck in a time period of about 200 years ago. Yeah, that does make me sound like a bit of a wanker, but read these and tell me there isn't something nice and old fashioned about them:

* Piddlehinton
* Troy Town
* Poundsbury
* Briantspuddle
* Sturminster Marshall
* Corfe Mullen
* "Chop & Ale House"
* Canford Bottom

And along with those I noted a place called Zelston, which to me sounds like the name given to a planet in some equally absurd sounding quadrant of space in a 1970's tv sci-fi drama series.

"Blake, we have entered the Geltorg quadrant and should be arriving at the planet Zelston very soon."
"Understood. Orac, can you calculate the make up of the atmosphere on Zeston's surface?"
"Jesus, Blake, can't the universes most advanced super-computer take a nap every now and then?"
"Just do it, Orac."

Errrrrrrm..... Yeah.

Old Phone Notes #2, 3 & 4.

2011-03-09T02:35:00.000Z

The next note was two quotes:

"Ugly sex is hot."

"I always go back to spit roast."

I can't entirely remember this, but I think my mate Anna who used to be on my college course said these. We were in a pub with another college mate, Humphrey. Think I just wrote them down because they made Humph and I laugh quite a lot.

Then comes:

"OLAibi"

I think this is a Japanese band I read a bit about in 'Wire' magazine that I wanted to listen to. Hang on...

Yes they are. And they "...feature members of OOIOO and Boredoms." Ooooooh. YouTube time.

First video: They're playing live. They're all wearing deer masks. Two people playing ikembes, two people playing glockenspiels, one person playing bongos. Quite mellow and hypnotic. I like it.

Second video: More live footage. More percussion heavy, similarly hypnotic groove music. I like this band.

Then:

"Boregore."

Someone once described this as "Really filthy sounding dubstep" to me and I never got round to checking them out. Let's go.

First song, 'Guided Relaxation.' Yup. The description seems accurate.

Second song, 'Ice Cream.' Starts off a bit tamer and with a really irritating vocal, but starts getting pretty filthy about halfway through.

Third sing, 'Act Like A Ho.' See second song, but with filth starting about a third of the way through.

To clarify, filth here refers to distorted, squelchy sounding synth.

Hmmm, they do all kind of sound a bit the same though. Shame. Not enough to make me think this is someone I'll carry on looking out for.

Old Phone Notes #1.

2011-03-09T01:41:00.000Z

I've been trying to work out what to write on here for a while now. Quite a few times I've started a post and decided that I actually don't want to write it and so delete it. I can't even remember what any of them were about now.

Anyway, this means that it's been back to this blog looking a bit sparse. Today though I was in the pub with m'college colleagues Adam and Humph, when they started having a massive conversation about the programme 'Smallville.' Not giving a toss about Superman in general (I could just never really care about him) I decided to sort out the problem of my phone running out of memory. I discovered a ton of notes I'd left myself and never chased up on, written about or whatever it was I was meaning to do with them. I wrote all these notes down in my diary and am going to write about these notes on here. This is the first part of this potentially tedious project.

(Is it a project? I don't know, but if I call it one it might make it sound like a more interesting prospect to work and read through.)

The first note said:

"Techno Welshpool."

Now, I actually remember exactly why I made a note of this. I was watching 'Final Score' or the Sky Sports equivalent one day at work and they were including results from a Welsh football cup, and this team called Techno Welshpool came up. I thought it was the best name I had ever heard of for a football team. I imagined it would be the kind of name a European dance act would adopt. I imagined they would sound quite a lot like the band Scooter.

I Googled Techno Welshpool and found that a site called fanchants (dot) com has lyrics to a chant of theirs. It goes:

"Techno, techno,

Yeh techno, techno,

Yeh we are Techno Welshpool yeh!!!!!!!!!!!"

This has made me think even more that a European dance band really should adopt it as a name. If someone had said to me that those were the lyrics to a Scooter song, I would've believed them. Someone needs to snap this name up while they can.

Why not? We've had football team band names before. Saint Etienne, Kaiser Chiefs, and the first time I went to Paris, there were posters advertising a (then) new album by a band called Astonvilla. I never got round to hearing what they sound like. Maybe I'll look them up on YouTube now.

Oh. They sound like boring, middle-of-the-road rock. How disappointing. Oh well...

So there you go. That's why I noted that down. I reckon I've been meaning to write about that for about three years. And I've been meaning to hear what Astonvilla sound like for longer than that.

This phone notes thing already feels like a good idea. Which probably means it'll be tedious from here on. I do hope not.

P.S. Google also told me that the official name of Techno Welshpool is actually 'Technogroup Welshpool Town F.C." and that they are called this due to the fact that they took on the name of their sponsors. That's pretty weird. I mean, imagine if Manchester United suddenly changed their name to Aon F.C. ...

This Song.

2011-02-24T11:51:00.001Z

I cannot get over this song at the moment. SO. FUCKING. GOOD.

Compere The...

2011-02-17T19:37:00.002Z

... No. I can't do it. That is one bad joke too far.

I'm doing my first ever compere gig on Monday (21st) at the Jericho Tavern. I'm looking forward to it. I've often wondered if I would be any good at this kind of thing, and someone has decided to put their night in my hands. Pressure? Sure, but how else will we find the answer to this question?

I guess the closest I've ever come to compereing is when me and my best friend from primary/middle school David Savage used to make our own tapes. We would do various things like come up with stories we would act out. Or news items, which consisted of children's author Sheila Lavelle trying to read out the news while Bill Murray tried to have sex with her. We were about 7 or 8 years old when we first did this particular story. It was a recurring theme of our tapes.

We would also do our own version of Top of the Pops, in which I would be the presenter and David would perform. It was a little bit like 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' in that I would come up with an artist and song title off the top of my head and David would have to perform it. The one that sticks in my mind is when I came up with the idea of Cliff Richard singing a song called 'The Vomiting Song.' Well, what really comes to mind is when I made David be Cliff Richard do 'The Vomiting Song II,' the first lyric of which went 'The vomiting is getting worse and the people are dying.' I'm not entirely sure why I remember that as well as I do, but I do. I wonder if I still have those tapes somewhere?

Anyway, we stopped making those tapes about seventeen or eighteen years ago now, so I haven't done any compereing since then. I'm kind of nervous about it, but excited too. I'm actually really looking forward to it. It's a three act gig and I'm gonna be doing about five minutes of poetry and rambling before each act, so it should be pretty fun. Not too long for people who've turned up for a gig to get bored (a problem I've had doing music gigs before), but enough time for me to do my thing and (hopefully) make an impact.

I'll let you know how it goes.

UPDATE (24/2/11, 11:54am): It went really quite phenomenally badly. I sort of don't want to write about it tho.

Things I Think About When I'm Ill: Part 2 - Music.

2011-02-11T19:57:00.001Z

Now, I think about music quite a lot anyway, so it makes sense that I should think about it when I'm ill.

I've been thinking that it's quite odd that the new, self titled, James Blake album is seemingly, subjectively speaking, a pretty boring album, yet there is something about it that is absolutely captivating me. It's one of those albums where if I'm not listening to it, I often find myself thinking about it, or running through songs or running over certain parts of songs from it in my head. It's deceptive simplicity seems to harbour real soul. I'm becoming a little addicted to it.

I would probably be becoming totally addicted to it, if it weren't for the new Joan As Police Woman album, The Deep Field, which I am also really digging right now. I'm not really sure how to describe it in a way that won't put a lot of people off, so just check it out because, well, I think it's pretty great.

However, I haven't always been thinking about it in the same way as I usually do.

Last night, when I couldn't sleep for being ill, I noticed that the two sides of the lead as it goes into the plug for my Macbook look like a bit like faces. I turned them into characters; one I called 'Harry the happy lead' and the other I called 'Charlie the simpleton cyclops' (oh yeah, one of them only had one eye). I then decided we were going to form a tribute band. As there were three of us, I figured we should be a tribute to The Jam, even though I don't like The Jam. This is the sort of sacrifice I am willing to make for friends. Of course, it turned out that they don't like The Jam either, but now we were committed to the idea. It was decided that I would have to be Paul Weller as a) my name is Paul, and b) neither Harry or Charlie could play guitar. I pointed out that I can't play guitar either, but they said it would be easier for me to learn on account of the fact that, being as they were two sides of a plug lead, neither of them had arms. To be fair, they had a point.

Now, I don't know if you know what it's like to be in a band with siamese not-quite-twins who are joined at the back of the head, but I can tell you it's pretty tough. Arguments started about which side group photos should be taken from. They would always have to be in profile in a shot to get them both in, but both prefer their left side. Also, having a body like a very thin plastic snake, they couldn't quite work out how one could play bass synth (no arms = no playing bass) and drums at the same time, as they both argued that they needed the same segments of their body at the same time. I tried to see if these were problems that could be ironed out in rehearsals, but they were having none of it. This tribute band was doomed.

Do you know what it's like to be ill and awake at gone two in the morning when you've just failed in an attempt at forming a tribute band with two sides of a plug lead for a band you don't even like?

No?

I'll tell you.

Not good.

Not good at all.

Things I Think About When I'm Ill: Part 1 - Thinking.

2011-02-11T13:44:00.001Z

Being ill means that sometimes I can bring myself to do little more than eat soup and watch things on YouTube. The problem with this is that soup only lasts for so long, and I get bored of YouTube, mostly because I have a little voice in my head telling me I'm wasting my time.

However, all the things that aren't a waste I either can't do or can't concentrate on. Currently I feel utterly hideous from the shoulders up. The rest of my body feels okay, but a little tired because all the energy seems to be going to my head to tackle whatever the hell's in there. This means I can stand up and/or walk for about half a minute before it feels like my body is becoming a cocktail stick that I'm trying to balance a tennis ball head on.

Oh, except for the fact that because my tonsils are sore, I've spent a lot of time reflexively swallowing air, so when I'm sitting down I feel like a tennis ball balancing on a balloon.

In short, it's crap.

I also have the concentration of a... a... a thing with very little in the way of concentration. So I can't do any college work, which is annoying because it would be the perfect time to do it, if it weren't for the fact that my brain seems to think that things like "James sent the letter the next day. He couldn't remember what he had written in his drunken state last night, but he was sure that he still felt the same feeling as what he had written, so he didn't bother to reread it and trusted himself to have stated his point of view in a manner that, while not necessarily appropriate, got his message to those concerned across." somehow constitute decent literature. Stupid illness brain.

Anyway, these things combined mean that I spend a lot of time just sort of sitting around doing nothing at all but thinking (I just wrote that as 'thingking.' Jesus...).

Normally I would put a list of hilarious and ridiculous things I've been thinking here in an effort to amuse you readers, but I can't actually remember what most of what I've been thinking about is.

So this morning I have mostly been thinking about thinking, or more specifically trying to remember what I've been thinking.

I think this is possibly the most pointless way to spend time there is, which doesn't exactly make me feel better, but hey, at least now I can say I've done something with it, even if that is just to make you lot read about it.

ABCtales Magazine Issue #20.

2011-02-10T19:47:00.001Z

I'm ill.

When I woke up this morning I couldn't speak. My throat feels like someone set fire to it while I was asleep and my head feels like there are people trying to make bombs in it, only they're not very good at it and the bombs keep exploding.

I hate being ill. It totally impedes my ability to do anything. I bought some soup today. That's the extent of my abilities. I spent an hour writing something in this post which I realised was awful and deleted. I tried doing some college work, nothing doing. Everything that came out of these fingers was garbage. Garbage that had to have a spelling correction every three words because my ability to type has also left me.

So, knowing me as well as I do, I should be a big moaning pile of self loathing and misery right now.

BUT I'M NOT and the reason I'm not is that today I found out that I have had a poem published in ABCtales Magazine, so I am feeling pretty damn happy as this is the first time I've been published (by something I'm not involved in). ABCtales is a writers forum site that I put stuff on sometimes to try and gauge a reaction. I was actually starting to wonder why I bothered with that site as it seems about as useful to me as writing poetry on stones and throwing them into the sea, or at least it did until I was asked to have a poem included in their zine.

The poem they've used is "5 Minutes With The Beatles" (which the editor of the zine appears to have felt the need to change to "Five Minutes With The Beatles." I'm not really complaining about it, I just find it a little odd), which is strange as it's a poem I had sort of forgotten about, it's one I hadn't performed or even thought about performing for months, yet that's the one that the guy specifically asked for. Funny how these things go.

Check it out here http://stores.lulu.com/abctales It's available as a physical purchase or a free download.

Something I Don't Understand.

2011-02-04T20:37:00.000Z

You lot, sarcastically: "Oh, that really narrows it down, Axl. Har har har."

Shut the fuck up.

Now, you know when you watch a film or tv programme and someone knows they're about to be killed but first the person who's going to kill them makes them dig their own grave?

Why do they do it?

If I knew I was going to be killed, I sure as fuck wouldn't be forced into digging my own grave by the person who was going to kill me. What are they going to do if I refuse? Kill me? Hang on, aren't they going to do that anyway?

If I knew someone was going to kill me, I would make my death as much of an inconvenience to them as possible. You want to kill me? YOU can fucking well dig my grave, you dick.

Mr Axl's Grumpy Old Man Blog.

2011-02-04T18:20:00.003Z

So, I watched 'Come Dine With Me' earlier and this absolute cock-end called Brian said "I thought we were having Greek, but it's lamb. Where's the mint sauce?" Earlier on in the week, he'd criticised someone for having a French menu with no French food because he recognised what the food was. Which begs the question, what the fuck? What does he think people eat in other countries? Was he expecting some sort of boiled tortoise? Or maybe slow roast unicorn? Or maybe some exotic six legged, twelve titted animal he'd never heard of because it doesn't fucking exist?! Jesus, the fact that someone can be such a total fucking imbecile in this day and age quite frankly astonishes me.

Yeah, that's right. I just wrote a blog post about 'Come Dine With Me.' I'm embracing my getting-old age, yeah?

And now 'America's Next Top Model' is on and Tyra Banks looks like she's wearing some sort of remodelled high class windbreaker.

What?

I sound like a grumpy old man?

Sorry, what part of "I'm embracing my getting-old age, yeah?" don't you understand?!

Ferment Zine.

2011-02-03T23:50:00.004Z

So, somehow I forgot to put on here how I'm sort of the editor of a magazine now.

It's a zine I do with two other people (my friends James and Sarah).

What we do is come up with a theme, give that to writers, and then give what they write to illustrators who draw up artwork to go with the poem or short story they've been given.

Anyway, the first issue's been out since about mid-December, and we're working on the second issue now, which we hope to have out in mid-March.

The print run for each issue is 100 copies.

We've had a lot of very positive reaction, but frustratingly that hasn't translated into sales. Yet. I think we've sold just over half of the copies we printed up.

I think this is, at least partly, due to the fact that we made a free pdf download available simultaneously. I think for the next issue we're thinking we'll only do that when we've sold out of physical issues. We do, after all, live in a world now where people seem to feel they are entitled to obtain someone else's work for free, so if that option is there, then that is of course what people will go for.

We're thinking of charging for the pdf while physical copies are still in stock, just in case people really don't want a physical copy that much. Shame, but that's how it is nowadays. God, saying that makes me feel old.

Anyway, please check out our zine over at http://fermentzine.com/

It is something that we are incredibly proud of.

?!?!

2011-02-02T12:23:00.001Z

Found this note outside my house the other day. It is somewhat perplexing.

So... Update.

2011-01-31T23:08:00.000Z

Turns out the reason I wasn't up for going out is that I'm a little ill, which I didn't realise until I was at work on Sunday and realised that the groggy feeling I had couldn't possibly be a hangover due to the fact that I hadn't been out and that I was in fact ill.

The reason I thought it was a hangover was that it was a Sunday and I pretty much can't remember the last time I worked a Sunday without having a hangover. Hangovers are bizarrely pretty much the only thing that make working a Sunday bearable, so I just assumed that I was feeling rubbish because it was a Sunday. I was, in fact, unwell.

I also hate myself more than usual when I'm ill, so that should've been another sign too.

Anyway, nothing more to say really, other than this evening I watched 'Frost/Nixon' which I enjoyed more than I thought I would. I had also forgotten how seriously, incredibly hot Rebecca Hall is, but I can't say that because I'll probably get in trouble with my girlfriend.

Wait, hang on... Shit.

So...

2011-01-30T01:11:00.001Z

...tonight was the one off return of 'Abort Retry Fail?', the night in Oxford that I used to fucking adore, and I had been looking forward to it for weeks. A proper little party night out, once again. Yes please.

But suddenly, at some point in the afternoon, something in me just went "No, you're not going to have fun tonight, you're going to be grumpy and boring instead for no reason," and so I've missed it and stayed in. I had some food, did the washing up, watched '10 O'Clock Live' (which is a very mixed bag and something I may feel compelled to write about another time) on 4OD, and came to bed. I am bored. Too bored to even write this properly and tomorrow I will feel like shit for not going tonight.

And I just wrote a really moaning blog post about it.

God, I hate myself sometimes.

The Rise & Fall & Rise & Fall of Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

2011-01-28T12:36:00.001Z

The other day when I was in the shower, I found myself thinking about Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

No, not like that, you filthy, nasty people.

No, I suddenly got a song by theaudience stuck in my head. Remember theaudience? They were her band years ago. The song was "I Know Enough (I Dont Get Enough)." This kind of typified the band in general. They were slightly joylessly pretentious, like so many of the late Britpop bands were, because they liked the intelligence of Britpop, but not the pop. They were paid attention to though, because pretty much everyone fancied Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

I'm not saying that just as some sort of personal judgement on their music, I clearly remember Sophie Ellis-Bextor on Channel 4's 'The Jo Whiley Show' (remember that? That slightly joylessly pretentious show from the late Britpop era? There seems to be a theme here...), having a go at Neil Hannon (he of The Divine Comedy, a joyFULLY pretentious non-Britpop band of the same era (and still going strong in fact)) asking him something along the lines of how could he look himself in the mirror each morning after being a guest singer on the then latest Robbie Williams album. She basically called him a massive sellout, then a couple of years later did that song with Spiller.

That's a bizarre collaboration right there. A successful European dj collaborates on a track with an unknown singer from a forgotten indie band. It would be like if Tiesto did a track with the guy from Terris (remember them? They were 'the best new band in the world' who were going to set the world on fire but thru a process of massive overhype just fizzled out and became ignored. I actually have their album somewhere. Can't remember what it sounds like now). It would just be weird. But somehow this collaboration worked and Sophie did better than ever, by dropping the pretention and embracing the pop, something a couple of years previously she'd have called someone a sell-out for doing.

Then came her solo album, which was gonna be huge, right? Right?

Well, not really. It was fairly popular, but where I work, we still had copies from our initial orders left over YEARS later, that we only managed to shift once they'd been marked down to £1. Even then I think we've still got some copies lurking around somewhere.

So, erm, I've kind of forgotten the point of writing this. I just kind of thought it was interesting her career has had two rise and falls, that's all. theaudience were seen as a promising band, they petered out. Her solo career looked promising, it petered out, although I believe she is still going, determined to get that third rise. Poor girl. I hope she's a pessimist.

(That's a very clever (God, I'm good) reference to another song by theaudience, 'A Pessimist Is Never Disappointed' which, by the way, as a statement, is bollocks. Pessimism thrives on disappointment. It couldn't survive without it. You fool.)

ENOUGH!

2011-01-26T19:37:00.000Z

Dear whoever makes the 'Compare The Market' adverts,

STOP IT.

PLEASE.

SERIOUSLY.

ENOUGH FUCKING MEERKAT ADVERTS, ALREADY.

NO MORE.

STOP.

JUST STOP.

Yours sincerely,

Axl.

The Best Way To Eat A Shoe.

2011-01-12T01:11:00.000Z

Today in the pub me and my college buddies discussed what the best way to eat a shoe would be. After discussing the various ways of cooking it, and whether refrigerating it would help or hinder the task of eating it, we decided that the best way to eat a shoe would be to take a cheesegrater, and grate the shoe on the part that grates it to the finest/smallest size, then take the shoe gratings and put them in a soup (effectively making it a "Shoup", I suppose). Voila. Best way to eat a shoe.

Although now I am wondering what a shoe smoothie would be like (A "Shoethie", if you will).

ZOOSK?!

2011-01-10T13:35:00.000Z

I just saw an advert for a dating website called Zoosk. You know the kind of thing; 'Unlucky in love? Find someone who's truly compatible with our super-duper mind matching doohickey service!'

There is one problem tho. It's called 'Zoosk.'

I don't think I would want to go out with someone who signed up to a website called 'Zoosk.'

Seiously, 'Zoosk'?!

Zoosk sounds like something a pre-school child would call a kiss.

'Zoosk Mummy, zoosk!' Then Mummy kisses her child which then laughs.

Not exactly the image you want a dating website to give now, is it?

I Really Need To Start Keeping A Pen And Some Paper In My Bathroom.

2010-12-28T01:49:00.000Z

I may well have said that before, and/or that may just sound bizarre, but there is a reason for this.

I find that the bathroom, for some reason, is somewhere in which I come up with a lot of my ideas. Now, if I'm somewhere other than home this isn't usually a problem because I normally have a pen and some old receipts in my pockets with which I can make notes or jot down a couple of lines. I sometimes even use my phone and save said info as a draft text message. The time it takes to do this is never a problem as pretty much everyone I know now knows that even at the best of times, my IBS leads me to be on the toilet for longer than the average person, so it is thought nothing of.

When I'm at home tho, I like to take everything out of my pockets to feel more comfortable, you know? You're at home Axl. Relaaaaaaaaax.

This does however lead to things like what happened about 3 hours ago when I was on the toilet (don't worry, I won't go into details) and got a massive flash of inspiration. Not just a great idea, but a great idea with several lines and incredibly clever, packed, non-formal schemed rhyming. About 7 or 8 lines of complex poetry suddenly flashed into my head. I immediately reached for my pockets to find no pen or phone. Shit!

I had receipts in my back pocket tho. If I could find something to write with, I would be fine. But what is there in a bathroom to write with? Well, luckily I live with two women, which means that in my field of vision there was a bag of make-up/lotions/female stuff. If I could find an eyeliner pencil in there, my idea would be saved.

No.

No eyeliner pencil.

I looked for ages. I started turning out the contents onto the floor by my feet. There was no eyeliner pencil to be found. Nothing I could write with at all. There was however, totally randomly, a box of matches. I have no idea what they were doing in there and I almost ignored them, but then I remembered one making mark on walls with matches when I was trying to light them on various surfaces. I tried to write with a match on a receipt.

They were safety matches tho. No marks left. Balls. I did notice tho that it had left an almost invisible indentation on the receipt just by having been pressed into the paper.

I started to write. By this point tho, I had forgotten almost everything that had come to me. It was gone. Gone. Not coming back anytime soon either. So I ended up only getting down a basic version of some of the lines and with it, a general idea of the poem, rather than the sure thing I had originally thought up.

All of which means that this will probably end up not being usable. Which means that I need to start keeping a pen and some paper in my bathroom. See? Not so weird after all, is it?

Don Paterson - 'An Elliptical Stylus'

2010-12-27T11:49:00.003Z

I just read this fucking amazing poem which I felt the need to share with you all. Don Paterson is a modern Scottish poet who has won both the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, for his 2003 collection Landing Light, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, for his 1993 collection Nil Nil, the collection that this poem is taken from.

Here it is. I really hope you enjoy it.

Don Paterson, An Elliptical Stylus

My uncle was beaming: ‘Aye, yer elliptical stylus -
fairly brings out a’ the wee details.’
Balanced at a fraction of an ounce
the fat cartridge sank down like a feather;
music billowed out into three dimensions
as if we could have walked between the players.

My Dad, who could appreciate the difference,
went to Largs to buy an elliptical stylus
for our ancient, beat-up Phillips turntable.
We had the guy in stitches: ‘You can’t…
er… you’ll have to upgrade you equipment.’
Still smirking, he sent us from the shop
with a box of needles, thick as carpet tacks,
the only sort made to fit our model.

(Supposing I’d been his son: lets eavesdrop
on ‘Fidelities’, the poem I’m writing now:
The day my father died, he showed me how
he’d prime the deck for optimum performance:
it’s a lesson that I recall – how he’d refine
the arm’s weight, to leave the stylus balanced
somewhere between ellipsis and precision,
as I gently lower the sharp nib to the line
and wait for it to pick up the vibration
till it moves across the page, like a cardiograph…)

We drove back slowly, as if we had a puncture;
My Dad trying not to blink, and the man’s laugh
stuck in my head, which is where the story sticks,
and any attempt to cauterize this fable
with something axiomatic on the nature
of articulacy and inheritance
since he can well afford to make his own
excuses, you, your own interpretation.
But if you still insist on resonance –
I’d swing for him, and every other cunt
happy to let my father know his station,
which probably includes yourself. To be blunt.

What I love about this poem is its last stanza in particular, which breaks not just the conventions of the 'fourth wall' but the conventions of poetry in general. This is something that is particularly difficult to do nowadays as we live in an age where pretty much anything goes in poetry. The fact that there is still something that defies expectations as much as the final stanza of this poem does is something I find astonishing. This aside, it is also a deceptively emotional poem, something that is also revealed in that final stanza. When the emotion comes, it comes as a shock. You aren't prepared for it and as a result it gives a reaction of shock, as well as the emotion you would have got from it anyway, which adds weight to the emotions themselves. It's extremely cleverly done.

Damn, I hope I can write something this strong and this affecting one day.

Christmas Carols.

2010-12-25T03:25:00.003Z

Yeah, I know it's the wee small hours of Christmas morning and I should be asleep, but I can't because I appear to have picked up some sort of bug tonight that means I'm sneezing and coughing so much that my throat and chest hurt. Doesn't exactly make sleep an easy thing to get, so instead of going insane, I'm doing this instead.

I'm gonna say something I don't hear said very often:

Christmas Carols are fucking weird.

First of all, I find the concept of Christmas Carols a little odd. Why aren't there other well known songs for other religious events? Has anyone ever thought of writing a collection of Easter Eulogies?

Secondly, most Christmas Carols seem to have had no compositional effort put into them whatsoever, certainly not in the lyrics anyway. For example, take 'The Holly & The Ivy.'

Now, let's start with the title. For a song that is about holly AND ivy, it seems a little odd that ivy is only mentioned twice. Once in the first line of the first verse, and in the first line of the last verse, which is just the first verse repeated. The song mentions holly in almost every verse, but ivy is pretty much totally ignored.

The lyrics themselves are mostly unbelievably lazy comparisons between holly and the birth of Jesus. Take this verse:

'The holly bears a prickle,

as sharp as any thorn,

and Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,

on Christmas day in the morn.'

Right. What is that verse actually saying? It seems pretty obvious that whoever wrote it was intending to say that holly bears something very painful just as Mary did in the act of giving birth, but both do so valiantly and should be celebrated for this. Problem is that what holly bears is not actually pain but something that gives pain. Therefore what the song is actually saying is that Mary has given birth to something that will give pain. Yep. Sorry, but this lyric is so weak that it says the opposite of what it actually intends to.

Think I'm wrong? Think I'm overdoing it somewhat? Okay, let's take the previous verse:

'The holly bears a berry,

as red as any blood,

and Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,

to do poor sinners good.'

Okay, first thing's first. What the fuck is that even supposed to mean?! It's seemingly just two random statements put together in the hope no-one will notice. It's like it was written by a child with ADHD just saying the first things that come into their head. You may as well have a song that goes 'The grass is green in the park / and I ate chicken for lunch today / and ice is cold.' It makes just as much sense.

Unless you actually look at the comparison being made. It does make sense, just not the sense the writer wants to convey.

If you look up holly on Wikipedia, the first line states that 'Holly berries are somewhat toxic to humans,' which considering that the following line is about the birth of Jesus would seem to suggest that Jesus' reason for being is to do harm to sinners. It's the 'cruel to be kind' principle. That is the only logical conclusion one can come to in comparing a holly berry to Jesus Christ doing 'poor sinners good'.

I could go on, but I feel I should move on.

Because this is by no means the only carol with ludicrous lyrics. Take this verse from 'O Come All Ye Faithful':

'God of God,

light of light,

lo! He abhors not the virgin womb;

very God,

begotten not created.'

Sorry? What? Are the wombs of virgins normally supposed to be abhorred? What on Earth does this line mean? What on Earth is it even supposed to mean?! It sounds more like a prog rock lyric than a Christmas Carol!

Elsewhere, we learn that Jesus was born after his due date in Hark The Herald Angels Sing; 'Christ, the everlasting Lord, / late in time behold him come, / offspring of a Virgin's womb!' Now, don't you all feel better for knowing that?

Aw, I had another one and I've lost it now.

So I shall leave you with this verse from 'We Three Kings' which explains why Myrrh was given as a gift to the baby Jesus:

'Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume

breathes a life of gathering gloom;

sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,

sealed in the stone-cold tomb.'

MERRY CHRISTMAAAAAAAAAAAAAS!!!

Celebrity Reality TV Ideas.

2010-12-20T16:37:00.000Z

Haven't posted regularly recently due to college stuff, but we're done for the term, so I can go back to filling your eyes with my garbage.

I had some ideas for new celebrity based reality tv shows today which I'm gonna run by you. Celebrity reality tv doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon, far from it in fact, so I'm gonna get in the game. Here are my ideas.

* Strictly Come Nursing

People are always saying stuff about hospitals being understaffed and so why not give them the Celebrity treatment? Each week a bunch of people who used to be in Eastenders or Corrie or Hollyoaks compete to see who can be the best at helping out in a real hospital.

If that's not exciting enough, how about;

* Strictly Come Surgery

Each week celebrities are taught how to do a new surgical procedure which they have to perform while being filmed. Maybe someone from Strictly Come Nursing can mop their brow when they get a sweaty forehead. Whoever performs the surgery worst, loses and has to turn in their surgical whites and leave the contest. They cry and say how if only they'd managed to keep their nerve, they wouldn't have cut the patients artery.

* Celebrity Masturbate

Each week a group of celebrities take it turns to have a wank while Greg Wallace and John Torode watch. They analyse and mark them on technique, pleasure, etc, and whoever they deem to be the worst wanker is out of the contest. You could even have a spin off series called 'Masturbate: The Professionals' where Greg Wallace and Michel Roux Jr. judge a show of the same format, but this time with porn stars as the contestants.

* RU

Chris Moyles, one of the most "how the fuck are you famous" people ever, hosts a new Celebrity quiz show where him and his celebrity guests talk about things that are Really Uninteresting in a sort of loosely based quiz show format. Somehow we are expected to find this entertaining. Oh wait, hang on, Channel 4 already commissioned that...

I had more, but I've forgotten them now.

A Brief Word About Adverts.

2010-12-12T21:06:00.000Z

Adverts can be good. One just reminded me how FUCKING INCREDIBLE this song is.

BBC Sound Of 2011.

2010-12-07T11:44:00.004Z

It's that time of year again folks, when the BBC tell us what we can expect to have rammed into our ears for the next 12 months. This means that I'm going to listen to them all and tell you what I think of them. Although the last two years have produced a mostly unpleasant list, I have enjoyed writing the posts about them (to refresh your memories:- 2010's: http://bit.ly/evPdfd 2009's: http://bit.ly/he8DZc ) and last years list introduced me to Gold Panda, who I really like, so I'm hoping for another pleasant surprise like that.
Well, here goes!

#1. Anna Calvi.
(Song: 'Jezebel')

Sounds like Patti Smith or Jefferson Airplane soundtracking a
Western. It's very weird. Not in a good way.
It's a song in which virtually nothing happens. Not in a good way.
It's boring. Very boring.

#2. Clare Maguire.
(Song: 'Aint Nobody')

Not a cover of the Chaka Khan song. Shame, it might be a bit more interesting if it was.
Clare Maguire probably thinks she's doing something really interesting and different but in reality it just sounds like she has listened to a lot of Kate Bush and totally missed the point of it.
Again, it is very boring.
This song also has a really lacklustre ending, like she just went... hmmm... how can I describe it... Right. Have you ever seen the Bill Bailey live bit where he talks about how it sounds like the writer of the Countdown theme tune just couldn't be bothered to finish it properly? That's what the end of this song sounds like. Like she went, 'Oh, I can't be bothered with this song anymore, let's just end it there, yeah?'
Also, whoever directed the music video has watched the video for Madonna's 'Frozen' a bit too much and thought 'I'll do that but in a bit more of an edgy, surrealist cinema style. Yeah, that'ld be cool.' It's not cool. It looks like the song sounds. Lazy and dull.

#3. Daley.
(Song: 'More Than A Woman')

Another song that share's a name with a very famous song. Is that gonna be a theme of this list?
Daley has fucking stupid hair.
He can sing though.
And he's not afraid to show that off. This song pretty much is just his voice with very minimal accompaniment from a drummer and a bassist. After three minutes some minimal keyboards come into play too, but this is a song based on his voice.
But it's just inoffensive fluff. Another white boy who got soul wrong.

#4. Esben & The Witch.
(Song: 'Marching Song')

I've heard of this band but never actually heard them. Let's see how this goes.
Ooooooh, apparently the video "Contains upsetting scenes." Scaaaaaaaryyyyyy.
Okay, Esben & The Witch might be my Gold Panda for this years list. That was fucking good. I could tell how good I thought it was because I didn't write anything for the whole time it was on and am in fact listening to it a second time now.
It's a really good, slow building, atmospheric post-rock song. Now, as a sentence to describe music, that has become as overused as 'LOL' is on Facebook, but I can't think of a better way to say what it is in a way that is understandable.
And the video is actually kind of genuinely disturbing. It's like they've been taken hostage and been made to sing after various stages of being beaten up. It fits the theme of the song (war, battle, loss, etc) really well. It's actually left a bit of an impact on me.
As I said about Gold Panda last year, I will definitely be keeping my eyes and ears out for this band.

#5. Jai Paul.
(Song: (Hang on, they haven't put a song on there. *Hunts the internet* Okay, now I can see why everyone is complaining about MySpace. *Hunts more internet* This computer isn't letting me look at YouTube. *More hunting* Okay, hype machine has something.) 'BTSTU')

Fairly interesting song. Sounds like a discarded MIA instrumental slowed down with some male falsetto singing over the top. Some interesting things going on, but it just manages to miss the mark in terms of making me go 'Yeah, this is good,' and so I just think this is alright.

#6. James Blake.
(Song: 'Limit To Your Love')

Right, a couple of people I know have been creaming themselves over this guy, so I'm pretty interested to see what the fuss is about. Apparently he makes 'Post-dubstep torch songs.'
This song is piano and vocal chorus followed by slowed down dubstep verse, the cycle is repeated then both elements are brought together for the finale.
Here's the problem. There just slightly too little going on. The concept of what he's doing is actually very interesting, I just think it can be done better than this. It does show definite potential though, and I will certainly keep eyes and ears on him as he could well come out with something very good indeed. The ingredients are there, for sure.

#7. Jamie Woon.
(Song: 'Night Air')

Weirdly, this sounds like Ali Campbell from UB40 covering Jamie Lidell. As a song, it doesn't really go anywhere. It's a little bit nothing. No, that's harsh. It's alright, it just doesn't really do anything.

#8. Jessie J.
(Song: 'Do It Like A Dude')

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA!!! THAT IS ONE OF THE STUPIDEST VIDEOS I HAVE EVER FUCKING SEEN!!!
The song sounds like someone listened to that awful Ke$ha person and instead of thinking "This is a total rip off of Uffie and it's terrible," thought "Hey, this is so modern and edgy. Let's do a faux feminist take on it!"
It's awful. Seriously awful.

#9. Mona.
(Song: 'Trouble On The Way')

Generic, boring rock music that doesn't in any way actually rock.
The funny thing is that the BBC iPlayer got bored of it about halfway thru and stopped playing it. Sadly after a little rest, it played the rest of the song.
If you like that band The Gaslight Anthem, then you'll probably like this.
I don't.

#10. Nero.
(Song: 'Innocence')

Okay, this song gets IMMEDIATE props for using clips of 'Cyber City Oedo 808' in it's video. I fucking loved that anime! WHY HAVEN'T THEY PUT IT ON DVD?! I only have it on VHS and my stupid video player doesn't work BECAUSE NO-ONE'S VIDEO PLAYERS WORK ANYMORE. That was the series that got me into anime. It was the first anime I ever watched and I absolutely loved it. I STILL DO! WHY ISN'T IT AVAILABLE ON DVD?!

Oh yeah, the song.

It's kind of a combination of trance and dubstep, if that makes ANY sense at all. The result is that it sounds VERY commercial and Nero will probably be massive.
Again, it's alright, but it's fairly standard. It follows a formula rather than stretching any boundaries, which it could potentially have done.

#11. The Naked & Famous.
(Song: 'Punching A Dream')

(Hate the band name. Love the song name.)

Sounds exactly like a slowed down MGMT song but with a female singer.
It's boring. It's massively derivative. It's irritating. I'll probably have to hear it about a thousand times, everywhere for the whole of 2011.
Fuck you, The Naked & Famous.

#12. The Vaccines.
(Song: 'Blow It Up')

They might well be the The Drums of 2011. By that I mean they are massively boring and simple but everyone will think they're cool because they use an old guitar sound.
YAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWN.

#13. Warpaint.
(Song: 'Undertow')

Amazingly enough, even though this band are so massively hyped at the moment, I still haven't heard them.
*listens*
I would be willing to bet money that my girlfriend would love this. It sounds a bit retro, but still pretty modern. The kind of sounds she really goes for.
It's pretty good to be fair. I'm liking it.
Oh, that's annoying. They've become victims of the "I don't know how to finish this song properly" bug that Clare Maguire had. Shame, it was building into something pretty special too. I will definitely check out more of their stuff.

#14. Wretch 32.
(Song: 'Traktor')

Traktor? Is this song going to be an homage to the short lived band I was in, Traktors? Will it be an onslaught of awesome noise? Will it? Will it?
No, of course not, Axl. Don't be stupid.
Wretch 32 has a very odd face face. He looks like he could be anything between 20 and 40 years of age. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if I found out he was really old or really young.
The song is a little boring. No, that's a little unfair actually. It's alright, its just that it's one idea repeated just a little bit too often.
And I'm pretty sure one of lyrics is "Eat peas every day."

#15. Yuck.
(Song: 'Georgia')

I saw this band a few months ago and found them pretty boring.
Yeah, my mind hasn't changed. They still just sound like a less good version of Dinosaur Jr to me.
Quite dull. Very derivative. Don't bother. Listen to Dinosaur Jr instead.

And that's it for another year.
Top 3 time.

1. Esben & The Witch.
2. Warpaint.
3. James Blake.

Check them out.

Weatherspoons Burgers.

2010-11-30T21:15:00.001Z

Today me and my mates Humphrey and Adam were in a Weatherspoons (the one in town isn't actually too nasty and it sells Stowford Press cider which pretty much makes it worth going to by default) and were feeling a little peckish. There were some vouchers that had been given out for money off food, so we thought we'd eat there. We all had burgers.

One time when I went to ATP, me, Gen and our mate Alison all bombed a load of MDMA and missed seeing Fucked Up because we were all just sitting in the bowling alley bar staring vacantly and unable to move or converse. Occasionally one of us would say something like "Woah. I feel really spaced out." and the others would agree.

This is what it was like today in Weatherspoons about half an hour after we'd eaten their burgers. We were seriously monged. I don't know what the fuck they put in those, but it made us all feel very mellow and sleepy and unable to talk to each other or move very much.

I can only conclude that the marketing people at Weatherspoons should promote them as a legal high. They would make a shitload of money if they did that, I reckon.

You could say this is yet another of my million pound ideas. They would never take it on though. They'd probably be worried about negative reactions in the press or something.

My Latest Million Pound Idea.

2010-11-29T00:49:00.000Z

Yes. It's been a while since I had one of these, and this one is totally awesome. It wouldn't make me a million pounds, but it would make Walkers a fuck load of money for sure.

Next year, Walkers should make giant advent calendars that have a packet of crisps behind each door.

Why don't they do that?! I would fucking love that! They should do it. I'm gonna send them a letter or an email suggesting it.

Thursday At The Betsy Trotwood Part 2.

2010-11-29T00:31:00.000Z

After I had performed, and as the night had finished and I was leaving to come back to Oxford, I was stopped by someone.

Them: "Sorry, can I just say something?"
Me: "Sure."
T: "I thought about 90% of what you did was shit."
M: I was caught a little off guard so just ended up saying "Oh."
T: "Yeah. There was this one poem you did with this image of shoes hanging..." they were talking about my poem 'Suspended' "...which was really good. Why do you do all that other superficial stuff?"
M: "I enjoy doing it. It makes people laugh and I enjoy doing it."
T: "Really?! I didn't enjoy it at all."
M: Pretty sure I just said "Oh." again. I was totally off guard and couldn't come up with any intelligent response.
T: "Yeah, I just think that if you can conjure up that kind of imagery like you did in that one, why would you bother doing any of that other stuff? I hated that most of what you did. You shouldn't do that other stuff, y'know?"
M: Resigned to the fact my brain has pretty much stopped almost all immediately useful functions. "Okay. Well, that's given me a lot to think about. Thanks for the honest feedback."
T: "Oh, no problem."

This made me feel pretty weird for a bit. Then as soon as I got on the Oxford Tube, I suddenly started smiling. I realised, I had my first hater! Someone had such a reaction to what I did that they felt the need to stop me and tell me about it. It was kind of cool.
I mean, yeah, if it happened all the time, that would be pretty demoralising. It's certainly not something I would want to happen too often, but, oh I don't know how to describe it properly. I just thought it was pretty cool, that's all.

Thursday At The Betsy Trotwood Part 1.

2010-11-28T21:41:00.002Z

Thursday was the third night I've done at the Betsy Trotwood now. I decided to do something a bit different and perform some poems that aren't humourous. Serious poems. 'Straight' poems, I suppose would be the best way to describe them.
Normally, I perform poems that are trying to be funny, that people usually find funny. I've used the last couple of Betsy Trotwood performances to try out new poems. This time, that included a poem called 'Grief' and one called 'Suspended'. These are poems about... I wrote what they were about and deleted it. If yer at all interested, nip over to paulaskew.tumblr.com and have a read.
Now, I'm used to audiences having a reaction of some sort. People either listen and laugh, sometimes applauding, or don't listen and have a chat, or even just get bored and leave. There's always some sort of reaction though.
After I read these poems tho, nothing. Silence. Absolutely nothing.
I was told later that people were unsure whether to applaud or not because they felt uncomfortable doing so. They didn't know how to react, so they just didn't. It seemed to really affect people somehow. They were the poems that everyone specifically mentioned to me afterwards. It was pretty awesome to know that people were willing to let me give them something a bit different to what I usually do, and that they really took it in and considered it.

I really like performing at the Village Green Preservation Society night. They always create such a great atmosphere there and the upstairs room at the Betsy Trotwood is a really cool room to perform in. Next one's at the end of January (they're having December off), 27th to be precise, and I am already looking forward to doing it.

"Mabel." Live from the Edel Assanti, London.

2010-11-23T20:36:00.000Z

This is a poem from the London Poetry Systems gig I did in Aug/Sept this year.

This is the best video there is of me yet.

PAUL ASKEW - Mable from Big Face Art on Vimeo.

Question.

2010-11-23T12:07:00.001Z

Does anyone else find that the more we communicate, the less we actually understand communication?
Social networking, for all its good points, does seem to have made people a lot more quick to judge and less considering of things. It's as if we've become accustomed to now only know how to have an instant reaction to anything and no longer really think about what's actually being said.
People seem to be forgetting that things like context exist and are very important.
People seem to be forgetting how to take a joke or how to take something on the chin.
Everything we say can come under such scrutiny now that it almost feels like people are looking for something to be annoyed about and it's not worth actually saying anything because everything we feel comfortable saying is becoming so sanitised to the point of it being almost pointless.
Maybe we all need to give social networking a bit of a rest and learn how to actually comunicate with each other again.

Or am I just becoming an old fuddy-duddy?

Yesterday.

2010-11-21T22:46:00.000Z

On Friday I went to the Coronet Theatre in London for an all-nighter that had a bill featuring both Four Tet and Caribou playing live sets. It was fucking amazing. Nathan Fake dj'd and was really good. Caribou's live set was seriously awesome. Then Four Tet played and blew my fucking tiny mind with his amazingness. Seriously, when he played 'Love Cry' I went a bit nuts and felt like I was about to dance my limbs off.
I would go into more detail but I'm not sure I can while doing it justice. Just accept that I fucking loved it.

Anyway, I ended up not leaving the Coronet until about 4am. I had to be at work 6 hours later. In Oxford.
I got home at exactly 6.45am.
I got less than three hours sleep.
I had to go to work.

So maybe I was hallucinating when I saw a man dressed like a mediaeval warrior going into The Magic Café on Magdalen Road.
Maybe I was imagining the tramp with her trousers and pants down round her knees as she was looking through the bin on the corner of St Mary's Road and Bullingdon Road.
And you know, work was pretty tricky on so little sleep, so maybe I wasn't really walking behind a man who was only wearing shorts and a t-shirt who was eating a cornetto (Remember, it is currently a particularly cold November at the moment).

No. All of those things happened. And I'm still really tired. But it was totally fucking worth it.

This Keeps Happening.

2010-11-18T17:28:00.000Z

Person: 'Hey Axl, how's your comedy thing going?'
Me: 'It's not really comedy. It's poetry. Some of it just happens to be funny.'
Person: 'Really?' Eyes glaze over and they stop listening.

It's kind of infuriating that if I were doing anything other than poetry, people might actually be interested in what I was doing.

Quick Question.

2010-11-17T23:49:00.002Z

Has anyone ever watched 'Richard Bacon's Beer & Pizza Club'?
That is the same set they used for Baddiel & Skinner's 'Fantasy Football League' right?
Nice to know that ITV believe in recycling.

Millbank.

2010-11-12T09:27:00.001Z

So, I went on the National march to protest against the education cuts on Wednesday. Yes, I was in the group of people who went to the Millbank office complex. No, I wasn't one of the violent ones.

Something that I've found interesting though is the simultaneous accuracy and inaccuracy of the coverage of the incident, so I thought I would share my experience of it, to try and give a more realistic account of what happened and why it happened.

One thing that interests me is the use of the phrase 'Peaceful protest.' The protest was in reality anything but peaceful. It was loud. It was raucous. Thousands of angry people had come to make their voices heard, and we were shouting at the tops of our voices about how we do not find the proposed education cuts acceptable. It was not a peaceful protest. It was simply a controlled one. Until we got to Millbank that is.

How I ended up in Millbank (for those who don't know, the Millbank complex is basically Conservative HQ) was simply by following those who were in front of me. The march had been permitted to pass Millbank and me and a couple of mates followed the people in front of us into the grounds just because we thought that's where we were supposed to be going. (Some people ahead of us were carrying what looked like a person made out of cardboard and other stuff. This, it turns out, was the effigy that was burned outside Millbank Tower and 30 Millbank.) Once we were there and got a handle of what was going on, we wanted to stay there. This was the headquarters of the party that are planning to put these massive cuts (my college stands to lose about 80% of its teaching budget and will effectively be forced to close) into action. This is why so many of us congregated there. These were the people we wanted to hear our noise, our disapproval, our anger, and we shouted it at them as loud as we could. The tabloid headlines of Thursday would seem to want to have you believe that everyone who congregated at Millbank was a mindless thug, but we were all there for a very definite reason.

Now, the violence. I've been thinking for quite a while about how to write this. I think I'll just have to write it as it comes to me. Sorry if it rambles and doesn't make too much sense.

It started to become clear that something was going to happen when a few people started setting fire to their placards. It wasn't what started the trouble, but it did seem to coincide with the anger of the crowd turning into action. Police officers were blocking the entrance to 30 Millbank after some people had rushed the doors and got in. This meant that they were stuck inside. Some news reports have said that this was when the vandalism inside 30 Millbank started. That's not really the case though. At that stage it was more like when people walked into the Vodafone stores to protest against their tax evasion. They seemed to just be concerned with making things difficult simply by being there.

Anyway, a few people started to throw things and as more people came into the complex, more people were pushed up to the police line, which is when they first raised their batons at the crowd. By now the people setting fire to their signs were putting them on the fire remaining from the effigy and creating a small bonfire. The shouting was getting louder and angrier. More things were being thrown. The area outside Millbank Tower and 30 Millbank was filling up with smoke. Then riot police turned up. Then people started to try and break the windows of 30 Millbank. At some point a drumming group turned up and got people dancing. All of this going on at once in such a small area created a truly incredible and addictive atmosphere. It was exhilarating just being there watching all of this happen. That may sound weird, but it really was something that was easy to get caught up in.

At some point it actually started to get a bit scary and I decided to force my way out (I had been pretty much trapped in there by the sheer number of people) of the Millbank complex and go next to the river by the other side of the road. From there I watched the windows of 30 Millbank get smashed and more people getting inside the building (which is when the vandalism inside the building really started). I watched as a group of police officers trying to reinforce the police line were bombarded by people until they had to turn back and retreat. I didn't see the fire extinguisher being thrown/dropped from the top of the building, but a friend of mine did and said it was pretty terrifying.

I'm amazed it didn't get worse. When it became apparent that the protesters were effectively had the power in this situation and that there was no way the police would be able to control the those who were in the complex was when things got bad, but they could've got a Hell of a lot worse.

I feel that the violence of the day has been somewhat misrepresented. Yes, it was a comparatively very small number of people actually being violent, but they were being egged on by a good couple of thousand people. Few may have done the action, but believe me, many more than that really wanted it to happen.

I'm also not sure how to take the claims I've seen that anarchist groups like The Babylon are to blame for what happened. Firstly, I can't help but think that it would've been worse if there were. Secondly, in a way I think it's an attempt to undermine the whole incident. Chalk it up to anarchists and let's get on with it. If it's anarchists then it's just violence the sake of violence and you don't actually need to consider why there was violence. From my perspective, a lot of people were very angry and wanted to act on that.

My opinion is that this was inevitable. You have the Conservative party, who've always been seen as just be a party of the rich and for the rich, in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats who've been seemingly far too ready to turn their backs on their pre-election pledges and policies when given a whiff of power and are suddenly ready to tow the tory line. This is already a government that has left a lot of the people who voted for it feeling massively let down. Now add to that the bold moves of raising tuition fees to triple the amount and slashing teaching budgets (cutting budgets entirely in some subjects it would seem) and you are going to make a lot of people very angry. They seem to have underestimated how much people really care about education in this country. The protest on Wednesday was about showing that we will not lie down and let ourselves be walked over. With a march of this kind being allowed to go past Millbank, well, what did they expect was going to happen? People are furious and some will act upon that fury if given the opportunity. That is an inevitability.

A point one of my tutors raised today: How was it that this march was allowed to go past Millbank in the first place? How was that authorised with as little police presence as there was?

I'm still not entirely sure if I'm for or against what happened. Either way, one thing I am certain of is that, no matter what news outlets might tell you, it was absolutely not mindless. It was not petty or pointless. It served a purpose. That purpose was to forcefully underline that people will not stand for what the powers that be are trying to force upon them and if you try to make them, they will fight back.

There will almost certainly be more demonstartions against the proposed Government cuts. People will protest against the cuts they see as being unfair. This time it was actually pretty lucky there was as little violence as there was. It could've been a lot worse. A LOT worse. This was a bunch of students who still have a chance at something. Wait til you have a massive group of people who feel like they have nothing to lose and are at the end of their tether. Then see what happens.

Yoof Night: Some Bands And That (Including Chad Valley). 6th November 2010.

2010-11-09T14:13:00.000Z

I took a rather hefty knock to the head on Thursday and still have a headache from it today. Admittedly today is the first day that it hasn't been that bad, it's mellowed out to just a dull murmur of a headache, but on Saturday it was still in full pounding, mood altering swing (I was really grumpy for about three days), so I really wasn't in the mood for a gig, but I really wanted to see Chad Valley again coz he's fucking ace. Oh, and I wasn't drinking either because I was having a week off booze due to the fact that after a particularly heavy 2-3 weeks it kind of felt like my internal organs had started to shut down. So I couldn't even drink myself into a better mood like I would normally do. So tonight was pretty much always going to lose.

The first band, Sissy & The Blisters, weren't bad, but I think they might be used to playing to a more appreciative and involved audience than the average Oxford gig crowd. They looked a little perplexed at times to be playing to room of people standing virtually still while they threw all their energy into a set of fairly loud rock music that sounds like a bunch of bands I can't think of now. I felt sorry for them. A room with a bit more response might have created a bit of chemistry between band and audience that might have elevated them somewhat. As it was the front man's energy in throwing himself around made his shapes look awkward, but I'm not sure that's his fault. I found him annoying, but then that night I was finding pretty much everything annoying.

The guy who's bag kept hitting me as he swayed to Chad Valley was annoying. The couple playing face hockey at the bar were annoying. The fact that my ex-girlfriend was there was annoying. Pretty much everything anyone said was annoying. All these things that would either not normally bother me or that I could do something about by, you know, just moving or something, were just really getting on my tits. I'm pretty sure in hindsight that I was still suffering the effects of concussion that night, as this is what tends to happen to my mood just after I've had or am at the end of concussion. Thinking about it, I've had concussion quite a lot. Maybe that's why my memory is starting to get so bad and why I keep mixing up my words or not being able to think of particular words I want to say even though I know I know them. Years of head battery have caught up with me. I really should be more careful.

The fact that NO-ONE was dancing to Chad Valley, now THAT was genuinely annoying. If there was one thing that was gonna get me out of that funk, it would've been having a good old dance to Chad Valley. People were swaying and bobbing their heads and that, but no-one was GETTING DOWN. I was disappointed by that. The only person I saw who clearly wanted to dance was someone I met for the first time and very briefly at that Blessing Force party, which was frustrating because if I'd known them a bit better I would've grabbed their arm and gone "COME ON, LET'S HAVE A PROPER FUCKING DANCE!!" but that would've probably just freaked them out quite a lot, so I didn't. Instead I stood too still and got hit by that swayer's bag quite a lot. While bobbing my head and that.
Then, during Chad Valley's last song, suddenly everyone started dancing! What with that? "Oh yes, we'll dance to the last song because that shows we've had a good time, but we can't possibly physically exert ourselves otherwise." You bunch of bastards.
Chad Valley was of course awesome. You don't need me to tell you that again.

I left halfway thru the headline band, Fiction, because I found them boring and I'd had enough of the night to be honest. Stupid concussion, ruining my night. If I ever meet concussion, I'm gonna kick it really hard in it's goolies.

Yet Another Open Letter To The General Public Based On Yet Another Weekend Working In Retail.

2010-11-09T13:05:00.000Z

Dear general public,

Three things:

#1. Don't be surprised if I can't help you to find what You're after if you come up to me and say something like:
"Hi. I'm looking for a flm but I can't remember what it's called. All I know is that there is a tree in the picture on the cover."

#2. If you say something like, "I've looked everywhere mate, and I can't find Kenny G at all. Do you not have him?" to which I say, "Kenny G's in the jazz section over here." and you're response is, "Oh, I didn't think to look there." then you haven't looked everywhere. Stop trying to portray yourself as some kind of retail martyr. It's tedious.

#3. Believe it or not, I am fully aware of how hot the basement I work in is and I don't need EVERY SINGLE FUCKING ONE OF YOU to make a comment about it. Seriously. It's fucking infuriating, so stop it. Stop it now.

Overheard Today.

2010-11-09T12:48:00.002Z

Man 1: "Do you wanna hear a joke?"
Man 2: "Yeah, alright."
Man 1: "Okay. What do you call a Scottish terrorist group."
Man 2: "Dunno. What?"
Man 1: "Och Aye-da."
Man 2 gives the kind of nervous half laugh you give when you really don't find a joke funny but don't want to disappoint your friend by letting them know they've just told a really fucking terrible joke.

Another Day Of Axl Foolishness.

2010-11-05T15:15:00.000Z

Tuesday was not the most fun day in the world. I was feeling very out of sorts, which I blame on, well, something. Booze withdrawal maybe, I don't know. I've stopped drinking for a bit as I was drinking far too much and I started to feel like my body was shutting down. Yeah, that's what I'll blame it on.

Anyway, I did a couple of really dumb things. I called my mate Charlie 'Rachel' even though I know that's not her name. I know Rachel's not her name, as this is at least the third time this has happened. I think this means she is now legally obliged to think I am a total dick and slag me off to all her friends. Sigh.

I ordered pizzas for me and Gen from Mario's and when the guy told me the price of the pizzas I thought "That seems a bit much, oh well, maybe their prices have gone up or something." When I got my pizzas, it turned out I had somehow accidentally ordered three instead of two. I was so embarrassed that I just paid for them and took them. As I was going home I suddenly had this 'Hang on, what the fuck just happened?' moments as I realised what I'd just done. My brain was working very slowly that day, so it did take this long for me to question it.

I'm sure there was a third really stupid thing I did, but I can't remember it now.

I do remember being followed part of the way home by a some guy who stopped me in the street while I was on the phone and was annoyed that I wouldn't stand with him until I finished my conversation to find out what he wanted to say to me. He gave up after about a minute. He was a prick.

Yeah, Tuesday was pretty rubbish really.

Boom.

2010-11-05T14:43:00.000Z

So yeah. After my whole 'Oooh, must write on here more often blah blah blah,' business, which I kept up pretty well, I haven't posted for a week now, which feels like a long time now. Basically I've actually been busy with things, things like college and projects and things.

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.

Urff.

2010-10-29T11:45:00.001+01:00

So I haven't posted for a few days. Sorry about that. Here are the reasons for that.
* Been sorting out my student loan.
* Had a meeting with Blessing Force and helped to set up a house for a party.
* Finishing poems for another performance I did at Betsy Trotwood last night.
* Going to the house party (at which Pet Moon, Chad Valley, Jonquil and Jack from Fixers all played very good sets), dancing and getting far too drunk. It was a pretty epic party. Oh, and a journalist was there from NME covering it along with a photographer who took a big old Blessing Force group photo (which I'm in!) AND a journo and cameraman from Vice TV were there to cover it too. We all put on our best of party behaviour for them.
* The party left me hideously hungover for the whole of yesterday.
* I had to go to London yesterday for above mentioned Betsy Trotwood performance. I had to finish two of the poems on the coach and was late due to two accidents on the M40 and of course, I was still hungover. I thought it went badly, but seemingly no-one else did. Massive compliments from everyone and I'm doing next months too.

I am still hungover from the party. I haven't had a two day hangover since I stopped drinking vodka. I'd forgotten just how truly unpleasant they are.

I'm sure I had more to say but I can't remember it now.

I Can Haz Tumblr?

2010-10-26T18:01:00.004+01:00

I was thinking recently that it might be a good idea to have a separate place to put up my scraps of writing and everyone seems to be getting a tumblr these days, so I thought I’d try it out.
So, the plan is that this will be where I keep some of my creative writing bits and bobs. Poems, etc, and all that. I decided it might be a good idea to keep this stuff separate from my personal blog. I’m not entirely sure why I thought that, but I did, so here : paulaskew.tumblr.com : is my new, other blog.
My personal blog still lives here and will still have all of my pointless ramblings posted onto it, so don't you worry about that.

Another Little Bit Of Truck.

2010-10-25T16:30:00.002+01:00

There are a couple of really awkward "Oooh, I'd better act along to this a bit" moments in this one. I don't do that anymore. I learned from that mistake.

Pet Moon/Trophy Wife/Braindead Collective, Bullingdon Arms, Oxford, 24/10/10.

2010-10-25T15:34:00.004+01:00

It's been a while since I wrote a gig review on here and the gig I went to last night was fucking awesome, so I'm gonna write about it. Even though I've already told you how great it was. If you don't want to read a clumsily written, wanky, fairly sycophantic gig review, you can pretty much stop here.

Normally when I'm enjoying a band and someone keeps telling me how rubbish they are, it really annoys me. Fine, I get it, you don't like them. Now can you shut up and let me enjoy this please? However, the level of hatred my girlfriends sister had for Braindead Collective was hilarious. I have rarely seen someone enjoy something so little while being so amusing. At one point she said something like "It's like having really fucking noisy worms in my ears playing random scat-jazz."

I really liked them. They reminded me of this band called Fraud. Fraud released this really good and slightly mental sounding free-jazz/funk/punk album a while back and won massive acclaim, especially for their live shows, and a load of Jazz awards, then just kind of disappeared. Apparently they haven't officially split up, they just do other things at the moment. Anyway, Braindead Collective reminded me of Fraud, and I really like Fraud, so I got pretty into BC's locked groove jazz noodling (is "locked groove jazz noodling" a massive contradiction? Well, I can't think of a better way to describe it, so that'll have to do), even with the running "They're fucking awful" commentary coming from others. It's inevitable really that this style of music will split opinion, especially in a crowd that haven't come to see that kind of thing. Well, I liked it, so there.

Trophy Wife pull off a trick of sounding like a lot of bits of other bands while not sounding enough like any of them to make you think "Oh, they're just another so-and-so." So you get elements of, oh bloody Hell, I had a list in my mind of all of them last night and I can't remember them now. Hang on, that's a good thing. Trophy Wife aren't a band that should be watered down to comparisons as in their own right they were pretty bloody good. Decent guitar pop songs on the slightly mellower side of "math" (whatever the fuck that means now, I only use it as it's a tag that people recognise) with a nice 80's vibe to them. And the drummer (appropriately named Kit) looked like he was having the best time of his life. Good stuff. Definitely worth keeping an ear on.

Ah, Pet Moon. I think I read somewhere that Pet Moon is like a white electro indie rock take on R&B, or maybe I said that and wish I hadn't. As a sentence, it's very on the side of wanky, and its also not wholly accurate. There is a definite R&B influence on some of those beat constructions, and there is an indie tone to the vocals and delivery, but to simmer it gently on a low heat down into that as a pigeonhole statement does what this music actually is a disservice (although at some point I guarantee someone will say/write that Andrew Mears is or has become a singer songwriter for the post-dubstep generation. Eurgh, music journalists...). These are well thought out, meticulously crafted songs that are just themselves rather than being of a style per se.

For a first gig, this is remarkably on it and together. I don't think I've ever seen a better debut performance. As a starting point they really couldn't have done much better. Very little could be criticised (who's gonna niggle over a couple of technical problems, really?) and it will be very interesting and exciting to see where this goes. Great songs, great show, great third thing I can't think of right now (coz these things have to be done in threes, OBVIOUSLY. I mean, like, durrrrrr). Yeah, Pet Moon = Fucking Great.

Yeah, now I remember why I stopped writing gig reviews. I'm not very good at them.

Overheard.

2010-10-22T17:49:00.001+01:00

Today I was walking to my Mum's and I was walking near two men. There was a woman walking ahead of them. One of them was talking on the phone. A few seconds after he finished his phone conversation, he looked at the woman then turned to his mate and said:

"Aw mate, that is givin' me a trouser tent, that."

Yes, he really did.

I know.

Open Letter.

2010-10-21T09:39:00.001+01:00

Dear Bruce Springsteen,

My bum is better than yours.

With Sympathies,

Paul.

Dear Cafés.

2010-10-20T16:56:00.000+01:00

When I come to you to buy a hot drink, amazingly enough I am actually expecting it to be hot so I don't need you to tell me to 'Be careful, it's hot.'

Seriously, do we REALLY need to be told that hot things are hot so we don't burn our mouths? I mean, I know I'm not always very complimentary about the general public at times, but that's just venting of frustration. I refuse to believe that the general public actually are THAT stupid.

Ribena.

2010-10-18T22:40:00.001+01:00

Ribena berry berry very very nice yes.

Oxford's About To Take Off.

2010-10-15T20:04:00.001+01:00

Check it: http://blessingforce.tumblr.com/

"ISA ISA Baby."

2010-10-15T19:31:00.001+01:00

If I worked for a radio station and was doing some kind of live advert for a bank/building society/whatever the fuck Halifax actually is, and someone suddenly brought up Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" and started singing "ISA ISA baby" over it, I would fucking punch them in the mouth, not look like a smug fucking prick.
When that song came out, I was 9 years old. I came up with a version that went "Ice ice baby, never get lazy, or you'll have a baby with the town's Miss Lady." That nonsensical, juvenile shite has more value than that fucking Halifax advert. THAT'S HOW BAD IT IS.

ISA ISA baby can just fuck fucking off.

If you like that advert, or any of the Halifax 'radio station' adverts, then you are a fucking idiot.

Now, if you need cheering up after that rant, go and check out Hatebeak. A heavy metal band whose vocalist is a parrot. http://www.myspace.com/beak666 Now THAT'S funny.

Oops.

2010-10-14T18:28:00.000+01:00

Today I saw a friend of mine across the street and waved at her.
She didn't wave back.
'How dare she ignore me,' I thought and made my wave more exaggerated. She would have to wave back now.
She did.
Then I realised it wasn't my friend, but a very similar looking woman. Except this one looked a little bit freaked out.

Oops.

Happy Birthday To Crisps.

2010-10-13T22:06:00.000+01:00

Yesterday evening I was in a pub for a friends birthday and I decided I would sing 'Happy Birthday' to their packet of crisps. 'Happy Birthday to crisps / Happy Birthday to crisps / Happy Birthday dear cri-isps / Happy Birthday to crisps.'
Now, when you sing Happy Birthday in a place where drunk people are, some of them will no doubt join in with a cheer and applause that seems to have become customary to do when someone has Happy Birthday sung to them. But I was singing Happy Birthday to a packet of crisps. No-one would applaud that, surely.
Well, actually it seems that no matter what you sing Happy Birthday to, surrounding people are seemingly conditioned into responding to the melody itself. People in the pub who didn't know me were applauding the fact that I sang Happy Birthday. To crisps. They were applauding crisps.
I thought that was quite funny.

Just Checking In.

2010-10-12T09:04:00.000+01:00

Saturday was drunken, Sunday was a hangover and Monday I was back at college. I tried to write a post yesterday about a t-shirt I saw that I hated, but time and cider had turned the amusing post I had in mind, into a curmudgeonly rant that just made me seem like a joyless old tosspot, so I deleted it.

I have no idea how to finish this post.

Rapture Comes To Oxford.

2010-10-08T23:58:00.001+01:00

No, not the band. Although I did see them play a gig in Oxford and they were awesome. Anyway they've split up now. Or have they got back together now? I remember hearing something like that a few months ago, but I don't know if I believe it. I'd like it to be true tho.

ANYWAY...

No, the Rapture I'm talking about here is the independent record store in Witney, which is apparently the only independent record store left in all of Oxfordshire. How fucking depressing is that? Anyway, for 3 days they are taking over the old Videosyncratic store and Oxford get an indie for a weekend. I popped along today and I had honestly forgotten how much I love music shopping. It was so nice to be able to do something I used to take for granted years ago. I knew that I miss it, but I didn't realise how much I miss it. It felt really good to be excited by music shopping again. It's kind of ridiculous how good it made me feel. I bought a copy of what they were playing because what I heard of it sounded really good. It's an album by a band called Fool's Gold (no, it doesn't sound anything like The Stone Roses) and I'm really looking forward to giving it a proper listen.

I could go off on one here about memories of music shopping and how I grew up doing it and all that stuff, but that would probably just be really boring for you, so I'll skip that bit.

I find it really depressing that there are no places like that in Oxford anymore, more so after today and the fact that by Monday it'll all be gone again.
Well, thanks anyway Rapture. Thanks for giving me that feeling again. It was awesome.

Hmmm... I just read that over and something about it seems very... odd. Oh well, I mean it and I'm not gonna not post this just because I can't word it right.

A Poem. Ish.

2010-10-07T13:04:00.000+01:00

As a little experiment, I gave myself an hour to write a performance poem. This is what I came up with. It may not read well, but I think I can get it work on stage. Anyway, any feedback any of you have, I would like to hear/read/whatever it.

On The Tube.

Mum, why does the train make so much noise?
Mum, why does the train stop so much?
Mum, are there there four stops left or three?
Mum, are we getting off here?
Mum, why does that man look so grumpy?
Mum, why are those two holding hands?
Mum, can you hear that? It sounds like a guitar. Why is there a guitar playing?
Mum, why is that man singing? He can't sing. He'd be rubbish on the X Factor.
Mum, when I grow up, can I have a farm and drive a tractor?
Mum, can I have a Mars bar?
Mum, why are we getting on another train? I don't want to get on another train.
Mum, why was Daddy so angry this morning? Is it because he hasn't got a job anymore?
Mum, what does Tampax mean? That lady has a box that says Tampax in her bag. What is Tampax, Mum?
Mum, am I going to die one day?
Mum, is that man a lady?
Mum, are pirates real?
Mum, can I have an iPhone? Simon's cousin's got an iPhone. They're really cool. You put your finger on it and things go whoosssshhhh, whoosssshhhh. Can I have one, Mum, can I?
Mum, I'm sure that man is a lady.
Mum, when I grow up I can fly an aeroplane can't I?
Mum, can I have an XBox for Christmas?
Mum, did you know that there's a big telescope that can see everything in space? Do you think they can see our house with it?
Mum, when will Daddy get a new job?
Mum, why do people believe in God?
Mum, why is Simon's Mum younger than you?
Mum, why do cats have claws?
Mum, why are there criminals?
Mum, why do you always make that look?
Mum, Mum, this is you Mum. 'Urgh. Stop asking so many questions Johnathan because I'm really boring and smelly. Blah blah blah blah blah.'

Yes Mum.

Sorry Mum.

You Think You Know Somewhere...

2010-10-06T22:37:00.002+01:00

I was born in Oxford and I've lived here my whole life. The last 22 years or so of that have been in the Cowley Road area, specifically either in or just next to the area with the shops towards the Plain roundabout, so it's safe to say I know the area between the Plain and Howard Street pretty well indeed.
A couple of weeks ago I was walking up St Mary's Road, and saw something I've never noticed before. Right near the corner, as St Mary's Road goes onto Magdalen Road, opposite the convent there, is what is essentially an extended bungalow. (Here endeth the tedious Geography part of the post.) I've walked past this many, many times, but I've never noticed the sign before. The sign that says 'Church Of Christ.'
Now, I can't get this out of my head. This church looks so inconspicuous. It looks like you could fit no more than about 20 people in it. It looks like the kind of place that gets investigated on Dispatches for bizarre and unsound practices, or the sort of church that secretly hides some bonkers American cult or religious offshoot that you'ld see some crazy news story about secret incestuous practices happening there.
I also can't find anything about it on the internet, which just makes me even more curious about it! I really wish I had to guts to take a Sunday off work and just go there one day to see what it's all about. What it's deal is. But I just don't. What if they're insane? What if... Oh just what if?!

I haven't been this curious about a church since the old Spiritualist church just off Cowley Road up by the petrol station. It's not there anymore, well what intrigued me so much about it certainly isn't.
It was such a plain looking building apart from the fact that it used to have a red crucifix at the top ot it, which they would light up at night if a service was on. Again, this really intrigued me. I wanted to know what what going on there, but I was never going to be able to actually go in there through the same fear that keeps me from ever setting foot in the one on St Mary's Road.

But why do I want to? I'm not in any way religious. There is just something that really intrigues me about it. Something about the plain-ness and that unknown fear. I just want to know what is going on there, because it's something I never knew was there in an area I know so well.

What is it?!

UPDATE: No, I didn't go there, it's nothing that exciting, but my Dad got in touch leaving a comment on this post to say that he's found their website! Although this does mean the mystery is somewhat taken away from the place, it's still pretty interesting just to find out a tiny bit more about the place, and for you lot it means you can see the place I'm talking about. Go here http://www.oxfordchurchofchrist.co.uk/index1.html if yer at all interested in seeing what a church that looks like a bungalow is like. I was pleased to see that in the photos section, it does pretty much just look like the inside of someone's house.
So yeah. Thanks Dad!

My First Review!

2010-10-05T11:13:00.001+01:00

I'm pretty excited because my performance at Edel Assanti has been reviewed. This is my first ever review and guess what? It's pretty good! Here's what it says about me:

"Although poet Paul Askew left his poetry without film, its short, unusual nature made an appropriate opener to the night. 'Crow' was a particular highlight and was delivered with a delicacy that made the obscurity of his imagination truly magical."

That's pretty good, yeah? Go me! Yeah!

Read the whole review (which will tell you why they felt the need to point out that there was no visuals with my performance) here: http://bit.ly/cr0UpZ

Almost Missed It Today...

2010-10-03T23:58:00.002+01:00

...but here I am in the nick of time. Today's post is very short. I recently found a haiku in my bureau that I wrote at Truck festival on the Sunday afternoon. At the time it was fucking hilarious. I publish it here in the knowledge that it won't carry the same sense it did then, and may in fact even come across as pretty lame, but at the time it was perfect.

Tom Cruise.

Tom Cruise falls in love
with a dead duck, fucks it and
takes it to the moon.

This One's Called 'Things I "Irrationally" Hate.'

2010-10-02T21:16:00.000+01:00

Working in a shop makes me really hate a lot of things that I wouldn't normally even give a second thought. Today I decided to note some of those things down as they happened, so I could present them to you in this blog. If you do/are any of these things I've listed, chances are that I hate you.

* People who say 'Amex.'
It's 'American Express' you goons. Abbreviating it to 'Amex' makes you no better than people who say 'Lol' in conversation. Actually no, that's not fair. It makes you far worse, because people who say 'Lol' just say it. People who say 'Amex' say it in a really fucking smug, superior way that makes me want to bash their brains out on the counter. If you say 'Amex' then there is a 95% chance you are an absolute wanker.

* People who chuckle when you give them a penny change.
What? A penny not good enough for you, is it? Is it so beneath you caring that you find a penny ridiculous? Why don't you give it to charity then, hmmm? No, you'ld rather be all smug about it. 'Oh, it's almost not worth me bothering, ha ha ha!' Tosser.

* Daniel O'Donnell fans.
I know that, you know, taste is all subjective and that, but sorry, if you are buying an album buy Daniel O'Donnell then you are in NO position WHATSOEVER to criticise any other music, ESPECIALLY not Bach, you simpleton fuck.

* People who say they need a bag and then put that bag in another bag.
'I'd better, I've got food in there.' What, do you think your cd case is going to somehow penetrate your tins of fois gras and boxes of bruschetta and spoil the flavour? Are your bangers and mash somehow going to be tainted by the plastic wrapping of an album? NO! THEY'RE NOT! GROW UP, YOU FUCKING IDIOTS! HAVE YOU HEARD OF A LITTLE SOMETHING CALLED 'THE ENVIRONMENT'?! STOP BEING A TOTAL DICKHEAD!

* People who say something as a statement when they mean it as a question.
It has somehow become acceptable for people to ask questions without asking them. For example, someone came in the shop today and said 'Frank Sinatra.' That was their way of asking either if we have any Frank Sinatra cd's or where would our Frank Sinatra cd's be. This is how so many people enquire about things. Do they ask all questions like this? Do they stop people in the street and just say 'Time', 'Lighter' or 'Magdalen Road'? No, if they wanted any of those things from strangers, they would at least word it in the form of a question, not just disrespectfully bark out what they want and expect that person to bend over backwards to help them. But of course, I work in a shop, so it's somehow acceptable for me to treated with as much respect as something they just trod in. THIS IS NOT ON. It shows a fundamental lack of human respect. Make no mistake, IF YOU DO THIS, YOU ARE A CUNT. YOU ARE A CUNT AND YOU DESERVE TO DIE A VERY SLOW AND PAINFUL DEATH BY HAVING YOUR INSIDES PULLED OUT OF YOUR ARSEHOLE, YOU TOTAL, UTTER CUNT.

A-hem. Sorry about that. Actually no. I'm not.

Just Another Quickie.

2010-10-01T18:27:00.000+01:00

Last night went really well. Gonna blog about it soon. Maybe tomorrow.
Going to see Plaid play at the Oxford Playhouse tonight with the Southbank Gamelan Musicians. I'm really excited coz I've been a fan of Plaid for about 10 years now and have never seen them live.
I've also wanted to see some Gamelan musicians live for a while too, pretty much since I first found out about it. I love percussion and percussive instruments. Gamelan is the sort of thing that's right up my street.
So yeah. Tonight should be fucking awesome.

Also, See Tickets are bastards. They sent me an e-mail asking me to phone them and when I did I was on hold for over half an hour (at 10p a minute) and didn't end up speaking to anyone. That's over three pounds I've spent on being dicked around. Thanks See Tickets, you bastards.

Just A Quickie.

2010-09-30T14:57:00.001+01:00

I'm off to London in a mo for a little gig I will be doing.
This is the picture they are using to promote it.
I think it's pretty cool.
It's at a place called The Betsy Trotwood. I've never been there.
I'm doing an about 15-20 minute set of my poetry.
I'm pretty excited as last time I did a gig in London, it was the best performance I've done yet.
The theme for the evening is 'Hippies Vs Beatniks.'
Sweet G is trying to convince me to wear a suit.
Hmmm... We'll see.
One of the other acts is a guy called Emit Bloch who recorded his whole album on a dictaphone.
I thought it was pretty good. I'm looking forward to seeing him live.
Anyway, must go. Want to shower and make myself delicious.

"The Suburbs" or Me & Arcade Fire Down By The Schoolyard.

2010-09-29T16:37:00.001+01:00

As some of you may already know, I've never been the worlds biggest Arcade Fire fan. Almost everyone I know seemed to gush themselves dry over 'Funeral' and 'Neon Bible' and I never really understood it. All I heard was bad sixth form poetry over the type of epic, bombastic music that always used to put me off listening to most English classical composers. I always just found it massively off-putting. It felt to me like they just all crashed in at once with huge sounding choruses to mask the fact that their songs weren't actually very good.

Then, this year, they released their third album. 'The Suburbs.'

I read reviews saying that it was a change of direction of sorts. That it was a toned down version of Arcade Fire. That by taking the subject matter of often ignored suburban areas (of America/Canada), they had ditched the bombast and created a more personal and involving album. Everything I read got me intrigued. I thought I'd give it a listen to see what it was like.

I love it.

I suspected I thought it would be good, judging from what I'd read about it, but I wasn't expecting to love it quite so much. The reviews were right. Gone is all the pomp and instead we have a very human sound. Songs you can relate to. Songs that invite you into them. Songs that make me start writing really pretentious sounding things about them.

Yes, I never thought I would say this, but the new Arcade Fire album is absolutely brilliant.

I said this to a couple of workmates who've always been big Arcade Fire fans and they both said the same thing. They can't get into it and they find it a bit boring. No offence to them, but this kind of backs up why I like it so much, because it doesn't sound like Arcade Fire. It sounds like like a fucking great band who've made a really REALLY good album.

Part 2 Of My Performance At Truck.

2010-09-28T20:36:00.000+01:00