Holiday in Avalon

After a refreshing holiday in a particularly magical corner of the English countryside, the return to workaday drudgery in the capital is an uninspiring proposition. Fortunately, the mystical powers of the Chalice (w t f d) and the Tor (w t f d) had already transformed it into a memory museum.

Photographs as memories...

The Felt Fantastic

Now that I've finally posted all of the photos from our recent holiday in Rome on Flickr, I can prove to you that Rin makes me go to fabric shops in every country we visit. Here she is, caught felt-handed:

Secretly, however, I like it. She's been doing wonderful things with felt lately and I like being involved in the creative process. Besides, if I didn't, I'd still deserve it as penance for all the non-music-geek friends I've made wait with me for endless hours in record shops around the globe. Everyone I know should collectively thank the internet for keeping me out of the shops these days. I was beginning to look pale.

If you're curious as to why Rin is stockpiling felt, head on over to her portofolio and have a look at a not-so-top-secret project soon to debut at a market near you - if you're in London, that is. If not, you'll have to beg for mail order options.

Note to creative/media employers: If you like what you see there, feel free to contact her, as she is currently available for work.

Karzy Little Thing Called Toilet

Since there was an ace gig we were attending near my gaff last night, Martin took the opportunity to continue his ongoing efforts to expand my British slang vocabulary. One can really never have enough ways to say "toilet" so now in addition to referring to it as the bog and the loo, I have come to call it the karzy.

And what an exciting bit of slang it is, with no less than six ways to spell it! From the brilliant slang dictionary at www.peevish.co.uk:

karzy: Noun. A lavatory, toilet. The word lavatory is in itself, a euphemism for a place to wash. From the Italian for house, casa. Numerous alternative spellings include khazi, kharzie, karsey, karzey and kazi.

I, however, have since stopped calling it that and instead am now opting to be Cockney. I've decided that "marsy" rhymes nicely, but means nothing, so I'll shorten it to "mars". This will confuse the squares into thinking that I'm talking about chocolates or the red planet. Only my plates born within the sound of Bow Bells will know otherwise.

Sample usage:

Dave: Where's the mars?
Martin: Just round the corner to the left.

Unfortunately, this changes of the meaning of "a Mars bar" quite a bit, I'm afraid...

A Dictionary of UK Slang and Colloquialisms
The English-to-American Dictionary
Cockney Rhyming Slang

Mmmm, Pie

One of my favourite things about London is its fantastic markets. I don't live far from the Camden Lock Market and I work quite close to Borough Market. Both occupy special stalls in my heart, but when it comes to gastrointestinal real estate, there is one booth that rules over all and it requires a trip out of my way to E1.

I should clarify here that Borough Market's endless variety of exotic culinary delights is truly a thing of beauty. From the wild board sausage to the turkey, stuffing and cranberry sandwich, I could live for decades eating only there and never get bored. When I need comfort food, however, Spitalfields' Square Pie Company provides the most Itis-inducing treats in the whole of London.

Initially indulging my love of Guinness by going for their steak and Guinness pie, my wife eventually convinced me of the superiority of the Lamb and Rosemary option. If you try to be frugal by only getting the pie, you're missing out. The only way to experience your Square Pie is to drop £6.50 and get the pie plus two sides, which for me are always mushy peas and mash, with gravy poured over the entire feast.

On a recent Sunday outing to Spitalfields, I captured these unboxing photos. Who cares about opening your new MacBook Pro? This is stomach technology!

Here we see the closed Square Pie box, coyly pretending it doesn't hold ample treasure inside its plain cardboard walls:

A-HA! We enter the hall of pie!

After a brief moment spent appreciating it's loveliness, it's time to move in with only two plastic utensils and a solitary serviette by my side:

Photographing whilst eating may result in gravy on the lens, and the next ten minutes went by in a blur anyway. Suddenly, there was no more pie! I felt not sad, but victorious:

Time to head home and resist the urge to fall asleep on the Tube. That would only result in me ending up in High Barnet, and since there's no Square Pie in High Barnet, I have no use for it.

I hope this unboxing has convinced you that your life is incomplete without pie and mash (and mushy peas). Charter a plane if you must, but get to Spitalfields as soon as you can and join me for a pie! JOIN ME!!!

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UPDATE (19 April 2007): According to this article, as of yesterday Sainsbury's has started selling Square Pies, including my beloved Lamb and Rosemary! You just don't know how many times I've looked at the pie section in Sainsie's and taken a few moments out of my day to simply stare at it, sadly thinking "if only they had Square Pies". Now they've read my thoughts and turned wishes into horses (but thankfully not horses into pies, that would be terrible). I knew they were my favourite supermarket for a reason. Tesco be damned, I'm going shopping for pie!

Suburban Swedish Embassy

So my fucking cat pissed all over my goddamn bed again last Saturday night and while I personally felt that my duvet could survive one good cat pissing, I had to draw the line at two. I can eat a chip that's fallen on the floor, but once it's rolled around and gotten hair all over it, you just gotta let it go. And so it was with my duvet. Once yea twice, but alas, ne'er thrice pissed upon 'twould it be.

It would cost at least a tenner to clean the fucker and it would probably still smell like cat piss to my fucking cat that's gifted with a superhero-sized sense of smell. Since we bought it at IKEA in the first place and they had one like it in their catalog for £35, Saturday night cat-cursing quickly gave way to Sunday afternoon shopping. Perhaps it was fate's way of keeping the Swedish motif going for me. Cheers.

After a Northern Line train from Camden Town to Euston, a transfer at Euston to the Victoria Line and then quite a journey up to Tottenham Hale, we had the pleasure of waiting for about 50 years until the shuttle bus arrived to take us from the suburban tube station car park to the IKEA. In Chicago, you had to have a car or know someone nice with a car if you wanted to shop at IKEA, as there weren't any trains or shuttle buses to take you there. I really do appreciate that in London one can get to IKEA via public transportation, but I think a part of me misses travelling there by car. Because whilst shopping in IKEA, knowing that a car is at my disposal in the car park gives me comfort. I have an escape route, an exit strategy.

All that standing around waiting for the shuttle made us hungry. The smell of fried chicken wafting over from the nearby KFC didn't help either. So upon entering IKEA, we made haste to the restaurant, in search of cheap Swedish meatballs and pie.

Once we waited through the long queues and got our food, the desire to hurt small children subsided and we found a place to sit down and eat. It was then that I experienced an IKEA-related emotion that I never thought I'd have: I started to like it there.

The IKEA restaurant was completely anonymous. It was sterile and neutral. It was an in-between place, like an airport. After two free coffee refills and a half plate of meatballs, I started to believe I was in international waters. Whose laws applied here? Maybe we were on the edge of slipping into anarchy and then if we ran out of meatballs, we'd have to eat people.

Outside the large wall of windows, suburban sprawl stretched as far as I could see. British suburban sprawl, American suburban sprawl, it's all the same. Maybe it's because I so deeply associate suburbs with America that I found this experience especially disorienting. At any rate, I was fastly drifting into the arena of the unwell, so I finished my fucking meatballs and pie and went to replace that pissed on duvet.

Later that night, tucked under the warmth of my dry, unsullied duvet, with my cat locked in the kitchen away from any absorbent fabrics, I found myself closer to resolving the question of what North London football club I should support: Arsenal can go fuck themselves, Tottenham has an IKEA!

Summer Ended Before It Began

Thankfully I read this week's issue of Time Out immediately upon buying it. Had I not, I would have missed out on learning that All Tomorrow's Parties is bringing Sonic Youth to The Roundhouse on 31 August 2007 to perform their classic 1988 album "Daydream Nation" in its entirety. It's been one of favourite albums for as long as I can remember, so after reading the news that tickets were on sale, I was online buying one just as soon as I could confirm that I would have enough cash left over to avoid starvation over the weekend. It's a good thing I acted fast, too: tickets have already sold out everywhere except for via the venue itself. If you haven't already bought yours, try checking out www.roundhouse.org.uk and if they don't have any, your only hope is your friendly neighbourhood tout.

ATP also has two more gigs in their Don't Look Back series scheduled for later this year. On 22 August, Slint will be performing "Spiderland" while the 13th of September sees House of Love revisiting their first record for Creation. Both gigs will be at Koko and at the time of writing still have tickets available for purchase.

The night before learning about this ATP series, I was having one of my occasional looks around MySpace and learned of Throbbing Gristle's 2007 schedule. I had no idea there were any TG live plans for 2007, so it came as a nice surprise. In 2004 I had the good fortune of seeing them live at the London Astoria. This time around I'll hopefully be able to see both their 27 May tribute to Derek Jarman at the Tate Modern as well as one of their six planned recording sessions at the ICA between the 1st and 3rd of June. Full details are available at www.throbbing-gristle.com.

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UPDATE 22/2/07: Breaking news! Second Sonic Youth "Daydream Nation" gig added for 1 September 2007. Go get tickets now!

UPDATE 14/5/07: Third show added for 30 August 2007, which as of today still has tickets available for purchase. The other two shows are sold out.

One From Spain, Two From Japan, 20+ From Sweden

In retrospect, it's easy to see the underlying Swedish themes appearing in past decade of my life. Shortly after university I had an imaginary electronic pop duo named Farmor and Farfar. To our credit, we aspired to move beyond the theoretical realm, but at the time I suppose I did as well. Then from 1998 - 2006 I lived in Chicago's Swedish neighbourhood, Andersonville (w t f d). Living in Andersonville as a young indie rocker naturally meant that I drank at the indie-rocker-living-north-of-Addison's pub of choice, Simon's. Simon's has a brilliant neon sign that only lights up for a few months each year. During those cold months, it proclaims "It's Glögg Time!" and, once lit, anyone within a 5 mile radius feels compelled to enter and consume copious quantities of this Scandinavian mulled wine (w t f d).

Until recently I had been mostly unaware of the massive quantities of excellent pop music this country was producing. Lucky for me, my friend Martin insisted that I get the I'm From Barcelona album "Let Me Introduce My Friends", which has quickly become a favourite of mine. Infectiously catchy, but with enough attitude thrown in to prevent sugar shock, it's a new staple of my weekly musical diet. Once I'd fallen in love with this record, there was no turning back and I told Martin to let me know if they ever came back to England.

Happily, they returned to play a gig on 24 February at the University of London Union. Well, most of them. Apparently they have about 29 members in the band, but I only counted about 20 that night. Still, that's impressive considering that almost constitutes chartering their own private plane for the occasion.

Focusing on their sheer numbers as novelty, however, misses what makes seeing I'm From Barcelona so special. It's not just a quirky gimmick, it's a necessary number: at all times it appeared as if there were a party happening on-stage. It mirrored the party happening off-stage, of course, in the crowd. In the end both threads wove together, as the band invited people up on stage and some of the band members wandered off into the audience. You could theorise all you wanted to about the line between the performer and the audience at that point, but it simply wasn't there anymore. And it was great.


A few days ago Ryan Air announced a sale too good to pass up which will take Rin and I to Stockholm for the early May bank holiday. It feels like Sweden is bursting at the seams with quality indie pop at the moment, so if anyone has any recommendations of record shops, clubs or bands playing Stockholm gigs 4 May through 7 May 2007, do please leave a comment!

Breaking news! I just received an email from Martin telling me that I'm From Barcelona is returning to London again, this time just a few steps from my flat at Koko on Tuesday 27 March. See you there!

- photo courtesy of Paul Wilcock (best of luck with your move to Australia, sir!)

Only for the Hardcore UK Raver

Since I think I may have finally regained the ability to express coherent thoughts, I can contribute a bit of content to the internet instead of just staring blankly at the public Twitter timeline. (To my credit, I did have a semi-productive morning on Yoshi's Island DS, clearing half of World 3 and unlocking Baby Wario, so I'm not a complete waste of space. And "finish World 3" is even a fairly high-priority item on my weekend to-do list.)

Richie Hawtin is easily my favourite techno DJ of all-time (no offence to my Docile boys). Always has been, always will be. His Detroit parties have consistently been the best events in their class, never failing to raise the bar with the bedtimes. Unfortunately, however, whenever he would come to Chicago to spin, it just.... kinda sucked. His Chicago appearances were capable, just boring - it could have been any DJ in that booth. The Detroit parties were special because they were hometown gigs, yes, but couldn't just a bit of that have come with him to Chicago? At a Detroit Hawtin gig it was not uncommon to have the beats completely fall aside for a few minutes to give space for ambient noise and voices claiming to have called us when we weren't there. In Chicago, it was always techno-by-numbers safety, or worse yet, tepid house music. Was it that Detroit was extraordinarily receptive to experimentation or was Chicago just more sonically conservative?

With no better way to answer this question than through empirical research, I attended the Minus Records night at The End on 30/12/06. This was my first foray into a club since moving to London, so I was well excited to break in the city's nightlife. And despite the ticket-taker being a real cockgobbler (he dropped one of our tickets after we handed it to him, then insisted that I pick it up for him), we eventually made it inside.

The venue was impressive: just the right balance between spacious and intimate, with full bass warmth eminating from the sound system and easy access to the bar and toilets. As the night moved forward, intimate would give way to overcrowded and reaching the toilets would become a journey for which the George Cross should be awarded, but for now we were there early and the club was ours.

We did a fantastic job finding an almost perfect base camp for the night. I say "almost perfect" because it had a couch, a pleasant breeze (a fan or the bass wind, I wasn't sure) and a friendly group of strangers by us, but it also was about a million miles from the nearest toilet. Clearly the place was oversold, but that wasn't the problem here so much as the lack of basic common sense. I know, it's hard to think on drugs, but trust me, standing or sitting on the stairs connecting the dance floor to the area with the bar/toilets is a rather bad idea. If you've consumed too much ketamine, there are some very nice stretches of floor near the speakers where you can have a sit down.

But the effort required to wee didn't cramp my style completely. Quite the contrary, it gave you something to do, a good chance to take a break from the dance floor and buy another round of booze so that you could repeat the whole experience all over again in half an hour.

When not peeing, I danced. There was so much music worth dancing to. Magda's set was at her usual level of brilliance. I can remember the first time I ever saw her. I had never heard of her before in my life, but she was warming up the room for Hawtin at a Detroit party that he threw sometime in the early 00's. At the time I happened to be getting into a lot of old acid house records, so when she smoothly cooked up a set packed with 80's Chicago-style treats, my night was made. Her set at The End was more modern, but consistently hard and funky, just like I like it.

By contrast I wasn't sure what to make of Gaiser. Perhaps I was just too tired at that point, stuck somewhere between my second and fifteenth winds, but his music fell flat for me. It lacked the funk that Magda was able to bring, no doubt in part because she had several artists' music at her disposal, hers being a DJ set instead of a live PA. The homogeneity hurdle can be a difficult one to overcome for an artist doing a live PA. Gaiser's tracks are quite good on their own, but they weren't enough to keep me awake when I needed it most.

A word about keeping awake: I was in it for the long haul here. This wasn't a simple leave-by-5am Chicago club. Officially The End was open until 7am, and Richie wasn't even starting until 4:30 a.m. My lame ass probably should have taken a disco nap in preparation for it, however I do think I slept standing up in the middle of the dance floor for ten minutes around 6:30 am. My apologies if I impeded anyone's efforts to get to the toilet.

Finally the time was here to get the proper techno treatment that I came for. Hawtin was getting ready to spin and one of my friends suggested we make a move closer to the DJ booth, just to shake out some of the laziness bred by the comfy sofa we controlled for the past few hours. Sounded like a good idea to me, so off we went into the sea of people.

Have you seen the "Dawn of the Dead" remake? You know the part where they say fuck it and just leave the shopping mall on a school bus to try and reach that one dude's boat and find some island? Yeah, it sort of felt like that side of an ill-conceived equation once it was too late to return to our shopping mall in the corner. It was so fucking overcrowded. I thought I was going to get eaten by mutant zombie ravers.

Thankfully, my flesh remained intact, though my beer did not. I was stupid, but too tired to fend off morons anymore. Some chick asked if she could have a sip of my beer and I just gave it to her. Now I'm no germ-o-phobe -- I'll share water and drinks with people I know. But some random girl hanging out with some random guy at a club? I think I'd rather everyone just kept their backwash to themselves. The best part was when she took a sip of my beer, then handed it to the guy that was with her. After he took a sip, he passed it on again to one of his mates who then gave it back to the girl. I was really entertained with the whole scene, wondering if they had so much nerve as to just keep the beer. Unfortunately, they didn't. She returned the beer to me with a polite smile moments later. A few moments after that I discreetly left it in the corner without taking another sip. (In all honesty, I'm sure she did me a favour in the end, sparing me a hangover on the morning of New Year's Eve.)

Up close and personal with the DJ booth, we were ready for the main event. I still wasn't sure what to expect. Would I get a proper Detroit techno night like all signs were pointing to or would I be disappointed with a phoned-in club set? Happily, I got a lot more of the former than I'd hoped for and none of the latter. Richie slammed it hard and played it weird, pulling out stops that he wouldn't even bother wasting on a Windy City crowd. I even got a replay of his favourite Lil Louis sample from "I Called U".

It wasn't Detroit-quality, but that would have spoiled the legend a bit, wouldn't it? Of course I really didn't care so much about the differences between Detroit's and Chicago's ears as I did to suss out London's. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that I've relocated to more of a techno town than I'd originally given it credit for being. I'll be back for more, but first, a bit more sleep.

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End of weekend update:

I did finally finish World 3 of Yoshi's Island DS. I am even well-into World 4, with or without that fickle Baby Wario!

The Day The World Turned Day-Glo

Since I live equidistant from both the Camden Town and Mornington Crescent tube stations, unless I need the Bank branch, I avoid Camden Town crowds and opt for everyone's favourite game and Belle and Sebastian song instead. Hop off the train a bit sooner, ride the lift upstairs and maybe even stop off for a pint and some Thai food on the way home. I love you, Mornington Crescent!

This, however, was not an option on Boxing Day, when limited London Underground services were running, so Camden Town it would have to be. (Note: Don't get me wrong, I love the Camden Town tube station for the amount of life that oozes from it and I feel fortunate that I get to use it on a daily basis instead of some boring quiet stop. I just avoid it sometimes on the weekends when large quantities of life-ooze are likely to make me ooze violence.)

As I emerged from my little transport capsule, I initially felt that something was off, but quickly came to see that something really was quite on. Paint was everywhere. On the ground, on the tiles, across adverts, covering tube maps and even electronic signs. A grin spread across my face as I realised that Camden Town tube station got massively graffiti bombed!

Of course this was the rare occasion that I wasn't carrying my camera, so I raced home to get it. Fifteen minutes later, I was back underground taking loads of photos. My favourites?

The initial shock of seeing this familiar daily sight turned on its head when you first come down the escalator:



Its close-up counterpart:



The melting acid swirl that once was a plain instance of familiar London Underground iconography:



The funny aside to Mr. Christ (apologies for, and to, the guy who is picking his nose):



These wishes of a good Christmas:



The punk prankster's reminder that this is not a socially acceptable way to celebrate:



Most of the graffiti was text, not drawings. Brixton, however, got treated to a cute rendering of Buster and Babs Bunny along with a manifesto. And who doesn't love a little manifesto, especially with a side of cute? (Certainly I would rescind at least a portion of my hatred for Matthew Herbert if he would draw bunnies in the margins of his rants.)

Photos:

Camden Town Tube Station Graffiti Bomb: 26 Dec 2006 (my Flickr set)
Photos of the Brixton graffiti bombing (courtesy of Alex Buchanan)

Blogs:

London Underground Tube Diary - Going Underground's Blog
rodcorp: Graffiti taggers vs British Transport Police
Camden station graffiti bombed

News:

Graffiti gang defaces Tube stop
Police target graffiti vandals

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Update (1/1/07):

I moderate the comments on this blog due to the sort of harassing rubbish I've been getting from quasi-stalkers here and on Flickr. I'm not silencing dissent: I'll gladly post a comment that disagrees with me if it can do so with even a mild degree of intelligence and avoid threats to me and my (landlord's) property. I happily let-live a comment on my Flickr site that so eloquently stated, "it's a piece of mindless vandalism by a group of low life scum". A bit blunt, but that's his/her opinion.

I like open debate, I just don't like trolls. Thanks again for stopping by.

Alive and Well and Er, Um, Okay, hmrphh...

My poor blog. It just lays here sadly dormant while I go off trotting around the globe...

It's not all been a pleasure trip, though. The last few months have been hard work, but never has there been a dull moment (well, okay, there was a rather relaxing coach ride from London to Oxford that qualified as pleasantly dull and then there was that other dull moment when I went to Sainsbury's and only had to get peas). There have been ups and downs, but as I said in the last post, you didn't come here for the life story. Well, okay, you kind of did, but we have to wrap that story within another story because I'm too old to keep a LiveJournal and too young to write my memoirs.

Suffice it to say, we arrived safely in London on 23 October 2006 and I started my new job on the 25th. Many adventures followed (including one involving hiding our cat away in our cheap hotel room for over a week - not my highest moment, though not my lowest either), much questing was done and high hilarity ensued until at long last our hero, heroine and cat finally came to call Camden Town home.

Our shipment of stuff from the States, including my record collection and some furniture, arrives next week. I hope we can fit it all into our flat. It should be fairly surreal to again see all these material possessions that I have learned to live without. I started to feel very liberated from them, though it will be ace to have my vinyl, our bookshelf and books, our vintage bar/booze cart and booze and our pink shag rug back in hand. How I do miss that pink shag rug! In January, if you need to find me, I'll be at home sitting on my pink shag rug drinking copious amounts of mezcal.

It's just over two months into our English life and we're over the roughest bits and ready to settle in and enjoy life again. As soon as the 4 p.m. sunsets are swallowed up by summertime and we can spend weekends walking in parks without overcoats, that enjoyment should come rather easily.

From London with love...

LDN

Some of you already know this and some of you don't, but I have one more big life change happening this year in addition to my wedding. Need a hint? It has a population of approximately 50 million and an average daily tea consumption of just under three cups (though either that statistic is either seriously flawed or my friends are dramatically raising the average)…. give up yet? It's England! And I'm moving there!

Okay, so technically it's not one more massive life change, but really two. The reason why I'm moving to England is because I recently accepted an offer from a fantastic social software company in London, where I will continue to work with ColdFusion and potentially Ruby on Rails as well. I'm tremendously excited about this new opportunity as well as the move to London.

I'll finish work at my current job in approximately two weeks. Shortly thereafter, Rin and I leave for our wedding/honeymoon in México. We'll leave for London soon after our return from our Mayan adventures, and I'll start my new job within a day or two of my arrival.

This blog will, of course, hibernate while we are in México, but I'll probably post again as soon as we return, with regular posts resuming once we're settled with a flat in London. I'm having my studio monitors shipped over, so I'll also follow through on my promise to give you a new DJ mix before the year's end. I'll also be expanding the focus of my writing to include my stories and observations of the UK.

I try to avoid discussing my personal life on my blog, so I'll wrap this up now. Thanks for reading and I'll catch up with you soon!