Sunday 26th September

Sheltering in a Skin Storm

A comparatively short gaps between updates, you lucky people, because my life has been jam-packed with excitement which I have just got to share. Alright, maybe not jam-packed, but busy at least, so even if there's no excitement, I do at least have something to tell.

As I'm sure you'll recall, I had plans to go and see Morrissey in Liverpool. I went and he was very entertaining. Very droll. The set list was fairly similar to the Move festival set, with the order re-jigged and a large part of the set taken from the current album. Which is only right - that is what he's promoting. He opened with 'How Soon is Now', which was fantastic and also played 'November Spawned A Monster' and 'Now My Heart is Full' in place of 'No One Can Hold A Candle To You' and 'Such a Little Thing...' from the Move set. My mate Muzz was a little disappointed that he didn't do 'Interesting Drug' but that was a minor complaint. We were sat up in the balcony, but despite that, weren't actually that far away from him. I certainly felt that I was closer to the stage than at Manchester. Top entertainment, although the support band, The Dead 60's, weren't up to much. They were meant to be a ska band (I read somewhere) but they sounded more like The Clash in their punk/reggae years.

It being nearly the end of the month, it's time for the usual lastfriday review. I have to start by confessing two things - one, I wasn't originally going to go to this gig and two, I got a little bit drunk, so my recollections may not be a true and accurate account of events... First up were The Darwin Theory, who were pretty damned good. Probably the best opening act the Civic have seen, I'd say. Truth be known they were meant to be higher up the bill but their bass player had to be somewhere else later in the evening so they opened the night instead. I was so impressed that I bought their CD, but was less than impressed this morning to find that there's nothing on it! Bah! Anyway, next on the bill were Nash. I'll admit that they're not quite my cup of tea and they did suffer in terms of comparison with what was a quality line up, but I thought they did well enough. What I think they're really lacking is a decent frontman to hold the centre of the stage and let the rest of the band get on with what they're best at. Although I could be wrong, as I spent most of their set in the bar (Bad Jim!) with 6ft Midget, amongst others. cheers guys. Moving on, third up were Disarm who were pretty much the reason I turned out. They were launching their new CD, so I had to show my support. They sounded excellent - the recent bout of gigging that they've done has obviously done them a power of good. A performance that I think they can be proud of. And the good news is that the CD sounds equally good. Visit their revamped website and see if you can get your hands on a copy now. Last on the bill were Laruso, who I thought sounded a bit under-powered last time they played the Civic. No such problems this tme round despite their apparent reluctance to take the stage. I missed the full impact of most of their set though as I was chatting in the bar (Bad, bad Jim!) but I could still appreciate why they're getting the attention that they are. I bought their CD too. It's quality. Get hold of copy before you have to pay thirteen quid or so in HMV for their album. Next month's lastfriday is a Halloween Hardcore special, so that should be thrash-cum-fancy-dress-tastic, mate. Not 'arf.

Of course, what you've all been waiting for is my report from Truckfest North West. It's a weekend show dedicated to commercial vehicles, with some entertainment thrown in. There are in fact several Truckfests in various locations each summer, so if you're curious you can probably find one near-ish to you. Kev and I usually go to the Peterborough show but that wasn't possible this year so we had to settle for the Haydock Park show. The weekend didn't start well - Kev managed to drive past me twice when he came to pick me up from Newton-le-Willows railway station. Ah well. We got to the Truckfest site not much before 7pm and put up Kev's gazebo, which wasn't an easy task as he didn't have any instructions and the poles weren't labelled - we managed to use the roof poles to put the sides together, then had to dissemble everything to put it right. It was getting dark when we came to pitch our tents. I'd had a trial run through in the garden earlier in the day and was pretty certain it'd be simple but I failed to take into account the additional difficulties imposed by being wet, cold, hungry and pissed off. So it took about half an hour rather than the fifteen minutes I expected. Still, once that was up, Kev got his stove on the go and cooked us up some tea, then it was off to the bar to "enjoy" the disco stylings of DJ Gary Wayne and pay over the odds for pints of beer and get totally ripped-off for a short. Then it was time to stagger the twenty yards or so back to our campsite and drink some more booze, not forgetting to have a couple of shots of rum, which didn't do me any good at all. Saturday morning dawned dull and wet. The rain didn't encourage me to get out of my warm, dry, uncomfortable tent. I struggled out around 9.30am. Kev had been up for a bit and had already had the kettle on. He boiled it up again and I made myself a cuppa. First crisis of the weekend - no sugar. Fortunately, I am a man of some resource, so I went and nicked some from the burger stand on my way back from the toilet. Kev knocke dup a fried brekkie, which was to prove invaluable in sustaining us through the rest of the day. A quick can of lager and then it was off to see the sights. Sadly, I didn't get any pictures as the batteries went in my camera and the replacements that I bought proved to be absolutely feckin' useless (I might as well have just chucked my quid on the floor). We did see The Kangaroo Kid and the Backdraft Wheelie Fire Truck go through their paces in what passed for the main arena. They both have websites, so look 'em up. The Fire Truck was being filmed for a Channel 5 show due on your screens later this year. They also filmed the Bigfoot vs Incredible Hulk monster truck face-off, which was a bit disappointing. The limitations of the arena meant they couldn't run side-by-side and were restricted to trying to get "big air" going over the cars. Anyway, we had a wander round the site, which was a bit poorly laid out - obviously the place is actually a horse racing track rather than a purpose-built showground but there was a lot of going back and forth and having to backtrack to find our way from one display area to another. There obviously weren't as many trucks on display as at Peterborough but there did seem to be more vintage trucks, which I actually like to see. By late afternoon we'd had enough and headed back to the tent for tea. After tea we went to the entertainment tent to stake our places for the evening's entertainment. We got there a little early (around 6.30) but even so DJ Gary Wayne was already promising the imminent arrival of Jim Bowen at "Truckfest North East". Someone finally told him, after about the tenth time he'd said it, that it was actually Truckfest North West. Anyway, his constant reassurance that Jim Bowen would be on stage shortly led to us re-naming said celebrity Jimbo When?. He finally arrived on stage at about a quarter past eight and dived straight into a revival of Bullseye. Kev forgot our entry form so we didn't have a chance of getting picked. Arse! Anyway, Jim was very funny, one of the couples was absolutely clueless about what was going on, and the lucky winners won .... wait for it .... a speedboat! Fortunately, it was a model speedboat stuffed with cash rather than a real one. Jimbo When? was followed by a Blues Brothers tribute band who were alright. And Kev had his evening considerably enlivened by being molested by some 18 year old bint. Ooh, I could start to not like him. Once the bar shut it was back to the tent for more beers and some Pot Noodles before retiring for a fitful night's sleep interrupted by rain showers, winds and toilet visits. (On the subject of toilets, I heard a few people complain about the state of them, but on the whole I thought they were better than the bogs at Peterborough - at least they were cleaned and checked regularly.) Sunday was another grey, wet day. We emerged, from our separate tents I hasten to add, blinking into the daylight, feeling the worse for wear. Bacon butties and a cup of tea worked their magic restorative powers and off we wandered for a last look round the site to buy souvenir-cum-gifts for our respective families. I managed to take some pictures, but only of the monster trucks, which you can see on my Truckfest Picture page We also got to see Jimbo When? in the main arena, although we missed Kerry McFadden as we were packing up at the time. We left the site at about half past two, Kev dropped me at Newton-le-Willows and I got back to Crewe for about half past four. I know that when I say I'm going to Truckfest, people look at me as if I'm mad, so I don't suppose I should let on that we've agreed to go again next year - not sure which venue, but it might be the mid-summer shows in Edinburgh or Sheprton Mallet, when the weather might actually be nice and warm. Should we go will someone be kind enough to remind me to take an inflatable mattress next time, please? Thank you.

In other news, I know that Marilyn Manson is pretty much irrelevant these days and seems to have become a bit of a figure of fun, but I noticed that he's released another electro-pop cover version. After the rocked-up retreads of 'Tainted Love' and 'Sweet Dreams (are made of this)' he's done the same with Depeche Mode's classic 'Personal Jesus' (although it doesn't need much rocking up, it must be said). I'm guessing it's for a film or something. Anyway, just for fun I thought I'd introduce the Marilyn Manson 80s Electro-pop Cover Suggestion Box: Just click on the link (if you can see it) and enter your suggestion in the comments box. Leave your name and the best suggestion will get a special no-prize. I've started the ball rolling by suggesting 'Being Boiled' by the Human League, which is a fantastically simple four chords and overdue for a bit of heavy metal revisionism.

I mentioned in my last entry that I fancied seeing Tom Waits play his first London gig in like 17 years or so. Predictably, I failed to get through on the ticket hotline and it transpires that tickets sold out within about 30 mins or something. Equally predictably, you can find plenty of chancers flogging their tickets on ebay. Well, I still really want to go but I'm not prepared to pay more than a hundred quid over the face value to some spiv who clearly doesn't want to see Tom but has spotted an opportunity to make a fast buck. If I can get a ticket to see him abroad I'd rather pay the extra for flights and accomodation than give my hard-earned to them scalpers. Twats. Anyway, to make up for the disppointment of missing out on Tom I went a bit crazy on tickets for REM's tour next year and am going to see them in Sheffield, Manchester, Hull and Nottingham. So, their new album had better be good and they'd better put on a decent show otherwise I'm going to be mghtily disappointed. I'm going to have to start saving now to cover the travel costs. Curse you, extended credit card limit!!!

And that's the way the world is tonight. I'll be back towards the end of October, if not before with the usual mix of shite and, er, more shite. Till then, do up your trousers and keep your shoes clean.

Go on, stick your oar in:

Sunday 5th September

Folk in Hell

I'm sure this has been done elsewhere but I can't be bothered to Google for any other instance and, quite frankly, I don't really care, so here's a quick meme-style list thing which is inspired by a conversation I had with my boss:

• Single - 'My Friend Stan' by Slade. I was a massive Slade fan when I was younger (by that I mean I liked them a lot, the lardass years were still some way ahead of me) and one week I spent my pocket money on this instead of Action man stuff.
• LP - 'The Light Shines On' by ELO. Yeah, it's ELO, but it's 'ELO - The Roy Wood Years' and contains the outstanding 'Whisper In The Night'. I must see if I can find this on mp3 somewhere, although as I don't use any file sharing tools that might prove difficult.
• CD - 'Earplugged 3', an Earache Records sampler. This is the one I'm a bit hazy on - I only started buying CDs around Christmas '98 and I bought a few at the same time. I really can't remember the exact first CD I ever bought, so it was a toss up between this, an Earache Techno/Metal crossover CD, a Hellcat Records sampler and Erasure's greatest hits, so obviously I chose the metal option.
• Video - Succumbs by R.E.M. A compilation of pre-Green promos, I seem to recall. I didn't buy a Video player till 1999 so I rarely bought vid's before then, although I did buy this back in the late 80's. I wish I could remember what I did with it.
• DVD - The Wicker Man. I still don't own a DVD player so my DVD collection numbers only about dozen films. It wasn't difficult to remember this one.

Currently listening to Hayseed Dixie - Let There Be Rockgrass. It's hilarious, although the best track is one of their own - 'I'm Keeping Your Poop'.

As forewarned in my last diary entry, I went to see Chumbawamba (Acoustic) at the Nantwich Civic Hall last Saturday night. Of course, it was part of the Folk Festival so I should have known what I was letting myself in for. First up, I was dismayed to find the hall laid out with tables and chairs. I haven't sat down at a gig for twenty years and I wasn't about to start then. Secondly, the audience consisted mainly of the sort of middle-class liberal-types that get on my wick. Thirdly, the support band, Waking The Witch, ought to be renamed Annoying The Fakir. It was as if someone had told them all the things I dislike about folk music and they'd tried to incorporate all of them in their set. Alright, they didn't stick a finger in one ear and drone on about a mining disaster but they did just about everything else. There was droning, there was the dirge-like pace of every song, there was retuning of guitars (and making a big show of it), there were attempts at "keeping it real" and there was tweeness in the shape of a song about accidentally running over a badger. Gah! And as if my dander wasn't up enough, once they'd finished the compere-cum-comedian felt it necessary to fill the interval between the bands by delivering the worst set I've heard in ages. The guilty man, Roland Gent, was terrible. Sadly he didn't quite die on his arse as one bloke at the front thought he was funny but apart from that the silence was deafening. After that Chumbawamba could have come on and sang their shopping lists and gone down a storm. They didn't though, they gave us a surprisingly good mix of original stuff, old folk songs, and covers in a folk-stylee. I'm not sure 'Bank Robber' by The Clash worked but 'New York Mining Disaster' by the Bee Gees was surprisingly effective. Sadly, there was no 'Tubthumping' inna da folk-stylee, but there were some other Chumba numbers. The one thing that did surprise me was how many of the songs they performed that I knew. Perhaps this means I'm a closet folkie. Or more likely it's legacy of having a form teacher at Junior School who used to teach us a new folk song every week. Whip jamboree, whip jamboree, with your pigtail, sailor, hanging down behind.... Anyway, that was the extent of my involvement with the folk festival. I decided against getting dragged in further, just in case my inner folk singer came out of the mahogany closet carved by oppressed Peruvian peasants under the rod of the wicked white landowner.

As part of alleviating the tedium of the folk festival I did have a plan to visit as many pubs as possible (see below) but decided that as my alcohol tolerance seems to be getting lower and lower these days, it probably wouldn't be a good idea. Well, not that weekend. Mind you, I'm not ruling out trying it one day. And the pub crawl.

I've noticed that one or two of the links round here are turning up '404' messages as the pages/sites they point to appear to have fallen off the Internet. So I've been round doing a bit of tidying, including updating earlier posts to take account of the disappearing pages. Well, I say "earlier posts" but actually I just mean the one from 1st August, where the British Blonde Society and Shatner links have been amended. The Chas 'n' Dave website link has been removed as that's disappeared. If the "official" Chas'n'Dave website was any good I would have linked to that, but it isn't so I haven't. I have however left the No Names Mentioned link up even though they've split up just because I miss 'em. *sob* I ought to point out that most of them now play in another band - Here Is The List Of Your Dead Friends - but I've yet to see them live so there's no link to them yet.

Fun with pictures parts 356 and 357 - Here's a couple of things for your delight. First up, it's not really a picture at all, its a PDF, so you'll need the Adobe Acrobat reader to view it (sorry about that) but for those of you still wondering why I'm going to Truckfest I believe this leaflet explains it all. Jealous now, aren't you? Anyway, second up, something I noticed when trying to log in to my hotmail account the other week. It's a diet ad for TVs/TGs, or perhaps I'm making too much of the positioning of Bill Phillip's name there....

This afternoon-stroke-evening I went to the DiaTribe all dayer at the Charters Arms in Rotherham. It's one of the rare times that me being in this part of the world has coincided with a gig by 6ft Midget, so I had to go. I was hoping to get there early and nip off in the early evening as triple concerns of getting my washing done, getting this page updated and being in a fit state to get to work tomorrow were taking precedence. Still, after a few beers that lot went out of the window. I turned up late enough to miss A Future Regret and one other band and caught sets by Penknife Lovelife and Fire Escape Routine. I then spent the rest of the afternoon hanging around with 6ft Midget and missed whichever bands played between times. The Midget guys finally got to play at about 7.30pm which was a bit of a delay from the original 4pm start time. In the meantime the pub had run out of decent beers, well, most beers, to be honest. I ended up drinking cider. *shudder* I took loads of photos, of which about half a dozen are decent, but the lateness of my return from the gig and the amount of beers that I've consumed have prevented me from uploading them this evening. I'll have to do it next time. [Monday update: I've uploaded some pictures now, which you can view on my 6ft Midget page. It's a hefty download although I've minimised the picture size as much as possible. Probably not for those with dial up access.] Them Midget guys were very entertaining and are the first band that I've seen organise a game of Musical Chairs in the middle of their set. There were songs for everyone, provided they were drunk, but you can never accuse them guys of giving it less than 100 per cent. I look forward to seeing them again sometime.

Finally, here's a tearful tale for you. I'm going to see Morrissey in Liverpool on Thursday night. No, that's not the tearful bit. If you must know, I'm taking my mate Muzz as he doesn't get out much and it's pretty close to his birthday so it's a present. And it's the best sort of present because not only does he get to enjoy it but so do I. Anyway, the tearful bit is this - Tom Waits has announced that he'll be playing in the UK in support of his forthcoming album. It's his first date in the UK since 1987. Unfortunately, he's only playing one date - November 23rd at Hammersmith Apollo - tickets for which go on sale at 9am this coming Friday. As a result of the trip to Morrissey I'll be in Liverpool, nowhere near the Internet, at that particular time, so my chances of getting a ticket are somewhat less than my chances of winning the lottery whilst shagging Kylie Minogue. I've programmed the NME Ticketline into my mobile and tattoo-ed a reminder on my hand but I'm not holding out much hope. So, if you do fancy seeing the Tomster and you get lucky enough to get tickets, don't forget your old friend, the fatfakir, will you? Hey, if you get too many you can always sell 'em on eBay....

Go on, stick your oar in:

Sunday 22nd August

Offshore Documentation Platform

It's been a fairly quiet three weeks for me. I spent the first two weeks of the month commuting from Nantwich to Warrington by public transport because the guy who usually gives me a lift was on holiday. Surprisingly there was little in the way of "comedy" cock-ups. The train from Crewe to Warrington was 40 minutes late one morning and the evening train back was half an hour late once, but other than that everything ran pretty much on time Even the delayed evening train caused me no inconvenience as I arrived at the station in time to catch a different delayed train to Crewe. Heck, even my trains over to Conisbrough on Friday night all ran on time so perhaps I've shaken off my rail travel jinx. I doubt it, but that's because I don't believe I'm jinxed but that the railway system in this country is pish poor. Let's see how I get on getting back to Nantwich tomorrow.

Thinking of getting poor service, I decided that I'd finally spend a bit of the new money on my credit card t'other week and buy my sister, Liz, a new fridge/freezer. She's put up with me for the last four months and she deserves a reward, plus her old one is reaching the end of it's life - the seal is going on the freezer door, the fridge door is a bit dodgy and the poor thing can't cope when the weather gets a bit humid (the fridge, that is, not my sister). So I told her to find one she liked and I'd pay for it. (Obviously, there were some constraints - it had to fit in the same space in the kitchen, for a start, which ruled out any of those lovely American-style fridge/freezers, sadly.) Anyway, off she went for a look and settled on this lovely Zanussi ZX99/5SI from Comet. Of the two fridge/freezers she had in mind this was the one she liked best, so off we went to buy it. We should have known it wasn't going to be straightforward, especially as we found ourselves standing around for a good twenty minutes waiting for someone to take my money. And it's not as if we were lurking in a corner at this point - we were stood by the fecking till! But, it's OK, we finally get someone's attention, order the blasted thing, arrange a delivery time and pay extra to have someone install it, plus an extra "non-profit" charge for Comet to remove the old fridge/freezer too. So the hundred quid discount turns out to be more like sixty, but, hey ho, that's bearable. Anyway, come delivery day and the fridge/freezer arrives early in the morning BUT, the driver starts to hassle Liz to sign the paperwork, doesn't even bother unpacking the fridge until prompted and then says he can't install it as it has to stand for six hours. As if this hasn't got my sister's back up enough, there's a big dent in the freezer door. So, yay for her, she refuses to accept it, tells the man to put it back on the van and bring her old fridge back in. No sooner has she done that, she's on the phone to Comet Customer Services to give them a piece of her mind. They promise to ring back in the afternoon, which they do, but unfortunately for them by this time Liz has noticed that the deliveryman had broken the hall lampshade when bring the new fridge in. Oh dear. Let's just say it'll be at least another seven years before she gets anything from Comet again as they gave her bad service seven years ago too. Still, the shiny new fridge should be re-delivered this coming Saturday, so look out for more comedy capers....

Speaking of Saturday, I'm off out on Saturday night to see Chumbawamba, who are playing in town as part of Nantwich Folk Festival. Yep, Nantwich hosts a Folk fest, as well as a Jazz fest. It's a swinging town, man. Normally, I'd avoid folk music like the plague - you should try everything once except incest and folk music - but Chumbawamba aren't really folk. I just hope they don't decide to sit down on the job, so to speak, otherwise I might have to heckle. Anyway, if you have a snoop around the folk fest website, you'll see there's a listing for the pubs and restaurants of Nantwich. Now, by my reckoning, 22 of those pubs are within fifteen minutes walk of each other. The Oddfellows and the Boot and Shoe are probably the furthest apart. Curshaws and the Three Pigeons are the closest - they're next door to each other. Anyway, let me just re-iterate that - there are twenty-two pubs all within a fifteen minute radius. And I've drunk (and been drunk) in all of them at one time or another, but never all in the same night. Hhhmm, now there's a challenge... Anyway, you'll probably find me in the Red Cow on Sunday and the Bowling Green on Bank Holiday Monday, simply because there's not much else to do in Nantwich that weekend.

And whilst we're on the subject of drunk and festivals, to attend one Truckfest can be considered unfortunate, to attend two looks like carelessness and to attend a third suggests that you're the sort of spotty geek who likes to talk "big rigs", lift axles, haulage capacity and the best places to eat when driving from Derby to Dresden. Well, hey look, that's me in the corner. I'm off to Truckfest NorthWest in about 4 weeks time. Handily, this is the same weekend that Crewe play Leeds Utd at home and V/VM play a rare gig in Liverpool. Damn. Me and my mate, Kev, will be camping out (as opposed to camping it up), eating crap food and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. We might look at some trucks too. Ah well, expect night-time temperatures to plummet into single figures and there to be unseasonal fog and rains of fish in the Haydock Park area that weekend.

Having got myself a lovely new external CD-RW drive three weeks back I thought I might go crazy this weekend and burn a few more of my mp3s to CD. How wrong I was. Instead I installed CDex and have had merry fun ripping my Bonzo Dog Band 3CD box set to mp3 instead. Yes, now instead of simply inserting the CDs and pressing Play, I can spend more time launching each track individually. (Yes, I know you can build playlists but I haven't got round to that yet.) Not quite sure why I did that, but now I know that I can I might rip a bit more stuff and then, once I get broadband, I can join the millions of other people illegally sharing music over the Interweb....

Finally, a big Woo Hoo! for Lisa, who recently announced that she's expecting a baby. Pop over to her site and make fun of her having to get all responsible and stuff. And there's a a Woo Hoo! too for stroppycow who's put a link to this site on her own. She probably did it ages ago but I 've only just noticed. Cheers, me dear, if you look on the left there, you'll see I've reciprocated. I'll wipe it up later.

Go on, stick your oar in: