Sponsoring the Moshpits

Went to see Half Man Half Biscuit again last night, this time at The Mill in Preston. It's a completely different venue to the last time at The Academy in Liverpool - probably a quarter of the capacity - but it was very busy last night. As usual the set was very varied with the surprise oldie being Sealclubbing. Unfortunately the cover version was the same as Liverpool - I Think We're Alone Now - introduced with a curt "Tommy James and the Shondells" to distance it from the Tiffany version presumably! We also got an airing of It's Cliched to be Cynical at Christmas which was seasonal. It's a while since I've been in the moshpit but there were about 15 of us bobbing away, with a combined age of about 2,100 years. Plenty of greying or bald heads on show. And you have to be a special sort of fan to buy some white oven gloves and write 'Joy Division' on them in marker pen as the guy behind me had done!

Incidentally the Pringles at the 24 Hour Garage were an outrageous £14.20 this time.

Probably not quite as good as Liverpool but excellent nonetheless.

Set list as follows:

Restless Legs
Sealclubbing
For What is Chatteris?
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
Third Track Main Camera
Monmore Hare's Running
CORGI Registered Friends
99% of Gargoyles
Foot Up in Europe
Deep House Victims Minibus Appeal
Uffington Wassail
Vatican Broadside
San Antonio Foam Party
Albert Hammond Bootleg
Twenty-Four Hour Garage People
PRS Yearbook
Look Dad No Tunes
Running Order Squabble Fest
Shit Arm Bad Tattoo
Four Skinny Indie Kids
If I Had Possession Over Pancake Day
Lark Ascending
Twenty Seven Yards of Dental Floss
Fred Titmus
I Think We're Alone Now
We Built This Village on a Trad Arr Tune
Trumpton Riots

Encore

It's Cliched to be Cynical at Christmas
Joy Division Oven Gloves
Everything's AOR

Listening Post

And this week I have been mainly listening to …

GORILLAZ – Demon Days
PAUL WELLER – As Is Now
PATTI SMITH – Horses and Horses (live)
THE JAM – All Mod Cons
RICHARD HAWLEY – Cole’s Corner
THE NIGHTINGALES – In The Good Old Country Way
SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES – Peel Sessions 1 and 2
THE DAMNED – Damned Damned Damned
Some GO PRODUCTION Mash Ups (go to www.goproductions.co.uk)

HMHB Lyric of the Day

… and thanks to ‘Stainto’ for the HMHB Lyric of the Day:

“My grandfather's clock was too big for the shelf, so I sold it and opened up a store....selling Joy Division Oven Gloves!”

‘Joy Division Oven Gloves’ from Achtung Bono.

More Gigs

Just to round up the recent gigs I’ve been to I saw the blessed Half Man Half Biscuit at their (almost) hometown gig at Liverpool Academy. I’ve seen them seven or eight times and I think this is the best I have been to. The place was packed and I reckon a third of them must have been on the guest list. It’s the first gig I’ve been to in ages where the touts were genuinely wanting to buy rather than having loads to sell. We missed the support as we were in the pub and managed to get quite close to the stage. The set list was as follows:

The Light at the End of The Tunnel
Fuckin’ ‘Ell It’s Fred Titmus
CORGI Registered Friends
Running Order Squabble Fest
If I Had Possession Over Pancake Day
Restless Legs
Turned Up Clocked On Laid Off
For What Is Chattteris …
Monmore Hare’s Running
Them’s The Vagaries
99% of Gargoyles
Hallelujah/Vatican Broadside
CAMRA Man
Shit Arm, Bad Tattoo
PRS Yearbook
Paintball’s Coming Home
Wrong Grave for 23 Years
All I Want for Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit
Them’s the Vagaries
Letters Sent
The Len Ganley Stance
Footprints
Look Dad, No Tunes
I Think We’re Alone Now
We Built this City on a Trad. Arr. Tune
Everything’s AOR
Twenty Four Hour Garage People
A Country Practice

Encores:

Venus In Flares
Joy Division Oven Gloves
Trumpton Riots

And yes, that was a cover of the Tiffany song ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’.

I’m seeing them this Thursday as well, this time in a much smaller venue – The Mill in Preston. It’s walking distance from home; even better!

A couple of weeks ago I went to see The Damned and Wreckless Eric at the Mill – veterans of Stiff Records in the late ‘70s. Eric was on when we arrived and I don’t think I’ve ever heard one man get so much noise out of one guitar! I’ve always liked his stuff and he was a great performer – funny too. The Damned were incredibly tight and put on a really good show with most of the hits. They are real crowd pleasers and got a great reaction. I’d forgotten what a good guitarist Sensible is.

In October it was The Fall at The Mill, supported by John Cooper Clarke. As expected it was all recent stuff from MES and they only played about 50 minutes in total. The set list was:

Theme From Sparta FC
Pacifying Joint
Clasp Hands
Ride Away
Assume
Wrong Place Right Time - I Can Hear The Grass Grow
What About Us
Midnight In Aspen
Mountain Energei
Touch Sensitive
Bo D
Blindness


Again, the band were really tight but it was spoilt a bit by one arsehole in the crowd trying to touch MES all gig. A workmanlike performance rather than anything spectacular although as MES constantly looks on the verge of doing something weird and wonderful it is never dull.

Ian Brown

The following day I went to see Ian Brown in Manchester and after Paul Weller he would have a lot to live up to. We drove over to friends in Stalybridge and got the train into town, but not before a couple of pints at the excellent Buffet Bar on the station. We sampled a few of Manchester’s watering holes but we seemed to be jinxed all day – whenever we ordered pints of cloudy beer we hit problems. The Kronenbourg Blanc in Wetherspoon’s was coming out of the pump at the rate of a pint every three hours and was eventually declared “off”. The Edelweiss Austrian Wheat Beer in All Bar One (or Allbarone [in an Italian accent] as one acquaintance thought it was) was similarly unavailable and the Hoegaarden in another pub (The Wellington?) went off after a pint and a half had been pulled. We also paid a visit to the German market where we sampled hog roast, spicy sausages and banana and chocolate pancakes.

I’m not a fan of the MEN Arena – I much prefer more intimate venues. We got there just in time to see one of the support acts; a street magician named Dynamo. Now I don’t know which bright spark decided that someone doing close up magic tricks in a massive warehouse like the MEN was a good idea but even with the two big screens it was impossible to see what was going on. The poor fella lasted about five minutes before being booed off. Ian Brown opened with Elizabeth My Dear then I Wanna Be Adored which in my opinion was a mistake as his own material doesn’t really stand up next to The Stone Roses stuff. His voice, which I expected to be quite weak live, was actually ok but I felt the show flagged a bit. The hometown crowd went wild all the way through but for me it fell flat as the weak Carlsberg I drank. I will stick with my memory of seeing him with the Roses playing in the foyer of the Preston Guild Hall in 1989.

Paul Weller

Well, I have shamefully neglected my blog for two and a half months so it’s probably time to make a new entry and then forget it for another six months. On Friday I went to see Paul Weller in Blackpool with Caroline. The support was The Ordinary Boys and I was keen to catch them as I thought their album was half decent. I can tell you that the last song they played was good. I can’t comment on the rest, as they were just finishing as we got there at about 8pm. They must have been on at 7:30pm – not a situation I am used to at gigs. I imagined we would have a long wait for Weller to appear but at 8:25pm he strolled on to a rapturous reception. I’ve not seen him live since the live debut of The Style Council in about ’82 or ’83 at a CND Rally in Brixton so I was looking forward to this and to be honest I was totally blown away – the boy played an absolute blinder. He was on for 2 hours and 20 minutes with barely a duff tune in all that time. He really seemed in a good mood, contrary to his ‘miserable bugger’ persona and the whole band seemed to really enjoy themselves. I will post the set list later but we got a good mix of Jam, Style Council and solo stuff with the highlights for me being In The Crowd, Changingman, Gilded Splinters, Come On/Let’s Go, That’s Entertainment, Wild Wood and a storming Town Called Malice to finish. It ranks as one of the best gigs I’ve been to, and I’ve been to a fair few in my years. Additionally he looks brilliant – he has aged particularly well and his voice has that gravely feel that too many fags has done. Fortunately it suits his songs. Thoroughly recommended.

Half Man Half Biscuit Lyric of the Day

The new HMHB CD came out this week so expect a few nuggets from it in the near future.


"In the kingdom of the blind, they say the one-eyed man is king.
In the kingdom of the bland it's 9 o'clock on ITV."

'Corgi Registered Friends' from Achtung Bono!

Holidays pt 2

After leaving Bowness we headed up to the North East for a spot of house-sitting for some old college friends. Steve and Paula live in a fantastic house in the middle of nowhere (otherwise known as Cornhill) next to a farm. It was ideal as there is a massive garden and the kids played cricket and football at every opportunity. Steve and family were off to Scotland for a week's camping leaving us in charge of the animals (two cats, some hens and some ducks). Fresh eggs every morning were a luxury I could get used to.

as soon as we got there on the Friday I took the boys down to the cricket club at which Steve coaches. It's a lovely setting in the village of Etal and it got better with a trip to the local pub, The Black Bull, which is the only thatched pub in Northumberland apparently, for a pint of Deuchars IPA - exceptional.

We waved off our hosts and Saturday was spent shopping and stocking up for the week, and finding our way around the place. Fortunately Steve is fully Sky-ed up so I was able to watch the Saints v London game in the evening.

The next day we went to a local Sheep Dog Trials at Kirknewton, which was interesting but the kids soon got bored. There were a few stalls and pastimes and the lads had a go at Archery, but as Dan said "It's a bit like the Craggy Island Fun Day". All that was missing was the Cat-a-Go-Round, with a cat on a turntable. The best part was being introduced to the local ice cream made by Doddingtons - the vanilla is great but the Double Ginger is out of this world.

Later in the week we went on a walk up a local hill, Yeavering Bell, which has the ruins of a Saxon fort at the top. The kids whinged about the walk as usual but all were proud to have made it up there. They enjoyed the descent more.

We also took a trip to Bamburgh and looked round the castle and played on the beach (rugby this time) before heading into Seahouses for fish and chips.

On the Saturday Ian and Leslie (from the first part of the holiday - are you keeping up?) came up with the two lads and we played cricket and watched the Challenge Cup final. We returned the compliment on the way home on Monday, calling to see them in Whitley Bay before returning home pretty tired.

We had a great time over the two weeks but it didn't prepare us for the disappointment of having to return to work!

Holidays

We started off with a few days in Bowness which was just what we needed. We played a lot of cricket and managed to get in a couple of walks - nothing too strenuous as the kids whinge too easily! On the first day we met a family from Newcastle who got involved in the game of cricket we were playing after which they came back to ours to watch the conclusion of the third Ashes test from Old Trafford. They had actually gone to Old Trafford that morning but along with thousands of others had been unable to gain access to the ground. We met up with them again at Fellfoot Park on a glorious Wednesday when the sun was beating down. Surprise, surprise, more cricket was played. We went out for a meal with them on the Thursday and had a few beers back at the house. We also met up with them when we were in the North East on the next leg of the holiday(more on that later). Hi to Ian and Lesley and their two boys Matty and Benjamin.

We were really fortunate with the weather in Bowness and had just one shower of rain, on the Thursday evening. The conditions were good for walking, although it was a little warm when we walked to Sawrey and I was grateful for the pint of Hawkshead Bitter half way round!

We had promised the kids a trip to the cinema during the week but we kept that busy with other things that we just didn't have the time or inclination to go.

A great start to our holidays and it was going to get even better as we ventured up to Northumberland.

To be continued ...

Long Time No See

It's over a month since I posted here - I wondered how long it would take for lethargy to set in. To be fair I have been on holiday for much of that time so there is a bit of an excuse but I still need to knuckle down if I am going to carry on with this.

This Week I Have Mostly Been Listening To ....

'Vivadixiesubmaruinetransmissionplot' by Sparklehorse

'Complete Peel Sessions' (again!) by The Fall

'Employment' by The Kaiser Chiefs

'Candi Staton' by Candi Staton

'The Magic Numbers' by The Magic Numbers

'Almost Blue' by Elvis Costello

'Low' by David Bowie

'Origin of Symmetry' by Muse

'BMFA' by Martha Wainwright

'Catholic Boy' by Jim Carroll

'The Slack Album' by DJ N-WEE

'Kilimanjaro' by Teardrop Explodes

Half Man Half Biscuit Lyric of the Day

"Tower block, You couldn't score in a tower block"

'Improv Workshop Mimeshow Gobshite' from the CD This Leaden Pall

Shock Horror!

Credit where it's due. I saw a billboard for the Lancashire Evening Post last week that contained no grammatical error where you would have sworn there would be one. The board talking about charges against some squaddies based at Preston Barracks read:

“Preston Soldiers’ Shame”

with a correctly placed apostrophe!!

Glasgow

I went up to Glasgow at the weekend with Caroline. It’s a place I have only been to once before. That was with work and I only saw the inside of pubs the whole evening! This time we went on the train and arrived at noon. We wandered down to the hotel, which was handily placed on George Street and left our bags then set off to explore the city. We decided to take one of the open-topped tourist buses – a bit of a clichéd idea but as it turned out an excellent way to get a feel for what a city is like and which bits of it you would like to see more of. The tour lasted about an hour and a quarter and the good thing about the ticket was that it lasted for two days and you could hop on and off as you pleased. We then went looking at the main shopping areas and decided we needed to eat or else dinner (lunch, whatever) would start to merge with tea (dinner blah, blah). Unfortunately, not knowing where all the good bars and restaurants were located we couldn’t find anywhere suitable and ended up in Burger King! Not an auspicious start to the weekend! Having eaten we went to the McLellan Gallery which houses some of the exhibits from the Kelvingrove, which is undergoing renovation and will not open again until next year. There were some fine examples of Rennie Macintosh’s work as well as paintings by the ‘Glasgow Boys’ group of painters. Some fantastic Italian works from the 15th and 16th Century are also on display as well as paintings by Rembrandt, Whistler and Lowry. A really enjoyable little gallery and I felt justified in suggesting a swift pint having done the cultural aspect so well. We found a decent boozer in the ‘Drum and Monkey’ and refreshed ourselves with some Hoegaarden and Deuchars IPA.

On the way back we had a look around to see what was on offer restaurant-wise and found what looked like a good Tapas bar which was already getting busy at around 6:30pm. We went back and got ready for the evening and I was overjoyed to be offered a flyer on the way down for a bar – I’ve not been offered one of those for years! As a reward we decided to honour them with our presence. It was a bar next to a Wetherspoons and it seemed to be trying to be a similar sort of place, albeit with loud music. Even the menu seemed very Wetherspoons-ish. We decided after one drink that it was a bit too dark and noisy for us so we would try the Wetherspoons next door. Out we came, headed next door only to find it was the same place! No wonder it seemed very like a Wetherspoons! It must be my age.

We walked to the Tapas bar which by this time was heaving. Fortunately the guy on the door took our names and told us to return at 9:30pm and we should have a table. 2 drinks at ‘All Bar One’ (one a particularly good pint of Paulaner lager from Munich) and we were back at the Tapas. “Just get a drink at the bar and we’ll be with you shortly” was the recommendation so I sampled the Cruzcampo and true to their word we were at a table within 5 minutes. After a bit of debate we decided to get seven Tapas dishes between us so we had a paella with chorizo, a lovely lamb casserole, some pickled anchovies, a chicken dish with sage, some meatballs, some potato and sweetcorn croquettes and some King Prawns with garlic. They were all delicious and the whole meal came to less than £25. We would certainly go back and sample some of the items we couldn’t manage this time. Back to ‘All Bar One’ for another drink before heading back to the hotel at last orders.

The next day we decided we would go to the Barras for the market held on Saturdays and Sundays. We got the tourist bus up there and it was then time to get some breakfast. Into a Greasy Joe’s for two bacon rolls and two mugs of tea. £3.20 – bargain. Halfway through doing the rashers on the griddle the bloke serving took them off and dumped them in the deep fat fryer with the chips before putting them back on the griddle after a minute or so! I had heard that lots of food in Scotland was deep-fried but I hadn’t realised the extent of it. We had been told that the Baras would be quite an experience and it was. There are dozens of stalls selling copied CDs and DVDs and other software and loads of blokes walking round selling tobacco and cigarettes. It seemed like every man, woman and child in the Gorbals with access to a PC was selling counterfeit goods! After a while though, all the stalls merged into one and we went off for the tourist bus again. We wanted to do the Hunterian up at the University of Glasgow but unfortunately it shuts on Sundays. We will have to see the Macintosh collection another time. As it was a gorgeous day we decided to head up to the West End and visit the Botanic Gardens. The West End is quite different to the City Centre – a bit more bohemian. You can tell it is a favoured haunt of the University academics. Some great shops too. The Gardens were interesting, even though I am not a gardening type at all. After a while we headed back to the city, having got a couple of tasty cakes from a fantastic deli. As our train was at 5:45pm we had a couple of drinks at a nice bar called The Ingram before getting a Sunday two course special at a Chinese. Just time for a farewell pint of Deuchars at the Ingram before collecting the bags and heading for the station.

We really enjoyed Glasgow and would definitely go back. There are still plenty of things to see that we didn’t have the chance to experience so therewill be no need to repeat anything (well, apart from The Ingram and the Tapas bar maybe!)

We had a weekend of culture of all sorts - culture and arts at the gallery, horticulture at the Botanic Gardens and sub-culture at the Barras!

Did the Americans botch it?

An unashamed copy from metafilter.com:

Are the London bombings a possible long-term result of an Administration undercover operative outing? And, why exactly was this deep mole agent blown by the US Administration in August of 2004, concurrent with raising the DHS Threat Level to Orange for NYC and Washington DC financial services? While the Plame blame game and investigation carries on, we now have another old news story about a rara avis Al Qaeda double-agent undercover operative outing that is suddenly rising from the ashes of dusty newsprint almost like a phoenix seeking it's own special prosecutor. -- Following the thread of the story is a bit of a tangle, so an attempt to unsnarl the imbroglio is provided inside....


Remember the Al Qaeda operative Naeem Khan, and his infamous communications hub of a laptop, an arrest widely reported in the news during the first week of August, 2004? While on

Coincidentally, August 1st the Homeland Security Threat Level was raised to Code Orange for the financial services sector in New York City, Northern New Jersey and Washington, DC.

I remember it well because a client of our security firm was one of the NYC stock exchanges, and there was some concern afoot.

ABC News just reported that the British authorities say they have evidence that the London attacks last week were an operation planned by Al Qaeda for the last two years.

Not reported by ABC was that after his arrest Khan started working for our side - sending emails to his other Al Qaeda buddies, working as our mole.

What is the Khan connection to the London bombings? Well, intelligence officials at the time said that the plans discovered on Khan's computer included attacks on London's transport system as well as Heathrow Airport.

Furthermore, according to Americablog, " ABC reports that names in Khan's computer matched a suspected cell of British citizens of Pakistani decent, many of who lived near the town of Luton, England - Luton is the same town where, not coincidentally, last week's London bombing terrorists began their day. According to ABC, authorities thought they had stopped the subway plot with the arrest of more than a dozen people last year associated with Khan. Obviously, they hadn't.

“This was an operation the Brits thought they caught and stopped in time, but they were wrong. The piece of the puzzle ABC missed is that this is an operation the Bush administration helped botch last year. It seems at the time it was notable, yet basically ignored in the reportage of the event, that Khan was a deep undercover mole who had been flipped to work for the West."

Security experts in 2004 were quoted as being "shocked" when administration officials outed Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan as an al Qaeda mole.

Jane's Defense security expert Tim Ripley pondered, "You have to ask: what are they doing compromising a deep mole within al Qaeda, when it's so difficult to get these guys in there in the first place? It goes against all the rules of counter-espionage, counter-terrorism, running agents and so forth. It's not exactly cloak and dagger undercover work if it's on the front pages every time there's a development, is it?"

At the time, Juan Cole noted that "The announcement of Khan's name forced the British to arrest 12 members of an al-Qaeda cell prematurely, before they had finished gathering the necessary evidence against them via Khan." At least one of those people was subsequently released due to lack of evidence.

Connecting the dots between the Khan story leak and the London bombing: Seems that some of the non-arrested cell members that were tipped by the news announcement of Khan's capture took the hint, fled, and escaped the ensuing dragnet.

According to some reports coming out of the current investigation of the London bombing, some of the actors involved in the London transport bombing may have ties to those escapees. This investigation (resonating the immortal words of Scott McClellan in not commenting on Karl Rove) is still developing.

However, if this blowback is in any part true about as having arisen from our blowing Khan, we just may have a serious problem with outing our own critical anti-terrorism undercover agents in Washington...and that's true even without referencing Plamegate.

Listening Post

What's been assaulting my eardrums recently? Amongst the CDs I have been listening to are:

ABC - The Lexicon of Love
Manic Street Preachers - Lifeblood
Decade - Neil Young
Sugar - Copper Blue
The Pogues - If I Should Fall From Grace With God
The Story of Jamaican Music - Various 4CD
The Fall - Hex Enduction Hour
Paul Weller - Stanley Road and Wild Wood
Deaf School - English Boys Working Girls
Talking Heads - The Name of this Band is Talking Heads
Brian Wilson - Smile
Scott Walker - Scott
Van Morrisson - Astral Weeks
The Adverts - Crossing the Red Sea with The Adverts

and many more I can't remember.

7/7

Since last posting I had a sobering experience. I was due to attend a meeting in Holborn, London last Thursday 7 July. I was booked on to the 07:18 from Preston, due to arrive at about 09:45. Fortunately, because of engineering works north of Preston the train was 25 minutes late leaving. Had it been on time I would probably been on Southampton Row at the same time the bomb on the bus exploded. As it happened the train was halted at Watford Junction andwe all had to make our way back North. Of course I was only on the very periphary of the incident, not even being in London, but it did make me stop and think about what might have been.

I have never been overly concerned at the prospect of being caught up in a terrorist attack like that. I don't mena that I think it would be a pleasant experience just that the possibility is remote. It has never been enough to put me off travelling anywhere. I was in New York three weeks after 9/11 having had the flight booked for months and it never occurred to me to not travel. So being relatively close (and having had the possibility of being even closer) was something new.

I can't imagine what it must have been like to be caught up in it all. How would I have reacted if I had been walking past the BMA at the very time of the detonation? I suspect that after the initial shock I would have had the selfish reaction of 'How will I get home today?'

It doesn't put me off travelling. I will continue to travel to London whenever I have to. I will not be put off making plans to go anywhere. this is not a bravado stand agains terrorists, showing them that our way of life will carry on regardless of what they throw at us; it's a lot more mundane than that. It's the way I have always been and I guess the way I always will be. Not necessarily unconcerned but not concerned enough to make me change.

The hat trick hero from the 75 - 0 demolition of the Pie Eaters

One of my favourite pictures!

Half Man Half Biscuit Lyric of the Day

"Why it's Mr Kowalski, it was you all along.
That ski lodge would have been mine if it wasn't for you meddling kids"

'Outbreak of Vitus Gerulaitis' from the CD McIntyre, Treadmore and Davitt