Rambolic » Rik

Presidents Rock!

Big Al — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:54:18 +0000

Last night was PUSA night and, as one Kerrang! journo described a friend’s band a few years back, it was bouncier than a bare-backed bonkers convention (please bear in mind that Kerrang! journos are rejects from the usual music press crowd that sit in a room with a Chambers thesaurus trying to lay way too much emphasis on cheap puns and one-liners.)

Support came in the form of very, very, VERY Japanese Electric Eel Shock – three kids, while managing to play their respective instruments to ridiculously high ability (as only the Japanese know how thanks to super-pushy parents) insist on writing songs that only consist of two chords with radio-friendly titles such as You Bastard. Actually, I think I counted three in one song. Not that that was any detriment to their entertainment factor – top class!

Next up was a (probably quite brave) Kid Carpet – a guy from the South-West armed to the teeth with sampling equipment, a Casio keyboard, more kiddy toy intstruments than I care to acknowledge exist and a microphone. I’ve gotta hand it to this guy – he had more guts than an exploding whale. It was a very fine line between musical genius and absolute tosh, and I think he achieved the former. Very mixed reaction from the crowd here which probably helped the odd heckle. “Thanks to the Presidents for bringing me on tour with them! It’s very cool of them to do that – they didn’t have to!” to which one guy yelled “They shouldn’t have!” It was all taken in good faith and fisty-cuffs didn’t break out.

The Presidents rocked as always, playing a couple of lesser known earlier tracks which everybody seemed to go down better than most of their later stuff. Not that their recent albums are bad at all (some songs are genius) but I guess we were all twenty-somethings reliving our youth. Notes were taken of kit I am required to purchase for our venture into the tribute world as The Prime Ministers of The United Kingdom. Oh yes. It will happen. At least as soon as I can afford a guitar that I can afford to deface. I was watching the guitbassism closely. It’s a talent I shall soon master.

Headbanging

Big Al — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:12:45 +0000

Rik refuses to believe my theory that if you bang your head on your pillow seven times you’ll wake up at 7am. He’s obviously a fool to himself. When the next power cut hits town and he can’t find his mobile phone to wake him up who’ll be laughing then, ey? Me – that’s who.

Alarming

Big Al — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:26:00 +0000

Okay, I set off a bit late to work this morning, still confident I could put metal to metal and make it to work on time, but for some reason (I haven’t found out why yet) the traffic was shocking and I ended up being ten minutes late, and making Rik even later probably. I got to work just as my colleague was opening up since I didn’t arrive on time, and the alarm was going off. I had to call the security company and let them know about the breach. Well, they already knew – that’s what they’re paid for, so they said they’d send out an engineer. Somehow this became my job (apparently I don’t have enough of these ‘responsibility’ things) and had to drop everything to check the security cams and try and figure out which sensors were which in the warehouse. We have about 30 or 40 scattered around the place with ridiculous descriptions that make no sense. I went for lunch and was pulled away again to try to find the main alarm control box, which nobody seemed to know the location of, and non-existent stepladders, which weren’t actually needed since the engineer neglected to inform me he’d already brought his own. I then went back to ‘work’ and had to sign random documents from the security co. to acknowledge what work had been done whilst I was mid-call with a customer and not really concentrating on either. I’ve probably signed away my pension. Actually, I don’t have a pension. That’s lucky.

Sheesha, Beer & Cars

Big Al — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 02:50:59 +0000

Wednesday was sheesha night. Nando’s then sheesha. Markaz is still open, but they’ve had to hide the smoking area in the sheesha lounge – no more smoking in the areas you can see. Presumably this is still against the law, despite the fact you wouldn’t be there if you didn’t want to breathe smoke. Anyway, was good to see Waz again. We had Nando’s too, which is always good. We questioned the intelligence of the girl who took our order though. Not content with us ordering the same meal at once, she insisted on taking our orders separately. I’m not sure how, since we told her about five times that we were both having the same meal, but she managed to get one of them wrong.

Last night I spent out in Leeds, first in Jongleurs comedy club, and then into Bar Risa (their counterpart) for Michelle’s birthday. The comedians were… okay. Everybody else thought they were shit hot. I guess I’m hard to please when it comes to comedy! Which brings me around to my other area in which I’m a snob – Bar Risa were presenting a band. To be honest, they were good. What annoyed me, apart from their slant toward generic pop/indie genres, was their sound and kit. The guitarist, while being evidently talented, had a PRS guitar shoved through a myriad of fx pedals, plugged into a half-decent amp and mic’d up to a shitty cab. The drummer seemed to have a 3/4 size kit with some cymbals so small I’m surprised he had the accuracy to hit them. They also had the kit mic’d up which, for the size of the venue, was pointless. All you could hear was drums. I guess the sound guy didn’t even know since he was stood in the wrong place to actually hear what everybody else was hearing. Again, everybody else I was with thought they were great. They were talented, but I guess they’ve not seen many good bands.

Today Rik and I went car shopping. I took him to the biggest car place here which has apparently been closed for months, which I only learned today. We went to Batley and looked around one place… the sales rep seemed pretty pushy so we had a quick look and then left. I need to find out where all the dealerships went.