6th form revue

I just posted some crap about t-shirts over at Hot Damn HQ… we’re selling them via net. They look frikking sweet (or is it fricking? hmmm.) Spend, spend, spend.

100 people looked at this pro-website yesterday. I think it had something to do with facebook, and people loving stories of pre-pubescent violence. Now I have such a major audience i’m going to fully take advantage and tell you about some pretty interesting things.
Today I re-upholstered 2 chairs, so now Luke and I have something nice to sit on when we go about our record label head-honcho duties, record producing and things and eating unbranded supermarket own weetabix. I also made 2 stretchers, which I will stretch canvas on to tomorrow so I can begin painting 2 commissions I have taken on. My hand hurts a lot from all my DIY. ok… i’m losing you right?

uh… once Robert punched me in the face and gave me a bloody nose because I drank all the orange juice in the house.

Brother

Whilst moving Robert up to London the other day I finally got round to taking some photos of the portrait I recently painted of him.

Detail:

One time when we were kids, I had saved up a couple of weeks worth of pocket money and bought myself a water pistol from the toy shop up the road from our house. I had brought this home and was very excited at the prospect of using it. However, before i’d even had a chance to fill it up with water, Robert had stolen it from me, filled it up and was using my water pistol to squirt me with water. To say I was upset is an understatement, I was livid, furious and extremely high pitched. As he squirted me with water I chased him around the house, politely requesting he return the stolen property. We reached our parents bedroom and were running around their bed, reaching a frustrating impasse… just chasing each other around and around with the mocking water hitting my face every so often. I should probably mention that prior to this point I had picked up a rather large, sharp pair of scissors and was weakly wielding them to try and convince my brother of his mistakes and to get him to give me back my fucking pistol. I guess we both thought I wouldn’t use them… we were both wrong. He had pushed me to the edge, I threw the scissors. hard. right at his face. As if in slow motion, they opened up whilst spinning in mid-air, Robert’s face changed from triumphant joy to mild horror and I stood there shitting my pants. They landed with a thud right in the centre of his chin. He stared at me with complete disbelief and a pair of scissors hanging off his face. I took this moment while he tried to comprehend what had just happened as an opportunity to run to the bathroom and lock myself in. 
I can’t remember but I’m sure I must’ve received a beating at some point over the next few days from him, fair enough I guess… it’s not every day you come a few inches away from permanently blinding/killing your brother with a massive pair of scissors. 

Guides to games

Another great weekend involving London… at this rate i’m going to start liking the place again. First up I helped my brother move to a new residence in the wonderful Stoke Newington. On the way Robert made some new london friends…

y’know we hung out, discussed the finer points of current trends in modern art, how to cook extremely fattening food in a sexy manner and what it’s like to be the lead singer in the world’s top watership down based emotional crust band… and then Charles and Nigella showed up. 

Phew.  

Too much… Anyway, after the momentous move I headed on over to Camden to catch my friends in The Barker Band play as part of the Camden Crawl. It was great, they pretty much ruled. They then spent all the money they got paid in an off-licence and we sat in the sun by camden lock, until someone fell in. The rest of the day and night was spent running around camden, sneaking into shows, haggling for cheap sunglasses, losing cheap sunglasses, acquiring free stuff (sorry King Creosote) and getting pushed around to the Shitty Limits. It was a lot of fun. 

The next morning was not so much fun. Listening to the Buzzcocks and the Undertones on repeat for 2 hours driving back helped though, then back in Brighton the sun, the park, the scatch, the launching, the rio, the 40 year old virgin and “Take me to the happy place where mother will be waiting…” worked a treat. 

I’m excited.

Thou shalt not commit adulthood

Bill Stevenson once helped me set up my drums. It was a highlight for sure.

They must be a bonk

When I was 15, 16, 17, 18 I was in love with a band called Snuff. You should look them up, they have some pretty amazing songs. They had this one song on their album “Demammussabeabonk” called Martin. It’s the first song on the album and despite the rest of the album being of a high standard (the best song being ‘Why’ located right at the end, wow.)  I became particularly obsessed by this song, as I do, and would listen to it repeatedly. learning the words and thinking “these guys are really great, I want to be in a band.”
I went to see them play a fair few times around this period too and they were always a lot of fun, I gave the bass player Lee, a Captain Everything! demo tape and eagerly awaited his response a few gigs later… “oh yeah, um… the title is funny.”  However… I think I only saw them play Martin once and this was before ‘the obsession’ and me hearing that they used to get people up on stage to sing it. Rats.
ANYWAY. fast forward a few years and Captain Everything! are playing upstairs at the Garage in Angel Islington, with Southport who were featuring ex-members of Snuff. “Holy Crap, ex-members of Snuff!!??!!?!?!” I thought. I was excited… the show was great, Southport were great, I could hear bits of Snuff in it, I was happy. Afterwards we ended up talking to Simon from Southport and he was a smashing chap, found out he was the ex-member, told him of my slight obsession with that song Martin, he said he wrote it, I gushed, hugged him and everyone then felt a bit weird. We got over it, it was ok. We stayed in touch, we played a show near where he was living at the time, he invited us round for tea. I WAS HAVING TEA ROUND THE OLD GUITARIST FROM SNUFF’S HOUSE, HE WROTE MARTIN AND EVERYTHING AND THIS IS TOTALLY NORMAL. It was a turning point, it sounds stupid i guess but he was a regular, stand up guy who just played in bands. That regular, stand up guy did manage to write a song which had a massive influence on my life but he also had me round for tea and it wasn’t weird. I still see Simon now and again, The North Pole played with Southport not too long ago and he’s still ace, raising his family and all that. I guess the moral of this post is that people in bands shouldn’t be dicks. ok? There’s really no need.
So, amongst that rambling there is a point, I recently recorded a cover of the obsession song for my ongoing fake 7″ single series. The a-side, a cover of “Martin” and the b-side an instrumental, the song I recently wrote for my friend Martin (see… it’s all circles people) for his entry into the Straight 8 competition. ENJOY.

Happy Record Store Day

RIP strawberry fields

The Best

Just got back from my fantasy holiday. I saw everybody. It was the best holiday ever. Highlights…

walking and walking. martin and chlomowner. hospitality. salmon curry. FISHBREATH. walking beer. seedi. louise taylor, yes! thee cold pumas. JELA. jela. jela. dan reeves. artistic endeavours. posters. alex curtis. haunch of venison artistic endeavours. andy the hills. LAC. -0.5 television. blitz. walking. portraits. paint. edirol. buckingham palace. japan centre, seriously. good. walking drizzle. lags. sushi. taxis. wine. tea. richard ardagh. clementine. oliver kristian. everybody. thomas wright. earl grey. potato wedges. cissy. das boton. excellent fun. friends. drums. GRAND DESIGNS. mind loss. paintball. long island ice teas. umbro. Kent and Bum. 

Oh, it was Andreas’ birthday on sunday, the only reason I didn’t visit him because I don’t have a passport. no shit. Happy Birthday FT.

Glad you read that? Yeah, me too.

ok.

Nope, you’re right, definitely not.

Terrible realisation.

Are you…

OR

Make the choice. I’ve made mine. The future of mankind may, or may not, depend on it.

Give up?

A couple ‘o things… firstly i picked up a copy of the first issue of It’s Nice That the other day, it’s good stuff… if not only for Andreas “the best” Konrath having a feature in it that made my day/month/year.

Secondly, The Dagger AKA Mark Pavey has put together another exhibition of screenprinted posters under his Art Is Proof megaglobalindustry banner, this time using FEAR as a starting point for the illustrators and designers. As an extra added bonus the money raised from the exhibition will be going to “good cause No. 1″ – where I work. So yeah, buying a print will not only enable you to have a great piece, but also you’ll be helping support musicians with learning disabilities to create some great pieces. It’s got some right lovely talent in there, for example Dan Reeves, Verity Keniger, Dave House, William Exley, ETC. I will be going to the open evening… will you?

Thirdly, and finally, I have put pen to paper and drawn another t-shirt up for my friends in Fake Problems. Two loving parrots…

END OF UPDATE.

x

His grey wrist

I just put up the last song in the SPART-A-GRIFFIC plan, if you could look down a few posts for the jist that’d be great as i can’t be bothered doing links. ok.

So this song is about the time i got into a fight with Hong Kong Fuey, Superman, Spiderman and Yoda. It wasn’t in anyway hilarious, it was terrible. Although i did have a broken jaw and didn’t realise it for 4 days… that’s funny right? 

No. not really… again, terrible.  As you get a bit older you do get a bit wiser, fighting on the whole is pretty ridiculous i would conclude from my experiences. I might start putting a moral at the end of each post from now on, make it feel a bit more like Scrubs. or boy meets world.

 

oh yeah – www.virb.com/iamsparticles