Wallypegs

How long was that?

2009-09-03T14:09:00.001-07:00

It must be at least a year since I posted here, does anyone still look? I'm not planning on posting here any more frequently but I have made a website for my fledgling new band which you can find here

Bye..

My word! The best just got, well, longer at least!

2007-11-13T05:49:00.000-08:00

Apparently Mark L Lester has deemed the time right to release a directors cut of his grand opus Commando

www.playusa.com/DVD/Region_1/3-/3385446/-/Product.html

Apparently it contains an extra 5 minutes of footage, let's hope that's all been added into the beach scene!

Field Day Festival Victoria Park

2007-08-14T05:26:00.001-07:00

Pros:
Getting there early, sitting in the sun, drinking sangria and watching Absentee.

Cons:
Queuing for an hour to get to the bar! By the time I had reached the front my order went from 2 beers to 6 to save requeueing. How difficult is it to open another beer tent or have someone selling cans, to add insult to injury they forced people to pour away their own booze outside.

Queues for toilets, and when you get to the front finding out the urinals are overflowing! They knew how many people were coming because it was ticketed, and people must have been producing a below average amount of urine anyway as no-one could get to the bar to drink.

Sound too quiet, I want Battles to hurt my ears not be gentle background music.

Dion losing his wallet, train ticket, festival ticket and money, I have not yet determined how this is directly attributable to the festival organisers.

If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one there to hear it does it still make a sound?

2007-07-24T05:22:00.000-07:00

The Lovely Brothers went some way to answering this age old philosophical question on Sunday when we played to an audience of about 8 people in Camden. It took us almost 3 hours to drive up from Brighton, with the help of our new TomTom which repeatedly asked us to do u-turns in the middle of central London; very useful. At least it diverted all arguments which normally took place between Annalise and I in these tense driving moments towards an automated voice called Jane.

In an attempt to drum up an audience before the gig, we got costumed up and Annalise led Mr Pump around the Dublin Castle bar (the venue part is at the back) whilst I tried to convince the public that they wanted to pay to come and see us, the only real response I got was when a girl asked me if Mr Pump and Annalise were getting married. A slightly bewildering question given our attire that I can only imagine was prompted by the way she was holding his hand leading him along (Mr Pump is essentially blind). Anyway the gig was fun to play but a bit of a waste of time really.

Barcelona and Prima Vera Sound

2007-06-07T04:59:00.000-07:00

Got back on Sunday from a week in sunny Barcelona. The first few days were spent in a very swanky hotel we managed to get for cheap on the internet. It seemed posher than I really deserve, with a swimming pool on the roof (which was effectively our own private pool due to no one else really using it) and a widescreen telly in our room with free films, although Annalise outlawed the viewing of the free porn, what a waste! Spent a lot of time walking around the city, and taking in the envitable Gaudi sights. The Sagrada Familia was a bit disappointing this time around as you couldn't climb to the top, you had to take a lift and we couldn't walk between the towers, still impressive though.

For the remainder of the week we had an apartment and were joined by Claire and her two friends Gareth and John. What luck that our apartment was positioned next to an excellent sword shop. Unfortunately no-one accepted my offer of going halves on the reproduction sword from the film 'Blade', a snip at 350E.

Prima Vera festival was lots of fun, a lot of the bands that played at ATP were also here but that was no bad thing. Highlights included Sonic Youth playing Day Dream Nation in its entirety, Maximo Park and The Fall. I was also surprised by how much I enjoyed the Smashing Pumpkins.

ATP

2007-05-23T04:55:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was another ATP, my third one. The venue has moved to Minehead, it's probably twice the size as it was when it was at Camber Sands but it's bloody miles away! The chalets are certainly much nicer though. This has to be the politest festival I've ever been too, everyone is so meek and indy. Highlights included Shellac (so good I saw them twice), Les Savy Fav (exciting but not loud enough for my liking), Battles (guitars+laptops) The Notwist (is this pronounced NO-TWIST or NOT-WIST? Could someone let me know), and carrying Annalise in my arms whilst running and singing 'Holding out for a Hero' by Bonnie Tyler after she twisted her ankle. I thought this was a beautiful moment but she had no recollection of it in the morning.

Overall rating : GODRAD

DVD's I have watched recently

2007-05-15T05:22:00.000-07:00

Brokeback Mountain

I'd had this for ages but never really wanted to watch it, not due to any latent homophobia just because I thought it was going to be really boring. I was pleasantly surprised. It's incredibly beautiful and although the 2 leads are selfish, aggressive, self-destructive and generally not very likeable I still sympathised with them, and the fact that the affair between them basically rendered them unable to have any other form of life.

Devil's Backbone

By the director of Pan's Labyrinth. Pretty similar in tone and set at the same time, the Spanish Civil war. Set in a boys orphanage (or orphanarium if you prefer), which is haunted by the ghost of a small boy. I really enjoyed this, like Pan's Labyrinth the 'reality' part of the film is strong and not simply a bookend for the fantasy or in this case horror.

LoudQuietLoud

A documentary about the Pixies reforming in 2004. Pretty interesting if you're a Pixies fan. It all starts off well and I was surprised how well everyone seemed to get on. Things take a tragic turn for the worst when Dave Lovering, the drummer who has since given up drumming and turned to metal detection and magic, loses his Dad to cancer. He attempts to distract himself with copious amounts of valium and booze and buying an ipod. Kim Deal still seems to find it surprising how adored she is by young and insecure indy girls!

music = difficult

2007-05-09T05:35:00.000-07:00

Thought I would try and start posting again as I'm sick of opening everyones blogs at once into tabs in Firefox and seeing mine first with a post written ages ago. I wonder if anyone still looks here, I guess I will find out..

Not much of interest to report really. I've started learning guitar, well I say started, I've had a guitar for several years now but it was only when Annalise bought me a second one that I decided I should really learn a chord other than G, so I've started getting lessons. It's like being back in school. My teacher does a seemingly huge amount of preparation for each lesson. Finding songs I like, transcribing them, and even recording himself playing the simplified version. I've had 5 so far, currently learning the Johnny Cash version of "I see a darkness" by Will Oldham. It's got some barre chords in, who invented those? I've definitely improved my strumming but my chord changes still have a way to go. I've started reading 'Guitar Man' by Will Hodgkinson, a journalist who gets to his mid-thirties and decides to learn guitar, but rather than going to a teacher round the corner, he gets lessons from his favourite guitarists, including Johnny Marr and PJ Harvey, hmm, I wonder if there are room for 2 almost identical books on the market, I'd love to get taught by these people.

If only we could perfect Matrix-esque downloaded learning, man, I'd be so good at guitar and samurai swording by now!

2006-09-12T05:25:00.000-07:00

"The fucking Lovely Brothers. What a bunch of talentless pretentious cocksuckers"
- Someone called Karlos on some forum

This was a rather interesting quote that I noticed on the Lovely Brothers site the other day, not sure exactly which forum it came from originally. Now I can appreciate his sentiment, and I understand people hating us, but I resent being called pretentious. Exacly what do we have pretentions of being? The new Grumbleweeds?

Another Lovely Wedding

2006-08-24T05:23:00.000-07:00

Last weekend the Lovely Brothers played the wedding of our friend Steve Reynolds and his lovely new wife Laura. It was a very relaxed reception, and everyone seemed to be having lots of fun. Honey Tree played first (Steve plays bass), who were good as always, although the hired PA was rather rubbish. We came on rather later than was probably advisable, by which time most people just wanted to dance. It took a while for the audience to warm to us, which wasn't helped by the terrible sounds we were making (I blame the PA and lack of sound check). By the end everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, dancing on the tables and singing along. Except that is, for Gail Porter (who is going out with one of Honeytree), who spent most of the gig heckling us, and uttered the immortal line, "I beg you to stop singing, you sound terrible." There was absolutely no irony in her voice, she truly hated us! Thanks for that Gail, that's going straight on the quotes page! I asked the audience if we should stop at that point, but most of them seemed to want us to continue. Especially the bride who screamed at the heckler to shut-up and danced like she was watching ACDC. Not being used to such an abusive attack I did stumble through one of the songs slightly, but we regained the power of rock for the last song, where Ben stood atop an oversize barrel for his final guitar solo and proceeded to violently bash his insturment as if he were trying to smash it off its strap, which he eventually did.

Punks and God like the Lovely Brothers

2006-08-21T12:26:00.000-07:00

Got back last week from our little jaunt around the country, first stop was Tallington, a small punk festival just outside Peterborough. The atmosphere was friendly, except when Ben tried to start a fire in someones tent, but the music was rather dull, luckily I had packed an assortment of boardgames.

Next stop was the Lake District, we were staying in Windermere, but as we had the car we managed to cover a fair area. I had bought a book on pub walks in the region, which weren't, as I was expecting, gentle walks taking in multiple pubs, but instead, rather involved hikes, utilitising only a single public house. The views were astounding though. Annalise was less than pleased though when we had to embark along a path which was rather euphemistically described as 'not for people with weak knees', but in actual fact looked like it hadn't been follwed since the book was written a decade ago, and involved descending on all fours in places.

Not for weak knees!

After the Lakes was Blackpool. Both the Lovely Brothers, and Pog(Annalise's band) were playing Wasted, a massive punk festival (well about 5,000, which is pretty big for us.) Sitting in the pub the evening before our gig I was rather surprised to get a call from Nad the violinist to say they hadn't yet left, and worse still their car was in the garage with spassed brakes. It was too late to hire a car and they couldn't fit their instruments on the train. Mick and Toni (the rhythm section) were already on there way, but without the others we couldn't play. I was pretty devasted, we had come all this way, to stay in Blackpool, one of the most depressingly backwards towns I have ever been to, and now we couldn't play. A couple of hours later I got a call to say they had managed to borrow a car from a waiter in a cafe they had gone to, he even gave them the keys to his flat so they could colllect the car keys. Exactly why an almost complete stranger would lend the Lovely Brothers his car for a week to drive hundred of miles still perplexes me. It was like a Lovely Brothers miracle. Concrete proof that there is a God, and whats more he's a fan! They finally arrived at 5am and all was well. We played a good gig, and the rather bored looking punks really warmed to us, even giving us a standing ovation at the end, bless em! The post gig celebrations involved going to a karoke bar, where I could serenade Annalise with Chris De Burgh back catalogue. We stayed at the festival for 4 days I got increasingly bored of banal punk music, but on the Sunday Pog played, who were splendid.

Punk Rock and Boardgames, the Lovely Brothers at Wasted festival

Finally.....

2006-08-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a long time since I last posted, as some people have felt the need to express to me in quite uncertain terms, so I'm going to post up a bunch of things, which will, I guess, appear in reverse order. If you have got to this post after having read all the ones preceeding it, please chronologically invert them in your mind.

I've been pretty busy of late, Annalise has moved in, which is great, and I'm having lots of building work done, which is not so great, both of these things use up a substantial amount of my time, that combined with the sheer number of gigs we have played this year, and it's even becoming hard to find time to play board games modelling the restructuring of Russia, let alone find time to blog.

Choose your own Lovely Brothers adventure

2006-02-03T01:59:00.000-08:00

1. Do you like THE LOVELY BROTHERS?

“Yes” – go to paragraph 2.

“No” – go to paragraph 3.

2. Do you want to see them play a gig?

“Yes, of course, they are my favourite band!” – go to paragraph 4.

3. Why are you on their mailing list then, you wally?

“I’m related to them” – go to paragraph 5.

“They got my address through illicit means” – go to paragraph 5.

4. Where do you live?

“London, that’s where all the cool people live” – go to paragraph 6.

“Brighton, that’s where all the cool people live” – go to paragraph 7.

“Somewhere else” – go to paragraph 9.

5. Sorry.

6. THE LOVELY BROTHERS are playing a gig in London this Saturday (Feb 4) at the Bull & Gate in Kentish Town. Do you want to know who else is playing?

“Go on then...” – go to paragraph 10.

“No I only care about The Lovely Brothers” – go to paragraph 14.

7. THE LOVELY BROTHERS are playing a gig in Brighton quite soon! It will take place at the Marlborough Theatre on Princes Street the Saturday after next (Feb 18). Do you want to know more?

“Please furnish me with more details” – go to paragraph 12.

“Do I have a choice?” – go to paragraph 12.

9. You will not be able to see THE LOVELY BROTHERS unless you get the train. Alternatively, why not arrange a gig for us in your shed?

“I can’t be arsed” – go to paragraph 11.

“My shed is too small to house a neo-cabaret ironic punk band” – go to paragraph 13.

“A theatre company have already booked it for their stage version of Wurzel Gummidge” – go to paragraph 17.

10. MR G & RICH and some band called THE DUVETS. It costs £4. Do you think you’ll come?

“Dare you question my devotion?” – go to paragraph 14.

“No” – go to paragraph 15.

11. Okay, but I’ll remember that next time you come knocking on my shed door.

“What do I do know? You didn’t ask me a question?” – go to paragraph 16.

12. Also on the bill is MC FASHION (An all-singing, all-dancing chav in need of Ritalin), and MJ HIBBETT (A protest singer for the geek generation). It costs £4 and starts at around 8pm. Do you think you’ll come?

“Dare you question my devotion?” – go to paragraph 14.

“No” – go to paragraph 15.

13. What about your garage, then?

“Look, I’m not interested” – go to paragraph 5.

14. You are truly a good fan. Well done! To see how much of a fan you are, would you care to do a short test?

“Yes, my liege” – go to paragraph 1.

15. Why not?

“I don’t really like neo-cabaret ironic punk music” – go to paragraph 1.

“I’m going to a shed in Hastings to see a stage version of Wurzel Gummidge” – go to paragraph 17.

16. I don’t know. What do you fancy doing?

“I want to play a game about pigs”
– go to www.pigfarming3.cjb.net

“I want to read a story about Britney Spears”
– go to www.collective-lust-of-mankind.cjb.net

“I want to peruse THE LOVELY BROTHERS website”
– go to www.thelovelybrothers.co.uk

17. Really? I’ve always thought that would make a great show. Can I come?

“No, it’s quite experimental, you wouldn’t like it” – go to paragraph 11.

“No you can’t make it because you’ve got a gig to play!” – go to paragraph 18.

18. I’d forgotten about that, where’s the gig?

“The one in Brighton?” – go to paragraph 7.

“Or the one in London? – go to paragraph 6.

Gay Love

2006-01-17T04:50:00.000-08:00

Last weekend saw the Lovely Brothers doing 2 gigs on 2 consecutive nights, none of us could remember if this has happened before, but it felt like doing a tour. The first gig took place at the Orange Street Music Club in Canterbury, this was a rather drunken affair, and was full of on-stage hoonery, including Sam wrestling me to the ground whilst I tried to sing, then putting a balaclava onto my head and sellotaping me to Ben. This made performing difficult to say the least and also resulted in my precious costume being slightly damaged! The second gig was at a gay club called 'Duckie' in Vauxhall, they only wanted us to play for 10 minutes but were prepared to pay us handsomely for it (NB due to the fact that we very rarely ever get paid for gigs any amount greater than zero seems attractive) . Anyhoo, we played 5 songs and it went down really well I think. Who'd have thunk it? London gay scene here we come!

In other news Neil has ordered us ATP tickets, yay! Well done Mr Stewart! I look forward to requisitioning a guitar off someone and playing the chords G and C badly whilst singing 'Cambersands Holiday'!

Life is a f***ing popularity contest

2006-01-03T04:51:00.000-08:00

Never has this been made more clear to me than this New Years Eve. Annalise and I had spent the night in a pub in Brighton with some friends. On the way home, at about 1am, it was pouring with rain, so we nipped into another pub and joined the dancing throng upstairs. In an effort to win my own robot I entered a robotic dancing competition. Myself and a group of other people ascended the stage and danced as if we were metal. I danced as if my arms were pneumatic and my legs had servos. Like the bastard child of Johnny 5 and Michael Jackson, I was indefatigable. No one could stop me, as more and more people were pulled off the stage for rubbish dancing I remained. My body coursed with feelings of hope, I could win! Even the judges had commented that they had found a winner. Then it was down to 2 people, me and a pretty girl. When the judges stated they were going to let the audience decide my heart sank. "Don't take away my robot!" I thought. Although the audience's cheers for my performance were laudable they could not compete with the whistling for the pretty girl, and her weak ass dancing, she was dancing like a robot that was so hi-tech it could completely mimic human motion. I WAS ROBBED. The judges even apologised afterwards citing my dancing as the best they had seen....

...right now I've got that out of my system... Happy New Year everyone, sorry to be away for so long, I've been somewhat distracted by a beautiful punkrock vegan!

Serenity

2005-10-12T05:17:00.000-07:00

Went to see Serenity last night and thoroughly enjoyed it, in fact I would go as far as saying it was GODRAD! On reflection though I am unable to decide whether I liked it because I am a Joss Whedon fanboy or whether it is actually a good film in its own right. I thought the script was excellent and consistently funny but the beginning of the film did feel like an extended episode and there was none of the grandiose cinematography we are lead to expect from Sci-Fi of this nature. So can someone who isn't a fan of Buffy or Firefly help me out, is it a good film?

Also saw Nightwatch over the weekend, unfortunately I was slightly drunk which was not helped by the fact that the cinema is licensed so I took a large glass of red wine in with me, but I have to say I was slightly disappointed. It had good bits, the scene with the women carrying out the magical miscarriage for instance, but the story just seemed a bit overpacked and slightly dull, in fact I left the cinema thinking 'weren't the subtitles good' which indeed they were, but I'm sure the filmmakers would have preferred my departing thoughts to be more about the quality of the film. I shall watch it again on DVD with a clear head and reappraise my decision.

Rock Blood!

2005-09-12T14:51:00.000-07:00

On Friday the Lovely Brothers played their first ever wedding, I've always had my doubts as to whether we really constituted good wedding material, but the wedding had quite a punk theme, we were followed by seminal British punk band UK Subs, and we seemed to go down quite well. We seem to have had a bit of a band epiphany lately, how well we play has very little bearing on how well we go down, what matters is how much we ROCK! Although the music we play is rather far removed from this genre it seems that our performances don't have to be, and when I do things like jumping onto the drum riser and accidentally knocking over a portion of the drum kit people seem to believe it to be a meticulously choreographed part of the act. I managed to sustain my first ever rock injury, during the inevitable rock out at the end of 'Elixir of Youth' Ben was sprawled over the monitor and I was collapsed next to him, shouting the cider names mantra from the end of the song, Ben seemed determined to pay me back for the flying kick I had given him earlier on stage so proceeded to ram his guitar into me, in what was almost tantamount to sodomy. My efforts to stop him doing this resulted in my hand getting rather badly lacerated. We only noticed when we had come off stage and Mick had my blood all over his judo gee.

Ben had used his innate party finding skills to convince one of the members of Anal Beard (another of the bands who played) to have a party at their house. She was apparently reluctant at first but I imagine Ben was as persistent as he was during my on stage buggery. We somehow managed to faff around for an eternity and didn't turn up until 2:30am, to find only one other person there. We got beer delivered by the 'booze brothers' (a very reasonable service I must say £30 for 26 beers at 3am can't be bad!) We stayed until 6am when the neighbours came to complain. Whether we overstayed our welcome is unclear, but even if we didn't I don't think we endeared ourselves any further by returning on sunday evening and cajooling the host to get dressed and get out of bed and come to the pub with us for last orders.

A missive from the lovely brothers...

2005-09-06T05:30:00.000-07:00

Greetings.

There's this thing happening next month called
Brighton Live. To get in the programme you have to be
nominated. The Lovely Brothers need your support.

All you have to do is send an email telling the
organisers that we are astoundingly good, or something
to that effect. It doesn't really matter if you've
never heard us and/or have absolutely no intention of
coming to any of our gigs. We'd appreciate the favour
anyway.

Send your message of encouragement hither:
info@brightonlive.net

Cheers,
The Lovely Brothers.

www.thelovelybrothers.co.uk

Aren't bank holidays brilliant?

2005-08-30T05:22:00.000-07:00

This one started well with a massive party on friday night on one of the houseboats in shoreham. They were having a three day party on their converted WWII houseboat for a threefold celebration of getting planning permission, a 60th birthday and a graduation. Ben and I danced more stupidly than ever before (this is quite a statement), and I got told off for wearing a girls leather skirt... but it fitted me so well!

On sunday I went to Reading festival for the day, this one day ticket cost about £15 less than the all day ticket I bought last time I went, admittedly this was in 1994 but still £67 for a day seems slightly steep to me. Anyway cost aside it was a fun day, got to see lots of music, spill chilli over myself and wear a hat! Musical highlights included Art Brut, The Futureheads, Blackalicious, Buck 65 and Iron Maiden!

Idiots or icons...you decide!

2005-08-17T04:46:00.000-07:00

I've put up a load of photos on the lovely brothers site check them out if you so desire.

In my opinion...

2005-08-12T09:15:00.000-07:00

...these comic strips are exceptionally funny, am I wrong?

Nice t-shirt
No Survivors

Should I smoke a pipe?

2005-08-12T06:19:00.000-07:00

I have always had problems differentiating between what's cool and what constitutes a fashion no-no. Be it insistently wearing a white 70's safari jacket since I was 17 or persisting in being in an overly camp comedy band. My latest fad is a wanting to smoke a proper pipe, not something as crude as a crack pipe, but a proper mans pipe, the sort that Roald Dahl might have smoked. The sort that can become a surrogate beard for contemplative massaging. If I'm going to have to live with grey hair this seems the next logical step, maybe a cardigan too. So is this a good idea? Additionally, is it difficult, seeing as I often have problems keeping a roll-up alight, will I struggle?

In defense of Hawk the Slayer

2005-08-09T05:10:00.000-07:00

It's been seemingly ages since my last post, I guess I've just been lazy and prefer reading other people's blogs to updating my own, but I felt I had to reply to Dan's brutal attack on the classic fantasy film Hawk the Slayer. Here is proof, if proof be needbe that it is god-rad!

1. It's ace! Are you sure you actually watched it Dan? Being able to watch a film in a group whilst making continuous amusing yet derisory comments and still enjoying the film makes it good not bad.
2. The music is wicked: Ok, Dan did pay a small concession to this, but not enough, almost as good as Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds (Oh-La)
3. It was the best fantasy film for ages : When the competition is Iron Warrior, Throne of Fire, Beast Master or one of the Death Stalker films, this is obviously a bold statement, but is easily corroborated by considering the rate of fire of Crow's bow, or the inclusion of the excellent mind sword, why bend down and pick your sword up like a sucker when you can magically float it into your grasp. Incidently anyone who thinks Krull or Ladyhawke are better films please keep it to yourselves.
4. It makes Live Role Playing seem more authentic: Films like the overblown adaptation of the Lord of the Rings have made the lives of people who like to run around in forests dressed as pixies or orgres a lot less satisfying. Hawk the Slayer's flimsy set construction, dodgy acting and poor costumes made it seem all the more real when you (er...I mean people that did live role playing) reanacted it yourself (I mean themselves).

These things are true, LIVE WITH IT!!!

Done and dusted

2005-07-18T12:15:00.000-07:00

The week of recording was pretty successful I think, Mick, who was producing us, managed to resist killing us in our sleep, and we are all pleased with the results. On thursday evening me, Ben and Sam and Nadia went to a gig in Canterbury,to see the endearing and amusing Luke Smith, after this we somehow managed to convince Sam and Nad to come to both a late night bar and a club, and then after we left the club Ben and I managed to convince a lovely girl to have a house party, in terms of recording staying out all night and going straight to Mick's without sleeping at all was possibly a little ill-considered, but being supported by my band mates whilst singing did feel quite rock'n'roll.

On saturday we had a lovely bbq on Brighton beach, which lasted many hours, and included annoying other people on the beach by serenading them with bespoke songs on the guitar, which was terminated by Rachel and Kate trapping us in a sleeping bag and dragging us away, the night inevitably ended up with us at my flat dancing like fools to appetite for destruction.

A voice coach taught me to sing he couldn't teach me to love

2005-07-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

Well here I am in Faversham Kent, in the process of recording the new album, and by golly it's all going quite well! We've just finished doing all my vocals, and the drums, bass, guitars and keyboard have all been done to. Ben is currently singing about 'tech marines with spanners' and musing on 'where the first milimetre of a tape measure begins' for the song 'games workshop stole my childhood'. We are actually starting to sound like a proper band which is slightly concerning, hopefully something will be done about this in the post production phase! The current working title for the album is 'songs in the key of sarcasm' which I rather like. I've now got a sore throat from trying to sing like Neil Diamond on 'just another day in worthing', possibly our first rock ballad, Foreigner would be proud.

In the studio

2005-07-10T11:12:00.000-07:00

I have all next week off work so that myself and the other lovely brothers can go into the studio for 5 days to record our new album. Given that Welcome to Shoreham was recorded in a day pretty much who knows what will happen with this amount time, will we record our best album yet, or will we over egg the musical pudding producing some self indulgent over produced prog rock epic, either way no one is really going to hear it so I guess it doesn't matter.

We are struggling for a name for the album, 'Wigwam of the Ages' is about as good as we have so far, if any of my 5 readers has a better suggestion lets hear it...

Dancing queen

2005-07-04T11:58:00.000-07:00

My dancing seems to have come under a certain amount of scrutiny in recent days. The girl responsible for the 'looking 38' comment which resulted in my hair dyeing, commented that my dancing reminded her of dancing with her clients, unfortunately she is a social worker who works with people with severe learning disabilities and uses the medium of dance to calm and placate them. Another referred to me as a 'dance bully' due to my continued attempts to cajole people into joining me on the dance floor. I'd always assumed people respected my dancing, they always back away to leave a space fo me to do my thing, and avert their gaze as if glancing my Swayzesque form might scorch their eyes.

Went to see Art Brut on saturday, their ironic lyrics and delivery remind me a little of the Lovely Brothers, but they have managed to attain that quality of cool that has always alluded us, and when I say cool I refer particularily to the fact that the lead singer had a following of cute girls staring at him with adoration. Needless to say I got drunk and jumped around like a fool. Managed to fall all the way down the stairs, on getting up I thought I could still preserve my dignity and maybe convince anyone that had seen that it was intentional (it was certainly faster than walking down them), I brushed myself off and promptly slipped over again. On the way home I accosted every passerby for tobacco informing them of their rubbishness when they hadn't any, resulting in me being frog marched away by Simon for fear of being accosted myself. The crowning moment was talking to a girl on the bus, and for some unknown reason trying to sing a song about buttons that I couldn't quite remember, she turned round and desperately tried to start a conversation with the person behind her.

If you're interested in old bits of boats...

2005-06-23T05:52:00.000-07:00

Just heard through the grapevine, or to be precise my mum, that photos of everbody's favourite pantomime pop sextet the Lovely Brothers are being displayed at an exhibition of photography at the Marlipins museum in Shoreham, the same museum that we cite in our pop hit 'Welcome to Shoreham' thus perputating the spiral of self reference. Why not take some time to peruse the newly refurbished Lovely Brothers site, possibly passing it on to your mates in the music industry who specialise in signing obsurce cabaret punk bands.

Nice day for a ...

2005-06-22T21:02:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was the wedding of everyone's favourite rock'n'roll couple Will and Kate. A couple of magnificent things happened, Kate and Will made an eternal commitment of love to one another, and I beat all-comers in a lengthy session of arm wrestles, it is now 4 days after and both of my arms still hurt. The wedding was held in the rather beautiful surroundings of Salisbury, which I have to say reminds me a lot of Canterbury. Will's parents kindly put the reception on in a palatial marquee in their back garden. Much boozing, dancing and the making of merry took place. The evening ended for me some time after 4am dancing to the Labyrinthe soundtrack, everyone seemed vaguely surprised that I didn't know all the words.

2005-06-22T20:51:00.000-07:00

135_3524, originally uploaded by scolar.

The groom sports cowboy boots and a tri-corn hat

2005-06-22T12:56:00.000-07:00

135_3542, originally uploaded by scolar.

2005-06-22T12:54:00.001-07:00

135_3552, originally uploaded by scolar.

Lockwood demonstrates what he would like to do to my face

2005-06-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

135_3566, originally uploaded by scolar.

Lisher adopts JC pose

2005-06-22T12:53:00.000-07:00

135_3557, originally uploaded by scolar.

2005-06-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

135_3533, originally uploaded by scolar.

VT flagrantly disregards the no smoking sign that Laura(?) so helpfully tries to make her aware of

Dye another day

2005-06-13T12:36:00.000-07:00

On the advice of a small welsh girl who told me that my grey hair made me look 38 (I'm 27), I allowed said girl to dye my hair. Using a variety of brown and black dyes to give a more 'natural' appearance she managed to colour my hair a solid shade of jet black and now I look like a goth! I actually don't mind it but I'm slightly worried that I might start wearing large rubber spiked boots and start listening to slipknot.

Don't Look Back

2005-06-10T03:21:00.000-07:00

The people behind All Tomorrows Parties festival are organizing this thing called 'Don't Look Back' where various bands do a gig where they play their seminal or most popular album, Iggy and the Stooges are playing Funhouse, and The Lemonheads are playing Shame about Ray. This strikes me as a rather bizarre idea, surely it will spoil some of the spontaneity of a live performance, you always know what is coming next. I then thought how ace it would be if the Manics did 'The Holy Bible' which is still one of my favourite ever albums. Given further thought I think it might be like going to see tribute band or an Elvis impersonator (on Blackpool pier perhaps). So what other great gigs could there be...Chris De Burgh doing "Spanish Train and other stories" maybe?

2005-06-07T09:30:00.000-07:00

For the beginning of this week I've been plagued with those post alcohol flashbacks of doom. It was Sam and Nadia's wedding on the weekend and I think I may have embarrassed myself somewhat. So far I've remembered kissing Sam's Dad (on the cheek I might add) whilst he played Trombone in his Jazz band, unfortunately I haven't been able to rember the reason, swearing at everyone in the marquee on multiple occasions to come and dance to my dj set, including the brides mother, and refusing to go to bed and instead keeping everyone awake playing guitar and singing (I can't play guitar). The next morning Toni woke up with the impression that someone had punched her in the face, we'd been dancing around with her on my shoulders (which I remember) when apparently I choose to walk through a doorway, almost concussing her (which I don't remember).

Went to see Revenge of the Sith last night. I'd been told it was the best of the new ones, which I think I agree with but it still suffers from exactly the same faults as the others, its completely charmless and some of the cinematography is just awful, in that scene where Darth Vader stumbles around like a drunken fool the framing is so poor it looks like an episode of Eastenders. Despite this and the rubbish dialogue and acting I could still enjoy the rather messy action scenes (faster, bigger and louder is not better it's just confusing Mr Lucas), basically I could watch those nimble Jedi's jump around with their glow sticks all day.

2005-06-03T06:58:00.000-07:00

The stag do last weekend past without any serious incidents, I believe the stag was ritually sodimised with some confectionery but he didn't seem particularly traumatised by the event. I've got a different wedding this weekend, I've been asked to 'dj',and so have been looking for some cheesy 80s to water down the music I want to play, I've come to the conclusion that most of it is even worse than I remembered, even The Final Countdown seems rather dull, apart from the infamous synth melody. Sam's friend was in a band called Wang Chung in the 80s and I've been requested to play some of their stuff, from what I've heard they aspired to sound like Duran Duran's album fillers.

I've just noticed that Dan has left a rather disparaging comment on my last post, I feel compelled to engage in some form of blog warfare with him, just look at http://lookintomyeye.blogspot.com/ to see what witty repartee I come up with to put him in his place. Actually I think Dan is the only person who knows about this blog, which reminds me of the ancient philosophical question if a conflict occurs between blogs and know one is there to read it does it still have a point?

2005-05-27T04:32:00.000-07:00

So this is my first blog entry, well the first thing I'm going to do is change the font...ah thats better, serif fonts suck.

Well this is truly the season of weddings, having only ever been to one wedding before, I'm going to 2 next month, and weddings mean stag nights. Last weekend was Sam's (Sammy Cuxtant to Lovely Brothers fans). Ben (his brother) was best man and had devised an elaborate game for us to play. We were split into teams and had to answer general knowledge questions, if we answered correctly we could win beer chits (or counters for the less boardgame savy), we could then play these on other member of the party to force them to buy us drinks, so far so simple, until the introduction of rebuttal chits, these could be played to counter beer chit attacks, and rendered them null and void, that is unless the chits were super beer chits (the rarest and most prized of all the chits), I won't even go into the theif chit game mechanic! Needless to say the night was full of alcohol lubricated enjoyment, my personal highlight was convincing the barmaid to accept my beer chits as currency for a drink, not sure if this was due to my charm or irritance, eithers good I guess.

This weekend is Will's stag, taking place in a lavish sounding country house outside bath. Hopefully this will give me ammunition for this web based journal, hopefully none of these anecdotal nuggets, lets calls them blog bullets, will involve my supreme embarrasment as usually follows drunken expeditions with friends.