bringing the noise!
…or at least sacking out for a few days listening to the noise; the hurtling about is almost over for the year and bar a couple of special Christmas treats coming up this weekend I am officially back and at my station for (almost) the next four weeks! It’s been fun, but Lord knows the recent stint of non-stop horror festival to horror festival to London to New York to gig and now more gig followed by cinema all nighter is taking its toll, and a bit of peace is definitely the order of the day. God alone knows how I used to manage covering three different locations (on average) in a month; it doesn’t take long to get lazy and very nice it is too.
First and foremost (and as the vigilant will have already spotted) London has moved, in the sense that what was originally a mad dash down on Saturday afternoon for the Prince Charles cinema’s annual Christmas Pyjama Party has had something of a last minute rejig! After best gig in my recent memory last Friday at what I keep forgetting is no longer called the GMEX (not to mention some superior food and a fabulous hotel barely five minutes walk from it – see pics), I decided that once was not enough and will be heading for Wem-ber-ley on Friday to catch Public Enemy and Prodigy again prior to a spot of R&R in E1 on Saturday afternoon, if anybody fancies it and I’m not either completely knackered or (more likely) too deaf and hoarse to answer the phone. I should report that whilst I made it all the way to Outta Space at the end without breaking any limbs this time, thanks to the inevitable tosspot in front of me I still left with a broken handbag strap. He wasn’t in front of me for long.
Wembley is sold out bar a handful of seated tickets, but determination won the day; we’re a long time dead and after a good rummage on StubHub a single standing one popped up at last – yay! I can enthusiastically recommend that anybody who can catches them in the week too, if only to get nostalgic about when music was angry, noisy and a lot more fun (jumping up and down until everything hurts is optional) and I was also happily amazed at the number of people in attendance for whom nostalgia can have played no part, purely because whilst we were waving everything around manically to Voodoo People in a field in 1994, those who were born at all were still in their nappies. Public Enemy should really have seemed like something of a mystery (it’s twenty eight years since since I bought my first Def Jam EP, a vinyl sampler called Kick It which is still in the house somewhere) but if they were nobody would ever have noticed from the reaction. Being forty two, I’ll (predictably) just admit to being stupidly starstruck.
Sadly there are no pictures here of either band, not only because during the sets I had better things to do but also because my height precluded me from seeing anything bar a bit of Chuck D’s head unless it was on the screens either side. It’s a shame, but despite my disappointment I have no plans to swap my trusty Doc Martens for my 7 inch red patent platforms this week. There’s always YouTube.
The PCC, in stark contrast, will mean sitting peacefully in a cinema seat in my pyjamas (or strictly speaking my soon-to-be pyjamas, since I don’t own any just yet) with a bag of snacks for roughly 12 hours, which will be as fitting a next-night activity as it sounds. I will be home at some point on Sunday afternoon in time for Jungle Book on Channel 4; Monday isn’t looking likely at all for anything if I’m honest, but then that’s officially it – phew! As ever, I’m not really taking advance bookings more than a day or two ahead but for the next few weeks there may be rather more flexible hours for those who do get in touch in good time; this will be countered by less availability for those who leave it until the last minute as (like everybody else) I have a fair bit to do, so an hours’ notice minimum please – a couple if possible!
Update once I’m back – for Londoners, I’ll be briefly available a couple of minutes from Aldgate tube on Saturday from 9-10am to about 4pm, and that’s it before my proper Christmas trip after Christmas on the 27th. Scarborough, you’ve got tomorrow, Thursday evening and Friday morning then back on Tuesday for aaaaages.
More soon – time to dust off the UV makeup and the glow sticks. And the Deep Heat.
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