My Stranger in India

Published on Fri 10 May 2013

I just had a really special experience in the security line at Heathrow. The lady behind me was annoyed with me because the American girls in front of me were taking ages to put their bags through the scanner so when they finally got out of the way and I went through, took my bag off the conveyor and put her and her ugly friend's bags through first. Is there a rule that if you get to an age at which it's OK to wear golden plastic Pat Butcher earrings you can act like a complete dick? I'm on the way to New York for the first time in a year and I'm beyond tired before I even have jetlag to deal with. Maybe that's a good thing really.

A few of us went down to London on Sunday to see Hop Along at The Old Blue Last after someone mentioned them on Twitter and I checked them out and loved it. I got brunch at the restaurant round the corner before getting the train, which was a decent standard but for some reason doesn't include baked beans. Of all the ingredients in a breakfast, baked beans are probably the most important - they tie everything together and stop it being too dry. A breakfast without them is like pizza without tomato and mozzarella. You can call it a pizza if you must, but we both know it isn't really. We got to London at about half 2 and, as an experiment, walked from Leicester Square down to Embankment, where I mistakenly believed the pub we were meeting Andy and Jason in to be. On the way we had a quick look at the National Portrait Gallery because I'd mentioned the frozen blood head they have in there, and passed some kind of rollerblading fun run. Not sure what it was in aid of but it seemed to have more marshalls than normal entrants. Still, rollerblading looks hard to me - you probably need a lot of people to help take the injured to hospital.

Upon reaching Embankment we walked along the river to Temple where the pub actually was, and then walked back up to The Strand to find a cash machine, past St Clement's church which was doing the Oranges and Lemons tune on its bells. Eventually we settled in at The Walkabout (scene of me watching that brilliant Liverpool vs West Ham FA Cup Final, 2006 maybe?) to wait for the others. After it transpired that it didn't do any real beer or food we headed off to The Globe in Covent Garden, which did. It turned out that it was right in front of the red carpet for The Olivier Awards, which honour the best in London Theatre. I imagined that there wouldn't be anyone you'd have heard of involved in London Theatre, but after Brian May sashayed past we started running out of the pub to take a look every time a cheer went up. I saw Helen Mirren, Harry Potter (I know, I know), this dude who I'd not heard of but is in some children's film and an awful lot of people who looked very attractive at the kind of distance an audience is from a stage and not so great at the kind of distance one side of a barrier is from the other. Jason saw Kim Cattrall.

On the way to the venue we went to Pizza Express and got a bowl of mixed olives that was really stretching the definition of mixed.

The Old Blue Last is a venue I'd not been to before but is exactly what a venue should be - dark, sweaty and noisy. With some inconveniently positioned bunting.

The first band started up as we walked in and were very loud, very good at playing their instruments (especially the guitarist), and the singer was very shouty and very standing on the floor in front of the stage so you couldn't see him. Reminded me a bit of Rock of Travolta (remember them?!) except with a shouty singer. A similar stage presence though, because the singer was in the crowd. I enjoyed them a lot for a while, until one of them said they run a "DIY space" (I'm assuming for horrible art rather than furinture building). And it got a bit samey. Second up, Muncie Girls, were really great. Girl fronted pop punk. It's often really hard to hear the vocals at gigs like this (loud music, small room, not especially great singers) but the drums were unbelievable and really great drumming is enough to get me going at gigs like this (most of the drum sound coming not through the PA so it sounds real and close to you). The same was true of The Sidekicks, who had some strange technical difficulties involving the bass, which sounded absolutely fine out the front. It meant there was a 10 minute gap in their shortened set, and some people who'd come to see them rather than Hop Along were a bit disgruntled. They sounded a bit like Weezer which is no bad thing and again the drumming was amazing. At one point just before the only kind of quiet song built up to being massive the guy was going absolutely crazy smacking his leg because he wasn't allowed to hit his drums yet. You can't help but love it when people are that into something.

Hop Along themselves were a little disappointing, though I'd mentally prepared to be blown away so I guess they were always going to be. The gig was running about 45 minutes late by the time they came on so a lot of the set was spent worrying about getting home (we missed the second half of my favourite song of theirs - not sure of the names but it's about cherry picking in Canada - could've watched it though because we had to wait 10 mintes for the tube) and I don't think the singer could hear herself for the first few songs because she was getting nowhere near the notes. There were some moments of brilliance though, and quite a lot of spine tingles, which is the reason I go to stuff. If there'd been no time pressure and I'd not been so happily surprised by the greatness of The Front Bottoms earlier in the week then maybe I'd see it in a different light.

On Tuesday I went to Half-Ton in Milton to get some drums recorded for what I've decided in advance is going to be my Great Lost Album. We did 4 songs and the drums sound really great. Guilt Edged Opportunity sounds about 10 times better than it did with my homespun saucepan and mattress effort at percussion. If I can just find time to do the rest of the recording... I'm not sure what the best way to release music is these days. A lot of the fun of doing it is having a physical thing that has your name on it, but nobody (including me) buys CDs any more. I wonder if there's any way of doing a run of 100 real CDs. Or if anyone would want just a little lyric book so that I can have the fun of designing one. Stupid internet.

On Wednesday I broke a 6 month abstinence from playing live in Cambridge and went to an open mic at The Alma. Didn't really enjoy performing at all, though things don't seem to go down well there if they fall outside the metaphorical paint of the metaphorical white line in the middle of the smoothest of metaphorical roads. I did So Finally a Love Song and Black Coffee and Bromide, both of which have emotional content so didn't have a chance. Though my cause wasn't helped by the PA cutting out during the second which threw me off my already wobbly stride. Oh well, maybe in another 6 months I'll ty again. I do miss playing though.