Friday, 9 October 2009
R "U" FEELING RAD????????
i'm not. don't eat (free) pizza non-stop for two weeks then have a go at healthy things like orange juice and sandwiches. or get swine flu. UGH.
Sunday, 4 October 2009
r.i.p marek edelman
"to be a Jew always means always being with the oppressed and never the oppressors". marek edelman, 1922-2009, the last leader of the warsaw ghetto uprising. no wonder he snubbed israel all of his life.news of his death was particularly poignant as i'd watched the new film out on the FTP-MOI (the communist, largely emigre-jew partisan group led by Missak Manouchian and Joseph Epstein, Colonel , L'Armee du Crime, at the Cornerhouse the same day. the film was generally quite a touching and excellently-crafted film, and can probably find common cause with more conventional, masculine french war films such as Indigenes in their correcting of the airbrushing out of history of ethnic minorities bravely fighting fascism, be they polish jews, armenians, algerians. although it's pretty fun to watch Thomas Elek beat up an anti-semitic student who stops him chalking up hammer and sickles, too, it's much more than kosher porn or communist kitsch.
so blog, recent things ive done.
- get interviewed, and accepted by, the university of manchester three days before the start of freshers week. the good thing is i am doing social sciences and holocaust studies, which is rather interesting so far, but the bad thing is that for the past two weeks ive had no fixed accomoation and have been sleeping on peoples floors, and also rachel of ashton lot fame's flat, as she isn't too big a fan of her neighbours (who seem alright to be honest. although, last night, a cat followed me into the halls of residence, burleigh house, and into the bottom floor of their flat. then three girls knocke on the door asking me to get rid of the cat because they were scared of cats... bah!) speaking to accomodation tomorrow about things tomorrow though, and i have to give up culture and society to do my holocaust studies thing. pah!
- went to quite a fun party where ftse 100, serfs and a few others played, all of them were rather fun. it was really hard for sally and i to find though! it was canadian amanda from chorley's party. a lot of people were there, like steph chlond, lewis from itbs and mark from kong. fun times.
- watched the derby, which was great. classic owen. heard some devastating news the same night though, regarding an old friend.
- saw times new viking and lovvers, who were both fun, at the corner in fallowfield. they were really good. by the way, here i should probably point out that ive just generally hung out with sally a lot, seeing as she let me crash on her floor for about five days, and we became authentic bros during this period. oh, and a condemnation of charlotte greene, who poured red wine on my bag..
- walked into a strangers flat and saw rudi sat down singing to "too many man". he was on the manchester leg of his freshers 'university challenge'.
heres me with the snap happy bastard. theres some right horrors on his facebook photo album documenting the manc night. luckily i went to max, grace and rosa's house party with nico instead and met my first IRA supporter at uni. hopefully the first of many??!?!
- ate a lot of free dominos pizza using the free coupons they stupidly gave us, AND WHAT
- went to a shit meeting on latin america by The Commune and Communist Students, which was generally a veiled mocking of the failure of venezuelan social movements to seize power in their own interests and that hugo chavez, evo morales etc 'objectively' oppose the workers movement. that seems a little confusing when you actually look at facts beyond the pseudo-marxian jargon of both Commune and CS speakers and see that it is a little more complicated, and the social movements may support Chavez and Morales because when they have a demand he generally agrees with their demands. he obviously is still a bourgeois leader but for fucks sake, try and have some fucking grasp of why people in social movements might feel uncomfortable about calling on tens of millions of people to overthrow a leader who generally agrees with, in words an action, many things they do, in the midst of violent right-wing reaction to these left-leaning presidencies. on the other hand, i went to a good SWP "why you should be a socialist" meeting, and confirmed in my head just why the SWP are the biggest organisation on the left at the universities and workplaces. they're so much more inspiring and less pathetic. gordon strachan had a similar experience also, he'll tell you on his culture cavern...
- after a night of free shots at baa bar with sally, went to heaths and watched him smash glass all over his kitchen listening to "my my metrocard". linn has lost hard-won dignity at uni...
- went to Rage Against New Labour with nico and the manchester lot. nice lovely day, even had a dip in the water and had an ice cream - BACK OF THE NET!
- went to lectures. fuck that.
anyway, offset blog looks less likely. but maybe! see ya blog
Monday, 14 September 2009
things to do while at uni
- keep in touch with everyone i like
- become a slob
- start a band that gets to release a 7" someday
- start a zine
- start putting on shows again - MAYBE
- type up jeffrey lewis interview from september 2008.
hi blog. offset blog soon.
- become a slob
- start a band that gets to release a 7" someday
- start a zine
- start putting on shows again - MAYBE
- type up jeffrey lewis interview from september 2008.
hi blog. offset blog soon.
Thursday, 3 September 2009
it's all about the confidence
hi blog,
i went to leeds festival and it was pretty fun.
me chilling out with some ladies. hm.
sososo highlights... well, before ANY of the bands, the banter going on was very much worth it. i'm gonna miss it when we all go our seperate ways to uni!
i'd rather talk firstly (before bands) about how throughout the festival we treated every one around us, to be honest, like proper shit. but in particular these people who were camping in 3 tents near us bore the brunt. there was about 8 of them and had 3 tents, two of them were averaged size with a large one - when they went off to get some food and left it out to be put together. when i got back from watching Blood Red Shoes on thursday, who were fucking awesome as usual, the large tent was completely snapped into bits. when cobbs managed to have a shit for the first time in over a week on the friday, he shat a yard away from the tent, put an aerosol can and soiled paper around the shit, lit the paper and as the can went off pieces of burning shit peppered their third tent and noone elses. in an unrelated incident in the morning barry had dived headfirst into another of their tents and snapped all the pegs on one side, making it blow over whenever wind picked up.
cobbs doing what he had to do.
"did you see lethal bizzle?! he was immense!"
"heh yeah i'm interviewing him later"
"cool i'm going to meet my friends in a minute"
blatantly gives a shit. i also happened to watch the XX who were really good, and worth watching. their new rekkid's quite decent. although, i didn't watch any old punk bands, i did get away from the fun energy that the Prodigy crowd was to go and watch Thursday with amber coupe (fresh from fighting liam postlethwaite, who was so unbelievably fucked that i threw him face first onto the floor on the way in as he tried getting me in a head lock, and just got up like nothing had happened, then tried climbing over the huge Leeds Festival perimeter to get back to the camping site when he got lost) who were good and played some old songs i digged when i was 13. Goxxip were brilliant also and Beth Ditto sung Huggybear and Bikini Kill songs! fuck the haterssss
Lady Sovereign apparently spat on a clock she'd brought up on stage and turned heaney on, but i decided to watch Crystal Castles instead. definitely my favourite band of the whole festival... although if someone had got a photograph of when rob paton, dressed as a woman, rugby tackled Alice Glass from CC and got twatted by security guards unable to drag him off her because he was tangled in microphone wires, it would have made my year. Metronomy were great too, and have revitalised my interest in them seeing as i didn't rate their album that highly. Radiohead were pretty rad; me, mateo, liam and eve linked arms Codnor-style and got really close to the front. you should definitely check these Radio guys out, i heard theyre gonna get pretty big in the next few years!!!
on the final day, i barely watched anyone. Danananananananananananananaykroyd were good in the morning, and as they split the crowd in half to tell people to charge forward into each other mike from Three Black Dwarfs and i ended up going towards each other and i got a fucking sweaty hug off him! best days of your life marcus. oh, i'd like to point out that it was great watching vanguard critchley just look really hangin' and tired at this gig. i went to get a glass of lemonade (LIVIN IT LARGE!!!) and watched Ghost Of A Thousand, who were quite brutal (aside from the singer being an arrogant cunt) even though noone seemed to be into them bar me. that's about it, really. the crowd of Faith No More also bought me a pint - i collected £3.50 worth of cups of the floor! back of the net. their playing of "Epic" was pretty... funny. in the night liam critch and me stole the flag of ulster from some guy hanging it outside his tent and i lost my phone in the general melee. even still, i chucked it on the big fire raging underneath a telephone pole. someone told me to not throw "something english" on the flag, so i invoked Michael Black's spirit and said "it's not english, it's just ulster". classic IRA. my favourite part of the "riots" at Leeds was when two people carrying a large pole to run into a larger pole got lifted by security, but a shitload of people chased after them chanting "security? youre having a laugh!" and the plain clothes had to run off. however, as soon as we were about to knock the pole down critch got lifted without anyone noticing - fucking hilarious! he broke back in in the morning though, fair play to the lad.
all in all, yeah! not bad.
i went to leeds festival and it was pretty fun.
me chilling out with some ladies. hm.sososo highlights... well, before ANY of the bands, the banter going on was very much worth it. i'm gonna miss it when we all go our seperate ways to uni!
i'd rather talk firstly (before bands) about how throughout the festival we treated every one around us, to be honest, like proper shit. but in particular these people who were camping in 3 tents near us bore the brunt. there was about 8 of them and had 3 tents, two of them were averaged size with a large one - when they went off to get some food and left it out to be put together. when i got back from watching Blood Red Shoes on thursday, who were fucking awesome as usual, the large tent was completely snapped into bits. when cobbs managed to have a shit for the first time in over a week on the friday, he shat a yard away from the tent, put an aerosol can and soiled paper around the shit, lit the paper and as the can went off pieces of burning shit peppered their third tent and noone elses. in an unrelated incident in the morning barry had dived headfirst into another of their tents and snapped all the pegs on one side, making it blow over whenever wind picked up.
cobbs doing what he had to do.on friday evening, i think, rudi threw mateo into the final tent and this girl started goin fuckin batshit at us: "GET OUT OF THE FESTIVAL, YOURE JUST SAD LITTLE BOYS, FUCK OFF YOU NASTY LITTLE TWATS", etc, she really wouldn't shut up! but they ended up ringing security and they came down and surrounded our entire camping area.
the plain clothes security guards were power hungry nutters. one of them told another that i'd spat in his face, then when heaney called him a "big man for giving (me) shit when you've got security guards everywhere" he responded (to me) that "i'm gonna take you into that big dark forest personally and show you the fucking meaning of terror". and gave some implied racist banter to me about rudi so i kicked off again and they had me by my collar.
pissed but wise mark "vanguard" critchley was getting up to some french resistance style shit, he got these two complete strangers to come up to me in front of these security guards and say that i was one of them's boyfriend and i didn't have anything to do with what was going on. they werent believed but it was still worth it. still nothing paid off in the end cuz critch got taken despite not even being there when the tent-breaking happened.
as we got in the van (all 13 of us) everyone was silent except for pissed-off-his-head critch... and neil garry, who just asked the driver for the ipswich score then went back to complete silence (highlight of leeds). we all got interviewed one by one, and i was the last one. i asked to go for a piss and they let me - compared to our communal toilets their portaloo was a fucking beauty so i pissed all over the seat and handle. no surrender.. anyway, rudi admitted what he did so we all got to go and he got evicted. goodbye rudi.
the next day, someone 100 yards to our left threw a bottle at someone 100 yards opposite us (dont forget we were at the hill) and then they threw one at us, so we of course responded with hell, throwing shitloads at them. as it turned out everyone just came out - numbers roughly between 90 to 120 people - to throw shit at us because they blatantly fucking hated our antics. barry just ended up fighting on by himself and got bottled in the eye, and eventually threw a bottle of coke at a security guard, which got him evicted. worthy, liam, cobbs and i all ran off, feeling very refugee-like, and went to one of worthy's mate's tents where we dropped our stuff. we chucked it all in critch's later where i got the joy of seeing green camp, aka orange camp-lite. a real joy was rickity pip throwing plums at passers by, with farny mark shouting "i hope i hit someone!" it was like the g20 out there. people also left their beer everywhere, so liam and myself liberated it.
"did you see lethal bizzle?! he was immense!"
"heh yeah i'm interviewing him later"
"cool i'm going to meet my friends in a minute"
blatantly gives a shit. i also happened to watch the XX who were really good, and worth watching. their new rekkid's quite decent. although, i didn't watch any old punk bands, i did get away from the fun energy that the Prodigy crowd was to go and watch Thursday with amber coupe (fresh from fighting liam postlethwaite, who was so unbelievably fucked that i threw him face first onto the floor on the way in as he tried getting me in a head lock, and just got up like nothing had happened, then tried climbing over the huge Leeds Festival perimeter to get back to the camping site when he got lost) who were good and played some old songs i digged when i was 13. Goxxip were brilliant also and Beth Ditto sung Huggybear and Bikini Kill songs! fuck the haterssss
Lady Sovereign apparently spat on a clock she'd brought up on stage and turned heaney on, but i decided to watch Crystal Castles instead. definitely my favourite band of the whole festival... although if someone had got a photograph of when rob paton, dressed as a woman, rugby tackled Alice Glass from CC and got twatted by security guards unable to drag him off her because he was tangled in microphone wires, it would have made my year. Metronomy were great too, and have revitalised my interest in them seeing as i didn't rate their album that highly. Radiohead were pretty rad; me, mateo, liam and eve linked arms Codnor-style and got really close to the front. you should definitely check these Radio guys out, i heard theyre gonna get pretty big in the next few years!!!
on the final day, i barely watched anyone. Danananananananananananananaykroyd were good in the morning, and as they split the crowd in half to tell people to charge forward into each other mike from Three Black Dwarfs and i ended up going towards each other and i got a fucking sweaty hug off him! best days of your life marcus. oh, i'd like to point out that it was great watching vanguard critchley just look really hangin' and tired at this gig. i went to get a glass of lemonade (LIVIN IT LARGE!!!) and watched Ghost Of A Thousand, who were quite brutal (aside from the singer being an arrogant cunt) even though noone seemed to be into them bar me. that's about it, really. the crowd of Faith No More also bought me a pint - i collected £3.50 worth of cups of the floor! back of the net. their playing of "Epic" was pretty... funny. in the night liam critch and me stole the flag of ulster from some guy hanging it outside his tent and i lost my phone in the general melee. even still, i chucked it on the big fire raging underneath a telephone pole. someone told me to not throw "something english" on the flag, so i invoked Michael Black's spirit and said "it's not english, it's just ulster". classic IRA. my favourite part of the "riots" at Leeds was when two people carrying a large pole to run into a larger pole got lifted by security, but a shitload of people chased after them chanting "security? youre having a laugh!" and the plain clothes had to run off. however, as soon as we were about to knock the pole down critch got lifted without anyone noticing - fucking hilarious! he broke back in in the morning though, fair play to the lad.
all in all, yeah! not bad.
Thursday, 27 August 2009
confession
im may try and watch every band on various stages (but mainly probably the lock up) i can remember from being about 12/13 and being into general semi-underground pop punk. that means YOU the Living End, Chuck Hagan (hey i still kinda like hot water music's 'bro as thinking man' music), and various others. if only Alkaline Trio, The Movielife (R.I.P), Lagwagon etc would perform.
i realise that this blog won't mean much to anyone.
also when i get home im going to write about the post punk revival using trotsky's concept of "substitutionalism". who is the cultureblog now, MARK CRITCHLEY?
i realise that this blog won't mean much to anyone.
also when i get home im going to write about the post punk revival using trotsky's concept of "substitutionalism". who is the cultureblog now, MARK CRITCHLEY?
Tuesday, 25 August 2009
help!
hi blog and hi matthew britton, yr blog on leeds was quite helpful - i will now see yeah yeah yeahs thanks to you. but,
1.where are the
2.obligatory
3.culture
4.blogs?
apart from the fact i don't massively want to go for anything other than throwing knives through tents with a bloke called Cobbs (anddd whattt?) who should i see at leeds festival this year? heres what i'm thinking with italics for things i genuinely want to watch rather than just out of opportunity:
thursday
blood red shoes, and none of the other shit that dance to the radio will probably put on.
friday
pulled apart by horses
mariachi el bronx
ian brown
goxxip
patrick wolf
rival schools (i'm coming for you, walter schreifels!)
municipal waste (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA)
chickenhawk
to the bones (big up dan thomas's bros)
saturday
radiohead
yeah yeah yeahs
crystal castles
metronomy
interested in this crazy "Grimes" new genre i've read so much about in Vices Mag so may check out this lethal guy
mstrkrft
lady sovereign
titus andronicus
and maybe the SPINAL TAP film?
sunday
sonic boom six
definitely LOVVERS over FAITH NO MORE out of spite for Sam King
a place to bury strangers
the ghost of a thousand
that doesn't seem that bad actually. pretty good, even. let's see if i catch more than 7 or 8. see you soon bloggo. happy birthday King Steve today also!
1.where are the
2.obligatory
3.culture
4.blogs?
apart from the fact i don't massively want to go for anything other than throwing knives through tents with a bloke called Cobbs (anddd whattt?) who should i see at leeds festival this year? heres what i'm thinking with italics for things i genuinely want to watch rather than just out of opportunity:
thursday
blood red shoes, and none of the other shit that dance to the radio will probably put on.
friday
pulled apart by horses
mariachi el bronx
ian brown
goxxip
patrick wolf
rival schools (i'm coming for you, walter schreifels!)
municipal waste (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA)
chickenhawk
to the bones (big up dan thomas's bros)
saturday
radiohead
yeah yeah yeahs
crystal castles
metronomy
interested in this crazy "Grimes" new genre i've read so much about in Vices Mag so may check out this lethal guy
mstrkrft
lady sovereign
titus andronicus
and maybe the SPINAL TAP film?
sunday
sonic boom six
definitely LOVVERS over FAITH NO MORE out of spite for Sam King
a place to bury strangers
the ghost of a thousand
that doesn't seem that bad actually. pretty good, even. let's see if i catch more than 7 or 8. see you soon bloggo. happy birthday King Steve today also!
Saturday, 22 August 2009
thanks shmanky
hi blog, last night i went to see Inglourious Basterds. it was pretty fucking good! i'd kind of written it off after reading Peter Bradshaw's review, the criticisms of which i thought sounded fairly convincing and worth making. plus bradshaws good for how much of a bastard he is reviewing films. but nah, i don't dig what he's saying now at all. the two things i liked a lot and picked up the most from the film was
a) the ennio morricone's compositions being everywhere! the opening theme was a strange mishmash of yiddish rhythm (i'm thinking the mourning yiddish of "shlaf meine fageleh" that george and ira gershwin lent the mournful tone from in "my one and only", a ella fitzgerald song, is kinda replicated) and morricone's spaghetti westerns. when a psychopathic anti-nazi gets 'released' from a dingy prison by the Basterds morricone's theme to "the Battle of Algiers" comes on. about as direct a homage you could get, but it still was pretty cool.
b) that what eli roth said about the whole thing being "kosher porn" is absolutely true. it was, amongst other things but generally, a feel-good revenge film about the Holocaust. roth's character's personal ending of the film may as well be the fucking cumshot.
this film kicked the shit out of Bruno, which wasn't, in one big swoop, homophobic/funny/daring/unexpected/interesting. it was, in another big swoop, static/predictable/soft/respectable/condescending to austrians more than anything. it got me thinking that this piece of shit is an implication that the LGBT movement must have made some serious leaps and bounds in it's long march, as Sacha Baron Cohen can make a film which damns Kazakhstanis so badly in Borat yet has to really dodge any heavy pisstaking of gays. although, it was a good excuse to see kathryn, back from turkey, again!
i also went to see Gang Gang Dance on tuesday night with liam, kieron, nico, critch and max, but later on we were joined by adam gill and a homeless man. there was a lot of awkwardness and i would have rather the homeless man talk about how much he hates the BNP and how much he loved going to flat block raves in the eighties rather than the confusing sprawl of anti-asian ideas he came out with, but whatever. GGD were fucking AMAZING. everything was spot on, and there was points where their music in my opinion reached cathartic points. shockingly good. not that Mr Culture Man would know this, leaving about 25 minutes into their set.
as for a-level results, i got AAB. so now i'm kinda up for having a go at swapping from Man Met to Uni of Manc, regretting setting my standards for three C's and regretting not getting the mediocre result i wanted even more. fuck, all the ashton lot got similar results to that, did the same amount of work as me also, and are getting into better unis. with all that being said and done, i still know i won't be arsed to even look into changing uni. ah well, roll on man met.
this photograph, among others things, happened on thursday night to celebrate getting decent results. it was quite fun, really. barry bought us several drinks and i got fucked. saw a lot of people i knew as well, and a lot of very good friends, which isn't a bad thing! although barry bailed on liam + myself when we were gonna crash at his so had to catch the 6am train back. richard ali turned up out of nowhere though and got the train to bolton! still, it makes me feel good that heaney and connoz burnt down sections of barry's house when he was out and they had a key to his free house. got your back lads.
coming up soon: leeds festival, offset, uni.
a) the ennio morricone's compositions being everywhere! the opening theme was a strange mishmash of yiddish rhythm (i'm thinking the mourning yiddish of "shlaf meine fageleh" that george and ira gershwin lent the mournful tone from in "my one and only", a ella fitzgerald song, is kinda replicated) and morricone's spaghetti westerns. when a psychopathic anti-nazi gets 'released' from a dingy prison by the Basterds morricone's theme to "the Battle of Algiers" comes on. about as direct a homage you could get, but it still was pretty cool.
b) that what eli roth said about the whole thing being "kosher porn" is absolutely true. it was, amongst other things but generally, a feel-good revenge film about the Holocaust. roth's character's personal ending of the film may as well be the fucking cumshot.
this film kicked the shit out of Bruno, which wasn't, in one big swoop, homophobic/funny/daring/unexpected/interesting. it was, in another big swoop, static/predictable/soft/respectable/condescending to austrians more than anything. it got me thinking that this piece of shit is an implication that the LGBT movement must have made some serious leaps and bounds in it's long march, as Sacha Baron Cohen can make a film which damns Kazakhstanis so badly in Borat yet has to really dodge any heavy pisstaking of gays. although, it was a good excuse to see kathryn, back from turkey, again!
i also went to see Gang Gang Dance on tuesday night with liam, kieron, nico, critch and max, but later on we were joined by adam gill and a homeless man. there was a lot of awkwardness and i would have rather the homeless man talk about how much he hates the BNP and how much he loved going to flat block raves in the eighties rather than the confusing sprawl of anti-asian ideas he came out with, but whatever. GGD were fucking AMAZING. everything was spot on, and there was points where their music in my opinion reached cathartic points. shockingly good. not that Mr Culture Man would know this, leaving about 25 minutes into their set.
as for a-level results, i got AAB. so now i'm kinda up for having a go at swapping from Man Met to Uni of Manc, regretting setting my standards for three C's and regretting not getting the mediocre result i wanted even more. fuck, all the ashton lot got similar results to that, did the same amount of work as me also, and are getting into better unis. with all that being said and done, i still know i won't be arsed to even look into changing uni. ah well, roll on man met.
this photograph, among others things, happened on thursday night to celebrate getting decent results. it was quite fun, really. barry bought us several drinks and i got fucked. saw a lot of people i knew as well, and a lot of very good friends, which isn't a bad thing! although barry bailed on liam + myself when we were gonna crash at his so had to catch the 6am train back. richard ali turned up out of nowhere though and got the train to bolton! still, it makes me feel good that heaney and connoz burnt down sections of barry's house when he was out and they had a key to his free house. got your back lads.coming up soon: leeds festival, offset, uni.
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