Tumbleweed

Hello!

Been far too lazy to blog anything for a while, as all my creative energy is going towards educating the nation's youth.  I have the feeling it'll stay that way for a wee while, but who knows what the future will hold?

In the meantime, you can follow my truncated missives on twitter: http://twitter.com/mrstevious

Cheerio for now!

The Kids Are Alright

Whew! I'm on the ol' train wifi again, only this time considerably more tired and deaf. The Reading Festival was a genius way to blow away the cobwebs of my old life as a lab slave. Although there were plenty of great things at the fest, the music was by far the most exciting thing about it so here's my highlights in terms of the bands:

Friday

Blood Red Shoes

Wow. Probably surprise of the festival - I'd listened to their album a couple of times but never really 'got it'. I'm now a total convert after witnessing what I can only describe as a perfect set of simple, high octane pop songs. They have that 'how do two people make that noise' thing that Death From Above had but are even tighter players. Only the second band of the festival and the bar was set very high.

Friendly Fires - Despite having much in common with Klaxons, these guys seem to have escaped the hideous 'nu-rave' title and the twattish trappings that come with it. They were clearly very comfortable playing to a packed-out stage and made the fun they were having contagious. They won me over by having a fuckload of cowbells and some of the most danceable indie-rock I've heard since The Rapture. Most bands would seem like pretentious World Music bores by ending their set with a 5 minute samba breakdown but these guys pulled it off by just making it part of the party. I hope they become huge.

Rage Against The Machine

All anyome spoke about during Friday was how amazing Rage were going to be. After their set everyone croaked about how great they were, and with good reason. Every word, every note played with the utmost of conviction and ferocity. Not a single wasted note. And their music really does matter - looking back I realise what an effect they had on my political views as a teenager. Basically as close to perfect as a rock gig can be.

Saturday

We Are Scientists - It's great watching performers who are so comfortable with themselves. No attempts to wow the crowd with gimmickry, just some great songs and some superb banter between songs. I tried to sing along but it came out as a croak.

Seasick Steve

A great big beard, a great big smile and a viking on drums. He proved that you don't need your youth, a correctly functioning inner-ear or even all the strings on your guitar to rock the fuck out of a crowd.

Foals - I was actually a bit to crushed in the crowd to see what was going on, but I've since watched it on the BBC website and they were indeed great. The thing that got me was that it was by far the biggest crowd I'd seen in the NME/R1 tent - packed to the rafters with hyper youngsters. And they were dancing to Math Rock. Mull that over in your mind for a while. If there ever need be a sign that the future is in safe hands, it's several thousand teenagers frugging in 7/8 time.

Sunday

Adam Green - I have to admit that I wasn't keen on the idea of seeing Adam as in my ignorance I thought it would be fairly dull folky noodling. What I actually got was some goood ol' rocknroll complete with a couple of backing singers and a superbly drunk frontman. Amy Winehouse could learn a thing or two from Adam about being completely wasted but still keeping your dignity. "It's only one in the afternoon. Shit, now I feel guilty about drinking that bottle of whiskey. This is another song about crack".

Holy Fuck

Listening to HF on record gives you a bit of an idea what they sound like live, but to actually see is something quite special. Drums, bass and a couple of guys playing what looks like a series of mangled cereal boxes with wires coming out of them. Each song seemed to require completely rebuilding their equipment while playing it. And they fucking rocked too. They managed to get my heavily hungover frame bouncing along, and even solicited a tear of joy during Lovely Allen. Amazing.

CSS - Lovefoxxxx dressed as a jester. Singalongs about coughing up furballs. Glitter cannons. Music is My Hot Hot Sex. I love you CSS.

Right. Now I need to give up drinking forever and let my hearing heal itself.

The Future's Bright

I'm pretty easily impressed by technology. Even though I know (roughly) how it all works, I still find it amazing when I can carry all those CDs in such a tiny wee box, or send people letters through wires. Right now I am suppressing yelps of glee due to the fact that I'm doing internets on the train. Like in the future.

The best part is that this train is a total antique - I think it might even be from an era when there was such a thing as British Rail, which is about a billion years ago. I think the router is coal-fired.

I haven't really been giving much thought to my wee trip South as I've been focusing on hating my job and riding my bikes. Now I'm free from my job and have left my bike at home I can ponder what's ahead. Firstly, the cons:

- There will be a whole shitload of people at Reading. And no doubt they'll get in my way.
- This ain't going to be cheap.

But the Pros:

- Free train wifi!
- Get to hang out with Del and catch up with some uni friends.
- Get to laugh at teenagers.
- I might get within licking distance of Lovefoxxxxxxx from CSS
- I will do some raging. Against Machines.
- Foals, Holy Fuck, Justice, Simian Mobile Disco, We Are Scientists and one squillion others.
- I win

No Blue Skies

It rains. oh how it rains. I can't believe I just paid £3 for the swimming pool when I could have just stated outside and waited for the waters to rise. I'm both miffed and gobsmacked that the Edinburgh Bike Co-op don't sell snorkels.

So I have been extremely lax on blogging of late, which is neither an indication that life has been too full to have time or too dull to document. I just couldn't be arsed. THAT'S RIGHT, I DON'T CARE THAT MUCH ABOUT MY BLOG. I'm so old fashioned.

So what's been going on? I've climbed a bunch of rocks (including posting a couple of totally unimpressive personal bests grade-wise) and rode a bunch of bikes (well, two bikes, but I rode them quite a bit). I'm feeling fit, feisty and full of fish. It's all good in SteveTown.

The best thing of all is that tomorrow is the LAST DAY OF MY SHITTY LAB JOB. No more standing in the sweatiest little room in Western Europe making pointless little solutions go pink. No more discussions in the tea room about how someone went shopping at the weekend and there were, like, hunners and hunners of shirts to choose from. No more being told off for clocking in 3 minutes late even though there's dick all work to do. NO MORE WASTING MY TIME PERFORMING POINTLESS TASKS FOR A MEANINGLESS COMPANY THAT I DON'T GIVE TWO SHITS ABOUT. Whoop!

So what next? Well, I have a year of (relative) poverty and hard work ahead of me at uni followed (hopefully) by a rewarding career as an educator. Even two years of quasi-scientific spirit-crushing lever pulling hasn't quashed my love for science, and I really hope that I can instill some of that in some youngsters. Although at first all I ask for is that they don't all leap on me and set fire to me.

Oh and between now and then there's the small matter of the Reading Festival. I'm readying my RockPants right now.

The Eternal Reek of Damp Wool

I'm not sure what it says about my teenage years, but much of them was spent idolising a cartoon sheep. Nestling in between adverts for bottom brackets and reviews of the latest knobbly tyres, the Mint Sauce strip in MBUK was a voice of reason amongst the unintelligible clamour of pish that constituted the rest of the magazine.

I've been trying to think of a way to describe why I should care about a comic strip featuring a mountain biking ungulate, but I love it far too much to write anything approaching sensible about it. So all I can say is have a look at this, this and this.

And if you can still see through the tears of joy then just look at the whole damn archive of them.

The Rain Drops

If you look on this here internet for reviews of Radiohead gigs, you'll find about 8 billion gushing testimonials to both the quality of the music and their showmanship. And with good reason too, scientific experiments have shown that they are totally fucking amazing.

So instead of recounting how berrrilliant their gig in Glasgow Green the other night was (although I will mention that they played the theme tune for the best climbing movie of all time) I thought I'd have a jolly good moan about some of the downsides of the experience. they are thus:

- Massive Crowds - Being a bit of a misanthrope, any large gathering of humans is likely to rub me up the wrong way, but when I actually have to interact with the bastards I often feel soiled. Why they all seem oblivious to this and still continue to be IN MY WAY I'll never know, but I suspect it's something to do with me not being at the centre of the universe.

- Tall People - When I'm a famous rock star I'm going to make every fucker over 5'9" stand at the back like the giant freak that they are.

- Glasgow rain - It was wetter than an otter's pocket.

- Pickpockets - Some unspeakable urchin filched my ticket from my trouser pocket forcing me to patronise the evil black market in surplus tickets. May a mighty pox cripple the urchin for the rest of its days (and may I remember not to wonder around with gig tickets hanging out of my pocket like a twat).

- The Drunk - Instead of turning to face the rest of the crowd to shout loudly about how this is your favourite song, how about shutting the fuck up and listening to the band we've all paid the best part of fifty quid to see?

- The Security - Firstly, they wouldn't let people back out of the gate so that they could go and get one of the sorely-needed ponchos for sale outside. And then they tried to throw out a guy who'd had the audacity to smuggle in ONE CAN OF BEER. He didn't even protest when they confiscated it from him, but they still tried to oust him. Luckily the rest of the crowd were having none of it, and I witnessed some of the upside of mob justice, as they all told the security nazi to get all the way to fuck.

Anyway, it was still brilliant. Go and see them if you can.

In Remote Part

Four days in the North West Highlands: