My neck might still be in agony but...
This bonkers cajun/country and western medley of Radiohead songs cheered me up: Rodeohead

Modstock


Despite my bloodied hooter, I ventured up to the Rocket in Holloway Road for Modstock.

Billed as a "3 Day Event Celebrating 40 Years of Modernist Culture", it was a curious mix of stylish young mods, middle aged sharp dressers and some less well-weathered old 'uns squeezing into mohair suits.

I was there to take snaps of the Actionettes, who performed a short set inbetween a moody fashion show and an old-school 60s band. It was fun.

In case you didn't know, I've always had a soft spot for Mod. I grew up with punk, Motown and the Who. For me, Quadrophenia remains the definitive album about teenage energy, awkwardness and rebellion.

I was even in a moderately well known mod revival band, Beggar, and we recorded several tracks on the chart-denting (just!) Mods Mayday 79.

I bet that, err, impressed you, eh?!

Smacked in the mush in Somerleyton Road

This fucking sucked.

Imagine the scene: you're walking along a quiet road at night and some twat - for no reason at all - decides to smack you in the face as you go past. As hard as he can. No provocation,. No conversation. No warning.

I hit the deck - literally gobsmacked - with a face full of blood.

There's two guys - black kids aged around 20 clearly a little worse for wear in terms of drink or whatever. One shaved head, the other with a hood. I ask them (from a safe distance) what the fuck they're playing at. They hurl random abuse and make it clear that they haven't finished.

I try and protect myself by standing further down the road and ringing the police. I wait. I wait a bit longer. And some more. I keep my distance but they're following me.

Next thing, I'm having a bizzare phone conversation with the police along the lines of "the one guy is now dragging me around by my hair in the street and kicking me. Could I have some police assistance NOW PLEASE?"

The police didn't show up. The two twats walked away. I've got a face that definitely doesn't look its best and I'm still bleeding.

Funnily enough, the three old black boys that came up to me afterwards as I stood there bleeding really made me feel better. Right then I needed to be reminded that this attack wasn't about race. It was about violent cowardly scumbags, and they come in all colours.

Oh, and the police finally rang back when I was at home mopping up the blood. I suggest they may have left it a little late.

TXTing
Here's what I've written on this 'english to lingo' converter website which converts normal English into the kind of gibberish that 'the youth' text to each other on their mobile phones.

And here's what it's been transl8ted into:

"O everybody

hErz wot ive RitN on DIS 'eng 2 lingo' coverter website which cvertz normal eng in2 d kind of gibberish dat 'd youth' txt 2 Ech othR on thR mob fonez"

Weekend updates
Apologies for the slackness with the updates - things have been a tad busy.

We finally moved over the rest of urban75 to its shiny, super fast home at exonetric.com and apart from a few expected minor teething problems things are settling in nicely. Phew!

On Saturday, we went back to the excellent 12 Bar Club in Soho to see a feast of top bands.

The stage there is tiny, but it's a friendly place and one of the very few intimate live gigs left in central London.



deXter Bentley were great. Despite their multi-instrumentalist ensemble being jammed into an impossibly small space, they served up an eccentric, quirky, funny and uplifting set.

Lord knows how you'd describe their set - I guess a mix of 00s acoustic folk meets XTC meets the Kinks comes close. They describe themselves as a 'no-fi neo-folk quintent' if that helps...



Headlining the night were the the Schla La Las, a five piece, all girl band with attitude.

Resplendent in matching outfits, the four guitarists produced a fabulous wall of sound, with Delia Dansette keeping the beats fast and furious.

Their upfront mix of 60s tunes mixed with punk sensibilities set the place alight and if "Are you ready" isn't a dance floor rippin' indie hit I'll eat my HTML trousers.

Guardian article
I forgot to mention this, but I was well chuffed with this piece in the Guardian last week.

"For some time, campaigning groups have used Flash movies to spread their ideas virally online. Moving into games was the next logical step. Hence sites such as Global Arcade, which uses variations on classic games such as Pong to satirise globalisation.

Similarly, the long-running British site Urban 75 features anti-corporate cover versions of old gaming classics. As Urban 75's Mike Slocombe says, his Brick a Brand is basically a variation on Breakout. After indicating their "brick-throwing ability" - student, protester or anarchist players get to bounce bricks at familiar-looking brand logos.

The natural home here for political gaming (the site hosts the satirical beat-'em-up, Downing Street Fighter), Urban75 could perhaps lay claim to have pioneered the genre of interactive political cartoons, with its Punch/Slap games.

Online since 1996, these simple Java animations let players virtually punch politicians and celebs by clicking on their faces. A click comically distorts the (over) familiar face.

"They're horrendously simple but phenomenally popular," says Slocombe, who sees the games on his site as a bit of cheeky irreverence. The hope is that they might draw people into the Urban 75 community where they could find out more about the issues."

Pioneer, eh? I like it!

Some surfing...
While I'm waiting for the server to be updated, I've been surfing around a few websites.

Seeing as I can't speak to them on the boards, here's some blogs of my chums: Dubversion's, err, 'Pounding System', Goldtop (eme), Ilona's 'misadventures in Publishing', Lazy Llama's musings and the slackly updated Sonik.

I think old age must be creeping up on me: I've just spent many work-shirking minutes clicking around the RSPB's A to Z of a wildlife garden guide. It's stuffed full of info about garden birds'n'bugs, plants and other nature-type things. It rocks!

Perhaps I should try and regain my tattered street credibility with a shout out going to Artcoup, the work of a Brooklyn based photographer. It's a fantastic collection of urban photographs. Recommended.

Part one of the big move
Today, we're moving the hyper-busy bulletin boards to their shiny new home at exonetric, with the .net part of urban75 following next week.

It's a mighty big, mucho fiddly task, but miss minnie and Mark at exonetric have been superb in sorting things out.

Fingers crossed!

(Check out the updates page for news)

Over-lagered

It's been one of those weeks when there always seems to be an excellent reason for going down the pub.

Wednesday was my friend Gea's birthday drink at the Effra Tavern, Brixton. They put on excellent live jazz bands on Wednesday and the pub's a no-nonsense, untouched-by-gentrification community boozah. Recommended.

Thursday was Offline (see below). Much quaffing.

Friday was the Prince Albert followed by a jaunt to the Canterbury Arms.

Saturday, I visited the fabulous Nunhead Cemetery for their Open Day (expect some pics soon) before resuming the lager intake at People's Republic of Disco.

One of the site regulars had decided to shave off his (very long) hair to raise money for the urban75 Server Fund, so I ended up waddling down Brixton Hill with pockets bulging full of coins!

Today, I've managed an alcohol free day, going for a lovely walk in Brockwell park, enjoying a laid back brunch at the Brixton Lounge and then going home to potter about on the balcony and start adding a new 'tech writings' section to the site.

I'm going to post up some of the many articles I've written for the now-defunct Internet Magazine in the hope it might help me get a bit of freelance work.

Well, I can dream...

Post-Offline Monster Hangover
Last night's Offline club night at the Ritzy, Brixton was a corker - but Lordy - the hangover payback is fierce!

Check out pictures from the night here

Goldie Lookin' Chain
You've got to check out the band's website - it's an absolute hoot!

The Welsh hip hop band have a 'flexible' line-up and mainly sing about getting wasted in Newport, smoking spliff and drinking, liberally injecting their catch-phrase, "You Fuckin' Knows It" throughout their songs.

I've definitely got to check 'em out - the MP3s on their site are well worth a listen and the photo gallery is hilarious too) and any band that finishes an encore-free set with the words, "we're off to smoke some draw now" is alright in my book.

Tidy!

A night at the Spitz
After a dull day fiddling about with tedious computer/site admin stuff, it was a relief to get out for a few beers in the evening.

I went to the Spitz Club in Liverpool Street (East London) for the launch party of Heist's new album.



I like the band. Featuring a boy/girl eclectic line up of guitars, violins, trumpets, keyboards and drums they make a lush, cinematic sound that is best summed up as Pulp-meets-Scott Walker, mixed up with a bit of new wave and the 60s.

Or something.



Supporting the band were the Actionettes, who put in a lively set of 60s moves in the sweltering club (when will they sort out decent air conditioning in the Spitz?).

Tonight, I tried my new Minolta A2 camera again after my first, less-than-successful attempt to use it for band photos.

This time I switched to manual focusing and spot metering and had far better results - and the little black and white movie I shot came out very well(sorry - I can't post it here because of bandwidth problems).



Miraculously, we managed to get a cab straight back to Brixton at the end of the night. Maybe it's only on weekends that some cabbies turn into south London-allergic arseholes....

Sense working overtime: a Sunday afternoon by the River Thames

I took a walk along the South Bank today and it turned into a bit of an onslaught of emotions - from being uplifting by art, saddened by an exhibition of missing persons and finally feeling utterly depressed after seeing the carnage on offer at the Canon World Photo exhibition.

Check out my photo report

Franz Ferdinand at the Elephant & Castle



Well, I liked the album and was well excited at the prospect of a freebie ticket for their gig at the Coronet, Elephant and Castle, London.

Here's some history about the venue:

It was built in 1872 as The Theatre Royal, with the original building being destroyed by fire 1878.

It was then rebuilt as The Elephant & Castle a year later and then converted to the ABC cinema in 1928. After a succession of renamings, it finally ended up being known as the 'Coronet Cinema'.

The cinema finally closed its doors in 1999, but a £2million refurbishment programme saw it reopening as a multi purpose venue hosting club nights, live music events, film screenings and (yuk!) and corporate events.

Anyway, back to the gig. It has to be said that the Coronet isn't much of a venue. The entrance is dark, dingy and uninviting, the bars woefully under-staffed and - unlike the Brixton Academy - the floor doesn't slope towards the stage, meaning that many people couldn't see a thing.

Moreover, there seemed to be an awful lot of drunk, miserable blokes at the gig who seemed more interested in wolfing down the beers than enjoying the band.

To be honest, I was a bit unimpressed. As you can see from the blurry picture above, the view was rubbish, the venue wasn't very attractive and the beer selection was uninspired.

Despite this, Franz Ferdinand started brightly and I certainly enjoyed the first few songs, before a nagging doubt started to enter my head: haven't I heard this all before?

There's no denying that the band have got some good tunes, but the charisma count was registering dangerously low and everything seemed a tad perfunctory: where was the excitement, the edge , the sense of fun and the originality?

We left a tad disappointed, but happily Ken Livingstone's rejuvenated bus service ensured that we could make it back to Brixton in time for a pint in the Albert, with a late night snifter in the Lounge following....

Some new urban75 badges!
I'm not so sure how well these will sell, but the last two could certainly be worn with pride by some members of the bulletin board community!



Order your badges here!

A Trip Down Tin Pan Alley
Tonight, I visited the 12 Bar Club in London's West End for the first time and was mightily impressed.

Conveniently situated in Denmark Street - a street long renowned for its connections to live music - the bar has got just the right mix of friendliness and scruffiness - and the beer's reasonably priced too.

The street facing part of the bar serves as a café, with two other bars leading on to the stage at the back.

The dark, low-roofed and intimate crowd area really is bonkers as it offers two viewing positions: upstairs (where you can only see the heads of the band) or downstairs (where you can only see up to their neck).

So here's the actual view we had for rather excellent Kevin-Rowland-esque meets ' neo-orchestral soundscapes' The Irrepressibles:



Impressive, huh?!

Naturally, you'll do fine if you've managed to grab one of the seats in front of the stage, but we learnt that by leaning waaay back against the back wall we could catch the occasional above-neck glimpse of the musicians.



We'd gone along to the bar to see an old chum, Helen McCookeryBook (formerly of The Chefs) play her third-ever solo gig.

Helen and I go back ages - I was in her band Helen and The Horns for a while and we always seemed to end up working on various musical projects, often with another old pal, Lester Square from The Monochrome Set.

Anyway - I'm waffling now 'cos it's late - but I can report that I had a chuffin' top night out and I can thoroughly recommend the 12 bar Club as an excellent old-school live music venue.

And they certainly pack the bands in onto their tiny stage: their site claims that they have an average of four acts a night, seven nights a week!

Mayday photo report now online
I've finally managed to battle though the fug of last night's lingering hangover to post up a photo report from the Mayday 2004 Picnic in the Park

Mayday 2004
After the full-on anarchist argy-bargy of previous Mayday protests, this was rather a sedate and curious affair.

The main protest had been cancelled beforehand and replaced by a picnic in St James Park. This sounded like fun to me, so we popped along mid-afternoon and found a ball-less cricket game in progress, put on by those mischievous chaps, the Space Hijackers.



The players were nicely turned out in full cricket whites, with a small gazebo serving as a club house and pavilion (with pimms available).

Billed as 'Smash Capitalism for Six!', their accompanying leaflet implored you to "Bring your trusty wooden bat, swing for glory and whack capitalism across the boundary". Wonderful stuff!

Because ball games are outlawed in the park by-laws, the cricketers played with an imaginary ball instead and took the virtual game very seriously indeed while the police looked on, baffled.

A large and unruly football game kicked off nearby, starring several urban75-ers with differing states of fitness and skill.



An ad hoc adherence to the rules was adopted, with the occasional 'pile-on' adding interest. I scored a fantastic goal (well, OK, the defender was only 11 years old and the goalkeeper was on the phone, but it still felt good).

Sadly, the football action was accompanied by some of the worst singing I've ever heard with painful 'interpretations' of punk classics being delivered by a tuneless woman, a trumpet player and - to add insult to injury - a fucking clown in full costume.

Happily a mobile sound system turned up later and pumped out some restorative ska tunes.

To be honest, I've no idea what the point of this year's Mayday was.
But it was a hell of a lot of fun.

King of the hangovers!

Last night was fierce and it's got a hangover to match.

The beers started to flow at the Albert and turned into a veritable torrent at the How Does It Feel To Be Loved night at the Canterbury Arms.