Flats in Dagenham! Flats in Dagenham! Kate Bush!

In case you're wondering what the above is about let me explain - the first is the written sound of the mighty drum roll intro to the 1980s stadium-thumper, 'In a Big Country' by Scots bagpipe-alike band, Big Country.

The second is a representation of a snare drum being hit, quickly followed by a cymbal (the 'Bush' bit).

I know, you're baffled. It's an old drummer's joke, and the reason I'm dredging up these appalling nuggets of drummer 'humour' is that today I got to play on a drum kit again.

Some of you may know that I had a moderate level of musical semi-obscurity during my other life as a drummer, playing for the likes of the Monochome Set, Dream Academy and having albums remixed by with hotshot producers like The Orb.

Despite securing several major record deals, my time in the music industry was a frustrating one, brought about by the necessity of constant contact with record company arseholes, egotists, brown nosers and fuckwits leaving me with a whole rack of unreleased singles, albums, masters, 48-tracks etc. all sitting at home, never to see the light of day.


I spent considerable time bashing the fuck out of these skins. Joy!

Anyway, I digress. Today I was taking photos for a south London music studio, and seeing a battered old drum kit in a soundproofed room, I had to have a go.

And I had fun.

The good news is that it seemed that I hadn't forgotten anything, and felt right at home laying down a few 'funky drummers', reggae riffs and nifty hi-hat triplets. The bad news is that the ease in which I hit my old standard of playing began to suggest that perhaps I wasn't that good in the first place!

And the even worse news (for people living in my vicinity) is that now I'm seriously thinking about investing in a small kit... I want a drum kit again!

Sunday night updates...

I've just slapped up some photos from the last Offline club night at the Ritzy. Unforgivably, I managed to miss taking pics of some of the DJs, probably down to my over-exuberant intake of alcohol.

Talking of which, I'm afraid last night was a bit of a lager fest too. We started off in the house with Barmeister Eme cooking up lethal cocktail combinations before we made off to the Albert and then up Brixton Hill to the Windmill for a packed People's Republic of Disco. It rocked.

Inbetween this feast'o'lager, I managed to take in some art this week, checking out the new exhibitions at the Photographer's Gallery and then being utterly humbled by the photographic genius of Jacques-Henri Lartigue.

There's an exhibition of his work currently on at the Haywood Gallery and although the admission price is an horrific rip (nine bleeding quid!), the show is definitely worth a look.

Beer, records and an old railway station


Last night was the seventh Offline at the Brixton Ritzy and it was great fun, although I'm paying a mighty price for my reckless use of the free beer tokens (a necessary DJ perk!).

I'll post up a proper photo report from the night when I get some time, but for the past few days I've been obsessively compiling a feature about another of my obscure interests - the old railways of the Wye Valley Line in south Wales.


I visited the disused Monmouth Troy station in the 80s and fell in love with the place - with a disused tunnel at one end (I like them), a lovely Victorian station building in the middle (I like them) and the beautiful River Wye flowing at the other end (I definitely like that too), I thought it would make an ideal place for a studio.

Sadly, a pitiful financial income over the ensuing decade meant that I never got close to buying my dream home, and now I've missed my chance forever as the building has (bizarrely) now been dismantled brick by brick and rebuilt on a preserved railway line in the Cotswolds!

Oh well. Brixton ain't too bad! :)

A minor chortle

The "bishop" came to our church today
He was a fucken impostor
Never once moved diagonally

On the road...

'Scuse the lack of updates - but we've been shuffling about the countryside a tad recently.

On Tuesday, we headed up to lovely, lovely Wales, arriving in Cardiff with time to catch a few bevies in the mellow-but-friendly Pantmawr pub, north Cardiff.

The next day we jumped in the motor with a car full of kids and explored the beautiful Wye Valley, stopping off at the Wordsworth-inspiring remains of Tintern Abbey before grabbing coffee at the old railway station at Tintern.


Tintern old railway station, Wye Valley

There's something a little odd about driving to a disused station to admire the view, but I guess that just shows how daft it was to close the line in the first place - if they'd kept it open, it would be become a tourist magnet and kept a load of stinky, noisy traffic of the road.

Anyway, we continued our exploration of the valley with a pub lunch at Redbrook, a once bustling port and ironworks on the Wye.

After taking a stroll around the town, we drove to the flower-laden town of Usk, a small Welsh village that has won many 'Britain in Bloom' competitions and clearly wishes to keep on winning them.

The evening was a disappointment: we walked down to the Pendragon pub in Thornhill - a large, modern pub utterly bereft of atmosphere and people. The Brains ale tasted fine and went down a treat mind, so maybe it's unfair to judge the place on a wet Wednesday night.


Looking across Cardiff Bay

Thursday we took the full family junior contingent down to Cardiff Bay for some button pushing, lever yanking, capstan turning fun at TechnoQuest, a large interactive science facility for kids.

Naturally, there seemed to be more adults than kids 'testing' the various games of skill and science, but it kept most of the kids happy for most of the time (the youngest teenager declared everything 'boring' - only after he'd be playing with it for 20 minutes, of course).


Cardiff Bay (aka Cardiff Docks/Bute Town/Tiger bay in the 1980s)

Cardiff Bay continues to develop apace, with new restaurants, bars and shops opening up at a rate of knots. I barely recognise it from the muddy wastelands of my youth.

In the evening, we got quietly drunk in the Butchers Arms in Rhiwbina, an old haunt of mine from years ago which still feels like an authentic pub.


Castell Coch

Friday, we checked out the fabulous opulence of Castell Coch, a fairytale redbrick castle jutting out of a wooded hillside in north Cardiff.

The indulgence of the Victorian zillionaire Lord Bute (who was reckoned to be the richest man on the world at the time), this Gothic fantasy is well worth a visit - and I can't recommend their cafe enough. Their hand cooked Welsh cakes were a triumph!

After a delightful walk around Fforest Fawr, we hit the bright lights of Cardiff city centre, grabbing a coffee and cake in Morgan Arcade (Lordy, it's sounding like all we did was drink and fill our faces!)


Cardiff vs Plymouth

Of course the big event of the week was Cardiff's home game against Plymouth- my first match of the season!

Suitably lubricated after a snifter or two at the Romilly Arms, we skipped down Sloper Road, confident of a handsome home win.

Sadly, City let us down again. They put in a dreadful performance against a truly average Plymouth who used ever dirty, low-down, steeenkin' trick in the book to hang on to their 1-0 lead.

Much drinks were needed in the Pantmawr afterwards to remove all memory of the game - although my throat remained horrendously sore after 90 minutes of effin' and blinding at my useless team/dodgy ref/manager/weather conditions etc etc...

King of hangovers!

It's about a zillion degrees right now, my head throbs like a wobbling rubber monster from Dr Who and I feel like I've slept about two minutes. On a pointy rock.



And the reason for my hangover is the aftermath of my first ever 'guest DJ' slot at the excellent How Does It Feel To Be Loved last night.

It's a 60s/indie type club and trying to please their highly fickle crowd for over 90 minutes was a tough call, but I think I just about pulled it off.

My DJ slot started quietly as the club slowly filled up. A German bloke with a curious wander-around-the-dance-floor dance routine would occasionally loom close to the DJ booth and mumble, "Vill you play some indie pop?" before shuffling away again.

Slowly, the dance floor grew busier - I was doing something right! But when I said the crowd was fickle, I wasn't joking!



Morrissey's excellent 'First of the Gang To Die' set the dance floor alight, and - confident that I was now capturing the zeitgeist of the crowd, I whipped up the dance frenzy with a storming KLF single.

Uh oh. Big mistake. The second the 'Mu Mu' chorus burst forth, the dance floor cleared quicker than a rocket assisted cheetah and I was left to hastily revise my playlist.

Out went my collection of sophisticated 'ironic' hits from Frank, Elvis, Shirley and Tom, the ska bonanza was consigned to the back of the record bag and there wasn't a hope of Goldie Lookin' Chains single making contact with the stylus.

So, like a brazen slut, I played safe and slapped on the Cure, Smiths, Strokes, Pulp and Franz Ferdinand and all was well on the dance floor. Phew!

For the first time I began to realise just how tough a job DJing can be and learnt one big lesson: bring more records next time!

A nice end to the night was meeting several Monochrome Set fans who had turned up to see me (I played drums on their Dante's Casino album).

DJ in a panic

I'm currently rummaging through hundreds of 45s, 33s, CDs and MP3s trying to put together a good selection of tunes for tonight's gig at the Canterbury Arms and it's proving to be a mighty tough call.

Do I stick with trusty post-punk 45s or slap in lots of new stuff or wander down a skanking ska track? Or mix 'em all up together? But will that sound like a right dog's dinner? Tough decisions!

Meanwhile, I'm trying to sort out my photos from the Big Chill festival and get them online before I get distracted by something else.

All this isn't helped by the fact that - in the never-changing words of my chum Sonik - it's so hot right now!

Desperately seeking records

Tomorrow I have the honour of DJing at the most excellent How Does It Feel To Be Loved night at the Canterbury Arms, Brixton.

Up to now, my DJing has been restricted to short 30-45 min sets at the urban75 chilled out Offline nights where you can play any old bollocks and not worry about keeping a dance floor 'happening'.

But tomorrow I'm playing a whopping great 90 minute set and have to live with the fear of clearing the dance floor with a dodgy tune - so I'm going to have to try and introduce some semblance of structure to my set. Eeek!

Anyone wishing to witness a grown man fumbling about with record decks and battling with baffling technology is cordially invited to come along - I'll be spinning the platters that matter from 1030 till midnight...

And then I'll be getting drunk.

Cartier Bresson dies and I get drunk

Yesterday, one of the world's greatest photographers, Henri Cartier-Bresson, died.
I've long been a fan of his incredible photos which have both inspired and depressed me. 'Inspired' because of the amazing composition, spontaneity and style and 'depressed' because they're so fucking good!

He used no flash, no tripod, no wideangle lens, no zoom lens and no cropping. And all the photos were taken on a Leica rangefinder camera (covered in black tape to make it less obtrusive).

Whenever I start to think I've got the hang of this reportage photography thang, a quick flick through one of his books brings me right down to earth.

I may be slowly acquiring a flotilla of fancy lens, but he was a genius and I'm still a fumbling wannabe with a lot to learn...

Still, I managed to toast the fella many, many times last night with an alcoholic fuelled evening at the Albert and the Dogstar.

And now my head hurts....

The D70 has landed!


My first picture with my D70 - a handheld 1 sec exposure from my window

After weeks and weeks of waiting, the replacement for my dodgy Minolta A2 camera has finally arrived and I'm now the proud owner of a brand spanking new Nikon D70 camera!.

Compared to my previous digital cameras, this one's a heavyweight mo'fo, but it feels just grand in the hand, finished off in a 'pro' black finish with enough features to keep serial twiddler and tweakers in a state of deep chuffdom.

Of course, the best bit of using a SLR is the fact you can slap on different lenses, although they certainly ain't cheap for the Nikon.

Seeing as I'm already casting envious eyes towards esoteric fish-eye lenses and village-illuminating flashguns, I expect I'll soon be troubling e-bay with a veritable boot sale of all my old camera gear to fund my habit.

And once I've got my head around the D70's mission control of an interface, it will sadly be time to also bid a fond adieu to my trusty Sony F717 - a tremendous, hi-tech looking camera, whose gleaming silver finish tended to attract way too much interest in the street for my liking.

Fopped again!

My forthcoming guest DJ slot at the excellent How Does It Feel To Be Loved club night at the Canterbury Arms, Brixton this Friday night gave me a fresh excuse to pop into Fopp Records at Cambridge Circus.

Although time was short, I still managed to fill up some gaping holes in my record collection:
Free: Free at last, Beach Boys: Pet Sounds, Marvin Gaye: What's Going On and Young Gifted and Black (50 classic reggae hits).

There's a booklet that comes with the Free album and it documents the tragedy of their Mandrax-addicted genius guitarist, Paul Kossoff.

The band argued like fuck when they were together and split up less than a year after their uber-hit, 'All Right Now' hit the UK and US charts.

After the split, Kossoff plunged deeper into addiction and self destruction and, concerned for his welfare, the band decided to reform to help out their old friend - a magnanimous gesture.

Sadly, their best efforts weren't good enough and after a host of non appearances, stage collapses and awful gigs, the band split for good. Sadly, Paul Kossoff died in 1976 of an overdose - but his work lives on and some of Free's material is still worth slapping on your music player.

Currently playing on my highly unpredictable CD player is the title track of Marvin Gaye's finest album, the breathtaking 'What's Going On?' I'm glad to have it back in my album collection!

Been Big Chillin'....

I've just come back from five days in deepest Herefordshire, enjoying the Big Chill festival, set in a beautiful wooden valley.


View from the main stage looking up to the camp site

Happily, we didn't have to endure the mud tastic gloopsville of Glastonbury, with a schorchio sun getting the suntan lotion slapping all over.

We had a gazebo-tastic, king-size camp set up in the hills which was ridiculously comfy with tables, chairs and every creature comfort to hand. With not an all-night shite bongo player to be heard!

Latecomers to the festival weren't so lucky - once all the prime camping spots had been taken, campers had to hang on for grim life on uncomfortably sharp inclines (we saw at least one couple who had rolled out of their tent during the night!)

Highlights were the superb Jim Cauty (from the KLF) doing a striking video set on the Sunday night, a storming, tear-it-up gig by The Egg and the bonkers full on reggae version of Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon' by the appropriately named US band 'Dark Side of the Dub'.

The lowlights had to be the hopelessly inadequate bars which either ran out of beer and/or glasses constantly, or were so undermanned that waits of up to 50 minutes weren't unusual. And at £3.50 for a pint of Westons, I expect slightly speedier service!

But overall it was a load of fun and my body is suitably trashed right now.

I'll be posting up a comprehensive photo report in a few days...