A generation w@nked itself to sleep

alfirin_kirinki's birthday, is it? Marvellous. Have a good one!

Strange to think that was the first 53 I've caught in months, when once it was my route to work. The only change I spotted on the Old Kent Road was that the Beckett Bar was now back to being the Thomas a Beckett - plus closed and To Let. Some areas will resist gentrification to their last crack-tainted breath.
[Aside: I do wish my colleague would stop doing the 'comedy' Oirish thing so loudly every damn day. It wasn't funny the first time, and wouldn't be funny even were it less shrill.]
I was in such inhospitable climes to see The Vichy Government play the Angular Recordings launch at the Paradise Bar. I think this was the first club I'd ever attended whose posters consciously positioned it against "Simon Price's disco", so my feeling of being behind enemy lines was intensified. And the first band on didn't help; Jamie tells me they're Haines fans but it really doesn't show. In the singer's head, he is Black Francis; in my world he is a fat man playing uninspired indie.
Vichy, however, were on particularly good form; something about the venue's PA was making their keyboard sound even more malicious than usual. I think this was most of the audience's first Vichy experience, and several converts were made both pro and anti. Of the latter, particular notice must go to one heckler behind me who, aside from the standard "FVCK OFF!", answered Jamie's "How To Become A Cult Figure?" with "Get shot on stage at your first gig", and was heard expressing astonishment and regret that he'd put up posters for the show. Some people's Pavlovian response to the word "n1gger" obviously overwhelms any understanding of context, though I must confess I was glad of ansia's impressed presence down the front for the concrete proof it offered that Vichy aren't just an in-joke for jaded white metropolitans.
I didn't stay for The Swear; judging by the soundcheck, the pretty singer was their only merit, and she wasn't pretty enough to justify a whole set of their genericism.

Oh, and I'm still not tired of the DLR, which gladdens me.