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Sometimes I feel like I'm living at right angles to everyone else's London. Ironically, what brought this home to me was crossing Oxford Circus on the diagonal. How long is it since they relaunched it that way? Months, at least. Yet until yesterday I'd had no cause to see it, much less use it. Even yesterday I was cheating slightly, I needed to cross back across Portland Place further up, but it was too good a chance to miss.
Sobriety, like any altered state of mind, is quite fun as an occasional thing - but feels a bit worrying if you suspect it's becoming a habit. Spent Sunday and Monday lolling around abstemiously, watching Stephen Fry on Wagner and The Kid Stays In The Picture and such. By Tuesday evening, my craving for Pimm's and comedy was strong, which made it damned fortunate that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
diamond_geyser's living room Edinburgh previews have resumed. Unnervingly, her new house appears to be exactly the same as her old house, except with a different man in the basement. Tom Craine and Nat Luurtsema were the acts, neither names which meant anything to me beforehand and both with acts which were very much still works in progress, but entertaining nonetheless and I would recommend them to anyone spending August in the relevant bit of Scotland.
Then out again last night to the George Tavern. A lot of venues which strive to feel rock'n'roll are in fact just grotty and rubbish - the late and unlamented Nambucca being a particularly spectacular example - but somehow the George works it. The sound is not especially subtle, but the feel is right, and it thoroughly suited Bevan 17. The headliners were the Ethical Debating Society, a band I've been vaguely meaning to see for ages, and though they were pleasingly energetic, by the time they came on I was not. A couple of songs, then home.
I don't disagree with the general feeling that the new Gaga video is a bit of a let-down - but only as compared to its predecessors. It's still leagues ahead of something like the new Rihanna, in which she's apparently trying to set the record for Least Convincing Pop Video Sapphism. Not that starlets cavorting suggestively was exactly Gaga's invention, obviously, but the Rihanna effort just looks so tawdrily bandwagonesque. Whereas Kylie's 'All the Lovers' video, for all its literal mountain of writhing flesh, feels distinct. Because it's got its own personality - or rather her own personality, that old bright and sunny Kylie charm, just updated with a little more physicality.
Sobriety, like any altered state of mind, is quite fun as an occasional thing - but feels a bit worrying if you suspect it's becoming a habit. Spent Sunday and Monday lolling around abstemiously, watching Stephen Fry on Wagner and The Kid Stays In The Picture and such. By Tuesday evening, my craving for Pimm's and comedy was strong, which made it damned fortunate that
diamond_geyser's living room Edinburgh previews have resumed. Unnervingly, her new house appears to be exactly the same as her old house, except with a different man in the basement. Tom Craine and Nat Luurtsema were the acts, neither names which meant anything to me beforehand and both with acts which were very much still works in progress, but entertaining nonetheless and I would recommend them to anyone spending August in the relevant bit of Scotland. Then out again last night to the George Tavern. A lot of venues which strive to feel rock'n'roll are in fact just grotty and rubbish - the late and unlamented Nambucca being a particularly spectacular example - but somehow the George works it. The sound is not especially subtle, but the feel is right, and it thoroughly suited Bevan 17. The headliners were the Ethical Debating Society, a band I've been vaguely meaning to see for ages, and though they were pleasingly energetic, by the time they came on I was not. A couple of songs, then home.
I don't disagree with the general feeling that the new Gaga video is a bit of a let-down - but only as compared to its predecessors. It's still leagues ahead of something like the new Rihanna, in which she's apparently trying to set the record for Least Convincing Pop Video Sapphism. Not that starlets cavorting suggestively was exactly Gaga's invention, obviously, but the Rihanna effort just looks so tawdrily bandwagonesque. Whereas Kylie's 'All the Lovers' video, for all its literal mountain of writhing flesh, feels distinct. Because it's got its own personality - or rather her own personality, that old bright and sunny Kylie charm, just updated with a little more physicality.
