Flashback: December 27-31, 2004

[alexsarll]

I've already polished off The Black Dahlia (entertainingly sordid) and The Leopard (magnificently depressing) since I finished work; now I manage to conclude Veniss Underground (acceptably baroque) and How To Be Idle (gently inspirational) before the birthday festivities commence. This year I find some of my homies on the route down and two more already ensconsed, so am spared last year's anxious wait. The T Bird's resident bankrobber is, unsurprisingly, in attendance but this year he doesn't remember me, instead having a go at us for being fooking students. After we prove him wrong with a show of hands, even the landlady gets tired and he's out on his ear. Sure, he's a regular customer but drunk as he is, 30-odd of us are going to drink more, innit? And he'll probably have forgotten the slight by tomorrow. Alas, similar democratic thinking doesn't stop them turning off the jukebox and installing a DJ, even if he does pay me brief musical tribute. But all this is distraction; the awkward date notwithstanding, many of my fine friends attended and took much of the edge off the annual notification of my entropisation. For this I thank you. And I even managed not to pass out until the aftershow, and that in the company of those rare beasts, friends of mine who don't write on me.

I'm back in the venue of said afterparty within 24 hours. dickon_edwards brings a plush Cthulhu to dinner; there's not really anything one can say to that, is there? I am consulted the next day as to what actually happened; non-drinkers aren't the only ones who can serve as a "repository of good times".

On the 29th I find a Violet Indiana single I didn't know existed; fortunately, so doing also enables me to contribute effortlessly towards the tsunami victims. In the magnanimous spirit this engenders I head for the pub where for reasons which don't really bear explanation, atommickbrane's crew are attempting to drink a Star of David around the British Museum. Unlike the last pub crawl I attended, this one's ridiculously slack, and by the time I depart they've already settled. That's the spirit!

Catch up with saraviolet et al in Dread Hoxton on the 30th; having read a Gaiman story in which Cthulhoid murders occur in Shoreditch on the Tube over, and had quite the worst pesto of my life just before that, I'm a little on edge.

I'm a late starter on New Year's Eve, which is probably for the best; on top of that I'm drinking Archers & lemonade that the sugar might counteract my narcoleptic tendencies. The first impressively hammered performance is missfrost; it takes a four-man relay even to get her to the party. As she's carried in, I ask,
"When have you been drinking since?"
"1984."
Most of us make it down to the Crouch End clock tower for a somewhat befuddled guess at when midnight might be. Proceedings decline inevitably into various flavours of carnage. Goodbye, 2004. Many of my friends have made grand pronouncements about how you treated them, but I just carried on along my orbit, no more discontent than this parallel guarantees. I suspect 2005 might be fairly similar.

Comments

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

Well we did 4, didn't we? And Pete, Tim and Aaron finished the crawl, so it wasn't entirely abandoned. You should have stayed for the Top 100 Songs Of All Time.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Even had I not been needed elsewhere, such exercises often bring out the worst in me, so that may have been for the best.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

That's the whole POINT of these lists, evidenced by song no 100 = the 7.1 seal of doom.

[icecoldinalex.livejournal.com]

"After we prove him wrong with a show of hands"

is that like a Robert Shaw/Richard Dreyfuss Jaws 'city hands' kinda thing? if so, props to you and your homies!

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

No, we just established that none of us were students at present and that a minority of us even had degrees.

[kiss-me-quick.livejournal.com]

...a somewhat befuddled guess at when midnight might be.

I knew when midnight was! But no-one listened to me!

[ex-dumbgenius.livejournal.com]

The talking cLock was engaged just before 12!

[kiss-me-quick.livejournal.com]

I check my watch with the pips on the radio every weekday.

[darkmarcpi.livejournal.com]

I love all the songs from Violet Indiana's debut Choke EP, plus a small smattering of songs from their debut album and the odd one from their new one. But overall there seems to be something deeply unsatisfying about their music. Maybe it's the nagging suspicion that VI just aren't as good as they should be, and that the emotional import and delivery of the songs isn't as impactive as it thinks it is.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yes, they're one of those bands where I listen to an EP and think 'That was good - why don't I listen to it more often?' before forgetting about it for another year. TBH I think of them more as a footnote to Mono than a band in their own right.

[darkmarcpi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know what you mean. I view them as a Cocteau Twins spin-off, but not as good. Or as good as Mono.

Mono really should've made another album. They could've been at least as big as...er, Saint Etienne, or something.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Similarly, when I explain to people how Keane used to sound like Stars, I then have to admit that Stars only sell about 100 copies of their records so I can kinda see Keane's point.

[darkmarcpi.livejournal.com]

Do you really think Keane used to sound like Stars? I'm not sure I do. Much as I love Stars, they're all twee, shy sensitivity, whereas Keane - then and now - are more blustery and grandiose-sounding.

I think the most accurate (early) Keane comparison is with A-ha. Non-guitar dominated happy-sad pop with liberal electronics and fantastic, heartbreaking falsetto vocals.

I still really like the Keane album; it's a good pop record. I just find it amazing that the the band and/or record company didn't realise that the synth-pop version of This Is The Last Time - which is only available from filesharers, I believe - is so infinitely superior to the one that was released, twice, as a single.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Do you have any Stars other than Heart, btw? That's all I'm going on. But I think that and Keane share a certain wistfulness.
Two things I noticed:
1) When you burned me the synthpop version it was 'This Is The Last Time (New Version)'. Wonder what the even earlier version sounded like?
2) I noted on the album that 'TITLT' and a few others have a fourth chap on the writing credits. Maybe it was just that when he left he took his synth with him?

Also: Saturday's Guardian reviewed a book of Gothic tales by one Mark Samuels. A very obvious pseudonym there, sir...

[darkmarcpi.livejournal.com]

I have their 'Nightsongs' album downloaded on my hard drive. It's similar to 'Heart' and thus good. Also includes their cover of This Charming Man. I don't listen to the album much though. I've also got The Comeback EP in MP3 form (two of the songs from which - Krush and The Aspidistra Files - are really good) and the Elevator Love Letter CD single. Can burn it all onto a CD for you if you want. (I like being able to give my friends gifts which are cheap and effortless but pricless in their own way...). Oh, I believe they covered Stay With Me Tonight on that Human League tribute album too.

1) I think my labelling may have been erroneous. On Soulseek the track is commonly known as 'TITLT Demo version'. (There are loads of Keane demos floating about, although no other synthy ones sadly). And the recent re-release of the track has 'TITLT - demo' as one of its b-sides, although I haven't heard it so don't know whether it's the version you know or another one.

2) The fourth member was, ironically, their guitarist. He used to be in the band for a while, and loads of the internet demos have his innoffensive guitar on them. I think the pianist in Keane is probably the one with the synth - a couple of b-sides and at least one album track are essentially all electronic, though not quite as majestic as we'd like.

I'm not bothering with a pseudonym - they just spelt my name wrong as so many peons do.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I'd never connected the League cover with them - how foolish of me! But yes, said CDR would be very welcome.

Elcka may be a little...*sweaty* for you, but I doubt you'll feel cheated of a quid.

[darkmarcpi.livejournal.com]

Oh, by the way...at the weekend I bought the Elcka album Rubbernecking, as it only £1 for the CD. Bought wholly on your recommendation, so it better be worth it...

[alexdecampi.livejournal.com]

The Leopard is one of my favouritest books ever, not that this will surprise you in any way.

And dammit, now I really want a plush Chthulu.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

The main surprise is that no one else has chimed in on that point yet! It's the first book I've read in a while which has jumped straight to classic status in my personal esteem without needing some mulling over first. And it's not exactly obscure, unlike some of my favourites. So why have so few of The Youth Of Today read it?
I spotted DVDs of the film adaptation in the NFT shop on Saturday. And as much as I like what I've seen of Visconti, the idea of Burt Lancaster as Don Fabrizio...just no.

The plush Cthulhu was from a comic shop in Ipswich, of all places, so I'm sure somewhere in London would have some, most likely Forbidden Planet.

1984?

[missfrost.livejournal.com]

I'm obviously wittier when drunk. And I sobered up later.
(I do have no memories of how I got to Jodie's, but remember lots from later that night. And I did the clock tower conga.)

Re: 1984?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Of course, you may just have misunderstood the question and estimated when you first ever boozed...