Books, Films, Gigs, and My Life!

( This is a little late, but click here for my views on Whitby this year! )

As this is a hugely long post I’m going to put all the pictures in the next post… :)

I had been waiting for years to see Placebo properly (I think I've seen them once before at a festival, but it wasn't too great), so it was great to see them. The evening started well, with my being able to push in right at the front of the queue as I had an O2 phone!! I must remember that for the next gig I go to at an O2 place, haha. Then when I got in there I saw Kassie and Hayley, and so stood with them at the front. The first band were a bit rubbish, a girl singing who sounded like she was trying to be Juliette Lewis - but failed - along with an extremely indie band, so that wasn't too great. They were definately just trying too hard. The second band were better, the music again was a bit meh, but the singer's voice was amazing. He was really wasted in that band, he would have been great in a goth band or something like that. Thinking about it his voice sounded a bit like Peter Murphy+Robert Smith+the guy from Muse. He was also extremely over enthusiastic, and jumped into the crowd during the first song, haha. The crowd seemed to take it quite well though, and didn't let him fall. I think he then tried to jump back onto the stage and missed, as everyone in that bit laughed, but he seemed ok and was laughing about it himself when he got back on stage.

Then after a short interval Placebo came on. It was a bit weird at first, seeing Brian Molko right there, after all the years I've liked them! But he's actually not as good looking now as he used to be, haha, which was a shame! He was also wearing one of those horrible men's V Neck tshirts, which I think is just horrible! Eugh! But anyway. They started with Nancy Boy, which was great. Unfortunately they didn't do Pure Morning, which I really really wanted to hear! It was good though, as even though I don't really know their two latest albums, I still enjoyed the gig. They covered "All Apologies", which was really good, "for absent friends" - so I wonder who that was! I can't remember all the songs exactly, but there were some good ones! In the gap between them going off and coming back on again at the end, guys with clown faces were shooting tshirts into the audience with these gun things which looked like they were gas powered, which I thought was great of them. In the encore this cannon thing near us kept shooting out confetti, which was pretty annoying - it was like watching a gig while it was snowing! Overall the gig was good, but I'd only give it 7.5 / 10 because they didn't play my favourite songs! :)

Argh they annoy me! Not everyone can get on with each other all the time - but surely they can at least speak civilly enough to each other to advance their business ventures. If people don't start talking to each other *everything* will fall apart. Of course I'm talking about Whitby, and the Goth weekend.

Theres so much talk about "official" and "unofficial" events, when really it doesn't seem to be about that now. Its just lots of venues in one place holding goth events, which combine to create the Whitby goth weekend. Plus events at the Abbey, despite being organised by English Heritage does that mean they're "unofficial" as well? :) I think the best plan would be to just create a list of the venues in Whitby which are able to hold events, a list of the people / organisations who wish to hold events, the dates they wish to hold their events on, and match them all up together. I know nothing about promotion of big music events, but this seems the most sensible, so it can all be decided to the benefit of everyone, *and* the goth scene and paying customers. As it's us who lose out the most, through the organisers ineptitude and bickering between themselves. It doesn't seem hard to be able to organise say 3 events on each evening - two band events and one club event - which should give enough choice for everyone. And if I think about it there are at least three music venues and two nightclubs (and thats not even counting the Spa).

Ah I don't know. I hope that even if there isn't anything "official" (argh that word again!) someone will still organise something in April and something in October. I really like Whitby as a town, and for somewhere to go on holiday, its really lovely. Or we could all just go to DV8 in York, as that sounds like an equally lovely city, and it was apparently excellent this year and had some great bands on!

FOR SALE: One ticket for Placebo on Monday 27th September, 2010, at Brixton Academy, London.

I bought this for a friend and she now can't go.

I'd like £35 for it, which includes recorded delivery (or signed for - can't remember the differences between them but I'll look it up, or please say which you'd like!) and paypal fees. I think on the ticket sites the ticket is £30, but then with fees etc (£5 a ticket on ticketmaster, and then postage on top of that!!!) it pushes the price up unfortunately :(

I will be posting this on either Thursday 16th or Saturday 18th September.

I really want to get rid of this so make an offer, or I may even part trade..although I really shouldn't!

Crossposted to a few other places.

I'm very behind on my book and film reviews, but I'm going to write about this while it was quite recently!

( Bloodstock, 13th to 15th August, 2010 )

Another update...now fully updated! :D

( Book Forty Two - Birdman by Mo Hayder )

( Gig at Slimelight featuring Nightporter, The Mumbles, Luxury Stranger and Voices of Masada, with XP8 during the night )

( Gig - Anathema )

( Book Forty Three - The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold )

( Book Forty Four - The People's Manifesto by Mark Thomas )

( Book Forty Five - The Last Dickins by Matthew Pearl )

( Book Forty Six - I Am Ozzy by Ozzy Osbourne )

To keep up with my goal for the year (10 books a month), I'll have to read four more books by Monday...I might read 3, but 4 might be a bit much! For the last few weeks the Times has been giving away books with it, a few of them look really good, and some are lesser known novels by famous authors, so they should be good. I might read a few of these to catch up as they are quite short! :)

Currently watching the second part of "Money", the adaptation of Martin Amis' novel, starring Nick Frost. I haven't read the book, but I have quite enjoyed the adaptation. Plus it has lots of great 80s music, even the mainstream stuff is really good. Hmm now they seem to be in the Winchester..haha.

This OU Archaeology course I'm doing is quite different from the other course, theres a lot more things to actually do and work out instead of it just being reading, but it is interesting. Although it has made me glad I didn't choose to do archaeology at uni - its a bit too much maths and science rather than just history. But still good! :)

( Film 27 - Jesus Christ Superstar )

( Book Thirty Nine - Riders on the Storm by John Densmore )

I’m just about to start “On The Road” by Jack Kerouac, I’ve read good things about it so I hope its good.

Oh and I bought tickets to see the March Violets today, woo! :D I can’t wait to see them again, especially as when I saw them in 2007 they said that was their only gig! And I will definitely buy a tshirt this time – I really regret not getting one last time.

Other good news...well good for me, not so much for other people...is that XP8 are playing at Slimelight on 15th May! I was planning to go anyway as there are some goth bands playing before Slimelight and the ticket gives free entry, so that’s a nice added bonus. They were meant to be playing in Sheffield that night, so that’s a bit rubbish about that gig being cancelled though – it seems like the Corporation have done that a few times. Although to be honest I don’t really mind, the less times we have to go to the Corporation the better really, as although it’s a good place for bands, its atrocious to get to and from!

The Whitby Goth Weekend in April 2010 is the next exciting thing I'm going to write about! :) It was only the second time we (me and Katie) had been, and will definately definately be going again! :)

We didn't get a ticket to the main event - at £40 for 6 bands I thought it was quite expensive, and there wasn't anyone I really wanted to see playing. Instead, we went to the Transmission night at the Met on Friday evening, the Costume Ball at the Met on Saturday, and to see Uberbyte at the Shambles on Sunday.

We got there ok on Friday, despite my atrocious direction following (NOT map reading - I'm good at reading the map, but just not the printed directions from multimap!) which meant we went the wrong way for a while....and the slight panic when an accident on the A171 meant we couldn't go the way we wanted to. But I map-read us out of that problem! :) We arrived too late to check in the hotel at lunchtime, so we just parked at the Leisure Centre Car Park and looked around some of the stalls, meeting up with Rob and Gemma for a while as well. Again I was disappointed that there was no vinyl for sale, but maybe that was a good thing otherwise I would have spent much more money than I did. As it was I just bought three cds from the Resurrection Records stall, from the sale section so they were £5 each! :)

The hotel was really lovely, such a nice room! We have one booked for October already (a different hotel), but maybe we'll go back next April :) There was a great idea for breakfast, as it was just put in a basket outside your room so you could have it any time you got up, instead of having to get up at a certain time, which was good! In the evening we met up with Katie's friend Emma and her friends (they were staying in the same hotel) and went to the Fish and Chip restaurant we went to in October. It was nice, again, and I again had Whitby Scampi, hehe :) Some of Emma's friends had some great steampunk outfits. There did seem to be a lot more steampunk dressed people around, and although I don't think I'd wear it (I prefer black and silver to brown and gold! :) ) it looks amazing. There were generally lots of lovely dressed goth people walking around, although less than in October. Looking around the shops on Saturday a little old man said how lovely our outfits were, it was really sweet, hehe. He generally sounded really impressed by everyone's outfits, hehe.

The night at the Met was good, some excellent music was played, a good mix of goth and 80s. It was a bit annoying as it was advertised as going on until 2am but closed at 1am, but it was still good. The costume ball on Saturday was great as well, we went as a queen bee (Katie) and a ladybird (me!). There was a guy disturbingly dressed in one of those...oh I can't remember what they are called, but like one of Sacha Baron Cohen's characters wears (I think)...it was horrible! Although he knew that so deliberatly stayed by the entrance so everyone was disturbed as they came in! Someone dressed as a gravestone won the "horror" catagory, a girl won the Superheros catagory, although I'm not sure who she was supposed to be! Her hair was all standing up on the top of her head (apparently it was dreads coiled round a wire frame) which looked great. and someone dressed as Osama Bin Laden won the "other" catagory. Some more good music was played here as well.

On Sunday we walked up to the Abbey, although didn't go into it, and had tea, which was nice :) The weather was really lovely so it was really nice to just walk around. Not so sure about all the goths posing on the gravestones though, I don't really like that. But that reminds me - I compiled a Goth I-Spy for Katie, it was great! :D And that was one thing I was going to add for next year, as well as Monks, a matching goth couple, and a few other things! :) Oh! and while we were sitting on the sea front (eating icecreams!) we saw goths bungee jumping!!! For a charity I think. It was a bit scary to watch though, I don't know why anyone would want to do it!!

Uberbyte's gig was really great. They played at the Shambles, which was a big pub on the side of the harbour bit - probably the only gig I've been to where I've been able to see the sea and the band at the same time! :) They played some great songs, and quite a few good new ones, I'm looking forward to hearing their new album, i think its out sometime this month. It was good to see there were lots of goths who like cyber as well as goth :) I actually got a couple of quite good pictures well, which was suprising as my gig pictures are usually just blurs! We spoke to them a bit after the gig as well, which was nice. All over the pub there were adverts for the DV8 festival, in York in July. It really looks great, theres some great bands/people playing, with a goth stage, industrial stage and a punk stage, all for £45. I really want to go, but need to find an affordable hotel first! :)

Whitby was really great, such a "nice" weekend. That is usually such a wishy washy word, but it was just so nice! So relaxing, and so nice to see everyone dressed up and everything. It always encourages me to wear more nice "goth" clothes and dress up more! Although not sure if I'll be able to do that as much now as I've broken my beautiful purple boots :( :( but its just the zip so I'm going to take them to the shoe place and hopefully get them fixed!

I've written quite a lot so I think I'll stop there, but might come back and edit it if I think of anything else cool we saw!

No books or films this time - mainly because I'm reading quite a boring book so its taking me a while to get through it, and plus I haven't been reading or watching films as much as I got all the stuff for the OU course I'm doing. I'm a bit ahead already though - I've already studied the first three chapters and should be on the first assignment, and the course hasn't even officially started yet! (It starts in March). I think I will just press on with it though, while I'm motivated to do it, and then discuss it with the tutor and make changes if I need to. Its really interesting so far, a little bit science-y, but not as much as I thought it would be, so thats good. Have done 2 1/2 hours of studying today, doesn't sound much, but considering I haven't really done any for about 5 years, I'm quite pleased with myself.

Having a bit of a weird day today, Katie went back to uni today, which always makes me feel a bit meh, and we went out to a gig and Slimelight last night, neither of which were as good as they could have been, so we just went home early and got the last train instead of the first train. but oh well. we've got other trips to slimelight planned, so hopefully they'll be better :)
( Assemblage 23 at Islington Academy, and Slimelight )

But ah well. Some things are good, some things are bad, thats just how it goes. Its strange writing things in here really, as I don't really know who I'm writing this for - just random people who come along, my online friends, or my real life friends. I've asked my real life friends enough times (Well through facebook) to add me if they have a Livejournal, but none of them seem to have done so. But oh well. I'll just carry on writing, its good practice for essays I suppose!

By the way, if you're just a random, Katie is my sister, we get on really well and I visit her a lot in Huddersfield where she's at uni! :)

Might watch a film tonight I think - after Lark Rise to Candleford that is! :)

*dances*

I've had a brill weekend!

First the amusingness of the Eurovision on Saturday, then Sunday went to see Panzer AG with Katie in London - ah they were so brilliant! And Andy LaPleuga looks so young! He's great :)

And the after that we went to Club Noir at the Electric Ballroom - ended up staying for 2 hours more than we planned to...and being the only ones on the bus on the way home! :)

and Andy LaPleuga DJed, and played some good stuff...and I've finally found out that the "exterminate annihilate destroy" song that I really like is by Rotersand! They're the next band on my list to see if they play! :)

Might be going to Slimelight next week, to see some bands - I'm undecided about it though!