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ventaIt's that time of year again. At least, it's one of the many times of year when I bugger off to Whitby. This one was goth flavour.
I've always driven up to Whitby after work on the Thursday, so I planned to that as usual. Sadly, I had forgotten several key facts, viz. I can no longer nick out of the office early, and I no longer work minutes away from a major motorway. After leaving my office at half past five, falling over a dangerous lump of fresh air on High Holborn and tearings holes in my hands, knee and jeans, and getting on a tube which got stuck in a tunnel, I'd have been setting off into bad traffic at 7pm. After mature consideration, I said 'sod it' and drove up Friday morning.
Just as well, really. I arrived on Friday afternoon in thick, thick fog (for those of you who know Whitby, I couldn't see the Royal Crescent until I reached the zebra...[*]).![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
davefish reports that the previous evening was equally foggy but, y'know, dark as well.
Rather disappointingly, the small flat I'd rented forkeris, Davefish and me to live in turned out to have a stair subsidy. Inside the front door, there were four flights of stairs before you even reached the kitchen. Ow. And some more steep and precipitous stairs to get to the bedrooms. Still, it was otherwise pretty nice. We tested its tea-drinking opportunities, and headed off to fill ourselves up with Chinese.
Getting ready (as ever) in a hurry to go to the Spa, I discovered that the dress I was planning to wear was only really suitable for people who were slightly less full of Chinese. And was making its opinions known by coming apart down one seam. In a hasty and rather contortionist manner, I sewed the seam up with a needle and thread borrowed from Keris, and made sure there were emergency safety pins available (also hers). I think this conclusively proves that, whatever she says, Keris is in fact a responsible adult.
Spurred on by a recent spate of non-shit bands at Whitby, I'd actually done a little revision and downloading of bands I didn't know. So I had, like, opinions and everything.
I'd only managed to find one Alexa de Strange track for download, and that suggested decent, poppy fun. Which was pretty much what we got. Eminently satisfactory for bottom-of-the-bill, but not terribly polished. The guitarist thought he was a guitar god; the bassist just thought he was a god. Also, if you're going to stand on a stage higher than your audience, don't wear a dress that short (YMMV).
I'd quite enjoyed the Cold in Berlin album I'd downloaded, but others dismissed them as "art wank"[**]. They're a rather stark guitar-based sound, with a singer who has the slightly screamy style often used to cover up a lack of singing ability - except she can actually sing. They seemed the exact opposite of the previous band; very tight, very together, very professional for a little-known band. And they even looked like they were enjoying it. Although the singer throws some bloody weird horror-film shapes at times.
They do suffer from occasional banality of lyrics - she takes a cigarette, from her packet of cigarettes, I ask you. But I really enjoyed them. Try White Horse if you fancy a bit of screamy art rock.
Top support was Vince Ray & the Boneshakers, a band whom I'd rather dismissed as sounding "exactly as you'd expect a band with that name to sound"[***]. There are actually only three of them - guitar, drums and double bass - and they play straight-up rock and roll. If they swore slightly less, you'd believe they were direct from the late 50s.
And then I wandered off to the foyer, and bought a pint, and got chatting to SF,john_the_hat and Kirsty. And at some point I realised Toyah was on and went to wave my ears at her. But it was late, I was quite tired, and she didn't really grab my attention. For the record, a large crowd seemed to be having a jolly nice time listening to her, so we will chalk this up as my failure rather than hers.
Saturday involved getting up earlyish to go and work on the Bring and Buy stall; as it often is in April, it was rather quieter. I boosted sales by buying a thoroughly ludicrous Batman dress. In the afternoon, we managed to turn "I should return a book toceb" into "seven of us should have a multi-course afternoon tea in Botham's". Dammit, why don't more places serve cinnamon toast and gingerbread-with-Wensleydale?
I wasn't doing any dressing-up to go out on Saturday, on the grounds I was going to be doing a lot of jumping up and down to music. And I have neither the balance nor the knees for doing that in heels. So, jeans and Converse for me. (This was the plan; there had very nearly been a Fashion Disaster the previous day, however, until Davefish pointed out that I'd got the two nights' line-ups wrong way round.)
I'd downloaded a Jordan Reyne album, and dismissed it as waily shite, so wasn't that bothered to be leaving a little late on Saturday. Several people assured me that, actually, she was very good... and what do you know? They're right. I arrived in time to catch half a song of excellent live-looped scary weirdness.
I've since listened to the album again, and warmed to it. Also, onvalkyriekaren's advice, I've listened to her version of Bedlam Boys. Which is good, but I don't get pairing it with footage of an early 20th C. steelworks. Surely if Bedlam Boys are famous for one thing it's for not having regular jobs.
UK Decay are allegedly a seminal punk-band, nowregurgitated reformed, but... they were pretty poor, to be honest. Out of time, out of tune, not that interesting, and possessed of the world's least pointful backing vocalist.
I'm still not quite willing to forgive The Last Cry for copping out and still not having a proper drummer, but they are still excellently-entertaining gothy electro pop. Disappointingly, someone seems to have got the singer an old-school microphone and he sings with one hand on it, meaning he no longer stares in horror at his own hands approximately four times per song. He still makes up for the other two having no facial expressions, though.
Now, earlier in the daywaylay had asked me about the headliners; she'd never heard them, were they any good? And I had to say that, in all honesty, New Model Army are a band I can't give you an objective opinion on. All weekend, unexpected faces had been showing up saying yes, of course we're here. NMA. You could barely walk round a corner withouth seeing three NMA shirts. The one thing I can categorically state is that NMA have a fanatical following, of which I have been one for (argh!) more than 20 years.
Waiting for them to come on stage, I was standing in the middle of a large crowd. People milled about, chatting and singing along to background music. A bizarre accordion rendition of Vagabonds started up, and the room came to attention. The band came on stage, and spontaneously the entire crowd to my right lost its shirts - I didn't see them disrobing, I think the shirts just vanished. I was, in fact, standing right on the end of the large and enthusiastic pit, which only stopped piling into each other for songs where it wanted to stand on each other's shoulders.
I'm smallish and inclined to fragility; I don't want to be in the pit. But nearby, where you can marvel at the weirdness of the spectacle, is fine (even if the price is occasionally having to catch a flying body). I also saw something I've never seen before. An extremely tall guy was standing on two other people's shoulders for Green and Grey. Before the first verse was over, the nearer supporting person was shaking badly, despited_floorlandmine's attempts to hold him up. In the end, a number of people held up upper guy's leg while supprting guy slid out and was replaced by someone new. In-flight refuelling. If you've never stood near one of the human towers at an NMA gig (or other gig? do they happen elsewhere?) you may not be aware that for one person to stand up there, there is a large support crew. In addition to the two people holding him up, there are people steadying them, people fore and aft steadying the upper person, and an extended network of watchers and catchers in case it goes wrong. It's all remarkably organised and considerably safer than you might expect.
I was also vastly amused by the number of people who came ricocheting out of the pit wearing ear plugs. "I don't mind being punched in the face, but I draw the line at hearing damage" :)
And the band? Well, they were pretty good, too :) The new bass player appears to double up on extra drums, and some of the new songs are very drummy. Even playing older songs, they had a really pound-y feel which I enjoyed a lot.
Sunday dawned foggy and horrible again, and I just about managed to pry myself out of bed in time to meet the parents for lunch. The slightly out-of-town Number 4 provided a most excellent lunch again, giving me just enough time for some last-minute shopping before Davefish and Keris decided it was tea-time. The new(ish) Diner on Flowergate turns out to serve Baileys milkshakes (I recommend them), and normal diner-y sort of food. Not being all that hungry, I estimated the size of their nachos portions based on the price and ordered one as a snack. Critical blunder! I forgot to allow for Yorkshire prices and portions. The waitress (on roller skates!) delivered my bowl, packed full of tortilla chips, melted cheese and pulled pork with a negligible garnish of rocket sitting on the top. I barely wounded it, and spent most of my time gazing hopefully out of the window in case someone I knew walked past and could be persuaded to help with a cheese-and-pulled-pork emergency. They didn't.
The three of us deviated slightly into The Wellington, where Last July were DJing, and did some sitting-about-chatting for digestive puposes before heading off to the 80s night.
Part of the problem with my minimalist Thursday-night-to-Monday-morning approach to Whitby is that - with evening events that start early, and run late, causing late gettings-up the next day - there is actually very little time. There are sufficiently many things happening at standard times that anything new is almost impossible to schedule. I managed very little sitting in pubs, for example. And not enough chatting. On Friday,maviscruet offered the option of boardgames over the weekend - but I simply didn't have a boardgame-shaped gap of time when I wasn't in the Spa, eating, working on a stall, or asleep. Maybe I need to sleep less. Or eat less. Or take Thursday off.
Still, in summary: brief but fun, good company as always, some decent bands.
[*] For those of you not familiar with Whitby's environs, that's zebra as in crossing, not as in quadruped. And an amount of visibility that would be described as "shite" on the shipping forecast.
[**] Which always reminds me of the possibly-apocryphal review of a dEUS album in NME. The reviewer started along the lines of "People dismiss this as art wank, but as a big fan of both art and wanking..."
[***] And contrary to my other claim based on their name, not one of them was dressed as a zombie.
I've always driven up to Whitby after work on the Thursday, so I planned to that as usual. Sadly, I had forgotten several key facts, viz. I can no longer nick out of the office early, and I no longer work minutes away from a major motorway. After leaving my office at half past five, falling over a dangerous lump of fresh air on High Holborn and tearings holes in my hands, knee and jeans, and getting on a tube which got stuck in a tunnel, I'd have been setting off into bad traffic at 7pm. After mature consideration, I said 'sod it' and drove up Friday morning.
Just as well, really. I arrived on Friday afternoon in thick, thick fog (for those of you who know Whitby, I couldn't see the Royal Crescent until I reached the zebra...[*]).
davefish reports that the previous evening was equally foggy but, y'know, dark as well.Rather disappointingly, the small flat I'd rented for
keris, Davefish and me to live in turned out to have a stair subsidy. Inside the front door, there were four flights of stairs before you even reached the kitchen. Ow. And some more steep and precipitous stairs to get to the bedrooms. Still, it was otherwise pretty nice. We tested its tea-drinking opportunities, and headed off to fill ourselves up with Chinese.Getting ready (as ever) in a hurry to go to the Spa, I discovered that the dress I was planning to wear was only really suitable for people who were slightly less full of Chinese. And was making its opinions known by coming apart down one seam. In a hasty and rather contortionist manner, I sewed the seam up with a needle and thread borrowed from Keris, and made sure there were emergency safety pins available (also hers). I think this conclusively proves that, whatever she says, Keris is in fact a responsible adult.
Spurred on by a recent spate of non-shit bands at Whitby, I'd actually done a little revision and downloading of bands I didn't know. So I had, like, opinions and everything.
I'd only managed to find one Alexa de Strange track for download, and that suggested decent, poppy fun. Which was pretty much what we got. Eminently satisfactory for bottom-of-the-bill, but not terribly polished. The guitarist thought he was a guitar god; the bassist just thought he was a god. Also, if you're going to stand on a stage higher than your audience, don't wear a dress that short (YMMV).
I'd quite enjoyed the Cold in Berlin album I'd downloaded, but others dismissed them as "art wank"[**]. They're a rather stark guitar-based sound, with a singer who has the slightly screamy style often used to cover up a lack of singing ability - except she can actually sing. They seemed the exact opposite of the previous band; very tight, very together, very professional for a little-known band. And they even looked like they were enjoying it. Although the singer throws some bloody weird horror-film shapes at times.
They do suffer from occasional banality of lyrics - she takes a cigarette, from her packet of cigarettes, I ask you. But I really enjoyed them. Try White Horse if you fancy a bit of screamy art rock.
Top support was Vince Ray & the Boneshakers, a band whom I'd rather dismissed as sounding "exactly as you'd expect a band with that name to sound"[***]. There are actually only three of them - guitar, drums and double bass - and they play straight-up rock and roll. If they swore slightly less, you'd believe they were direct from the late 50s.
And then I wandered off to the foyer, and bought a pint, and got chatting to SF,
john_the_hat and Kirsty. And at some point I realised Toyah was on and went to wave my ears at her. But it was late, I was quite tired, and she didn't really grab my attention. For the record, a large crowd seemed to be having a jolly nice time listening to her, so we will chalk this up as my failure rather than hers.Saturday involved getting up earlyish to go and work on the Bring and Buy stall; as it often is in April, it was rather quieter. I boosted sales by buying a thoroughly ludicrous Batman dress. In the afternoon, we managed to turn "I should return a book to
ceb" into "seven of us should have a multi-course afternoon tea in Botham's". Dammit, why don't more places serve cinnamon toast and gingerbread-with-Wensleydale?I wasn't doing any dressing-up to go out on Saturday, on the grounds I was going to be doing a lot of jumping up and down to music. And I have neither the balance nor the knees for doing that in heels. So, jeans and Converse for me. (This was the plan; there had very nearly been a Fashion Disaster the previous day, however, until Davefish pointed out that I'd got the two nights' line-ups wrong way round.)
I'd downloaded a Jordan Reyne album, and dismissed it as waily shite, so wasn't that bothered to be leaving a little late on Saturday. Several people assured me that, actually, she was very good... and what do you know? They're right. I arrived in time to catch half a song of excellent live-looped scary weirdness.
I've since listened to the album again, and warmed to it. Also, on
valkyriekaren's advice, I've listened to her version of Bedlam Boys. Which is good, but I don't get pairing it with footage of an early 20th C. steelworks. Surely if Bedlam Boys are famous for one thing it's for not having regular jobs. UK Decay are allegedly a seminal punk-band, now
I'm still not quite willing to forgive The Last Cry for copping out and still not having a proper drummer, but they are still excellently-entertaining gothy electro pop. Disappointingly, someone seems to have got the singer an old-school microphone and he sings with one hand on it, meaning he no longer stares in horror at his own hands approximately four times per song. He still makes up for the other two having no facial expressions, though.
Now, earlier in the day
waylay had asked me about the headliners; she'd never heard them, were they any good? And I had to say that, in all honesty, New Model Army are a band I can't give you an objective opinion on. All weekend, unexpected faces had been showing up saying yes, of course we're here. NMA. You could barely walk round a corner withouth seeing three NMA shirts. The one thing I can categorically state is that NMA have a fanatical following, of which I have been one for (argh!) more than 20 years.Waiting for them to come on stage, I was standing in the middle of a large crowd. People milled about, chatting and singing along to background music. A bizarre accordion rendition of Vagabonds started up, and the room came to attention. The band came on stage, and spontaneously the entire crowd to my right lost its shirts - I didn't see them disrobing, I think the shirts just vanished. I was, in fact, standing right on the end of the large and enthusiastic pit, which only stopped piling into each other for songs where it wanted to stand on each other's shoulders.
I'm smallish and inclined to fragility; I don't want to be in the pit. But nearby, where you can marvel at the weirdness of the spectacle, is fine (even if the price is occasionally having to catch a flying body). I also saw something I've never seen before. An extremely tall guy was standing on two other people's shoulders for Green and Grey. Before the first verse was over, the nearer supporting person was shaking badly, despite
d_floorlandmine's attempts to hold him up. In the end, a number of people held up upper guy's leg while supprting guy slid out and was replaced by someone new. In-flight refuelling. If you've never stood near one of the human towers at an NMA gig (or other gig? do they happen elsewhere?) you may not be aware that for one person to stand up there, there is a large support crew. In addition to the two people holding him up, there are people steadying them, people fore and aft steadying the upper person, and an extended network of watchers and catchers in case it goes wrong. It's all remarkably organised and considerably safer than you might expect.I was also vastly amused by the number of people who came ricocheting out of the pit wearing ear plugs. "I don't mind being punched in the face, but I draw the line at hearing damage" :)
And the band? Well, they were pretty good, too :) The new bass player appears to double up on extra drums, and some of the new songs are very drummy. Even playing older songs, they had a really pound-y feel which I enjoyed a lot.
Sunday dawned foggy and horrible again, and I just about managed to pry myself out of bed in time to meet the parents for lunch. The slightly out-of-town Number 4 provided a most excellent lunch again, giving me just enough time for some last-minute shopping before Davefish and Keris decided it was tea-time. The new(ish) Diner on Flowergate turns out to serve Baileys milkshakes (I recommend them), and normal diner-y sort of food. Not being all that hungry, I estimated the size of their nachos portions based on the price and ordered one as a snack. Critical blunder! I forgot to allow for Yorkshire prices and portions. The waitress (on roller skates!) delivered my bowl, packed full of tortilla chips, melted cheese and pulled pork with a negligible garnish of rocket sitting on the top. I barely wounded it, and spent most of my time gazing hopefully out of the window in case someone I knew walked past and could be persuaded to help with a cheese-and-pulled-pork emergency. They didn't.
The three of us deviated slightly into The Wellington, where Last July were DJing, and did some sitting-about-chatting for digestive puposes before heading off to the 80s night.
Part of the problem with my minimalist Thursday-night-to-Monday-morning approach to Whitby is that - with evening events that start early, and run late, causing late gettings-up the next day - there is actually very little time. There are sufficiently many things happening at standard times that anything new is almost impossible to schedule. I managed very little sitting in pubs, for example. And not enough chatting. On Friday,
maviscruet offered the option of boardgames over the weekend - but I simply didn't have a boardgame-shaped gap of time when I wasn't in the Spa, eating, working on a stall, or asleep. Maybe I need to sleep less. Or eat less. Or take Thursday off.Still, in summary: brief but fun, good company as always, some decent bands.
[*] For those of you not familiar with Whitby's environs, that's zebra as in crossing, not as in quadruped. And an amount of visibility that would be described as "shite" on the shipping forecast.
[**] Which always reminds me of the possibly-apocryphal review of a dEUS album in NME. The reviewer started along the lines of "People dismiss this as art wank, but as a big fan of both art and wanking..."
[***] And contrary to my other claim based on their name, not one of them was dressed as a zombie.
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no subject
Date: 2014-05-02 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-03 08:44 am (UTC)I don't think I've ever been quite that close to an NMA pit before, and it was strangely fascinating. Just noticing little details like every single person had taken their watch off (every so often people helpfully stuck their arms in the air so I could check).
no subject
Date: 2014-05-07 01:46 pm (UTC)I had not noticed the bassist doing that, but then as C may have related, I didn't notice the Koffin Kats swapping a guitar and a double bass mid-song.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-04 08:18 pm (UTC)Shhhh!!!
:)
no subject
Date: 2014-05-06 07:57 am (UTC)