i don't really enjoying starting my blog posts by apoligising for or explaining that for some reason or another something hasn't been done, but i do start a fair number of my blogs that way, that is the nature of my life, i have either been too busy or too distracted, that is the usual excuse.
so this is an apology in advance, as i get a feeling that updating my blog may be going on the backburner, so this is just a brief post to tide over whoever reads this until the next time i get a chance to impart anything worthwhile upon you.
i had hoped that this weekend would have proved good fodder for a couple of articles, yesterday i volunteered four hours at a community centre in tottenham as part of orange rockcorps, which i thought would make an interesting piece for the paper, but considering how far behind they are getting perhaps i should just leave it for now and try and hold back when i feel the urge to write.
and today i should have been eating free bbq food and drinking free sailor jerrys at the Major Lazer party at Notting Hill Carnival but i got there just in time to see the guestlist queue closed infront of me, so i guess that is another article that the Enfield Advertiser won't have to worry about finding the time to print.
i suppose this blog has been a little heavy on posts relating to my work for the Advertiser and music reviews, i'm hoping that it won't get too boring with a swath of home improvement based posts in the near future (or near-ish), but who knows how i'll be feeling and what i may have on my mind, but for now i'm gonna round out the long weekend in traditional bank holiday style by chilling with a Bond film on the telly....
while i'm glad that my latest article to be published in the Enfield Advertiser sheds light on a number of acts that i might not get a chance to feature individualy, i am slightly disapointed with the way it came across in print.
i don't think the picture used really did the story any justice in capturing an exciting underground movement and the bi-line made it sound as if the scene was focused on Bar Form, unfortunately the picture choice and bi-lines (and even the headlines) are not down to me, although i do try and make suitable suggestions, this time putting forward a handfull of great images of Deeds of the Dying...
i did suggest tho that since there were a lot of bands featured, it would be difficult to cram so many myspace addresses on the end of the article, so i perhaps they could point interested persons in the direction of my blog so that i could run my full length article and provide links to each of the bands mentioned.
enjoy.....
Uncovering the Enfield Undergound
Have you heard about the Enfield Underground?
This isn't a plan for a tube station in our fair town but probably the most loved scene among our boroughs musical tribes.
Ok, so i may have just grouped together a bunch of like minded bands in a rather journalistic fashion to create a nice catch-all term, but the ends justifies the means if it makes it possible to shift this columns focus to some of the heavier bands around.
And I can't even claim to have coined the term Enfield Underground, when Mark Riley organised a gig at Bar Form in April under the banner The Enfield Underground... Overground, featuring Syn-X, Sokit and Unexpected, the appeal of these bands was apparent and the name seemed to be rather appropriate.
It is all large riffage, pounding drums, Famous Stars and Straps t-shirts and maniacally screaming vocals for the most part... not always to everyones taste and quite unfairly overlooked by your local rag... until now.
Heading up my list of personal favourites from the scene are Deeds Of The Dying and Sokit, both full of youthful ambition and genuine talent that only seems to grow with every gig they get under their belts.
9blind have been making waves right across the scene with their latest long-player 'A Negative Response To Change', that was released earlier this year, and blisteringly well received recent live shows.
And Syn X are yet another local band that have inspired savage devotion with their ridiculously hard n fast playing.
Edging away from the borders of screamo, a new EP has recently been released by From Great Height that takes the ever popular metal template and heightens it with searing elements of 70's prog-rock, while for a more FM friendly style you should look in the direction of Enemy Planet, a female fronted band that rock out in a style similar to Paramore, with catchy hooks.
Many of the bands mentioned share their fan-base, share the same bills and in some cases also share the same band members, cultivating a fanatic sense of community among everyone that frequents their gigs, either onstage or off.
For now I can only provide the briefest overview of a number of the bands but with future columns I will look a little closer at a handfull of these acts that have been rocking the suburbs.
credit where it's due: Deeds of the Dying photo by Laura Harvey
once again the mindless majority have every saturday from now until christmas all mapped out.
x-factor has started and yet again it will be near inescapable, with inevitable facebook statuses and tweets about it clogging up social networking, voiced opinions in every pub, school and workplace and any upset or utterance concerning contestants or judges preposterously passing for 'news'.
i would usually avoid it like the plague but i made a decision that as a music journalist i should actually sit myself down and at least watch the first episode in the name of research and report my findings.
i was hoping to be completely and utterly repulsed by it, i thought this would make a great article if it was full of bile for Simon Cowell's unstoppable cash-machine, but to be honest i couldn't even muster the passion to despise it.
it just bored me.
of course i have no kind words to say about it and sternly remain anti X-factor but i at least wanted to feel some sort of reaction to the programme other than indifference.
and of course it was a vapid showing of 'entertaining' individuals and groups as they embarrass themselves in front of a nation just for their fifteen seconds of fame (or a lifetime on youtube) but do we ourselves believe that they believe they have any talent, they are there purely for their brief moment in the spotlight knowing that this is the type of dross that gets on the telly.
and it is now that i realise that i don't hate a television programme that lets people chase their dreams, that gives them a chance to reach a wider audience and even allows a select few to achieve the status of celebrity that they so desire.
any sense of disdain i have is for those people that actually choose to watch it and can't see through the blatantly orchestrated cranial numbing drivel that they are being drip-fed by the show's puppetmasters, and whose only attempt at validating their viewing habits is proclaiming that 'some of the auditions are really funny'!
i'm disgusted by the way society seems to converge on sofas every week to expose themselves to such drivel and that it has somehow become a national obsession, with some people even going as far as making their plans revolve around watching the X-factor at all costs.
and i know more than afew people that were vocal of their support to get Rage Against The Machine to number one ahead of last year's X-factor winner but were still guilty of flocking to their idiot boxes every saturday night and seemingly enjoying it.
i just can't accept how people that i know that consider themselves 'music fans' will still tune in week after week to possibly the world's biggest marketing tool and subscribe to this heightened state of consumerism gone mad.
just an unfortunate accident i presumed, some sort of glitch in the matrix.
i'd inform my editor and let her know so that it could be reinstated.
turns out that the head honcho at glasswerk took a dislike to some of the gonzo elements of the review, feeling that my guestlist woes really had no place within the feature.
perhaps it detracted from Mr Fogg.
perhaps it's cos it's a trade secret that reviewers don't actually pay to get in places, or perhaps reviewers are considered as gig going apparitions that just float through the walls of venues, either way, they just pulled it completely.
i took the news humbly, tho i was slightly baffled as to why it couldn't have just been edited, and then offered to rewrite the piece without the offending comments as i didn't think it was particularly fair to Mr Fogg to lose out on any kind of exposure due to something i had written about an experience that he had no control over.
i harbour no hard feelings over it at all, somebody made a decision that something didn't belong and that was that, if anything i feel an intense satisfication and a sense of pride that the words i had written provoked such a reaction.
this week has indeed seen my eventual return to the pages of the Enfield Advertiser, picking up with my feature on Room 9, although i thought they was intending on publishing the following article to coincide with the rather forgettable Fake Festival that it appears that nobody actually went to...
here's hoping this one will make it to print eventually as i think it raises some good points....
i was intrigued to find out quite how succesful Enfield's 'Fake Festival' could possibly be.
but since nobody from their press office responded to any of my enquiries about covering the event for the paper i'm afraid there isn't much more i can tell you.
i certainly wasn't willing to spend £25 (or £30 on the door) to see three tribute acts in a local park, and i wondered how many other people would have spent out on it considering everyone i had spoken to shared my stance on the ticket price.
even tickets for under 18s would have been setting them back £20.
taking into consideration the fact that there were 5 other support acts playing throughout the afternoon including a couple of specially picked local bands, it still felt like this was a disproportionate charge.
The biggest question though, should be that if Enfield can have a 'Fake Festival', why can't we have a real music festival?
We definetly have more than enough willing bands operating in our borough to fill up a whole weekend, my previous articles looking at local acts and coverage of gigs held by Rock For Change and Bar Form are quite clearly testament to this.
Teenagers and young adults across Enfield are clamouring to go out and enjoy themselves whenever they are able to do so, discovering new experiences and new music, so it is such a shame that Enfield Town's first ever dedicated music festival amounts to a handful of tribute acts, hardly something for anybody to be getting excited about.
Teenagers and young adults are clamouring to go out and discover new music, so it is such a shame that Enfield Town's first ever dedicated music festival amounts to a handful of tribute acts, hardly a reason for anybody to get excited.
The passion to support music shown by under 18s is still so strong despite having few oppurtunities to attend gigs locally and they would certainly lively up a field, while those above the legal drinking age would also relish a decent festival on their doorsteps and likely keep beer tents busy all day long.
mix in a few up and coming acts with a known reputation and, although being far from Hyde Park standards, Enfield could have a festival to really be proud of.
and if success provides a scope to stage such a thing annually
i couldn't possibly comment on the logistics of such an event, but surely we have the performers and the passion to make such a thing a real possiblity.
so, i originally featured this little article over at glasswerk's blog, and if you have an interest, you can read the live review it refers to here (erm, ok, actually it isn't over there, it seems to have gone missing!?)
...... but anyway, read on.
'hi james, this is glen from glasswerk. i'm meant to be reviewing Mr Fogg but i'm at the venue now and they don't have me on any guestlists. if you could get back in touch i'd appreciate it'
twenty five minutes past seven and i'm stood outside Bar Academy Islington cursing the PR guy that was meant to be sorting tonight out, i've just hung up after leaving a message on his mobile and the only sense of relief is that i actually had the foresight to print out the email he'd sent earlier which thankfully had a phone number on, for all the good it did me.
and this isn't even the start of my grievances, it was only by chance that i thought to check out who the other support acts would be, only to find that Mr Fogg actually was the support, the first support on, which was not mentioned in any of the mail-outs or correspondence, not even when i checked that i was definitely down to review it that morning, so i reckon that since doors opened at 7, that Mr Fogg will likely be on in about five minutes.
i fire off a quick text incase he's one of those people that doesn't answer calls from numbers they don't recognise and hope that i hear back soon as we retreat to the kooky homeware shop downstairs that i had already dragged my girlfriend away from once, partly because the sale on the house hasn't gone through just yet and i insist on not buying anything for it too soon, but mostly because i didn't want to be late for the artist i was supposed to be reviewing.
she nonchalantly looks at teapots and tea cups and fluffy wall mounted animal heads while i continue brooding and cursing the PR guy, i apologise for having dragged her out, spending money on travel and a subway each unnecessarily when we really should be saving our money for the mortgage and for the house instead of making wasted trips to Islington, she hardly seems too bothered, and i wish the salt and pepper grinders she is looking at had the same calming effect on me as it seems to for her.
after a once around the shop, a little more brooding and cursing and a little more apologising i decide that i might as well give the old, 'i'm on the guestlist' routine one last futile attempt before we go, perhaps they had misspelt my surname or something, clutching at straws before we called it a night.
lo and behold, did the guy on the desk recognise me from earlier and mutter something about having the guestlist arrive now, printing off my tickets and handing them over, i didn't ask for a full explanation of events as Mr Fogg had already started and i had to call over to my girlfriend to get her over here and in the venue before she got distracted by any other shops.
so i'm in, Mr Fogg is pretty much exactly what i expected him to be, it's a shame there aren't more people to witness his one man fiddly little electronics show, it is uplifting and engaging, but it is still early and only barely more than a handfull of people mingle about, not daring to cross the invisible barrier and get too close to the stage, and i think how there would have been two less people here enjoying it if i hadn't decided to give it another go on the door, it was only pure chance considering that i hadn't heard back from anybody at all.
it would be an hour and a half later when i get a text proclaiming 'fucks sake, sorry mate, here's james number.......', not only an hour and a half later but an hour after the guy i was meant to be reviewing had left the stage, but i was in somehow, and that was what mattered, but the irony was not lost on me when Mr Fogg played his last song, 'this is called Answerphone'.....
it has been 3 months since Rock For Change's Big Gig at the Milfield Arts centre in march.
and since then, disappointingly and inevitably they have once again struggled to find bars and venues willing to let a younger audience attend gigs.
But after a hiatus, the campaign once again touches down in Enfield, finding a new home at the Live Room in Palmers Green for a battle of the bands contest.
five acts were pitted against each other after topping a qualifying vote held via facebook, with the winning band filling a support slot at Enfield Town's Fake Festival
.
(why these five local bands weren't already considered for the support slots is another gripe i have with the Fake Festival, but let's carry on regardless)
Red Monday were first up, kicking things off with a mature and impassioned performance that would have gone down well with any festival crowd and then Hurricane Season followed. Considering the infancy of the band the post-hardcore band were supported by a steady stream of followers as the band powered through their 25 minute set, keen to make an impact and win over voters.
Syn-X took to the stage to give Hurricane Season a lesson on how to really rock a crowd, introducing themselves as 'the heavy band' and advising the more discerning members of the audience when it was safe to take their hands from over their ears. thrashing out to a thrilled crowd with lead singer/screamer Johnny Bailey possessing personality enough to fill the room. those less interested in the heavy heavy metal were appeased slightly with Rihinna's 'Rude Boy' being transformed into a metal machination.
I have been entertained by the preppy punk styling of Double A before and yet again they do not disappoint. crude yet all done in jest. they neither take themselves too seriously nor treat their band like a joke. from a band with vulgar lyrics and cover versions of Black Eyed Peas and Justin Beiber this is rather a hard balance to strike yet these guys attain it with seemingly minimal effort.
and then onto final act, Kids Uncanny, a band that i have reviewed a few times and make no secret of my passion, and yet again they turn out a set that perfectly showcases their abilities to write great songs and work a crowd, taking the contest in their stride.
claiming the festival support slot after overwhelming voting, Kids Uncanny clearly have the talent to cut a swathe across the local scene and position themselves as the Enfield band to keep an eye out for. hopefully big things will be abound for them very soon.
the editor said my article would be in this week's paper.
it wasn't.
stir in a number of emails back and forth between me and our solicitor's in which i think i managed to piss her off because i don't really understand all the jargon bullshit and i also insinuated that nothing had progressed for weeks.
top another wednesday off by heading out to a gig i'm meant to review and finding out that not only is the guy i'm meant to be reviewing not headlining at all, he is in fact the first support on, but add to the mix that i'm not on any of their guestlists.
long story short, i got in, and the review should be up on glasswerk shortly because i've had a rather productive hour and a half and not only completed my review of last night but also knocked out another blog/article based on last night's experiences, so keep your eyes peeled for that one too (unless you plan on looking out for it in the Enfield Advertiser, in which case you might as well hibernate for six months).
and so around these parts you should be expecting a fair few music related pieces coming soon as i have also got my write-up of monday's Battle of the Bands gig and my *ahem* 'review' of Enfield's truly likely to be absolutely spectacular Fake Festival !!!
all of that is without even mentioning the truly cheesey new-wave band that actually were headlining last night, i certainly wouldn't spend fifteen quid to go and see China Crisis live, but their music was pure teen movie montage material which was nigh impossible to not like and the camp, expletive-ridden between song banter was surely a highlight of what was possibly the most enjoyable band i have seen for a long time!!
but before all of that kicks off, let's breifly revisit my mild obsession with Synchromystiscm, and a quote that i think really sums up how i think it should be viewed, treating it as a curiousity to be observed instead of merely letting the coincidences pass us by.
"Unless we prefer to be made fools of by our illusions, we shall, by carefully analysing every fascination, extract from it a portion of our own personality, like a quintessence, and slowly come to recognize that we meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life."
why is it that writing articles to a 350 word quota must be so difficult?
i'm currently sat knocking out my review of last nights Rock For Change Battle of the Bands and at first check my incomplete article is already 450 words, so stay tuned for the directors cut of that piece over here soon (probaly way before publication) and with any luck i should have my articles back in print from this week.
the whole of enfield waits with baited breath for copies of the Advertiser to drop through their letter boxes tomorrow........
and so i was also debating what to write for my follow up post after getting a little wayward with that slightly lengthy post on synchromysticism
i thought perhaps maybe another sklightly lengthy post on synchromysticism....
but to be honest there are plenty of other people that do it better than i do, and that have got the time and the inclination to study the intricacies of symbology and syncs...
my girlfriend is convinced that i'm likely to go mad obsessing over these inexplicable coincidences....
(shit, how did i not get that michael j FOX was the star on teenWOLF, how did i miss that one?)
... but i just like reading other peoples theories and finding something other than constantly refreshing facebook to occupy my time. sadly my brain doesn't have the capacity to constantly link greek gods to the rise of the autobots and have a rich understanding of erm... pentagrams (honestly, i don't know) and the jupiter finger.
i am constantly intrigued by what other people believe and have a hunger for knowledge (since my mind is mostly full of useless info) and i am also interested in how religion plays a part in people's lives and artistic legacies.
i am well aware that i have been annoying my girlfriend with too much talk of foxes and how everything is connected......
but it is!!! (isn't it?)
yes, there are other people that do it better, but after pointing out (the most striking) syncs i have seen i see yet more....
so lets keep this brief (pah)
i read that Maid Marion is a sync with Mary Magdalene and the word Mum (MuM)
countdown has been constantly referring back to Mary Marvel
i decided to have another listen to the music of Marvin the Martian
oh, but not just that i've also read about the dark star, Sirius. which other blogs have linked to The Dark Knight (Why so Sirius?), low and behold, the comics i am reading have seen Jason Todd (a former Robin that died at the hands of The Joker) teamed up with Donna Troy, who once held a position as a Darkstar
it's nigh impossible to keep these things simple when trying to point out the multiple ways these thing cross over, like, harking back to my last post, since not only has CHRISTian Bale played patrick BATMANe, he is also the new John Connor (JC again) in Terminator: Salvation, of course Arnie is THE terminator and the terminator can be linked to duality (just take a look at the posters, reminiscent of Two-Face?)) and we also saw Arnie as Mr Freeze battling against Fantastic Mr Clooney in the Batsuit in Batman and Robin.
ok, that's enough from me, i can't realy do it justice with my limited knowledge but the whole concept of synchromysticism is intrigueing and if this is of any interest i beg you to follow it a little bit further.
and after all that, i'm not particularly sure if i can see all the ways the world is connected, or if i'm just such a big geek that i can't help but spot how almost anything will link back to Batman.
my mind wanders. quite alot. it wanders further than you should reasonably allow a curious child to wander from yourself when it is in your care. i should hold my mind's hand. but i guess that really makes no sense. actually it wasn't even the point of this post to make nonsense. but i like thinking. and writing. and i spend a lot of time thinking about writing. more time than i ever manage to spend writing. and i also spend time reading. and with a wandering mind it is easy to get distracted. and sometimes there is nothing i like more than getting distracted. and this is a style of writing i haven't tried before. well not very often any way. this is all non-related to what i want to blog about (getting distracted again).
the point of this post was to draw a little link between somethings that have been playfully skipping across my mind recently.
because the internet is so wide and expansive and it becomes so easy to get caught in the same trappings over and over i do try to follow links and threads to new places. and i can't even remember how i found the concept of syncromystycism but what is important is that i did (actually it's not even that important, but it has been eye opening).
and it caught my curiosity again and again i clicked through to a couple more blogs and continued reading.
now. syncromystiscm is new to me, and it relates to patterns that emerge again and again and the connections that can be made, and some people like to read a lot into these things and some people's heads are full of conspiracy theories and some people are well versed on matters of symbology... i am not, but i find it amazing how once i was made aware there were so many syncs that i could also see once i had been made aware of their existence
blah blah blah. cue images of her in promotional posters for Hard candy in a red hood and then tenuous links to her co-star in Juno, Jason Bateman, linked to Batman.....
Batman you say??? great, my mind ran wild as i pieced together for myself that Christian Bale not only played Patrick Bateman in American Psycho but also Batman in the new Christopher Nolan films, which also neatly links back to Nolan's Inception.
Nice and neat. all done.
nope.
obviously something must have been triggered in my brain, as later in the evening as i ran for (and subsequently missed) a bus i was faced with a poster for a community play of Robin Hood (harking back to the images in the video).
strange i thought. and was done with it.
but my mind got another jolt later in the evening, at my girlfriend's house watching frequently asked questions about time travel, when one of the characters pulls a red hoodie up over his head.....
bit weird now.
but anyways, that was that, until the next morning when i found myself thinking about it a little bit more.
about batman. and foxes. and red hoods. and robin hood. and how how in the current story i am reading, Batman's former sidekick, Jason Todd (a former Robin) is travelling the multiverse alongside Donna Troy, Jason Todd of course made a (rather unnessary) reurn to the DCU as the Red Hood!?? bloody hell.
hang on, there's more.
i suddenly realised that having got home on sunday and milling about readying myself to go out again, Teen Wolf had began on the telly, the wolf linking not only to the video clip i had watched but also to the Red Red Hood theme! Bloody Hell!!??
aside from all that there is also a whole host of other little connections and wonderful coincidences, such as Cillian Murphy opposing Bale's Batman as the Scarecrow/ Jonathan crane (the JC/Jesus Christ symbolism seems to run deep and again comes back around to the Inception/Oz sync). Ellen Page also starred in Whip It, directed by Drew Barrymore, who crept up in Batman Forever as Sugar on the arm of Two-Face/Harvey Dent, a clear resonance of duality, and in the film we had Two-Face teaming up with the Riddler played by Jim Carrey (JC again) to take on Val Kimer's Batman. Val Kilmer had of course previously played Jim Morrison in The Doors and a huge Jim Morrison Poster is clearly visible on the wall of a deserted club frequented by vampires (syncing with the bats) in Lost Boys which i had only just watched earlier that week. Lost Boys and Batman Forever were both directed by Joel Schumacher, who again worked with Jesus Carrey for the Number 23 (another film i have been watching recently and is of course ridiculously filled with an overwhelming abundance of synchronincitys surrounding the 23 enigma).
all leading to the obvious conclusion that it is a syncers life for me.
so with this little whirring of excitement sparking all kinds of synapses in my brain i was feeling a little giddy as i cycled on monday morning.
and almost screamed with joy when it dawned on my that Fantastic Mr Fox was voiced by none other than George Clooney??!!! yep, and George Clooney also filled out the Batsuit in Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin!!!??
geeez, this was all far too much for me and i was grinning from ear to ear!
and everything tied together rather nicely as a little further along the journey as i exited the park and turned onto a small residential road i took a look left and felt it had all come full circle as i was looking straight into the eyes of a fox that stopped and looked straight back at me as it paused in an alley between residential homes. it felt like we had connected. and that everything is connected.
if you know Batman as well as the next geek then you will already be well aware of Frank Miller's Batman: Year one and most likely hold it in high esteem.
within Year One Batfan's were given an edgy retelling of the caped crusaders earliest experiences tackling crime in Gotham City, something that Christopher Nolan drew heavily on for Batman Begins.
we saw a young Bruce Wayne get his arse handed to him, we saw him brawling with prostitutes and we saw him bleeding all over his expensive furniture after a rough night.
we saw the things that make Batman what he is today emerge and we saw some rather iconic panels of storytelling.
there was one thing however that we did not see, and, living legend in his own right, Kevin Smith has gone and thrown a bone of contention among the devoted with this panel from his latest issue, showing Batman reflecting upon one of those said iconic panels and giving us a little more information that we needed.
since my original 'sung' version of vcr has ceased to exist because i have failed to keep my fileden account active, and after mentioning it while posting up the video for my new 'spoken word' version i thought i may as well revive it and put both versions on here to listen to and download in all their glory.
so if you liked what you heard on the video, help yourself to an mp3 of it right here
