levers.tripod.com/blog
« March 2006 »
S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30 31
You are not logged in. Log in
Entries by Topic
All topics  «
Film
Football
levers
levers.tripod.com
Obituary
Pop
The Automobile
Travel
TV
Blog Tools
Edit your Blog
Build a Blog
RSS Feed
View Profile
Thursday, 23 March 2006
Fly round the world for less than a pound.... (maybe not)
Topic: levers
Yes, yesterday’s rant wasn’t just because I was having a bad day. Oh no. Already I’ve marched my way down to STA travel and handed over a thousand pounds and demanded that they send me (in this order) to Los Angeles, Auckland, Wellington, Sydney, Melbourne, back to Los Angeles so I can endure an irritating stop over, onto New York, and then back to Blighty in time for the World Cup. And I didn’t leave the Travel Agents until they’d damn well taken my money! Yeah, that’ll show the like of the Labour Party, James Blunt, Chico, The Daily Express, and erm the complete lack of Global Warming we’ve been having lately….

Posted by levers at 12:56 PM GMT
Post Comment | Permalink
Wednesday, 22 March 2006
Farewell to these fair shores...
Topic: levers
That’s it, I’ve had it with this country, with its rubbish climate (March, and I’m still freezing my proverbial bollocks off, whatever happened to the halcyon years of Global Warming, when we could look forward to a Mediterranean climate, and be able to sun bathe on the beach at Weston in the middle of January, while wearing Factor 535 sun block, or risk being as withered and prune like as Robert Kilroy-Silk by the time we’re 30?), it’s rubbish Budget 1p on a pint of bitter? You b’stard. I’ll have to go back to drinking scrumpy at this rate) by a Chancellor who still reckons he’ll be Prime Minister before it’s time for us all to draw our pensions (but of course there’ll be no pension to draw by then as they’ll have been abolished by then, and that private works pension we’d been relying on will have mysteriously vanished in a Robert Maxwell ‘whoops fell off m’ yacht’ Mirror Group scandal – oh how very ‘80s – stylee). It would seem that, Brown is to Blair, what Charles is to the Queen. And then there’s James ‘bloody’ Blunt, making a band like Coldplay seem interesting at one end of the scale, and then hey lets all go crazy cos it’s Chico-Time (Copyright: Simon “how smug am I” Cowell), at the other. And don’t get me started on the Daily Express* still wasting the planets rain forests by printing yet another piece of drivel about flippin’ Diana and the non-story that they haven’t actually got any proof that she was bumped off by Secret Intelligence beyond the rumour that one of the chasing Paparazzo might’ve had a wonky moustache.

*At the risk of being sued by Daily Express owners, I should point out that they probably don’t print the Express on the nations forests, and in fact they’re probably not doing the world any harm whatsoever. On the other hand, a number of Richard Desmond’s other titles do feature quite a number of huge tits.

So that’s it, I’m packing my bags and leaving the country, just like Phil Collins did when Labour won power in 1997, and Frank Bruno (ahem) threatened to do, but then realised that they don’t tend to have Panto anywhere but Britain (I mean, do they? I would be fascinated to know. Where else can you get men dressing up as women wearing massive frocks, and women dressing up as boys? Bangkok, maybe?). And I ain’t ever coming back! Well not till June anyway cos that’s when my money’ll run out, and I’m not actually going till the middle of April as it stands, but I’m going to jolly well start packing my bags right now!

Posted by levers at 12:01 AM GMT
Updated: Thursday, 23 March 2006 12:57 PM GMT
Post Comment | Permalink
Tuesday, 28 February 2006
The Go! Team/The Grates/Smoosh Live @ Bristol Carling Academy 26/02/06
The two members of Smoosh outdo the current batch of Indie popdoms young guns (Arctic Monkeys, The Subway et al) by several years, their combined age equalling that of a fresh faced 24 year old. This is rather alarming. Should these girls not be in school? Many a comparison can be made between Smoosh and the pre-teen young bucks that went before them (sisters 11 and 13). On first sighting, the word MmmmBoppp might spring to mind. However, merely passing them off as the female equivalent of Hanson would be to do them something of a disservice. With merely a keyboard and drum kit in use, a comparison to Keane might be more appropriate. This is rather interesting, because if we are to go down this route, then we can conclude that the two girls, born in the dying days of the 20th Century, make a noise that is a hell of a lot more interesting than Keane, bland bland Keane, ever could. On the other hand they could just be the next Cleopatra (Comin atcha!).

Next up it’s The Grates. Are the Grates about to become your new favourite band? On the face of it, quite possibly. Hailing from Brisbane, Australia (or should that be Brissie!, admittedly somewhere I had once believed to have been made up by Neighbours scriptwriters as a handy plot device to deposit any cast members found ro be surplus to requirements), the threesome combine the verve and energy of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Strokes and Le Tigre, to create a concoction of something very close to shear punk power pop madness. Although it is all about lead singer Patience, from the moment she bounded onto the stage, tripped over her microphone lead, and then plunged head long into the first song. This girl is quite simply amazing, as she quite happily belches between songs, in very much a vauderville style humour, mind. However, it’s rare that you find a support band that can captivate a crowd and lead an audience quite as successfully as The Grates. Admittedly, I was of the belief that the drummer and the sound engineer were in fact Smoosh’s parents, as they immediately dashed on at the close of Smoosh’s set to help pack away their gear. New favourite band? Quite possibly. The Internet has been scoured, and the EP should be winging its way any day soon.

With The Go! Team, everything finally comes to fruition. The Go! Team are a band I’ve been attempting to champion to my friends since around August of last year, thanks to a free CD giveway from the NME containing the album version of current single Ladyflash, the only jewel amongst a sea of somewhat run of the mill indie-by-numbers dross. The Go! Team are just something else, fusing Northern Soul with Sonic Youth, 70s disco beats with the themes from shows such as Huckelberry Finn and Friends. And to top it all, they have two drummers! Not since Pavement at their height in the mid-90s has their been a band with two drummers (although I think any comparison between the two, has to stop right there). Stand and marvel, as MC Ninja raps and freestyles through the likes of Feelgood by Numbers and Get It Together (surely worth a commercial release with Ninja’s vocals, anyone?), as she leads the audience in singing the chorus to Huddle Formation. The set is complete with an extended version of Ladyflash, with Ninja performing the various dances of the world (breakdancing for America, and a rather hilarious Riverdance for Ireland, culminating with Britain and a dance my friend Robin attributed to someone having a ‘spaz-attack’). And still it makes my heart weep that they were overlooked for the Mercury Music Prize in favour of Antony and the Johnsons. I mean, p-lease!


Posted by levers at 8:05 AM GMT
Post Comment | Permalink
Sunday, 26 February 2006
The Go! Team in Gig Photo Fury!
Now Playing: The Go! Team Live @ The Bristol Acadmey 26/02/06
Topic: Pop
Photos of such a poor quality the Paperazzi would be up in arms...













remote Posted by levers at 11:00 PM GMT
Updated: Tuesday, 28 February 2006 8:07 AM GMT
Post Comment | Permalink
The Grates - They really are Grate!
Now Playing: The Grates Live @ The Bristol Acadmey 26/02/06
Topic: Pop



Your new favorite band?

remote Posted by levers at 10:45 PM GMT
Updated: Tuesday, 28 February 2006 8:08 AM GMT
Post Comment | Permalink
Saturday, 11 February 2006
Amstell, Oliver, NO!!!!!!!!!!
Topic: TV
Mere weeks after the shock announcement that Charlotte out of Ash was to leave Ash (https://levers.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=1394361), news breaks that Miquita and Simon out of Popworld, are to leave, er, Popworld; thus rendering the 'best pop show on the planet' nothing but a sagging empty vessel, like Dick without the Dom, Cannon without the Ball, Little without the
Large, Chaka Demus without the Plyers, Andi Peters without Ed The Duck...

And who can replace the irreplaceable? Absolutely no one that's who. But, rest assured that it'll probably be a couple of the Dullards (TM) off E4 Music.

In a quote, Miquita said that she'd been on the show since she was 16, and now that she was 21 it was kinda like leaving school. Yes, I expect that would be a school for extremely thick people who kept being put down a year. God, I love that woman.......

Posted by levers at 1:07 PM GMT
Post Comment | Permalink
Wednesday, 8 February 2006
Screen Burn
Topic: TV
Y'see. I knew BBC Four had more uses than showing re-runs of the Avengers.

The Guardian's Charlie Brooker (Nathan Barley, TV Go Home), is to get his own show based on his weekly column Screen Burn in the Guide section.

If you're unfamiliar with his sarcasm, then check out his Screen Burn compendium that came out a year ago, and now going cheap in Fopp Records (for the pedantic, it is a book, not a record).

Read more about the show here

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,1704667,00.html

Gotta be better than Bushall On The Box..........

Posted by levers at 6:17 PM GMT
Updated: Wednesday, 8 February 2006 7:24 PM GMT
Post Comment | Permalink
Livejournal
Topic: levers.tripod.com
Can I draw your attention to my quasi-mirrored blog at Live Journal.com, in a somewhat futile attempt to actually gain an audience for my inane murmurings?

The reasons are thus described in my Live Journal profile as described via the following:

http://leverz.livejournal.com/profile

Rest assured, this site will continue to be active and updated for no other reason but my own personal satisfaction, until hell freezes over, or something similar.

Posted by levers at 6:12 PM GMT
Updated: Saturday, 11 February 2006 4:00 PM GMT
Post Comment | Permalink
Tuesday, 7 February 2006
Guinness is good for you.........
Topic: levers
Sunday Morning, 6.26am

Ok. This isn’t good. Can two pints of Guinness do this to a person? That’s two Guinness on top of three pints of bitter you understand. I mean, surely I’ve consumed similar quantities before. But here I am, six-thirty in the morning, lying in my bed trying to make sense of it all. Of course this could well be a good introductory piece to a future blog article on the hilarities and pitfalls of getting drunk, of which I have experienced many. The last time I got I drunk on Guinness I seem to recall an apparent need to sleep walk. So maybe this is a similar feeling.

I feel confused. As if I am lacking the sum of all my parts. Like the real me is yet to come back, and the rest is all but a dream. Trapped in a maelstrom of chaos. As if there are parts of me that keep fading out of existence. Even as I write this I feel incomplete. My mind is clouded. That’ll be the alcohol, I tell my self.

The reason I am writing this now is in the hope that it will somehow be able to unpick enough of my consciousness, that it will once again become the dominant voice in my head. It hasn’t happened yet. This is bad.

The last time I was like this, I finally came lucid again due to the coldness of the night air enveloping me. I had taken what I thought to be a routine journey to the toilet, while in my final year at Salford University, staying in the third year flats on Castle Irwell. The toilets were right at the end of the corridor of the flat, and my room was immediately next to the door leading to the stairwell to the other flats in the building and ultimately the outside world. Had I been of sound mind I’d have gone straight back to my room, and the warmth of my bed. Unfortunately, with my mind clouded, I instead had chosen to leave the corridor via the latter door leading to the outside. And so trapped out in the cold, the door back to my flat having slammed shut behind me, I bounded up and down the flight of stairs in my unreal state, until I was able to muster enough conscious matter to work out exactly what was going on. As the coldness of the night crept round me, I eventually realised I was stood outside in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts, and was able to summon up enough conscious thought to return to the flat and hammer on the door.

Of course, rather hilariously my housemate Jay opened the door to me thus allowing my re-admittance, shouting “next time, take your f’’king key”

It transpired the next day that he was of the assumption that I had been out gallivanting with a lady in the night, and like all gentlemen who don’t wish to be there for breakfast, left the scene of the crime and returned in ones boxer shorts, of course leaving the rest of ones clothes to be dry cleaned over night, or something.

The coldness doesn’t appeal right now.

How much of me is back now? Not enough. Not enough, that if I close my eyes again I won’t be dragged back to the maelstrom, piece by piece of my being torn asunder.

Believe me, this really isn’t pleasant.

However the bathroom in my current house might be cold enough, allowing me to regain enough of what is me, that I can make it through the night.

Wish me luck.

And no I can’t bring the laptop with me, as even though it’s on a battery it just doesn’t seem right. Besides, the cold and the damp will probably get to it’s circuits and it’ll become as unworkable and confused as I’m feeling right now.

Back in five.


7am.

Of course, I might have gone mad, but then if I am mad then I’m hardly likely to admit to it, so there’s no sure way of knowing. If I am still like this tomorrow, I expect I’ll consider suing the Guinness Corporation for compensation.

How Annie, who will quite happily drink nothing but Guinness whenever she goes out on a session, doesn’t experience the same effect, I don’t know. Then again, maybe she does. Maybe it’s the fate of every Irish person to wake at 6 o’clock in the morning and feel this maddening detachment from reality.

The bathroom wasn’t cold enough as the central heating had come on the timer. Maybe I’ll have to stick my head out the door.

7.10

I haven’t been sick which is a good sign. Especially when you’re sick and don’t quite reach the toilet. Or like on one occasion, don’t get anywhere near it.

Graduation day. I had probably been drinking solidly from the mid-afternoon, in the bars up and down the Bristol waterfront, throwing in a curry for good measure.

I slept the night in a friend’s front room. Sometime during the night I half awoke, took what I thought to be a waste paper bin, and let it all out, beer, curry, and all.

Turned out, it wasn’t a waste paper bin. It was a magazine rack. And my mate’s girlfriend wasn’t overly impressed to come in to the lounge and find vomit amongst the magazines, the papers, the rack, and the floor. Although, to be fair I’d had the decency to make sure the majority of the vomit had ended up plastering the two t-shirts I’d been wearing earlier that day.

Rather than trek home with them on the bus, I chose to deposit them in the nearest bin (that’s bin, not magazine rack), the next morning after leaving my friends flat for the last time, as his girlfriend, rather harshly I feel, opted to ban me from ever setting place in the place again. So I was left to stumble round the streets of Bristol in the cold early morning gloom, kitted out in nothing but a slightly crusty pair of jeans and jumper.

If I’m being honest, I can’t say it came as much of a surprise to find I had actually been banned from staying round my mate’s flat in future, but it came as a bit of a shock to find that offers of space on a lounge or bedroom floor had suddenly become far and few between.

7.20
Might try to sleep again. Fug appears to be lifting.
I slept. I actually did. Though Sunday was still something of a struggle, the Guinness fug failing to lift completely. Do I actually write more intelligently when I’m feeling quite so detached from reality. Or was everything I’d written utter bollocks? Guess we’ll find out when I go through it again next weekend…………….

Note: some heavy editing did take place on the above text, as too be perfectly honest not all of it actually made much sense.

Posted by levers at 8:03 AM GMT
Post Comment | Permalink
Wednesday, 1 February 2006
PlayerPocketCam

Hey you've heard of PlayerCam, right. The nifty little waste of time introduced by Sky Sports many moons ago, that lets you follow footballers round the pitch as they stand around picking bits of turf off the heels of their boots, or spit balls of flem at rival supporters while camped out in the opponents half waiting for their team mates to hoof long balls up to them?

Well, this is PlayerPocketCam exclusive to levers.tripod.com on this midweek Premiership fixture night. With live feeds from the insides of players pockets up and down the country.

Keep watching to the left of the browser window to see live pictures from inside Robbie Savage's pocket as he attempts to gouge out Rio Ferdinand's eyeballs.

Ain't modern technology marvellous!

remote Posted by levers at 8:45 PM GMT
Post Comment | Permalink

Newer | Latest | Older