This blog is just a review of the gig I went to on the 28th of December, I should have wrote this a lot earlier and made it more blog worthy with various incidents such as leanders fetish for death, his goth look and the lighter man who claimed to be the father of a premiership footballer but unfortunately my lack of enthusiasm for blog writing has returned and so apart from maybe the odd band review I don't think I will be writing any more for a while.

Kid Harpoon has been for the last couple of years, one of my favourite artists and so when I saw that he was going to be playing at KOKO, one of my favourite clubs in London, it was immediately a certainty that I would be going.

We got to Camden at about 9:30 hoping to get in for doors open and to our joy we were told that because we were one of the first 100 people to turn up, we got in free, Brilliant. Obviously getting in this early meant that buying driniks for the rest of the night would cost a bomb, but we had already been drinking earlier in a pub so it wasn't too bad.

There was an early dissapointment when I saw that even the main act was only going to be on for half an hour when I was hoping for a real head-liners set as Ive never seen Kid Harpoon do more than 40 minutes but nevertheless I continued to have a good time.

The DJ was great in my opinion, playing all the sorts of bands that you read about in NME, including no less than 3 songs by my beloved Libertines over the course of the evening.

The first band, Paris Trading came on at about 10:30 and provided some decent music, if not particularly exciting, I must admit during this band though I was mainly still sitting and enjoying the company of my friends.

The second band on were The More Assured who I had heard of previously only through them being one of those annoying bands who add you on myspace. I remembered listening to them before and not being particularly bothered by what they were playing. Again there was nothing really bad about them, they just provided nothing to get excited about.

But then at about 12:30 came the main act, Kid Harpoon and the powers that be. Unsurprisingly they gave an amazing performance as I have seen on the 4 previous occasions that I've seen them play. Unfortunately their regular Keyboard player couldn't be there but he was replaced by a woman by the name of Ciara Haidar who as an artist in her own right I saw at the electric gardens festival in the summer. The show went flawlessly to my knowledge and they played all the songs that you come to expect including Death of a Rose, Milkmaid, Late for the Devil and First We Take Manhattan. I have noticed though that he never plays Colours when he is with the Powers that be, which is a shame as it is one of my favourite songs but this aside it was still an excellent set and I think they gained a few new fans in my friends.

We stayed for a bit longer dancing to the indie DJs and then left by about 2:30 and then made our way home to various bits of south London.

All in all a good night and so I shall be revisiting Club NME in the near future.

END - for the indeffinite future

Maybe starting the blog again was not the best of ideas, after only a few posts I am back in the habbit of not writing up about events as soon as they happen and thus this blog is going to be long and will cover the events of friday, saturday and Christmas day.. with a little forward look at the end. So that's warning you before you start reading and get bored. Maybe I should do seperate headings so that people can hone in on the exact bit they want to read. I think I will.

Friday

On friday I went first into Wimbledon to do some Christmas shopping, as you do a couple of days before the big day and I bought my sister a lovely little art set along with some completely useless no smoking stickers (one of the few advantages of writing a late blog I can write about the presents without fear of the surprise being ruined). I then met up with Phoebe and we went on to take a bus into sheen where I was to see where she was now living. The street leading up to her house looked well dodgy but the house itself was nice enough, looked very studenty, more so even than my house up in Essex, locks on all the bedroom doors, random posters all over the walls, a stolen street sign in the bathroom and what appeared to be blankets hanging over the windows instead of curtains. Her room though was quite large - at this point we had varied discussions with vegetarianism possibly the most in depth, and also consuming small amounts of alcohol. Soon enough it was late and we had decided to meet up with John.. well that was the plan until Phoebe decided to fall asleep, says a lot for my company, so I left and went to meet John - getting on the bus i was greeted with a lack of money on my oyster card so I had to get off again.. boo. SO I decided to walk, bad plan.. it was long and cold.. after much complaining John came and picked me up.

We first went to a pub called the Cocoanut, which was very odd, dark and dingy but we stayed and had a couple of beers, whilst John conversed with the locals who were having a party. In the early stages it was ok, 3 of them, 2 of us and there was a nice little conversation. But when the rest of the party folk turned up it was soon quite clear that we were not wanted there, the epitomy of which was John being called an obvious paedophile who should go away.. strangely enough John didn't think this a bad thing and still wanted to stay but I convinced him we should leave. We then went to another pub called the Cricketers which was a much nicer pub in my opinion, again we had a couple of pints but we realised that this was never going to be a big party night so we decided to call it a night at that point.. very dissapointing. Luckily Saturday was to be much more enjoyable.

Saturday

Saturday night was to be the second reunion, as Matt Bond was back, back from Surrey. I brought my good friend Ross along too and it was to be a great night. We headed down to berties bar. Again I had been drinking before I had left the house but not as much as the last time but still I feel I had a bit of a head start. There were very few seats in Berties so we all had to stand at first and proceeded to poach chairs and tables where we could. Eventually we all managed to sit down  together, by which time we had had a number of pints and also a few shots. The general conversations took part and then the idea of going out clubbing floated into the air.. although tempting, we decided time and money matters meant that it was probably not for us, so all apart from Dom stayed. Unfortunately for him, it was soon after that that we chose to interrogate Matt about his new girlfriend. Despite the genius plans to almost make him cry though tough interrogationI feel we were generally quite nice about it. Obviously the odd obsenity thrown in by Tate but you really expect nothing less. The only exciting thing really was that we decided on a date for the wedding which will be heald on Saturday 7th September 2008 according to my phone which in a slightly drunken manner I added it into. It is unknown yet who will get the best man job, he was talking about his brother but I think really it will be me. We drank more, even playing a drinking game which lasted not very long at all before being told it was time to leave and so we did.

This though was not to be the end of the night oh no, as you do when slightly intoxicated, you look for a way to extend the night and so we went on towards O'Neils - as I have said previously a good place to end a night. Me, Ross, Dan and Tate walked in no problems but Dave and Matt weren't allowed in. We toyed with the idea of being gentlemanly and using a sense of commaradery and leaving when our friends didn't get in. BUT we were drunk so we stayed. Sorry Guys. But anyway we started drinking some more.. again beers and shots and before you knew it we were all sitting in our corner singing and swaying to the folk band who were playing on the stage. It was a beautiful scene as I am sure you can imagine. Whilst in the pub we also met up with Dan's sister Laura, who was looking lovely as ever, obviously we made a few jokes about her after that and then of course it moved onto my sister and Tate's sister as is usually the way. Ross luckily gets away with that, due to people not knowing him as well. But soon enough it was time to leave there too and so we walked out, chatting to a few old faces on the way. Wimbledon pubs are always a good place for seeing old chums. We stood outside for a bit, Tate then walked off without saying goodbye with a guy that we could only assume was his brother and then we all went home. On the way me and Ross had a deep political discussion which was very interesting but very alcohol fueled. And so that was Saturday.

Christmas Day

Not really any more exciting than any other Christmas day but I thought, why not give it a blog anyway. I woke up early at around 9ish ate some breakfast and then got to opening my presents highlights of which included a few CDs, DVDs and some lovely items of clothing.. time passed. We had a very tasty Christmas dinner prepared by my mother which I ate far too much of and felt incredibly sick and then despite this I ate two servings of ice cream to follow it up. Luckily I wasn't sick but I was feeling incredibly tired at this point and fell asleep for a couple of hours. Then the annual board games came out, which is always a laugh and before we knew it, it was 1 o'clock. I went up to bed, watched one of my new DVDs and then fell asleep.

Sorry that last bit is a bit slap-dash but I am getting bored of writing. On Friday I shall be going to see Kid Harpoon at KOKO and I'm sure a blog/review will coincide with that and then I shall be doing a bout of travelling, first to Essex for New Years and then up to Newcastle from the 3rd to 7th of January. See you all soon

END

As i pointed out in the last blog, I am back down London way for the Christmas holidays and so naturally, there had to be a reunion drink in the Wimbledon weatherspoons.

So being skint and all I decided that the best idea would be to start drinking at home so that I wouldn't spend as much money when I was out, the typical thoughts of a university student. So I polished off the bad whiskey that I had brought back from uni with me and had a little drop of the parents vodka before heading towards Wimbledon at around half seven. I met Mary at the statues and then we made our way to Weatherspoons and were just about to get in the first drinks when we got a text. A few of the guys were in O'Neils.. I mean really. Don't get me wrong, O'Neils is a great pub and has provided a good end to a night on more than one occasion but for the start of a night, no, there were no seats and it is more expensive which is just something I can't deal with. But we went over had a drink there before convincing the majority of people to leave and come back to Spoons.

So we proceeded to drink and reminisce about old times and new and of course a few little jabs at various people, I appeared to be taking most of it but I didn't mind I was already quite drunk. Despite my not wanting to spend much I managed to spend all of my £20 and I even think I probably scrounged some drinks off some other people but I did have some strange ones. I joined Dave in drinking lager and lime which is quite afemminate but they do taste quite nice its true. I also had my first ever shot of Jagermeister and i don't think I will be having another, it was disgusting. Needless to say by this point I was very drunk and thus I don't really remember very well what happened for the most part in Spoons, especially the saying goodbye to people. I can only assume I did it as I am such a well-mannered individual but if I didn't I apologise.

My next memory is standing by the cash point with John, Dan and Dom who proceeded to give me money so that I could order some gig tickets for them and myself. I don't remember discussing the said gig previously in the pub but I will just have to assume we did. So there I found myself with £90. I'm not entirely sure who thought it was a good plan to give the drunkest person all the money but I had it nevertheless - then theres another bit of a blank and it was just me and Dom and we were in south Wimbledon and we decided to go into some place and buy some pizza. You know, as you do when drunk.. obviously I used some of this money that wasn't actually mine and we ate and sat down at the bus stop.

This is where it gets quite amusing.. two drunks came over to us and tried to blag some pizza, I was not having any of this and so I hugged the box and told them it was all mine, but the woman kept asking so I had to keep saying no, I even resorted to calling myself an unsharing wanker before she got the point. Then as you do when you are drunk you talk to the other drunks and the woman said to dom "what are you then? a muslim? a hindu?" to which we were both a bit shocked but he answered politely saying he was a catholic and we used that awkwardness to get away and we moved down to the next bus stop to finish our pizza, but then we heard then coming so we hid around the back behind a bush. The drunk woman and man went passed and I clearly heard her say something racist about 'the black man' and so after letting them walk on a little and politely asking Dom if he minded, I went out and shouted at the top of my voice "YOU FUCKING RACIST SLAG" to which i heard a reply of OI, so we ran and hid and then walked the back paths round to make sure they didn't find us and beat us up. Of course we were now in tears of laughter as tends to happen when something is funny and your drunk. We walked down to Colliers Wood high street and Dom went to get a taxi, and went on to tell all the people there about the story, they seemed a little non-fussed, but we were still giggling like school girls. We said goodbye and then he went.

On the short walk I still had to do on my own I decided to write little happy messages in the frost covering the cars, I must have done about ten or so before I realised that I was only doing it because I was very drunk and so I stopped and walked home, still giggling to myself. I then made a sandwich and passed out on my bed and now here I am still hung over but I had fun so it's all ok. But my money problem probably won't be changing all that soon as I just phoned REED employment and they say there are no temp jobs going, which is a bit of a bummer, ah well here hoping I get some Christmas money. Au Revoir

END