Quick Fix

Had to fiddle with the colours on this thing; it's started fucking with my eyes. I'm just taking some time out of my busy schedule of scamming bank managers out of 0% overdrafts (three new accounts opened, and counting), which I swear to James Mason I'll stop doing when I've funded whatever rent I owe. And a bus slash flight slash RIB to Liverpool. And an Electric Picnic ticknick. And a drink of some kind.
Well at least the Taste of the Summer 2009 (as coined by Stone Cold Steve Shipman- Jacques; the red stuff, I'm not a complete fruit) has started to get sickening. This is the appellation Steve places on a beverage, generally a sugary refreshing fruit-based one, at the start of every summer. Last summer (such as it was) my drink was Tesco own-brand 4% lager, which isn't nearly as bad as it sounds. The summer before it was snakebite, the summer before that it was Kopparberg, before it became as riotously expensive as it now is. Every year we drink these things til our kidneys fall out with us, and you can tell when the summer's on its way out because the drink becomes sickly and does nothing but give you a headache. This has now happened with Jacques. Just as well, because I was just starting to fear for my eye-teeth.
So what now? The landlord is still clamped to my back like someone else's shirt on a muggy day, and the bank managers may start talking to each other at any moment. Only one course of action remains- switch to dark rum for the autumn, polish the brass on my neck, and get up them stairs. Word to your mother...

Derry Is An Odd Place

Another town, another hangover, and another library. I've been out of The Town I Recognise So Easily (there's a tune Phil Coulter never wrote) for so long things keep jarring with me every time I'm back.
For example: I had to carry a guitar and a bass to the Dungloe for a gig we're doing tonight. It's a fundraiser for Rich Coast, a film being shot in Derry as I type - upstairs Dungloe, stacksabands, land if you're about. Now for anyone not acquainted with the Walled City, the distance from the depot to the Dungloe is a couple of hundred yards, five minutes' walk uphill. I was stopped three times, by three separate old men, who used to play in bands, and wanted to talk the ear off me about them. Apparently everybody who was young in Derry in the seventies was in a band, and also probably the Ra. Derry's a very strange place to be at half six on a Thursday in August. There's kids up to the age of eighteen, then nobody else younger than 30, except the occasional flock of foreigners swaddled in clothes that would boil my blood if I wore them in the Alps. Prime tourist season this, so they tell me. Must be a very sad place to visit. "Vere are all ze yunk peepil? Vere is all ze laife?" I know from experience, Herr Schneider- they've fucked off to Belfast and England and Scotland and generally have neither the bus fare nor the inclination to get back. You'll see a strange class of individuals come out after dark, fellas and fillies just about to fuck off to uni in the autumn, or reprobates back for a sesh, or the people who found a paying gig and never left. But we don't talk about them.
Anyway, before I get any more on my own nerves.... I dumped my various crap up the stairs in the Dungloe, which brought up some very unusual memories. I was never out of the joint before I fucked off to the West Glasgow that is Belfast. but that's another set of anecdotes to tell in my anec-dotage. I'm off to work on another hangover, and fund a film while I'm at it. Where else would ye get it? To the Walls, and don't spare the Buck...

I Fucked Up

Turns out Gogol Bordello are quite good. Maybe a bottle of gin and a bottle of dark rum were a factor. Who knows? Sorry Laurence, chalk it up as one-all...

Torn Again

Another hangover this time the result of a going-away party for the Cov Beetle, during which we kicked the shit out of his house and tried to make a zombie film on his mobile phone. Upshot is, I lengthened a worrying trend I've been noticing recently, in that I ripped a fuck-off hole in the crotch of my trousers while performing my own stunts in said film. Not as dirty as it sounds. Anyway, partly because I'm off Liverpool at the end of September (they let me in to study Law, the fools) and didn't want to be burdened with unnecessary shit to move over, and partly because I was too damned lazy to carry all the shite from Delhi Street to my current abode round the corner, I chucked out the majority of my trousers and jeans - they hadn't been worn in donkeys, so I figured fuck them. Now the downside to this comes during the move, when I tear a frayed gash in the fork of my jeans trying to pick up a box, thereby leaving me with two other functional pairs of trousers. One bit the dust when I drunkenly tried to wrest my guitar from the mount of shit it was under in my room, the other in the filming of the aforementioned short.
This led to my having to make a bad choice between waddling to Botanic without a gusset in my trousers, or dandering up with a massy hole in the front, and hoping to Hell my boxers did their job,. I chose Boxer Roulette, and set off for a charity shop to replenish the stocks.

A few things I pondered on the way:
- Having a haircut is an expensive and bothersome hobby, not unlike windsurfing, but far less fun - complicated apparatus, dependence of wind conditions etc. Why does everyone look this way if it's so much hassle?
- But then when has that ever mattered to people who worry about the fashion of the day? Botox? Arsenic? Belladonna?
- There was a lot more scope to get off your kite if you were wealthy before Wall Street crashed the first time. It must have been a lot easier to get on with drug stores, rather than shitty Numark chemists, on the corner. That is until the economy went splat, then another World War happened, making the rich poor and the poor dead. And we're still squabbling over who's who today.
- That odd time of day, round about five, when the bakeries and charity shops are closed or closing, but before decent bars or take-aways open properly- what to do if you've £3 in your pocket? Nothing to do really, unless you count going to Witherspoon's for three pints of pish ale, which just about gives you a thirst, and is therefore counter-productive.
So I fucked off here to the old faithful library, to vent some spleen and kick my brain into order again. This weekend will be messy. The one fucker I know in Liverpool's coming back over for his 21st, so we're going to say goodbye to Belfast. You have been warned.

The King is Dead, Long Live the Republic

Library's about to close, so I'll keep this brief. Michael Jackson, the last true globally successful pop star, is dead. Some good tunes, pity about the going mental and subsequent kiddy trouble. Now cue the era, already well-underway despite what Time-Warner-AOL-Behemoth says, of small-time hustlers in the music business, with loads of people bringing the margins down, and far less people making ridiculous money. More will probably come on this subject. One thing though- when did Peter Pan become a euphemism for child molester?

Well that's torn it

It's that time again. What time, you ask? Well, it's that peculiar time where it doesn't matter what time it is. For I, dear reader, am unemployed again. I've made my share of fuckups over the last four years of drug-sprinkled poverty in Belfast, and by and large I like to think I've learned something from them. These things are best handled with a sense of humour, and humour works best when it has a point. But then I do something so staggeringly fucking daft I feel like I've been kicked in the back of my head by my own drunken spastic self.
This something happened (probably the wrong word; 'happened' sounds like it could be someone else's fault) on the 15th of this month. I'd been drinking the night before, not caning it you understand, but because I was working the next afternoon and didn't want to inadvertantly shout at anyone, had drunk sensibly and gone home at some point. Now up I get at one-ish, and out I dash to take calls from people picking bones with Vodafone. Dandy I thought. So down I sit, ten mintues early for my shift, and down I settle to read the BBC website through again. Well at least I thought I was early.
I checked my online worky schedule-checky thing, and found to my bewilderment that I was supposed to be in from 9 that morning, and since there were no managers in the shithole they'd marked me down as AWOL. Again. Then I recalled that I'd made a note of the shifts I was supposed to have been working about three weeks in advance, and not bothered my balls checking it over the last week for any changes. Then, even more bedevillingly, I remembered that because I'd done this sort of thing a couple of times before, and was on a final written warning for this other similar silly-buggery, I was sacked. And I had a cunt of a hangover.
So I decided to cut my losses, and fucked off for a Snickers.
Two plus sides: one, I was paid the Monday after that, and so was able to square up my current landlord for the last of the months' rent I'd not paid the last time I was habitually bothering librarians, and b) I managed to get an interview with Abbey the day I got fired, and as such have only two weeks or so to kill while very skint. An an eye over my shoulder in fear of a Richard Hammond-esque jinx, how hard can it be?

Dylan and the Provincial Craic Vacuum

Been meaning to update this for a while, but what with not being unemployed anymore - although that might not be the case for too much longer - I can't laze about in the library or up in Queen's titting around on a publicly-owned computer. But this morning I find myself in Terry's living room, with lots of sun happening outside, and I wouldn't mind delaying walking home and getting the fuck fried out of me.
's been an odd month, this one. Strange being able to afford to do things again. Even went down to the Dublin to see the Dylan on the 5th there. Although apparently I saw him on the wrong night (bastard typical) because the next night was the end of his tour or some such guff.
I went down with my brother, whose student loan had just come in, the lucky prick, and so was bankrolling the expedition. We got off the bus at four or so, and stationed ourselves in the first bar with an offy attached. Drinking in the street in central Dublin is a lot easier than I thought it would be. Then to the O2 for a bit of Bob.
I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I was pleasantly surprised; he played with two guitarists, a bassist and drummer, and a mentalist who switched between lap steel, banjo, guitar and I believe accordion at one point. The man himself was mostly on organ with occasional harmonica, and picked up a guitar for Don't Think Twice, It's Alright. Now I'd heard he sits at the side now, facing the band and hiding behind an organ (Zimmerman-frame?), but I didn't really expect to enjoy it. Which I did. Hugely. It was as organised and regimented a set as you'd expect from a man who's been touring solid for forty-odd years, treading the knife-edge between trying to affect people and make a statement, and just knocking it out, going through the motions. I was standing somewhere near this guy, and it sounded great. The major letdown of the evening was the crowd. Of course you're not going to see the same angry young man as you would have in the sixties or even the seventies. But for God's sake, try to enjoy the spectacle when one of the best songwriters ever gives a performance, and appreciate it for what it is. Don't fucking talk over it, maybe dance a little, and for crying out loud TURN ROUND AND WATCH THE STAGE. At times I felt like I was the only one paying attention. And I wouldn't call myself a big fan.
That may have been it though- I went in with pretty low expectations and enjoyed myself more than I thought I would, with a very danceable bluesy set with some well-worked versions of classics and, I'm told, the live debut of a track from the new album. It would have been easy to be disillusioned if you went in with high hopes. For one, he was doing a very good club singer impression. Two, he finished at about 10PM, and that's after three encore tunes. But anyone who goes to see Dylan for his vocal gymnastics is a spoon, and although he probably should have had a support act, I thought a two-hour set of that standard was good value.
After the man himself me and the brother cleared off to a slightly sweaty bar which had rock on the jukebox and a decent stout, and got quietly twatted in a corner. Then we hopped in a taxi to Rathmines, where the rich fuckers live, and snuck into Trinity's halls, which were fucking palatial compared to the borstal I stayed in on the Malone Road. But I suppose at five grand a year it'd need to be. There we drank Bavaria with Scruff (Derry fella who's down there getting a proper education), and I slept on a busted airbed. Dublin's an incredibly nice town if you have money in your pocket. I was only there for a day, but it convinced me I'm going to have to live there at some point. It struck me when I was there that I'd never lived in a properly big city; Belfast may be self-contained and horribly full of its own importance, but a big city it isn't. Johnny Tiernan played And So I Watch You From Afar in Lavery's the other night, and I've never seen a more smug self-congratulatory circle jerk in my life. I think that typified Belfast for me. I'm certainly not alone in the view that nine out of ten bands here are pointless. I know we shouldn't slate local talent, that we should give it the help and the props it deserves, but people here have a very skewed view of what's talent and what's dross. I'd love to say that's the last time I'll be in Lav's, but I'd be lying. Because that's where the tail is. And that's what really matters, after all.