(Eventually I will write up all those shenanigans I promise!)
Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of proto-electronic Batcave staples, Alien Sex Fiend's first ever gig, so they were performing a very special birthday gig at the Boston Dome in London. They're another of the many, many bands I've been trying to see for years but somehow always missing, so I simply had to make it to this one. Coming straight from work and stuck with slow trains (I thought it might be quicker to get the train than the coach, turned out to be about the same time, dammit) I arrived late, so if there was support I missed it because the Fiends themselves were already blaring through Manic Depression. I was kicking myself for being late (I have no idea what tracks I missed, alas) but I needn't have worried, because the Fiends had an amazing three hour set in store! Three hours! Three frigging hours! I still haven't quite gotten over that. Three hours of live Fiendishness! Ahem.
The venue was reasonably full, meaning that for a while I was towards the back, though by the end of the (three hour!) set, I was right down on the second row. The audience was largely an older crowd, I guess they were mostly people who've followed them for years (there were a lot of well-worn ASF t-shirts on show) and generally more on the punky side of things, at one point a full-blown mosh pit opened up. As for the Fiends, they were brilliant, exactly as I'd hoped they'd be: loud, atonal, unhinged, kitsch and... did I mention loud? My hearing has gone in my right ear. Oh and they had the brightest strobe lights I have ever seen that did weird trippy things to my vision.
Nik and Mrs Fiend and their cobwebby stage decorations along with one of those customised mannequins they seem to take everywhere
Shrouded in dry ice and enshrined with fake cobwebs, Mrs Fiend leaned over her keyboards and contraptions for most of the show, while Nik staggered about messing around with props (which included a plastic skull, a rubbish bin, counterfeit dollars, fake blood, and a giant inflatable banana. I think the banana might be the odd one out) and on the opposite side of the stage, two chaps dressed like mad doctors (alas, I don't remember their names) played guitar and any other electronic gizmos that Mrs Fiend didn't have enough hands for (I don't really understand how electronic music and tape loops work, but it appears to involve a lot of knob twiddling, and one person can only twiddle so many knobs). During the encore, Mrs Fiend finally escaped from behind the decks to play guitar, which was awesome.
Mrs Fiend and whoever the doctor fellow was on guitars
Mrs Fiend on guitar and Nik Fiend on a rubbish bin. This was about two and a half hours in, I think Nik needed a sit down!
Their (three hour!) set was a selection of tracks from their lengthy career, with each track extended into length, experimental versions, highlights being R.I.P, Boneshaker Baby, I Walk the Line, and of course Dead and Buried. Nik's vocals are just as aggressively raw in person as they are in record, tempered slightly by his gloriously kitsch stagecraft; picking through bins, pretending to eat a plastic rat, lurching around with his arms stuck out like Boris Karloff, covering himself in fake blood, throwing fake bones out into the crowd, and so on. In between songs, while Mrs Fiend did whatever it was she needed to do to get ready for the next one, he would natter away about how he hadn't gotten Mrs Fiend an anniversary card and how he doesn't want a makeover and whether or not you can have a cup of tea in the next life and how he wanted to thank various people for helping the band over the years. At one point, in the middle of a vaguely political rant, he said something along the lines of "fuck going outside, I want a fucking cigarette" at which point someone in the crowd handed him one and someone else offered a light. And so Nik was smoking through the whole of the next track. Indoors. Too bloody right. Honestly, that was the most punk rock thing I've seen at a gig for a long while, and kudos to the venue staff for not stopping him.
Nik Fiend looking like the undead supervillain he is. You can't really tell in my crummy photos, but he was wearing a riddler coat and a Judge Death t-shirt. And he had "Fiend" written on his trousers in case he forgets who he is
Actually, come to think of it, the whole atmosphere at the gig was pretty similar to a punk gig: lots of people slightly drunk, lots of people really feeling the music, lots of people moshing, lots of spilt drinks, but somehow all very friendly. At one point towards the end a very drunk bloke climbed up onstage while Nik was talking, but Nik just grinned, put his arm round him and carried on until security pushed the guy away.
Nik covered in fake blood and singing. Or possibly yelling.
When they were finally forced to leave the stage, Nik went along the front row shaking/grabbing hands with people and he very briefly grabbed mine!
My hand with a smear of fake blood thanks to Mr Fiend.
After they finished, the venue turned into a club as the DJs took over. They were playing a great mixture of stuff, but I was rather tired (I'd been up since 6 that morning) and so after buying myself a souvenir t-shirt, I got ready to go. I do wish I'd had the energy to stay longer, apparently they were going to crack open the chocolate cake mannequin thing they'd been given at Whitby, but it was a long journey back and I'm feeling zombified enough today as it is. As I was leaving, a bloke from the Fiends' website took a photo of me because apparently I'm "very gothic" and "far too young to be one of the old goths"! I'm going to have to keep my eyes peeled for the picture, but when (if?) it appears online it'll be here too.
So anyway, happy anniversary to the Fiends, long may they reign!
Gig review time again! Actually there'll be a few posts over the next few days, as there are plenty of antics that I need to get around to documenting, but let's start with the most recent, shall we?
Now, if you didn't know that my favourite band in the universe is Bauhaus, you don't know me at all. So imagine my excitement this weekend to get a rare chance to see former Bauhaus bassist and all-round clever singer-song-writer (and director and playwright) David J perform solo. He hasn't played the UK in at least ten years, which is a terrible pity because his solo work is incredibly rich and beautiful, ranging from cozily comforting to astutely melancholy to downright heartbreaking. Of course, I've seen him perform with Bauhaus themselves several times, but I certainly wasn't going to miss the chance to see him when his tour reached London.
I rushed out from work, backcombing my hair on the train because, y'know, I can't go to a gig these days unless my hair is puffed out to at least the same size as my waist, and dashed across ol' London town to the Slimelight. I've got to say, I thought Slimes was an odd choice for David to play. Yes, Bauhaus are beloved of goths the world over, and yes he wrote a very witty song about Goth Girls in Southern California but he's not exactly a goth and Slimes is...well, Slimes. I missed the first support band, who apparently sounded "almost exactly like the Fields of the Nephilim" but arrived just in time to catch the second, a band called Partly Faithful who looked and sounded like an enthusiastic mixture between Gene Loves Jezebel and Christian Death. They weren't amazing but they weren't bad and they did seem to be rather enjoying themselves, which is always nice.
After they finished I took the chance to catch up with some old friends from my days lurking on the bauhausmusik fan forum. It'd been a good few years since I'd seen most of them, so it was nice to see everybody again. Happy memories and all that.
Unfortunately, I was so busy chatting in the smoking area, I missed the first few songs performed by the next act, the fabulous Mister Joe Black. He's a cabaret singer from back home in gloomy Portsmouth (where he hosts a burlesque night in the King's Theatre, and dammit I wish I hadn't managed to keep missing that when I lived there), and like any good cabaret act, his songs are witty, flithy and ever so slightly disturbing. I arrived just in time for a deranged rendition of You Are My Sunshine accompanied by an accordion (I really do like accordions) and gosh, I'd never realised quite how creepy the lyrics of that song are. Anyway, his set was brilliant, musically, it's very dark cabaret, think the Tiger Lilies by way of the Dresden Dolls, only with more off-colour jokes (yes, more off-colour jokes than the Tiger Lilies, that's quite an achievement). I particularly liked the song about murdering your lover if they leave you and the cover of Radiohead's Creep performed on ukulele and kazoo. I bought his latest CD right after the set and I will definitely be looking out for him again, he was absolutely hilarious.
Next it was at last time for David J Haskins to take the stage. Unfortunately, some of the Slimes regulars didn't seem to quite "get" him, and there were some very rude and uncultured individuals chatting through most of the show, which was distracting and rather irritating, at one point promoter Frank Flag had to come onstage and tell them all to shut up. On the plus side, David's work is accoustic enough not to be too badly affected by the dreaded Slimes soundsystem although his ensemble did suffer at one point with problems with the guitar. The ensemble, incidentally, were marvelous too, though at points I have to say it felt weird seeing someone else playing bass on Bauhaus tracks. For the last half a dozen songs a lovely lady (whose name escapes me, sorry) joined them improvising on violin, apparently she had played on the album and happened to be in London. It was a perfect set, with a few gorgeous melancholy tracks from his new album Not Long For This World and plenty of old favourites from throughout his career too. From his solo work we had tracks like I'll Be Your Chauffeur, Crocodile Tears and the Velvet Cosh, and Goth Girls In Southern California (very fitting, methinks), from Love and Rockets we had Rainbird, Dog End of a Day Gone By, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven and, my favourite, No New Tale to Tell, plus a few glorious Bauhaus tracks, All We Ever Wanted and Who Killed Mr Moonlight, which is absolutely one of my favourite tracks of all time and I can't even begin to tell you how happy I was to finally hear it live. David himself was in fine voice despite apparently not being very well and having to rush around trying to sort out his passport, which someone had stolen!
For some reason or other the next show, which had been scheduled for Bristol, had been cancelled, so he was playing a second night in London. I couldn't miss that! So I hopped back on the bus that afternoon and back into London for a "Bauhaus party" in the Purple Turtle in Camden. The venue was sadly all but empty, despite criminally low entrance prices, but on the plus side that meant I could stay right down at the front for the whole show. The first support act were a slightly electronic goth rock band called Das Fluff and they... weren't to my tastes. Thankfully Joe Black was back next with a sparkly hat and more cabaret shenanigans. Well, I say "more", it was the same set as the night before but it didn't matter, I really enjoyed it and there were plenty of new jokes to keep the humour fresh. And funny. Did I mention he was funny? He was very funny. Plus it meant I got to catch the songs I'd missed the night before, including an accordion cover of Sex Bomb by Tom Jones which finished with him felating the microphone.
One very blurry photo of Joe Black. I had a few more photos of him, but the shutter didn't open on the camera properly so they are impossibly dark
And one very blurry, slightly photoshopped photo of Joe Black. The dark smudge at the top is where the shutter of my camera didn't open. Stupid camera.
David J's set was interrupted with a few more technical hitches, largely because the ensemble had only been given one pickup between them (an oversight which was remedied with the help of one of my friends) and yet more problems with the guitar, leading David to add a bit of "VU dissonance, man". The set itself was pretty much the same as the night before, the only real difference was that some of the songs were played in a different order (perhaps because of the different technical problems) but it was wonderful all the same. David had a few different, interesting asides that night too, but the real treat was the encore. The first encore was a rendition of Bela Lugosi's Dead with added violin and more dissonant guitar (by that point, there was a string hanging from David's guitar, and the violinist's bow was pretty much decimated). The second encore was a suitably cabaret-esque version of The Alabama Song performed with Joe Black, which was completely and utterly fantastic. I do rather miss David's cabaret faze.
And a blurry photo of David J
Ye gods, this one isn't blurry! I didn't take many photos, I was too busy being in awe.
After the show I lurked for a while with a couple of friends who're acquainted with David. I'm making rather a habit of standing around behind people who are chatting to musicians, aren't I? One of these days I will get over this dreadful shyness and actually talk to someone!
Anyway, it was a wonderful weekend and, although I suffered for the lack of sleep at work on Monday, I'm so glad I made it to both shows. I'll leave you with a little clip of Messers Black and Haskins performing the Alabama Song (not taken by me, so it's not blurry!)
This year has been pretty significant for me. I found my first full-time, long-term job and started living independently. I've acquired a social life out of almost nowhere. But, perhaps more importantly, I've started to make sense of my personal life: I'm on top of my bipolar disorder for the first time in years, I've become a bit more comfortable with my body and my sexuality, and I've had a bit of a spiritual reawakening. All just in time for my 25th birthday. Talk about a turn around.
I wanted to do something to commemorate all this, but I honestly didn't know what to do. Getting a new tattoo seemed like a good idea, but I couldn't really decide what. I'd settled on a cliche-tastic vampire design that I'd drawn but it just didn't seem like the right time. I almost gave up on the idea but I'd been drawing a lot of mythology-based nonsense, and almost by accident, drew a little doodle of everyone's favourite Norse trickster deity.
Loki tattoo design... well, that's what I think he looks like, anyway
Now anybody who's heard me wax lyrical on the subject of mythology will know that I have a bit of a thing about tricksters, and Loki in particular. I find him fascinating. There's so much about him that's ambiguous; his relationship with the Aesir (and with the jotnar, come to think of it), his sexuality, his skills, his motivations, even his gender is in flux. I know a lot of people think of him as evil, mainly due to the fact that Christianity doesn't like mythologies where there's not an antagonist, but I really don't subscribe to that interpretation. I see him more of a representation of the Other and a creature of chaos, and chaos by default is neutral (unless we're talking D&D alignments!) Or to put it in an even-more pop-culture-y way and steal a line from The Dark Knight; "that's the thing about chaos. It's fair."
On a far more basic level, Loki represents change. The change he brings about is often painful, he does things that seem cruel and pointless but it usually turns out to be necessary. Take the shearing of Sif's hair, there's no real reason for him doing that, he just calls it a "joke", but without that seemingly random act, there would be now Mjolnir and no Gungir (and no Loki's Wager for that matter). Even Ragnarok is a necessary change. Ragnarok isn't really an end-time myth, it's a renewal myth. Its survivors huddle around the regenerated Yggdrasil and the cycle begins again.
Thinking of Loki as change, the drawing seemed like a perfect choice for a tattoo. This year has been all about change. And, yeah, it's been a kind of Viking-y year, somehow. Does this mean I'm devoting myself to him in some way? No. Does it mean I'm going to stop worshiping other deities? No. My world view pretty much allows for all deities from all pantheons to exist, but I only really worship those from the Graeco-Roman, Norse and Egyptian pantheons, with a little bit of Celtic mythology thrown in. This is mainly because I don't think one can worship a deity unless one completely understands them and their child-cultures (or parent-cultures, depending on how you look at things). There's no point trying to sing a song in praise of someone you hardly know. Of the pantheons I do worship, there are certain deities that I know very well and feel a particular connection with; those are the ones I would say I actively worshiped. Loki is one of them, but he's by no means the only one. If I had to go right out on a limb and name a "patron", I'd be tempted to say Persephone. I've been drawn to her since childhood, long before I started actually worshiping the old gods, and eventually I plan to get a tattoo in honour of her. I feel I owe it to her.
So now I'd settled on the design, it was just a matter of finding a tattooist. I'd heard good things about Evolution Tattoo in Kidlington, so I took the bus out there to try them out. I showed the guy the design and he said fine, he needed to tweak it a bit but he'd do it. So I booked myself in for three weeks later. I was really excited when I rode out on the bus to see what they'd done with the design. I was set up to be disappointed: the tattooist had completely changed my design and turned it into an old school tattoo design with a hippie-ish witch lady. He'd even changed the flames. He asked whether I liked it and I had to say no. I had to explain that, no, the androgynous figure was definitely male and had to explain who it was supposed to be. I was slightly disheartened when the chap didn't even recognise the name.
In the end he made it very clear that he had no intention of drawing in my style, he flat out told me, "no offense to your drawing or anything, but if someone brings in something I like then, y'know, I'll do it but I'm more comfortable drawing my own stuff." So I told him, no offense to his drawing or anything, but we clearly have different aesthetics. It was all very disappointing; a waste of a day, and of the three weeks wait, and then there was the nuisance of getting my deposit back.
So, back to the proverbial drawing board. I trawled the interwebz for a while, looking at various tattooists in the area and ended up of the website for local generic "alt" shop, Tiger Lily. My first tattoo was done there nearly six years ago, and to be honest it wasn't great, but looking at their site they had new artists and their work was actually pretty good. So I popped in (using it as an excuse to buy a Hellbunny cardigan too) and lurked by the tattoo and piercing area. A rather ominous looking chap came up and asked if I was waiting to get a piercing, and I explained what I was there for and he said "it's time, isn't it?" At which point I tried not to laugh.
He let one of the tattooists know I was lurking, a friendly chap known as "Mad Mick" who specialises in black and grayscale work (and does some fairly impressive portraits). I showed him my design and he took a photocopy of it and told me to pop back in later in the week to have a look at what he'd done with it. I did, a week or so later, and it was spot-on, almost exactly what I'd originally drawn.
So this Sunday I finally went back in to get the tattoo. It took about two hours on and off, sprawled on a stretcher in the tattoo parlour listening to Planet Rock radio (which kept going funny when Mick used one of the power sources for the tattoo gun) and chatting to Mick and the other tattooist, Chris. They even bought me a cup of tea.
It wasn't too painful until late in the session, when my skin was starting to get sensitive and generally fed up. For most of the session, it was the tickling feeling of the vibrations that was most uncomfortable, and trying to keep still when things are tickling isn't easy.
Still, by five o'clock it was all done, looking something like this
One fresh, slightly sore Loki tattoo. Or Lopt-tattoo as I've taken to thinking of it
I'm really pleased with it. It looks pretty much exactly how I wanted it, and I was really impressed with what he did with the shading on the cloak. He left in all the important details; the mistletoe, the scars around the mouth and the bindrunes at the bottom. Plus, it still leaves my little triangle of moles uncovered. I like those moles.
Two days on and it's healing fairly well. It's a little uncomfortable to lie on, but it's stopped weeping and the skin is starting to tighten where it's going to scab.
Oh and for anyone looking for tattoo aftercare, that Tattoo Goo stuff seems pretty good and it smells of lavender and rosemary, which is quite nice.
What, you thought my monster mythology kick might have finished by now? Shame on you! No, I'm still looking for fun and bizarre media based on my favourite world mythologies, and here's another cartoon version. Class of the Titans was a Canadian action cartoon from the mid 00s loosely based on Greek mythology. The premise? Seven kids descended from Classical heroes are gathered together by the gods into use their unique powers against Cronos, who has escaped from Tartarus and isn't very happy. It's not exactly revolutionary, but it makes up for its lack of originality with some inventive character designs and surprisingly interesting takes on the mythological characters. There's even a joke in one episode about not being able to read Linear A. Each episode centres on a particular deity, myth or monster, and is named accordingly with plenty of room for entertaining puns, my favourite being an episode about the Graeae and their famous all-seeing eye called Grae's Anatomy. It ran for two, 26-episode seasons before finishing on a lacklustre cliffhanger.
It's silly but worth a look if you're so inclined. Here's the first half of the first episode.
The post-M'era Luna doldrums are setting in so over the past few weeks I've been trying to extend the gothiness with evening excursions to suitably goth-tastic places and events. The day after returning from said German festival was Intrusion, Oxford's marvelous goth night, and the weekend afterwards I popped up to London for a wander around Camden (SHOPPING!) and a visit to Slimes (thank the gods for the Goth floor!)
Last Friday it was time for something a little more exciting, however. Inkubus Sukkubus, the renowned goth rock/pagan band who've been gigging for years and years yet I've somehow managed to never see, were playing a gig in Bristol. Thanks to some frantic swapping of shifts at work and to Big Alan and his unofficial goth taxi service (thanks Alan!) I managed to make it up there to catch them. After a rather long, but entertaining ride up from Amazingstoke station to Bristol, we arrived at the venue, an old-fashioned gig pub called the Fleece, in time to catch the first band. I have no idea who they were, but they played inoffensive alt rock and had a very enthusiastic, very young fanbase. Not great but not horrible, and to give them credit it looked like they were really enjoying themselves. Meeting up with some friends, we discovered that the Inkies themselves weren't due to start their set until gone ten, so we wandered Bristol for a bit to find somewhere to eat. We ended up in the Slug and Lettuce, which had shifted into pre-club loud-and-horrible pop music mode but was still serving relatively nice food (with rock hard peas).
Back at the venue, another support band that I don't remember the name of were playing rather generic metal so we popped next door for a drink and a natter before catching up with Mr Sticks, Pyromancer and a few other friends on the front row. The Fleece is a nice little venue; reasonably good sound system and no barrier, so I could pretty much prop myself up against the stage and take some typically terrible photos of the band.
Speaking of which (or should that be, "speaking of witch"? Heh I'm funny)...
Ooh look it's Tony and a light. My camera really doesn't like lights.
One very blurry photo of Tony
One slightly less blurry photo of Bob
Candia and a light
Candia pointing at something
Their set was amazing, a nice mixture of things from throughout their career, including some of my favourites, like Vampyre Erotica, Belladona and Aconite, Church of Madness andof course Wytches. I'd forgotten just how many of their songs I love, and to be honest I'd forgotten how talented they are; watching Tony play was incredible, and it's a rare thing when I'm at a gig and I'm too busy being impressed by the vocals to sing along. They're also very, very funny and genuinely nice people. I really need to get off my arse and go and see them play again.
After an hour and a half long set (honestly I wish it'd been longer) they finally left the stage and it was time to chat to friends (and stand next to friends while they chatted with the Inkies themselves!) and begrudgingly say goodbyes. The journey back was hard work, it was about half midnight when we left so it was pretty late by the time we reached Oxford (and I really, really suck at navigation. I can't even navigate with a satnav. Dear oh dear) though it was really nice to get the chance to have a long natter with Alan. Unfortunately I had to work the next day, that was even harder work on about four hours sleep!
So... yeah that was that.
In other news, there are pictures of me turning up around the interwebz after M'era Luna. It's shallow, I know, but this makes me happy. Looksie at these two from this website
I'm famous! (Oh alright, I know I'm not. Let me have my fantasy, damn thee!) Honestly though, I can't believe a photo of me is included in the same gallery as Adora Batbrat, I mean, she's a model for gods' sakes! *brims with pride*
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