All Tomorrow's Parties 2/4

Day two began with a hangover, front and vice. We managed, with herculean effort, to lift our leaden heads off our pillows and out the door for the weekends most bizarre spectacle: Sun Ra Arkestra. An amazing array of sparkly outfits and free form calamity jazz with truely interesting results, they had to be one of the highlights of the whole weekend for me. Some impromptu break neck speed charleston-esque dancing from one of the sax players, who could easily claim a pension or two, made for a jaw dropping visual metaphor to the impressive set. Afterward we sought out two friends who had also made the epic journey down from Leeds in search of some beautiful noises; mike and teresa. We once again sought out some food from one of the nearby vendors, this this time plumping for some Finnigan's fish and chips which were revolting. Soggy batter, dry fish, shit chips and expensive... you may be wondering what happened to the pasta, so did we! It wasn't going well for our epic tubs o' carbs and the concept of eating them was dropped on this, the saturday, due to the funky odors and worringly tangy/sour tastes arising from our plastic nosh mountains. With a poor excuse for fish and chips in my belly and other food options looking increasingly insane price wise we landed upon a heavy and fateful decision. Do we go to Tescos and buy some cheap grub or stay and try and enjoy the Horrors? I voted for the faceless corporate monster that wanted to assure me that "...every little helps!" ...they do cheap sandwiches.

Poverty and hunger beget principles.

Moo-sick!

What a better place to regurgitate my own mess than my own blog:

Violent Sky and the Lightning Kite



All three of us come from different musical backgrounds and we all retain our own individual tastes and writing directions, which is what makes playing in the band so exciting. Once we've got our shit together and tied our massively sprawling, out of control spray of ideas into a coherent strand i'll post it here proper but right no we've got a few badly recorded live recordings and jams at:

www.myspace.com/violentskyandthelightningkite


The Black Mesa Incident



The band that has existed and been on hiatus whilst being active for the last 3 years. We've been a three piece hardcore band, a five piece prog collective and a badly thought out foray into screamo. I've pretty much reclaimed the name as a little alter-ego for myself and the darker, scream-ier, more hardcore stuff i've written/am writing. The Black Mesa Incident will now be two bands existing under the same name at the same time, one based in Scarborough, the other based all over the shop and worked out via email. At the moment our myspace is rather bare. We've got two tracks up, a demo from Scarborough and "Tooth and Claw" from one of the elder Northwich branches. Expect more soon...

www.myspace.com/blacmesaincident


Florence Nightingale and the Cancer Germs/All My Eyes and Betty Martin

Pretty much the same deal as Black Mesa but a less-hardcore home for random musical scribblings spat out by my mind.

http://www.myspace.com/andbettymartin

Rejigging

It's been a long, long time since my first post. You may recall an obtusely sized scatter gun attempt at a follow up made up of an essay i handed in for uni and fan boi enthusing about La Quiete, and that's quite enough of that. Not that i don't enthuse about La Quiete because i do, a lot, i just feel this blog such begin to take a more constructive, creative and far more maintained bent.

First off, bare basics out of the way. I'm back in Northwich, home of the interesting and the few. Got me a job down Bunbery way potwashing for a princely price with tips. Not bad. I have a friend to thank of course and it was sheer luck i got it. Handy that really.

Besides potwashing my way into the black whilst spending my way into the red (a leeds ticket, new amp and just generally being a reluctant but active bitch-slave to the consumer sandwich that is the spending sprees just to get by), i have been attempting to understand the faint but very real misogyny within. Now i'm not classing myself as a woman hating sadist who believes the enwombed's rightful place is in the kitchen, far from it. Or am i? Ever since i can remember i've always aimed to be for equality. I've had my moments as we all do and i'm in no way saying that, up until recently, i thought of myself as a paragon of truth, justice and virtue, i just can't help but feel a nag in my head that has unlocked a few dark hidden home truths.

Chapter One: Genesis

In the beginning there was man. A man with a disheveled beard and a dodgy haircut, tired of using msn file transfers and sordo to spread the sound of Screamo to all his friends. He decided to start a blog to rant and rave about all his favorite bands and generally compile his thoughts on random happenings.

He didn't want to come across all preachy and evangelical and soon realised that writing in a faux-biblical style with genesis in the posting title was counterproductive to his goals.

He dropped using the 3rd person and everything.

Bit of a background; i've been into "music" from since i can remember but around the age of 9 or 10 something clicked inside my head and i suddenly acquired a vague sketch of exactly the sort of music i craved to hear. I started off with the usual commerical pop-punk shennagins of Blink and Sum 41 (i've always hated Green Day). After the briefest of metal phases (it all just seemed a bit daft and pretensious like bastardised theatre) a friend got me into AFI and I found my way into hardcore and more. Bands like At The Drive-In, Glassjaw, Thursday, Alexisonfire, SiKth, Converge etc. etc. they all made my ears do summasaults (they still do!) but I still hadn't found the "sound" I was searching for.

My ears were like metal detectors picking out bands like road signs. I slipped in and out of subgenres and styles trying to find this holy grail genre my brain had envisioned. It took me nearly a decade to bump into exactly what i was looking for. I found it on the internet on a forum set up to adore The Fall Of Troy (http://www.maybesheforgot.com/forum/index.php if you're interested)where we did anything but. Thanks to a couple of conversations, I was introduced to what real Screamo sounds like and satisfyed the persistant musical nag thats annoyed by head since I was 9.

So now im at university studying music technology, finally able to try and weave a footnote for myself on the long, long tapastry of music with my own music that hopefully will get me somewhere but if it doesn't then what? I'm thinking of writing about music whether I succeed in my dreams or not. I've always enjoyed it. That and promoting gigs, perhaps working for a record label or something. This blog will probably be littered with gig listings/reviews in the very near future from nights i'm going to be putting on in Scarborough (im at Hull University but their music tech course is at a different campus) and i'm attempting to squeeze my way onto the student radio station for a audio adaptation of this blog and it's contents (more the musical side of things that my freehand random rantings).

My two main goals with this blog, if I have any at all, is to try and pull like minded people together and introduce some very alternative music to people who may not have heard it yet.

And I promise. No more weird third person things to kick stuff off. I had to blow away the mandatory cobwebs somehow!

Thanks for reading. More soon.


Currently listening to: Louise Cyphre - Revolver A.K.A. Schall And Rauch