In my previous post, I may have implied that the Slingshot AW200 was a conspiracy by LowePro to disenfranchise millions of lefthanded photographers with their asymmetric sling-style camera bag. I may have also compared using this bag to wiping your bum with the wrong hand. I wrote to LowePro to ask them if there was a version of the bag for lefties. I got a reply to my email from LowePro and from Mike to my LJ post both saying, basically, “Try harder”. I tried harder and even got to copying the picture on the website of a guy carrying it. It turns out I was led up the garden path (by a right handed infidel it’s worth pointing out) and not taught the secret way of carrying this bag. Duly chastised, I will probably get one of these bags and see how it works out.
Archive Page 5
LowePro redeemed, I’m an idiot
11Jul07
Since I bought a new lens in Japan, I’ve been thinking of the need for a new bag. The new lens is a bit massive and has finally forced me to outgrow my little Crumpler thing I’ve used since I started out on this crazy gig. One of the chaps at work has a nice bag made by Lowepro which you wear over one shoulder and comes with a cunning little quick access zip so you can easily whip out your camera at a moment’s notice. He bought it in today so I could see if my stuff fits inside. It does! I tried to wear it over my shoulder and suddenly came to the horrible, bigoted truth. Lowe hate southpaws! You see, the bag is offset, so it’s asymmetric. You can only wear it over your left shoulder which, as I explained to LowePro in an email just now, is like trying to wipe your arse with the wrong hand. It feels totally wrong and it’s going to lead to a terrible mess. I really want this bag, but unless they make a leftie version or I can get some kind of hemispherical motor neurone reassignment surgery I think I’m done for. Are all sling bags made by bilateral hand-fascists?
Last weekend, I went to see Antony Gormley’s exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. I wasn’t sure what to expect given that the media surrounding the thing was intent on making it revolve around the gimmicky sounding box of fog that they’d installed. I was pleasantly surprised by the whole thing. The atmosphere in this godawful Brutalist monument to aesthetic fuckheadedness that is the South Bank Centre is unexpectedly wonderful – cold, concrete walls with sharp edges, colourless and futuristic-feeling in spite of being (ironically) an anachronism in an age of glass and steel. Putting Gormley’s cold concrete and metal artworks into this space is almost a no-brainer. One piece, a giant metal sculpture that barely fits in the space it’s been put, looks like Salvador Dali met the Borg and squirted out Gormley’s brain as their sole output of feverish steely copulation. To imagine the piece, it’s not a million miles from a katamari made out of giant metal plates with square holes somehow bored into them. The whole thing was glorious but was, however, dimly lit and guarded by a wary eyed security man who looked like he would wring my neck if I so much as thought about getting out my camera.
One of the more time consuming pieces to make, I imagine, is “Allotment”. The nut of it seems to be that Gormley (or assistants) measured 300 people’s heights, widths, girths. All sorts. These measurements were then converted into boxlike concrete forms that were the exact height and width and depth of the 300 individuals. To make people “ew” a bit, the boxes also have areas cut out of them to represent the area of their mouths, ears and, er, anuses. The room is fun to walk around, the concrete statues were cast inside wooden boxes and have natural defects that give character to some of them. The lighting in this room seemed to miss a trick, we commented at the time. It was harsh, directed from above and a bit warm in colour compared to the rest of the gallery. In the corner, by the stairs, another (doubtless) photography-hating gallery employee was stood next to a chair. So close, in fact, you’d imagine she was about to sit on it. She wasn’t though, it was a piece of artwork she was skilfully hiding from the visiting public. A chair with two balls (“maybe testicles”, the exhibition pamphlet helpfully suggests) sat on it.
I’ll skip over the bread-based wall-hanging and the frankly awesome steel-wire sculptures which defy logistics as well as my primitive arty brain. How did they get them into that room without breaking them? The advertised highlight of the show is “Blind Light” itself, a glass box maybe 10 metres square and a couple high. Inside the room was fog so thick you can’t see more than a few inches. The artistic merit of this is somewhat dubious until you see people stumbling around inside, inches from the glass wall and fading into the smokey beyond. Walking into the box yourself is a very rapid exercise in suppressing panic and trying to work out a survival strategy. Ok, I’m in a room and I can’t see my legs. If I extend my arms, I look like a thalidomide victim. A bowl of skimmed milk is less opaque than this, for crying out loud. I can hear voices clearly, though. Voices of Rob and Sarah and Jon who went in a few seconds before me, immediately lost in the mess. The fog in here is so thick you can taste it. If you inhale too quickly, through your mouth, you’re liable to cough. You breathe gently, through your nose, in here. I make a beeline for the friendly voices and Rob looms out at me, growing from dark splodge to full features in half a footstep. We’re at the back corner of the glass box and they tell me they just found a couple kissing, secretly, in the middle of the room. I wonder how far you could get before someone stumbled over you, called the guards and the whole thing was emergency-evacuated of smoke in a heartbeat leaving you in mid-grind with your girlfriend de-pantsed on floor and the entire gallery looking in at you, O-mouthed and disbelieving. Hmm.
We edged our way around the room. Someone walked into me and fled before I had time to retaliate. Some giggling and annoying child was running around inside, ruining my attempt to pretend I was in a horror movie by crouching down and then standing up just as someone came near. The child’s levity was cruelly crushed as it ran headlong into a wall with a satisfying clunk. There were no tears or cries, so I can only assume it knocked itself unconscious and was found half an hour later with heat-sensing equipment. I didn’t hang around to find out, my schadenfreude satisfied for the day, I left and hung around outside for Rob and company who, somehow, had got lost inside an empty box with one door. Duh!
I woke up to John Humphreys telling me a car bomb had been found at 2am in Piccadilly Circus. It appears to be developing into another tale of hilarious overreaching ambition by mad incompetent bastards. They should really have started, as I did as a curious pyromaniac kid, by trying to blow up little mounds of earth with gunpowder in medicine bottles. Once you’ve got the basics cleared away, maybe move on a bit at a time. It really reads like these guys get a copy of the lethally inaccurate Anarchists’ Cookbook to tell them how to perform their crazy attacks. In this case, it seems like two guys knocked off a Merc, raided a B&Q, obtained some patio gas and a box of nails before hoofing it to the West End whereupon their ability to drive a car promptly evaporated and left them crashing softly into some bins outside a bar before fleeing down the road to avoid, at all costs, their just reward for being a martyr. These guys can stand as stoop-shouldered embarrassments alongside the 21st July bombers, as examples of woeful, thankful, incompetence. If they went to the training camps we’re assured exists in Pakistan or Afghanistan, I hope they get their money back.
I did head to work this morning idly wondering if I’d be able to make it back. You never know how these twisted days develop. One discovery in the early hours might lead to a day-long mess as more faith-guided fuckwittery unfolds with damp squib fizzles that are still capable of closing down huge parts of the transport infrastructure. Nevertheless, bold soldier of capitalism that I am, I went to Vauxhall station to catch my train to work. The signs were immediately ominous, though. Two police cars sirened past my bus at high speed, through traffic lights and on the wrong side of the road with frankly terrified looking uniformed passengers in the back seat. When I got to Vauxhall, they were parked outside the station entrance and sealing up the underground passage that leads to the tube station. Argh, more terror? Not really, more likely a tramp expired in his sleep down there. Or a fight between a pair of highly strung commuters battling to the death over the last copy of the Metro.
I booted through the melee and up to my platform on the overground. More horrors! A young chap was lying unconscious and dribbly against the railings by the stairs. He was surrounded by a group of terrible rubbernecks, all looking ever so concerned but nobody doing anything more than looking around passively for someone, anyone, to help. One decent type was arranging her knees under the chap’s head – good plan – and as I stopped, briefly wondering if I should give aid, many high-vis clad train staff were enroute to add their own oh-shit-what-did-my-training-say-again flavour of chaos to proceedings. Given there was already a clutch of cops downstairs and an ambulance, I suspect the odds were in this chap’s favour. I hopped on the train and headed away from this insane place. Hopefully, I’ll make it home this evening.
God, I’ve blown my load in the last post. I’m sure the Suicide fans will be here to rip me a new one in due course. I’ve plaintively asked elsewhere for education about what makes them legendary. I suspect it’ll be along the lines of “they invented the genre”, in which case, all credit to them, but for crying out loud move on.
Grinderman weren’t too long in taking the stage after Suicide left. Long enough, though, for me to build up a head of rage at the blue-wigged toilet attendant who kept singing jingles while I took a piss. “With-out-soap-there-is-no-hope!” “Let’s get drunk and have some fun, have some fun, have some fun.” Singing the latter at some gigs is enough to earn you a stabbing. Not here, though, everyone here seems to be approaching the sunset of their youth or, in some cases, denying the fact outright. A chap who looked like a cross between Jonathan Ross and Peter Stringfellow wandered past mopping his brow extravagantly with a flock-pattered silk handkerchief. Another looks like he might quite have liked Suicide, an inoffensive-looking cybergoth type remarkable mostly for the fact that his arm has four large japanese kanji tattooed on it that, to the best of my abilities, crudely translate to “LITTLE MEAT BRIGHT SOUND”. I contemplate this for a while and decide definitely not to ask him what he thinks it means.
Ok, yes, Grinderman. That’s who we’re here for right? It’s Nick Cave, Warren Ellis (no, not THAT Warren Ellis, but they both have beards of wondrous voluptuity in whose shadow I feel somewhat emasculated.) Martyn Casey and Jim Sclavunos (the best beard of the lot, which could only be enhanced by his dramatic pink suit and drum kit). All four of them are alumni from the Bad Seeds but the music they perform for Grinderman possesses some considerable stylistic clear air from the last Bad Seeds outing from 2004. The band’s name should give you a clue to grinding, thrashy chaotic and quite glorious tunes hung together around Nick Cave’s always-superb lyrics and they’re performed here with the perfect amount of flair and confidence. Confidence, that is, except for Cave’s handling of his guitar at which he’s a confessed newbie. It’s almost charming to see him thrashing away and playing the guitar rock star knowing that he’s only recently learnt the instrument. He’s cautious with it sometimes but is clearly enjoying the iconography of throwing around a Fender and screaming into a microphone. Grinderman’s songs are frequently loud and brutal by their close and I’ve never before seen a crowd in front of Nick Cave actually moshing. The keystone track and first single, “No Pussy Blues” went down a storm whereas the other crowd-favourite “Go Tell the Women”, a song from the point of view of men everywhere giving up the ghost and leaving the world behind, got a far greater response from the women cheering along who seemed positively bouyant at the concept of a world free of men.
With only one album behind them, you would have been ignorant to expect too many songs from their debut tour. Steering well clear from dropping into covers or plundering the Seeds’ back catalogue, they play their last tune and Cave announces his thanks and then, “We’ll be back in a minute with Suicide!” I quickly weigh up whether he means the band or a sudden and bloody exit to their long careers. Given the alternatives, I’m not sure which held the greater appeal at that moment.
Ten minutes later, still wearing his absurd skiing goggles, the keyboardist comes onto the stage and kicks off a looping sample. He’s joined by Cave and the vocalist from Suicide both entering into a screaming contest in which they bellow staccato phrases through enough electronics to make a soprano sound like a dumper truck engine. The whole mess crescendos without doing anyone on stage any favours. The rest of Grinderman are ostensibly hammering their instruments in the background, noiselessly as far as we were concerned. I could even see Seasick Steve at the back, uselessly percussioning something near a microphone. The keyboard player by the end was mashing the keyboard with his fist and not looking. The second track was more of the same with unified yelling. My notes at this point read: “Are they shouting Supercunt together?” Before the end, Cave gives up and waves goodbye. Not deterred, Suicide carry on with the inaudible remainder of Grinderman gamely playing alongside until fade. Cups are being thrown onto the stage. They all leave. In the toilets, where I am regularly forced by virtue of tiny bladder and copious beer consumption, my neighbour pissee remarks, “What the fucking hell was that? What a load of bollocks!” and I’m afraid I have to agree.
[ Photo credit: Alison Covey: Flickr Stream. Source Photo]
I am not sure why, after so many years of going to gigs, I persist in turning up so damn early. Maybe it would be an excusable thing if I were attending with friends, it’s nice get a chance to get some beers in before the main event. In the case of Grinderman’s gig this week at the Forum in Kentish Town, I’m afraid I had no real excuse. I left work early, showered quickly and was inside the forum with two hours to kill before the main event. Boy, was I was made to regret it.
The regret came later, though. The first support act was a single guy who wandered through the thin crowd in front of the stage whooping and playing an acoustic guitar, Blues style. He had a supremely weathered and tanned face, a long white goatee beard, dirty cap, dirty jeans and dirty shirt. He gave the impression of an American deep-South mechanic, or a hobo, or a tramp. Turns out, he was actually both homeless and spent time hoboing it up on the railways having left home at 14. His name is Seasick Steve, so named because, well, he gets seasick. “There ain’t no mystery,” he says. His music is unmistakably Blues and he played a handful of battered-looking guitars with great style and talent. Stamping on a wooden box to provide his own percussion he howled out some fantastic tunes, at times writhing his upper body around in mad contortions and looking for all the world like his head was about to explode. The still-small crowd gathered make some of the loudest, most appreciating noises I’ve ever seen for a support. I got really into this charming chap; he has a great wry sense of humour and story-telling style that adds some real depth to his character and goes some way to explaining where the music comes from. One of his guitars, about which he tells a story, is held together by duct tape, has only three strings none of which are the correct strings for the position. Somehow he makes some incredible riffs come out of it and even slows the action right down to show the crowd. It doesn’t help, I still can’t see where the complex changing chords and plucked notes are coming from. Steve finished up after 6 or so songs and got such a warm reception, I can’t help feeling I’d like to see him again.
With Seasick Steve’s raw analogue talent and honest warmth setting the tone of the support acts, what followed can only be described as a brutal joke played by cold and evil bastards on an unsuspecting, softened-up, gullible crowd. The next band up were called Suicide; a name that, by the end of their set, you end up wishing to be a case of nominative determinism. A two-tier rack of synths is plonked on stage. One microphone stand some distance away. What follows is this: the keyboard player comes out wearing a pair of huge pretentious ski goggles and sets off a multilayered looping sample. He then plays a simple melody over the top of it with all the stage presence of a broomhandle. The behatted singer comes on stage looking for all the world like an extra from Nathan Barley. His vocals consist of heavily adulterated, echoey screamings over the top of whatever garbage the synth player is wanking out from the sick depths of the keyboard’s memory. The crowd is five times bigger than were around for Seasick Steve (who I’m feeling quite nostalgic for at this point) yet their applause is a fifth the volume.
I can’t help feeling a bit depressed about seeing these guys since I am quite a fan of noisy electronica with shouty lyrics. I’ve spent enough time around the gothy side of London’s music scene to know that this kind of band is not only common but there are whole armfuls of London groups operating in this space that are more deserving of this support slot. I’ve spent long holiday weekends at EBM events stood around being mopey in the LA2 (as was) and heard ten bands that have more stage presence and innovation than these guys. They’re played to saturation in venues like Slimelight and you don’t have to look hard to find someone talented, doing something new. Standing listening to Suicide, you can’t come to any other conclusion that they are just a particularly boring example of the genre and question the reason for them being chosen. Imagine my surprise, then, to hear that they’re MOJO “Innovation in Sound” award winners, have been around since 1971 and are considered seminal. Who’d have thought it?
From my notes on “Suicide” taken at the time.
“One track sounded like the distorted melody from Black Box’s number one hit “Ride on Time” overlaid by vocals from a man in the midst of a bad trip, whooping like a fuckwit. It sounds like he’s crying for his mum and simultaneously realising that he’s shit himself. The lead singer has pulled his jacket over his head now and is singing from within his little cocoon of bollocks.”
The finale arrives and the keyboard player is hammering dramatically on the keys and yet, strangely, having only the slightest discernable effect on the music. At this point, proceedings have descended into comedy. He’s stepped back now, playing the keyboard like he’s prodding at his dead mother’s corpse. They finally finish, soak up the “meh” of applause from those not trying to lick the wall sockets to end their suffering, and fuck off. Thank Christ.
There’s more to write, but I’ll break here since it’s becoming lengthy. Spoilers: Grinderman were really good, BeardRating(tm) was very high and Suicide make a comeback and earn the ire of my newfound friends in the men’s toilets. Stay tuned!
I occasionally have a look at the stats for ni.chol.as, since it’s fun to see how people come into the site, what they read and the search terms they might use. I don’t get massive traffic, but it’s still something to sate your curiosity now and again. One of the best things is the incoming search terms – what people are searching for on Google to find ni.chol.as in the results. Today, I noticed that the number one search term for people finding me is “naked old men“, followed by “old men naked”, followed by “naked older men” followed by… you get the picture.
I’m terribly sorry to let all these people down, but the naked old men were really only in a public bath in Japan. Now sling your hook!
