fire and forget

Whatever happened to the Longpigs, Bennett, and Joyrider? Where are all the indiedisco heroes?

Well, to be brutally honest, they didn’t exactly light up that many indiediscos back in the mid-to-late 90s, but they were just three of the bands on heavy rotation in my halls of residence bedroom.

I’ve forgotten more bands from that time than I could name now, but as I sit here ripping my CD collection, wandering song by song through my halcyon youth at the wrong end of the country at the wrong end of Britpop, I’m listening to the Warm Jets and lamenting that my copy of The Longpigs’ Blue Skies has vanished.

I miss the Liverpool Lomax. The first time I went there was to see Silver Sun, if I recall, and Satellite Beach, or maybe it was Carrie, or both, supported, and became the first in a line of going-nowhere outfits bashing away in dingy half-full venues to me and my going-nowhere friends. Who are now engineers and policemen.

Which is a clue: as my boss, at the Tower Bridge office where I work, is a former member of Tiger. So that’s what happens to the denizens of the indiedisco, and the lords of the pub backroom. We grow up and get jobs.

Looking back, I can honestly say that was the last thing I expected.

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Bizarre commuter rage incident this morning: Respectable-looking middle-aged commuter on packed train gets irate with respectable-looking middle-aged commuter who has one of those daft mini bikes. Irate Commuter has obviously been saving this up for a while as he rants “You do this every day, you have no regard for the other people who have to stand up on this busy train” to which Cyclist Commuter insouciantly rejoins “You’re being antisocial.”

This only winds up Irate Commuter further as he retorts “You’re being antisocial - look at the railway bylaws, only folding bikes are allowed and that’s not a folding bike!” Cyclist Commuter suggests that irate commuter is “being objectionable”, to which Irate Commuter spits in his face.

Brilliantly, this is greeted by a collective pantomime “GASP!” from the entire carriage.

Just goes to show, civilisation is just a thin veneer and we’re only one folding bicycle away from savagery.

“Why is Spiderman in a black suit? Does he turn bad or something?”

No, his suit turns bad. It’s called Venom.

“What? His suit turns bad?”

Yeah, in the comic he goes off into space or something and gets a new black suit, but it comes alive and goes bad. It’s called Venom.

“Oh right. His outfit comes to life. Cause that’s plausible.”

Any more plausible than a man getting bitten by a radiocactive spider and gaining superpowers?

“Oh that’s perfectly plausible. Isn’t it a documentary?”

Yeah. Fly on the wall… arf!

Noisettes / Foals
ICA 29.01.07

Foals are uptight-strapped guitarslingers, a doomed spiral of repetitive Bloc Party-isms until they undergo a mid-song seismic gear-shift and suddenly it’s all Cossack! At The Disco and stomping good.

Noisettes are here to teeestiiiiiffffyyyiiiiii! They’re an evil universe Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a Skynard-style barroom band fronted by the wicked fairy that all the fairies in fairy school were scared of (but secretly fancied).

Decked out in goth-Tinkerbell rags and POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS guitar strap, Shingai Shoniwa belts out ‘Don’t give Up’ and ‘Scratch Your Name’ like a whirling dervish with sugarcoated wolf’s lungs. Just when you’ve got your head round the jerky gospel punk racket the Noisettes close with ‘Pub Life’, an oompah-driven atom bomb dropped on Oliver Twist’s fogbound London streets, and they’re gone gone gone. Please Shingai, can we have some more?

Well look who it is. It’s been a while. Take a pew. Let me get you a drink. The cheap stuff, we were never that close. Cheers.

Welcome to Fire And Forget 2.0.

Fire And Forget Version 1.0 was alright for a warm-up, a halfhearted homestead halfway along my wagon train ‘cross the blogosphere. Have a look if you can be bothered, but you’d be better off going back to the porn. Another pint? Why surely.

I started 1.0 with a lot of mealy-mouthed promises and ambitions, to myself as much as anybody, in the hope that making such promises public I would be inspired to complete them. I’ve learned a lot since then: mainly to never make promises.

Another one? Why not.

So no promises this time, just a guarantee that the standard of writing will stay dead high, like. Comics, films, music, you know the drill. My name’s Rich, by the way. One for the road?