For one night only "Last Night" at the Astoria

The major problem of living in Essex and working in Kent, apart from being refered to the "token northerner" in the office, is the only viable way of crossing the Thames is by bridge in the morning and by tunnel in the evening. Most days the journey is quite reasonable but when a lorry breaks down in one of the tunnels you are in for a delay of about an hour. When a lorry breaks down in each of the tunnels - at the same time, - the whole area grinds to a halt and switching off the engine is the only thing to do. folks that commute using trains have to contend with cancellations and delays, folks that use cars have to contend with traffic jams. Minor delays seem to coincide with me going to gigs; I hope that this does not start a trend of major delays coinciding with my reviews. My first work for Fatea Magazine looked like it was going to be over before it begun. When I was describing what Fatea cover and how they work to a friend, she said: "it sounds like the mother ship is calling you". It was more likely that a couple of breakdown trucks cleared my path rather than the mother ship, but what ever it was, by the time I got home I was running about an hour and a half late, not good but, as I was asked to review the head liners, would still be able to get to the Borderline in time.

Much of the news on the radio was that it was the last night of the Astoria, in eight years time the legendary central London venue will be a new railway station. Normally I would be thinking of the band I would be seeing, listening to their music, reading up on the research I'd done on them. Tonight I couldn't focus on anything other than the building the bulldozers would soon be attacking. I guess most music fans have a favourite story of this place, mine is as much about what happened before and after the gig as the couple of hours inside listening to Swiss thrash metal band Celtic Frost.
As was often the case, I drove us to the local tube station so my alcoholic consumption for the evening was limited to one bottle of Newcastle Brown in the Tottenham. Having never had any inclination to drive a car JD was under no such restrictions, indeed he had more of a thirst on than normal and during he course of the evening drank all the money in his pocket and most of mine as well. In the Tottenham we got talking to this metal guy, he wasn't going to the gig but had seen them before. He was more interested in chatting up the very pretty, dark haired New Zealand barmaid. When we left, he was getting no where.

With the benefit of hindsight, going back into the Tottenham was a bad idea, I could have said no but I didn't. The guy we met was still in the pub, still chatting up the barmaid and still getting nowhere. JD then said something to him. I don't recall what it was exactly but felt sure he was going to get chinned for it. Being towards the back of the pub the "flight" option was not available to us and the best scenario was getting thumped and getting slung out, at the other end of the scale was a mass brawl. What actually happened was the the guy shock his head and said "Fuck off mate, you're pissed".

When you go to lots of gigs it is not only the music that is memorable; in twenty years I may remember The Bittersweets gig as much for the struggle to get there as their beautiful song "War Is Over" or their cover of Gillian Welch's "Orphan Girl".

From "Prince Charming" to "Goodnight, San Francisco" by way of "Bridge of Spies"

I'm listening to the Bittersweets latest album "Goodnight, San Francisco" which I downloaded from e-music. At the end of last week I got confirmation that I would be reviewing them their debut London gig at the Borderline this Wednesday and even though both their albums are available through Amazon the chances of me taking delivery and having a proper listen before the gig would be slim. The ability to download it will make my life a whole lot easier.

Over the weekend, on a bus from Kilburn to Shepherds Bush, I had a conversation about the relative merits of CD's over downloads which followed on from me revealing that T'Pau's "Bridge Of Spies" was the first CD I bought. Despite still buying vinyl for many years I was a quick convert to CD's, not because I preferred digital to analogue, not because I thought they would last forever and not because they were new, it was just because what I'm listening to has always been far more important than what format it was in or, for that matter, what I was listening to it on.

I had a friend who spent more money on his car stereo than I did on my car (in fact, he probably still does). He had a Kenwood head unit, pre amps, power amps, bass bins tweeters, woofers and mid ranges they were crossed over and had custom a custom made shelf. I was once earnestly told that you just had to have a graphic equaliser in a car because of it's shape. At this time his music collection consisted of Meat Loaf's "Bat Out Of Hell" and Billy Joel's "Greatest Hits Volume I & II", that's all, nothing else (he gave his record deck away as he didn't own a record). I'm not questioning the quality of his collection: I owned three copies of "Bat Out Of Hell" (three different labels, orange, black and blue) and, despite having all of Joel's albums, I still bought the Greatest Hits album as there were two new tracks on it, but rather the quantity of it in relation to the expense of his car stereo.

I must confess though, I always had a much lower opinion of cassettes. I have lost many a good album through leaving it on a dashboard and now wish that I'd taken the same amount of care with them as I did with my vinyl, which is still in pretty good nick. "Prince Charming" by Adam and the Ants was the first album I bought and it is true that no other format has ever been able to match a gate fold sleeve; unfolding a CD insert just is not the same, neither is a jpeg. The biggest downside of downloads is that there are no sleeve notes. This may be unique to e-music (I don't use I-tunes or Amazon or any other download service) and is the gripe I have with them. I pay £11.99 a month for fifty downloads, which makes it about an album a week for £3.00. This pricing plan means that the major record labels will have nothing to do with them. This bothers me not a jot; there are more than enough independent releases to choose from.

Ultimately, the only thing that matters is the music; how you buy it, how you store it and how you play it is unimportant.