feeding time for otters

the sun is shining, my sheets are freshly washed and i've just got in from a trip to the nature center near cassie's house in which we saw otters swim and frolic about and had a picnic, i'm in good spirits to say the least. perfect time for a blog update.

i've been pretty slack in getting this thing off the ground despite being upto a lot of fun stuff recently. the influx of exciting activity has been due to me being getting made redundant from my shitty job as a mortgage accessor, something which i looked upon with a great deal of positivity. that is until my bank account was wiped clean on saturday night at tuck shop. i lost about £240 in all, £150 of which was on hiring equipment, i'll uphold some kind of professionalism here and not go into the full details, but lets just say i defiantly won't be doing any more gigs, for the foreseeable future at least.

since saturday at least 5 people have actually said something along the lines of "i would have came if you didn't have bands" or "go back to having just djs " or "you shouldn't have put bands on again". it really comes to something when people actually avoid going to a night, which always is a lot of fun for the vast majority, just to avoid seeing some new bands. i could rant about this forever so instead i'll just leave it at that.

the saturday before last was the vice / fly53 tour or 'anti-tour' as they'd have us believe, instead of being in support of an album / single / digital release / t-shirt / nice dinner it was a "short, sporadic FREE tour inspired simply by inspiring acts" and not surprisingly it fell widely short of it's mark in terms of inspiring me, that is all but one fiery young 'rapper' named mapei.
while the whole loose rapping over hip hop influenced grimey beats format doesn't normally keep my boat afloat, her positive attitude coupled with energetic yet down to earth stage presence really caught my attention. i had several alcohol-based chats with the front woman jackie afterwards in which we decided that their sound was garage-punk and then we bought some weed and discussed her doing a tape for us over a few joints. lets see what comes of that? haha.

i the last week i've seen mirror! mirror! at both of their single launch parties and a super super magazine party at punk in soho. the mirror! boys are really coming into their own now both sound-wise and with their live performance and with the addition of a new track 'as good as gold' to their sets (which will appear on upcoming 7" on chicks dig jerks / puregroove records) they really are begining to make people take notice.
the london show @ the macbeth wasn't as well attended as i'd have hoped for but still a great show none the less, if a little dull in terms of crowd participation. i got to dj a great set and didn't have to worry about anyone dancing which was nice.

we had a lovely day on tuesday hanging out at fenners, of lesser panda, house drinking tea, listening to dub on radio 1 and picking fantasy football squads for euro 08 (i should check how mine are doing, i heard it's quite well). also we had some great breakfast at a nice little place in dalston and later on some mean falafel kebabs from an autentic turkish place, they even gave us free turkish tea! fenner really knew where to get tasty wholesome food at a good price, a quality in people in which i greatly admire.
the super super night later that evening was quite surreal. punk was anything but it's namesake, a swanky up market bar full of nathan barley types in outrageous ensembles. the music their djs were playing was a little less flamboyant however, a standard mix of 4x4 heavy electro house, nothing new, nothing exciting. i expected a lot more. needless to say the crowd didn't really seem like they were into m!m! but they got some good feedback which is always pleasing.

the birmingham show ran away with the title for me, as always it was rammed packed full of people who aren't scared of getting their clothes dirty and thus fun was had by all. we all went down to naked lunch afterwards, just your average student night out really but it was absolutely heaving and we had a brilliant mosh towards the end of the night, here is a picture courtesy of witts.


i'm not even going to go into how much of a horrible night i had on saturday. i left my own night at 1.00am and didn't even dj. lets just leave it at that. i think things are going to have to go back to normal for the next tuck shop.

anyway, this is all getting a little bit long now and i'm sure you all stopped reading a long time ago so i'll call it a day at that as i'm off out to dj @ danananakroyd now, i'll try and keep this updated a big more regularly now too to save epic posts like this.

this is an otter me and cassie bought at the nature center, he doesn't have a name yet but i thought you might like to meet him. he was a bit fatter than than the other one so i had to have him, cassie left the skinny one behind because we didn't have enough money but she has assured me she'll go back to get him this week!

thanks for reading.