A (still pretty pathetic) "staying off the booze" experiment

After a few weeks of fairly constant drinking I'm trying to "stay dry" for a while. Even if I'm only on day five it is proving quite difficult. It seems alcohol is present in almost every aspect of my social life. Saturday was day one and Allo, Darlin' were playing at The Luminaire. The world was really against me. There was free "band beer", parents willing to pay for drinks and even a friend who mistakenly bought two pints and thus had a spare one. But, I managed to stay away from the fire water and stuck to Red Bull and Diet Coke. Yes, I hate most sugary drinks apart from the most sugary of all. Then, on Sunday we were playing a show at The George Tavern in Whitechapel. Again, I would normally have a couple of drinks, just to kill time or for some "Dutch courage", but I stuck with the Red Bull/Diet Coke again. The gig? Well, I found myself even more nervous than usual and unfortunately there wasn't even any improvement in my keyboard skills. If anything I probably messed up more than usual. Monday was easy cause we had no plans to do anything. Yesterday I went over to Bill's house to record some vocals for the new Moustache EP. He offered me a beer and I DECLINED. Go me!

Then in the evening I watched a documentary on BBC3 called Drinking With The Girls. It basically involved presenter Cherry Chadwyck-Healy going for a night out with every female age demographic from 14-year olds to pensioners. It wasn't a particularly good documentary as such, even embarrassingly bad at times, but it had glimmers of interesting bits. It wasn't pretty.

Today is day five and I'm going to the cinema in the evening. I will have four hours to kill after work, time that would normally be spent in the pub. Hmmm. What to do?

Henry Rollins Don't Dance

Here's a video I took of Henry Rollins Don't Dance at Monday's Duke of Uke Easter show. The quality is a bit dodgy since it's from my old stills camera, but it'll have to do. I do wish Henry himself got to hear this song. I have a feeling he'd absolutely love it.



Amazing.

It's been a while...

So, chaotic re-cap of the past two weeks….GO!

Last week (3rd-7th April) we went to Berlin. It was AWESOME! Allo, Darlin' played an incredible set, Moustache played a reasonably coherent set and Mike and Paul played a couple of awesome stripped-down Hexicon songs. We drank a lot, walked a lot and ate a lot. Successful holidaying indeed. And we rented bikes! Woo! Some photos…

We drank some horrible green beer.

Did some sighseeing.

Elizabeth Darling

We started a Berlin biker gang.

Took over a playground.

Last Friday I went to Kingston all by myself. I'm not sure why, but I had this image of Kingston being a horrible, dirty, dangerous London suburb. In the end it was actually quite nice. I had one of the worst pizzas I have ever had the privilege of paying £10 for though. Hooray! Instead of cheese...or at least as well as cheese, they seemed to have put bechemel sauce or some other cheese sauce on top. It was not pleasant. Anyway, the reason I went was because my old friend and former bandmate Michael was playing with his new band, The Terrors. This was my first punk show for quite some time, so it was a bit of a nostalgia trip.

Finally...yesterday it was time for the Duke of Uke Easter all-dayer (or all-eveninger as it turned out). A bunch of awesome bands in an awesome little shop. It was an incredible evening. I only caught five bands, but from what I heard it was great all the way through. Great turn-out as well. It's a real shame that these kind of events don't happen that often in London.

It was really weird playing in daylight and being able to see the audience, but I think it went alright. People seemed to enjoy it (despite all the mistakes) and we sold a bunch of CDs. Woo.

Moustache of Insanity last night (photo by Anika)

Allo, Darlin' (with Monster Bobby)

OK, I think that's about it.

The Boat That Rocked (3 out of 5)

I can't say my expectations were very high for this one, but I had free tickets and nothing better to do so why not, eh? Still, it would be fair to say that I expected to absolutely hate this film. The title is terrible, the poster is absolutely awful and then there's the whole "Directed by Richard Curtis" thing. But, you know what? The Boat That Rocked was actually thouroughly enjoyable. It was also instantly forgettable and I'm struggling to remember anything particularly amusing, but it was very pleasant as long as it lasted. And it had a familiar, but still really ace soundtrack, which never hurts. All in all I give it 3 Niks out of 5.