Hello! It’s good to be back! The last few weeks have been very busy, both work-wise and socially and so it’s great to finally have an opportunity to sit down and recall it all. So here it is, a chronological history in reverse, like Felt’s “Absolute Classic Masterpieces”. Yesterday, I went down to a pub in Iffley, just outside Oxford, where I met up with two quiz team mates for an all-day music event and barbecue to celebrate the landlord’s 38th birthday. Apparently, the inevitably- (and clumsily) named “Iffley-stock” had happened last year to celebrate old Liz’s 50 years on the throne, but I somehow missed hearing about it that time. I arrived at about half-past one to be told that they’d already had two complaints about noise levels from local residents – I would guess the more (ahem) “mature” ones. This did strike me as rather churlish – this is a once a year event – couldn’t they just arrange to be someplace else? I learnt a new word –“sneck”. Apparently it means the latch on a garden gate. This was because I sampled a rather strong dark ale called “Sneck Lifter” and I said to the barmaid, “I don’t know what a sneck is and I don’t think I want to” and she allayed my fears when she told me anyway. Like so many Oxfordshire events, “Iffley-stock” was very much a family affair, complete with bouncy castle and a raffle to win a mountain bike. The former led to this exchange between my quiz team-mate John (who is, I’d guess, in his fifties) and myself: Me: I never went on bouncy castles when I was a kid; I didn’t see the point. John: They didn’t have them when I was a kid! Me: Yes, I suppose it would be a bit difficult to make them out of Bakelite. As for the music, it was not what I would usually listen to, being a mixture of jazz and soul bands playing mainly covers. Cover bands tend to be either deathly dull or embarrassingly awful, but one of them (bad name alert!) Soul Beaver were actually rather good. In between the acts the recorded music included these bizarre covers of hard rock songs played in a jazz style, including “Enter Sandman” and “Smoke on the Water”. I’d heard these versions once before but I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the “perpetrator(s)” – it’s the kind of gimmick which tends to have the longevity of the Mike Flowers Pops or Dread Zeppelin. Why do so many publicans in Oxfordshire have Rod Stewart hairstyles? It’s something I’ve been pondering for some time. They don’t seem to have his other attributes though – I’ve yet to see one accompanied by a six foot blonde. On Friday night, I went to our work summer party. Earlier, I’d asked my boss if she was going and was told that she couldn’t make it, because her friend had just discovered Britain’s first ever cave art in Derbyshire (is this anywhere near Emma Cooper’s village?) and she was going up there for the weekend to look at it! I told her that this excuse for not making the “event of the year” was guaranteed to be unique. The party was at Freud’s, a rather splendid venue which is an old converted church complete with stained glass windows and a Doric arch for those people whose appetite for neo-classicism isn’t sated by the Oxford University Press building over the road. Whilst the food and company was good and we had the opportunity to drink vodka and tequila from an ice sculpture of a can-can dancers legs (!), I was disappointed to get absolutely nowhere with a girl I’ve had an office crush on for ages. I split up with my girlfriend some two months ago after a relationship which lasted a couple of years and I am now absolutely *hating* being single, something which had never bothered me in the past. I hope that those of you who went to Glasto had a good time. Nobody Reported Back on the rather sparsely attended Hyde Park picnic on Glasto Saturday, so it looks as though the lot falls to me. Present were Paul Healy, Dafyd Strange, Chris Eames and myself. The weather was lovely, but when we arrived at Hyde Park Corner station we discovered that the picnic coincided with a Bon Jovi concert and there were hordes of Bon Jovi fans of all shapes and sizes emerging like giant ants from all the subways and buses in the area! If the Bon Jovi collective were the hay, it was our job to pick out the sinister needles, but despite both Paul and Chris wearing light blue B&S T-shirts (a welcome relief amongst all the RAWK black ones) we failed to spot any – so if you turned up at Hyde Park and failed to meet us we’re really sorry! Later, the London Underground people decided to make the tube station exit only, so we had to trek over to Green Park to get the tube home. The previous Wednesday was the Freaky Trigger Club Nite at Parker Place, Holborn, an unusually decorated bar with fish bowls containing apples instead of fish, gold-leaf picture rails and antique sofas. Lots of sinisterines past and present were there including Archel, Tim H, Mark C, Ken, Liz, Starry, Geoff and Adam. Top choons were supplied by Tom, Steve and Pete (including an old fave of mine from days of yore, Renegade Soundwave’s “Probably a Robbery”) and Mark C imparted the surprising information that people in the US wield their knives & forks differently from those in the UK. The Saturday before was the Charlbury Riverside Free Festival, where lots of local bands played and a couple of them, Black Nielson and Ciccone, were very good indeed. The ones which weren’t so good provided an opportunity to eat, drink and read the paper (I noticed that there was a guy writing in the Independent called BEN Chu – any relation??). An out of control barbecue sent smoke billowing over the site at one point. There were notably more campers than on previous occasions and someone really ought to do something about the fact that the last train leaves for Oxford before the festival finishes – ok, so Rock of Travolta are far from being my favourite band, but it was still pissy to have to leave for the station half-way through their set. The day before that, Ian Watson brought How Does It Feel to my local, the Folly Bridge Inn. It was a lovely evening, with a real mix of people. I chatted to ex-sinisterine Matt Willson, who seems to be more into electronic stuff these days, and noticed how there were lots of people I didn’t recognise. This is a rarity in Oxford where you get used to seeing the same old crowd. Ian played a couple of what, IMHO, are the top records from the eighties, Weather Prophets “Almost Prayed” and Felt’s “Sunlight Bathed the Golden Glow”. The Dobie Gray track sampled by Spearamint for “Sweeping the Nation” was another highlight. Anyway, that’s enough delving into the past, what of the future? Well, in a couple of weeks, there’s another local festival, Truck (can anyone think of any other festivals which have spawned a record label?) at Steventon, a village with a railway line but no station, so travel arrangements are going to be interesting. British Sea Power and the Butterflies of Love are playing….I can’t remember who else. The following week there’s a family reunion where will I will meet up with cousins I haven’t seen for years and their partners, which will be nice. In an attempt to find an excuse to stay in and not spend too much money, I have resolved to attempt the gargantuan task of listing all my CDs and MCs (I still have quite a few of the latter) on a spreadsheet. Does that sound geeky to you (in the words of Sellar & Yeatman, “be honest”). Surely keeping all your CDs stacked in alphabetical order is more geeky and I’ll never do that so nerr. I’ve been listening to the Field Mice comp “Where'd You Lean to Kiss that Way?” a lot lately. The Sarah office was a stone’s throw from my uni hall of residence you know (I didn’t know at the time, but only found out when I saw the picture and Sarah history on the Shinkansen site). What other bands on the Sarah roster are worth checking out? I know there was a band called the Orchids, not to be confused with Baines and Bramah’s ex-Fall band Blue Orchids, were they any cop? A few replies to other people’s posts now: Robin mentioned look-a-likes on the bus. Here in Oxford we have a driver who looks like a fatter Bill Clinton and another who looks like Graeame Souness. He didn’t mention being at the Nottingham HDIF (but that is him in the pictures, isn’t it? There are pics of me at the Oxford one, FWIW). I thought Dirty Vicar’s post was going to be about Durutti Column from the subject line (though it’s Lotta isn’t it, rather than Lutta?) but even though they played Glasto he didn’t mention them in the end. I know Lixi saw them – I found out in a roundabout way via Michael Jones on ilx. Can anyone tell me about their set? Contrary to what Christine Irene said, I can’t blame my blog for my lack of appearance on sinister. I haven’t updated my blog since April and it’s beginning to seem like something of an albatross. I really prefer writing to sinister and reserving the blog for record reviews and suchlike. Bye for now, Mark. ______________________________________________________________ For up-to-the-minute music news, reviews and specials visit http://www.nme.com Get free e-mail (anyname@nme.com) now at http://www.nmemail.com The sender of this e-mail is NOT an employee or associate of NME, nme.com or any other IPC magazine. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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