Another trip to the Goose, our first for a while (and all the better for that). This time it was Mum's belated 70th birthday. Rose and I both had burgers and chips, which were very nice as usual. For pud I had sticky toffee pudding, which was nice but very rich and heavy, Rose had sorbet and ice cream, probably the sensible option after a Grey Goose burger!
Having passed up the chance to see Tom Shear perform at Resistanz 2014 (what a fucking idiot), I finally got to see him play live headlining the second SOS Festival at the legendary Electrowerkz in Islington.
Not being particularly arsed about the other bands, Rose and I decided to take as late a train as possible, to minimise standing around time and wasting our Saturday. We left home at 6:30pm, got the 7:30pm train and got into London at 8:45pm.
When I came out of the toilets at Euston I saw Rose standing waiting for me, talking to a very tall man and woman... it was Pete from Shiv-r! That was a bit of a surprise. We all took the tube to the venue together and once we got to the venue went our separate ways.
The venue was a bit of a warren, with one very strange room that looked almost like it was 'outside'.
Here we found the merchandise stall, although it wasn't really much of one at all, it was in fact a little stall set up by Analogue Trash Records. The proprietor and I bemoaned the lack of A23 shirts and I bought the Neonsol CD. He was also flogging the Advance redux CD, but I passed on that, in hindsight, perhaps that would have been a better purchase!
Analog Angel weren't annoying, but they weren't exactly anything to get excited about. The most notable thing I could say about them was that the lady in the rubber top was lucky to keep her puppies in her basket, if you know what I mean.
Assemblage 23 were supposed to come on at 10pm, well it said 9:45pm on Facebook, but after much dithering and plugging in and unplugging of the keyboard (surely this could have been sorted out in advance, no?) they finally kicked off at 10:35pm. Which was annoying since we had a leaving deadline of 11:45pm to catch the last train home at 12:15am.
The sound was a little boomy, but A23 were really good. I didn't expect Tom to be an entertainer like Daniel Graves, and of course it was more about the songs than the show, but that was fine because Tom has some quality tunez! Best of the night was undoubtedly 'The Noise Inside my Head', but other notable tracks included 'Damaged', 'Document', 'Spark' and set opener 'Binary'.
Unfortunately we had to leave while A23 were still playing, but I don't think there was much left in the tank as Tom had already announced that they don't do 'encores', so we left the building with 'Let Me Be Your Armor' playing in the background and headed back to the station. Then we had to stand on the platform for about fifteen minutes with a load of annoying brats waiting for the doors to open.
It was a very late night by the time we got home, but worth it to see A23 and finally see what Electrowerkz looks like.
After a somewhat exhausting journey (3.5hrs from home to Bristol) we arrived at the venue to find that the first band hadn't even been on yet. But actually, Sinestar weren't bad at all. They had a sniff of Mesh about them, but not really on that particular band's level. After a year of shit support bands, Sinestar were a refreshing change.
Rose is yet to be convinced that Shiv-r are any good, but I like them (albeit I do think the new album is far above what has gone before). I wish the whole set was taken from Wax Wings Will Burn, but sadly it was just a few songs (albeit the best ones)... after the show Pete Crane was standing near the merchandise stall (such as it was!) and I asked him about the availability of the remix album.
How things change. A couple of years ago Rose would no more go and see Aesthetic Perfection than eat pasta. But now... This was my second time seeing Aesthetic Perfection of course, having seen him co-headlining with Faderhead in Sheffield in 2013. Earlier in the week Daniel had posted an apology on his Facebook page about the fact that he was feeling very ill and had only played for 35mins in Manchester, I wonder if that put a few people off coming out because the venue was a bit sparsely populated...
Actually at one point we had considered going to Manchester because Cyferdyne were supporting there, however a mix up of dates meant that we switched to Bristol, and I'm glad we did because it was great and I think he probably played the full set and his voice sounded okay too.
Coming on to 'All Beauty Destroyed' was a good start, pity he didn't play it all though... half way through he segued into 'A Nice Place to Visit' and the gig started proper.
Not sure of the full setlist but songs played include: The Siren, The New Black, Big Bad Wolf, Lights Out, All Beauty Destroyed, The Ones, Inhuman and The Great Depression.
Our original plan was to eat at the Portwall Tavern, situated right next to the carpark we use for The Fleece, however... after a horrendous journey, the last 1.5m taking 45mins, we arrived to find the pavement outside full of drinkers. Not a good sign.
On closer inspection the Tavern was almost empty, but was not serving food that night, for no good reason whatsoever! The landlord pointed us in the direction of The Hole in the Wall, and actually it was rather good.
The interior was very 'woody' and the menu was predictably better than the scampi and chips we were expecting at the Tavern. We enjoyed a nice half chicken each with some very tasty fries, but decided against trying a brownie or a sticky toffee pudding seeing as we had a long evening of standing up in front of us.
The waiter was very nice too, even though he was French.
On our way to Bristol we stopped off at the seemingly 'brand new' Gloucester services, an experience that was as enjoyable as it was unexpected! The services is billed as Farm Shop and Kitchen, and it certainly is high end, to say the least. Rather than McDonalds and KFC there's a variety of hot foods on offer, and then there's the Farm Shop, which features things like raspberry presse's, fresh meat, and numerous brands of posh chocolate, including Charbonel and Walker, Quite remarkable.
This was our third time seeing Bad Religion, and our second visit to the upstairs room in the Birmingham Institute (the first time was seeing Kreator, last year). We arrived about ten minutes before Bad Religion took the stage (perfect timing!) and we ended up under the balcony right at the front left, which was a very good place to stand.
Opening with 'Spirit Shine' from The Gray Race, BR treated us to over 90 minutes of greatness, and even though it was, as Greg pointed out after the first few songs 'a showcase of some of their less well known tracks', it really didn't matter at all. BR have a ridiculous amount of awesome songs so even though they didn't play Punk Rock Song, Broken, A Walk, 10 in 2010, The Gray Race, etc, etc... they really weren't missed.
I could perhaps have done without the No Control segment, but I'm sure a lot of old fans would have been very happy to hear those songs. They weren't bad, just... it's been a long time since I've listened to that album and some were more memorable than others.
Still, we did get; Stranger Than Fiction, Atomic Garden, Generator, Infected, Sowing the Seeds of Utopia, Fields of Mars, American Jesus, Skyscraper, (21st Century) Digital Boy, The New America, Sorrow, Only Rain, True North, No Control, Fuck Armageddon, The Defense, Modern Man, Anesthesia, Change of Ideas, Struck a Nerve, I Want to Conquer the World and many more.
A cracking gig, and a great start to our three gigs in four days, with Aesthetic Perfection tomorrow and Assemblage23 on Sunday.
After our morning looking at TAGs and Handbags, we made a slight detour to take in Rousham Gardens. Unfortunately the house is not available to view unless you can get a dozen people together! A shame, because it's supposed to be lovely inside.
The gardens were very peaceful and informal and it was a nice way to spend an hour. Despite some black clouds looming overhead it stayed dry for us and when we arrived back at the car there was a very old car in the car park too, with an 'Essex Motors' badge on it, no idea what it was.
Another weekend, another outlet shopping experience... this time at the decidedly high end 'Bicester Village' near Oxford. No Cadbury's / Next / M&S shops here, but then again no Lindt either which is something of an oversight, one might think! No, this is a place to shop for TAG Heuers and endless, endless handbags!
First on the list was Radley, but as seems to be the way these days, the Radleys were mostly uninspiring and a little dull. Next we moved on to Lulu Guiness which had the usual mixture of nice stuff and outlandish and expensive 'couture'. Nothing here caught Rose's fancy either and so we were pinning our hopes on Kate Spade, which, truth be told, had a plethora of splendid baggery.
Among the appealing goodies on offer were several pink bags, including these two...
In the end, after some to-ing and fro-ing, Rose chose the second one, but in black (with a pink lining).
We also visited the TAG Heuer shop (of course) where I tried on a couple of things... first there was a Grand Carrera Calibre36 1/10 cronograph, reduced from £7,500 to about £5,500...
And then a Monaco 24, which was reduced from £10,725 to about £7,500! I have to say neither of them really excited me enough to wish I had the money to buy them, but if I had to choose I would have to say I preferred the Monaco. Both seemed quite light, but that could be because I was wearing my incredibly heavy Aquagraph. Also, neither of the clasps seemed to work very well, which was a bit of a concern on a watch costing that much money!
Actually there was some very nice F1's in the shop that were around the £1100 mark too.
One thing it did show me though was that I needn't worry about the Monacos or Carreras being too big for me because they looked just fine on my wrist.
I also managed to purloin another copy of the latest catalogue which I will give to Rich.
