black lips

So last night I finally saw my favourite band The Black Lips play live, but how did I end up jumping around on the stage with a microphone in my hand singing with the band???

The black lips at Manchester sound control. Thursday 28th August 2014.  I bought 2 tickets a few weeks ago but didn't really advertise the spare one very well to my friends and with nobody really keen on a last minute Thursday night out I went by myself and stayed over being as I've a day off work on Friday. 

 
I was surprised at first that a small venue had not completely sold out but they don't go in for glossy in your face over promotion, they shy away from being too fashionable.  The understated back drop to the stage is just a big white sheet with black lips and some cartoon flowers in spray paint, balloons and toilet rolls are being thrown about until there's trails of paper draping from the rafters all around the stage.

 The band are genuinely enjoying themselves on stage, dancing around, interacting with the crowd rather than some bands I've seen who just seem to be bashing through another day on tour.  As their hour long set bounces along the crowd get more excitable which culminates in a mass stage invasion on their last song "bad kids" at which point it was impossible to hold myself back and leapt over the barrier to join around 30 other stage invaders, I happened to be right next to a mic stand and so rather incoherently helped the them through the second half of the song.  

 The band seemed to enjoy the chaos and came hugging and shaking everyone's hand as we clambered back off the stage.  Despite turning up on my own with two tickets in my pocket I had a great time. two tickets = double fun?

twisted-electro-dirty-techno-punk-rave

If you're wondering what The Prodigy sound like live then Id say... twisted-electro-dirty-techno-punk-rave.

 That about sums it up, my ears are still ringing a bit but it's okay, I'm happy to lose a few percent of my hearing to have experienced that because they have to be one of the best live acts I've ever seen. Awesome. Blown away.

  I mentioned in the previous post that Gaz and me would try and better my previous crazy night out in Manchester..... so.....well...... if I said after The Prodigy finished we left The Warehouse Project about 1.30am and we somehow ended up in a strip club drinking champagne with a group of fire eating dwarfs at 5am, how does that sound for another crazy night out?!  Wow!  What a night!  How do we get ourselves into these situations?  I mean I may have exaggerated a little bit there but even so!  Okay we walked past the strip clubs which showed great inner strength because we were desperately searching the city for a late night drink to keep the party going but not a single bar would let us in after 2am with it being a Thursday night.  Undeterred we tried about 10 different places between 3 different cab rides across the city but reluctantly retreated back to the hotel sometime after 3 to drink the only beer we could get our hands on, a few warm cans back at the room. Well we tried!

Eh? what?  the fire eating dwarfs?  Yeh sorry I made that bit up.

The Prodigy at The Warehouse Project, Manchester, Dec 2013

Magic people, voodoo people

Off out to see the Prodigy with Gaz tonight with 3 spare tickets in my back pocket!  5 have become 2 due to 3 mates foolishly dropping out but that's okay coz Gaz knows how to party hard enough to count as double.  I keep getting asked curious questions about the last time I went out in Manchester so I'll briefly detail the story now before it becomes overshadowed by tonight's antics.....

Couple of weeks ago went out to see Crystal Fighters play at Manchester academy with Ryan, Lewis, Mary, Diana and a few others.  Great gig, great atmos, all had a great time.  After that went for few beers and tequilas in a bar called The Deaf Institute.  Normal story so far!
A few of Diana and Maria's Spanish friends came and met us and when Ryan and co decided to call it a night I decided I'd stay out with my new Spanish buddies.  So anyway whilst walking to the next bar Maria stopped to talk to a homeless guy on the street, she got upset and decided we must take him with us to buy him some drinks in the warm, sounds easy enough but of course none of the bars or clubs would let him in wearing tracksuit bottoms, with a scruffy beard and his blankets stuffed in his backpack.  The fella who's name I don't recall kept getting turned away and so told us to carry on without him but Maria was determined and eventually we got him into a pub near the gay village.  We bought him a few beers and snacks and had a few games of pool and now in the early hours we decided to head for the nightclubs again and ended up in some gay nightclub down Canal Street.  There was certainly some sights in there! It was a bit more 'normal' than I expected but still there were lads camping it up in tight tops and hot pants all around the place.  By the end of the night I'm not sure where the homeless guy got to but I'm quite certain he had an unexpectedly eventful night.  Somehow without knowing the address got back to Diana's flat in a taxi somewhere between 5am and 6am.

A great night out but can it be topped tonight???  Yeah!!! Well we'll try of course!!!
Everybody in the place..... Let's go!!!

RISE UP!

Went to see The Wailers at Manchester Ritz on Saturday (minus Bob obviously).  I like the Ritz as a venue anyway but the atmosphere in there was brilliant, real happy feel good vibe, everyone dancing, everyone knew all the words and even without Bob Marley The Wailers still manage to have a stage presence without seeming like a tribute band. 
Now if there's one thing that's slightly irritating at any gig nowadays it's all the phones being held up filming, there's always a few dotted about at any given time.   I do have to admit I did get my phone out and take this photo.....

.....and as you can see it's pretty rubbish.  Realising the pointless taking of a useless photo I had a cynical scathing word in my own ear and promptly turned my phone off.  My view is that why stand there filming and taking photos to look at later when you are there now??? watch it now! it's on, live, infront of you!  All these shaky videos with distorted sound and naff lifeless blurry photos that do the experience no justice whatsoever will in the vast majority of cases be of no use or interest to anyone ever.....ever, ever, including the person who took it.  In my photo for instance it clearly does not depict the night I described at the start of this post.  Do what you want but I say put your phone away, your missing everything.
Anyway, where was I?  Oh yeah, The Wailers were great!  How ya feelin? Irie!

After a 2 hour funky reggae party played to an exuberantly appreciative crowd we spilled outside to cool down and went in search of beer.  Found a couple of bars, one of which we went in to satisfy a long time curiosity.  'The Temple' is an underground bar with steps leading down from an island in the middle of the road, I've walked past it plenty of times in the past and wondered what is that place?  It's small, dark, strange and most of all cool as fu6k!

made of stone

the stone roses weekender got going friday midday with gaz and ryan.  ian brown himself found time in the morning to phone me but unfortunately i missed his call


a couple of beers on the train, tram to hotel, back out to city centre for food and beer and off to heaton park in good time to catch the vaccines.  a few beers later saw an end to our drinking due to horrendous crowds at the bars, decided queuing for an hour for beer was idiot and went to enjoy the wailers.  primal scream completed a decent support line up.

enter the fab four, resurrected live on stage with no less than an epic 2 hour set, sounding tight and unexpectedly in tune.  well worth the hype!
another epic performance followed after when we walked all the way back to salford quays, not once did we moan about aching legs and feet and the lack of beer. not once.  overall a good weekend of music, beer and banter.
saturday got back to crewe and went for a few snifters in the white lion to meet a load of mates who were off to see the stone roses second night, unfortunately their night went less well with tales of passing out and missing the show, a chipped tooth, a lost ticket, losing each other in the crowd, lost cameras, being manhandled by security and so on and so on.  nevermind, at least friday went well.

#wildorbeastbarmyarmy

Went to manchester with lewis to watch wildor fight today, there were a load of kids fights early on some of which were ok and some of which involved crying and pushy parents. At the business end some of the fights were a bit of a brawl and I reckon even with my limited skills and puny arms I could have got through the fight by flailing my arms and legs about in a similar fashion. There were a handful of fights which were of much higher quality, one of which happened to involve Wil. To be honest when we saw who he was fighting I thought bloody hell he's up against it here but by the second round he had the measure of him and a series of well timed shots secured the win. Enjoyed the fight and was impressed by Wil, think I'll come and give support again next time, well done Wildor!

bmx

went to manchester velodrome today, spent the morning at an oakley training course and the afternoon on the bmx race circuit. the morning was better than being at work but work related all the same, the afternoon was very enjoyable, didnt realise how physical riding a bmx could be! bombing off the starting ramp and tackling the jumps along the track feels so good when you get it right, i managed to get through the afternoon without any falls which was largely due to good fortune and partly due to my newly found olympic potential bmx skills