I hate:

People who are always happy.
Couples.
Fucwkits On Facebook Who Start Every Word In A Status Update With A Capital Letter.
Mercy nightclub.
My mattress.
Everything on Radio 1.
Going out/staying in.
My concentration span when it comes to reading novels.
Having literally no money.
Being largely unwilling to look for work.
My hometown.
People I went to school with who've literally not changed at all since we were 16.
Girls.
People who live up to the horrible clichéd notion of being a fresher.
Any twat who describes someone as a "LEG-END!"
Burtons.
Photobooth on Macs.
Carlsberg lager.
Pretty much everything.

The Night The Most Famous Man in the World Died

Last night was, in many ways, another normal night out in Norwich: largely uneventful, not a hugely fun and slightly depressing. We ended up in Mercy, a club I'd not been into since A-Level results day, and one that I didn't intend to go back to. It's a soulless place, populated by a) people you went to school with who don't seem to have changed at all b)dudes in striped button down shirts, too much hair gel and a sex attacker vibe to them and c)fat girls. The music is uniformly terrible, the drinks are expensive. In short, it's a dump.

But anyway, we get in there (for free luckily), get some beers down us and stand around for a while. Billie Jean comes on. Now, it's only 11PM by this point and I'm thinking that most DJs would save a tune like that for the peak hour. So I thought something might be up. Mercy has screens on the dancefloor which display either texts from punters ('LOL DARREN IS A TWAT' etc.) or, rather disturbingly, sock puppet porn. Last night it was just texts. One caught my eye. It was pretty simple: 'Michael Jackson is dead'. WTFFFFFF. I still didn't believe it. Then a friend text me confirming that the King of Pop had died. Now, I'm not a huge Michael Jackson fan but thinking about him being dead bummed me out a bit. I wasn't going to have a great night anyway, but this was the nail in the coffin.

I'm still unsure about how I feel about Michael Jackson. Sure, he made some very, very, very good pop songs but it is impossible, for me at least, to seperate the music from the man. And there's no doubt about it: Michael Jackson was a complete fuck up. A fascinating one though.

So yeah, I'm donning a single glove and recording a cover of 'The Way You Make Me Feel'.

Just so you know...

I've started a new blog to run alongside this one.

http://thefirstfivehundred.blogspot.com/

Good Life/Big Fun

Today was, I guess, the first day of my summer holidays (technically the holidays started last month after I finished my last exam, but y'know, whatever).

I spent the day productively. Strolled into town, visited a charity shop and amongst other threats, found this beauty for 50 pence:




Made my day that did. If I could only track down a cheap copy of Inner City's other smash hit 'Big Fun'...

Spent the afternoon watching films: First up was the universally panned The Hottie and the Nottie which, surprisingly, wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Don't get me wrong, it was bloody awful, but I'd been psyching myself up for a complete holocaust of a movie. Instead I got a simplistic, moralistic, unfunny, not very romantic rom-com. And jesus, who on earth thinks Paris Hilton's fit? (We've all seen the porno right I was shown it on the school bus many times. It was a lot tamer than most of the stuff people had on their phones. Literally will never forget seeing this grim cumshot/anal prolapse clip. ughhh). The message of the film was: tart yrself up a bit and BAM, someone will fall in love with you.

Straight after this I watched Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited. I wasn't giving it my full attention for some reason. I found it quite difficult to get into and it was never going to be as good as Rushmore, but eh, it looked nice and made me smirk at times. Which is good because I very rarely laugh out loud whilst watching a film. Unless it's Airplane.

Summer's Here Kids

This will be the last blog I post from Loring Hall. Tomorrow afternoon I sign a contract for a house on Lucas Street in Deptford and leave South East London for the summer. Which will be exciting. We've got a loft conversion and everything. And a garden big enough for a two man kickabout.

This summer, like life, is full of possibilities (yeah, I just made a bad Dntel reference. I don't even like Dntel, apart from the Superpitcher remix of (This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan, which you should check out ASAP. It's a beaut). Who knows what I'll do. Perhaps I'll travel to various cities in Europe for hedonistic weekends fuelled by cheap alcohol, fist pumping and pounding, monotonous, rigid techno played in sweatboxes filled with leather clad Germans. I might actually do some writing over the summer. This would be a good idea as, for a creative writing student, I do very little writing in my free time. I started this blog primarily as a way of forcing myself to write, but it hasn't worked very well. I'm too worried about being earnest or whatever so I just post rubbish about records I like. I end up sounding like a tossed off in 5 minutes Vice article. But yeah, what else could I do? I could work. I really do need to work. If I'm lucky I might get to sweat my face off in a Pizza Hut in Norwich for 35hrs a week. Still, it's got to be better than working in a toy shop like I did for the whole of last summer.

No, in reality I will probably spend my summer sat in my room, listening to techno, house, disco and twee indie pop whilst I read short stories by American writers. I will moan about being bored but be unwilling to change things. I will be bored on the beaches and bored in the woods, and when I am bored in London next year I will miss being bored on beaches and in woods.

I'll leave you with an mp3 of a song by a band I've become obsessed with in the last week. John Darnielle is the man behind The Mountain Goats. Now, usually I hate most singer/songwriter stuff (Jens Lekman aside) but this guy is something else. His lyrics are better than most authors prose. So yeah, here's my favourite song of his, from the 2006 album Get Lonely. Totally reminds me of the writer Lorrie Moore, whose Collected Stories is one of the best books I've ever read. There's bound to be some of her stories online, so give her a go. She's like a slightly more flowery Raymond Carver.

The Mountain Goats - Get Lonely

Oh woe is me

I'm sat in my tiny room in halls, looking out of the window as it rains, listening to Get Lonely by The Mountain Goats. brb, just going to slit my wrists.

MAD WEEKEND

8 STEAKS
SNACKS ON SNACKS
LOADS OF BEER
LADS
YES

WE'RE FROM BARCELONA!

Long time no see blog followers. I couldn't remember my password for ages. I'm sure you've missed me.

Anyway. I just had pretty much the best week of my entire life at the Primavera Sound festival. The week started off horribly as I had to drag my case all the way up Jerningham Road. Now, I know it's not exactly Everest, but jesus fuck I hate that road. It was one of my worst walks/up down there yet (the worst was my 20 minute long walk down there after a night spent doing pills in a warehouse in Camberwell with 15 year olds). So I get to Brockley station. It's cold and wet. Jess and Gunning arrive the the holiday starts there. Except we have to get off at East Croyden and wait for another train. So, we're at Gatwick. Ravage some McDonalds. I thought this would be our last junk food binge of the holiday. How wrong I was.

After an uneventful flight we land in Barcelona. It's a surprisingly easy city to navigate and we manage to locate the road our hostel is on. It would appear to be a building site. Fearing the worst, the three of us are pleasantly surprised by how decent the hostel itself is. Whilst stood in the kitchen preparing some food, we're asked up to the terrace for 'red wine and spliffs' by an Irish guy. We head up there and meet Richie, Mikey and Gav, the dudes we'd spend the holiday with. After getting drunk and listening to shoegaze with them, we all headed into the centre of Barcelona. Barcelona had just won the Champions League (I missed the game but heard the city go mental when both goals went in), so we knew there'd be a good atmosphere in the city itself. Errrr, wrong. We turned up in the middle of a goddamn riot. Hundreds of people running around screaming, throwing shit, you know the deal. At one point, me and Gunning need a wee. So we stand in a doorway and have one. He finishes, walks off and then I hear people shouting at me too hurry up. I'm mid wee though, can't stop it. Unbeknownst to me, a riot van pulls in behind me, the cops jump out and BAM, I take a baton to the kidney, then one to the wrist. Ooof, good lord it hurt. On arrival at the hostel, in an attempt to heal my fucked up wrist, Jess places a slice of bread under a tap and places it limply over my wrist. I'm not sure what she thought it'd do.

The next day all of us hit the beach. Apart from men on the beach relentlessly offering 'AGUA, CERVEZA, FANTA' and occasionally 'HASHIIIISH, COOOOOKA' it was literally heavenly. Just perfect. That night we hit Primavera. After buying drinks tickets and food, me Jess and Gunning ventured to a local mall to buy bottles of very cheap vodka to drink before seeing any bands. We got through one pretty quick, hid some vodka and lemonade into a towel and stashed the final bottle behind a bin. We go back into the festival site and literally RUN down to the ATP stage to see Lightning Bolt. They were fucking amazing, literally jawdroppingly great. A lot of people, including me, threw their heads back, arms raised in moments of joy. Hearing 'Dracula Mountain' live was a dream come true for the 14 year old me. Plus, about 10 minutes in, I realised I was stood next to Dan Deacon. I got very excited by this and eventually got a photo with him.

Next up was Yo La Tengo, I think. I'm not a huge fan and we left early to find some substances. We failed and returned in time to get to the very front for Phoenix. Which was rad. They seem to be getting loads of good press at the moment. I'll admit, I used to be in the mindset that they only had one good song (that song being 'If I Ever Feel Better', which features on Erlend Oye's still 10/10 DJ Kicks comp), but they've grown on me in the last 6 months. Really enjoyed them and have a look on youtube for the video of them doing If I Ever... and listen to Jess' wonderful, soulful vocals.

My Bloody Valentine followed and they were, as expected, fantastic. Just a lovely wash of sound innit? When You Sleep was a highlight.

I think we got some more drinking in after them before heading off to sit down and admire Aphex Twin. His set was prettttttttttttttay wonderful, appreciated the almost minimal techno bits. If anyone knows what that SICK dubstep track he played was, let me know. Shit was off the hook, mad wobble. After Aphex, I headed back and thus missed Wavvvvvvvvvvvve's mental breakdown, which was a shame. To be honest, 'So Bored' aside, he was a bit shit anyway.

The next day was spent at the beach as well. We saw Bat For Lashes at 7. Didn't really rate her at all but she had a nice bum, so I didn't mind seeing her. After her, we got our drink on outside (god bless KoolRoff vodka). We were sat right outside the Auditori so we could see people going in. How we scoffed at the nerds RUNNING down the stairs to get to front to see MBV again. Yeah, suckers, we'll walk down in a minu.....OH JESUS THE QUEUE STRETCHES ON FOREVER. Well, it looked like it would. We got in after 20 minutes. Watching a gig sat down feels weird, but MBV were rad again. We made a dash out of there to catch the Mae Shi. Initially I wasn't feeling this as they've never done much for me on record. Turns out Jess made a good decision (her only one of the night) becuase they were hilariously good fun. I lost my camera after swinging my towel round my head. Some girl behind me kept trying to hide in my towel. I should have persued her, it could have been something beatiful.

The Mae Shi finished and we grabbed some more Estrella Damm before DAN DEACON!!!! came on with his ensemble. Good lord he was good. Organising danceoffs, making everyone correspond hand gestures to screams and stuff. I was loving his set until Jess tugs me on the arm and walks out of the crowd. It takes a minute to find her and when I do, she's lying on the towel half asleep. She's evidently gonna throw up at some point, so despite her protesttations I get her in a taxi back to the hostel. The whole time I'm watching the clock hoping that we'd arrive before 2:45 so I'd have a chance to get back to the festival by 3 and not miss Michael Mayer, who was pretty much the artist I was most looking forward to. We don't, and Jess proceedes to puke up a few bottles of vodka. Ughhhhh.

Saturday night was the last night of the festival and good lord it was good. We kicked things off early with Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti. I would have loved to have heard Jules Lost His Jewels, but you can't have everything. They were joined onstage by The Vivian Girls. I fucking hate The Vivian Girls. We had a massive drinking gap between Ariel and Liars/Deerhunter. I saw Herman Dune between them and it was really lovely. The sun was setting and David-Ivar had a tear roll down his cheek into that massive Jewish beard of his at one point. Not gonna lie, I welled up as well.

Deerhunter were as sick as you'd imagine. Things went into overdrive after them. Sonic Youth were about to start. Me, Jess, Gunning are waiting for all the Irish boys to turn up. I'm restless, so im like "yo, meet me here after the Yooof, yeah Jess?". Seems simple enough. 10 minutes into SY, I get a text saying "josh im dying", I ignore it. Shortly after "josh im dead". Ignore that. At the end of the set, "on my way to hospital help me". Im thinking "nah, she means hostel" so don't worry too much and me and Gunning, after comandeering an iPhone to send her a text, head off for Black Lips. Half way through their set, Mikey bounces up to us out of nowhere, follwed by the rest of the Irish boys. I somehow miss the guy from Black Lips wanking on the crowd. Following them, we hit Jagermeisters and dance to DJ Medhi till 6am. He was great, even though every song sounded the same. So anyway, after a long, drunk Metro ride back to Badal, we roll into The Nest to find Jess sat up in bed. She HAD gone to hospital. The doctors fucked up, broke her vein or something. Not good.

The next afternoon when we all got up, no one was feeling too hot. So obviously we get a metro into the city for a KFC. This Boxmaster thing they do was new to me, and was recommended so I paid my 8€ for it. That was a mistake.

That night, me, Gunning, Gav, Mikey and Richie headed down to Las Ramblas for the Primavera afterparty where we saw a surprisingly great set from Tim Burgess. We headed upstairs for some banging techno from Juan B later on before calling it a night at about 7am. I fell in love that night too. If yr the hilariously beautiful girl from the Apolo who I asked for a lighter from, ring me bbz.

My memory has gone hazy at this point. We definitely went to the beach again and saw the Sagrada Familia, which was jawdropping. Oh shit, that was Monday. Yeah, we did that and then got drunk with the Irish boys in their room.

Getting the flight/train home depressed me immensely. I don't wanna be in New Cross. Anyone know if I can change my degree?