Leaving London
Aug. 26th, 2009 01:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shermaramaI'm leaving London soon, which I've known for a while, but now I know when; we've given notice on this flat for the 20th of September. I'm not actually around in London at weekends between now and then apart from the weekend before, during which I'm hoping to say goodbye to London in various ways.
As some sort of preparation for leaving, I've started walking places a lot more. I think people think it's odd to walk a long way in London - after all, there's this ubiquitous and remarkable public transport system, why would you walk? Well, because walking's good. Travelling over the land in a way where you know exactly where you've been. It's also cheap. Many people take the cost of a monthly travelcard as a sort of inevitable London tax, it seems, but even at the student rate I can't stand to spend that much on travel every month as a default, and much as it's easy to say, oh it's only a pound to get on this bus, I'm the sort of person who's aware of the pounds building up. And so recently I've walked from work to home, Euston to Holloway, and from home to the top of Highgate hill, and from home to Shoreditch and back tonight, and all those walks were under 45 minutes; the sort of time I wouldn't think twice about walking in Brighton, where the buses are far less convenient and more expensive, but in London seems a bit self-consciously penny-pinching. This is one of the ways in which London is Not For Me.
One of the things I will do in wherever I go next after I leave Brighton again is see about playing in bands. I enjoy the playing itself but it's also a good way to meet people who care about the sort of things I care about. Tonight I walked to Shoreditch to go to a night put on by this bloke Steve who I was nearly in that Shellac-like band with, and it was an interesting night, with some good bands on. The first was described as Casiocore, DJ Tendraw, and it was a bloke with a table full of boxes of knobs but it was done with some imagination and plenty of enthusiasm. The bloke had to scoot straight off afterwards to watch his girlfriend, who's in Gaggle. Then there was a band who wanted to be Helmet, which felt like a shame because it felt like they'd been doing this for years and had never, would never have the energy to move out of the limitations of the style they'd imposed on themselves. They were called Voltage Players and they had plenty of interesting things going on but it just didn't add up to anything bigger. The contrast was clear with the next band, Uncle Pedro. It's a very similar sort of thing to Mclusky, but this is the thing, they're not copying them, they're just doing a quite similar thing, and very well, and on their own terms, and they've been doing it for years and they don't sound tired of it, just very tight. And Mclusky aren't even doing it any more so if you miss Mclusky, hey, go and see Uncle Pedro. The drummer was ace, had that extra edge of sharpness and volume that the previous band's drummer didn't, and the songs are about the inadvisibility of keeping cats as pets and The Concealed Excitement Of Home Furnishings and the like. Unfortunately the band on last, Stereo Juggernaut, were pretty rubbish. The drummer was good in terms of having chops and using them musically, and the frontman had something going on in a slightly Brian Molko way, but the other two made the band look like a joke. Some twerp with an Apple and a bunch of keyboards and electric piano, of which I could only ever hear the piano and didn't want to, and someone rather older than the frontman/drummer on bass, with a Musicman and a Hendrix t-shirt, playing something perfectly adequate but living up to none of the t-shirt, the bass or what you'd expect from a band that should be stuffed with keen young people who have an excuse not to realise how close to Linkin Park they're sailing.
So I left and walked home.
As some sort of preparation for leaving, I've started walking places a lot more. I think people think it's odd to walk a long way in London - after all, there's this ubiquitous and remarkable public transport system, why would you walk? Well, because walking's good. Travelling over the land in a way where you know exactly where you've been. It's also cheap. Many people take the cost of a monthly travelcard as a sort of inevitable London tax, it seems, but even at the student rate I can't stand to spend that much on travel every month as a default, and much as it's easy to say, oh it's only a pound to get on this bus, I'm the sort of person who's aware of the pounds building up. And so recently I've walked from work to home, Euston to Holloway, and from home to the top of Highgate hill, and from home to Shoreditch and back tonight, and all those walks were under 45 minutes; the sort of time I wouldn't think twice about walking in Brighton, where the buses are far less convenient and more expensive, but in London seems a bit self-consciously penny-pinching. This is one of the ways in which London is Not For Me.
One of the things I will do in wherever I go next after I leave Brighton again is see about playing in bands. I enjoy the playing itself but it's also a good way to meet people who care about the sort of things I care about. Tonight I walked to Shoreditch to go to a night put on by this bloke Steve who I was nearly in that Shellac-like band with, and it was an interesting night, with some good bands on. The first was described as Casiocore, DJ Tendraw, and it was a bloke with a table full of boxes of knobs but it was done with some imagination and plenty of enthusiasm. The bloke had to scoot straight off afterwards to watch his girlfriend, who's in Gaggle. Then there was a band who wanted to be Helmet, which felt like a shame because it felt like they'd been doing this for years and had never, would never have the energy to move out of the limitations of the style they'd imposed on themselves. They were called Voltage Players and they had plenty of interesting things going on but it just didn't add up to anything bigger. The contrast was clear with the next band, Uncle Pedro. It's a very similar sort of thing to Mclusky, but this is the thing, they're not copying them, they're just doing a quite similar thing, and very well, and on their own terms, and they've been doing it for years and they don't sound tired of it, just very tight. And Mclusky aren't even doing it any more so if you miss Mclusky, hey, go and see Uncle Pedro. The drummer was ace, had that extra edge of sharpness and volume that the previous band's drummer didn't, and the songs are about the inadvisibility of keeping cats as pets and The Concealed Excitement Of Home Furnishings and the like. Unfortunately the band on last, Stereo Juggernaut, were pretty rubbish. The drummer was good in terms of having chops and using them musically, and the frontman had something going on in a slightly Brian Molko way, but the other two made the band look like a joke. Some twerp with an Apple and a bunch of keyboards and electric piano, of which I could only ever hear the piano and didn't want to, and someone rather older than the frontman/drummer on bass, with a Musicman and a Hendrix t-shirt, playing something perfectly adequate but living up to none of the t-shirt, the bass or what you'd expect from a band that should be stuffed with keen young people who have an excuse not to realise how close to Linkin Park they're sailing.
So I left and walked home.
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Date: 2009-09-04 10:44 am (UTC)