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Tour De France
Jul. 9th, 2007 05:06 pmWe went down to see the start of the Tour De France. Trafalgar Square was heaving on Friday night, which felt out of kilter with the first presenter, a diffident man from Leicester giving us all a nice talk about the history of the bicycle illustrated by various old or odd bikes being wheeled onto the stage. After that there was a pointless countdown and a good ten minutes or so of irrelevant, bizarrely-costumed dancing to restore the balance of shinily abstract civic event, so that was all right. And then there was Ken, and the boss of the Tour telling us how wonderful it was to be amongst all these historic places, while carefully not acknowledging that the location of this event was a giant monument to having thrashed the Frogs at Battleships.
Saturday was the Prologue, the first speed trial stage, and the route went from Green Park, round Hyde Park and then up the Mall. The Caravan goes before it, a sort of publicity parade for all the various sponsors, featuring floats and decorated cars and lots of people dressed in silly outfits (and safety harnesses) shouting slogans and handing out freebies. Since the advertising was for French products and aimed at a very European market, though, the effect was a little surreal. You're never going to see bottled water advertised in the UK by a bloke dressed up as a priest spattering everyone with it, are you? Couldn't see much of the race itself but there wasn't much to see; some blokes in lycra going past very fast, accompanied by motorbikes and cars and cameramen and hovering helicopters and people in the crowd with cowbells. Where do you even get cowbells like that from? The brass sort with clappers, traditional-like, you know, but you can't exactly go and nick one off a passing cow these days.
Then we went home and got my drumkit and went to the Wilmington in allegedly Angel. (Why do venues give these weirdly optimistic directions? Do they think it helps that people come out of Angel tube and get lost inbetween, rather than working out where it actually is and getting a bus or something?) The place is on Rosebery Avenue, close to the junction with Farringdon Road, which brought weird flashbacks to the meeting I had about a year ago with the airship enthusiasts. That doesn't seem like as long ago as it should. Anyway as gigs go it was a Dunkirk spirit job with more or less no-one there apart from the bands, and only two of those since three others had pulled out; given that, it went damn well. The promoter was a St. Helens lad who used to be the drummer in Mazey Fade, many years ago, who loved us last time he saw us in Camden and spent most of this set jigging around too, and the support band were a proper comedy punk band called Monkish. Stage names like Boris Fecker and Cardboard P. Bedspread, ridiculous outfits on a general theme of camp as fuck, a nicely boingy bass sound and songs about drugs, stalking B-list celebrities and retaliatory urination in kitchen equipment; what more do you need to start your Saturday night? Now, one thing PJ can always do is rise to the occasion, or at least give it a damn good go, so what with having to follow such an energetic (if untechnical) band and with a friend of Debz's attempting to video us too, I think we did okay. Chris tried to suggest to Monkish that if they ratcheted the camp up just another fraction of a notch, they'd go down splendidly on the Brighton cabaret scene, at which they started looking a bit defensive and insisting they were all straight. Bless 'em.
Saturday was the Prologue, the first speed trial stage, and the route went from Green Park, round Hyde Park and then up the Mall. The Caravan goes before it, a sort of publicity parade for all the various sponsors, featuring floats and decorated cars and lots of people dressed in silly outfits (and safety harnesses) shouting slogans and handing out freebies. Since the advertising was for French products and aimed at a very European market, though, the effect was a little surreal. You're never going to see bottled water advertised in the UK by a bloke dressed up as a priest spattering everyone with it, are you? Couldn't see much of the race itself but there wasn't much to see; some blokes in lycra going past very fast, accompanied by motorbikes and cars and cameramen and hovering helicopters and people in the crowd with cowbells. Where do you even get cowbells like that from? The brass sort with clappers, traditional-like, you know, but you can't exactly go and nick one off a passing cow these days.
Then we went home and got my drumkit and went to the Wilmington in allegedly Angel. (Why do venues give these weirdly optimistic directions? Do they think it helps that people come out of Angel tube and get lost inbetween, rather than working out where it actually is and getting a bus or something?) The place is on Rosebery Avenue, close to the junction with Farringdon Road, which brought weird flashbacks to the meeting I had about a year ago with the airship enthusiasts. That doesn't seem like as long ago as it should. Anyway as gigs go it was a Dunkirk spirit job with more or less no-one there apart from the bands, and only two of those since three others had pulled out; given that, it went damn well. The promoter was a St. Helens lad who used to be the drummer in Mazey Fade, many years ago, who loved us last time he saw us in Camden and spent most of this set jigging around too, and the support band were a proper comedy punk band called Monkish. Stage names like Boris Fecker and Cardboard P. Bedspread, ridiculous outfits on a general theme of camp as fuck, a nicely boingy bass sound and songs about drugs, stalking B-list celebrities and retaliatory urination in kitchen equipment; what more do you need to start your Saturday night? Now, one thing PJ can always do is rise to the occasion, or at least give it a damn good go, so what with having to follow such an energetic (if untechnical) band and with a friend of Debz's attempting to video us too, I think we did okay. Chris tried to suggest to Monkish that if they ratcheted the camp up just another fraction of a notch, they'd go down splendidly on the Brighton cabaret scene, at which they started looking a bit defensive and insisting they were all straight. Bless 'em.