[Above] The Shadow-Line and The Doubletakes
Thursday 29th July - The Horn & Hatfield Road Social Club
After coming off the train from work I went home to get changed and pick up all my gear. Tom Mellish drove round, picked me up and sat on my bed smoking his e-cig whilst I finished writing my email address on the back of demos. We got in the car and headed over, I was nervous for soundcheck but we sounded ok considering it was only a vocal PA and they're more suited to Tom Jones covers acts who wear their shiny shirts open at the chest and sing along to karaoke. We sounded ok though, and once soundcheck was over I was more excited than nervous. We went to Morrisons to buy some food, which reminded me of every single lunchtime at Verulam School since we were allowed out in year 10, and as we were late in the day shit was majorly reduced. I got some sushi and an egg and cress baguette. I had never eaten sushi before but at £1.19 how could I say no?! It wasn't spectacular. Why do people always go on about it? Is it because it's an edgy indie food? It's just not that great, and kind of annoying to eat. Just fry that fish and put it with some chips, surely? Know what I mean? Anyway, we also bought a blackcurrant pie which we never actually ate, but we did take a victory photo with it afterwards:
[L-R: Oliver Bissill, Oliver Wolffe, Zygmunt Day, Will Day, Tom Mellish, Boris Holmes, Rob Llewelyn]
BUT, before I played with The Shadow-Line at Hatfield Road, I went to do an acoustic set at The Horn. It was empty, as the Horn often is early in the night, but even more annoyingly some idiot started playing some fucking Atreyu off his phone whilst I was singing one of my tender acoustic ballads! If it's an acoustic gig, don't talk over the performance and then start playing a fucking song off your phone to show your mate! Some people actually want to listen! The worst thing is he was in one of the other bands, so he should be showing a bit of respect to a fellow musician. If you don't want to listen to music, what are you doing at a gig? Go home and sit on your hand before you have a wank so it feels like someone else is doing it or whatever kids get up to these days. Just don't come and play your Bullet For My Valentine over the songs I've spent hours writing! I told him off from stage too. I guess everyone makes mistakes, it's just a bit pointless. You're at a live music show, why are you listening to music on your phone? I'm not that shit! I think you can spare five minutes to listen to my song.
Anyway, after that I walked the short walk to Hatfield Road under gathering dusk, and we were on pretty much as soon as I got back. This was the set list:
It went pretty well. It's hard to comment on your own performance, but we mainly pulled it off with a few mistakes that can be put down to teething problems as much as anything. After a lot of nerves in the week before, I was pleased with how well it all came off. The other bands were apparently really good too, I wouldn't know I was at The Horn! But people said The Doubletakes were really good, they had Courtney Ellis joining them on vocals for Springsteen's "I'm Going Down" and also their song "17 Days". I'll have some photos from the gig soon, I'll post em up when I do.
Then when we were finished, we packed up, took the victory photo, and I got a lift home off of Rob Llewelyn. Cheers Rob! Also cheers Jessica for organising the gig!
Friday 30th July - Google Offices
After work on Friday, at which I was the sleepiest man in Hackney (I think it was the first time I ever actually fell asleep on the train to work), I went to visit Broken & The Blessed regular Rhodri Karim at the Google Offices in London where he's interning, helping them design a microchip which goes into peoples brains, or something, and the Google offices are amazing! I knew things were initially gonna be good when the first place we visited was the canteen, which is more like a cross between the all-you-can-eat daytime buffet at Pizza Hut and a hip, airy hotel restaurant than what you might imagine as a work canteen. It was a lot better than the canteen at my work, even though they do a mean sausage sandwich. The other thing is, at Google it's all free! Literally everything was free! They even had beer! So much beer! And premium brands too! I felt like the luckiest man in Victoria.
After that we had the Office Tour, in which we literally went inside Google Earth:
Rode on a Segway:
Sat on Deckchairs:
And enjoyed ironic practical jokes:
Look at that joke! You get a better brand of humour at Google. They joke outside the box! Also, the guy who was interning as tech support rode round on the Segway shooting us periodically with a Nerf gun without even laughing. He literally just did it as if he was a contract Nerf-killer. "It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it" was what he probably thought as he levelled another foam projectile at our cowering torsos.
Anyway after that I bid a fond farewell to Rhodri and the Internet, went back to St. Albans and went out for a pint with Tom Mellish. At one point Tom Mellish got this text:
Needless to say, none of us were shagging last night.
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