22:22, 26/03/2006

Two pints of champagne.

Rock and Roll

Jennie and Steve Diggle - camphoto by Erika I went out on Friday night with Jennie and our friends Erika and Jo.

Jennie told me a funny story about when she went to see The Buzzcocks at Koko in Camden a couple of weeks ago.

She was backstage later with Steve Diggle (pictured with Jennie - camphoto by Erika), their brilliant guitarist and he told her how he stays so youthful (the others look like the aging white haired punk legends they are, while Steve still looks rather fresh and feisty).

The secret? Note this down: he doesn't drink anymore except and I quote: "a couple of pints of champagne before a gig".

That sort of anecdote is why I love rock n roll music so much. It's the easy and unironic combination of magnificence and stupidity.

See I hate irony and rock n roll at its best is both preposterously stupid (as an industry and as a form) and at the same time incredibly honest, passionate and real. I love practically all forms of music but rnr in all its forms is what really gets me.

I remember Steve came to one of my old band's gigs (see below) with Jennie's mate Elena a couple of years ago. He really liked us and he hung with us at the bar of the venue. Jennie says I just stood there with my mouth open all night. What are you supposed to do when you meet a hero?

24-03-06_2143.jpg
The loos at the Dirty Water Club. Choices choices...

Rock and Roll 2

Speaking of Friday night, rock and booze, we all went to the Dirty Water Club in Tufnell Park to see another friend's band, Thee Exciters. They play raw, primal garage punk. It's stupid, simple and exhilarating stuff. If I was having a big party there's absolutely no doubt that I'd ask them to play there.

Paul, the band's frontman likes a drink or two, and he was on particularly fine form. Barely able to stand for most of the gig, he still hit all his hooks perfectly, and also did some brilliant drunken rock business, climbing into the crowd, drinking beer from his boot, stripping naked and trying to climb the rickety lighting rig before falling off. Perhaps the most brilliant thing was watching him several times try and untangle his microphone lead from the stand during instrumental breaks. It's hard enough when you're sober...

Anyway their set was great. They're doing a tour in the US in April, so you should check em out, American friends. More details on their MySpace page.

I am here 24-03-06_2211.jpg
(top) Paul, Thee Exciters; (bottom) Steve Copter.

Before Thee Exciters, we were surprised to meet another bunch of good friends, the Birmingham band Copter, with whom we've had a long relationship. They booked us to play their club ColdRice a while ago, and have championed us a fair bit.

So it was great to see them opening the gig. They play a lot harder and faster than I remember them from before, frontman Steve coming on like some electrified Brummie Ian Svenonius. Unfortunately as Stef, their lovely keyboard player explained to me afterwards, their robot, MILO, who usually llivens up proceedings inbetween songs, had broken down, but it was still an excellent and very loud set.

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Stef Copter lays down the licks, with a defunct MILO in front

Stef and Steve don't (as far as I know) know about Miss K, so they may be in for a shock (an Electric Shock?) when they look at their logs and see this post :)

Great night all round. Both bands are heartily recommended.

Rock and Roll 3

Jennie and I are making progress with our new band. We have about ten really good songs written, have found a keyboard player and have three drummers (all of whom have been with or are currently with well known bands) lined up for tryouts.

We toyed with the idea of actually having three drummers for a really HUGE sound, but I guess that's asking a bit much.

Electric Shocks, by Emma Campbell
Jennie (centre) and me (right) from our time in Electric Shocks. photo Emma Campbell

I feel really good about this. During our time with Electric Shocks, Jennie and I have become really close friends and we work very well together. Hopefully we'll start gigging very soon.

We've even thought of a great name, for which the domains and MySpace URL were still available, which I think it pretty much unprecedented. More as it happens!

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In /music/deathline
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18:52, 19/03/2006

Don't do stuff when drunk

So, I got home rather drunk on Friday night and decided (like all us sad bloggers tend to do) to check my logs. Aside from the usual flurry of referrals from my profile on URNotAlone, I noticed a couple from an URL that looked like they were from some sort of message board.

Never one to miss an opportunity to investigate what is being said about oneself, I registered and found a rather interesting general (non transgendered) message board full of rather smart and interesting people discussing life, the universe, everything, really.

The link actually came from a discussion about Caroline Cossey which referred to my article on that well known and high profile transsexual. The ensuing debate was describing the (to us) hoary old issue of honesty. In essence, is a transgendered person being actively and unethically dishonest by not revealing his or her birth gender?

This discussion is as old as the hills in our community. Most of us never have to worry about this as we have as much chance of passing as the proverbial snowflake in that rather warm place below (where liars reportedly end up, coincidentally).

For example, in the Second Life resident forums, the topic crops up with almost nauseating regularity, and often leads to some sickeningly bipartisan trollfests from which no partricipants ever emerge with credit.

(This is why I generally avoid message boards - just simply because they are the online equivalent of a bunch of angry drivers trapped in hot cars in a traffic jam, and it's usually only a matter of time before someone goes postal and starts a 50 page troll fest. Oh the anger, the frustration, the anonymity, the safe distance... we've all been there)

But anyway, drunk as I was, I decided to offer up my advice and opinions and made the following posting:

"Hi I'm not here to troll. I was just genuinely interested when the link from the original post on this thread turned up on my weblog's referral logs and I followed it back to see this discussion on this fascinating forum. I wrote the article referred to
"I'm not here to troll..."

Well for a while, it was fine, there was some interesting debate going on, some negative, some positive, and I felt generally that people were welcoming in the right way. I even got some private messages from people sending me words of welcome, which was nice.

Then this afternoon, notification of this reply popped into my mailbox:

"I dont like when trannys dont inform people that they arent female. There were a couple of news stories last year where trannys gave blowjobs to guys who thought they were female and when the guys eventually found out they freaked out and the trannys got
"The trannys got killed..."

A couple of posts later he went on to argue that actually trans people should be convicted of rape in these instances.

It really really upset me.

Intolerance always does, especially as the crime he is referring to led to the particularly awful murder of a young trans teenager, Gwen Araujo.

The last example of trolling that upset me this much was the personal attack I received on flickr on my birthday.

I know, I know. I should be big enough by now to be able to rise above this sort of thing but I've got into so many disheartening and exhausting battles in the past with the trolls to really want to involve myself in any more - which is why I tend to walk away if I encounter them.

So I posted as much, made my farewells and left the forum.

The moral of the story is that you should never try to do anything as dangerous as driving or posting in a forum when drunk. Stick to weblogging.

You know it makes sense.

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