The last 2 weeks have been rammed. My buddy and I went to the tasting of Frank Turner’s ‘Believe Beer’, a beer he has created with the boys from Signature Brew. I’m not a big beer drinker, but it was a really fun night and the man himself was there too. See the video of the tasting here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCJYJUinRas

We then travelled up to my home town of Birmingham to see Frank at the Academy where we picked up the #FTHCFlag. The flag accompanied us on our travels down to London the next day where we wined and dined it and delivered it to the gig at the Forum that evening. Both shows were awesome, it was great to hear Frank’s new material and even greater to be a part of the Flag which is now on ebay for nearly 2 grand!

Death Grips are coming to London, courtesy of All Tomorrow’s Parties, the curators of last years “I’ll Be Your Mirror” festival which featured one-day with the awesome line-up of Slayer (playing Rain In Blood in its entirety), Sleep, Melvins, Wolves In The Throne Room and A Storm of Light. The concert will take place in the London Forum in Kentish Town, London UK. Tickets are available directly from ATP.

Death Grips are an electronic/hip hop act with an aggressive and oppositional sound. Utterly twisted music that shouldn’t be missed by anyone who likes the sound of a fusion between Electronic production, hip hop rhythm and heavy metal fury.

Check out their new track, “No Hands” (via deadandtaxesmag) below…

Diane Burridge: “let’s talk about how to get more social glue.”

Everyone has a story on the Islington Faces Blog.  Diane Burridge grew up in the Australian outback. She arrived in Britain in 1975, first living and teaching science at a secondary school in Brixton, before settling in Islington in 1981 with partner David Braine. Interview by Nicola Baird

Nothing seems to stop Diane Burridge, 61, enjoying what’s on offer locally – whether it is shopping at her nearest shops, helping run events at the Ecology Centre off Drayton Park, N5, or being on the committee for a street party for neighbours.

Diane’s organisational skills have brought in a lot of money in areas where she has worked in London, thanks to her know-how about where to go for funding. For most of her UK working life her day job has seen her working on regeneration projects in London. “I’ve raised tonnes of funding over the years, but I’m not a fundraiser. Raising money has been part of my job, just part of being a manager.”

Over a year ago Diane took early retirement, giving her time to be a Games Maker at the 2012 Olympics. And she’s dusted off her classroom skills, so she’s back teaching chemistry GCSE three and a half days a week, plus lecturing part-time on regeneration at University College London (UCL).  She’s also a committee member of the Highbury Community Association, the London Forum, and Friends of Gillespie Park (the latter since 1987).

Perhaps it’s no surprise that she can juggle heavy workloads as from 1986-1994 she was also the local councillor for Gillespie Ward (now roughly Highbury West and at that time an unpaid role) taking on spells as chair of Economic Development, chair of the Environment Committee and also Deputy Leader.

“I was working full time, nearby, and so I could manage the workload which took up about 25 hours a week,” explains Diane who is well known for rushing to multiple meetings in an evening by bike (perhaps an obvious way of getting around as she does not have a car).

She claims it was her childhood in Western Australia that shaped her into a political activist. “I was very young when my parents divorced. Very few people divorced in the 1950s but my mother was this young divorcee working in the outback as a bush nurse with two young children [Di’s sister is a year younger].  The treatment of single mothers and the low pay for nurses, as well as the harshness of our lives, gave me a lot of my politics. We moved a lot. We lived in one town, Mukinbudin where there was just one main shop only open on Friday afternoons – the next nearest town was 30 miles away. It was wheatbelt country on the edge of the desert. They were still clearing land then – we used to help out by pulling out the huge roots of shrubs.”

“I’d see herds of emus and kangaroos and the sky would be covered with birds. We also stayed with my aunt every holidays and where she lived the nearest northern town was 300 miles away.”

“There was no resident doctor in Mukinbudin. My mother was the local vet, doctor and nurse all rolled into one. She even had to drive her own trail across the desert to reach some Aborigine families.”

Living in the outback, moving often, Diane’s education could have been very patchy but she won a scholarship to a Methodist Girls’ boarding school, and went on to secure a free university place in 1969 to study geology.  After graduating she travelled the world for three years on her own – working as she went.  “These experiences made me very independent, self-sufficient and perhaps a bit too fearless,” says Diane.

Islington report card
Despite the huge amount of energy she’s invested locally over the past 30 years, Diane is proudest of the campaign that saved Gillespie Park, just behind Arsenal tube. Not only did she and others (including Angela Sinclair-Loutit, Pat Tuson, Chris Ashby, Sue Jandy and Rev Stephen Coles) guarantee a green space for Islington they also began the tradition of running a free festival on the second Sunday in September which attracts more than 2,000 locals. The 27^th Gillespie Festival will be 8 September 2013.

With so many cuts anticipated over the next few years, it’s worth remembering Diane’s tips on how to protest successfully. “Campaigns are so hard and so much work. You have to be patient and resilient,” says Diane. “It took three years to save Gillespie Park but we worked as a team and shared the work.”

Her other tip is not to dwell on the past – “I like looking forward. I don’t like looking back. ” Even so as a regeneration specialist she has some thoughts on how fast Islington is changing with ever-rising private house prices and rentals. “Physically Islington has got better but it’s suburbanisation. I cycle and used to notice the little work spaces, small factories, family-run shops and children’s homes (at Highbury and Ambler Roads). That variety of use of buildings has diminished.  Even the football stadium was turned into housing! We are getting a divided community.”

“I do see the social glue weakening, not helped by greater disparity of incomes between people.  That’s why playgrounds in parks and free festivals are so important.  They are the areas or occasions when people who reflect the local population can mix.”

Shops are another melting pot where Diane reckons people can chat and invest in local businesses. “I find it very sad that local shops are closing down. I refuse to shop in superstores – and only use small local shops. Her favourites are Whites Fruit and Veg, butcher David Mayers and La Princesse all on Blackstock Road, and the Arsenal Food Store on Gillespie Road.  “David and I know lots of really nice local people,  helped by being active in the community. We feel so lucky to have been able to have bought a house here 27 years ago and to live in this wonderful part of London. We’ll never move.”

2013 Gillespie Festival – Sunday 8 September. Entrance is free. Open from approx 2-5pm.

Over to you

How much do you get involved in Islington life – do you find it a way to make friends or something to be proud about doing?  By the way, if you’d like to feature on this blog, or make a suggestion about anyone who grew up, lives or works in Islington please let me know, via nicolabaird.green@gmail.com. Thank you. This blog is inspired by Spitalfields Life written by the Gentle Author.

Kentish Town graffiti (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Afternoon, 

I made my sophomore stand-up appearance last night, at The Freedom Fridge in the Torriano Bar, Kentish Town.  I was, I must admit, pretty nervous about the gig, maybe even more so than my debut back in July.

It had been almost three months since my first show, not entirely intentionally, and when I’d performed for the first time it had been announced that it was my first ever slot, so I was concerned that the audience had ‘gone easy’ on me.

I came away from last night’s gig feeling a strange sort of ‘Zen‘, I have a good bead on where my flaws currently lie as a stand-up (beyond not being funny enough) and what I can try and work on in the future.  But, I won’t get into that here, if you’re really interested in my self-absorbed thoughts that feel free to come along and ask me at one of my future stand-up shows, which I’ve now started listing on the Stand-Up page of this site.

Hopefully I’ll see you at a show soon!

Owain

Chickenhawk are main support

Annoying train complications meant I missed openers The Computers‘ set. The second band of the evening is Chickenhawk, out in support of their new record ‘Modern Bodies’ out this week. Chickenhawk sound like Queens of the Stone Age playing mathcore. Well, this is the desired effect but Chickenhawk suffer from bad sound and for most of the set all we hear is drumming and shouting.  Unfortunately these volume troubles deflate their set. The audience for the most part look on bemused, but Chickenhawk take the opportunity to cause some havok as singer/guitarist Paul Astick wades over the barrier into the audience, guitar and all.

Everyone is waiting for Alexisonfire. Chants of ‘Alexis’ begin to erupt and swell in volume. Looking around the room, the average age of the audience has noticeably risen over the years. Alexis are now in their ninth year as a band. I must have seen them five or six times and you always wonder whether they’re going to be able to perform with the same energy, if George is going to still hack those screams or Dallas is still able to blow everyone away with his angelic voice.

As the lights drop, the atmosphere is electric. Alexis explode into ‘Young Cardinals’, the lead single from their last album, and suddenly everyone in the room is sixteen again, running into each other, going wild. Honestly, Alexis do little, which a fan wouldn’t expect. But what else would you want? It’s an A1 punk rock show.

Chaos in The Forum: Alexisonfire make their mark

Far from flagging, these five men are at the height of their performance powers. Dallas’ vocals soar and he teases the thousands-strong audience by changing his melody lines. George takes off his t-shirt halfway through the show. Set closer ‘Happiness by the Kilowatt’ duly comes and has fifty more repeats of the final bars than it does on record, drawing out that moment – just as always.

A notable omission from their set is classic track from their second album ‘No Transitory’, but we did have ‘Accidents’ and ‘Control’ plus, as a special treat, ‘.44 Calibre love letter’ which opens their self-titled debut. The weakest moment in the set is the straight ahead punk rock song ‘Accept Crime’ from their last album.

That song’s sentiment is valuable; zero tolerance towards those who deny gay people the right to marriage. Musically however, it isn’t one of the bands finest moments. New track ‘Dog’s Blood’ from their new EP of the same name is a great hardcore song with an epic ending only pull-off-able by this band.

An excellent headline set, tonight Alexisonfire prove to the faithful that they’ve still got it and convert the uninitiated in droves. I’ll leave you with this classic video of Alexisonfire live on Open Mike:

Andrew Kiliman

ANDREW KLIMAN ON CAUSES AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE CAPITALIST CRISIS

July 8th London Forum

Andrew Kliman speaks on the Capitalist Crisis

Andrew Kliman, author of ‘Reclaiming Marx’s Capital’, will be giving a talk in London on Wednesday 8th on ’causes and implications of the capitalist crisis’. The meeting takes place from 8pm at the Lucas Arms, Grays Inn Road, near King’s Cross.

See: http://thecommune.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/july-8th-london-forum-kliman-speaks-on-the-capitalist-crisis/

Kliman, a member of the USA’s Marxist-Humanist Initiative, has argued that we have to see the current crisis as part of a wider structural crisis of capital, and moreover has argued that statist and Keynesian solutions to the crisis are a dead end for the working class. See our October interview with him here.

The meeting is being jointly hosted by The Commune and The Hobgoblin group.

Plenty of time for discussion

All welcome

Email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com for more information

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon at MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Today’s MP3 of the day is the band Biffy Clyro wanted to be when they first started out; Sunny Day Real Estate are the shit, they are signed to Sub Pop and are playing a show over here in London in April.

By Alexandra McLoughlin

Simple Plan playing at London Forum pix by Alexandra McLoughlin

After having sold over SEVEN million copies worldwide on their two albums the Canadian boys SIMPLE PLAN were back in town to promote their third self titled album “Simple Plan” which has already gone Platinum in Canada  and Gold in Mexico.

The band kept their promise of treating their British fans to a signing section at the HMV Store in Oxford Street. The event which took place on the 29^th November 2008 at 5.15 in the afternoon had fans lining up at the store as early as 8.00 am however no one was disappointed having the opportunity of not only meeting the guys on their last day of their UK tour but also the chance of grabbing their latest album.

The band sold out gig at The Forum in Kentish Town London was another huge success in a goody bag full of funny surprises and great entertainment. Despite having plenty of energy to feed those starving fans with greatness and glory and yet they have managed to leave them feeling hungry for more.

 Their new single “Save You” was written in tribute to Pierre’s brother who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 28 and the boys are trying to increase awareness of this illness by setting up the SIMPLE PLAN FOUNDATION where all the proceeds from each download sale will be distributed through their foundation to cancer charities around the world.

So, another reunion gig but who are the ‘Butthole Surfers‘? For the uninitiated, this is a good place to start for getting a feel for the Texan born psychedelia alt-rock lunatics who were one of the more unique bands emerging from the American post-punk scene in the mid 1980′s. I’m not their biggest fan, I have three albums and a live bootleg – but their live shows from the start of their career have obtained an almost mythical status so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see them reformed with most of the original line-up. As I expected they weren’t quite as insane as they used to be but still delivered a cracking show with all the requisite back projections, strobes, smoke and loud, loud guitars.

The band use two drum kits, up to four guitarists on some tracks and vocalist Gibby Haynes employs some weird voice distortion equipment so this ain’t exactly your traditional rock act four piece. I must confess that set list wise I only recognised about half of the songs as many of the tracks were culled from the album ‘Rembrandt Pussyhorse‘ and some of their EP’s which I don’t have. My two favourite tracks of theirs are fairly mainstream, ‘Cough Syrup‘ which they didn’t play but we did get a storming rendition of ‘Sweat Loaf‘ which made the night for me.

  
The Forum is a good, intimate venue where I’ve seen both ‘Nine Inch Nails’ ages ago and the ‘The Pixies’ during their storming reunion a couple of years ago. Here are some other links to Surfers material I’ve tracked down to give you an idea of their history. And madness. 

Frontman Gibby Hayes has certainly changed over the past few years – check out the before and after photos above. The whole tour was part of the Paul Green School of Rock project which aims to get kids on stage performing live with established acts - the world has certainly drifted further toward Apocalypse when they’re letting Gibby near children considering stories of his past behavior. For the only encore about twenty of the kids performed something of a stage invasion during a rendition of ‘The Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey’s Grave‘, destroying equipment, wrapping each other in gaffer tape, throwing objects into the crowd as squeals of feedback rumbled around the venue, now that’s the chaos you expect from a Surfers gig!! 

There are some legendary stories about the antics these psychopaths got up in the late eighties which are part chronicled in this book, an absolute must read for anyone even passingly interested in the US alternative/punk scene of the 1980′s. If you’re interested further, here is a link to the Surfers website where they are giving away, perfectly free and legitimate copies of a live bootleg from 1988.