2 posts tagged “snafu”
Oooo - this is a bit new! I'm old enough, wise enough, and opinionated enough(!) that I feel qualified to write a band review. Yay! It only took 31 years.
Saturday we took a trip to see Crazy P play at Sanfu.
[A quick apology to Miss D at this point - she was due to attend with myself and Magroo but helped a friend out behind the bar on Saturday. She had a pretty rough time of it and I promised that I wouldn't rub it in... so Miss D.. stop reading now please! You were sorely missed!]
All the ingredients were wrong:
- Who the hell has heard of Crazy Penis? (Crazy P as they are known in the UK - we are too conservative!)
- The tickets hadn't sold out.
- Magroo was really tired.
- Miss D wasn't with us :-(
- Magroo was half a bottle of Jack very tired.
- It was 23.20 and I was STONE COLD sober.
- Five (the pre-club bar) wasn't busy.
- Snafu isn't a big place - 300 capacity maybe?
- Aberdeen crowds are notoriously unappreciative.
- Aberdeen dancey-types are relatively reserved when it comes to making a band feel welcome.
However - all this was rememdied and/or forgotten about thanks to our friends Mr Vodka and Mr RedBull.
In sanfu the stage is tiny. How they managed to fit all the keyboards, drum kit, guitars, etc and still allow room for the hugely endearing Dannielle Moore to dance her socks off I don't know.
After presuming I was the only person in the entire world familiar with Crazy P, I was taken aback by the noise that greeted them walking on stage. I was even more surprised when the dancefloored filled up and every chorus of every song was met with the unmistakable sound of the crowd joining in.
One thing that struck both myself and magroo was the quality of what we heard and saw. We (accidentally) managed to see Mylo and his band play 5 times over the last two years, and despite following a huge improvment in his act over that time - Mylo isn't a patch on Crazy P. Fair point that Crazy P have been on the go for at least 7 years, but this gig just felt so Faithless-eque 'polished'. Crazy Penis sounded increadably tight and sweet - suprising in such a small venue. In fact - It was so bloody good that had we not been so close that you could witness the the guitars being plucked, you could have been mistaken for presuming it was all on backing track.
Several Budweisers were consumed. The obligatory idiot at the front sticking his fingers up was removed. And everyone settled in.
I was nervous when Dannielle announced she was going to do a slow one as this is the point at which the disrespectful tossers in a crowd usually head on mass to the bar or just heckle.. but as a true testiment to her warmth and stage presence everyone stayed and those who knew the lyrics joined in as loud as we could.
For a band used to touring European and Australian festivals it was great to see how seriously they took the night - Dannielle changed her dress half way through the act for example. The encore of their cover of You've Got The Love was as sublime as the rest of the set.
One of the many advantages of the smoking ban in Scotland is that we got a chat with some of the band members outside afterwards. I asked them why we aren't seeing more them touring the festivals in the UK... they said they have plans!
Live dance music will always be my first love. Suncreem blew me away as a kid. I've seen hundreds of live dance acts over the last 14 years - Faithless, Scissor Sisters, Mylo, Hybrid, Basement Jaxx etc. To my utter astonishment all the ingredients came together on Saturday to bring one of the best gigs I've ever seen - onlt Faithless still hold the top slot for me.
I cannot stress to anyone enough - please try to catch Crazy P and give them your support this year!!! If they are only half as good for you as they were for me on Saturday, you'll have a unforgettable night.
[sorry if I'm confusing anyone who knows me here - this post was started a couple of weeks back]
After a rather large Friday night out (Groove Armada's Tom Findlay at Snafu) - Saturday was very chilled. Housework, Rugby, Sofa, DVDs, Roast Pork, etc... but highlight of the day had to be watching DVD release The Last Kiss.
It's an English adaptation of an Italian Film with one significant change made at the end of the movie. I really identified with this film, mainly because of the uniquely settling acting skills of Zach Braff (JD from Scrubs) - but perhaps more ... the premise. It follows a normal guy turning 30 having seemingly unfounded doubts about his 'perfect' relationships. We see him getting involved with a (very hot!) mistress despite his internal arguments against it.
The film follows in detail what happens as his partner finds out, and how the various 'perfect' relationships around him fall apart. It got me quite emotional (I make no apologies I have a soft spot for the Coldplay song! It's at the end of this post.) ... and.. because she too was suffering big time from Friday and laid out on the sofa ... Miss D had some strong opinions on it too.
In fact we had a fairly heated debate about it.
But - as usual...
She's wrong.
(My word - I actually felt a cold shiver down my back as I typed those words ... hell hath no fury like an enraged Miss D... I think I may pay deeply for this!)
Back to the film.
As the story unfolds Zach Braffs character makes some seemingly selfish and outwardly stupid decisions. He's clearly unsure about so very much in his life, and he ends up lying to his girlfriend and going to a party with the mistress. I completely understand ALL the decisions that Zach Braff took in this film. Infact, if i'm being completely honest with myself I think that I probably would have made the simliar choices if (and only if) I found myself in the same mind set. However - that doesn't mean that I can forgive what he did. HE CHEATED ON HIS PREGNANT GIRLFRIEND. It's unforgivable. It's completely wrong. It's selfish. Its horrible. And it effects everyone.
But dispite Miss D's arguments to the contrary ... I dont think think that because I personally UNDERSTAND what he did I too should be branded an 'arsehole'.
Let me explain:
My life feels like it started from scratch about 2 years ago and I've made some horrible and often painful mistakes as I readjusted to a single life in a normal society. These have included:
-
mistaking a rebound thing for love and eventually breaking a sweet young girls heart (TW)
- mistaking a long distance relationship for real love and eventually breaking a special girls heart (LS)
- mistaking a dangerous 'fling' for true love and breaking my own heart. (JH)
- mistaking a right black shoe for a left brown shoe - but that's another story to be published shortly (see pic to right - not good!)
At all times I believe I've acted in a way which I felt
was right at the time. On no occasion did I ever deliberately hurt
anyone or set out to make something bad happen. I just acted on my own
feelings and instincts at that time, feelings and instincts which are surely
created by the experiences and decisions of our pasts?
I've hurt people - regrettably badly in some cases - but does that make me an 'arse hole'? Miss D thinks it possibly does. But I don't. In the film Zach's character has to pay for his stupidity - big time. A shortsighted selfish couple of decisions and his world - his entire world - came crashing down around him. The self doubting questions that he was asking himself were answered in an instant. He ultimately knew exactly what he wanted... I'd bet it was to be able go back in time, knowing what he knows now, and NOT do the whole thing again.
I have a theory: I believe its a hundred times easier to start a new behaviour than it is to stop repeating the same bad behaviour. Breaking out of repeating patterns of destructive behaviour is incredibly difficult for me. I blind myself all the time. So much so that I completely convince myself the a situation is how I *want* to see it... not actually how it is. This was definitely the case with, erm, lets call her Mandy a barmaid at my friends pub. Arguably I was encouraged by her - but - ultimately I admit that I made a huge mistake.
I was completely and utterly convinced that we were a couple! All my friends thought we were too. All the ingredients were there - time spent together, constantly being close, present buying, emotional support, trips away, sharing a bed and each others bodies. I just saw that we were a couple... but she didn't think so and told me more than once. So why didn't I hear it?
It ended horribly.
I was just trying to live my life right. I was listening to the voice in my head telling me how the relationship was. That voice was telling me how I should feel and how I should behave.
Doesn't everyone listen to that internal voice??? How come I seem to make such huge errors? I'm not stupid... am I? I loved JodiPodi post on trust ... I guess the answer is that I should learn to trust my internal voice less!
Maybe Zach Braff's character should have ignored that naive and misguided voice in his head too. If he'd acted upon the warning signs that came from his friends he wouldn't have broken his own world.
I hope as I grow up I'm learning to do that too.
Anyway - I'll finish of with the previously mentioned Coldplay Track....
