patrick boo

Ah yes, Angela (aka Ms Gir) is indeed a right lil' sweetie - The Videos played with her down in London (arf) and I exchanged some lovely e-mails with the faun of electronica. She's doing pretty well for herself doon there it seems...

Isn't it ironic that this thread will have already lost them the title? Now the least talked about band are... well, they've asked me not to mention them...

This is definitely his favourite part, the part that makes him feel best inside. He feels all at once prouder and harder than walking around at the gig hand in hand with her earlier, knowing everyone was looking at them, envying at least one of them if not both of them. They looked good anyway, but people are always secretly jealous of couples. He feels warmer and buzzier inside than ever, forever, after when something triggers her to reach slowly and tenderly back and place the palm of her hand on his thigh, and he reaches over and cups her tiny, virtuous cream tea breast in his hand, and it all leads.... Now is the best time, the time when that big word love becomes tangible and physical because everything it means is here. It's in the syrupy amber glow of surrogate moonlight from the street lamps which filters through the raindrops on the windowpane and paints her silhouette in treacle as she undresses. It's in the sounds, tiny imperceptible sounds which shouldn't exist but are there, airborne and lascivious. Sounds such as the electric swish of soft skin against soft skin, her schoolboy arms against her own body as she moves across the room to the bed, where he lays poised, ready, waiting, like a badly posed photo. It's a tiny single bed, which most of the time they don't mind, although it can get very hot and sticky in the Summer as the sun shines in on them early in the morning. Their favourite position is with her on her left side, back to him, facing the wall. He will lie spooned against her, a physical echo, two as one, clinging like fetal twins. This is the best bit. Sex, yes, sex is a good thing - a very good thing, but not now. Sex is best on long languid afternoons, when it feels like they are the only ones in the world doing it, as if the world depended on it, on a bed, in a bed when one should not be in a bed. Sex. Not 'making love' . That sounds so pedestrian. When you're in love you don't need to make love. You already have love. But not now. Oh, all right then, now. But tomorrow afternoon? Good. We can get up and clean the house and feel all rosy and wholesome and self-satisfied, and then, and then, and then.....and afterwards a bath as dusk settles like dust. Another beautiful day wasted beautifully away, elegantly wasted. He feels invincible in the world they have here, their little terraced Anderson shelter in the war of Summertime lust in a teenage town. As long as he doesn't let her out of his sight when the bombs are falling around them they'll get through it intact. He hates sleeping alone now; it just doesn't work. He'll climb into a cold hard bed and grasp and clutch for something that isn't there, gathering up folds of dirty sheet, unable to find a comfortable resting position. He won't hear the faint sounds which comfort him so such as her breathing, smooth and sibilant, sometimes irregular and staccato when she is dreaming. Sleeping with her is fitful but content; he awakens every couple of hours or so and checks she's still there, perhaps kissing her forehead lightly but carefully so as not to stir her. What is she dreaming of? He often gazes at her as her eyelids twitch and flutter, wondering what her unconscious mind does to exercise, what it throws out with the rubbish. Shes locked in the bathroom. It's not her bathroom, but a great imposing room decorated with black marble and weathered brass. Above the door - she doesn't know why - is a gigantic brass plaque, engraved in cursive script with the word 'BURLESQUE'. She's in the bath, naked and wet, shiny and exposed, and she can't get out. She seems pinned down, unable to move her arms or legs. There's steam everywhere and she can't see a thing. The water is becoming cold and she is beginning to get a little uncomfortable, clammy, and a bit scared. She's been having a lot of similar dreams like this lately. What he loves about her is that she is so good to sleep with. His last girlfriend would fidget and flap and probably end up edging him so he was hanging out of the bed, clinging for dear life. He can put his arms around her and hold her like the world is ending and she wont move an inch the whole night. Not an inch.

You must excuse me - I was having a kind of supermarket acid flashback. Glad you likes though.

Laura and Helen are drunk on Smirnoff and memory. They lay down on the bed together and held hands when they were fifteen; when they got up again to face the world they were twenty-five. Those little white hands with exquisite English fingers, teacup fingers, entwined in understanding - an iron-deficient latticework with brilliant white satin finish, tipped with those little rosebud nails, lacquer patina black cherry and electric blue respectively. What a pretty pretty pattern. Fifteen years old and the world seemed so small they could get it into their schoolbags, eyeliner and glitter and a half bottle of voddy and Dog Man Star and The Holy Bible. Getting changed in the public lavvies and sneaking off to pretend to be 19 in pubs, leaving in time to get the last bus. Now at 25 theyre still pretending to be 19 in pubs, only the world wont fit into a schoolbag anymore its leaked and its all over the floor. One thing has changed though, they can climb into a shiny black cab and slide around in glossy skirts on the smooth leatherette seats long after chucking out. Like big stars on the back seat, like skeletons everso pretty In the quarter-light they stare up at the stars through the ceiling, surrounded by the ephemera of their lives, the stuff that leaked out; its not what we do that defines us, its what we have. Stuff. Black eyeliner, casing cracked by a gold shoe with Tequila splashed on the toe. Spineless copy of Anais Nins Delta Of Venus, folded open against the floor. Large convex mirror with chipped silver frame which Laura bought yesterday because its like the one Dirk Bogarde was polishing in The Servant. The price is sticker is still on the glass - 4.50 from The Marie Curie shop. One of those postcards of a girl that winks at you if you move, stained with a clumsy coffee ring. Records Francoise Hardy Sings About Love and Funhouse by The Stooges, placed on the carpet in a strategically casual fashion to impress a new male acquaintance. Tigerstriped hatbox sans hat but overflowing with bits lipstick, eyeshadow and nailvarnish in fifty shades of undress, bracelets, brooches, narcotically discarded earrings, packets of home hair-dye, false eyelashes, hairpieces, hairbands, wristbands, necklaces these stupid things that we do And the stars stare back through the ceiling at them, pinned and mounted delicately amongst stuff, instillation still life anthropological study entitled English Roses With Stuff. On first glance we know art but we dont know what we like, and this isnt art. What do these lives have to do with anything at all? We move on, perhaps discuss the flogged horse in formaldehyde; what daring use of space and unexpected scale but something pulls us back we were too busy looking at the bigger picture to notice the details. See, there, for instance - look at Helens forearm, the raised criss-cross pattern of livid scar tissue, tiny lines that enlace, like a map of the city where she vanished when Laura went to Italy with her parents. At first it was just to see if she could. The first incision was the hardest as the skin scratched apart like a torn hem she bit her lip on a sharp intake of breath. She tensed and her midriff rode up - she reigned herself in, cursed Freud and licked the point of the compass before pushing it deeper on the second pass. Once she was underway it was the colours that fascinated her most, the spectrum of her insides on their way out; deepening angry scarlet chink at the epicentre, rising into rusting seams, already coagulating at the raised edge of the miniature furrow. Then a healthy pink giving way to a callow border intersected with the rough, canvas white of old wounds. All those lovely colours - She is a work of art after all a very exclusive piece, with selected viewings. Laura has marks too, two of them. Theyre more refined though, scars made by a more intent blade. Theres one thin white sliver on her left cheek which carries on, if she holds it in the right position, onto the palm of her right hand - a souvenir of the blade Gavin took with him the night he went away and didnt come back. Gavin was a small-time dealer who used to get them dope and speed and acid and let himself get carried away with ideas above his station. Trouble is, Laura got carried away too. Frequent freebies and the life of a full-time hedonista were the reasoned trade-off for the occasional fumble with a suspiciously short but tolerable enough cicisbeo; a certain lysergic haziness coupled with a belief in an imbalance of sexual power in her favour may have clouded this somewhat. Helen had got the tip-off from a friend of a friend of her brother who was in the force. They were onto Gavin - the midget Howard Marks, they were coming to take the house apart piece by piece and if they didnt find anything they would make sure they did anyway She called Laura and warned her to get away from there and come home right away, which she was trying to do, only Gavins state of mind was snarling paranoia and eight thousand calamitous scenarios were playing out in his head all at once, each of them leading to one conclusion betrayal. Helen and Laura, the Siamese twins, he had prised them apart at last, and this was how he was to be repaid? Laura hid in the airing cupboard, stoned and alone, whilst the rabid paramour clumsily stomped around the musty mid-terrace finding bags of chemistry to empty down the U-bend. He found her coincidentally, hallucinating in the warm cubby hole, as she was crouched beside a large jar of semi-dried mushrooms. He backed her into the kitchen where he swiped at her with a knife still stained from the tomatoes bludgeoned for last nights dinner, chicken thing with tomatoes and rice. She put her hand up to protect herself but only partially deflected the blow. Her first thought was, how funny, he had to reach up to do that like he was slaying a giant or something. Her second was thankfully one of fuzzy self-preservation, and in one movement she opened the back door and let herself out, retrieving the key as she did so and locking him in. Turned out just fine in the end Gavin ended up getting away before they got to the house and was last heard of in Spain. Laura managed to get away with a clean scar, a decent sized jiffy of uncut speed and two dozen microdots uncomfortably stashed down her knickers. Helen got her flatmate back, and half of a lost weekend fuelled by a large jiffy of uncut speed and two dozen microdots But thats another story, another haze of memory, another life lived whilst the other world sleeps. Its written in the tatty notebook on the bedside table serving as a makeshift coaster to a chipped yellow coffee mug. Its on the third page, some spidery scrawl about circles and holes which doesnt make sense, but did at the time. Pages one and two have accounts of dreams about snakes and painful tattoos she never asked for Helens phase of writing down her dreams for inspiration lasted just a fortnight in the Summer. Page four has the e-mail address and mobile number of the singer in a band she thought she might have wanted to sleep with until she spent an hour in his company. The other pages are blank. Stories dont need to be written though. Theyre trapped like flies in amber amongst the stuff. Theyre in the laddered tights, the cracked picture frame, the old movie magazine with Hedy Lamarr on the cover, the hat that stinks of woodsmoke, the videotape with 13 painted on it in yellow nailvarnish, the empty bottle of Ouzo with a dusty red candle wedged in the neck, the Japanese toy robot This is all that we are, all what we are. We are the words that dont reach the page. We are the stuff, the beautiful stuff.

It's strange how life turns out. You think you have a handle on the world and then it goes and shifts on you. Maybe it's the world, maybe it's me - probably a bit of both. When I was a kid I thought pop and rockstars were naturally more intelligent human beings than us mere plebs. I think I was around twelve when I started to realise that 95% of them were dimwitted, self-serving arsewipes, just like normal people. I grew up feeling isolated, the only vegetarian kid in Lincoln in the 70s and 80s. Then when I got to 17, 18 years old all of a sudden everybody seemed to stop eating meat, it was wonderful, I thought the world was changing. I had no carnivore friends, never slept with a girl who ate meat, and remember when I invited some people around and discovered one was a carnivore I panicked - I mean, what do those people eat? Now of course the axis seems to have shifted again and all of a sudden I'm a crank, I'm the wierdo for checking the ingredients on my kids' sweets because they might have crushed up bovine spines (how do vegetarians get BSE? Duh.) or beetles in them. I'm not presenting a case here - if you don't give a fuck what you put in your mouth, it's no skin off my nose. I'm just musing on how I see life. One thing that does piss me off though is that for 25 years I've for some reason had to justify what I eat, the boring, 'So why are you a vegetarian? Aren't you tempted by the smell of bacon?' questions coming up time after time ad nauseum. For the record, the smell of bacon turns my stomach, it's too close to the smell that comes from crematorium chimneys.

It's not been mentioned because it would shatter the illusion that these people have been wallowing around in obscurity just waiting for their chance to be plucked and thrust into the limelight by the show. People might feel a bit cheated voting for somone who has already had a career singing around the world, appeared on TOTP countless times and is already famous enough to appear in a film as herself! ('24 Hour Party People')

The Inverness gig is in The Market Bar, 9pm on Friday 10th September. As for the big old proper UK release, well, I'm currently horsewhipping a fellow at Shellshock until he gives me a definite date. He'll crack soon, and I'll let you know...

That statement implies that they never actually spent any money that they made... Put it this way, I've seen PRS cheques of people who have written thirty second pieces of music for syndicated TV shows, and it buys a good few Sherbert dip-dabs... An ex-girlfriend of mine had one of her songs featured in a car advert. At one point she was earning 4000 a day in royalties. I think this thread is veering... THIS HOSPITAL IS DIRTY!!!

*snatches back thread and runs down street naked with it quite unnecessarily* ...They were also played on 'Air' last nite, so you can listen back to the show online and sample them. The LP is officially out early next month, but (as soon as I get the site updated later on) you can order a copy from the Planet Boo website if you like what you hear...

This is a wonderful cyclical thread, pulled in all directions but still destined to end up gnawing at the same skanky marrowbone like a dumb dog. If I were to say everything, what would be the point of saying it here? See earlier. Beware the naked man who owes you his suit...

You see it's all about being canny, playing a better game than your opponents involves creating the illusion you aren't playing. You need an example? How to promote bands using subliminal use of colour... no, of course I'm not going to tell you exactly how, but here's a clue - look back at this thread. Oh, and if you want to get in your local rag, you have to remember that the everage local hack is a semi-literate lazy half-wit who would like nothing better than to do no work at all and at the same time seem learned, erudite and sexually alluring. Write a decent press release and they will print it word for word. When I say decent though, also bear in mind that 98% of press releases, those from record companies and professional PR folks included, are bowel-churningly tedious. I rest my case, and I rest my feet on my case. There is a broken jar inside it and marmalade leaks from the cracks.

There's no doubting the quality of Macca's back catalogue, and damn right, a real crowd pleaser... what I find cringeworthy is everything between the songs though! Paul McCartney was the world's first embarrassing Uncle - see the 'Let It Be' film, Paul in the studio, bearded in a tanktop, coming out with his excruciating 'hey, remember when we used to be wierd hippies' speech, met with an uncomfortable silence by his three wierd hippy bandmates. He's done that 'Oh wow man' taking the piss thing for 35 years. It just makes me nauseous. And Delbert, I like a bit of meat on a woman, don't you?! Speaketh not poorly of a sex goddess, infidel!

I set the video to tape Friday nite's but taped Channel 4 instead. Bah. Last nite's was all Macca doing his embarrassing Uncle routine, the same one he's been doing since 1969. Was hoping for a bit of Goldfrapp... hey ho. Seems to be less on this year - I suppose they are putting it all on those fancy pants channels that poor people can't get, which is a shame, cuz live music is marginalised enough on TV already...

Extract from 'Brainwashes Whiter' by Mr Ray's Wigworld, 1992 - "Just the other day I went to the Reading Festival and I met John Peel and he said, 'hey, aren't you the singer from Mr Ray's Wigworld?' and I said 'Yeah, and I just wanna tell you that I love you I love you I love you', and he said 'Why's that?', and I said 'JOHN, I'M ON ECSTASY!!!!!!!'" This is based on a true story.

No date set right now, but it will be soon. They have an EP coming out on Planet Boo and they will be playing loads of gigs to promote it.

thankyouse all Thanks everyone who turned up and made it such a luvverly nite. Unfortunately we were one band down - Kirby had to pull after the soundcheck as Lynne was really ill, so apologies to anyone who turned up to see them. As for Thee Execution Of's sound, Phoebe's vocals were a little all over the place - this was mainly due to a wee monitor problem apparently. To hear the full effect of their sooper-dooper sound I suggest you look out for their debut single which will be out on Planet Boo soon. Thanks to all the folks at Drakes for making it such a home from home for Planet Boo too! Mwah!

THE EVENT - Planet Boo orbits Dr Drakes for one nite only - Wednesday June 9th, 9pm til late. THE PARTICIPANTS - Real Shocks - Robotique remnants from 50s nuclear testing moulded into tight nu-fi diskopunka outfit. Kirby - Tralala spiky but lovely gurl/boy groop from Glasgow, equal parts Shangri-Las and Peej Harvey Thee Execution Of... - Exciting nu three-piece from Lincoln, sound like Billy Childish, The Raveonettes and The Cramps playfully mudwrestling Le Reno Amps - The prefect fusion of Johnny Cash and The Barron Knights, like The Proclaimers on Rohypnol. PLUS - Exotic filmshows Gorgeous people Meeee Deejaying Antigravity dancefloor DRESSCODE - Ladyboy PRICE - 3 / 2 if you've obeyed the dresscode or for nowt if you have one of them there Go North laminates - corporate cocksuckers we be.

Given the paucity of the badinage on this thread (that and the ho-ho-homophobia, yawn), I think it's high time for him to return. But hell yeah, he's looking old... I'd say he looks almost forty-five. Strange that...

A song called 'Tar And Cement', recorded in 1968 by Verdelle Smith. It's a sentimental tale of a girl who grows up in a small town and plays in the fields as a child, but grows up and moves to the big city for her career. She's lonely and unhappy but is determined to make it, but misses her small town and longs to go back and lie in the meadows of her childhood. When she eventually does get back, the meadows have gone, replaced by a 6 lane highway. It's a beautiful tune, a translated version of a Francoise Hardy song. Can't get enough of it.

Flicking through my lyric books, a selection.... *Being dumped *Obsessional Lust *Primo Carnera (World Heavyweight boxing champion in 1930s who was found to have had all his fights fixed by the mafia and Italian fascist heavies. After the war went to the USA to become wrestler and filmstar) *Feeling trapped in a relationship formed on large amounts of LSD with a girl who works in a bank in Bristol *Man who becomes the most famous man in France after being abducted by aliens *Girl feeling suicidal at 17th birthday party but ends up scratching her thighs with a compass instead *Sex *Having no money but living like a 50s filmstar *Obsessional Lust *A man who steals 30 000 library books *Wife-swapping and inbreeding in rural areas *Posh blokes who pretend to be poor and manky *The wierd 2000s revival of the 1950s revival in the 1980s *Being dumped *Synaesthesia *The word 'NOT' *Obsessional Lust *A popstar Scrabble league *A religious cult formed by a man who thinks his tailor is God *Robert Rietti, celebrated voice-over artist who redubbed all the male voices in 'Gregory's Girl' when they were thought by the studio to be intelligible to those outside Scotland *Sex *The film 'Inside Daisy Clover', starring Natalie Wood *Oral sex performed by schoolboys *Freudian symbolism *Obsessional Lust *Sex

Don't get me wrong, I have no gripe with bands who end up playing, or even the judges, many of whom I count as friends... so that leaves one thing... Good to see you duly appeased though. Nice one. On another semi-related subject - You know they filter Tennents through the bones of calves?

Having spoken to some of the judges and also a fellow from DF, there was a collective sigh at the paucity of a majority of entrants this year, and a frustration that a lot of bands which, and I'm paraphrasing a quote here, "would have got through" didn't even enter. The reason a lot of bands didn't enter is because they were pissed off at the unfairness of recent years' selections and also the experiences of some of the bands who played and found it quite soul destroying. One band I was managing played the T Break stage and it was the direct catalyst to their split a few months later... so, if you are one of the bands who entered and you do go all the way, don't expect to have 'arrived' straight away. Nobody comes to see you - it's like doing an out of town gig where a dozen people are dotted around waiting for their mates' band to come on - only they are even more spread out! A lot of the other bands I spoke to who didn't enter gave the same reason as Real Shocks - to quote Nick Cave, "My muse is not a horse." At the end of the day, T Break is just DF's corporate 'battle of the bands' competition to appease the Scottish music scene... if they were serious they would be putting said winners on the main stage, rather than in their own wee ghetto.

I hate everybody... just some less than others. I'm not fantastically qualified to comment on most Aberdeen bands, having not seen them. All I'll say is the actual 'scene' you have is completely disproportionate to the size of your little fishing village, and for that you should be proud. I've just come back from a fortnight down South, and have visited Lincoln, Nottingham, Oxford, Cambridge and Leeds on my travels. You have more live venues, more bands, more of a buzz (and let's not forget 'Go North') than any of these, and on paper this really shouldn't be the case. However, if you add up all the things in Aberdeen's favour, it puts the place on a par with Manchester, a city with a vast musical heritage and a lot of clout internationally. Now I could go into the sociological reasons for all of this but you don't really need to know why you are where you are, just make the most of it. most places the size of Aberdeen have a dozen bands, eleven of whom ape the prevailing trend and one that sticks out like a sore thumb. Now what you have is a massive number of bands that are doing something ordinary, and more than enough bands that are railing against that in some way to make it an 'anti-scene' within the city. This is when you get something really special, as both sides of the divide spark creatively from the tension and booooom! I saw it happen in Liverpool ten years ago, some great bands from both sides spurring each other on, and now fantastic bands coming from there (Coral, Zutons, Ladytron et al) that are both populist and artskool at the same time due to two scenes pollenating each other. Think of 'Go North' as a superbee from Africa, pollenating at four times the speed Lay back, show of your blooms and let it happen!

Please excuse me for not being anywhere, but I'm a good seven hour drive at present. However, I'll see what's on in Nottingham, so I might yet be out at a nice gig. Rarara.