Flash@TMB

Yes please bring this back, and I'll happily do the punching live on stage as part of the awards.

There may also be some special guests from France, if their flight gets in on time...

It's all in the skip. The cymbals are totally trashed.

Here is a selection of broken kit that we just turfed out after 4 years. We've kept all the parts that we could salvage, these are just the left over bits that are totally unserviceable. Most of the items are stands, plus a few cymbals. The reason for failure on all the stands is over tightening. This doesn't count stuff that's been accidentally removed... for instance we also turfed out two full bin bags of useless 1m guitar leads that were accidentally left behind after people mistook them for our high quality 5m leads Reckon the hardware that we threw out probably cost 2,000 - 3,000 when it was new. To put this in perspective the door charge from approx. 4 punters at a gig essentially covers the wear & tear on cymbals, cymbal stands, drum pedals, and vocal mic stands during that gig. So if anyone's ever wondered why the house gear in venues is always shagged, this is probably answers that question.

Huh we were mentioned in the EE, and it didn't involve drugs, gand-land beatings, prostitutes, and folk jumping out windows??? Well fuck me sideways... I've seen everything now. An actual gig promo??? HOLY SHIT!

WHADAYA MEAN "just"?

Yo - yeah I can provide you with the definitive answer on this. Absinthe was originally distilled in Switzerland and then France. Absinthe was traditionally drank with 1 part absinthe : 4 parts chilled water poured over a sugar cube on a perforated silver spoon. They did not set the liquor on fire. When the production ban on absinthe came into force, the distillers Paul Ricard and Pernod (who originally produced Pernod Fils absinthe) started to produce a similarly flavoured drinks named Pastis and Pernod respectively. Later these distillers merged to form Pernod-Ricard. This is the source of the Pernod we drink today. Until recently this was the closest thing to absinthe that was available. In the 1990s some drinks pertaining to be absinthe were distilled in Spain and the Czech Republic. These bore little or similarity to the original product, other than they contained wormwood. In my opinion, the closest thing to authentic absinthe currently available is produced by Ted Breaux at Jade Liqueurs. Ted is a microbiologist who spent years researching absinthe, including purchasing bottles of vintage absinthe at auctions and running them through his GC/MS machine in order to determine their composition. He has also purchased wholesale much of the equipment, including the stills used by the original manufacturers. His absinthes are meticulous recreations right down to the bottle. To all intents and purposes they are genuine authentic absinthe. The story is very interesting. To the best of my knowledge The Moorings is the only bar in Scotland currently stocking Jade Liqueurs Absinthes, although you can also purchase them on-line. You can read about Ted Breaux here, the article helps dispel as few myths: Wired 13.11: The Mystery of the Green Menace As an aside, the reason absinthe was banned was not due to any profound hallucinogenic quality (other than that which we may experience with other forms of alcohol), it was more to do with the social impact of the drink. A similar thing occurred in London approx 150 years before the banning absinthe, known as The London Gin Craze, or The London Gin Scourge, you can read about this here: Gin Craze - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Of course the next big thing is the Aberdeen Ear Bud Menace...

They have some stuff down at 9% ABV.

Does anyone here remember the Glider club night? It was held in the Hotel Metro but not in the Pelican or Metro club areas. It was on the floor before the Metro ballroom and facing the other way. I remember going there in 1996.

Really pleased that he won.

It had a sunken dancefloor with a massive lighting rig!

Music video by The Gothic Dorics: YouTube - The Gothic Dorics - Spanglegrinder I really liked it.

This is partially true. I can remember when I was skint buying 1/4 bottles of whisky in the supermarket and smuggling them into pubs, then ordering plain half pints of lemonade and mixing it in under the table. It was either that or stay in. Even then I couldn't afford the taxi home and would have to walk it. But then I discovered that there was a more efficient way to tackle the problem, specifically Addlestones. After that epiphany it was possible to go out, drink 4 pints, be reasonably wasted, and have enough left over for a kebab and a taxi to Torry all with change from 10. These days it's possible to go one better with Thatchers Heritage. OK the prices have increased a little in the intervening 15+ years but it's still doable for 15 And without the horrible chemical feeling high that cheap crap booze induces.

Bob - I don't disagree that there has always been a binge drinking culture in Scotland, and that there has always been a degree of violence in Aberdeen. It's always been in our national psyche to concentrate our drinking at the weekend, and occasionally to get into some mischief. BUT people didn't used to be so focused on getting as many units of booze down their throats as quickly as possible, and that's the difference. These days people are attracted to cheap booze. The cheaper the better. I've even seen people turn their nose up at reasonable quality products like Smirnoff and specifically request "What's the cheapest vodka?". That NEVER used to happen. It's like a form of retarded brand awareness. 20+ years ago most bars sold the same reasonable quality spirits. Smirnoff, Bacardi, OVD, Gordon's, Grouse etc. Cheaper brands were generally looked down on as being inferior, and the stuff that people with drink problems would buy in an off license to drink at home. If a bar sold Grants Vodka then people would complain about it! For some reason Grouse was considered to be marginally superior to Teachers or Whyte & Mackay. If somewhere sold Glenn's whisky then... well they wouldn't have sold any LOL. These days there are bars actually selling a brand of vodka called (I shit you not) Minkoff. Who in their right mind would buy such a product? There is even fake Jaeger out there, openly on display. Yes back in the old days bars did sell stuff like this, but usually surreptitiously by decanting it into a better branded bottle (the practice is known as tipping, Trading Standards actually go round collecting samples for spectrum analyses to prevent this). The reason you can't remember this Bob is that it all kicked off in the early 1990s. Around 1993 if I recall correctly. Pretty much the same time that Archie's opened *GASP*. You were only 17 then so I doubt you were really paying attention to the situation. What happened was the dark forces of marketing (Bill Hicks had strong opinions on them) convinced us of a positive connection between CHEAPER and BETTER. It's incredible to believe but most of our population have actually bought into this plainly ludicrous concept! Now just for the benefit of the morbidly stupid, let me clear this one up. A good rule of thumb to apply is: CHEAP = SHIT QUALITY EXPENSIVE = BETTER QUALITY And that's the fundamental truth of the matter. There is nothing to be gained from throwing 40 units of Minkoff down your throat at 50p a throw. In fact, for those that aren't aware, 30 units is considered to be the LD50, the dose that would be enough to kill 50% of us. One unit = one standard 25ml serving. Also, in my own personal experience (and you'd all be better off without an experience like mine) the poorer the quality of the booze, the worse the hangover, and the quicker it harms you

Not much chance of winning unless they could prove it. Also they'd have to show that they'd sustained a material loss of some sort as a result of that. I think what might have happened here is that they've seen this coming down the track and just decided to cut their losses.

They may not have been made aware of that issue when they took on the lease. The whole building was up for sale for 2M only 5 years ago. That includes the pool hall. If it was me then I'd rather invest 1M of capital on buying suitable premises and kitting them out than blow it on soundproofing leased premises.

I'm quite interested in this as, aside from being a publican, I attend the Local Licensing Forum which is a think tank that reports to the Licensing Board, and this topic frequently comes up. What are places charging at weekends, before discount, for common drinks like: draught lager premium lager draught cider bottled beer smirnoff ice jack & coke vodka & coke jaegerbomb etc ? I'm very out of touch since I've barely been out of The Moorings in the past 8 years, and am basically operating in my own little bubble.

I'll clue you in. Up until the early 1990s around 50% of all bars and clubs were owned by breweries, the rest were predominantly freeholds (independent), with only a negligible amount owned by pubcos. Everywhere paid pretty much the same for their beer. There were some minor variations between breweries, but not much. Typically for a pub or club to thrive it needed to be reasonably busy and to make a 60% gross margin before costs on every pint sold. That was the generally accepted formula. A pint cost approx. 35p. With a 60% margin that = 35/40*100 = 87p. On top of that there was VAT at 15% which made the sale price 1.00 for a reasonably priced pint. The government gets the VAT, the pubs made around 52p on every pint sold. If somewhere attempted to start a price war then the brewery would threaten to cut them off. The breweries would tolerate a small variation in price. Cheap places were charging 80p for a pint and expensive places were charging 1.20. If you went to the supermarket then you'd pay around 60p. The only places permitted to operate lower pricing schemes were student unions and private members clubs. The breweries could make these threats because the effect of cutting off one pub would have virtually no impact on their overall sales. The breweries also stuck together. You crossed one, you crossed them all. Back then pubs and clubs were considered to be lucrative little money spinners. In some cases they were veritable gold mines. People who held freeholds usually had them for life, and even passed them on as inheritance. Sports personalities and musicians invested in pubs as part of their retirement plans. Breweries were also seen as safe haven blue chip investments. There was no binge drinking culture. People could safely walk up and down Windmill Brae, Union Street, and Belmont Street all night. There was hardly any drink related violence compared with now. What they had was in effect the perfect little communist system. Then some capitalist big ass business knobs complained to the government that the breweries were price fixing. They sold this as the public was being short changed, that if the breweries were broken up then it would be possible to charge less for drinks. The government went and broke up the breweries, they separated pub owning from beer brewing. Big breweries no longer owned pubs. Suddenly half the pubs in the UK were up for grabs. The same capitalist big assed business knobs bought all of them. They formed pubcos. The rented the pubs out at extortionately high rates. They then challenged the now toothless breweries to preferential bulk discounting. What you paid for your beer now depending on the total throughput of all your outlets. The breweries were not in a position to tell a chain of 100 pubs to fuck off. Then the supermarkets also got in on the act. Now you had the big corporates paying 20p per pint, and in order to recoup this the freeholds were made to pay 50p. So now you had a situation where a Wetherspoons would pay 20p per pint, factor in a healthy 62% margin and sell it for 60p. Whereas a freehold would be paying 50p and to sell it at 60p would mean a 4% margin. They could no longer compete. Of course everyone now believed that cheap was best so they flocked to those places and drank like there was no tomorrow. Unfortunately there is a tomorrow, it's today and our streets are no longer safe to walk. Nowadays the price of beer has increased. A big chain will be paying 50p per pint, and a small freehold will be paying over 1. The gap has if anything increased. Nowadays a cheap pint is 1, the same price it was over 20 years ago. Some outlets are still making a decent profit at that level, others are barely covering the cost of said pint. If you look at a 1,000 capacity site, their cost base (rent, payroll, rates, insurances, overdraft, operating costs) was probably approaching 1M in total. In other words they'd have to make a gross profit of 1M just to break even. If they were selling pints at 2.80 then they'd probably be making a healthy 60% margin or thereabouts, which is 1.43 per pint. So to cover the cost base they'd need to sell the equivalent of 700,000 pints a year, which equates to 153 kegs a week. But if they dropped their price to 1.50 then that would only equate to a 25% margin or a profit of 32p per pint, meaning that they'd need to sell the equivalent of 3,100,000 pints a year in order to cover their cost base and break even, that equates to 675 kegs a week. How many trucks is that? Yeah - I don't think so, you be as well laying a fucking pipeline to Carlsberg. OK in reality there are spirit sales, food sales, door charges all contributing towards this, but for most places the draught will make up at least 50% of all sales. Still requires a throughput of several hundred kegs a week at that price point. So imagine that your 1,000 capacity site is failing to cover it's cost base, and it's also being threatened with legal action over noise pollution. Now to properly soundproof a building you need to build a room within a room. That means demolishing the whole interior, laying down some huge rubber blocks (the kind industrial machinery sits on), and then construct a room on top of that, which does not touch the outer shell anywhere. Then you need to do some basic soundproofing on that inner shell too. Then you need to rebuild your whole interior. Cost of this on a 1,000 capacity site would be upwards of 500,000 if not double that. And guess what, you'd need to be closed for weeks, with no money coming in, in order to do the work. But at the end of it all, for possibly a 1,000,000 plus total hit you wouldn't even sell one extra pint. Nobody is going to come along to admire your soundproofing. So ask yourself - is it really worth blowing 1M of capital on a RENTED building, in order that you can continue to fail to break even? Bottom line is that the game is fucked, and will continue to be fucked for the foreseeable future. It's not a case of bad business brain, it's a case of mission impossible. Look around you, how many independent pub/club ventures last more than 5 years? Even the pubcos are suffering, and they started this whole process! Adding the cost of live music into the mix is like smoking in a burning building. End of drinks business lesson.

To be fair she wasn't actually admitted to the bar, she was a random passer by partaking of a shore crawl.

There will be live music early evening, followed by the usual club night till 3am. Initially we're starting out with 1 band on a Friday to see how it goes, although we may expand this to two bands at a later date. Saturday's we're reducing from 4 bands down to 3 then a club night kicking off at midnight and ending at 3am.

Mark Thomas <mark@holburnhifi.co.uk>

S.N.A.F.U. Sew on Biker Trike Motorcycle Patch on eBay (end time 18-Aug-10 13:00:03 BST)

I have to second that.

We draw the line at poop... either that or we draw a line in poop. Hmm.

Designate Degree in Computer Science from RGU (was still called RGIT back when I started the course). Only a designate as I went down with glandular fever in my final year. In spite of that I passed all but one subject which I failed by 1%. Lecturer/cunt wouldn't budge so they gave me choice of resit that exam or accept designate degree. I chose the lazy option of course. Highers English - B Maths - C (over 2 years) Physics - C Chemistry - C Standard Grades (we were the first year ever to sit these) Computing - 1 English - 1 Chemistry - 1 Maths - 2 Physics - 2 History - 3 German - 3 Ordinary Grade Art & Design - C