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Thursday 14th June 07
Letter from the Editor.There are times when you feel like you have been transported right out of the city and thrown somewhere very different. Saturday was a prime example, Take the first right down Oxford Street onto Hanway Street. Within 20 yards the little dingy street is transformed into a very Hispanic back road with people spilling out of the pubs. Carry on and you’ll come across a bar called Troy, it’s upstairs through a little passageway. Inside is nothing special, a few tables, windows that open out and overlook the grubby street downstairs. But the atmosphere was fantastic, a Caribbean guy walked in with his guitar and began to play, and by the time the bar closed we had all been showcasing our talents. Costa Dorada a tapas bar and nightclub is just across the street and the only thing that reeked of London were the bouncers. Rude, unsympathetic and generally not very nice. However once the tables have been cleared for dinner the place opens up, and there is a flamenco show, then dancing, dancing and more dancing. Drinks are reasonably priced and the Sangria helped keep the feeling of being somewhere hot. It made me realise once again how lucky we are to have such diversity in our city. It’s these bars and streets that make London so special and it’s the people you find in them, and then if it’s warm the night bus home is always a pleasure, more of a party than a bus journey, people singing, drinking, sleeping and laughing… So what are you waiting for: the weekend is almost here, find yourself a bar and some tables to dance on, talk to people (not in a weird way) and have some fun…For some ideas check out Today’s Special where we’ve selected some of the better pub gardens to start your afternoons in…Plus there are more terrible dating tips…smoking bans and plenty more reasons to be happy inside. Incidentally, we’ve reached Issue 10. By my reckoning that’s five months of bloody hard work. I’d like to throw out a big thank you to everybody who has been involved: writers, illustrators, photographers and especially my treasured American designer. Not forgetting our possee of pretty boys who get up so early every other Thursday to hand this out. Thanks for all your support (especially you people at Highgate Station).
ed. x
Contents
Pointlessnesslessssss
The Great smell of Fox!
Changes
7 Stops
Today’s Special
Cultural Comment
Listen Up
Northern on the Northern Line
Nico
Put together bySam Lassman Watts and Rebecca Hall
Handed out by Pretty Boys
Printed on recycled paper by recycled people. Please make sure you pass on or recycle, Yeah!
www.theothersidemag.co.uk
text of the weekPete08-Jun-2007 12:29
I’m gonna start a website where u can adopt invisible animals 4 a price. u shud discuss how to market this.
on to
ur w
ith This week there is a furore in Vancouver about the lack of housing planned in the face of the 2010 winter Olympics. This is hardly going to help now is it? (figure A)See more Canadian photographs on the website:www.theothersidemag.co.uk
“Yesterday... I used six spoons to eat three yogurts.”
“That voice, Paola I’ll have you know, is the pen in my mouth!”
Overheardin the office
TRY THIS: Nuts and Berries1 shot Frangelica1 shot ChambordA dash of cream
(figure A)
Seems our Landlords and lady’s are all a-tizzy. Looks like July 1st is coming all too quickly for Club owners
and owneresses. Appears that the banning of the burning of tobacco in public spaces is not the jolly good idea we all thought it was. That when weighed against the cost (Physical/ financial/ medical/ emotional) of smoking, the weight of what the clouds of smoke conceal is much, much heavier, in the mind and wallet of Mister and Missus Pub. For when the sparking up of fags along with a pint of Heavy is a thing of the past, the lighting of a rollie with a pint of Snakebite relegated to tales of antiquity, then we will be left with an odour far worse than the one we have just consigned to the halcyon days of rose tinted nostalgia. Old Stale Beer. Apparently the smell of a pub/club without the cloying, clinging odour of weightless, spent tobacco might just put us off our pints/ flaggons/ gallons of Best faster than… well, faster than a bucket of lager-induced vomit in the corner! And what then would become of the Brewing Industry? All of which reminds me of a story I heard about the Elizabethans way back when. Apparently, knowing that they smelt like the armpits (legpits?) of supremely rancid rhinoceri, the men and wimmin of the Golden Age would keep foxes around about them so that, when particularly unsubtle guest commented on the nostril-rattling aroma that greeted them upon the threshold, the Hosts would merely point at the curled up vixen in the corner and all would look heavenwards with a sigh; “Those bloody foxes! What shall we
do with them?” To which one might reasonably retort, “Put the poor bitch outside where she belongs, have a bath and watch from your armchair as she roots around in your wheelie-bin!” Except that that would be frightfully C20th and knowing of us, wouldn’t it. It is EXACTLY what we have been doing all these years; walking into pubs and clubs holding our noses and muttering “Bloody smokers” when all the time lurking beneath was the much more disquietingly foetid stench of the spilt pint, toppled wine glass and neglected puddle of Bacardi Breezer. It should probably not come as a
great surprise that the putrid funk of old booze hangs about forever since we so wantonly concoct it with preservatives, colourants and fake gas, but that perhaps is another tale. To return, should we be reaching for the B&H again? Or should Mister and Missus Pub invest in a herd of foxes? (Herd? Pride? School? Agglomeration? Fecundity?) Which is exactly what they are doing. Except that they call the foxes ‘Essential Oils’ and they’re planning on dropping them down the Aircon. Sly buggers. Instead of the insidious nastiness of Nick you will be drenched in the syrupy stench of Rose Oil, return home with the bouquet of lavender all down your arm having stood next to a particularly volatile vent, your hair enshrouded with the scent of a thousand musks! We could have fragrance themed pubs, clubs with a variety of scented rooms on an international theme! We could choose the incense of our night of romantic bliss. Oh! We could… We could stop being so boringly American right now! Do you think perhaps we can cease being so bloody nasally sensitive for a while? Just accept that we smell as disgustingly as we act and deal with the consequences? Accept that the rear-ends of restaurants smell like the rear-ends of the animals they burn, that the odour of pubs and clubs only serves to remind us that ‘we do not buy booze, we only rent it’ as the graffiti above urinals attests. Accept and live in the real world rather than some perfumed enclave that spares us from ourselves. If not… we could just wash! That is of course what did for the Fox
The Great Smell
of FOX!
BY CARDOROWSKI
de-odourant of the Golden Age. More plentiful bathing. Surely the obvious recourse to the appallingly rank fug of stale booze is too wash the surfaces onto which it falls on a more regular and fastidious basis? Get a few more refugees in, pay them peanuts so that our peanuts and beer don’t go up and hey presto, Robert is yer mother’s sister’s husband and the pong is gone! Of course the price will go UP! So what? We all drink too much anyway. The fact is that the removal of the funk of tobacco brings us but one thin layer closer to the smell we
were all born with but seem bent on denying. The smell of ourselves. Be it by foxes, Nick O’tine or the great smell of Brut and its brutal industry, we wrap ourselves in aromas aplenty out of an inbred/ inculcated fear that we might be found to be the smelliest bird or bloke on the block/planet. Lemme tell ya, it’s not gonna happen. It won’t be you, and so what anyway? You can always wash. So, while on the one hand I rejoice at the disappearance of smoke from public places, and will not hold my breath for the removal of the odour of stale booze, I will restrain my more immodest celebrations for that time
when, having washed ourselves, we will encounter our neighbours as we are meant to be and rejoice that we all smell different, not like every other Chanel-girl or Spice-boy. Either that or I’m gonna catch me one of them Urban Foxes that patrol my garden. Leash him and take him for a stroll down the tube at rush hour. Visit a perfumed pub I know, order him a lager shandy and wait for him to fart! Watch those sensitive noses curl, eyes water and throats hurl. Nothing will wipe the smile from me and my Foxy! Au naturel, Baby! Au naturel.
Illustration by Jamie Jackson
Everyday we are surrounded, responsible for and affected by change.
Some, such as the changing of the seasons are beyond our control. Others, such as the replacement of last year’s tired trends for this year’s sizzling styles are a result of vanity; and some are simply socially embedded in the fabric of our daily lives, for instance the changing of your socks (I should hope), or even the changing of trains to reach your desired destination (my particular favourite being between the Northern line (naturally), bank branch, and the Victoria line at Euston – what a nippy little jaunt that is)! Small changes take place as a necessary part of our daily lives, and most of us accept them without a whimper or a moan; but what about the bigger ones? What happens when you make a change that affects not only you, but also those around you; what happens when you make a change for an outcome yet unknown?
In the past few weeks I have been a powerhouse of change, ruthlessly culling my life of both people and organisations in a mad bolt for the greener grass on the meadow of my dreams. Maybe I’m in the midst of a mid-twenties crisis, I don’t know, but all of a sudden something snapped and life, as I have known it since graduation, is strangely no more.
After 2 years I decided to call time on a relationship. There was no great catastrophic incident; no final showdown; more just a series of small catalysts and a rising number niggling questions, leading to the tired resignation that it was time for a change. This is, in retrospect the result of jumping on the train without considering the final destination. A week and a half on, and it’s clear that this change is a work in progress. It has been overwhelmingly hard; peppered with doubts and sprinkled with salty tears. The sudden change in the dynamic of the relationship; the power shift from couple to dumper and dumpee is agonizingly uncomfortable. When someone has been such an important part of your life for such a length of time it is unrealistic to expect such a change to be easy, and it has not; in fact as changes go, this has been a hard one.
A slightly less traumatic change has been my decision to leave my job; a job that has been a ball and chain dragging me down for the past 6 months; a job that was only ever meant to be a stop gap between something much worse and something a whole lot better; a job that I have moaned about since the honeymoon period abruptly ended somewhere in week 3 when I realised that everyone didn’t get on, no-one liked my boss and she began losing my loyalty through
her despicable habit of leaving dirty lunch plates on the top of my filing cabinet! This is a change that is also filled with uncertainty, yet not in the same way as the end of my relationship. Unlike the end of my relationship this change is more down to boarding a train I knew would never take me where I wanted to go, and realising now is the time to jump off. This is an exciting, dynamic, pink and yellow flashing 2012 Olympics logo of a change. This is a change full of opportunity and the hope of better days ahead.
So, where am I going with all of this? Well, I think what I am trying to say is that change, in all its forms, is an inevitable part of our lives. Although it can sometimes be painful and scary, it can also be thrilling and constructive. So although, unlike the underground, life doesn’t come with a pocket-sized, colour-coded map to tell us where we’re going, much like the morning commute we have to just get up and get on with it!
changes
It’s a question that has haunted my mind for quite some time now. Since starting work on The Other Side, I have spent my Thursday mornings outside Highgate station handing out copies to passers by. In their eyes what am I? Am I the wonderful guy that brings their Thursday morning journey joy and happiness or am I the pain in the backside standing in their way with a stupid bit of paper that they just don’t want!? I have had my fair share of experiences. There’s nothing worse than walking down a crowded Tottenham Court Road to work on a drizzly day, when L. Ron Hubbard’s minions shove a scientology pamphlet in your face. *&$% OFF are the words that spring to mind. However there are the times outside a club where someone hands you their band’s flyer for their next gig and you think hey why not, you go along and you discover something great. It is an age old question and one that really does boggle even the sanest person. The way I look at it is, if you are going to flyer, respect your clientele. They are humans and they do have feelings so before shoving something in their face maybe try something different, something fun. I tend to sometimes go for the surprise flick, the shock of the paper coming out of nowhere automatically makes the brain say “I want that” or just a
friendly “good morning sir, would you like this magazine?” You’ll find the answer will either be a polite “yes, thank you” or “no, it’s ok” rather than the polite &*%$ OFF! Furthermore those of you that have a hatred/fear of flyerers, keep this in mind next time you are about to let the profanities loose onto said victim: they are people trying to earn a bit of extra cash doing something a tad boring. So even if a flyer is flung into your face calmly step aside, take
a deep breath and continue walking. The flyerer will forget you and was probably not thinking it would offend to be a bit more forceful and I’m sure deep down he was sorry for doing so. In conclusion, the question of the flyerer – good or bastard? doesn’t really have an answer. And the answer to the question the flyer recipient – good or bastard? all depends on how you as a person act: don’t be a bastard, respect someone’s job!
Illus
tratio
n by
Guy
Fau
lkne
r
EastFinchley
Highgate
Archway
Hampstead
Euston Angel
Kings Cross Old Street
BrentCross
GoldersGreen
BelsizePark
TufnellPark
ChalkFarm
KentishTown
CamdenTown
MorningtonCrescent
WarrenStreet
GoodgeStreet
Moorgate
Bank
TottenhamCourt Road
Leicester Square
Charing Cross
Embankment
Waterloo
London Bridge
Borough
Elephant Kennington
Oval
Stockwell
ClaphamNorth
ClaphamCommon
The best things going on in and around the Northern line both sides of the River
If you would like to advertise something in 7 stops then please contact us at [email protected]
Here goes....Kaiser Chiefs....White Stripes.....Queens of the Stone Age...Calvin Harris...Air......Daft Punk....LCD Soundsystem....CSS.....New Young Pony Club...Simian Mobile Disco..........Klaxons....Kelis....Faithless...Mark Ronson....Editors....the the bands (cribs, rakes, pigeondetectives, duke spirit, twang, bees, sounds)GO SEE A BAND THIS WEEK IN HYDE PARKTickets are cheaper on Ebay!!
Fly TowerEver tried growing grass in your garden? It’s a nightmare especially with our sporadic rain.So imagine trying to grow grass on the walls ofa national institution! That’s exactly what HeatherAckroyd and Dan Harvey have done to the NT.So driving past the other night..late, about 2am I saw a man absailing down and watering the grass! It was quite surreal. Anyway, don’t just see that, there’s plenty more going on at the South Bank every day! and most of it is......
Weather PermittingGet yourselves back to the parks!We love to champion the idea ofspending a day in the park so overthe next few issues we’re on a search for London’s most unsung parkland.First up Cherry Tree Wood. Over theroad from Highgate Woods (also amust) lies the quiet little woodlandand a magical little café!
Artois ChampionshipsThe Wimbledon build up starts here. Generally tennis tournaments mean rain and plenty of it! So take a brollyand head down to Barons Court (that’sa change onto the Piccadilly Line here).For it’s time to get all patriotic and get behind the Scot and the Canadianbecause we all know what’s going to happen to Tim!! Ground Admission £14
Outdoor CinemaEvery Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in June TheScoop (that’s the amphitheatre just by City Hall to you and me) will be showing films for free. This week you can see Sidney Poitier starring in ‘In the Heat ofthe Night’ and Julian Temple’s festival celebration‘Glastonbury’.
Dananananakroyd + moreAn all ages gig at the Roundhouse!!Artrocker magazine and FREEDM have gotthemselves together to put on these topnotch afternoons. This Saturday is the lastin the series so get yourself and kids wired on Ice Cream at Marine Ices and then bounce over the road for live Bandsand quality DJ Sets! Sat 16th June
Wireless Festival
FREE
FREE
Othello @ The GlobeWe love Shakespeare! Who doesn’t?Well, if like us, you do make sure that you make your way to the Globe atleast once this summer. First up is Othello a tale of Jealousy and Tragedy(Note to all - This is the easiest way to describe any Shakespearian play. Youcould add other words; Love’s lost, revenge, mischief etc etc)Tickets £5 - £32. enjoy!
FREE
FREE
7 Stops
EastFinchley
Highgate
Archway
Hampstead
Euston Angel
Kings Cross Old Street
BrentCross
GoldersGreen
BelsizePark
TufnellPark
ChalkFarm
KentishTown
CamdenTown
MorningtonCrescent
WarrenStreet
GoodgeStreet
Moorgate
Bank
TottenhamCourt Road
Leicester Square
Charing Cross
Embankment
Waterloo
London Bridge
Borough
Elephant Kennington
Oval
Stockwell
ClaphamNorth
ClaphamCommon
The best things going on in and around the Northern line both sides of the River
If you would like to advertise something in 7 stops then please contact us at [email protected]
Here goes....Kaiser Chiefs....White Stripes.....Queens of the Stone Age...Calvin Harris...Air......Daft Punk....LCD Soundsystem....CSS.....New Young Pony Club...Simian Mobile Disco..........Klaxons....Kelis....Faithless...Mark Ronson....Editors....the the bands (cribs, rakes, pigeondetectives, duke spirit, twang, bees, sounds)GO SEE A BAND THIS WEEK IN HYDE PARKTickets are cheaper on Ebay!!
Fly TowerEver tried growing grass in your garden? It’s a nightmare especially with our sporadic rain.So imagine trying to grow grass on the walls ofa national institution! That’s exactly what HeatherAckroyd and Dan Harvey have done to the NT.So driving past the other night..late, about 2am I saw a man absailing down and watering the grass! It was quite surreal. Anyway, don’t just see that, there’s plenty more going on at the South Bank every day! and most of it is......
Weather PermittingGet yourselves back to the parks!We love to champion the idea ofspending a day in the park so overthe next few issues we’re on a search for London’s most unsung parkland.First up Cherry Tree Wood. Over theroad from Highgate Woods (also amust) lies the quiet little woodlandand a magical little café!
Artois ChampionshipsThe Wimbledon build up starts here. Generally tennis tournaments mean rain and plenty of it! So take a brollyand head down to Barons Court (that’sa change onto the Piccadilly Line here).For it’s time to get all patriotic and get behind the Scot and the Canadianbecause we all know what’s going to happen to Tim!! Ground Admission £14
Outdoor CinemaEvery Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in June TheScoop (that’s the amphitheatre just by City Hall to you and me) will be showing films for free. This week you can see Sidney Poitier starring in ‘In the Heat ofthe Night’ and Julian Temple’s festival celebration‘Glastonbury’.
Dananananakroyd + moreAn all ages gig at the Roundhouse!!Artrocker magazine and FREEDM have gotthemselves together to put on these topnotch afternoons. This Saturday is the lastin the series so get yourself and kids wired on Ice Cream at Marine Ices and then bounce over the road for live Bandsand quality DJ Sets! Sat 16th June
Wireless Festival
FREE
FREE
Othello @ The GlobeWe love Shakespeare! Who doesn’t?Well, if like us, you do make sure that you make your way to the Globe atleast once this summer. First up is Othello a tale of Jealousy and Tragedy(Note to all - This is the easiest way to describe any Shakespearian play. Youcould add other words; Love’s lost, revenge, mischief etc etc)Tickets £5 - £32. enjoy!
FREE
FREE
Today’s Special
We all love a drink in the summer, but what better way to spend the weekend than in some of London’s best Pub Gardens. We employed a student with a bit of time on her hands and asked her to find the most enjoyable patios, benches and heaters North side of the Thames.
Our FavouRiteS
The Boat HouseAs the name suggests this is a waterside bar and being only a leisurely 5 minute walk from Angel it is quite a surprise that it is so serene and idyllic. The bar is on two levels, approachable from the street or from the lock side walk below. Both levels of the bar have large windows which open up onto a view of the lock and passing barges. The menu is contemporary and the beer is inexpensive with a good range of guest ales. It doesn’t have a beer garden but you can take your pint down the lock side, sit and dangle them toes of yours near the water and watch the ducks go by, occasionally pursued by the odd pirate ship.To get there aim for the canal and it’s on your right as you walk away from Angel tube.
The Lock TavernA popular choice with the 20 somethings of Camden who are up on their break-beat or new indie, this trendy pub makes for an excellent summer venue. The beer is not cheap and there isn’t a huge range but a Brothers Perry sits nicely with the atmosphere. Their roasty dins are nearly as good as me mam’s but make sure you get there early as they do run out of them. I enjoy sitting in the downstairs garden as the greenery and comfy benches suit my fancy but the roof terrace is also a good choice. It gets quite busy on the weekends but not overcrowded and has a vibrant buzz. I hear they’re cracking out the BBQ now, I’ll see you down there.Nearest tube: Chalk Farm
The Big ChillIsn’t that a festival? Ah it’s a pub too you say? Run by the same people is it? Sounds like the perfect summer watering hole. This pub/club is an excellent way to get in the summer festival spirit with a charming roof terrace and many different rooms and areas to the inside. The menu has an extensive collection of veggie yummy things, all organic and free range and also some interesting meaty choices from snacks to full meals. The drinks aren’t overly expensive and boast a massive range of spirits. By daytime it is cool, relaxed and up beat, towards the evening it can get pretty hectic with a long wait at the bar but hey, that’s festival vibes for you. Its mix of DJ nights, comedy and live music can certainly be called eclectic and sums up the whole Big Chill ethos. It isn’t in any way reflective of its name but if you like your summers with a bit more wild then this is the place to get you in the mood.It’s right next to the Kings Cross Thames link station.
The Best of the RestFor those wandering around Highgate Village The Flask is always a favourite, if you can’t find a seat in the garden then take your drinks over the road to the nice grassy patch. With BBQ’s all summer it’s good times all round. If you can and I suggest you do, walk to Hampstead Heath and right across it to South End Green (nr Belsize Park) to the Garden Gate with its vast garden, BBQs on tap and a nice range of beers it will have been worth the walk. Heading further South behind Upper Street on Thornhill Road you will find The Albion the quaintest little pub in the city with a top notch beer garden. The best thing is the lack of noise pollution! So what are you waiting for people get your summer drinking caps on and live it like it’s supposed to be lived. In the Pub Garden.
Step 1 - Learn guitar.After last weeks Rockeoke and my subsequent dreams of turning back time and becoming a musician I contacted a friend of mine who teaches guitar. After he stopped laughing he was more than happy to help and my lessons began in lovely old Finchley Central with Henrique. Now Henrique is in a band called King Cnut (www.myspace.com/0kingcnut) which is a bit rocky to say the least so in a kinda rock school sort of way (think Gene Simmons and not Jack Black) he really is my perfect choice. Combine this with the my opinion, perhaps distant dream that heavy rock is the new zeitgeist waiting to steal indie’s crown it seems that I’m perfectly placed to be a rock champion. Fantastic. Pity I can’t play a thing.
Not that I’ve not tried. I learnt guitar for three years at school but every year started with a new teacher (these musicians have no staying power..) who would ask “what have you learnt” and would reply to my blank face (come on like you ever practiced when you were supposed to) “okay let’s start from the beginning.” Anyhow none of this mattered because Henrique is a breathtaking teacher and by the end of my first lesson I had stuffed into my addled brain (if you live in London, you know what I mean) the logic of notes and music theory for beginners. And I can now play “Knocking on Heavens Door” the G’N’R version!(I should mention Guns N Roses “Lies” was the first Album I ever bought). Amazing. Can’t wait till my next lesson. So far I’ve kept practicing
a couple of times a day since my lesson (ha, f*ck you voice in my head telling me to go out and get pissed) and as I type my blistered fingers are giving me a wonderful sense of twisted pleasure, hurting yet proud. I’m working on a song too, though it’s more a melody than a song at the mo, but at least it’s a start…. This is going to be harder than I thought. Hmmm, I know I can hide behind a band of talented musicians, write all the songs and keep all the money (money that my very excited imagination
has decided exists in my future)…. I put the feelers out and contacted a few friends who play. I think I’ve found a bassist and a singer and perhaps a few other positions. I’m thinking the band needs to be experimental so the more instruments and sounds the merrier. I’ve thought of a drummer who is uber talented but also in Sri Lanka and probably not going to be interested but let’s see... .Top ten here we come! Next week, Step 2: Forming a Band.
-Mandeep.
Cultural Comment
STep 1 - Learn GuiTarOur esteemed food critic turned music journalist has put his wits up against the rest of the world, thrown down the gauntlet and decided to form a Rock Band. Over the next few Issues we’ll be tracking his progress, his ups, and more likely his downs waiting in anticipation for the ‘next big thing!’ or at least the next band to play the Bull and Gate!
;j 5
Fellow datees. A crisis is upon us. For the last week I have had no time to roam into the world of pick up lines and text messaging, no patience to play hard to get and certainly no time to have the eyes wander left to right after a bit of top totty. I feel a little forlorn with the game, it’s time I took a step back and revelled in my success stories, because since the last Issue, six, yes six individuals have found love through The Other Side’s
dating scheme. LIES! I hear you cry! And you are right. I think? Well true or not it was a great idea and one that will continue until, like Cilla used to, I can buy myself a new hat! On that note the petition is going strong, 11 signatures to bring back Blind Date. I was informed by ITV that once it reached 5000 then they may consider it so check out our facebook site (yes we are moving with the times…search for the
other side, we’ll add ya!) and sign up to the Bring Back Blind Date part! Moving on this week we have a date up for grabs. Yep, falling down that unchartered passageway into realms of biased fantasy. Miss Sex is up for grabs. However you have to fit into her diary….and also fit into her demands. So if you like fish, tan well, earn over £40,000 a year, are over six foot, also over 30 and free on Thursday 21st June between 6.15
and 8pm then please get in contact with us for the ride of your life (please don’t read too much into the whole riding thing there… if you didn’t you will now…erm…good luck).
D o you come here often?
IF THERE IS ANY PLACE YOU THINK WE SHOULD BE PLEASE EMAIL US [email protected]
NEXT TIMEAll the gossip, celebrities and
worcestershire sauce from our
late launch party!
KEEP WRITINg US YOUR vIEWS, THEY MAKE OUR DAY!
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Wasting space & time
Recently I’ve been shuttling around various places so I haven’t really had much time for new music, plus my iPod frequently runs out of battery at the crucial moment. There is nothing more torturous than running out of battery just before you embark on a long train journey. Maybe torture is just as torturous. Moreso perhaps? But never mind. Recently conversing with a fellow Other Side writer, I recommended a band offhand just to make him leave me alone (I was, of course, busy doing nothing) I suggested Los Campesinos! (www.myspace.com/loscampesinos) a nice, Team-Love sounding type 7 piece from Wales. Previously I had only heard a few songs, lead single ‘You! Me! Dancing!’ and also ‘We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives’ and thought they were just okay. I hereby subtract this, as they make lovely
music, and I have fallen for them so much I may just go and see them on Tuesday 5th June at The Forum. I also recommend ‘Don’t Tell Me To Do The Math’ which can be found on their space. I know it seems like I always recommend ladies, but they’re just so darn good. A new favourite is SoKo (www.myspace.com/thesokos) who makes simple and pretty songs. ‘I’ll Kill Her’ is a little heartbreaking, but she is a bit beautiful, so it distracts you somewhat. ‘Shitty Day’ is adorable, detailing how she looks and feels awful and fears being dumped by her man. Its worse that you know she wakes up looking spectacular. Yet another band with a lady singer, Psapp (www.myspace.com/psapp) make hard to classify music. It’s a bit electronic, it’s a bit folk, it sounds like they stole Norah Jones’ voice box, who knows. My particular favourite and
lead single is ‘Hi’ but also listen to ‘Tricycle’ on their space, and if you can find the album to download, ‘Eating Spiders’. I paid £4 for the single on vinyl recently, and it’s worth every penny. Right, enough of that quiet night in doomed romance TWADDLE, it’s all about songs that make you want to go out, and like, drum on something really loudly. Shake up the establishment, or something. Or maybe just jive. Operator Please (www.myspace.com/operatorplease) have a song just about ping pong, called...’A Song
Just About Ping Pong’ it reminds me a lot of Be Your Own Pet, one of the best bands I have seen live, ever. Hopefully Operator Please are no different. There are also elements of old Yeah Yeah Yeah’s (do you remember the ‘Master’ E.P?) and The Grates. But anyway, it makes me want to hit things, in a good way. Give ‘Crash Tragic’ a listen too. I know I’ll be going to see them at Reading Festival.
by Reece James
LISTEN UP
New MusicThursdaybetter than i-tunes
Los Campesinos: www.myspace.com/loscampesinos
Mental health is a great thing when you’ve got it...at least that’s what I hear. Sometimes mental health goes a bit pear shaped, and grows legs and has a voice that screeches at you to tickle a stranger on a bus, or to stare into infinite space, or to just not function as perhaps you should do. This leaves you open to name calling by meanies. Bonkersfest is the annual festival aimed at not only improving knowledge of mental health, raising a bit of money, and reclaiming words used to describe those with mental health issues, but also it’s a celebration of the creativity of individuality. Jo Brand, an ex-mental health nurse, was there to kick things off with a bang. Bang! Just like that! A cannon (exhibit A), filled with glittery paper and bananas (of course!), was fired and the festival was open. The first band of many were Channel One (exhibit B), veterans of the UK reggae scene, and utterly perfect for a hot, sunny, mentalirific festival. There was music, theatre, poetry, dance, funfair rides, stalls, refreshments, a tea tent (selling coffee – mental!), a ‘therapies’ area, and some nice green grass. I remembered the Insect Circus cart (exhibit C) I’d seen on the way in, and I started to run, like no man has ever run before (not fast, just weird, like a penguin on stilts). I love a good Insect Circus. I have insects in my blood. I should probably see a doctor about that, actually. Sitting around, a few ciders happier, strange things began happening. Wheelie bins and plant pots driving around. Giant insects parading. Bizarre and a little disturbing Morris dancing. I glanced at my drink in search of answers, for some sort of reasoning. But reasoning was nowhere to be seen. Bonkersfest is not about hiding behind explanations, or excuses. By its own admission, ‘Bonkersfest has diagnosed normality as a mental illness’. Hurray for crazies!!
Send/Invite the Northerner somewhere by emailing [email protected]
Northern on the Northern Line
nOrTHern aT BonKersFeST
Camberwell Green, 2nd June 2007
exhibit A
exhibit B
exhibit
C
what's nico been thinking?
WHAT'S NICO BEEN THINKING
THIS WEEK?
