Who the hell thought up ‘the noughites’?

A few months ago, my friend Jacob drove us to a show I was playing in Southampton. We got to the place way early, so we went to the zine fair that was happening in town where our friend Elliott was running a stool.

After flicking through a zine with a particularly cool cover, I handed over £1.50 and walked away with it. Maybe I bought it because it was co-written by Richard Phoenix, ex-drummer of The Steal and Captain Everything - who are pretty much two of the best bands ever to come from the surrounding areas of the M25 - but probably just because the feature about the fears and loathing of driving tests looked pretty good.

What made me really like it was the introductory editors’ note, which made me realise not all non-music related/how-to zines aren’t lame propaganda trying to get me to sympathise with the authors’ views.

It was about how he’d met someone on a tight-legged long bargain-coach journey who became one of his best friends. Of all places; a cold night-bus that he was alone on was the place that two people became what are affectively life-friends.

Just before Christmas this year, I was letting off steam in a friend’s toilet in Hackney after an inebriated night out when I read a column in a crumpled up issue of one of the first Last Hours. It was written by Itch King Blues and was about when he and a mate befriended a handful of strangers in a taxi from the midlands back to London after the trains weren’t running due to the July bombings a few years back.

Both reads made me think that it’s in the most unsuspecting places that you’ll meet the most amazing people.

Whether it’s a bus or a train, a taxi or a plane, you can have the most life-affirming or memorable conversations you’ll ever have.

I remember sitting on a plane to America with my mum and we were sitting next to a back-up singer of INXS in economy of a budget airline. I wasn’t too sure the nice young, blonde, wide-eyed and big-breasted lady was telling the truth, but she sure did have some awesome stories from being in the band.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I’ll be sure to not shake off the next person who wants a chat in what for a lot of people is a keep-to-yourself-and-avoid-eye-contact zone. It could lead to something pretty good.

In a bit.

Christmas boozey dü - you punk, you bowl.

Punk ‘n’ Bowl is what it says on the fucken tin. You punk. You bowl.

P’n’B is a pretty weird little event which has been happening every couple or so months since January in the basement bowling lanes of the larr-dee-darghh Tavistock Hotel near Euston. Pretty, pretty, pretttyyyy swank!

I only think it’s ‘pretty weird’ because it seems too good to be true: awesome bands (from the UK/USA/Germany/wherever!) kill it all day, and on top of that, there’s a bar which sells fucked up German beer/nachos and you can bowl.

You can bowl. You can watch rad bands. You can bowl. You can fucking bowl. Alternating between the two attractions.

If you really tried, you could hop to and fro on each foot – to, BOWL, fro, FUCKING AWESOME MEGA-BAND, to again, BOWL... and so forth ‘til your nuts drop off.



But the really fucked up thing about Punk ‘n’ Bowl? It’s donations. £3 and everyone’s happy. £3!

I’m genuinely finding it pretty frustrating trying to write down my thoughts on Greg/Cara’s social-network-punk baby, because I get too excited to whenever I think about it. Which makes this a bit of a pointless exercise. Anyway…

So why is this relevant today? PUNK ‘N’ BOWL III is happening on 20th December.

The Gateway District, Bangers, The Shitty Limits, Regimes, The Arteries, Men, Cold Ones and Brothers are playing. So am I.

Roo from Bangers said to me the other day that he was as excited about P’n’B as he was about Fest. I replied that I thought that was stupid. Unless I die anytime soon, I’m starting to see his point…

Oh and here's the f-book open event - http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/event.php?eid=194052508047&ref=nf

In a bit.