I hate Spurs, there’s no two ways about it. I was born and bred in the east end of London and am an ardent West Ham fan. I love them and have long suffered for it. As for local derbies Orient are our closest rivals in terms of distance but our paths don’t cross too often, there will never be any love lost between us and Millwall and Chelsea aren’t exactly our best mates either but I sincerely hate Spurs. It is an irrational hatred, some of my closest friends are Spurs fan and I have to hide the glee from them every time they lose. I was at the game last Sunday by the time the day had come round none of the lads I was with were particularly enthralled by the prospect of getting thumped again but we persevered.
I arrived at Barking to meet the other lads in the pub at lunchtime, we had a few beers, bemoaned the dire situation we had found ourselves in and shuffled into a crammed Barking station. The train took an eternity to arrive but the crowd at the station were in fine form and there was plenty of banter. We got on the train which proved to be an even more intimate experience with my fellow West Ham fans. This is where I begin to feel a little uneasy. The mandatory choruses of Bubbles were evident and the usual anti-Spurs chants were evident including “We’ll be running ‘round Tottenham with our willies hanging out singing I’ve got a foreskin haven’t you?” Which teeters on the edge of racism but even my Guardian reading ways can just about see the humour in it (added to the fact that I come from an Muslim family and I couldn’t run around on the Seven Sisters Road with my foreskin flailing because I’m sadly lacking in that department) but the climax of the chant was “fucking Jew”, this I found a lot more offensive. A few years ago I was a the FA cup game where we again played Spurs and was a lot more offended by the hissing noises made by our fans to the Spurs support. This time I heard nothing like this during the game itself and I felt the exchanges were generally well spirited if occasionally a little heated due to the on pitch activity.
I don’t believe West Ham fans are racist overall, although I have experienced racism at Upton Park (many years ago and the surrounding fans were quick to reprimand the offender) it is certainly more the fact that the “Yido” nickname has been appropriated by Spurs fans although I know a lot more Jewish West Ham fans than I do Spurs. This said I think we should be actively making attempts to stop chants that on the surface are anti Semitic and I truly believe the majority of football fans aren’t racist thugs but more the chants are a legacy of less enlightened times.
Ultimately I know football, West Ham United, in particular has made a lot of efforts and progress in eradicating the racism that once existed in football (I remember John Barnes describing Upton Park as the most racist ground in Britain) but there are still situations like this that need to be got rid of. That said I still hate Spurs, I don’t think any amount of political correctness will ever temper that.
Update:
Now I read that at half time there were chants of “I’d rather be a paki than a Jew”, I was in the Bobby Moore upper bar area and I heard no such thing there, being Asian myself I should of probably picked up on that really so not sure where those chants were happening.
Right I’ve been far too slack on the blog front so I’ve decided to get back on the horse. I’m currently in India with work, I arrived in Mumbai on Tuesday and realised that my internal flight had been booked for the previous day and I was told that I would have to go on stand by. After some hanging around the nice people at Jet Airways not only got me on to the flight, they also upgraded me to business class. As you will be aware on Tuesday some tosspots decided to bomb the arse off of Mumbai, the first I heard of this is when I turned on my TV in my hotel in Hyderabad and saw the utter chaos unfurl. Strange time it being so close to the anniversary to the London bombings where a friend of a friend got killed (someone who I was out with only a few weeks prior to the attacks) and it took a while to realise that I was pretty lucky even though I wasn’t travelling by train. I don’t understand what these people’s ultimate goal is, killing innocent people including kids, is that what your religion preaches? I doubt it, unfortunately like most organised religion it serves only to divide people and cause problems. Please stop me if you’ve heard this one before…
Well I’ve actually scrapped the original post that I was going to write, I’ll explain all. Just to briefly touch apon the other two bands I caught last Wednesday at the Camden Barfly, the first was one who name I had heard but had never actually experienced, the excellent Dirty Little Faces, thoroughly recommended and the penultimate act the ever eventful Dustin’s Bar Mitzvah, who seem to becoming consistently excellent judging by recent gigs (except for the bizzaire incident of Dave’s guitar head breaking this night!), and they’ll be getting plently of practise according to their gig schedule.
Getting back to the headliners, Television Personalities, the hype leading up to the gig was immense. Apparently Kurt Cobain’s favourite band and the inspiraiton for Alan McGee starting Creation Records. Having seen the DLF and DSM as the support acts I was expecting something quite special. Initially and for some time we weren’t sure if it actually if it was TVP as the lead singer we knew was a bloke and a youngish lass stood centre stage even if the lead singer had been for gender realignment surgery the person on stage looked far too young. Then on came a chap who was dressed in several layer and a wooly hat (despite it being incredibly hot in the room), this person was the protagonist in TVP, Dan Treacy. The place was packed by as each tune unfurled the audience dwindled, it was reminiscent of any number of my friends’ bands or mine for that matter who were just starting out and seemed woefully inexperienced. The band consisted of four people the bassist Ed Ball, who seemed to be holding things together and was apparently a member of the original 19777 line up, a female lead vocalist, a cellist and the drummer. The female vocalist had a torrid time with a drunk at the front who apparently kept trying to get on the stage, this ruined her night although some could argue the state of Dan Treacy himself was demonstrating how adept at this he was.
Ed Ball made some interesting comments, the non event thing was true, DSM had to close the TVP set with a cover of “Part Time Punks” but something that played on my mind afterwards was Dan Treacy’s own stability. Shambolic was what I had first thought of the performance, I felt insulted that I had paid money to see this performance and all that the lead singer could do was cower in a corner and abuse the audience. The next stage was considering the artist I am to see in a few weeks, Daniel Johnston, a man described as a Savant and also coincidentally much admired by Mr Cobain. An article I had read had described whether it was exploitative to have Johnston perform and create art due to his inability to take care of himself. I drew some similarities, Treacy is well known to have issues with drugs and alcohol (a burglary in order to fund his habit lead to his incarceration in a prison ship off the coast of Dorset according to this) and he has had mental health problems as well as stints living rough. Given all these facts my opinion shifted dramatically, I no longer thought Dan Treacy was some obnoxious has been that was trying to cash in again whilst not giving two hoots but rather an individual whose mental state and physical addiction did not allow him too. This isn’t meant to be some looney lefty liberal rant (and trust me I am open about getting involved in those regularly!) but Treacy’s performance did not suggest that he should be on stage other than some sort of distasteful Victorian spectacle. So my question is should those people who are around Treacy and are supporting him be encouraging him to perform? I really don’t know enough about TVP to form an informed opinion but given his reported history of mental illness and substance abuse and judging by his performance it wasn’t of a standard which would warrant paying any sum of money to watch, unless someone had rather unpleasant voyeuristic tendencies.
Finally I’ve managed to get access back to my blog so here’s my run down of the events of last night! London SEO is a small group of people who are involved in SEO and online marketing in general. Often we end up going to the US, where the majority of these gigs happen and although there are a couple of events here we decided to organise our own one but just to socialise rather than a money making exercise. Last night was a bit different due to the heated discussion at Threadwatch. We turned up to the pub and we weren’t sure quite what to expect, I had booked for 25 but it was difficult to guess how much of an impact the Threadwatch publicity would of got us. In the end it turned out that it was spot on met some really interesting guys and I’m definitely hyped for the next one. The only problem was that due to it being a Friday it was busy and loud but the drinks flowed so that certainly helped lubricate the evening’s events.
Just a quick one to mention the fact that I was out on a SEO night out last night and the infamous NIK (Black Hat extraordinaire) turned up! Unbelievable but stuck around for quite a while and I think he may of been quite tipsy by the end. Unfortunately he was fairly tight lipped about his activity but hopefully I’ll get a chance to squeeze some good stuff out of him at another time.
My first proper post thought I should be about something I am passionate about, so I thought music. More specifically about Dustin’s Bar Mitzvah, interesting name and a more interesting band. To give you a brief overview if you have never heard of Dustin’s they are a bunch of lads from West London (except for Baco, who is from Middlesborough), they write catchy punk pop tunes and they have an abundance of confidence. Amongst their celebrity fans are included Alan McGee and Steve Lamacq. Apparently Johnny Borrell hates them for an incident involving his then girlfriend, you can’t ask for much more recommendation than that.
I’ve been following this lot for about a year, I should be honest and say the only reason I had heard of them is that a friend of mine is their plugger (he also grew up with Baco) and last December he wore me down and said I should check them out. As time past I noticed that Dustin’s were playing at the Pleasure Unit in Bethnal Green, I emailed a few friends and headed down. To be perfectly frank the performance wasn’t the best gig I had ever seen, the sound was poor, Dave’s (the lead singer) vocals were barely comprehensible, the lads had a mini slanging match with a friend of mine (which was quite amusing as she was giving as good as she got), the only song that really stood out was “Get your mood on”. The support bands were probably more memorable but in saying that I couldn’t tell you anything about either of them. Not a great start but as I was leaving my friend the plugger said check this out, giving me a single (Lucy/Jimmy White) and also a Sun Christmas Songs CD. Well to be honest I was quite put out, it was February, what was he thinking, but then he explained it was some more Dustin’s stuff disguised as a Sun Christmas Songs and I should check it out.
We headed back but in the car I decided to give it a go and the short CD that we listened to (10 tracks) actually sounded good and the more I listened to it the more I learned the words, we listened to it all the way back to Woking. I was meant to have the CD for a week, I ended up keeping it for a couple of months, much to the owner’s distress. I spent the subsequent months developing my interest in Dustin’s and finding out more about them. I knew that their album (Dial “M” for Mitzvah) had been released in Japan so when I bought the T-Shirt I thought I’d ask the person on the other end of the email what the situation was with a UK release. Next year I was told with a single to be released in December (which I believe is “To the Ramones”/”Goldhawk Road”). A few days later I received a something wrapped in a yellow plastic bag (from an off license in West London), on opening it I discovered the Dustin’s T-shirt and they had thrown in a copy of the CD. I was chuffed, I listened to the CD in my slightly inebriated state and it was good but required further investigation. The further investigation had paid off, this was great, track four was a part witty/part angry attack on Nick Griffin (the leader of the BNP), this provided more evidence that I needed another Dustin’s fix.
At this point it had been a few months since I had seen Dustin’s originally, I had spent a lot of time research them, learning their songs even having some banter with their manager via email. It was time to see them again. They were playing at the Cartoon Club in Croydon. I was quite anxious when we pulled up across the road from the venue, it was surrounded by 14 - 18 year olds, the combined age of the two of us was 61 and the last performance was not like that of my best gig ever (easily The Beta Band, London Astoria, January 2000), nowhere even close. I had a lot pinned on this gig, I had been street teaming for Dustin’s in my own way for the past eight months, this was going to be my payback.
We turned up to a friendly chap on the door and great bar staff, this was looking good, my journey to a Dustin’s Nirvana had got off to the right start. We were got our drinks and parked on the garden benches (inside the venue, where else?). Although I was meant to be in the Cartoon Club in Croydon, it felt I was in the Kings in Seven Kings, the Island in Ilford or The Standard in Walthamstow or any number of the nefarious indie venues I had frequented when I was their age, I started feeling more comfortable about my agedness, I was coming home. The support acts consisted of members of the audience taking turns to play, one of the support acts even covered “Get your mood on”, I saw the Dustin’s boys clapping and nodding approvingly, although I wasn’t so keen on this cover mainly because it was awful. The time had come, I saw the boys getting ready to get on stage, I got up, I felt that we (that is Dustin’s and I) needed to be close to each other for this. It was all 61 years of us two surrounded submerged in a sea of youth. The boy’s kicked off their set they sounded so much tighter than last time, their musical talents and tightness had grown in the subsequent months but as I listened on Dave’s vocals were consistent with the performance of our last meeting. He mentioned something about “lines in the toilet” and I think he had been on the pop, he was living the rock star dream but my romantic notion of Dustin’s nirvana was cruelly whipped away from me, the scary looking barmaid (middle aged rock firebrand) even pointed out the lads’ unprofessionalism, we were beyond that point. I even tried to sing along (I had worked so hard to learn the lyrics so of course I was going to use them) to make it work all I got these youngster pointing and laughing at me, the old man who was digging on their scene, I was dejected, I had been robbed of this moment. I later spoke to Pete, the Dustin’s manager, and said they had been much tighter than last time, he seemed happy. I wasn’t lying but I was too hurt to talk about it, it was still too fresh in my mind.
I had bought plenty of other CDs in the mean time, the Test-Icicles being the main one but I had also starting delving into stuff that I hadn’t listened to for a while, Dead Prez, Four Tet, GZA, Bert Jansch and James Lavelle for a start. I didn’t need Dustin’s and I didn’t need punk pop, I was my own man. I got a call from a friend asking if I wanted to meet up for a drink, I said yes why not. I knew Dustin’s were on the agenda but I wasn’t spending too much time thinking about. In my eyes this was going to be a big gig for them, playing Alan McGee’s ‘Now We’re Off To Rehab’ in Islington, in front of a crowd of in the know musos, I foresaw a disaster.
There was crowd there and Dustin’s were on, kicking off with To the Ramones. They sounded tight, like last time but Dave’s vocals were astounding, he was on the ball and working the crowd a treat. I sang along and there were few of those insolent scamps but no one even registered my heartfelt bleatings. There was a bit of fisticuffs but that soon evaporated and Dave even a caring side by saying how horrible it was that people were fighting and over all an amazing performance. I bumped into Baco in the toilet who said he had seen Steve Lamacq in moshing, a phenomenal feat considering Steve’s age. The cruel irony was that they were only given a 30 minute set, way too short but I loved every minute of it.
I would thoroughly recommend you check them out, Steve Lamacq says they’ll be your new favourite band and Alan McGee loves them and who I am to argue with musos of that calibre, in fact, I whole hearterdly agree.
The Dustin’s boys have won my heart back and I expect 2006 to be their year.
Dustin’s Bar Mitzvah’s Web Site
After much deliberation I have decided that I must commence with my blog, I think it will consist of music, SEO and general rantings but this does not necessarily constitute the whole scope of this blog, although it may well. There will be plenty on the music, as it’s my primary poison (unfortunately not my only one). Please bear with me, this could be a long night…