Pompey Pains, Hangovers and Capital Trips

Oh Portsmouth,
My only Portsmouth,
You make me happy when skies are grey
You never know just how much I love you
Please don’t take my Portsmouth away...

This was a concept which as a Pompey fan was in a very small place in our minds. If I’m honest with myself, the thought that Pompey could go out of business was a small thought in the back of my mind but never really given any serious considerations. There was even talk that a deal was in place and just needed signing off to take Pompey out of administration and into the ownership of Chanrai. And then on the eve of Friday, 22nd October, a press release was released (that seems a strange thing to say) saying that Portsmouth FC was to be liquidated. Suddenly this little thought given no serious thought became the main thing I was thinking of. Seriously consideration now had to be given to a life without Portsmouth FC (or rather, a life of speaking about PFC in the past tense). It’s hard to describe to non-football fans what it would be like to lose your club – hell it’s even hard to explain it to football fans of clubs that are not and will never be in trouble. The best way to put it would be like losing a loved one (either a family member or a partner). You have a relationship with a club and when that relationship comes to an ugly end, it’s going to hurt. This is where I would go into my thought process of my Friday evening when I found out about the liquidation plans – however these next two photos will explain why that just isn’t possible...

Picture One: http://twitpic.com/1xbegz

Picture Two: http://twitpic.com/2zw1sb

That is not a 100% accurate representation of my Friday evening on the grounds the bottle wasn’t brand new. But it had about 500ml in there. That was quite something and forgetting the next day involved many a train journey and screaming teenagers, the whiskey flowed. Pompey FC was going out of business and I was determined to toast its downfall along with the downfall of my sobriety.

Morning came, and the sun rose. This was something I didn’t think would be possible in a world without Pompey FC (despite the fact that the club still existed but essentially were on death row). I heard news that the administrator of PFC was saying there was nothing to be worried about. I dismissed this as the word “liquidation” is a word to be concerned with. Anyway, this morning was now filled with sadness, unease and of course, a hangover. I had a train journey to make with the promise of fried foods at the end of it, courtesy of Wetherspoons (well, they were gonna cook it, I still paid for it). Me and Dave (who was not hungover) heard news of promise on the journey to London but again, could not be sure. How can anyone be sure until the paperwork declaring that the club is not going out of business is signed, sealed delivered and yours (hang on, that last bit is from a Stevie Wonder song). Signed, sealed and delivered at least! This news came through thick and fast a few minutes before kickoff. The deal was done – so the weight was off the shoulders, and the hangover was for nothing (which I must confess, did wind me up somewhat). What can be drawn from this? Scaremongering and playing with people’s emotions works; what a fucking horrible message to draw from this situation. But that is the message it would seem. Still, I can proudly sing that I am Portsmouth Till I Die! I know I discussed the virtues of short blogs, and they are easier on the fingers. But this is gonna be a long one. As I’ve now discussed up until the moment we arrived in London, but why were we in London this Saturday? Speaking of which, how did the Tuesday London adventure go? Read on...

Ok, so we arrived in London and the journey there was fairly painless (well, as painless as a train journey with a hangover can be). We had decided to come up slightly earlier than we needed to and visit random tube stops with no real purpose. There is still a mission both me and Dave have and that is to find a Wetherspoons which we visited on a previous London weekender – but that mission failed again on this trip (all the information I have on it is that the ‘spoons in question is literally next door to a major station’s exit, or one of its exits, and it is huge!) Anyway, we did pop by Leicester Square which led to an impromptu walk down Whitehall to the Palace of Westminster and around the general area before strolling back to LS. KFC was the food of choice before heading to the tube to head to Hammersmith. Who would have thought the Leicester Square tube at around 6pm on a Saturday would be busy when it is raining? Anyway, got to Hammersmith after Dave was almost killed by a couple who were essentially using him as a standing mattress (which I thought was hilarious) and then decided to cave. It was near 7pm and my hangover was still going strong as ever. I relented and dropped by a Boots and bought some aspirin. On reflection, they did very little to help me but you know, when you pay 40p for aspirin – you get what you pay for. I paid 40p for aspirin and refused to pay 50p to use a toilet; got to love London at times. After a fair bit of time outside Hammersmith Apollo looking at the queue and thinking: “fuck that” we decided that a trip to a nearby pub made sense. We found a nearby Wetherspoons and sat down for a drink (non-alcoholic for me, the hangover might have disagreed with me drinking alcohol). Anyway, killing time in the Wetherspoons was cool (it was either that or seeing Twin Atlantic). Having successfully avoided TA, we headed back to the venue. There were about 6 people outside smoking which I observed were all the adults who were at the gig taking a break (I’m quite hilarious at times). The reason for the journey was here.

I truly did not know what to expect from a live My Chemical Romance show. I’ve been very outspoken about them in the past and a lot of that was due to having not listened to that much of the music and joining the hate emo brigade. When I matured somewhat, it occurred to me that MCR are actually a really good band. Anyway, someone played with the lights before MCR came on and the crowd screamed. My hungover head disagreed with the high pitched nature of the scream – especially knowing that this was just a lights test. I now dreaded the band coming on stage. Sure enough when they did the screams were deafening which hurt. The actual show was really bloody good. All the songs I knew really well from MCR were played which was nice (right now I can’t single out one highlight because honestly there were so many). There were some others I recognised as well and the new stuff sounded really good (with an honourable mention going to Planetary (Go!)). In an old school moment – when the band played Welcome to the Black Parade, I was stood saluting (this will make no sense whatsoever if you didn’t come to route/chaos in 06/07 and spent time with the friends that I did). The gig was just awesome and a solid 10/10 for their performance. One thing which I do honestly believe is that I’ve never seen a band do what MCR do to a crowd. I’ve seen bands like Metallica/Iron Maiden come really close with people clapping, cheering and signing along (thinking about it, Iron Maiden – Fear of the Dark is probably the closest I’ve seen to whole crowd participation). But MCR did something to that crowd which I’ve never witnessed a band do before. From front row to back, there were people singing, dancing, clapping and (unfortunately for me) screaming. Would this be the same in the o2 arena? Hard to know truthfully – but the atmosphere was electric just like the performance. One of the best live bands I’ve seen (I’ve been to fewer gigs in 2010 but pretty much all of them have had bands that are great live). The journey home was fairly painless aside from how long the fecking train took to get from London to Portsmouth. I’ve been on trains from London to Manchester that were quicker! Some of the stops are stupid. However what was entertaining was if one of these pointless little stations would come up, me and Dave would make jokes about it and someone sitting right near us would get off there. Always awkward, but pretty damn funny at the same time. My Chemical Romance is a great live band and the trip was well worth it. Would I go to see them again? Definitely.

So that is the second London trip of last week discussed. Seems strange to work backwards but now I’m going to review the first one. This trip was the first midweek London trip I’ve done without taking holiday from work since early 2009 when I did it twice in 2 weeks. Slight bit of context for this trip – 1) We knew just over a week before doing it that we were going; and 2) I worked 7.15am-5.15pm the day before travelling up to London. Surely there had to be a good reason for this? The reason was to see Stone Sour – a band I’d not seen since 2007 and didn’t think I’d get the chance to see this year (I love SS but not enough to pay £30+ to see them + A7x who I don’t like). They then announced they were doing a tiny show in London in a room that holds 490 people for MTV and that tickets cost £14 (with fees). This gig was worth the pain of working a 10 hour day, then travelling 90mins and tubing across London and back with the end result being not getting home until gone 1am. Anyway, this gig fell on a Tuesday which isn’t exactly a fun day at work to begin with but with the good grace of the other decontamination tech, I was able to escape slightly early so I could get sorted and make the train station for the desired train, which I did. Journey up to London was fairly smooth (thinking about it I’ve said that twice in this blog – I don’t recall any journeys where the outbound leg has been a bastard). Anyway, the travelling to Camden went by fairly painlessly as well (the tube was surprisingly quiet but I guess most of the work traffic will have dispersed by 7.30pm). We had a slight issue in that we got to Camden town station and had no bloody clue which way to go then. After a quick check with Google Maps, we were sorted and on the way. The venue, Dingwalls, is a decent distance from the tube station which is good to know for any future gigs that I happen to go to there. Got to the venue and there was a bastard of a queue (always the way with ticketless gigs). The actual venue in itself is very strange in that it’s all standing but it is on different levels. We got as close as we could and waited for SS. All I can say is holy fucking shit! The gig was superb. Again, another example of a very tight live band with the ability to take over the entire venue (granted not as impressive as the earlier example due to the size) but the atmosphere was much the same as the MCR gig I discussed earlier. This gig had more of a party atmosphere about it and is up there as one of my top gigs of all time. The setlist was near perfect for me (almost everything I like from Audio Secrecy, and the best of their first two albums). There is no song I’d lose from the setlist, but I could easily add 3 or 4 more. The gig was just everything I hoped for and more! The journey back from this one was a bit of a bugger as there was a replacement bus service from Havant which was due to make 3 stops which ended up making about 9. One of those did end up benefiting me somewhat but still, annoying. As I said in the previous posting Wednesday morning was not a work morning for me so everything ended nicely. Two awesome London trips and another two awesome gigs this year. These gigs rank in this year’s chart at 2 (for Stone Sour) and 3 (for MCR) which is quite something. Both fantastic gigs but Rammstein @ the MEN arena is still the best one so far. Next up, Thursday night and the 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster!

Reviews and Forecasts

I mentioned before that I’d bought a ticket to see Jason Manford very early on this year. I’m not 100% how early on in the year it was but I’d happily guess February. Which means since then, I’ve seen Skindred, Trivium, Jeff Dunham, RATM, Bill Bailey (x2), Airbourne and been to Sonisphere! That is a lot to get excited about before Jason Manford. But I was still; whenever it came up in conversation (whether it was talking about his DVD or the show itself) me and the others who were going would talk about how awesome it should be. Interestingly he had no support. Now I’ve been to comedy shows before in big rooms such as Guildhall and there was no support, but it still seems strange. Anyway, the night before Manford came to Portsmouth – the dinosaur which inhabited a place on Southsea common burned (or was burned) down. This led to some early jokes about that. The show was very good. One of the main highlights for me was him taking a stab at Southampton and admitting he will do the same to Portsmouth when he plays in Southampton (got to admire his honesty). I don’t honesty recall an awful lot of his material right now but it was a good show. I’d definitely recommend going to see him live if you get the chance. He did about 2.5hrs in Portsmouth. It is quite funny because he has a joke on the DVD about someone from the city at a show letting the city down (I made sure to wear shoes just to ensure it wasn’t me). Some of the conversations with the crowd were really quite funny but some were plain weird. I don’t recall the context but someone shouted out about Coco Pops. This might be creative license, but I think it confused Jason slightly before he retorted “COCO POPS, THEY TURN THE MILK CHOCOLATEY!” Not to be outdone, during the Q&A, the coco pops man decided to have another go at being funny and asked him if he preferred werewolves or vampires (a clear Twilight reference). The response was funny (“neither really. If I had to choice a mate I’d prefer a milkman. I’m always low on milk!”) The purpose of highlighting that was that I thought it was funny a previous joke of Jason Manford’s was about someone letting the city down, and this man acting like a complete knob-head – letting the city down. Anyway, it was a really good show and well worth the wait. We discussed going again the next night but money got in the way and also I think it was sold out. Shame – still, Soton next year is a possibility (not actually discussed this with anyone!)

Comedy is all well and good (very good actually) but I hadn’t seen any live music since Sonisphere until last week. Bill Bailey has music in his act but I consider that as a part of the stand up show rather than seeing live music. Anyway, one of the bands I thought I’d definitely see at Sonisphere was Lacuna Coil. Before Soni, they had announced a Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms date but I thought I’d give that a miss as I’d be seeing them at Soni and I’d seen them at the Wedge at the tail end of 2008. However, then stage times were announced and they clashed with Evile. This was tough because I loved both bands. I opted for Evile as I hadn’t seen them since the passing of Mike Alexander (which has just passed its one year anniversary – RIP Mike!) This worked out quite nicely for me because it meant I could justify spending the money going to see Lacuna Coil. However Chimaira were due to play the Wedge the day after LC. My original thought process was that gig takes priority as I’d not seen them do a headline show (just a support and festival slot) where with LC; I’d seen them 3 times previous. Anyway, long story long, Chimaira cancelled their tour so LC became top priority again. I’d like to take this time to thank Chimaira for cancelling their tour as LC were fantastic! I cannot believe I even second guessed myself about going. They released an album in 2009 called Shallow Life which not only did I not know about, I only heard it in July for the first time. The album is superb, probably their best yet. There are a few fantastic songs on the album which come across great live. I’m Not Afraid; Survive; I Won’t Tell You; Underdog; and Spellbound – all fantastic songs. They played a fair whack off Karmacode which is by no means a bad thing! Slaves to Gravity supported and they seemed cool as well.

I said in a previous blog that I am aiming to squeeze one more London trip out of this year. I then managed that and am going to see MCR later this month (in less than 2 weeks to be exact). I somehow managed to squeeze in another. I love Stone Sour. They have released 2 awesome albums (I’m still unsure on Audio Secrecy. It’s a good album certainly but the jury is still out on whether it’s awesome). I really hoped they would tour post Download 2010 as I was unable to get there to see them (and actually I’d probably have missed them in favour of Aerosmith had I gone). They announced an arena co-headlining tour which sounded good aside from one major elephant in the room....AVENGED SEVENFOLD AS THE OTHER HEADLINER?! As a famous dragon from the Den would say: “A’m OOT!” (How lame, I do apologise). Anyway, I have no desire to see A7x again after their “performances” at Twickenham and Wacken supporting Iron Maiden. I was never that much of a fan anyway, but the self titled album just turned me off them completely. I haven’t listened to the new album truth be told but I’m just not interested. Anyway, I had resigned myself to another Stone Sour-less year. Haven’t seen them since Download 2007 and it appeared this streak would continue. BUT! They announced a special headline set for a show at a venue called Dingwalls in Camden. In a nutshell, this band that are touring arenas, are playing in a little room in London just a touch bigger than the Wedgewood Rooms (487 capacity!) Oh how win. I arranged to have a week on Wednesday morning off work as well which is nice. So Stone Sour and MCR make up the London trips this month with a little 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster thrown in at the end of the month for good measure. Excellent!

Final unrelated thought – Am I alone in hating X-Factor? I know this is something I’ve probably spoken about before. And this might seem somewhat surprising as I did mention a previous contestant from the show on the last blog (I was criticised for writing about that, but I see that as more of an immigration and hypocrisy issue than one which relates directly to X-Factor). I’m not going to waste my time on this too much but I really don’t see the draw of this show but the social networks become seriously bogged down with people expressing surprise, or their joy/dismay at picks. At the end of the day, it really doesn’t fucking matter. They’ll pick who will make them the most money, regardless of singing ability. Is the contest fixed? There’s a good chance it is – who cares though? If it is, stop giving them your money, simple!

I’ll do my best not to give them a mention again but my word bookface and twitter were overtaken with this bollocks over the weekend!