Thursday, 9th November.
Aural stimulation

Sometimes I amaze myself. I arrived at Maida Vale at exactly 6pm. Punctuality is something I'm a little lax about. (about which I'm a little lax? Experts on english grammar can email me at someone.who.gives.a.damn@planetian.com) I was looking at a flat inhabited by a man with the unlikely name of "Phil".

Room was ok, blah blah blah, and Phil worked for a record company. Obviously my drive to become a rock star is waning, because I wasn't excited by this at all. Perhaps this was because Phil is a tubby bloke in his late 30s from northern England. And because he works at a dance music label. Who, incidentally, have just released an album called "Aural Stimulation". Ooh er.

Not expecting him to call me back (they say they'll call, but they never do) I went back to Jonah's joint to get ready.

There was some irony about the fact that I'm not really a fan of Teenage Fanclub. But I was up for stretching my musical tastes. I arrived at the Astoria ON TIME! Twice in one evening, how bizarre. Charmari rolled up soon after and we went inside.

The first band was just a bunch of sad young shoegazers from Scotland. I don't know what they were called, and I'm not too fussed about that either. Second on the bill were a bunch of north Americans (they could've been Canadian, they could've been from the USA, I couldn't tell and I didn't ask them) who sounded like they had listened to too many Chicago records. Nice harmonies, a bit 80s but that's not a bad thing.

Teenage Fanclub came on and proceeded to play a whole bunch of songs that I didn't know. Not that that was unexpected, beacuse you'd expect them to play a bunch of songs. Some fat boofhead tried some argy-bargey on me towards the end of the set, but I didn't budge. Next to me some old bugger was rubbing himself up against the girl in front of him. (Yeah mate, I'm sure every female would want a rough-looking old bloke, a stranger at that, rubbing himself up against them at a concert. You're on a winner.)

Then they played their Hit Song, "Sparky's Dream", and the fat bloke with the bleach blond hair went mad and so did all his mates. I was bumped around, thrown over the barrier, had my head smashed in to a speaker stack, nearly impaled myself on a mic stand, cracked my ribs on the drum riser, and ended up straddling the lighting rig.

A pretty quiet night, really.