www.betika.co.uk
a) Betika, back to full fitness in the Imogen arm department, are playing the Joiners in Southampton tonight! Today, incedentally, is Friday 26th May. We won't be playing anything new, just old things, but greeted like long-lost freinds, with vim, vigour and lovelovelove, the things with which an old friend should be greeted. That's all we can offer really. Skill is right out of the question, but who needs it when you have the kind of glue that holds us ( that's us and us, AND us and you) together? No fucker, that's who.
2) AaaaaaaaaaaaTttttttttttttttttttPppppppppp! Were you there? Wasn't it good?
Friday was mostly guitar solos, culminating in Dinosaur Jr, but never mind - Broken Social Scene!
Saturday was sublime end-to-end, can't even remember half of what I saw, largely due to mine and Caz's strict 2-standard-drinks-per-hour booze reigime, which lasted way, way beyond sunrise. I think it may have been 14 hours, plus extras to take away the taste of the chilli powder we dabbed on our tongues in the name of science, in order to find out what bits of our tongues did what, you see? (About a centimetre back from the tip does spicy). Boredoms were staggering, Dungen (pronounced Doonyen, thay said) were a revelation (albeit from 1971), Joanna Newsome has stolen my clogged-up, jerky heart away forever, may I never get it back. Camber Sands is not called so for nothing, for grains of it got everywhere, between indie gymnastics in the Pontins playground and passing out in a sanddune at stupid AM (post Newsome, an adrenalinatastic brush with a Wierdo Indie Knifeman and many, many hours of Real Hard Dancing), my pockets are still full of the stuff and I didn't even take these trousers with me.
Sunday I don't remember much, missed the Delicate Hammers in-chalet gig due to body having gone way beyond maximum endurance. Electralane were pretty special, and then nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. And then somehow I got home, enriched to the max by R Kelly and his "Trapped in the closet" nonsense. I urge you to steal this particular cultural artifact into your life using internet file-robbing tools. Or maybe buy it from amazon.usa
iii) Keep 30th June free in your diaries! There will be a Betika party then, and I hope that you can come.
Friday, May 26, 2006
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Things we have seen lately
www.betika.co.uk
1) Life-sized scrap metal sculptures of two giraffes (parent and child).
2) A buzzard, circling right at the end of my road. Like foxes, they're encroaching more and more into urban areas. I wonder what it is they're eating? Maybe they're raiding bins, or perhaps they swoop down and carry off pigeons?
3) Carolyn saw a pygmy hippopotamus chasing a rabbit round a field for ages. She says she'd like to think that they were friends and were frolicing gayly, but I think she knows deep down that the hippo was intent on biting the bunny in half with it's flip-top head.
4) Guillemots (the band, not the birds). And Joan as Policewoman. Talked to Fyfe Dangerfield (vox and keys) afterwards and tried to explain (with sung examples) how "Trains to Brazil" has one of the top five lip-trembling lyrics of all time, in particular the bit about the pile of telephones starting to shake and ring, which I've always taken as a reference to the 7/7 tube bombings. Like everyone who knew somebody in London that day, I was straight on the phone as soon as I heard the news to make sure they were okay. I can't begin to imagine how it would have felt if those calls had never been answered, as was the case for hundreds of people.
Incidentally, the other songs in the top five are "Mr Bojangles" (where his dog up and dies); "The village green preservation society" ("God save the George Cross, and all those who were awarded them"); "Love will tear us apart" and; "Two little boys". Fyfe quite rightly added "Bright Eyes" to the list (but on no account the Steven Gately version, not ever ever ever.)
ATP this weekend!
1) Life-sized scrap metal sculptures of two giraffes (parent and child).
2) A buzzard, circling right at the end of my road. Like foxes, they're encroaching more and more into urban areas. I wonder what it is they're eating? Maybe they're raiding bins, or perhaps they swoop down and carry off pigeons?
3) Carolyn saw a pygmy hippopotamus chasing a rabbit round a field for ages. She says she'd like to think that they were friends and were frolicing gayly, but I think she knows deep down that the hippo was intent on biting the bunny in half with it's flip-top head.
4) Guillemots (the band, not the birds). And Joan as Policewoman. Talked to Fyfe Dangerfield (vox and keys) afterwards and tried to explain (with sung examples) how "Trains to Brazil" has one of the top five lip-trembling lyrics of all time, in particular the bit about the pile of telephones starting to shake and ring, which I've always taken as a reference to the 7/7 tube bombings. Like everyone who knew somebody in London that day, I was straight on the phone as soon as I heard the news to make sure they were okay. I can't begin to imagine how it would have felt if those calls had never been answered, as was the case for hundreds of people.
Incidentally, the other songs in the top five are "Mr Bojangles" (where his dog up and dies); "The village green preservation society" ("God save the George Cross, and all those who were awarded them"); "Love will tear us apart" and; "Two little boys". Fyfe quite rightly added "Bright Eyes" to the list (but on no account the Steven Gately version, not ever ever ever.)
ATP this weekend!
Thursday, May 11, 2006
In the interest of science...
www.betika.co.uk
...I've eaten Sugar Puffs for breakfast every day for a week. Now not only my wee but my entire life smells of honey until around lunchtime. I'd be interested to see if eating asparagus at every meal would have a similar all-pervading effect, but two possible drawbacks spring immedeately to mind
1. The cost - asaparagus don't come cheap, partly because of
2. It's fabled aphrodisiac properties. There's a risk that the test subject may be transformed into some kind of raging nymhpo and have to face up to all the responsibilities that come with that.
Some of us went to see the Go! Team tonight, and it was 9 out of 10. Kid Carpet wasn't half bad either.
...I've eaten Sugar Puffs for breakfast every day for a week. Now not only my wee but my entire life smells of honey until around lunchtime. I'd be interested to see if eating asparagus at every meal would have a similar all-pervading effect, but two possible drawbacks spring immedeately to mind
1. The cost - asaparagus don't come cheap, partly because of
2. It's fabled aphrodisiac properties. There's a risk that the test subject may be transformed into some kind of raging nymhpo and have to face up to all the responsibilities that come with that.
Some of us went to see the Go! Team tonight, and it was 9 out of 10. Kid Carpet wasn't half bad either.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Penzance
www.betika.co.uk
So many things to write about, so little cohesion in my head! I guess Penzance is a good place to start...
Seven fully functional Betikans, one slightly broken Imogen and a magnificently bearded Nic the Paper Cinematographist clambered aboard a cavernous minibus at stupid o'clock on Good Friday and headed west. Bank holiday traffic! So many roadworks! So many caravans! So many "comfort breaks"! Got chatting to a roadside cafe proprietor called Phil, got some good showbiz catering stories out of him, ended up talking about Johnny Dankworth's frankly bonkers Schoenberg-influenced 12-tone big-band music and hearing tales of late nights in Ronnie Scott's. Made pretty good time past wind-farms and abandoned tin mines, arrived in Penzance mid-afternoon and immedeately sought out a chemists so I could get some painkillers for my horrendous toothache. We decided to find ourselves a nice pub garden to sit in - cue several orbits of Penzance's one-way system before we opted to take a trip out to the charmingly named nearby village of Mousehole (pronounced "Mowzel", I've since been told). It was here that we learned that 6' 6" wide roads + a 6' 6" wide minibus + oncoming traffic = one of those situations where everybody has to get out of their cars and have a conference about what is to be done. We also discovered that Rich Betika is highly skilled in manouvering large vehicles in tight spaces. I'm so glad it was him driving and not me! Eventually we found the perfect pub with a garden overlooking the sea, in a village called "Paul", an idyl so remote that when we piled out of the van the only sound we could hear were those made by birds and insects. It turned out that this was because the pub was shut. Gary said it was the most disappointed he'd been since some childhood FA cup final where whichever team he supported at the time had been beaten so badly it had caused him to lose all interest in the game to this day. Downcast, we piled back into the bus. We found ourselves a pub on the outskirts of Penzance, which turned out to be my favourite kind - a small one that only serves lovely dark brown beer, and spent an hour or so sat outside making Betika-related drawings for Nic to incorporate into the paper cinema. I drew a Sopwith Camel, a fox and a face with a disturbingly blank expression on it, Gary drew an interesting portrait of Kate Moss, I wish I could remember more - I know Martin drew something very elaborate, but I can't think what it was. If I can get the pictures back from Nic I'll scan them and post them here so the keen amateur psychologists amongst you can analyse them and work out which section of the mental health act applies best to us.
The gig in Penzance was fantastic and really strange for the same reasons - not only was the venue (the Acorn Arts Centre) packed, there was also a table of people in the middle of the audience shouting for songs from "Heads smashed in..." era onwards. Long-term Betika fans! If we could, we'd have played everything we were asked to, unfortunately we'd only succeeded in downloading a portion of the repertoire into Gary's already jam-packed head, so we couldn't really deviate from the set we had planned, which naturally included none of the songs that were being requested! We did manage to make one exception - the shouters seemed particularly keen to hear "I've been in an accident", so we retreated to our dressing room, worked out an ad-hoc arrangement and played it for the first time in over two years as an encore. Martin and Gary had never played it, but Gary did produce the recorded version so had a pretty good idea of when to do what, and it turned out pretty good, I think. It felt good, anyway. By the end of the song I was relaxed enough to attempt to sing a high B without breaking into falsetto, not something I'd normally consider behind closed doors, let alone in front of an audience of innocent music fans. But I was taken with the spontaneous urge, and somehow I managed to not only hit the note but hold it. For a couple of seconds it was like I could properly sing. Not something I'm about to do again in a hurry though!
We hung around at the Arts Centre for a few late night drinkies with the crew after the gig before attempting to sneak into our youth hostel without waking the German backpackers with whom we were sharing a dorm. I was wishing I hadn't bothered an hour or so later when, fatigue finally having overcome even chronic dental pain, my slumbers were disturbed by teutonic snoring of Wagnerian volume and resonance. ||: Eventually I got to then point where I was so tired that not even this could keep me awake. But then it was so loud that not even my tiredness could keep me asleep :|| (I have used a device from musical notation here to explain what happened for the rest of the night). The coming of daylight seemed to coincide with the last of my painkillers wearing off and toothache returning with vengance, so I got up and took myself off for a walk around the grounds of the hostel. I took a couple of ibuprofen but they seemed to do nothing so I found myself the softest breakfast the kitchens had to offer before going for a shower, only to find the cubicles occupied by, as it turned out, our German roommates! Did I mention that they both had ridiculously long and shiny hair? The kind sported by extreme melodic power-metal band Dragonforce? Obviously, hair like that needs a lot of washing, conditioning and so on, so my wait was not a short one.
Back in the van and back on the road we found ourselves with the best part of a day to make the journey up to Salisbury for the next gig, so we picked up some tourist information leaflets to see what kind of diversions we could take ourselves on. We settled on making a visit to Perranporth, which has an amazing big surfing beach and proved to be an ideal venue for a game of intra-band 4.5-a-side football. I am not one of nature's footballers, but amazingly not only did my team win 2-1, I also scored one of the goals - an acheivement I will always regard as one of my greatest.
And that's what we did in Cornwall. For what happened next, see the entry "Some very kind words" below.
So many things to write about, so little cohesion in my head! I guess Penzance is a good place to start...
Seven fully functional Betikans, one slightly broken Imogen and a magnificently bearded Nic the Paper Cinematographist clambered aboard a cavernous minibus at stupid o'clock on Good Friday and headed west. Bank holiday traffic! So many roadworks! So many caravans! So many "comfort breaks"! Got chatting to a roadside cafe proprietor called Phil, got some good showbiz catering stories out of him, ended up talking about Johnny Dankworth's frankly bonkers Schoenberg-influenced 12-tone big-band music and hearing tales of late nights in Ronnie Scott's. Made pretty good time past wind-farms and abandoned tin mines, arrived in Penzance mid-afternoon and immedeately sought out a chemists so I could get some painkillers for my horrendous toothache. We decided to find ourselves a nice pub garden to sit in - cue several orbits of Penzance's one-way system before we opted to take a trip out to the charmingly named nearby village of Mousehole (pronounced "Mowzel", I've since been told). It was here that we learned that 6' 6" wide roads + a 6' 6" wide minibus + oncoming traffic = one of those situations where everybody has to get out of their cars and have a conference about what is to be done. We also discovered that Rich Betika is highly skilled in manouvering large vehicles in tight spaces. I'm so glad it was him driving and not me! Eventually we found the perfect pub with a garden overlooking the sea, in a village called "Paul", an idyl so remote that when we piled out of the van the only sound we could hear were those made by birds and insects. It turned out that this was because the pub was shut. Gary said it was the most disappointed he'd been since some childhood FA cup final where whichever team he supported at the time had been beaten so badly it had caused him to lose all interest in the game to this day. Downcast, we piled back into the bus. We found ourselves a pub on the outskirts of Penzance, which turned out to be my favourite kind - a small one that only serves lovely dark brown beer, and spent an hour or so sat outside making Betika-related drawings for Nic to incorporate into the paper cinema. I drew a Sopwith Camel, a fox and a face with a disturbingly blank expression on it, Gary drew an interesting portrait of Kate Moss, I wish I could remember more - I know Martin drew something very elaborate, but I can't think what it was. If I can get the pictures back from Nic I'll scan them and post them here so the keen amateur psychologists amongst you can analyse them and work out which section of the mental health act applies best to us.
The gig in Penzance was fantastic and really strange for the same reasons - not only was the venue (the Acorn Arts Centre) packed, there was also a table of people in the middle of the audience shouting for songs from "Heads smashed in..." era onwards. Long-term Betika fans! If we could, we'd have played everything we were asked to, unfortunately we'd only succeeded in downloading a portion of the repertoire into Gary's already jam-packed head, so we couldn't really deviate from the set we had planned, which naturally included none of the songs that were being requested! We did manage to make one exception - the shouters seemed particularly keen to hear "I've been in an accident", so we retreated to our dressing room, worked out an ad-hoc arrangement and played it for the first time in over two years as an encore. Martin and Gary had never played it, but Gary did produce the recorded version so had a pretty good idea of when to do what, and it turned out pretty good, I think. It felt good, anyway. By the end of the song I was relaxed enough to attempt to sing a high B without breaking into falsetto, not something I'd normally consider behind closed doors, let alone in front of an audience of innocent music fans. But I was taken with the spontaneous urge, and somehow I managed to not only hit the note but hold it. For a couple of seconds it was like I could properly sing. Not something I'm about to do again in a hurry though!
We hung around at the Arts Centre for a few late night drinkies with the crew after the gig before attempting to sneak into our youth hostel without waking the German backpackers with whom we were sharing a dorm. I was wishing I hadn't bothered an hour or so later when, fatigue finally having overcome even chronic dental pain, my slumbers were disturbed by teutonic snoring of Wagnerian volume and resonance. ||: Eventually I got to then point where I was so tired that not even this could keep me awake. But then it was so loud that not even my tiredness could keep me asleep :|| (I have used a device from musical notation here to explain what happened for the rest of the night). The coming of daylight seemed to coincide with the last of my painkillers wearing off and toothache returning with vengance, so I got up and took myself off for a walk around the grounds of the hostel. I took a couple of ibuprofen but they seemed to do nothing so I found myself the softest breakfast the kitchens had to offer before going for a shower, only to find the cubicles occupied by, as it turned out, our German roommates! Did I mention that they both had ridiculously long and shiny hair? The kind sported by extreme melodic power-metal band Dragonforce? Obviously, hair like that needs a lot of washing, conditioning and so on, so my wait was not a short one.
Back in the van and back on the road we found ourselves with the best part of a day to make the journey up to Salisbury for the next gig, so we picked up some tourist information leaflets to see what kind of diversions we could take ourselves on. We settled on making a visit to Perranporth, which has an amazing big surfing beach and proved to be an ideal venue for a game of intra-band 4.5-a-side football. I am not one of nature's footballers, but amazingly not only did my team win 2-1, I also scored one of the goals - an acheivement I will always regard as one of my greatest.
And that's what we did in Cornwall. For what happened next, see the entry "Some very kind words" below.
iCast - for fans of "Thunderstorm"!
www.betika.co.uk
Gill Mills, of BBC Radio fame, has included our song "Thunderstorm" in her latest Podcast, available from www.icast.uk.com or via iTunes (do a search for "iCast" in the music store, it's the one with the little green and white picture of an iPod, labelled "explicit"). We're the first track! Gill has also recently done a podcast showcasing the bands on Transgressive records, including the very lovely Ladyfuzz, with whom we shared a stage in Salisbury a few weeks back and whose album "Kerfuffle" gets a regular airing at Betika Towers.
Gill Mills, of BBC Radio fame, has included our song "Thunderstorm" in her latest Podcast, available from www.icast.uk.com or via iTunes (do a search for "iCast" in the music store, it's the one with the little green and white picture of an iPod, labelled "explicit"). We're the first track! Gill has also recently done a podcast showcasing the bands on Transgressive records, including the very lovely Ladyfuzz, with whom we shared a stage in Salisbury a few weeks back and whose album "Kerfuffle" gets a regular airing at Betika Towers.
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