It was something of a relief to get out to the first music gig in some time last night, albeit one at the complete opposite end of the Victoria Line. It has to be said, Brixton is a lot less hassle to get to than (for example) Gypsy Hill or Crystal Palace or even Richmond, but the distance involved still does sometimes make me reluctant to go down to gigs there. This meant that, rather shamefully, last night marked the first time I'd ever bothered to set foot in The Windmill pub, which is inexcusable as it tranpires it's a really decent venue these days and not the scuffed-up old den of London yore.

In the end I was glad I made the effort, because there were at least two outstanding bands on the bill. The Sailplanes I've mentioned on here before, but no harm can possibly be done by reminding others of their existence once again. I'm sure it's in no way deliberate or staged, but visually I find them incredibly striking in a rather unorthodox way. Tim Sailplane always thrashes and hollers as if the gig is the most urgent thing in his life or indeed the last thing he will ever do, his spidery limbs flaying all over the place. Stacey stands alongside him looking dollishly pretty but periodically aggressive, seeming dispassionate and behind-her-fringe one moment and snarling the next. Their drummer seems somewhat cartoonish too, thumping and smacking the skins with merry abandon as her tied-up hair bobs up and down. That none of this seems remotely contrived, and their energy seems totally natural, is amazing. There are bands out there that would kill to even contrive an effect half as well.

In terms of tunes, although I'd heard rumours of a slight change of style it sounds much the same to me. Slapping Sonic Youth comparisons around is doubtless lazy, but there's a clear influence there, and the distorted treble noise the band produce is relentless and unforgiving but somehow incredibly energising and almost cleansing. Given the mood I'm presently in, it's fantastic for me to be able to watch a band who have the ability to make me smile so much.

The main reason I was at the Windmill on this occasion, however, was for the Hermit Crabs. One of their number (Fergie) is an old friend of Amanda's from Glasgow, and they're presently making some fairly convincing inroads into the music industry. They've had sessions produced by Norman Blake out of Teenage Fanclub, and some critical acclaim and goodwill coming from equally impressive places. This doesn't stop at least one of their number from seeming a bag of nerves about the prospect of a London gig, though, and I probably don't help matters much by telling him a jolly story about how a fight once started at The Windmill during a spoken word set of Niall O'Sullivan's, when a builder had a violent disagreement with a heckler about the worth of his work. It perhaps wasn't the best time to bring stories like that up, as the resulting expression on his face proved. Just make me a badge with "Tactless" written on it and force me to wear it for a month as punishment, why don't you?

He needn't have worried. There's no doubt that there's a clear "Scottish Twee" influence running through the middle of their work like a stick of rock, but it's done in a very stylish, considered manner. Melancholy vocals combine with jaunty melodies (and vice versa) and even with the irritating chatter towards the rear of the bar the band manage to transform the front end of the venue into a warm and welcome place. Perhaps their tales of Glasgow life seemed rather remote in the wilds of Brixton, but it was an honest and direct perspective and a real change from the scenester-ish posing of many London acts.

Obviously enough though, one berk has to ruin everything by standing right at the front and talking incredibly loudly throughout their set, competing directly against the PA. Amanda eventually challenges him to "shut the f__k up" in no uncertain terms, to which he seems terribly threatened and offended. I have no sympathy for him. I'm genuinely getting really tired of going to London gigs - and it is always London gigs, at no other town or city do people seem quite so ill-mannered - and having people loudly chat right at the front whilst acoustic bands are playing, or indeed any band that has any degree of subtlety about them whatsoever. If you want to talk, go to the bar at the back, or better still, go to another pub where paying customers haven't come to hear bands. It's really that simple. My patience is wearing wafer thin with you lot. More to the point, you're starting to embarrass me.

All right, I've been meaning to do this for awhile now... behind the link there's some pictures of the Spinster event on the 20th November. Sadly, due to my technical incompetence and stressed nature on the occasion, most of them are a bit underexposed and naff. There's some much better ones over at http://www.spinstermusic.com though.

Once again, if anyone has any particular objections to these being public, please do let me know and I'll either put a lock on this entry or get rid of the offending pic. Oh, and no, I didn't manage to get any pics of Rachel Pantechnicon either, though they are on the site.

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Anyway... as you can probably guess, I haven't really been up to very much recently. I've very much retreated into hibernation mode, where I'm only leaving the flat for provisions (although Amanda would probably argue quite rightly that she does most of that) or to go to work. In many respects, I'm quite enjoying it. I've been holed up listening to music mostly, digging out various obscurities I haven't heard in a long while. Somewhat strangely, Slowdive are really cutting the mustard for me at the moment, which is most peculiar as I absolutely loathed them as a teen. I think this had more to do with seeing them live before I'd heard much of their recorded music, though - all I remember from the doomed occasion was a lot of distorted noise and a bunch of people stood motionless on stage hiding behind their hair. As I paid eight pounds to get in (a lot of money for a boy with only occasional weekend work to his name) I was quite rightly highly irritated. Then the NME photo shoot came out with them posing on top of expensive sports cars, and that probably made me feel even more peeved. It's time to let bygones be bygones, though. "Alison" is actually a fantastic, majestic swooping single I can't believe I didn't pay more attention to at the time, and some of their other stuff shows competence beyond mere "FX pedal fiddling" which is what I accused them of at the time.

Then there's something even more bizarre I'm regularly spinning. Francois Wertheimer's "Le Compagnon De Voyage" is a sinister, bellowing, doomy orchestral ditty with shrieking echoing sounds and disorientating phasing. I cannot speak French so I have no idea what it's about, but the original sleeve for the seven inch had pictures of Hitler in a dress on it. For all I know, I could be listening to some cross-dressing Nazi anthem, but I'm none too sure. It's probably the oddest thing I've heard in weeks. Just when you think it sounds like a wrist-slashing Euro-ballad, it goes absolutely haywire for a while before returning to standard form. Good stuff. Honestly. Perhaps I should try to get Robert Yates to translate it.

One of the first rules of opening a gig night should be the following - you should never pick an evening when either:
a/ terrorists decide to take out a London Underground power source putting the system on amber alert
b/ when there's been a power failure on both the Victoria and the Piccadilly lines
or
c/ there have been "severe signal failures" on both the Victoria and Piccadilly lines.

You can actually pick any of the above as an option for what happened last night, as these were all reasons that London Underground staff gave at one moment or another. I'd personally plump for "a" as a result of the sheer inconsistency of their excuses, were it not for the fact that Sunday evening seems like an incredibly strange time to strike the network (unless of course the terrorists were targetting our evening's audience in particular, something I'd personally doubt).

The result of the above, and usual first night troubles, meant that the audience was below what it realistically should have been, but large enough not to make the venue feel cavernous or empty. Leila and Jo had already drawn a divide across a significant part of the ULU knowing damn well we weren't going to reach 800 capacity, and also put out sofas, chairs and other comfortable objects for the acoustic and poetry segement of the evening. This filled the space nicely, and also leant the venue a homely feel it otherwise doesn't necessarily have. (Click on "read more" for detailed information)

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On the practical side of things, I couldn't help but feel slightly guilty on the night that I couldn't do more. As a non-ULU member, I was unable to get involved with the lighting or the engineering processes, which often left me hanging around with a lot of nervous energy and nowhere to really spend it, all this whilst Leila and Jo were running around desperately trying to get things moving. We had to stick Rachel on ahead of schedule as well, which lead to a bit of a frantic rush on that score. Something to do with the late arriving bands, I believe. Still, what was wonderful was how everyone involved in the evening left stage when they were supposed to, started their sets pretty much within a couple of minutes of their designated time, and generally chipped in to make everything work. It was a very packed bill, and if just one act had over-run it would have lead to a potential problem with the curfew time of 10:30. Fortunately, nobody had the urge to play their ten minute epic final number, and we were saved from any major discrepencies. It was astounding how tight the organisation of everything actually was, and I remain gobsmacked about the ULU staff who are like scores of worker ants, clearing things away and generally chipping in at every available opportunity. I offered to help, but they told me there was no need.

I am, on the other hand, pretty disappointed that so few people in my social circle could make it. I'm sure there's a lot of very genuine reasons, and this particular whine doesn't actually include people who've already apologised to me, but the lack of enthusiasm for something I really needed support for was disheartening to say the least. But then, I'll stop writing about that so as not to marr the obvious positives about the evening, and also so as not to turn this into another downer of an entry. It really shouldn't be.

Except to say, of course, that on the way home on the Victoria line, I heard the ominous announcement from the tannoy at Kings Cross of "Would Inspector Sands please report to the engineering room?". Internet savvy folk will know this is code for "there is a fire/ suspected terrorist activity at the station". The majority of my fellow passengers, on the other hand, barely batted an eyelid, so it's clear they weren't Internet forum dwelling sad bastards. Shall we run with option "a" as being a reason for the slurry of delays and shutdowns for definite, then?