You haff to verk for money

Phew! So I’m a little worn out, despite getting home at an oddly reasonable hour last night. I think some sort of virus is having a 12 round bout with my immune system which has yet to see a victory either way. It might just be a virulent meme, since I can’t for the life of me get the base line for “Billie Jean” out of my head.

Nonetheless, I headed down to Brick Street (via Liverpool station) last night, clad in notebooks and armed with no less than two pens and a mechanical pencil to defend myself from getting mugged by the awkwardness one can feel when heading to a “hip bohemian venue” on their own. I did, however, get taken aback momentarily when I spotted Arabic (and only Arabic) street signs on some of the side roads I navigated. This was rendered stranger still as I heard more Polish than anything else (non-English) while walking around.

With a few lines of advice from good old Roberto in the back of my mind, I set to a winning start by sitting with my notebook and pint in the wrong half of the bar! It was a very enjoyable part with plush leather couches and all the rest, which I think I shall definitely return to, but not the right one! 93 Feet East (the venue, not an address) strikes me as a pretty successful place if only by merit of its size. It has a very large courtyard with a dozen picnic tables and a BBQ vendor who, if you ask nicely, will allow you to pay just a bit too much for sausages, chicken breasts and the like. Then there is the area where I first sat, with those couches I mentioned set about low wooden tables with a fine black finish, tall windows that look out on the courtyard and an affordably priced bar with nice staff. On that particular evening the DJ (who was, to my amusement, crammed in the upper right corner of the ceiling like a stuffed toy in some girls room) laid down some really relaxing, technically interested sounds.Now these two parts could fool most people into thinking they’d seen the whole place, I’d like to think, but after 40 minutes of sipping Strongbow and writing letters I asked the bar staff if the event was still on and discovered that yes it was, but in the area next door. So I hurried round to a third area, basically a tall roofed rectangle with a stage on one end (with a drop down screen for the viewing) and a larger DJ/Technical booth jammed up against the ceiling in the back. Lucky for me there had been problems with the AV setup which delayed the beginning until about 30 seconds after I found a seat. I then saw 13 London shorts and a handful of bands, I'd expand upon that but then I shall be doing so in my article for CapitalMag. I'll link to that when it's up, should they find my 350-500 words pristine enough to "print".

But for one exception....amongst the short stories, music videos and dubious "concept" videos there was a bit of outright propaganda for one of the looniest organizations I've seen in a while. I mean, O.I.L. are not as bad as some folk but I question this misapplication of fervor when there are so many more tangible and pressing issues to wrestle with than some nauseatingly vague mission to "reclaim love". Then again, perhaps I'm being a bit harsh due to how frighteningly unnerving the facial ticks of their leader were to me. I couldn't find any picutres of her, but imagine if you took a woman with a ratty brown ponytail and performed an operation on her brain so that in one small corner of her mind she would always think that a tiger is leaping down on her from a high cliff...you'd have an idea.

The Shortwave-sponsored event is happening again on the 8th of April and I have to say that I do feel inclined to give it another go, particularly a go in which I won't have to frantically try to write down names of people and production companies in a room darkened for viewing. Not to say that I didn't enjoy playing reporter, I'll definitely do it again some time but I do hope that I can busy myself with enough film work (of a more hands on nature) so that I can't.

Enjoy the pictures, I'm off to collapse after shambling through a day at work...