Guitars, Wrong CDs and Plays (Blog 54)

I’m relieved to say that in the past few days, not only have I done things, I’ve also done rather new things. I am talking relatively speaking when I say ‘new’, but that doesn’t matter. I have stuff to write about. So, last Thursday me in a friend went into Guildford. When we got there, we had a look at two CD shops, and I soon bought a couple of secondhand Thin Lizzy albums. No problems there, but I later found out my purchased Rancid CD and my Green Day CD had the wrong disks in. Someone out there is going to think he is about to listen to pop music, but will get blasted with Rancid’s hardcore punk, instead. Hopefully that won’t be at some dinner party for all the family, as I know old ladies rarely like that kind of music. (Though to be fair, there are exceptions who you can find on Youtube).

About the Green Day, I had previously tried to buy the same American Idiot CD at a charity shop as well, but I later found it had nothing in it. (Over than its DVD, which I really don’t care about). Why does the world not want me to hear it? I thought I’d leave that question hanging over the last few days and come back to it with a fresh mind, but no. I can think of nothing. But that’s good in a way, as I haven’t been thinking crazily and coming up with the conclusion ‘aliens’. Anyway, at least the Thin Lizzy was good, though. I have literally hundreds of CDs with speed metal guitar wigouts in, but I have few classic rock wigouts. I got a nice breath of fresh air.

Later on in the day, we went to Andertons music shop to play the guitars. I thought the ‘Explorer’ shape guitar in white and gold looked really cool, so I showed off on that, for a while. However, on closer inspection it seemed to be decorated with glitter. Hardly ‘metal’ is it? Maybe metal for 10 year olds. After that, I played on Kirk Hammett’s signature guitar. It was a few hundred pounds more expensive, but it didn’t look as good and the tone was duller. At least it didn’t have glitter on though. Imagine seeing Metallica live and hearing songs about drug addiction and murder coming from what is effectively ‘a shiny thing’. Anyway, as my friend had a go, I looked out of the door window at the other customers. He’s not as good at guitar as me, and I felt it very important that the patrons knew who was playing what.

The following day and when sorting through the emails of the online music magazine I’m (voluntarily) working for, I came across one message from a band wanting to promote their music. That’s fair enough, but their clip was only 15 seconds long and it only featured one note. What was even weirder was someone gave it a thumbs up. A fan of very minimalist music who finds even John Cage’s music too contemporary maybe, or perhaps more likely it was just from the band. Whatever the explanation, the music in this country is going to the dogs if that’s a musical highlight. Saturday wasn’t so interesting, so skip, skip, skip to Sunday… (Actually when I think about it, Friday wasn’t exactly that interesting, either).

So, the last day of the week. Or is it the first? Let’s just call it Sunday again, for clarification. On that day, I went to The Vault in Waterloo to see the play ‘The Boring Room’. I didn’t have TOO much trouble finding the way there once off the train, but I did a little bit. (And rather worrying, I had been there before). I certainly didn’t need around two hours to get to the place, but it’s good to be safe. At the venue, I quickly ordered a Jaegermeister and lemonade. I asked the bartender twice if it was made with the correct fizzy drink, as the brown colour made me suspicious. It looked like Coke to me and to cut a long story short, I react badly with caffeine. Yes, my sitcom ‘The Supercharged Apprentice’ is (very) loosely based on real events. Eventually the play started and it was funny and not boring at all. So modest.

After an hour or so, the performance was finished and I headed back to the station. I had a lot of waiting around to do before my train left, so I thought I’d get myself some food. I ordered my couple of spoonfuls of chocolate desert from the sushi bar and heard some of the weirdest music I’ve heard in my life. It was Japanese pop music about trampolines. I’m not saying it wasn’t good, but it was well up there on the randomness scale. But at least it wasn’t one note, right? There does at least seem to be some hope. What was the journey back home like? Very standard, so I think I’ll end things here… Byeeeee.