Staines AND Guildford?? (Blog 116)

Planned CD shopping with a friend whilst driving in my car! Who doesn’t like such an activity? (And indeed the activity of shopping itself?) If you’ve read my blog, you will know that I often go music browsing in Guildford, so yesterday was time to shake things up… By music shopping in Ali G’s hometown, Staines! In the HMV there, the two of us noticed some records on sale. There’s nothing wrong with that, many people own record players. But why were they more expensive than the CD versions? Are they more useful than them? Nope. You can’t exactly put them in cars or computers, can you? The only real advantage is you can scratch them, like a DJ, but after a couple of minutes or so, the novelty will almost certainly wear off. Nevertheless, my chum bought one, but I kept my mouth shut about the situation out of politeness. Who knows, maybe he bought the records to find hidden messages in them by playing them in reverse. If so, it’s best not to criticise such paranoid people as they have tendencies to take things the wrong way. But I’m sure he’s not like THAT. That’s just me. Only joking.

After I bought some Judas Priest albums in my Judas Priest hoodie, we went to the nearby Starbucks where I bought a very nice hot chocolate and cream. For maybe the fifth time over the last few months, I checked if it had caffeine in it, but if you’ve read my sitcom ‘The Supercharged Apprentice’, you will know why I’m so careful. It was also there where my amigo's mobile went off and we got invited to go to Guildford by the caller. That was a bit annoying, as I wanted to go to the gym with my co-wanderer. What’s good about the place I go to, is some of the same styled, identical looking exercise machines are easier to use than others even on the same difficulty setting. If I was on one of the more stress-free machines to use and my friend was on a harder one, I could have potentially beat him in an endurance test, and he wouldn’t expect I cheated in a million years. (Unless I failed to control my excitement). But it wasn’t to be.

After I drove my friend to HIS friend’s house the now three of us went to you know where in his car. For starters, we went to Anderton’s music shop, where we checked out the merchandise. My friend’s friend (Dan, to save time - better late than never) was more into the keyboards than the guitars, but I joined in with him by playing Korn’s ‘Blind’ riff on the same instrument. Whether anyone recognised it, I will never know. Either I was giving the impression I was knowledgable about my nu metal, or alternatively I came across as an angry maniac playing deliberately discordant and random piano lines. Actually I was a bit of both.

Eventually I got bored and picked an Ibanez guitar off the wall to play. However, the queue to get into the music rooms were very still for a long time and it seemed that some of the customers were using the shop as a free place to do band practice. As the time went on I was getting more frustrated. I suggested I could start crying to guilt trip the Anderton’s fans, but I obviously wasn’t thinking clearly. A grown man in tears because he can’t play guitar isn’t someone to be pitied, but more likely to be nervous around. Not exactly normal is it? Fortunately however, I didn’t cry even if I kind of wanted to deep down. I did end up playing my Ibanez eventually though, so it wasn’t all bad. What a low action! Wow.

After all that, the three of us went CD shopping again, locally! There were lots of second hand albums on offer, but the shop keeper putting metal releases in the ‘pop and rock section’? A big no no. Imagine someone looking for something in the style of Westlife as a present, (the hypothetical shopper is an old man) so he browses through the section assuming everything would be nice and light. He then obliviously picks some Slipknot, consequently traumatising his grandkid on his birthday. It could happen. Ok it couldn’t because the section was pop and the darker rock not just ‘pop’, but I didn’t want this paragraph to be one sentence long, so I had to exaggerate a little. My bad. Well maybe the imagined shopper thought rock was the same as pop. ‘Pop and pop?’ No, that’s dumb.

Anyway, after THAT we went to Wetherspoons for a bit of a chat and some fizzy drinks. Some of our more interesting conversations were based on us jamming together in a rock/metal band on a later date and us deciding what to call our group. Some of the names I suggested were ‘Cabbage Dweller’ (a title I had been working on for a while, and one that I brought up in Staines), ‘Facial Smell’ and the social group favourite, ‘Chicken Thief’. ‘Rage Against the Vending Machine’ was suggested by Dan, but he was too modest and unconfident with himself. He said that it would be too hard writing many songs about the snack machines that were different enough from each other. Ever heard of Pirate Metal? Songs just about pirates? If such ensembles can pull of such narrow subject matter, so can we, just in a more unusual way.

Soon enough, we were all driven to Dan's home to the sound of proggish jazz music purchased by the jazzier, perhaps more sophisticated friend. (I on the other hand had recently bought some Sex Pistols, though to be fair their music certainly was innovative at the time). The soundtrack to the night sky and colourful, lit up traffic was fitting I suppose, but I much prefer rocking out. When we got to our destination nothing too much happened, so me and my original friend said our goodbyes and I drove HIM home. I chose not to mosh whilst driving and rightly so. Being metal is better suited to house/non road environments, surely. And THAT was the day fully summarised. Bye!