Notting Hill Diary

Right - I’ll make this simple. Two misconceptions that crop up all over the net.

• The name of the band is “Rotten Hill Gang”, not “Rotting” anything.
• It is not “Mick Jones’s new band”. Neither is it “Mick Jones’s band”. In fact, and I hate to disappoint anyone who’s already bought tickets to one of our subtly misbilled forthcoming gigs, he isn’t even playing with us at the moment because he’s busy playing with Damon’s current live incarnation of Gorillaz.

Um that’s it really. Just making sure we’re clear on that!

Axx

Krysten surveys a suspicious damp patch on the ceiling

Somewhat off-topic, but with a tenuous link, On the evening of the same day that Rotten Hill Gang play Carnival, Monday August 31, the première of the movie “The Descent Part 2″ takes place in Leicester Square,

What’s the tenuous link? Well one of our two singers, Krysten Cummings, is in that movie and as a consequence will have to dash off straight after our set to get changed somewhere and go to the première.

I don’t know too much about the movie first hand, aside from he fact that she was unavailable to sing for us for several weeks a few months back (our other singer Alexia Collen filled the spaces admirably, taking the lead on Krysten’s songs as well as her own), so I’ll just be lazy and quote from the press bumpf:

“The Descent - Part 2″ continues the story of Sarah, who as the only survivor of an all-female caving expedition gone horrifically wrong, suffers severe psychological trauma. Unable to speak, she accompanies a rescue team back to the cave she has just emerged from, but events once again take a sinister turn.”

So now you know.

Portobello Winterfest

Thanks to everyone who came to see us freeze our nuts off at the Portobello Winter Fest last night and thanks to the festival organisers themselves.

I arrived a couple of hours early because I wanted to catch Ebony Bones and I’m very glad I did. I first became aware of her a couple of years back when Rat Scabies (who was managing her … or something like that) asked me to try out on guitar for her. This despite the fact that I didn’t have a guitar¹, hadn’t played guitar since I was a teenager (and never on stage) and that Rat had never seen me play any instrument whatsoever.

Anyway that didn’t come to anything because I didn’t have the time, but she put on an excellent show and we were really indebted to her for pumping up the crowd.

It was so cold when we went on that the ends of two of my fingers went numb during the second song and I made what can only be described as a right hash of it. During the next two songs the temperature change threw my guitar wildly out of tune, leading to some dark looks from Mick. Which was fair enough!

But it went really well and we made a good few new friends out of it if the comments we received afterwards and the hits on our myspace page this morning are anything to go by. We were honoured to be asked to play the first ever Portobello Winter Fest and wish them all the best. One of the organisers was saying that they were hoping to make it a 3 monthly affair.

Don’t forget, tonight is the Strummerville show at the Tabernacle on Powis Square. If you like it last night, you like it tonight, because it’ll be the same. Only in tune. Oh and we have the obligatory “surprise guest”. No not Mick, it’d be a surprise if he didn’t play with us these days.

¹Actually strictly speaking I still don’t have my own guitar. The one I use is Wifey’s. She acquired it in a “settlement” when she split from a musician boyfriend in a medium sized US band I’d never heard of called Sister Machine Gun. I think he just never came back to collect it after they split up.

Cor it’s busy for us at the moment isn’t it? Nice that all these people keep asking us to play.

I’ll try to remember to announce them all one by one here, but you can see the full schedule on our seriously in need of updating myspace page.

I’ve never been to the Blag before (it’s the Kensal Road one, not the Notting Hill one) so I’ll take this opportunity to review the club while I’m there, albeit from a slightly strange angle. It’ll be about as objective as my writings about Carnival

Join in if you know the chorus!

Axx

The Blag Club
222 Kensal Road
London W10 5BN

Yes, yes I know the Scala is in Kings Cross, but the point is that Wild Boar are a local band. It’s Ed Harcourt’s bizarre side project that’s … oh hear for yourself. I’m playing bass.

We’re supporting “Hush the Many” Nima’s new band, “Arrows of Love”.

There’s an unlimited, though paying, guest list. Anyone who wants to go just drop me a note and I’ll sort it out.

Axx

Sobriety can be its own high

No more bouncer related stories for a while please
OK enough moaning about door staff. Here’s new of an event taking place at Inn on the Green on Valentine’s day next year, a place a place where door staff is never an issue and a friendly welcome always guaranteed.

A short while ago a chap (or possibly chapess I guess, I never did ask*) named Cal posted a comment to my item on The Duke of Wellington, pointing out that locals still call it Finches.

Clean parties?
What interested me was the link back to his site (and remember all links from here are nofollow free) about his clean parties. I don’t know much about them apart from the fact that they run occasional parties at which the pumps are covered. That’s right, they charge you to get in and then don’t let you drink any alcohol (or of course anything naughtier).

But surely that’s nuts!
On the face of it I can see that that sounds like a crazy business plan. Valentine’s day next year falls on a Saturday and you wouldn’t think that any bar would have to try very hard to fill up that night, but I urge you to visit their site. I think it’s a brilliant idea! After all the competition is tough and every other bar in town will be - well - serving alcohol. I’m sure there are enough people around who just don’t want to drink, for whatever reason, and don’t want to be around people who do want to drink.

I myself have been experimenting with sobriety recently
It’s quite a feeling to leave a bar or club late at night absolutely sober. I don’t mean any feeling of superiority over or condecension towards your peers, just that it’s amazing to see the streets not through an alcoholic fuzz, but through clear eyes. It probably only applies if you’ve regularly experienced the dizzy opposite, but sobriety is in a way its own high. Plus if everybody else isn’t drinking, you don’t feel like you have to as well.

I’m not advocating it as a lifestyle necessarily. I realise that at the moment I’m dangerously below the recommended glass or so of red wine a day and have much catching up to do. I’m just saying that a few non drinking weeks or even days can be a revelation and I recommend that you incorporate one of Cal’s clean parties into your drink free diet at some point.

*Cal is of the bloke persuasion.

Of course the irony is that the ads served up on this page are bound to be to do with pubs!

Correction! Google’s cleverer thanI thought and is serving up alcohol addiction ads.