saga
Topic: Stephen Says
Last night was a bit of a saga. I was able to meet up with my fellow Neurosis fan with ease at Woking station and we trained into Waterloo with ease and in good time, entered the tube system and headed to the northern line only to be told that someone had just jumped infront of the train at Camden Town and that the whole line was shut down.

We managed to cut diagonally across London and got to Euston where we were told that a bus could take us to Camden Town and then we'd have to catch a replacement bus service up to Kentish Town where the concert was being held. We waited for about 15 minutes only to notice a sign saying that due to industrial action our paticular bus wasn't running this weekend.

It was here that I embarassed myself and called a local Londoner, looking for transportation advice. I also received a call from work because someone had taken an overdos and the new staff member couldn't get hold of management (Little did he know that time the super-management team was stuck at Euston station trying desperately to get to a concert they were now 1/2 an hour late for) and my partner in this mess had lost his travel card so I was reduced to slipping it back to him once I'd enter/leave the tube and then wait around for the card to reset its self so that he could go through.

Crisis: Around this time I also lost one of my lovely Italian mitts.

We decided it would be easier if we took the train to Highbury/Islington and then caught the Silverlink to Kentish Town West but, when we got to Highbury, realized that we would need to buy another ticket for the Silverlink because, for some reason, the Silverlink is designed to gouge commuters even more. So we went back to Euston with a plan to catch a cab.

At this point, with the underground a complete mess, taxis were hard to come by and we waited a further 20 minutes until we could catch one and got to the concert an hour and a half late.

Luckily, we had only missed the 1st supporting act and the 2nd one was winding down. It was a New York metal act called Tastes Like Babies/ We Eat Babies/ Something Something Babies. They were pretty crap - to show how metal they were, the bassist 'forgot' what label they were on (yeah, right...) and the female vocalist strutted around downing shots that looked remarkably similar to Pepsi and, while dressed all metal with her grungy metal hair and grungy metal clothes and all her tattoos, she'd taken the time to shave her armpits. Not very metal if you ask me.

She embarassed herself at the end of Neurosis' set, diving into the audience and then pushing past us through the crowd being helped by someone while clutching her face. Hmm...

Anyway, Neurosis was really fantastic. Basically an hour of 3 men screaming at you while being bombarded by a wall of sound with no one in the audience dancing, just headbanging and shaking their fists in rythm to the music. Their video show was very cool but I only really started to get into the show when I stopped paying attention to the stage and just got wrapped up in the music.

Gratuitous video imbedded for you to taste the pleasure (Sorry for the cheezyness of it, though):



After the show, we left hoping that the tube was running again but of course it wasn't, so we picked up a couple of cans of beer and headed down to Camden Town to hopefully get on there, which we did and then packed into an overcrowded tube and were acosted by 4 very drunk Irish men who, upon discovering I was Canadian, broke out and sang the whole damn version of Blame Canada and then did a disturbingly good impression of South Park Canadians, floppy heads and all. Then they tried to sexually olest me and steal my scarf.

At Waterloo station, the trains were a mess but we got lucky with one and headed home. (Sorry, I'm getting tired of blogging so I'm going to wrap things up) My friend was going furher and would have had to have taken a replacement bus service but his wife was lovely as always and picked him up at Woking.

In conclusion, Great concert and public trasport here ess-you-see-kay sucks.

We're off to London again today to go to a textiles museum and see a very different concert to the one I was at last night. Bye.