before sleater-kinney, there was a small riot grrrl meet-up called 'princesses in the park'. it was mostly just grrrl zinestresses & their friends, and people we knew from gigs in london. there was also a band there called 'valerie' who have been described as "huggy bear, but with tuneful songs". we were all pretty drunk & glittery by the time we stumbled into the u.l.u.....the first band on were some weird sex-show men w/skinny white bodies & shite music. solex were on after that, & they were quite good in a dancing kinda way. the riot grrrl group inevitably drifted apart, & me & some other grrrls stood near the front of the venue. it was still pretty empty, & I noticed two midget ladies walk past.....we chased them until they stopped, and yes, it was sleater-kinney. they were looking mildly pissed off at us for stalking them (oh, they don't know the MEANING of the word!!) so we left them alone for a while.....later on in the evening, after we'd been star-fucking various, er....stars, we spotted carrie standing w/a man at the back of the venue. me, sarah sabotage & ali snot edged over to her slowly. the grrls told me to leave carrie alone, but when I saw janet appear I could no longer control myself. they were pretty nice, obviously annoyed though, & they let me & sabotage take pictures of them. all thru the night they kept popping up everywhere. we almost ran over corin when we saw her, but we were too drunk to speak to her. after we'd seen the beautiful & amazing cat power lady, sleater-kinney came on stage....they played a lot of new songs, and a lot from 'the hot rock'. the new songs are a mixture of pop trash & angry grrrl spite, and we were catching on to them cuz we'd heard them before at the reading festival. they were really cool, & I noticed that corin has a new, even cooler glittery guitar...we are all very jealous.....so the songs that I can remember are: start together, heart factory, the end of you, god is a number, banned from the end of the world, get up, little babies...i can't really remember any more. but the whole set was furious & jumpy. corin's voice was stretching itself to the limit, carrie was jumping around in a big girl haze, janet was a robot princess AND a singer. janet's drumkit fell apart like it did at reading festival, so carrie told us to entertain ourselves...sleater-kinney are damn cool, but they should converse more w/the audience. all we could do was dance. I think that's just them, y'know, like all I can do when I hear them is dance. and sing along. me & bis boy number two have a really cool, but amazingly easy, dance for 'heart factory'. the last song they played was 'jenny'. it was really weird hearing that live. it was kind of sad, kind of final, and I just listened to it w/my eyes shut. the entire night was weird & shiny. maybe we'd done too much star-fucking, but we left w/fluffy smiles on our faces.

By: kandykiddie@hotmail.com
"A Nice Weekend In London", Matador's 10th anniversary party at ULU (University of London Union)... ULU is a brilliant venue - perfect size auditorium, no barrier, with a huge adjacent conservatory for the aftershow parties. I was approached by a couple of people that recognised me from Hole at the Brixton Academy, which was cute. I was positioned directly infront of Corin for the entire set; fuelled by Mitsubishi's and pints of Pepsi-cola, I sang along and shook-my-thang all nite long. Carrie, grinning, high-kicking and twirling fantastic throughout the nite, chiming licks flawlessly....Janet,bare-foot behind her drumkit, pummeling and teasing out the beats whilst flicking her neatly clipped hair from side to side....Corin's silvery guitar roaring like a formula 1 engine, her skyscraping shriek pitched somewhere between a helium balloon and heaven - listening, I feel like I'm breathing water. The tunes --- 'Stay Where You Are', 'turn It On', 'Heart Factory', 'Little Babies', 'Jenny', 'Start Together', 'The End Of You', 'God Is A Number', 'Banned From The End Of The World', 'Get Up' and several new songs. The show was **amazing**, everyone was up for it and the atmosphere was incredible; Carrie even tried to incite the frenzied crowd into a line-dance for 'Get Up' :D .....Their voices melt my heart and those beats make my body *move* :)