2009 8th Annual Damn You! Christmas Covers Party

The annual Christmas Covers Party is a chance for bands in Nottingham to murder some classic songs whilst boozing without care for dignity or coolness and in the process make a massive pile of cash for Cancer Research.
Simmo put together this Database Project on Facebook to assist the memories of those who have taken part or whose ears have suffered over the years.
It's taken me ages but my photos from the 2009 event are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumlin/sets/72157623714141387/

New Energimolla Posters

Latest set of posters for the Energimolla venue in Kongsberg, Norway. This time we opted to make a virtue out of the press photos that agents send promoters for their acts. I reduced the press shots to high contrast black and white and then added a single bold colour to give the set a uniform feel and make them stand out among the countless gig posters that use a promo photo of the band concerned. That's the plan anyway.

You're Pushing Yourself Too Hard!

Supersonic

Just got back from this year's Supersonic Festival in Birmingham. Pictures when I have time to wade through the 700 shots I drunkenly took of Monotonix. The festival was splendid as ever and as if they didn't look after you enough, there is a limited edition LP (on appealing spunk-coloured vinyl) on the Capsule label that documents Harvey Milk's 1st ever UK show, headlining last year (pictured above). They were a comprehensive mindmelt that finished off my brain. They also made Ross McGivern take a running celebratory hoof at what he thought was a beercan only to find out (upon high speed foot contact) that it was a steel fixture for mounting a fountain that wasn't going anywhere even if you drove a truck into it. Picture (not for the faint hearted): http://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-sf2p/v295/228/78/622891490/n622891490_1045504_677.jpg
Commemorate this stupid injury and our night spent in Selly Oak casualty by purchasing this glorious chunk of wax:
http://www.capsule.org.uk/blog/2009/08/harvey-milk-live-at-supersonic-08/

Ouch

Just got back from a week in Les Forges, near Poitiers, in France.

It was a week of excellent tranquility with one exception. After an evening spent exploring meadows, petrified forests, pastures, woods, lakes and the like, I settled down to watch a James Bond film only to suddenly feel a very painful concentrated pinch to the base my erm... "chap". It was enough to make me jump. I feared a pube entanglement until a repeat occurrence sent me scurrying to the loo to check inside my shorts.

Good job I did because one of these was clamped onto my groin:



I had no fucking clue what it was and immediately dissolved into a liquid-like mess of panic based around the quite reasonable assumption that this spider/scorpion thing had just laid it's eggs in my penis. This panic was enhanced by the discovery that not only had whatever it was bitten me, it was hanging on for dear life too. It took me about 3 goes to detach it from my flesh and then throw it down the sink like a big girl before whimpering at the sight of two freshly bleeding teeth marks in my youknowwhat.

Turns out it was a Tick; an external parasite that lives off the blood of mammals. They like woodland areas, especially those with deer and human track areas. They like humid, slightly damp conditions and they basically hang around waiting for something nice and living to be a host for them. The warmth emitted from my flowing short leg was enough to convince this one that my genitals were prime Tick real estate. I'm flattered.

The bad news is they carry all kinds of fucking hideous diseases (mainly Lyme Disease) and there are horror stories online of people being paralysed or going mad as a result of an untreated bite.
The good news is they can sometimes hang about on you for over a day without you noticing and can be next-to-impossible to detach after getting this comfy so good job it chose a particularly sensitive spot to sink itself in and I managed to get rid of it within a few minutes.

Pleased to report no side effects, temperature, swelling or mentalism as yet. Will update with any breaking developments.

Sleep Paralysis

I'm off on holiday to France tomorrow for a week. It's the first non-musical, non-friend-visiting holiday I've taken in I don't know how long.
Now, I'm not exactly a workaholic but then again I'm also not adverse to pulling an all-nighter if the occasional job requires it.
Unfortunately for me, it seems the first couple of weeks of this month have been the busiest time in recent memory and so the occasional all-nighter has turned into "practically no sleep for nearly 3 weeks".
A sudden barrage of artwork jobs (to be posted soon once the proofs are approved by the people approving them) took me by surprise. Then there was the sorting out for Lords playing at ATP to erm... sort out. Then, to our surprise, we managed to score a record and publishing deal with Felix and being managerless I had to take a crash course in "spotting hidden clauses". Luckily, we seem to have associated ourselves with two of the best in the business.
I then finally plucked up the courage to go to the dentist after 10 years and the diagnosis wasn't as bad as I expected. Turns out my cracked and crumbling teeth aren't because I'm rotting from the inside out but are instead down to grinding them in my sleep. Stressed? You bet.
I made a few quick runs to get some as-yet-unprinted poster designs printed and managed to fit in a Felix photoshoot for the album on the way in Milton Keynes or thereabouts. This was immediately followed by a back-and-forth batch of emergency Lords practises in Leeds.
Just as I sensed critical mass approaching, it was time for ATP which was essentially a 3 day bender in the middle of which we apparently played a gig.
Because I hadn't seen enough bands, I booked a ticket for The Jesus Lizard's London show on the Monday after ATP. I didn't think it through. I went to bed at something like 5am on Sunday, got up at 9 to drive back to Nottingham via first Kenilworth and then Burton to drop passengers off. As soon as I got back to Nottingham I met Hoppy from Stage Blood and then met up with Paul Crick who was kindly driving us down. I felt like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas in the scene where he's making dinner for everyone whilst simultaneously being tailed by the police helicopter. But without the cocaine. The only way to deal with it was to crack open a beer in the car.
It was a long day to put it mildly. The only person who looked more tired than I felt was Creston Spiers whose amplifier seemed to have been built to further compound his situation and instead of emitting the sound of absolute rock thunder instead emitted an apologetic cough that accurately summed up the inside of my head.
I got in at about 4am like a zombie and went to bed. I cannot describe how much I was looking forward to going to sleep and that's exactly what I did.
Shortly afterwards I was woken up by what I though was a car outside my window. I remember I could hear the stereo playing Derby radio station Ram FM really loudly. The car lights shone through my blinds onto my wall. I opened my eyes and felt a bit weird. The presence of the car made me really agitated. My gut instinct was that I had to sit up and see what was going on.
But I couldn't.
I could look around though. I could see what was happening but no matter how hard I tried to move (and trust me, I tried hard) I couldn't do it. It was like the moments in dream where you want to scream but can't. But I was awake.
As suddenly as it happened, I was able to move as per normal and when I sat up and put the light on there was no car. No lights. Just my room.
I drifted off again. What seemed like a few minutes later I heard the stairs creak from over my shoulder. I figured Hoppy, who was staying over, was going for a piss. Then I heard the door handle to my room go and someone come in. This completely freaked me out. I was exasperated and wanted to sleep and still a little unnerved by the car incident anyway and then I found I was locked still again. This time was worse as I was sure someone was in the room. I concentrated my efforts to move out of the paralysis but I couldn't do it until suddenly I broke free like before to find no-one was there and my room was normal.
I shit you not, this then happened about 5 times in the space of what seemed like an hour. I almost got used to it.
The following day I looked it up online and it's known as Sleep Paralysis. Essentially it's when the brain chemicals that shut your body down and your waking senses aren't in harmony and your mind wakes up before the rest of you.
It's mentioned in folklore from around the world with fascinating consistency and has even been used to explain away the generic out-of-body alien abduction experience. I can see that. I seem to remember having similar confusing experiences as a kid too.
It may even explain away my broken teeth.
Apparently, it happens a lot to people who are severely sleep deprived which figures.
Thankfully, it's not happened since then but I have still been up until godknowswhen each night trying to finish things off for deadlines. For example, last night I was up till 3am putting the finishing touches to a poster and then today we recorded 2 songs with Lords starting at 10am in Derby, not counting the time it takes to load all my stupid amps into a car and drive there. Which I had to do slowly as I got a speeding ticket last week too.
So, in essence: FUCK THIS.
If you want me for the next week then; tough shit: I'm on holiday.

Ouch! (Stage Blood gigs this week)

For the last 2 years (since developing the problem when in Barcelona on holiday) I've had this weird thing with my right eye where, when I wake up, any movement in the eyeball results in a severe (and I mean severe) concentrated pain in the centre of my eyeball.
My doctor referred me to Eye Casualty who said it was an abrasion of the Cornea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneal_abrasion) and gave me some ointment and drops.
It carried on. My doctor told me to take an eye test. They told me there was nothing wrong and I had perfect vision.
Every day for the last week I've been woken up by the problem and it's been getting worse. Another trip to Eye Casualty finally got to the bottom of the problem: the damage to the Cornea hasn't healed properly and going to sleep has the same effect as a sink plunger on the Cornea - it creates a vacuum-like state where any subsequent movement 'pops' the healed tissue away from the Cornea leaving a wound and causing pant-pissing agony.
A nice gent at Eye Casualty then proceeded to use a small pair of tweezers with sharpened knife-like tips to cut away the tissue on my eye to 'start again' and let my eye repair itself properly. His advice that 'for the next 2 days, this is going to be excruciatingly painful' is pretty much on the money so far.

Unfortunately, I have to take a train journey tomorrow to sunny Glasgow in time for Wednesday's Stage Blood gig at The Captain's Rest. I think the ordeals I'm going through to get to this gig should be enough to convince anyone within a 200 mile radius to attend. We have 3 gigs this week which almost constitutes a tour:

Weds March 25 Glasgow Captain's Rest

Fri March 27 London Brixton Windmill

Sat March 28 Nottingham Arts Org

I'm the one with the bright red eye, playing everything wrong because he can't read his cheat sheets.