And I experienced the Black Dog Ballroom, a fitting name. I haven't experienced anywhere quite so depressingly awful for a long time.That said, a lot of fun times were had, even in the Black Dog.
I'd not been out to play since the Pine Barrens gig, and Arbouretum with Easter supporting is a pretty nice reason to leave the house, so I decided to trot along. When I say last Wednesday, I mean the 21st, not two days ago. I've been meaning to write something for a week or so, but a curious feeling has been on me, where the only things I wanted to write are not things I care to share, and, given my tendency to over share, it's definitely sensible of me to heed my limited self-censorship radar. The Arbouretum gig was at Soup Kitchen - I don't think I've been in there since before Christmas, when the lovely Ceelpop was in town, and Driver came to stay, and we all got lovely drunk and ended up giddy dancing in Kraak, and some weird boy who looked like a rapist truck driver in training (I think it was the cap and bum-fluff mustache) attempted to drag me over to a pillar for snogging (15yr old in 5th Ave style). I think the level of disgust was evident by me not even apologetically using my usual go away line of "I'm thirty-two and have a kid", instead I looked at him, pulled a face, told him he was too young and ran away, thankfully unmolested in anyway. But I digress... Back to the gig.
I have a tendency at the moment to go to gigs regardless of whether I know people, though it was nice to find I did know some folks at this one. Having arrived a little early, it was nice to sit with folks and have a beer and a chat and generally inflict my company on anyone too polite to tell me to bugger off. One of the chaps at the table was the brother of one of the chaps in Easter. Easter are a Manchester based band, consisting of Thomas Long, Andrew Cheetham, Gavin Clarke and Rich Clarke, and more importantly, they're excellent, and, though the mix on the sound desk last week did them absolutely no favours, they still sounded reasonable. Go to White Box and acquire yourself a copy of Innocence Man. You'll be doing yourself a service. Or something. All I'm saying is that it's a record that gets played from time to time.
Arbouretum were ace, at times kind of folk metal, at other times the darkest, heaviest blues ever. The band consist of Dave Heumann (vocals, guitar, and who I found out later is slightly strange when drunk), Corey Allender (bass), Brian Carey (drums) and Matthew Pierce (keyboards and percussion), and again, despite the dodgy sound desking of the Soup Kitchen, this was an awesome set. I've not seen them before, and even given the technical issues, I was seriously blown away.
After the gig a bunch of folks, including Easter and Arbouretum ended up at the Castle, and drinks were had, and conversations were had,and merriment was made. Somehow I ended up from offering some of the guys a lift home to being in the Black Dog Ballroom (under Afflecks) instead, with some friends and Arbouretum, and this marks the peculiar part of my evening, and the part for which I got, most likely deservedly, soundly mocked. One of my friends went to the loo, and Dave sat down in his place, and started asking about my perfume, and perfume generally. Now I rarely wear perfume, and know little about it, but he just seemed a little bit weird friendly drunk, so I answered as best as I could, then the somewhat stilted conversation went to sibling torture, reasons for scalping oneself (i.e. what was wrong with my life to make me cut off my hair - answer, nothing) and amputee fetishes. I'm pretty rubbish at this kind of small talk, it felt like he was trying to talk about subjects he thought a girl might be interested in, and some girls might of been, this girl not so much, and especially not after having been having lovely interesting and funny conversations all evening. So after running out of things to say, I ran away to the loo, realised it was 3am, and reiterated the offer to the guys of a lift home, but Danny wasn't ready for leaving, and in the style of good friends they stayed with him. But at 3am, and needing to be on form for Kittencat the following day, it was high time I hightailed it, and this is where I realised my folly, and got laughed at. According to the other guys, it was quite evident I was being hit on, and apparently it was naive of me not to notice until it was spelled out to me in words of one syllable. But I was not expecting an instance of "everyone gets less choosy after midnight" that particular evening. Excuses were made, and running away was done, a stocking malfunction occurred on Newton Street and resulting in a midstreet change out of stockings and heels into flats, before taking myself home to sleep for a whole two hours before the start of a new day.
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