gindrinker - stuff

this page is a page of stuff. it's got stuff on it. look ...

(scroll down for old stuff)

Twisted HQ, Cardiff 5/3/5

DC Gates "and friends" re-recording an episode of the Goon Show

(l-r: Sian, Spencer, Darren, DC, Stephen, Peter)

photo by gary twisted

A review of a concert by The Fall, by D.C.Gates

I don't like to say anything bad about other bands as a general matter of principle, but Resist, the openers, were terrible. Half - arsed Siouxsie Sioux impressions do not cut the mustard these days. John Cooper Clarke was amazing, and deserves to be placed in the accolade of great comedians stroke poets such as Les Dawson, Harold Pinter, and John Cooper Clarke. Despite what I have read elsewhere, he hasn't lost it at all, and doesn't look any older than he did in the seventies, which surely defies all medical science. Mark E. Smith was not so well preserved, but him and his band gave a cracking performance, marred only by the sound engineer deciding that microphones don't need to be turned on whilst being used... Consequently, the old bastard was in a bad mood, which resulted in him leaving the stage during 'Touch Sensitive', and later 'Blindess', leaving ex-Tystion/MC Sleifar vocalist Steffan Cravos to do some rapping over the band's thundering bass workout (this wasn't planned, it just happened, and I apologise to Mr. Cravos if it was not him - I couldn't see). Storming kraut/garage fun, in other words, and a good time was had by all. It beats seeing whatever flavour-of-the -month band that The Enemy/MTV2/Mary Whitehouse is pushing this week...

ten of those discs what i (graf) have been spinning on my stereo in the last week or so

misty's big adventure - the black hole

the brakes - give blood

arab strap - last romance

a470 experiment - demo

lcd soundsystem - lcd soundsystem

younger younger 28s - soap

the fall - fall heads roll

belle & sebastian - if you're feeling sinister

deerhoof - green cosmos

grandaddy - excerpts from the diary of todd zilla

not that you care or i think it matters but i realised we haven't had any new "stuff" for ages so i felt like i had to do something.

whinge whinge whinge

[ there was a pretty pointless waste of time / typing here but i deleted it because i didn't like it. graf ]

they made me do it. i had to write a funny poem for national poetry day. i couldn't, so i took inspiration from my situation and wrote an (anti) poem about it which made me laugh. they wouldn't enter it into the competition though. swines. that didn't make me laugh.

A poem i wrote in college ...

A photographic study of steps and staircases from around the world.

(a.k.a. a selection of photos i had on my phone which turned out to mostly be of steps. one point for each stair/city correctly matched, answers on an email, winner gets a large g&t or something.)

Other band names Gates and Middleton considered (independantly)

Globe Street Rollers

Death of Klinghoffer

Buns of Naverone (go-go dancin' nude revue)

"Why the hell are you guys called Gindrinker, then?"

Ah, lemme tell you a story... Gather round, children, and I'll tell you a tale. The last album on the list below, Dopesmoker, is a fantastic hour-long blast of neo-Sabbath doom, long unreleased due to record company wrangling. It's just one track, by the way. You should track it down. Anyhoo, our name is a spoof on this album's name. In some places and societies, smoking dope is still considered cool, dangerous , and 'sexy', rather than the preserve of a wide range of social groups. People still talk about getting stoned as if it makes them Jim Morrison, Bob Marley and Hunter S. Thompson rolled into one. Gin, on the other hand, whilst having undergone a revival of late, is most definitely neither cool nor dangerous. No one reading the Daily Mail would think of drinking gin as worrying, it being such a mundane thing to do. Gin is also traditionally associated with a certain sort of run-down seediness. You know, bored houswives quietly becoming alcoholics, retired colonels, Hogarth's Gin Lane, Victorian Whitehall and all that claptrap. Of course, both dope and gin are well-reknowned for causing paranoia and depression when taken in excessive doses... As a group who are not concerned with the gang of scenesters and musical snobs that makes up the 'alternative scene', the mental associations of the phrase "gin drinker" suit our musical endeavours down to a (G &) T.

Stuff 1

Ten albums that Mister Gates has been listening to of late (June 2005):

The R. Crumb Music Sampler

Ornette Coleman, Ornette!

The Fall, Complete Peel Sessions (does this count as six? Ooh, buy it from Spiller's. It's a lot cheaper there - Ł23.99 - than other places)

Black Flag, My War

Hasil Adkins, The Wild Man

Coil, Horse Rotorvator

The complete preludes of Claude Debussy

Amon Duul 2, Yeti (bastards won't let me have an umlaut for that. What the hell do they do in Germany, then?) [sorry d.c. - this is free software (shhh!), yous gots to pays for umlauts and shiiit. graf]

Well, that just shows what a pretentious fuck I am, doesn't it?