Monday, March 22

Happy (UK) Mother's Day

The week ahead:
Monday: Fellow tstgu comrade Jan-Erik will be in town assuming the role of Diefenbach's manager. He's invited Ben Sand and I to swing by Old Street in the evening to check out at their performance , as well as to catch up, but has also warned that he'll be in 'business mode', whatever the heck that means!

Tuesday: Minimum wage at Snappy Snaps. Select images for fast approaching photography competition deadlines.

Wednesday: Collect plane ticket for Hong Kong. Mika Bomb live performance on Resonance 104.4 FM in afternoon. Mika Bomb live performance at Metro in evening.

Thursday: Minimum wage at Snappy Snaps. Pack for trip.

Friday, Saturday & Sunday: Mika Bomb weekend tour of Norway

As you can see, things have been a lot busier than I'd like. I haven't even had the time to check out the impressive collection of photo exhibits that are taking place all over London at the moment, and regrettably I've already missed out on a few of them. However I have managed to continue the habit of uploading crude collections of Lomo photos onto my Lomohome. Give it a visit. You might see something you like.

Sunday, March 21

It's been a week of surprises. Apart from being one of the lucky winners of the Lomo BMW snapshop competition for the month of February, I also received a nice little cheque from Inland Revenue with a note saying that I had been over-taxed during my time with edesigns. In other words, I now have a BMW snowboard jacket and an extra 100 quid to my name. I'm curious to see how the jacket will look. It's too bad I didn't get picked for one of the camera prizes. It all seemed a bit random. I thought it was pretty hilarious to see someone post on the Lomography site the other day, desperately offering up their jacket in exchange for the lesser prize of an action sampler. I guess a snowboard jacket isn't the most practical of prizes. I just hope it'll fit me. But then again, it's the simple fact that my images were appreciated and picked that means so much more to me than any kind of prize that I could've walked away with.

Don't really have much more to comment on at the moment other than that the new Darkness single is terribly catchy - in a Warrant meets Europe kind of way. Only they're 15 years too late. Well, one has no choice but to like it when tuned in to a station (London XFM) that does little more than alternate exclusively between that and the new one by Cypress Hill. Gosh... now that's an annoying song and I'm tired of how the DJs have to continuously mention that it features Tim Armstrong from Rancid on guitar; I certainly hope his reggae strumming isn't the key selling point. I used to think Cypress Hill was lousy enough back in the day of their pro-marijuana classics, but their new 'gentleman-picks-cute-girl-up-in-club' approach is plain laughable at best in terms of both lyrical rhymes and content.

If you are looking for a single to blow money on, pick up Aqualung's 'Easier to Lie' instead, which is drop dead gorgeous.

Wednesday, March 3

Mika Bomb had their first gig of the year last night at the Buffalo Bar and boy did the show rock, especially with having Mel the new guitarist. Of course it's still sad that Tomy is no longer with the band, but it certainly kept me entertained to see a totally whacked out female guitar player on stage spending half her time knocking into either the crowd or the drum kit. I had a great time despite being trapped between Ergi's ride cymbal and Ann; it definitely felt like the most energetic and fun-filled show since Haruna's farewell gig. It was also a really neat surprise to see Aki + Kazu rocking along and smiling at the very front of the stage. Gosh they're such mellow and shy human beings when not on stage. I wasn't aware that they were currently on a tour of europe. Turns out that they were only in London because they were too flat broke to fly back to Japan! Now THAT's rock'n'roll.

Oh yeah, just to make it clear that playing in a band is not all fun and games: We ended at around 11:30. Stuck around the club until 12:30. Then came the time to load everything into the van and bring it all back to the warehouse on the other side of town. We probably got done at 2 am. It was freezing cold. Ergi dropped us all off in Camden, where Mika and Ann then promptly tried to manipulate him into driving them all the way home, by using the universally accepted excuse of "I'm having my period". As for Daniel and myself, we didn't really have a remotely pitiful equivalent to use on him, so we willingly got out of the van and equipped ourselves with a kebab before boarding the night bus home. I got off at Friern Barnet at approximately 2:45. Then it was a lonely brisk walk through the chilly night air for a good half hour, with the heavy bass alternating between tired arms. Bed at 3:30. This happens after almost every gig.

We're off to Sweden for episode I of our Scandinavian tour this weekend. Unfortunately it's just for one show. I guess it's because the promoter didn't want the quality/attendance of the one big show diluted by the existense of other Mika Bomb shows. It's a bit misleading to call this a 'tour'. Worse still is the fact that we'll be flying in on friday and flying out on sat, thereby reducing my first trip to Stockholm to being little more than a mere 24 hours.

Apart from that I've been keeping myself busy with coordinating the Whence He Came European tour, as well as helping them put together a more stripped down HTML-based version of the site. I'm quite confident that their new record is going to set new standards and turn quite a few heads, and I'm not just talking about within the HK indie scene. I wish they'd upload a clip or two of their new recordings. They have a pretty busy summer ahead of them (Japan, Malaysia + Singapore in July; Holland, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Switzerland in August) and if everything goes according to plan there's a mighty good chance that I'll be able to tag along as keyboardist/driver/manager. Well, those boys could do with a bit of indie cred anyway. Ha.