Sunday 30 March 2014

The last plea


As you may know from previous posts I’m running the London marathon in April. In fact in 14 days I'll be there in me ever so tight running vest squealing breathlessly in pain. Please revel in that image...

This is the last update/plea before I shut up banging on about running. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

I've wangled a place in this gruel-a-thon via a small north London charity known as Kith and Kids. They do mint work supporting young adults and kids with a learning disability or autism to overcome their social exclusion and learn new skills via weekly club and projects. You can check out more of their business on their website here.

 I'm aiming to raise £1,500 to in aid of the charity and I'm close (within sniffing distance if one flares the nostrils) so if you can/feel the urge please donate a little money via the link below. It would be greatly appreciated...

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/JimOttewill 

Birthdays at the Company Shed


Birthdays should never be spent at work and always made to last for as long as possible. After a weekend and Monday night booze up, Kathy's involved a Tuesday day off, a train ride to Colchester to ace seafood joint, The Company Shed and a some pints in the sunshine. Balearic times in Essex...

Colchester is a bit like Croatia

Fuck off oysters

Les platter

It's a shed
Balearic

100 years of music


Me work - PRS for Music - is celebrating its centenary this year and as result, there are a whole series of events going off to ring in this mad milestone. The opening one was a week long photo exhibition at the Getty Images Gallery with a star-studded launch going on. The likes of proper A-listers Bob Geldof, Gary Kemp and Cathy Dennis were all in attendance and all had the pleasure of being interviewed by moi. Lucky them. The day after was the centenary itself and culminated in a lovely staff bash in central London. The quality of an evening should always be judged by the size and grease quota in the following day's fry up. It was massive... 

Musical menu

Great view of the action
Free breakfast
Centenary tat

Edible centenary tat

Fimber Bravo

Hangover breakfast

Hangover lunch

Let's play a game of fuck off. You go first



Hello spring. At last you're back in our lives. Thank fuck. The last few weeks have been total vibes and made even better by the sun returning after what feels like decades since he last came out and let it all hang out. Plus from today the clocks have changed so now the days are even longer. Phewee. What have been doing? Dancing at the Roundhouse to Despacio, the new balearic flex from James Murphy and Soulwax, eating kebabs and going to the seaside. Check it...

Foxy

Food is very dry in Chorley

Kedgy ting

Get fucked wankers

Saturday night in

Obligatory speaker snap at Despacio

Lost in dry ice

Up close and very personal

Being successful is gangsta

Windsor Castle's chicken is unrecognisable since the gentrification

They call it acid

Steve Ovett has been 'Han Soloed' in Brighton

Fucking fancy Bloody Mary

Fucking fancy espresso martini

First in to check out Topshop vs Adidas new collection. Karl Lagerfeld over here...

Don't do it

Our new work tea pot - game changing

Thursday 20 March 2014

Heat you up - melt you down

2014 is generating some serious musical heat. Here are some of the reasons why...

You've had a top night yo - here's five reasons why


At the fag end of February, we hosted our We Run Tings club night. The do was thrown to raise money for my London Marathon effort in April and props to everyone involved. Although slightly chaotic and drunken we had a top time and woke up the next day totally dazed and confused. When I opened my eyes and looked around, I knew it'd been a good do for five keys reasons. I've compiled them below just in case you've got up after a large one and you're just not sure whether you had a boom time or not...

1. Waking up with blood on the face - classic pre-London marathon training regime in full effect. Don't ask where it's come from. Just make sure it comes off.
2. Benjamins in the bed - fundraising must have gone aight.
3. Boots in the bed - one was so relaxed after the night's festivities that one couldn't be arsed taking the boots off. Winner.
4. Car keys to beamer in front room - 'literally' no idea who this person is. Who drives a beamer anyway? Who leaves them in a basement club full of pissed people?
5. Snotty arms - who needs tissues when it's Saturday night. Use your arms you fucking pussy

Benjamins

Boots

Keys

Snot

Blood Orange



Injections of live music used to bring on great euphoria but sadly, disappointment seems to be the top prize from such evenings over the last 12 months.

Pricey tickets, shit sound, too many dick heads, £5 for a can of warm beer that the sneering bar staff opens in front of you, no vibe - without wanting to sound like an old dick, all of these tings and more are wrankles when it comes to going out. And, as the crappy experiences have tended to outweight the good, there's been a general retreat from the clubs into the pubs where it doesn't cost you an arm to booze and the twat quota is low.

With this backdrop, when something's good, it really is fucking great - so it was with Dev Hynes aka Blood Orange when he played the Converse gig at the 100 Club. It was a mesmerising experience fo' sure.

Tickets were divvied up via an online raffle in which the majority of us lost out. I even queued up at midday like a proper fan boy to try and pick up one of the final ten pairs of tickets on offer but was unsuccessful there too. It was only by a chance last minute pull out that we could go. The whole vibe tasted even sweeter as a result.

The 100 Club spills out onto the tourist-shopping-armageddon of Oxford Road so there was a suitable amount of chaos both inside and outside the place, particularly as the now-New York based Dev Hynes wandered freely among the crowd giving high fives to friends old and new. After stints in previous outfits Test Icicles and Lightspeed Champion, he's seemingly found his true vocation as a producer for hire and solo artist in his own right. His studio tinkering with Solange, Sugababes and Sky Ferreira has all been top draw, potentially chart busting hits, but Dev's own material is arguably even better - his latest LP Cupid Deluxe sucks down hard on the best bits of Prince and Quincy before blowing it all back out in lurid smoking four minute pop cannon bombs. And even better is how he sounds live. Surprisingly, watching him in the flesh makes for a crisp, tight sound with Hynes twinkling and sprinkling right through it. This is despite looking like he and his attire (vest, truckers cap and baseball boots) have fallen out of a copy of I-D from the eighties. Even the vocal interplay between him and current squeeze Samanath Urbani is great - it's non-sickly, like a genuine Elton John and Kiki Dee.

The show finished with us drinking our own cans in the venue, an appearance from grime king Skepta and a stage invasion. In lesser hands, this could have been a car crash but instead Dev and his ace, agile band weaved circles around us and left the place in raptures. Hats off...
amantha Urbani