oneintheear

Thursday, 30 April 2015

Heat you up, melt you down

Music has been all around us for the past three months and rightly so. There's been some right heat being let out of the traps. Check these for pure bliss and ting...

Keep Portland (and Seattle) fucking weird

America is well known as the land of the free but Barack should really contemplate a rebrand before he gets the boot. Either the land of the fuck off Bloody Mary (see above), or just 'awesomeeeeee' - the drink and the word were two tings we constantly encountered on our recent jaunt across the sea to Portland, Oregon. To many of the Americans we met, pretty much everything from buying bog roll to their donkey dying was 'awesssommmmmeeeee'. There's no middle ground. It's a constant high level of positive vibes which is totally bewildering. Are they being sincere? If they drink those, Bloody Marys everyday, then yes mate they are. Life writhes around through a filter of vodka and tomato juice.

We started off our trip in the auspicious surroundings of Costa at Heathrow in the middle of a Tuesday night, utilising sandwiches and hot drinks as match sticks to prop our eye lids open while waiting for our flight - 12 hours, one stop in Frankfurt and many bevs later, we were in Seattle, being driven down to Portland for a stag/boat party/wedding parteh. Oh yes for this was the occasion of a big, splendid explosion of a hitching and mega marriage.

Yankee proceedings all kicked off at lunch time the following day in the wonderful Portland sun with a brace of craft ales and some dirty, artery stopping fries. This set the tone for the next two weeks - strong beers, gibberish chatting, getting lairy and eating extreme meals. The stag began in what felt like an industrial estate with an ever burgeoning number of revellers in our throng - friends, fam, parents, even baby Rocket find himself in the battle cruiser. We zig zagged our way around numerous breweries, boozers, karaoke joints, picking up t-shirts and fellow drunks enroute before ending up at notorious strip club, the Devil's Point. Ooof. As with many of the days to follow, getting back to our borrowed bed definitely happened. But no knows how. It's a modern day miracle.

The stag certainly set the bar high for debauchery but one which we continually attempted to hurl ourselves over. 24 hours later we rebooted the party on an opulent booze cruise with families, banter and cake following a practice church wedding,which as groomsmen, we had to do (albeit drunk). The wedding day itself involved yet another boozy brunch at midday complete with scalding hot eggs and beers before we all got trussed up in our best garms and caught the bus to the church. An hour and a half later and the deed was done, a hitching which went off totally without a hitch. Well done to the happy couple! It was a classic do featuring a photo booth, craft ale, raw dancing and about as much Kendrick Lamar as you could wave a stick at.

Life after the wedding featured many, many big moments. For while we'd gone out for the do, we also had a few weeks just to stretch out and roll around in the American vibe.

So what did we do? Stripparaoke at the Devil's Point was weird and mind opening. We discovered the Monte Cristo (see above), a sandwich so disgustingly greasy even we couldn't finish it. Bread inside batter with cheese, ham and turkey plus extra ham. We journeyed to Bend, three hours south of Portland and spent an afternoon exploring the many, many breweries of the town - we met a weird American, retired businessman turned dealer with six dogs called Randy. We met Jay-Z's light engineer (a dude called Loren) who invited us back to his huge house at four in the morning to drink his beers and watch his train set loop round and around his cavernous gaff. We went to Timberline Lodge, the eerie, snowbound ski lodge atop Mount Hood and walked the corridors where Jack Nicholson went so totally skitz in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. There were many vibes to be had.

Our second road trip started off in Twin Peaks style misty rain and a lack of understanding about starting an automatic BMW. We went over to Cannon Beach (where the Goonies was filmed) and had a paddle before heading down to Cape Lookout and Pacific City, then going inland to McMinnville, a weird town in the middle of nowhere. We stayed at the Hotel Oregon, an inn with the names of famous and infamous Oregonians in every room. We had the pleasure of staying in a room named after James McBride, a dude who helped create Alaska - well done dude! The joint itself is like a shrine to aliens and the weird - the walls were adorned with creepy paintings while the town itself was supposedly the scene of a UFO sighting in the fifties.This sense of weird certainly seemed to have permeated the people we bumped into who were all totally fucking tapped.

The rest of our time in Oregon was spent in Portland, taking in the laid bike, yet technologically tuned in vibe. 'We love the outdoors but we're also fans of Google Glass' seems to be the maxim by which folk live by. We continued to drink, went shopping, ate bbqs and even had a beard trim by a woman called Misty. Oh yes.

Our last few days in the states saw us get a bus back up to Seattle and spend three days marauding around. Again the vibe was ripe and steamy (in a good way) - we scoffed our faces, went to see a gig (from French electronic poppers Yelle), ate (more) fried food and caught Ru Paul's Drag Race being shown in a boozer. Throw in a bar open 24 hours to show David Lynch's Twin Peaks and seeing David Bowie's Goblin King outfit from Labyrinth and it was big. We were so sad to leave you America, hopefully see you again soon...

If you're really interested, you can head over to Flickr for (literally) hundreds of photos...

Sunday, 15 March 2015

Manchester marathon

Uh oh. Yep it's happening again. Running. Myself and henchman Craggs are doing the Manchester Marathon in a few weeks and have decided that it might be nice to try and raise some money while we're doing it. Training has really upped the ante of late with the latest one at 20 miles. It makes the inevitable post run binge drink even more chaotic...

If you're feeling fruity or generous, here's the link - https://www.justgiving.com/JimandCragg - and here's the 411...

What's better than the sight of one bespectacled beanpole slogging their guts round 26.2 miles? The answer is of course: two bespectacled beanpoles slogging their guts round 26.2 miles. This year's Manchester Marathon will be a grudge match between Jim and Cragg to see who'll be first to fling themselves over the finish line and into the waiting arms of the St John's Ambulance service (or nearest Wetherspoons). Jim is the current Marathon Record Holder with a PB of 3hrs 52 mins, whilst Cragg is on the leaderboard with 3hrs 57 mins... Will we hold hands over the finish line, or spend the last miles trying to trip each other up to snatch the crown? Only time will tell...

Fresh heat

Plenty of musical business is keeping our pecker tight and stiff at the moment. We can't move for bombs. Look out...

Thursday, 12 March 2015

Railing against the curse of the man bun

What defines the word 'evil' in 2015?

While the twin ghouls of ISIS and UKIP stalk the very soul of our land the biggest threat on the streets themselves comes atop the heads of mega doofuses. Yes that's right. Beware the dreaded 'man bun', an indicator of extreme torment in its wearer and one of the most inexplicable of all current fashion fads going around like a small, hairy plague.

The man bun is far worse in the man who has no need for it. Take this chap here. His boff is so short, that he don't facking need to tie his locks up in elastic. It's not gonna blind him in its current form if he goes white water rafting. But he, like many other gents has decided, that hair needs to be in place. Keep your eyes peeled for the rise of the bun as the days get lighter and summer starts becoming more than a twinkle in the eye. And make sure you have scissors on you at all times...

Wednesday, 11 March 2015

Boy George wants to touch me

Back in February we went to the Music Producers Guild Awards (zzzz) to film some video interviews with some old pop dudes.

We didn't really anticipate anyone being there but it turns out the whole thing was ram-jammed with stars getting drunk and hob knobbing. Royal Blood, Richard Russell from XL Recordings, Goldfrapp, Dave Stewart and Boy George were all on the press carpet in various stages of shitfacedness. Check out the Boy George interview below. He had slight wine breath and was being a bit flirty innit...

5 lessons we learned in February

February's vibe was proper with time spent veering from running away from hangovers to just generally running. We've got a marathon in Manchester in April and an integral part of the training regime is to not have a hangover on the day itself. By some sort of backwards calculating, this should make running 26.2 miles easy, especially after training with a hangover for three months. As Craig David would say, 'drink like a fish, eat like a pig, train like a fairy'.

What else have we learnt?

FKA Twigs live is shite

We went to London's Roundhouse and spent the best part of the gig waiting for her to play a tune. She spent most of it dancing around and pouting. We were left disappointed.

Abbey Road Studios is not shite

We went with work to delve around in a studio at Abbey Road Studios with a mastering engineer. This isn't a euphemism for something 'torture gardens'. We spoke to this dude who it turns out is the fella who mastered New Order's Blue Monday. Fact.

Made in Chelsea actors are just like you and me. Almost

If you watch Channel 4's Made in Chelsea you're either posh and like watching fellow poshoes act posh or you hate posh people and want to find out how to destroy them. We were wandering through M&S enroute to watch Twigs and saw Jamie from Made in Chelsea rummaging through the sandwiches. Just like a normal person who's had four pints on the way home and is already done for. The only thing that made him look like a total cunt were his shoes, woven from the souls of poor people. What a cunt.

Market research can be lucrative

February's Wednesdays were spent discussing the finder points of desserts and coffee machines. Couldn't give a toss about either really but for £200 I will. Kerching.

Walkers have upped the game of crisps

Monster munch, French Fries, Wotsits and Doritoes all in the same bag. That's some game changing shit right there fam.