A week of waiting

Yes, that's what I've been doing mostly this week: waiting. A most pleasant way to spend your time. I've done all this waiting in various places and in different forms: waiting for buses that never show up (or at least make me wait for over five minutes, which is of course totally ridiculous); waiting for the tube on a platform that is getting ever more crowded up to the point where people have to queue to actually get on it or get in line to get into the tube station itself; waiting outside a record store to get into a free gig without having the required wristband while people at the end of the queue get in before you because they laugh at the 'jokes' of the security guy; waiting at a gig while discovering the most awful support band ever (or at least a new contender as the competition appears to be very harsh); waiting at another gig because you'd think that 2 hours after door time some band ought to be doing some kind of performance, possibly including making music; and lastly, waiting at the self check-out at Sainbury's where I've of course chosen the line full of people who don't get the basics of shopping or how to put their groceries in a bag (it seriously took me one hour (60 whole minutes or 3600 seconds!) to buy 2 pints of milk).

But some good things also happened this week: one of those things being me making my radio debut. Well, it wasn't actually me on air, mostly as I'm afraid I would get a spontaneous speech impediment by just being in the proximity of a microphone, but some of my writing got quoted on air. Yes, after subtly starting my take-over of the blogosphere, I'm now also making my way into radio. I guess TV's next up (Stephen Fry beware). Oh, I just love that absolutely no one is going to get what I'm going on about here :). Well, maybe just two people. And as that is a fair estimation of the amount of persons who are gonna read this I guess I'm alright.

And as always, I've left the best for last: Wie is de Mol? It seems I've got an ally in thinking that Frits Sissing is the mol. And yes, I'm just gonna carry on with my English, even on this topic, which is kind of making it completely pointless as this makes it absolutely indecipherable. I've actually got a good reason for using even more English than normal, as next Saturday I will be taking an IELTS exam. Basically, I'm retaking my secondary school English exams for £110, just to prove I can read, write and speak English. The best part of this all is that it's gonna take from 9am to 6pm. Marvelous. A whole Saturday lost on a test that's going to take me probably half an hour. That's what you get with last names starting with a 'W', you always come last. If only they started with the speaking part, than I could at least sleep in. But to get to my point: Frits Sissing is so the mol and Manuel is out so the only other contender (out of my 4 entries! yay!) is Erik van der Hoff and he'll go next episode! Ha! (Just let me have my moment here)

I've also kind of decided to do a short (very short) write up of the bands I've seen every week, so here it goes:

These New Puritans (Rough Trade instore): I'm quite impressed with their new album Hidden. It sounds dark, layered and a bit too complex to make it work live. However, they did do just that. The set was a bit short, under half an hour, but I guess that's what you get with a free instore. Though it was enough to convince me to buy a ticket to see them tomorrow.

Memory Tapes / Fitness Club Fiasco (The Luminaire): Epic. Absolutely and utterly epic. Memory Tapes that is, Fitness Club Fiasco were an epic fail. Full review below.

Chew Lips / Fenech-Soler (Koko): Both bands were really good. I'd never heard a song by Fenech-Soler before, but they were absolutely brilliant live. I can imagine that they wouldn't make much of an impression whilst just listening to one of their songs though: they are really a live band. A sort of mix between the energy and glitter-shirts of Late of the Pier and LCD Soundsystem's disco. Chew Lips were a bit underwhelming after this, but still really good. I like their album Unicorn which is coming out tomorrow, 'Seven' and 'Karen' (that must a tribute to Karen O, sure? With the whole copying of YYYs songs? I haven't really listened to the lyrics though) being my favourite singles. I've heard some bad things about their performance at London Calling last year, but they've certainly improved since then.