I was going to write about the new Trent Reznor (and trophy wife, shemale Mariqueen) venture “How to Destroy Angels” but someone else beat me to it. Please go read the blog reviewing HTDA, cleverly titled How To Destroy Insomnia HERE. It`s awesome and says pretty much all I wanted to say.
Good reading
I must start by praising the venue. The ICA is a small but hip place for a gig. The door staff were marvellous and I thank the lack of queue for those in the band`s guest list. Also worth a mention is that drinks aren’t overpriced like on most of London`s bars/venues. So, all in all I recommend you pay the ICA a visit.
Now for the supporting bands: The first was I Concur (who supported GiaA November 08 – for that review click HERE and scroll down). I personally like them and their performance (although I arrived two songs to the end) was a good one. The second band was Butterfly Explosion. They are on the UK/Ir GiaA tour. They were a good supporting act but personally I wouldn’t go see them. Don’t take me wrong, I did enjoy some of their music but they left me with a sense that they are still trying to find their ground, their niche, their genre. The tunes which had no vocals were the best ones. No point trying to sing when you cant or when the music isn’t improved by it. I also failed to see the actual role of the female eye candy keyboard/backing vocals apart from the already mentioned “eye candy”. Still, its a band worth keeping an eye out for.
Now for the main act: God is an Astronaut were brilliant. As tight as a rat`s ass from start to finish. Could have done with the volume 1 or 2 notches up and Torsten`s mic was a tad too low but that said I don’t blame the band, I blame the sound engineers (always blame the sound guy, lol). Nice to see Niels head banging like a possessed lunatic while playing magnificently. How he does that and doesn’t lose balance I don’t quite know. As for the drums…well…and forgive me for using the term again but “as tight as a rats ass”!
So, all in all a WIN gig. I look forward to their return to London next November. And a last word: If you haven’t seen GiaA live yet, DO IT! Also watch out for their new album.
It is with a heavy heart and a guilt ridden conscience that I have to inform my readers that Trent Reznor and his fiancé Mariqueen have deleted their public accounts on Twitter on July 17th.
HA! Had you going there! Although it’s true that both have deleted their accounts, my heart is as light as a feather and my conscience hasn’t stopped me having a great night sleep. Thanks very much!
I’m not saying I’m happy it happened. Their accounts were of great value. Reznor provided us with hours of amusement. It was like watching a train crash unfolding in slow motion. While Mariqueen gave us an insight into how flakey, superficial and cheap her life is. So yes, I will miss them. I will miss Reznor`s ill advised rants and outbursts as I will miss Mariqueen`s pre-pubescent and grammatically flawed tweets.
To say, like some are already saying, that they quitted Twitter because of my blogs is giving me too much credit. As much as I appreciate being given such credit, one cannot forget those who also questioned Reznor`s motives and attitudes which ultimately led to his Twitter demise. How can one forget Fred Garrett (of the #fuckfred fame) with his blogs which are now legendary? How can one forget my followers on Twitter for their support and loyalty? My girls (too many to mention by name) who havent just been supportive but have also been caring and gave me their time, loyalty and lots of laughs? How can one forget all those, who from behind the scenes provided me with information and photos? Each and every one of you stars! I thank you all.
Still on the point of “who to crucify” for Reznor`s Twitter departure, look no further than Reznor himself. Don’t be naïve (or stupid) to think it was a hand-full of “trolls” that led a grown up man to crash and burn. Reznor has been online his entire career. He used it, manipulated it and made a pretty good living out of it. People “trolling” him, shouting at him, verbally abusing him should therefore have no impact on him. Why pick on and blame me (and a few others)? Because we didn’t actually “troll” him. We asked questions. We asked difficult questions. We were those “pesky kids” that wouldn’t let go until we got proper answers. Answers which were never forthcoming.
In my case, this whole thing started back in March when I posted a blog on Myspace about ticket pricing for gigs and festivals. You can read that blog HERE, just gotta scroll down. At the time I was not only asking/pressing Reznor for answers regarding this issue. I did direct the same question to many others in the music biz. However, Reznor was the only one who took my questions personally and went on the defensive with me. Why so pissy? Why not just answer the questions? Those questions rang alarm bells. Could have Reznor got all pissy because I was on to something? I asked him that and from that point on I was blocked. I WAS on to something….
Almost 3 months went by. I had just about dropped the whole ticket price fixing issue when I read/saw somewhere he was engaged to Mariqueen. If Twitter wasn’t so damn impossible to scroll back on posted tweets, I did even congratulate him, but that is irrelevant. What is relevant is that I was having a chat with a mate on twitter (note-rebelrebel666 who was duly banned from Twitter at Reznor`s request, or so I’m led to believe) about Reznor`s sudden engagement to someone half his age and of dubious personal and professional credentials when I jokingly said I thought she looked like a ladyboy. Which in my humble opinion she does! Anyway, little did I know that Reznor still stalked my page and read my tweets. His retaliation wasn’t clear to me until I started to get abusive and downright vicious NIN psychofans trolling me. As we all now know, Reznor said and I quote: “@andreaurbanfox you know what sucks, YOU”. Ha! I couldn’t help myself, it was too easy, and so I replied: “I suck and swallow. How about you? Any cock action lately of just Mariqueens?” I thought and still think it was a damn good reply and it still tickles me. The problem is that at the time Reznor had ½ million followers. Most of which are angry, depressed, emo, starry eyes, arse licking fans who took upon themselves to “protect” their 45yr old idol from me. The backlash of my comment/reply is well documented in mine and Fred Garrett’s blogs.
Bla bla bla time went on…Reznor carried on making a fool of himself on Twitter. Saying how mellowed out and in love he was just to turn around and rant about this and that, diss the odd fan or celeb….the usual. Then came the Eric story. At the time I was pretty pissy with all the NIN psychofans that religiously pestered me and was also very concerned about the floods in Brazil. I must admit I approached Reznor a bit “all guns blazing” and asked him why help 1 individual whose chances were minimal and not help ½ million displaced and starving people in Brazil. Again, this part of the story is well documented. His reaction was the usual name calling so typical to him (and his sheeply). This time I took this and turned to my advantage as it did help raise awareness of the problems I was then actively campaigning for. I even thanked him for his outburst on my blog on Myspace titled “Act Now” HERE.
Then something came to light. Actually, make that someone. Andrea Mulrain, Reznor`s ex-sweetheart approached me. She had a lot to say. Most of which remains private but one of her many emails to me was blogged on Myspace, but can be seen HERE, because I thought it was of public interest and necessary to make clear to his fans that he was/is NOT the philanthropist he claims to be. At the time I raised many questions regarding his motives for helping Eric and that can be found HERE.
True to form, nothing was answered. All I got was more ranting and raving from him. Then came the “I’m quitting Twitter” bluff and the long winded rant he posted at NIN.com blaming “plump & ugly” Metalsludge users for his decision. Again, there he was playing the victim and manipulating his minions. Totally unable to take responsibility for his actions. Unfortunately it backfired on him big time! His lack of eloquence topped with his lack of humanity made him, apart from alienating his more hefty fans, he went on to give suicide advice to his fans (and we know that if they aren’t emo, they are pretty fucked up and/or angry fanbase). The backlash of that can be seen HERE and I also wrote a parody of it which you can see HERE.
We carried on antagonizing each other, playground style. Oh! The joyous days of puerile bunter! I shall always remember those fondly!
Let us go back to the oh-so-evil blogs. In mid June I went to Southside festival. No to just see NIN. I was actually more interested in seeing Nick Cave, Pixies, Fleet Foxes etc. But it so happened NIN was the headlining act on Saturday night. As I was going to write about the festival, I couldn’t help but write about NIN. You can read that review HERE. And yes, I did enjoy their gig. I actually thought I wasn’t going to because of my now tainted view of the utterly flawed singer (I use the word singer loosely). I DID see him drinking of what looked to be a can of beer. I DID see him slip and almost fall onstage. I DID think his performance was a let down. I can’t be blamed for what I saw and the conclusions I came to after the gig. I also reviewed Mew & NIN Luxembourg gig HERE.
So now we are at the stage where/when apart from Reznor reading my blogs/tweets I also had Mariqueendoing the very same. It is well known that many times she had a “dig” at me via Twitter but to be honest by this stage I couldn’t care less and was fully openly saying what I thought of her, him, their relationship, his behavior, the Eric story etc. I didn’t even engage in banter with her because in true honesty her ghetto lingo topped with the poor grasp of the English language meant most of her stuff was painful to read, let alone reply to.
One thing Reznor never accounted for was the fact that I am the best of friends but the worse of enemies. Don’t piss me off and expect me to drop it and let go. He also didn’t account for people from his past (and present) circle of friends were feeding me information about him. And for his annoyance and the disbelief of his more psychotic fans, I was not suspended from either Twitter or WordPress (despite their string of complaints) because all I was/am saying is MY understanding based on information which is either already in the public domain or information which was given to me and duly verified. I’m also pretty sure the networks in question here are ok with the amount of traffic and publicity all this has generated. Not being a cynic here but without these online dramas the internet would be boring and lame.
We now move on to the 4th of July. Not because it’s just “lets blow shit up” day in the USA but it’s when Eric died. Yes it was sad that after the entire circus created around him, he didn’t manage to pull through. Unexpected? No it wasn’t. He never even got the heart transplant he needed. He was never well enough. At least that was the official story and we shall never know if it’s the truth or not.
With that in mind I DID tweet Eric’s sister Veronica. I simply said it was bad news but I asked what would happen to the donated money. Would it be returned to the donors or would it go to a worthy cause. Simple. No accusations. No pestering for full accounts (which I have done since but no one is able or willing to supply them). Anyway, it seems I wasn’t the only person with questions regarding the Eric fund and the accounts for medical expenses. How this other person worded her question to Veronica I don’t know. All I know is that at this point, our uncapped crusader Reznor either read my tweet or was alerted of it and went on a verbal rampage calling me and this other girl, and I quote:” uniformed c*nts”. I sure want wearing a uniform at the time so I didn’t take offence to that. I was a bit taken aback by him calling me a pig knowing very well I’m Jewish therefore making clear his anti-Semitism. I duly went on to blog about this and you can read that HERE.
What followed was the usual trolling with the added threat from NIN psychofans as well as the “Eric’s Twitter army” on the defensive. I say, for a bunch of Born Again Christians with so much love in their hearts they don’t half like swearing and bashing. But hey, their motives for donating can also be questioned as most of them did so because of their devotion to Trent Reznor, not because they genuinely cared who the feck Eric was. So that you know, up to this day no one has produced any accounts nor has any official statement has been made regarding the accounts or the whereabouts of the remaining donated money. Silence is only golden in certain situations (the one that went straight over Reznor`s head are a good example) but in this instance the less open they are about this, the more they open themselves to speculation.
Bla bla bla more playground antics and banter from both sides….more questions being asked about Reznor`s now apparent meltdown…..bla bla bla NIN touring Europe and Reznor still making a fool of himself (read about it HERE)…bla bla bla Mariqueen posts picture of her panties online…..bla bla bla London O2 gig….. That ROFL worthy photo of an overweight Reznor falling onstage (HERE) and now this. Both jokers are gone from Twitter…err….their public accounts are but their private accounts ( @noise_floor & @NEEUQIRAM )remain which means that this story is far from over…..I can predict both will be lurking around, reading our stuff as usual. Needless to say we are due an influx of newly open accounts used exclusively to troll those, like myself, got a brain, a voice and it isn’t scared to use either.
We are now up to date with this story….until his next move that is
UPDATE 1
Hours after Trent Reznor waves Twitter goodbye…
…after closing @trent_reznor (and @mariqueen) account on Twitter the tickets for the last (last?) NIN gigs go on sale. Hmm…
Think about it. Not the first time Reznor uses some drama before announcing something which needed all his minions attention. Clever PR. He knows his minions lap it up like the little sheeply they are.
A few hours later his not so private account @noise_floor (and @neeuqiram ) is also closed. At this point one is lead to believe he/they actually meant the whole privacy stuff.
It`s official. Our once beloved, trendy, friendly local booza The Florist in Bethnal Green is no more. What we have now is a tired looking, overpriced, unwelcoming pub.
Long gone are the cool days of lock-ins with the locals and a selected few, when one could go have a power-nap until 11pm and then hit the pub by midnight in the certainty of a guaranteed bender.
Gone too are the after gig parties. I vaguely remember them (flashbacks?). The last one I went to was The Strokes back in the summer of 2003. As usual one hit the pub around 1am (a girl has got to make an entrance) and by then the party was at full swing. The place was packed with journos, hangers-on and the usual colourful locals including yours truly. I must admit to being well pickled already and as the booze & Co were flowing freely at the bar or in the loos, it didn’t take long before I was twankered (twatted+wankered) but so was everybody else. Anyway, The Strokes frontman was introduced to me. Julian was a lovely, polite and pleasant young man very much the opposite of his poodle curly hair frisky Brazilian drummer who tried to stick his tongue down my throat. As for the journos present, they were either higher than I was or they quoted a different party because somehow the next days tabloids said Julian broke one of the toilets and brought it into the main area of the pub. Utter rubbish as I was there until 7am, by which time the band had long gone back to their hotel and no loo was to be seen.
But lets come back to the present day and the pub review which this was intended to be.
Where was I? Oh yeah…gone too are all the good looking, well dressed and nice bar staff being replaced by smelly, ignorant, arrogant, intolerant nobodies who treat you like shit when they actually bother to serve you…no time to serve when they spend most of the night going into the cellar for a sneaky fag (bare in mind we the punters aren’t allowed to smoke).
And apart from the nice, “happening” peeps, Shoreditch twats & City pimps of times past, we..re now faced with “wannabes” and “has-beens” who spend most of their time snorting bad quality coke out of the smelly gents loo.
It is very sad to see how bad its being run and what has become of this once great little East End booza.
* This is NOT immediate exposure for company & wannabes – do not be fooled ** Do note the use (overuse) of the words assume & allege
This article was originally posted on the 7th Feb 07 HERE – Nothing much has changed since…just got worse
Another day, another gig. This time it’s in Luxembourg.
I had no expectations of the venue but I must say I was surprised to see it wasn’t all that big. My guess would be a 5k capacity tops. But then I reminded myself of where I was and let’s be honest, Luxembourg is tiny! With that in mind it came as a surprise to me that the venue wasn’t packed. My estimate would be that it was at half of its capacity, if that! During the gig one could easily walk around from side to side and as you’ll see by the photos, one was able to get very close to the stage. So, it wasn’t a sold out gig. Hmm…
Let us move on to what matters: Mew. For those of you who don’t know Mew, they are a 5 piece alternative prog-rockish band from Copenhagen and have been around for 15yrs or so. Mew has seen members come and go and their style has evolved (like it should) but they always had a very distinctive sound which they like to describe as “pretentious arty rock”.
Mew’s set was very good. Not once did they drop the ball. They were and looked very professional, passionate and as though they were having a good time, not to mention they were as tight as a rat’s arse. The punters obviously picked up on that because everybody (after their gig) was in total awe of them. My personal opinion is that their set was too short. We could have all done with a few more tunes from them. All in all Mew is full of WIN
Not sure if there were technical difficulties or if TR couldn’t find the right shade of black T-shirt to wear but NIN had us waiting for about 45 minutes. Obviously by then the punters were not amused and started to get restless, to boo and whistle…Pretty much like what happened at Southside festival in Germany minus the cold & rain.
So after the long wait NIN finally showed up. With not a single word to the crowd, NIN played song after song, like they were doing a 9 to 5 job. Reznor looked even more tired than he has done recently and was doing his part of the “routine”, nothing more. Once again he was a let down as a showman and most disappointing of all, as a singer. This “bad vibe” he so strongly transmitted to us must have been picked up but the rest of the band because they all seemed a bit bored.
Having said that, bored or not the rest of the band delivered what was expected of them. They are extremely good musicians. To me the obvious centre stage, the one who carries NIN on his back is Robin Finck. The dude is just bloody awesome! Hard not to ask oneself what Robin could/would achieve if he had a band of his own. He is front-man material, he can sing (and hit the notes) and is just an amazing bundle of pure energy combined with incredible talent and feeling. WIN to Robin Finck and the rest of the band (minus Fatznor)
Going quickly back to the gig as a whole, I recall Reznor mumbling “thank you” once but even that wasn’t audible. I am positive those present would have appreciated a bit more than a mumbled, almost begrudging “thank you”. It is possible he could have mumbled something else and I just didn’t hear it because apart from paying a lot more attention to the others onstage, I can also almost completely block out Reznor`s voice. He also seemed a bit pissed off because the audience wasn’t as quiet as he obviously had wished for during the last song (Hurt) and there was no encore. So, again, Reznor was/is FAIL in my books.
Saturday 20th June – After hours on the razz non-stop, I finally hit the sack at… err…don’t know the time but it was getting light. Nothing much to tell until I woke up at …err…no idea of the time but it was afternoon, my head hurt something silly and I had no voice (a blessing in disguise, I hear some of you say)
Details of the rank loo experience while hangover as fuck aside, time was flying and all of a sudden it was time to hit the festival stages again…But first some beer to ease the pain.
Gogol Bordello was on at the Green Stage at…err…don’t know. All I know is that me and my homies made it there in time to see some of his set and attempt some dancing and singalong but all we managed to do was to stand there kinda mesmerized by the energy coming from the stage while pitifully lacking any energy ourselves. It was enjoyable, the band was tight and the crowd got well into it but I must admit it wasn’t my cuppa. Still, I feel I must give them a WIN
I vaguely remember seeing Eagles of Death Metal perform 1 or 2 songs but I was shattered so I decided to have a nap until midnight as NIN was on at 12.30 and I wanted to be compos mentis then. It goes without saying that I didn’t manage to nap due to the anxiety which was now pretty high. Why was I anxious? Because I was about to be surrounded by NIN psychofans who could potentially recognize me and carry out some of the threats I received after His Holiness Trent Reznor flamed them and set them loose on me. But that is old news now so…
Nine Inch Nails was on at the Blue Stage. Unlike some of the other bands which came on earlier, NIN was the first (and only) band to keep the punters waiting. It wasn’t a long wait to be honest, 10 minutes tops, but it was cold and raining so it was unpleasant and unnecessary. Obviously I speak for myself but I know most punters were pissy about this because they started to boo and shouts of “oh c`mon!” were heard loud and clear. Later I was to find out by a reliable source that the band didn’t arrive at the festival site until like 20 minutes before the gig. Not a very professional approach from Mr.Perfect, is it?
Lights deemed and the stage filled with smoke. I moved my plump ass closer to the stage and managed to position myself a few feet from the shortest microphone placed in the middle of the stage. NIN came on in style! Robin Finck guitar was deafening. The drummer reminded me of Animal, in a really good way. They were both great! Then the unexpected happened: Trent Reznor started to “sing” and his deep, low voice was almost inaudible. As he struggled to mutter his own songs, at the end of each line an excessive amount of reverb kicked in. Cant blame the PA because the rest of the band was doing just fine. The reverb was there to hide the fact Reznor no longer can deliver. His voice is gone and we are left with a sweaty, bloated, old & angry looking excuse of a man/artist with moobs. All through the show Reznor looked “out of it” and there was a lot of going back and forth to have a sip at the beer can next to the drums which lead me and my companions in the crowd to assume he was legless. This assumption was confirmed when, while erratically pacing about, he slipped and almost fell to the ground. So, all things considered, it was a FAIL
Thursday 18th June – Arrived in Zweibrucken to beautiful sunshine and a beautiful smiley face of my friend Iris who was picking me up and driving me to Saarbrucken where I was to spend the rest of the day in her garden eating cherries straight from the tree and annoying her cat with a long/thin stick. Later the same day we had a lovely dinner at a rather picturesque local old brewery come restaurant where I was introduced to the delights of krautbeer.
9 am Friday 19th June – Iris, Nichole and me finally finished packing the big van which was to be our home for the next 3 days with everything we could possibly think of minus the kitchen sink. We said our good-byes to the cats, set not 1 but 2 sat-navs and off we went, festival bound.
What I wasn’t aware of was that the tiny airfield in Neuhausen ob Eck where the festival was held was in the middle of the Black Forrest, almost 4hrs drive away from our departing point. Glad to say we took a shortcut (?) through France and shaved some 100km off the journey.
Several beers ater, I mean hours later, we arrived. Thank fuck! We drove around a bit, found a spot near the loos (but not too near so we wouldn’t run the risk of suffocating with the notorious vile fumes which would no doubt come from it), unpacked some gear, dressed down to match the already pissed & unwashed revelers in the caravan next to us and off we went to watch a few bands.
We managed to see the last couple of tunes by Less Than Jake. They were up on the Green Stage. I thought they were a good “warm up” band. WIN. Little did I know they were far better than the following act…
Lily Allen was a let down. I didn’t quite get why the fuck she was there in the first place. But I stood there for as long as I possibly could before I walked away from a cold, distant, un-passionate, mechanical set where Lily hardly managed to smile at the crowd and the bored looking musicians. Ok, she is competent and hits her notes but she totally lacked the festival spirit. FAIL
Fleet Foxes were on next at the Blue Stage. If you are not familiar, let me try to describe them: they look like hairy Yetis but sing like angels. Anyway, as they started their set it started to rain quite heavily. Wet and cold we stood there in total awe because they were simply divine! Their mellow tunes delivered to perfection. It was quite an experience and I highly recommend you go watch them. Big WIN
I was soaked to the bone and cold so I duly went to get pissed at a Brazilian kiosk selling caipirinhas. Damn! They were good! So good in fact that I lost track of time, missed Fettes Brot and most of Die Arzte. But I must say that from what I saw of Die Arzte they were really good and a real crowd pleaser. I didn’t stay until the end because their set overlapped with Nick Cave.
Pissed, wet, cold and alone I went to the Blue Stage to watch Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. This one is easy to write about: it was fucking awesome, mind blowing, brilliant performance! And what a sexy mutha fuka! Even when the PA died on him, he carried on until the end of the song before leaving the stage for a few short minutes. He returned, apologized to the punters, had a dig at the sound engineers and went on to deliver what was to become the highlight of the festival IMHO. Uber mega bitchin WIN
