Death Descends Upon The City
First of all, should I go to see Howling Bells or former Gorky's frontman Euros Childs on Tuesday? I'm leaning towards the former, but tell me your thoughts! And speaking of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci alumni, last night Chris and I went to see Richard James at Taylor John's House, who played while 'Metropolis' and 'The Third Man' were beamed onto the ceiling besides him.
We miss the opening act but get in just in time for Kill Henry Sugar (**1/2), whose frontman has a line in comedic introductions that puts me vaguely in mind of Henry Rollins, although this may be more down to recent Rollins listening and the inflexion of his voice than anything he's actually saying. Indeed, his ramblings (including a bit about how, in the same way that Eskimos has 12 words for snow, New Yorkers have 12 words for how much of a dick someone is), are more enjoyable than the music (which is essentially just plucked electric guitar and voice), and you sort of wish he'd give up one in favour for the other as a result. Plus, the only other man in his band is one of the laziest musicians I can remember seeing, playing shaker, reading backing vocals off a sheet of paper, and playing two-note basslines.
When 'The Seven Sleepers Den' was released in 2005 while Gorky's Zygotic Mynci were allegedly on hiatus (it turned out to be permenant), it recieved considerably less fanfare than former bandmate Euros Childs' 'Chops'. Still, such is evidently life for Richard James (***1/2), playing without his band today and admitting that "this is from the album I released in 2005... on a label that went bust... then released again in 2006."
During recordings, James refused to sing the song he'd written on GZM's 1997 album 'Barafundle', and he still seems an uncertain frontman, sat half-facing the audience and barely introducing his songs. That said, this is the first time he's played solo (save for the guy on Apple Mac in the background), so small wonder he's nervous, and there's certainly nothing wrong with his finger-picked indie-folk songs, which throw up Nick Drake and The Byrds as obvious comparisons. He's turned into a hell of a guitarist, which is probably the difference between him and most acoustic sets- I'd be interested to hear him with band.
Drunkeness had to be called for last night, however mesmeric the music, owing to the horrible news from earlier in the day.
Some of you may know that I work in a hotel doing a dual role. Officially, I manage the 'department' that is Conference and Banqueting. However, because there's not always enough business to justify working 40 hours in C&B, I move over to Duty Management, which is just- hey- being the Manager on Duty, which means taking care of every department for eight hours. Well, officially: in actuality, being a big cheese at Cov Hill is equivalent to winning Dogshit of the Year in terms of glamour and prestige.
This week, it's been dead as all hell at work, and has been across the industry: most hotels are half-empty this week just because it's out of season, everyone's broke, there's no big events anywhere, blah blah blah. So Head Office looks at the wage bills, compares it with the business, and all of a sudden "OMG, how do we reduce the wage bill?"
So they phone up all the General Managers trying to find out which staff on fixed salaries are flexible and which aren't, which staff merit their wages and so on. By the end of this investigation, they've decided they want SIX of our staff to go- when we're already on skeleton staff as it is, that's a major loss. Of course, we're fighting this (or at least, my superiors are).
But there's more fun still! We have an afternoon meeting spent discussing next week, in which we have 300 guests staying in-house. We discuss three days coming up, in which we have to deal with 250 guests in-house PLUS a wedding, and the relative logistics of this. We talk about how we'll have to stay up til 3am clearing the room that the wedding will be held in, and turn it round so that the room will be ready for people to breakfast in the next day. Who'll do bar, who'll do everything.
At the end of this, we're told they want to do away with Duty Managers and does anyone want to volunteer for redundancy?
Now, given that one of my colleagues, Ewan, is on a contract wherein he's paid for 40 hours a week, but STILL puts in 60 hours; given that we can all cover all departments and can't just be marooned in, say, restaurant of an evening if reception's going to shite; given that our staff will need a boot up the arse every so often to ensure the work is done well (not just half-assedly done), you'll forgive me if I think this is THE MOST IDIOTIC IDEA IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. Particularly when, on a personal level, if I can't do Duty Management shifts, there'll instead be weeks where I simply can't work at all, and when I've got a wife and kitten to care for and we're barely scraping by as it is, that's simply not possible.
It's not as if my job is in danger, as such (we all rejected redundancy, natch, since we only get a week's wages for every year we'd worked there- so, I'd get less than a month's pay as severance)- however, I can't help feeling worried about what direction my job and my employment is set to go in. And, as usual, it's back to the jobs pages.
We miss the opening act but get in just in time for Kill Henry Sugar (**1/2), whose frontman has a line in comedic introductions that puts me vaguely in mind of Henry Rollins, although this may be more down to recent Rollins listening and the inflexion of his voice than anything he's actually saying. Indeed, his ramblings (including a bit about how, in the same way that Eskimos has 12 words for snow, New Yorkers have 12 words for how much of a dick someone is), are more enjoyable than the music (which is essentially just plucked electric guitar and voice), and you sort of wish he'd give up one in favour for the other as a result. Plus, the only other man in his band is one of the laziest musicians I can remember seeing, playing shaker, reading backing vocals off a sheet of paper, and playing two-note basslines.
When 'The Seven Sleepers Den' was released in 2005 while Gorky's Zygotic Mynci were allegedly on hiatus (it turned out to be permenant), it recieved considerably less fanfare than former bandmate Euros Childs' 'Chops'. Still, such is evidently life for Richard James (***1/2), playing without his band today and admitting that "this is from the album I released in 2005... on a label that went bust... then released again in 2006."
During recordings, James refused to sing the song he'd written on GZM's 1997 album 'Barafundle', and he still seems an uncertain frontman, sat half-facing the audience and barely introducing his songs. That said, this is the first time he's played solo (save for the guy on Apple Mac in the background), so small wonder he's nervous, and there's certainly nothing wrong with his finger-picked indie-folk songs, which throw up Nick Drake and The Byrds as obvious comparisons. He's turned into a hell of a guitarist, which is probably the difference between him and most acoustic sets- I'd be interested to hear him with band.
Drunkeness had to be called for last night, however mesmeric the music, owing to the horrible news from earlier in the day.
Some of you may know that I work in a hotel doing a dual role. Officially, I manage the 'department' that is Conference and Banqueting. However, because there's not always enough business to justify working 40 hours in C&B, I move over to Duty Management, which is just- hey- being the Manager on Duty, which means taking care of every department for eight hours. Well, officially: in actuality, being a big cheese at Cov Hill is equivalent to winning Dogshit of the Year in terms of glamour and prestige.
This week, it's been dead as all hell at work, and has been across the industry: most hotels are half-empty this week just because it's out of season, everyone's broke, there's no big events anywhere, blah blah blah. So Head Office looks at the wage bills, compares it with the business, and all of a sudden "OMG, how do we reduce the wage bill?"
So they phone up all the General Managers trying to find out which staff on fixed salaries are flexible and which aren't, which staff merit their wages and so on. By the end of this investigation, they've decided they want SIX of our staff to go- when we're already on skeleton staff as it is, that's a major loss. Of course, we're fighting this (or at least, my superiors are).
But there's more fun still! We have an afternoon meeting spent discussing next week, in which we have 300 guests staying in-house. We discuss three days coming up, in which we have to deal with 250 guests in-house PLUS a wedding, and the relative logistics of this. We talk about how we'll have to stay up til 3am clearing the room that the wedding will be held in, and turn it round so that the room will be ready for people to breakfast in the next day. Who'll do bar, who'll do everything.
At the end of this, we're told they want to do away with Duty Managers and does anyone want to volunteer for redundancy?
Now, given that one of my colleagues, Ewan, is on a contract wherein he's paid for 40 hours a week, but STILL puts in 60 hours; given that we can all cover all departments and can't just be marooned in, say, restaurant of an evening if reception's going to shite; given that our staff will need a boot up the arse every so often to ensure the work is done well (not just half-assedly done), you'll forgive me if I think this is THE MOST IDIOTIC IDEA IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. Particularly when, on a personal level, if I can't do Duty Management shifts, there'll instead be weeks where I simply can't work at all, and when I've got a wife and kitten to care for and we're barely scraping by as it is, that's simply not possible.
It's not as if my job is in danger, as such (we all rejected redundancy, natch, since we only get a week's wages for every year we'd worked there- so, I'd get less than a month's pay as severance)- however, I can't help feeling worried about what direction my job and my employment is set to go in. And, as usual, it's back to the jobs pages.