Didn't we have a lovely time the day we met Cthulu?
As mentioned last Friday, I was under a cold. A slightly weird one, as it happened, in that I went from the awful sore-throat-shivery-achey-feverishness of "coming down with a cold" to the tight chest and hacking cough of "getting over a cold" without ever really having the snuffly bit in the middle.
Anyway, despite feeling moderately ghastly, I headed off to a gig on Friday night.
TMTWNBBFN are a four-piece steampunk band, despite them not being especially convinced that steampunk is a thing. I guess they do contain both steam (lots of lyrics about steam engines, Stephenson, Brunel, etc) and punk (noisy).
They were supported by False Flags, who I really didn't enjoy much. I described them as screamy thrash, but valkyriekaren corrected me to shouty hardcore. Anyway, they play music that I don't especially like, but reports from people who do like that kind of thing suggest that they weren't actually terribly good at it. We should have stayed in the pub a bit longer :)
Top support was provided by The Cesarians. With a name like that, I was rather expecting extremely inexpert, filthy punk but they turned out to be a sort of debauched and corrupted 40's danceband. I recommend giving them a listen - althought I think I actually like them recorded rather than better than live.
The Men erupted onto the stage, in full-on celebratory mode following the good news about their singer's recovery from throat cancer (he later came on stage wearing his radiotherapy masc - a scary white plastic affair - to sing Creaming Jesus' Lilies). The band is one part musicians to one part comedians, and they are very funny while making a splendid racket.
Certainly enough so that in my delicate and weakened state, an hour flew by with songs about gin, Charles Darwin, Jesus, girls in goggles, men made of boilerplates, the Whig party, Prince Albert etc. A good few new songs were trotted out, airing concerns about, for example, the perfidy of the average mine owner. Let no one say they're not on top of the burning issues of the day. If you like your songs raucous, silly and occasionally filthy, I highly recommend giving them a list. Go on, you can stream the entire (and rather lo-fi) first album from Bandcamp.
Unrelatedly, I am pleased to notice that The Garage is no longer Relentless. I guess its mellowed a bit.
On Saturday, I braved hell and (almost listerally) hight water to get over to bateleur's house for a spot of role-playing. (NB. If you're one of the people playing in subsequent versions of this, it's safe to read this as it contains no details of the game.)
Bateleur kindly offered, a while back, to run a Call of Cthulu game for people who'd never played CoC. I've done remarkably little roleplaying in ages, so jumped at the chance, dusted my dice off, and hopped on a train.
Fortunately, all five party members seemed to have brought their special dice with them - you know, the ones that crit fail when it's funny and critically succeed when it's important - and we had both a very convivial and very entertaining game.
I think the last roleplaying I did was actually as a stand-in for a friend in an ongoing old-skool D&D campaign. I was in the area, he was not, and he drafted me in (complaining bitterly that his party always let nasty things happen to his character when he himself wasn't there). It was a fun evening, majoring on solving complicated puzzles and carefully planning out our actions to make sure we got the maximum success from any encounter.
However, I do like my role-playing a bit more, well, role-play-y. On Saturday, at the point at which things were going very wrong and Bateleur was pointing out that we all had time for exactly one action, my action ended up being "stand and stare blankly". A massively un-useful contribution, I concede, but it seemed like an extremely probable reaction from the character I was playing to the situation that was unfolding.
And the rest of the party, bless 'em, didn't even whinge about it.
Many thanks to Bateleur for running it, cooking us an extremely fine meal, furnishing some very pleasant company and generally being a good egg.
And, to tie the two nicely together, we have TMTTNBBFN performing Margate Fhtagn:
Anyway, despite feeling moderately ghastly, I headed off to a gig on Friday night.
TMTWNBBFN are a four-piece steampunk band, despite them not being especially convinced that steampunk is a thing. I guess they do contain both steam (lots of lyrics about steam engines, Stephenson, Brunel, etc) and punk (noisy).
They were supported by False Flags, who I really didn't enjoy much. I described them as screamy thrash, but valkyriekaren corrected me to shouty hardcore. Anyway, they play music that I don't especially like, but reports from people who do like that kind of thing suggest that they weren't actually terribly good at it. We should have stayed in the pub a bit longer :)
Top support was provided by The Cesarians. With a name like that, I was rather expecting extremely inexpert, filthy punk but they turned out to be a sort of debauched and corrupted 40's danceband. I recommend giving them a listen - althought I think I actually like them recorded rather than better than live.
The Men erupted onto the stage, in full-on celebratory mode following the good news about their singer's recovery from throat cancer (he later came on stage wearing his radiotherapy masc - a scary white plastic affair - to sing Creaming Jesus' Lilies). The band is one part musicians to one part comedians, and they are very funny while making a splendid racket.
Certainly enough so that in my delicate and weakened state, an hour flew by with songs about gin, Charles Darwin, Jesus, girls in goggles, men made of boilerplates, the Whig party, Prince Albert etc. A good few new songs were trotted out, airing concerns about, for example, the perfidy of the average mine owner. Let no one say they're not on top of the burning issues of the day. If you like your songs raucous, silly and occasionally filthy, I highly recommend giving them a list. Go on, you can stream the entire (and rather lo-fi) first album from Bandcamp.
Unrelatedly, I am pleased to notice that The Garage is no longer Relentless. I guess its mellowed a bit.
On Saturday, I braved hell and (almost listerally) hight water to get over to bateleur's house for a spot of role-playing. (NB. If you're one of the people playing in subsequent versions of this, it's safe to read this as it contains no details of the game.)
Bateleur kindly offered, a while back, to run a Call of Cthulu game for people who'd never played CoC. I've done remarkably little roleplaying in ages, so jumped at the chance, dusted my dice off, and hopped on a train.
Fortunately, all five party members seemed to have brought their special dice with them - you know, the ones that crit fail when it's funny and critically succeed when it's important - and we had both a very convivial and very entertaining game.
I think the last roleplaying I did was actually as a stand-in for a friend in an ongoing old-skool D&D campaign. I was in the area, he was not, and he drafted me in (complaining bitterly that his party always let nasty things happen to his character when he himself wasn't there). It was a fun evening, majoring on solving complicated puzzles and carefully planning out our actions to make sure we got the maximum success from any encounter.
However, I do like my role-playing a bit more, well, role-play-y. On Saturday, at the point at which things were going very wrong and Bateleur was pointing out that we all had time for exactly one action, my action ended up being "stand and stare blankly". A massively un-useful contribution, I concede, but it seemed like an extremely probable reaction from the character I was playing to the situation that was unfolding.
And the rest of the party, bless 'em, didn't even whinge about it.
Many thanks to Bateleur for running it, cooking us an extremely fine meal, furnishing some very pleasant company and generally being a good egg.
And, to tie the two nicely together, we have TMTTNBBFN performing Margate Fhtagn:
Click to view