Swedes can ruin your health/ Hitler was barking up the wrong tree/ and other life lessons.

Last post I made bold claims about how this post would be a thrilling tale of debauchery, tits, expensive pants and public humiliation. Well, I don't want to back away completely, but my lawyers have expressed concern about full disclosure of the details of  what-I-did-on-my-night-off.

The short story is that Svensk uber-vixen/taste-maker Sara Isobel Shakarchi and her renaissance-girl-bro Tilde Evelina took me out for some drinks and loose talk in the Shoreditch (innit) area.  They introduced me to a pal of theirs, fashion gadabout and certified loose-cannon Daniel Strandman (from the house of Julian Red) who embarrassed the dung out of me by introducing me to his freinds as "Fucking Ben from fucking Civil Civic, the best fucking band in the fucking world, man! I'm fucking serious, man!".

What followed was a nightmare of bad behavior and poor life choices that still turns my stomach to think about. I have no-one to blame but myself, but fuck that, I choose to blame Daniel anyway. I tried to find a picture of him online, so I could post it with a huge bold warning underneath. But all I could find was this picture of Eva Strandman, who I suspect is his psychotic, gun-having grandma. It'd make alot of sense.

"Daniel....DANIEL!!! Quit hanging out with those evil 

queers and come shoot some elk with old Granny Eva."

In summary, many thanks to Sara, Mathilda and Daniel for the good times. Mwah!

Anyway, I'm shifting the thrust of this post to our Saturday night gig in Camden, at Proud in the Stables Market.

As you can sort of see from this photo, the back half of the venue is a bunch of old stables which have been converted into private booths for patrons. Now imagine this space packed to bursting point with hideous, screeching slags in cocktail dresses and their dumb-as-a-bag-of-hammers-covered-in-hair-gel boyfriends.
Horrible, horrible. I've tried everything to blank out the memory.

Not an actual photo from the night, but an aproximate illustration of the kind of ignorant, cashed-up scum I'm ranting about. I just put "Essex Clubbers" into Google images and it jumped right out. Is that Hasselhoff??

In my (usually offensive and arrogant) opinion, Hitler should have left the European Jewry alone and gone after THESE fucks. That would be a Thousand Year Reich I could get behind.

Fortunately we didn't have to do much mixing with these putrid assholes. The crowd in the band room were much less smug and offensive. Anyway, we were playing first-on, on a bill that included local popsters "Fiction", who both Aaron and I were keen to see after listening to the choons on their Myspace and having a little bop in the loungeroom. Nice shit.

We, however, were not nice shit. For the first time ever in the History of Civic, The Box had a series of personal crises and we were forced to stop multiple songs in mid-flight. The effect of this was that even when we convinced it to play, we were rattled and jittery and played with anti-swagger. Horrible.

But these things happen, even to awesome, seasoned craftsmen like us, and we managed to play a few songs from beginning to end without incident. Apologies to the crowd. We were not on form, but hopefully you got the drift. Thanks to that Irish couple who laughed at my Aussie joke and shook our hands post gig.

In post stage news, I was shocked and pleased to meet  and drink with an old high-school friend who had come along to check us out. Michelle Magherita, in the many, many years that I wasn't keeping track of her, has become a powerhouse of creative action, playing bass in international touring acts, running a small label or two, and doing fashion journalism just for kicks and loose change.

MM, with bass, on stage somewheres, killing it for Canberra.

 Turns out not ALL of my friends were pre-destined for either suburban slavery or drug addiction and early death. Nice to know....really nice to know.

Blah blah rattle blah. I'm hoping that tonight we can re-balance the cosmic scales by tearing the mthrfkn roof off The Windmill (mostly so I can play with Ben the dog). Come on down and help make it happen!!!!!

P.S. If your wondering why this post contains no mention of Aarons' sickening behavior, it's because The Cube still has him under it's nerdy spell and he's meek as a kitten. So don't be shy! Come to Brixton and meet the new Mr Cupples!
Thanks to Michelle for the moody live shots.