You know when you deviate from your diet of lard and sample a piece of fruit and end up all bleurgh? And you're stressed out coz you out of a job next week?
Last thing you need to Par Carking at the UEA at a sell out gig.
Honestly, the Parking Like A Twat In Norfolk facebook page would have a field day... although they'd have to rename it Parking Like A Complete Cunt In Norfolk.
Parking Horizontally/Diagonally over 2 bays. Parking over the lines to take up 2 bays. Where 2 bays are front-to-back, parking over the line so you cover off 2 bays on 2 lanes.
Twatters!
So, after 20 mins and some stressful multiple-point turns, The Xym parks pefectly...
...just in time to sample the support band Bo Derek Ningen.
Now, they'd just finished a track as I entered, when I was espied by Spooky Joolz, and hoisted onto a plinth, giving a bird's eye view of a triplicity of Sadako's out of the well.
"This band is fucking shite!" quoth the Ghostbuster.
"This is our last song" quoth the balladeers
"Well, I'll soon find out..." quoth The Xym
Holy Mary Mother Of Christ, what the buggery fuck is that unholy racket? By Satan's farty breath, this is by far the worst thing one has ever heard! Aparently, they are a psychadelic acid punk metal act - but not a very talented one. All the death screeching of all the Bain Sidhe's in hellish torment whilst scraping their talons down a chalkboard could never sound as bad as this!
You know when old folks say "That's not music, that's just noise"? Well, this band is the epitome of that statement. Skeletal asian men in dresses leaping about, screaming, and bashing/swinging guitars about in a discordant fashion with no rhythm, tune or any attempt at harmony does not music make. It was, literally, just noise.
Anyhow, the aural rape ended after an interminably loooooooong coda, and the general consensus?
"What a fucking pile of crap that was! An absolute shower of shite!". I've yet to find ANYONE who liked their performance².
So, now we wait for The Cult! Ooo, there goes Marky heading to the bar... blanking us despite shoutage... Ooooh, and wotserface (also blanking us)... and her! Phwoar! (also blanking us) - damn this eyeline evading elevated platform!
"BTW Xym, there's a curfew at 10 now. It said on the website"¹
"Are you sure? Gigs usually finish after 11 - you sure you weren't looking at Sunday?"
"Nope"
"But I has the set list here - they'll go way over 10pm!"
And here come the others to get the front! Sister & Brother-In-Law (who'll double back later for glitter), New Romantic and the missus, Beers, The Phwoarder... and then into your head pops inappropriateness as the little black dress suggests a cute Wednesday Adams, and suddenly it's all wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong, Xym! On way too many levels!
Stay here on this little plateau, o'erlooking the unobscured view of the stage, away from inappropriate commentary about hot Pretties.
But here comes The Cult! And oooooh! David Beckham is on guitar for the ladies! Oh wait - that's Billy Duffy looking suspiciously like Beckham.
And heeeeere's Ian! Is that Ian? Looks like a fat Andrew Eldritch. Or mayhap an undead Michael Hutchence. With a triplicity of aminal tails a-dangling from his belt - looks like The Xym may have to add a new addition to his Ant-scarves!!
And we're straight into the entire Electic Albumen. Wild Flower! Peace Dog! Lil' Devil! Aphrodisiac Jacket! Electric Ocean! Bad Fun! King Contrary Man! Love Removal Machine! Born to...
...oh wait - Born To Be Wild was a cover. They've ditched it, and replaced it with Zap City off the alternative version of Electric, Peace!
And finally, we end the Album session with Outlaw and Memphis Hip Shake, before the band take a break as a remix of Elemental Light is played.
Then they're back for the Hits part of the set! And we kick off with Rain! Honey From a Knife! Sweet Soul Sister! Luci...
...oh noes! They've dropped Lucifer from the set list! So we carries on with Embers! Phoenix! Rise! And, of course, She Sells Sanctuary to end it on!
But it's now almost 10, and as Spooky Joolz and the Scotch have to leave, up returns The Cult for an Encore.
Aaaaand we're into everyone's favourite Spiritwanker! Hold on... they were down to open the encore with Nirvana. Another song lost.
But as Ian finishes psychonautical manitou based ballads, he whips off his shades - well, fuck me ragged - it was an old Jonathan Creek all along! Alan Davies, all old, apologizing for the 10pm curfew so they can only sneak in one last song. "What's the worst that can happen?" he asks - "locked in a room to be raped by Alan Partidge?"
And so we end on an epic performance for all the Moon Queens, as he belts out a blinder of Sun King,
And then it's all over. Ian has tossed tons and tons of tambourines into the crowd (why, I felt disappointed to be one of the few unable to leave with one of the plethora of cheap tambos handed out hand over fist) and everyone is smiling! But as some people sneak off without their glitter hairspay, I'm still able to catch up with many an acquaintance.
● Aha! Marko! Everyone should be rallying around me! Stay here in visual awareness
where they knoweth mine location (at this point unaware some had snuck off rather than suffer
The Xym, afore Marko snuck off too on the pretext of Finding Peoples instead of stuck with Xym)
● Aha! The Swan (note to self: must lend them that new Goldfrapp album. And get
that previous Goldfrapp album I lent 'em back)
● Aha! Thingummybob who used to go out with wotserface who I ain't seen in years
● Aha! Paulina! So... less about how great The Cult were, and more Numan Knotting
'em in November. Oh, and present Paula with his Birthday Foxx we gots him in May
to be presented as a present in July... so, only 3 months late!
● Aha! Them, them, him and her!
● And outside there's a couple more. I even gets presented by The Artist with a
singlature of cannabis leaf that had been discarded on the floor by the tour bus.
Right, that's me snorted - off home to heat it on a spoon to get a restfull nights
morphean slumbers!
General verdict on The Cult: Awesome! Brilliant! Nowhere near as crap than they were a year a so ago! 10/10. Only complaint is,as with most live performances, the re-arrangement of the lyrics, so you try and sing along, and the singer is shunting bits about and changing lyrics. Slightly disappointed that he'd changed the iconic shamanic wail at the start of Spiritwanker to a generic grunt, but hey-ho, you can't have everything.
And Ian doesn't half bark a lot! Brother Wolf, indeed!
Universal verdict on Bo Ningen²: Shitter than a shitbox shitted in with shitty shit. Absolute crap. Talentless twattery. Will never, ever see them again, and you couldn't pay me enough to obtain one of their seedy CDs.
All in all - a top night out (apart from the support, which I was lucky enough to hear only 1 song by)
¹ NEWS JUST IN! SEEMS THE CURFEW WAS IN PLACE BECAUSE THE UEA HAS A STUDENT CLUB NIGHT - AND THEY HAD TO CURTAIL THE CULT SO THE STUDENTS COULD HAVE THEIR POKÉMON NIGHT...
...YEAH, COME TO THE UEA! BECOME A PROFESSOR OF POKÉMON! COME TO THE FRESHER'S (POKÉ)BALL AND DRINK YERSELF SENSELESS AND SHAG A STUDENT! STDs - GOTTA CATCH 'EM ALL!
POKÉMON? POKE YER MUM, MORE LIKE. IF SHE'S A FITTIE MILF COUGAR BEAVER IN CATTON PARK. OR SOMETHING...
² UPDATE! I HAS COME ACROSS TWO, YES TWO PEOPLES WHO LIKED BO NINGEN! I CAN ONLY GO OFF THE LAST TRACK, WHICH THE LIKERS ADMIT "DID GO ON A BIT". MAYHAP I SHOULD LISTEN TO SOME OTHER TRACKS FOR A MORE INFORMED JUDGEMENT...
...OR MY DISLIKE COULD COULD ALSO BE THAT AT FIRST GLANCE BO MINGEN LOOKS A BIT LIKE HO MINGE(N), AND THUS PROVING A DISAPPOINT ON THE VAGINAL FRONTAGE. OR SOMETHING.
...ACTUALLY, THE MORE I THINK ABOUT IT... PERHAPS THAT'S WHAT THE FOX SAYS!
♪ BO NINGEN NINGEN NING NINGEN, BO NINGEN NINGEN NING NINGEN, BO NINGEN NINGEN NING NINGEN, WHAT THE FOX SAY? ♫
Oh you crazy Russians greybeards!
So, you've discovered an alien spaceship, deep in the Arctic wastes. Within, there lies a most amazing discovery - a lifeform beyond imagining.
And what do you do with such a discovery?
Why, send a crew up into geo-stationary orbit to artificially inseminate spiders with space monster DNA in the hopes of breeding a Queen spider that will generate bullet proof webbing to get your armour light years ahead of The West.
As you do. When you're not fighting off or imprisoning Somalian & Greenpiss Pirates who ram your ships and try to board your vessels.
But lo and behold, would you Adam and Eve it - once bred, your alien arachnid hybrids run amok, and eat your crews faces off!
And on top of that, space debris from meteor shower collisions would decide to smash into your space station and send a cage of killer spiders tumbling to Earth.
To New York no less! Home of the oversized invasionary monster. Through the streets and into the subway goes the mutant multilegged mostrosities, and before you know it, some hitherto unknown cavern is taken over as a nest.
Of course, the Tube Station Manager only knows something has crashed, and the trains need to get back up and running in time for rush hour, so you naturally send down your best engineer.
Who promptly gets bit and falls on The Third Rail.
Naturally, our Hero of a station manager can't believe his experienced engineer would be such a gormster to step on the third rail, so visits the coroner, who's pulling eggs out of the engineer. Damn good luck his wife is a Heath Inspector, so he can take a couple of eggs for assessment.
And naturally, his wife his all moody, as he's missed his daughter's 12th1 Birthday, and comets crushing the tube and monsters impregnating engineers is a poor excuse. And she has the final divorce papers to hand.
But all she can deduce is that there is no contaminatory bacteria in the eggs.
So naturally you go down into the subway with a team of military folk, and promptly get et by oversized spiders, and so the area's cordoned off.
But what's this... the Ruskies have teamed up with The US and are intimidating the coroner and going through her eggs... but... oh noes! They can't find the Queen egg, coz as luck would have it, it's in the grubby paws of The Healh Inspector!
So, once more the brilliant Russian Intelligence comes to the fore.
Nick the eggs back out of the Health Inspectors car, inject Tube Manager's mate with spider eggs (and let him die in the street) and quarantine the Tube Manager/Health Inspectors daughter. Oh, and put the Queen into the spiders nest (ooooh, they grow bigger in Earth's atmosphere!)
Failing to see the flaws in this plan, the streets are soon overrun with human sized space spiders(Where are they coming from? I thought we had them contained?), as within the nest the Spiders spin webs over the CCTV so they can't be watched. Disaster is surely on the way!
But, the family must be reunited, and they can't get to their daughter because of the armed soldiers around the quarantine zone... quarantine zone being their high-floored apartment, rather then the subway with the Spiders in.
So, mom and dad take to the subway, as it luckily links directly to their apartment block!
Well, it would, it it wasn't populated by space spiders trying to eat your face off, who chase you out into a warehouse. Where, like Ripley, you take them on with a Caterpillar P-5000 Powered Work Loader, I mean - a forklift truck!
And after you've spent ages spearing spiders and disarming guards withing yards of your door... you ends up being surrounded and arrested.
Whilst your child escapes the apartment and legs it to hid in a toy shop, you're taken to the Sentry Point outside the gate. Tied up, you watch all the soldiers get their faces et off - even the Top Brass bloke, until the spiders all scuttle off so the Russian Scientist can free you. You help your wife out of the back of the jeep, taking the opportinity to grope up your co-stars preposteroulsy oversized busom in tight top, ...
...just as the Giant Queen Space Spider bursts out from under the sidewalk and eats the Russian all up!
Roaring like a behemoth beastie from beyond the stars (or the Cloverfield beastie), the gargantual monster steps on the babysitter to death, before putting a foot/claw through the toyshop window to tumble your daughter into the basement!
Not only are most of the spiders bullet-repellant, the Queen is missile repellant! Boom boomy boom! And follow the daughter into the Toyshop basement (which is also the subway for some reason).
Thankfully, the daughter finds a small alcove the Queen is too big for, being a great big fuck of giant spider. So it seals her in with it's thick, sticky, bullet-proof webbing. Damn - it's so thick, sticky and bullet-proof, you can't break through!
Thick, sticky and bullet-proof it may be, but when mom & dad come to the rescue, they can just peel it apart and let her out.
Oh noes - here comes the Queen! OK, distract it from your family! Pick up a pole and poke the arachnid as your spouse and offspring escape! Make it chase you to an old, abandoned train and seek safety!
Crapola! It's monstrous mandibles can tear through metal! Bugger! Oh wait - what's that on the terminus wall in front of the drivers cab? DANGER! FLAMMIBLE GAS! Of course! What else lies at the end of the trainline, except pipes, cannisters and valves of explosive flammable gas!
So, sift away the æons of dusty detrius, and turn on the decrepit engine! Wow, it has power! The controls are a bit stiff, but we gets it in reverse! Back down the track at speed, chased by a Giant Mutant Space Spider! Ha! It's stuck in the tunnel entrance! BRAAAAAAKE! And... forward!
Tie the forward lever down with yer shirt, dive onto the platform, the train charges down the tunnel, smashes into the spider, hurtles headlong down the tunnel and splats the spider into the end of the line wall, igniting the gas and flambéing the ferocious menace.
Awww... the family reunites on the streets, as the soldiers shove dead spiders into the back of a jeep.
All's well that ends...
...y'aaargh! Space Monster Spiders survived on streetlights! Save us from a sequel!
1 12? 12? IF SHE'S 12, I'M JIMMY BLOODY SAVILE! LET ME JUST PAUSE IT AND CHECK IMDB... YEP, SHE'S 19. 19!!!, NOT 12 AT ALL!
You know when you're a japanese schoolgirl, and your dad is a slave driving sushi chef? Constantly beating and berating you for not fingering the rice properly, and transferring your womanly scent onto the salmon and shrimp slices?
So you run away and become an waitress at an Inn, where it just so happens that a Corrupt Company is visiting to sample the sushi.
And it just so happens that the ex-CEO of that corrupt company is lurking nearby, having been fired for reanimating dead material, about to weak his wewengay upon his former employees. And just how does he do it?
Why, by reanimating a squid, and sending it off to infect the sushi with the reanimatory serum!
And lo, the squid flies off (yes, squid can fly through the air!) and sticks its' suckers onto sushi. The salmon Sushi and the shrimp sushi immediately turn on their non-ichthyan egg-based cousin who flees in terror. Lifting their fish slice topping from the rice and baring their teeth, the sushi cackles in glee!
The sushi epidemic spreads and takes to the skies! Swarms of sushi take to the skies and descend upon their hapless victims. The evil corporate secretary takes a Salmon Roe ikura gunkan-maki to the tongue, before being hit by multiple fish dishes!
Oh noes, the egg sushi has taken refuge in a store cupboard, but before Our Heroine can bash it with a broom... it lifts up it's egg lid and sings her a soothing seranade!
Aww, cute singing sushi! Now Our Heroine has a firm friend on her shoulder, christened "Eggy", whispering words of encouragement in her ear.
But alas, they're locked in... how to escape? Luckily, Eggy has a trick up his Soy Sauced sleeve - it spews acid! A quick vom on the lock to dissolve it, and escape is made!
What's that out of the window... oh 'eck! A Fat Belly Tuna nigiri is humping a Salmon nigiri on a tree... it cums and out of the Salmon nigiri is birthed an unholy shoal of baby sushi!
Whoa - look out! A school of sushi is swarming by! Dive out the way, quick!
Ermagherd! The bite of the sushi is not only lethal (why, a swarm can consume a corpse to a skellington in seconds), but those they do not consume rise up as Rice Zombies!
A sushi shoots up the shopkeeper's snatch, and suddenly she's spewing deadly plumes of rice at her enemies...
...Husband stands behind wife, turns her to aim... a squeeze of the titties and... FIRE! Blam! Blam! Blam! Busom triggered cannonfire of rice!
What to do? Ah - connect sushi into adjoining sections to form...
...sushi nunchucks!
Twirl! Swirl! Smash a sushi out of the air!
Run, people, run! Run for the abandoned office...
...as the Ex-Ceo mergers himself with a Tuna nigiri and mutates into...
...part-Man ...part-Tuna ...all psychotic sushi!
Oh, the huge manatee! (geddit? no? Well, please yerself then!!)
♪ Fish head, fish head, roly-poly fish head! ♫
Run down the trail... "Save yourselves... I'll fend them off and save you!". Ah, but he didn't expect the nigiri mutation. For as the salmon lifts from the rice... a spout comes out and napalms him in the face! Fire beathing sushi!
Meanwhile, back in the safety of the abandonded offices...
...the one uncorrupt salaryman of the corrupt company (and sone of the CEO) is stuffing his face with ramen noodles. Unaware that the ex-CEO and batrachian behemoth hybrid has snuck some roe in with it, thus causing his face to seep fishy noodles out of his cheeks to death.
And if it couldn't get any more mental... the kamikaze sushi bands together to form an arial battleship, replete with sushi cannonfire! Eggy to the rescue! A tiny egg nigiri taking on a huge battleship formed from rice, fish and seaweed strips.
Oh, how can our remaining survivors survive?
Simples - shouting at sushi!
Seems that sushi can't bear being shouted at, and dies on impact with the soundwave. So shout at a cloud of super-sushi, and they drop dead! Fillet off the teeths from the slice of fish, pop the de-fanged treat back on its' bed of rice, and scoff 'em down into your belly!
I started to drift off at that point - they overcame the swarm, then there was an expositiony bit. And then I must've fell asleep, coz I can't remember the actual end, or what happened to fishbloke, Eggy, Our Heroine and her Sensei.
But I suspect that Mr Fish ended up dead for the fourth time, Sensei recovered from his the knife phobia after accidentally killing his wife and taught Our herine how to become a proper Sushi Chef.
But killer sushi though - how awesome is that!
