Paul Schiernecker

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  • Newsweek.

    I’ve spent the last couple forays feeling neurotic as hell. The fact is that I’m waiting on other people, waiting on news that could alter a lot of what I’ve got going on, and today is the first of two days this week when I am supposed to hear back regarding one of them.

    I’m not going to publicise this post in the way I usually do because if I don’t get my way I’m liable to kick off and delete it anyway but if it is good news I will post it here and reveal why I’m being so cryptic.

    I hate waiting on other people, they never seem to grasp the utter emergency state that is my realm and take their precious time.
    Pleasssse just let it work out.
    I’d really like this.
    I need out.
    Please.

  • Bank holiday Monday freeform jazz odyssey post

    I’ve got some raisin toast and black coffee at my side, I don’t have a top on and I’m ready to do some writing. By that I don’t just mean a blog post, I’d like to finally get the first in a long line of short stories completed, it’s been kicking about at the four thousand word mark for weeks now, and I’ve just got to close the thing off and then I can move onto something else and not have to be so concerned all the time.

    Yesterday I got to visit my godson Toby and his doting parents Will and Chloe who I lived with while I was at University. He’s a right little tearaway now, I haven’t seen him since his first birthday and while he hasn’t mastered the complexities of saying my name yet, he has learnt to open doors and store food in his chubby little cheeks so he can compost it down to mulch and then expel it to the carpet whenever he chooses, he’s adorable. It’s really nice to spend time with Will and Chloe because they remember what I was like at Uni better than I seem to myself, I had such a brilliant time while I was living with them and its nice to get lost in those memories for a while, and for Kate to realise that I’m actually a lot better, and that she’s lucky she didn’t meet me during those hedonistic times because I was a self centered little creep and for the majority not all that fun to be around. Regardless of that I still maintain a brilliant friendship with Will and Chloe who prepared for the arrival of their child by looking after me, ensuring that I was put to bed, up in times for lectures and eating properly, they’re naturally attuned to looking after a baby, because they had me first. They’re brilliant parents.

    I’m going to get on with some work now, too much to do on a bank holiday, which is a bit depressing, but maybe tomorrow will bring a change of plan, or the news I’ve been waiting for, and everything will just work out for me. Here’s to hoping.

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  • Reading on review.

    Morning.
    Or if it isn’t morning, where have you been?
    I feel I need to clarify a few points before I write this post.
    The first is that despite what I am due to say I very much appreciate the opportunity to see live music, I feel privileged to get to enjoy the music I like, and to spend time with a good friend.
    The second is that if you recognise yourself or your characteristics in the people I describe then that’s fine.

    Yesterday I got to spend the day with my friend James, I hadn’t seen him in about a year and while I know that he follows this blog fairly religiously (he pointed out the link to it on the homepage of his iPhone to me yesterday) I don’t think I’ve ever written anything about him, and I know this causes him more pain than when we discovered Burger King was shut at one o’clock this morning. When I was fresh out of Uni I got a job as a ‘data entry’ clerk in a bank, it was supposed to be a stop gap, but it lasted nearly two years, and just led me to the job I’m in now. On my second or third day I got in the lift after a cigarette break with who I thought at the time was the coolest man I had ever met. He had the skinniest jeans on you can imagine, a deep V-cut t-shirt and an oversized beanie holding back his mane of curly dark hair. We have talked about our meeting since and it was pretty much exactly the same as when Summer and Tom meet in (500) Days of Summer. I was wearing a The Queen Is Dead t-shirt and James said:
    ‘you like The Smiths?’
    and the rest, as they say is history. This was a big deal for me. James was the first person in that office to take the time with me, and in a way that will make me cringe (and probably make him laugh) he served as a big brother character.
    Two years ago; and with his hand forced slightly behind his back, James moved to Birmingham for work (despite the fact I repeatedly told him he would get stabbed) and my visits up there, and his visits home have been sporadic at best so it was nice to spend yesterday with him. That’s a bit of backstory for you. Onto the main event…

    We arrived at Reading at about twelve, having been caught up in traffic for about two hours, and taking in the brilliant new Bloc Party album Four alongside Scroobius Pip and Jack White. Trying to find a cashpoint I couldn’t help but notice the ‘scene’. Rather than it seeming like everyone was in their disposable dusty t-shirts it seems a trend has arisen for ‘festival wear’. This basically means boys in vest with bold kaleidoscope triangle prints, skinny jeans or skinny shorts and boots and girls in high waisted shorts, t-shirts promoting bands they have neither heard of or intend on hearing, and wellies. It’s a bold look when there are several thousand of them queuing outside a petrol station and it led me to tweeting that it looked like the worst episode of skins imaginable.

    When we got onto the site we headed to the Main Stage and caught Blood Red Shoes set which had a lot of heart considering its slot, and had an impressive haul of fans stretched out across the front. After that I got my one and only cider of the day and we settled in to watch Mystery Jets on the barrier, by this point my level of disdain for the majority of the people at the festival was rising, like that moment before The Hulk starts lurching forward in agony and fucking shit up. Mystery Jets were very good, as they have been each time I’ve seen them, and the songs on Radlands fit comfortably into their set. In a move that I don’t think I will ever fully understand Odd Future were on after Mystery Jets. For those of you who don’t know (and up until yesterday I’d have probably been writing this for me if that were possible) Odd Future (or to give them their full title Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All) are an American alternative hip-hop collective from Los Angeles (yes, I did take that from Wikipedia). Their leader Tyler, The Creator is a fan of controversy and his lyrics have caused a stir for their homophobic and mysoginistic views. The set was one of the weirdest things I had ever experienced, and people went absolutely fucking crazy for it. There were; by my count, eight people onstage and they rap over each other and over the kind of deep bass grime thing that I don’t really good. They were entertaining though, constantly diving out into the crowd, miming sex moves on the security staff and generally just seeming a lot cooler than I’ll ever be able to comprehend, eventually the sound was cut on them for overrunning their set and I was left with the feeling that I was missing out on something (rather than my usual feeling that everyone else had it wrong).

    It was James’s decision to watch Odd Future, and as I said yesterday, I’ll always try and see bands at a festival that I wouldn’t usually see just for the experience of it so that’s fine, but I got to see The Shins after who have been a firm favourite since the exchange about them in Garden State. They played a set that was completely parallel to the one I saw at the HMV Forum earlier this year but that’s in no way a dig, because it was very well done, and covered all four of their albums nicely. After The Shins were Enter Shikari who I cannot condone in any way shape or form I’m afraid so I went to get some noodles and took James to see the end of Miike Snow’s set. We arrived just in time for Animals (which I suppose is the song isn’t it? From there we slowly made our way back to the Main Stage and accidentally caught the last song of Enter Shikari’s set. We then waited for all the clones of my youngest brother to clear from the front of the stage and that got settled in for The Vaccines. It was an odd experience, because I felt a bit like Dorothy amongst the Lollipop Guild (what a fruity example, please excuse me). It didn’t help that all of the boys seemed to be dressed like this:

    I began to grow very aware of how much older than everyone else I felt, James and I spoke about it afterwards and concluded the best word was surreal. While we were waiting I was scanning around the audience trying to work out a way to describe them. You know how in Less Than Zero everyone is described by Clay as being ‘tan, blonde, dark glasses’, it was like that, there as such a mould to everything and I started to get pissed off about it. Twenty years ago Nirvana played on that stage and here we were with a bunch of clones dressed like little Topshop mannequins. Then something strange happened. The Libertines was blasted out over the PA and every single person in the audience sang along, then Cage The Elephant was played, and every single person in the audience sang along, and it happened a couple more times and I had this incredible revelation that it didn’t matter, that the majority of them were here for the music, that they wouldn’t have crammed themselves in around us if it wasn’t for their love of music and that perhaps the reason I was so pissed off with them is that they represented a part of my life that had long since gone out of the window, I have (albeit very few) responsibilities now, I think in logical terms all the fucking time, I don’t really do reckless (although I seldom ever did) and I was jealous of them all. With that in mind I enjoyed The Vaccines set with renewed vigour, and have to say that I’m looking forward to how songs like Ghost Town sound on the new album because live it sounded incredible.

    After The Vaccines sweatfest we wandered around waiting for The Cribs to start on the NME/Radio 1 stage. James and I have been long serving fans of The Cribs, I remember them being one of the first bands we discussed together as we prowled around in circles figuring each other out. Their set was incredible (as they always are) and the songs from In The Belly Of The Brazen Bull sound better live than they do on the record. We left after Be Safe (a personal favourite) to catch the Main Stage headliners Kasabian, and they absolutely pulled the place apart. It’s hard to describe the atmosphere surrounding the headline set at a festival, there is such energy that can never be explored or contained and when the band took to the stage people just went absolutely crazy, it was brilliant. Usually I get to a point in any set beyond an hour where I start to wonder how long it will continue for but it felt like I didn’t have time to check the time before they were walking off again, it’s easy to forget just how many belting crowd-pleasing songs they really have, it was an attack and they had an excellent strategy.

    What I will say of the day is that it has confirmed I couldn’t camp at Reading again, the sites and smells of the campsite are different to any other I have experienced and it would take an incredible across-the-board line up for me to consider staying there overnight but the snatches of the festival I do get, the Saturday of indie brilliance, is something I adore, and I hope that it will long continue, hopefully with James by my side.
    The good ship Albion sails on course.

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  • Swapping reading for Reading.

    I’m off to Reading within the hour. It’s my first journey back to the festival in two years (I did go to Glastonbury last year), since Arcade Fire and The Libertines played and they had to scrape me off the metaphorical ceiling at the end of the night. I was in love and I was a mess.
    Today it’s Kasabian and Florence and the Machine on the main stage although I’m more tempted by At The Drive In and The Cribs, for two reasons apiece. I have this rule that it’s always best to go and see the band that you are least likely to see again (this theory got me to the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury on Sunday last year for Beyonce). I only know a few At The Drive In songs but can guarantee they put on an amazing show. My second reason for wanting to go and see them is that I can be sure it will rile up some jealousy in some of my closest friends who have followed the band for as long as I can remember (and once smashed my living room door off its hinges dancing to them). My reasons for wanting to see The Cribs are exactly the opposite, I’ve seen them thrice before (?) and I know that they always get an incredible reception. The last time I saw them they had Marr in tow and I wonder how the newest album (produced by Steve ALbini) is shaping up live. I’ll have to see where the day takes us.

    I’m also interested to see what kind of creatures inhabit Reading Festival now. When I first went in 2007 it was the pure love of music and alcohol that drove people there but each visit since has shown a shift in the focus, it now seems to be more about looking cool, chino wankers and girls in daisychain straw fedoras getting fucked up on their parents money before they go back to Wherevershire to be a burden on the general populace. I hope this is just me getting older and being jealous of the hedonism of youth because I would hate to think that people aren’t going to music festivals for the music, it would be like walking up to an ice cream man and asking for a doctorate in psychology. All I can hope is that everyone stays safe, and has a good time, and doesn’t mind me flailing about to The Shins this afternoon.

  • Mancrush Friday – Marc Bolan.

    I think it’s only fair following on from last weeks mancrush that I give this week over to Mr Bolan, responsible for a generation of 70’s teenyboppers naming their children Marc, yes I know a few.

    I think it’s easy to disregard what Bolan was doing, as at the time it wasn’t particularly ‘cool’ to like T-Rex who were seen as a Top of the Pops type group. In a similar vein to how The Beatles were for girls and The Rolling Stones were for boys (as my dear old dad puts it). What is now recognised is that Bolan wrote some of the best guitar-based pop songs of his generation, leading many onto ‘heavier’ rock bands. He was a total innovator.

    What people didn’t realise was that behind the bulging catsuits and glitter was a deep rooted bohemian rock star, friends with Bowie, Jagger and Stewart, Bolan wasn’t seen by his contemporaries as being pop, and he certainly had the habits of a rock star.

    With his highset cheekbones and (self-proclaimed) corkscrew hair Bolan will always be an image, I just hope people can go deeper than that to treasure the music he created.

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  • Hunger – a flash fiction piece.

    There was a moment of shock and burning as the shoddily constructed flap at the bottom of the door was pushed open and a tray of what could almost be described as food was shoved through it, slopping its grey contents over the lip of the plate and skid marking the floor as it came to rest by his head.

    The last meal pushed through the hatch had made him terribly sick and he feared this was some part of their plan, whoever they were, to weaken him and make him more susceptible to whatever. He checked the date on his digital watch and concluded it had been just 44 hours before that he had got out of his car to remove a piece of paper stuck to the back window when he had been attacked. He was sure by now there would be a missing persons report filed, but he couldn’t work out who loved him enough to do it.

  • Joy Formidable at The Lexington.

    It’s fair to say that prior to last night my interest in Welsh three piece Joy Formidable was a passing one. Despite my girlfriend’s desperate pleas that they are one of the best bands of the last decade. We got to see them at a 200 person venue in Angel/Islington last night and I couldn’t look away.

    It’s fair to say Kate (my girlfriend) has a super girl crush on Joy Formidable’s lead singer Ritzy and I can see why. She’s a diminutive thing, who on first sight could get lost behind a guitar but as I watched her I realised that she really knows how to play. I think that’s part of the appeal, when she’s onstage your eyes can’t avert, and she knows how to play up to it, especially when she can address individual catcalls between songs.

    Bassist Rhydian layers thick heavy riffs over anything going on, and the dynamic is very much a grunge thing of quiet verse/loud chorus used highly effectively with effects pedals and loops to create a sound much more dynamic and epic than usually possible of a three piece (other than Muse (early Muse anyway)). Their drummer Matt doesn’t get the chance to say a lot but who needs to when you can play like that. It was amazing.

    I have to say (and this is just my acoustic sensibilities of late) that my favourite track of the night was Wolf’s Law taken from their upcoming second album, it was just one of those rare moments at a gig where you forgot who you were. Buoy, Greatest Light and Everchanging Spectrum were also fantastic live.

  • Put a steak in me, I’m done.

    Last night I ate a really good steak. It was so good that twelve hours later on the train to work I’m still thinking about it, that’s the sign of a good steak.

    Kate and I stumbled across Hundred Crows Rising in Islington whilst trying to find somewhere to grab dinner before a show at the Lexington. It’s a great find. The place is almost laid out like a cantina with bare wooden floors and an open bar/kitchen area so I could smell my ribeye coming.

    It was also very reasonable, two big steak dinners and two drinks for just over forty quid in Central London is pretty unusual and I plan on heading back there again. The staff were friendly without it seeming put on and the food left me with cravings on my way into work. Good show.

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  • Well I did say…

    you’ve got to try.
    It feels like a different person has passed through this skin since then. I have some exciting revelations in the coming week but I can’t give anything away upfront, because you’ll call me a blog slut.
    Just trust me when I tell you that I’m getting excited, and that I hope everything comes to fruition because it will all be much better for my psychological welfare.

    In other news I’ve decided that I want to start writing longer blog posts, I’m impressed that I manage to find some time and some words every single day but that’s not enough of a challenge for me, so on top of that I also intend to start planning a number of longer blogs, maybe verging on the term essay or the word article, depends on the content I suppose.

    The good news is that I’m going out in big London tonight with my little Kate and we are going to see Joy Formidable. I realise that in going with Kate to see Joy Formidable I am basically consenting to the affair Kate conducts (pretty exclusively in her own head) with their frontwoman Ritsy but hey, she came to see The Amazing Spiderman with me, so all is fair in love and war.

  • My blood is too thick for this.

    I can’t think properly when it’s humid. I know Essex is hardly the dizzying heights of Marrakech or Salamanca. I’m using that as an excuse for not having done any writing over the weekend. That’s usually the best time to do it but I spent the time with friends and family which I think was far more beneficial.

    Spending time writing basically means writing a paragraph, googling myself and sitting on Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr and WordPress and telling myself how good I am. It’s not the most productive way of writing. I seem to have lost a bit of focus since I finished Situation One which is probably for the best considering my intensity with it at times. I do have other stuff to be getting on with, but it’s hard to balance with the feedback I’m getting on my first completed novel (or the implied feedback I’m getting). Never more, must keep reaching, must keep on, worse things happen at sea.

Paul Schiernecker

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