One of the things that I find increasingly annoying is when people brag about how much they drink like it’s impressive. You know the kind of thing: “I tell you what, I certainly put a lot away last night!”, or: “well you know me, 1 or 2 pints normally turns into about 8 or 9! You know what I’m like!”. Yes, big wow. It’s for this reason that I am embarassed at having to admit that yet again, I was pretty much well on the way to being ruined by the time we went on at nearly 23:00 at the Marlborough in Camberwell.

This was for 2 reasons: the first being that we’d been there from about 20:00. We were actually supposed to be there at 19:00 but we got stuck in traffic. (God, imagine what would have happened if I’d been there drinking since 7! You know what I’m like! Wahey!! etc.)

The second reason  was that the venue were very kindly giving us Free Beer. We didn’t expect this, in fact we rarely do. Only a handful of venues I’ve played in have really gone to town on the Free Beer as far as I can remember. The Watershed in Wimbledon always kindly gives you a few bottles, The Northern Monkey in Leeds were the same, The Swan in Ipswich were actually very generous with drinks and food actually…

Anyway, being on a bit of a money saving mission at the moment, and the fact that I’m incredibly classy, I’d bought some cans from a garage on the way up which I intended to neck in the car and in the street just to get ‘in the mood’, so I was pleasantly suprised.

I don’t know about you, but I always feel a little uneasy accepting free stuff off people who are very nice, but then the more you drink the less uneasy and embarrassed you become, and the quicker and quicker you knock them back. They were also kind enough to give us free pizza, so for this generosity we thank them again, and happily plug them.

Incidentelly, I don’t think the headline band knew there were Free Beers, as they inexplicably left before soundcheck.

One of the other bands on the night were The Perry Lane Sect which were interesting in that they are influenced by Can. Can are one of those bands that it’s kind of cool to reference so I was over the moon when I actually managed to successfully start a conversation about Can with the singer. I’ve never felt cooler. I think I remember Thom Yorke used to cite Can as his favourite band back in the mid-90’s, around The Bends, and talk about how they ripped off the opening track on Tago Mago for Planet Telex.

On to more important matters though, it seems that our very own Matt Jarman has become quite a chameleon, appearing to change his appearance even more often than Sam gets mistaken for Russell Brand. Here he is sporting a hairstyle I believe was fashioned with the help of duct tape: