London Calling - from the top of the dial

What follows here is an attempt to reconstruct the post that I, like a jackass, managed to lose on Sunday in England and then strangely recover (Tripp we need to talk) - it's turning into a blow-by-blow trip diary since I'm realizing how cool it all was as I look back.

After I cleaned up at Blackmarket Records hopped on the tube back to the flast and met Nicole. We hung out a bit while waiting for Chris to get out of work. Actually she hung out - I dropped off to sleep more or less the moment I hit the couch. I hadn't gotten much sleep on the plane on the way in (middle seats suck) and the forty five minutes of late afternoon shut eye helped recharge the batteries.p>

Some general comments about Chris and Nicole are probably in order at this point since their both pretty new to most of the cats that read this space. Top three things you need to know about them:

1. They're lots of fun - always down for a drink and a laugh or a smoke and a giggle depending upon the mood and the time

2. They're awesome hosts - they pretty much gave Jason and I the run of the place for week, which when you think about it is incredibly generous especially when you consider they'd only hung out with me a few times before this - they even made an extra set of keys for me and Jason, a few excellent homemade meals, inside access tours of their turf (highlights including Norman Cook's house and Noel Gallagher's old house just a couple blocks away), pints at the pub, late night smokes, and all around good company. Allstars.

3. They have excellent tastes - outside Nicole's unfortunate affinity for Air Supply it's all good - Audio Bully's (ohmygod go buy this album!), drum n bass, excellent hip hop, ultraviolent japanese movies, Da Ali G show (the original British episodes (DVD region coding fucking sucks!))

Anyway, back to Thursday night, after Chris got in we headed out to a local pub for dinner and drinks. After eating we went to the upstairs area to shoot some pool and pitch back a couple more drinks. I basically shot shit and Chris mopped me up, but we bumped into Chris' sister - Kath and one of her friends whose name I now forget. The three girls were hysterical together and had some awesome stories about a kickboxing class they go to, as Kath's friend noted "to get a better bum" even though their instructor was deadly serious about kickboxing as a competitive sport.

After the pub, Chris and I hopped on the tube and went to Forward. I had heard about Forward from Simon Reynolds who I had e-mailed for advice about garage clubs. He reccomended it as a good monthly party playing the latest in Garage. He also gave me the e-mail address of Steve Goodman who often spins there under the name Kode 9. I e-mailed Steve to see if there was a night going off while I was in town and was surprised to find that not only was the party happening at Plastic People the night I was landing, but he was also willing to put me on the guest list. I asked him to put down both my name and Chris' and he was good to his word. So it was only two quid to get in.

After Chris and I got to the Shoreditch area where the club is we got our bearings in the neighborhood before stopping off for another couple drinks at a pub before going in. I love going to nightclubs and hearing the bass slap through the walls as you line up outside. It always builds up my anticipation to hear the music before you get inside. We didn't have to queue (as they say there), but we were able to get some sense of the place before going in because the pungent aroma of sensi wafted right up the stairs along with the beats and greated you right out on the sidewalk. When we got down into the club, it was about the size that Bakhtun used to be - kind of big bar/mini club and the bass pressure was also pretty Bakhtunesque.

Garage has completely lost that upwardly mobile house vibe. The Diva vocals are gone. The hiccuping cutup Todd Edwardsish vocals are gone. The string builds are gone. In their place are raw breaks and dark bone rattling bass. It's really slowed down jungle (I think Tripp's prediction of jungle, breaks and 2 step coming to some sort of uneasy truce seemed very precient on the dance floor) and it's all about the MC who I have to say had a wicked rhythm even if I couldn't understand much of what he was saying. He did shout out Kode 9's name and I wished I knew what he looked like so I could thank him for the hookup.

All in all it was more head nodding music than it was dance music. As is always the case with dark music there was a conspicuous absence of females, but the most amazing thing by far was the openness of the weed smoking. People rolled joints right out in the open, as in standing next to bouncers. There was no way that anybody in the place didn't get a contact high.

To the average punter it might have been distressing, but remember: I'm an original junglist soldier so it all just comes with the territory.

Waking up early on Friday was a bit on the rough side. We had to get out early to meet Jason at Paddington and I was kind of running on fumes, but we met him pretty much as soon as we got there and hung for a bit over a cup of coffee before taking the tube back. We hung for a bit then did the tourist thing at the cabinet war rooms. The war rooms are where Churchill and the rest of the cabinett in WWII ran the war. Weird fact - Churchill had special tables built so that he could work in bed for several hours in the morning and as he got fatter over the years they had to make him bigger and bigger tables.

It was Italian for dinner and back to the flat to get ready for Fabric. Originally Jason and Nicole were going to bail on it, but when Simon's sister Kath showed up with Jenny and we all started getting our laugh on they caved in decided to join us. I love going to clubs with a whole crew. Fabric was wicked. Superclub in every sense of the word. But packed. I mean rammed up, squeezed in, crazy bodies littering every corridor, nook and cranny packed. The drum n' bass room was absolutely mad. English people have taken bass to whole new depths. It was sooooo deep. You didn't listen to it so much as get pummeled by it. Roni Size was wicked as usual. There was a DJ battle in one of the other rooms and a third room with old school hip hop and disco. The old school was actually the source of some seriously guilty pleasures. It was a bit less crowded in there and the DJ was just flat out good - extending the instrumental beat from Let Me Clear My Throat for several minutes and then mixing into the original funk song the sample came from, scratching a bit, and dropping into "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life" and getting a rewind from the crowd!

Saturday was more or less a total wash. Nicole apparently got out early and accomplished stuff and hats off to her for it cause I didn't get out of bed until two. Chris came through in a big way though with a traditional English fry up for breakfast. The fry up consisted of fried eggs, sausage, bacon, beans, and toast. Sooooooooo good. Just what the doctor ordered for the hangover. My good guest strategy includes compulsory dish washing and I jumped right on it afterwards.

That night we met up with Jason's TV friends. They're documentary filmmakers who met Jason while covering those Columbine wannabe kids in Jersey who got caught before they managed to off anybody. Jason was one of the beat reporters who first worked the story so they interviewed him for it and apparently did some drinking with him on South Street in Philly. They were mad friendly (I love the people in this country) and we all got hammered.

More London later, the day is calling me…

PS Remember my first post from London on the eighth? Good, cause while I just managed to recover my last post, I also just managed to delet that one…