Spring is coming dear B&G lovers! You happy? Well I hope so… In case you are not I have great news for you: Bibs & Gigs is now on Instagram!! I know I mentioned Facebook in the last poll (thanks for the ones who voted, especially who gave their preference to the Smelly Armpits option) but I’m 100% sure that starting a FB page will make me lazy towards the blog activities.
So stop doing whatever you’re doing (unless you’re having a delicious meal or some great oral sex), open Instagram, find the B&G Marshmallow Man and click follow (or simply click the picture below)!
Stay Puft, Follow Bibs+Gigs!
Talking about food (and not about drugs): I went to Silk Road in Camberwell (click here for their menu) last Sunday after hearing a lot of great things about it.
Double Cooked Pork Slices – Silk Road
The food was a bit oily but pretty good (the Double Cooked Pork Slices and the Home Style Aubergines were soooo tasty!) and, since I’ve been in China during my travels, I felt while in there a sort of tradition which I never came across when having dinner in Chinatown.
Double Cooked Pork Slices II – Silk Road
Home Style AuberginesBeef & Onion handmade dumplings
As me and Lucy were very hungry as usual we also ordered a bunch of ox tripe and lamb skewers, some freshly prepared handmade dumplings and a very big portion of hand-pulled noodles with lamb.
Cheap prices, friendly and quick staff, relaxed atmosphere, generous servings. Will definitely come back!
Gigs&Tips: Going to see Swingin’ Utters tonight at the Pipeline and since I’m around there I may go to have some tacos at Lupita… I’ll let you know how it goes!
.. that started with a Chilango burrito, some beers and a quick chat with Sascha (guitar) and Ed (trombone) from the band just before the show. We got talking about when I arrived late to their gig in Milan in 2003 and we ended up playing the dices and getting drunk, then, as soon as me and my friends got in, we found the perfect spot to watch the great performance they put together, just in-between the bar and the stage.
Pulled pork burrito at Chilango
It’s impossible to fully describe how I felt, but I can promise you that when they played Macho Nachos, Road Rash and Leavin’I was completely taken back to the late nineties/early noughties, when it was all about skateboarding (or at least trying to) and Punk Rock music.
Needless to say that I was crying a little bit during that trip down memory lane, but y’all know how soft I am.
Last night the boys from Santa Barbara were absolutely impeccable, and since they started 20 years ago they’ve only got better and better, especially live. Chuck’s voice is still amazing, Dustin smashed it at the keyboards, Graham and Todd did the same on the bass and on the drums, Sascha is still looking like a kid but he now plays like a pro, and Eddie the Sexy-Mexi wasn’t just epic at the trombone, but he also managed to jump all over the stage for the entire show and play the last song from the bar just behind where we were standing. S-U-P-E-R-B!!!!
Unfortunately Keith, Caddies’ trumpet player since they started back in 1995, is on tour with Mariachi El Bronx, so wasn’t there to enjoy the party. I’m pretty sure he’s still having a good time though.
Dear Mad Caddies, thanks a lot for being the soundtrack of my youth and for making feel like a kid again during your show yesterday. Funny enough it happened to be just 5 days before my 30th birthday, so I’ll take it as a pretty cool present.
One more post before Xmas amigos, and I promise it won’t be about music this time.
.. The only disappointment in going to see 4 gigs in a week is the fact that the budget for food is very very tight, like 50p late evening deals on Waitrose’s sandwiches just before the show, or a big plate of pasta with whatever-is-in-the-cupboard type of sauce when you come back home drunk as a skunk right after it.
But for some Rock ‘n’ Roll I reckon is a pretty fair price to pay.
It all started last Wednesday with The Lawrence Arms @ the O2 Academy in Islington.
No one wanted to come so I bought the ticket online at 4pm on the very same day (pretty risky to do that for a London gig), cooked some dinner, jumped on my Vespa and boom, here I am under the stage singing out loud old timers like The Devil’s Takin’ Names, Great Lakes/Great Escapes, Like a Record Player, Quincentuple Your Money, 100 Resolutions and new great songs like Seventeener and You Are Here from their last album Metropole.
Chris (guitar) and Neil (drums)
I love these guys! The mix of melancholic lyrics and constant drunkenness makes the Chicago trio one of the best Punk Rock bands around, since 1999!
Brendan Kelly (bass)
Last time I saw them was in 2010. Same place, same feelings during the show and a lot of beers shared with my best mate Alessandro. Since then he got married and he’s now father of a beautiful girl called Chiara. And what about me? No wife and no kids, but I’m still pretty good on getting drunk on a regular basis.
Even if they didn’t play it this song is still one of my favourite..
Starring: Cocky Balboa
Saturday was the turn of Fat Freddy’s Drop @ Ally Pally..
Mr Scruff was opening… But we missed him (insert Sad Face here)! However I had the pleasure to see him earlier this year at Koko’s and God he was good! If you don’t know him go check it out!
Quick watered down beer with an extraordinary taste of piss, quick look at the toilets just to realise that I’m not in the mood to queue for 45 minutes just to get rid of some liquids and then lights went down and the Kiwis appeared on stage, making the whole crowd go bananas!!
Great logo!
Just to give you a bit of knowledge, the Wellington music collective started back in 2005, when they released their first studio album called Based on a true story. The album went gold on its first day. Recorded in a basement studio in the home of one of the band members, it was released on the band’s own label, The Drop. It was the first independently distributed album to hit number one on the New Zealand album charts. Dr. Boondigga & The Big BW came next, followed by their latest masterpiece Blackbird.
And the Ally pally night was the perfect occasion for Joe Dukie and his gang to play some great songs from this new fabulous album, Mother Mother and Silver and Gold for example, with the addition of old tunes like This Room and the mind-blowing cover of Waiting in Vain by Bob Marley.
One hour and forty minutes of greatness! No pictures and zero trips to the bar, just music, good vibes and the entertaining crazy little dances of sweaty pants Hopepa, Fat Freddy’s trombone player. What a dude!
Click here for some pics, click play on the video below for some beats..
If you spend a night in a sweaty mosh pit at a hardcore punk show you have to bare in mind that the next day in the office will suck big fucking time! And those suicidal tendencies I’m having this morning are not because of the bruises all over my body…. It’s all caused by the fact that punk rock and hardcore punk shows are making me feel so ALIVE, bringing back beautiful memories of my early 20’s, when music wasn’t as mainstream as today and everything related to it was more romantic.
No Spotify, no YouTube, sometimes not even the Internet. Just Compact Discs and Cassettes. I still possess the glorious one that introduced me to this world: Straight Ahead by Pennywise on side A and Ballads from the Revolution by Good Riddance on side B.
Also going to gigs was much more fun: you firstly had to find the money, then a car, then a friend keen to drive until Milano, Genova or Torino, then a little shop to buy beers and then, most difficult part, the venue!
I think we reached the bottom of the barrel when we got lost on our way to Fat Wreck Tour in 2003. When we got there the gig was over, the fans have left and the only people in the venue were the barman of a deserted bar and some Mad Caddies and Lawrence Arms members playing dices. They obviously laughed at us, but just before the sadness in our faces was about to turn into tears, they invited us to their table and we spent the entire night up to no good with our new friends.
Time to leave Memory Lane now and start talking about these Fucked Up Canadians and the immense gig they played yesterday.
Damian Abraham and co. had the brilliant idea to start the show with Echo Boomer, the opening track of their new album Glass Boys (Matador Records) followed by Queen of Hearts. I’m not complaining about that, it was the best start they could have possibly done, but I’m not exaggerating in saying that the floor almost collapsed.
The rest of the night was all about mosh pit, sweat, crowd surfing, beers and great songs like Black Albino Bones, The Other Side, Led by Hand, Sun Glass and Paper the House.
I need to mention as well the fact that the singer Damian was never on stage! That dude can’t stay away from the action and from the love of his fans to a point that he spent the entire time in the middle of us, hugging everyone and smiling like a little child when people were kissing his bald head.
I also managed to give him a big hug when the concert was over and you can really tell there’s nothing fake in that incredible human being!!
Great night, Great show, Great bunch of Fucked Up people!
Bibs&Tips: The Kings Cross Honest Burgers branch is literally 45 seconds walking distance (Angel direction) from La Scala… and we all know how good their burgers are!
Just to clarify: Bibs = food. Mainly around London, as it’s the beautiful city where I am living at the moment. And Gigs, mainly because I love Live Music as much as I love my Nonna’s Lasagna, beers, colourful sunsets, big Loblollies and the Stay Puft dude from Ghostbusters!
What you won’t find in the Gigs section is:
Negative reviews. And the same rule applies to the bibs one: If I don’t like it, I am not going to talk about it.
A Justin Bieber’s gig review.
Professional pictures – For 3 simple reasons: 1 – I am not a professional photographer; 2 – I rather use my hands to hold beers (even if a fiver for a pint served in a plastic glass is an absolute robbery); 3 – Taking thousands of pictures (which is the new hipster thing), as it is probably the rudest behaviour you can find during a concert. Even worse than nudity!
Professional reviews: Because they are so fucking boring!
The entire set list, unless I’m lucky enough to grab one directly from the band, or get invited (really unlikely) to an after show interview.
What you’ll be amazed to find is:
Fun stories: Not a lot of things in life are better than a night out to a gig with your mates! What you’ll get is not just my feelings about the event but also what I am able to read in other people faces, especially if they’re either drunk or high.
Shitty pictures and shittier videos.
Some rude language and several synonyms of the word Boobs (like Loblollies for example).
Some tips about the venues’ surrounding area in terms of food and drinks: Basically, if there are nice restaurants and cool pubs down the corner from the gig’s venue I’ll let you know about it. And I’ll also try to link some of the gigs reviews with the appropriate bibs ones.
Now, it’s Friday, and the sun is shining over London…. Let’s create the right atmosphere for the upcoming weekend….
Bibs And Gigs 