bands, books and fireplaces.

Tuesday was Sabrina's birthday, and after eating the hugest meal I had ever eaten in my life, we decided to visit some pubs to escape the cold. Firstly we saw Peter Ewing at Labour in Vain, he sang quite pretty and was accompanied by a man with a violin who was amazing. He played with Spencer P Jones and James McCann in previous weeks which would have been cool to see (especially ol' Spencer Jones, because he plays all the time, but I never get to see him!).

On the way home, we stopped by the Old Bar to stand infront of the fireplace, and the band there wasn't too bad. They played a cover of 'Dirty Old Town', which was fitting, as that seems to be played by a band every time we go out for someones birthday.

We continued our weekday band freebies on Wednesday and went out to the Old Bar upon recommendation from a friend. Loveless Marriage played first, and it was the strangest act I have seen. It started off with some poetry reading, then an instrumental with a guitar, violin and double bass (maybe? i don't know my string instruments), then magic tricks. It was amazing, and they had a smoke machine.

Mass Cult Suicide played next. They played quite a short set, and weren't as good looking as I remembered them to be, but they were still quite good. Last, but not least, was Plague Doctor. It was their last night of residency, so the bar was relatively full for a Wednesday. They were lots of fun, and during their last song one of the girls dancing ripped up a Star Wars novel and threw all the pages around like book snow.

It was pretty.

you say you love me when you're drunk.

My friends brothers band plays around the town fairly often, so I usually get updated of their shows via some sort of electronic social networking site. I saw that they where playing with Mass Cult Suicide and I was a bit befuddled as to why they'd be playing with such a heavy band (judging by their name...). I looked them up, and they were awesome.

I was going to scurry down to Off The Hip last week to pick up their album, but I wasn't sure if the rest of the nine songs would be as enjoyable as the two I heard. So I thought I'd brave taking my child-like face to the Tote to go see them on Friday. I really wanted to go but no one would come with me, then I got grumpy, forgot about it and did something else.

So, today I went into PBS and help out with writing mini-blurbs (which really just consisted of going to a bands Myspace, Ctrl C, Ctrl P, then a minor edit to make the sentences flow...like streams) for this wrap-around advert in Inpress for PBS Live Music Week. Bands have been coming in to prerecord their sets and today as I was trawling Off The Hip's webpage for info about Mass Cult Suicide, they totally started playing in Studio 5!

I was a bit excited and went and sat like a loser in the room with the knobs and shit, and watched for two songs. They were great, except the two songs that I heard, where the two that I already knew. But Dan Trolley is good lookin' in a fun looking way, so I'll probably buy his CD anyway.