Damn, I’ve had this ‘ere blog for over a month now, and no new posts have been made. That’s sad. The plan was to concoct some remarkable feat of literary ingenuity and place it, fully-formed and flawless, onto the blog.
So it’s come to this. Hastily pecking away at the keyboard, as though I was some particularly keyboard-obsessed mental patient. Making things up as I go along. Don’t tell me this is going to be one of those Dear Diary dealies? Oh sweet dear crap yes…
Today was a pretty good day, then. I awoke to the jolt that ‘Home Truths’ is no longer presented by the mighty – and much missed – John Peel. Most of the programme was met with sweet sweet sleep, truth be told. Lunch date was cancelled, so I had time to exercise – a practice enacted unfortunately rarely. So, exercise I did, and briefly hit the internet to jot down my reservation number for the Jeff Buckley film I was seeing with Fran, a film entitled Amazing Grace.
So I met Fran. After a visit to an overheated music emporium, we made our way to Firefly. A posh bar in the centre of town, Firefly is either exceedingly pleasant, or the waiting room for Purgatory. During the day, when the clientele consists largely of me, it’s great. I have the plush leather sofas and bar all to myself. It’s as pleasant a place to relax as one should find in the centre of Leeds.
Of course, the Hyde-ian transformation occurs once dusk hits and the cro-magnon men enter, with their equally undeveloped ‘womenkind’. Shirts, alternately checked and diagonally-bestriped, block ones view of anything else, their foreheads jutting over their eyes like poker visors hewn from bone and skin. Leering at those poor, attractive females in the employ of the establishment, able to summon no more to their lips than ‘aaaaaright luv?’. I hate them. But I digress.
We were in there just long enough to discuss various subjects briefly (the drudge of work, the increasing shortness of days, the superiority of Tim Buckley’s ‘Song to the Siren’ to anything his son ever released. Or, indeed, any cover version of that very song) and to consume a disappointingly watery hot chocolate. Perhaps more pertinent nomenclature would have been ‘warm brown water’? On we went, to HiFi Club, and the film!
Our journey to the venue was one riddled with wrong turn… or was it merely a meandering route? Either way, ours was a journey that seemed to be misinformed… until we actually got there. And gazed upon the queue, snaking around the street corner. Hopes were resting on my internet booking actually holding water, and if it did, we’d be scrabbling for anything resembling decent seats. And would they accept my 4-year-old Leeds City Council ID card as sufficient grounds for discount ticketage?
Coincidentally, I bumped into an acquaintance, who was directly in front of us in the queue. He was partnered by an individual who we were certain was a girl, but who apparently turned out to be a 13 year-old boy. Strange indeed. This acquaintance, who shall remain unnamed, had no ticket, but was brimming with optimism regarding his (non-extant) chances of entry. He was also attempting to get the number of a good friend of mine, simply because they had a brief chat at the Leeds Festival.
He failed to comprehend one of the basic tenets of mobile phone etiquette (if indeed, such a term is not oxymoronic). He asked for the number. I told this acquaintance that I would ask said friend if he was willing to have his number doled out willy nilly (for this amounted to willy nilly number distribution). Acquaintance failed to comprehend this, and repeated his theory. Once more, rebuttal was in order. However, being the eternal diplomat, I thought of another plan. I would take the number of Acquaintance, and pass it on to Friend, so the latter would have the choice of whether he wanted contact to occur. Still Acquaintance failed to understand. nevertheless, I took the number, and said I’d pass it on.
Fortunately for Acquaintance, a middle-aged lady with a ticket wanted to return said ticket. She decided HiFi wasn’t the venue she wanted to see the film. Acquaintance stepped in, suggesting he could take said ticket from her. So he bought it. HiFi Employee said “but it’s only one ticket”, at which point Acquaintance turned to his associate of indeterminate sex and said see you later”. The expression on the face of associate was one of pure disappointment. I was awaiting tears, but exit prevented such a view.
My tickets arrived in due course, and identification wasn’t even sought. Good. We entered the venue, and took our places at a table, with sufficient (read: full screen) view. More fool me:
There were spare seats in front of us, which were duly taken by a man in a Joy Division t-shirt and his colleagues. They disappeared off, and a beautiful young lady – rather reminiscent of Fairuza Balk in The Craft – aproached. “Are these seats taken?”, she asked, at which point a completely misguided sense of loyalty to Joy Division Bloke kicked in. “Yes”, I mumbled, and she moved on, checking me out all the while.
JDB never returned, and the seats were taken by two idiotic couples, whose idea of watching a film consisted of talking through it (especially when Jeff Bleedin’ Buckley was singing), and of course bringing their heads together and obscuring my view of the screen. Morons. I was tempted to tap one of the ‘men’ on the shoulder and request he desist this ridiculous behaviour, but I maintained an (evidently misguided) optimism that this would stop.
And to think I could have had young Fairuza in their place…
The film itself was decent enough. It was a very well made puff piece, which hit all the right buttons in regard to making us fall in love with Buckley, and featuring sizeable quantities of performance. Chris Cornell added his thoughts on JB, as did the rather incogruous Sebastian Bach, which was a breath of fresh air (as was Skid Row’s rendition of ‘Eternal Life’). Usually, puff pieces aren’t to my taste, being as they are lengthy adverts for whatever subject is at hand.
However, given the high quality of todays subject, and the fact that people seem to find it impossible to attain any semblance of objectivity regarding the late, young Buckley, this was forgivable.
Not so for Fran, who had seen many Buckley DVDs and TV specials, and for whom this was largely deja vu. Not enough new material, apparently. So be it, but for someone as wonderfully uninformed as I, ’twas quite the eye-opener.
Erk. Might finish this missive to mineself tomorrow…
throughsilver in blog 