It's time for a long overdue update of the Books I've Read This Year list!
The italics show the list from last time.
My Appetite For Destruction - Steven Adler
Assholes Finish First - Tucker Max*
Notting Hell - Rachael Johnson
Strip City - Lily Burana*
Kill Your Friends - John Niven
Bye Bye Baby - Caroline Sullivan*
Tattoos and Tequila - Vince Neil
No Angel - Jay Dobyns
Assholes Finish First - Tucker Max*
Rachel's Holiday - Marian Keyes*
Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married - Marian Keyes*
Dirty Cash - David Southwell
A Lion's Tale - Chris Jericho*
Undisputed - Chris Jericho
Got Fight? - Forrest Griffin*
CSI: Skin Deep - Jerome Presler*
CSI: Brass In Pocket - Jeff Marriotte*
Can You Keep A Secret? - Sophie Kinsella*
CSI: Blood Quantum - Jeff Marriotte*
The Godfather - Mario Puzo*
Glamorama - Bret Easton Ellis
Palo Alto - James Franco
CSI NY: Four Walls - Keith R A DeCandido*
CSI: Double Dealer - Max Allan Collins*
CSI: Sin City - Max Allan Collins*
CSI: Body Of Evidence - Max Allan Collins*
CSI: Cold Burn - Max Allan Collins*
Sweet Valley Confidential - Francine Pascal
CSI: Grave Matters - Max Allan Collins*
Let's Spend The Night Together - Pamela Des Barres*
The Devil Wears Prada - Lauren Weisberger*
Criminal Minds: Jump Cut - Max Allan Collins*
Criminal Minds: Killer Profile - Max Allan Collins*
CSI: Binding Ties - Max Allan Collins*
CSI: Snake Eyes - Max Allan Collins*
CSI: Killing Game - Max Allan Collins*
CSI: Headhunter - Greg Cox*
CSI: The Killing Jar - Donn Cortez*
Criminal Minds: Finishing School - Max Allan Collins*
Kill Your Friends - John Niven*
I Heart New York - Lindsey Kelk*
CSI Miami: Right To Die - Jeff Mariotte*
CSI Miami: Misgivings - Donn Cortez*
CSI Miami: Riptide - Donn Cortez*
CSI Miami: Heart Attack - Donn Cortez*
I Heart Paris - Lindsey Kelk*
The Last Living Slut - Roxana Shirazi
The Single Girls To Do List - Lindsey Kelk
Last Night At Chateau Marmont - Lauren Weisberger
Chasing Harry Winston - Lauren Weisberger*
A Kiss Gone Bad - Jeff Abbott
Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone - JK Rowling*
Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets - JK Rowling*
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban - JK Rowing*
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire - JK Rowling*
Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix - JK Rowling*
Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince - JK Rowling*
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows - JK Rowling*
The Nanny Diaries - Nicola Kraus & Emma McLaghlin*
Black Jack Point - Jeff Abbott
Life - Keith Richards
Faithful - Marianne Faithful*
Wonderful Tonight - Pattie Boyd*
Everyone Worth Knowing - Lauren Weisberger*
One Fifth Avenue - Candance Bushnell
The Single Girls To Do List - Lindsey Kelk*
Ronnie - Ronnie Wood
I have this idea that some books can come to you when you most need them. I've had Life since Christmas, and I started reading it then, but I wasn't ready for it. When I picked it up again, it was at a point where I needed to read that book, to have a certain type of reassurance in the way I live my own life. I ended up finishing that book in a few days because of what I needed from it. Books can be escapism, books can be a reassurance, books can end up being whatever you need them to be. Books are amazing!
There were times, not often, that I awoke in the middle of the night on a tour bus or in a hotel room and wondered what the hell I was doing. Why on earth was I spending my time with these random dudes in bands when people my age were normally having house parties and drinking cheap vodka? Then I'd realise that was exactly why I was doing it. There was no part of me that craved average teen years. I wanted excitement, adventure and the idea that I had somewhere to run away to whenever life became insane. Of course, I ended up doing it too long, to the point where it was no longer my escape, it was my life.
After a few brief explorations into into various aspects of the music industry, I ran far away from the idea of working within it, mostly because I liked the idea of keeping my soul, but also because that wasn't how I wanted my life to be. I didn't want my love of music to become a paycheck, I heard more than enough disheartening stories about artists, managers and record companies without ever officially working in the industry, I didn't want to hear more, didn't want the grimy, sallow part to overtake the simplicity of hearing a song for the first time that you know will have kids singing along with it. I wanted to still hear that without working out a marketing plan in my head.
So I slipped into an anonymous role, involved enough to help out baby bands, hands off enough to never risk losing my love of music. It got to the point where all my male friends were in the industry and, by default, so were all my (ex) boyfriends. I've unwittingly become immortalised in songs, but never spoken about by those who wrote them, which is how I wanted it and proved to me that I'd chosen wisely. Despite my dalliances, fame was never my objective. I could think of nothing more depressing than people believing you're worth attention based on who you've had relationships with.
It's been a very long time since I've taken part in a tour for any reason. It's not what I need in my life any more, there are times when I get the urge to run across the country and see bands and I usually go with the urge, but a few shows are usually enough to remind me why I stopped touring in the first place. My wanderlust these days has less to do with seeing bands and more to do with discovering new places and seeing old friends.
After the 10 plus years I spent running away and running around, I'm left with a handful of fellow retired road warriors as great friends, a whole bunch of musicians, some of whom are still close friends, and a life time of stories that I'm currently trying to mould into at least one novel. So what was I doing with myself all those years ago? Starting to build a life for myself in the most interesting way I knew how.
When you're a teenager all you're really searching for is somewhere that allows you to grow, to explore who you are and who you'll become. As a teenager, I found that place at a club called Stay Beautiful.
When I was 11, I found this band called Manic Street Preachers. I was sort of a brat. They introduced me to various aspects of popular culture that I doubt I would've found at such an early age by myself. As I turned into a teenager, I found other bands who were similar to them, either had emerged around the same time or were influenced by their music in later years. If I hadn't been a King Adora fan, I'm unsure if I would've ever gone to Stay Beautiful, but after one of their shows when I was about 15 years old, I was handed a flyer. I still have that flyer, actually, stuck to my school diary at the time.
My best friend, Fabian, and I decided that, yeah, we could talk our way past any doormen and get in. And we did. Being underage, we were happy to be in a decent club anywhere that would let us in so we could drink, but this place was different. People were friendly, and not in a creepy way, we were just made to feel welcome. We went back, and after Fabian died, I kept going, bringing other people, making new friends along the way. It moved venues a few times and I was never legally old enough to attend until it moved to Wicked in London Bridge, which is also when I first started working for them. Flyering at first and then when it moved to it's final home at The Purple Turtle, I was asked to do the door.
For me, Stay Beautiful was a place that allowed me to grow in the best way. I made mistakes, drank far too much, danced until my feet ached, woke up with bruises I couldn't explain and explored different sides of myself while figuring out who I was going to become. In many ways, I still am figuring it out, but the years I spent attending Stay Beautiful helped that process beyond measure.
No matter what was happening in my life, I knew that once a month I could go to a place where I could dress however I wanted, in as little as I wanted, a place that played music I literally lived for at the time, a place full of people just like me. The importance of that to a teenager cannot be overestimated. The club didn't save my life, but it gave me somewhere to go that became an extremely important part of my life. Working there, I learnt a lot and I had a hell of a lot of fun while doing it, with some quite wonderful people. Now that it's all come to an end in London, officially, after 10 years, I'm not sure what words can adequately sum up what it meant to me. The last 10 years of my life would've been radically different without it. I would be radically different without it.
It gave a lot of us a place to go where we could feel at home. We could be as outlandish, weird and strange as we wanted to be and it was all accepted. It created a scene within itself that brought so many people together. It might've started life as a club night, but it became more than that to almost everyone that attended. It was part of our lives and, as we carry on through life now that it's ended, I'm sure that when we hear certain songs, they'll spark a memory that makes us smile, or cringe, and we'll remember what that club gave us.
For now...
"Don't wanna see your face, don't wanna hear your words, why don't you just..."
It's time for me to come out of the closet. I'm a wrestling fan. That isn't news to most of my friends, but is to new people I meet, which I find amusing. I've given up trying to explain it, it's just in my DNA. My wrestling DVD collection is obscene, the whole basis for my first trip to New York was a wrestling show and I've spent more hours than I'd care to admit talking about it.
There's a stigma attached to being a female wrestling fan. When the UK indie scene was stronger and I was running around going to shows, I lost count of the amount of times I'd have to politely, or not so politely, point out I wasn't there to fuck the wrestlers. It gets boring, fast. Since then my position on such things, as with much else in my life, has been that if people want to talk shit, then let them. It's nice to bring a little excitement into what must be very dreary lives if that's all they have to talk about. Besides, my friends get it way worse than I do. Benefits of living across the ocean!
Anyway. For my 26th birthday I was bought tickets and travel to the UK Pro Wrestling NOAH shows in Broxbourne and Nottingham. The shows themselves were excellent and I highly recommend ordering the DVDs of the shows, but one of the things that stuck with me were the two little kids at the Broxbourne show. They were fully clad in John Cena gear and I doubt they really knew much about the wrestlers they were watching, but they cheered, they booed, they had a fantastic time and I'm betting they came away from that show bigger fans of wrestling than they had been.
Kids like that are why I never really see the point in hating John Cena. Aside from the inhuman amount of charity work he does (seriously, the man is a machine) one of the most important things he does is get kids interested in this crazy sport-entertainment hybrid we all love. Didn't we all start out like those kids? Cheering our favourites even if they weren't the best workers? And look at how long we've stuck with it since then. If we want this business to carry on, we need people like Cena who kids adore. They go to a show to see him, sure, but they'll also end up seeing Daniel Bryan, CM Punk, Evan Bourne and Alberto Del Rio. They'll get exposed to a whole bunch of other wrestlers and, as they grow up, they'll start branching out, finding other promotions they enjoy, places they can see wrestling in person more than the once or twice a year WWE comes to their area.
Do I enjoy Cena? Eh, not so much. I respect the amount of work he puts in, but I cannot take a man who wrestles in trainers seriously. That's alright though, he's not aimed at me. I have other wrestlers on that show I can watch. I also have Ring of Honor, Evolve, PWG, Dragon Gate and various other promotions that I can watch when I want some actual wrestling. Those kids at WWE shows in Cena gear don't have that yet. I have faith that one day they will, and if their love of Cena gets them there, I'm good with that.
Don't ask me to explain the grown men who cheer him, though. On that, I got nothing.
Snobbery annoys me. It especially annoys me when it comes to reading. I love to read, all the time, almost anything. I've read books walking down the street, while travelling, on the beach, in the bath, sitting on the pavement, at a gig in between bands, once even during a band, but I think that says more about the band than it does about my love of reading. When I was in Primary School, my reading age was advanced I was allowed to bring my own books in. Yes, I was the geeky 8/9 year old reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography while other kids read, well, I don't know what they read because I wasn't reading it. What do normal 8/9 year olds read? Remember, this was pre-Harry Potter!
Reading is one of my favourite things in the world to do. It allows you to escape into another world, it lets you learn about people's lives, different experiences, other countries, pretty much everything in the world can be learnt about from a book. Even how to fight zombies, which is obviously a necessary skill to have. I encourage everyone to read, whatever you're interested in, find a book about it and get stuck in. It's so much fun. Join your local library before the Tories close it and discover shelves and shelves of free books! Why, yes, my perfect gift would go something like this clip:
Look at all the books! Beauty And The Beast was released when I was about 7 years old and it was such a great movie to me because Belle read and didn't take crap from anyone. Even studying media and the evil Disney machine didn't put me off loving that movie. Books! Reading! Yay!
Anyway, my lack of snobbery when it comes to books means I have no shame in saying I own a large collection of Sweet Valley University, Nancy Drew and CSI books. I have biographies and autobiographies about people from the aforementioned Mr Mandela to Tommy Lee to Robbie Williams to Jeffrey Dahmer to Pamela Des Barres to Bret Hart. I read Camus' The Stranger when I was 13, but I also enjoy trashy chick lit. Chuck Palahniuk rests next to Kevin Smith who rests next to Mick Foley on my bookshelf. Heck, I've even read a couple of Katie Price's fiction books. Which does make me wonder if I'm the only person to have read Camus and Katie Price. Anyone else out there?
This year I decided to keep an ongoing tally of the books I read, just so I can look back and see both what, and how much, I actually read because I've never paid attention before. So, here's the list. Re-reads are indicated by an asterisk and if I read the book again during the year, I simply list it again. It's been an interesting experiment so far, we'll see how it progresses.
My Appetite For Destruction - Steven Adler
Assholes Finish First - Tucker Max*
Notting Hell - Rachael Johnson
Strip City - Lily Burana*
Kill Your Friends - John Niven
Bye Bye Baby - Caroline Sullivan*
Tattoos and Tequila - Vince Neil
No Angel - Jay Dobyns
Assholes Finish First - Tucker Max*
Rachel's Holiday - Marian Keyes*
Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married - Marian Keyes*
Dirty Cash - David Southwell
A Lion's Tale - Chris Jericho*
Undisputed - Chris Jericho
Got Fight? - Forrest Griffin*
CSI: Skin Deep - Jerome Presler*
CSI: Brass In Pocket - Jeff Marriotte*
Can You Keep A Secret? - Sophie Kinsella*
CSI: Blood Quantum - Jeff Marriotte*
The Godfather - Mario Puzo*
Glamorama - Bret Easton Ellis
Palo Alto - James Franco
CSI NY: Four Walls - Keith R A DeCandido
I always have to have more than one book on the go. Right now I think I have about 4 or 5, a couple of autobiographies, a book about Hells Angels and a couple of CSI books. I never know what I'll be in the mood for, and it means reading never becomes dull, there's always something else I can pick up if I get a bit tired of what I'm reading.
There are many things that irritate me about job hunting. These are the top ones:
Lack of proof reading Recently I looked at a job advert that stated hours were "12am-8pm". Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that they meant midday, which, as most semi-intelligent people know, is 12pm. This begs the question, if you can't tell time properly, why are you in charge of hiring people? Then there's the little things, like 'teh' and 'wto'. Really, people, if you don't start proof reading your adverts, I will. Your in-boxes will be full of me correcting your mistakes and asking if your three year old typed it up for you.
Internships I have no problem with internships as a concept, for some professions they're the only way you can get your foot in the door, but when I see companies advertising for interns every 3 months, to do the same work, I can only assume they're bastards who don't want to hire someone to do the job. They'd rather use unpaid labour in the form of a bunch of people who hope this will lead to a job, but never does. The worst one I saw was someone asking for an intern to, essentially, run their business. Stop being cheap. Hire people.
Degrees being essential Now, I admit I might be a little sensitive about this because I left Uni halfway through and, now, even if I wanted to go back, I wouldn't be able to afford it. There are some jobs where you need a degree in a subject that relates to that particular profession, and that's fine. It's the rest that bothers me. I'd love to know what use a degree is for being a secretary, or a receptionist. Or, in fact, a sales assistant. What exactly does having a degree bring to those jobs that would be missing if someone without a degree was hired? Not many people want to hear this, but having a degree doesn't make you smarter than everyone else. Doesn't make you better than everyone else. It just means you have a piece of paper that shows you studied a subject for three years.
Inability to spot interchangeable skills I used to work at a club in Camden. I've also done a lot of voluntary work that involved dealing with a wide range of people in a very professional manner. Between the two, I've probably dealt with any sort of customer you could care to throw at me, but for most employers this doesn't translate as experience. Personally, I think the fact that I worked at a club in Camden and was never arrested for punching someone shows just how excellent my customer service skills are, but when they look at my CV and see that I worked at a club, all they think is 'Hostess'. And I don't want to be a hostess forever, it's tiring, your hours are funky, you spend 80% of your time being hit on and then you have to get nightbuses home. Besides, I'm almost 26, there's a whole new group of hotesses coming up the ranks, I'm over it!
So there we have it. Job hunting, especially at the moment, is all too often a thankless task with no result at the end of it. Make you wonder why we bother, doesn't it? Oh, wait, to survive. Can I not just marry a rich man instead and spend my days writing and watching movies? No? Oh, alright.
It's not often you get to travel back in time and assess a certain period of your life. This year, with the announcement that Special Needs were reforming, myself and many other people got to do just that. They were to play a show at Proud, Camden on the 15th of February. Sadly, since that night happened, news surfaced that a young girl many of us knew died at the age of 21. I saw her at the gig, but didn't get a chance to say hi. I wish I had. Rest In Peace, Louise.
It's strange to look back at that period of time. I've spent a lot of time running around the city within many different scenes, with several bands, but this scene and these bands were different. While I was once a teenage companion to rockstars, with car service and 5* hotels amongst the luxuries that brought, this was a world away from that. Last minute gigs, nightbuses and house parties were the order of the day. It was a democratic scene, you'd trip over someone at a party one day, and the next week NME would be hailing them as the future of indie.
As with all scenes, the bubble burst not long after the record companies got seriously involved. Ridiculous demands being put on bands who had never built a significant fanbase outside of London. Demands to sell 40,000 records at a time when physical sales were already dropping and no one had yet worked out how to capitalise on music being available online. Demands to give sensible interviews, devoid of crack psychosis (there was only room for one crack addict in the press and Peter Doherty had that sewn up). Demands for these kids to treat what they were doing as a business when they mostly just wanted to play music with their friends. Bands were dropped, bands split up. Members went back to the home counties, nursed the drug habits they'd picked up. Some stuck around in the city, managing to carve out a life for themselves. Many left the music business altogether, preferring to take their chances in the 'real world'. The rest of us picked up the pieces of the music we'd loved, attempted to stay friends with the people we'd actually liked and carried on with life.
February 15th was a very strange night. Of all the bands who had been involved in that scene, Special Needs were the ones most people thought should've Made It. They weren't like so many bands around at that time, hashing together imitated Libertines riffs with a frontman putting on a phoney London accent. Special Needs were 60s pop meshed with gang vocal choruses, guitars with a nostalgic feel and an Irish singer. They were bright, vibrant colours who stood out against the crack smoke haze most of the other bands were spewing. Their reunion made people happy in a way that I don't think any other bands from that time could've accomplished.
Special Needs - Sylvia (live at Proud)
It was like 2004 again, right down to having to yell at a Jarman brother to get out of my way. The Cribs may well be selling out venues like Brixton Academy now, but to me they'll always be idiot boys with stupid haircuts managing to get in my way. There were plenty of people I wasn't too keen on seeing, the feeling was probably mutual, and thankfully any awkward moments were avoided. The people I wanted to see were around, though some I missed, and while the surreal feeling never really dissipated, it was really quite lovely to see that people I'd spent a lot of time with years before were doing well.
When Special Needs hit the stage I, and many other people, were hit with a reminder of a time when we were never at home because there was always a band like this playing some corner of London. When you could go out by yourself to see a band, safe in the knowledge that you'd know half the crowd once you got there. There were cliques, fights, grudges and problems, but it was still a community. At that time, bands were still working out how to use the internet to market themselves and to build a fanbase. It was still in it's infancy, being tweaked and played with. You could log onto a message board, get cheaplist for a show that night, go and see a line up featuring bands playing songs they'd given away for free on YouSendIt. That's what Arctic Monkeys did. It was the internet that made that band big, not the music press.
Special Needs were the catalyst for a lot of people to come back together and relive that period of their lives, but their reformation shouldn't be looked upon as nostalgia. They have new songs, they have damn good songs that deserve to be heard by a wider audience than before.
Special Needs - Nobody's Darling (live at Proud)
The old songs deserve to be heard as well, who wouldn't want to hear a large crowd of people singing along to Blue Skies, Sylvia and Convince Me? If one thing can come out of this Tardis trip to 2004, let it be that Special Needs get their chance to shine. Let them have a happy ending. They're a band who were better than that scene. They should have the chance to finally prove it.
As for me? I look back at who I was in 2004/5 and am glad I'm not that person anymore. I had a hell of a lot of fun with some fairweather friends and made some long term friends, but I'm not one to live in the past. Life moves on. Being able to look back and see how much I've grown and changes is something I'm thankful for. Nothing but Blue Skies ahead...
