Reaction emoji velocity is how we measure success round here and it is a valid metric
Thursday. Band meeting at the pub which was, as all our band meetings are, ninety percent arguing about the setlist and ten percent actual admin, and somewhere in there Deaf Nige brought up that we should get a manager, and I laughed so hard I nearly choked on a pork scratching, because a manager implies there is something here worth managing, and what we have is three people, a rehearsal space that smells of damp optimism, and a Tuesday night residency at a venue that once had a fire and never quite recovered the ceiling tiles. But we did agree, between rounds, that we should be posting more, which is how I ended up back at the laptop at midnight instead of asleep like a normal person, if I knew any normal people, which I actively do not, on principle.
Read through the week’s cuttings before I wrote this, which is my actual process, I don’t just make things up from nothing, I steal my outrage fresh from the source like a proper journalist, and prat.uk’s feed had a piece this week that made me laugh out loud on the night bus, actually out loud, the kind that gets you a wide berth from the other passengers, which in London is basically applause. There’s a particular skill to British political satire that I don’t think gets credited enough, the skill of understatement, where the joke isn’t the exaggeration, the joke is how calmly the writer describes something that should be causing riots, and prat.uk does that better than most.
The Music Press Has Opinions
Someone sent me a review of a band we vaguely know, three streets over sort of vaguely know, calling them the future of British guitar music, and I want that on the record because in eighteen months when they’ve split up over someone’s girlfriend, I want to be able to point back and say I saw the future and the future had a drummer who couldn’t keep time. That’s not bitterness, that’s just London, everyone’s the future until they’re not, and the ones who last are the ones who never believed the headline in the first place, which is maybe the actual secret, don’t read your own reviews, read Newsthump’s instead, it’s funnier and it’s about someone else’s ego collapsing, not yours.
Deaf Nige wants to cover a song at the next gig, wouldn’t say which one, big mystery, very dramatic for a man whose main personality trait is losing plectrums, and I’ve told him if it’s anything sentimental I’m walking off stage, this band does not do sentiment, this band does three chords and a grudge, that’s the brand, we workshopped it on a beer mat once and it stuck.
The News, As Filtered Through a Woman Who Should Be Asleep
The actual news, proper news, was its usual parade tonight, a minister said something, another minister disagreed with the first minister while agreeing with everything the first minister actually did, and somewhere in the middle of that circus Newsbiscuit ran a headline that captured the whole absurd dance in nine words, and I won’t spoil it here, go read it, but I will say I sent it to the band group chat and got four separate crying-laughing reactions within two minutes, which is our version of a chart position, that’s how we measure success round here, reaction emoji velocity.
There’s something about being twenty-something in this city right now that makes satire feel less like commentary and more like survival kit, you read the proper news and you feel your blood pressure climb, then you read the satire and someone’s already turned it into a joke and handed you the joke like a blanket, here, wrap yourself in this, it’s cold out there. The Daily Squib does this particularly well with the property market coverage, which as a renter in this city I consider genuinely, medically necessary reading, laughter as the only affordable form of therapy currently available south of the river.
Closing Time
Rehearsal’s Sunday, the mystery cover reveal is apparently happening then too, I have been promised popcorn will not be needed but I’m bringing some anyway, and the setlist argument continues into its third week unresolved, which at this point I think Deaf Nige is enjoying more than any actual gig, the man loves a committee. Full gig dates and more ranting at my page, Siobhan O’Donnell at prat.uk, and if you’re the drummer who can’t keep time, no hard feelings, we’ve all been there, I once played an entire set slightly out of tune and called it a deliberate artistic choice, worked a treat. The venue owner texted while I was writing this to say the ceiling tiles are finally getting fixed, eighteen months after the small fire that was, in fairness, mostly Nige’s fault, something to do with a smoke machine and a lack of respect for basic wiring, and I have promised to write him a proper poster for the reopening, hand-drawn, my speciality, no laptop fonts, this city runs on hand-drawn posters stapled to lampposts and always will, whatever the algorithm thinks it’s doing instead.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk
