BBBG Goes To Europe: Part 2.2 - Sparkly Fiend

Friday and Saturday were much better thank you very much. A large portion of the responsibility for this upturn in mood must be placed at the very sore feet of our friend Kat AKA Sparklyfiend who arrived like a Tasmanian Devil in a whirlwind of vulgarity and hilariousness to cheer us up no end, not to mention the ability to receive an instant bank transfer and pass the cold hard cash on to us.

This is Kat, she tells us she's regularly cunted on jelly

After a morning of general relaxation and book shopping we spent the better part of the day indulging in alcohol therapy before heading to Camden for the much anticipated Pierce The Veil gig (my review of Collide With The Sky.) At Camden tube station there was a very heavy police presence with many dogs sniffing at passengers legs and multiple vans outside. The vans contained many more dogs from the sound of it. There was nothing subtle about it, nothing surreptitious and yet still we witnessed half a dozen idiots try to get past the cops and the dogs whilst carrying drugs in the pockets in the matter of minutes it took Kat to buy her train ticket. If I had been allowed to take a photo I would be showing you a shot of the station ticket hall half full of men waiting to be taken in to a back room for what might have ended up as cavity searches for all we knew. Listen up kids, if you're too stupid and lazy to change your travel plans when faced with police cavity searches then it might be best to give up on that drug dealing career you're embarking on.

But on to the show, the Underworld in Camden is a strange little venue that I had actually once been involved in organising some shitty concert for an internet TV company at. I didn't remember this fact until I'd walked us a mile in the wrong direction from the pub we were drinking at. Yes well played Toby. The stage is in a pit with a small dancefloor whilst the rest of the venue is up some steps, in theory to allow people to see I'd guess but that never happens. Bizarrely the stage does not actually face the majority of the crowd, it is rotated at 45 degrees to face a corner instead. That aside there's low ceilings and dark walls and it allows for a really good sound in the right circumstances. Pierce The Veil rocked hard, after two albums packed with incredible songs they had a lot to choose from and put on a show that didn't suffer from attempts to play tracks that they had written on tour, album filler or the obligitory slow song, it was all balls to the wall, hispanic influences post-hardcore singalongs from start to finish. That I had a voice at the end of the show after attempting high notes and growling throughout was a miracle. Negatives on the night mainly feature all of the young girls that somehow had tickets to the show and seemingly had never been to a gig before as they all seemed to just run around for an hour, in to the "moshpit" for twenty seconds until they couldn't take it anymore, back to their boyfriends/parents, off to the bar, time for an excited wee, lets mosh some more, oh wow this song is so good I need to tell my other friends about it. Maybe we're all getting old but seriously WTF. This did not make for a good crowd, with their numbers in constant flux they seemed unable even to clap on demand. Small things really and it was over way too soon. I looked amazing in my new Breakfast Club sweater as you'll see and I have provided you with the obligitory shit and pointless photo of a band on stage.

Yes that is a Breakfast Club sweater and yes, Kat dresses like this everyday

Saturday followed very quickly on the heels of Friday, getting in to bed at 1am we required a 6am wakeup call to head out on our first day trip. Brighton is famous for being the gay capital of England, a hive of student activity and as such has an alternative vibe to the city (in the case of England meaning at least a quarter of the shops are not massive chain stores) plus it was traditionally a great summer holiday spot for the Brits in times when global travel was prohibitively costly.

Kat demanded breakfast/coffee on the beach, something I was incredibly hesitant to do. The beach in Brighton is all rocks, there's no sand at all, and walking through Brighton from the train station it was bloody freezing, to use a local term. But with coffee in hand we braved the elements only to find it was the opposite of going to the beach in Perth, the wind dropped off and we just sat in the sun waking up to the day. Great call Kat, you justified your existence with that one.

Brighton is filled with incredible architecture, everywhere you look up you find yourself looking at beautiful old buildings. Here take a look at some examples:

A postcard from Brighton Beach

Princes House, North Street - one of many fantastic buildings in the city of Brighton

The Royal Pavilion is a former royal residence located in Brighton, England. It was built in three campaigns, beginning in 1787, as a seaside retreat for George, Prince of Wales, from 1811 Prince Regent. As the first major piece of touristy behaviour on our part we were very excited by our visit. What the hell is with audio guides in museums these days? Not a single person looked like they were enjoying their visit as the wandered around with these mobile phones from the mid 90s attached to their ears. Brighton Pavillion provide them free to everybody who buys an entry ticket, but we refused to accept them. Taking our time we wandered around in awe of the ridiculous frivolity engaged in by the Prince Regent.

There was a no photography rule in place so I cannot share the mind boggling size or decor with you but I did manage a sneaky photo of the smallest item on display instead.



This miniature Bhagavad Gita is over 100 years old and was found in the "Indian Military Hospital" display room. This room commemorates the palace being turned in to a hospital solely for Indian soldiers injured whilst fighting for Britain during The Great War.

For all you film fans here's an interesting artefact found in the old fashioned penny palace arcade; a crank handle operated flicker card magnifier giving the effect of watching films of two burlesque performances. I tried in vain to get a decent picture of the image seen in the viewfinder but those semi naked women will have to remain a secret until you visit for yourself.



There was a large amount of book shops visited and naturally books purchased, here's some images for all you book lovers:

Books, you're doing them right

Colin Page Antiquarian Books in Brighton is exactly what you imagine a secondhand bookshop to be like, I stepped through the front door and let out an involuntary gasp at how pretty it was.

Books, you're doing it wrong

Rainbow Books in Brighton seems to function at the opposite end of the market, here was a man who seems to have become overwhelmed by the volume of books he couldn't resist buying and was now paying the price in terms of collapsing shelves. This one very much reminded me of the Philip K. Dick descriptions of the world in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

Crystal Palace Public Library and their traditional English Pub style sign

Finally I shall leave you with something wonderful found in an English newspaper; we complain bitterly about the lack of actual news found in The West Australian newspaper but I'm not sure even that rag would publish this headline:

Is this the best headline ever?

Now then, now then, it's time to coffee, pastries and The Sunday Times so I bid you farewell. Tomorrow we fly to Budapest.

Currently Listening: Collide With The Sky by Pierce The Veil (2012)

Last night you ended up in Palm Springs dancing on tables...what am I supposed to be, impressed?

Disclaimer up front, Pierce The Veil are an American post-hardcore band. This is the story of me and Pierce The Veil.

It takes a lot for the jaded emo hearts of Leah and I to get excited over hearing a new band these days. At 25 and 29 respectively we've been there and done that and bought countless t-shirts since before the scene exploded in to teenage haircuts on a high street near you, we witnessed the rise of the mediocre and quite happily dump most bands with a similar sound to Pierce The Veil in to the third rate 3rd generation category. And dump is definitely the correct word, anything smaller than a landfill wouldn't be able to contain the sheer volume of mediocre to shit.

Have you ever heard the "Punk Goes..." compilations? Up to two dozen punk, emo and hardcore bands cover songs from a selected category, classic albums include Punk Goes Pop (giving the world the incredible Stretch Armstrong cover of the Pink song Get The Party Started) and Punk Goes Crunk (the All Time Low version of Umbrella is the definitive version if you ask me.) Well, Pierce The Veil covered the classic Blue Oyster Cult song Don't Fear The Reaper (no cow bell unfortunately) on Punk Goes Classic Rock and I guess you might say we were infatuated.

Summer 2010/2011 featured almost non-stop play of their second album Selfish Machines (2010) thanks to some infectiously catchy melodies, the combination of Vic Fuentes unique vocals and lyrics and so many sing-a-long, heart on your sleeve moments you're forever declaring "this is the greatest emo song ever" which is topped off by actually the greatest emo song ever, complete with most definitive emo song title ever, Bulletproof Love.

We live in one of those cities that are never visited by bands that you want to see, merely endless streams of pop megastars and stadium rock (hey Perth is the home of AC/DC you know) yet by some small quirk of fate Pierce The Veil chose the moment we fell in love with them as the moment they would tour with one of those mediocre piles of shit I was discussing above and play a Perth show whilst they were at it. Happiness rained down upon us, tickets were bought and we attended what has to be the strangest gig we've ever experienced.

The Astor theatre (below) is a beautiful old Art Deco building that is the home of the Perth Revelation International Film Festival and also double as a concert venue. I have two words, no three words that sum up our experience: PARENTS, SEATS, POPCORN.

There were kids eating popcorn at an post-hardcore show, they were all thirteen or there abouts so had to take their parents along and the classic cinema seating that is set back from the stage/screen by quite some way was filled with both parents and teenagers looking generally quite bored whilst they ate their popcorn, leaving the "dancefloor" largely empty.

Leah once saw The Wombats in a half empty church basement in Philadelphia but she says this one was much more bizarre.

But on to the new album, it was finally released at the end of last month and initially I was unable to listen to anything else for days at a time so excited I was that it wasn't total garbage as I had feared. Pierce The Veil are not one album wonders! Most bands make an album that gets a lot of attention then feel the need to get even more attention with their next album, in the process they remove everything unique and fun from their sound and hey presto you're back to sounding like Silverstein.

PTV actually got better, they took what they did well on the previous album and crafted an album filled with the sound of a band who has toured consistently for three years; it's tighter and harder, more energetic and there's just as many of those "this is the greatest song ever" moments after singing along at the top of your voice with your eyes closed that all great emo will do to you.

Low points are few and far between, the guest vocals of Jason Butler (letlive.) simply irritate me for no good reason other than he reminds me of that guy from Say Anything, who I hate listening to.

As I said at the top of the post, I'm too old for this but that isn't stopping me. Pierce The Veil are touring the UK whilst we're on holiday in September and you'll find Leah, our friend Kat and myself  towering over the sea of kids at Camden Underworld, throwing back the mojitos and wearing skinny jeans. Score!

Been there, done that, still buying the t-shirt AKA I'm too old for this shit

The first single released from the album was King For A Day and featured Kellin Quinn of Sleeping With Sirens, it is available for free here thanks to Fearless Records.

The second single, Bulls In The Bronx, has been embedded below thanks to those great guys over at Soundcloud.