Bad Music

A rather unsuccessful night out last night. Buoyed by the good weather (the last couple of days in Brighton have been just gorgeous. By contrast it's pouring with rain right now, and I'm sitting here listening to the fire alarm going off and wondering who's burnt their lunch) we decided to go to the Hold Up alldayer, which was a 5pm-2am event at the Zap put on by the boys who do the DJ nights at the (ahem) Pavilion Tavern and Arc. It consisted of six or seven bands and a club thing.

Now, if we'd have thought about it in advance, we would probably have realised how bad it would be. The presence of The Tenderfoot on the bill notwithstanding, we hadn't heard of the other bands playing, and this is normally a recipe for Brighton-rocks style awfulness. Indeed, when we turned up we watched a band (whose name I shan't reveal) who were certainly amongst the worst bands I've seen in ten years of gig-going. Additionally, Hold-Up the club (at the Arc) is turgid; bad indie record after bad indie record. So putting the two together would never work.

To make matters worse, Vic is on antibiotics for her bad foot and I'm on the sympathy wagon, which meant neither of us were drinking. Reasoning that we could probably stick it out until The Tenderfoot came on and then escape immediately afterwards, we sat through the first band, some clueless DJing, and observed the rituals of a clientele all of whom seemed, bar us, to be explitly flouting the over 18s only rule.

Eventually, a band limbered up and began a laboured punk rock / john spencer / idiot-savant routine which was - frankly - the nail in the coffin. Actually, the nail in the coffin was when they announced "We're the last band on tonight" and we realised we'd missed The Tenderfoot. We made way, hoping to find solace in a bar on Ship Street which was having an electroclash night. We tried it, but despite the excellent music - 'Deceptacon' by Le Tigre - we moved on elsewhere; it was overdressed and showy, and crap. Eventually we went for a (non-alcoholic, sigh) drink in the bar at the Joogleberry playhouse, which was, as it happens, lovely, although the fact that we had missed the food by moments didn't lift our mood much.

Still - I'm happy to report that 'The World's Wildest Police Videos' on C5 when we got back was fine.