london adventure day 7 (mon. 04.08.2002)
Originally written 04.08.2002.
i woke up this morning nearly 12 hours after my ridiculously early bedtime last night. Turning it in early has been a good call. i awoke with no set plans for the day. well, i did have to change hotels, but other than that, nothing. i had realized yesterday that i was starting to get sick of museums. maybe it was my aching body telling me to turn it in, but after a while, the paintings and exhibits seemed interesting but lacked a more profound impact. it made me more than a bit jealous of the london locals who get to scope this stuff any time they want. i reckon that’s one of the merits of living in a city like london. even as a kid, living only 2 hours away from free museum hubs philadelphia and washington dc, i didn’t go all that much due to the overwhelming hassle of finding transport and parking once i got into the city. had there been trains to those cities as convenient and cheap as those in the uk, i would have gone all the time.
money’s running low – only 24 pounds left, so it felt bad to drop the five pounds to see the interior of st. pauls. you can get in for free if you intend to worship there, but i felt about lying about my intentions (in a church no less). you need a tick to climb up the stairs to the whispering gallery (so called because its acoustics allow you to whisper against the wall and be heard on the other side of the rotunda), and the stone gallery anyway. sir christopher wren‘s masterpiece is a sight to behold and it is overwhelming to behold in both in size (being one of europe’s largest cathedrals) and intricacy of its adornment. it is disturbing to see the frivolous graffiti scrawl of the tourists on the stairwells up to the stone gallery which provides a great view, not only of the skaters sessioning the stairs below, but also of the thames and much of london. looking out over the city, one gets a real idea of the density of the place.
below the main floor of the cathedral are the crypts which are the final resting place of such notable figures as florence nightingale, arthur duke of wellington, lord nelson, william blake, henry moore, and other artists, scientists, and military figures. st. paul’s is actually london’s third st. paul’s with the first built by saxons in 603. the second, built in 1100, modified to create a combination of gothic and norman architecture, and later burned in the great fire in 1666. wren recreated some of the second st. paul’s in the current structure, whose construction began in 1675.
i tried to scope westminster abbey, but it seems that it is a destination that will go unvisited on the trip to london – it was closed in preparation for the queen mother’s funeral. what i did encounter was a very odd spectacle of public grief, if one can call it that. perhaps it’s because i’m not from a country with a monarchy (thank goodness, though our current leadership suggests we’re hardly better off), but i really don’t understand the response to her death. i overheard the conversation of some young brits on the tube yesterday that share some of my bewilderment. i mean, it seems that the queen mother was a good person and all (or perhaps not as some of my flatmates have suggested), but it seems superfluous to see such a huge response to someone who, in my opinion, in the grand scheme of things, had such a small impact on the world.
what i saw was really interesting. no one was in tears. it was more like the tourism of death. people queued up for 6-8 hours to see her body lying in state. people were camped out on the sidewalk near westminster abbey and there was the pile of flowers that seems to have become essential to these public displays of mourning. i snapped some pictures of the onlookers as i thought a tourist’s photo of these tourists seemed somewhat appropriate. the funniest image was of a little boy, posed by his father, holding a poster of the queen mother. the kid looked totally confused.
i’m not trying to be xenophobic in criticizing this kind of public pseudo-grief. in fact, i think that a similarly public figure would receive an identical public response. to me, this kind of public pseudo-grief is just an example modern (wo)man’s obsession with the cult of celebrity. perhaps people feel that their life is made more significant by participating, even in an infinitesimally insignificant manner in the life (or death) of others. i just can’t get over the number of wasted moments in the mass of people spending eight hours waiting in queue. one can’t help but think that in all those hours, someone might do something significant and meaningful in their own lives. i just don’t get it.
it reminds me of the discussion on punk culture that i heard on saturday. if there’s one thing that i like about punk, it’s that punk inspires a sense of personal action. sure, i’ll grant that there are celebrities of sorts in the punk scene, but it seems almost impossible to ignore the fact that the person up on stage is very much like you. people often criticized punk’s raggedness and simplicity, but in that i fin it’s true beauty. it captures the inherent potential for creativity in everyone. if i, for a moment, get caught up in someone else’s life, it’s because i find what they’re doing to be inspiring and empowering in my own life. if that’s what the people find in waiting eight hours to see a corpse, fair enough, but i just don’t see it.
i made a couple of stupid realizations today. first, that the term continental breakfast refers to the european continent and seems to be in contrast to the heavier english breakfast. second, i realized why harry potter departs from king’s cross station on his way to hogwarts. london has a number of train stations (others like paddington also having children’s literary significance), each providing service to a different part of the uk. king’s cross provides service to the north, and since j.k. rowling is from the ‘burgh, she’d use king’s cross to get to/from london. so, it only seems natural that harry would use king’s cross as well.
let’s get one thing straight. time out is ace! if you’re planning on seeing a show, checking out a gallery, the cinema, the theater, or doing anything at all in london, you need to score a copy of this weekly events mag. it offers reliable listings of all kinds of events and points out the freebies and best bets. so, that’s how i arrived at the bluetones‘ in-store at the virgin megastore next to the tottenham court road tube exit. the last, and only in-store i had been to, by the ex-urge overkill frontman, made me feel like rock had died. it wasn’t that the music was bad. it was the atmosphere – think spinal tap book signing. there were more curious yuppie parents with strollers and j. crew bags than people who actually know who the band was. so, i didn’t have high hopes for this one, especially having heard the band, billed as “indie-pop”. hopes were higher though when realizing that the turnout was at least 10x that of the aforementioned abortive show (easy to do when there were only about 10 people there).
the pop label is quite accurate as the bluetones seem largely the product of the long british guitar-pop tradition. sweet and simple, their music was pleasant if not particularly innovative. sweet and simple, their music was pleasant if not particularly innovative. the first american comparison that comes to mind is fastball, but i’m sure i can come up with something better.
the band seemed a bit flustered at the idea of playing an in-store. they made a number of cracks about it, but it was still odd to hear a band sing a song title “freeze dried pop”, about the fickleness of popular music, while some of the guitar parts and other instrumentation was so obviously pre-recorded. still, it was a good time and the price was right. a note to anyone else wanting to check out a virgin in-store: when i arrived at 17:45, i was able to get a spot at the front rail. by the time the set started at 18:30, the coral was full and security shut off the floor. so, arrive early to get the goods.
time out is also how i arrived at verge (147 kentish town rd, nw1, 5 minutes north of the camden town tube on the norther line). the show was listed as emo and the lineup featured douglas who i had seen open for hundred reasons a month earlier. funds were now seriously running low, but i decided i’d rather see a show than eat.
i chose wisely and was treated to a night of intense post-hardcore. i had wondered where all the younger kids were at the last two gigs i attended, but the younger set showed up in force for this show, filling up the just right sized venue.
the first band, called jerry built, seemed to be another of an emerging number of younger bands formed by kids who started listening to pop-punk and then expanded their musical tastes. the end product was ataris-style melo-punk that also showed some hardcore influences. the kids were trying to get in all the new-hxc trappings, apparently, as they found away to include programming and tape loops in their music.
the next band to play was losone, from germany. they sounded very much like small brown bike and though not particularly original in style, they played with an intensity that made for a great set. emo is such a muddled label, but these guys were definitely emotional if not traditionally emo-sounding.
the intensity started by losone continued when uk band douglas took the stage. if i could use one word to describe douglas’ set, it would be attack. douglas hurled themselves at the audience, both musically and physically in a manner so bombastic that it had the kids hooked. this band is crazy. i later realized that this is the same band whose singer had jumped from the balcony at the hundred reasons show and given some poor kid a concussion.
in my mind, there are two kinds of post-hardcore bands – the kind that are good because they’re innovative and the ones that are good because they’re tight, solid, and purvey their love of music by completely exhausting themselves on stage. i’ll let you guess which kind of band douglas is. i hadn’t heard of douglas until i came over here, but hopefully they’ll tour the states in the near future. they’re getting quite big in the uk and are even supporting saves the day on a number of uk dates.
the last band to play was dallas texas’ red animal war. a band that surprisingly missed my radar when i was living in texas. surprising because they were quite good. i guess it underscores the intricacies of international record distribution – certain bands that get distributed over here are far bigger than others which are more well known in the ‘states.
unfortunately, i thought they were a bit overshadowed by douglas’ overwhelming set, but they were the more experimental of the two bands, playing more with rhythms and time changes as well as idiosyncratic melodies that had a distinct math rock influence.
so, it was a good night and the show ended just in time for me to make it back to bayswater via the tube.