I thought I’d never really enjoy London, well not since I came when I was a young pup. I’ve been quite a lot of times as an adult but this is the first time its been ‘fun’. Sure there had been some great shows and record purchases in the past but the darm unfriendliness of the Londoners has always been a downer.
But today something happenned.
I got ‘evacuated’ from the Tube after someone left a parcel on there. Then I went looking for a John Fahey album in Rough Trade in Neal’s Yard and actually got a smile out of one of the staff there! He got so excited that I asked his opinion of which Fahey album to get . . . . the smile didn’t last long but it was good. I left some Cyclics with him ‘for his favourite customers’ and he immediately spotted the Oren Ambarchi track on the sampler and smiled again.
Two smiles in London. In one day.
Then on the bus back to the couch I am sleeping on there were these angry teens arguing about whether it was cool or not to download albums from the net, and then started to argue about who was the best garage MC.
Crazy.
Also, if the labels at the Saatchi Gallery don’t raise a smile you must be dead. They’re often better than the art – “erosive destruction” used to describe a picture made out of foam; “emotional absence”; or “his paintings are neither beautiful nor seductive” . . . .
*
