Info About Poker Card Reader

A cool weekend and finally a lull in the action.



Thursday was INSANE. I played two shows in the same night.



I arrived at VIA FOSSA (I don’t think I’ve played at that rock club before) for my corporate show with Wayne playing for Lucy’s work’s meal. Me and Wayne had some adventures setting up and blowing a Via Fossa fuse when we shorted a socket (my pink 15 watt practice amp was TOO POWERFUL). The set was pretty cool, a challenging audience but pretty funny and I enjoyed it. Some of the patrons had been drinking all afternoon and I felt for the poor magician as I left:



‘Ok Madam…I want you to think of the name of a famous person…..don’t tell me who it is……Ok….Have you got one?...’

‘No’

‘Ok…..Just think of a famous person and put their name in your mind but don’t tell me…do you have one?....’

‘No.

‘Ask the gentleman next to you to whisper the name of a famous person to you’



During the reveal when the magician asked for the name ‘ someone shouted ‘Gay Bastard’.


Poor poor Freddie the Magician.



I got to the HEAVING alley café at about nine fifteen for my ten o’clock show. Parisia from the maze was playing with an 8 piece band who had brought everyone in the world with them. It was amazing! I stood at the back for ages talking to a few people, telling Will about the magic poker chip and finally watching it ease up a little in terms of numbers. I met Irena, the singer from Muha a Russian/Latvian folk band and told her the squalid origins of Joey Chickenskin’s name story. I said that I couldn’t think up a fake story and she said I should ask a comedian to do it so I pointed to my name on the poster with (Comedy/music) next to it.



My set was pretty cool, a lot of shouting to a loud room but loud applause and complements afterwards. It was strange singing Spiderman when Stephen from page 45 was in the audience and I played my Christmas song.



I was pretty shattered by the time Muha came on. They were cool, kind of folky and entertaining but interesting. The percussionist has a cajon that he’s modified to create a pretty convincing bass drum snare combo and the guitar player played fast riffs on an acoustic guitar. I asked him if he slept with the guitar in his hands and he said that he doesn’t practice much now but used to leave a metronome on while eating his breakfast and practice for SIX HOURS a day. The singer reminded me of four different people I know rolled into one and the room was AMAZING during their set. Will was filming them inches from their faces, two guys were getting off with each other to my left and a straight couple to my right (Russian folk must be pretty sexy music) and a guy was going EXPRESIVE DANCING in front of them that made me smile with alternating warmth and embarrassed mockery but mainly warmth with a bit of embarrassed mockery. It was a really cool, unique night that you could only really get when you mixed Will with the Alley café at midnight on a Thursday.



On Friday I had the afternoon off and spent it being guided by Joe into trying to sneak past some bullshit virus on my computer that pretends to be a virus checker and doesn’t let you open programs or documents because they are ‘infected’. It disabled task manager, hid the file names, let me use firefox (or firefox was to foxy for it). Joe remembered a startling amount of menu and menu options on the phone without a PC in front of him and as soon as I’m not too scared, I’m going to shut down and reboot and hope my various updates kill it. What a waste of three hours! All I then had time for was a quick nap and to get ready for the Ish show.



The Ish Marquez show was lovely. I haven’t played at Lee Rosies for a while and I haven’t played a ‘nice’ quiet show for a while so my act has turned kind of RINGMASTER in it’s presentation as I ram my shtick down the audiences throat and steam through the set. I was already a bit self-conscious about my material. I don’t apologise for being Joey Chickenskin and the show is more adaptable to different settings and bills than a lot of other things but I love Ish Marquez and I was just a little embarrassed that there was so little substance in my songs and so much mucking around. I pulled Jose lopez in case he found it offensive, pulled my new Swine Flu song because only 2 Nathan Barleys have not hated it and was kind of nervous but buoyed by a conversation with a guy the night before who told me not to worry about it. Alyssa came along and so did Holly and her boyfriend and Andy Radar was doing sound so that was cool and there were about 20 people there all together. Ish remembered me from chatting last time



I recalibrated after my first song to try to calm it down and enjoyed a sense of chatting with the audience rather than shouting at them. I was constantly amused and bemused at selling my wares to such a quiet and pleasant audience but also enjoyed telling anecdotes and stories a bit more gently. I delivered my White collar gangsta skiffle shtick and immediately felt silly because it wasn’t the situation to be ‘lying’ to the audience so talked about the time I was interviewed about it at Splendour with ‘So, Joey tell us about white collar gangsta skiffle’ where, because I’d MADE IT UP, there was no more to tell. It was a nice set though and I uncomfortably enjoyed it.



Ish was cool about it and kept creeping up on me later going ‘Jooooey’ which was funny and the guys form Triple Rosie said some nice things. I enjoyed their set a lot this time, they’re like the best bands from Indietracks, in fact I spoke with them afterwards encouraging them to get some indietracks action and we also chatted about Ish and how he should be on Later with Jools Holland because people would go for his live show in a big way.



Ish is great! He has all of the energy and the show is so much optimistic fun even when he’s singing as the self-deprecating character. He does a lot off-mic and does this thing where he cups his hand to his mouth like he’s telling us a secret or gossiping, sometimes at the expense of playing the guitar. It was really cool to be part of that show, nice people playing cool music. I bought a CD of the last four songs that Ish Marquez and Triple Rosie did between them, which is recorded on one mic in a room with some chatting at the end of some of the songs.



It RULED to see Alyssa and holly at the show. Alyssa had bought Italian biscuits from the market and I was doing the ‘pretending to throw an invisible ball into the air and catching it in the bag’ trick. Alyssa confessed that she didn’t know how you did it and was disappointed to find out you just snap your fingers on the bag. It was cool to hang out with Any Radar and I told him about our conversation about terrible tribute nights like aBob Marley night where only white indie bands played and he agreed to record ‘no woman no cry’ for me in his own style completely straight. I PRAY it happens because it will be AMAZING. Cool night. Cool ‘tour’.



On Saturday I spent HOURS preparing the two Death to burly Nagasaki images. Front:





Back:




I can’t get the hang of filling in shapes in freehand so have to work in a paint programme at 300dpi so see that hour glass a LOT. I produced a monochrome version and decided to copy my Elvis seaside shirt with the colour image on the front and the black n white one on the back so my Shirt is a tribute to TWO shirts. I finished up in time to have a haircut and meet Abi at Splatt for four where she was having an AMAZING Dolly Disco shirt made.



Having T-Shirts done when you are me is such a STRESSFUL thing to do because I become increasingly demanding. The last Burly shirt needed a full colour print and a simple circle cut-out. The new one needs full colour and a vector path to cut out the colour print which is apparently harder than for the vinyl one-colours. The guy told me that they would need to work on my images and I argued saying ‘you can make the path by selecting the background colour (my image had a green background for them to de-select as there is black in the images) then inverting the selection and tracing that but he said there was more to it, like moving the nodes and keeping the cut-out slightly inside the image to avoid white margins. At first I baulked at the £20 price tag because a double sided shirt is TWELVE and even walked away but had a think, calmed down, counted my rock n roll money (£60 in one week) and went back. Making the image had already been about four hours of fun and I’m pretty sure I’m going to LOVE the shirt. I may leave it a while to do any other ‘specials’ because they are swamped with Christmas orders and are probably a bit more frugal with their time.



I scored some comics and popped round Sarah’s for a cuppa before coming back into town for the Spaceships are cool/We show up on Radar show only to find out that Racialism had closed the Malt Cross. Town was very strange on Saturday. There were police everywhere, clumps of Asian lads, clumps of dicks, clumps of protestors saying original things like ‘go home fascist scum’. I saw a guy in an England top with a chunk out of his head marauding around, the police guarded Greggs and the Police ‘escorted with enthusiasm’ some dicks shouting Eng-er-land!. The whole thing is a strange phenomenon. Some dicks come to march in town, some protestors whip up as many counter demonstrators and publicity to show how unacceptable it is, hards who like fighting find out about this and decide to join the racialists on their side but really just want to kick off and you’ve got enough tension in town to sensibly shut the Malt Cross because there is a chance that ay one of the little incidents could flare up.



Meanwhile I don’t understand how anyone actually sees the England football team as representing this country or being a signifier for it in any way when it’s a commercially driven enterprise that sends millionaires around the world to play other millionaires, that happens to be called ‘England’. Which makes bullshit of using it as a badge for a country which is now so multi-racial that if you are a racist, how can use England as a banner for your cause. It confuses me because REALLY the anti-fascists should be shouting ‘England!’ because England is about the current mix of cultural influences, not just in terms of the ethnic mix but the mix of identifiable groups (Chavs, Goths, Rowers, sneaky Fox hunters…whoever) who live in this tough climate and make it work.



Anyway, we had to go to the Orange Tree instead and take pictures of BIG PINTS


Twins



and Dead Marthas. Martha managed to fit exactly on a bench lying down as though it were made for her like a coffin. Martha’s sister took some photos of her in her coffin and I sugeste PENNIES FOR HER EYES (well, 10ps) but then got the FEAR when I saw the scary photos that the coins were now CURSED. We had a cool night of shooting the shit where Theresa asked me ‘Is there anything you can do about that?’ when I said that I don’t like Queen, a bit like when I say ‘go to the doctors’ when people don’t like things I like. It was a cool night of LARKING.



On Sunday I was up in time to meet Sarah and her friends, including Lesley for Sunday Lunch for Sarah’s birthday. I felt like the most virtuous man on earth LEAVING some hungry horse chocolate cake because it was richer than the Queen. It was cool to see Lesley and I said that I’d teach Caitlin to call her ‘Anton’s wife’ as she is known in town. I’m SO going to do that.



Afterwards I went to the park with Sarah and Caitlin and then went back to theirs to almost fall asleep before meeting Kris and Anton and Lesley at the Broadway before going to see The Descent 2 which I’m here to tell you, is a WASTE OF TIME. Honestly, if you’re a three month old immortal, you don’t have time to see the Descent 2. It was like a low-rent-story cheating sequel where there was no suspense because you know what is down there. The only way to sequel a film where you spent the first one revealing the monster is to CHANGE THE MONSTER like in Aliens. Or tell us more about the monsters than we knew before, or have a KING of the monsters or Monsters that EAT those monsters or some bit of secret backstory but retreading is bor-in.



Then I wrote about Patti Smith and Eastieman.



This week:



Tonight: Burly Nagasaki homework and badge making.

Tomorrow: Burly Practic

Friday: Sarah’s birthday and Dolly Disco



7. A photograph that makes me happy:

Hey, turn your coat inside out and put it on...



Heavyweight champion of the world.10. Wrapping up with the random: Playing with a concussion is not a badge of honor, it’s a badge of stupidity. As one talking head said recently (Colin Cowherd I think?) let’s stop calling it a concussion, and instead call it what it is: a brain injury. You don’t play with brain injuries. That’s not something that you suck up and play through. Not unless you wanna end up like Al Toon (Kids, Google) and sleeping in a sealed off, dark room for weeks at a time because being subjected to even the slightest bit of light or sound is complete agony for you….I’m 5 books into the 9 books - and counting - “True Blood” series, and I gotta say, me likey. Andy recommends (Thank you Laura!)…I know I’ve raved about “Modern Family” like 3 times but oh…my…god…it’s…good, and speaking of the alphabet network, the Turkey Day episode of “Cougar Town” may have been the best one yet…I am however having serious issues with the very stagnant “FlashForward” and I want no part of the ridiculous Katherine plot (she deserved so much better) on “Desperate”, and while I’m railing, do you really believe Carlos would turn on Lynette like that? What? What? Did someone say “Jump the Shark?”…You can tell I’m a liberal because I feel really bad for the New Jersey Nets. I may even send a card…My god I know it’s the biggest pipe dream ever, but could you just imagine the hype for an undefeated Super Bowl matchup between the Peyton Manning led Colts and the Drew Brees (”The gate is narrow”) led New Orleans Saints? (Btw…upcoming blog topic - my years in Louisiana and why Lions fans should be inspired by what the Saints are doing) The Tigers are gonna miss Placido Polanco badly, but that team needs to get younger. They couldn’t risk Polanco going downhill overnight like Maggs and Guillen. Detroit has been spending money like Antoine Walker at the casino, but they need to start being far more prudent.