Strangely awesome.

Sic Alps are friendly.

The Portland Arms (Cambs) could not have been a more fitting venue for this U.S. grunge-fi band Sic Alps. It seems that grotty and gritty is quite fashionable at the moment.

Before solely divulging into the complexities/praise of the Alps performance, the only other notable band of the night were Internet Forever (naming crisis?!) who not only were fronted by a man in jegging's, therefore offering a lovely silhouette of his penis for about 30 minutes, but they also tempted me to part with £2.50 for a wonderfully kitsch tape containing their songs - 6 tracks on side A, 6 on side B. There were interesting/fresh/sort of new...

Sic Alps. This was the penultimate date of their 14-leg UK tour, which you would not have guessed from the energy that they exuded for about an hour on what was a very small stage, in a very dingy venue. They threw themselves through a heavy set of 19 songs. What really impressed was that all three band members switched and swapped instruments regularly, fully enthralling the 30 odd people in the crowd. 

For me, the gig was what music should be about... intimate venues, tiny gatherings, strong drums, and dirty guitars - not NME endorsements or mega-crowds! Post show, doubling up as a salesmen, I was sold a nice AA T-shirt by the freshly sweaty front man, that states "Give It To The Sic Alps". He even wrote me out a set list to what I had just witnessed (friendly right)! He then informed me that their last stop was Ipswich - good luck with that, I said.

Developing...

Unrelated pictures.

Top Road (Wootton Marshes, Norfolk)

Middle Church (Tintagel, Cornwall)

Bottom Trash (King's Lynn, Norfolk)

All taken 2009.

I painted Damien Hirst.

This is him. Well my interpretation. I don't in any way think that this is very good, and it is definitely not worth anywhere near the 125k photograph that I painted this from...

I suppose part of the reason I have done this is because I have recently become slightly infatuated by his decorated life. His new show of paintings at the Wallace Gallery look very Bacon-like, but with their own Hirst-ness about them! He has said that when he was younger he gave up painting because all his efforts looked like bad Bacons.

These 25 paintings could soon be seen as the defining works of his career... Especially the haunting, ghoulish Requiem. This seems important, although I am yet to see it physically...

I also had forgotten that he built his Shaker-style painting studio on the third series of Grand Designs. I wonder if he will bring back Fat Les anytime soon... Yep, that is him. Seriously. He seems to like pulling rabbits out of hats!

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Since the above post ^ I have visited Hirst at the Wallace. All I can say is this... I retract any excitement or intrigue that had been felt prior visitation.

It was a terrible show - from setting (the Wallace) to subject (skulls, dots, and darkness). He was right about only being able to produce "Bad Bacons". Plus Damien, you can't just re-invent historic meaning and association.

Career defining... sure, but for all the wrong reasons.

Here is a very comprehensive (and shared) review about Hirst's new work (as we attended it together) from my good friend Jian Wei.