Heaven's Basement @ Barfly

Have just returned from seeing Heaven's Basement at Barfly with Kitty Moran and McTizz. I don't know what I was expecting, but they certainly surpassed it. Their website says they'll make people fall back in love with rock and roll, and I believe they will. I can't believe they're still unsigned, but I can tell you that they won't be for long. They already have quite the following, and several of that number turned out tonight in skinny jeans vying for autographs and high-fives.

I was standing right smack in the middle of the second-ish row taking photos, like everyone else. I have never seen so many cameras and phones out for so long. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the future. At one point the lead guitarist Sid got ahold of someone's phone, filmed the lead singer Richie and the crowd, then handed it back to its owner.

This is the lead guitarist that, for a period of time, played his guitar behind his head. Well.



He was one of the best guitarists I've seen up close. He was also giving some of the girls in the crowd "that look -- the one that works" at the same time. Multi-tasking. Effective.

As for Richie, he proclaimed he was glad to be back home in "an accent that could melt better" (I believe, was what Kitty said) and Cardiff was glad to have him. There was a significant degree of reverence from such a small crowd in such a small bar, and Heaven's Basement did not disappoint. They were wildly talented and indulgent headliners, and I can only see them getting bigger from here. From a completely cynical perspective, you can't go wrong with a group of hard rockers who are that pretty.


Still, when you see them, the prettiness really isn't the first thing that strikes you. In fairness, the first thing that struck me was that Jonny Rocker's extra long cardigan and skinny black jeans combo was both trendier and girlier than anything I own, but that was just me. Much more apparent in person is the intensity with which they play and the raw quality of the music. It was thoroughly enjoyable and over too quickly.

Kudos to new bass player Rob for fitting in so well -- I had no idea he hadn't been playing with them since the beginning.



On a side note, met drummer Chris afterwards to say thank you for the interivew, etc, and he was absolutely lovely. Let the record show that Heaven's Basement are very nice and they support their indie magazines. Hooray!

PS - Support band Dear Superstar were a lot of fun, particularly their thrash-punk cover of the Kinks' Lola. The bands showed their influences on their t-shirts - The Misfits & Ramones - and that made me smile. Hope to hear more from them in the future.

For more on Heaven's Basement, check out Issue 3 (which is out now, and beautiful) via the website. You can also check out the best of the best photos from the show here.

The Pain Issue: 40 Pages of Sex & Violence. Merry Christmas!

Spent the afternoon wandering the streets of Cardiff with The Punk. We ended up by the ferris wheel they've put up for the winter carnival (see my photo above). The idea of a winter carnival is still fairly novel to me. They don't really have them in the summer over here, but then we don't really have them in the winter. The closest thing I've been to in Minnesota was a drive through a field of Christmas lights in the warm safety of a car.

Still, the idea that Cardiff gets bad winters is laughable. Today was so unseasonably warm and sunny that I didn't bother taking a coat with. I'm not complaining, but I still find it ridiculous when everything comes to a screaching halt the moment an inch of snow hits the ground and instantly turns to slush.

Have spent the week working on Issue 3. Good stuff! The literature section is complete, and this time we're doing a short story thing with short fiction from Rhys Owain Williams, Kirsten Jensen, and Liza Penn-Thomas as well as Part III of Amphetamine Logic. I love them all, and I'm noticing a theme as the features come together. We have more than our fair share of comic violence, fetish wear, and *adult situations* (including our Dominated Love Slave Playlist) that this issue needs a very special name... perhaps The Pain Issue: 40 pages of Sex & Violence!

Or, you know, something like that. Send your suggestions to primaryantagonist@gmail.com.

Speaking of which, my super junk filter seems to have eaten a lot of stuff it shouldn't have, so if you or anyone you know has sent in a submission and I haven't replied, please SEND IT AGAIN! My Minions are too lovely to ignore!

Relocation to G-Town

G-Town

After a stupidly busy week touring every crack den for rent in Cardiff, me and the Punk have settled on a very nice house in Grangetown.

It's a beautiful house, and we have a week to move into it. Today is probably my last monging day in this flat. Weird.

The house is gorgeous, and I'm excited to live in it. It's already just about perfect, so in order to keep it that way, it looks like we're going to have to get rid of about half of our stuff. This doesn't depress me as much as I thought it might. I find the idea of trashing the pointless liberating, and look forward to what will hopefully be a less traumatic move than last year.

As I say, the house is great, and is by far the best thing we've seen all week. I suspect the only reason we can afford to move into it, however, is the fact that it's in Grangetown, which is supposedly dodgy. It's near the train station, which is awesome, and as there weren't any burning crosses or flags in the front garden, I figure it can't be that bad.

After hearing several warnings about this apparent dodginess, I checked it out on the old 'net. This is what I found:

Wikipedia: "A short walk from the city centre, Grangetown is considered one of the rougher areas of Cardiff. House prices are reasonable and therefore attractive to first time buyers. Grangetown is also known as 'G-Town', due to its 'ghetto' and 'gangsta' like image, caused by juvenile delinquency and anti-social behaviour."

Cardiffpedia: "There's an air of last century Poland about Grangetown - invaded by outsiders, districts fought over, sections sliced off, parts renamed and given to others" Peter Finch Real Cardiff (2002) p.113

and

"A staggering 20% of the population suffer from a limiting long-term illness, 36.45% have no qualifications."

and

"Unique in Wales, Grangetown has its own IKEA store."

Well, that's nice at least.

According to one of the Grangetown community websites, the worst "crime" problem Grangetown has is actually with motorists speeding and parking incorrectly. But a genuine little-old-lady had her purse snatched last week, I think.

I'm not worried about it, although everyone expects me to be. I know I'm a girl and everything, but shit. Asian supermarkets don't make a place dodgy. The Punk isn't worried. He laughs.

He's from Brixton.

Although we'll be moving away from Swansea, my home-away-from-home and base of operations for the past five years, it's only 30 miles East (which is nothing to an American, with or without a car), and I think it'll be good for the magazine. I'll be that much closer to the shows I keep getting invited to, and The Headquarters will move into its first *office* -- no longer will I have to publish this thing out of my kitchen! Not that I minded; that was fun, but it'll be nice to have a place to hang all of my gig posters.

Many of our contributors will still be in Swansea, obviously, but I don't expect that to make a difference. If anything, I hope the relocation encourages people to "expand their horizons." If we can begin to establish a bit of a base in Cardiff as well, that would be great.

Feminism...

In other news, The Observer called my this week. I talked to the editor of The Observer through my shoe phone. Looking back, I think that was the moment I had anticipated when I bought the red high heel phone for its comedic value. Anyway, they're planning on printing a letter of mine tomorrow, and he wanted to know more about The Antagonist.

He'd seen the website and said it looked "fascinating", wanted to know if I wanted to appear in the paper as the Editor of The Antagonist (YES) and where we are based. I explained we're in Swansea now, but moving to Cardiff this week, so he said for the sake of simplicity, he'll just put "Cardiff."

If you're wondering, the article was a response to a column complaining that women who choose not to have children are still seen as silly, selfish, or unnatural. My argument is that it is ridiculous that, nearly fifty years after Roe vs Wade, people still think the reproductive choices of others are their business. Also, doctors are saying that women don't understand the added dangers of "putting off" reproduction and encouraging them to pop out their inevitable children in their twenties for the sake of their health. These doctors are just being naive: women know exactly what the added risks are, and they're willing to take them by reproducing later (if at all) instead of having children before they're emotionally and financially ready.

It's becoming more and more apparent that you can't have it both ways. If you have kids early, whether you want them or not, chances are you'll have a hard time supporting your family financially, and even if you manage to go back to work and earn a decent living, balancing work and family life will always be a struggle. No wonder so many mothers prefer to go into business for themselves. Conversely, if you spend years pursuing your career before having children in your forties, you're stigmatised as a scary "career woman" who endangers her health and the health of her offspring by "leaving it too late."

Even in our supposedly more female-friendly society, we can't win when it comes to balancing career/family. Some people are going to choose one over the other, and that is their right, while rest have to decide for themselves what's going to work best for them. It's hard enough as it is without everybody weighing in with "helpful advice."