TOSMAG 004

Thursday 22nd March 07

Letter from the Editor.So there I was sitting on the Beach in Brighton, the sun beating

down on me, the wind smashing into my face, and I just stared

as wave after wave crashed into the stony beach, every now

and then a sprinkling of salty water hit my face bringing a smile

to it. It was less than two years ago that I left for the big smoke

and also one of the hardest decisions of my life. But as I sat

back there on my favourite part of the beach, just by all the old

fishing boats I finally understood how good a decision

moving was. You see in London things are different, if you want

to do something, you can do it, in Brighton it seems that nobody

wants to do anything. The only jobs seem to be in juice bars and

little boutiques and everybody just sits around smoking rolled

up cigarettes and chatting about the party they went to last

night. Don’t get me wrong it is a lovely atmosphere and there

is always plenty to do, but it’s just not a place to live if you have

any sort of aspirations or dreams, even a miniscule one.

It’s now Monday morning and I’m back in London, thinking about

the contrast. My bus was packed this morning so I walked to

work. I went the scenic route past the park and away from the

noise of the main road. Tonight I’m off to White Hart Lane to

see the FA Cup Quarter Final. Wednesday I’ll take in a pub quiz

just off the Northern Line. I’ll see a band on Thursday, go to

Borough Market on Saturday, will check out a club night over

the weekend. There’s just so much to do, and unless you go

to the complete other side it only takes 30 minutes to get most

places. London is massive but everywhere is accessible and I

just don’t think enough of us are enjoying its potential. So take

this advice, go and do something you’ve wanted to do for ages;

take a film course, go to a fetish night, join a rugby team, learn

an instrument, walk in the woods (I bet you haven’t done that for

yonks) and then go to Brighton, enjoy yourself for a few days, sit

on the beach, play on the pier, go shopping in the boutiques and

then think about how lucky you are to live where you do.

If only London had a beach!

-Ed.

Contents

London State of Mind

All Right Now!

New Pads

7 Stops

Travel

Cultural Comment

Northern Heights

Listen Up

Northern on the Northern Line

I mean what hope is there for a solution to the important issues of our day: Should men wear skinny jeans, PRÊT vs. EAT or achieving peace in Albert Square, when people can’t even be bothered to pose in fancy dress on the North-ern line for a competition with a fictional prize?! I would be angry if I wasn’t so darn disappointed! As the days went by and noth-ing, not a single lousy entry arrived I began to think about the causes of this lack of response; had you all seen through my lack of precision and realised there was in fact no prize? Were you all just too busy? Was the thought of fancy dress really that bad (surely not I thought, half of you look like you’re doing it most days anyway). And then it came to me. It was none of the above, it was just that you couldn’t be arsed! More and more I am no-ticing this sense of apathy and resignation among us, and when you think about it it’s hardly surprising; every day we are forced

to battle our way into our soul-destroying 9-5’s (usu-ally with our heads in the smelly pit of a complete stranger) on an out-dated, over-stretched transport system you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. We can’t drive anywhere because a dictatorial old socialist has decided to charge us for the pleasure of using roads we have already paid for. We are given parking tickets for daring to park outside our own houses, on which we are paying mortgages that mean we are likely to drop dead before reaching the age of retirement, AND on top of this we’re petrified to walk out the front door for fear of being stabbed, shot or blown up! Thus it’s hardly a shock that we no longer have time for many of the frivolities that give life meaning. Furthermore it seems that we don’t even have the time or energy to fight against these in-justices we face on a daily basis; at the end of each day we simply curl up into a paranoid ball of anger

and frustration simply to wake the next morning and do it all again! It seems to me that ordinary London life has become such a struggle, such a chore and an incredible responsibility that we simply no longer have the energy to fight back and stand up for ourselves. It has got to the point where I, and many of my friends are seriously questioning the quality of life in London, and that is a lot to admit when you’re a Londoner born and bred.

So anyway, back to the competition. Being Miss Impeccable I was going to go and pose for a picture myself - show you all how it’s done, but then my London State of Mind kicked in and I realised that this would require me to actually get up off the sofa on the weekend (a proper Londoner above all else Dear Reader), so, in true Blue Peter style I present you with one we faked earlier....Enjoy.~ Miss Impeccable

Well thanks a bunch dedicated TOS’ers

(The Other Side readers - of course)

for all your millions of amusing, original

and daring pictures of fancy dress on

the Northern line. Your exuberance and

creativity has blown me away.....NOT!

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LONDON STATE

of mind

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Local news/corner shop/ Post Office. Indian Gent before me. Lord alone knows how many generations he’s been here, but given the obvious vocal delivery you’d have to think not many. We’re transacting along the lines of Next Day Delivery and a paper please, when Free burst over the weedy radio, it’s “All Right Now” and my mind spins back a few decades to those heady days when such a sound, emitted by so disreputable a gang of scruffs represented rebellion and the unbridled joy of the air guitar

knew few riffs of such posability, outside of Keef. But the reverie is cut short by whistling! The Indian Gent before me is whistling to “All Right Now”! Was he here when the 7” vinyl originally hit the shops? Was he shaking his snakey hips to

Kossoff’s pre-grunge-grungedel-lica riff down the student disco or was he listening on a weedier transistor while he studied hard? Did it signify a very different type of rebellion to him then? Does it hit the heavy rotation list on his pod-u-like? Or is it just a damnably whistlable tune even after all these years? Strikes me that this little encounter may just dispel some of the doom that is foisted upon us by the Rags that prop up the livelihoods of many a Newsagent and News Magnate. You know

the ones I mean; The Daily Fail; The Bog Standard; The Scum; The Crimes etc... Those that maintain that we still live in racially intol-erant times, harping on about le-gal immigrants coming over here and doing the jobs we don’t want to do for wages that we wouldn’t

work for and picking up on the idiotic chants of moronic West Ham fans who think it clever to chant “I’d rather be a Paki than a Jew”. At least they’ve stopped throwing bananas. Well we have in North Lunnun, which is the only place I can speak of with any authority. People here rub shoulders with each other and get pissed off with each other for any number of reasons but the colour of the skin does not seem to be one of them any more. Hal-lelujah. Of course there are still the gang wars, and idiotic tour-ists from less tolerant parts of the Isles, but Lunnuners, for the most part, seem to me to have got over the more obvious reasons for discrimination. Noses, Lips, Eyes or Sartorial Variation. My boys used to come home from school, talking about their friends, and when I asked: “Which one is that?” they very matter-of-factly replied “The one with the brown skin with the Big ‘fro’” or “The brown boy from India”. They don’t do it so much now because I know their friends better, but they still describe people by what they look like rather than where they sit in the hierarchy of the class, which is probably a good thing. Descrip-tion not discrimination. Which

Surely the object of joined-up-thinking, multi-culturalism and hope for the future is that we see all the colours and celebrate them without pretending that they’re all the same. Pink is pink, brown is brown and black is black.

I YAM AN’YOU IS AN’THA’S COO’

reminds me of an ad I used to loathe for a well known Jumper shop, which proudly boasted that they ‘See No Colour”. I always thought that a trifle self-defeat-ing, not to mention deceitful, of a boutique that also prided itself on turning English heads from the regulation brown or grey Cardie! Surely the object of joined-up-thinking, multi-culturalism No one’s pretending that every-thing is in fact ‘All Right Now”. We’re all well aware that the

Footie is only one of any number of places that people use to spout unacceptable lingo; that now that racism is no longer politically correct it finds other devious little corners to sequester itself before erupting in the BNP or Mr Silk and his cronies; that some lazy people still make distinc-tions based on race and creed that have often catastrophic results; that people get killed, but... can we not just stop a min-ute, see where we are, remember

where we were, even where our parents were, think about how we got here and celebrate the breadth of our lives. Because if we don’t then we will simply trudge on under the relentless barrage of mono-cultural despair and moronic jingoism that fun-nels us deeper into the mire of fear, loathing and more death. We have it bloody good and we have so very much to be grateful for, and not all of that is as a result of the brilliant Anglo-Saxon mind, the brawn of Anglicised Celts or the nous of those Normans who came and stayed. Is it? So, if we are to continue to progress, make this an even better place to live and breed and generally carry on, it might behove us to throw wide our arms again, welcome in the poor huddled masses that the yanks are so busy refusing and allow them to contribute to the tapestry of this fine and expand-ing land. That way it might be a case not of “All Right Now” but of “Getting Better All The Time”. Just don’t ask me to whistle any of those Bol-lywood Arias. Man have you listened to that stuff? That’s waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too com-plicated for my anglo-saxon mind!

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BY CARDROWSKI

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MYsDAD'SsNEWsPAD

ico has strayed away from the car and into the entrance to what appears to be a show home, there is literally nobody there and it feels like one of those moments in non fictional films where all the players vanish except one, who is left alone to contemplate where everybody else is. I swiftly follow him in from the barren Borough street and pull him out, we are not buying a house today, we are here to see the new pad my father and his lovely new wife have purchased, a stones throw from Borough underground station. We look up to the sky and see bodies frantically waving down at us. Eventually finding an entrance, a concierge and a lift we venture up to the tenth floor, plastic sheets cover the unfinished carpets and a mattress covers the mirror in the lift ‘Warning! Mirror behind’ exclaims the sign. It’s not quite finished. In we walk, shoes off, pristine white tiled floors that you can see you reflection in and into the main room, containing a small round

table a rather large white leather sofa and an even larger plasma screen TV placed on the floor, that’s it, except one thing, the window. The window that is London, everything that is London. It must be 10 ft across. I peer to the left and I can see right round to the London eye. Look down and there’s a beauti-ful Northern Line station, keep going, the BT tower, the Gherkin, Tower Bridge, Canary Wharf. It’s a one stop thrill ride of South West to South East through the best and worst bits of our city. Not only are

the sights there, but look down below and there is a ‘Grand Theft Auto’ view of a Bermondsey council estate, watch long enough and I guarantee that you’ll have enough evidence to send down Tony Soprano for life. Once you're outside it’s about four minutes to Bor-ough Market. If you don’t know what’s there then you need to find out. Recently it has gone from foodie paradise to tourist hell. No longer can you relax whilst choosing the best produce for your Saturday night dinner party, everybody is rushing around, trying to

cram as much free pate, brownies and olive oil into their chops. If you go early, before 10, it’s great, you can chat to the fishmon-gers, the greengrocers and the bakers about what’s good, what’s fresh and what type of cheese to have with your spicy pork sausage from the deep-est reaches of southern Spain. But like I said, if you leave it too late it’s near impossible to manoeuvre your baguette through the crowds without losing the end of it to somebody looking for something to dip into the balsamic vinegar!

n

Sam

Placed Image

Sam

Text Box

Not actually the writer's father's new wife.

Sam

Note

Accepted set by Sam

Sam

Note

Accepted set by Sam

Sam

Note

Completed set by Sam

Sam

Note

Completed set by Sam

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TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE OTHER SIDE PLEASE EMAIL US [email protected]

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Suite 2,PO Box 39437 Muswell Hill N10 3HL

NEXT TIMEWe go stateside to South by South West and find ourselves a puffy chair

h

wspot the difference A recipe for juice.

Who cares what five fruits you stick in the blender, they are all going to tast nice but I especially suggest this one.

Some ApplesSome Pears Some Ginger This is best in a juicer as opposed to a blender!

Directions.Put all ingredients in the juicer.Press On Drink.

Find 7 differences for a chance to win this weeks prize...which is so good we cannot disclose such information!

EastFinchley

Highgate

Archway

Hampstead

Euston Angel

Kings Cross Old Street

BrentCross

GoldersGreen

BelsizePark

TufnellPark

ChalkFarm

KentishTown

CamdenTown

MorningtonCrescent

WarrenStreet

GoodgeStreet

Moorgate

Bank

TottenhamCourt Road

Leicester Square

Charing Cross

Embankment

Waterloo

London Bridge

Borough

Elephant Kennington

Oval

Stockwell

ClaphamNorth

ClaphamCommon

The best things going on in and around the Northern line both sides of the River

SKETCH

South London

ROCK N ROLL CINEMAParks & Woods

The Steels

Wyndhams Theatre

Whilst having a leisurely strollthrough Highgate Woods the otherday I stumbled across a rather delightful little café (albeitslightly overcrowded with Highgate Mothers. So enjoy the springtime sunshineand go for a walk, a coffee, some cake, an ice cream...thenif you haven’t already got onestart thinking about having achild!

Entrance: FREEKids: Mastercard?

Dorian Crook, described by the NME as "Leslie Nielsen at 78rpm" and by Loaded as "the Human Jokebox", presents an evening of Comedy, Music and Variety. Accompanied by his anxious sidekick Jack Cutting "It's the only way we can get off!" Doors 19:30, show 20:30 / £6 (concs £5)

THE OLD QUEENS HEAD

On the first Sunday of every month 93 FEET EAST holds rock ‘n’ Roll Cinema. Anafternoon and evening ofShort Films, Live Musicand general fun.

Entrance £5Kick Off 4pmBrick Lane

Some of the best nights outI’ve had in recent timeshave been sitting in a pubwith a bunch of mates. The Sir Richard Steel pub, rightin between Chalk Farm and Belsize Park is an ideal venue for this kind ofdebauchery. Upstairs is bestwith high ceilings and bigold fashioned curtains

Step inside our den of playfulness and revel in an afternoon of ageless funand good old-fashioned (and not so old-fashioned) games. The Gallery willbe filled with activities, music, film and live performances throughout theafternoon.Nearest tube is Oxford Circus but the walk around the silent businesslessstreets from Warren Street is always a pleasure. entrance is free 9 Conduit Street

Being a North Londoner bytrade, my South London knowledge is sketchy at the best of times, I knowabout The Ritzy, BrixtonAcademy, a few Dulwich boozers etc, but I don’tknow it well enough. The Other Side is now lookingfor a South Londoner to find one thing to fill this space each fortnight. If you’re up for the task then get in touch [email protected]

THE HISTORY BOYS

Go and see it then exclaim at the end..

“Yes, well I thought the staffroom

rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence

provoked insistent questions about

history and how it is taught; about

education and its purpose...etc.”

However should somebody say this to you

first then “I quite fancied the dark

haired one!”

Variety Pack

Wednesdayth

4 April

tick

ets

£10

-£

45

If you would like to advertise something in 7 stops then please contact us at [email protected]

7 Stops

[email protected]

EastFinchley

Highgate

Archway

Hampstead

Euston Angel

Kings Cross Old Street

BrentCross

GoldersGreen

BelsizePark

TufnellPark

ChalkFarm

KentishTown

CamdenTown

MorningtonCrescent

WarrenStreet

GoodgeStreet

Moorgate

Bank

TottenhamCourt Road

Leicester Square

Charing Cross

Embankment

Waterloo

London Bridge

Borough

Elephant Kennington

Oval

Stockwell

ClaphamNorth

ClaphamCommon

The best things going on in and around the Northern line both sides of the River

SKETCH

South London

ROCK N ROLL CINEMAParks & Woods

The Steels

Wyndhams Theatre

Whilst having a leisurely strollthrough Highgate Woods the otherday I stumbled across a rather delightful little café (albeitslightly overcrowded with Highgate Mothers. So enjoy the springtime sunshineand go for a walk, a coffee, some cake, an ice cream...thenif you haven’t already got onestart thinking about having achild!

Entrance: FREEKids: Mastercard?

Dorian Crook, described by the NME as "Leslie Nielsen at 78rpm" and by Loaded as "the Human Jokebox", presents an evening of Comedy, Music and Variety. Accompanied by his anxious sidekick Jack Cutting "It's the only way we can get off!" Doors 19:30, show 20:30 / £6 (concs £5)

THE OLD QUEENS HEAD

On the first Sunday of every month 93 FEET EAST holds rock ‘n’ Roll Cinema. Anafternoon and evening ofshort films, live musicand general fun.

Entrance £5Kick Off 4pmBrick Lane

Some of the best nights outI’ve had in recent timeshave been sitting in a pubwith a bunch of mates. The Sir Richard Steel pub, rightin between Chalk Farm and Belsize Park is an ideal venue for this kind ofdebauchery. Upstairs is betterwith high ceilings and bigold fashioned curtains

Step inside our den of playfulness and revel in an afternoon of ageless funand good old-fashioned (and not so old-fashioned) games. The Gallery willbe filled with activities, music, film and live performances throughout theafternoon.Nearest tube is Oxford Circus but the walk around the silent businesslessstreets from Warren Street is always a pleasure. entrance is free 9 Conduit Street

Being a North Londoner bytrade, my South London knowledge is sketchy at the best of times, I knowabout The Ritzy, BrixtonAcademy, a few Dulwich boozers etc, but I don’tknow it well enough. The Other Side is now lookingfor a South Londoner to find one thing to fill this space each fortnight. If you’re up for the task then get in touch [email protected]

THE HISTORY BOYS

Go and see it then exclaim at the end..

“Yes, well I thought the staffroom

rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence

provoked insistent questions about

history and how it is taught; about

education and its purpose...etc.”

However should somebody say this to you

first then “I quite fancied the dark

haired one!”

Variety Pack

Wednesdayth

4 April

tick

ets

£10

-£

45

If you would like to advertise something in 7 stops then please contact us at [email protected]

[email protected]

Travel

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From Friern Barnet to HighgateSince the introduction of Oyster Cards my bus route has certainly sped up somewhat. There is no dallying around whilst Mrs Jenkins fiddles around in her purse trying to find 13 more pennies to make up the bus fare, or whilst teenag-ers try and switch their bus passes by running upstairs and throwing them out of the window to their mates downstairs.

There are however occasions where somebody doesn’t have an oyster card. What puzzles me is who are these people and why don’t they have an oyster card. Do they not watch TV, read newspapers, listen to the radio, use the internet or even look at billboards and advertising at the bus stop they got on at. Presumably not, either that or they are just plain ignorant.

I’m guessing the idea of Oyster Cards is a non profitable one for the government; otherwise Ken would be encouraging us to pay cash fares.

One theory is that they are uncool in the proverbial sense hence some people are anti – oyster. Perhaps the Jewish population do not use them as they are not Kosher. And the most frustrating are the high brow Muswell Hillians who see no need for them as they don’t need to save money. Well next time I miss my connection because of one of these No-yster ‘s I think that their perception of London transport may change, and change quickly.

jonburgerman.com

@ sketch

jonburgerman.com

Sundayʼs cool!A new Sunday experience for the whole family

entrance is free so just drop in and doodle !

Save the dateSunday 25th March 2007, 12pm – 5pmEntrance is free

doodle at sketch is the ultimate in family entertainment.

Step inside our den of playfulness and revel in an afternoon of ageless fun and good old-fashioned (and not so old-fashioned) games. The Gallery will be filled with activities, music, film and live performances throughout the afternoon.

doodleʼs menu has been inspired by Michelin-starred culinary genius Pierre Gagnaire. You can book a table in The Glade for lunch, or savour delicious ʻfood on the goʼ in the Gallery. The East Bar is open just for the kids!

Recommended age 5 to 50 Children must be accompanied by an adult at all timesPlease contact reservations for lunch on 0870 777 4488or visit www.sketch.uk.comFor more information about the event please contact [email protected] or call 07929 738 024

sketch 9 Conduit St London W1 2XG www.sketch.uk.comnearest tube oxford circus

Sundayʼs cool !

[email protected]

jonburgerman.com

@ sketch

jonburgerman.com









Sundayʼs cool !

jonburgerman.com

@ sketch

jonburgerman.com









Sundayʼs cool !

WheeliesHe just Wheelied straight into me. I’m standing at London Bridge station about to go to Brighton. My sunglasses are out for the first time this year in antici-pation of a bright weekend on the beach, and to say I was jovial would have been an understatement. But then, these kids and there

goddam Wheelies just tearing about around me, it’s like some backwards Ridley Scott flick but instead of futuristic flying cars there are children and they’ve been created with wheels on their heels. I can just vision it in a few years, we’re no longer going to be getting on the tube frightened of Osama

and his merry men, we’re going to be crapping our-selves at the thought of being knocked into by a flying kid and dropping our precious OYSTERs on the platform, thus being lumbered with a whopping £4 fine on our autotopups for not touching out. The only answer is to combat them now, just like we

did after 7/7, Londoners together or summin. So next time you see a little nipper charging towards you at the supermarket, the underground station or wherever stick a leg out, then those ‘loving’ parents might think twice about letting their kids out with wheels on their feet.

Cultural Comment

Make Doherty History #004 FEED HIM TO THE LIONS?

Take away pizzaBig cheese on toast for 15 pounds, case closed c

BlobEvery Monday morning Jamie takes the bus into work. He always buys a coffee and a croissant from the café near his work.Jamie doesn’t particularly like the coffee in the shop, or the croissants for that matter and usually ends up throwing them in the binHe does however, like the girl who works behind the counter. Every week he tries to drum up the cour-age by doing something crazy before getting to the café to ask her on a date In the past month he has tried Skydiving to WorkBus Surfing (this did not go down well with the bus driver or Ken Livingston, he

was fined £20). Rollerblad-ing. He even went to the zoo with a bit of steak tied to his back and released a pack of lions. Nothing worked – he just ended up with a dangerously high heart rate. One day he went and sat outside with his coffee and croissant and began to eat it. It then struck him; he had to drink the coffee to get to the girl.So he did and all of a sud-den there was a huge bolt of lightening and it began to hail. This was strange because it was exactly what the weatherman had predicted. Jamie got up from his bench and walked into the coffee shop.He asked the girl out for dinner. She looked into

his eyes, smiled and said, “if you think I’m going to go out with a crazy freak like you, you’ve got another thing coming – who skydives to work?” Jamie threw the rest of his coffee over the girl – actually in her face and she began to melt (a bit like in the terminator film). The owner of the shop looked at Jamie and told him to run. The girl, now more of an evil blob slid out of the shop and after Jamie. He was helpless to it’s grasps and the blob took him down and gobbled up his brain before morphing into the body of Jamie. And this is why it is not a good idea to ask girls out.

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Highgate folk get on the underground train and travel south into town. At night they return along the same track and exit the underground at Highgate Station. How many and how often do they travel north from Highgate Sta-tion? They should try it sometime. They could be in for some surprises. The train emerges into daylight at East Finchley and enters a four platform station. Northern line trains stop on the outer platforms. The inner tracks once served as part of the Edgware, Highgate and London Railway. Set up in the mid nineteenth century this was an overground line from Finsbury Park to Edgware via Mill Hill East. Mill Hill East Station was opened in August 1872 by

the Great Northern Railway which had taken over the single line track from Edg-ware, Highgate and London Railway. From 1923 the line was taken over by the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) and the intention was to electrify it from Finsbury Park to Edgware. The work was started but never finished. The tunnelled section of the Northern Line dates from the late nineteenth century and was originally named The City and South London Railway. A plan to build a spur of the Northern Line from Finsbury Park to Muswell Hill was aban-doned when the excava-tions hit a plague pit. The Great Northern Railway opened the branch line to High Barnet in April 1872. All the stations from

Finchley Central retain their original Victorian features and have a quaint rural atmosphere. West Finchley, Woodside Park, Totteridge and High Barnet itself are a world away from Highgate Underground Sta-tion. The Station buildings are small as compared with their modern counterparts and lack many passenger facilities (loos are few and far between and the waiting rooms are bleak and cheer-less). At off peak times some of these stations tend to be unmanned. What they lack in sophistication is made up for in the rustic atmosphere and the oh so clean air. The Northern Heights Project was a 1930’s plan to incorporate the Mill Hill East and Barnet Branches into the London Under-

ground. The first under-ground train to reach High Barnet did so in April 1940, the first to Mill Hill East on 18 May 1941. The plan to electrify the line to Edgware where passengers could join the LNER trains to Watford were abandoned after the 1939 – 45 war. The track from Mill Hill East to Edgware was dismantled in 1964 but sec-tions of the line can still be discerned, as for example in the piers of a viaduct just to the right of the A41 at Spur Road. So you Highgate folk take a turn for the better and visit the Northern Heights!

by Ben Samuel

THENORTHERN HEIGHTS

The Industrial music scene is a relatively small one (I hear my flatmate muttering ‘thank God!’).If you’re into dance music, but don’t want some chirpy bint warbling on about crap, this is for you. At the forefront of the scene, since their invention in 2003, are Combichrist, with their hard-edged, catchy, radioactive bubblegum floorfillers. Support bands North-borne had a pounding arsenal of tracks, but I tire of seeing two chaps with laptops bobbing up and down, playing their own CD. Kloq, the second support, were similarly lost in their own world. Some nice vocal work, and a singer with the same stylish sunnies as I possess, weren’t quite enough to make me want to invest. Reaper, I had seen last year, and had marked early on for great things. Reaper’s mastermind, Vasi Vallis pumped up the crowd with smiles and screams, endearing us with a comic

attitude, rarely to be seen in the scene – surprising considering the dress code! I’ve been a little scepti-cal of Combichrist in the past. Like Vasi, Andy LaPlegua has built up many successful projects, and the concern I had was he was spreading himself a little thin. I must admit now, having seen a band entirely in their element, playing with such energy and brute enthusiasm, and a man – a giant on any stage, that my doubt is based almost entirely on jealousy. Tracks such as ‘This Sh** Will F**k You Up’, ‘Blut Royale’ and ‘F**k That Sh**’ are no doubt written to a formula which is fast becoming the norm, and filled with swear-ing (swearing is fun and sells anything!) but they are, without doubt, corking beats played by a band who dance you like puppet-masters, pulling all the right strings! Shame the drinks were so expensive though. London – dang!

by Sheik Yerbouti

LISTEN UPCOMBICHRIST The Electric Ballroom March 12th 2007

This week your editor, designer, northerner and illustrator have been listening to these albums and singles.....

The Arcade Fire – Neon BibleBadly Drawn Boy – the hour of bewildermentThe Shins – Wincing the night awayThe Strokes – First Impressions of EarthDavid Bowie – Ziggy StardustCalvin Harris – Acceptable in the 80’sClap Your Hands Say Yeah! – Satan said DanceCountry Teeth

Oh and Reaper!

We recommend that you go and listen to these this week. A good place to do this is hype machine (www.hypem.com) where blogs meet music and you can listen to hundreds of songs day after day.

Holy Apples and Pears! I’m in London! With a job and a house and a bicycle and a pet lion (in my mind) in its very own swimming pool (in my mind – I have a large head, hence the nickname ‘Large Heady McFew Hats’) Last issue I was stuck under a pile of boxes and mayhemic (yep, you heard!) mess from moving once and for all across the North-South divide (I think its somewhere near an old Little Chef on the M-some-thing-or-other (I don’t drive and don’t care about ‘M’s), and as such, was unable to put fingers to keys and type my column (more of a wobble than a column I think....maybe a splat? Can you write a splat?) As soon as I’d unpacked my exploding hand-puppets and waterproof buttocks (that’s the North for you!), I rushed to the Northern Line

via a very slow bus, and sat for a whole ten minutes wallowing in contentment in my uncomfortable seat, amid the unsettling smells, and unnerving characters (not you, you’re ace! I especially like what you’ve done with your hair/clothes/chin today). As part of my assimila-tion programme, I have set up my Oyster card, which I’ve had for aaaaages, despite being only a tourist previously, to do that auto top-up thing. However, there is a problem. I have little cause to use the tube during the week. I use the buses (saying, ‘Morning Squire!’ to the nonplussed driver) or my legs and feet which I have cunningly connected to the end of my legs, to get me to work. The problem is, I need to get to Highgate to activate my auto top-up ... but where can I go?!

Highgate has now become a promised land to me, a portal to a new world of mild convenience and slack financial control. I want in!! But to go to Archway (south), or East Finchley (north – at least on the tube map) purely for activational purposes of my card, just seems stupid. I know you can’t open your eyes in the morning without spending a pretty penny in London, but sometimes you just have to make a stand! Maybe I’ll write to Ken. Maybe I’ll write to Bruce Willis....he’d know what to do! I would happily make a trip from Highgate if I knew of somewhere special I could go. Obviously once there, I’d spend a lot more money than I would if I were a less stubborn chap, but who cares about that?! So if you know of anywhere special, anywhere I really

should go to, let me know northern@theothersidemag .co.uk and I’ll write a review or something. Thanks! I think my obstinacy on this matter is due to matters in my personal life being so out of control, what with the move, new job, increasingly pretty nose etc, that I’ve created this predicament so as to gain semblance of control over at least one aspect of my escapade into this city. And though it may cause me headaches and confu-sion, its ok, because it’s something I’ve created, and I’m in control. I wear the pants!! Except on Wednes-days, where I only wear a poncho and a fig leaf.

‘Large Heady McFew Pants’

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Northern on the Northern Line

holy apples and pears!

what's nico been thinking?

WHAT'S NICOBEEN

THINKING

THIS WEEK

TOSMAG 004

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Transcript of TOSMAG 004