Plans Video Diary 3!

Posted by Mallard on May 6th, 2008 — Posted in Diary

Not really.

This is probably old news, but I only just saw this today and I can’t stop watching it. I think it is the funniest video I have seen on youtube to date. Absolute gold.

EDIT: This comes a close second

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Why I love a band

Posted by Mallard on May 5th, 2008 — Posted in Diary

A lot of the time on this here webshit, I wax lyrical about Bono and why I don’t like the weasel-faced bastard. Presently, I would like to be positive about a band.

of Montreal suddenly got quite famous over the last year or two with the release of Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? , an album which garnered tons of positive reviews, but eventually also a lot of comments from people saying “This is an over-rated piece of shit,” or “of Montreal are the most over-rated band on the planet,” that sort of thing. I have to say, the only way someone could possibly come to that conclusion is if they have only heard Hissing Fauna twice and given up, and not explored the wealth of mind-boggling stuff that’s fallen out of Kevin Barnes’ head over the last decade or so. Hissing Fauna isn’t the most penetrable of records, and personally I found it slightly baffling that it’s the one that suddenly had a large audience paying attention - in places it is unparalleled brilliance, in some others it is bizarre and not always in a good way. But honestly, Kevin Barnes is a rare talent, about as close as someone can possibly get to being a songwriting genius…his back catalogue is so overwhelmingly vast in scope, brimming and overflowing with ideas, a sense of fun and horror simultaneously, musical references to the entire history of popular culture from the Kinks to Prince…can I make this any clearer? I AM IN AWE OF KEVIN BARNES. He is the sort of songwriter who can make absolutely anyone who ever entertains the notion that maybe they can write songs hang their heads in shame and throw their guitar across the room in despair.

I first heard of the band when Steve gave me a CD of the album “Satanic Panic in the Attic”, easily the most accessible and poppy record he’s made to date. If you haven’t got it, and you like indie pop, you are an idiot. Well maybe not an idiot, but you’re missing out. And that’s before we even delve into the simply wonderful early stuff, which is certainly as bizarre on first listens as the later stuff, but usually made up of loads of tiny bits of hundreds of brilliant songs all jostling to appear in the same song…aaaargh…

Right, enough gushing. Have I made enough of a dint on my karma now after all the Bono bashing? No?

Bono’s got a tiny penis.

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What do you do when you wake up in de mornin? Put some cheese on a cracker and some wine in yer step!

Posted by Mallard on May 5th, 2008 — Posted in Diary

Typical me. One minute I do a post hailing cheese and wine night as BEST, the next…

Well, cheese and wine night was a surprising success this week. Not only were the four Derby-based Pandaz in attendance, but also Mr Johnny Shepdawg and Christopher “Buff” Marsh turned up, not to mention world-wide celebrity Aaron (star of that show on the telly, you know, with the cameras and that…Pic Idol? Something) and the lovely Russell of Deirdres fame also turned up. There were TOO MANY people at cheese and wine night! We’re gonna need a bigger boat! Not that I’m complaining you understand.

But I failed to be on my best behavior, and as I zig-zagged merrily home it occurred to me that I had been the ONLY ONE talking throughout the evening’s film, the completely fucking bonkers Korean monster-flick “The Host” (well worth seeing, I think?) Oh well. In retrospect it could have been worse. I kept all my clothes on, and nobody died.

In other news, Bono is still a giant egomaniac, a hateful zealot, a penis with a mouth, a silly and ugly clump of false idealism, preachy bullshit even he does not care about or truly believe, and smelly leather trousers, a man with so little talent and so little charisma it’s a miracle he’s managed to fool so many people for so long, and not taken up his rightful place in the grand scheme of the world - sitting in a grubby box in Paddington Station, weeping into a sock, sneezing blood from his eyes as hoodies walk past and administer grisly acts of violence to his horrible, horrible head whilst he whimpers “still…haven’t faaaand…what I’m lookin’ for….Sunday…Bloody…Sundaaaaay…” and the people point and laugh and say “You’re a dick, Bono” and fling twigs and semen and bricks at him.

That last paragraph was for Sam.

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Cheese and wine, looking for a good time, cheese and wine, looking mighty fine, mmm.

Posted by Mallard on April 30th, 2008 — Posted in Diary

Folks, I’m feeling really shitty today. I have lost confidence by the bucket load this year and despite loving our new material and really loving our new new material that we haven’t learned yet, I am not a happy bunny. Why is everything so shit? Is this ever going to get any better? Blaaargh.

For this reason, I hope you will ignore the following or simply indulge me as I ramble and rant about something I have actually been enjoying recently in an effort to cheer me’self up.

Robbie texted me earlier on and announced he’s going to stop drinking soon. I had a thunk and decided he’s probably right. We should stop drinking for a bit. Fact is I’ve been getting so drunk recently I didn’t realise how bad it had got until I was actually on a stage in front of people at my current level of drunk. Over the past six months or so me and Robbie have both been on a more or less endless boozy bender and although Robbie has only lost part of his mind, I have left a trail of utter destruction in my wake. I’ve made friends with about 20 people I didn’t previously know, but gone on to alienate them with my drunken behaviour. It’s all really rather silly when you consider I could stop the madness by just not drinking. Considering I started it in such a hardcore manner in a misguided attempt at fixing my depression, it isn’t really very sensible.

Stop the drink. Stop the drinking. Do it for your health and sanity.

With this in mind, I think the time has come for me to tell you all about CHEESE AND WINE NIGHT! The next one being TONIGHT! Yeah! Who loves cheese? Meese! Who loves wine? Me-ine? Yeah!

There have been two official P&A cheesenwine nights to date. The first was about three weeks back, and featured myself and Robbie. We didn’t plan ahead, so the cheese was somewhat absent, but what we lacked in cheese, we made up for with wine. Mmm, delicious, red, fruity nectar of the Gods. We watched Clerks 2 and both fell in love with Rosario Dawson a little bit, sent random text messages destroying friendships (mainly me, admittedly) and eventually I staggered home to my lonesome bed where I probably had a wank. It is the cherry on the top of the cheese and wine cake, everyone knows that.

The second was an altogether more organised affair. We were joined by Jamie and Dan, who slightly misunderstood the basic premise by turning up with two four-packs of beer and no cheese, but no worries; Robbie and myself were on hand again to show them how to drink large and flowing quantities of the nectar of the Drunks, and Robbie’s fridge had more cheese in it than his PANTS. We enjoyed cracker after cracker, it was cracking and we went crackers for the crackers. And cheese. This time around we watched a rather good German film called the Edukators which, along with Clerks 2, I had already seen, but no matter. Robbie and I began ruining the film towards the very strong last third by talking loudly, giggling and generally making a nuisance of ourselves. It was great. When it ended, Dan demanded that we watch the special features disc from the Spaced box set, which we duly did, before I got up, pissed as a ferret and finding it hard to walk in a straight line, and left the house behind me as I set off on my mission to zig-zag across the pavements and roads the whole way home. It took me about 3/4 of an hour to get home; usually it takes about 20 minutes.

Tonight, we are going to have the CHEESE and the WINE and a movie, and it will be good.

THEN, I’m not going to drink anymore except for at cheese and wine night. I’ll keep y’all updated as I’m sure you are fascinated.

Oh yeah, except also for Sunday cos it’s Michael’s drinkies birfday night out.

Right…I’m off to try on my funeral suit. xx

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Plans & Apologies play very badly in Sheffield

Posted by Mallard on April 30th, 2008 — Posted in Diary

Hello there.

Well, last night was pretty bad…to be honest I can’t remember that much about it at this point in time. I’m expecting things to slowly come back to me in flashes of monumental embarrassment.

Apparently it’s spelled “Bassett” with two t’s. Must remember that.

Right, here’s what I do remember - quite a lot of free beer.

White Russians - two really bad ones, two really good ones (if you’re going to West St Live, get the female member of staff to make your White Russians).

Dave Gibb, who was really good and reminded me of me a bit in his mannerisms and his lyrics. Sorry Dave, I empathise with you, it’s shit being a bit like me.

The Situationists who have improved ten-fold since last time I saw them and are now a really, really impressive band…upbeat, twiddly, whoopy, technically impressive sing-a-long-a type of thing. Good eggs!

(At this point, there was another band. I’m not sure what they were called but they seemed pretty good. Unfortunately it was around this time that I had noticed how drunk I had gotten and I spent most of their set wondering about giggling and falling around. They did seem really good though, perhaps someone else who was present can fill me in).

Anyway, so, not that any of the people at the gig are massively likely to come on here, for the bits of our act I can remember, sorry. I’m really, very sorry. We’d been waiting a long time and I, for one, had drunk a silly amount of booze. I remember cracking at least two gags about poverty that seemed hilarious at the time but not to the audience. So yeah - I didn’t mean it. Honest. It was meant to be funny.

So here’s what I’ve learned:

-Plans & Apologies should not headline.
-If they do, they should NOT drink. This is a rule I am going to start adhering to.
-Charity gigs are good. Cracking jokes in a loud and drunken way about the charity is not good, EVEN IF the charity’s tag-line is “Bollocks to Poverty” which is bound to seem funny on a massive sign on stage when you’re pissed. Jokes about charity=no no.

So yeah, sorry again to Sam who put us on and anyone who watched. It won’t happen again, I promise! The important thing is, between us and the ten people that came to the gig, we have ended poverty. So at least we got that…wait, that’s another charity joke, and I’m sober.

The other thing I’ve learned is that I’m an arsehole.

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News Just In: Plans & Apologies finish album

Posted by Mallard on April 28th, 2008 — Posted in Diary

Hoots man!

Last night, the boy they call Robin and I went into the studio and finally finished the tracking for The Basset Hound and the Icy Ground. There is literally NOTHING left to record for this album. Now all that remains is for us to listen to it a couple of times, remix it, listen to it a couple more times, mix again and finally send it off to the Masterers of the Universe, who will Master it most profoundly.

This makes me a glaaaad PandA.

To celebrate, we drank some cheap shit cider and a pint in a pub, then ate some cheap shit food and walked home. Rock and roll!!!

Tonight we shall celebrate further by gathering at Robbie’s house to watch Steve play GTA (exciting!!!) and all go “Oooooh” and “Aaaaah”. I’m hoping Robbie has got the appropriate cheeses and crackers for the occasion.

And finally, tomorrow night we’re going oop North to that ther Sheffield to play a giggle at West Street Live. I’m not sure of the details, but I believe it is for charity so come on down if you’re in the area. Harier.

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The Boys are Back In Ta-a-a-a-own

Posted by Mallard on April 23rd, 2008 — Posted in Diary

Peekaboo!

The website went to nowt for a while…the explanation? We didn’t pay to keep our domain name. The reason? Somewhere along the line, somebody left this matter with Dan…you do that maths.

The important thing is, it’s back now, and better than ever!/it’s back now, and exactly the same!

In order twos, Robbie was wrapped up in a nice scarf and a hat by his mum today, presented with a nice weaved basket full of scones and cheese and ham sarnies and a flask of milky tea, and encouraged aboard a horribly overly-priced train to our nation’s fantastic capitol city where he met up with Steve and, all being well, the guys from Exercise One Records to talk about what the hell we’re going to do with this here album we’ve done made. I hope it goes well, but I’m a little peeved I couldn’t afford to go myself. As a side note, if the government wants us to use public transport more to avoid carbon emissions, couldn’t they at least make the rail prices a little fairer? At certain times in the year you can fly to Barcelona for 1p, but to get on a shit-encrusted train full of drunks and Nathan Barley’s costs an arm and a bastard leg all year round. Just sayin’.

In udder clues, Robbie has made a start on the final part of our fantastico album-making video diary, the rest of which seems to have been taken down from youtube due to…well I’m not sure, but I am sure they have a fantastic reason in their infinite wisdom. The barstools.

And finally, as if the wait wasn’t bad enough for this album for that fella over there in the flat cap reading this - oh, he’s gone - well, as if the wait wasn’t long enough for, er, us, I’ve started writing the next one. Is it good? I think it rather is, but it’s hard to be sure when I’m the only bugger who’s heard it. What I can assure of, though, is that it’s absolutely fucking miserable. And very simple, by my standards.

More news when there’s something actually good to tell you.

EDIT: Reading this back a while after typing it, it appears as though I’m under the impression the government set rail prices. I realise that is not the case…damn you Thatcher!

PS Damn you American English dictionary! That’s how you spell realise! Don’t AmericaniSe our spelling!

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Delirium in the brain of an ill Panda with a keyboard and lots of time on his glans

Posted by Mallard on April 16th, 2008 — Posted in Diary

Upstand and take heed, children of the empire! The final strands of the dwindling noose dangle before you like spitting flames at the last barbie kewl before Satan’s unholdy demise.

The umbridge of billions of millions of flies twitters in your faces whilst the bed sores join together, a blotchy dot-to-dot that, when viewed through the correct eyes, make the fibers of the universe unfold and collapse like so many empty vessels, limp and lifeless, deflated on the open chest of the ocean, crying out like a bat in a blizzard.

Unclasp your withered handbags and detach your miserly uncles, this is no time for extramarital horseplay, this is no time for whet whistles, this is no time to weep oily tears from the last visceral scars of the winter, this is no time for your brittle consternations, your angry little yelps, your satisfied grunts of pleasure as the air slips from the airships and the floor is closer than you think.

Bring down your enemies with a cup of tea, wring out your enemies clothes and bring them to me, for I am the hobgoblin of great contradictions and I will have my milky drink with two sugars, please. Crumble your grumbles and make a scrapbook, chain a cat’s hook to a crap rook and send him forwards as a spy for the empire. Improve your gambles with foresight and hindsight, grip your muddy eyebrows in your bloody highbrow supplements and sup a mint in the glare of the tired sun.

Oh, forniforivorous carny! My tiny, trembling pooper! Oh, multitudes of mumbles, yards of hatred spilled out on the lawn like so many fresh guts in the slaughterhouse. A bike pedals backwards into Saturn, the universe sighs and creaks as a strain tears a hole across the center, swirling inwards and outwards, confused and infinite, like a publicity stunt for a publicly shitty cunt.

Fast forwards the tape until you find the bit you like, cut it out with a knife and lend the tape to someone you don’t like.

Bloody your fists on a Dairylea slice, spread them on toast, boast to the host about who has the most.

Girth.

Laugh yourself inside out upon a golden platter, serve yourself with chips and a smattering of pepper, perhaps some salt if it suits you better. Open the crisps and win a tiny blue packet. Open the packet and find a crisp. Take it back to the shop and the shop has gone. Phone the shop and win a tiny blue packet. Climb within the tiny blue packet and climb back out half the size, yawning like a colossal brigadier, naked til tuesday when the man comes with all his answers, hoisted upon his tiny battery-operated cart and rammed to the teeth with cow’s tits.

Breathe slowly.

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The ongoing adventures of Space Dog

Posted by Mallard on April 16th, 2008 — Posted in Diary

EXT - WIDE OPEN GREEN SPACE - DAY
TITLE CARD: England, 1944
Enter SPACE DOG, running freely through the playing field. A child of roughly seven years old, a fair-haired and freckled BOY, runs after him, giggling.

CU - CHILD’S FACE, BOBBING IN AND OUT OF FRAME

CU - SPACE DOG’S TAIL. IT APPEARS TO BE WAGGING.

BOY : Space Dog! Calm down, boy! Where are you going?

SPACE DOG runs faster still.

The BOY slowly gets up. Camera turns from CU of the BOY’s face, pulling back whilst moving behind him, to reveal

WIDE SHOT - THE BUNKER

BOY : Christy!

SPACE DOG is pawing at the bunker door. It is rusted and the handle is in the shape of CHRISTOPHER LLOYD’S FACE.

BOY : Well, I’ll be. Come on, boy!

INT - BUNKER - DAY

Camera tracks back from the door handle, which CREAKS slowly downwards, to take in all of the door as it is pushed open, hinges CREAKING, sunlight spilling in through the cracks, finally showing the BOY and SPACE DOG, in silhouette.

BOY : I think we should go home now, Space D…

It is too late. SPACE DOG has run inside. BOY waits for a couple of beats, then, with a sigh -

BOY : You’re going to get me into trouble again, Space Dog. Just remember it’s within my power to get you neutered.

SPACE DOG makes his way through what we now see to be a twisty Labyrinth, covered in cobwebs and pipes and shit.

Eventually SPACE DOG reaches another door. He goes up on his hind legs and pushes the door open.

COLLAR CAM

We now move inside the new room on the COLLAR CAM, and see three more dogs - MINTY, THE YAP and BRUCE.

MINTY : Ah, Space Dog. We’ve been waiting for you.

The BOY waits in the corridor outside the room. Peering around, he sees with some SURPRISE that the voices he can hear are coming from DOGS.

THE YAP : What took you so long?

SPACE DOG : I have been playing with the human. He is a tiresome child, but easy to amuse.

The BOY is going bloody MENTAL. His dog can speak?!

BRUCE : Well, come in, come in! Cup of tea?

SPACE DOG : I would, but I’ve got no thumbs.

BRUCE : Of course…bowl of cow guts?

SPACE DOG : Laaarvly!

Cautiously and with some tremble in his step, the BOY enters the room. He opens his mouth to speak, but a BARK comes out instead. He puts his hand to his mouth, confused.

THE YAP : You brought your human with you?

SPACE DOG : Yes, have no fear. He is a good boy. Now, how are you getting on with the weapon?

MINTY : It is ready. We have not yet tested it, however. Perhaps your human…

SPACE DOG : Leave him be, he will do you no harm and we will do him no harm or else.

MINTY : It seems a shame to have such a perfect test subject…

SPACE DOG : No Minty. He is…special.

THE YAP : The chosen one?

SPACE DOG : No, he’s got a brainwrong.

MINTY : Ah.

To be continued…

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Here’s what we looked like at said gig!

Posted by Mallard on April 16th, 2008 — Posted in Diary

This is my face, in colour. My face is black and white.

This is what I look like when I’m singing, feeling a bit smug, and Robbie is stood behind me.

Here’s me looking all spastic whilst Robbie gets pensive and Steve looks a bit concerned, perhaps in the direction of Jamie.

This is me tuning up and displaying the awful sweat problem I had been developing throughout the day, whilst Robbie considers what it might be like to tickle a goat’s chin as it is slowly lowered onto the stage.

Here, me and Steve try to out sexy one another, and Steve wins.

Here, we see Dan in colour so we can further understand the unique pigmentation of his skin.

And in this picture, you can see some of Jamie’s godly rays being cast from his bonce upon the stage.

Thanks to Bibi for the pics!

EDIT: I hope when Steve gets the new site up and running (yes, this is still happening) that when I post pictures they won’t corrupt the whole website. Look, I don’t understand the kids and their new fangled blogs, alright?

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