So, this is my first blog entry, I have been contemplating doing a blog for a while, but like so many things I plan on doing, I am too lazy to ever get started. Not with this though! To be honest, I have decided to finally start because I just get the feeling I'm not going to remember great thoughts, or whatever, I maybe had at one point or another, and while they probably mean nothing in the great scheme of things, I'd like to remember some of them for reflection purposes.
Well that's the boring introductory part out of the road (I write that like anyone will ever read this!). It was because of some recent experiences I've had, that I thought I definitely wanted to start my blog, just to give it a go and see whether or not what I write down still means as much, as it does in my head, when it is actually written. I don't necessarily expect it to, but I'll see what happens. It is fitting then to write my first blog on a recent trip to London, it was a mad adventure, and I thought I'd share out what I felt had gone on and the experience I felt I had.
Now, whether to write about my whole time in London I don't know, it was all great, it all felt like one epic build-up to an inevitable chaotic madness. I think I'll just briefly write about the build-up to the peak of what seemed like a pocket of insanity. Got a flight down to London from Glasgow on the Friday night, I was going to visit my mate Paul, we are old friends and are cut from similair cloth you could say. On the first night, he had booked us into a hotel and got us tickets for DJ Pogo at the Camden Cafe Jazz Bar. We had planned on having a relatively quiet night and keeping the big one for the next day, so it started off with all catch-up conversation nonsense, digging the London atmosphere, and some beers. But of course, soon escalated into tequilas, dancing about, heading to another mad pub at shutting time (2ish), where they were banging out some drum and bass tunes, and we were able to get a gram of mdma. Obviously, from there, what ensued was us going nuts till about 8 in the morning and then sleeping in past our check-out time in the hotel, all good fun, and what you would, in all honestly, really want from your first night on a session weekend in London.
The next day, both Paul and I got up, feeling a bit done in and fragile, but ready to get out there and see what the fuck was going down. After a breakfast, we had a stoat about, inevitably ending up in a few bars, including one gay bar in Soho for the sheer novelty factor of it all (As a side note, I made 2 observations here, 1. Why, when Soho is rammed with strip clubs,etc, is it full of gaybars and not any normal bars? I suppose it's just a sleazy place, thats cool with me. and 2. When in the gaybar I noticed a few men reading a gay porno mag they had available at the bar called 'Boyz', and they were discussing the guys they liked, and as I looked about, there were a few wee groups like this, which made me wonder what the fuck that's all about, I mean it's not as if cause I'm straight, I'd go into a straight bar, and there would be Playboy, etc, and I'd sit and read it and discuss the girls with my mates? weird I thought), anyway, a few big beast (don't take offence, it's only a joke!) types came in and it was time to leave sharply, so went to a few more bars, then started the night adventure.
We got the Underground to Elephant and Castle. There's a few weirdos in the Underground in London, but hey, I dig that, it's great to see people just 'out there', not giving a fuck, and it's great that we have big cities that people like that just blend in, you don't even notice, it makes you feel free I reckon. Haha, Paul said on the way to meet me the night before, he was on the Underground, and a mad old African woman sat next to him, with crazy jazz blaring out of her headphones, as she sat down, she said to him "the devil rides", yass! that's the kind of folk you want to sit down next to you on the Underground at night, just mad folk.
Anyway, Elephant and Castle is just the ususal inner-city type of place, industrial looking bits, and estate-type looking areas. Straight away you could see there was a few dodgy people about, but that fitted the mood, gave it an edge, like who knows where tonight will lead. We had to get to a place not far from the station, as we walked through the underground passways, they were all swooping so you couldn't see round the corner, tiles painted different random colours, and paintings of elephants. We laughed about the way we'd feel headin back this way at some hour in the morning. The place we were headed for was the Corsica Studios, all we knew was it was some wee underground club, and the music line-up looked exactly like what we wanted. Anyway, it was a while away, so we went for a few drinks in a wee boozer, Charlie Chaplins. The place was great, all sorts of inner-city folk of all ages, this was obviously a local boozer for local people, that's what you want, see what's happening. The drink was a lot cheaper than centre London too, so we chilled with some double vodkas, didn't speak much, and soaked in the atmosphere of the place for a few hours. I was doing my usual, nosey-ing in on other peoples business, observing the social relationships, and trying to suss folk out. Inevitably, I was too nosey outside and a big rasta looking guy called Robbie was like "you like to watch things, you like to know whats going on, yea, I've been watching you", I laughed about it with him and just admitted yeah, I do. But, what he had been talking about was me seeing him sell drugs, but that was a good thing, cause it meant getting hooked up with some pills. He was a strange sort of cat, you could tell, even by the way he approached me, he thought he was a bit of a big shot, "I do the stuff around here", haha, a pub full of middle-aged drunks, and a few dudes sittin about. He was alright though, a friendly enough 'geezer', who smiled with a mouth full of gold. I ended up going up his flat not far from the pub to get some pills off of him, he did talk a bit shit, trying to convince me that his pills were top quality, and that you could tell from the stamp because it was a mitsubishi, but all pills can get stamped with whatever I wanted to tell him, it really means fuck all. Anyway, I just agreed and listened, I didn't want to start disagreeing up in his estate flat somewhere in London (even though I did kind of think the pills didn't look the best, oh well!). He told me to take his number, and put the name under JR, but then he changed that to Snoopy, I should have laughed. He said to phone him about anything, anytime, and that he might introduce me to Frank, who was apparently big time, but greedy, and maybe wasn't that nice. I was thinking who the fuck is Frank? Why would I want to meet him? And what pish are you talking? Anyway, we got back to the pub, and I gubbed a pill in the bog. When I got back Paul handed me the first acid of the night, and we decided it was time to leave and find the club.
The Corsica Stusios club looked ideal, down an alley under a railway bridge. The bouncers searched our bags and we went in. At the door I asked if Lula was about, it was her club night that was on, Wang, and I had spoken to her on the phone before coming down from Glasgow. She was at the door and introduced herself, she seemed like a mad Londoner type, vibrant, ageing a little, looked as if she enjoyed a good party, and, more importantly looked as if she would run a good night. She nicely showed us in, and to the cloakroom, all was cool. The cloakroom wasn't exactly a room, more out the backdoor, and a few coat rails at the back of the outdoor smoking area, situated under the bridge which gave it shelter. It looked a nice outdoor smoking area, long enough, and with plenty of space. The cloakroom attendent was similar to Lula in that you could tell from their vibe it would be a good night, but his vibe was completely different all the same. He was an almost withdrawn, dark character. He had a long black trenchcoat, dark swept back hair, that was so long it came over his face when he lent over to take our jackets, he had a pale face with dark eyes, and black painted fingernails. His gothic demeanour threw you off guard as to what his personality would be like, maybe he'd be stand-offish and aggressive I had thought,maybe the welcoming vibe from Lula would change when we spoke to him. However, he was a fumbling, nervous seeming type. He tried to rip a raffle ticket to give me for my jacket and couldn't do it at all, getting embarassed as he tore unevenly across it, then ripping the page off in a gentle frustration. Grinning and starting to feel the trip coming up on me, it felt like a good funny start, edginess to be couteracted immediately by a non-threatening comedic experience. Once the cloakroom attendant goth had taken our jackets we moved inside again, and went loking for the bar. The place had hallways into it like a community centre, with grafitti all over it, a room to the right immediately at the start, and a slight path going off at a side at the end, along with a staircase going up next to it. At the end of the corridor was the main room with the bar coming off it. The room had some couches facing the entrance from the corridor, the bar to the left, the dancefloor to the right. There was the usual strange looking strobelights and some nice dubby type laid-back techno playing. The trip was definitely creeping up, so we took another and I took another pill. We got some drinks, chilled, chatted, let the trip come up on us a bit more, then headed out for the first sanctuary cigarrette.
We ventured down the path coming off the corridor, it seemed the right direction. It went along in a funny zig-zag with grafitti over the walls and a door at the end. We went out the door and found the smoking area. It ran along the outside wall by the building under the brdge, with a fence opposite to the wall by about 3 metres, enclosing the area. It felt like an outside corridor and a back entrance to a fucked up factory all at the same time. People had already begun gathering there to smoke and chat. There were the usual types of people you find at an undergound gathering of weird technoheads. Crustie looking types, maths geeks that liked drugs, tracky top and baggy jean wearing fuckers, industrial punks. There were the usual dodgy looking types. And, the obligatory hot girl smoking a fat ass fucking cigar? She was cool as fuck. We fitted right in to be honest, I've probably not described the type of people that are the usual, as I terribly put it, people, but if you know the type of place I'm talking about, you'll know what I mean. Anyway, we stood had a cigarrette and chatted about the place and the people. Looking down to the bottom of the smoking area, you could see the gothic attendant sitting by lamplight reading a book, he was a funny spectacle in our state. Like something out of a dark modern fairytale, a funny black, alomst spectral, figure minding the jackets. We laughed to ourselves and named him The Warden, the title giving the impression he would play a significant part in the emerging story in our heads about the night. I don't know if he did, but I was mindful of his presence the whole night, thinking him an Oracle like figure, who would help in a moment of crisis. Laughing, observing and chatting, I finished my cigarette and we went into the room at the start of the corridor that we had not yet been into.
Upon entering the room and hearing the pounding old-skool style of electro I was like fucking yass! The beats were thundering down with sonic retro-future style sounds, amazing. There was already a gathering on the dancefloor, guys and girls getting right in about it, cutting a dash, that room probably held 100, and there was about 35 in, the floor still looked busy, but there was room enough to dance and throw some shapes. It was immediately clear who the main man was near where we stood on the side of the floor digging the tunes. A 6ft, blonde spiked hair, camp, yet kinda hard looking, guy. He had a big hoop earring and high trousers at the back, which made his built like a bit of a tank frame seem grandiose and authoritative. He had naturally maddening eyes I thought, and was throwing down the gauntlet on the floor, moving like a big fucking boss lizard creature standing on end swinging his tail. Big fucking Erasurehead, the name coming from his obviously camp style and his maddedning look represnting the Eraserhead type vibe that my brain was in. He seemed sound though, like the Warden. Characters were emerging in the play, I fucking love that when tripping, mad themes, everything just starts turning into an unreal world, like you're on another planet, or in a more colourful and close dimension. Standing listening to the dj banging out the likes of Aux 88, early LFO, I-F, and the like, the trips were really on now. I could feel it on my skin, that almost coating mad feel, my mind was drifting , the lights were cool, and my brain was buzzing. We stood, listening to the tunes without dancing, and just got into it. Lots of interesting looking people were going about, the room was busying, older hot early thirty-something women going about, folk coming up on pills dancing. Then a crazy guy and girl came in, cool looking black folk who had funky clothes, the girl may have had feathers coming off her in places, it seemd that way anyway. They danced in a close-together synchronised fashion, almost intertwining with each other. They were electric looking, dancing, smiling and laughing, they looked fucking great. More people not of the real world, but out of some imaginary disney-meets a rave world.
Having had enough, we went through to the main room where the bar was to get another drink, it was my round so I went to the bar. Standing about, I looked up, hidden up at the side, but still obvious, there was a big fucking bizarre photofragh portrait of a 70s middle-aged guy with a big fuck-off tash, a huge smile, and laughing eyes. Fucking bizarre. It was just from his chest up to his face, you could see he was wearing a tie and blazer. He looked like a golf club captain, but overseeing the mad rave that was starting to kick in by this time. He had a detached feeling, like the Wizard of Oz or something, a normal man hidden away, looking over his weird fucked up kingdom. It felt right. I told Paul about it and he already noticed, fucking belter, so we sat down on the couch across from the bar facing up at the portrait.
I needed a pish, so journeyed for the toilet. It was up the stairs across from where we were sitting, at the edge of the entrance, and at the end of the entrance corridor. The stairs were wooden, rickety and carried on that fucked up community centre vibe the place partly had, and again all grafitti covered. Going into the mens toilet at the top, what immediately hit me was the lights, they were intensely bright. Straight away my trip was on me well fucking heavily. The 2 trips we had taken were only about 20-25 minutes apart, and what was effectively coming up on me was the rush of a double-dunt of acid. The intensely bright toilet made sure my rush now came on me like a bastard, right away I was like whooft, what the fuck? It was a small space and there were a few bodies there. My trip was well heavy on me and so I made towards the cubicle, to be honest, alomst shaking, I was out my nut. Honest to God, the place was just intense, kind of contracting in and out slightly, the bright light creating colours, like seeing the full spectrum of colours that lie within pure white light. The 2 bogs were locked, folk in doing coke probably. Although the place was fucking bright, with white grafittied walls, with mirrors, it was filthy with footprints and fuck knows, so the place was just mental and vibrating. The guy in the cubicle queue looked at me grinning and breathing, looking all out his face, breathing in, going "aw yeah". I was thinking what the fuck's with this guy. "Hows it going?" he said. I felt I had to expalin my collapsing look as I leant on my thighs standing, I just said, "Aye, I'm a bit fucked, tripping on acid", hoping this would explain any consequences of me falling with the intensity of my rush. The weird looking fucker just grinned and breathed, and answered me with "yeaa, I've had loads of speed", which I straight away thought you manky bastard to, but at the same moment obviously thought fair enough. He did seem sound, but over-eager to talk shite I felt, which in my state I couldn't be fucked with. Our last bit of conversation was him saying "I just wanna rack up a line of coke" and scraping his fingernails down both cubicle doors. Fuck sake, weird trippy shit, typical to happen when I feel like a place is pulsating round me. Got in the bog, did my pish, and as I was doing so I was drawn into a picture on a practically clean toilet wall above the actual toilet. It was an ugly looking young looking creature/man-things face, with spaced out fucked up teeth, and sparse strands of hair on its head, its eyes looking righ at you, and even in you, into your sould. It was brilliant looking. The signature below it looked so smooth, so refined and perfect. The grafitti artist, just from his cool as fuck signature, seemed like he must have been a smooth motherfucker, and his picture seemed to be at home in the toilet, like a character you encounter by yourself in the cubicle, you have a one to one with it, giving off an ugly mythical feel. Getting out of the toilet I went and told Paul about how fucked up a trip to the toilet is and he went up. He came back saying it had been like he had been on a boat with doors swinging at all sides as if going up and down on waves. The toilet definitely had an unsettling feel.
Out for a cigarette, I saw loadsaspeed guy and his mates. They were young guys and girl, no more than 19/20, all of them sitting chatting and clearly speeding out their minds, twitching away. I pointed loadsaspeed and his mates out to Paul. We were both like whooft, mental, but again, fair play and that. They were young club-kids, middle class upbringing, into their drugs big time kinda folk, just on that who-gives-a-fuck path of decadent adventure you love when you are young. I pictured their parents to be lawyers, business-owners, who probably had affairs, too busy to worry about their kids getting full of speed. The fact they were all full of speed and coke too, such dirty decadent drugs, it just seemed like a disturbing scene, a section of kids frying their minds, the twitching and buzzing look to them made you think their minds were definitely frying there and then, probably burning a thousand brain cells a second. Having said that, I know some nights I have looked much worse, dancing at a rave with my jaw and eyes all over the place, having taken stupid amounts of pills, but not so much now, it is a very much younger thing getting pure fucked. Anyway, they were a community at the rave, you could identify them I thought. That's what happens at a good underground rave, there are all different communities, you could see them out there, all loving the freedom a mental club gives them, able to get wasted, be what they want, and not give a fuck. That's why raves are always full of weirdos, not everyone is a weirdo in a classical sense, but everyone has weird undertones. Also, I dont mean weird in a negative sense so to speak, just in the fact that when compared to the normal world, out there, the people seem weird. It's also one of the things that makes a rave interesting, part of the adventure. Like a futuristic sci-fi community, the darkness of the weird people that the rave attracts, they have a future feel, the decadence of drugs give it a Brave New World feel, the futurism in the music, like some deep place in a dark run-down fucked up city, on a dark industrious planet. Fucking magic. Love that year 3000 feeling.
There are also the real weirdos at clubs of course, folk who you know are a bit mental. On another visit to the belly of the beast, the intensely bright toilet, I bumped into a guy waiting to get into the cubicles, "This place is great eh? Have you been here before?". "No" I replied, "but the music is great, the old-skool electro has been sounding shit-hot", while I observed his sweaty, rodent like features. He began to tell me how he got into electro, which seemed fairly recent, and considering what his age must have been, he had got into it quite late. He told me his friend had taken him to see Andy Weatherhall in a wee basement club and he was hooked. All the time he was speaking though, my tripping brain, having to deal with the ever present toilet intensity and its fear endusing power, was thinking what the fuck is he tellimg me all this for? It was the beginnings of one of those dreaded ecto conversations where someone tries to tell you everything about themselves as soon as they meet you. I could not be fucked with that, but found it all amusing to myself in a sort of mocking judgemental type way. My inner patronising feeling towards the guy was ever increased when he then asked me if I had heard of Magda, who is a minimal techno dj, and how he thought she was great. Now this point is fair enough, but the two music styles were completely different, the electro we had kind of discussed is not like minimal techno, but he seemed not to know this. I know I sound like a bit of a dick thinking that, but he was being very weird. He probably sussed my vibe though I think, because next thing you know after a barrage of personal information from him to me, he proclaimed he was off, and moved out of the cubicle queue, and out the door, advising me to keep it "electrotastic" as he went. I don't know if he was just in there for the conversation or what, but it was mad. Visits to that toilet have a very unreal quality. That same ecto chat-sweaty rodent guy was later to be encountered again trying to offer me his left over half a beer, which I refused, and then watched him as he tried to offer about another 20 people it, not one taking it, he was wrceked and thought it the proper thing to do. Sound enough, but who wants left over beer from a stranger when there's a bar next to where he was offering it.
On a similar note, Paul and I came across another character who seemed to play a significant part in our nights story, he too, like the guy in the toilet, was a weirdo who would encroach on our personal space. We had been sitting on the couch, which had became a sanctuary along with the smoking area from the emerging madness of the club. We were digging the tunes, observing the people about us, Hawaii 5-0, due to his shirt; the potbellied poofter; the eccentric spaniards; crazy girls who wanted our couch but could not have it; a guy by himself who seemed to drink his beer and just sigh each time I saw him from start to finish that night; the funky young barman, a cool wee dude who went around gathering glasses, he was wearing what looked like a homemade waistcoat with all different colours, I dug his vibe, he seemed his own person and content. Then there was Clawhammer. We had been sitting on the couch as I said, and Clawhammer sat next to us. He was completely off his tits, he was a big skinny mid 20s guy with short dark hair, his head was rolling around he was so out his face, he was twitching severely and had started to be bumping all into Paul as he sat next to him. He was in full blown contorionist mode, probably as bad as I've seen, and I've seen a lot. His hand was stretched across the back of the couch, his fist towards my face. As I turned and looked at it, it was squirming and moving into different shapes, like a big huge revolving fist version of a swiss army knife. Paul had to get up and go to the bar it was so oppressive, and the guy had started to say fucked up non-sensical shit. What made Clawhammer so distrubing though was the way he twitched so severely and just didn't have a clue what was going on, it did not look healthy, especially when we were so tripping, it didn't seem right. His big clawhammer of a hand was getting scarily close to me, and both Paul and I got up and went for a cigarette. The rest of the time spent in that room we seemed to be plagued by the Clawhammer, he was always near us, stalking in a fashion, bumping into us with his twitching when he sneaked up. It was fucked up. He was like an enemy to be reckoned with, a disturbing character, whose realm you did not want to enter.
By this point in the night, both Paul and I were tripping off our heads. My mind had gone into a place of fantasy, the characters around me were all involved in my journey now, I kept a close eye on all their behaviours. Both of us were at a stage in the trip where our minds were just flying. Increasingly the people we were coming across seemed mad, actually mental, so we moved between our two sanctuaries, the blessed couch, and the smoking area. I don't know if the club was as fucked up in reality as it had become in our heads, but it did feel extreme. We spent a lot of time monging in and out at our different sanctuaries, and chatting about those around us. We observed more characters, there was a cool guy by himself who looked like a young Jeff Mills, he was just standing, leaning on the wall, listening to the dj intently, I imagined he could follow every microbeat and sound, and figured him to be like some sort of musical genius on the level of a savant autistic person. There was an old guy cutting about with old-style specs, he had an old camel jacket, like the one Arthur Daley wore in Minder. I said to Paul he must own the place as he moved about with a Tony Wilson-esque feel, and I had seen him talking to Lula about the club. It felt like those two were the ones who were in charge of the asylum we had found ourselves in, the Governor and the Head Matron who looked after all these mad people, there were no rules in their asylum, it was as if once a month the doors are open, everyone comes in, goes mad, and the doors get shut again. Everyone who comes in just goes and loses it, but they enable it, they make sure the place is there, again, they felt like magical characters, full of purpose, ones who facilitated us, and everyone else, in our voyages to a land of insanity, and they loved to enable us.
Our minds twisted, the night went on, more different characters coming in and out of our trip, some characters even interacting with each other, which gave new insight into their personalities. At the smoking area I overheard Hawaii 5-0 chatting to Erasurehead about music, with Hawaii 5-0 exclaiming "Wonderful! And what do you play?" to him at one point. It came across as a meeting of intellectual minds, who were discussing the finer things in life, all Tchaicovsky and French art films, that kind of thing. But even that conversation was important in the feeling you got from the place, that all walks of life came in, didn't matter background(hell, there were even traditionally looking dressed native American looking types), and everybody was just there for the same reason, pure liberation. The place was a sanctuary for everybody who came from whatever background, that needed that outlet, a place that was futuristic and dark in feeling, playing futuristic and dark music. They all came, everyone was represented, and everyone mixed. The club was a microcosm of a fantsay Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, type entity. The Warden reading by lamplight, a dark figure who greeted you as you entered, and cared for your things, the one to one exchange with him as you made your crossing into the madness, it felt like meeting the ferryman to Hades. The Governor and Lula, who were the keepers of the land, making sure it existed for all the strange characters to gather at, you imagined they could have been there forever, through the passing of time, making sure the madness never died. The plethora of weird and wonderful groups and individuals, going from one extreme to another, geeks to gangsters, technoheads to drugheads. Then of course there was the almost hidden mythical element. The beast in the toilet, its large ugly head in that intensely bright room, the mix of its image and the way the trip came on you in there made it feel as if it was reading your mind, and the middle-aged guy in the picture, the founder of it all, the one that started it, just observing the madness and laughing. All of us together, teetering on the edge of a madness, losing it to great music, pounding beats and crushing synths, we loved it, it was where we could just be and not give a fuck.
What a club, a truly crazy experience. It definitely felt that things just became larger than life in there, including the people inside it. I suppose it was the people inside that gave it that vibe, that and the libertine atmosphere. Like all good things though, it had to end. At some time in the early morning we decided to make a move, although we knew it was going to be a task, we didn't know what transport was available to get us out of Elephant and Castle. We decided to go and consult the Warden and ask him what time the Underground started, he would know, like I mentioned before, he had an Oracle like quality, and we knew that if we needed some help in this asylum, he would be the person to speak to. Asking him if he knew the times, all we got was an apologetic, clueless expression, you could see he was really trying to think, but in the end could only respond with "I have no idea, I'm really sorry". You had to laugh. We knew we were on our own, at this time in the morning, nobody in that club could help us, they were all on their own journeys, riding a beastly steed into a maddening sunset. We left the club and just decided to see where we could get. I knew it would be a tall order getting out of here, I was still tripping pretty bad, but who gave a fuck, it was all in the adventure.
We made our way through the underpasses we came through before, those randomly painted tiles now not looking so random, they soared ahead in a zig zag of lights, like the flashing neon signs of Las Vegas, it looked brilliant. It was a nightmare trying to get home, the Underground hadn't opened yet, we didn't have a clue about the buses, so the only option was to get a taxi. Trying to get a taxi wasn't as easy as you might think, it seemed all we could do was move from one roundabout to another, then move down deadly quiet roads. Eventually we got one, an old African woman in a beat up car, who tore through London making for Victoria Station, at one point crossing a bridge where the view was amazing, I looked down the river as we went over, you could see Big Ben, the London Eye, all lit up, with a night blue sky in the background, which was populated by silver shimmering clouds, it was gorgeous. We arrived at the train station where we had to wait for ages, and watch all the morning folk, another mad/disturbing sight. I had lost my wallet. It was time to get home.
I don't know if I have managed to portray the feelings I had during my madness quest in London,I think I was able to convey some of the ideas, but the feeling was just too unreal to capture maybe. It definitely did feel like come sort of place of meaning, yet it was a place of such disturbing sights, and strange characters. I suppose at the end of the day, it was all really in my head, that insane energy I felt from my, what felt like an epic journey. No matter really, I know when I read back on this, I will remember what it was I was trying to say, though I have left out so much, I just couldn't write about everything, so that I don't foget though, I need to give a mention to the stoatin' about crew, big Can I get you a chair?, the wee hun, 4 points clear, the old guy who went yass!, the gangsters, and the Detroit Grand Pubahs, who played live that night and were fucking immense.
No matter if I described the intense brilliant madness of that night, it was there, you just can't hold on to it, it was too fantastical and fleeting to be captured and formulized by words. Know that it was mad. It was the asylum dimension, haha.