| Filling The Heavens With Dirty Great Balls it's... Dani's Inferno Pact Nineteen - Eclipsing All Else August. Hardly a majestic or venerable month, inscribed as it was with a tyrannous nature more in keeping with namesake Caesar assailing us with hails (geddit?), earthquakes, floods, twisters, heat waves... if I didn't know better I'd say Ming The Merciless was abroad with a target: Earth Death Ray. There was the solar eclipse on the 11th, which in all fairness, and despite garnering profound astrological significance, was about as exciting as wiping your arse with your other hand. In truth, the more I think about it the more it seems that prophet Nostradamus has got something there ... wiping your (or 'thy', as I believe he phrased) arse with the other hand can be fairly revelatory, especially if your imagination lends credence to the fact that this rarely performed act could actually be someone else wiping your bum for you. So with this in mind (after sitting on my digits for 20 minutes for that benumbing authenticity), first up with the job with the slidy school toilet paper (or better still, the new Coal Chamber album) would have to be Patrick Moore, for all his bumbling eclipse rhetoric over the passing few moons (I'd certainly log onto his Website). Jack Koschick - promoter of this years Milwaukee Metalfest, who didn't even have the decency to provide a rider, or the venue with a PA that worked. And finally (for the perviness of it all), Jane Seymour, who could pamper me like a baby whilst tending to any other basic necessities I so desired... Mmm, Jane Seymour. Doctor Quinn. Anyway, dickstrations aside, August was a relatively extreme few weeks all round, and it hardly seems appropriate that I should ramble on about myself and my experiences in lieu of the recent devastation caused by the earthquakes in Turkey. But I will. It's my fucking column! Not one usually to sit at home blowing my own trumpet but, if anthropologists are to be beloved, that one restrictive little vertebrae in the male spine is the next thing to go in the evolutionary chain, thus rendering most men hermitic and women unneeded (though this is where Val Ium interjects by mentioning the dildo...), but last month was a blinder. Then again, perhaps I shouldn't have stared so vehemently at the eclipse, but I didn't want to miss it and there was this big fucking round thing in the way, and by the time it drifted past the eclipse was over. Typical. Patrick Moore, wipe my arse. Things didn't exactly get off to a flying start when two little hoodlums pranged my girlfriend's brand new car, and then grew progressively worse when their parents claimed I'd assaulted the brats with their own football boots! Now you know as well as I do I'd never stoop to such a thing (possibly because they were about the same height as me), but the general animosity soon simmered down and the matter was resolved, at least I don't expect the six sets of graves to be stumbled upon just yet... Lughnasadh gone, the great witchy periodical Lammas found the band ensconced in the great USA for not only the Metalfest, but a string of club dates, culminating over the Canadian border in Toronto. I remember this day vividly, because of the advance Misfits album I received from Roadrunner, which rocks like King Kong in a cage (and the new Coal Chamber, which is not so much a roller coaster as a coffee coaster), and the fact that this was the beginning of a week's worth of anti-gravity, depravity and snorting in the lavatory. Well, just about doing anything, and everything, including the rare onboard-a-tour bus phenomenon of taking a poo. Oh yes, our bus was like a three-star of David Hotel in heaven compared to the travelling hippy commune we're familiar with in Europe. Air-con, two full entertainment systems, rear lounge, kitchenette - it was enough to bring rudas out from the husk of his keeper, take three acid blots and hide himself in what was a more than ample sized closet for storage. Still reeling from jetlag and duty free, we literally had to be peeled from bed the next morning after our return to face an in-store signing session as part and parcel of another magazines award week. We weren't alone - we would sign; Feeder, 3 Colours Red and 'A' would play, and after watching the Circus Of Horrors perform, all would regroup for a Barbie on the rooftop patio. Good plan in theory, but never grant near-dead menthe promise of booze... especially that which is free. Two hours is a long time for anyone sitting, signing and swilling a lethal concoction of Absolute and JD, and by the time we eventually made it back to our (which according to Music Week and The Daily Star - must be true! - we wreaked, having all ready tossed pictures out into the street below, narrowly missing security and a distressed store rep...) there was a spreading pool of pee in the corner of the Video Department, two bemused and abused Deejays who'd attempted interviews, and a drummer so drunken that he was wobbling astride industry people's tables at the barbecue screaming "Wankers!", and throwing the universal sign of metal in their astonished faces. Police and the Fire Department were eventually alerted, whether it was for us of the Circus, who's also revolted, I can't rightly remember - we made good our escape during the mêlée. And finally, the awards ceremony itself. Not much to say here, apart from an impressively spooky decor and an abundance of people with colds in the toilets... though it does show the current clime in our beloved scene when B-movie actor David Soul received the loudest response of the evening! 'Til next time we meet, dwelling on reasons why there appears to be too many pop bands winning awards from heavy metal magazines... Yours in disgust Your fiend, Dani |