Heart of a Punk Soul of a Rasta

This is not a review of
The Dead Weather/Creature with the Atom Brain
26th October 2009 O2 Academy Birmingham


Yes it's "Dead Weather"! Jack Stripe, Alison Kill and the other two. And at the all new O2 Academy in Birmingham, no big deal for "The Weather" obviously, but this is my first trip to the venue and as sure as Booker T made Green Onions I'm gonna be frequenting this place pretty often, so, am I happy about the move, no I'm bleeding well not, I'm old and sick in the head and this sort of upheaval could do me in.

So goodbyeeeeeee Top Rank, Dale End, even from day one you were a huge black toilet but you were a huge black toilet I came to love, need, and eventually become chemically dependent on. Bye byeeeeee Academy, bye bye Bar Academy, bye bye Academy 2, damn you progress with all your confounding progressions.

Daunted by change and in a maelstrom of confusion, I set out early for the NEW Academy, it was a good job too because I needed an emergency lavvy, they should have a government health warning on this "Rockstar" stuff "EXCESSIVE USE WILL MAKE YOU PISS". But where to piss that was the question, 'cause for the last thirty years I've favoured lift 2 in the Londonderry House NCP Car Park (Well it was private and convenient), if you've been to the Dale End Academy and parked at the NCP and used the lift you will have smelt the stench of piss - well that was me!

Without my usual pisstoir I had to grin and bear it and take a piss at the new Academy facilities. Now I'm sure that when the NEW Academy was first muted they said the NEW Academy wasn't going to be a soulless barn of a venue, they said the interior would have a traditional feel. Oh dear, the new bogs, traditional? I think not! The design guys obviously had not got a clue - shit stations with doors on? Doors with locks on? Grandiose maybe, traditional nah. And where's the homophobic and racist graffiti, the mobile phone number of BIG BARRY, where are the drilled holes in the cubicle doors and walls filled with piss wet bog roll, where's the burnt pieces of silver paper and the mountain of milky bar wrappers, where's the black congealed blood on cracked and barely reflective mirrors, where are the plug holes cankered solid with un-dissolved soap, the stray pieces of toilet roll on the floor ready to become attached to the soles of your shoes, where are the cigarette butts in the urinals and where oh where is the one urinal that's always blocked and full of piss - no, no, no, these aren't traditional venue bogs.