We just launched the magazine in Belgium with a big party in Antwerp.
Archive for June, 2006
New Zealand - My Brother And I Are Pornstars
What can be said about Colin Mitchell? Well first up he’s a handsome devil and talented to boot. This Thursday at the Herald Theatre you can catch his critcally acclaimed (!) play "My Brother And I Are Pornstars" and help contribute funds to get his smut (critically acclaimed (!) smut nonetheless) over to the Edinburgh Fringe thingy.
Go drink his free drinks and participate in the porn auction. See below for critical acclamation (!).
London - Daniel Is Back!
This is our friend Daniel Kingsnake. He’s like if Pete Doherty was a 40-year-old rockabilly from Spain. Daniel used to live above the Marathon Bar on Chalk Farm Road and we’d go up there and party with him quite a bit in between him playing guitar downstairs at the bar. Jack White has played with him a few times and Kevin Shields is such a fan of his unique style that there’s talk of the two of them making a record together. For one reason or another we lost touch but we bumped into him the other day on the tube to Angel. His daily routine is: Don’t Sleep / Go And Busk On The Train All Day Until You Make About £40 / Go Home And Party / Don’t Sleep / Go Out And Busk All Day etc etc. Honestly, we don’t think he has slept since the last time we saw him and that was about two years ago. How does he do it?
Answers to john@viceuk.com.
San Fransisco - Date With Lady Sovereign
An obsessed fan, Zach Slow, bagged a date with Lady Sovereign by raising $10,000 to take her on a luxury night out. He got the money from donations to his website using pathetic pleas, such as: “this night is for ALL of us… the little guys… for everyone who’s had a dream that didn’t come true, we’re going to show the world that anything is possible. Sure, it will be ME sippin’ the champagne and handing SOV a diamond grill with MY name on it, but you will ALL be there with me… it will practically be your name on that grill. So let’s show the world the power of community.”
Melbourne - Code One Rocks Out
Did you know that Police bands aren’t actually made up of any real Police Officers? They are simply deceptive PR departments that wear the uniform but have no training whatsoever outside the music room. I’m pretty sure the guitarist we spoke to after the show wasn’t meant to tell us this so they’re clearly not that good at PR either, but apparently they exist to “break down the often-perceived ‘barriers’ between the public and police”. Um, I think lying to us and wearing the uniform in vain might do more to drive us apart Officer Dexter!
Anyway, after we got over the fact that we had been stooged all these years, we started thinking about Code One’s (that’s Police lingo for On Patrol) show and none of it mattered anymore. These guys were tight! They performed at the Vic Markets to about 35 old people with the same relentless energy and enthusiasm as The Stones are likely to at their very last show if they ever quit.
Germany - Glas Des Grauens Update
Now that Summer is finally here, the only two thing people are talking about are how fucking hot it is and the World Cup. The side effect is that every single bar is full of sweaty football fans getting pissed. After the England vs. Sweden game last week, we were leaving the office when we saw two English fans standing outside on the street. On closer inspection we saw that one of them was actually taking a poop on the pavement while his buddy kept lookout.
THE VICE GUIDE TO CHICAGO
We just finished the Vice Guide to Chicago. It has some crucial shit in there for Intonation including a map of the park and a list of who plays what stage when. There’s also a guide to bars, a guide to eats, Chicago music, Chicago DOs & DON’Ts and Chloe Sevigny getting shitfaced for $10,000. If you’re visiting Chicago for Intonation or ever for any reason you need to download this and have it all folded up in your man purse the whole time you’re there.
VICE HEARTS CHICAGO
Do you have any idea what we’re doing in Chicago? We are inviting everyone in the world to see every band in the world hosted by the funniest people in the world. That’s 15,000 people in Union Park to see Ghostface Killah, The Streets, Bloc Party, Dead Prez, Blue Cheer, Roky Erickson, High on Fire, Lady Sovereign, The Stills, Devin the Dude and, fuckin: Boredoms (Japanese percussion stew that sounds like all music at once), Sword (psychedelic metal stoner band from Austin that sound like a hundred guitars falling off a cliff), Chromeo (everything 80s pop and R&B had to offer but without the kitsch and totally irony-free), Rhymefest (Kanye West protégé that wrote “Jesus Walks” with him), Lupe Fiasco (another West protégé), Robert Pollard (Guided by Voices front man), Favourite Sons (Nick Cave if he wasn’t so Goth), Erase Errata (stick-in-your-head indie rock girls with weird hits that sound like soundtracks)…
New York - Japanther Foofaraw
A little while back, our buddies in Japanther were asked to play the opening of the Whitney “Peace Tower” show along with a couple other bands, Momus, and a bunch of older anti-war speakers. The whole exhibit centers around a new remake of a giant collaborative sculpture made by artists in 1966 to protest the Vietnam War, and if you’ve already guessed that this story has to do with Baby Boomers’ overinflated sense of achievement and complete disconnect from the younger generations or anything approaching objective reality, pat your back pink.
New York - Cougars
Back when VICE was starving its ass off in Montreal, we came up with the term “cougar” to describe all the gross, older marketing women we had to fuck in order to sell adspace. Well, actually, we didn’t–Helios Design beat us to the coinage, according to their trademark–but in any case, much like our fledgling newsprint ‘zine of those days, it’s funny to see how far our little in-joke (that’s actually a trademark of Helios Design from whom one of us probably heard it without realising, blah blah blah…) has come in the last decade. First it came down with us into the states, then some other “with it” publications started using it, and now it’s a movie and a goddamn consulting firm.
The Laundromat
Why are you fucking idiots still doing your own laundry? We explained a long time ago how that works. By waiting by the machines instead of dropping it off you are saving anywhere from $1 to $2 an hour. Do you hate yourself?
We’ve heard excuses like, “I like it. It’s peaceful.” Yeah right. Sitting in a boiling hot Laundromat in the middle of the day is peaceful. That’s why it’s filled with illegals sweating their asses off trying to make money for their family back home.
Sometimes girls say they like it because they are very particular about exactly HOW their delicates get washed. Fine. Tell yourself that.
London - The Creepiest Pet In Town
We made our feelings about keeping cats and dogs locked up in confined spaces quite clear in this article a few months ago.
Our words obviously had quite an effect on people because the hot new pet in London is this little guy hiding behind the rock here.
Thailand - Body Snatchers
Our correspondent in Bangkok, Hannah Borrowman, walked out of a bar last weekend to find a load of Thai guys sweeping up dead bodies into bin bags like they were massive sloppy portions of Massaman curry with coconut rice and minced chicken and prawn on toast, served with chilli and plum sauce, or something along those lines…
She did a bit of investigation about what she had seen and has just sent us this report:
(Be warned, the photos are fucking horrible).
