Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Fucking public-sector employers that want you to fill in a NINE, yes NINE (9) page form to apply for a job. Describe each of your previous jobs in painstaking detail, with reference to skills, responsibilities etc. etc. And then your degree(s), A-levels, GCSEs, blah blah. What the shuddering fuck do they think a CV is for? And then there's the relentless fucking box-ticking, as if my religious beliefs and sexuality are any of their fucking business. Tempted to write and complain that there isn't an option for genderqueer neopagans or Jedis with a foot fetish. Oh, and they want it signed and posted or faxed back to them. Can't all this bollocks wait until they've at least decided whether the applicant is even remotely suited to the job?
 
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Benny Bunter

Well-known member
That new 'dropometer' on soundcloud

The drop in a track can be unpredictable and surprising. Some of you have even told us that you find it unsettling, not knowing when to expect that sense of overwhelming euphoria. Inspired by your feedback, we’ve invented the Dropometer.

Using a unique algorithm (patent pending), the Dropometer is designed to help you prepare yourself for the big moment, whether that means getting in the mental space where you can really break it down, or fixing yourself a fortifying snack.



What a pile of shite
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Reserved tables in pubs.

Fair enough if you're a gastropub and focused on the food. Fair enough if you've got a couple of massive tables that you don't mind reserving for big groups. But for half a dozen people going out for a drink on a friday night, if you want a table you can get there early.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The word "naked" as a universal marketing shorthand for nice/natural/organic/wholesome/innocent/childlike etc. etc. etc.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
OK, this really, really does my head in:

People who are utterly undiscriminating in the kinds of places they're prepared to go for a 'night out'.

Last night I went for a drink with a couple of guys from the place where I started work just over a month ago, both of them pretty intelligent and generally engaging and interesting to talk to. We started fairly late and had only had a pint each by the time ordinary pubs were calling last orders. So my colleagues decide they want to find somewhere with some music playing, and my heart sank a little because come ooon, this is fucking Oxford, they don't 'do' music here. My heart sinks a good deal further when we draw level with the entrance to the Purple motherfucking Turtle and they want to go inside.

How much? "£3" What sort of music is it? "Everything!" Oh great, that's my favourite genre! There is no DJ. Turns out "everything" means assorted rock, indie, r'n'b and generic dance-pop hits from the last twenty-odd years, played quite literally at random. I mean, we're talking RATM followed by Kylie followed by Kaiser Chiefs followed by Rihanna followed by Hanson. Yes, Hanson. I'm starting to wonder if this isn't all a hideous practical joke. There is some small consolation in the fact that the PA is so knackered you can hardly hear what song is actually playing, although of course it's loud enough to make conversation difficult.

Inside it's wall-to-wall shitfaced 18-year-olds. Most of the punters are local working-class white kids with a conspicuous smattering of undergrads who've stayed on for a bit after their exams, including one rather self-conscious-looking lad who's wearing a dinner jacket and a kilt, like some sort of utter dick-end. The venue itself is ugly and squalid (I mean, not even the good kind of squalid) and smells bad. The drinks options are basically shitty lager or shitty vodka with a mixer, all served in plastic glasses that make it taste weird. Security goons, who are there in a higher concentration than any club I've been to outside of Lambeth, are moodily barging people out of the way, although I'm pretty sure no-one there is on drugs. It occurs to me that I've half a strip of Sudafed in my pocket and that I could probably flog them for a fiver apiece. Some obnoxiously bright flashing lights indicate what is meant to be a dance floor, where a few people are swaying arrhythmically and spilling their drinks on each other. When we eventually left, I was just finishing my beer as we were walking out the door and a fucking gorilla in a hi-vis imperiously gestures that I have to take it back inside. I show him that it's finished and leave it on a window sill in the little courtyard bit outside the entrance (still part of the premises, I think) and he commands me to take my empty plastic glass back in the club. I'm like, fuck that, I don't work here! He says something to another gorilla about "escorting this one" off the premises. It's OK officer, I was going anyway.

Now the weird thing is, my colleagues seemed to be having, if not precisely the time of their lives, at least a pretty enjoyable evening. They're younger than me but only by five years or so, which still made them at least five years older than 95% of the crowd. Granted, I don't think either of them has ever lived in London, but even so, I just can't see what either of them would have seen in the place that was enjoyable. Well, OK, the booze (such as it was) was almost insultingly cheap, and the girls were nice to look at, but my criteria for what makes a club worth going to extend somewhat beyond how cheaply you can get drunk while having a good ogle.

So I was stuck in this dilemma of, on the one hand, not wanting to go into this clearly depressing boozehole, and on the other, of not wanting to look like a snob and a party-pooper. It's like the attitude is: it's open, there is booze, there is music, what more do you want? Of course it's a small provincial city that's hardly famed for its night-life in the first place, so it's not like I'm disappointed because I didn't find myself in the Berghain, but is it too much to expect that there might be someone selecting tracks that kind of go together, rather than filling a multi-CD player with I Heart The 90s compilations?

Has anyone else been in this situation? I remember Rich telling me about being in a similar-sounding place with some colleagues or friends of friends, who were perfectly happy yelling into each others' ears over some ghastly generic pop in a bar with all the visual charm of a McDonald's. And yet these are people who aren't stupid and have individual tastes and opinions about books and films and food and whatever else. It's utterly bizarre.
 
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e/y

Well-known member
I study in Bonn and that more or less describes my experience of the clubs here the few times that I've been. The music is generally the same (as in the same exact songs) wherever and whenever you go - electrohouse pop from the charts, a few awful German rap songs, shit RnB and random stuff from the last 10 years (Linkin Park, etc). Which is a shame and quite frustrating because I think there's good pop/rnb/rap out there that that I'd love to hear on a night out and that would work with the crowd but I guess the clubs are lazy and it works.

This is why I barely ever go (Cologne is 20 minutes away by train and there are some really good club nights there), only if my friends really insist. But whenever I've gone it seems like most of the people there are really enjoying the music and the atmosphere. I'm sure many of them would find the music that I like to be boring or shit, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

zhao

there are no accidents
lol enjoyed reading that. thnks tea :)

as i get older i get exponentially less and less concerned about seeming like a "snob" or "party pooper", and exponentially more and more concerned about wasting my precious, PRECIOUS time and energy. "well, this is far as i go lads. have a good one and see you soon!" :)
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Yeah, I need to learn how to do that better, I think.

It reminded me a lot of the bars/clubs in Eindhoven actually, except there the musical emphasis is on mindless generic Eurohouse with the occasional bit of cheesy r'n'b, apart from when the salektah wants to go crazy and RAAWK OUT with some Foo Fighters or RHCP. :eek:

And also except for the fact that Eindhoven is a drab industrial city that scarcely existed a hundred years ago, rather than an ancient university town widely regarded as a Bastion of Western Culture As We Know It.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
Funny though. Although in one sense I actually agree with everything you've said there Tea, there is also a part of me that likes those places. I guess I do have a soft spot for chart music and people who get drunk and dance to it from about six pm. Also, it probably has some kind of forbidden allure for me cos every time I'm in a place like that with one of my friends they drag me away, probably looking wistfully over my shoulder...
 
What I don't get are these places that are these hybrid between pub/bar and club/disco - no dancefloor, so people are just standing around drinking, music at almost club/disco volume, so you're forced to scream at each other, and you have to pay to get in.

I study in Bonn and that more or less describes my experience of the clubs here the few times that I've been.

Hey I work in Bonn... haven't been in clubs there for ages, but it was the same 10-15 years ago.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
What I don't get are these places that are these hybrid between pub/bar and club/disco - no dancefloor, so people are just standing around drinking, music at almost club/disco volume, so you're forced to scream at each other, and you have to pay to get in.
Loud music = less conversation = more drinking = profit.

How this has been sold as a good thing for the punter is a mystery though. Possibly
Loud music = less conversation = more drinking = fighting = fun.
 
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