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And last night in Liverpool, despite initially telling three of the guests to “fucking shut up and leave me alone”, things eventually panned out quite well. Afterwards the happy couple went to spend the first night of their nuptials in a hotel in town and they said I could use their house.I had a fine view of the TV from a fold-out bed in the front room. I lay there watching Channel 4's House Party, laughing at Jessie Ware’s inability to lip synch and Annie Mac’s desperate attempts to make mixing big room house look difficult. Every time she touched the bass or the midrange her hand would fly off into the air like she’d just received an electric shock. But, you know, at least she was trying. I went to a pre-carnival Vagabondz party at Koko the other night to see a mind-blowing night of reggae, dancehall and dub including The Bug, Daddy Freddy, Flow Dan, Congo Natty, Tenor Fly and General Levy. It was one of the best gigs I’ve been to all year – literally the only bad thing about it was the fact that one of the support toasters, a young white kid swamped in outsized leisure wear, spent his entire slot on stage with one hand in his pocket.What a fucking disgrace!It’s like turning up for a funeral wearing sweaty jogging pants, Dunlop Green Flash, a foam jester’s hat and a barely concealed erection. This is why David Bowie is the master. Several years pre-fame training to be a mime artist have left him in full creative control of his hands. So all things said and done, good on Annie Mac for paying lip service to entertainment. And good on her for dropping "It's Time For The Percolator" as well. She should maybe start learning how to twirl four glass orbs in one hand by studying the film Labyrinth, though.
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Erick Morillo was up next and at first he was dead entertaining, singing along with early Chicago house classics while waving his hands in the air like a man undergoing the rapture but when he failed to drop "I Like To Move It" by Reel To Real featuring Mad Stuntman I lost interest and went to sleep. Talk about a Maoist rewriting of history…But the next morning, lying on the couch watching Dr Who, I was filled with a sense of dread. I was trying to enjoy the first opportunity for a chilled out morning I’d had in months but my nerves were jangling and I couldn’t put my finger on why. I hadn’t taken any drugs or begun drinking coffee yet, so why did I feel so tense? It took several minutes to realise that, under the sound of the telly and my tinnitus, I could hear someone screaming. Outside the window, across the street – but out of view – a man was howling, screeching, wailing and ululating in utter agony. There was a pause of a second or two and then it started again, each scream seemingly more agonised than the last. An ambulance pulled up across the street but the howls continued. I called a cab and headed for town.My driver, a gregarious silver fox, enquired after my night out. I told him that the city had been surprisingly low key: “Bold Street was dead quiet. During the day there were some Scottish men wearing dresses in the gutter outside the Reflex 80s bar… absolutely clattered they were.”
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Back in Euston that night I hail a black cab. The driver looks like a crab who has had his shell ripped off. His pink and puffy flesh looks in its entirety like soft, throbbing scar tissue. He leans out of his window and shouts at some people wearing football colours: “Who fackin’ won? EH? WHO FACKIN’ WAAN? OOOOO FAAAAAN WAAAAAAAN?"He leans back in: “Do you like football?”
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