i have a ticket to sell for a tenner for tonight's wolfman/pete doherty gig at the scala in kings cross

but will he turn up..............

http://www.nme.com/news/109363.htm

Exactly that Pete didn't turn up last nite at the Barfly - but held a "guerilla" gig at his flat.

gig=junkie strummer in his flat now does it?

gig = acoustic clash karaoke

according to mark "i ruined the melody maker" sutherland on 6 Music - he charged a tenner entry for his flat gig. 60 people turned up.

a nice little earner, cash in hand - with no taxes to pay.

dotmusic confirm this
http://uk.news.launch.yahoo.com/dyna/article.html?a=/040802/340/ezec7.html&e=l_news_dm

i was there at the flat gig. and 6 music were there, didnt know that was mark sutherland though. he did not look that impressed, whoever he was.

surely he will be taxed? going to jail for tax evasion=not very rock.

i've not been paying attention to this Doherty bloke really. can someone sum up what the deal is with him in general and his beef with the Libertines?

2002: Libs release album. There are 2 singer-songwriters, Doherty and someone else. Doherty is a crack/heroin user and robs his bandmate at some point to pay for the habit. He gets jailed.

2003: on release, he playes 'legendary' gig in Clapham. They record a new album with Mick Jones.

2004: Doherty kicked out for being an addict. Doherty has found success with 'For Lovers', a solo single about his 'issues'. He plays 'gigs' in his Whitechapel flat.

People who romanticize this sort of stuff go wild. As Simon R says today, 'how do people still get it up for this old, old shit?'

Do you really hate The Libertines, "thesplooge"?

Is that why you want to pay your own money to quicken the death of a thieving junkie?

the saddo NME have fueled the libertines/ doherty hype - NME/NME.com is like the [un]official Libertines fanzine wing/ pr machine/ and reuters like news service all rolled into 1.

i thought nme/nme.com was the unnofficial fanzine for the strokes/white stripes/yeah yeah yeahs/etc etc.

mencap, i dont hate the libertines at all. id even go so far as to say i love them. as far as this 'why pay to help out a junkie', pete is hardly the only desperate drug user in music, now or decades ago. his troubles are just that much more public. i dont much like the attention hes been getting for his problems, much less how people romanticise him as a tortured genius or whatever. i liked the libs before i even knew about all their troubles.

anyway, tonights gig is for wolfman, not pete. pete is just supporting him. the flat gig was somewhat depressing, so i wont be going to any more of those. it was full of yes-men hangers on and studenty idiots who all acted like they were petes best mates, and they were walking about his place like it was theirs. it was too strange and near-vile for me. plus it wasnt much of a gig as such really, it was like being at some sort of bedsit sing a long. hes still good in concert though.

thanks Enrique - most of that I had an inkling of, but was unclear on the jail terms - he didn't seem to be in that long, why was this?

the new Libertines single is incredible only in it's dullness. have to agree with Reynolds. i liked 'For Lovers' tho.

Fair enough... probably best to disassociate yourself from this sort of thing as much as possible mind, lest anyone thinks you're in favour...

Yeah, not suggesting that several decades' worth of record labels giving their charges thousands to become raging drug addicts is anything remotely respectable. But at least this introduces a nominally responsible middleman into proceedings, as opposed to giving it straight to someone you know perfectly well is going to put it all into a glass pipe... not nice

well, the end result is pretty much the same isnt it. and at a gig, you give the cash to ticketweb or whoever, so its just like buying the album where the money gets to the artists through the label. turning up at his flat or going to the rhythm factory, buying the single or the album, all the money ends up in petes pocket, and if he chooses to take that wad out and stick it in some dealers wallet, then theres nothing i can do about it.

anyway, does anyone want to buy the ticket?! a fiver for it! my final price!

fine, ill just have to be a tout for the night.

well, shit gig. pete didnt turn up. much to 98% of the audiences' annoyance. wolfman was mediocre, i felt sorry for him as everyone was there to see doherty, but he was a trooper. a mediocre trooper whos band often sounded like a bad 80s synth rock outfit, but a trooper nonetheless. what a pointless waste of my money. never mind.

*feigns surprise* Regarding your post up there, it's not "all" of the money is it? It's some of the money, and I bet matey has more crash to kill himself with now than he would have if he was on a wage from his label.

It's just like, is your fandom such that you'd cheerfully hand someone money to buy the one thing (or two things, perhaps) you know is most likely to kill yr idol, in exchange for the chance to have a wander round his house? Fucking weird. As I think I said on the longer Libertines thread last week, I don't care about the band that much, but I do find this an extraordinary rock phenomenon.

more drama later this month that pete is going to try and gatecrash the libertines live performance at Reading ..and [re]join the band

[according to his interview on 6 Music]

"*feigns surprise* Regarding your post up there, it's not "all" of the money is it? It's some of the money, and I bet matey has more crash to kill himself with now than he would have if he was on a wage from his label."

well arguably, if he books a gig at a venue and plays to a couple hundred people, it would be about the same as if he played to about 50 at his flat.

"It's just like, is your fandom such that you'd cheerfully hand someone money to buy the one thing (or two things, perhaps) you know is most likely to kill yr idol, in exchange for the chance to have a wander round his house? Fucking weird."

hold on. i didnt want a chance to 'wonder' round his flat. i didnt even walk around it. i stayed only in the two rooms he played. other people were going in the loo, the kitchen, balcony, whatever. i wasnt jumping up on the bed, lolling about the place, like i owned it, or scrawling on the walls. i didnt go there to pretend i was petes best mate or talk to him or 'touch' pete or fawn over him. i wasnt getting lagered up or anything and bringing boxes of lager to the flat, i just went to hear some music (and the new songs he played off his laptop, plus the almost techno-IDM-lo-fi-ish demos of songs from the first album were great).

i didnt even know it would be in his flat, the message was posted on the net, and i thought it would be at the pub nearby to the meeting place. the message said that someone would call the phone boxes where everyone was standing to let us know the venue (honest to god, these were the - admittedly tongue in cheek - instructions). i was just as surprised as anyone when the doors near the phone boxes opened. i didnt even know it was *petes* flat til i got in there and the writing on the wall looked like it was done by him.

"As I think I said on the longer Libertines thread last week, I don't care about the band that much, but I do find this an extraordinary rock phenomenon."

so do the NME.

anyway mencap, i have no desire to go to any more of these random flat gigs. pete hardly looks in the best of health, i dont think his performance was really up to much as a result, and the general atmosphere at the thing was somewhat sycophantic and pitiful.

This was mark sutherland's report published yesterday on 6 music website:

What i find strange is the tenner entry - surely some people went away when they knew about this?

Pete Doherty's latest guerrilla gig
Published 03 08 04

Pete Doherty failed to show for his official solo performance at London’s Barfly venue last night – but he did play one of his infamous “guerrilla” gigs earlier in the evening.

BBC 6 Music joined around 60 fans who were told to meet by a row of phoneboxes in Farringdon, east London, and await a call telling us the venue for a secret warm-up show. The call never came – but only because it soon became apparent that the gig was in Doherty’s near-by flat.

After paying £10 a head, we were granted access to the former Libertine’s new home, which proved to be light on furniture and fittings but surprisingly clean. The sheer volume of fans meant that Doherty had to perform in two different rooms: he started off playing songs acoustically while sat on his bed before moving next door and playing a longer set with rudimentary amplification.

But while no normal gig would have got away with charging £10 for a restricted view and a terrible sound, the crowd were still gripped with excitement at being so close to their hero, drowning out Pete’s fragile vocals on songs like Time For Heroes and Don’t Look Back Into The Sun. He also performed songs from the forthcoming Libertines album, Babyshambles material and a version of his hit with Wolfman, For Lovers.

Doherty was on good form, handing out beer and sweets to the fans, greeting people by name during the show and looking much more together than in recent weeks, if still hardly a picture of health.

His continued exile from The Libertines is also still clearly upsetting him – speaking exclusively to BBC 6 Music he said: “At the moment I’m in complete denial pretending they’ve all fallen down a hole or fallen off a mountain or something, and that they haven’t actually gone off round the world without me. It’s just too incomprehensible. When it sinks in I’ll put a bullet through my brain cos it’s going to be too harsh.”

Doherty is scheduled to play with his pal Wolfman at London’s Scala tonight, before another appearance at the Barfly on Friday.
Mark Sutherland

theres nothing about gatecrashing the reading festival appearance there though.

but there was on 6 music radio yesterday - in the 6 music news spot !

that Pete is Psycho he is determined to play at Reading

i wonder if the authorities will be onto Doherty:

NOT having a public entertainment licence - possible prosecution from local council?

undeclared earnings, presumably he is classified as self employed - can you see him declaring the cash in hand earnings from this gig? [this may take a while to be detected - re: annual returns]

I don't know what's worse in the Doherty debate, the fact that people are glamourising something that's so tragic, or that they're glamourising something that's so dull.

Doherty would prime time Mr Agreeable Melody Maker - if it still existed

Haha innit... I meant the more uselessly nutty sections of the band's fanbase "splooge", not you. You seem to be pretty sensible about the whole thing

as far as glamourising, the worst, most offensive piece of journalism ive read that really did everything in its power TO glamourise whats happening to pete and the libertines was the piece that accompanied the two interviews with carl and pete from the band in the NME two weeks ago. quite appalling. it didnt even try to mask it.

Whcih was by Mark Beaumont, rent-a-hype, and I hope he gets run over by a car.

Summat I wrote ages ago about The Vines;

Seven Reasons Why Craig Nichols Is The Perfect RockStar™.

1; Young.

2; Good skin (= good looking 'cos all music journos are spotty cunts).

3; Messy hair (= good looking, 'cos if your hair is messy than presumably someone [maybe a gUrL] has been running their hands through it, ergo you might have been doing some shagging [music journos are asexual {not through choice}]).

4; Acts a bit 'mad' (see Jim Morisson through Johnny Rotten to Richard Ashcroft [always good for entertainment value {plus 'mad'ness is 'sexy' 'cos if you're 'mad' you might do weird things like shagging with the woman on top and so on}]).

5; Smokes dope (drugs are sexy 'cos they can KILL YOU and danger is always sexy unless it's actual real, potential-pain-and-nastiness danger happening to YOU rather than SOMEONE ELSE).

6; Because he acts a bit 'mad' and smokes dope he might DIE possibly of SUICIDE (one's records become approx 50x better if one dies under the age of about 40, esp. if one tops oneself [accidentaly or on porpoise]; see Kurt Cobain, Ian Curtis, Curtis Stigers, etcetera {nb. Curtis Stigers has not died young, and so his records are still not good}).

7; He's Australian, and might be able to set you up with Kylie Minogue.

See point 6.

Interesting theory - had Curtis Stiegers done himself in, we would prefer him.

I don't think that this theory will hold up for Elliott Smith, but did work for Jeff Buckley.

jeff didnt really kill himself on purpose though, did he?

He was a bit of a dumbass - which is enough, really.

It's not whether the actual incident which causes death was intentional - it's whether they projected an aura which suggested that it could have been or else that death by accident due to being too fucking cool to care was an option.

"dude im going into the river to kill myself by drowning, but im too cool to care! watch me as i glug glug glug my way to the heavens and reissue immortality!!"

Splooge - I think "I'll go for a swim in the mississippi where there is an infamous rip-tide" is a pretty fair reason for him to be considered a bit of an arse.

ah, that does sound more reasonable. i forgot about the rip-tide.

Maybe he did to. It just proved a little more costly in his case.