04.24.13 — 4:05PM GMT — Wednesday — Holiday Inn, Camden Town

Looking up at the Cathedral at St Albans, it was pretty easy to understand why doom was invented here. The building, massive and begun about a millennium ago, is as ornate as it is elaborate as it is definitely-letting-you-know-who’s-in-charge-of-this-here. Mix something like that in with some inherited post-WWII trauma (I have a whole theory about how World War I was the end of the world; ask me about it sometime and then interrupt before I finish), driving blues rock, industrial/working class Birmingham malaise, twisted psychedelia, and you’re good to go. Every now and again something just clicks into place in my brain.

I got into St Albans on Tuesday night after the train to London. Chris West, drummer of Trippy Wicked and the Cosmic Children of the Knight and now guitarist for Groan as well (both bands play Desertfest this weekend), was kind enough to meet me at the Kings Cross St Pancras station, which resulted in a few anxious minutes until we ran into each other — I had been outside, back in, downstairs, upstairs, whathaveyou looking for the statue where we were supposed to wind up, and we went into Camden to catch Elder, Pet the Preacher and Serpent Venom at The Black Heart. Review forthcoming on that, but afterwards, it was back to St Albans, where most of yesterday after sleeping late was dedicated to checking out the area and chatting in a variety of pubs.

The cathedral is a sight to see, old crypts dating back centuries and still basically saying, “Yeah, this guy was alright. We liked him well enough,” but even the pubs have more history to them than the country I call home. One had a sign up that it was rebuilt “After the flood of 1599.” Oh yeah.Thatflood.

A walk through Verulamium Park — which in the States would be a golf course not in the slightest dedicated to public use — had me run into a bird that looked like a hybrid pigeon and chicken that I not surprisingly dubbed the chicken-pigeon, finally giving me a reason for the distinction of saying pigeon pigeon twice, as I often do. So now it’s “‘Pigeon pigeon,’ as opposed to what?” “Well, as opposed to chicken-pigeons.” Those conversations, incidentally, never happen.

We hit a couple pubs and I sampled the local tap water whilst digging on the low ceilings and townie vibes, wood beams, dogs sharing benches with people, the whole thing. Chris happens to be an exceedingly good dude, and though I was kind of run down post-Roadburn, it was a great time to see the town and get a feel for something that wasn’t the big city in London. I ended up watching the whole first series of the tv show Big Train, which I can now safely recommend to anyone who enjoys the Python tradition and may not yet have seen it.

Early this afternoon, following a bangers and mash lunch that was just what I was looking for, I and Big Blue made our way to the St Albans city station and headed to Kings Cross St Pancras and then Camden Town, winding up on the Northern line of the Tube for the last of it after taking what I guess is the normal commuter train. It wasn’t an overly long trip, but I patted myself on the back for being able to do it without asking anyone where I was supposed to be. I walked from the Camden Tube station to the hotel here to basically catch up on writing and crash out for the rest of the day.

I may or may not see if I can head over to Music and Video Exchange, but probably not before a nap, given the fact that I’m currently typing with my eyes closed. I can hear the murmur of conversations and laughs coming up from the cafes below, and for just right now, that’s really all the reminder of the world  outside that I’m looking for. Big things coming up over the next couple days — by the time I get to Heathrow on Monday, I will have seen Dozer, and by that I mean “life complete” — so it’s worth my time to regroup, and that’s just what I intend to do.

A Nobel to whoever invented blackout curtains!

Tags: Camden, London, St Albans, UK

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 24th, 2013 at 10:46 am and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.