#the london jazz four

[formulaforza]

💐 hi my wonderful birthday girl !! so i was thinking about a dress coded lewis blurb (because i was born a lewis and ts girl) where they just get drunk together and there’s teases flying and stuff. keep it as brief as u wish <333

—you can take it off

lewis hamilton x merc!reader summ. thank you stephy i love u bad <3 inspo from... ur never gonna believe it... this. hope it's up to your standards my love. 2.7k (kind of got out of hand)

You were half-asleep and half-drunk the night of the Belgium Grand Prix. The air was cool, recycled like all air seems to be in hotels, smelled of too-strong perfume and was filled with the dull noise of elevator jazz. What had begun as a before-we-go-to-bed night cap in the hotel bar with Bono had turned into a seemingly never ending addition of guests. 

Valtteri was first to join—never could pass up the opportunity to give you shit, to offer you job postings at Alfa Romeo that weren’t job postings at all—and with him around, there’s no casual drinking. You don’t try to keep up, not really, because you know you don’t stand a chance, but also because he would never let you. After all these years of being just a few months younger than him, he still calls you kiddo, still promises to call your parents when you’re out after dark, and always sends you a text after a race with some… questionable strategy decisions you’re catching flack for online. 

A brief appearance from Toto and Susie, just long enough for them to know they had no business trying to go drink for drink with Valtteri, and then they’re wishing all three of you a wonderful summer break and retreating to whatever room is considered prestige enough for Motorsport’s it-couple. 

And then there was Lewis, the last to arrive, who never called you kid, who never viewed you as one. He sits adjacent you in the red, high back leather booth and takes up a seat and a half, the toe of his shoe brushing against the side of yours, flashing you apologetic puppy dog eyes every time he bumps against yours. 

It’s somewhere between drink number five and six that Lewis gets his first, insists on a toast to the summer break that officially began… six hours and fifty-three minutes ago. For a long season this and a too-short summer break that, you lot had a mouthful of things to complain about, but a million more to be grateful for. “To not having work for a month,” Lewis proposes, clinking his glass against yours, offering a quick wink and holding it up properly over the table. 

“To no racing-talk for a few weeks,” Bono adds, clinking his glass against Lewis’. 

“To summer-fucking-break,” Valtteri chimes in, laughing at himself before the rest of you get the chance to match it. 

“To summer fucking break,” you repeat because you know there’s no better way to sum it all up. 

Unlike the other two, you slowed down when Lewis joined, wanted to give him time to catch up, to give yourself time to meet him somewhere in the middle. A glass of water and a virgin rum and coke and another water and the night is still young. 

“First summer break as the big boss, kiddo,” Valtteri remarks, and you have to squint to hear him through the alcohol-induced thickening of his accent. 

“That’s right!” Bono laughs. Your cheeks run hot at their mention of your title, of your promotion following James’ departure earlier in the season. Lewis smiles against the rim of his glass, bumps his foot against yours and doesn’t give you apologetic eyes. No, he raises his brows so slightly you think you’re the only one that notices, which is probably exactly the way he intended it to be. “Little miss queen of strategy is making the big money now, got any big travel plans?”

Lewis clears his throat, and your eyes dart over to his almost instinctively. “You’re staying in London, yeah?”

He’s right. Your summer-break plans consist of four weeks of trying to remember what it feels like to do nothing, failing at that task pathetically, and spending the rest of the time meticulously picking apart every call you’ve made all season and imagining the million and one things you could’ve done differently and their billion and two outcomes. 

You pick apart the drink napkin, tear it into tiny little pieces. “Yeah, yeah. Just staying home, catching up with friends and family,” you clarify, try not to sound as pathetic as you feel. It’s hard not to when you’re sitting next to the guy who spends his offseason snowboarding in Antarctica with his celebrity friends and his weeks off traveling to Paris fashion week for front row seats next to supermodels. Anything you say would sound pathetic to someone who makes thirty-five million a year. 

“I love it,” he nods, stares right through you and into your soul so you know he’s being genuine. “That’s awesome.”

You nod, swallow hard, purposely angle your body away from his, to the rest of the group. “What about you guys?”

Lewis laughs, soft, quiet, completely under his breath. The kind of laugh that deserves to be bottled into a jar and kept on a shelf for safe keeping. You know he’s always laughed like that, even before he knew you, but in the last few months it just feels different. Good different, like he’s laughing just for you now instead of everyone else too. 

You know you’re crazy, that he’s just Lewis being Lewis and you’re just single for the first time in a long time and also drunk. Not half drunk anymore, just drunk—even if you do think you’re meeting him in the middle, you’re not. He’s just chasing after. 

“Back home, too,” Bono concludes. “Take a breather, might head up to the country with the family.”

“You’ll take pictures, yeah?” Lewis asks, starts to pick up the pieces of your napkin tear pile and move them in front of him like a kid who isn’t patient enough to share or destructive enough to rip up his own. You watch in your peripheral, the way he fiddles with the wet paper, gets it stuck to his fingertips. You can’t laugh, so you don’t, but you want to. You think he knows you want to. 

Bono scoffs, nods while swallowing a sip of his drink—something dark, something pungent. Not what you would have pegged him for ordering, even after knowing him as long as you have. “So I can compare with the likes of you lot and,” he turns to Lewis, leers around you to emphasize the eyeline, “your million dollar vacations or,” and then the other way, back to Valtteri, “your olympic cycling events?”

Valtteri smiles, swirls his drink—gin, you think. Expensive. “Yes.”

“No chance.”

“I’ll be sure to send you a picture of me having a meltdown when I think about our side pods from the beginning of the year,” you chime in, because it’s not like they all don’t know you well enough to know exactly what you mean by spending time with friends and family at home.

 “What sidepods?” Lewis chuckles.

“Fucking exactly,” you add, mirror his mannerisms without even realizing it, all the way down to readjusting in your seat when you’ve had your laugh. 

“Could be worse,” Bono offers. “Could be last year.”

Lewis nods, holds his drink up in the direction of Valtteri across the table. “We never should have let you leave.”

He smiles, weak, lips  pursed. “I could have told you that.”

The night continues on, all drinks and laughs and yawns, occasional remarks that it’s about time I head up, followed by another round, another joke, another comment about this, that, or the other thing. 

You’ve always liked Lewis when he’s a little tipsy. He lightens up a bit, you can actually watch the stress drip from him like sweat, all the titles and the wins and the losses, they all just fall away when he’s relaxed like this. You’ve always liked him like this. Always. Before he was king of the world and before he was the prodigal son and every moment in between. 

After every joke he makes—or, after every comment he makes that he thinks could be considered a joke—you find yourself laughing, because it’s Lewis and you have a crush on him and of course you do. And, without fail, everytime you laugh, he winks, like you’re in on some inside joke even though he’s making it to the whole table, like there’s some double meaning to all of his words that are meant just for you, just for the two of you to understand. 

Somewhere in it all, it comes back to Lewis, because, well, it always does. “Is your back still bothering you?” Bono asks, and you think you already know the answer. You think you know, because you can’t remember the last time you;d seen him take careful consideration of his posture when he sits. Not even now is he sitting up straight, with his legs perfectly spread a shoulder’s width apart and his feet flat on the floor. Instead, he’s taking up more room than he needs to, all relaxed and comfortable on the leather booth bench. 

He swipes his thumb over the  condensation of his glass, looking up from the action at you, and then to Bono. “No, no. All good there.”

“All good?” Bono prods, because he was on the receiving end of a year and a half of complaints from Lewis.

Lewis nods, clicks his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “No Paracetamol in a month.”

Across the table, Valterri chimes in. “None?” 

“None for my back,” Lewis says, and the whole table laughs. You just watch him, though, because who laughs better than he does? You could wax poetic about it without a second thought, the way that his lips upturn and his cheeks round and his eyes crinkle and go soft in a way that makes you feel like you’re the funniest person in the world even when you’re not making a joke. The way that his smile is brighter than anyone’s you’ve ever seen, and the way that if you look at it for too long, you think about how it would feel to run your finger along the gap in his teeth. 

“That’s what I thought,” Valtteri mutters off the end of his laugh. “You're getting old.”

“Not too old to make half a million.”

The entire table’s heads fly to him. You gasp, an embarrassingly wide smile on your face. “You didn’t!” You almost yell, smacking his upper arm with a weak hand. 

He mocks your gasp, makes it somehow more dramatic and over the top and laughs sweetly, shrugging your hand off his arm and letting his hand fall to your leg, bumping your foot with his again. “I didn’t.” The table chuckles, you pout, and then you realize that his hand is on your thigh, that it’s staying there quite comfortably, and that you mind it less than he does. 

“Don’t be a tease,” you sigh, take a swig of your drink. Your knees are suddenly weak, like you know you wouldn’t be able to stand up if you wanted to. It’s like he can sense your change but can’t quite read it, because then he’s moving his hand back to his own lap, interlocking it with the other and resting it there.

 He nods, suddenly shy, suddenly guilty. “It’s as good as done.”

Valtteri laughs. “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.” You hear what he says, but you’re not listening, not really. Lewis stares into you like he wants to look anywhere else—apologetic eyes and a fear he’s taken a misstep. He hasn’t, you want to tell him. You haven’t, put your hand back, please. Silently, you try to convey what shouldn’t dare be spoken. “I’ll believe it when pen is on paper.”

He snaps his eyes away from you, back to Valtteri. You don’t follow suit, stay fixed on him, on trying— hard—to get your message across. “I’m telling you, they’re announcing it after the summer break.”

“Whatever you say, Mate.”

Bono nods around a mouthful of alcohol, sets his half-empty glass down with an incidental thud. “Who’s to say we still want your geriatric ass?”

Lewis raised his interlocked hands from his lap, to the tabletop, resting his elbows on the wood grain and rattling the empty glasses when he does it. He leans in towards the center of the table, even though the only person separating him and Bono is you. “Would you tell Schumacher ‘no?’”

“What was that?” You ask, your words a convenient excuse to lean in closer, to settle into a spot that much closer to him without raising any brows. To brace for the shift, you leave your hand on his thigh with less subtly than your original movement, but it’s okay. It’s okay—only Lewis knows where your hands are, and you don’t want it to be subtle, don’t want anything to be lost in translation. “I can’t hear you over your ego,” you smile, and your fingers dance up his leg just a few, careful inches. 

He drops back into his seat, drops his hands back into his lap. Under the table, he grabs yours and laughs, but it’s stifled, stunted, not quite relaxed. “Very funny,” he humors, and moves your hand back. His stays too, though, and he crosses one leg over the other under the table. His thumb moves over the fabric of your slacks in shudder-worthy circles. 

“Someone’s gotta check you,” you smile, nod in the direction of your tablemates without ever looking away from him. “These two won’t.”

Bono scoffs.“Are you kidding?”

Your smile grows. “How do you want me to answer that, Peter?”

“Damn,” Lewis laughs so hard he coughs. “She Peter-ed you. That’s cold.”

“You’re the one comparing yourself to Michael fucking Schumacher,” Bono scolds. 

“I didn’t say that, but,”

“But!” You interject. 

“But,” Lewis laughs, threatens to continue even though all at the table know he won’t, knows that no matter how often the media and the girlfriends and the friends and the family tell him he should put himself up there with the greatest, he’ll never quite see himself in the same light. “But it’s about time I head up, I think.”

“Ah, see,” Valtteri chuckles. “Old man Hamilton can’t hang.”

“No, he can not,” Lewis remarks, pulling his phone and his hotel keycard from his pocket, setting the latter on the table and if you were feeling a little crazier than you are, you’d swear he nudges it ever so slightly out of his bubble and into yours. He types away rapidly at his phone, and you try to pay attention to the jokes Bono and Valtteri throw around, the pokes at Lewis they make, but suddenly you’re feeling like it’s a good time to head up, too. You try to shake the crazy, to leave it with your backwash in the final sip of your drink, and you do. You do.

You do, but then he’s slipping his phone back into his pocket. He’s leaving his glass just beyond his keycard and telling you to feel free to finish it. He’s saying his goodbyes while he moves out of the booth and his hotel room key is still sat on the table next to you. It stares at you—the hard, thin plastic. Stares at you in its white paper pocket with the intricate printing of the hotel label and dares you to look at him when he walks away. 

You do, begrudgingly, subtly, and his eyes are already on yours. They’re expressionless, and yet, say so fucking much. You hold the remainder of his drink in his direction before downing it in a single gulp and then he winks at you. He looks at his keycard on the table, and then to you, and then he winks, and you’re sure you’re absolutely crazy. 

You swallow. 

“Oh, fuck,” Bono says, reaches over you to grab the keycard from the table. It’s like you were zoned out and he snapped in front of your face, the way it pulls you from Lewis to the table. “He forgot his key.”

“Oh,” you squeak, and then louder, “I can take it to him.”

“No, no, It’s okay,” Bono says, and he makes you stand up to get out of the booth. “I should be heading up anyway.”

“Really,” you half-insist, trying to convince him you can handle it without letting him in on why you’re convincing him. “It’s no problem.”

Bono pulls out his wallet, flips through the pockets of it and fiddles with his bills. “Our rooms are right by each other,” he insists, tosses his share onto the table. “I got it.”

“Okay,” you nod, accept your defeat. “Yeah, I should be heading up, too, I guess.”

[sirenologyyy]

EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LOVE !

୨ৎ summary : wherein singer!reader books her next role in the ballad of songbirds and snakes after starring in the third highest-grossing movie of all time called avatar: the way of water, and falls for the bad guy... of course

୨ৎ warnings : cussing, that's pretty much it HEHEEHEH

୨ৎ author's note : YA'LL I've never seen laufey as a faceclaim in these before she's gorgeous. Also, your character in atwow is named Magnolia Quaritch, you're in Daisy Jones and The Six as a Jazz singer named Vienna Cartwright and a character in House of The Dragon named Theadosia Baratheon.

yourusername

tagged: @/jamieflatters @/baileybass @/jackchampion

liked by rachelzegler, sukiwaterhouse, hunterschafer, baileybass, jackchampion, livkatecooke and 176,987 others

yourusername the sexy skxawngs are SO back 🤩🙏🔥

view comments

jackchampion DUDEEE YOU SAID YOU WEREN'T GUNNA POST THAT PIC OF ME

⤷ yourusername obviously I lied

user1 NAWW YA'LL ARE SO CUTE

user2 OMGGG your boots are giving

user3 average brother and sister dynamic

user4 HELLO DON'T TELL ME Y/N AND JACK PLAY SIBLINGS IN AVATAR????

⤷ user3 HELP yeah they do they're quaritch's kids and they're stepsiblings, y/n's character is named magnolia she was born on pandora like three or four years before spider was

⤷ user4 they barely look alike HELP

⤷ jackchampion no because we keep saying that too

⤷ yourusername @/slang_711 your response 🎤🎤🎤

user4 naw HAHAAHAHA

rachelzegler YA'LL ARE SO CUTEEE

⤷ yourusername MWAH

jamieflatters what is that picture of me

⤷ yourusername my finger slipped

⤷ jamieflatters this is an injustice

⤷ yourusername mb I'm sorry

⤷ jamieflatters you know you aren't

baileybass no because that day in london was so fun omggg

yourusername especially when it started raining and we all were just running around like headless chickens and we took cover inside that empty ambulance

⤷ jackchampion and then I totally didn't fall getting out

⤷ baileybass lies

⤷ yourusername falsehoods

⤷ jamieflatters these people deserve the truth jackson

user5 UGH y/n's so pretty I wish she was real :/

user1 frl I wish pretty people were real

user6 jack eating dino nuggies and mac and cheese with a coke sends me

⤷yourusername I have a folder on my phone with 18 seperate photos of jack eating the same meal over the course of filming atwow

⤷ jackchampion WHAT???

⤷ yourusername my lil bro 😔

⤷ user6 PUAHAAHAGAHSHS

⤷ jackchampion girl bye I'm literally 6 feet tall

⤷ yourusername nobody asked jack

⤷ jamieflatters yeah jack

ayoedibiri I miss you 😔

⤷ yourusername I miss YOU

user7 MAGNOLIA QUARITCH 🔛🔝

user8 if magnolia quaritch has a million fans I'm one of them, if she has a hundred fans I'm one of them, if she had 0 fans I'm DEAD

hunterschafer looking tew good babes x

⤷ yourusername ure too kind 🫡 🫶

user9 HELPPP BECAUSE JAMIE'S FACE IN THE BEGGINING

⤷ yourusername he tried gochujang for the first time

⤷ jackchampion top 10 worst anime fails

user7 I think you cropped me outta some of these babes 💋

user8 imagine breathing the same air as y/n y/l/n is rn like I cannot imagine 😔

user10 y/n what's ur favorite hot wheels car

user11 come home the kids miss you 😔

user12 can magnolia come and dissect me like that bladder polyp 30 minutes into the movie

yourusername

tagged: @/lionsgate

liked by rachelzegler, hunterschafer, jackchampion, tomblyth, joshandresrivera, oliviarodrigo and 500, 975 others

yourusername show our girl mira sage baird some love, the ballad of songbirds and snakes out now November 17th!

view comments

user1 STOP STOP STOP

user2 THERE'S NO FUCKING WAY SHE'S PLAYING MIRA SAGE

rachelzegler welcome to the rodeo big sis 🎹🎶✨️

⤷ yourusername let's fcking do this thing

user3 im literally screaming crying and throwing up right now OMFG RACHEL JUST CALLED Y/N BIG SIS

user4 STOP BCS I just finished reading tbosas yesterday

user5 OH MY FUCKING GOD MIRA PLAYING THE PIANOOOO

user6 these stills are everything to me

jackchampion SO SO SO PROUD OF YOU 🙌

⤷ yourusername #1 WINGMAN FRL 💯

user7 her first freaking role was literally playing stephen lang's daughter in a james cameron film, then immediately booking the role of serafyna freaking baratheon in house of the dragon, then playing a jazz singer in daisy jones and the six, NOW SHE'S IN THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES???

user8 no one's doing it like her frl

user1 "OUR GIRL MIRA SAGE BAIRD" WHAT IF I START SOBBING

user5 like hello I'm never getting over this tf 😭💔💔💔

user3 Y/N Y/L/N THE WOMAN THAT YOU ARE

tomblyth hey nightingale

⤷ yourusername wsp gent

user9 OH MY FUCKING GOD NO ONE TALK TO ME RIGHT NOWWWWWWW

⤷ user3 DID THEY JUST CALL EACHOTHER BY THEIR NICKNAMES OH LORD

user5 they saw an opportunity and took it

ashleyjliao oh ya'll are not READYYYY

user11 TOM BLYTH AND Y/N Y/L/N NATION RISE

user8 IM LITERALLY SCREAMING RIGHT NOW HOLY SHITTTTTTTT??@@?@?!!?!,#*#(

⤷ user1 someone time this exact moment these two made frickin history tonight

⤷ user6 I'm so glad I stayed up for this holy shit

⤷ user8 it's literally 5:39 am for me rn I literally have to defend a thesis in 3 hours and I am wide awake bouncing around my dorm

⤷ yourusername oh babes get some sleep 😭 (good luck on your thesis btw you're gunna kill it! 💓)

⤷ user8 IM GOING TO BED RN MISS MA'AM 🫡

⤷ user10 replying to user8 NAW GIRL I CAN'T BELIEVE SHE REPLIED TO YOU

⤷ user8 replying to user10 IT CAN ONLY GO DOWNHILL FROM HERE DUDE

user7 I WILL NEVER FORGET THIS MOMENT OMFGDYDHDU

baileybass can't wait 🤍

⤷ yourusername I love you so much bai bai 🫶🏼

user12 oh my FUCK is that the scene where sejanus and mira have that conversation outside the hob???

⤷ user9 OH THERE'S NO WAY

⤷ user13 STOP WE'RE FINALLY GETTING THE "you're everything I could ever have wanted" SCENE

⤷user9 AAAAAAAAA I CAN'T WAIT OH MY GOD?!?!?

⤷ user6 UGHDGDFC MY SEJMIRA HEARTTTTTTT 😭💗

⤷ user3 I apologise for the person I will become once I see Sejanus and Mira at my local theatre

⤷ hunterschafer me neither

⤷ user3 HUNTER'S A SEJMIRA SHIPPER CONFIRMED?????

⤷ user6 hunter I love you

⤷user3 HUNTER SHIPS SEJMIRA YA'LL HEARD IT HERE FIRST 🗣🗣🗣

⤷user12 NO BECAUSE IF WE'RE GETTING THE HOB SCENE THEN THE CLIFF SCENE IS 3 DAYS AFTER...

⤷user13 oh...

⤷ user1 I DON'T THINK I WILL SURVIVE THIS

⤷ user2 yeah and neither does-

⤷ user8 NAWWW STFU @/user2

⤷user12 don't even go there @/user2

⤷user10 GET THE HELL OUT @/user2

⤷ user10 DONT EVEN CONTINUE THAT SENTENCE @/user2

joshandresrivera prepare to have your knocks socked off

⤷yourusername oh they dunno what's COMING

⤷ rachelzegler stop because tell me why I was sobbing even more than you were while you were performing mira sage's song 😭

⤷ yourusername we were inconsolable that day 😭😭😭 i think even Tom was tearing up too

⤷ tomblyth no you're wrong there was a busted pipe above my spot it kept leaking into my eye

⤷yourusername sure honey.

user14 NAWWWW ☝️☝️☝️

user15 someone check up on tom if he's still breathing cuz if y/n fucking y/l/n ever called me honey I'd be GONEEEEEEE

user16 @/tomblyth are u alright pal

⤷ joshandresrivera his eyes were literally irritated when I looked at him during our first initial take

⤷tomblyth nice going josh

⤷ yourusername rachel never let him go

⤷ rachelzegler duly noted

user17 y/n y/l/n as mira sage baird oh someone up there is looking out for me frl

rachelzegler

tagged: @/yourusername

liked by yourusername, tomblyth, joshandresrivera, hunterschafer and 168, 753 others

rachelzegler new york, new york - Frank Ocean

view comments

joshandresrivera alright I see how it is

⤷ rachelzegler it's not you, it's me?

yourusername I'm coming after your entire career Joshua

tomblyth I asked if you wanted to go hang out in new york with me and you told me you were busy?

⤷ yourusername but I was 😁

⤷ rachelzegler get in line blyth

⤷ tomblyth I'm devastated, truly

⤷ yourusername it's not my fault I'm incredibly sought after, I'm sorry Tom

⤷ hunterschafer go tell 'em honey!!!

⤷ yourusername better luck next time @/tomblyth

⤷ tomblyth there's still a next time?

⤷yourusername For you? Always

⤷tomblyth I'm the luckiest man alive, I feel like I'm going to soar out of my flat any minute now, maybe do somersaults in the sky I'm not sure, we'll see.

yourusername liked this comment

user1 not Tom Blyth being down bad

user2 HELLO??? TOM???

user3 why do they sound so flirty wtf...

user4 dosen't Tom have a gf HELPPPP

user5 I don't think it's confirmed

⤷ user4 it better not be cuz why am I kinda eating this up

user6 NO BCS SAME ADFSDGSJSSHZ

lionsgate our favorite sister duo 💕

⤷ yourusername iktr 🙏

⤷ rachelzegler this is a WIN

user7 OH WE NEED THOSE DIGICAM PICS RNNNN

user8 @/yourusername LETS MAKE IT HAPPEN ‼️‼️‼️

user9 Y/N AND RACHEL IN NEW YORK Y/N AND RACHEL IN NEW YORK Y/N AND RACHEL IN NEW YORK

user10 THERE'S NO WAY I WAS 5 MINS AWAY FROM THAT RESTAURANT AND DIDN'T GO THERE 😭😭😭

user11 y/n l/n and rachel zegler my bestfriends

user12 HELP THE TEXT WITH Y/N AND RACHEL IM CREASING

⤷ user11 IKR THIS IS SO UNSERIOUS

⤷ user10 I wonder if she actually got the Lucy Gray barbie

⤷ yourusername everywhere we went it was sold out 😭

⤷ user12 NAHHH QUEEN YOU DESERVE SM BETTER

user3 @/tomblyth you might wanna get onto that

⤷ user5 @/tomblyth GET THIS GIRL HER LUCY GRAY BARBIE

⤷ user4 @/tomblyth YK WHAT TO DO

user14 HAHAHAAYAH NOT YA'LL TAGGING HIMMM 😭😭😭

user15 I know Y/N was mourning for that spilt coffee

⤷ rachelzegler OH YOU BEST BELIEVE SHE WAS DISTRAUGHT

user16 and they were thrifting too UGH I wanna be able to go thrifting with y/n and rachel

⤷ user14 I wonder who got those cowboy boots

⤷yourusername actually we both saw it at the same time but I ended up giving it to Rachel because I'm a wonderful person! (and we totally didn't fight over it inside goodwill!)

rachelzegler 😭😭😭

tomblyth

tagged: @/joshandresrivera @/rachelzegler @/yourusername see more...

liked by yourusername, rachelzegler, joshandresrivera, ashleyjliao, hirokiberrecloth and 268, 836 others

tomblyth HG film dump. We had our flaky croissants, our chewy croissants, but alas, not one croissant on earth could live up to these beautiful people. teebosass coming to theaters near you. ❄️❄️❄️

rachelzegler FIRST!!!

rachelzegler ugh blyth you sap

⤷ tomblyth what can I say

ashleyjliao 🥐🥐🥐

yourusername that cucumber salad did not taste as good as you manipulated me into believing

⤷ tomblyth hey you could use the vitamin K, you're welcome ❤️

⤷ yourusername this is what playing a pre tyrannical president of a dystopian world does to you kids

user1 yes mom 🫡

user1 AWWW THE GROUP PIC OF ALL THE MENTORS 🥹🥹🥹

⤷ user2 I'm abt to sob

user3 so excited OMGGG

user2 YA'LL THE CABIN SCENE I WILL NEVER RECOVER...

user4 sofia crying makes me wanna cry too wtf

user5 the tributes and mentors aww

⤷ user3 I'm having that picture framed and put on a pedestal

user6 Y/N getting her own picture is so cute 🫶

user7 holy shit ur right

⤷ user2 replying to user6 she literally got a single picture all to herself while the others were with someone else on every photo

⤷ user8 CHAT WHAT IS GOING AWNNN

user8 no because y/n having her own picture meanwhile everyone else had to share the spotlight is making me think thoughts...

user9 oh twitter's about to blow up and second now

user10 @/y/nsidehoe on twt 🔥🔥🔥

user11 you were amazing in Billy the Kid!

user12 RACHEL IS SO POOKIEEEE

user13 these photos are so well shot though

user14 the tributes all hugging eachother ugh MY HEART

user15 josh's posture is cracking me tf up 😭

⤷ user10 BWHAHAGSSJAJSSJS

user16 10 MINUTES AGK HOLY SHITTTT

user17 y/n's face though HELP ME

user18 Y/N NATION HOW TF ARE WE FEELING???

user19 I don't even wanna speculate anything atp remember what happened to her and Charles Leclerc?

user17 oh NAWWW they were definitely a thing, did you SEE those yacht pics?

user10 it was a shame they never confirmed it though they were so cute 😔

user20 YALL dosen't tom have a gf???

⤷ user18 nothing's confirmed, pretty sure he said him and the girl were good friends in an article somewhere LMFAO

⤷ user8 omg link

⤷ user13 (2)

⤷ user18 hold on dms

user21 josh and rachel have my heart fssss 🫶

user22 y/n nation boutta start shipping them I'm frl calling it

user23 it'll be gone in a week or so then she'll hop onto the next male lead in her next film

⤷ user22 HAAHAHA SHUDDUPPP

⤷ user23 for promo ✨️

⤷ user24 she's doing smth to these men I swear, spiking their drinks, keeping voodoo dolls of em or sumn

⤷ user23 WAIT STOP AHAHSHSAH

[ctimenefic]

Became obsessed by the idea of Alex getting his grubby mitts on George's nudes, had a breakdown, bon appetit.

positive negatives Rated Explicit Fandom F1 RPF Pairing Alexander Albon/George Russell 4,963 words

Summary: George doesn’t regret that shoot, exactly.

He had for a long time. After the first high of seeing the rushes wore off; after overhearing a murmured warning in general casting, days too late; after he woke up at three am to reread the release he’d blithely signed without thinking, and spent the next four hours staring at the ceiling hoping to wake up. He’d regretted it then.

For years after, the memory of it could hit like an ice cube sliding down his spine. Always, of course, at the most inconvenient moments. When he was working, or networking, when he needed his wits about him, couldn’t afford to stutter over his words. They’d put him in white silk, or offer him wine, or he’d walk into a room with slow, warm jazz playing, and the whole excruciating mess of it all would come back. He’d learnt how to smile through it, then how not to blink at all. (rest of the first chunk below the cut)

And when the pictures had finally leaked – first onto some old-school subscription gay porn site, then everywhere else a day later – he’d put his lessons to work. Keep smiling. Don’t blink.

It had been a surprise to look back, a month later, when the worst was over and his clients and his billboards and his agent were all still there, with an extra 400,000 followers on Instagram to boot, and think Was that it? 

When he looks at the photographs now, it’s like that first time again, young and bloody-minded and startled to see he had a flesh-and-bone body under all those choking layers of denial. He looks good. He looks good at looking good, at ease with himself in a way that George-at-twenty-five knows he took years to relearn. And maybe the desire of the camera reads as lecherous now he can see the places where his youth shaved the fat from his hips, but George still remembers being that boy. He deserved, he thinks, to be wanted. 

Still, he doesn’t mean to tell Alex about them. Alex doesn’t really get modelling, or the difference between George’s shoot for Calvin Klein, plastered up and down the Tube, and the accidental softcore porn he shot at 19. It’s been a long time since their karting days, and George’s career has taken quite a while to bring him back into the orbit of rich men driving even more expensive cars for a living.

Also Alex is his boss, technically. Or his client. Alex is going to put him in some very stupid clothes with far too many pandas and cats and horses on them, and George is going to sell the fuck out of them. (It won’t be a set to add to his portfolio, but it’s the least he can do for an old friend whose smile is just as bright and broad as it was ten years ago.) George doesn’t have a normal job, but he knows it’s probably a tad unprofessional to bring up why “...gay” “...2018 shoot” and “...dick” never leave the top ten Google autocompletes for his name. 

But then he gets to the private members’ club in London where Alex is going to show him the final designs (and George is going to nod and smile like he’s never worn Versace) and Alex, already there waiting for him, looks tired. Worse than that – haggard.

“We can’t all be fucking supermodels, Georgie,” Alex retorts. It’s mild enough that George files away deliberately mixing up super-licence points and the other, better kind for a different, pettier occasion. Still, he slides his (prescriptionless, fashionable) glasses down his nose for a brief disappointed look. 

George still follows F1 – he has the app, keeps Alex in his fantasy team but puts the double boost on Verstappen every race with just a twinge of guilt – so he knows the run to summer break hasn’t been kind. No position higher than 15th. No points. 

He’s not seen Alex actually down about it before. He’s certainly never heard Alex talk about Red Bull, and the fiasco that happened there long before George met Lewis Hamilton at LFW and found himself waltzing back into a racing paddock. It presses at something tender in the depths of him, behind layers of poise and millimetre-perfect physical control. 

The iPad propped against the bar has gone dark, fashion long forgotten. George would sit through a hundred abominable fish-print shirts if Alex would laugh again. 

“Sometimes I feel like I fucked it right at the start, you know, and I’ll never get past it,” Alex tells his pint glass. He’d told George he was only allowed one, then looked pissed off and affectionate when George had held him to it. Like George didn’t understand a strict diet. “Do you ever- Nah. Course not.” 

He can’t stand that, the way Alex’s eyes glide up and down him, a smooth surface. And that tender part wants to crack him open from the inside, press itself against Alex’s bruised under-eyes. 

So George tells him about the shoot. The stifling heat of the studio. How the sheets had stiff spots that snagged against the hairs on his arms, and he hadn’t realised until later how they’d got that way. He’d been so thirsty, and so trusting that the water was shut off. The wine had been cheap and nasty and he’d not had the experience to know the difference.  

He hadn’t known he’d made a mistake until the photographer had messaged days later, said he wanted a follow up of George freshly fucked out and offered to do the honours. 

He tells it like it’s funny. It helps, he’s found, if he can make the jokes first. Alex laughs in the right places but nervously, like he’s not sure it’s allowed. 

“-So, yeah, I understand, a bit. In the end it’s probably got me more jobs than it’s lost me, but if you want a bright side, no one’s put your Red Bull season on a porn site. Well, none of the mainstream ones at least.”

“I try not to think about what the admins won’t tell me,” Alex responds darkly, but his eyes cut back to George’s face with a hint of guilt behind them. “Jesus, Georgie. I didn’t know it was like that.” He hesitates. “Should I stop making the jokes about your shirts falling off?”

George laughs properly at that, loud enough people at the nearby tables turn their heads. He feels their glances lingering. It’s a sixth sense by now. “Nah, it’s become a crucial part of the brand. But show me the horse one again?” 

This time, Alex smiles as he explains exactly why the ‘Horsey’ line is actually covered in cats. 

The collection is fundamentally ugly. There’s no getting round that. But at the shoot itself, the snapper Alex has hired, a teasing chap with an accent that meanders between Dundee and Penzance, doesn’t mind when George pulls faces at each change. The clothes feel good at least – well-constructed, made by a women’s collective in Thailand that George’s agent had checked aligned with his ethics clause. 

Alex isn’t there, off at a training camp. It doesn’t affect how George does his job – he’s a consummate professional – but, well. He’d been prepared to show off a little. He could’ve got away with fewer crunches that morning. 

Still, he persuades the photographer to take at least one shot for each shirt with a very technical definition of ‘wearing.’ Inside joke, he promises. 

It’s about a week later when he gets the email from Alex. Subject line: AA23 Pet Collection Edit. No body text. Attachment: GR_Photos.zip.

When he opens it up, he doesn’t blink. Just smiles. 

Read the rest on AO3 or, like, bully me to post it here.

[batboyblog]

Public Domain Notice!

Happy Public Domain Day here in the USA!

today, January 1st 2023 marks the day all works published in the year 1927 enter the public domain! This includes books, movies and music.

Here are a few of the most famous and important works entering public domain today:

The final two Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. You likely have heard something about this, while the character of Sherlock Holmes has been public domain for many years a handful of stories in Conan Doyle's last collection of Holmes stories, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, published in 1927 remained under copy right. The famously litigious Conan Doyle Estate Ltd has used it's control of these copyrights to pressure movie, TV, and even authors to pay them when using the public domain character of Sherlock Holmes or adaptations of public domain stories. Well finally the last of their copyrights have finally run out and you can publish a collection of all 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories (and 4 novels) if you want, or use elements from these final stories in your own Sherlock Holmes story and the Conan Doyle Estate Ltd can finally go fuck itself.

speaking of detectives, the first 3 Hardy Boys novels, The Tower Treasure, The House on the Cliff, and The Secret of the Old Mill are also entering public domain, as such you are free to include Frank and Joe Hardy in your own work of fictions, but be careful to stick to their characterization from these first 3 books.

other exciting books entering the public domain today are, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, Men Without Women (a short story collection) by Ernest Hemingway, The Big Four by Agatha Christie (big year for detectives huh?) Mosquitoes by William Faulkner, Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton, The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury, Der Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, Amerika by Franz Kafka

in terms of movies one of the most famous silent films ever made and one of the most visually iconic, Metropolis directed by Fritz Lang will reenter the Public Domain, The American copyright lapsed in 1953 making the film widely available and allowing for versions with material that had been cut from the 1927 version to be published in the 1970s and 80s. However under an international copyright agreement the film was returned to copyrighted status in 1996. But Today it's back back back again in the Public Domain!

Other exciting films entering the public domain are The Jazz Singer the very first "Talkie", Wings the very first Academy Award for best picture (or "outstanding picture" as it was then) The King of Kings directed by Cecil B. DeMille, Sunrise directed by F.W. Murnau (his first American film!) and The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog first first thriller directed by legendary director Alfred Hitchcock

the musical Show Boat by Oscar Hammerstein II will also enter the public domain with songs like Ol’ Man River, the musical Funny Face, and Good News with songs like Funny Face and The Best Things in Life Are Free, stand alone songs (I Scream You Scream, We All Scream for) Ice Cream, Puttin’ on the Ritz, Potato Head Blues, Gully Low Blues, East St. Louis Toodle-O, and Mississippi Mud will all be free to the public today

Finally a piece of Disney history is entering the public domain. Oswald The Lucky Rabbit first appeared in 1927 and will be free to appear in works of fiction this year, a year ahead of his younger brother Mickey Mouse

[cheeseplants]

The Ecstasy of Eden: 4 & 5

Good Omens fic: Chap 4 & 5 Four of five times they used sex pollen, and one time they didn't

Excerpt

“The music is good, isn’t it?” Aziraphale said, his face as bright as the morning sun. Crowley’s eyes dropped to his lips, moist from whiskey, he noticed a small dot of cream on the edge of his mouth.

“You have -” Crowley leaned forward without thinking, and ran his thumb to catch it. Aziraphale’s cheeks turned pink, and his eyes stretched wide.

“Oh.” Aziraphale’s small pink tongue dipped out, and brushed the edge of Crowley’s thumb; a volt of electricity zapped his hand, he pulled away stunned.

“Eclair,” Aziraphale smiled, licking the corner of his lip to fish the rest of the cream off. Crowley’s fingers clenched hard against his thigh.

He looked so beautiful. Why did he always have to look so damn beautiful?

“Right, mm, yeah.” He stared forward, not daring himself to gaze any longer.

The band stopped, and the air stilled; Aziraphale glanced up and caught Crowley’s eyes through his dark glasses. The air crackled with static electricity, and Crowley’s knees bounced, unable to stop it, he knocked into Aziraphale.

“M’sorry,” he mumbled, he began to move it away.

A hand caught it.

---

Things are happening in a seedy jazz club in London.

It's a double chap drop this week for reasons.

CW: Sex pollen, dub con

Rating: Explicit

Start here

Read Chap 4 & 5 here.

We're nearly at the end. Thanks to: @adverbian, @voluptatiscausa, @malachitegrey again for the High Sex Pollen Event! And to my lovely betas: @fuzzygoblin , and @happynachohologram.

@goodomensafterdark

[humunanunga]

So I looked it up, because of course the Holmes books aren't alone to enter the public domain this year, and Metropolis has too. So here's the list I found of creative works that are now public domain:

Books

— The Gangs of New York, by Herbert Asbury (original publication)

— Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather

— The Big Four, by Agatha Christie

— The Tower Treasure, the first Hardy Boys mystery by the pseudonymous Franklin W. Dixon

— The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle

— Copper Sun, by Countee Cullen

— Mosquitoes, by William Faulkner

— Men Without Women, by Ernest Hemingway

— Der Steppenwolf, by Herman Hesse (in German)

— Amerika, by Franz Kafka (in German)

— Now We Are Six, by A.A. Milne with illustrations from E.H. Shepard

— Le Temps retrouvé, by Marcel Proust (in French)

— Twilight Sleep, by Edith Wharton

— The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder

— To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf

Movies

— "7th Heaven," directed by Frank Borzage

— "The Battle of the Century," a Laurel and Hardy film directed by Clyde Bruckman

— "The Kid Brother," directed by Ted Wilde

— "The Jazz Singer," directed by Alan Crosland

— "The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog," directed by Alfred Hitchcock

— "Metropolis," directed by Fritz Lang

— "Sunrise," directed by F.W. Murnau

— "Upstream," directed by John Ford

— "Wings," directed by William A. Wellman

Musical compositions

— "Back Water Blues," "Preaching the Blues" and "Foolish Man Blues" (Bessie Smith)

— "The Best Things in Life Are Free," from the musical "Good News" (George Gard "Buddy" De Sylva, Lew Brown, Ray Henderson)

— "Billy Goat Stomp," "Hyena Stomp" and "Jungle Blues" (Ferdinand Joseph Morton)

— "Black and Tan Fantasy" and "East St. Louis Toodle-O" (Bub Miley, Duke Ellington)

— "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" and "Ol' Man River," from the musical "Show Boat" (Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern)

— "Diane" (Erno Rapee, Lew Pollack)

— "Funny Face" and "'S Wonderful," from the musical "Funny Face" (Ira and George Gershwin)

— "(I Scream You Scream, We All Scream for) Ice Cream" (Howard Johnson, Billy Moll, Robert A. King)

— "Mississippi Mud" (Harry Barris, James Cavanaugh)

— "My Blue Heaven" (George Whiting, Walter Donaldson)

— "Potato Head Blues" and "Gully Low Blues" (Louis Armstrong)

— "Puttin' on the Ritz" (Irving Berlin)

— "Rusty Pail Blues," "Sloppy Water Blues" and "Soothin' Syrup Stomp" (Thomas Waller)

Source: https://www.voanews.com/a/public-domain-debuts-include-last-sherlock-holmes-work-/6898309.html

[transformers-mosaic]

Transformers: Multiverse #3 - "Pack"

Originally posted on October 10th, 2012

Story, Letters - Niels van Eekelen Art - Paul Vromen Colours - Sam Palmer

deviantART | BotTalk

wada sez: This strip explains Grimlock’s motivation for departing to Hydrus Four to search for Nucleon in “Eye of the Storm”. The Dinobots are depicted with (I believe) original Cybertronian modes in flashback. Grimlock recalls his fellow Classic Pretenders, Bumblebee and Jazz, revived at the end of “All the Familiar Faces!”. He also remembers the Dinobots being offlined by a cosmically-empowered Starscream in “Dark Star”. In the comments, Niels shared a cute little anecdote: “It might interest you to know that at the Kapow Comic Convention in London this spring, Paul and I gave a print of the pencils (plus letters) of this page to Simon Furman himself, to thank him for the impact he had on our childhoods.” See below for a process breakdown.

[haveyoulistenedtothisalbum-poll]

Tracklist:

London Calling • Brand New Cadillac • Jimmy Jazz • Hateful • Rudie Can't Fail • Spanish Bombs • The Right Profile • Lost in the Supermarket • Clampdown • The Guns of Brixton • Wrong 'Em Boyo • Death Or Glory • Koka Kola • The Card Cheat • Lover's Rock • Four Horsemen • I'm Not Down • Revolution Rock • Train In Vain (Stand By Me)

Spotify ♪ YouTube

[mimisempai]

Witness of a Growing Love

Summary

She may be nothing but metal on four wheels, but she’s listened to enough love songs to know how to recognize it... 

So when an angel and a demon can’t figure out their feelings for each other, the Bentley decides to take matters into her own hands... or wheels?

Notes

Fanfic written for @theineffablecon 4 fanzine. 

And what if this time it was the Bentley that saved the day? 

Another sort of fix-it from episode 6

On Ao3

Rating G -  2182 words

Crowley leaned back against the Bentley and waited.

He still wondered how the situation could have deteriorated so much in such a short time.

After so many years, prompted by his conversation with Maggie and Nina, he'd finally poured his heart out and... nothing.

Apparently he and Aziraphale didn't want the same thing, or didn't want it anymore.

One proposal from Metatron and it would have been over.

Yet he still waited, hoping that maybe Aziraphale would open his eyes.

But deep inside he felt that all was lost.

His gaze was drawn to the door of the bookshop as it opened and he saw Metatron and Aziraphale come out.

They seemed to be chatting naturally as they made their way to the elevator.

Metatron looked as if he said something that surprised Aziraphale, who immediately lost his smile.

The angel then regained his smile before standing in front of the elevator and time stopped for a few seconds as he slowly turned his head toward Crowley.

The demon couldn't help but feel one last surge of hope.

But no, Aziraphale straightened his shoulders, smiled, and moved toward the elevator.

All was lost.

Crowley glanced toward the coffee shop, where Nina gave him a little wave that he didn't return, then toward the record store, where Maggie slept on the counter.

He climbed into the car and immediately the radio began playing.

“A nightingale sang in Berkeley square...”

Crowley instantly turned off the radio and the Bentley took off.

The car began to drive ahead, but suddenly, instead of turning left, she lurched forward.

Crowley shouted, "Hey, what are you doing?!"

She braked in front of the elevator, whose doors were still open, and the passenger door opened wide as the radio began to play loudly.

“So hold on now just hold on a minute

This car's not leaving if you're not in it

You've no idea how lucky we are

A wound that deep would normally scar”

Crowley and Aziraphale's eyes met and time stood still.

***********************

She drove through the burning streets of London, fearing for her bodywork as an angel and a demon chatted quietly in her cabin.

She had grown accustomed to Crowley's eccentricities over the years, but today he had brought a new individual with him.

For the first time, she had a passenger.

Strange.

"You know... that was a very nice thing you did for me."

The stranger seemed nice, not the kind of company she'd expected to see here.

"Shut up."

Idiot, he says thank you. Just answer "You're welcome" and you're done!

The stranger insisted.

As far as she could tell - she was just a car, after all - he seemed to like her demonic driver.

"There must be something I can do for you in return."

"Forget it, will you?"

Oh, there was something else in Crowley's tone. 

A new kind of sound.

A bit like that soft jazz music he liked to listen to sometimes.

Interesting.

More interestingly, when she took them from the theater to a bookshop much later in the evening, there was something new in the air.

And when they left the bookshop much later, the demon was not his usual self.

He said really softly, "You know, Aziraphale is someone special, you'll have to get used to him, because we'll probably see each other again."

The demon sighed, "Even if I don't know when, as always."

***********************

The angel had just gotten into the car. 

Crowley soon arrived, just as surprised as she was.

"What are you doing here?"

The angel looked a little uncertain and replied, "I needed a word with you."

"What?"

Aziraphale replied reproachfully, "I work in Soho. I hear things. I hear that you're setting up a... caper to rob a church. Crowley, it's too dangerous."

Finally, someone with some common sense.

The angel continued in a pleading tone, "Holy water won't just kill your body. It will destroy you completely."

Crowley retorted, "You told me what you think years ago. And I haven't changed my mind."

Stubborn idiot. I don't want a new driver. I'm used to you by now.

Aziraphale replied, "But I can't have you risking your life. Not even for something dangerous. So... you can call off the robbery."

The angel handed him a thermos and continued, "Don't go unscrewing the cap."

Hey, what's wrong with this one? Both as crazy as the other!

Crowley asked, "It's the real thing?" 

"The holiest."

Crowley's voice had inflections she'd never heard before as he replied, "After everything you said. Should I thank you?"

Of course you should.

"Better not."

Ah, well, no.

Crowley asked, "Well, can I drop you anywhere?" 

Good boy, well educated.

"No, thank you." 

She didn't need to see to feel the demon's disappointment, she could feel it permeating the cabin. 

The angel had seen it too, apparently: "Oh, don't look so disappointed. Perhaps one day we could... I don't know. Go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz."

She'd heard enough love songs to know when it was in the air, and as much as she felt the disappointment in the demon's voice, she could feel the love flowing from the angel's.

But the demon felt nothing. 

"I'll give you a lift. Anywhere you want to go."

The angel shook his head and replied softly, "You go too fast for me, Crowley."

And there it was. 

Idiot, I always told you. Or thought.

You overdid it with the gas pedal and now you've hit a wall.

**********************

"You're so clever. How can someone as smart as you be so stupid?"

You're one to talk.

The way these two were made for each other and unable to say it to each other.

She was a heartless piece of metal and she could see it.

"I forgive you."

Oops, apparently that didn't go over well with the demon, who replied, "Oh...I'm going home, Angel. I'm getting my stuff and I'm leaving. And when I'm off in the stars, I won't even think about you."

Idiot and liar.

For years she'd heard Aziraphale - this, Aziraphale - that over and over again, angry, amused, affectionate.

But she had no choice, so she drove him away from the angel.

***********************

She had never driven so fast.

Fear and panic filled the cabin.

Her tires squealed as she pulled up to the burning bookshop.

Crowley ran inside.

He returned moments later.

She had never "felt" him like this.

He got in, dropped his head on the wheel, and whispered, "Bastards. They killed him. My angel."

Then he straightened up and grabbed a new pair of glasses from the glove compartment as she drove off.

***********************

They had come through the flames and reached their destination, burning. 

Actually, she was the only one burning. 

Crowley hadn't done too badly.

The important thing was that he and the angel were reunited. 

She had fulfilled her mission.

It was up to them to do the rest.

She could let the flames consume her now.

She left in an explosion.

***********************

She was now parked in front of the bookshop.

And the silence in the cabin was really uncomfortable.

She'd been around both of them long enough to decipher their behavior.

Especially since it had been the same for years.

Aziraphale not daring to ask Crowley to stay.

Crowley not daring to ask Aziraphale if he could have a nightcap.

"See you soon."

And there it was again, ending the same way.

Crowley replied, "See you soon, Angel."

They were tiresome.

Hey, idiots, I died in the flames to bring you together, and when I'm resurrected, you can't even admit how you feel!

Makes me want to drive into a wall.

Crowley stared at the angel for a few seconds, then left.

She hadn't said her last word.

She turned on the radio.

“Tell him 

Tell him that the sun and moon 

Rise in his eyes 

Reach out to him

And whisper 

Tender words so soft and sweet”

"Change the music now!" the demon admonished.

As you wish!

“I wanna be your lover

I wanna be the only one that makes you come running

I wanna be your lover

I wanna turn you on, turn you out”

"Are you fucking kidding me? Stop it! You know nothing! You're just a car! I can't tell him. There's no way my feelings are mutual."

There... we are finally making progress. 

Monsieur at least admitted that he felt something.

Now she had to deal with the other one. ***********************

It had taken him four years to finally get the second one alone.

She had to admit that the angel had pulled off a masterstroke.

He'd managed to get the keys. 

For that alone, she was willing to indulge Aziraphale's every whim.

Even if she felt Crowley's presence all the time because he wanted to interfere.

And he had succeeded.

She'd only agreed to change back to her original color because Crowley had threatened Aziraphale's books, and she'd known all along how much the angel cared about them. 

"He's really not funny," the angel said sulkily. "Yellow is pretty, because that's the color of his eyes. But of course I couldn't tell him. He can't know."

Of course he must know, you idiot!

Well, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Let's have some music!

“I fell in love with the Devil

And now I'm in trouble

I fell in love with the Devil

I'm underneath his spell “

"No. Not this one, thank you!"

Why not? Too scared to admit the truth?

Wait, I'll bring it up again!

“I know something about love

You've gotta want it bad

If that guy's got into your blood

Go out and get him

If you want him to be

The very heart of you

Makes you want to breathe

Here's the thing to do

Tell him-”

"I prefer silence now."

If anyone was never silent, it was the angel.

He wouldn't hold it for more than 1 minute.

5,4,3,2, -

"I can't tell him anyway. He's a... and I'm a... .... No, it's not that. He's one of the nicest people I know. But you see, I have a plan. The ball. It's about trying to tell him that..."

Another one that made her want to drive herself into a wall.

Wait, she had the music.

“That certain night, the night we met

There was magic abroad in the air

There were angels dancing at the Ritz

And a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square”

This time the angel didn't ask her to stop, so the Bentley told herself that all was not lost and that maybe these two idiots would have a happy ending.

***********************

So what had gone wrong?

Why wasn't she driving them to the Ritz as planned?

What was the angel waiting for in the elevator, the message was clear, wasn't it?

Get in the car!

We're not leaving without you!

And you idiot, call him! 

Shall I do the job again? All right, then!

Turn it up! Let's do it!

“I may be right, I may be wrong

But I'm perfectly willing to swear

That when you turned and smiled at me

A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.”

Aziraphale seemed to snap out of his trance and took a step forward. The old man beside him tried to hold him back, "Azi-"

But the angel broke free, shoved him back and closed the elevator doors with a gesture.

He walked forward, entered the car and closed the door.

And now?

Nothing.

Nothing?

Are you guys kidding? 

You're finally together and you're looking at each other in silence!

Don't tell me...

Okay, but this is the last time.

And this time, no subtlety.

Let's have some music.

“If you want to kiss the boy then you better kiss the boy right now

You ain't got to be afraid of the words you want to say right now

'Cause love is a game we deserve to play out loud

So you want to play then you better kiss the boy

Oh, you better kiss the boy right now”

Aziraphale and Crowley looked at each other in silence, and when they realized the lyrics of the song, they couldn't help but laugh.

Nice start.

"I'm sor-"

"I shouldn't have-"

One of them said, "There'll be time to explain later."

And finally, as in the song, they did.

Clumsily, they embraced and lost themselves in an endless kiss.

They were so lost in the kiss that they didn't notice that the Bentley had just pulled away.

Nor did they notice the new song on the radio.

“I was born to love you

With every single beat of my heart

Yes, I was born to take care of you

Every single day of my life

I want to love you, I love every little thing about you

I want to love you, love you, love you”

Even much later, as they whispered forgiveness and vows to each other, interspersed with kisses and tender touches, they didn't notice the Bentley turning onto the freeway. 

Nor did they notice the sign that read: South Downs 59 miles.

***********************

Songs used for the story : 

Cars Not Leaving - Gabriel Bruce 

Tell him - Barbra Streisand/Celine Dion

I wanna be your lover - Prince

I Fell In Love With The Devil - Avril Lavigne

Tell Him - The Exciters

I Was Born To Love You - Queen

_________

Still not beta'd

Still not my native language

Still hoping you'll enjoy this story  🥰

Still thanking you for bearing with me 😝

Ineffable Growing Love series : here (After season 2)

Ineffable Husbands masterlist : here (Before season 2)

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday Ian Anderson, born 10th August 1947 in Dunfermline. After attending primary school in Edinburgh, his family relocated to Blackpool in 1959. Following a traditional Grammar school education, he moved on to Art college to study fine art before deciding on an attempt at a musical career. He was influenced by his father’s big band and jazz records and the emergence of rock music, but was disenchanted with the “show biz” style of early American rock and roll stars like Elvis Presley. In 1963 with some school friends he formed his first band The Blades, a soul and blues outfit. In 1965 they regrouped into The John Evan Band with major lineup changes. They disband two years later when Anderson moved to Luton. In his new surroundings, Ian meets the drummer Clive Bunker and the guitarist Mick Abrahams and with Glenn Cornick, a bassist - of The John Evan Band-, Anderson creates the seed of the group that would become the legendary Jethro Tull. Still enjoying a lengthy if intermittent ongoing career, Jethro Tull has released 30 studio and live albums, selling more than 60 million copies since the band first performed at London’s famous Marquee club. After undertaking more than 3000 concerts in forty-something countries throughout four decades, Tull has played typically 100 concerts each year to longstanding, as well as new fans worldwide. Widely recognized as the man who introduced the flute to rock music, Ian Anderson remains the crowned exponent of the popular and rock genres of flute playing. So far, no pretender to the throne has stepped forward. Ian also plays ethnic flutes and whistles together with acoustic guitar and the mandolin bouzouki, balalaika, saxophone, harmonica, and a variety of whistles. I briefly met Ian on Skye in 1987 on my way back from Benbecula where he had an estate and ran a Fish farm, well 11 fish farms as my research has unearthed, he also employed over 400 people before selling it in the 90’s. Anderson recalled in an interview how he started as a flautist… “ once owned a 1960s Fender Stratocaster, which had previously belonged to Lemmy Kilminster before he found fame with Motorhead. But when it dawned on me I was never going to catch up with the growing band of hotshot British guitarists at that time – Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton – I traded it in for a Selma Goldfield student flute worth £30. I knew Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton didn’t play the flute, so I thought I would be in with a chance. A lot of people told me it was a ridiculous trade because the Strat was worth at least £150. But in fact it was a great buy because learning to play it was the start of Jethro Tull.” Anderson lives on a farm in the southwest of England where he has a recording studio and office. He has been married for 37 years to Shona who is also an active director of their music and other companies. They have two children. In 2006 and 2010, he was awarded Doctorates in Literature from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh and the Abertay University of Dundee. He received the Ivor Award for International Achievement in Music. Ian admits he owns no fast car, never yet having taken a driving test, and has a wardrobe of singularly uninspiring and drab leisurewear varying from light grey to black in colour. He still keeps a couple of off-road competition motorcycles, and a saxophone which he promises never to play again.

Our birthday boy likes to play more intinate venues rather than grand halls, I noticed in the past he has played in religious buildings like cathedrals, he said in an interview ‘Playing in a cathedral gives you a sense of history, responsibility, and humility’ He seems a man after my own heart, while I am not a religious man I do get this same feeling when visiting these sites.. It's not about profits for Jethro Tull, again I have posted that he doesn't charge over the top prices for his tickets, and when he plays in historical places he gives back….The profits from the sales of tickets for my Christmas concert in Bristol Cathedral will go to the upkeep of these sacred buildings, and, perhaps, also in support of the musical liturgy of the church.

Ian admits that he is responsible for an enormous carbon footprint over the years —" I’m a climate sinner — but I’ve planted over 50,000 mixed deciduous trees on our farm. Its heavy clay isn’t not capable of producing arable crops. At best, it grows grass for grazing, but some margins aren’t suitable; so we’ve extended our ancient woodlands with many oak trees. They are an emblem of the Anderson-family clan, whose legend is “Stand sure”.

Jethro Tull are playing Bristol Cathedral on December 11th, tickets are £25-45 snd Salisbury Cathedral next day. These dates are sandwiched between a European tour.

The video features the song, Dun Ringill, from the group's 1979 album Stormwatch, it is an ode to the Iron Age-era fort of the same name. The fort, located on the coast of the Isle of Skye in Scotland, was occupied by the Clan Mackinnon for centuries.[1] The ruins of Castle Ringill, located near Loch Slapin, were located on Anderson's Scottish property, thus inspiring him to write the song. Anderson explained: " Dun Ringill" [is] about the ruins of an old hillside in the Isle of Skye, off the west coast of Scotland, where Nordic invaders would have landed to pillage and plunder and the local folk would have hidden the women and children and the sheep under fortifications.

It's a cool video, pity it was filmed at Dover rather than on Skye though!

[chambersandfogg]

December 4th, 1924

My dear Mr. Chambers,

Where in the world are you today? Have you fled Europe yet? Not that the continent is a place that needs to be fled from these days, but if the papers are anything to go by, this year hasn’t exactly been uneventful over there. What a mess we all made of things. I still can’t claim to understand why you wanted to go back there in the first place, but I have been enjoying the postcards. And I will admit some envy over getting to see the Games of the Olympiad. Your letter about it only just arrived, postmarked from Czechoslovakia of all places. I can’t tell if you just failed to send it from France over the summer, or if you didn’t write it until well after.

You’re usually good about dating your letters. You’re usually very good about writing them. But you’ve been across the sea for a year now and I have a paltry stack of missives on my desk. Then again, you haven’t received many from me, though I refuse to take full responsibility for that. You’re a hard man to track down, Charles Chambers, and you haven’t left me an address to write back to in four months. Three whole letters, two postcards, and, I imagine, several countries ago. Which means this, like many others, will most likely go unsent by me and unread by you.

I suppose that provides me a venue in which to be more honest than I typically am. Not that I’ve ever held back my mind in your presence. One of us has to say what he’s truly thinking and it’s never going to be you. I’m not sure why I’m bothering with the ritual of writing to you at all, but I'm about to open a new show and usually I’d be sending you an invitation. That’s never been a guarantee that you’d come, but the hand would be outstretched as it always is.

I think I’m quite miffed with you. You left the country with hardly any word. Simply a letter from London, three weeks after you’d already vacated the city, saying that you were going wandering for an unknown amount of time. Not a particularly typical move of Charles Chambers. And even less characteristic is the lack of plan you seem to have. I don’t think you’d keep your next destination from me on purpose—or, at least, I can’t think of a reason why you wouldn’t want me to know where you’re going, to give me some indication of where to send correspondence—which means that you have little idea of your next stop on your Grand Tour. Why the aimless traveling, Charles? For what purpose are you circling the globe with no map?

It isn’t that I don’t have plenty to entertain me. The theater is booming and bustling, the money and interest pouring in faster than I can mount new productions. And I can hardly keep up with every new musical act that’s playing in the jazz clubs. The talent is astounding. I’ve even taken myself to a moving picture twice this year and still find the whole thing as charming as I did when we saw that one picture last year. My parties have gone from delightful affairs to gatherings of legend and sometimes I wonder if this is what we fought the war for. So that life could be only this from now on—art and music and laughter and sparkling champagne poured by bold women in sparkling dresses. I’m not sure if it’s a fair bargain, all told, but it is one of which I’m happy to be on the other side.

I won’t say that I miss your company. We both know that you’re hardly wonderful company on the best of days and I know you don’t hold the same joie de vivre for the frivolity of our present moment. But I don’t enjoy not knowing where you are. I feel off balance hearing from you so infrequently. I find myself wondering what it is you’re doing at random times throughout the day and wishing I could tell you how I’m spending my days.

The harsh reality is, Charles, that you are the person on this earth who knows me best. And that’s been the case for some years, but in your absence that fact has begun to sink into my mind in new and terrifying ways. I don’t want to be reliant on your understanding.

There isn’t any point to finishing this letter in its usual manner. It’s simply going to be shoved into a drawer along with the rest.

[a letter never sent by J.S. Fogg]

[to read the pre-1917 entries, join Atypical Artists and get access to the archive of 24 entries (5,000+ words), as well as ad-free episodes of Atypical's whole catalogue. to receive future monthly missives straight to your inbox, sign up for free here]

[antifainternational]

Yes Virginia, The Nazis Were Fascists - Part Four

(this is part four of a continuation of a discussion we've been having with an Anon who challenged us to define fascism. In our previous response, we provided Anon with a photo of a poster from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, a bullet list from Yale professor Jason Stanley, quotes from William Reich, Ludwig von Mises, Harold Nicolson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Henry A. Wallace, Marcus Garvey, a link to a video breakdown of the subject by Philosophy Tube, and recommendations to read books by historians Mark Bray, Robert O. Paxton, Umberto Eco, and Hannah Arendt - all of whom have published key works on the topic. Anon did not do his homework and instead sent us an immediate reply, informed solely by the two images we included in our response, ignoring everything else we cited. His reply includes some, uhh, pretty incredulous claims. In this post, we crack our knuckles, get someone to hold our beer, and tee off).

ANON: While the nazis had a disdain for intellectuals (whoever those may be), they appreciated art. AI: The nazis appreciated art they believed aligned with their ideology (e.g. classical Greek and Roman art). But they also rejected and vilified other art forms as "degenerate" including existential literature, expressionist, modernist, and surrealist painting, and jazz music. Thousands of works done in these styles/traditions were banned by the nazis. Museum directors who had displayed modernist art were fired. The works of dozens of authors - including Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, H.G. Wells, Marcel Proust, Jack London, and Bertold Brecht - were banned. Thousands of avant-garde artists were branded as enemies of the state and forced into exile. In 1942, the nazis held an event in occupied Paris where "degenerate art" - including works by Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, and others - were burned in a massive bonfire. We don't think that is what most people would call "art appreciation."

[readingoals]

Getting ready for the Booklr Reads Australian challenge. These are a selection of Aussie books I own (fiction on the left, nonfic on the right) which I'll be choosing from during the month. I'm a mood reader so I have no idea what I'll actually end up picking but I'd like to get through at least a few of these.

List of titles and brief descriptions of each is below the cut for anyone looking for ideas for their own Australian reads.

The open book is The Tea Chest by Josephine Moon (my current read.) It's a rather sweet novel revolving around four women who's lives in Australia have been disrupted and who come together to open a tea shop in London.

A true History of the Hula Hoop by Judith Lanigan The book weaves together two parallel stories, one of Catherine, a struggling Aussie hula-hooping performance artist, and the other of Columbina, a feisty 16th century Italian female clown travelling through Europe with the first ever commedia dell'arte troupe, while also weaving in the history of the hula hoop.

Without Further Ado by Jessica Dettmann A romcom inspired by/paying homage to Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, in which the protagonist loves the Kenneth Branagh adaptation and finds her love life mirroring the plot.

Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match by Sally Thorne A romance inspired by Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, in which Victor Frankenstein's sister Angelika is anxious for love and decides to take matters into her own hands and create a suitable suitor.

Empires by Nick Earls This novel spans continents and centuries. It's split up into 5 parts, each occurring in a different time and place, but which all intertwine and connect. It's about two brother from Brisbane who've lead separate lives, but its also about humans in strange and difficult times, the way people see themselves, and the interconnectedness of all things.

The Tea Ladies by Amanda Hampson A cosy mystery set in 1965 Sydney. It follows a group of tea ladies who work in a fashion house getting tea and biscuits for the staff. Until a murder occurs in the building and the tea ladies become accidental sleuths.

Top End Girl by Miranda Tapsell Larrakia Tiwi actress Miranda Tapsell's memoir about her work and life as an Aboriginal woman and how she combined both when creating the film Top End Wedding.

Girt by David Hunt A humorous look at Australian history, from megafauna to Macquarie. Full of strange, ridiculous and bizarre stories.

Harlem Nights: The Secret History of Australia's Jazz Age by Deirdre O'Connell This is the story of the Sydney and Melbourne legs of American jazz band The Colored Idea's ill fated Australian tour in 1928. It's about the international rise of African American jazz, the history of Australia's entertainment industry and modernism in the arts in Australia, and the influence of the White Australia Policy beyond immigration issues.

Flash Jim: The Astonishing Story of the Convict Fraudster Who Wrote Australia's First Dictionary by Kel Richards This is a biography of conman, pickpocket and thief James Hardy Vaux who was sent to Australia as a convict. Not only does it go into explanations of his numerous crimes but also the origins of Australian English as Vaux also created a dictionary of the criminal slang of the colony, some of which can still be seen in modern Australian language.

Great Australian Mysteries by John Pinkney A collection of Australian true crime mysteries including inexplicable disappearances, unsolved murders and scientific enigmas.

Notorious Australian Women by Kay Saunders This book celebrates the lives of some of Australia's most fearless, brash, and scandalous women, including bushrangers, courtesans, and writers, amongst others.

[my-chaos-radio]

Release: May 19, 1978

Lyrics:

You get a shiver in the dark

It's a raining in the park but meantime-

South of the river you stop and you hold everything

A band is blowing Dixie, double four time

You feel alright when you hear the music ring

Well now you step inside but you don't see too many faces

Coming in out of the rain they hear the jazz go down

Competition in other places

Uh but the horns they blowin' that sound

Way on down south

Way on down south

London town

You check out guitar George, he knows-all the chords

Mind, it's strictly rhythm he doesn't want to make it cry or sing

They said an old guitar is all, he can afford

When he gets up under the lights to play his thing

And Harry doesn't mind, if he doesn't, make the scene

He's got a daytime job, he's doing alright

He can play the Honky Tonk like anything

Savin' it up, for Friday night

With the Sultans

We're the Sultans of Swing

Then a crowd a young boys they're a foolin' around in the corner

Drunk and dressed in their best brown baggies and their platform soles

They don't give a damn about any trumpet playin' band

It ain't what they call Rock and Roll

And the Sultans

Yeah, the Sultans, they play Creole

Creole

And then the man he steps right up to the microphone

And says at last just as the time bell rings

"Goodnight, now it's time to go home"

Then he makes it fast with one more thing

Songwriter: Mark Knopfler

"We are the Sultans

We are the Sultans of Swing"

SongFacts:

👉📖

[sweetdreamsjeff]

Jeff Buckley in the U.K.

JEFF BUCKLEY loved British music; the nervous energy in British punk, the wired consciousness of the Clash, the way Siouxsie and the Banshees went from gun-metal moodiness to skies full of fireworks.

He adored the Cocteau Twins, of course, especially Liz Fraser's "impossible voice". He loved how the Smiths called to outsiders and nerds. He loved the textures of Johnny Marr's supple guitar and the mordant presence of Steve Jones's guitar in the Sex Pistols.

Jeff, whose own nervous energy was considerable, became even more wired whenever we went to the UK; he was stimulated by its variety. He also appreciated its compactness – the lack of eight-hour drives between cities was refreshing.

Sony had passed on Live at Sin-é in Europe. We were understandably disappointed, but there was a solution close at hand: Steve Abbott, known to everyone as Abbo, who ran the eccentric indie record label Big Cat and had picked up on many of the promising un-signed bands playing in New York: Pavement, Mercury Rev, Luscious Jackson. He had approached Jeff after Gods & Monsters and Sin-é shows and asked him if he'd like to record with Big Cat, but then Sony stepped in. Jeff felt that he owed Abbo a record, so when Columbia UK passed on Live at Sin-é and Michele Anthony instigated a funding deal with Big Cat, it seemed the perfect opportunity for them to become involved. Abbo jumped at the chance.

Big Cat's small team – Abbo, co-owner Linda Obadiah, Frank Neidlich in marketing, and Jacqui Rice in press – did such a good job that the week it was released in Europe, Live at Sin-é sold over four thousand copies, which was amazing for a complete unknown.

After a Sony conference, where it was clear that a lot of the affiliates were bemused by him, Jeff had a warm-up show at Whelan's in Dublin. By the time he came on, the crowd, several drinks into its evening, had become a little boisterous. Jeff said hello softly, as usual, but no one was really paying attention. Jeff just stood there, waiting. People started to quieten down and watch to see what he would do. There was a pint of his favourite beer, Guinness, sitting on the stool next to him. Jeff lifted the glass to his lips and downed it in one hit. Everyone on the room cheered, and he began the Irish show with the crowd completely on his side.

The audience was more blasé the next night at his London debut at The Borderline, a Western-themed venue under a dubious Mexican diner in Soho, right in the heart of London, a group of local reps for hip American indie labels like Sub Pop and Merge yacking away rather disrespectfully at the bar. In the age of grunge, a lone guy with a guitar softly singing Edith Piaf covers was baffling for some.

"It was an epiphany for me," says Sara Silver, Sony's European head of marketing. "There are some shows where it just feels like you're a voyeur, looking into someone's soul. This was one of those. He was charismatic, but also haunting, and I think because of my particular situation at the time, still suffering from the [loss of my husband], he resonated hugely. This haunting sound was a powerful force, and it was my job to work out how we took it to the world."

A gig the next night in Glasgow meant an early-morning flight back to Heathrow the following morning to catch a session with GLR, London's local BBC station, a slot designed to alert people to the next couple of gigs at the Garage in Islington and at Bunjies, a cute little basement folk club in Central London that dated back to the early 1960s and made Sin-é seem generously proportioned.

Abbo was accompanying Jeff on this run.

"We'd meet regularly at a bar called Tom & Jerry's in New York, hang out and drink Guinness together," Abbo says, "I suppose I became a friend of his, and he didn't seem to have many real friends. I'd only discovered I liked the blues since living in New York, so it was great hanging with him, because he was a huge blues and jazz fan and if there was a guitar around he had to pick it up and show off. He knew every Robert Johnson song, every Muddy Waters tune, Bessie Smith; he introduced me to the physicality of the blues, watching it at close quarters. Everybody talks about his voice, but he was a brilliant guitarist. The guitar was an extension of his body.

"Tim Buckley hadn't really entered my line of vision growing up listening to black music. Singer-songwriters with fluffy hairstyles were not currency on my council estate in Luton! We were in Tom & Jerry's and someone said to Jeff, 'I've been listening to your dad,' and I said, 'Who's your dad?' and he said, 'Tim Buckley.' I knew the name from record shopping; I'd seen the sleeves in the racks, but that's it. But when he came over to Britain there were loads of Tim Buckley fans. And it was a real problem early on, because he really didn't like talking about him."

The traffic from the airport to the GLR studios just off Baker Street was awful. A road accident had slowed everything to a standstill. Jeff's slot on the mid-morning show was fast approaching. "Of course, this was before mobile phones, so I had no way of communicating with the radio station that we were stuck in traffic," says Abbo. "For the last few days on this tour, everyone who'd interviewed Jeff had been asking about his dad. How did Tim write 'Song To The Siren'? Was there stuff in his lyrics that he might have related to? Things Jeff couldn't answer.

"We were listening to GLR while we waited in traffic and the presenter kept saying, 'We're supposed to have this artist, Tim Buckley's son, turning up, but he's late....Will he or won't he turn up?' This went on and on. She must have said 'Tim Buckley's son' about four times and didn't mention Jeff once. Suddenly, he just kicked my car radio in with his big DMs [Doc Martens], just smashed the fascia and then sat back sulking all the way there. I could get another radio, of course, but I was mostly worried he wasn't going to do the performance. 

"We finally arrived about forty minutes late and they were all so rude to us, and yet they knew what the problem was, as they were broadcasting traffic updates and warnings of delays themselves. If I were him, I'd have walked out. The female presenter was a typical local radio DJ, a bit gushy and knew nothing about him and his music. I had a word with the station manager to ask her to stop mentioning Tim Buckley, and he handed her a note to that effect. Jeff just sat there silently and she said, 'What are you going to play?' and Jeff said, 'A song.' I'm thinking, 'Oh god, here we go.' And he started to play "Grace." He did this long guitar introduction, went on for about a minute, like he needed to calm himself down before he got to the actual start of the song, and then he launched into the most electrifying performance. The best I ever heard him do it.

"There were about six phones in the control room, and they all started lighting up. 'Who is this? Who is this? It's amazing!' And all the time, Jeff's getting more and more into it. The presenter went from being this standoffish woman to...I swear she would have thrown herself on him given half a chance, the second he finished singing. You could see she was totally enthralled."

Presenter: "You looked quite exhausted at the end of the song."

Jeff: "I was getting a lot of anger out. Something happened on the way here..."

"The phones didn't stop throughout the next song. The station manager said that in all his twelve years at the station, he'd never seen a reaction like it."

Abbo thinks this performance sparked Jeff's breakthrough. There were certainly plenty of people in line outside the Garage in North London that night. Inside, the first stars were taking note. Chrissie Hynde and Jon McEnroe were in the audience. Chrissie had been a big fan and a friend of Tim's, had actually interviewed him while she was briefly a music journalist with the NME, and she was obviously curious to see how his offspring compared. They struck up a conversation after the show and she clearly said the right thing, because he went off with her to jam with the Pretenders in a nearby rehearsal room. I wasn't carrying anything heavy because of a recent lung collapse, and I didn't want Jeff to pull any important muscles, so I asked McEnroe if he wouldn't mind. He happily hauled Jeff's amp downstairs to the car. The Pretenders' jam with special guests Buckley and Mac went on all night.

Bunjies, as I've said, was tiny, a basement folk club and coffee bar on West Street in Soho, along from the Ivy, with gingham tablecloths and melted candles in wine bottles on the tables and a performance area tucked into a couple of arches in what must have been a wine cellar at one point. It looked unchanged since it had begun in the early 1960s, and had seen a couple of folk booms come and go. It was more of a cafe with an open-mic policy by this point, which felt like a good place for Jeff. There wasn't really any need for amplification, so when we arrived for a sound check there was very little to do but see where Jeff was going to stand in the cramped space and gauge how his voice reflected off the nicotine-stained ceilings. While Jeff did that, I went outside for some fresh air and was stunned to see a line of people already waiting to get into the show.

I took a look at the guest list and realised we'd be lucky to fit twenty of this assembling crowd in the tiny space. Every time I looked up, the line was getting further down West Street. I went back into the venue and found Jeff talking to Emma Banks, the agent. He was saying how great the venue was and that he'd like to do something like hand out flowers to everyone before he went on.

"Jesus, you won't believe what's happening out there," I said to them. "The line goes about four blocks. There's no way these people are going to get in. Is there any way we can do two sets?" Jeff was happy to. Emma spoke to the club owner and was told they had some regular club night happening later on. She came back and said, "They can't do it but I've had an idea!" She disappeared up the steps onto the street, and I spoke to Jeff.

"What flowers would you like?"

"White roses," he said.

"I'll get them," I said, and went back up to the street, where the line had grown even longer.

I walked around looking for a florist and bumped into Emma. "I've booked Andy's Forge," she said. "It's a little place just around the corner in Denmark Street. He can go on at 10:30."

I bought as many white roses as I could find. Jeff handed them to people waiting outside and those lucky enough to get into the club, as he squeezed himself into the corner that passed for a stage. He sang upward, listening to his voice reflect off the curved ceiling into this hot, crowded, and attentive space. There must have been a hundred people stuffed in there.

When the show was over, Jeff walked up the steps to the huddle of patient people that Emma had gathered, plus anyone from the first show who wanted to tag along, and led this crowd like the Pied Piper toward Andy's Forge. Abbo was alongside me. "Have you ever seen anything like this before?" I said.

"Never!" he said. And we laughed liked idiots at the wonderful absurdity of hanging out with Jeff.

Jim Irvin, 'From Hallelujah to the Last Goodbye' (Post Hill), May 2018

Excerpted from Jeff Buckley: From Hallelujah to the Last Goodbye by Jeff's former manager Dave Lory and former MOJO man Jim Irvin (Post Hill Press).

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

Out Patients 2000 Future Jazz / Broken Beat / Drum n Bass

Checked out this sweet turn-of-the-millennium electronic comp over the past couple days called Out Patients, the first installment in a three-volume series that was put out on UK label Hospital Records. Originally launched in 1996, Hospital was founded by London Elektricity, a duo who, sometime in the early 2000s, decided to downsize to just one member, Tony Colman, so the former member, Chris Goss, could devote more time and energy to running Hospital himself.

Now, if you know anything about either Hospital or LE beyond what I've just told you, then you know that what they're both primarily known for is their drum n bass output. In fact, in their first four years of existence, that's all Hospital pretty much ever released. However, in 2000, with the launching of this little, cleverly titled Out Patients series—songs that largely laid outside of Hospital's own sonic radius—they decided to venture a little out of their comfort zone.

So, ultimately, what we have here are a bunch of groovy electronic lounge-type vibes that largely come in the form of future jazz and broken beat—a pair of oft-intertwined electronic genres that were both surging at around the same exact time. Broken beat was this wonderful, broadly-defined music that saw fundamentals of drum n bass taken to a sharper, more complicated and unorthodox abstraction, and its rhythms would be integrated into future jazz, a type of jazz-infused electronic music that succeeds the late 80s-to-mid-90s UK phenomenon of acid jazz, and hearkens back to the halcyon days of free-flowing jazz fusion from the 70s and 80s too; also known as nu jazz.

And even though this is just an exclusive dozen tracks from a label that'd never really put out this type of material before, Hospital was still able to get a few notable names to contribute to this release here: veteran Uschi Classen, who in addition to her own solo material, had also been in a bunch of groups, like Ashley Beedle's Black Science Orchestra and the Ballistic Brothers; dnb trio Aquasky; and Mr. Scruff, whose biggest claim to fame is this very popular electro swing tune—one of the only decent ones that's ever been made—and if you're an American of a certain age, you might remember it from an old ad campaign for Lincoln's full lineup of vehicles too.

Here's one of those ads with Michael Clarke Duncan!

But, to me, the best song on this release has to be "Action," by Japan's Yukihiro Fukutomi. Fukutomi himself was his own entity too by the time this song had been included on this very comp, but the vast majority of his music had only ever been released in Japan; so when he appeared on Out Patients, it was likely the first time that many people outside of Japan had ever heard him before. And those people were probably fuckin' dazzled, because the combination of constantly shifting broken beat drum rhythm and Fukutomi's whiny old school keyboard improv here is simply diabolical 😈. Get lost in this super craggy shit!

And something that also needs pointing out here is that even though most of this comp isn't drum n bass, there are still a couple dnb tunes on here anyway. And as someone who really loves it when people just *straight-up rap* over drum n bass beats, I can't leave this post without mentioning MC Mello and London Elektricity's bouncy "Melloizdaman." This is just such a cool and fun tune, overall, and I especially love how LE add this warm coat of ambient synth to their double bass-infused beat after the first verse. Usually rappers need to rap over steady beats in order to maintain their own timing and flow, and while LE don't mess with the rhythm itself here, they're still able to enhance their tune further with this added synth in order to keep it sounding fresh. Really great stuff 🤩.

So a pretty dope set of early 2000s tunes from Hospital Records here. Mostly not the kind of electronic music that they're typically known for releasing, but they included some nice, previously unheard tracks on this album nonetheless 👍.

And if you want the type of stuff that Hospital *is* known for, check out this post I did a few months ago on Plastic Surgery 2, a double-disc comp and DJ mix that featured them on the 2-step liquid funk trend, a more mass-appealing strain of drum n bass that grew to be very popular in the UK in the mid-to-late 2000s that they themselves were on the forefront of.

Highlights:

Liane Carroll - "The Trap" Uschi Classen - "Tocatta (The Indigo Blue Mix)" Aquasky - "Another Day" Skitz + Julie Dexter - "Be...." Landslide - "Golden Cavalier" London Elektricity - "Incurable" Space Clique - "Exit #1: Luna Park" MC Mello vs. London Elektricity - "Melloizdaman" Yukihiro Fukutomi - "Action" Marcus Intalex & S.T. Files - "Taking Over Me"