We're so cross, we're not even going to bother to find a token picture to enliven the look of our post

First off, a hearty fuck you to Vice Magazine and Topshop for presiding over the biggest ticketing farce of the year so far in their organisation of the Black Kids gig previewed here. Corporate sponsored free events like these always leave a bitter taste in the mouth, but at least they tend to be organised with some semblance of competence and money driven efficiency.

So this is what happened: A couple of months ago, Vice advertised a special gig at 93 Feet East with Black Kids, Friendly Fires et al. Tickets were free and all you had to do to get one was to register on their website. We quickly did this and looked forward to the gig. Within a few weeks, we received a multitude of junk e-mails from Vice, advertising their rubbish website. This didn't bother us too much. We arranged a big birthday night out with lots of our friends. Two days before the gig we receive an e-mail from Vice informing us that we should arrive early because the gig will be first come, first served and that we should bring our booking details with us. In other words, our confirmation e-mail did not entitle us to entry but merely meant that if we queued up long enough, we might be accorded entry. We turned up over an hour before doors opened on the coldest night of the year and queued for an hour and a half. During that time we moved almost five metres. Our music industry friend used a contact to get inside and spotted Faris Rotter. It was that sort of event. The quue wasn't regulated properly so people kept joining at the front meaning we barely moved forwards at all. Meanwhile, we couldn't feel our toes. It turned out that Vice, in their infinite wisdom, had issued 5000 tickets for a venue that only takes 800 people. They had done this to ensure that it was full. It didn't bother them that potentially thousands of people would be massively inconvenienced and pissed off.

So...we went to the pub instead.

Perhaps it serves us right for going to such a raw advert of an event. We should have stayed at home and read Marxist literature instead. Or if not Marxist literature, the very good new novel by Jonathan Coe.