Zoetic

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about love in my 44 years on this planet, it is this: it doesn’t need to be rational. In fact – it shouldn’t be rational. True love should come from a raw chemical adoration that you just can’t explain. Not from a calculated decision to pair with somebody who satisfies criteria A through G whom you found via an algorithm on a smartphone app. If love is real, it not only doesn’t have to be logical… it shouldn’t be logical.

And I have always… loved… amphibians. I can’t really explain why, something about them has always made my heart tingle.

So when I studied herpetology as part of my zoology degree at the University of Toronto – with the inspiring @amolops/ as my incredible tutor – I was inspired beyond belief to discover just how fascinating these creatures are. As the first vertebrates to migrate from water onto land, they have had more time than any other group of terrestrial animals to evolve quirky characteristics: crazy colours, toxic poisons, bonkers behaviours… I was right all along: amphibians are dope, and it’s perfectly sensible for me to love them as much as I do.

And you know what? I think they love me back. On rural jaunts and forest forays, I always seem to come across the little guys, such as in Estonia in 2016…

Medicine Festival in 2023…

and most recently, camping just outside London in 2023 when I woke up to find this little guy just chilling in my tent.

I swear, every time I pick them up, they don’t struggle. On the contrary: They seem more than happy to relax in what is clearly a safe pair of hands.

I’ve never been surprised to find frogs in a forest. But I was definitely shocked to stumble across a toad next to the huge, horrible newbuild condos in Stratford, East London. The urban planners who designed the area fifteen years ago installed a series of artificial ponds – “Portlands Lake East” – bang in the middle of a cluster of awful highrises. Creating habitats for waterfowl and fish was a nice idea, but it’s obvious the ponds don’t drain properly so the water gets a bit manky.

Therefore I was astonished to see a toad hopping across the path. And very distressed to see that the little guy thought he was heading towards another pond, when in fact the only thing that lay in his direction was a tacky and overpriced cocktail bar.

So of course I scooped him up and returned him to the water where he belonged.

Remember kids: amphibians are awesome. And they are integral to the health of every ecosystem: they are the only creatures that transport nutrients from water back onto land. Without them, everything falls apart.

If you want to know more about what magical and unappreciated creatures they are, I’ve written extensively about them for the BBC and The Globe & Mail.

Frogs rule. Be nice to them.

It’s never anything but a privilege and a pleasure to present at Breaking Convention’s annual conference on psychedelics, either giving a lecture of my own (such as this delightfully snarky 2023 presentation about the global history of ketamine addiction and the reprehensible lies of the rapacious American k clinics), or just as a host introducing other speakers who usually know way more than I do.

I may have written about psychedelics professionally for 14 years now, but I’m still just a hack journalist and drugs are just a slice of my work. The scientists, therapists and academics at Breaking Convention work on psychedelic issues 365 days a year. These are the real experts, and I have been friends with many of them for over a decade. So it’s nothing but a privilege to introduce them with the greatest respect, and nothing but a joy to be a bossypants bitch hosting the Q&A sessions and reminding the audience: “This is your chance to ask a QUESTION, not to stand up and orate, if you start rambling, I WILL take the microphone away.” Honestly, it’s delicious fun: I get to be harsh so the lovely speakers don’t have to.

One of the three sessions I hosted this year, “Should Scientists Be Activists”, featured three of my very favourite researchers in the entire field: Dr David Luke, Professor of Exceptional Experience at the University of Greenwich; Dr Ros Watts, founder of Acer Integration; Dr Christopher Timmermann, Co-Director of the UCL Centre for Consciousness Research. Plus a badass anti-authoritarian journalist I’d not had the pleasure of meeting before, Guilio Sica who “walked out of his job at The Times in 2003 in protest at the invasion of Iraq” (a man after my own heart).

(Image by James Willis @james_willis_photography and courtesy of Breaking Convention.)

I’ve written about Dr Timmermann’s work many times, starting with this 2018 piece about how “DMT is the Drug For Our Collective Crisis of Meaning“, I’ve recently profiled Dr Watt’s beautiful dedication to the “integration” part of the psychedelic process – so important and so unappreciated, and I’ve had Dr Luke on panels with me countless times, such as this great panel at Noisily in 2022, because you can slot him into anything and he’ll have the best one liners and the most wonderful insights (and we all love that salty baritone don’t we). Oh lord,, I’d forgotten about how he endorsed the work of “MK Extra” and their plans to “poison the acid supplies with water” (and I just annoyed all my officemates howling with laughter re-reading this).

True to form, all the speakers busted out wise insights and great lines. Dr Watts pointed out us how hard it is to totally have a “pure” existence in your employment, whether you’re a doctor with the NHS who has no choice in handing over patient data to Palantir or a researcher forced to work under the conditions of the pharmaceutical companies who fund their research. Did you know those companies get to approve the data before it is published in scientific papers? Absolutely fucking absurd. That’s called “marking your own homework” as I said in my follow up. You can walk away, but as Sica reminded us from his own experiences standing up for his principles… it isn’t easy.

Is there any easy answer? Of course not – there never is to a question this hard. I myself used to cover environmental issues exclusively in my career as a young reporter… and it was MADDENING to see my carefully researched pieces on climate change and the lies of fossil fuel companies be placed on the same pages as giant ads for f’ing Shell. But what are you gonna do – just post your own stuff on Substack for an audience of dozens (wooooo), or in the largest newspapers in the world where people will actually *read* what you write?

I pointed out something in my own little wrap up – because I’m not just there to host the Q&As, I need to add *something* to the conversation. The subject of the delightful Albert Hoffman, creator of LSD, came up in the panel. He was renowned to be lovely and sweet. But you know who wasn’t? His boss, Arthur Stoll (1887 – 1971). Stoll was best friends with Richard Kuhn (1900-1967), who was “Hitler’s favourite chemist”, who conducted enormous experiments with mescaline on concentration camp prisoners at Dachau (and probably elsewhere – we’ll never know exactly what happened because the records were burnt as the Allies approached). But we do know from correspondce that survives that Stoll sent Kuhn samples of ergotamine, a key precursor to making LSD.

Did Hoffman know about this? Probably. Should he have quit? Everyone nodded yes. But did he quit? NOPE. He worked for Sandoz Chemicals for his entire career.

Even our heroes have skeletons in the closet, remember. And good people can get caught up in “bad” things when the tendrils of the machine are just too entangled to escape.

But as Dr Watts put it: “Sometimes we are serving the machine… and so sometimes we have to stop.”

If you know anything about music tech, you know that “spatial sound” – arranging speakers in an array around an audience, rather than a bunch stacked either side of a stage – is the trendy thing in audio design. The reasoning makes sense: our ancestors always heard sounds coming from every direction, so why should a performance only pump out music from the front?

I’m no expert on tech, but I can tell you the brand spanking new Polygon Portal on Dean St in London, with 37 speakers of varying types placed all around a plush theatre with luxurious seats, is something else. As composer and “pioneer of therapeutic sound” Tom Middleton put it: “Working with this space was like being a kid in a candy store”.

I was lucky enough to experience his newest project Time Echoes – “A conscious, connected deep listening journey through sound, from cosmos to life on Earth and beyond” – in this sumptuous space. And if I could give it more than 5/5, I would. Heck if I could give it more than 10/5, I would.

Go. There are more spots this spring and summer. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard… and I’ve heard an awful lot in my life.

My experiences ranged from exuberant bliss, with that burning in your heart only romantic love can elicit…

… to the kind of inconsolable sobbing only true grief can provoke.

I already knew that Middleton’s work is exemplary, having worked alongside him before – such as at Future Is Sound at the Barbican in 2022. I spoke about “archaeoacoustics“, a new and incredible field that explores the acoustic properties of ancient constructions, before his fantastic talk about the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid, where he has conducted experiments himself. He’s not just a musician, he’s a scientist in his own right.

And I already assumed that the Time Echoes auditory journey would press many of my buttons, as it features “biophony (the sounds of living organisms), and anthropophony (human voice, music, and culture) – forming a living exploration of acoustic ecology”.

But I had no idea it would affect me so much, bringing me right back to my early twenties studying my greatest passion: the diversity of living things and their under-appreciated sensory capacities.

I won’t give too much away, but with beautiful recordings from an enormous range of species I instantly recognised, this is truly a sonic tribute to life on earth that does justice to the music of our planet. I didn’t realise that Tom also worships at the altar of animal intelligence.

Backstory: I’m best known these days for my writing on drugs and psychedelics (as they’re the trendy thing in medicine these days), but my first love is music, having grown up in the industry, and dedicating much of my professional work to music. However, I didn’t study either medicine or music at university: I chose to specialise in zoology. Because biological forms are infinitely fascinating. And why study just one species – Homo sapiens – when you can study the mind blowing range of millions of creatures crafted by three billion years of evolution? I call studying zoology “studying the creativity of the universe”.

If you’re my friend on Facebook (not that anyone uses it anymore), you’ll know that I list my “religious beliefs” as two things:

1. Animals are cool.
2. Turn up the bass.

You can verify this on my professional website as the very last line of my bio.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that for my final year mega-projects, I devoted my time to two things: the construction and evolution of the ears of cetaceans (dolphins and whales) in a huge research paper. And for lab work, acoustic communication in amphibians. I played the songs of American bull frogs, Rana catesbeiana, to living critters in our lab. I recorded their responses, then examined how they sang back to me. (On magnetic tape back in 2005 in the pre digital hegemony, thank you very much.) True story. What can I say, I just adore anurans.

In my journalism I have continued to explore both subjects, such as this piece about whale vocalisations and this feature about the heartbreaking decline of amphibians, both for BBC Earth. 

I should have figured Middleton’s sonic journey would hit me hard… but I didn’t expect to be moved so much that I spent more time than is sane at the very end quietly sobbing. I tried my very best to stifle my sniffling, so as not to disturb anyone else, but everyone could probably see my puffy eyes afterwards. I cursed myself for wearing mascara. I should have known I would cry. 

I won’t give away too much about the experience because there are still more sessions you can book.

Again: Go. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard… and I’ve heard an awful lot in my life. 

I maintain that it’s a scientific fact that eccentrics with disposable income like to build weird crap. Especially in the UK.

Mazes. Moats. Follies.

I’ve seen a few strange things in my 24 years on this soggy island, home to some of the most adorable and peculiar people on earth. But the Shell Grotto is one of the oddest things I’ve ever seen. And that’s saying something.

Tucked away in Margate, Kent, this network of caverns is lined with over 4.6 million seashells, and only discovered (so they say) in 1835.

Like all weird-ass random creations, it’s become the stuff of legend.

Was it actually built thousands of years ago by Celtic druids? Or hundreds of years ago by Soothsayers?

Or was it really just a “passion project” (to use modern parlance) for some rich weirdo in the Victorian era who wanted to host seances for naive young girls? (My interpretation – don’t quote me.)

Whatever the reason, even I have to admit: this is one impressive and bonkers construction.

I was very happy to pay a tenner for this instead of some tiresome nonsense in an overrated McHipster art gallery.

15/10.

This post about how musical mastermind, my boss and my friend Max Cooper performed at Royal Albert Hall in April comes a bit late, but forgive me: I’ve been sick on and off all spring (I think most people have), but more importantly: I struggled to find the right words, as this gig meant so much to me on every level. Personally and professionally.

I think I’ve finally found the right thing to say:

I have lived in London since 2007, and first visited in 1998. Since my very first trip, live music has been central to my existence here. Some make pilgrimages to the Big Smoke for the Tate Modern, some come for the West End theatre, and some want to scrutinize stolen objects at the British Museum. I love all those cultural institutions, but above all… Live music, from tiny basement clubs to the heaving masses at Glastonbury, has been crucial for my survival in the UK.

So I was already thrilled and proud beyond belief to know a year ago that Max was booked to perform at the unparalleled Royal Albert Hall (a lifelong ambition of his). That joy became amplified when I remembered that the very first gig I ever went to in this town was a classical orchestra at RAH with my grandparents in 1998. Delicious how things can come full circle like that. I don’t think the building’s architects Captain Francis Fowke and Major-General Henry Darracott Scott had filthy electronic music in mind when they designed the building in the 1860s… But guess what: it fits. I think they’d be pleased to see the building accommodate all art forms – as anything timeless should.

Note I have to admit… I don’t remember what I went to at the RAH 18 years ago. Even though I studied the piano at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto for many years, I just don’t have a good memory for the names of specific symphonies. (I don’t know how anyone can remember Adagio Number X or Arpeggio Number Y – flummoxes me.)

… but there’s no way I’ll forget this show, which combined exquisite techno with bio-inspired visuals and sick, deep, dark-ass bass. I’ve seen a lot of shows at the RAH… but this was by far the best. Nothing but congrats to you Max. You deserved this.

PS Respect to anthonyfaulknerx and @rosyjmorris of @meshmeshmesh_ who – like all managers – work tirelessly without receiving the glory or the fame. And nobody ever says thank you. So: THANK YOU.

Note: The other reason I found it hard to sum up my joy last month is because I’ve written about Max’s brilliance and what an honour it is to work for him so many times, I had to go back and look through old social posts to review what I’d already written to make sure I didn’t just repeat myself. I mean, it’s hard to beat this:

“A bona fide genius with a PhD in computational genetics just gave us an eight hour showcase with batshit crazy spatial sound, three dimensional visuals, all inspired by evolution and molecular biology. And then he put on some legendary old school DnB to show us where he came from – then came back for an encore. Nothing I ever attempt to achieve in life will mean anything now. I concede defeat.” (October 2022 following his Brixton Academy showcase: https://www.instagram.com/p/CkV3Hp_DbC0/)

Or this:

“To be asked by Max – a musical genius with a PhD in genetics – to speak alongside him is so flattering it doesn’t even seem real. I adored his music before meeting him for the first time in 2021, but it was only when quickly skimming his bio prior to a pint that I realised he has a PhD in computational genetics. *Of course*, I thought. That explains why his music is so intricate. The only thing that inspires me more than music is the complexity of living things, so it’s nothing but an honour to work for somebody who appreciates both.” (Posted just before Mesh Live at the Stone Nest chapel in Soho before our April 2023 event https://zoecormier.wordpress.com/2023/05/11/stone-nest-w-max-cooper-may-13-2023/.)

Sod it, I’ll say it again: “The only thing that inspires me more than music is the complexity of living things, so it’s nothing but an honour to work for somebody who appreciates both.”

I constantly pinch myself to remember that working for Max and Mesh isn’t just a dream.

For videos, check my instagram account here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DYTcQNXjAtb/

And my other rants here, posted for posterity:

https://zoecormier.wordpress.com/2022/03/22/my-mascara-stained-tissue/

https://zoecormier.wordpress.com/2022/03/22/music-is-medicine/

https://zoecormier.wordpress.com/2022/10/30/max-cooper-in-brixton-i-concede-defeat/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CqrMUlEoeHg/

https://zoecormier.wordpress.com/2023/05/11/stone-nest-w-max-cooper-may-13-2023/

https://zoecormier.wordpress.com/2023/12/03/brought-back-to-life-by-max-cooper-as-always/https://www.instagram.com/p/C4Gn4CCo3q1/

https://zoecormier.wordpress.com/2024/04/05/on-seme-italy-and-da-vinci/

https://zoecormier.wordpress.com/2024/06/03/the-highlights-of-my-highlights/
https://www.instagram.com/p/C85BkrtIANY

Anyone who knows me well knows that I ADORE standup comedy: it’s one of my favourite artforms.

It’s impressive enough if an actor can perform Shakespeare (or any play ,for that matter), capable of reciting hundreds of complex lines from memory without a teleprompter. BUT. If you can hold an audience in the palm of your hand for hours on end, with no other actors to spar with, nobody who can save you if you stumble… THAT takes serious balls, talent, and braincells. Which is why I model my speaking style on standup comics: they are the masters. And the greatest ones – Billy Connolly, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Wanda Sykes, Doug Stanhope (I could go on and on) – aren’t just comedians: they are philosophers.

So of course it was nothing but a privilege and a pleasure to support my brilliant friend Emily James as she put on a new night of emerging talent, Go Fish @fish_island_faces/

I wasn’t sure what to expect, the online listings were vague. I am more than pleased to say I laughed my ass off. As Emily advertised: “You might one day be able to see some of these people when they hit it big.” I certainly hope so.

Unfortunately I had to sit in the front row as every other seat was full… ugh. You always get picked on in the front row.

Fortunately, I got selected for a quiz about the crazy shit Trump says. As a junkie for American politics, of course I figured I’d win.

The wonderful host Sam Jacobsen @samjacobsencomedy presented us with a string of whack-ass quotes, asking “Trump or [Somebody Else]?”

I admit I got one quote wrong, when asked if it was Trump or Madonna who said this:

“Cher is somewhat of a loser. She’s lonely. She’s unhappy. She’s very miserable. And her sound-enhanced and computer-enhanced music doesn’t do it for me, believe me.”

I thought it would be Madonna, as I wouldn’t think Trump could muster “computer-enhanced” from his vocabulary. Nope… it was Trump. He’d been sparring with her on social media way back in 2012. Wow.

Well, either way I won the “cash prize” – the king’s ransom of 50 Turkish Lira!

Hats off to everyone who performed that night – especially Same Eley @mrsameley as “Basil Crumbwick”. Wearing an enormous papier mache head, he made me laugh so hard I almost puked from the first minute.

Apologies for my heckle, mate, I couldn’t help but point out the Connolly reference. Mea culpa.

Anyone who knows me well knows this: I love people who are one of a kind.

The kind of person that is completely unique, utterly unlike anyone else, irrefutably irreplaceable. Hard-baked, singular, one-off weirdos.

The sort of human that you could never replicate, no matter how hard you tried with all the techbro cash, gene sequencers, and bio-reactors in the world.

Even better: people who are bonkers AND brilliant. Teetering on the edge of madness, yet blindingly bastard clever. I mean, if you’re even slightly intelligent, it’s impossible to look at reality right now without feeling like you’ve had your breakfast spiked with DMT. Only stupid people aren’t worried and on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

If anyone fits the brief, Matty Roche does: half man, half cyborg, a hundred per cent genius.

Plus: He’s a Scouser. As my Italian grandmother once remarked, reflecting on her childhood in Nova Scotia, surrounded by nutjob Viking-esque Liverpudlian immigrants: “They were insane, but they were so funny – and so sweet.” Or as another English non-Scouse friend of ours put it: “Scousers are the best people in the world.”

They really are. And Matty might be the best one I’ve ever met. This incredible man and I became friends through one of those endless WhatsApp groups with 200 members, ostensibly created for us to chat about music, but which usually devolved into petty arguments about politics. After constantly telling off a mutual friend of ours for posting asinine shit, Matty messaged me privately to thank me for speaking the truth. We became fast friends instantly, naturally, because we’re cut from the same cloth. He even told another old friend of mine from the ‘Pool that I’m an honorary Scouser due to my sense of humour, left wing politics, and ability to imbibe.
I think that’s one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received.

You know what’s even cooler? He thought all this and said all this – plus gave me tons of emotional support in times of crisis – before meeting me in person. How many people would do that? For anyone?

And it was only after knowing him for two years that I realised… holy shit. You’re the guy that won the first episode of Naked Attraction! I only watched one episode in 2012, researching for my first book, out of curiosity. Reality TV isn’t my thing – nor dating shows – but of course the man who won the first round left an indelible impression: with a silver prosthetic leg, a pair of elephant ears around his member, and piercing blue eyes, the guy was impossible to forget. And a decade later we became friends through our circles of contacts… and the rest is history.

I cannot express how grateful I am to know him.

Happy Birthday Matthew Roche, you irreplaceable you.

I am sure all of us are delighted at seeing Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor finally experience some form of justice. I mean, sharing national economic secrets with Epstein is, I’m sure, the least of his crimes.

However, people born in the UK had to put up with these inbred and entitled toffs from the day they came into this world – they had no choice.

But when I received my British Citizenship in 2006, I did not have to swear any oath of fealty to a god, deity, or stupid fairytale.

What was non-negotiable was swearing undying loyalty to the Queen… and ALL her heirs and successors. Which means I had to pledge allegiance to the brats, “Il Tampolino“, and Andrew.

I literally had to pledge undying fealty to Rapist Pedophile Andrew.

More than seeing Andrew, Trump and all the other Epstein buddies go to prison, what I desire is for Brits to finally realise: The monarchy serves no purpose. All the idiotic arguments that “They’re great for tourism!” drive me insane.

I believe you’ll find, sirs and madams, that Italy and France get plenty of tourists without useless, overrated, racist puppets.

Imagine how much money we could make in revenue for the national treasury if we rented out all the rooms in Buckingham Palace, Windsor, and every other castle to naive, rich, and deluded Americans willing to pay £100,000 a night to stay in one of those fancy pants rooms that they’ve seen on The Crown?

For more on my hatred of the monarchy, you can read this, an op-ed in The Globe & Mail (Canada’s largest newspaper), for which I got more hate-mail than for anything I’ve ever written in my entire life. (Full text here.)

I can’t believe I said an oath of allegiance to Andrew M-W.

I feel horrifically, incomprehensibly filthy…

And not in a good way.

A recipe for remembering why London can be so brilliant:

1. Buy tickets to see the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra perform a very special gig nearby in an art deco masterpiece.

2. Dress up for the evening, and like a good girl, brush your teeth diligently.

3. Wind up with a bristle from the toothbrush stuck at the back of your throat. Ow.

4. Attempt to extract the bristle with tweezers. No luck.

5. Bring tweezers to the gig, hoping your friend – an expert model maker who is highly skilled with tools – can extract it. No luck. Tweezers too short.

6. Desperate to avoid a trip to A&E, where you will no doubt have to sit for seventeen hours waiting for help for this very non-lethal inconvenience, message a friend across town who makes fucked up art and no doubt has a huge pair of tweezers that might work.

7. Have friend confirm, yep they have huge tweezers – but they’re too high at that moment for the requisite hand-eye coordination.

8. Travel 90 minutes across town. Obtain tweezers (which are enormous), and call another friend who lives nearby to ask if they wouldn’t mind doing this very strange favour for you. Friend agrees.

9. Walk twenty minutes to this very kind friend, the third destination of the evening.

10. Open wide and say AAAAAAHHHHH…

11. Experience the unique joy of seeing a dear friend triumphantly brandish one single toothbrush bristle in front of your face with a pair of giant tweezers. A joy you never even knew existed.

12. Make it to the tube station in time for the last train, arriving home at a decent hour – spared the misery of four night buses or a very expensive taxi.

So in one evening I enjoyed great music, historic architecture, a pretty darn good transport system, and – above all – brilliant friends who came together to help me avoid a miserable trip to A&E (and gave me the ability to eat and drink comfortably again).

Nice one London: 9/10.

(One mark deducted because the brush shouldn’t have malfunctioned in the first place. Only in England would an attempt at normal dental hygiene wind up in a crisis…)

Kilburn isn’t exactly the first area that comes to mind when you think of hip and trendy London neighbourhoods. A friend who grew up nearby in Swiss Cottage asked where I’m living right now. When my response was “Kilburn, just for a couple months,” his reply was swift and succinct:

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

Far in Northwest London, it’s not exactly Soho or Shoreditch or Camden, all known worldwide for their nightlife and music scenes (even if they’ve been disneyfied). There’s some nice restaurants, but is anything else going on in Kilburn?

Well it turns out: There sure used to be.

Back in the 70s the high street was  known as the “music mile” with a string of venues that hosted countless legends from Bob Marley to Dusty Springfield. And apparently no venue hosted more legends than the Gaumont State Cinema (also known as The State), a huge and beautiful art deco theatre which opened its doors in 1937 with a capacity of 4,000 – at time the largest purpose built cinema in Europe.

Sidenote: Remember when we all went to the cinema for the ritual of experiencing films with other people in an enormous room kitted with a great sound system – instead of just whacking Netflix onto the telly in our living rooms in solitude? I miss the past.

Back to The State: The Beatles, David Bowie, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, Thelonius Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, The Who, Black Sabbath and countless other stars played here. Check this blog post for an impressive and comprehensive list.

Then the usual happened: crowds moved elsewhere, the building fell into disuse, and it became in 1980 – wait for it – a bingo hall. By 2007 even the bingo crowds weren’t interested in the State, and rapacious property developers threatened to devour it before the Ruach City Church took over the theatre, which has hosted zero live music outside religious events for almost twenty years. 

Until this month, when the glorious space reopened for the secular public as a live music venue, starting with a special performance from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. I didn’t look up any of the details about the venue or the lineup before going, I just said “OF COURSE” when my friends said the RPO were going to play at a venue down the road and the tickets were cheap (£15 – totally fair).

I normally do my homework… but this time I’m glad I didn’t. It was a joy to be surprised by the spectacular architecture (love me some art deco), and an absolute delight to learn about the venue’s history. I also had no idea that the RPO would be treating us to an evening of music from the legends who played here. When the strings fired up Bowie’s “Life on Mars” my heart sang. And I bawled like a child all throughout “Let It Be” (absolutely my favourite track from the fab four).

What a delight, and what a surprise. Never thought I’d say this but: Kilburn you get 10/10 for this one.