The magazine is mildly entertaining, not your typical advertising magazine, but obviously with zero journalistic integrity. But it’s another odd element in Red Bull universe, and I’m having a hard time figuring out what that company is all about. At the core of their business they have this energy drink. I’m not a big fan of the taste, but lots of people are, and it does offer some kind of temporary energy boost, same as that of a cup of coffee. For a long time I’ve been baffled by the fact that their consumers are willing to pay 3 to 4 times the price of a can of Coca-Cola or other soft drink, but that just happens to be the case, and obviously Red Bull are making an insane markup with every sold can, considering the amount of money they put into their sponsorships around the world. I don’t mind when companies are good at making money, and Red Bull have obviously struck gold by convincing a lot of people that their product is better than the alternatives.

Or maybe they’re selling a way of life, not a product? I guess most business would love to sell ways of life instead of mere products, because that way you can charge whatever you want for the product that lets you have that way of life. But I’m curious as to what way of life, Red Bull is promoting. Take the way they sponsor major sports teams. It’s not enough to just have your company logo shown on the team jersey; they literally take over the entire franchise and change the team name and jersey colours to some Red Bullish. There is something almost North Korean about that, and I fully the frustration some fans must feel by being Red Bullied out of all of their traditions and history by a way of life.

It’s not that I’m going to stop drinking Red Bull because of this – that would be hypocrisy on my part – I just thought I’d share my curiosity on the ways of this particular soft drink behemoth.

Inspirations and sources

The streaming services are also an excellent way to discover new music through their excellent use of various social networks, and that is the source of a lot of the music I’ve discovered this year. As always Roskilde Festival and their always excellent lineup is a great source of inspiration, and I can’t help myself from being heavily influenced by some of the live shows I’ve seen with a couple of the artists in my list. I really love a good live show although I haven’t seen quite as much as I would have liked to in 2011. And that’s probably going to get even worse in 2012 when the junior DJ makes his scheduled arrival in late February. Oh well …

I listen to a lot of music on my bike commute to work. This is the perfect setting for the more difficult music that requires some contemplation to settle. Another scene is the office speakers, but that only works with music that everyone can accept, as this is a working environment, so we definitely listen to a lot of chill wave. And the last setting is the gym, where the intensity of the music sets the intensity of the workout.

Stuff that didn’t quite make the cut

Tough decision to get the shortlist down to 10 albums, but you always have to make a choice. I really wanted to add some Skrillex (rdio / spotify) to the list, since 2011 was the year I discovered his awesome electronic music, but his best album is from 2010, and the stuff he has done in 2011 is good, but not quite good enough for the top 10. Another one that almost made it was Pala by Friendly Fires (rdio / spotify), but again this album isn’t quite as good as the first one. Cults (rdio / spotify) almost made it, but I guess I decided not to give in to the hype. Another one that didn’t make it was The War on Drugs with Slave Ambient (rdio / spotify). With this one I guess I find it really annoying that I can’t tell the album title from the artist title. And one of my favourite Danish hip hop acts Suspekt didn’t quite make it with their Elektra). I was really impressed with that one on listening to it the first couple of times, but it slipped out of my mind after a while. Also it isn’t quite as good as Prima Nocte from 2007.

10 – Mastodon: The Hunter

(rdio / spotify)

I’m moving well outside of my comfort zone with Mastodon. It’s almost metal, and the live concert I caught at Roskilde Festival last summer featured several variations of mosh pits right in front of me, which isn’t something I typically see at concerts, although I fully appreciate how it adds to the atmosphere of the event. Not a lot of acts in this range of the genre spectrum on my all time favourite list, but since I discovered Mastodon through “Crack the Skye” I’ve been a fan. Incredible skill combined with excellent production quality where you can actually distinguish each instrument instead of the typical wall of distorted noise you hear in other metal. Compositions and harmonies are of equal high quality and the drummer is out of this world. Favourite moment is where the drums build up the composition of the whole song during the intro of “Dry Bone Valley”. They’re also excellent live and I was soooo tempted to join the mosh pit last summer, but it’s probably a good thing I didn’t. I guess Mastodon is what Metallica would be if Metallica didn’t suck …

9 – Oh Land: Oh Land

(rdio / spotify)

First Danish act on the list this year. Nanna Øland was clever in picking this name for herself, since she is clearly aiming for something much bigger than Denmark and she clearly has the potential to break through. Also she is really hot … I love the ambition this lady has – the first track of the album is even called Perfection. Despite the name of that track the album isn’t perfect, and there are tracks I usually skip over, but there are amazing tracks as well. The combination of beautiful grand scale compositions with electronic elements and Nanna’s amazing voice really do it for me in tracks such as “White Nights”, “We Turn It Up” and “Sun of a Gun”. Oh Land reminds me of another wonderful Danish artist named Randi Laubek who did two amazing albums more than 10 years ago but got too cutesy after that. I hope Oh Land retains her edge and I can’t wait to hear and see what the future holds for her.

She actually performed around the corner from where I live, but unfortunately I was busy trying to do a surprise audition for Simon Cowell at the Ago on Melrose that night. Hoping to catch her next time she is in LA.

Did I mention how hot she is?

8 – Chase & Status: No More Idols

(rdio / spotify)

Chase & Status had a sure spot in my list, but then they almost blew it by being the biggest disappointment live when I caught them at Roskilde Festival. There are so many potent tracks on this album that I could imagine would work wonders in a live setting and I had really been warming up to the concert in the months before it by listening to the album LOUD when working out. Roskilde Festival always has amazing sound at their concert and electronic music almost always works live. Except on this occasion. The sound was bad and not nearly loud enough and there was a bad angry (not good angry, such as during Mastodon – bad angry!) atmosphere. They even cut the front of house sound at one time during the concert to keep the crowd from going mental, and the act kept playing because nobody had told them the only sound that could be heard came from their monitors,

So I actually stopped listening to the album after that. Frightened Rabbit suffered a similar fate a couple of years ago when I realised the lead singer sounds horrible live. I forgave Frightened Rabbit because the albums sound really good, and I’m willing to forgive Chase & Status as well. Their music is way too powerful to be dismissed because of one bad live experience, and I actually think I would give them a second chance if they came to a club near me. The music is really intense, the buildup during the tracks is always amazing and it’s not really possible to find a bad track on the album. The guest list is also really good and adds a good variation to the album.

7 – Jay Z / Kanye West: Watch the Throne

(rdio / spotify)

It’s no secret that I’m a sucker for Kanye West and the way he brands himself. He happened to do the best album and the best single of 2010 and he is probably the best hip hop producer right now. And Jay Z is another old favourite of mine and one of the finest and most skilled rappers ever. So this collaboration was eagerly anticipated by yours truly. Kanye West always manages to balance on the edge of being way too much in everything he does, but he hasn’t tipped over the edge yet and this is no exception. The album is a grand masterpiece of pop hip hop and Jay Z definitely got his swagger back. “Lift Off” with is a perfect example of how the production is almost too much – it starts with an ” All Engines Running” sampling and the song really lifts off with a grand horn section and Beyoncés glorious contribution. Everything is turned up to 11 in this one and it just works.

The Watch the Throne tour definitely adds to the grandeur of this collaboration. I was fortunate enough to attend it a couple of weeks ago and it was a tour de force from two gentlemen with an incredible catalogue of songs and the knowledge that they are the kings. Kanye West started “All of the Lights” over 3 times because he wasn’t satisfied with the response from the audience and they ended the show by playing “Niggas in Paris” seven times in row and turning the Staples Center into a gigantic rave.

6 – Cut Copy: Zonoscope

(rdio / spotify)

I somehow managed to miss “In Ghost Colours” when it was released in 2008 so I didn’t know Cut Copy until Zonoscope received a very favourable review in Pitchfork in early 2011. But I’m glad I read that review and got to know Cut Copy. It’s a little difficult for me to tell my impression of the two albums apart since I started listening to them at the same time, but they’re both really good. This is also the first album on the list found acceptable by the working environment, so it’s been given a lot of airplay at the office. I don’t know what it is about this album, but it just makes me really happy. Maybe it’s the pictures it creates in my mind? I love the way “Need you now” builds up and adds new layers for every verse until it puts all of the layers on top of each other at the end. Music for dancing, that’s for sure

4/5 – Washed Out: Within and Without & M83: Hurry Up We’re Dreaming

(rdio / spotify)
(rdio / spotify)

You might be surprised to find these albums so far up the list once you’ve read all the bad things I’m about to say about them. These two albums are at the peak of the Chill Wave that really hit hard in 2011 and they’re very alike in my opinion, hence the shared ranking. Chill Wave is the equivalent of lounge music of the 90′s in that nobody can be offended by it, it works as background music for sex and it doesn’t really mean anything. This music is also acceptable to everyone in the office, since it is acceptable to everybody. I haven’t bothered listening to the lyrics for any of the albums, since both titles are just so damned stupid that I can’t really be bothered to start paying attention. In writing this I just realised there is a track on the bonus dics for “Hurry Up We’re Dreaming” called “My Tears are Becoming a Sea”. I rest my case …

But where lounge music is really, really bad, both of these albums are really, really good if you allow yourself to be sucked into the wave. Like Air back when they still mattered. Ridiculous music, but at the same time beautiful and sexy.

3 – Bon Iver: Bon Iver

(rdio / spotify)

Hooray, the king of the hipsters made my list along with every other “Best of music in 2011″ list out there. There are many things that get me really offended about Bon Iver, his beard, his flannel shirts and his staying in a cabin in the woods to record and album (not this one). But maybe these are traits of his fans and not of Justin Vernon himself? I mean, he actually seems like a guy who wants to create incredible music and not worry too much about maintaining an image. He did after all contribute to the incredible “Lost in the World” with Kanye West on the number one album last year.

“For Emma, Forever Ago” is definitely too introvert for me and I dismissed it and Bon Iver when I heard it a while ago. But this new album is incredible. Every single track is amazing. The way it opens in “Perth” sends shivers down my spine every time I listen to it and Justin Vernon sings like an angel. And when it breaks into the chorus first time it is almost too much to bear. “Holocene” made me want to re-learn playing guitar.

I bet that guy gets laid a lot, but I bet he has also helped a lot of other guys getting laid by giving us this incredible album. Bon Iver is the reason I want to go to Roskilde Festival next year even though I don’t have any vacation to spend on it because of the arrival of the Junior DJ. Speaking of the Junior DJ I’m planning on letting his or her arrival in this world be accompanied by this incredible album.

2 – Malk de Koijn: Toback to the Fromtime

(spotify)

Malk de Koijn can’t be easily found on the streaming services. They’re way too old school for that. They’ve also managed to assemble an incredible fan base after they dissolved back in 2003 (or 4?) so obviously they wanted to sell real physical albums instead of making 1/8000 of a cent every time someone plays one of their songs on Spotify. Well I’m really old and part of the original fan base that actually liked and loved the best rap group in the universe before the fan base went ballistic around 2008. I have two copies of each of the first two albums so naturally I had to own a physical copy of “Toback to the Fromtime”. I ordered from Target Distribution well in advance of the release and paid around $40 to have it shipped to the US. It arrived several weeks after the official and had a huge scratch that ruined every single track on the album. I reached out to Target but never managed to get hold off anyone. Fortunately for me there are many fans out there, so when I announced the horrible state of my CD on Facebook no less than 5 of my friends uploaded a digital (and almost legal) copy of the entire album in various places for me to download. Thanks, guys, you are true friends.

I have so many great memories with Malk de Koijn, and most of them have something to do with Roskilde Festival. 2007 was the muddiest year in Roskilde history and we were pretty miserable most of the time. I remember one late night when it was impossible to find anything to drink, but our neighbours offered to share their horrible red wine with us on the condition that we would play Malk de Koijn really loud on our camp stereo. Great party, and shortly after we found several beers buried in the mud.

2003 had us all struggling to stay awake for the Malk de Koijn concert that started Monday morning at 3.30 am. I remember buying a case of beer around 1.30 am when everything seemed dire to restart the party. It worked and most of us made it up there for a perfect concert, excluding one friend, let’s call him D, who almost aggressive when we tried to wake him up for the concert he had been babbling about all week. I remember biking 20 miles home after the concert ended.

2009 was the re-union of Malk de Koijn at Roskilde Festival. That was one eagerly anticipated concert, and a lot of the festival was about planning how to make it to the front of the stage for the 2 am concert Saturday night. Due to a most unfortunate turn of events I kinda forgot to sleep between Friday and Saturday so my chances for making the concert were pretty bad if I had had a normal festival Saturday. The weather didn’t exactly help – it was unbelievably hot and my wife actually dropped from a heatstroke sometime around noon. I stayed away from the festival site all day gathering my strength in the shade of our camp and didn’t see a single concert. We went to the festival site around 9.30pm to get in line for the concert, more than 4 hours before the scheduled start, and the line already had hundreds of people in it. Staying in the line wasn’t too bad at first, as we were able to get food and beer and sit down to enjoy it, but a couple of hours before it started, somebody got to their feet in the line and a chain reaction forced us all to stand in order not to lose our place in the line. The next couple of hours were not the funniest of my life, and we lost most of the group, including one unfortunate friend, let’s call him D, who had also missed his sleep between Friday and Saturday but hadn’t spent the day gathering the necessary strength to make it to the concert.

Standing in that line sucked – I remember being hit by a plastic glass of water that was thrown from the the front of the line. I could see it coming from a distance, but I couldn’t move and I couldn’t get my hands up, so it hit me lige i face. And when they finally opened the gates, we didn’t make it into the closed pits, and the crowds were going really mental in their eagerness to get in. We were stuck 6 meters from the gates but couldn’t reach them. After 15 minutes the gates were opened again to let a new group of people in, and we really fought to get to the front of the line, but unfortunately they were closed right of us. At this point an announcement was made that no more people would be let into the closed pits, and they told us to turn around. But there were still hundreds of people behind us, so we couldn’t even get away from our spot in front of the gates where we would miss not only the closed pits but also the general audience area. So things were looking really bad when the crowd manager with whom I was having a heated discussion received a transmission from the front of the stage. Shortly after he announced quietly that he had been allowed to let another 50 people in, and when they opened the gates my wife, one friend and myself were among the very last ones to be allowed into the garden of Eden. Completely worn out from the fatigue of standing in a horrible line for hours I still managed to jump several feet into the air, and one of the best concerts of my life started right at the point when we ran around the corner.

The Danish Broadcast Radio “released” a live recording of the entire concert and listening to the audience in between and during the songs brings back all those fantastic memories once again.

So plenty of memories and three amazing albums, the last one at least as good as the first two. But not the best album of 2011.

1 – Rustie: Glass Swords

(spotify)

It’s worth asking the question of why “Bon Iver” isn’t the best album on my list. If we detach all the albums on this list from my context, it would be the best album. But this isn’t a list where I take myself, my memories, my experience and my expectations out of the equation. Music is about emotions, about how it makes you feel. About who you are when you experience it, how it moves you and changes you. Who you are sharing the experience with and how it makes you feel that you are sharing this experience with these other persons. The Malk de Koijn album brings back memories of so many great experiences and in it self it is a brilliant album. But when I listened to “Glass Swords” for the first time I immediately knew that this was the best album of 2011 and not even the return of the best rap group in the universe can change that. I regard music as the supreme art form, art as the supreme form of human expression and as such “Glass Swords” becomes one of the finest works of human expression I’ve ever experienced. This will probably not be the case with a lot of other people. I know the good people at my workplace really hated this album when I played it, but what I hear transcends time and space and takes me to another world. The aesthetic experience and expectations I bring into my encounter with this album transforms it into this magnificent work of art for me. My feelings are those I have when I see the opening scene in Blade Runner, when Arthur Dent and Slartibartfast travel through the planetary workshop in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, when reading the first two books in Orson Scott Card’s Ender Wiggin-series or when playing Turrican II as a 12 year old boy.

The soundtrack above is what it reminded me of. The most awesome soundtrack for a computer game ever, although I can appreciate that it might not sound that impressive today. But it certainly rocked my world in 1990 (or whenever it was).

Another reference is “Music has the Rights to Children” by Boards of Canada. It has the same qualities in that it feels completely disconnected from time and takes me out of this world. “Music has the Rights to Children” is one of the best albums ever, and “Glass Swords” is as good as that.

“Glass Swords” sits in a niche where not a lot of people will appreciate the qualities it has, but it certainly hit the spot for me. My favourite music for travelling in the whole world, both on the inside and outside.

The discussion wasn’t really a discussion – all of the panel members seemed to be in agreement that music streaming services are the best thing since sliced bread and that it will revitalize the music industry. But it got me thinking about the way my own consumption of music has changed over the years. The way I consume music is really a combination of my great two greatest interests: New music and technology.

The Napster Years

My preferences in music are very picky. I don’t want other people to choose for me, I believe in my own taste, although I am heavily inspired by some music resources, in particular Soundvenue Magazine and Pitchfork Media. But I don’t want anybody to choose my music for me, so some of the classic online music services like online radio and more modern genre-based services like Pandora don’t really work for me. I was one of the heavy users of Napster back in it’s prime for that very reason. To me, Napster was basically a gigantic music library where everything seemed available. My music taste wasn’t very evolved back then, and that might have been the reason why it felt like I could find everything I was looking for. After the slow death of Napster I had kind of a dead period of music consumption myself.

The CD years

When I eventually picked music up again I became bit of a HIFI geek, buying a decent amplifier, a CD deck and a set of very good (and very BIG) Dali speakers. I still had quite a large collection of illegally downloaded music, but my collection of music started growing by buying CDs which I then ripped to my computer. One thing that I’ve always really hated about illegally downloaded music is that the quality is usually quite bad and that it’s very hard to keep it organised because the various pirates around the world apply their own organisational schemes instead of relying on proper ID3 tags. Because of that and because I wanted to go in a more legit direction I eventually deleted the entire collection of crappy illegal music and started maintaining my own collection of music ripped in high quality and with decent ID3 tags from my own collection. That collection has continued until today, and I now have around 90GB of music, which is nowhere near the 2 TB of music the typical music pirate “owns” but quite a considerable collection considering it’s mainly from physical music.

But finding new music has always been a problem. I’ve never really enjoyed going to record stores and listening to music because their selection (at least in Denmark) is always so limited and the prices (also in Denmark) are ridiculously high. I prefer exploring in front of my computer by reading the reviews and recommendations from my peers, but the problem is that it’s very difficult to actually HEAR the music you’re reading about. As mentioned I’m quite concerned about quality, so the crappy samples offered by services like MySpace (please die soon, it’s a pain to watch you suffering like that), allmusic or the crappiest of all: YouTube (ptui!) wasn’t really a solution. So I admit that I still had to resort to the flavour of the time in P2P networks like DC++ and various torrent clients to find the music before eventually buying it on CD online at UK prices (roughly half of Danish prices). I also subscribed to a number of music providers over the years, including the monthly Soundvenue Sampler and the montly Fabric! and FabricLive! CD.

Enter Spotify! (and Rdio)

Spotify had existed for some time before I eventually picked it up. You couldn’t get it in Denmark without going through some trouble and I still had my large CD collection and huge, expensive HIFI system so I was quite happy without it. But moving to the states left me without my huge stereo and CDs, and the only quality equipment for consuming music I had left was my UltraSone headphones and my (second set of) Etymotic earbuds. I still had my collection of music, some of which I could store on my new 16GB iPhone and listen to, but I had to find a way to find new music. The answer was pretty obvious in Spotify. So I went through the trouble of getting a Spotify account, which was just as complex in the US as in the States, but it was definitely worth the effort. I pretty much completely stopped downloading illegal music as soon as this service was made available to me. Being fortunate enough to have unlimited data on my phone I could connect to and find all the music I wanted. I since lost the debit card I used for my Spotify trick and had to close my account, but fortunately the very similar Rdio service had launched shortly before that, and I switched to that. Being an early adopter was a bit painful, but they’ve definitely caught up and now offer a very solid service.

Cloud music libraries

Unfortunately services like Rdio and Spotify have one big problem: While they have a HUGE collection of music, they don’t have EVERYTHING. In particular I’m missing some of the music from my old collection, which I now rarely get to listen to, because it’s so bloody inconvenient to have to sync the music to my iPhone. It just feels so old-fashioned having to connect to a computer and decide what music you want to put on a device with limited storage. But I believe I’ve found the answer in the cloud-based music libraries. I’ve started uploading my collection to my Amazon cloud drive, and that music is now available to me in the quality that I like (because I’m the one who ripped it) while I’m on the road. The big drawback is obviously that I can’t play the music from my iPhone, since Big Brother has decided against it, but at least it really rocks from my computers and my Android devices. My Amazon cloud drive is free for now, but it only has 5GB of storage. Another player I’m waiting with excitement for is Google Music, which is unfortunately in closed beta. And I guess Apple will launch a similar service with their iCloud this Monday, which is a bloody shame, because that’s probably the real reason why Apple won’t allow the Cloud Player in their app store – we all have to use the Apple approved service instead. This all puts me in a very awkward position, since the iCloud will probably only work on iDevices, but as the iPhone is my primary device, it leaves me with little choice.

My future as a music consumer will consist of a combination of streaming services, Rdio currently being my weapon of choice and one of the cloud based music services to serve my music collection to me wherever I might be. The next month or so will tell which service I choose, but I really hope Apple will allow me to make the choice myself, although I seriously doubt it.

The thing is, I feel pretty good. And a big reason for that is that the world didn’t end yesterday, and that made me really happy. We didn’t make a big thing of it my wife and I, but we did go outside on the balcony a minute before 6pm to see the skies crack open (or whatever was supposed to happen), and when that didn’t happen we toasted in a glass of excellent red wine and went on in our fabulous Saturday night. I know intellectually that of course the world wasn’t going to end, but the whole Rapture thing has stirred quite a bit of excitement around me the last couple of weeks. Harold Camping and his posse of Christian cultists definitely did a fine PR job, since everybody and their mother knew the Rapture was supposed to happen yesterday. I shared in the excitement – not the hysteria – and yesterday when the world didn’t end, I felt quite good about it. And I’m not even a believer, but what I did was allow myself to feel happy about it. It other words I staged a situation where the fact that the world didn’t end at 6pm led to me feeling happy and it worked. I had a great night last night.

There is this American principle of the right to pursue happiness. That’s pretty abstract to me, but I believe I’ve found an interpretation that works for me: It’s all about staging situations in your life that will eventually lead to a feeling of happiness. I can’t actually take credit for this idea, I got it from Danish stage director Peter Langdal in 1998. He was giving a guest lecture at the University of Copenhagen where I was studying to be bachelor of Theatre Science at the time. I honestly don’t remember what the lecture was about, but I remember his description of how he staged situations in his everyday life that would lead to intense feelings of happiness. As an example he explained how he would tell his children – I’m guessing they were 5-6 years old at the time – to wait behind for a while as he would walk up the driveway of his allotment house. He would then turn around to look at his children and tell them to run towards him. The sight of his two beloved children running towards him up the driveway would lead to an intense feeling of happiness, and that was all staged. I loved the idea back then and I’ve tried my best to set things up in a way so that I can do myself that favour as often as possible.

My wedding is a great example of such a staged event on a very large scale and the end of the world is an example on a very small scale. I know the real end of the world is a big thing, but since this was an imaginary end of the world, it was simply a matter of setting it up in my mind so that I would be relieved by the world not ending.

Another example is the diet my wife and I have started following this last month. I will not bore you with the details about the actual diet, suffice to say that it is a low carb / high protein diet. The important element in the context of this post is the Cheat Day. Every Saturday my wife and I are allowed to eat and drink whatever we want to. It works wonders for us. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed food and drink as much as I do on my cheat day. And we don’t even eat anything terribly out of the ordinary, it’s just a matter of eating the things we can’t (and don’t) eat on the normal days. Behold our breakfast from yesterday:

It’s really simple and it’s completely staged by yours truly, but it makes me feel really good.

So maybe Harold Camping was really out to do us all a gigantic favour announcing the end of the world. In realising the world didn’t end yesterday hopefully we all learned to appreciate it more. I’m thinking he’s got plenty of money from contributions, and I guess he can always blame it on a mis-interpretation of the Book of Job (again) and pull out his holy calculator to predict the next end of the world. But next time he should try to place it on a bank holiday weekend so that all of his followers have an extra day to make it back to the mid west to square things out with the job they quit to go to California to be in the front rows of the Apocalypse.

Happy afterlife, everybody …

I guess that business model works, since they have it – or maybe they’re just trying it out? I’ve always avoided night clubs that charge you differently based on your sex, same as I avoid restaurants where they have waiters in the street trying to get you inside, but these places always seem to have a crowd, so maybe I’m missing out on all the fun …

I have felt very discriminated occasionally when going out in London. If you’re with 3 other guys you’ll often have a VERY hard time getting into a lot of places, where I don’t have any problems at all when I’m out with my wife. Maybe the guy/girl ratio in London is just tipped too far towards the men? I guess it’s because men in London never really reach an age where they stop going out, which is quite unique – and I kinda like that. But I guess it works against us. But isn’t it the men who spend the most money in the bar anyway? Well, I guess it’s a delicate balance where you want just the right ratio of men inside to buy cocktails for all the (underage) girls, but no so many that they’re just buying for themselves because there are no ladies to charm.

Then again it also be because men – especially between 18 and 21 – tend to start fights, drive while drunk, do drugs, rape, loot and pillage.

Anyway, I think that club from the radio commercial should go all in, pay the girls 20£ to get in, charge the guys 100£ and up the age limit for guys to 35. At least that way it’s honest. Can’t wait until I turn 35 so I can get into these places …