However, last week the 'Garden hosted two specific events – two flipped sides of a location and venue silver dollar, if you will – that were close to this writer's heart. Firstly, the resident NBA basketball franchise (and serial underachievers), the New York Knicks, made the post-season play-offs for the first time in seven years. Having hung my hat on a team due to the fickle world of celebrity merchandise endorsement (exhibit A is worn by Beastie Boy Mike D below – be warned a Beastie blog is coming soon), it appeared that although being a cool team, in the coolest city, they were also shit. However, through clever player trading, acquiring Amare Stoudemire last year, and the January signing of superstar Carmelo Anthony, the team has been revived beyond all recognition. It has been time to celebrate this team getting back to where it thinks it belongs. Knickerbocker glory is now potentially possible, instead of a distant dream.
The other side of the coin was the farewell gig by the wonderful soon-to-be-missed-by-those-that-love-them LCD Soundsystem. James Murphy's collective have produced three full-length albums of energy, pith and groove, including the best use of a cowbell since 'Hey Ladies' by the Beastie Boys, or when that Swiss school-dodging Heidi nearly got caught with that goat herder… Anyway, through a set of over three hours in length, they said goodbye to a loyal and sweating congregation, including an encore of their endearingly self-effacing ditty 'North American Scum' with friends of this parish Arcade Fire, before finishing with 'New York, I Love You But You're Driving Me Mad' – a song so good some twat wrote a truly terrible film script to incorporate it in the title. There is a list of gigs that over the years which this writer would dearly have loved to have been at, and this is included in that list.
If you have no knowledge of astronomy, when a star is born or dies it probably means nothing to you, though there is a chance that at some point in time the star itself was potentially beautiful. In the same way, if you have never heard, or heard of a particular band, then their demise is equally unimportant. However, to those that gaze at the musical stars, a band splitting up can be as grief-laden as a teenage break-up, or as melancholic as emigrating, knowing that there is a strong chance you will never see some of your best friends again. The track below, All Our Friends, had me in both places, missing the band, and reminiscing about friends I had lost over time through years of nomadic professional relocations. That it was at exactly the same time that an old episode of 'Friends' was being broadcast simply added to the ennui and lead me indirectly to being on this rambling page.
There are times when all roads lead to a certain place, and at that point of the evening's reflection, everything at Pause Towers pointed towards New York. Ironically, that is the same way that the relatively unknown cast of Friends all arrived at that very point, at the same time, and created an ensemble that would make the show, and it's cast, one of the most successful in US broadcasting history. However, since that stratospheric rise, what happened to their careers? What could these six performers achieve individually, who together were an unsinkable ship of coffee-soaked, saccharine, thirty-something smugness, as they surely all had some talent for it to have been that successful, right?
Well, it hasn't quite worked out that way for them. Matt Le Blanc (the thick one) was as one-dimensional off stage as his character was on it; Lisa Kudrow (the hippy dippy thick one) has managed to appear in some TV mini-series, but no films of note, good or bad. Courteney Cox (the fit but OCD thick one) has been seen on the big screen in the commercially successful Scream franchise, but nothing else to write home about. Matthew Perry's (the quick witted, jobless and often thick one) list of, er, achievements are so utterly uninspiring, that there really isn't much to mention at all. David Schwimmer (the paleontologist, thick brother of the fit and thick one) is more well-known for having a fling with the Australian actress, turned one-hit wonder Natalie Imbruglia than for his post-Friends CV. He was, however, the voice of anxiety-stricken giraffe Melman in the entertaining Madagascar series of animated films, along with Chris Rock, Ben Stiller and a film-stealing cameo by Sacha Baron-Cohen.
Aniston - descended from distant royalty
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