Entertainment For Lively Minds
You Can hardly Blame Him...
Critic David Simpson's next-door neighbour in a village near York took such exception to his choice of late-night sounds that he punched him in the face.
The critic says he has been the victim of a curse since he wrote a book about legendary group The Fall.
Since he wrote the book, his lifelong girlfriend has left him and he has driven his car into a river.
His experiences echo that of many former members of the band whose career often went into freefall once they left.
Mr Simpson, who worked for The Guardian and still writes regularly for the newspaper since recently going freelance, said: "I have been beset by the Curse Of The Fall, which has resulted in various incidents ranging from being dumped by my lifelong girlfriend to driving my car into a river, and I'm tempted to suspect this is another one of those.
He was playing Control I'm Here by Nitzer Ebb for about three minutes when he was attacked.
Harrogate Magistrates Court heard how ''a continuous thumping sound'' at 10.20pm on January 25 had disturbed 51-year-old Brian Edmunds' TV viewing and led to him marching to Mr Simpson's house in Crawford Close, Tockwith, near
York, and attacking him when he came to his door.
Prosecutor Kathryn Reeve said Mr Simpson had been twice punched in his left eye, grabbed by his neck and pushed back into his hallway. "He had needed hospital treatment for a one-inch cut and swelling and bruising to his eye, along with blurred vision. He had also suffered a broken tooth and a sore neck.
The court heard Edmunds had moved into the house only four weeks prior to the attack, having left Ripon after his mother died.
Edmunds had gone to investigate, the two men had a dialogue and when it appeared to Edmunds that Mr Simpson was not prepared to turn the music down he acted totally out of character.
Maybe he was exacting revenge for Mark E Smith. The Fallen is a particularly badly written and executed book. I felt like punching him after I'd read half of it.
- More from Mr Drayton.
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I'm with Brian
I once lived below three students who fancied themselves as Club DJs. They thought the best time to practise was after the clubs closed. After the 4th time of asking we were told "To chill,Man". The playing of the first Black Sabbath album at a fair volume every morning around 8am did the trick for a while until one day they came to complain.
The whole thing ended a week later with some alleged "Sledgehammer/Two Technics decks and mixer "interface. I wasn't there so i can't really say.
I've been responsible...
...for a fair amount of night time noise in my time, but the student after the club noise thing is a bad thing. We had student neighbours who took advantage of cheap club nights on a Monday and would come home at two on a Tuesday morning. We'd just had a small child (a baby) that was woken up by them. My complaints came to nothing until one night, at the end of my tether, I became a geordie (I'm not, I live there though). My gentle tyneside brogue worked wonders and the racket stopped. Or maybe it was the threat of 'putting their fucking windas in'
mean
what a particularly spiteful and mean-spirited idea for a blog
Dave's been tweeting about this today.
http://twitter.com/DaveSimps0n
He's not very happy with Mr Drayton.
Bugger all that, though: lucky sod's got the new Fall album.
oh yes, you can!
I'm not surprised Dave's not happy- and I'd encourage readers to read one of the articles about this, from which this blog is drawn.
They show it was an assault case, in the writer's own home, and that there was no ongoing noise issue of any kind. I'm struggling to understand the point of this blog, which seems to just quote someone else's article whilst adding a snipy comment at the bottom. How nasty.
"No ongoing noise issues of any kind"?
How so? I've read the other online accounts and from what I can make out it was clearly an issue at the time. That's why Edmunds went round and knocked on the door. Edmunds asked Simpson to turn it down. A reasonable request given the time of day. Simpson refused. Edmunds response was unacceptable; Simpson's refusal stupid.
You'd like to think both parties have learned something from this. Edmunds has apologised and will take his punishment. And Simpson? Here's a few of his more recent tweets :
#Dedicated to my neighbour, who until recently was 'living with his mother' [you tube link deleted]about 24 hours ago
"Must remember, track 9 on the new Fall album is a definite "neighbour-puncher" 4:33 AM Feb 25th
"The neighbour is out, and the new Fall album is playing, at a very decent volume" 3:44 AM Feb 25th
A real charmer.
Yuck.
A guy (allegedly) barges into a man's home and assaults him, and there's some humour in that? I'm not a po-faced git, and neither am I indifferent to noise complaints, because I've suffered from noisy neighbours, and it's a bastard. But smirkingly alluding to this as some kind of just deserts for the man having written a book you don't like? Not very nice.
Wow
This is a really popular thread for new members!
Right, that's it....
I'm off. (flounces out, slamming doors behind him).
Only joking. I'll be back.
You should have read his Twitter the night it happened.
"Am playing Nitzer Ebb full blast. Fab! Oh wait, there goes the door... "
"Shouldn't be too much of a problem for me. After all, he lives with his mother…"
"Oof"
ho ho
are Albert Edward and Mr Drayton the same person? They're certainly as funny as each other...
If you read the online accounts it doesn't say Simpson refused to turn the music down at all. The bloke just decked him
What the accounts say is
the two men had a dialogue and when it appeared to Edmunds that Mr Simpson was not prepared to turn the music down he acted totally out of character.
The music can't have been all that loud...
if they could have 'a dialogue'. Plus you usually turn the music down to open the front door unless you're trying to prove something -- which it's safe to say Simpson wasn't.
So my money's on the music being heard next door, even though it wasn't up that high and the confrontation resulting from the two men's differing interpretations of 'loud'.
Noisy Neighbours
The reason we moved to a detached house was because of noisy neighbours. Although we lived in Sheffield, they were Mancs and who, in the words of Frank from Shameless, 'knew how to throw a party!'
We put up with it for a while after they moved in, but regular loud music at 1.00 am on a week night was too much to bear (how many times would we have to listen to that fucking song from Flashdance?).
I eventually went round to complain and asked them, very politely, to turn it down because I had work in the morning. A posse of them followed me back to my front door calling me a 'sad old man' (I was only 31 at the time, fucking cheek!).
Environmental Health were contacted. They recommended keeping a log of occurances and, if it persisted, they might eventually put some monitoring equipment in t measure the noise level. We could see that it would take ages to sort anything out and it was beginning to get to us quite badly. A conversation with a police officer friend led to the suggestion that if it was him suffering the problem, he'd give them a taste of their own medicine.
So, one Sunday morning after being kept awake until gone 4am, we set the alarm for 7am, went downstairs to the living room and the dining room, turned the speakers of both hi-fis towards the wall and blasted out Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young (Hey Hey My My) on repeat and at full volume.
They were quiet for a couple of months after that...
We still moved, though.
bit different
to three minutes of music though isn't it?!
Well, yes!
I think it might have been 3 minutes of music that broke the camel's back, so to speak?
Not that I condone the bloke getting violent. I posted what I did, because I've suffered noisy and unpleasant neighbours and it ain't nice to live with.
Depends where you live as well...
I live in Whitley Bay on Tyneside, it,s a lively, noisy area and it,s not unusual to hear music indoors/outdoors going on well past midnight--you just accept it as part of the pleasure of the place. Music at 10.20 wouldn,t bother me at all, but maybe it,s out of order in a quiet village.
Wasn't
Mr Simpson once chinned by Matty Blag from Blaggers ITA? Obviously, I'm not judging the chap, or insinuating he deserves acts of violence, obv. PS Nitzer Ebb, tho. Bloody hell