I CANT STOP LISTENING TO THIS ALBUM. HELP! I LITERALLY CAN'T STOP PUTTING IT ON AND LISTENING TO IT OVER AND OVER. AND THEN I SAW THEM PLAY LAST NIGHT AND THEY WERE EVEN BETTER THAN THEY ARE ON RECORD AND I CAN'T STOP LISTENING TO IT. IT'S A TINY LITTLE LO-FI MASTERPIECE AND LIVE THEY SOUND LIKE EX MODELS COVERING THE ZOMBIES WHICH, TO ME, SOUNDS LIKE THE BEST THING EVER. AND IT IS THE BEST THING EVER I CAN'T STOP LISTENING TO IT.
"Hey, don't fucking kick people and don't punch people, i'm talking to you, right there, alright? I'm talking to you and you. You want to fucking do that shit, get the fuck up on the football field, alright? I'm talking to you, yeah, i'm talking to you, yeah, that's right. It sucks to have to tell people to behave themselves, but there's other people here too, alright? So try to be a little more kind.
You know, I saw you two guys earlier at the Good Humor truck and you were eating your ice cream like little boys and I thought, "those guys aren't so tough! They're eating ice cream, what a bunch of swell guys!" I saw you eating ice cream, pal. Oh, don't you deny it, you were eating an ice cream cone. You were eating an ice cream cone. Oh, you're bad now, you're bad now, but you were eating an ice cream cone. And I saw you. That's the shit you can't hide, you know? You got your fucking shit, but you eat ice cream, everybody knows it, the whole fucking place knows it - ice cream eating motherfucker. That's what you are."
....ONE OMNIPRESENT DARK LORD OF THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS REPRESENTED BY A HORDE OF FEVERISH MINIONS POSING AS HUMANS AND SNAKING THEIR WAY INTO OUR EVERYDAY LIVES WITH THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF BRINGING OUR EXISTENCE TO IT'S KNEES
HaHAHAHAHs anyone ever seen Home Alone 2? It's aboHAHAHAHut a 10 year old boy who gets separated at the airport and ends up getting on the wrong plane (New York) while the rest oHAHAHAHf his family head off on holiday (FloriHAHAHAda). Luckily, however, the 10 year old boy has his dad's bag with him and it's choc-full of hard cash. He spends it all on room service and basically flapping about the joint like a total coolie. Amazing. I'm at the bit where he's in the park with the pigeon lady. Ok, they're away now for chat (heart-to-heart) in the loft ofHAHAHAH the opera house, so I will keep watHAHAHAHching and let you know what happens. Amazing scenes. We're in Cardiff. I think. I think we're still on tour. Nobody knows anymore. Who wants to spend ChristHAHAHAmas in a tropical climate anyway?
Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough. Our van is a gigantic steel bag with gold-on-black Louis Vuitton print and we are the greasy contents of our rumbling, mobile torment. The motorway is, like, the biggest ever man! A sort of really, really big man with a big man face and hands and the sort of gigantic, really big man arms that only a really big man would have! He has a firm grip of our van and is shaking it around so hard and so violently that Paul's Ipod earphones will just not stay in. Everyone catches a horrible little earful of 'Janet Jackson through a shoebox' as and when an earpiece swings by their head or in their face. At one point, I am face up against the window staring deep into the crying eye of, like, the biggest ever man, ever! A hundred bullion years of heartbreak swirl and flow deep down within it's murky depths. I can almost see his soul. But it's too late for him, I catch my reflection in a teardrop and am dismayed to find myself looking more and more like a stupid head, bearded sad git and trumpet guffer with each and every passing day. Still, Francis Bacon has developed a tour cream which has, for now, controlled this awful head and inner mind rash. If only I had something for the... for the... nevermind. Look, Calum is playing air drums. No, wait, he's just having another fit. Call an ambulance! AT ONCE!
I can't see. REPENT REPENT. We have come to the end of us. I want to tell you that we love you. We reluctantly love the heaving and fleshy Kingston mass of flailing arm, 40 quid haircut and airtight ego as it swells and rolls over the stage, Katamari-style, consuming us all in dark love (veins, guts), right before the indie disco du jour. A thousand acne-ridden faces explode in glorious unison. Someone spills their cheap lager. On purpose. I turn to Duncan, who is a pelican. But all good things come to an end. I can't see. This rash has grown so foul and so harshly that it has become impossible to look back on my life and what it was like before touring... to re-imagine a world of colour and of nature. I open my mouth and out spills white noise. I plug in my guitar pedals: white noise! I turn to the audience and ask them to stop hitting each other: brown noise. I lie in bed and open the window to hear a tree or a bird or the wind, a fart or anything: white noise. Yes, it is true, every good thing comes to an end. I can't see.
John turns to me. It's a huge show and it's rammed tonight. "David, is it just me, or is the audience made entirely of ants?" he says. I don't hear him at first, i'm far too bewildered with the fact he's playing drums with two meatball subs instead of drumsticks. "Eh, what? I don't know, John". All our songs tonight sound like Janet Jackson through a shoebox. I spot Calum riding the crowd, in slow-motion, like a leather alligator over Niagra Falls, as I sway hard and backwards over a tough, three chord structure and rinsed loaves of sweat beads. There is a massive, jarring crunch as song meets fans head on and the world, at once, sounds like Dananananaykroyd. Do you know what that sounds like? It is massive and jarring. There are four rappers in the audience tonight. Suddenly, almost instantaneously, we're back in the van. We look around at each other post-show and burst out laughing. Is it our job to turn strange? To discover strange things about people who are fast becoming strangers? I don't know. It is now us versus them. As you now now, I have a gigantic rash that is starting to curl round the back of my ears and I wish the... I wish I could... nevermind. We play our hearts out tonight. Yes, we are broken and sick, but we put on good show and sell all the t-shirts. I will give you that.
I'd like to clarify, on record, that the "TUNNEL OF LOVE" at our 'live gigs' is actually a LEGALLY BINDING statement of WEDLOCK.
That's right, if you grab hands with a stranger and float on down our makeshift aisle, you better hope he/she doesn't snore. Because that's it, FOR LIFE.
Feeling a little better. Travelodges all look exactly the same. I've decided that this is my new bedroom, so I get to sleep in my own bed every night. I do. Shut up. If only I could just control this... nevermind. Favours For Sailors join our tour for a few nights and are really amazing. Slack indie-rock of the highest order. The audience of our Portsmouth show is probably the best of the entire tour so far. They let us move them around into various positions, we do the 'Tunnel Of Love' and 'The Wall Of Cuddles' and, to top things off, they laugh at our increasingly worrying stage conversation like the nice bums they are. If only they knew that when we go off on insane rants about starting Jamiroquiauiu (sic) cover bands, it's actually not funny because it's the 'brain rot' talking and we really should be going off to hospital and not performing for people. Yes, bands tour way more than us and cope fine. But, whatever it is, it wont wash off. We though we were tough - made of tougher material. Even Duncan broke down. I caught a glimpse of him weeping by a canal. Last night, the broken white motorway road paint was so hypnotic, I began to lose myself in a dream and believed I was a frog on a motorbike. Laura has begun talking to a little stuffed animal named Francis Bacon, that she won from a vending machine at a service station. John's went straight. It's not looking good... what is this rash? We TELL MY MUM I LOVE HER are keeping positivie. ositiosve. Positiviie. Pisitove.
We arrive in Coventry too early to find ourselves locked out of the venue and trapped in what appears to be Springburn during the holocaust, but is, in fact, Coventry town centre. It's, what, minus 403? We go for a walk and get spotted in Starbucks by some dudes who shout our band name at us. We'd have reacted favourably, but we're a week into touring and, as much as it pains me to say it, we're going a bit 'wee-hee'. Call me melodramatic, but it's getting weird. Is this brain rot? Hours later, our good friends Mirror! Mirror! show up and we clumsily try to remember how to act around people who can play rocking, mentally draining gigs and still function as human beings. Instead, we set up our wall of computers and forget ourselves and everyone around us as we fall head first, again, inside our fantasy internet worlds. The backstage room has a life-size zombie figure with eyes that follow us around the room. We're literally terrified of it/him. The gig itself is very loud (soundman turns everything up to eleven and is rad), right in the middle of a really bad student disco and almost pointless. But forget that, it was ROCKTIMES FOR YOU LUCKY LUCKY PEOPLE. Thanks to everyone who watched us. I just wish i could control these... i just wish.
No, not Whigfield, Wakefield. It's near Leeds, apparently. Yeah, i know! We've heard that Wakefield audiences are both odd and rowdy. So we're not too surprised to play, after 46 support bands, to an audience that is both odd and rowdy. It's the first show of the tour where i'm not told to turn my humungous amp down on stage. I go out front during the show and can't hear it. There's a small group of Barnsley football fans shouting "Rab C Nesbitt" at us. One of them tinkles John's nether-regions while he's up on a chair. I break up a pair of twins texting each other during 'Greater Than'. It's all a bit odd. And rowdy. Apparently we go down quite well though (it really was quite hard to tell), so it's all good. Some guy buys 3 t-shirts. Amazing. Paul turns 23 or something, we gather up our bottles of Sailor Jerry and some candy floss, drive off to the Travelodge and drink ourselves silly. Starting to feel weird and zombified...
The first thing that strikes us about The Deaf Institute is just how swish a venue it is. The wallpaper is nuts and the stage is all high up like Madame Jojos in London, but with sloping, arena type seating at the back. It's just the right size too (ie. far too small for my 100w tube amp beast machine - burn!) Despite being rickrolled by the barstaff (no matter how many times we ask or how many times we try to connect, the wireless password "rickastley" won't work ever - haha), it feels great to be back in the land of the living, a town populated by actual fans of our band or creeps who hadn't just crept out the walls to stare at us blankly. We play with Cats In Paris and Dutch Uncles who are both completely rocking bands. The venue is packed and we go down a storm, playing our first encore of the tour. We even pull out 'The Wall Of Cuddles' and wear our daft, 12 pence witches hats. Normal service resumes... for now. A wee bit of dancing afterwards and, at midnight, we sing happy birthday to Paul, who, incidentally, will be the first man alive from Glasgow to ever spend his birthday in Wakefield. Wherever that is.
The M Club in Crewe is gigantic. It's brown trousers time. There's no support band. The PA music is wildly awful. Like, seriously. The sound guy tells us that "students in Crewe don't go to gigs" and, with those sorry, half-hearted words still ringing through the venue come stage time, it's another poor show as we're presented with a handful of blank-faced dribblers, stinking of indifference, spaced out at tables all across the 2000 capacity venue, refusing to show any sort of emotion towards the band as we struggle right from the off to inject any sort of fun or memorable content into their lives for one half hour. We shout at people in the hope they'll shout back. They don't. There's even a guy with a flashing LED t-shirt who wont try and fight us, no matter how much we make fun of him. Perhaps we really should have come on stage wearing the 12 pence witches hats that John had bought for all of us a few hours earlier. Ah well. However, upon closer inspection, some people are actually into it and the night is saved as those who do enjoy themselves all buy t-shirts. Thanks! We pack up the van and leave hoping that when we do return, word will have spread that, yes, live rock music really does exist in Crewe and people there should never take that for granted. Cheer up!
We didn't even know where Wrexham was until we got to Wales. And discovered that Wrexham was in Wales. Sadly, not many people there knew who we were either and we played to a very modest crowd. Still, it was a good show, we jumped around like loonies, climbed up on things and the few people who lasted the night left happy. I think. Not much to remember about the night, other than Paul and I finding a pub with the Celtic game on. Everyone in the band has a laptop now and scenes in the backstage areas are starting to resemble something lifted straight from 'Microserfs', with everyone gathered round, on the internet, looking like we're all programming some fantastic new software together, when, in fact, we're all just playing 'World Of Goo' or looking up that Hackley School band cover of 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' on Youtube. We're used to the funny looks.
We just played Liverpool Music Week, supporting our good friends Johnny Foreigner at Bumper. Another no-soundcheck, rusty, start-of-tour show. We broke down the pointless barrier at the front of the stage and when a guy came to fix it, Calum stroked his hair and some kids kicked it back in again. It was funny. Two stage invasions and another big crowd, who seemed into us, but might not have been. At one point I jumped in the air and pulled my guitar lead out in the middle of my favourite bit of our set. What an utter goon. After laying waste to the stage and befriending a bouncer, I went back on stage with Johnny Foreigner and played rhythm guitar for a couple of their songs. Had a blast. Staying at our friend Ellis' tonight and looking forward to a 'Top Chef' breakfast in the morning. G'night!
ps. Everyone go out and buy the Desalvo album Mood Poisoner. We've been listening to it and it's really really great. It's out on Rock Action now.
Last night, after a weekend of last minute money nightmares, van disasters and general first day slush, we played our debut show in Middlesbrough. My wee sister even came down to see us play. The venue was small and sold out and we rocked a good 'un. Sort of. First night is always a bit rusty. A wee guy came up on stage and played drums for us. He looked terrified. Jen, one of the promoters, put us all up for the night, in beds, with breakfast in the morning. It literally couldn't have been a better start to our three weeks on the road. Thanks Jen and thanks Middlesbrough!
Anyway, I just listened to this, and wanted to post it again in an idiotic attempt to get it on someone's end-of-year list (yeah, end-of-year POOPlist!!!!!!!!!?). It's awf-- I mean amazing. Yes, that's right. It's time to post again the link to THE MYTHICAL NHG RECORD, "BLACK PLAQUE". NHG is David, Calum and ex-drummer James. It's elephant-metal made with the drum, a guitars and the computing. Download it (again) from here, or suffer the same fate as James Woods did: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NRVLN65J
Anyway, with that out in the open (I feel like a bigger man for it), I'm now listening to the title track of the 1977 record 'Going For The One' by prog giants and favourites of mine, Yes. Every other song on this record is utter SHAT (SHAT) but the title track is amazing. What a chorus! So jaunty and optimismistical! HEAR IT IS:
I suggest clicking through to the AKCHOOAL YouTube page for the fucking lyrics. I mean, WHOOOO BOY.
