JE T'ADORE, MOI NON PLUS... THIERRY?!

HI GANG,

We're all sunning our lips right off.

Paris is beautiful, as usual.

Check out how radical it makes David's face:



We'll see some of you at Leeds on Sunday, some more of you at Offset next weekend and the rest of you in October.

YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT, I SAID 'OCTOBER'.

GIRL YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE.

DAN X

UPDATE

hey buddies,
just a quick update on things and how they're getting on!

last week, i was rexrayed and told (once again) that the surgeon had done an amazing job (thats 3 different people that have told me how good this guys surgery was). with any severe elbow injury, it's very important to get the damaged muscles moving as quickly as possible, so they've taken off the cast and given me a sling to hold my arm at a comfortable angle. the muscles were so damaged that i couldn't even move my fingers as well as my wrist, elbow and shoulder. at the moment, i've got my hand moving again, i can move my elbow about 30 degrees but i cant move my wrist at all yet. they thought i might have broken my wrist, but i haven't, but they still can't figure out exactly what's wrong with it yet, which is making me shit myself a little, but i guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.

reading/leeds & rock en seine!:
we are treating these shows as a test to see what i can do comfortably (not only the show but all the traveling etc etc). we don't want to cancel any more shows than we have to, but at the same time, we have to be careful not to push this fucking arm too hard, as that could be an even worse set back! weh!
for these 3 festivals (and probably more) our tour manager and drummer extraordinaire scott simpson will be helping out with extra drumming stuff (he does this for us sometimes anyway) so you guys out front will still have the DRUMPUMPS in yr lovely ears.

the irony is that i've dangled from 15 ft balconies, swung from lighting rigs and rafters (literally), beat ricky wilson at 'do something dangerous' every night for a month and generally been an absolute clown, throwing myself off anything i was able to climb - yet stepping off a 2 ft stage and catching my foot causes all this. fucking typical, eh?

i'd like to thank everyone who has sent me 'get wells' in the past few weeks, it really means a lot and it's made this much easier to deal with. thanks, i love you.

x jbj

The actual best live band in Britain

Quack Quack can't come out on tour with us in October, aw! We've got some awesome alternatives who we're chasing up though.

Meanwhile, here's what you could've won.

LOL

THIS IS THE SECOND FUNNIEST THING OF THE DAY!

http://lacinta.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/is-dananananaykroyd-the-worst-indie-band-name-ever/

Nothing like some angry Canadian to brighten up our day. Hooray!

Spotify playlists

A few months ago we were asked to compile a spotify playlist each for a site, but for some reason or another they didn't get used, so i thought i'd share them with you guys here!

if anything it shows how varied our tastes are (only one song appears twice - can you spot.. [ahem] it?).
1t'5 L1k3 a D1gitAl m1Xt4p3 0r somMaT

JBJ
http://open.spotify.com/user/jbjbjbj/playlist/2wjU2HXWUtE4q4ItXT1r5G
DAVID
http://open.spotify.com/user/gitchops/playlist/0Zm8D45ybhnxRgNgvTCR4G
PAUL
http://open.spotify.com/user/scotttchevrolet/playlist/3AwYnCviDgWCAmnG1Or4ya
CALUM
http://open.spotify.com/user/danananacalum/playlist/4R4bqWoy5Cm8rI31HwaEhE
DUNCAN
http://open.spotify.com/user/knacknud/playlist/4Md0JWVQBAMEZurdKRoVAj

apologies to those of you in countries where spotify isn't available.
let us know what you think!

x x x x x

NATIVE!

OK guys,

You may well want to think about buying this band's music.

They're ridiculously talented and I kinda wish I'd never heard them because they're ruining my life the same way Maps & Atlases did.

Enjoy. And read their blog here. They dig root beer :)

JBJ Hospital Diary pt 3

Friday 31/7/09

I woke up in a cunt of a mood. I hadn’t slept, my arm was increasingly painful and I was still shitting myself about being put under and wondering what I’d do if it didn’t work.

I was told it would be 12pm or “maybe tomorrow” that I’d go in. I got into some Abraham Hicks while on a shit-tonne of codeine and it got my head together a bit. It turned out that I got taken down just before 2pm and panicked in the direction of anyone who came near me: porter, receptionist, anaesthetist, surgeon, you name it. The anaesthetist gave me some ‘calming’ drugs before knocking me out, so by the time it came to it, I thought it was a brilliant idea! “Lets go! Knock me out, Doc!” I was saying.

I woke up to find myself (as I usually do after anaesthetic), swinging my arms about and shouting. My family seem to have a history of having interesting reactions to general anaesthetic, my favourite being my sister waking up and telling the nurse she was “pure… beautiful” before bursting into tears. I, this time, felt very nauseous, had come out in a rash and was generally freaking out in a semi-conscious but vocal manner. My arm felt better already, the same amount of pain but not as ‘wrong’ as it did before, more natural. Or as natural as 4 steel pins holding your arm together can feel I suppose.

I went upstairs, back to the ward and after my new 20 hour fast was given 2 slices of bread, a slice of cheese and a pear, but Colin added to this a fantastic pack of crisps and M&Ms from the machine. We had a few laughs in the ward (actually, i was so wasted that when i think about this, i remember loads of people there and music playing and all that) eventually he headed back to the hotel. For the rest of the night I phoned family etc back home to give updates and watched Mannequin. My sleep was only interrupted once by pain, but my favourite night nurse James sorted me out. In exchange for eye-pieing painkillers, I’d say things in my funny accent at his request, leaving us both delighted.

JBJ Hospital Diary pt 2

Thursday 30/7/09

I was left overnight in this horrible place. Everyone went back to the hotel, I had 2 excruciating rounds of X-Rays and a C.T scan. In the morning the orthopaedic surgeon (Dr Waddell, he as it turns out, is the man) came round and gave me the grim news. I had snapped both bones that run from the wrist to the elbow. They had broken near the elbow and had sheered off a chunk of the humorous bone with them, which was now sitting in among my muscles somewhere, which was the cause of the agonising spasms. He said it was a bad and rare injury, my arm was literally in bits and I had to have emergency surgery to try and fix it.

Soon after, I called my mum and bawled my eyes out, this time over what was happening and how much I was shitting myself. I dunno how anyone with a good relationship with their mother can hear her upset without automatically crying as well, we trigged each other. I dare say being 12,000 miles away from home didn’t help either.

I was put on a fast while I was waiting to be taken for the operation, which was to be as soon as a space appeared, the rest of the band flew onto Melbourne and Colin stayed with me. I was moved to bed 27 in a ward with a beautiful view of the city. I heard of radio stations talking about me, which made me feel both loved and embarrassed.
Dew Process and Secret Sounds sent me a bag of presents and a Superman card, surely the nicest label ever? The ward had an old man coming off alcohol and he made my stay extremely stressful and give me a completely sleepless night. It shocked me how he treated the staff here too, anytime they’d try to do anything for him in the most sincere and patient way, he’d shout and swear at them. Old bastard.

I sent Colin back to the hotel to rest, he hadn’t been to sleep from dealing with cancellations, flight changes etc. and was hang about to make sure I was okay, bless him. That night I got to eat, the operation had been changed to the next day, in the morning, or whenever I could be fitted in, joy. I hadn’t eaten in 20 hours, I got some absolutely disgusting hospital-made chicken stew with potato and horrible brocolli – it was amazing, somehow.

Before I passed out with whatever glorious drugs they had given me I spoke to my only sister, I had to talk her out of flying to Sydney. I also spoke to my boyfriend for the first time since the accident, chilling him out since he hadn’t heard from me in 2 days, then freaking him out by telling him what was going on, and right before he went on holiday too. Started to feel like an international party-pooper of life.

JBJ Hospital Diary part 1

Wednesday 29/7/09

In the Annandale Hotel, Sydney, Australia, during the 2nd song of our set (The Greater than symbol and the hash), I cleared a space in the crowd with my hands before stepping off the 3 foot stage, as far a I can remember both my feet cleared the stage then one was caught on either a photographer’s tripod (of which there were 10 in the small venue) or on a cable running along the stage, I’m pretty sure it was the former.
I hit the floor with my entire body weight on my out stretched elbow, forcing it the wrong way (“hyper-extended” I’ve since learned) I heard a ‘click’ and felt immediate pain, at this point I was only aware of how long I had to go to get back to the drums for the next section of the song, thinking as the pain got worse that as long as I got back for the section where I cue the band into the fast part, I’d be fine. When I stood up, my arm flopped lifeless (and as it turned out, elbow-less) and I realised I probably wasn’t making it back on stage any time soon. I hobbled through the crowd, found our manager Colin and said something along the lines of “my arm just fucking snapped, get me the fuck out of here!” (something he said played over and over in his head for days). The show was stopped and I was taken outside to wait for the ambulance, the muscles started to seize up and as my adrenaline wore off I quickly became a bubbling wreck. I’ve never felt pain like it, nothing else existed but blinding white torture, I would have done literally anything to stop it. By the time the paramedics arrived, I couldn’t stand up, they injected me with morphine on the street and some fans tried to take photos (which was met with proper rage from manager/band/label types), Ryan [McGinness, Bass] came with me in the ambulance where my 2nd or 3rd shot of morphine kicked in, I cant remember much of the journey except Ryan laughing as I (apparently) told the male paramedic that the Doctor who was in attendance at the show had done “fuck all but give me ice” and asked where “sally jesse” was (the other female paramedic with red glasses). As I was being checked in I got given more and more morphine (200mg in total I think), I was completely fucking wasted, I cant even imagine what pish I was talking to Paul (Dew Process) and Colin (our manager) who had since joined us. I waited around for hours for my first x-ray which would turn out inconclusive, while hearing a little boy hallucinating, a girl who had apparently faked her insurance but had swine flu and other miserable screaming noises that make hospitals such joyous places to be.

to be continued. . .