Or "How we defeated the French and found our way to Zurich".

"Kas, we have to get out of here, now. This isn't a joke, the old boy has a gun, man, I think he's going to kneecap both of us!" I shook "la Balance" roughly by the lapels. The bar staff were looking at me shiftily and one of them was glancing nervously towards the door security, ready to say the word if these two men of Ecosse started any trouble.

Kas straightened up his jacket, turned back to his drink, and after a pause said calmly, "We have to leave anyway. Guess how much I just spent on three gin and tonics? Twenty-seven fucking Euros, that's how much. This tool here...", pointing at the barman who was standing approximately three feet away, but, like most of the people we had spoken with earlier this evening, doing a remarkable job of pretending not to understand a single word we were saying, "...this tool here told me it's because it's after five in the morning."

How did it come to this? Our peaceful two days off in the relaxed city of Nancy were starting to take on an atmosphere that was neither relaxed nor peaceful. A little earlier that day we had arrived at the Place Stanislas, a square of not inconsiderable architectural prowess and gold-leafed austerity, to enjoy a coffee and croque-monsieur in the sun before dandering around town looking for a suitable tavern within which to spend the first of our days off, knowing that the following day had none of the hinderance of travel or performance to inhibit our evening. We managed to find a place in a small square where half of us stopped for a grande biere and nibbles, before reconvening with the others, who had made it as far as...the other side of the square.

Around this point we split up proper, some people heading back to the hotel for a sleep whilst some of us headed out for a dance. With hindsight I think I should have been in the former group, but predictably opted for the latter. The omens for the day had not been good - even getting my bag out the van earlier had resulted in broken glass and Hamburg's finest "Fritz-Cola" being deposited over almost all of the clean clothes I had left from Utrecht. However, I took this to be a sign that things could only get better, a la D:Ream's 1994 hit single. I also chose to ignore the images this threw up of the 1997 re-release (John Prescott dancing etc.)

On the subject of bad dancing, we found ourselves into a club and ordered some beers, before partaking in a little of it ourselves. Things start to get a bit hazy here, not due to alcohol but the effect of standing in the "smoking room", where it was almost impossible to see more than a few feet due to the cancerous fug. It was here that I entered into a debate with an animated Frenchman about the British government's policy towards Europe. At this point it would of been wise to point out that I don't particularly have an aptitude for the French language, but reason had gone out the window so I thought I'd give it a bash. 


What did I say? Find out in tomorrow's exciting installment...

BR xxx

First of all, a big thank you to all who came to our wee early-Christmas party type gig at Cab Vol on Wednesday! Also massive thanks to the awesome Withered Hand and Jesus H. Foxx, and an honourable mention for Tallah who joined us for a hastily arranged encore, carrying a tray of whiskies. Spot on!

Well aside from fun-times-had-by-all shenanigans last week, we have been up to a wee bit of behind-the-scenes action, trying to put together a ... *drum roll* ... second album. With the last set of tunes there was a certain degree of editing applied "on the road", as things tended to get more streamlined and gradually changed the more we played a tune live - this time it's a bit different as we are trying to be more...ummm...self aware? Self-editing? Who knows. As a very wise man once said, it's as much about what you don't play, as what you do. So the hammer-and-tongs, kitchen sink approach is out. I'm thinking about cutting the drums altogether and moving onto full time banjo and harmonica. It seems I'm the only one thinking this however.

And so Christmas is nearly upon us and we will be taking a break from gigs for a few weeks, returning in January to play Eurosonic in Holland, bloated and full of sherry, whisky and mince pies. The most exciting news so far for next year is that we are going over to SxSW in Austin, Texas - already getting excited about this, and it's not even 2010 yet...I've never been to America, I hear that everything is pure massive over there, and they have all different words for stuff 'n' that. Only they're like the same words, but they say them different. Weird.

2010...it seems like only yesterday we were all waiting for the planes to fall out the sky as the Millenium Bug unleashed it's reign of disaster at midnight on the 31st of December. I'm starting to feel old these days...anyhoo, over the next few days I'm going to be finishing and sticking up various old blogs that I haven't got round to completing these last few weeks due to one thing or another, starting tomorrow evening with a rampage around France, complete with imaginery guns and giant conkers and everything. Mental.

In other news, our forum is still running at www.brokenrecordsband.com, feel free to pop in and spout some jibber-jabber at your leisure, it's still in it's infancy so the more the merrier.

See yis tomorrow an' that, ken but aye but etc. Yeah?

BR xxx

After the tour we spent four days barricaded in a house in Cragganmore working on new material, aided by some horrible weather outside, a woodburner and several bottles of Balvenie. All in all it seemed to be pretty productive, and we demoed (is that a word?) a load of stuff on Arne's funky 2-microphones-sellotaped-together system. You want the drums quieter? Simply move them further away. Old school. We headed for home on Tuesday and had a few days of banal call-centre tomfoolery before we commuted to Glasgow on Saturday morning to record some tracks with producer Tony Doogan. After many hours of drum set-up and adjustment (in the process missing Scotland beating Australia on the telly in the other room), we finally got the rhythm tracks, fuelled by Nescafe and Lidl's Mars-a-like bars, before heading home for the night. Sunday saw us back to the studio on Argyle Street for piano, guitars, and assorted bits and bobs, with takeaways ordered in and difficult decisions being taken as to how far to push certain guitar effects before we were deemed to be taking the piss. Prawn-cracker-tacular.

Monday (I never joined a band to make a daily commute on the M8 you know...) saw us back through for strings and a fantastic curry, acoustic guitars and biscuits, vocals and so on. After some 20-odd hours of doing nothing I got to do a minute and a half of tambourine, then it was back to coffee and listening to the same tune over and over and over again until it made no sense anymore. Luckily at this point the middle bit (technical terminology, do try to keep up) of the desk guttered and died like a novelty candle, and we had to adjourn with the mixing left for another time. I say luckily as it's probably for the best to take a break from the damn tune before mixing, I for one couldn't tell the difference between right and wrong any more. That could have been down to a dose of McVities-itis though, brought on by an over indulgence of Hobnobs. Choc' and roll...

Anys hoo, here's a link to a wee bit footage from BBC Rapal before I run off at the mouth (too late?)...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/alba/radio/rapal/sessions/broken_records.shtml#

I know it looks really Gaelic but bear with it, the songs are still in English, ken...

BR xxx

Hello everybody,

We're really excited to be able to announce that we will be playing a show back in Edinburgh on December 9th at Cabaret Voltaire. As we haven't played on home turf since August, we can't wait for this night. Further details will sent out shortly, including our excellent support acts, ticket details etc. It looks to us like it's going to be great, so come along and share in some good old christmas spirit.

BR

We stayed in the Beggars flat after the Bush Hall show, partaking in a small carry out and sitting up long into the night. I arose earlier than I though on Friday as the clock in there was set to some random time which had no bearing on reality, so after a shower decided to go back to bed fully clothed and await the call to leave for Bristol, hoping to spring gazelle-like from the supersized duvet and straight into the van. However, I am no gazelle so it was more of a slow shuffle down the stairs but hey ho.

Bristol was good fun, playing in The Cooler club, then out with Tigers That Talked for a beer afterwards. We were staying near Birmingham and arrived back quite late on, then headed to Kelso on Saturday for our first gig in the borders as part of the new Borders Music and Comedy Festival. We were in the Tait Hall which is a big old space with a good big stage, although the size of the hall somewhat overpowered the crowd, it being the first year of the festival the attendances were still pretty low. That is not to detract from the fact it was a great show and Ian "Local Hero" Turnbull got some humourous applause as he headed out to do the merch desk, whilst I whistled the Mark Knopfler track in the background...

It was a bit odd to head home that night, arriving as we did around midnight, while still being in the middle of the tour. Usually when you are away you don't really need to consider the day to day stuff like bills etc., and it kind of removes your focus on what you're meant to be doing a bit ("post-tour blues", mid-tour...) But it is nice to get your own bed! Sunday saw us to Glasgow for the Oran Mor, and we went across early to do some studio perusal for the new single/album recording sessions.

Monday was a day off, which I spent doing some laundary, buying a mop and subsequently mopping the kitchen for the first time since we moved in (I know, I know, it's a disgrace), and generally bumming around drinking some great coffee and eating pizza, then we headed to Perth on Tuesday to play at the Perth Theatre, a really nice setting, albeit a theatre so it was all seated. We tried to up the "enjoyment level" today as the feeling was things were getting a bit flat after Glasgow, and it seemed to do the trick. We encored with A Promise, for which I had a quite harsh line from this week's episode of Panorama stuck in my head (I won't say it here but if you pop onto the BBC iPlayer and have a listen you'll know what I mean, they used a few tracks as part of the backing to a Miscarriages Of Justice episode...).

We stayed at home again that night but then got back onto the "tour proper" yesterday, heading up to Cafe Drummonds in Aberdeen, a great wee venue with a very loud stage sound which was a lot of fun, and the crowd seemed up for it despite it being a Wednesday night and having had to brave the horrible weather conditions to get there. Some even went as far as missing their last trains home (hardcore!) as we started a bit later than the previous nights on the tour. By the time we had got everything out down the back steps and spent half an hour fannying about as is now traditional, we didn't arrive to the house at Cragganmore until after three. Although we did spend a bit of time driving round looking for it - Rory at one point actually going into the nearby distillery for directions, where they seemed to be doing some late-night barrel work. We found it in the end though and after a small nightcap Balvenie hit the sack for a well anticipated sleep.

This morning (well, afternoon...) was time to go to Inverness for the Ironworks, our first time at this venue and it is a cracking place, with a good big stage and plenty of monitors and coffee and suchlike. Woohoo! On at nine so just time for my delicious *cough* microwave thai curry from the Coop, a Double Decker and a shower.

Thurso tomorrow, Friday 13th...ooooooooo

BR xxx

So, with my lowdown on the latter half of the European tour still languishing somewhere in the dusty channels of my decrepit hard-drive back in Edinburgh, it appears we have hit the road again... Tuesday night saw us at The Duchess in York, a town famed for it's minster and Viking Centre (a feature which it shares with Largs, helping make Dave feel right at home). It is of course also reknowned for that fantastic confection, the York Fruit.

We were playing with support from locals Stop Motion and the Leeds-based Tigers That Talked, and it was a good night all in all regardless of a pretty meagre attendance (indeed, the town had all the bustle of a rainy Sunday morning in Edinburgh, ie. deserted, so no surprises). That night we headed to Doncaster, Travelodging it (infinitely more comfortable than their European counterparts), and had no great rush to get up in the morning so everyone caught up on some sleep Wednesday morning. It was a reasonably quick drive to Liverpool, where we were playing in the Masque Theatre. We didn't know any of the details for the day so when we rounded the corner and discovered that the Masque Theatre was in fact a cunningly disguised Barfly, scene of a pretty miserable day last time we were here, it raised a few chuckles. We parked up and went for a coffee, Kas receiving a phone call from the promoter to let us know that the gig was still on and that we were to load in at three, to which the reply was, "That's great, we're sitting outside anyway". About ten minutes later the heavens opened and we typically had to load in in a deluge. It turns out that the Masque has put some effort into improving the venue since it was a Barfly, although we were playing the only stage we haven't already done there, the tiny podium in "Ink" which is off the downstairs bar. With some careful arrangement we managed to get everyone on the stage, I was on a raised corner surrounded by stacks of amps with just my head sticking out and no monitor which was a bit like sitting in a washing machine. There were a dozen bands on the three stages and the place was buzzing. We didn't start until near midnight, and it was a good banging set which was surprisingly fun after our reservations of the afternoon.

We stayed in Stafford last night and are currently sitting backstage at the Bush Hall in London, having had a greasy tea of chicken burger and chips. Fun times! Bristol tomorrow. Over and out.

BR xxx