We're in the dressing room in Birmingham. The 02 Academy is easily the nicest venue we've ever played. Not nice as in historically important, or architecturally grand. Nice as in it's got heating (a rarity these days - it'd seem the UK live music industry is leading the way in reducing carbon admissions by not turning the f**king heating up) and it has multi-coloured urinals. Its like pee-ing on one of those 'atmos lamp' things from the gadget store.
 
Stephens playing some awful awful riffage on the guitar, oh hold on, he's onto weezer now. I met Rivers Cuomo from Weezer once, he was REALLY rude. But Pat the dummer was lovely. Maybe Rivers was on bad form. Anyways, where was i? Oh yeah, steven... he is a library of bad emo 'hits'.

 
(check out those gloves)


Its been the best 36 hours of banter we've had on tour. Im pretty sure it's going to end in punches though. These things always go too far. Stephen kicked Owen in the nuts in the van, cant remember why now. But it was deserved. Probably.

oh hold on a second, stephen's onto Death Cab for Cutie now. Maybe he's wasted behind that kit. His seat broke last night during the first song with the Answer. It kept slipping down until he was just a forhead playing the drums.
 

*gig time*

What the hell is that noise? Seriously? It sounds like someone has walked a donkey into the dressing room, led it into the toilet with the promise of carrots and grass and then strarted to punch it in the face with a bag of wriggling cats.

Seriously. what the hell is that noise?

*investigates*

Stephen's boking. All that emo riffage has made even him sick, or it could be the pizza he had 15minutes before he went on stage.
 

He's ok now. Apparently he 'cant be sick like a normal person' so he has to make noises to help get the boke out. Like a horse. Horses can't be sick. Well they can, but their necks are so long they have problems getting it up. You need to rub their back and squeeze the boke out like you're eating a calypso, start at the bit where the neck meets the body and with both hands bring the boke up. But dont eat it like you would with a calypso, it's horse boke, it'll make you sick. Then you'll both be boking. The horse, you, boke everwhere.
 
 

The gig tonight was great. A huge circle mosh pit and people on the front row singing along to the words. Good work Birmingham. You dont have a 5 star hotel but yer crowds rock.

Lots of love
General Fiasco x

Tues, 12.45pm 
Tour Manager - Here that back tyre's getting close to being illegal.
Tech - Really? Ok, we'll change it tomorrow.


Wed, 9.30am

Van - *BANG!! FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP WOBBLE WOBBLE FLAP FLAP BANG BANG*
Band - *AAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH*

"What the f*** was that?"

'That' was the wheel on our van exploding. Literally blowing itself apart. It had had enough of all the bad jokes and badly packed merch cases it was having to carry and it failed. Big style. We were on the motorway, doing a modest 60 in the slow lane. It was about 20mins into a mammouth drive to Manchester from Portsmouth and we'd planned to get a new tyre fitted after an hour or so of putting some miles under us.
It didnt work out like that.
We pulled over to the hard shoulder and band and crew got behind the crash barrier. Safety first! I'm not sure Enda knew entirely what was happening at this point. He'd fallen asleep in the front as soon as we set off and probably thought he'd slept the whole way to Manchester. Wrong! You've been sleeping 20minutes and we've just blown out a tyre. Thankfully it wasn't raining...


...it was hailstoning. Yup, hailstones. Actually when we first stopped it was a blue sky but the Four Horse Men of the apocalypso saw us and decided to make our already balls morning even more balls. Within a few minutes the sky had blackened like the end of days and it started absolutely pelting down.


 
(The rain targeted Stephen...they don't get on)


 
(The busted wheel)


Our hero, Tour Manager Darren started doing things to the van. Then he started fixing it. Boom boom. Sorry. It really was hammering down as Darzo crawled under the van and jacked it up, removing it's sick shoe.

A few minutes (45) later and off we set. All fixed. Sweet.

So we're in Manchester tonight for the first night of the Answer tour. The room is great. The stage looks great. The Answer are great.

That's it. We're stopping. Why continue? We've seen the future and it's not where we were heading (is that the right use of where and were? Why not just have one 'were / where'? Simplify it all.) Anyway, the future is in a 'Leisure Park' south of London and it has nothing to do with what General Fiasco are... or should i say 'were / where' doing.

It all started as the night was about to wind down. Our schedule was wrong. We thought we had a gig, we didn't. So we were (?) sitting in the lodge at last orders when in he came. A new age musical Knight, bringing his techno-ey message.

Guys, what are you doing?
Nothing! We protested, acting all guilty.
How would you like to go to a super club?
well...I mean...
It's got a smoke machine AND lasers!

We'd heard of both and Stephen said he saw a smoke machine in the limelight in Belfast once, but both, together? Surely not!

We had to check this out. a 'Super Club'. Smoke, Lazers. Both maybe going at the same time! We finshed our depressing beers, brushed our teeth and headed out into the wilderness...the Travelodge Car Park and over to the 'Super Club'

Past the Corsa's with Spoliers lifted from Formula 1 cars and Saxo's with Alloy Wheels worth more than the cars they're attached too we reached the new Cathedral of Music at which we were / where going to worship...

Never in our lives had we such a thorough security check. I'd have preferred if he'd have taken me on a date first, but no. Straight in, no kissing. Unless i had drugs hidden in the depth of my grey heart (this was a different body part but i've removed it as it was a bit boke) he'd have found them.

In we went. What to expect? Would we be able to handle it? Would it be absolutely balls?

Yes, yes it would.

This had not been a good day. We had somehow got the gig wrong by an entire day. we raced to get to nowhere for no reason. We raced to get to a cinema to see a balls film for £7676325 and then we raced (strolled) to the 'Average Club'. One scary guy with a laser pen (yup, that's right a pen) does not mean you have lazers. They had smoke. It came from a small box under the stage. We didnt see but we're pretty sure every once in a while a mouse lit up a tiny cigarette and with no windows as an option blew the smoke in his tiny puffed cheeks into the main room. the main, bleak, empty, cold, room.

When all this started the band's days, and those of the pe0ple closest to them, were often filled with day dreams. We will join a band, we will see the world. We will leave Belfast in the middle of the night and we will return, months later, with tales we will never forget, memories that will always be with us, good times, great times. Not once...not once did anyone of us think that at 1.30am on a saturday night we'd be watching an angry man with a lazer pen point it at 23 dancing souls in a super club with a smoking gerbil. This memory will never fade. sadly.

 

Glasgow today, and it's freezing! No one slept too well last night. Night off because of the cancelled show in Edinburgh so team Fiasco went to the cinema. 2 hours of fear followed. A movie involving Owls from space kidnapping people in the middle of the night in Alaska. Bad times. Afterwards everyone went back to the hotel bare and scared each other more with tales of abductions and the like which somehow ended up on the subject of Japanese Pornography and why it's so extreme.



(Official Movie Poster)

The reason why we were busy chatting and not busy drinking in the hotel bar was because the Barman was THE most ignorant barman we've ever met...and we've met (and been) quite a few ourslves! Here's some of the things he did before he served us...

- counted the change in the till. 
- emptied the bin behind the bar
- collected the glasses on the bar
- took a phone call
- left the bar twice, for unknown reasons

One of the GF team at this point had went from anger to laughing, like the time a woman tried to use a normal bank card (with no pin) in the chip and pin machine in Asda while eating a chicken drumstick. Then we had the great idea of phoning reception and getting his attention this way, but thankfully he finally decided to pour some pints.

It was late and we really should have been in bed but we werent for 2 reasons. 1) The hotel was colder inside than out. That's quite a trick. How do you even do that? Secondly (& thirdly) the beds were tiny. Properly small. and the duvets smaller. It was like sleeping under a hand towel, and then when you'd move to try and put both legs or shoulders or arms under the hand towel at the same time you'd fall out the f**kind bed and onto the floor.


 
(The hotel beds, except ours didnt have wee protection barriers)

So all in all Edinbrugh was a disaster. But hey, Glasgow now and tonight should be lethal!


 

(View from the venue)

 


 

We can't go on like this. Its only day 2, well 3 now (it's actually day 4 by the time we've got round to putting this on Myspace!). Maybe if it wasn't Liverpool we'd have given ourselves a break but its just too easy to go out in that city. And £1 a drink! I thought that was illegal. So yeah, last night was day 2 of the enemy tour. Liverpool Uni. Another great gig. Then out to 2, 3, 4 bars? Stephen tried to trick a guy into buying him shots but it back fired and for a minute it looked like it was going to be a bit Royal Rumble-esque. But by the time Stephen had put his Ultimate Warrior tassles on it'd calmed down. Pmar went missing. Jimmy and Darren went home early like the lazy, party-shy, secret lovers they are and the Stratherns rolled home (to a travelodge) around 4am.


(That guy's lucky Stephen has so many tassles to tie)


We've just stopped at a bakery in a pretty grim part of Liverpool. On the upside a bacon butty and bottle of water was £1.85 and we are on our way to Edinburgh (Not now, we wrote this yesterday! All the tenses are out of whack!). It's going to take hours. Hours!! Turns out Enda was drinking Brandy last night. Do they still make that? Who drinks that? The last time I saw anyone drink Brandy was 1999. Maybe they didn't have any Port or Sherry for him. Weird. It was probably £1 a glass tbh.


 
(Enda, Yesterday)

 
So it's today now. Tuesday. Oh last night...well, we had a night off in Edinburgh. Here's the high (low)-lights...

- Stratherns sat in
- The rest of team Fiasco. Stephen + Crew went to a bar that sold more £1 drinks.
- Stephen laughed so hard at people falling off their skateboards and BMX's he nearly boked
- These people were on TV. IN the bar. He didn't go out of his way to laugh at other peoples misfortune. But we're pretty sure he would
- After the 'one drink' we went to a takeaway that only served food that could be deep fried. (this is the truth, not a lie)
- MR Tour Manager got a double cheese burger, in batter.
- Mr Tech got a Chip,
- Mr Co-Manager got a deep fried chicekn Burger
- Mr Stephen Leacock got a deep fried battered saugsage in a bap.

Told you they were low-lights.


 
(Mmmmmmm!)


So today...woke up to the news that the Edinburgh show was cancelled. Time for a swim. Seems like the idea of Slides and Fun with water hasn't made it to Edinburgh yet...or maybe we're just rubbish at google searches but we ended up in a pretty deppressing craic-free 'you must swim in an anti-clockwise direction in either the fast lane or slow lane' type of place. Where were the footballs? Where was the Lazy River? Where was the FUN!?!? and they closed at 3...careful now, don't want to be having no fun all day do we! So we went into the sauna and used a full bucket of water on the coals so as it felt like our eye balls were turning to dust. Oh, also, it was such a no-fun place they made you put protection on your shoes in case you got the floor pregnant from walking on it.


 
(Protection)


So that's pretty much it. Night off again tonight so we'll probably go soak up some of Edinburgh's cultural heritage...or go to the pub with the £1 drinks and get another Batter Burger.

GF x

PS Can you tell we've ran out of batteries for the Camera?