July 30 - Saalfelden
Hey ho. After months of looking forward to this, it's time to get things started. first stop: our hometown Saalfelden, where we're gonna meet to load in the van, make some last preparations and rehearse the first and only time for this tour. Austria may be a small country, but living in different cities all over the place still sucks when it comes to effectiveness as a band, especially with lazy bastards as ourselves... Anyway, we're all stoked as can be, since this will be the first time to the UK for 7yearsbadluck. We pick up Mike at the train station, go swimming and prepare our minds for the upcoming adventure. Getting our shit together takes way longer than anyone has expected, and we don't get into our beds before half past one.





Which is sort of a problem cause the goddamn alarm clock is set to...

July 31 - Rotterdam, Het Pourtgebouw
...RRRIIIIIIIIINNNNNGGGG at 4:00 in the morning. This is really hard. After trying to wake up the rest of the gang (Andy (bass), Tombo (drums), Puddel (merch/sleep), Mike (merch/cider) and myself, Giorgio (guitar)), i have to use a considerable amount of violence, psychologic pressure and threatening to get everyone into our crammed Opel Vivaro. We make it on the road around 5am, and it doesn't take longer than three hours on german highways to get us in that special mood. We haven't toured outside of Austria for a while, but this great feeling of going abroad, looking forward to meeting new people, going to new places - let's say, this general feeling of upcoming adventure - is back. there's nothing quite like it, i have never experienced that sort of excitedness when preparing for any other holiday or travelling. For me this must be a band-only-thing, i guess.







Our route leads us through western germany, flying past the Ruhrgebiet (no speed limits on the Autobahn) and directly into Holland. We haven't been here since almost 5 years...crazy. Directly after the border, we take a piss break. A couple of empty beer bottles fall out of the car, one of them bursts into pieces. We immediately get yelled at by a hysterical dutch tourist bus driver going "Wat is das? WAT IS DAS?" and furiously pointing at the mess we have created. We get scared and meekly clean up the broken glass under the watchful eyes of the 60 old people on the bus. Fucking borderland. After two more hours of highways we enter Rotterdam, drive by the Feyenoord stadium, the harbour area, and arrive at the Pourtgebouw around 5 pm after a 12 hour drive. The sun is shining, the harbour is kinda beautiful (maybe because we don't have any oceans in Austria), and we are even more stoked after entering the Pourtgebow. It turns out to be a neat, pretty small former squat that has been turned into a legal concert location / bar / culture center (?) / apartment. The whole building is right next to a huge and pretty impressive draw bridge.







We meet Kevin Aper who is promoting tonight's show. He is the singer for the dutch rock & roll heroes The Apers and The Jizz Kids, and more importantly, he's an overall nice guy. We feel super comfortable from the start, with free beer and yummy food and good herbal smells in the air all the time. After all, this is holland! We do soundcheck and go outside for a walk in the harbour area...The city has a really nice vibe to it. Kevin tells us tonight's motto is "sleeveless party", so we cut the sleeves off our shirts and start the show around 9:30. A whole bunch of people is already there, and we have a really, really good time on stage (no "stage" actually...we like playing at people's eye level better anyway).







After us, it's the Jizz Kids. People go nuts during their set and i can totally see why: crazy energy, Kevin jumping around like a gum ball and everybody in the room obviously having a good time...everybody check out that band.
After the concert, the party becomes devastating, to say the least. We don't go easy on ourselves. There's tons of people we get to know, like "Pedro, from Spain", and after midnight most of them stand outside the door on the street, drinking, talking, enjoying the warm night, and the whole evening seems more and more unreal to me. Harmonic feeling +10, i guess. After a perfect start for a tour, we go upstairs and crash in one of the housemates' room. I fall asleep with a smile...


Aug 01 - London, House Party
...that lasts until the morning: no hangover! For some reason i'm feeling perfectly fine (i guess Puddel wouldn't agree).



I go downstairs to have a smoke outside when someone enters the front door. As a little morning surprise, two uniformed cops enter the house and come right at me. After explaining i don't live here, i am not the person they are here to arrest ("Are you Martin XXXXXXX?") and, in fact, not even dutch, the two let me go and walk upstairs to look for their victim. What the fuck? When everybody is up and interrogated, we load the van, get a cup of coffee and bunch of evil looks from those cops (who didn't succeed in arresting Martin - whoever that is). Off we go to Dunkerque where our ferry is leaving. On that 3 hour drive through picturesque brickstone towns and the huge flat plain that is Belgium, it becomes pretty evident that The Gaslight Anthem, Off With Their Heads and the Smoking Popes are going to provide the soundtrack to this whole tour. When we are in line at the Dunkerque ferryport, i make an amusing discovery: I forgot my fucking passport home in Saalfelden. Super cool. I get a bunch of bitch slaps, but we still have some good karma on our side: Although we are coming up with the most horrible worst-case-scenarios, the french border guy sends us over to his english colleague ("Talk to my colleague, i don't have time to take care of this now"), the english guy ("Who sent you here? The french guy? He is not my colleague.") who lets us through with only my driver's license as an ID. Stoked again!
The ferry ride is part of the whole adventure, and we stay on the upper decks most of the time drinking beer and enjoying the cloudless day and the salty wind (storm, to be precise).







After two hours, it's the first time one of us drives in the UK. In case you have never been in that situation, left driving IS a bit challenging at first...good thing i have drunk enough beer, so Andy has to do the job. We arrive in London around 7 or so and meet Sarah.



That girl has helped us out so much with this whole tour that we already love her even before meeting her, good thing she's also super nice in person and has a cool house where we are going to stay the next three nights. Today is the only day off on this tour, so after a quick pasta dinner Sarah suggests we could either stay in or go to a house party somewhere in northern London. After the long drive and being rather hungover, we have a hard time deciding...in the end we all go except Tombo, who stays at home alone to watch TV and go to sleep early. At that time, none of us have any idea what he is gonna miss. The fool.
After a 1 hour tube ride we buy some wine and cider at a liquor store. Back on the street, an old bum blesses us, and we give him a can of cider in exchange. Being in the middle of London at night, walking around with a bottle of good (but ridiculously expensive) red wine adds to the surreal feeling that i have. We arrive at the party with no idea what to expect and find ourselves in a dark backyard stuffed with people. Through the window we hear some guys playing a hollering set of acoustic cover songs in the bathroom and loud cheering, while we exchange sips of red wine for whiskey. After a a while, things fall in place: All the housemates are about to move out, so nobody gives a damn about neighbours or police. As if to prove that, some dude named Itch pulls out an ukulele and performs an absolutely amazing, intense set of songs and poems that leaves me pretty speechless. 40 people squeezed into the small backyard, listening to this without a sound or any talk, just singing along from time to time...damn, goosebumps. We find out that many of the people at the party are musicians, and there will be acoustic performances all around. Five minutes later, i stand on a queensized bed in an upstairs bedroom, surrounded by yelling, screaming people, with a bottle of absinthe in my hand, and a girl named Kelly (formerly of No Comply) plays another acoustic set. the crowd literally goes wild, and when Kelly is joined by the lovely El (more about these ladies later) for some songs, the attendance mounts up into a human pyramid that almost touches the ceiling, while the people on the bed (like me) jump around like monkeys. Monkeys with small whiskey bottles, that is.







Meanwhile, Andy spends some time in a cupboard downstairs with another bottle and an astounding amount of fellow drunks. Things start getting crazier and crazier. You see, everyone who spends time with us knows that we are pretty prone to playing acoustic songs whenever appropriate (or even when inappropriate), so i have sworn not to touch a guitar that night. My oath lasts as long as 1am, and half an hour later, i find myself trying to play a fierce version of Sublime's "What I Got" (amongst other classics) with bleeding fingers, standing on another bed in another bedroom stuffed with people singing along.





The party then reaches its climax in the kitchen. I stumble in there just to see Puddel raising a huge salad bowl filled with punch over his head and drinking like a horse, while the enthusiastic crowd chants "Puddel! Puddel! Puddel! Puddel!" at the top of their lungs.



Mike and I decide this is the best party we have ever been to, period. We get to know loads of nice people, there is drinks and smokes in the backyard and so much laughter that i almost collapse at some point. This goes on until 4, and then we lurch homewards, dragging Puddel along like a corpse. The crowd chanting has obviously done him no good, and back at Sarah's we have to undress and put him to bed like a little shitfaced baby. We manage not to rub Tombo's nose into what he has missed until...


Aug 02 - London, Twelve Bar Club
...the morning. Although its been like 5am before we got any sleep, Tombo, Mike and I decide to go to the inner city for some tourist action around 9. Fueled by gigantic cups of coffee with equally gigantic prices, we manage to see some of central London, before it's time to go to Camden Town.





After a short visit at All Ages Records we get some food, drink a couple beers and meet up with Andy and Puddel who have slept until the afternoon. At the market i find a tiny, but fully working acoustic guitar for 30€ for myself and lots of souvenirs for back home. A marketeer talks Tombo and Puddel into buying some legal make believe mescaline, and from then on they won't stop talking about trying that shit later. We go back to Sarah's around six pm. The Twelve Bar, tonight's venue, has a hardcore show going on  before our concert, so we're told there is no need to get there before 11:30pm...weird but true. So we take a trip to Kingston to the Fighting Cocks pub, where we are gonna play the day after, and watch a complete concert before even going to our own show. When we arrive at the Twelve Bar, things turn out to be a little complicated. The sound tech asks us to use the club-owned gear that's already standing on stage, amps, drums, everything. Although we usually hate not playing with our own stuff, we don't give a damn this time and play a rather hectic (and not very good) show. It seems most of the audience were here for hardcore, but after a bunch of songs more and more come back in from the bar, and we even get to give autographs to some drunk. Mission accomplished. Our car has waited in front of the club in the no parking-death zone, but miraculously, there's no clamp. Although the Twelve Bar's owner is a really nice guy, there is just no way of staying out and / or drinking tonight. We go back to Sarah's place. That living room is already like a second home to us, and after Tombo and Puddel finally have to accept their fucked up mescaline substitute is not gonna kick in even after two hours time, we cuddle together on floor, couches and beds, and after ten minutes we're asleep. The last thing i hear is...


Aug 03 - Kingston, The Fighting Cocks
...Tombo's rancid snoring that wakes me up. Not drinking to heavily the night before turns out a great idea. After a healthy breakfast we decide to do what we were talking about the last couple days: watch the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight. Said and done, we go to a big ass Odeon Theatre in Wimbledon, buy tons of popcorn, nachos and ice tea (even candy floss) and off we go...now I'm a true fan of Batman Begins, but i am kinda dissappointed. Maybe I have just had too high expectations, with critics talking about Heath Ledger's "Oscar-worthy" performance as the Joker - i just think that movie is pretty "meh", bit above average, no more. Anyway: We can't wait to play at the Fighting Cocks tonight. we arrive there around 7, set up the backline, meet a bunch of other bands like Milloy who are also on the bill. The Fighting Cocks is the kind of pub/venue i think one only gets to see in Britain. There's a typical wooden, comfy pub interior, but at the same time there's punk music and lots of young people around. Pretty cool bar culture, in my opinion. There is a really cool looking leopard-style pools table, and of course we won't miss the chance to prove how much mainland europeans can suck at that game. Passers-by mildly laugh at our skills.



In the meantime, Mike discovers a passion he has never even known about: Cider.This apple booze stuff is kinda hard to get in Austria, and they only got Strongbow in a couple of supermarkets. Here in Britain, the unexpected multitude of different Cider brands proves to be vicious...Mike, not much of a beer drinker and in need of a tour beverage, cherishes it (way too much, as it turns out later).



This show is promoted by Sarah herself, and she seems to have done a good job: Good bands, bunch of people around, good moods. El, the girl who inducted the Human Pyramid at Friday's party, plays a whole set of acoustic songs, this time on her own. Good stuff, seriously. After that, it's us. I really feel like playing tonight, and although the dark blue light in the Fighting Cocks' concert room is giving us a hard time even seeing our instruments, let alone the frets on our guitars, i'm really satisfied afterwards (besides, we think the blue neon must have made us look good).





We stick around some more and watch Milloy's show. Nice way of getting in touch with an audience: they just open a whole case of beer and give it away for free. Ever seen a horde of desert animals approaching the nearest water hole? You get the picture. Way better than the usual "come a couple steps closer if you like" routine, huh? To be honest: they are a really good band too, so that's OK. After the show's over, we go back to Sarah's one last time. Tombo and Puddel just won't give up, but their stupid cactus "drug" lets them down again. Boo fucking Hoo.



We watch some movie I can't remember now, and i drift off...


Aug 04 - Sheffield, Nelson Bar
...to Sheffield we go!" We have a long drive to do today, so we clean up our litter that's spread all over the house (all sorts of trash, bottles, sleeping bags, Puddel, dishes) in a hurry, say goodbye to Sarah who has been the coolest host one could imagine (thanks for an overdose of party, patience, tourist info and laughter, aside from the unique chance of taking a shower every single day) and head North on the highway. By now we are all more or less used to left driving, no problems there.



So far, the weather has been surprisingly good, with sunshine and warm nights all along, and (maybe for that reason) we agree the landscape is actually far from being as ugly as people kept telling us (sorry lads, they did.). One more thing about Britain that we have noticed during those last days (besides the terrible ale, the overly polite people in the service industry, the funny hats on London cops and the astronomic prices for coffee and diesel) is that if you walk into any given restaurant, chances are pretty good that you'll get an amazing vegetarian option. Same goes for highway stations.



After a 6 hour drive (including a mind-boggling veggie burger feast) we finally reach Sheffield. When we enter the so called "steel city" i am rather surprised: There's lots of green spots, parks, alleys, also the town is built between a couple of hills ("like Rome", someone tells me later that night) which makes it a pretty nice place. Also, I have to say i really dig brick buildings, and in that area, there's tons of them. After a trip to a music store, where Tombo, the berserk, buys new drum skins, we drive down to the Nelson Rock Bar to meet Mike and Justin, tonight's promoters. Justin looks an awful lot like Nick Frost. The concert room is a dark basement, no stage again (yeah!), pool tables pushed aside...just perfect. We do soundcheck and have a couple of beers. You know this has been said a thousand times before, but if you are in a touring band, there is (besides all the crazy stuff that's likely to happen) always some sort of routine that naturally comes with it. You get up, you leave the (mostly cool) people who gave you a place to stay and (sadly) for just one day have become friends, you figure out where to get something to eat, you drive for hours after hours while listening to music, discussing, laughing, fighting with the idiots with whom you are crammed into the car, you make it to your destination, and there you get to know a totally new bunch of (mostly cool) people. Part of that routine is the time between soundcheck and the start of the actual show, time that is often killed with beers, chilling and getting the picture. I can imagine some people really don't like that routine, but i love it. So we have a bunch of beers with Mike and Justin while the first two bands are playing: Copout and Red; The Resistance, both British, both really good.



By the time we get to play, the place is full of people, which is something we didn't expect to happen on this tour and we appreciate even more for that reason. Again, we are damn lucky to be dealing with promoters who know what they are doing. The show turns out to be super fun and super hot, and after an hour or so we contently put down our guitars, covered in sweat. Seriously, is there anything better than small, but packed basement shows, band at the same height as crowd?









We talk to lots of people, have more beers (welcome back to that particular routine) and cool down. Mike eventually announces he has prepared some pasta back home, and being the hungry and drunk pigs we are, we're off to his place in a minute. On the way, we stop to buy beer (cider, respectively) and cigarettes. Next to the liquor store there's a takeaway that has veggie burgers on the menu, and Mike is very pleased that the people he has spent hours cooking for return to the car with 2 huge burgers each.



After a short drive we arrive at Mike's place and make ourselves comfortable in the living room. Of course we can't leave Mike thinking we'd disrespect his cooking efforts, so we devour the huge pot of delicious lasagna (or whatever it is) he has prepared and gargle it down with a bunch of beers. Yum. Afterwards, it's cuddling together, hanging out and watching the first couple minutes of another movie (Star Wars, I think), before my eyelids get heavy and...

Aug 05 - Bolton, The Dog and Partridge
...open at exactly 8 am, with no chance of going back to sleep. Damn. I step out on the porch, meet Mike (how the fuck can he be awake at this time?) and thankfully accept the big cup of coffee he passes me. Coffeine, smokes, showers, regeneration. We leave Mike's palace of hospitality around 1 to take him to work and go to the inner city. Mike works at a bookie's (that scene in "Snatch" springs to mind), so he has to appear with shirt & tie...pretty neat. When we arrive at his new workplace (1st day of work there) he's already half an hour late, nice job 7ybl. We say goodbye in a hurry, and thank him for the amazing night in Sheffield. Then we walk around in the pedestrian area in the middle of town, get some medicine for sore throats and more coffee, buy fresh socks (to fight the no.2 cause of the abominable stench that has crept into our van during the last days - no.1 is mouldy towels) and then ask around for cheap, good places to eat lunch. Someone sends us over to Wetherspoon's. A huge pub / restaurant that is totally stacked with people at Tuesday noon? Should be OK. The food is totally awesome, I wish they had places in Austria that serve local cuisine as well as Italian, Mexican and Indian food. Even the prices are pretty affordable for UK standards. After lunch we head over to Steve's (?) (bass player for Red; The Resistance) apartment. Tonight they will play with us again, so after more showers and some DVD action we leave Sheffield, the not-hideous-at-all Steel City, in a convoy.
The route to Bolton takes us northwest, and even though (or maybe just because?) it's rainy, foggy and cold, we enjoy the drive a lot. The road leads over the so called "Snake Pass" (England, not Arizona, remember), a winding mountain road through green hills, woods and lakes.



I've already come to the conclusion: England IS pretty. At some viewpoint we even get out of the car and take pictures.
We arrive in Bolton and immediately find the Dog & Partridge. Another one of these very British rock pubs, is my first impression. The second: The "stage" is bigger than the audience part of the room. This should be fun. After almost 1 hour of setting up gear and drinking the day's first pints, I realize the guy sitting next to me at the bar is actually Cotty, tonight's promoter. He's a really nice fella who has been doing shows in the Bolton / Manchester area for a while, and has just put on a show for our pals and fellow Austrians in Rentokill, who stopped by at the D&P a couple of weeks before us. Nice thought, to be standing where Jack's sweat must have soaked the floor not too long ago...
The Dog & Partridge has a really cool backyard with tables and even an outdoor stage. Around 8 or so, a bunch of local drinkers show up. One of them, a short, but pretty athletic guy approaches with a pint, and we cheer. After a few seconds it turns out he is an obvious lunatic, as he starts to blabber in a totally incomprehensible idiom (which might also be related to Bolton's geographic location) and insists on licking Puddel's face repeatedly. Allllllllllll....right.
As for the concert: as we start playing after another nice show by Red; The Resistance around 11 pm, there ain't a real lot of people around, but the small audience area is sufficiently filled, we make the best of it and end up having a really good time.



Afterwards we decide to say goodbye to our new friends in R;TR with a little song we improvise on my new Ukulele/guitar and drive over to Cotty's place. We are rather hungry again (duh), so our first stop is a supermarket: welcome to ASDA. For me as an Austrian, entering the biggest supermarket I have ever seen (except maybe a German Wal-Mart I almost got lost in a few years ago) at 3 in the morning is a pretty weird thing to do. We buy food and booze and board Cotty's living room. Unfortunately he has to work tomorrow, so after a few drinks we say goodbye and dismiss the man into his bedroom. Thanks Cotty! No member of the 7ybl travel party is willing to sleep yet, so we celebrate an intern booze-up with whiskey, an old bass guitar and a couple of "Masters Of The Universe" toy figures. Andy falls first and gets decorated, while me and Tombo find a 2 litre pint glass, a real beauty. We fill'er up and try our best, but have got nothing on her.





At about 5 am, Tombo pukes onto his own shoes in front of the house (really nice neighbourhood, btw), and we proceed to inspect Cotty's kitchen. The supply of canned food is overwhelming, there's canned ASDA spaghetti, canned ASDA maccaroni, canned ASDA beans and whatnot. We decide to postpone our drunken feast to another day. Back in the living room, the party continues until 6 in the morning, when I fall...

Aug 06 - Swansea, Bar-Co
...off the fucking mattress, hitting one of Cotty's Xbox controllers with my head. After a few minutes of disorientation I slowly realize where I am. Almost noon, still feels like I just fell asleep. This is the first serious hangover of this tour, guess I've hoped too early I would get away without one...Holy shit. I try to fight my bad headache with a cold shower and partly succeed. We drag ourselves into the car and get on our long way south, to Wales. Three hours or so later, we find ourselves in the middle of some sort of foggy highland area, surrounded by huge grass plains covered with sheep and winding mountain roads full of dangerously demented Welsh lorry drivers.



Things start getting more and more surreal to me. In the middle of this, we plug in an mp3-player and fall prey to a serious NOFX frenzy, wearing Strongbow boxes on our heads and bawling along. A sort of mood we usually refer to as "Autokoller"...good times, though.



At some point our GPS leads us off the highway and into the middle of nowhere, through some spooky woods and over shady field paths with no cell phone reception. When I just begin to doubt we'll ever go back to civilisation, we arrive in Swansea around late afternoon, driving through the harbour area. I'm pretty impressed, the city looks really neat and looked after, with lots of young people on the streets and a good vibe going .. a few coffees and half an hour, the people running the Bar-Co show up, and we load in / meet the other bands. The venue is in the middle of the local nightlife district, and Alex, the promoter, is confident there should be a lot of attendance tonight.
After setting up the backline and the merch table (which is kept in top shape all the time by Mike and Puddel), we order rounds of cider to fight the general hangover. We play 3rd tonight, so while the first couple bands get it on, we are busy finding a place to sleep - since Alex is putting on this show for 5 bands, there's no plan for the night. After a few minutes, relief: Timmy, guitar player for one of tonight's bands, is actually from Swansea and offers us to stay at his parent's house. Hooray! The show is pretty fun, although it seems a big part of the audience is there by chance, not so much for the bands that play. Anyway, I'm enjoying myself.





As often happens, the desperate attempt to escape hangovers by drinking more results in more insobriety. We spend most of the evening standing outside the Bar-Co, talking to everyone we have just met and being astonished by the sheer amount of people on the streets. This is a student city with a good scene, we're told by Jimmy Jazz, a local punk with a strong accent and an even stronger disposition to the beer we have bunkered in our car. And he's right: The streets get more and more crowded. One of the cool things about the Bar-Co is that you can watch the back side of the stage from outside through the front window - being located BEHIND the band. The band that's playing last is ending their last song, when the singer/guitar player climbs some sort of wooden post; through the window we have a pretty good view of what's going on onstage: that maniac throws down his Fender Tele (from almost 2m height), then jumps after it, landing on the thing like a pro wrestler crushing some unlucky bastard's spine. I don't trust my eyes. After a few minutes, he comes out totally exhausted, yet smiling, with huge blood stains on his shirt...he has cut his right fingers by hitting the guitar strings badly. Pretty impressive, especially considering that towards the end of their set there's an attendance of circa 9 people left inside the bar. Dedicated, alright.
At the same time when we decide to go get the van (and of course, park it in front of the venue to visibly load in expensive instruments), mayhem breaks loose on the street. There's hundreds of totally wasted Welsh people, there's fist fights all over the place, and the whole atmosphere turns a bit ugly. Directly in front of the Bar-Co, a cop car comes driving down the street to intervene, and as soon as they get out of the car, the cops are yelled at and thrown at with bottles. Nice situation for loading! We park the car in a dark side street and load in as fast as we can. Some drunk walks towards me and demands my hat. When I tell him repeatedly there's no way I am selling him the hat, he obviously gets furious and yells something I can't quite understand (Welsh, you know); Jimmy Jazz translates: "He says either you sell him the hat or he will take it from you, when you lie in the street with a broken nose." While I'm still considering this, another equally drunk asshole shows up, grabs the first one around the chest and more or less pulls him into the next bar. Holy shit. When the van is loaded and everyone is ready to go, up comes another steroid-fed idiot: "I want your hat!". This time I'm smarter: "Ah, I'm sorry. That hat was a gift from my grandfather. Can't give it away, can I." The moron is deeply moved and shakes my hand..."In that case, keep it, my friend". What the fuck? Don't they have hat shops in Wales?
Timmy, our host for tonight, is a 16 year old guy who doesn't talk much, but drinks a lot. He hops on our van and we leave this battlefield. On the way out of town, we pass the waterfront, and of course we can't let that opportunity slip. Unfortunately, the tide is low, so there's a hundred meters of cold mud between the car and the actual water...also, there's zero light. Andy, who is not exactly sober, immediately removes his pants and tries to reach the sea. The rest is stumbling from puddle to puddle, hysterically shrieking all the time and laughing our asses off. In the end, we all get scared and renounce our nightly swimming action.



Once we have reached Timmy's parents house, we don't trust our eyes yet again: The place is a villa, built on top of some hill, overlooking the shoreline, huge rooms and a big ass kitchen. The living room (as big as my apartment back home) is where we are unrolling our sleeping bags this time, and after having a short look at the terrace / balcony (twice as big as my apartment), we go to the kitchen to catch up on last night's postponed drunk feast. When everybody can't possibly eat any more, we go back to the terrace with some red wine and look on the shore and the clear night sky above...How lucky can you get? A good place to get into the sleeping bag and count sheep. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,...

Aug 07 - Newport, TJ's
...9 am: some noise from the kitchen wakes me up. Now that I think about it, I vaguely remember Timmy telling me that his parents, who are gone for vacation, have invited his uncle and aunt over - to have an eye on the boy. Super cool: Here we are, a bunch of drunk foreign strangers lying all over the living room, about to face Timmy's relatives who should prevent the guy from doing stuff like that. I peek through the kitchen window and see not only two, but about 6 people having breakfast. I decide that attack is the best defence and simply enter the room. After receiving some pretty interested looks, I try to be as polite as possible, thanking everybody for letting us sleep at their house (as if they had had a choice) and apologizing for any bewilderment we may have caused. In the end, they smile at me and ask if I would like to take a shower...nice situation.
The morning is spent with hanging out on the terrace, drinking coffee and playing pool up in the attic.







So far, we have been really lucky with the weather, and today is no exception: swimming time!!! We drive down to a public beach and within 5 minutes, I can't believe I am lying in the warm sand, surrounded by palm trees and listening to waves…after all, this is the UK, right? The water may not be as warm as in the Caribbean, but we go in a couple of times anyway, before we make our way back to Swansea. Surreal feeling +10 again.









Back in the city we find out that Wetherspoon's is a nationwide chain of pubs and there is actually one in Swansea as well. Everyone is enjoying their meals but Mike, who tragically decides to order a vegan Welsh sausage dish…that must be the worst thing any of us has ever tried. Simply awful.



The drive to Newport (Wales again) turns out way longer than expected, there's traffic jams and car accidents, so we don't get there before 6pm.
TJ's turns out to be an absolutely legendary venue in the western UK, at least for punk rock. Every band we can think of has played there, most of them twice…and the walls are covered with posters and flyers of past concerts. The Misfits, The Dickies, Green Day, Nirvana, NOFX…you name it. Mike, being a total music nerd, spends about 1 hour taking pictures.





Tonight there are 6 bands on the bill, with us playing second after a French band of obvious fashion victims. We are pretty amused with their stage acting, guitar throwing, choreographed jumping and so on…modern metal-core can be pretty sad.
After our show we decide to leave immediately, as we don't have a sleeping place yet again.



Well, tomorrow's show in Portsmouth is promoted by El, whom we have met before in London. She organizes a place to sleep in Portsmouth, we say good bye to everyone at the TJ's including Connor, the promoter, and leave for Portsmouth. Long night drive…at 2 in the morning we arrive in a rather quiet and nice neighbourhood, where Harriett, a friend of El's, opens up the door. She's gonna give us shelter the next 2 nights and we can't even express how thankful we are. Lights off, everyone shut up, good…

Aug 08 - Portsmouth, The Fawcett Inn
…morning! Waking up on tour feeling totally comfortable (and sober) is a rare, but enjoyable experience. Harriett makes some great coffee, and we join her on a shopping trip to another ASDA. The afternoon is spent watching Monty Python DVDs, drinking more coffee and playing Guitar Hero (we suck). Harriett, meanwhile, is cooking a huge pot of Indian-flavoured chilli for all the bands…yummy. At some point El shows up and is warmly welcomed by everyone.



We drive over to the Fawcett Inn where we meet the other bands and set up. Another great venue, another cosy Pub with a roofed outdoor area…yeah. We fix some technical problems with Tombo's drum kit and have some ciders. Harriett's chilli gets 10 out of 10 points.








Today is this year's last show in England, and there's a hint of melancholy…although we haven't talked about this yet, I guess we all know we will be back soon.
The show is started by Kelly, whom we have got to know at that infernal London party…within a few minutes, she has the whole pub circled around her. She later tells us that El and her want to do an acoustic tour of mainland Europe sometime soon…if anybody reading this has the chance to see them or put on a show, go for it.



We get to play last today, and we enjoy it a lot. I really gotta remember not to wear long shirts for shows, though…or lose some weight.





Anyways…after the concert we stay a little longer, have some more beers, meet an incredibly annoying (yet good-looking) drunk nurse with her frat-boy boyfriend who keeps telling us that we "have to play at Portsmouth University! Fuck all these pubs, the PU is THE place for shows!" until no one can take it any longer. We take a bunch of pictures with Sarah and El (as if we were ever going to forget these people), then we head over to Harriett's, play some drunk Sing Star (Puddel's personal game 1) with the other bands and eventually walk down to the sea another time.



El gives us a little tour of the harbour area, and although it's freezing cold, we lie down by the water for 20 minutes looking up to the stars. The ridiculously harmonic quiet is only interrupted by Puddel's sonorous snore that sets in after 2 minutes. On the way back we pass by a children's playground, where Andy and I almost break our necks in a swing jump competition.
We get back to Harriett's house around 4 and say goodbye to El. Hope to see her soon. After that, it's time to sleep, cause we have to…

Aug 09 - Herselt (BE), JH De Choke
…"Get up! It's almost 7 and we have to go all the way to Belgium!" Tombo, today's first driver, wakes us up rudely. We stagger around picking up all our shit and manage to leave Portsmouth around 8 in the morning. The drive back do Dover takes us longer than expected, and when we approach the ferryport I am getting nervous again: After all, I have not had a passport during this trip, and I have no idea whether the border officials are going to be as mellow as the ones on the French side. Plus, we are really late…
But I am lucky again, and we are simply allowed to go through. We wave the Dover cliffs goodbye, promising to be back, and after a boring ferry ride and 3 more hours of (now unfamiliar) right driving we enter the small city of Herselt, Belgium. The JH De Choke is a pretty big youth centre with a big porch and some sports facilities in the backyard.







Stijn, the promoter, is not here yet, so while the other bands set up their gear and do sound check, we decide to get sporty and use the small football ground behind the house for a grim 4 persons-soccer game. 30 minutes are enough proof for our miserable physical condition, we realize it's time to change soccer for something less exhausting and walk over to the beach volleyball court…more like our kind of thing, I guess. In the meantime, Mike has to bear the consequences of his tremendous cider consumption. The poor guy is feeling sick to death, catatonically lying in the car almost unable to move with a mixture of a horrible hangover and actual illness.
Around 8 or so, Stijn shows up. He's a super nice guy who has put on this last minute show in a hurry and apparently done a really good job, cause the venue is already pretty crammed. His band (Second Base) is playing as well, which I'm looking forward to. So while the first couple of bands are playing, we regain all the energy we've invested in our soccer battle by eating an amazing pasta dinner and having Belgian beers. Face The Fax are playing a cool set, then Second Base: Super-fast 3-piece melodic HC, I would say. I can't take my eyes off Jeff, the drummer…that guy is just ridiculous. But even though the band is really good, I have to go outside to the car from time to time to check on Mike...he's in a really rough condition, lying in the back of the car and always on the brink of puking. I suppose his days of light-hearted cider-drinking are over.
I personally think we play one of our better shows so far, fuck minor tech problems and broken guitar strings, and the mood in the audience seems to pretty good as well. When the last gig of the tour is over, we put our crap into the van, sit down on the porch and have some final beers (at least that's what we think at the time) before going back to Stijn's place. The plan is to go to sleep as soon as possible, everybody staying sober, so we can leave Belgium at 7 in the morning, with 5 possible drivers to take turns, and won't arrive home too late the next day. After everyone has unrolled their sleeping bags and Mike is safe and sound in bed, Stijn offers us to have another beer in the kitchen. Tombo, Puddel and (obviously) Mike decide to go to sleep, Andy and me go "Ah, the hell. Why not?". Stijn then produces a ice-cold keg of Desperado's (beer with tequila) an tells us that Rentokill who were on tour in that same region previously, have spent a couple of days at his house drinking Desperados, and he has just this one keg left…what can you do. With the resolution of having one single beer, two at the most, we open the keg.
3 hours later Andy is drinking rum out of a salad bowl with party goggles on, the Desperado's keg lies on the floor, empty and forgotten.



A friend of Stijn's called Birte has come over, and by 5am we have all reached that level of dull wisdom that is the perfect base for deep philosophical debate. At some point (6am) Andy is sleeping in Stijn's father's water bed, and I stumble back to the living room, falling on some couch, where I…

Aug 10 - Post-tour depression, AUT
…am woken up by Tombo, Puddel and Mike half an hour later. They are very amused to find out that neither I nor Andy are capable of driving any vehicle (not even a bike, for that matter) for the next 10 hours. Nonetheless: We leave Herselt at 7 in the morning. Tombo and Mike emerge as true heroes by taking the first turn, and by the time we wake up, it's late afternoon, and we are almost in Munich. Tombo, in a gigantic effort, has driven all through Belgium and Germany for over 8 hours…if I were a little less hung over, I suppose I would have guilty conscience. I offer to drive the rest, but now his ego is in the game, he decides to finish what he has started and drive all the way back to Saalfelden. After a superhuman 11-hour drive we arrive back home, where this short, but incredible journey has started.

7ybl would like to thank everyone who made this possible by helping out with shows, food, places to sleep, by playing with us, by singing along or by simply hanging out:
Kevin @ Rotterdam, Sarah @ London, all the lovely people we have met in London, Kelly, El @ Portsmouth, Mike & Justin @ Sheffield, Cotty @ Bolton, Alex @ Swansea, Connor @ Newport, Harriett & Azzam (hi!) @ Portsmouth, Stijn @ Herselt and all the amazing people and Bands we have met. Sorry for taking so much time with this diary, I just felt an urge to go into detail (as I usually do). If you came across one or two grammar mistakes, go fuck yourself. If you happen to be the bass player for Red; The Resistance and your name is NOT Steve, i deeply apologize. We have played with about 30 bands in those 2 weeks, and there's no way I can remember all the names correctly...

Even if it's only for 2 weeks, touring is the best thing for any band to do. We all have commitments back home, sometime I think it's for the worse, sometime for the better; nevertheless, I think it's safe to say we will be back to the UK within conceivable time. Hugs,
Giorgio & 7ybl