We’ve been toying with the idea of
being a real band for some time. We went some way towards it
this weekend, popping our festival cherry with the Wilsonic crew in
Bratislava.
Having people be nice to you is weird,
right. I might just be a hard, cynical modern woman, but it is definitely
not something I am used to. Playing gigs in London, a lot of people
you meet think/act like they’re doing you some kind of favour by allowing
you to breathe in their airspace let alone giving a slot on their rota
at some beer-trodden dive in the backstreets of town. We were once emailed
to be told that we had made £9, but because we’d given flyers to
people who weren’t coming to see us , the promoter was keeping that
£9. Seriously.
So, arriving in Slovakia; being picked
up by Lukas; staying in a nice hotel; being fed and watered well; having
a stage team of ten. All pretty new. I balanced my natural defensive
tendencies gently against the feeling that this was really how it should
be. The Wilsonic crew were welcoming and attentive and it made
a nice change.
The gig itself passes for me in a cloud
of excitement; nerves; giggles. My riser wobbles, annoyingly
out of sync with the beat for 'Soho Was Always There For Me', with interesting results. But the
sounds on stage are clear and crisp, and in more than one song I get
the tingle down the back of neck that reminds me why I think we’re
a little bit magic.
And in the end/You almost give up the ghost/Because love's a most/Elusive property...
Halfway through ‘Lights in the Sky,’ I see a couple making out, moving…no …grinding in time to
the song, and I try not to catch Joel’s eye 'cos I’m sure that he
and I will explode laughing. Without wanting to be a perve, it was strangely
satisfying to see.
See?
In an act of rampant Xenophobia…or
charming thoughtfulness, we share dressing room space with another
Brit, Trouble over Tokyo, whose album ‘Pyramids’ is pretty
damn good. You should go here to decide for yourself, but I like.
Bratislava : great city. It has it’s
own UFO. You have to call it an ‘oofo’ in Slovakian. It sits astride
a bridge and for a few Euros you too can see what it’s like to be
an alien. Kinda. 'I for one welcome our new insect overlords,' says Gbenga.
No heroic death defending humanity for him. Communism had it’s failings,
I guess we can all admit that, but the architecture was not one them.
The airport, the trams, the concrete. All ace. Then there’s the older
bits, with plaques saying ‘Mozart played here.’ Pretty awesome.
I’m not a Slovakian history buff, but the city was certainly proud
and beautiful.
Meanwhile we discuss at length what
we like about being musicians. We all like the music, obviously. None
of us feel like we could live without it. Joel feels born
to the job, mainly because he likes sitting around and reading/sleeping.
The waiting around makes me twitchy, but I reckon I could get used to
it or find things to do in the down time. Gbenga loves all of it. Grin.
We then work through Marriage, epistemology, fundamentalism, rapa chicken.
No really. In the Aupark (shopping centre) there’s a fast food place
called rape-a-chicken. Berkurk. Flap. Quite.
I wanna sample the Ryanair trumpets
that play when you land. Fucking amazing. Shamelessly cheap.
[x sarah]