ok, thought I'd do a quick write up of the rest of the gigs we did in 2008 after the kaiser cheifs tour. just to wrap the year up (pics of both tours are in our pics by the way). couldn't decide on beverage to join me on this touch-type adventure but plucked for a beer called "Bavaria" which is curiously from Holland. Am I confused or is Bavaria in Southern Germany? I may be confused. nonetheless the beer is total shit. I would say flat as piss but I've never had the misfortune to taste piss though I'm regulary curious, especially when dehydrated and it's ultra coloured, or post barroca, you just wonder more then don't you. enough...
Exeter: Made the long journey south in our new replacement van, got some kfc from a brummie with a very high voice. Arrived at the venue to find pasta waiting for us. A real delight. Gig was excellent too, the hub is a nice little venue and there was a lot of people there, some having seen us with the chiefs which was a big compliment, as exeters a right trek from anywhere we played with KCs.
London: Death Disco seemed to die a death later .....it's shitpuntime), but fortunately we were on first to a full room. Got caught in traffic on the way down, the motorway freed up just as we were joining a queue on the diversion. RUBBISH. Got there 5 minutes before our stage time to be told we have to go on 5 minutes early. I pulled my disgusted face, which is a bit like the face I pull when I'm checking if I need a wee, but a bit less intense. Fun gig, no space on stage. Slept on a very cold floor.
Bristol: The Louisiana is marvelously carpeted upstairs. Played with a sweet band called Jump Ship (http://www.myspace.com/jumpshipuk ). Sounded like you might expect a band from Bristol to sound like (ie. a bit trip hop kind of). There's about 10 of them in the band or something, check them out.
Tunbridge Wells: A very posh town, and a venue that used to be a public toilet. But it seemed everyone was at halloween parties because they sure as hell weren't here. you win some you lose some I guess. Completely awesome guesthouse after though. all got one room and it felt like a school trip. talked about girls and everything.
Portsmouth: Bruised egos repaired with a sold out gig. The band before us opened their gig with "come out from your shelters it's the absolute belters" and then played some serious sex pistols style punk whilst wearing shades and a union jack vest. a set of portsmouth fans went ape shit at the front and some blokes tooth flew onstage. the absolute belters are actually dead polite and the lead singer sounds like danny dyer when he talks but we were still bricking it. strangely fear brings out the best in us and we did a sweet gig. first proper bout of head hurting from shaking it about too much. large skull, small brain?
York: Come home to the duchess, big crowd, now on home territory I fall back into sounding like a dickwad on stage. say something about touring with the chiefs, which everyone knew anyway. idiot. played a good gig though. hoodwinked everyone including ourselves with an encore. everytime we go to york people shout for more after the last song so we decide to play to it and when we do there's just mass confusion. it was like a scene off spinal tap. Anyway excellent return and got to play with former homies the runaway sons ( http://www.myspace.com/runawaysons) who are ace as are dead rebellion ( http://www.myspace.com/deadrebellion).
Birmingham: First journey to birmingham, see some excellent buildings, and very confused by format of gig which seems to be a cross-venue festival of sorts. play gig in worst ironed slacks of all time. meet the young knives who have finely pressed slacks and are charming people. Watch guillemotts who are AMAZING. watch young knives who are brill but I couldn't remember well as was pretty hideously drunk off very few pints. probably refer to myself in the 3rd person and demand that the van stops on the hard shoulder a couple of times so I can urinate. classy diva.
Derby: support act is a guy called james who is basically excited about everything. asks my advice on whether to wear shades onstage or not. it's a complete no-no for me but he's clearly excited about what are some fine shades so I suggest a comprimise of half-on half off. he follows it through. it's amazing to think we are influencing people already.
Norwich: Late again. This time stuck in what appears to be a huge blizzard...concentrated only on east anglia. which is pretty bad luck. fun gig, bizarrely people in norwich know us and request really old songs. try to set off home and have a tiff with lee about whether to progress or not. both of us use the line "just do what you fucking want" almost immediately after each other. argument collapses shortly after realising it doesn't make any sense anymore. promoter dudley saves us by putting us up in the finest student house I have ever encountered.
Buckingshire Uni-Truck: Set off in what seems like good time. me and lee in a car, neil and vijay in a car. neil and vijay take an hour to get out of bradford. things aren't looking good. it's a race against time with them an hour behind us we relay all traffic info to them diverting them from a queue on the m40 and such like. it's a bit like a military operation, if the military operation were to involve idiot weaklings, no actual map, and middle range runarounds laden with too many instruments. we arrive JUST in time. and as we do lee's car's suspension collapeses. literally at a roundabout just next to the uni it kicks it, in our panic we end up driving down a one way street the wrong way and avoiding a car head-on by taking the central reservation. Trundle up to the venue with the car rattling horrifically. walk onstage. find half the drumkit is missing. play immediately. walk offstage. call breakdown service and chat to promoter paul truck who is very nice and doesn't want to kill us anymore as we were on time. Soon find that me and lee will be spending the night in wycombe and the whole day following whilst £400 of repairs are applied to the car. We fill the time with bowling, going on some swings, and dance mat arcade games. Lee scores 3 strikes in a row. we make it back home about 10:30pm, roughly 30 or so hours after we set off.
So there you go. hope it was kind of interesting. it might not be, sorry. anyway we're touring again in feb I think...details of that and maybe a release to come soon. have a smashing christmas if you've read this far. sam