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May 15 SPRING BREAK!!!!!!!Big Sun blazes up London, makes it a different place. Wrenches a big smile out of the city-busy frown. It’s a great view from the bike. Okay, so it’s gloomy today, gentle chill and grey. Whatever, I still got sun in my mind and I’m looking back over the last few red hot days and if that was my summer then it was a good one. Also what’s not to be happy about – The Dennis Wilson ‘Pacific Ocean Blue + extras (eat ‘em up)’ reissue is almost exactly one month away. That is summer right there, waiting to happen. New band: Male Bonding. We played our first show. R.A.G.E. – a house party in Maidstone, Kent. We played with the amazing PENS. We just want to tour with PENS forever, house shows only. We will play your house. Pulling in to Maidstone with the weirdest commuters/neanderthals I have ever shared a train with (what were those noises?) there’s people everywhere, Madonna is in Maidstone, the Kooks, Cribs probably, I don’t know, that’s a BBC big buck event, that’s a Madonna lifeline, that’s not THE party. This is the party, this Maidstone front room. It’s the best. Party is total “Spring Break”. There’s a trampoline in the garden, there’s a grad vibe happening. So good. Amelia, Steph and Helen are PENS, they are throwing this thing. PENS switch guitar, drums, casios, microphones so quick you just dizzy out. A whirlwind you can only whoop in to. You’re insane if you don’t move to it. Party winners. Before PENS, Male Bonding played our four songs. It was really sweet. ATP felt a million miles away. It’s spurned us to do this thing, get a bunch of songs on, get with fun. The party was fun. I don’t care what you say, we sang every word to ‘The Middle’ by Jimmy Eat World. And do you know what the song of the night was? Level 42 ‘Running in the Family’. For reals. I don’t care, you weren’t there. It was amazing. Serious! Spring Break!! I’m so good on trampoline. I get some serious air. I nearly never came back down. Back in London. In city heat, Tropics play New Cross. I’ve only seen Tropics once before, that was a barfly show so I can’t count that one. If you’ve been to a Barfly venue, you probably get what I mean. Anyway, so tonight they were great. Slam-tight. It’s at the Amersham Arms, New Cross. Small pub vibe (did I really see a poster for FAUST @ the Amersham???). Tropics are on it. Matt Flag commands it on bass up front, in the middle. Jodie plays and sings so hard you lose your own breath. Dan powers cool energy back through pedals and quick guitar from the other side of stage and Robin draws everything in to his drumset and sends it out to us in beautiful dancing heart attack beat. Great job. They are so ready for those Pissed Jeans shows. The Mae Shi are in Town. So is Michelle (PRE’s USA booking agent and close friend). We’re got the Americans on our town now. We go watch/hang with Mae Shi at Kings College show. They’re great. Good crowd that Mae Shi ends up inside with parachute aloft and distributing their instruments to the people. The after show is on the top floor and nobody cares for the after show, but the view is amazing. It’s all London, Big Ben/H.O.P far right, spanning London Eye, St. Pauls, Tate Mod to Tower Bridge far left. We’re all like: “Look American people, look. There’s London for you”. And then I walk out in to that London and I wish I had my bike as I wait for ages on London’s time, for the London night bus. Spring Break!
May 09 Tour ExtensionsBlog Backlog / Recapping / Oh I added some photos to my last post / So: Tour extensions. We came off tour and on to some UK shows. So it feels like the tour only just wrapped. Now I can look back and try and scoop some word-worth up on to here. So it goes: Jetlag busting and all happy with familiar equipment, our own equipment. Amp hugging. Play Luminaire, Kilburn, with L.A. hotcakes HEALTH. HEALTH is a machine right now, sixty-odd dates in the US, flying in to forty-odd dates in Europe. Lifers. And they just get better and better with every scorched performance. And it’s great that London sells out the Luminaire tonight to feel it. We open, and we’re all tight off-tour. Drives me mad, touring, drives me mad in that it takes a few shows to get good and you get good and it’s over. So I’m actually grateful for these three London shows, because we can be all good. Skeletons & the Kings of all Cities play Brooklyn wig out. Smoothcore. Nice, nice people. A little rest/work/shipping TOME orders and we’re plugging in again. At the ICA. We play the opening of the new ICA show: ‘Nought to Sixty’. It’s a six month exhibition of sixty emerging UK artists. Definitely worth checking out. Lucky Dragons were supposed to play tonight, but got stuck in L.A. flying from Japan. John Wiese steps up and steps in. Our show is amazing. London artist Giles Round provides amazing visuals for our set. Really works. And this big room is packed. Props to Richard Birkett, ICA curator, for setting this up. Was party. From contemporary art gallery, to Turkish restaurant in one quick day. We’re called up last minute to play a tiny Stoke Newington show with New York’s Talibam! (also John Macedo of Queen of Swords & KKKK). It’s the bodrum café, and it’s tiny. And it’s so good. We play in pitch black, mic share, play off our amps, play tight-fright. Feels good. Props to Bill Kouligas for setting up an awesome show and to Luke Younger for playing insane music all night. Wow, the moussaka was SO good. Go eat there, and if there is rumblings and feedback creeping up from below, go eat that up too. And that’s it, no more shows for a while. We have half an album to write. And then we have a whole album to record. We’re excited for it, excited to twist something different out of what we have created. Got to move in swerves. Got to keep moving. Somehow I am also deep in practice with my new band: Male Bonding. Our first show this sat. House party. Regular party band. Play/Play/Play To play is to play. I guess.
May 04 Yes San Francisco Yes SacramentoSan Francisco grabs me. Something bout SF. It’s stunning approach. Over bay, Golden Gate Bridge, it’s warm, green, hilly. Instant feel. Tonight we play Bottom of the Hill with XBXRX. Tempo No Tempo open and they are a birthday party. All ages show, so it’s packed and it’s all party hats on stage, and I feel like we’re crashing. XBXRX crash in. I’ve so been looking forward to this. XBXRX is Vice Cooler (Hawnay Troof ) who is probably the busiest and definitely the kindest dude in the underworld (he more than took care of us in Oakland few days earlier) and Weasel Walter, who is weird legend in his own right and an equally busy-music-maniac and Steve Touchstone (Snowsuit). XBXRX kill me tonight. I think they are amazing. They are having a bad show. Apparently. I think it rules. Sharp-shard clean guitars, like wrestling barbed wire. Weasel nail gunning, bolting drums all through. Vice the amazing frontman. Camp command. So good. I feel a little dumb when I tell Vice how amazing I thought it was, they clearly had a off-show. Those guys dissect it for ages in the dressing room after. I had a good XBXRX show. Tonight the Mae-Pre changeover is seamless. Supergrooop style out. Show rocks. I lose my shoes. John loses his shoes. Eat the best Mexican food in all of America. End up in a big apartment playing pool with Dr. Dre and Jimmy Eat World and Kelly Clarkson and two “retarded” cats. Beautiful morning lounge-out in SF. Love these streets. Last show. Sacramento. Mae-PRE have a radio show @ KFJC 897 FM. Warm campus. Clean. We record a live session. It’s pretty cool. It’s a filmed CCTV style. Mae Shi join in. Mae Shi tell us to turn it down live on air. We handover, Mae Shi buzz. After John PRE & Jacob Shi interview = dead air criminals. We arrive at a house in Sacramento. The house is the venue. Witchdome. People are hanging around, on bikes and skateboards. We check out the basement and walk across train tracks in warm twilight. This place is amazing. I’ve walked in to a John Hughes film. Back at the house: SUCKS open. Sucks feature members of the now defunct Hot Girls Cool Guys, who are incredible and were massive to us when we were getting PRE together. We’re in awe of these kids. Sucks hit and spiral in front of us. Brandon pulses and writhes with the snaking, spilling tangle of drum, guitar, amp-ache. It’s total destruction. Sucks suck sonik. Sucks rules. We play next. This show is utterly incredible. I am actually pinned to my amp. It goes off. Basement is rammed and insane. I cut my head. Pleausure cut. This is the ultimate. House show, everyone going crazy. Perfect tour closer. Mae Shi get two songs in and the Cops shut it all down. So good. This is how I imagined America. This is dreamy. Soon as the cops clear, Matt and Akiko have slung two tshirts over the back of the trailer, held in place by beer bottles and are selling a ton of merch. That’s it. Tour over. Pretty incredible. Love the west coast. West coast peoples are so UP. West coast peoples are so down with it. The roads are long, long, long but the towns are kind reward. And we are richer for the people we now know. Friends forever. Deep breath, trucker coffee, and we drive all through the night, truck lights in confusing distances like spaceships. Slightly crazy we pull up to Los Angeles as the sun rises. It’s special. In the hot heat we play basketball at Mae Shi mansions, with downtown L.A. skyline ahead and that Hollywood sign and its hills behind us and that very same day we are in London and it’s raining, it’s cold, it’s dark and it’s lunchtime. It’s heavy. Time to sleep weird sleeps before we reunite with HEALTH and play London. Wired.
May 02 Seattle, Portland almost LondonOk, I’m back in the UK now. Not only am I back in the UK but I just played a show with a band from L.A. who we just played a couple of shows with in L.A. and now they are in London and so are we and we are playing a show…in London. See how music eradicates time, distance, geography…it is other. Where am I? I’m here and I need to wrap up the US tour report to give myself some sense of location and to bring us up to date with the HEALTH/Skeletons/PRE show last night. I’ll get there eventually. Here goes: Seattle. Feeling the grunge excitement in the van. Mae Shi have a radio session so PRE escapes by foot to explore Seattle. Why hasn’t someone set up a grunge sightseeing tour? Have they? We would have bought tickets. We found the Crocodile. Notorious grunge venue / hang out. It’s closed down. Vacant spot, dust on the clean Seattle streets. We swerve tourist hell and slip in to a punk record shop: Singles Going Steady. Pick up some vinyl we can’t afford. The show is at the Vera Project, an all ages venue which has the peculiar slant (allegedly) of being part of a youth community centre (resembles a college campus) set up by the one, the only, Mr. Bill Gates. Apparently he pumped two million in to this centre. Well it is money well spent. There is not enough all ages shows, and centres for people to screen print, to drink coke and to create. Anyway, I have been so excited to see Talbot Tagora. We like them so much we actually forced them on to the bill. And they are amazing. Serious. Ani, amazing on drums, flanked by Mark and Chris. Sonically stunning. Vocals buried so deep in the enveloping timbre, so deep it sucks you inside the sound and you are in it, with them. Ani, totally non-plussed and incredible on drums. An indifference that is mind blowingly endearing. I needed to see this band so much. They gave us a tour CD, an album and 7” and it’s all I am going to listen to for ever. Midwife sweep the floor and nail feet with sax and virtuo-guitar wrestling. Past Lives is the new band featuring Nathan of Blood Brothers. More song based than BB but I love Nathan’s vocals. I’m in to this. I feel like I’m on my own. I dig it. Nathan is Hannah (Gossip)’s twin. It’s weird because tomorrow we are staying with Hannah in Portland. Family. We play good. Then the mics break and Akiko breaks, and mics are flung in all directions. Tantrumcore. Amazing. The Mae Shi kill tonight, it’s a fairly light and parachute celebration. We party all night at the house of Talbot Tagora. I sing too much Prince, too loudly. And the house erupts to Smashing Pumpkins ‘1979’. AMAZING. Seattle love in. Portland. East End Club. Been a lot of band bonding in the super van and tonight we decide to merge sets. Idea being we sneak on to the end of Mae Shi’s set and jam on last riff and take over and PRE is in the house. Seamless. Would have been if my bass amp didn’t die on me. Jam is mega extended and when we get me working we rip out a storming set and Portland is mental. Brace Paine of Gossip, tugging at my keychain throughout the show and screaming for us to “retun to London” and bringing houmous and brocolli on to the stage. Pitchfork took photos: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/50305-photos-the-mae-shi-pre-panther-portland-or-042608 Panther is amazing. Just amazing. Just he and drummer and tapes and guitar. Stunning. Visceral and you want to hang with this music for ever. Me and Matt PRE are max-revved as Panther closes with a cover of Can’s ‘Vitamin C’. Matts favourite song, a killer bassline. We’re bassists all about the bass. We stay with our friend Hannah from The Gossip and Hannah introduced me to my new favourite thing, I am totally obsessed: Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show Great Job. Watch and weep. We sleep for roughly one hour and drive a million hour/miles to San Francisco. I got to break this up. For your eyes. Next post will bring us from San Francisco to Sacramento to Los Angeles to Kilburn, London. Hold tight.
May 01 Olympia: Indie heaven and havenOk. PRE US tour. Pick it up. We left Chico, CA and it’s marshmallow gunk in the sunrise dust and make out for Olympia, Washington. I needed the scale of a small city like Olympia. And as indie tourist I am basking in the heritage here. Walking by the anti-abortion protestors trying to find some breakfast, I suck in the air. It’s cool air. Seems quiet and alive here. We play Voyeur, a tiny back room that rocks out. Rachel Carns (The Need / King Cobra / Twin) booked the show. Midwife open. Good skronk-out / freak out / wack out / saxxxing / hurt. Show for me is a flip. First three songs I hate it and I want to die, I don’t know why, but fourth song in and the whole thing transforms. The room erupts and I don’t want to stop playing. West coast crowds (north and south) are so in to it. Blows me away. Joey Casio closes out the show, and I dance. The lovely Joey Casio put us up at the Red House. Red house is legendary. A punk house opeariting since 1990s. An open community house that has breathed in and out multitudes of transient creation. If you’re interested in this, check out the short documenatry on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gBcxR8NPUw. Also, Red House is featured heavily in Abby Bank’s recent book ‘Punk House’. Get it. Luckily the creative history and the optimistic vibrancy of the place outweighs your compulsion to push a hoover around and clean the bathroom. The next morning, sitting out on the porch steps, I’m in awe as Joey points out the K Records HQ, directly opposite. An old Jewish church hall it also houses the Dub Narcotic studio. K Records has a massive influence on my interest in music, and has, in someway, by default, informed a lot of my choices about music. Also, it has had a trickle down effect on the ideas I have about my own label. The Tome Records logo is my secret nod to K. So I feel like I’m on a school trip at some religious institution, the only difference is that I want to be here. The sun is out on the steps of the Red House and looking over and beyond K Records, I’m happy. We drive out past Sleater Kinney Road. Snap snap. We plaid up for Seattle.
April 24 Good Guys GunsThe Fall and Fleewood Mac pull us up in to the Oregon mountains. Reckon there is bear deep in those trails. Before we got rolling past ‘Good Guys Guns’ and got climbing in sunshine by snowy mountains, we were still in L.A. We played a ‘secret’ college show @ UCLA with HEALTH. Traditionally college shows are not so hot. Ask any band. They pay out good but it’s usually the booking of one hep kid and the funding of one big liberal dean and the attendance of, well, not much really. But this show was hot. In a regal room more Oxbridge than Sweet Valley High. People came out. People travelled up that were at the Smell show the night before. It was pretty great. We had champagne and HEALTH slammed. And we all partied for Brian and Eva at their house. And up early and out in Los Feliz with the Mae Shi cats, hitching up this damned trailer. And we drag it, and us, and a stowaway, 7 hours up to Oakland. Play Crux Art Space with the mind-rutting Robin Williams on Fire, and this their last gig for some time amid rumours of a name change (someone else will be on fire by 2009). They rule, continually pulling crowd in to the heart of the heat and blowing them out to the walls. They get naked. They destroy. Triangle next. Weird brooding. Clunks, skew rolling. Sometimes a flames burns out of it and puts a bright orange on the grey. Pretty cool. Oakland kids are pumped. And get crazy. It’s fun, we play on the floor with them. Mae Shi rule tonight. The crowd goes bezerker, they fill the parachute, they carry each other around they knock each other out, they sing up, dance, dance, dance. They love each other. So much love. If I was a kid, I‘d be wishing I lived in Oakland. We stay with Vice Cooler (XBXRX / Hawnay Troof ). Vice is beautiful. We hang a little in Oakland. We eat Flipper donuts. For real. A donut store stocks vegan donuts made by one of the guys from Flipper. Damn good. And we’re off to Chico, CA. We’re supporting our troops here, for sure. A small show. I clunk and break myself in to the ground. These two guys open and close the show. They sing banally about Ronald Reagan and play the worst music out of their laptop. And everyone is throwing marshmallows around. This is a crap idea. The room is ruined and so are my shoes. The floor is glued. Props to the guy who put us up though. He and his ‘After Death’ hot sauce. We lost three to the hot sauce. It’s insane-o-clock and we are on our ten-hour mountain drive to Olympia and it’s completely beautiful. Things we have to know about Olympia: 1. If it’s yellow let it mellow 2. If it’s brown flush it down. Urban law. Mercy.
SmellCows bond around a graffiti water tower and we whiz past heading out of the bay area headed for Chico, California. PRE/MAE SHI rolling hard, laptops akimbo. It’s a wacked out blur since my last post. I’ll try to carve something out of it. What I didn’t mention last time was two life-loving moments.. After mooching in central L.A. we went out to Jessie Mika Miko’s BBQ. Met beautiful people. Teenage Moms were rehearsing in the basement for that nights show with us, and others at the Smell. More on that in a minute. Veggie dogs chowed. Cold beers popped. Girls skate, boys trampoline and party mix tapes are approved as the sun sets gluey on to Silver Lake. Also at the BBQ is Michael Vidal. Michael plays in the amazing (and surely soon to blow up in to all our lives?) Abe Vigoda and this is the other important thing I should have mentioned in my last post. Michael played our first L.A. show @ Spaceland. A brilliant ten minutes. Wonked US law means that Michael, being under 21, is allowed in the venue to perform for ten minutes and has to leave the venue immediately from the stage. Michael Vidal + guitar + amp loops out spells that reach beyond alcohol. Really smart. Jumping time. We played San diego. A punk rock bar, Tower. It’s all good. Rams out and crowd parties with it. The owner of Tower gave me power for the rest of the tour. Literally and maybe metaphorically. The Smell. The best, without any doubt, venue space in the whole screwed up world. Without doubt. Soon as I arrived I was overwhelmed with the feel of this place. All ages. Non profit. Struggling to get a grip on Los Angeles music life? Start here and fold it all out. Push out lines in the mess. Tonight we play with David Scott Stone / I’m a Gymnist / Foot Village / Teenage Moms / HEALTH. It’s sold out. Eva (Kevin Shields) has been preparing vegan burgers all day and she sells them out tonight. Brian Foot Village is running around running things. Jim, the owner, sweetly asks us to get a feel for the space and set up wherever we want to. All the while people are flooding in. People are hanging outside, some jam and sing with nintendos. We have nothing to compare the creative air and the bubbling community here. Totally inspiring. Everyone here for each other. We drink and interview for Video Thing in the gay Mexican bar next door. In booths while gruff old Mexican men tenderly hug each other and snog. It’s amazing. David Scott Stone (Melvins contributor / ex-Get Hustle) switches and bumps a sound piece for the gathering crowd. It’s really filling up. Filming outside we are distraught and embarrassed that we crunch our timings and miss the most part of I’m a Gymnist. This is a band we have had a lot of contact with over the last year or so, and were psyched to finally see. Really sucks. But I hear they may be coming to England and that’s a little consolation. The Smell is heaving and drums are pounding, somewhere in the middle of the hordes. I shove in, squeeze right up to Foot Village who are going at it, hard. It’s truly amazing. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time. And it’s better than I wanted it to be. x4 drums create a different volume, more power than level. Nothing like it. It’s deep. Kids are throwing me all over the place. It’s epic and I’m happy inside. Teenage Moms are Kate & Jenifer of Mika Miko and Stef of Finally Punk. Jennifer on drums, Kate on bass and drum machine and Stef guitars. They are amazing. Crowd right up at them. Kate storms the crowd. They take the crowd. They win me. They’re amazing. We play next. Best gig ever. Kids are calling out for songs. ??? Don’t know how that ever happened??? This night is beautiful. HEALTH up next. Our good friends. Amazing to see them, amazing to see them after sixty odd shows straight. They are awe-inspiring. They throw down power and top the best night ever. That’s how it happened. I’m out of breath. I’m out of type.
April 20 London Los Angeles ScrambledOk here’s a scramble. PRE USA west coast tour. It just began and here’s the beginning, London to Los Angeles, as I remember it, all bullet pointy. Eleven hour flight = non sleep. A little embarrassing high altitude emotion (I cried at ‘National Treasure’ not ‘Kite Runner’ the genuinely upsetting, emotional and tragic story of our screwed up world…no, I cried when Nicholas Cage found the treasure and got the girl and saved the constitution and god blessed america etc. etc.). Non sleep. We get in to Los Angeles airport and it’s like we’ve been emptied out of a dark cardboard box in to the sun. Like gremlins to water we’re all squawks and glee at the brightness on our pasty skin and minutes later we are in Trader Joes, domestic shopping. Weird. Much like the east coast tour, last October, we seem to hit the big city and get faux-residential for a few days before we roll out on to the rest of the country. And so here we are, flailing around the wide-wide-wide Los Angeles, getting lost and sunburned on low rider bikes, drinking beer in gardens. It’s the longest Wednesday ever. It’s a week long weds. Beat back at the jetlag by outlasting it and getting out to downtown L.A. to check out Crystal Antlers and Darker My Love at Charlie O’s. Through my fuggy mind, it’s a good show and on the jetlag ropes I get my arse kicked, repeatedly, at pool. Charlie O’s is pretty much like a squatted regal ballroom, the right amount of black & white chequer floor tiles versus 1960s carpet, with ripped out roof with exposed electrics. It’s great. It’s got the tables and pool will always win me. Dan & Grace (Foot Village) are amazing and are keeping us kept here. Only two of the three guitars we had shipped over from London arrived. We’re in trouble, we’re a bass and a bunch of pretty crucial pedals missing. Sucks. A lot of Fed Ex robot to human dialogue = Boring. We are still a guitar down, as they “re-deliver” what appears to be half a cello, in the place of our guitar. But we, via our amazing new L.A. friends, get enough equipment thrown together and with unfamiliar amps and borrowed guitar and improvised drum set, we are live on air recording a bluster session for KXLU. It was live so we don’t get to hear the mess we made, but it was fun for sure. Later we taxi a million square miles to Cha Cha Lounge in Silver Lake where a member of Melvins is DJing and from the same vending machine we buy Robocop 2 stickers, Bill and Ted picture cards and a small packet of tiny fish. Real fish. Gross. We rinse the old school photo booth dry too. After getting overwhelmed at Amoeba Music (it’s a giant) and overwhelmed by the sun climbing Hollywood hills (it’s a giant) we play our first show in L.A. and our first with the Mae Shi. At Spaceland. Mae Shi are great, even if they do introduce us as PRE from Australia. For us it’s the classic first show syndrome and we cut our teeth a little, but it works out. And I think we are ready to go. Pick up van. Beautiful beast. It’s gonna house Mae Shi and PRE for next two weeks, it’s got wi fi, it’s ridiculous. We take it to San Diego for our own show at Tower with The Muslims. The Tower is kind of a punk rock bar. It kind of rules. It’s good. Crowd is good. Feel like we are warming up now. And priming for tonight’s show at The Smell with: HEALTH, Foot Village, I’m a Gymnist, Teenage Moms. PRIME! Before that we’re gonna check out No Age & Mika Miko lunchtime show at the Los Angeles Public Library and try to get to the Family store. Before that we’re going to have a massive breakfast with our beautiful hosts Brian (Deathbomb Arc/Foot Village) & Eva (Kevin Shields/Winners) and Asphalt (the cat). Less scrambled from here on in. Promise.
April 14 New LaboursNew work. A new project. Music with my best buddies John and Robin. Possibly inspired by dreams of American Football. A new band. Way too new to vent on here…yet. We have parties booked for May. Yes, yes, a regular party band. Too new. When I’m back off tour and we’ve played those parties, I know that words will be rabid and bulging and reaching to put your eyes in your ears. But, yeah, too new to talk it up now. But to swerve back to any point being made here: I wanted to make mention of this new band if only to throw out props to Rory Attwell = Bratwell Recordings. Rory recorded us, our four and only songs, that we chopped out in a once-in-a-blue-moon rehearsal, and he netted the vibe and quick-scorched it on to tape…and then like some kind of magical fourth member, got us messing with drum machine and glockenspiel and bouncing each other around the room. Rory is flat out recording bands right now, stuffing his musical hunger and getting the skills. Getting real good. You should try to record with him. When he is not nailing the foundations in all these HOTT new bands he seems to be recording (S.C.U.M / Televised Criemwave / Tropics etc.) he also plays and records with his band Kasms. My new band that I am not talking about yet is called Male Bonding. If we write a fifth song, I’ll write about it here. Meantime I am very occupied making a mix-tape for the PRE tour and I’m stuck at Kate Bush ‘Cloudbusting’.
April 06 Wi Fi? Get in the vanLiving the dream. We just booked our van for our west coast US tour. Start again. The Mae Shi guys just booked the van for our US tour (we tour with Mae Shi and we're all gonna travel togeths, 10 people, van + nerve-wracking trailer) and atop the pile of 'tour group emails' is the gleaming "Guys...do we want wi fi in the van?" We can have wi fi 'on board' for a few bucks more. 2008. This is where we are at: Wi fi on the road. Total dream living. Can you imagine? The rock and roll circus hitting town disguised as a mobile cyber cafe. Punk Rock Laptops will be blazing through California. Digital Hardcore. So you (??) will be right there in the van with me...occassionally...as I blog as we roll. When I'm not reading my book. When I'm not at the wheel breaking out in trailer-sweat. Who knows, maybe the tour party will out-party the computers. Road banter may keep them ibooks sleeping. Henry Rollins, if you are reading this, dude, I know your pain, I swear while the other guys play xbox and myspace the scenery away, me, I will get in the trailer with the gear, pitch black, shirt off, punching my face until we hit Seattle. Wi Fi or No Wi FI, I'm stoked to tour again, and to road trip with Mae Shi guys. Especially stoked right now as I sit in the London freak-freeze that just followed the London freak-april-snow (our only snow) and I'm thinking of that cali-heat. And I'm thinking Wi Fi on board? Whatever, better have me that AC with all that PRE and that Mae Shi. HOT AND HEAVY!
March 30 Label / Life / LovingRunning a record label is quirky. This thing that evolved out of a fancy. Exploding idea. One day you are sat in a bookshop sculpting a concept, all in the head. Next thing you are trying to eat your breakfast while emailing with Latvian TV Set advertisers and gay porn film makers. How did I get here? It’s weird. Every now and then (like now) I stop and see what’s up. I’m only on my fourth release but already things feel weighty and alive. Those four releases are out there, like indifferent organisms doing their own thing now and off they go, into the hand’s of Latvian ad agencies, or, hopefully, in to the hearts and lives of the people. Bouncy. It’s quite eerie immediately post-release. So much action pre-release and then off it floats and you sort of chart it’s rise by the feedback emails you get or from the voice of the folk turning up to the shows and also distorted returns from what the press hounds decide to say about these things that aren’t mine any more. The Foot Village album has been out 3 weeks now, and press is starting to trickle in. Most recently an album review in the ‘underground’ section of the current MOJO magazine. Which is pretty cool – small mention in a big magazine. These are our reverberations. Dozy website ‘Drowned in Sound’ have just flopped out an album review too, baggy words bolted on to the provided press release with unbelievably hackneyed lame-o reference points…but words none the less and a chance for those message boarders to hate each others lives etc. etc. Words and music, bouncing balls. S’all good. There’s more press-a-coming, and tours are announced, and over the days things will come up, requests, orders. Love it. Love being at the heart of this thing that flails wildly, out of control. All over the shop. Uncaged. Words thrown at it, but still moving. Love it. And while all this is up in the air perverse mind is hacking away at the next idea. And I’m SO excited for it. A split release: Birds of Delay / Family Battle Snake. Another turn. A sweet step. New piece of art kicking at the gates. Raring. Heart Quirk.
March 28 Peaches Geldof and my sister and Will Young and PRE and The GossipI don’t dig on metaphor. But sometimes, in the half-sleep, you have to wonder. Running for the bus I disturb a gang of pigeons cold-chilling behind a bus shelter. Anyway, they freak and flee and one of them flies straight in to the bus shelter. Big doink. Embarrassing. That’s a headache. Same cold morning. Coldest day of the year. On the bus, clumsy wet dirty snow flopping about, a man proceeds to open every single window on the bus. Amazing. People are shocked into a moments silence and then mass freak out. So cool. The guy’s all: “I need to see where I’m going”. He’s pretty intense. The people are all disgusted and voicing their disgust, loudly, to, like, no one in particular. Invisible audiences. So yeah, in the eye of this commuting hurricane, is me, thinking this is some kind of distorted metaphor. This is my band, PRE at the Gossip show @ last week. To explain, we, PRE, just played a show with The Gossip at Shepherd Bush Empire and it was amazing. They are amazing. But I couldn’t help but feel we stole the slot away from some hype-wave POP band or something. Y’know, we felt like Black Flag on these boys and girls. We are not Black Flag, not in any way (although I was Chuck Dukowski for two long seconds when a an empty beer beaker landed at my feet, oh man, that was so good). Felt like we disturbed the | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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