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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.
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