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Thursday 7th September: Day 10 : Leeds. The plot is definitely going. You've probably noticed this craze over the past couple of years for re-appraising shite music. The "Guilty Pleasures" movement. Whereby otherwise perfectly sane music fans are staking claims for sugary pop, pompous prog and excruciating hair-metal. Yeah, students have been doing this for years, but students always claim it's "ironic" whereas this lot seem to be under the impression that theirs is the righteous way and if you still think "Hold The Line" is the bag of wank it clearly is then you're some sort of indie snob. Uncool is the height of cool now, and I can't work out whether this makes my music taste cool, uncool, post-cool, post-uncool or whatever. Good job I don't actually care. But I'm not having it anyway, it's attitudes like this that led to me being woken up this morning by the saccharine slop that is The Scissor Sisters, on bloody 6Music of all places. No, OK? It'll be the David bloody Hasselhoff revival before we know it... what do you mean it's already started? Anyway given my hardline views on such things, I know full well the plot is going when we jump in a taxi outside Leeds station and the radio's playing "Abracadabra" by the Steve Miller Band... and I get the driver to turn it up so we can sing along... I have repented though, really I have. At the time I was just on that momentous high, knowing that I had one half day left to work before a week off...
I have no idea how I have managed never to have been to the Brudenell Social Club until now. Yes, it is what it says on the tin, a traditional working mens club with bar prices to match, but (as anyone acquainted with the Leeds live scene knows) over the past couple of years it's become one of the city's favourite small gig venues, alongside the nearby Faversham (which is, as the name implies, a traditional pub.) The list of gigs I have nearly been to at the Brudenell but not quite made it for whatever reason is extensive. Many of them probably involved Forward Russia. But we're here now, and Nick's more than a little impressed with the pint glass he's been given.
His next pint depicts some Ryder Cup winning team. Frazer's here, Chris and Karen Brokenwindows, my old pre-getting-to-know-the-regulars BSP-watching crew. Jo The Shopkeeper, British Sea Power's merchandise girl, is dishing out chunks of sweets made from chickpeas that look like loft insulation. Oh, and we've managed to miss all but the last half a song of The Seal Cub Clubbing Club's set. They don't sound any more interesting than last time we saw them, or the time before that, etc etc. Then after a while a chant comes through the speakers: "Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!" - yes, it's The Witch And The Robot. Now I love the Lake District, but it has to be said pretty much everyone I've ever met from there's been a bit crackers. The Cumbrian 75% of BSP, like the various vaguely odd Lakelanders I seemed to acquire as mates when I was a student, demonstrate the mild derangement of a Cumbrian upbringing nipped in the bud by moving out of there at 18 to go and study or whatever. The Witch And The Robot are what happens to those who don't escape. A flattened out cardboard box behind lead singer Mr. Goodknight has the pen-scrawled claim "No Dead Men In My Tea", but I'm not sure I believe him. Coloured balloons tell us to "fuck off" or leer at us through sinisterly drawn eyes.
Their music could probably be described as (a) experimental nu-folk with gothic undercurrents (b) borderline impenetrable but rather enjoyable in the same way that some of the weirder shit they stick on the bill at FictionNonFiction and AutoTestPilot is, and (c) a lot more thought-out and rehearsed than an initial exposure to their world would imply. Their finest moment is still the one that solemnly intones "Everyone on the farm is dead" over a single-chord backing, which sounds like Sonic Boom crossed with Nick Cave. Mr. Goodknight and his partner in crime Mr. Venice are soon joined onstage by the papier-mache-headed Mr. Heartbreak, a sort of melancholy, mute Frank Sidebottom today wrapped up warm for the winter. Mr. Goodknight can even make a flute sound scary. Frazer says they remind him of Death in June and more entertainingly his very goth girlfriend, who's pretty much hated every band we've seen with her, quite likes them.
The walls are already dripping long before BSP get near the stage and within a couple of songs the band and crowd are soaked through to the skin. Hamilton is once again demonstrating his quite unique take on dress sense - if it's wearable then it'll do - in a green silky tunic type dress thing. And to think there are still writers who claim this band wear "vintage military uniforms"... The audience is lively to say the least, as seems to be the case at most Leeds gigs I go to, although thankfully without the undercurrent of violence which marred the Longcut's recent Faversham gig. New songs get a good reception here too; I wonder if this is partially due to the fact that people who come to this venue regularly (and there seem to be quite a few "general gig goers" amongst the more specific fans) are used to seeing newer bands here, many of whose songs they might not know. Or maybe it's just that the band are on flying form again.
Noble seems to have brought his entire extended family along (his dad, a thoroughly lovely chap, actually comes to see the band quite a lot anyway) - including his beautiful teenage cousin, who joins the band onstage towards the end of their set with a sign on her back saying "Work Experience" and is later hotly if not entirely successfully pursued by at least one of the regulars' young lad contingent.
Meanwhile Yan has acquired a paper parasol from somewhere and Hamilton's up on the speakers threatening a high impact crowd-surf, and by the time they've finished the front is a mass of dripping collapsed bodies - but all smiling. It's a popular choice for best gig of the tour, marred only (for the Mancunian contingent, all of whom have got work tomorrow) by the train home's decision to do that piss-taking route where it goes out of Huddersfield backwards and spends hours piffling round the countryside only to end up coming in through Salford and Victoria - any Mancunians who regularly go out in Leeds will probably have experienced this at some point and know how fucking annoying it is.
It's only a half day for me on Friday 8th September though. It takes a really long time to get to Glasgow by any means, and I am not hugely fond of the place - so this was another date I'd originally comtemplated missing, but other people have other ideas. Firstly an old mate who used to live near us but has relocated to Scotland has bought a ticket presuming we'e going, even though she's not really a massive fan (Rammstein being more her thing) - and secondly up and coming electropopsters Firebrand Boy, have been slotted in as support in place of the original choice of the unfeasibly dull Field Music. Unfortunately for them most of the listings papers are unaware of this, so anyone coming specifically to see the support (Field Music do seem to be quite popular, although I can't fathom this myself and what with previous BSP supports and a couple of Blowout appearances god only knows I've tried) might be a little pissed off.
Again, arriving in King Tuts after fighting through the large group of smokers clustered around the tiny front yard (I'd forgotten we were in a foreign country until this point!) we manage to just miss the Seal Cub Clubbing Club. I'm intrigued to see how Firebrand Boy come across live, as their records (or at least the backing tracks thereof) are largely made on old computer games machines. The venue is far from full at this point, although most of the BSP regulars have made the effort; after all, their label (Pale Fox) manager Gary's one of our own, and both the design and photography of their single sleeve were done by some of our little community's creative talents. To be honest I'd dreaded getting the single for review - integrity's pretty important to me, what if it was rubbish? (Luckily it wasn't...although personally I do still prefer the JC909 mix to the lads' own.)
It's a strange mix, the dreadlocked club kid Philip Cunningham behind his table with a laptop and the band's trademark Gameboy and at his side the "so well turned out, if you took him home your mum would start to worry you're not being wild enough" singer / acoustic guitar slinger Gordon Turner - Cunningham had been ploughing his own chipbeat furrow for a while before finding his musical foil. What's strange for me is how much, even without JC909's four-to-the-floor beats, this Glaswegian duo remind me of home, musically. Cunningham's more deranged, vocal-free efforts such as single B-side "Three Mile Wish" sound for all the world like one-time Twisted Nerve electronutter Little Miss Trinitron (resisting sticking this refernce in my single review on the grounds of not wanting to sound wilfully obscure I was amazed when online music mag AngryApe used it in theirs!) - whereas the blend of ever-so-slightly-wet but cute little vocal tunes with robo-electro backing elsewhere in the set recalls Alpinestars in their heyday; at other times there's the waywardness of My Computer or the electronic anthems of The Whip. They certainly have the material and can render it live rather well; the only possible drawback being that - as with a lot of largely electronic music - there's not a great deal to watch in the way of performance. Something visual, such as those excellent video projections Alpinestars used to have, or Starfighter Pilot's dancing girls, might be worth considering.
Last time British Sea Power played King Tuts was September 2003, the week "Remember Me" was released; their debut album had been out for two months and however much I knew it was the greatest debut album I'd ever heard, the raft of five-star reviews that had built up as the band became more widely known was pretty stunning. The night before the Tuts gig there'd been a Later With Jools Holland appearance and it seemed beyond doubt that the band were going to go on to pretty massive things; the single was a sure-fire hit. They were just coming to the end of their most successful UK tour to date, and were about to head off to America for a headline tour out there; a last minute decision to go and see them out there in a couple of weeks' time had seen me visiting Glasgow's passport office that morning to get a new passport fast-tracked through. Still exhausted from the previous night's Liverpool gig which had been quite a late one, I'd struggled to force my eyes open for the photos, eventually pulling a rather Hamilton-influenced bug-eyed stare with which I'll be scaring immigration officials for another seven years yet. It was also one of the first large gatherings of the regular fans, as the original and largely Southern-based so-called "Third Batallion" had been joined by me and my little Manchester-Leeds crew as well as a few other ones and twos from around the country and pretty much everyone had come up for a big Glasgow Saturday night out. Earlier in the day we'd got involved in a bizarre transaction with some locals in a pub involving a pumpkin of disputed ownership; it was just one of those days...
King Tuts, October 2003
And I remember sometime before the band went onstage, standing in the ever-cramped bar area chatting to a couple of relatively tall male friends, and noticing Yan (largely unrecognised, then, with a dark jumper on over his trademark stagewear) standing behind them trying to work out how he could get past; me pulling my mates out of his way and him slipping through with a warm, shy smile towards me; I remember being surprised (this being only about my 13th or 14th time seeing the band, and I'd only really talked to Hamilton at this point) that this wild, uninhibited, commanding, sexually-charged, menacing, seemingly arrogant frontman who reminded me of all the best bits of Ian Brown and Iggy Pop put together was so small and so timid offstage; I wondered exactly how he'd cope with the major stardom that couldn't be more than a couple of weeks away. And the crowd went absolutely fucking wild that night. Years of reading music reviews had given me an idea of "The Tuts spirit", the rowdy but friendly crowds and party atmosphere in this most legendary of venues; and back there on my first ever visit to the place I saw it for myself. Of course the big breakthrough never came, the unlikely-indie-band-to-go-mainstream turned out to be Franz Ferdinand, which amazed me given that their summer 03 Interpol support dates had left me completely uninspired; BSP took over a year to get round to a follow-up single and despite a commercial push around the time of the "Open Season" album, remain somewhere under the radar of all but a few music-oriented people. The band have only visited Glasgow once since then, a visit to the rather uninspiring QMU in November 2005 (I seem to remember Field Music were involved there, too) and the crowd tonight, aside from the regulars and a small group of massively enthusiastic local big fans, don't really seem that inspired or inspiring.
Noble has written "New song" and "Old Song" on his palms, and holds up the relevant one before each song. They play well but the crowd largely don't seem to want to know, apart from one rather over-excited fan who hurls his six-foot-plus frame several feet in the air almost constantly throughout, lends his fisherman hat to Noble and attempts to get Captain Riot on his shoulders - if only his enthusiasm could have been more infectious. Old favourite "A Wooden Horse" goes down well, but most of the new songs fall flat on a crowd that can't even be bothered to give them a fair go. The gig brings one of the liveliest encores of the whole tour, with an unhinged "Apologies To Insect Life" leading into fun punky thrashabout "Pelican" - yet afterwards the first comment I hear as we're shovelled unceremoniously quickly out the door (clearly no late licence tonight then) is "the didn't play Lately, I want my money back..." after sizing up that the moaner is bigger than me I decide against smacking him one, but only just.
Not playing "Lately". Oh, shock fucking horror.
Afterwards we fail to find a single bar with a late license and no entry fee - we'd assumed Tuts would be open til 2am but come to think of it we've only ever been there before on Saturdays - so we curse the backwardness of strange towns and turn in via a nightcap in the hotel bar. Half twelve; back home Retrobar would just be getting started...
Saturday 9th September is another day off for the band, who probably have all manner of last-minute preparations to sort out for their most prestigious performance yet the following day. Julie and I had planned to go to London for the 13th Floor clubnight, a feast of 60s garage, pop and psychedelia run by another one of our regulars crew which I've been promising to go to for ages, but her own band's rehearsal schedule means she can't come down until Sunday now and I'm really in two minds myself. But I'd planned to meet an old university mate to go for a meal, and I didn't want to blow her out. I set off at 3pm, and there was no rhyme nor reason, when I came off the bottom of the M6 Toll a couple of hours later, in my decision to take the M40 as opposed to the M1 - bound for Stoke Newington either would have done.
Somewhere near Banbury I come upon stationary traffic. Ah yeah, those bloody roadworks, must have moved north a bit... fifteen minutes later the traffic hasn't shifted an inch and engines have been switched off. The lads in the yellow sportscar alongside me are on the phone; when they hang up I ask them if they know what's happening. A lorry fire apparently; both carriageways are closed. People are getting out of their cars, playing penalty shoot-outs on the hard shoulder, sharing fags and biscuits and water - it's a wonderful scene of classic English resignation to fate. Updates from the trafficlines are shouted from car to car - five miles, eight miles, twelve miles; no idea how far from the scene we are but hey, it'll be a lot worse for them at the back - it's not exactly how I'd have chosen to spend a Saturday afternoon but it's not exactly unpleasant either. Until the traffic moves ahead. At first there's a feeling of relief, we're on the go again! - but it's short-lived. Over the next three hours day becomes night, I almost lose the will to live, and cover four miles before passing the charred heap of cinders that was clearly once a fairly large truck and accelerating to freedom. The hard shoulder is awash with miserable people sitting beside smoke pouring from under bonnets and I thank my trusty little Ka for holding out; with hindsight I do vaguely remember thinking something doesn't quite sound right, but I'm exhausted, I've had to blow out my uni mate, and can't face driving in central London after all that so I dump the car at Riot's secret unofficial park'n'ride space (a residential road in northwest London with no parking restrictions, far more space in front of the large houses than the residents need, and a tube station two minutes' walk away - details on request, if you can keep a secret) and arrive at the club at midnight.
Dan 13th Floor wore this exemplary moustache for only a very short time between losing his beard and going completely cleanshaven - here it is for posterity, in all its glory.
Kevo and Riot's attempts to get here have, remarkably, been even less successful. Having booked an evening flight in order to pursue their regular Scottish-away-trip habit of taking in a lower league football match, they discover said flight is cancelled, and have to spend a night enjoying being "the Easyjet scum" in a hotel rather posher than either of them are accustomed to. I think Stenhousemuir won, but I can't remember. Cindy and Paul and I get tanked on gin; I rather feel I've earned it.
Sunday 10th September, 5pm, Kevo's house, Highbury. Eventually back on English soil after a rather epic journey of their own, Kevo and Riot have rendezvoused with Julie and finally myself; I am standing in the living room wearing a flowery dress. This is not, as you may have gathered, something I do often. But we are off to the West End, darling, yes, to the theatre. Not just any theatre either. The Prince Of Wales Theatre to be precise, and we're told the eponymous royal nutter and la Camilla will indeed be in attendance. I can't believe we are going to this, either. It seemed like a bit of a laugh when we bought the tickets months ago; go and support the lads, or laugh at them, or something... but now we're walking up through Leicester Square and there are crowds of people lining the streets to catch a glimpse of the Royals. But is this any weirder behaviour than following a band on tour, or going to every match your team play home and away? Yeah, we reckon, it is. Not sure why. You wouldn't wait hours by a roadside just to see your fave guitarist or goalie drive past though would you? Well, you might, I suppose. That would be weird too. I wouldn't. Yeah, so fuck only knows why they're here, but this is why we are...
The John Betjeman Gala
in aid of SANE, sponsored by Shell
in aid of SANE, sponsored by Shell
Sunday 10 September 2006, 7.30pm, at The Prince of Wales Theatre, London.
In the presence of Their Royal Highnesses The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall
A Variety Performance
Compered by Barry Humphries
Directed by Joe Harmston
Compered by Barry Humphries
Directed by Joe Harmston
The cast includes Nick Cave, Jonathan Cecil, Ronnie Corbett, Kenneth Cranham, Sinead Cussack, Joanna David, Edward Fox, Stephen Fry, Richard E Grant, Anne Hart, Jools Holland, Kit and The Widow, Joanna Lumley, Miriam Margolyes, Bill Nighy, Diana Quick, Prunella Scales, Rachel Stirling, Suggs, Timothy West, British Sea Power, and St Pauls Cathedral Choir.
For the second time in two weeks I have to say you don't get a line-up like that every day. I don't think we ever find out who the fuck Jonathan Cecil is. (Google later reveals he's one of those TV light entertainment types who's been in all manner of shite that I have nothing to do with. If you care:- http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0147699/ ).
We've been warned about tight "airport style" security and are faintly surprised at the laxness of the bag searches; if I'd known I'd have sneaked the camera in. Ah well. On the stairs we pass Joanna Lumley and get rather more excited than we probably should. Yeah, there's a certain sort of people who probably do this kind of thing a lot, but for us seeing people off the telly is quite bizarre. Kevo finds himself stood next to Andrew Lloyd Webber at the urinals. Problem is I wouldn't know half these luvvies if I fell over them. I'm guessing the scary tall bearded chap in the black dinner suit is in Nick Cave's band though (and turn out to be right). We've been warned British Sea Power are on first and just doing the one track, so we ensure we're settled in our seats in good time, and amused to discover that whilst about four groups of us bought tickets separately we're all seated fairly close together, with me, Kevo, Julie and Alan on the very back row. Riot's at the other end, and has told us of his plan to watch the BSP slot and then leave.
Chuck and Camilla enter somewhere and we all stand up even though we can't see them, and then the curtain goes up and British Sea Power are onstage, looking smaller than ever. Augmented by Phil on trumpet they perform Betjeman's mildly dirty "Licorice Fields At Pontefract", and Yan looks scared, then they shuffle off. Worth it? Inasmuch as following this band regularly takes us to places we wouldn't normally dream of going, yes. Barry Humphries is compereing as himself, sadly; I slip into a sort of half-pissed-half-stoned trance, and Riot walks out as promised and fucks off for a Chinese with Gary Pale Fox. Nick Cave performs two tracks which are enjoyable; Humphries' turn in costume as his longterm seedy character 'Les Patterson' is about as risque as you can get at a do like this; Ronnie Corbett and his wife singing old music-hall songs is frankly terrifying, the cathedral choir are strangely moving, Suggs is rubbish, and the rest of it consists of smug people off the telly reading Betjeman poems as if they're in some school revue. The whole thing is deeply surreal. Then gets more so at the curtain-call - a rendition of old showtune "After the Ball" by a selection of the evening's performers. Nick Cave and his tall beardy sidekick are getting well into it - is this where you saw yourself one day when you were a howling undernourished goth smackhead then Cavey? Yan is the only member of British Sea Power in the line-up and he looks more terrified than ever, despite being bolstered on each side by Jo Shopkeeper - resplendent in 50s bathing suit and cap - and the still caped Phil who looks like he was born to do this kind of thing. They sway theatrically in time with the other performers; he gets the giggles and barely opens his mouth. Class stuff. We go off in search of a pub and for the second time in two nights realise how spoilt we Mancunians are with our lax licenses, and end up back at Kevo's wondering what on earth just happened.
Monday 11th September. We're on the tube out to my secret parking spot, and pick up a copy of the Evening standard's freesheet version London Lite. Like most of the papers the front cover is dedicated to the day the world changed, five years ago. We get a bit of a shock when we turn a couple more pages though...
As Julie is fond of posting on forums and myspace pages, AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Eleven out of ten Jo. And check out the dirty leer on Charles. We jump into the next carriage when we get off to see if we can collect some more copies. We're giving BSP's sometime managerial assistant (and Yan and Hamilton's elder brother) Roy a lift to the next gig in Bath, and he's equally amused by the paper - and tells us the event was actually slightly more scandalous than the article implies. Clearly Jo is not "in" the band (although with BSP being in the band is sometimes a slightly fluid concept anyway) and her appearance in the curtain call has apparently caused a bit of a security scandal. Miriam Margoyles was apparently heard to exclaim in disgust "Who is that girl?!" - meanwhile Woody, the only member of the band actually addressed by HRH, found himself completely lost for words. A mate of ours who managed to blag the after-party (again, making a mockery of tight security - she did so by being confident and well-dressed enough to get away with it and going out the other door of the toilets) said the band were last seen huddling in a corner. We can't wait to see Jo later.
Kevo has managed to get himself yet another really disturbing B&B. Having booked it online in the normal way and taken down the address, he gets a phone call: what time will he be arriving in Bath? Not having my M4 crystal ball on me we can't say. "Phone me when you get to the station then, and someone will come and meet you." Eh? Seems he is not staying in the B&B at all but in a strange annexe. Maybe it was the last room available. But then Roy decides he needs a B&B too and figures however weird it is at least there'll be two of them, so he phones up... and is placed in the normal B&B on the website address. Kevo's annexe turns out to be part of a monastic abbey, where he is ordered to remove his shoes on arrival and "noise will not be tolerated". Julie and I are somewhat relieved we booked somewhere else weeks ago...
Bath is quite possibly the poshest place we have ever been. Our B&B, the cheapest in town, is at the end of a terrace opposite a garage and in any other town would probably be home to temporarily resident Polish workers, but this is Bath and it's lovely even if the wallpaper's a bit disturbing. And the girl on the desk appears to be on the happy pills. Right, time to get wasted. After a few money-saving drinks in the room while we're getting ready we arrive at the meeting pub to find the band sat outside; they seem in good spirits and it should be a good night. Moles Club is small and late opening, so we decide to get in there as soon as we can which means our tactic of Seal Cub Clubbing Club avoidance has come to an end.
We actually quite enjoy them, partly carried along by local BSP regulars Clare and Alan who are big fans and partly because we are completely shit-faced; I still couldn't tell you much about them. They're slightly psychedelic but don't have your typical Scouse jangly sound; and, er... no, sorry. The stage is very small and about four inches high. This is going to be a bit up-close-and-personal, especially given that the bass-playing side of BSP (where we're stood) are not the world's tallest people. This coupled with Yan's bass technique of standing side-on means that I spend most of the Hamilton-led songs dodging the bass headstock to avoid getting it right in my face.
Actually, it seems Hamilton nearly got me as well here...
The gig's going well until they hit Spirit Of St Louis, which seems to disintegrate half way through. Some of the band can't hear some of the monitors and various plugs are falling out of things; they're losing the flow... they pull it back though, and by the end everyone's on a raucous high, Yan is singing through a cardboard box on his head and I've finally got my hands on the air-raid siren, and give it loads. I'm not going to bother reviewing every gig in detail from hereon in - fans who were there should hopefully remember them (although that's debatable in some cases) and nobody else cares...
Afterwards Shan and Woody produce the world's biggest bottle of vodka which is duly shared between the band and small regular fan contingent. This could explain why I look like shit and Noble's face has gone out of focus...
It appears the venue has been rather generous on the rider front, so Julie and I grab a couple of beers to take back to the B&B, but manage to pass out before we drink them. Breakfast is very tough indeed, and we have to spend a couple of hours lounging in a park before I consider myself capable of driving. But hey, we did learn something...
Heading back to the station to pick up Kevo and Roy, we arrive back at the car to hear a decidedly Mancunian voice yell "Ey, you can't park that here!!" from a nearby van. Morning Shan... soon we find ourselves once again at the mercy of a one-way system, but Bath's small and I've got an A to Z... if we just go down this road here... oh god, that's the venue... and Shan's beaten us to it, the band are packing up their equipment. We're relieved to see they look as rough as us. Right, race you to Birmingham then! Having parked up in a proper car park (Riot warns us you shouldn't leave a car in Digbeth, and he should know - little do I know the car has about eight hours to live at this point) we walk down towards the venue. There is a record shop with a box of vinyl LPs outside labelled "Free, please help yourself" - however a quick flick through reveals they are all by Perry Como. A passing motorist expresses an interest, so Roy hands him a couple through the window. Our next mission is to try and find a pub near the venue that is not completely terrifying; a mission on which Nick and I failed on our previous visit here for Forward Russia in July. We end up in a pseudo-trendy bar which has no coffee, no juice and no fizz in the cola, and really unpleasant taste in disco-house background music. Next door then? A rough Irish pub, it looks OK for one pint, and Julie's got relatives in the Digbeth Irish community anyway, but as we walk through the door the entire clientele (possibly one extended family, ridiculously pissed for 6pm) approach us and sing loud Sinatra-style karaoke right in our faces. Back to the nasty bar it is, then. Any Brummie entrepreneurs reading this (well, you never know!) could do worse than to open a pub somewhere in the vicinity of the new Barfly that the pre-gig crowd might actually want to drink in; you'd clean up. Gradually the rest of the regulars turn up and eventually we can escape to the venue. Tonight sees a return for The Witch And The Robot, who scare the crowd accordingly.
British Sea Power play another of the best gigs of the tour here, and once again have made an effort with their attire: Yan is wearing a black silk dress (he later insists it's not a dress. Rubbish.) and Hamilton, not to be upstaged, is modelling a hessian sack.
They are later joined onstage by TWATR's Mr Heartbreak and his balloons; later that evening the papier-mache'd love machine entices two of our girls to a late night casino session. I don't know whether he still had the head on. Also invading the stage towards the end is Mr.Buckethead - not, as you might presume, another spare member of The Witch And The Robot but, er, a bloke with a bucket on his head who throws fruit into the audience whilst dancing like a gibbon.
They are later joined onstage by TWATR's Mr Heartbreak and his balloons; later that evening the papier-mache'd love machine entices two of our girls to a late night casino session. I don't know whether he still had the head on. Also invading the stage towards the end is Mr.Buckethead - not, as you might presume, another spare member of The Witch And The Robot but, er, a bloke with a bucket on his head who throws fruit into the audience whilst dancing like a gibbon.
A bloke who looks very very much like Roy, the lovely mild-mannered chap who was sat in my car just a few hours ago. Then he chucks the bucket into the crowd, too. An apology appears promptly on the band's forum... I recall that it was just a mile or so up the road at the Carling Academy where on the April 2005 tour a direct hit from the boot heel of a stage-diving Noble left me unconscious for a few seconds then concussed for three days; is there something they don't like about Birmingham?
We head off home soon after the gig; Nick and James both have work in the morning and I could do with some sleep before the final leg of the adventure - and we're making good time up the M6 when just past Keele services I hear a strange rattling sound from the front of the car. Surmising it's that loose cap on the screenwash tank I pull into the middle lane and slow down a bit and it stops. Then starts again. Louder. Then the oil light's come on. Amazingly I am on the only bit of the M6 not to have an inside lane full of lorries; by the time I'm on the hard shoulder we've lost power - this whole process having taken around twelve seconds, and I'm cruising to a silent halt by an orange box to conserve the minimal battery left on my phone, and I know the drill, order Nick and James out of the car and onto the verge, reading out my AA number to the disembodied but reassuringly Brummie voice on the other end in small chunks as the only lighting on this part of the motorway is from the headlights of passing vehicles, and turn round to see smoke pouring from under the bonnet. Sorry lads, I think your early night just got cancelled. I suspect the car isn't fixable but I can't have the beer in my bag in case they send me a hire car to get me home or something; I have no idea how this works. I've only had Relay cover for six weeks. Thank fuck I upgraded. The voice on the phone asks if we have kids with us; later James, aware that he looks about three quarters of his 20 years, comments that we should have said yes, they might have come quicker. The AA man shakes his head and explains that he has to knock off shift soon as his truck is due for service - what, at midnight? - and calls for a local recovery firm. But fails to tell him I have passengers, so the local bloke has to bugger off for another hour to find a truck with a cab big enough for all of us. We push the car into my parking space; it's still there two weeks later. A new engine on top of the bodywork and heater repairs it's been needing for ages would set me back more than the old thing's worth. We crawl into bed at five; Nick somehow gets up for work at 6.30 and I write a long obituary for the car on the BSP forum. Most of the regulars have had lifts in it at one point or another; it's probably "been" to more BSP gigs than most people have although the closest it's got to hearing them's the pre-release cassette of Open Season that's been stuck in the tape deck for a year and a half. My brain is by this point in bits. I've got the rest of the week off... I was meant to be off down to London today but as I've got the rest of the week off maybe I should stay home and get a new car or something... but I've got Andy White's ticket in my pocket... and my hotels for Bristol and Cardiff are pre-booked... dunno how the hell I'm going to get there... train I suppose... fuck it. I'm not going to let a little thing like a deceased car stand in my way. I discover a bottle of champagne of unknown origin in the fridge and lug it across the train and tube to Kevo's to celebrate the fact that it's, er, Wednesday.
We head off home soon after the gig; Nick and James both have work in the morning and I could do with some sleep before the final leg of the adventure - and we're making good time up the M6 when just past Keele services I hear a strange rattling sound from the front of the car. Surmising it's that loose cap on the screenwash tank I pull into the middle lane and slow down a bit and it stops. Then starts again. Louder. Then the oil light's come on. Amazingly I am on the only bit of the M6 not to have an inside lane full of lorries; by the time I'm on the hard shoulder we've lost power - this whole process having taken around twelve seconds, and I'm cruising to a silent halt by an orange box to conserve the minimal battery left on my phone, and I know the drill, order Nick and James out of the car and onto the verge, reading out my AA number to the disembodied but reassuringly Brummie voice on the other end in small chunks as the only lighting on this part of the motorway is from the headlights of passing vehicles, and turn round to see smoke pouring from under the bonnet. Sorry lads, I think your early night just got cancelled. I suspect the car isn't fixable but I can't have the beer in my bag in case they send me a hire car to get me home or something; I have no idea how this works. I've only had Relay cover for six weeks. Thank fuck I upgraded. The voice on the phone asks if we have kids with us; later James, aware that he looks about three quarters of his 20 years, comments that we should have said yes, they might have come quicker. The AA man shakes his head and explains that he has to knock off shift soon as his truck is due for service - what, at midnight? - and calls for a local recovery firm. But fails to tell him I have passengers, so the local bloke has to bugger off for another hour to find a truck with a cab big enough for all of us. We push the car into my parking space; it's still there two weeks later. A new engine on top of the bodywork and heater repairs it's been needing for ages would set me back more than the old thing's worth. We crawl into bed at five; Nick somehow gets up for work at 6.30 and I write a long obituary for the car on the BSP forum. Most of the regulars have had lifts in it at one point or another; it's probably "been" to more BSP gigs than most people have although the closest it's got to hearing them's the pre-release cassette of Open Season that's been stuck in the tape deck for a year and a half. My brain is by this point in bits. I've got the rest of the week off... I was meant to be off down to London today but as I've got the rest of the week off maybe I should stay home and get a new car or something... but I've got Andy White's ticket in my pocket... and my hotels for Bristol and Cardiff are pre-booked... dunno how the hell I'm going to get there... train I suppose... fuck it. I'm not going to let a little thing like a deceased car stand in my way. I discover a bottle of champagne of unknown origin in the fridge and lug it across the train and tube to Kevo's to celebrate the fact that it's, er, Wednesday.
We arrive in Camden already so pissed we can't find the pub. No longer constrained by having to be in a fit state to drive every day I will by the end of the tour be possibly in need of the other AA...
The venue assists this by kindly providing a free Jack Daniels for every punter. Actress Hands (yes, that's Phil, above) are back in the support slot allowing us much Phil-heckling; BSP look as tired as I feel, but play another blinding gig; back at Kevo's he puts on the first Suede album before retiring to bed, and I'd forgotten how bloody good it was. Fucking hell, I should have stayed at home and sorted the car out, but I've never seen any band on such consistently brilliant form as this last couple of weeks. Am I going to Bristol then? What do you think!?
A man in a dress. Whatever he says.
If it's Thursday (14th September, I think) then it must be.... Bristol. And in keeping with the eclectic nature of the tour, tonight's venue is a Polish community centre in Clifton. When I phoned up for a ticket (yeah, the band will stick the regulars on the guest list if we get stuck but I don't like to take the piss too much) the nice lady on the phone apologised to me that it would cost me an extra 50p if I wanted it posting to me, and when I dictated my Manchester address to her (this was sometime over the summer) she asked sweetly if I was "a student down here". They really don't know what they're taking on here, I thought. The ticket - itself a beautifully printed little thing harking back to the days before you just got a print-out from whatever agency you used - arrived two days later (are you listening, Seetickets?) with a little photocopied map and a hand-written receipt. Clare lives locally and decided to call in and buy hers directly;she reported back that she'd had some trouble finding the place as it was effectively just a big house on a largely residential street. Pulling up in a taxi I couldn't even see the place, so followed Clare's directions to a nearby hotel bar - there don't appear to be any pubs round here. The hotel bar appears unaccustomed to hosting more than two customers at once and quickly runs out of change, with the barman looking more and more confused with each arriving person. Best go to the venue then. Up the path at the side of the house, passing the leaving Seal Cub Clubbing Club on the way (oops - again!) and through a side door. It is, indeed, a social club / community centre. Not a social club that's reinvented itself as a gig venue like the Brudenell, or some council-funded arts venture like that place in Aldershot, but the sort of place that hosts public meetings or pensioners' dances, or that you hire out for someone's 50th birthday. Pictures of Polish football teams and traditional artwork adorn the walls, and the bar has a wide variety of very reasonably priced vodkas of brands with lots of W's in we've never heard of before.
Morton Valence's wonderfully diverse (both in ethnicity and style) line-up actually looks like it belongs on this stage; I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. They've got a bag of breezy, ever-so-slightly seedy electropop tunes with the earthiness of a stage-full of real instruments and personalities. For them a potential problem may be that they aren't the easiest band to pigeonhole, and we all know how much the press prefer bands they can pigeonhole. (Laughably, the NME last week ran an entire review of Larrikin Love bemoaning the difficulty in pigeonholing them - very postmodern. I could have helped them though - "pointless crusty revivalists". There. Anyway, back to Morton Valence...) For me the thing that's missing, it's not dissimilar to my only issue with the aforementioned Firebrand Boy, is quite simply that I grew up round Manchester, certain things are in my blood and can't be denied, I prefer my electropop with a fuck-off great thumping beat. From (New Order's) "Temptation" to (The Whip's) "Frustration". maybe Morton Valence should commission a JC909 remix as well. As it is they're still a bloody good band but I can't quite lose myself in it.
After their set one of them comes over to Kevo and apologises that the keyboards were a bit down in the mix; there've been complaints from a local resident, it seems. What the fuck are they going to make of a band with their own air-raid siren, we joke, and get some more wodkas in.
Half Man Half Biscuit, somewhere in some lyric I can't place right now (although it's probably "Breaking News" - a 'list song' detailing everything Nigel finds annoying) have a little sneer at "bands who type out their setlists". Worse still are those which are not only typed but formatted, and titled with the venue name, date and a band logo. British Sea Power have been guilty of this in the past; I have several pieces of evidence of such from their "professional" period of early 2005. Now, however, it's back to cardboard boxes, and like the smaller and weirder venues and rawer sound it all seems like part of a return to what they do best.
The set-list above is followed faithfully up to a point; yet again it's drippingly hot, and I'm stood still exhausted leaning on the speaker Noble-side when a small bloke brandishing a mobile phone taps me on the shoulder and gestures to be let past me. Cheeky git, I think, but he probably just wants to get some photos on his phone. He holds up the phone - maybe it's that age-old trick of sending a bit of the gig to a mate who can't make it. Been there, done that. Not sure I'd have chosen "Pelican" do try that in though, it's just going to sound like a racket to anyone who doesn't know it... and then the song's finishing, and he's beckoning Hamilton over, saying something quietly. I do, however, hear Hamilton's side of the conversation. Firstly "No we can't turn it down, it all comes through the sound desk", secondly "You really can't do that, these people have paid their money" and thirdly something uncharacteristically angry, the general gist of which was that he should have checked all that before booking the gig. It seems the police have now been alerted.
Uh-oh. Hamilton politely explains the situation to the crowd, before leading the band into a bizarrely woozy, half-speed, queitly strummed version of "Mary". Half way through they give up and blast through the song properly and at full pelt, before Yan returns to centre stage. He says we can have either "Spirit Of St Louis" or "Carrion" because they could pull the plug any time; the vote's split, and we get both anyway - each in one of the fastest, loudest, hardest versions ever. It's outstanding. Word comes back via Morton Valence that the complaint is from one little old lady, next door, who's trying to watch some feelgood soap and can't hear her telly And whilst I do have sympathy with her (this is, after all, a slightly different kettle of fich to that twat who moved in near Night & Day and then sought to whinge about the noise; this woman's probably lived there 70 years, it's that kind of street) I can't believe the promoter didn't do his job. He pushes past me again, presumably en route to deliver another telling off to the band, and (somewhat vodka-fortified) I tap him on the shoulder, look him straight in the eye and nod towards the stage with its rudimentary bingo-hall PA and lighting rig, and say "The music stops, and this place gets demolished." I wave or gesture at Clare and Alan down the front, Riot behind me, Julie and Victoria and Mrs Riot who are stood up on a bench at the side. They all smile or wave back - of course there's no conspiracy and they all think I'm just saying hi, and I will say on record and for certain right now that I do not condone violence or vandalism, especially of really nice community centres - but I think I've put the shits up him slightly. Well lad, you should have done your homework, end of.
By this time Phil has rejoined the stage dressed like that (above). I really don't think anyone's going to mess, now. If I didn't know him I'd be scared of him. The fact that I do know him doesn't make me much less scared of him. Beast. Woody and Hamilton have had enough, anyway, and wander off through the fire doors at the back. Noble climbs behind the drums, and amazingly he is really rather good at it. Yan picks up a bass, and heavily tattooed guitar tech Welsh Paul (yes, he whom they had dressed as a cardboard and tinfoil robot at the summer's festivals - poor sod!) picks up a guitar. And randomly shooting pictures whenever my rather slow-to-respond camera can manage it, I end up with a load of shots of backs of heads and stuff - and there in amongst them all, I later find the best BSP photo I've taken since my iconic "Eamon At Full Moon" picture of almost three years ago, which is still used by the band on their Myspace page. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you (and all credit to Cindy for the title) Homoerotic Gasmask Trumpet!
This picture is now my work PC desktop background. Amazingly nobody has asked me about it...
This picture is now my work PC desktop background. Amazingly nobody has asked me about it...
Afterwards, Phil emerges with a bottle of whisky and we head out looking for a pub before any trouble can ensue. It says something for the calibre of establishment that we end up in that they don't turn us away at the door, being all rather the worse for wear and carrying loads of booze (they do ask us to leave it outside though). I am reliably informed things get very messy indeed inside and I don't remember how we got back to the hotel. In the morning (well, early afternoon) Kevo, Yuko and I stumble to the station looking rough (well, apart from Yuko, who never looks rough however much she's been drinking.) Julie and Victoria turn up looking even rougher. We stagger off the train in Cardiff and run into Noble and Woody who look the roughest of the lot of us. A shirtless chav hassles Yuko for some water. Cardiff is rough. Riot has offered to drive Kevo and me to tomorrow's End Of The Road festival and it's starting to feel rather aptly named. I drift into town and buy the cheapest tent Argos have to offer; might as well see this thing though. Then a couple of hours' sleep before it's time to go out again...
Cardiff, Friday 15th September, a pub somewhere. Chips and cheese - my first and only meal of the day. Christ, my diet leaves a lot to be desired. It's always like this when you go out following a tour though. By two thirds of the way in you generally lose both the taste and the ability to digest anything healthy and start to consider Red Bull and dry roasted peanuts to be the two most important food groups. I've not got ill though - that first Chameleons US trip in 02 absolutely everyone ended up with the green snot-lurgy from hell, and even on most of these UK jaunts everyone else seems to get a cold at some point, but these days I figure I am immune to most cold and flu bugs, and doubling up on the multivitamins deals with everything else.
The crowd are really up for it. It's rammed down the front even during Actress Hands' set, and (as we have come to expect) seriously hot - and with its brickwork arch the venue bears some resemblance to Exeter Cavern, the first (non-festival) date of the tour which seems a long, long time ago now. We stand aside a little, plenty of breathing space; Kevo and I find ourselves dancing with a grinningly enthusaistic lad who's never seen the band before. He's in luck tonight - they go out with a bang and afterwards everyone's smiling. Yuko and I crash into a couple of chairs up the back, barely able to move. At the side of the stage, Kevo overhears the first-timer grab Yan on his way past and tell him "that was better than shagging a sheep". Oh god, where did reality go again?
Victoria actually spent a year or so at university in Cardiff but has no tips for late night sessions because she claims she rarely went out; from our admittedly limited experience of the place we don't blame her. Clwb Ifor Bach, which we know because BSP played there once, won't let us in, so we end up in a dodgy Irish pub somewhere near Cardiff castle. That won't let us in at first either, but Phil "We're in the band that just played the Barfly and they told us to come here" and me "Look, these two are in the band, the rest of us are crew and PR" somehow manage to keep straight faces and our best polite voices up until we're all safely inside. Again I have little memeory of the rest of it...
Saturday 16th September, and we're off to the End Of The Road, situated on the Dorset/Wiltshire border not a million miles from where Riot and I kicked off one of the craziest summers ever, when we decided to go and watch iLiKETRAiNS in Swindon as a prelude to Latitude festival, largely because we could and it amused us. Ten weeks and 24 BSP gigs later we're driving down lanes of decreasing width; as we pass Warminster, Kevo claims it's the UK's hot spot for alien abductions. We consider faking one. Where the hell is this place? It's not called End of The Road for nothing, then... and when we arrive, there doesn't seem to be much evidence of a festival....
It's like Latitude all over again, only even more so. The site is as beautiful as the promotional material suggests; all woodland walks and strange little paths, with the main stage on a central lawn. A peacock (well, peahen probably) struts around followed by two or three chicks, and everyone seems to be chilled out on the grass. A lady called El Perro Del Mar is doing some girly folky stuff that's quite nice if rather unmemorable, and Andy and Cerys who've already been there for the first night look a touch delicate, and soon we discover the reason for this...
Yes. That's hot cider, spiced with cinnamon, and a shot of brandy in each half pint. Which costs three quid. To quote Liam Frost (somewhat randomly, I admit), "this is the place where I made my first mistake..." We head off to put my tent up, and if you've ever wondered what Argos's cheapest one-person tent looks like pitched, this is it in full effect...
Back in the arena, My Latest Novel are excellent, blending Belle & Sebastian with Arcade Fire type sounds; one of these days I'll actually get to see this band in their own right rather than squeezed into a festival bill. They also provide me with the first of these for ages...
The reviewer from Soundsxp later notes "The first weird thing I notice during My Latest Novel's set is the fat bloke stood up (everyone else is lounging on the grass) reading the Daily Telegraph". Good heavens, who'd do such a thing?
Congratulations My Latest Novel, you have been Captain Riot-ed. Next up is the first instalment of the Brighton brigade, Electric Soft Parade. I am really glad I'm not reviewing this properly, as I remember really enjoying their set but not much else. They come to Manchester soon anyway (Monday 9th October, Night & Day) where I hope to be able to remember slightly more. All I can say is that after a couple of years in the wilderness they're actually better than they ever were back in the major label next big thing days, if anything they've grown into their sound (they always used to look about 13, didn't they?) and with the newest material the strongest in the set I'm quite looking forward to that. Next act on however are universally agreed by our relatively eclectic little crew to be somewhere between "the worst band I've seen this year" (me - and yes, that does mean Guillemots - whom I'll be avoiding on the Big Top stage later - have been demoted) to "the worst band I have ever seen" (Andy). I mean look at these twats.
Their name is Superthriller and frankly that picture doesn't even do justice to their awfulness. Musically they seem to be operating in the terrifying space between Jamiroquai and Level 42. although they clearly consider themselves slightly more cutting edge than that would imply. One of their songs has the repeated refrain "Smoking kills, and I'm dead" - sorry? what? - and just in case there's anyone they haven't offended enough with their music (and this is such a "nice" festival that they actually get away with it for the best part of an hour), at the end their Asian member, wearing a Palestinian style headscarf, comes onstage with a large pretend bomb, lit fuse and all. Words fail me as to what sort of statement they are trying to make here. Whatever it is it's certainly lost on Alan and his son, anyway...
Thankfully Brakes are along soon to get us back in the party spirit (another few rounds of the Wrong Drink have helped) and intersperse the much-loved short sharp shocks from their debut album with some newer, slightly longer but still unmistakeably Brakes tunes of which the punky "Cease & Desist" is currently my favourite. They've enlisted the help of a couple of their Brighton pals too; first Phil "The Beast" Sumner stands solemnly in his cape throughout the ten second burst of "Cheney" before adding a touch-of-genius trumpet parp to the end - it's so good they do it twice - and then this rather lost looking creature wanders onstage...
... to add some backing vocals to the lovely "If I Should Die Tonight". Brakes are also touring soon (Manchester date is the Roadhouse, 3rd December) - looks like those White brothers are going to be quite busy. We have a final run to the Cider Bus before British Sea Power, where Cerys decides we need pints rather than halves of the how-the-fuck-is-that-legal hot loopy-juice, and by the time they come onstage we're ready to give it loads down the front of the still rather static crowd. I wish I could tell you what they plated - although at a guess it was probably not dissimilar to the tour sets - but it was great fun, anyway, and twoards the end there was the return of an old friend...
...yep, it's Eamon. Christ, yeah, we know Yan's been wearing that not-a-dress-honest for the past few nights, but he has the decency to wear trousers with it, and besides, Eamon's just that little bit taller... Cerys and I are really quite glad we have lost any ability to focus our eyes properly by this point. Jo Shopkeeper's up there too in her royally-approved bathing costume, there's a couple of people who might or might not be in My Latest Novel, Phil and his cape and trumpet; it's a triumphant and appropriately ridiculous finale to a fantastic tour.
Except it's not quite finished yet. Rumour has it that the collective Brighton crew will be performing a midnight set in the oddly named Bimble Inn tent. This appears to be some sort of hippy tent, with nice floor rugs and cushions (actually I might well have imagined the cushions) and...
...yeah. I have no idea who even took this photo. I'm woken up by Cerys shoving Jaegermeister down my mouth from a hip flask, and yeah, there appear to be some of BSP and ESP mucking about with things onstage. The next half hour or so is possibly the most demented thing I have ever seen onstage and utterly defies description, but I'll have a go. British Sea Power (plus Phil) start off playing "Freight Train", something that's been creeping into recent live shows as a sort of Rock In A replacement set-ender, but Yan is clearly very much the worse for wear. He howls something about his shoes into the mic a couple of times then wanders over to the drumkit (now manned jointly by BSP's Woody and ESP's Tom) and hits a few things at random, before curling up in a small ball at the back of the stage.
Eamon, Noble and Hamilton attempt some vocals, and Noble announces "We've had acid!" - a fact which is probably quite apparent. I certainly haven't, but I'm starting to feel like I have. And then Phil's off.
His first couple of attempts at standing up are unsuccessful, but then he's off into the crowd. The next thing I know he's on top of me hitting me round the head with the trumpet and for a minute I think maybe this really is the end of the road, but Cerys throws him off; I'm later told I got off lightly, he has also allegedly knocked someone out cold, which may or may not have been Roy, and nearly trodden on a small child, and I'm far from the only person who received speical brass lessons. Cerys feeds me more Jaegermeister. The plugs are pulled roundabout the time Phil starts pulling the tent down with a guitar, and I really don't remember much else.
"Cath, we're going soon..." I have no idea where the fuck I am. I seem to be in a bin liner and it's dark. Oh yeah, it's my £14.99 "tent" - I check my phone. It's 5am. Never one to hang around, Riot has calculated that he'll be legally OK to drive by now, and I'm rather glad this is now someone else's problem as I doubt I will for several days, not that I have a car anyway at the moment. We gather up the tent and walk back through the festival site. Yeah, it was a lovely little festival, but the ease with which Kevo and Riot found our encampment in the dark tells us something about the number of people actually here. Maybe it was the fact that there were no day tickets, and at the end of a summer strewn with more festivals than ever before few people would have had £95 spare; maybe it was just that it was unclear who, apart from us daft bastards who'd go and watch British Sea Power on the moon if they played there, the line-up was aimed at. The remote location meant camping was a must, and who seriously wants to trust the English weather in September?
We drive away down the empty lanes. There's a thick morning mist and we haven't seen another car in miles, and then Riot sewars he's seen a man by the side of the road. Kevo swears there was nobody there; I'm not really in any state to judge. A vision, a ghost, an optical illusion? We're all completely done in. It's been a crazy three weeks, and whilst we've had some excellent times all three of us are starting to feel we're maybe getting a bit old for all this. We have seen British Sea Power almost 500 times between us. I've done every date on the tour, they've missed one each. This is possibly not normal behaviour for people in their 30s and 40s with jobs and mortgages and stuff.
A few days later Riot announces via a Myspace bulletin "Returning home from last weekend's End of the Road Festival at Larmer Tree Gardens, Captain Riot witnessed a spectre with closely cropped hair and wearing a knee length coat walking along a deserted lane on the edge of a Wiltshire Field in the early hours of Sunday morning. The Captain hadn't even passed another vehilce in the previous ten minutes. Captain Riot's comrades: Kevo and Cath Aubergine, who were with him at the time, witnessed nothing, despite being on the look out for road signs and turnings. Captain Riot has exclusively revealed: "The image was myself in younger, pre-British Sea Power, days walking forwards from the end of this particular road in life. The spectre appeared to be on unknown ground, lost and uncertain about what direction to take." Kevo said "I have agreed to lend Captain Riot a book that has been out of print for a number of years".
My response is thus:
Over the past year or so we've lost quite a few of the "old crowd", because for whatever reason they've gone off the band - and whilst I admire those who know when the time is right to stop, I do miss them terribly. Yeah, we all still see each other quite a bit, but it's not quite the same as when we had the focal point of the gig. The pre-gig drinks, the anticipation, the euphoria, then the warm shared afterglow. I'm starting to feel old down the front these days - when I first got to know the other regulars I was amazed how many of them were older than me; there was a whole bunch of them around the 40 mark, but these days the crowds are young, and most of the newer additions to the regular crew are still in their teens. And even most of the old-timers still hanging in there tend to stay back a bit, but that's just not me. Down the front is where I belong, but on occasions I'm slightly ashamed to be there, jumping around with people 10-15 years younger than me.
For me, and I can't express this strongly enough, there has been no loss of interest or love for the band/music whatsoever. They rarely leave me a gibbering wreck these days going "what the fuck was that!?" but then they wouldn't, would they, after that many gigs. They do however still really fucking excite me far more frequently than bands I've seen a tenth of the times, and I can honestly say on this past tour they have been on absolutely blinding form nearly every night. And no, there's not a "Carrion" or a "True Adventures" emerged out of the new stuff yet, but it's generally up there with everything else they've done, and with the development which we've been repeatedly told is still in progress I have confidence Album 3 will be fantastic. But maybe the time has come for me, too, to cut down a little. I never actually intended to do the full tour this time round but the installation of iLiKETRAiNS as support for some of the dates I wasn't going to bother with in week 2, the collapse of the "other plans" I'd had for York night due to other people, and the surprise announcement from Sharon (who doesn't even like the band that much) that she'd be at the Glasgow gig as she assumed we would, all added up to ensure I did. 18 dates in 21 nights. Did I get tired of the band? Not tired of them, no, but tired? Christ, I didn't think that level of tiredness even existed.
*
It's been a week and a half now since I've been home. I've been to a few local gigs (the normal blog will return this weekend), gone back to work, and tonight my beloved old Ford Ka left my parking space for the last time on the back of a tow truck; tomorrow a shiny (nearly) new one awaits me in Old Trafford. Riot says of course he'll still go and see the band, just no longer feels the need to do every date. And me? Well..... I was pretty fucked. I'm still not sure if hot cider with brandy or for that matter Jaegermeister should be legal, and certainly together they should be avoided. I have now seen British Sea Power 131 times, which even I think is possibly slightly excessive. But I've seen hundreds of band this year; week in week out, I've written about many of them here, and I still can't think of one that gives me the buzz they do. Yeah, maybe Oxford on a work night is a bit silly, maybe I don't need to go to every gig they play any more, but I'm pretty sure wherever they next strike a note in concert I'll be there. And that third album's going to be brilliant, trust me on this.
As Hamilton sings in "True Adventures", "you think it's gone my friend, but it comes back again"...
The best band in the world.
Love and thanks to everyone who came along for some or all of this crazy trip, I won't name them all because I'll forget someone, and thank you above all to Noble, Woody, Yan and Hamilton for making the greatest music I've ever heard, and long may it continue.
http://www.mortonvalence.co.uk/
http://www.myspace.com/thewitchandtherobot
http://www.myspace.com/actresshands
http://www.johnbetjeman.com/
http://www.myspace.com/thewitchandtherobot
http://www.myspace.com/actresshands
http://www.johnbetjeman.com/
Sorry, I really can't be bothered doing any more links tonight...
