Newcastle 11/29/09

Some mornings, you wake up all excited to go exploring- you’re in a new town, the sun is out, and the birds are whistling the melody to "Young Folks". I love these days- they're the kind of days I find a new thrift store with every knick knack and slide guitar you'd ever want ever for a nickel.

Some mornings, you don’t wake up at all. Instead, you wake up in the afternoon with the power out, the toilet not working, and the heat off. I don't know about you, but when I can't figure out how to make the toilet flush, I don't feel quite right. It turned out that Walter had just run out of money on his pre-paid utility card (I don't know, don't ask) and all the electricity and water turned off in his flat. We made it out of Walter's before anyone started peeing in bottles. At least, b'fore I did.

The day was about as bleary as could be, so it wasn't really a bad thing that we didn't wake up til three or so. It was dreary and overcast and drizzling and there were probably werewolves out there, so the less we were outside, the better.

During tonight's interview, the truth behind BBE becoming a four piece was revealed. See, BBE went on a bear hunt. Over the mountain, around the river, through the Goonies cave, the whole nine yards. And when they finally found a bear in the cave at the end of their trek, they lost their nerve when the Grizzly charged them, so they hightailed it back. Josh was unfortunately the slowest of the five of them.

For some reason, these machines made me feel like we were playing at a 7-Eleven:

And today is the third time in as many nights that I’ve hear the DJ play Parklife, Smells like Teen Spirit, Song 2 and/or Killing in the Name Of. I mean, seriously?

This is the only picture I have of Jenny from the Block's house. We stayed there and she treated up super awesome, again. Her roommates on the other hand, were not so awesome. She lives with her landlord's girlfriend, so when he came out of her room and told us that the bathroom was now off limits and that if anyone else used it they'd get their head ripped off, we couldn't do much about it. Except pee in bottles.

11.30.09 favorite joke of the day:

Me: “Charlie, scare T’nealle, she’s got the hiccups."

Charlie"T'nealle, I'm your brother. And you're pregnant."

Carlisle 11/28/09

We woke up in Manchester and found this really cute breakfast joint. They even had mugs to help us cope with the rigors of touring.

We got on the road and made our way to Carlisle. The weather here has been a bit horrid, and the News keeps warning of massive flooding in the northern UK, but we got to the club without any problems. Hopefully our US tour mates/BFFs don't have any problems when they come through a week later.

The venue BBE is playing is called the Brickyard. Inside, it looks and feels like a wide open, damp cavern. Or a really big pizza oven.

The dressing room has an old stone fireplace shrine-ized with multiple thrift store mirrors and naked white hanging bulbs.

Someone from NZ might use the words “Super rad vibes” to describe the accommodations. On top of all this architectural/interior design greatness, everyone we meet is super nice and outgoing to boot. We meet Jenny from the Block, who is playing in one of the bands tonight, and we find out she'll be our host and promoter t’morrow night. But b’fore her band plays, The Sun Explodes slays things. They're like a live-action Dethklok, including arpeggiated keyboards, 5/4 half-time breakdowns, and leg-up-on-the-monitor-wedge-finger-tapping guitar solos. It gets me in a hedonistic mood and I go gorge myself on the way-to-much Indian food I got around the corner.

After the show some really enthusiastic fans insist we come down to the dance club CONCRETE. Just the name of the place makes my filling hurt, but whatever. So I hopped in the car to drive all our gear to a safer locale before heading to the club. At one point there was a strange intersection with an Ambulance trying to merge in, so I held back to let the ambulance in front of me, which it never decided to do. Instead we just sat there. And sat there. The light wouldn't change. A couple minutes later a cop knocked at my window and said I had to pull up another ten feet to trigger the sensor. Waa waa. I still don't understand why the ambulance didn't take the right of way I was giving it. So we ditched the car somewhere safe and made it to the club. It's in the basement and they have a sheet of 20 or so fruity shots that each cost 1 quid. I watch Charlie go hog wild in an attempt to try one of each He gets sidetracked from his mission though when he orders a Bananarama martini. True story. James and Zach did not get Bananarama martini's, but that didn't stop them from humping on the dance floor. I stood sagely by and told dudes I was the caddy from Happy Gilmore, and if I they bought me a drink, I'd take my picture with them. This actually happened. Twice.

The party at Concrete came to an end, but our soiree did not. On our way home, we tripped over this guy in the alley. Yes, completely passed out, lying supine on the cobblestone ground in a puddle of water and puke. One of saintly ladies in our crew called an ambulance as the rest of us tried our best to get the guy up without actually having to touch him. This was as hard as it sounds. He eventually staggered to his knees, and then did something amazing. As soon as he saw the lights of the ambulance through his closed eyelids, he found the focus to start RUNNING away. Remember, this guy was unconscious and pickled in a cold, cold alley. We decided he thought it was the cops and his mind was screaming "WEEEEEEEEEEEEEE'RE NEVVVVVVVVER GOING TO JAAAAIIIIIIIIL AGAIN! REMEEEEEEEEEEEMBER!?"

Our host for the night, Walter, found our alley discovery pretty amazing and was pretty happy we didn't bring the guy back to his flat with us.

11/27 Blackburn Fish 'n Chips

I finally got my first taste of fish and chips on this trip. And me getting some fish and chips has been a moment everyone on tour has been highly anticipating. A little background: BBE is from Christchurch, NZ. In 2001, I hitchhiked around NZ for ten weeks, and about the only things I remember about Christchurch are the Wizard and that I ate some Fish and Chips that I got for $3.00 NZ (it was about $1.30 US dollars) and then literally crapped my pants in a park 30 minutes later. The story is much better in person, because I recreate the horizontal walking posture I used to get me from the park all the way to the second floor bathroom of the library down the block. So yes, me and fish and chips, what would happen? The place I found seemed like a real deal Chippery: you could get about 30 things, and 28 them came fried.

The other two were the ubiquitous pizza and doner kebaps, which worried me a little bit. Cause when they start offering additional items that aren't fried, you know they have to cut corners somewhere. I was hoping it wasn't in the fish dept. Just to be safe, I made sure not to eat my meal in a park.

After a hilarious interview, we made our way to the venue and slowly watched the night unfold. I don’t know if I can come up with the words to capture the setting, so I’ll just give you some facts: the opening band played a 12 string guitar that they refused to tune (one of those “too cool to tune, too dumb to know how” situations), the girls in the crowd were all wearing matching black tights and/or hypercolored tops, and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” was the stone cold frat jam that got the crowd all revved up before BBE played.

The dressing room was up above the rest of the club, and there is a big piece of one way glass set in the wall so you can look down on the stage and a wee bit of the dance floor. I think it’s actually just there so the workers can look down girls’ shirts, but I’m usually wrong about these kinds of things.

As cool as Blackburn is, we leave town to stay with friends that have transplanted to Manchester from New Zealand. James and Zach just can't wait to show their gratitude for the hospitality.

11/26 The Royal Derby

Meet BBE’s new bass player: Meat Sandwich.

She will make you a mean meat sandwich. Go ahead, just ask.

So, the next town on our tour is Derby, and apparently it's pronounced Darby. I can't explain why, but since the English language is from England, I'll just talk their word for it on this one.

We made our way to Derby pretty early and got our culture on. The Derby Art Museum and Art Gallery was a pretty amazing conglomeration of everything Derby. And it didn’t just have any old art to enlighten the citizens of Derby- the museum actually only had art about Derby or created by people associated with Derby. As far as I could tell, the curator of the museum was pretty sure Derby was the location of the original primordial pool.

In addition to recreations of the ancient past, it had a room displaying the adornings of a Derby man in the Armed Forces, a contemporary gallery with recent works by the locals, and a natural history section with awesome dioramas of what James is like every night:

There was another gallery with an exhibit of what it's like to get Charlie up in the morning:

By this point in the tour, BBE even has me being sarcastic with interviewers:

"Does the band have a website?"

"Yes, it’s Cakefarts.com."

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BBE plays that night in an old hotel with our friends Polka Party. Carlsberg beer tastes like crap.

The venue has a huge Drum and Bass show the next night that they have to start setting up for right after BBE's show ends, so we sit around playing on the internet while Meat Sandwich helps decorate the dressing room.

We ended up back at the promoter's place eating chips with salad and watching bad TV.

As you might guess, 1000 Ways to Die is a pretty dumb show. There was a re-enactment/re-creation of a goblin strangling a woman, which was the explanation for the cause of her SUNDS. I mean, does Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome really exist? Wikipedia says yes.

11/25 Shakespeare says "Go to the Flapper"

After our scolding last night, I expected to walk out of the motel, where last night's manager is waiting on the roof to dump hot oil on us, but the new dude on the new shift could give two shits about us. We jumped in the car and headed out to see Shakespeare's birthplace. On the way, there was a ton of signs begging us to stop at the Warwick Castle, so we stopped. It was a bust. They wanted like 18 quid a person so you could hang out with a bunch of high school theatre people that never made it so now they're character actors in a castle. They just looked like extras from Young Frankenstein to me.

They did have peacocks. Then again, the Como Zoo in Saint Paul has peacocks, and it's still free.

About the only thing good about Warwick Castle was that it afforded Zach the first of his many tour attempts to cut off T'nealle's maidenhead.

Down the road, we made it to Stratford-Upon-Avon and checked out the Bard's childhood home. It was cool to see the house, and I guess it was cute that everything in the town was named after characters from the literary world of Shakespeare. But the Subway sandwich store next door and the surrounding shopping centres sprawling as far as you could see kind of ruined the idyllic scene I had created in my mind. Which was of course that the town was going to be quaint homes along a small stream dotted with fawns and fairies.

I kind of wished they had Shakespeare's body embalmed Lenin-style. That'd be cool.

So we made our way to Birmingham. Holy shit, Birmingham has the most looney-tunes drivers I've seen so far on tour. If a road has three lanes, there will be six cars crammed side by side vying to get to I don't know where, cause there's another six cars crammed side by side in front of them. Total free-for-all. But we made it to that night's venue unscathed, and wow, the Flapper is awesome. Micky and George are stellar promoters, and the club is fun. People from Birmingham also love shows it seems. If more UK venues were like the Flapper, well, then the UK would be way cooler. Just sayin'.

The show is a blast and we make a load of new friends before hitting the road. Due to my flagged status, tonight T’nealle and Zack checked into an unsuspecting Travelodge as a statutory legal couple. Then they returned to the car and let the other three of us walk in, with James disguised in all of the clothes that Zach was wearing when he just checked in. It worked just great.

I woke up in the middle of the night to a deep hollow thump rattling over and over inside my head. I sat up and looked around, only to find James on the floor in one of his hyperactive deep sleeping fits banging his head erratically against my bed frame. Cute that one.

Of course, we couldn’t get away without incident, so we got evil-eyed and kicked out the next morning when we weren’t out of our room by 12. I think it’s going to be hilarious when Travelodge sponsors our next tour.

Reading The Oakford Social Club.

Oh Reading, how we have missed you so. It's like this place has some kind of crappy tractor beam honed in on us that won't let us stray from the heart of the town. Our first day in the country we stopped through Reading to quickly drop off some merch and meet our booking agent. Instead we ended up doing u-turn after u-turn and getting sick in roundabouts under construction. This time, we end up going down some bus only lanes and driving in reverse up hills until the clutch smells like a vacuum cleaner on fire. At the centre of town is The Oracle, and I decide that's where this tractor beam is housed. It's big and it's ostentatiously bright, so I make the guess that it's a nüchurch of newage enlightenment or a Stargate to other planets. It turns out to be a giant mall/movie screen complex. Ah, yes, the Church of Lemmings and Consumerism. How could I not guess that with a name like The Oracle?

Tonight’s club is owned by the same people that owned last night’s club, so it's done up in matching decorations, theme, and menus. There’s a slight déjà vu feeling that we're going to be stuck in the same bar until we play a sold out show.

The show was pretty fun, but hey, dude, drunk guy, stop kicking chairs into my legs to get me to move. Just tap me nicely and say I’m in your way. Or get up and watch the band, I know your legs work, I’ve seen you walk to the bar about 47 times. Or go outside and drink some English bum poison and leave me alone.

We drove a bit out of town and did another Travelodge extravaganza. Checked in, chatted up the nice lady at the front desk. But then of course James just had to stop and put his 1 pound coin over and over and over into the broken candy machine, drawing astute attention to all of us as we walked in. So when I came back in from gathering my luggage from the car, the woman was on the phone with her manager to report us for having five people in one room. And now I’m flagged in the system as someone that uses Travelodge rooms for my Coyote operation or something. I’m not going to be able to travel anywhere by the time I’m 30, at least not cheaply. Anyway, look, the place just looks evil. It must be the heated fumes of hell residing below the motel that are distorting the camera shot.

60 Million Postcards in Bournemouth 11.23

My water bottle is MIA. Tear.

We have been trying to destroy our hire car’s stereo with Lil Wayne’s No Ceiling mixtape. No luck yet, but we have it distorted enough that every time Weezy hollers “No Ceilings” it sounds like he’s saying “New Zealand”. Which he should be shouting anyway.

BBE plays with a Kings of Leon wannabe band with a front man that hates Americans. Ironic? Definitely sad. I also don’t understand this manner of thinking. I get it if you hate rapists. But a whole group of people who happen to live on a large land mass? It’s like saying “I hate food”. Sure, there are some terrible things out there, but I generally like most of the stuff I try, or at least appreciate them for what they are. I feel the same way about people. Most of the people I meet around the world are interesting and intriguing. This dude, not so much.

The show that night is pretty great, and I get to watch it from behind two couches of girls sipping wine and dressed up as exotic cats. Chloe the promoter is a peach and takes five star care of us with homemade lasange and some bottles of wine of our own. We all pass out to watching Life with David Attenborough, and its internet counterpart, I Hate Nature.

the Freebutt likes Reis

We woke up to Charlie taking forever in the bathroom. The delay: he thought taking a shower and then drying off with toilet paper was a keen idea. Instead, he killed a whole tree blotting himself and he probably still has TP stuck to that unreachable spot between his shoulder blades. Kind of like when Tobias tried out for the Blue Man Group.

Charlie has also discovered Twitter. I’m not sure how into it he is, but I think he likes using it just for the fact that it annoys the rest of the band.

We rolled into Brighton early, so we stopped by the Grapevine Hostel to get the key deposit back from the last time BBE were in town to play the Great Escape festival. And just like last time, the hostel couldn’t find the proper paper work. Grapevine, we will be back, don’t think you got out of this one. We need that 30 quid deposit back for per diems. Have you seen how skinny T’nealle’s getting?

We kept exploring and wander down to the Ocean. The old pier’s charred armature was still holding it’s own against the ocean’s swinging temperament, and the new pier was pretty cool.

Horatio’s wasn’t as cool without bands playing there, but the shut down carnival rides cantilevered over the water were pretty interesting to look at.

I could only imagine these rides, with their joints crusted by the salt water, being used until disaster. Of course in my mind everything is being run like Pleasure Island in Pinocchio, the operators fiendishly laughing as the deteriorated joints of the Teapot Scrambler and the Rails of Speed snap and shoot laughing patrons into the sea.

Off of the beach they have these amazing stone and mortar constructed walkways that look like boat hulls. They extend about 200 feet into the water. The ocean cries and whines against them, smashing the stone bows with every pent up wave. We watch quite a few unsuspecting tourists get soaked this way. I like the ocean, it’s a funny beast.

The guys that run the venue BBE plays, The Freebutt, are two stellar dudes. They put together a great show (Zach even got to nerd down with Son of Robot about WoW and Abelton Live), fed us a super delicious pasta meal, and let us crash in the upstairs bar apartment. Among other things, we talked RFTC and sampled the local brews. Harveys beer was delicious. It comes in 20 or 30 liter boxes.

Since we spent so much time talking about John Reis, we ended the night with shots of Brandy, because we are full of great ideas (ie see: Charlie’s hostel shower)

London Saturday 11/21

Ah yes, the maiden voyage driving into London. I am so impressed by semi-truck drivers here. Fine, lorries, whatever. I don’t know how they make their way down these narrow, pint-sized alleys. Maybe the sides of their trucks are covered in vaseline. As far as our vehicle goes, zipping around London is actually kind of fun, and there's a bit of an out of body mindset you have to embrace so you stop thinking of the 1001 different ways people might smash into you every given second. It's kind of like I'm in a video game - I even end up in the wrong part of town with decrepit slums that all look the same. We meet Rich and Patrick, and they turn out to be stellar promoters. Their flat mate cooked a big pot of chili and a load of baked potatoes and we have a grand old feed. Alas, we have to leave this little womb of comfort and venture back into the labyrinth of London’s one-way streets. We eventually make it to Barfly, and Zach finds a parking spot while I pull the car around. This is easier said than done though, and it takes me 15 minutes to get the car back to where he is. So Zach entertains himself by keeping really pissed-off Italians from parking in the spot he’s holding. The bar’s door is manned by a member of the Amy Winehouse army, and the show is understandably awesome.

While the band is sound checking, I go exploring on the tube. This is kind of a bust for two reasons: 1) the station I want to go to is under construction, and 2) they have posters for Legally Blonde the Musical plastered everywhere. Which obviously wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but the lead actresses’ name is Sheridan. And here I was thinking my name was only a girl’s name in Australia. Maybe I should try a transgendered lifestyle. Sheridan’s definitely a cooler gender neutral name than Pat.

As far as the actual tube experience goes, it's pretty amazing how the train cars are packed with people and yet everyone manages to not look anyone else in the eye or even acknowledge each other’s existence, even if it’s a sniffley nosed grandma pressed up against their back. The girl next to me is crying and has mascara running down her checks. But I still think the tube is pretty cool.

After the show, we make it to the hostel Rich was nice enough to book us. A Russian lets us park in the expensive hotel’s locked carpark down the street (and he even didn’t kill Zach for humping the orange Porche in the Porche only zone), and now the only thing I have to worry about is that I didn’t get shingles or fleas from our one random roommate.

Cambridge Friday 11/20/09

Driving through the overcast English countryside listening to Kid A is kind of surreal. It's like I can see the overbearing and dreary environment that the record was made to through the songs. The album makes a good ominous soundtrack for the ride- I feel like I’m driving into a Margaret Atwood novel, and just past these saturated, beautiful fields of green and over the hills, some type of utilitarian government is going to stop us and put us in a breeding camp and make us write catchy theme songs for their constantly broadcast Big Brother telescreen announcements. Maybe Thom Yorke’s soul is a Margaret Atwood novel. Makes sense to me.

I am starting to rue the fact that the roads don’t have street signs on every corner. Or numbers on the buildings. Sometimes there’s road signs attached to the sides of building, but half the time they’re covered up with ye olde english moss or have fallen down. I guess this is why touring bands hire drivers from the UK. Or maybe it's hilarious task under taken by the GPS companies of the world. They all have street teams that go around the world taking down street signs.

The Junction in Cambridge is ginormous. Our hang out room is stocked with fresh fruit and I can feel my jaundiced eyes rejoice. Mmm, a tasty lemon (which is better for treating scurvy).

The opening band is comprised of three 14 years olds and a 15 year old drummer. They totally set the bar pretty high for the rest of the night. They have a blast and the crowd is screaming. Like, really screaming, a Hard Day's Night style.

Unfortunately, we had to be party poopers when they came by our dressing room later asking to buy beer off us. Sorry dudes, hit me up outside of a gas station in America and I’ll totally hook you up, at least with some 3.2. Inspired by the kids' brash personalities, we walked back to the hotel (Travelodge part 2)and proceeded to give James the best prison tattoos we could manage. Which of course meant we drew some wings on his nipples, 40oz of Colt 45, a taco on his belly, and some cue balls. Twice. Only one star of David though.

Bath and Stonehenge Thurs 11/19

It is official, we’re a family. For 16.50 quid we got a family pass into Stonehenge, so we morphed into a two adult and three 15 year-old family right in front of a quizzical ticket taker.

Charlie was hella excited to get in touch with his inner witch.

The venue in Moles was sweet. You knew it was a legit club when you showed up and it smelled like stale beer and bleach- it just screams through your nostrils and into you brain that awesome parties happen here. All the time. We got to hang out at the vegetarian restaurant next door, where the girl tending the bar was on an awesome head trip. I don’t’ know where her mind was, but it wasn’t there taking our order. She looked really relaxed and dreamy though, so I’d love to go to that secret place some time. The DJ on the other hand, was driving us looney tunes. Whoever it was couldn’t decide when to put on the next song, so s/he kept abruptly stopping songs just as you were getting into ‘em. When I asked who was on the tables, I was told it was Otis Redding. I think I don’t know the DJ lingo here.

This poster was also apparently worth tweeting about. I disagree.

Tonight is our introduction the wide world of Travelodge. We drive about an hour out of Bath and we rock a really great interference pattern in the check-in area and get all five us in one family room (Family room- One full sized bed and a couch with a pull out mattress). T’nealle get’s all twee on the room and constructs a sleeping nest on the floor out of spare comforters and pillows. Good times.

Cardiff 11/18 Wed

I love grocery stores. Or I should say I find them really intriguing. There’s people just throwing things in their basket with mindless abandon, there’s people with crunched up foreheads torn between nutritional value and monetary value, and I guess in every country, there’s also lil old ladies touching every single piece of fruit they can manage. We are in a Waitross, which we find out later is the hoity toigty supermarket in the UK. I’ll admit, it was pretty swank inside to the point of when you checked out, they gave you a little green medallion that you could use to vote for one of three animal relief foundations. I picked tortoises. I’ve never seen people trying to save the tortoises before. But the kittens were winning. Always the kittens.

We made our way to the town centre to check things out. The Cardiff Castle staff was totally on to us after we jumped the fence to get in. But it was pretty cool from the outside too.

I’m warming up to the left side of the road, and after some fun unintentional extra revolutions in some roundabouts, we’re at our first show at the Buffalo Bar. Man, this place is super. Totally cool bar, total chaos in the universe of organization. Phantagram is on the bill with us, who had the misfortune of showing up at their venue and setting up all their gear b’fore being told that the location for their show had changed. But we were stoked to play with them. They are strobe-light awesome.

After a little bit more confusion regarding our backline (which wasn’t there) and some additional misunderstanding regarding our rider, we ended up with two pizzas, chips, and coleslaw (James eats pizza with coleslaw on top. I don’t recommend this course of ingestion. Sure, maybe everything you eat ultimately ends up in the same place, but I personally enjoy tasting my individual meal components. Unless of course you’re talking about mixing mashed potatoes, gravy, and corn, because that is a tasty combo), which we ate picnic style on the floor of the bar while Anikka got us everything we needed in the gear dept.

The show was great, so we kept things going strong by heading down to Clwb Ifor Bach for dancing. That is of course if you call dancing bouncing up and down and shooting beer on the bouncers while the DJs rock One Armed Scissor, Bulls on Parade, and Smells like Teen Spirit. Some people in the crowd were painted up like Smurfs, they had 1 quid shots of Sambucca, at the bar, and James ended up in his underwear talking to the front desk attendant of our hotel for 15 minutes.