Blog
Back the way we came
8th October 2010 | Juliet
We are parked outside the venue which by day looks like a large school assembly hall… Unfortunately there are no showers, and so we take the minibus in turns to shower at the hotel which is a 15 minute drive away.
The days have started to take on their own routine, with those that swim swimming and those that go to gym gymming… Today has a bit of an extra feature though cos there is a daytime performance and recording to do. It was a TV/radio thing. All this before soundcheck.
In the evening some people eat at the tapas next door, some go Ethiopian up the road. I go for a quiet salad downstairs. Get chatting to some fans including a naturopathic doctor, and D, an acupuncturist who offers to check my pulses and give my chi a little turbo boost.
This heaven sent event happens on the bus. Many thanks.
She also does a bit of acupuncture on Mark’s shoulder which along with the A535 helps…
After the show there is a big trip out to a club somewhere. Notable performance from the Suicide Girls apparently. Ed Harcourt and his band went too.
I had an early night at 2am.
We are heading north through the night to Seattle. It’s not too far on the scale of things but for some reason it’s back the way we came.
Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver, British Columbia
7th October 2010 | Larry
Vancity soup and style
7th October 2010 | Juliet
I remember a cup of coffee in Vancouver in a fancy place near the art gallery. They took American dollars. We sat out and watched the people go by. The theatre was nice, welcoming us with homemade spicy black bean soup. Yes, real soup like on the Xmas tours back home.
We buy some local Antiphlogistine Rub-A535 camphor cream for aching shoulders. This is the kind of thing granny used to use. Seems to do the job.
Saul was very excited to see a cheese board. A blue and a cheddar, with figs on the side. He was bored by what passed for cheese in America. Some states do great cheese however – it’s all about pasteurisation laws.
Saul knows Vancouver and its fine cheeses quite well.
Vancouver has oft been voted the ideal place to live. Based on quality of life and access to beautiful places around. Indeed everyone looks very well dressed and bright eyed.
There were some people from Mexico on the front row, with flag and all.
We travelled back from Canada through the night. Passed customs control bleary-eyed early in the day, for a long drive to Portland.
The Complex, Salt Lake City, Utah
5th October 2010 | Larry
Echoey and monstrous
5th October 2010 | Juliet
Usually we don’t play in Salt Lake , we pass through and sleep…
Now there is a new venue. It’s like a huge sports complex. Echoey and monstrous. Horrendous soundcheck with just blasting noise that sounds like it could swallow you up. For some reason the Christian heavy metal band are checking the room sound with Graceland at the highest volume ever known to mankind…. I am scared to open the dressing room door in case I shatter to bits from the impact. There are no towels. There is no food. Did they forget we were coming….? The crew do the load in with not even a breakfast bagel between them. We hang out on the bus or on the concrete outside the building. It comes to something when lying on concrete is better than being inside a new designer building…
Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam
5th October 2010 | Tim
It’s strange you can walk into one of these smaller American gigs, 500 or so, and it feels like the people have been waiting for you for years. Old friends. No matter how we might be feeling at this point in the tour, pretty shattered if truth be told and bus stir crazy, we are immediately lifted by the warmth of the crowd. I use the word ‘warmth’ for our English viewers, the truth is it feels a lot more like love than I dare to admit. The venue is appalling, a faceless black box. In fact two faceless black boxes. The larger one is hosting a metal Christian rock band. Our dressing room is attached to their hall and becomes a bass bin whenever they soundcheck or play. The racket is incredible. Jesus would not approve. Jules keeps suggesting they are playing ‘Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam’ but I beg to differ. She hums ‘Keep On the Sunny Side‘ as a protective mantra. We brush up on God Only Knows as a response to their righteous certainty.
When we play this song in the gig a fight breaks out which initially we assume to have theological origins. The song stops. I look at one of the robust participants who says in a brummie accent, “I said I’m sorry, I said I’m sorry.”
I looked at the other guy; “He punched me in the face.” Back to the Brummie, “I said I was sorry”. I said, “Is there any security round here?” Silence. “Okay it looks like we have to police ourselves.” I lean forward and look deep into the eyes of our exuberant Brummie friend. He has quite an open, warm face, is clearly passionate about James, and looks guilty as hell. Time stops. The crowd is silent. Waiting for me to act. What am I going to say? I lean further in and applying my best Supernanny voice say “You. Go to the back of the room.” I say this with the irony of one who feels he has no power over the situation whatsoever. The man holds up his hands – guilty as charged – and backs away saying “Okay, fair enough”. And he does so. Goes to the back of the room and diffuses the inevitable retaliation.
Later I go singing walkabout in the audience, and check on the guy with the punched nose. He is cool and sweet. “I’ve waited fifteen years to see you and I’m not gonna let that bastard ruin it for me.”
The spike of adrenalin from the incident lifted the gig.
Afterwards, signing autographs etc the guilty party serenades me I turn to him, “You are a very naughty boy.”
“I know. But I did go to the back of the room.”
“You did. And that makes you less of a bad boy.”
Go figure.
“Queers park on left, Bitches’ parking to the right”
5th October 2010 | Larry
About 200 yards from the venue is a strange little building all on its own at a deserted crossroad with a small neon sign saying ‘open’. As I venture in the battered door of ‘The Trapp’ I get strange looks from the locals and asked for ID, I don’t have any, “I’m from England” I explain, “and we don’t need ID.” After some discussion they let me in, the bar owner comes over to say that he likes to know who is drinking in his bar and that he didn’t want me to be ‘shocked’? A strange thing for him to say I thought. I then noticed the 6ft guy at the bar resplendent in his dress and high heels and a sign above the bar saying ‘queers park on left’ and its companion sign ‘bitches parking to the right’. This is a local bar for local people of the most colourful kind, an oasis for the local LGB community in America’s most religious city and what a lovely friendly place it was.
After the show about twelve of us descend on the place to have a few beers before the long drive west. The locals flirted with the boys and the lovely bartender delivered a round of tequila shots ‘on the house’. This place is one of only a few reasons I would come back to Salt Lake.
Bluebird Theater, Denver, Colorado
4th October 2010 | Larry
“If we dont go anywhere, where would we be?”
4th October 2010 | Juliet
Boulder is 6000 feet above sea level. Altitude wooziness takes over as we try to adapt. I wake bright and early do laundry, swim many many lengths while the washing’s spinning, and then head out at 11am with Ed Harcourt and a few of James for a mountain adventure. We go to the Chautauqua Trail to the Flat Irons. Breathing gets more tricky as we ascend even higher above sea level but we trudge on in our unsuitable hiking gear, passing lithe healthy mountain people in shorts and proper footwear. Ed wears his red snakeskin cowboy boots and says they are ideal for hiking… I give up over the big flat rock zone (partly due to an unsuitable dress). The others continue, using Spiderman tactics to cross the rocky, near vertical sheet of rock, and onward and upward they go. Meanwhile I sit quietly listening to the distant birdsong. Peace and tranquillity strikes..and a drop of sweet rain falls…
“There are no bears ’cause bears come out in the springtime after hibernating,” explains Lovage, who comes too.
Everyone else in the party makes it up to the pinnacle for spectacular views and all round exhilaration …
I zip to Boulder for some pumpkin bread (it’s Halloween time) and spicy Chai tea, and then we all meet up again and zoom back to the hotel to meet the runner Dan who whizzes us to Denver for the soundcheck.
Some of the crew are feeling a bit woozy due to lack of oxygen. We get an oxygen tank so people can have a gasp. We are now 5280 feet above sea level but it’s still a stress on the body. Like a cross between sea legs and slight drunkeness… but nobody is drinking.
People eat at the Mexican over the road and return later during load out for a game of pool, ” hustler Davies relieving defeated Diagram of $40,” according to Larry.
The band did PS and Basic Brian, “which hasn’t been played since before we ever started playing together” said Larry. Also Whiteboy was back, and Lullaby…
The audience were very friendly and lovely.
Woozy from altitude we set off though the night to Salt Lake City. It’s a nine hour drive still heading west…through the Rocky Mountains.
If we don’t go anywhere, where would we be? ….. (Saul made this random comment whilst looking at the schedule earlier.)
On the road to Colorado
3rd October 2010 | Larry
