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OMAHA a day off one Sunday in September
28th September 2008 | Juliet
We pulled in to the Comfort Inn at around 10am… Rooms ready, a miracle, hooray, but then this is the bible belt… We have the day off here on the way to Denver. Paul our driver has to sleep. We are to reconvene at 1am in the night…
We sleep and wash our handwash only… and I do some yoga after sleeping for 3 hours. More on yoga later, there’s a cosmetic surgery outside the hotel…
8pm-ish we go to the Cheesecake Factory and eat nice food. Me and Larry go to Wholefoods across the motorway and buy exciting olives and good rye bread and cheese, blue and smoked and soft and Jarlsberg and little tomatoes. Mark and Saul and Stewart from Unkle Bob (who took the spare bunk last night) have an aperitif while we are gone.
Back to hotel. There’s a thunderstorm. We get on the bus. The cheese and wine has been postponed til the desert crossing.
We are going overnight to Denver. Chris says it will be great to see the mountains into Colorado in the morning… I am looking forward to that.
Good night.
The Fine Line Cafe, Minneapolis Saturday…
27th September 2008 | Juliet
Very small stage for James tonight. Gig goes well, slight Spinal Tap moment with dry ice all over Jim and Saul for the first three songs. Finally get the bloke on the stairs to shift the pump back but now its all over Dave. So second try and it’s shooting ice up towards the air conditioning and basically out and away… Tim in fine form. He throws his hat at Magic in the dark… Band feeling well.
All a bit unsure of this massive drive 25 hours to Denver. Over Thai food we discuss bus mess. Socks must now be engaged in plastic bags as must other soiled articles. No bags on seat at back lounge. Use the junk bunk. Keep your water bottles to yourself and generally keep the air circulating…
Post gig blitz of back lounge by me and Saul . As Tim is not on the bus and he is allergic to perfume, Saul and I take it on ourselves to blast the back lounge with my Clarins Eau Dynamisante. It takes a lot of spraying. We can use geranium oil next time I say. Saul grabs the red bottle and sprays ad lib into the back wardrobe copiously. I’ll get some more he says.
Then we get the hoover out. Everyone lifts their feet in the air and shouts loudly ‘you missed a bit’, I know, I know. Saul then adds the hose (technical bit) and does the corners and the missed bits. Exhausted I sit down with a glass of wine which is the one that nice man Scott gave us at the Stone Pony. It’s covered in wire mesh so must be good. Mark has been saving it in his bunk for the right moment. Saul whisks the hoover and its attachments away and is now mopping the kitchen floor with a vanilla wet wipe which is semi attached to the moppette thing. Fresh or what.
But there is a major problem. Somebody has done a poo in the toilet. It must have been someone other than us. A friend of someone who didnt know that it is not possible to poo in the loo. There is much detective work. Nobody knows how this has occured. Mark our wonderful zen tour manager says there is gonna be a 500 dollar fine for this. Oh no. Apparently you can get a loo with a grinder but that makes for an extra cost of 100 dollars a day… When Paul the driver gets on at 2.30am we sit quiet as he empties the bins and also the floodgates under the bathroom. Nobody says anything but the smell is gone…
We sit up watching Brass Eye which Dave has brought with him…much laughing til 5am….
Arrive in Omaha and check into a hotel for the day. It’s sunny…there is even grass to sit on outside. Its Sunday today.
I blitz the fridge and rearrange the beer into the fridge on the left. There are 12 boxes of brown sugar in the cupboards… throw out tons of plastic cheese slices, edges curling, and lost pots of ageing salsa and hummous. Asking Saul’s advice first I decide to plan a midnight cheese and wine featuring last night’s rider pineapple….the bus leaves at 1am…we are also in a different time zone we think.
Over to Tim today
27th September 2008 | Juliet
Hi again, we have just passed the halfway point of the tour and realised haven’t had much input from Tim so here goes over to Tim now…
Tim’s catch up blog Minneapolis…
As with most of the band, I came on this tour with some trepidation. The last time we toured the States was the Lollapalooza tour, playing to melody-phobic Korn fans in a neck brace having ruptured 2 discs. To varying degrees that tour broke the spirit of the band, reaching a nadir with the Millionaires album. So some of us carried the ghost of that tour. I am very happy to report that the ghost has been exorcised. The love and appreciation we have been showered with on a nightly basis has been overwhelming. So many personal stories from people who have been waiting 15 years to see us. The concerts have been mutual love-ins. I am almost embarrassed to be standing there with a half moon grin on my face. It’s decidedly uncool, un-NME, un-English. But it’s real, so fuck self-conscious judgements. Great nights standing on stage listening to this astonishing orchestral cacophony, as I stand in the centre of the hurricane. I have never felt such prolonged ecstasy in James, and I have hardly seen it in other bands. It takes hours to come down afterwards.
Fine Line Music Cafe, Minneapolis, MN
27th September 2008 | Larry
Turner Ballroom Milwaukee
26th September 2008 | Juliet
Yesterday in Chicago the aftershow carried on in the diner over the road… We finally left town at 2am. Milwaukee not far. Parked up outside hotel for a while. Sleeping on the bus getting easier. Stationary sleep becomes an unusual event. We’ve been doing overnights on the bus for 4 out of 5 nights…
Milwaukee seems like a quaint peaceful town. River and malls. Go and buy socks in TJMaxx, just like TKMaxx. Just round the corner there is a beerfest. Me n Mark eat a Caesar salad at Buck Bradley’s. Blackened chicken done their special way. Tastes great. A polka band are playing wearing lederhosen and hats with feathers…….before going into a cabaret style version of That’s Why the Lady is a Tramp…..
Tim, Jim, Larry and Andy doing a radio show. It’s sunny and warm today.
The venue is 100 years old, dark wood stylish old place with a very slopey floor. Windows covered in posters of the B-52’s and Josh Rouse to give a stained glass light effect in an unusual kind of way. The ballroom is a stunning building with a kids tumbling studio downstairs. It has a tasteful, clean dressing room and modern shower. We are very happy about this. Larry takes a photo of the shower curtain. He sees James daisies everywhere. There is much showering and Unkle Bob shower too. There is even an in-house juicer so we run out of carrots quite soon. Another three bags arrive and then me n Geoff get to a bit of post-juice bottling before it all gets packed away. There are some interesting yellow beetroots which look like giant radishes. Geoff the Unkle Bob chef goes wild and juices half a ton of celery and it tastes dreadful. Don’t say I didn’t warn you… He then looks dismayed at the pineapple pulp and whisks that off to use in something he is creating later.
The people who work at the Turner are really friendly and helpful. Especially in catering where there is an array of mexican options and a vat of fluorescent green margarita containing 3 bottles of tequila. We steer clear til later and it ends up on the bus til then.
Take Tim back to Buck Bradley’s. The oompah band have gone away. But the Usinger’s sausage factory is a good point of reference to head for. The bar is a long one with a great atmosphere. Tim has blackened fish and is really happy with that.
The gig is a stormer. A guy called Eric has asked to propose on stage to his future wife. He does this near the end of the show. Then the band play Star…..she’s a star… Eric even got down on one knee. The ballroom slopes forward so there is a feeling of dancing forward. The place is packed but there’s a bit of breathing space at the back. There’s a little lookout square window just outside the dressing room where you can see the show.
A woman gives us orange roses outside the dressing room. There is an aftershow which is packed. The two guys who helped me with my suitcase randomly got tickets to the aftershow, good karma to them. The couple who bought me and Mark lunch were there. Hello and thanks to all them. Lots of good people. Much signing of t-shirts and singles and Larry explains about the artwork being changed with the baby and the bricks and the gun…. We finally set off at 2am to Minneapolis… It’s a long drive and I wake at 9 and head out off the bus passing a neonlit place called Sexworld to a charming Dunn Brothers cafe where I drink a well brewed tasty coffee…..life is good…
Turner Hall Ballroom, Milwaukee, WI
26th September 2008 | Larry
Thursday Chicago. The Vic Theatre.
25th September 2008 | Juliet
There has been time for much laundry and dry cleaning. I went to Whole Foods and bought the granola aisle, and oats and carrot juice and real bread and real cheese; the latter two being hard to find in diners etc… Stocked up for the long haul that is coming soon…
The taxi driver explained how in the Chicago accent there’s no TH sound. It becomes a D. Hence everyone sounds like they in an old gangster movie. “Put dat gun over dere” etcedera. The taxi driver explains it comes from the Slavic peoples, this D thing…
“Chicago is gritty city but the people are very nice,” said Jim. A bit like Manchester hey? And it rained in the night.
Saul bought some wild new stage outfits today.
Re: Sigur Ros gig Saul said, “It was a lesson in deconstructing the strictures of modern pop music, thus reminding me of a blend of Soft Machine and the Pale Fountains.” Whatever.
We hung out in Clarke’s Diner a bit. Drinking weak coffee and eating eggs in the style of omelettes and eggs benedict.
The Vic Theatre, Chicago IL
25th September 2008 | Larry
Bank Robbers, Racoons and Phoenix Nights
23rd September 2008 | Juliet
“Such a gentleman and such a talented man. Kulas is part of the family of James and its nice to know our family members still want to take part,” said Andy after the Toronto gig.
We drove overnight from Montreal and parked up outside the mental health centre, next to the Phoenix Club. Me and Jim up n about first, went for walk in the botanical gardens. Giant cacti the size of Habitat light shades and lots of spiky things. We always wake up first, next Tim then whoever… Went to day room, had showers. Went to Kulas’ house for lunch with his wife K making lovely tapas including olives and real cheese. As we eat, Unkle Bob’s van got caught up in cordoning off of road after robbery of bank and bomb-planting. Two police helicopters later and unable to get our transport we take a cab. Loads of fire engines. Back later to get Winnebago. We are surprised it hasn’t been blown up as it was the only vehicle apart from police and fire vehicles at the scene of the crime.
Back at the Phoenix Club we have a juicer and yellow carrots. Big thanks to the runner Bruce Worthington. Great gig. Kulas plays bass on Fred Astaire. And a few more songs after including Laid at the end.
There are raccoons with their babies (raccoonettes?) at the stage door all through the gig. Cuddly things with stripy tails that bite, so says the security man. Fun to watch and see. All of a sudden it’s like an episode of Northern Exposure.
Big after show party. Crates of Heineken. Can’t find a bottle opener as usual.
Set off for Chicago in the night, 2am. Border Police checks chuck us off the bus at 4am. We are knackered. Wake at 1.30pm the next day…we are in Chicago. News from home is that Sit Down has been played at the labour party doo-da in Manchester.
We are finally checked into the hotel that has a curious smell of wee throughout. Its now 3pm. Could it be the carpet cleaner? I hope so.
There is an exploding tomato ketchup bottle, Heinz, all over Saul and Dave at Clarke’s Diner. It looks like a knife fight has gone on. It freaks the staff. They bring towels and knock 25% off the bill.
Later Tim, Jim, Saul and Mark go see Sigur Ros play. Me n Andy go for Mexican food and a margarita…. and talk music and Chinese medicine.
Phoenix Concert Theatre, Toronto, ON
23rd September 2008 | Larry
