Diesel, Pittsburgh
earken, now, my lords and ladies, to the story I shall tell, of bold adventures, heroic exploit, and a Quest Beyond the Sea. The tale concerns four knights errant, each of different virtues, each from different woods hewn, each as pure of heart as the sacred saints, and as brave and bold as holy lions.
First, Matthew, son of Hales the Military Accountant, captain of our happy brigade, then David, son of Price the Travelling Industrial Salesman, then James, son of Copperthwaite the Geographer, and finally myself, your chronicler, Benjamin, brother of Sir Matthew, the last and the least of all the Hales Clan.
We sail aboard the good ship Aqualung, a doughty vessel. She's old but she's seaworthy, and when the wind's behind her she can give even a Spanish Corvette a run for her money. We're headed to the New World to preach the Good News of melodic melancholy spacerock among the Heathens, in the sure and certain hope of Converting each new supplicant into album sales for our new disc Memory Man, available now! Aside us, in their peasant robes, tread our trusty squires, Adam of the Ears, son of Bell the Policeman and Claire de la Telephone Cellulaire, son of Rosenbaum the Documenter, both of sworn fealty to our Queen and both riven with poxes of the most disgusting nature.
We set forth on the fourteenth day of the fourth month in the year of our lord 2007, when the auspices were favourable and the flights were available. Our strategy: Music! Our weapons divers: clavichord, lute, tambors of all sizes, and the bass lute, sackbutt and hautboy (optional). Our hearts: Bursting with song! Our minds: Ravaged as sacked Persepolis, burning 'neath the feet of Alexander. Our eyes: Fixed firm and unwavering 'pon the ultimate prize. Never before has the world seen such a band. My lords, my ladies, I commend to you the story of Aqualung's headlining tour of the USA, March-April 2007!
Huzzah!
Match the face to the shoes to win an INCREDIBLELegal Disclaimer: Prize is literally too good to be true. prize!!!
In fairness, it wasn't a calamitous error, as I spend most of the day wearing contact lenses, it's just the beginning and end of each day... that's the time I miss them most of all.
I shall try and get over it. I just can't believe I could be such an idiot.
So here we are in America for the second time this year, touring Memory Man properly for the first time. It's actually in the shops here! People know the words! It should be a very enjoyable tour, and when you say that it always sounds like you're setting it up to be a hopeless disaster.
Last night in Pittsburgh was a classic first night. It didn't help that it was a Sunday and there was only one cab in the entire city. It also didn't help that we chose to buy a fair amount of new equipment that didn't work properly. I think we played OK though. No one asked for their money back. (It's too late now, Pittsburgers, if you're thinking of asking).
On tour with us, and sharing the bus is the young chanteuse Sara Bareillis and her band. They seem nice, in the way that people do when you meet them for the first time.
Today we're in Washington DC at the excellent 9.30 Club. I've no idea why it's called that. We're on at 10. It's the kind of place you can spend the day in without leaving once, which you're inclined to do because you can't come to DC without someone saying "the highest murder rate in the country". I'm sure that doesn't mean you're certain to be murdered while you're here. I've been here twice and I've hardly been murdered at all. But then I've mostly spent the day inside the 9.30 Club eating salsa and lounging on the curious bunkbeds they have in the dressing room.
I did drop my towel in the toilet, though.
The grand innovation on this tour is that Matt will be performing in not one, but TWO locations on the stage. Not at the same time, obviously. This is not The Prestige. Not only is he playing at the big heavy piano at the back of the stage, he also plays a flimsy home keyboard at the front of the stage! This is to overcome the classic piano player-singer conundrum, which is that you can't dance when you're sitting at the piano, and on low stages no one except the front row can see you.
It's slightly amusing because in our first ever bands Matt used to stand up playing a flimsy home keyboard, which never quite looked right. But in this case, we have the heavy black piano to add Eltonian gravitas.
The Pittsburgh stage wasn't big enough to put this plan into effect, but tonight we've got the width, the depth and the risers to do it properly.
Jim wishes to be quoted so:
"We're fucking awesome! We rule!"
I hope we can look forward to more exclusive insight from Jim in future posts.
Paradise Rock Club, Boston
This is in fact our third visit to Paradise. I think I might make a solo album and call it "Third Visit to Paradise". It's cold and drizzly and the roof is leaking in Paradise. ("The Roof is Leaking in Paradise" by Randy Newman).
I have a large hotdog and the lid comes off the mustard while I'm squeezing it.
It seems like nothing goes quite right for the first week of a tour. Merchandise fails to be delivered; equipment doesn't work; you force a huge clart of mustard onto your hotdog. At the beginning of the last tour we were beset with bus problems, and got through three in the first ten days. The first one had something wrong with the suspension, which meant that you couldn't sit in the back without shattering your spine, and people were hitting their faces on the roofs of their bunks in the nights. Metal Mark, the driver at the time, claimed it was just the shittiness of the highways on the northwest coast, but eventually he was convinced there was a problem because everyone on the bus had black eyes and were being sick everywhere. Then the transmission went.
Anyway, it is a shame when you wake up and the bus is stationary and you can see half a driver poking out of the engine. Today one of the belts has broken, which apparently causes some supplementary problems in the switching mechanism. Don't worry about it though, it won't affect you.
The two piano setup seems to work well. It has the effect of making the gig seem like a bigger deal, perhaps just because someone has obviously gone to enormous effort to put a whole extra piano on stage. It suggests that somewhere, someone is actually thinking about this stuff.
It's wonderful to see the audience singing along to the new stuff. Vapour Trail seems to go down particularly well, like people are just waiting for the loud bit.
We played Garden of Love for the first time ever tonight.
Jim's Quote of the Day: "We slayed the audience and feasted on their blood".
The Icon, Buffalo
Tonight will be notable for being the smallest audience Aqualung has ever played to as a headlining act. The Sabres, it seems, are in the playoffs tonight, and Buffalo is like a ghost town.
The gig was fine, and of course we were very grateful to the those hockey-indifferent Buffalonians who came along. There is still a huge difference between playing to a small number of people who have come to hear you, and inflicting yourself on a pitiful crowd who hate you, which is a characteristic of being in a new band. It was quite nostalgic.
Jim: "It was like forest floor, a hint of barnyard; some leather notes, and a long, cedary finish. It was served a little too cold but it opened up nicely in the glass." (Volnay Premier Cru Nicolas Potel 1999)
Opera House, Toronto
Ah, the sun has come out, and it's all spring-like and optimistic.
Driving a tour bus full of equipment across the border is always a slightly stressful exercise, since Immigration Officials can be known to be extremely officious, and bands tend to have a poor reputation when it comes to organisation and paperwork. But they let us in again.
The papers are all saying that Toronto has run completely out of money. You can't tell. It has the same cosmopolitan, but slightly shambly feel as ever.
The gig is a lovely old theatre, one of those rooms where the sound changes completely between the soundcheck and the show because people come in and cover up the nasty concrete floor. Jim discovers it's hard to hold down the bass part while having a sneezing fit. The audience is excellent, it all just feels very short, like our little journey should go a bit further.
After the show I get the ultimate accolade, when one of the stage hands says he didn't realise I was in the band. "I thought you were Crew, man," he says. I am finally recognised for carrying things like a Professional. It is the proudest moment of my career.
Jim says: "A little backward on the nose; some fresh acidity, but rather hollow, with dry - if not dusty - tannins on the finish".
Day Off, Toronto.
Park West, Chicago
Everyone loves Chicago, don't they? Especially on a bright April Saturday.
Dave and Josh, Sara Bareillis's percussionist, head off early to go to Andy's Music. Andy's is an Aladdin's cave of rare and unspeakable percussion instruments. They return with Frame Drums and speak ominously of holding drum circles in the back lounge.
In the meantime, Jim and Matt and I discover that there's nowhere good for breakfast in the zoo, and you can't get to the lake because there's a freeway in the way.
The venue has a supper club vibe to it, with banked rows of cocktail tables leading to a dance floor area in front of the stage. It seems more appropriate for Tony Bennet. Apparently they have weddings here quite regularly.
When the people come they make the place seem huge, and make us feel like huge rock stars.
Afterwards we go out and eat fine food and drink fine wine, and for a few hours at least, are rightly to be envied.
That's why we love Chicago.
Jim: "Fine indeed. A harmonious and mellismatic blend. Lush dark fruits crescendo to a sensational forty-five minute finish. Bravo."
PS. As we came offstage tonight, the house soundman put on The Final Countdown by Europe. I think we'll keep it in...
Mad Hatter, Covington
On first impression, Covington seems to have died. But then it turns out just to be getting up late.
It's Sunday, it's hot, and I can wear my shorts and sandals without shame, although it's too terrifying to wear sandals when loading-in in case something heavy rips your toes off.
It's a small but ardent crowd, and we treat them to a set that starts quiet and gets louder and louder and louder.
Hard Rock Cafe, Atlanta
We're playing a benefit show tonight, the first of many I hope, for ActionAid. The Hard Rock lay on a frankly embarrassing rider for us, which covers several tables in the manner of a medieval banquet. Except with a spit-roast Soy Ox for the vegetarians among us.
I got scammed while we were loading out by a charming young street conman. He assisted me wheeling a big trunk round the corner, and hit me with a five dollar bet that hung on the small but crucial semantic difference between the verb 'to get' and the verb 'to buy'. It was to do with my shoes, funnily enough, and his ability to guess in which city and state I 'got' them. Not 'bought' them, you notice, despite that implication in the question, which was mere misdirection since, as he was quick to point out, I continued to 'have' my shoes (I still 'got' them, in the vernacular) this very day in Atlanta, Georgia.
But the thing about this grifter, that lured me in without arousing my suspicions, was the fact that around his neck he was wearing A LAMINATE.
I couldn't see what the laminate was for - it might have been a voucher for a free meal at Denny's for all I knew - it was the air of legitmacy it conferred. The mere presence of the laminate proclaims to all the world, 'I am a reliable person, who should be given the benefit of the doubt'. I won't be caught that way again.
On the other hand, I can't help noticing I have my own laminate right here. I wonder what mischief I could concoct with this....?
Jim: "Underwhelming nose, but developed well after half an hour in the glass. Slightly astringent; a bit chewy, and a little green on the finish. Not a bad effort considering the vintage."
Verizon Wireless Music Centre, Birmingham
We're spending the next few nights opening for The Fray, who by now qualify for 'old friend' status. They're doing a short tour of enormous arenas, and they invited us to come and play with them.
Their success has really been prodigious. We first met them at the end of 2005 when they were driving around in a small van, first on the bill for a few end-of-year radio shows. To go within eighteen months from 500 capacity clubs to 7000 seater arenas is phenomenal. You could be jealous of a band doing twice as well as you. With success on their scale, you just have to enjoy it from a distance like an electric storm.
It's also a bit like being in prison because there's nowhere to go and nothing to do, apart from escalate tensions with the Sanchez gang.
The gig is very strange. The stage feels very disconnected from the audience. And the band feels very disconnected from the PA. There certainly were a lot of people there, though, and the stars came out very prettily over the course of our set.
Koka Booth Ampitheatre, Cary
Today we seem to be playing on the Forest Moon of Endor. The stage rests among fragrant pines at the side of a fetid lake, and resembles a giant white arachnid.
It turns out there is a sound level restriction which means the PA can only be turned up to slightly below the level of a child's snore, on pain of a $10,000 fine. This is to protect the sensitive hearing of the Ewoks.
If yesterday's show felt distant, tonight's feels cut off entirely. I started doing that fatal thing of wondering if I was making any sound at all, which means you start playing odd things just to prove it to yourself. It was perplexing.
Happily, it was still a beautiful night and everyone got a bit giddy. It kept reminding me of the Keg Party in Dazed and Confused - made me wish there was a Girl I Liked here so we could Stumble into the Forest and Make Out.
That's the conundrum of touring; the most beautiful places feel the farthest from home.
North Charleston Coliseum, Charleston
The Frays have invited us to go and have breakfast in a little cafe they know down by the beach. Unfortunately, people being as aimless as they are while on tour, we didn't manage to get there until after they'd stopped serving breakfast. (There's nothing unusual about that though - 'All Day Breakfast' is a term that is particularly welcome to touring musicians, for whom midday is a painful early morning.)
But we are by the beach, and it is not long before Jim and Dave create their own legends by stripping off and running into the sea, where they gambol like hairy manatees before washing ashore with giant grins on their faces.
In the meantime, Matt has been out playing golf with Joe Du Fray (we have established some helpful nomenclature, as both Dave and I share names with the Frays - they are the family Du Fray, hence Dave Du Fray, and we are the family von Lung, as in David von Lung. I'm not sure the Du Frays are aware of this). Joe is clearly a committed golf enthusiast whose clubs are transported on one of their articulated lorries, and Matt is a Total Chancer.
Matt was somewhat nervous about how it was going to go, especially since Jim had been carefully undermining Matt's warnings about how shit a golfer he was by telling Joe he being hustled, and that Matt was actually a Major Talent.
When Matt returned from the course he had become extremely orange in the sun, but otherwise he seemed to have not been bad enough to cause embarrassment, nor too good to appear rude. Such is the social minefield of the golf course.
The gig is in a hockey arena, so for once we get a good dose of ourselves from the back wall. The audience is very young and excited, and the energy of the whole night is completely different from the last two. It totally rocked, dude.
Day Off, Nashville
Exit/In, Nashville
The Music City Marathon passed by our hotel this morning, but I didn't hear a thing. It takes a lot of training to achieve something like that.
The Exit/In is a proper Rock club which is square and dark and painted black. It has a grand heritage of bands that have passed through, and has a big list of them up on the wall in case you forget - Dr John, The Ramones, Talking Heads.
Across the street is a great guitar store called the Rock Block, where Jim buys an acoustic, so that he can take a little bit of Nashville home with him. I'm thinking of getting a new guitar while I'm out here, but they didn't quite have The One there.
I was extremely grateful for the proximity of the shop once we got set up, because my amp kept blowing fuses. We're not the kind of operation that carries lots of spares, and it wouldn't take too much to fuck up the show (like when Tracy Bonham fell over on stage and poured beer into the piano - oh yes, Tracy, we remember). Somehow we've got away with it so far, but without a helpful distributor of power tubes nearby tonight would have been a guitarless gig. And that would have been no fun for anyone.
And although I can't see how anyone would be more interested in this than amplifier repairs, the gig was tremendous.
Jim: "Blackish maroon; quite zesty. Good on the front palate. Considerably inky. Great texture."
Blueberry Hill, St Louis
This must be our fifth visit to a single street in St Louis. Never has one man known so much about so small a part of a city. Delmar, for that is the name of the street, boasts a prodigious number of Thai restaurants, including a Thai Pizzeria.
It's still ridiculously hot. It's like the best ever summer day in England, and it's only April here. I wonder if they get sick of the summer in this part of the world.
Luckily the venue is a stoneclad basement which is a stranger to the warmth of the sun. They call it the Duck Room, and it has something to do with Chuck Berry, although the things I heard about it that were to do with Chuck Berry are surely libelous. And sensationally prurient!
It's a Sunday, and it's the day after Nashville, which has become a traditional party location, so everything moves very slowly today, including the gig. But somehow, despite a fairly lazy start, it keeps getting more and more intense, and by the end we're about as giant as we've ever been. Once again it's the audience we have to thank. They made us do it.
Assembly Hall, Champaign
There are three facts that are important about today:
1. The venue is a huge dome that looks like a grapefruit squeezer. The backstage area is a large underground bunker that looks like the Rebel Base at the end of Star Wars where all the X-Wings and Y-Wings are preparing for their attack on the Death Star.
2. In the dressing room we have been provided with the biggest bowl of tortilla chips I have ever seen.
3. In the middle of the afternoon Joe du Fray gets the phone call which everybody dreads, saying that something had happened to one of his family, and leaves immediately for Denver. It is a recurring nightmare of this kind of life that every time you go away, you're somehow bringing a disaster closer to your home, that inevitably awful things will happen to the ones you love at the time when you are least able to reach them.
Everyone is a bit shaken up, and for a while it's unclear what's going to happen next. Finally we get word that tonight and tomorrow's shows are cancelled, and the stage starts being dismantled.
We stay at the venue till late playing frisbee and sitting on the grass. There's something very strange about a venue that should be full of music and life standing empty and dark. Something worryingly karmic.
Record Bar, Kansas City (eventually)
The mosquitoes were busy last night. It's like I've got nipples on my back.
The cancellation of the Fray show tonight put lots of wheels in motion to find us an alternative gig. I should point out that none of these wheels were mine - it was all the work of agents and tour managers and radio stations. Well done everyone.
We ended up muscling our way onto Sara's gig at a nice little place in Westport called the Record Bar.
We didn't want to overcomplicate things for everybody, so we tried to use Sara's setup as much as we could. This wasn't too tricky for me, but Dave was borrowing Josh's Cajon, which is a traditional Spanish percussion instrument that looks like a box. When you sit on it and beat it with your hands, it sounds uncannily like you're sitting on a box, beating it with your hands.
It was one of those occasions which ends up being fun because of all its shortcomings. News of our emergency gig had got out to a handful of Aqualung Appreciators, and everyone else there was very obliging. The juxtaposition between the sitting-on-a-box gig and the anticipated giant-arena gig did lend the whole thing a slight tinge of absurdity, which did, I'm afraid, lead to some foolishness. We are a little prone to foolishness. It wasn't as stupid as the two-man show we did at the Boston Arts Theatre in December 2005, but it got pretty close.
While we were killing time on the bus that afternoon, we idly started working out how to play 'Muzzle of Bees' by Wilco, so we chucked that into the set too. It was going tremendously well, until we all simultaneously forgot what happened next. And so it joins the pantheon of Unprepared Cover Versions That Went Disastrously Wrong ('I want you (She's so heavy)' The Beatles - The Nerve Centre, Derry, April 2003. 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' Elton John - Showbox, Seattle, April 2005). This one we'll probably persist with, though.
I can't believe it's May.
Fine Line Music Cafe, Minneapolis
After a few days of confusion, I'm itching to do a proper gig. I like Minneapolis a lot, and it seems like a long time since we had our own show here.
It's a wonderful thing, when you return from whichever high-class eatery you've been patronising that evening, to find the venue packed and buzzing with actual people. It's a small miracle every time it happens. I hope it keeps happening.
The gig is long and loud. We make it all the way through Muzzle of Bees and are very pleased with ourselves. I imagine it's going to be a regular fixture for the rest of the tour. If you're coming along, you might want to get to know it.
Pabst Theatre, Milwaukee
Ah, The Pabst. It's our third visit here. In fact, now I think about it, this is the only place we've ever played our own gig in Milwaukee. And it's not surprising, for it is a very wonderful place to play, not least for the delectable array of sweetmeats they offer downstairs.
It's interesting how the framing of the gig changes how it feels. The Pabst has a high stage and quite a distance to the first row of seats. It feels very different to a smelly rock club like Exit/In where everyone is pressed up in front of the stage, close enough to read what they're texting. On this occasion we left the front apron free for people to stand. (They gave us the option of putting seats out, but we explained that we'd got louder and faster since we last played here. They raised their eyebrows).
After the second song Matt pointed out this enticing standing-up area, and in a moment of uncharacteristic verve for Aquafans, they actually got up and stood there. As a social movement, it was probably not on the same level as, say, the Algerian Uprising, but it seemed significant to us. From then on the gig combined the sweaty immediacy of the rock club with the hushed reverence of the theatre show. With that and the cake, it was pretty much perfect.
Special mention goes to Annette, who made us comfortable backstage to the extent of doing our laundry for us; it was like living at home in the glorious years before Mum realised we weren't incapable of looking after ourselves. And now my bedsheets are Milwaukee fresh!
Jim: "Hoppy; yeasty; fruit-rich, showing the vigour of youth."
Day Off, Deep in Nebraska
Two sides of today's coin:
Also:
Bluebird Theatre. Denver
Oh dear. I had one of those nights. 'Those' being the ones where you seem to be doing all the things you normally do in slightly the wrong order, so it's like a proper gig, but one in which the guitar is played by a mule.
I could blame it on the altitude, I suppose.
There seemed to be an above-average number of over-50's there tonight. Perhaps there was a bus tripIngratitude for humour's sake reliant on prejudice that no one over 50 has heard of the internet. And those that are are too worldly, too sophisticated and, let's face it, too goddam SEXY to take offence..
Day Off, Springdale, Zion National Park, UT
House of Blues, San Diego
It's confusing, because we normally start the tour on the West Coast and head east, so now we are in California it feels like the beginning. In which case, what have we been doing for the last three weeks?
It's incredibly hot. I know, it's boring and you don't care what the weather's like, but that was the main feature of the day. It's all I talked about all day, how fucking hot it was.
We played this very House of Blues in February when we were opening for Pete Yorn. House of Blues is a chain of restaurants and venues that spreads across the US. I believe it has something to do with Dan Ackroyd, hence the 'Blues'.
They are a little peculiar. Small and mid-size music clubs tend to be owned and run by private individuals, often with mad eyes and ostentatious hats, clinging to their business with rat-like tenacity, who, despite the fact they can make more money at the weekend doing a club night with DJ Poo and a Tribute to the Music of George Micheal and Wham and Also Spandau Ballet and Also Abba, nonetheless book small, new, local and national touring bands, seemingly as a public service. As such they are the gummy grease on the wheels of the music industry. Without them talented musicians wouldn't discover that their first band is shit and they should try something else.
House of Blues has cunningly spotted a gap in the market for venues that can put on bands that a few hundred people want to see, and concluded that if it can convince the audience to come and enjoy their legendary jambalaya beforehand, they might actually make money out of it.
So they operate like all the other major US chains; all the locations are fitted out the same, even down to the puzzling hand-painted portraits of rock luminaries, such as the Blue Ray Charles (Ray Charles, but blue), they all feature highly competent staff and new equipment which actually works. It's a smooth operation. They even have decent showers.
The only problem is the lack of soul. No one has the heart put their band sticker on the dressing room wall; still less write 'are gay' underneath it. The irony is that House of Blues would probably love it if you did. It would prove their authenticity. They'll end up getting their corporate artist to design an ersatz dressing room wall covered in crude drawings of dicks.
They probably don't put on local bands, either.
On the other hand, Adam is happy because all the DI boxes work and they don't have to call in Beef, who's the only one who knows how to get the power amps to stay on. And the monitors aren't made out of cereal boxes with a paper plate in. And the desk isn't built vertically into the wall of a rabbit hutch out the back. And so on.
And sadly, the gig is delivered professionally, in stereo, to the highest standards of technical competence, but suffers somehow from the lack of metaphorical dicks drawn on it.
Tonight Show Taping, Burbank/ House of Blues, Anaheim
We're being on TV tonight, tonight, in fact, on tonight's Tonight Show.
The Tonight Show is taped during the afternoon, allowing us to perform tonight's show at the House of Blues in Anaheim, which is actually inside Disneyland, creating a kind of corporate square root (from which the Money Tree grows).
So the day begins painfully early, especially in the light of last night's Big Night. We are driven through the boiling sun to the NBC studios where Lucky Adam has already been for a few hours, setting up our stuff.
With the aid of a bagel or two, we make sure everything works and then run through the song a few times for sound and vision. Tonight we will be performing our new single called 'Outside', thank you very much.
After this there is a four-hour hiatus during which we are NOT ALLOWED to leave the studios. We are allowed to have an uncomfortable sleep draped over an armchair though, while on the TV you can watch them hone the script from 'moribund' to 'flabby'.
In the bathroom they had some of those toilet seat covers in a cardboard holder which had 'Provided by the Management' printed on it. I had a little while to consider this, and I wondered why it was necessary to say that. Was it possible that there was a Gideons-style organisation committed to installing toilet seat covers? Perhaps their efforts were so second-rate that everyone knows to only use official toilet seat covers provided by the Management. In case they rip and expose your upper thighs to GERMS.
Also on the show was Antonio Banderas, and a TV naturalist who dresses up as a crocodile. It was almost as good as Letterman where they had Richard Gere and a guy who specialises in unusual food.
Eventually we're ushered down to the studio, everyone nods, the curtain goes up and three and a half minutes later we're all shaking hands with Leno, Antonio Banderas and the crocodile guy.
Half an hour after that we're on our way to Anaheim.
Things threaten to turn ugly at Disneyland Immigration. There seems to be a problem with our Mickey Visas. A squad of nasty-looking mansize raccoons in riot gear appear twirling batons with ears. Claire hands over our merchandise revenue for the tour and we sing 'It's a small world after all', and they let us through.
The gig is great. It's one of those things where, because you've already done something major today, the gig seems dreamily stress-free.
The Fillmore, San Francisco
It struck me today. I've never once thrown away a plectrum. I must have bought several thousand. Where do they all go? Does any guitarist actively throw their picks away? No. They just disappear. Perhaps they wear completely away to nothing, as if they were made of dust. Maybe I have breathed them all in.
At least when they have disappeared you can get lovely fresh sharp ones.
Ah, a big night at the historic Fillmore, and for once it is everything it should be...
Jim: "Dense purple rim. Massively concentrated on the nose, with hints of graphite and camphor. Overpowering fruit on the the front palate followed by sinuous tannin and an exhilarating finish. Should keep for ten to twenty years."
Day Off, Grants Pass, OR
Nuemo's, Seattle
Oh dear. Everyone's bodies seem to think the tour is over and have stopped working. Matt has a cold. Dave's recurrent back problem has recurred. Now his head starts to the right and his feet end up a long way to the left. It's like he's standing beside himself. Jim has a cough and a recurring back problem for every cough.
Yesterday we went on a lovely boat trip. Today it is if our very essences have been depleted, perhaps by beautiful scenery.
They do something at the gig that I have never seen before, which is to segregate the under 21s by means of a barrier down the middle of the venue. It seems amusing to us, and encourages some more foolish behaviour, including a very lengthy tribute to Def Leppard.
I was thinking of including a photograph of the dressing room wall, which was amply served with drawings of dicks, but it was actually too offensive.
Too offensive for the Internet. Imagine that.
Richards on Richards, Vancouver
Back over the border again, which we'll be repeating for the next three nights for reasons too tedious to mention.
Everybody loves Vancouver, don't they? It's got mountains, it's got beaches, it's got aspirational glassy apartment buildings within walking distance of seedy massage parlours. If it weren't for the fact that everyone under 30 has been liquidated, it would be the perfect place to live.
Matt and I are featured on the news in the morning. Sadly it is not because of an act of heroism or controversy, but because in the world of 24 hour news, there is occasionally a three minute slot after the Weather when they can put a band on.
It's hard to believe this is the penultimate gig.
I suffer slightly from Red Light Syndrome. Sometimes this refers to the inability to play properly when you are being recorded (the red light being the small one next to the 'Record' button), but in this case it is a very specific problem for me, which occurs when they light the stage in red. It always seems to be the exact same red as the neck of my guitar, which means that it suddenly becomes invisible.
Now, a large proportion of playing the guitar is your hand's familiarity with distances up and down the neck. For me that proportion is, let's say, eleven twelths. This equates to one semitone, or a single fret. It's a tiny distance in physical space. But it's an entire musical universe away from what you should be playing.
Wonder Ballroom, Portand
Seattle, Vancouver, Portland? You're thinking, 'what kind of crazy route is that?'
There is something inherently funny about the word 'ballroom'.
The truth is that as I write this, I am flying high high like a bird in the sky, on my way home. I've got time to kill, and you've got nowhere to be.
The tour is over now. Reckon it was my tenth tour of the USA. I feel like I'm getting to know it pretty well now.
Portland was a nice way to end. It was an early show, to give us time to drive back to Canada in time to get our flight. The Wonder Ballroom was originally a church hall, so the gig had a School Disco feel, especially as you can see daylight peeping through the edges of the curtains.
It was another one of those shows which went a bit stupid. When I left school, the headmaster's comment on my report card was "A sense of humour is a valuable thing, but should only be used at the appropriate time".
I like to think that when a roomful of people have paid to see you, you have a right to entertain them in any way you see fit. Sometimes the songs do all the work; sometimes it's very intense. Other times it's the pretend fights and spontaneous shitfunk jams that seem like a good idea. It's an amazing feeling to pick an audience up and take them with you somewhere, whether that's laughing or crying or hair-prickling. But they have to want to go. It's always half you and half them. That's why it's different every time.
So thankyou, Portland, and thanks to everyone who came out to see us. It would have been much less interesting without you.
Jim: In summation:
Overall an exquisite seductive appeal on the nose transformed into a glossy
complex brute in the glass. The undeniable pedigree of terroir always
dominated the experience though on occasion ripeness levels overcame the
elegance of breeding and led to an almost outlandish, crude fruitiness.
Pure theatre, bravo! My expectation is that this will continue to mature
over the next decade and could rival '82 as the outstanding vintage of our
generation.
