Taking pictures of fireworks is tricky, I would have
thought that cooking dinner for 16 people was trickier, but not according to
tonight’s uber vegan curry banquet extravaganzascoop.
Films is the order of the weekend. I used to watch
films all the time when I was at school, but at some point a few years back I
convinced myself that there just wasn’t enough time ...
Iron Man seemed like good fun, but it was ruined by
its deplorable portrayal of Middle Eastern freedom-fighters....
After having watched the new Bond film and having
been told that the producers are trying to make them more like the Bourne films
I thought we’d have a gander. Like J says, it’s not really fair to compare, but
nonetheless the similarities are fairly glaring, and nine times out of ten Bond is just not
as cool....
This picture of Matt Damon is an actual still from
the Bourne Ultimatum:
Today we went to the pictures to watch the new Bond
film. Which was fun, but not as good as the last one.I’ve been told that Bond just wants to be
Bourne, perhaps tomorrow I shall see for myself.....
Now that I’m back from a three week stint of gigs I
thought I’d go to a gig. Tonight Sween and Garside were playing in Omar Puente’s
band at the Brud. Puente is a cuban musician, and a badass, who currently plays violin with
Courtney Pine amongst other projects. He’s also been in the news recently as
his wife is unwell, and fears that if she excersises her own free-will
regarding her own life that there may well be a backlash for her husband....
It’s all done. Home to bed. Cardiff was a scoop, we
played in the Buffallo bar with Kytes, well they were Kytes at the start of
their set, they appeared to be Talons by the end of it. We drove home
afterwards (well Tim did). Something like five and a half hours from Cardiff to
Leeds, I stayed awake as driver’s mate and then when we got back at six in the
morning we still had to unload all of the gear into the studio. I think I was
asleep by 6,30...
Here for your delight is the finished ubermap. Sorry
I couldn’t keep it up to date on tour, but I have one too few functional laptops
for such a charge. Note the various items strewn round the country, there were
probably more that we haven’t even noticed yet......
This gig was weird..... We were in Bristol at the Croft. We’d been billed with two American
experimental touring psychadelic noise bands, Talibam! And Jackie O Mofo, but
the room had been double booked with three touring Belgian black metal bands,
and so the gigs (and thus the crowds) had been combined making for a melting pot
of bonkersness. It was ace though, and I think we played to about 80-100 people
all told. Jackie O were cool as well, although I loaned them my amp, and the
speaker is now all blowed up.Most
likely not their fault, but it takes the edge of it if you have someone to
blame.
The venue were projecting live footage from the
stage onto the backdrop whilst we played, and one of the ladies from Jackie O
took this picture of me and.... me..... boons
Tired tigers today..... Brixtonin London was ace, too many
familiar faces to name and a sweet deal of a gig. Think we might have blown up
the monitors though..... Cheers dudes for letting us stop in your mega yard, and for the toaster.....
Today was pretty bonkers.We managed to cram three awesome events into
one day....
The first, after a leisurely day spent in the
charity shops and sea air of Brighton was to play at Resident records. A record
shop so small, that Tim played kit by the till, Tom and Martin played by the
front counter, and Lee and I set up our gear down each of the aisles. A good
few folk turned out to see us and we played a fully instrumental and fairly
thunderous set at seven in the evening in a shop. Not something I have ever
done before. The pics show us in the shop, and Tom pretending to be a chess
piece behind the store...
Then we hightailed it over to London, to watch
Mogwai play at the Hammersmith Apollo. I’ve never seen Mogwai before, but everyone
else in the band has lost count of how often they’ve had their ribcages shaken
to pieces by their caucophanous rumble. The gig was ace, although we did miss
the first few songs. Props to Tim and Jon, who went to park the van, and thus
only caught the last four songs, but didn’t seem too phased since they’d seen
them a squillion times already anyway...
Then.... We went to the Mogwai aftershow under the
railway arches in Southwark. An all-night techno party featuring, Fourtet,
Nathan Fake, Caribou, James Holden, Errors and Mogwai all doing DJ sets. After meeting
Errors at our Leeds gig with them a few weeks ago, they blagged us all in to this
do for free, which was lovely, and I stayed up all night dancing to James
Holden, who is a mega dude.
Then we went to bed at
Rachel’s riverfront uberpad as the sun rose over the Thames..... gonna be tired
tomorrow....
Tonight we played at the Freebutt in Brighton. I have no idea who all of these folk who come to
these shows are, but it is ace to go to another city, far far away, and for a
room full of people to show up and pay money to see us perform, because they’ve
heard us on the radio, or from a friend, or read about us or something.....
another scoop. Although what was even more of a scoop was the party we had at
George’s flat afterwards...
The picture is Lee, and a live action thought bubble
about the current state of world affairs...
Back to Leeds for the Brainwash Festival at the Brudenell and The Royal Park Cellars. Fully good boons.
Probably got to perform to about 250 folk tonight, which is always nice. My
highlight though was watching Red Stars Parade who went on after us. Which is who
all of these pictures are of.....
This was for me, the gig of the tour. The people of
Bolton somehow manage to make themself part of the show, fueling our performance with
their over-the-top but entirely sincere enthusiasm and encouragement. The Dog and
Partridge is being bulldozed by the council to make way for a casino or
something, despite the fact that 100% of its patrons object..
The picture is of me and Ivan, anyone remember his lovely face from last time around
Vessels and Brenda at the Vine Sowerby Bridge. And the prize for the lamest
photo of the tour goes to me. I was trying to depict the footage of a young boy
in the desert strangling his cat that was being projected behind Brenda but I
don’t think I managed very well. Scoop of a jig tho.....
Glasgow was a treat. The Captain's Rest was lovely, and, as with most of the shows this tour, I was again surprised by the number of people we can pull to an out of town headline show. Apart from at Chichester last week, we haven't played to fewer than about 50-100 people at any show, with tonight being no exception. We did get caught out by the curfew, and ended up playing fewer tunes than we would have liked, but all told it was a lovely do. Dan Abassi turned up with some pals, as did my younger brotherwith his mates, and we topped it all off by stopping with the boys from the OceanFracture, who must be just about the lovliest boys in Glasgow, and we sat up in their new flat and watched 'Some Kind of Monster', which documents the two and a half years it took Metallica to squeeze 'St Anger' out of their collective minds. Cringeworthy and tragic, like Spinal Tap but sadder and real....
Back on the road for missions again. This time we played in Newcastle, with Moleck (Who some of were in Kappernicus,whose t-shirt I have on today) and the British Expeditionary Force, who are very different on record..... The gig was ace, and many a familiar face showed up, Luke and Cleever, Lucy the Hobbit, Mordue, Miller and Main, Dave and Derek, the Geordie, Grigg and Clarky and the Duffin and the boy Minnis. A band called Hot Club De Paris were djing afterwards, and we were all staying in the same flat, they played some guitar and told us a few tales and all went to bed eventually, but Minnis and I sat up with one of their entourage, a lad called 'Grasser' from Monkwearmouth in Sunderland, who could airdrum to Sunn0))) like no one else.... Here he is, at some late hour, regaling us with tales of repeatedly enjoying loud, droning noise to the point of inexpressible joy, whilst attempting to play us comedy soundbites from his phone....
Today with one day off from the tour, I played a solo gig in Leeds, in support of Anni Rossi at the Packhorse. I showed up an hour late for sound check but still with three minutes to spare before my stage time, got straight on stage and played to about 20 people, casually forgetting and re-inventing parts of my songs and tellng stories of our tour inbetween. It was my favourite acoustic gig I've ever done, but hopefully not that I will ever do.... I entirely failed to take snaps though, but did boon off this shot of my room just before I went to be, after staying up till the early hours with Tom Vessels and Tom Blythe (he of he Niven Tash) as he is leaving Leeds forever.....
Today we drove to London and recorded a live session with Chris Denham for XFM. The man usually records two bands a day, and last year recorded 341 bands. It was a whole bunch of fun, but I drank two much coffee due to the lovely girl by the coffee machine, and we just couldn't seem to nail anything first take, which started to become a bit of a stress. We got there in the end however, and then toddled off back to Leeds to clean the sweat from our bodies and sleep in our own beds. Jon booned off this shot of Martin looking suspicious and Tom looking rock n' roll, but he couldn't keep the camera steady because he too had had too much coffee....
Today saw us head to the Oakford Social Club in Reading. We played here on our last tour and I seem to remember being particularly taken by this neon sign. The Oakford is where Jon works, and is where we first met him, last time we played here, when after the show he asked us if he could come on tour with us as our engineer. Eight months later and he's been on the road with us for the past two weeks, making our gigging experiences far less of a headache than ever before. He even queefed off the cheeky Autumnal shot at the top of the page out the back of the Oakford. Boons. I Concur played with us tonight, and Jamie and Katie whisked themsens over from Aldershot from the do. Tremendous.
The text that should have accompanied this picture seems to have vanished, and I'm not gonna go into it again in too much detail, save to say that this is us, on our way to Chichester for a jig that was lovely, although under-attended in comparsion to the rest of the tour. There was a lorry crash on the motorway and we were stuck in traffic for an hour, so we climbed out of the van and hung out in the sunshine, eating gingernuts and picking blackberries. No Hodger, I do not have a new Blackberry PDA...
Cambridge - The Portland Arms. Speaking to various members of the crowd tonight I'd have thought they were at a different gig. The rapturous commendations and appreciation could only mean either that they were at a different gig, or that it wasn't as bad as I thought. All told, we played well. But when moments before we intended to commence the first song, the bass amp, and both bass guitars (Primary and emergency backup) ceased functioning, a sense of impending doom replaced what should have been the opening salvo of 'An Idle Brain...' Martin and I performed the entire set (a somewhat short affair considering the time we took to attempt to, and generally fail to repair the equipment) with the bass plugged straight into the P.A, intermittently cutting in and out, a pantomime of post rock held together with Gaffer Tape and good humour. This picture says it all, The Vessels stage set up, at the Portland Arms in Cambridge, melting into chaos....
Seven hours on the M1 - largely thanks to some immense and baffling diversion at Derby. Still, gave me a good chance to read about the credit crunch. Still can't decide whether I care or not - with very real and tangible chaos affecting the climate, the animal kingdom, and the oppressed and wartorn of this world, does it really matter if loads of numbers in cyberspace have started to implode? We were late for the show, and got on stage in just enough time to play four songs. The 100 club in London is ace, mottled upon all its walls with black and white images of the great luminaries who have graced it's stage. There was a framed picture of Metallica looking younger than us playing on the very same stage just behind where we set up the merch. The first picture shows the sunset taken from the van on the way down, significant a) beacuse by the time the sun was going down we should have finished soundchecking but we were only just past Birmingham, and b) because it looked lovely. The second, rather blurred picture is me and Richard Ayodade, who I know best from Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, taken shortly after I gave him a Vessels album and told him it was the most important multimedia event since Quantum Leap. Pivot sounded fairly cool, although I couldn't see them from my post behind the merch stand as my view was impaired by Alex Turner and Alexa Chung both seemingly playing hard to get with each other. I didn't give them a Vessels album.....
This was an awesome gig, as part of our residency at the Brudenell Social Club. But unfortunately someone is so out of practice at blogging that they forgot to take a single picture. So you can have this one, of Errors, who we supported, who were ace, which I rinsed off their website....
In the City. Manchester's answer to South by South West. An urban 'festival' of the country's hottest new bands, who all queue up to play for nothing or next to nothing because they know that their audience will be peppered with talent spotting A&R sorts who are going to whisk them away to Whereverland, perm their hair and make them famous. Having said that, it was an ace gig. We had to load all of our gear on, AND soundcheck, in a fifteen minute changeover. Ludicrous. We did it in twenty and played a twenty five minute set. We sold no albums, because I forgot them. And we got paid nothing, because secretly we were all holding out for the hair permers....
This picture shows Tom Evans from Bolton, telling Tom Evans from Vessels what a great name he has. Hardly objective though is he....
I'm gonna try and tie this all together into one contiguous meaningful representation of the last few weeks. It might make no sense, but it'll make sense to me....
It seems to start sometime around the Chapeltown Carnival, the largest free reggae concert in Europe, that takes place every year on the bank-holiday weekend only minutes from where I work, when I took this photo of Bill and Sarah. Excited because I hadn't seen them in such a long time, and keen to blog about it because I hadn't blogged in such a long time.... unfortunately it never came to that....
Later that evening I went to borrow some shoes from Blythe for my sister Paula's wedding. Spurred on by having met up with Bill and Sarah and taken a snap for my blog, I took my camera with me - it hadn't been by my side for such a long time..... Thus, I took this rather lovely snap of Blythe, with his temporary 'Niven' Tash, collected said shoes, and casually left my camera behind.....
The wedding was lovely, one of the most laid back and fun I've been to:
Fortunately I was able to use J's camera to document the magical day, and J took this snap of me, Ma and all of my brother's and sisters all together on the same day - that happens once a year at best....
Then, still cameraless, we bunced off to Bestival to play the BBC stage - arriving just as an epic storm spread over the south of England and turned the Isle of Wight into a mudbath... I think I took this shot (again on J's camera) whilst watching Underworld, which was beyond immense....
J took this picture of some gorilla sculptures in the park....
This
is me and Andy Beesley - he was a friend when I first started Uni and
he lived with me briefly over a summer - I haven't seen in about four
or five years - and may never again, as I didn't take any contact
details, just this imensely flattering snap..
The weather was so bad that our stage was closed intermitently across about half of the weekend, it was pure fluke that we got to play at all - and here is the rain soaked crowd as seen from the stage.....
And a video of us playing courtesy of the BBC.......
Just as Underworld finished, in a haze of euphoria, they lit up the night sky with fireworks. Tremendous.
I returned from Bestival, realising that I had inadvertently left my camera at Tom's house shortly after snapping the aforementioned David Niven Tash shot. When I retrieved my camera, I found, amongst other obscenities, this delightful snap of Will from the Smokestacks contained within its memory...
Once my camera was back in my possesion I was able to snap this shot of Bon Iver in Manchester (Although Martin may well have taken this one, not sure....) - Had I written about this gig closer to the time I would undoubtedly have gushed for hours, but it was about six weeks ago now, so all I'll say is, go here and listen to his sweet melancholic heartache and then you can all gush to yourselves...
Then there was the great adventure of Cath and Donal's not-wedding. A three day anarchist celebration in Herefordshire. Featuring part of the not-wedding on a Shell garage forecourt, an immense feast, cabaret, camping in the woods, a keildeh, an eighties disco, and a late night drum n' bass adventure rave.... Oh and a not-wedding....
Then, once home and refreshed, Vessels began to rehearse in earnest for the mega-tour. This shot shows mine and Martin's new amp. I've never owned a proper guitar amp before (and I don't really own this, as it was bought with band money for Martin and I to both use during the Vessels extravaganza) but it is there for the usage and it has already made me ludicrously happy....
And this final snap shows the boys, in the newly autumnly-cleansed Vessels studio, preparing to trot off on the road once more.......
And thus concludes the time betwixt the great silence and the ubertour, which is hopefully by now documented above in detail. If you've read this far I applaud you - If you've just skimmed over the pictures I think I can relate.... the internet can be an immense tool, but it can also turn you into an immense tool, by sapping away the hours of potential creativity, I wish I could say that whilst I haven't been writing for you all I've been writing for myself, but hopefully soon, the time will come....
