Monday 26 May 2008

dot to dot

this weekend saw us visiting nottingham and bristol for dot to dot festival. its one of several inner city festivals that we've been fortunate enough to play this year. my favourite thing about these types of events is getting to see and hang out with our friends bands, especially when its been an absolute age since we last saw them. mirror!mirror! filled that criteria this weekend. i think they're the only band who cares as much about football as we do. probably more so. ANYWAY, they put on one of the best shows i think ive seen all year and having done endless shitty gigs together it was great to see them play to a packed out room of people who were really into it. they've just put out (or are just about to put out) a new 7" on holy roar and tough love. you can get it on iTunes too and you totally should.

Monday 19 May 2008

the great escape 2008

...was again a pretty ridiculous weekend of very indulgent fun.


DAY ONE
we arrived on friday to do our show with AIDS wolf. soundchecked then everyone split up for a few hours to meet various friends, eat and scope out brighton. i was pretty worried before our set as ed and mate cut it fine by arriving 10 minutes before we were due to go on and the changeovers at these festival type things are incredibly short. nevetheless we played, some people came and it was enjoyable. i think. stuff got broken (my microkorg is fucked), the stage fell apart but we all got pretty into it. AIDS wolf were pretty decent. having had their record for a few years it was nice to finally catch them live. they seemed like cool people too and were happy to trade merch. bonus.
again, we all split up and ventured seperate ways. i headed down to the drownedinsound stage to meet a few different people and plan out what was next. after getting to the barfly to try see black lips and finding a stupid queue with a one in one out system, we went to the pav tav. for about 10 minutes. i had one drink, got seperated/left from half the group i was with and went back to the barfly with some girls called chole and rosa, jumped the que and blagged in with some DiS types through the smoking area. win. it was pretty busy inside and i didnt particularly think much to black lips (or the price of snakebite) but we stayed til it finished. i think. what happened next is hazy but we sat in a park then went to a club that had been an italian restaurant earlier on. i was fortunate enough to be invited to stay at chateau burgess which was very comfortable compared to some of the houses ive stayed in over the last week, including my own.


DAY TWO
i wasn't half as hungover as expected. got clean and wandered back into brighton with james and sam. they went to see cancer bats and i went back to the flat that the others had stayed in. spent a lot of the day just sat around and had food made for me by the lovely chris cayford and his lady, anya. it was good. in terms of bands i saw; times new viking were ok. ive heard a lot about them recently and didnt really know what to expect so i wasnt disappointed. i went and saw the twilight sad in a theatre which was very pleasant. i havent been at a seated gig since weezer, about 5 years ago. i had to leave their show early to get back to catch these new puritans. missed the first 2 songs and they played a pretty short set but it was spot on. of the few bands i managed to catch this weekend, they were an easy favourite.
left digital pretty much straight away and headed towards the house of maths class. having taken our equiptment up earlier it was just a case of waiting for people to show up. they all seemed a bit on edge about the turnout which, considering how quickly word of mouth can spread at events like great escape, was totally fair enough. it had gone from secret house show to the 'official artrocker great escape aftershow party' in a matter of hours. having absolutely no money, i managed to blag some alcohol and was then repeatedly offered various swigs from various bottles. needless to say, when it came to our set i was 'in the mood'. this meant underwear, not really playing my keyboards at all, falling over, repeating myself a lot and then falling downstairs later on and splitting my lip massively. intense. needless to say, loads of people did come, the house didnt get that messy and the police did sort of break it up later on. some pictoral evidence below. thanks to maths class for having us and being really nice guys.


both pictures by james burgess

Friday 16 May 2008

be right on

yesterday we finished a weeks worth of touring with horse the band. it was way too short but fun regardless. it was strange being on the road with a band that had been away from their homes for 3 months and still had ridiculous amounts of energy and we're more than great to be around. my only slight disappointment was that we didnt get to 'party' as such. myself, alex and ed got drunk at chateaux throats which was fun but other than that, a very sober week.

we have brighton this weekend; two shows including a house show. it feels like forever since we last did one so everyone is keen. swag.

Friday 9 May 2008

are you sure?

having just returned from tour i decided to begin chronicling things. im poor at keeping a diary and they're too embarrasing to read back. ive read other peoples blogs and they're relatively entertaining so why not...