Hello again! After after I (7:06 pm)
Hello again! After after I finished my last blog entry and emailing, I went to Rough Trade in Covent Garden. I have to say that Rough Trade probably has to overtake Ambient Soho as the best record store in London… Or at least equal it. You can listen to as many CDs as you like, and they’ll play vinyl on the store system if you ask.
But the range is just incredible! I spent hours there, just looking at stuff, and then longer listening ;) Good fun, not so good for my bank account balance, but y’get that. I made sure I didn’t spend anything over what you’d pay in Australia. And just everything (up to a point) was just there on the shelves…
From there I went up Shaftsbury Avenue to New Oxford St… popped into Forbidden Planet, a big mainstream comics chain, but they have some quite good backissues. Then I couldn’t resist going back into Soho. I went down to Sister Ray and found the first Gimmik 12″ (which comes sealed in a brown paper bag!) and poked my head into a few places.
Then I met the others again and we headed off to dinner at Wagamama’s! We’d been looking forward to this, on our own memories and many many people’s recommendations, and it does not disappoint. It’s cheap for London, wonderful asian food. Lots of Japanese and some vaguely Chinese and other stuff. Our lovely friend Guy Curd (who has sold many a FourPlay CD for us at gigs) came along too.
Next day, Thursday the 6th of July, was the first gig day for FourPlay! We picked up a hire car at Victoria Station and drove out to Hampton Court (apparently Henry the 8th liked Hampton Court Palace so much that he had his honeymoon there - again and again. Haha. So say the ads for the place anyway). We played at Hampton Court Flower Show - very odd. Middle aged couples mostly, but enough people appreciated our music to buy quite a lot of CDs…
From Hampton Court we then drove a couple of hours out of London to Chichester, where we were playing as part of the Chichester Fringe Festival. I was designated driver as usual, but probably mostly because I like driving so much and have a fair amount of stamina with it… Tim was designated navigator, because he’s damn good at it!
It was really good to get out into the country… although all in all I’m a city gent and prefer cities. But it was nice to go exploring a bit. Chichester is a bit country-townish though. We found the venue but there was noone there… We then found our way to the accomodation, at the University College (”Bishop Norbert” building, or somesuch) and at least we all had separate rooms, a nice change from the mouldy five-person room in London! But the beds were a bit narrow and my shower seemed to only dispense cold water…
The gig itself was… ok. Well, if I may say, we played wonderfully - good sound makes a bit difference! We were really tight and had a great time. Beforehand, at the end of soundcheck, I started playing a groove on the cello, round and round, and Veren eventually began improvising a beautiful tune over the top. It was a fabulous experience, and revitalised me somewhat as I’d been getting a bit tired out… I wrote down the chord sequence and rhythm in my Palm Pilot afterwards *grin*
But there weren’t very many people there, as it hadn’t been properly publicised. A bit of a shame. Considering how few people were there, we still made very reasonably CD sales ;) But still…
Next day, Friday the 7th, we made our way back into London. The traffic was abonimable, and we found that practically every second street is one way in the wrong direction, or blocked off, or something else that it doesn’t say in the London A-Z (street directory). Infuriating. Finally got back to the hotel and had to leave shortly afterwards to go to the Royal National Theatre to play an outside (but covered gig). It’s very near the centre of town, and therefore it was completely hellish trying to drive there. We somehow made it on time though.
Lovely location, right on the Thames, but unfortunately the sound was less than spectacular and we felt like we played awfully. The audience, conveniently, didn’t. There were quite a lot of people, and it wasn’t bad…
After the gig, we met quite a few friends, including, surprisingly, and old school friend of mine, Charles Blumer. Also there was Tim’s girlfriend’s mother Dita. We thought we’d be seeing her the next day, but it was great to meet up with her then. We all went off to Brick Lane (kind of India Town) for dinner, meeting up with Guy there too. A fantastic meal at City Spice, near the far end of the street.
I then ran around unsuccessfully trying to find an open internet cafe near our place, but gave up and went home. I did find a great pirate drum’n'bass radio station… At least I think it was a pirate, it was mono and not great reception…
Saturday the 8th of July. And a crazy day too. I’m not sure I’m mentally up to writing about it right now.
Yeah alright.
Well the first thing we had to do was return the car to Victoria Station. Easy enough, not too much traffic… Got there and then did a bit of internetting at a very cheap place near there (the Easy Everything chain (I’m at one now) have this system where the cost of use changes depending on the demand, so at lowish-demand times you can get over an hour for £1. At any time it’s cheaper than anywhere else). Then we got in a taxi to go to the Greenwich & Docklands Festival. They were paying…
So we got to Greenwich and had some spare time. It turned out to be in fact a lovely place. We found a £1 bookshop (and a £2 one next door!), and there’s a nice market and some great eateries and things. It was rather rainy though, so we didn’t end up having heaps of people for our two sets. The soundguy was fantastic though, and although for the first gig we were exhausted, the second ended up being quite tight and a pleasure to do.
What’s more, the lovely Trish Young from the Clouds was there. Having just done some recording for Jodi from the Clouds’ new solo album, it was great to meet Trish, and of course we played our cover of the Clouds song Domino. We chatted to her and her boyfriend and their gorgeous baby for a while afterwards, and hopefully we’ll see them again when we’re back here.
After the gig, we had to get to the accomodation we’d been provided - the Travelodge at East India Quays. This is in the Docklands area, but hardly next door to Greenwich. After enjoying it in the afternoon we really wanted to get in there, and Tim & I wanted to vegetate to Mission Impossible 2 at 6:15pm. However, the taxi went all round about to get to the Travelodge… Nice enough rooms, one each, all double beds, TVs, nice bathrooms etc. But just not very centrally located ;) Tim & I tried to get in to Greenwich and it took us about an hour to find our way there, even with Tim’s A-Z. Asking for directions, we were pointed the wrong way twice, and then we flagged down a taxi and the driver had no idea either, and drove off as we were talking to him!
Luckily the next taxi driver was very helpful and drove us down the road to the start of the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. Yep, we walked under the Thames to Greenwich! Most enjoyable ;) And rather plush lifts at either end. The Tunnel was opened in 1902 it seems, and still going strong.
However, it was an immense disappointment to get back to Greenwich. We were exhausted as it is, and too late for the movie, and time didn’t want to hang around for the 9:30 showing. AND there are no internet cafes in Greenwich. Evil bastards.
So we had a relatively nice Asian meal and then took the Docklands Light Rail back (which is how we should’ve gotten there in the first place!) As we got there we ran into the others, going out. I was desparate for Internet, and Jordan said he wanted to find some too, after seeing the Bluegrassy Knoll at the National Theatre.
The Bluegrassy Knoll are a fantastic band from Melbourne, with whom we’ve played gigs on numerous occasions. We’ll be crossing paths a few times on the tour. Last night they were doing their extremely cool live soundtracks to (silent) Buster Keaton movies. Funny and clever as always. Sadly, during the second movie it started raining. Everyone piled into the foyer of the National Theatre, and shortly afterwards they came in and said that until the weather stopped or it got too late, they’d just play us some music acoustically. Everyone crowded round, and as it pelted down outside they played us some excellent bluegrass and gypsy-inspired music. Loved it.
Unfortunately it was too late after that for internetting, so Jordan and I took a cab home.
NOT as easy as it sounds. How do you flag a cab down in London? For that matter how do you find one? We went up to the bridge, but had no luck there, so we wandered backwards, and eventually found some, but they proceeded to ignore us. I think they were off-duty… Eventually we found one. The guy knew the approximate area he was going to, but not exactly where it was, but being a taxi driver, he neglected to check the map until we were lost ;) Checking the A-Z he found that the right turn he had to make was just after the spot where we did a U-turn a minute earlier, so another U-turn later, and some blocked off streets and weird round-abouts too, we were home.
*sag* Dropped into bed, watched some really crap TV (Alan Alda and Jacqueline Bissett in some crazy ’70s horror movie - she was verrrry pretty I must say!) and finally dropped off to sleep.
I’m afraid today’s exploits will have to wait for the next blog entry. I’m very very tired and have 4 minutes left at this Easy Everything place. 3 minutes now! Next stop Prague, and hopefully I’ll be able to do another entry really soon!
Peter.
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