Monday, 7th of August, 2000

Well! Finally! Many of you are no doubt wiping sweat from your brows after more than two weeks of non-updated blogness from me. I must apologize deeply, but it’s been a busy time and blogging requires a certain frame of mind to be done well.
First, NOTE that I have updated the Listening and Reading sections on the left! Finally *phew* - I knew y’all were getting bored.

I finished the last entry before our fist gig at Paradiso in Amsterdam, on the 19th of July. That night and the next we played an hour-long set each night. The room was impressive, as I described before. Both nights we had quite talkative crowds, but they seemed to enjoy themselves thoroughly all the same. Both nights the gigs started considerably later than we expected - on the second night I think it was 12:30 or even 1am!
I can’t for the life of me remember what happened on the day of the 20th of July - certainly it was a very late waking day, after the late night before. At the gig, I was delighted that not only did Penny and Marty come along, but Penny’s best friend Isla was there too. I’ve known Isla for years, and had no idea she was in Amsterdam. I rang her when I got back to London, but we haven’t managed to meet up yet - hopefully in the middle of this week.

On Friday the 21st, we all woke up very late again. I had my last wander around, and sometime in the middle of the afternoon I got an SMS (mobile short message) from Tim saying that Jordan’s backpack had been stolen! He’d been making a phone call in the hotel lobby, and it was taken from basically right under his nose. Luckily he had the FourPlay folder with all the info with him, and also all the cash we had, so all he lost was his mobile and camera - still a big pain, since we’d been communicating so much with SMS messaging.

That evening we went and saw the very silly new Jackie Chan movie, Shanghai Moon, basically Jackie does Western… Suitably funny and mindless with some good Hong Kong style action.
Afterwards we had dinner and then walked a few blocks to find the Bluegrassy Knoll, who were playing at a pub the name of which I’ve forgotten. They did a fantastic show as usual, hampered by the fact that they weren’t allowed to plug anything into the PA except vocal mikes. So all the instruments were extremely inadequately amplified by a hodge-podge of guitar and bass amps - we could hardly hear the violin at all… We had fun though, despite this and despite the stifling atmosphere. Smokers - just give up, honestly!

Next day, Saturday the 22nd, we were off to Rotterdam! We had plenty of time, but woke up very late of course. Lara and I then engaged in a last-minute dash for a birthday present for Tim *grin*
Then we took the train to Rotterdam. Readers of last year’s effort will recall that I was less than impressed with Rotterdam - it had basically one cool street.
Well, amusingly, it turned out we were staying (and playing) on that one cool street. I’d had a feeling this would be the case. Our hotel was literally across the road from the venue, and was very pleasant indeed. We spend the afternoon wandering up and down the street, and in a biiiig second-hand record store I found a copy of Tom Waits’ Big Time (live album from the wonderful Swordfishtrombones/Rain Dogs/Frank’s Wild Years period) among other things.

The venue we played at was called Rotown. It turned out to be an extremely cool place. A great bar with lovely food, it turned into a venue later in the evening, with the back area being closed off. We’ve been hampered by some difficult stage sounds on the tour, but the sound was fine here, and the audience was totally into it. There were heaps of people - it seems to be the place to go if you’re an indie music fan in Rotterdam - and they really enjoyed our stuff.
A great surprise, since I wasn’t really expecting anything of Rotterdam; it was the best gig we’d had up to that point.

Now, the 23rd of July is Tim’s birthday… Lara and I had found a great book on Yiddish Theatre in Amsterdam that we knew he’d like, as well as some little things, and we decided we had to give it to him after the gig, since it was well after midnight. As well as being Tim’s birthday, it’s Katie’s birthday, and since it was late enough (after 9am) in Sydney, I decided to ring her. She was still in bed, but didn’t mind being woken up, and it was really lovely to talk for a bit.
In the meantime I’d been getting SMS messages from Naima, who is bicycling around Australia at the moment, as I think I’ve mentioned, and happened to be in a mobile reception area. Since we were going to Belgium the next day, where international phone calls are insanely expensive, I decided to ring her, and we had about a half-hour conversation, which was a real pleasure and made me feel a bit more human and in touch for a bit. We couldn’t decide whether Naima, in the middle of outback Australia, was more or less far afield than I…

Next day, 23rd of July, we got back on the train, and were off to Gent, in northern Belgium, to play at the Festival. We found our way to the Ibis Hotel, and then wandered around town for a while, as our gigs weren’t until later.
I say gigs. I mean it. We had five gigs that day - three half-hour sets at the Novotel stage and then two 45-minute ones at a restaurant later. Tim was not impressed to have all this on his 25th birthday ;)
Not a lot to say about the gigs. We felt a little strange at first at the Novotel gigs, playing in front of an audience we thought would’ve been the last people to be into our stuff, but they seemed to enjoy it all the same, which just goes to show…
Afterwards we trooped off to this Brasserie/restaurant called Het Pakhuis. We were shown around by Olaf, son of the festival organiser, a truly lovely guy who also did a great job of our sound at both venues, particularly at Het Pakhuis, where we were so tired it’s a wonder we made it through the night at all. But the sound was mellow and rich and we had fun with a much more improvised and relaxed armosphere than usual.
I should mention that our dear friend Guy turned up in the meantime, with his friend Kath. We knew he was around, but weren’t able to contact him, so were most pleased that he found his way to the Novotel stage, and they spent the rest of the evening with us.

Next day, more wandering around the festival. Gent is a truly beautiful city, and is extremely active during the enormous festival.
We had to get to the soundcheck by 5:45 or so. At 5:15, Tim and I decided it was time to leave, and just in time it began to hail! The weather had been hot and sunny up until then, so we were, one might say, somewhat surprised at this! We caught a tram as far as we could (it was raining, not hailing, by then), and then had to dash along the cobbled streets (imagine me pushing my cello case, on its skateboard trucks, along the cobblestones - a similar effect occurred in Prague.) We made it there, relatively soaked, and of course it was all running late. We were certain that nobody would be there, even though it was the main stage on the last night of the festival. Poor Lara was wet and bedraggled and didn’t have anything warm to wear, including having sandles on because of the earlier good weather.

After soundcheck we had a free dinner, but La went to get changed first. The rain was coming and going, and there were a fair few people about. The band before us played countless encores, but eventually it was our turn. Miraculously, it stopped raining just in time for us to go on stage! The crowd was really quite immense, and cleared enjoyed our set… We played two encores, and afterwards sold some 58 CDs, signing them and chatting in various languages (talking to fans in (very bad) French - there’s an experience!) while the rain began again… A fantastic evening.

On the 25th of July we had to go back to Amsterdam, as we were flying from there the next day. Tim & I decided to go back via Antwerp, as I’d loved it last year. I wanted to visit Bries, an amazing underground comics shop, and opposite it, Stereophonic Records, who specialise in exactly my kind of experimental electronica and drum’n'bass and stuff.
Antwerp was just as beautiful as I’d remembered it. However, as anyone can guess from reading my tour diaries, something had to go wrong, and Bries turned out to be shut until about the 4th of August! [Hey - last year the one full day I had in Antwerp was a public holiday - everything was shut!] Oh well, no doubt good for my bank account.
Not so good for it was Stereophonic Records, where I spent about two hours listening to 12″s and CDs, and chatting with the lovely Hans behind the desk. I found a Kid 606 7″, and commented that I already had all the tracks on the Ipecac CD (Ipecac is the label owned by Mike Patton, of Mr Bungle and Faith No More). He was immediately extremely excited - “Do you have that?” Kid 606 had played live in the store earlier in the year, and showed him the artwork on his laptop (*chuckle*), but he’d been unable to get hold of it. So I ended up selling it to him, for more than the pound value, and buying another copy in London (it’s one of my favourite purchases so far…)

Next day, the 26th of July, was a day of travel. We’d used up our London-Heathrow stopovers on the tickets we got (stupid rules about hubs and things, I dunno), and had to fly in to Birmingham, and then catch the train to London. We were fortunate to accidentally make use of a special that day that meant our tickets were only £6.99 each to London (usually probably £25 or more). So, two more hours of travel later and we were in London, taking the tube one stop to Bayswater again. This time we’ve been staying in the Princes Square Hotel, a (rather small) step above the last place, and about two blocks away from it - slighty closer to the tube stations. We had a very yummy Chinese dinner on Queensway. Bayswater is a beautiful area, and it’s been a highlight of staying in London just to be there.

Thursday the 27th was our first gig back at Bartok, in Chalk Farm, where we’d played last year. In the morning I wandered into Soho again (of course!) and then to Chalk Farm. At Mega City Comics I got the much-delayed final issue of Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which I read in the car trip the next day. I can’t express how much of a genius Alan Moore is. You just have to go and read something by him, that’s all there is to it.
At Rhythm Records in Camden Town I was sure I recognised the girl at the counter, so I went over to ask her about something, and she did have an Australian accent… She noticed my accent and recognized me too, by which time I knew that she was indeed Alison Galloway, ex-member of Sydney indie band Smudge, who used to work at Waterfront in the city, and is the subject of the Lemonheads song Alison’s Starting to Happen. It was nice that she recognized me, and knew who FourPlay were.

At 4pm we had our soundcheck, although it ended up being rather later than that. We had some… difficulties with sound, involving no foldback, tiny speakers, and a tiny desk. The sound engineers, whose fault it was not at all, ended up using every bit of equipment they had. Singing was very difficult as we could hardly hear ourselves. Kinda silly. Nevertheless, there were quite a lot of people there (lots of Australians, as usual) who had a great time, bought CDs afterwards, etc, and didn’t mind the sound, which was no doubt considerably better than we felt. By the second half even I couldn’t whinge ;)

On the 28th, it was immediately on the road again (ho-ho) for us, driving all the way up to Holyhead in north-west Wales. We left early early, taking the tube to Victoria to pick up the hire-car, and then of course I took the driving seat (any opportunity…) It was quite a lovely drive up there; we stopped in Shrewsbury for lunch, the town where I was born, and decided that it was really quite a good choice of birthplace, although I couldn’t live there, being too much of a city gent. Lovely place though.
The traffic on some of the routes was insane, however, and we ended up getting there extremely late for soundcheck. The venue was quite odd for FourPlay, the inside of an old church that had been changed into an Arts Centre. Because of our lateness (naughty!) we had some problems with the sound, almost resorting to acoustic sound at one stage, but with some heroic efforts from the sound engineer, it was all fine in the end. The audience was small but appreciative (how weird for us to play in front of a silent crowd!)

That night we were put up in a bed & breakfast in town. There being a TV in the room, Tim & I had to watch, even though it never occurs to us to watch it when we’re at home ;) [Did I mention the inordinate amounts of MTV and suchlike crap we watched in Europe? There is so much rubbish in the charts, I can't begin to say... Don't knock Britney Spears though! (*ahem*) Oops, I did it a£$%£$% Bleedin' 'eck! And that fucking Melanie C song...! And that's just the listenable ones. I ended up liking them as a reaction against the vomitous R&B hip-hop that makes up most of the charts, or the lifeless club-house pap].
Where was I? Oh yes, I was going to describe a monumentally horrendous, but utterly irresistible TV show that was on, er Channel 4? Not sure. Anyway, it was called Euro Trash I think… And involved a man with a very bad French accent compereing a show where they trawled through European pop culture for the most gratuitously sexual er… idiocy? A story about an Italian (was it?) woman who ran a factory, and was also a stripper. No really. Or a German “band” with two men and two women (who spent most of their time topless) with one song - about giving head in the grass. Their next song was apparently going to be about giving head in the snow. Then there was the guy who wandered around France asking men if he could photograph their penises… They took him to England, where he was far less successful with his requests.
Gotta love the British. Mikey, you need to watch this when you get here. Friday nights, relatively late.

Saturday the 29th, and everyone else was going to drive around Wales for a couple of days, getting back to London on Sunday night. I was feeling restless, however, and not into looking at the (admittedly extremely beautiful) countryside. So I got Jordan to drive me to the train station after a lovely breakfast (but I did ask for no baked beans! Ugh! Hard to clean them off the eggs and bacon…)
Once I got there it turned out to be incredibly expensive to stop over in either Manchester or Nottingham, my two possible choices of places I wanted to visit. So after much vacillation I decided to give them a miss this time. Page 45 in Nottingham is one of the best comics shops in the world, but New York will no doubt come up with the goods ;)
The next train to London wasn’t until 1:25pm, so I had hours to wait. In the meantime, it was early enough still to ring Australia. So I rang up Chris Breach, and had a lovely chat about what I’d been doing and getting, and then rang home as well.

I sat waiting on Platform 2 for the train, and then it turned out that it was leaving from Platform 1. Dashed over there, and found a decent seat, and then couldn’t find my mobile phone! The doors had closed, and I had to reach through the open window to open the door, climb off the train and ask the man on the platform to hold the train as I’d lost my phone. “Well it’s about to go” he said, and refused to hold it. I ran back to Platform 2 and the people I’d been sitting with handed me my phone. I still missed my train though. The next one was leaving about 20 minutes later, but wasn’t direct… As it happened, what with delays and changing trains, I didn’t get into London until about 8pm. I think all the trains were delayed, as there was some kind of trackwork going on (typical), so it’s possible I didn’t waste any more time than I would have had wasted for me otherwise anyway!

I bought myself a lovely Chinese take-away from the place we’d eaten at before, and ate it in the twilight in Kensington Gardens, and then wandered down to the Kensington High St easyEverything (where I am now in fact!) I immediately felt that it was the right thing to come back; I was really glad to be back in London.
One of the main reasons I’d come back, other than wanting to be in London, was too see my friend Mark Reid, who was in London for a conference, but going off to Edinburgh on Monday, he said. It would be mad not to meet up. As I sat doing my email, suddenly he walked past! I had to grab his attention, and then we internetted next to each other for the next hour or so, transferring things by infra-red between our Palm Pilots, and generally being silly. I’d just emailed him trying to find out how we could meet on Sunday, but this was a much better way!

So, on Sunday the 30th I rang Mark when I woke up in the morning, and we met at Notting Hill Gate and explored London. We went everywhere, including Rough Trade in Covent Garden, Berwick St Soho, various Music & Video Exchanges and so on. We incited each other into spending far more money than we should have, on comics, CDs, records, books… At 3:45 we went to St Paul’s Cathedral and watched some of the Evensong. It’s an immense and impressive building, which I hadn’t seen properly before, from the outside or in.
We went to Wagamamas for dinner in Soho. It was a lovely day, and completely justified the day of travel on Saturday (and the price of the ticket - let’s not discuss that, ok?)

Now, this blog entry is too long… At this point I paused for breath for a few days, so I’ll put the rest in the next entry!

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