Thursday, 10th of August, 2000

This is a continuation of the last entry, because I’d written too much for blogger’s blog-entry window!
You can go straight to the beginning of the tour diary entry if you haven’t read the rest already, by clicking here.

On Monday the 31st of July, FourPlay began our daily regime (we sustained it for three days!) of practising in the “morning”. Morning of course means starting about 11am - we are musicians you know. Our rehearsals on these next three days involved the working together of a new cover (woo-hoo!) - a Suede song from their first album called The Drowners - as well as just practising some of the repertoire.
Having finished practising, Tim & I headed off to Southwark(-ish) to meet our (Australian) friends Sally and Amanda at the Tate Modern. We only got there at about 3:30, and it closed at 6pm, so we didn’t give ourselves much time, but it was extremely impressive. Dali’s Metamorphosis of Narcissus, some Magritte (but not enough - he’s my favourite artist), and a roomful of extraordinary eye-and-mind-bending paintings by English artist Bridget Riley…

I had intended to meet Mark there but we failed to cross paths, but later on I was at Tottenham Court Rd easyEverything and got an email from him whilst internetting. It turned out he was at Kensington High St (I knew I should’ve gone there) and we arranged to meet up.
He asked where and I said that there wasn’t anything much there and why not (I thought I said) Notting Hill Gate? Then I described which exit to get out of (same side as his hotel, nearest exit in my direction…) and I then took the tube there and patiently waited. Finally, about 10-15 minutes later, he called my mobile from a public phone - “I’m here, don’t understand where you meant, come and find me”. I said “But I’m here too”… Huh? Then it dawned on me - he’d said Tottenham Court Rd! No wonder my instructions made no sense. Cursing myself, I walked all the way from Notting Hill Gate to the next station, Queensway, waiting for him to call again. He finally did, and told me where he was waiting, and another tube journey later (love those weekly passes!) we met. Italian dinner, and more emailing, and it was too late for a tube home so we caught the bus.
It was truly a very enjoyable time spent with Mark.

Tuesday the 1st of August involved rehearsal again in the morning, followed by the requisite wandering around shops, and then in the evening Tim & I went to Sally’s place in Camden Town for Amanda’s farewell. Had lovely dinner at Wagamamas (yet another…) and then drinks at a pub called Dingwalls. I found out that the legendary drum’n'bass collective/label Metalheadz had a Sunday night club there and resolved to go there the next Sunday. [Sadly wasn’t to happen, but I hoped…]

Wednesday the 2nd was slightly more eventful. We rehearsed in the morning… Then I took the tube to Old Street, in search of a record store I hadn’t been to before (!) called Smallfish. Old Street does weird things with its name as it trundles along, so I went backwards and forwards about three times before I found the shop, but it was well worth it. They have a fantastic selection of stuff, much of it a little overpriced (welcome to London), but very impressive all the same. I found a t-shirt of 555 Recordings of Leeds, my current favourite record label, and snapped it up along with a couple of 7″s. Smallfish rival Rough Trade for best record store in London…
Then in Selectadisc in Berwick St I found a black Godspeed You Black Emperor! t-shirt for £9.99. This is from their EP, Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada, and features this image on the front:
and the title on the back. No band name anywhere, in keeping with their weirdly obscurantist nature.
I’d like to know what the Hebrew text means - I think it’s from the Torah, given there’s a whole page quoted inside. Some of the members are Jewish, and the even more wonderful trio A Silver Mt Zion plays a little more with Jewish imagery, although the music is no more Jewish than, say, Lou Reed (or Beck… or Jodi Phillis… etc…)
The other extremely exciting find of the day was a promo copy of the new Amon Tobin single, 4 Ton Mantis. The guy’s a living legend. The single doesn’t come out until September, so this was very exciting. The one new track, Yards, is a killer, and the remixes aren’t bad either.
I also got some an old Pop Will Eat Itself 12″, in fantastic condition. My Poppies rarities collection has grown dramatically on this tour!

That evening Tim & I met our friends Anna and Jo (who I know independently but who went to school together) and Anna took us to a wonderful Thai version of Wagamamas on Wardour St, called Busaba. Superb! We then took Anna and Jo to the Blue Room, a cafe down the road that we frequented last year with Kirra and Danae.

Thursday the 3rd of August was our follow-up gig at Bartok. I made my way to Camden Town, wandering around the shops there as usual, and eventually made it to Bartok. We were hoping for perhaps a bit of a more sizeable sound setup this time, but lo and behold, exactly the same. However, our sound engineer did a fantastic job, and other than not being able to hear our vocals (not a big problem as everyone had lost their voices to the dreaded lurgy anyway), all was fine. Great audience again (heaps of Australians again)…

Friday the 4th, another day of excitement, jam-packed. We were playing an afternoon gig at Canary Wharf, a “self-contained estate” on the Isle of Dogs. We thus got to take the new tube line, the Jubilee Line (it was still under construction when we were here last year).
Canary Wharf is quite a scary place actually, soooo artificial, very Big Brother. Amusingly for Australians (well, some), one street is called Mackenzie Walk. *ahem* anyway, as usual with outside gigs, the sound was difficult, but all was fine out front, and the professional people who worked there seemed to enjoy themselves - Jordan commented that most of the people he sold CDs to seemed to know us already!
We had a big break before another gig at 6pm, so I took the tube back into town and went to the Oxford St easyEverything. At the second set, some friends from Sydney met us there: Glen Wright, who co-owns Harbourside Brasserie in Sydney and also our agency Red Square, and who was staying with a friend of Tim’s called Victoria; and Rachel from (the sadly defunct) Something Urban. After the second set, I took my cello home - I couldn’t be bothered staying out at the Travelodge in the Docklands, since we were going into town anyway.

Why were we going into town anyway?
Why *gloats* to see Mouse on Mars playing at the Uni of London Union (ULU) of course!
This was simply a staggering gig. Mouse on Mars are a really quite experimental German electronica band. I introduced Jordan to them a year ago, and he was bubbling over with enthusiasm days before. The gig completely exceeded any expectations I could’ve had, however. Just the two of them (Jan St Werner and Andi Toma) playing bass/guitar and all manner of keyboards, effects, laptops etc, plus the drummer from their last album (I’ll remember his name soon!) who was the tightest drummer I’ve seen in a long time, playing along with all the crazy sequences perfectly.
All the songs were recognizable, yet completely changed. It was extremely danceable, big big drums and all, yet constantly mentally stimulating as well, and it was very impressive to see them playing so much of it live! About 45 minutes in Jan (or was it Andi?) said “This is our last song”… Then after riotous applause they came back on and played for about as long again .
The last few songs changed the tone to their more usual more ambient and experimental sounds, whislt at still being melodic and rhythmic. An extremely inspiring and exhilirating experience, especially these last few songs. I bought a MoM t-shirt afterwards (three new t-shirts! woo-hoo!), and a 12″ and CD on their label Sonig too.

On Saturday the 5th Veren went off to France. Glen took us all out to lunch in Notting Hill; at Victoria’s suggestion we went to Pharmacy, a restaurant/bar based on an installation I’d seen a year or two before at the Tate Gallery, by controversial English artist Damien Hirst. Odd. But the food was divine. Big thanks to Glen!
Afterwards, we all trouped up Portobello Rd, which was absolutely packed because it was a Saturday market day. I was entirely unimpressed with the crowds, and ensconced myself in the Rough Trade on Talbot Rd for ages (Jordan followed, and found a rare Tortoise 7″. I got a Fridge CD and… um… something else. Wish I could remember).
On the way back, Jordan and I found our way into the Comic & Book Exchange in Notting Hill Gate and bought up various bits’n'pieces.

Sunday the 6th was another market day - this time Camden Markets. I’d arranged to ring Sally and meet her, and everybody ended up going. We did a fairly thorough exporation… First I stopped by at Mega City Comics, because I’d found a number of Grant Morrison Doom Patrols at the Comic & Book Exchange. I knew Mega City had a whole lot of them (they’re out of print and unlikely to be collected), so I went in with a purpose, and ended up getting about 20 backissues. The very early ones were very tempting, but at about £4 a pop AUD$10+), it was a bit much. Still, I’ve got most of ‘em now!
In the markets I finally found a copy of John Cale’s Fragments of a Rainy Season, his extraordinary live album. Just him singing and playing piano (guitar on a few tracks), incredibly moving. Also got myself a copy of the Nick Drake collection Way to Blue, which Tim has but I need myself, in lieu of eventually getting all the albums. And I found, for £1, the Carpenters covers album If II Were a Carpenter, with Shonen Knife’s disarming version of Top of the World, and Sonic Youth’s classic Superstar cover. Some other good tracks, although the Australian a capella trio Acapelicans‘ version of Solitaire beats Sheryl Crow’s hands down.
I did find the crowds got too much for me, however, and didn’t last very long in the real market. So no new clothing for me… aren’t three new t-shirts enough? Well, considering the tatty state of all my long-sleeved t-shirts, I don’t think so… And I only own ONE shirt really, a lovely purple silk though it is. I found the shop where Tim found a silk shirt earlier that week, but all the sleeves were too short for me. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I had planned to go to the drum’n'bass club Metalheadz that night. However, I was exhausted, having been on my feet all day, and would’ve had to wait two hours before it started, which I couldn’t face, so I just went and did some internet… wrote a fair chunk of blog, which I’m finishing now.Monday the 7th of August, and Tim, Lara, Jordan and I were off gallivanting for a few days. First, some jobs had to be done, however! We put all our clothes in at the laundry down the road, and then I took an enormous pile of comics and books (mostly mine, some Tim’s), off to the post office.
*sigh*
All I can say, and I should’ve remembered this from last year, is DON’T FUCKING USE FUCKING BRITISH FUCKING POST. They’re evil. You go in, you buy the box, and they won’t give you tape to tape it up - you have to buy a roll! I had to buy two rolls of bubble-wrap too (of course, no newspaper to scrunch up in the package…) Then I get to the front of the queue, and weigh my package. 10kgs. Woaaahhhhhhh. Well, last year there was one 7.5kgs and then one 15kg one later, so this is… ok! I guess. How much do you think? I’ll tell you, because it’s so scandalous… £67 for postage; about another £8 for packaging. Still, what a relief to not have to carry all that around! Still have some great new books to read, and I’m still carrying the vinyl around ‘coz I don’t trust it in the post.

So, once we’d gotten our delightfully warm dry washing back, and packed it all up, we were off! Oh what fun; even though the bastards at the car hire place had refused to remove the back seats from the 7-seater we’d hired, so it was very hard to fit everything in, we somehow managed. We listened to funky CDs via my CD-to-tape converter thingy, and went off to Bath, where we found our way to a little Bed & Breakfast. We wandered around Bath and had some lunch/dinner, and then went back via a Safeways to get some nibbly supplies. Immediately I sat on my bed I decided I had to lie down. I was feeling extremely uncomfortable (I’d slept very badly the night before too - my bed in that hotel room had been truly appallingly bad, but still…) and even though at 8:30pm I desparately needed to, I couldn’t really sleep, just tossed and turned and felt crap. I didn’t feel nauseous, but everything was irritating, little sounds and all; I must’ve been totally exhausted and just not coping. I stayed there basically until about 8:30 the next morning, having slept pretty badly, when we got up to have breakfast and check out. Poor Petey.

So, the morning of the 8th of August, and on discussion we decided just to drive somewhere. Back in the driver’s seat, I felt somewhat better, and improved as we went along. We knew we were going to Oxford, but not how we were getting there. It was really liberating and a lot of fun to just drive, look at stuff, and not worry about missing soundchecks or anything. We went into Salisbury and from there to the nearby Old Sarum castle - an extremely old site. My interest in ancient history being negligible, I admired the view and then went back to the car, unwilling to pay the £2 entry.
I made the right decision, because a short time later the other three returned to the car with cries of “Start the car! Infestation alert!”. They were all covered in little insects, fruit fly like things, which of course then they managed to get on me as well. So we wiped as many off as possible (they didn’t seem to bite or anything) and were off again.

Next stop was for supplies in some little town - cheeses, turkey, nice breads, avocado, corn chips, lettuce, cherry tomatoes. In the cute little town of Pewsey we found the ideal and idyllic spot for a picnic, in the shade in green grass next to the river Avon (more of a glorified trickle at this point). I couldn’t help thinking of Pooh and Piglet floating down the river in an upturned umbrella (with the original E.H. Shepherd drawings of course, none of this Disney crap). Delightful and hilarious. Eventually a woman drove past and said “You know you’re sitting on somebody’s private lawn?” but by then we’d finished anyway.

Following lunch, Tim decided that we really had to veer via the Uffington White Horse, a horse cut into a chalk hill in the countryside some 3,500 years ago. As amazing as this sight was, we were as impressed just by the incredibly view of flat English countryside for miles into the distance. It was a beautiful sunny day, and altogether fabulous fun.
And so we drove on to Oxford, which we found was extremely inhospitable to cars. After some effort, we found our way to the very grottiest establishment in Oxford (a B&B, but Jordan saw/smelled the kitchen and forbade us from doing the Breakfast part there *grin*). We were in room 1, meaning the very top floor (of course!) The guy who checked us in was the weirdest, most unsocialised person we’d met… Weird. Still, there was a working TV. After a lovely Thai dinner, we went home and watched Irvine Welsh’s depressing and bizarre Acid House trilogy on Channel 4… Freaky.

That brings us to… Today! I thought we’d never make it!
Today, we piled everything back into the car, and parked in town for a few hours. We had a yummy breakfast, and then Tim & I took ourselves off to the bookshops, while Lara & Jordan found their way to the botanic gardens. We were extremely impressed by the bookshops. Blackwell’s is the most incredible bookshop in the world. You get the feeling that they have pretty much everything. Their science-fiction section, naturally, isn’t very good (why is this always so?), but the philosophy section is amazing, and Tim (and I) gaped and gasped at sections on the environment, international relations, and countless other academic areas. I ended up somewhat grudgingly feeling obliged to spend some £43… On three books, but three books I just couldn’t not get - I’ve been looking for books by Christopher Norris all over the place for a long time, and finally found everything I could’ve expected. Great critiques of postmodernism, critical/cultural theory, relativism, etc… by someone who is a Derrida scholar and knows the stuff inside out. I’ve put a little blurb in the current Reading list in the left column, but for when that gets updated, the book titles are Against Relativism: Philosophy of Science, Deconstruction, and Critical Theory; Reclaiming Truth: Contribution to a Critique of Cultural Relativism (Post-Contemporary Interventions); and Quantum Theory and the Flight From Realism: Philosophical Responses to Quantum Mechanics. Essential reading for me - this is the one big spending event I don’t regret or feel bad about at all.

After a little more wandering about, we went back to the car, and gradually found our way back to London. We had dinner at, lo and behold!, Wagamamas (in Kensington High St, for variation), and now I’ve been at the Kensington easyEverything for a few hours, updating this blog. Finally done! Hopefully it won’t be as long until the next update, but who knows when I’ll have time? I’ll try, I promise.
Missing you all, my lovely friends and family, and FourPlay fans and complete strangers (but to a lesser extent)…
Love,
Peter.

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