Posts Tagged ‘America’
Friday, October 17th, 2008
The Americans have given us our visas, so we can definitely, definitely join the insanely long list of bands playing at the CMJ Music Marathon next week. Now it’s all official, we can start to get excited.
It’s hard to know whether we’ll get many people turning up – it all seems a million miles away, and without an American record label there’s no real way of getting feedback. There have been a few people saying nice comments on our forum and this blog, and some nice bloggers like Music Snobbery and Chromewaves have been putting the word around, so hopefully we’ll get a few people through the doors. The new songs seemed to go down quite well at the warm-up gig last night, so we’re all set to go. Just one more warm-up (at King’s College, supporting Those Dancing Days on Tuesday night) and then get on the plane. Never mind that we still haven’t sorted out the equipment, we’ll figure something out.
Only a few more days to go before we go. Pancakes and maple syrup. Coffee and donuts. Pizza pie (whatever that actually means). Mom’s apple pie. Bagels and coffee from street vendors. Signs that say Walk Don’t Walk (although I heard that NYC has got rid of them now). Bring it on…
Friday, September 26th, 2008
I’m not sure that we’ve made enough of a big deal yet about the fact
that we’re going to New York.
The Big Apple. New York, New York, the city that never sleeps, The
United States of Kiss My Ass. America, fuck yeah!
all that sort of nonsense.
I went there as a tourist once, and I couldn’t stop myself from feeling
like I was walking around a film set, seeing so many places that were
familiar to me.
This will be our first trip to the States as a band, and it should be good.
We’re doing two shows, one is a showcase as part of the CMJ Music
Marathon at the Studio, Webster Hall. We’ll only be doing about half an
hour there, but we’re doing a much longer set (longer than we normally
play – everything is bigger in America) at
Joe’s pub in Brooklyn
The details are still being sorted out, but it will be good to get away
from the day jobs and out of the studio, and get in front of people
again. And I expect someone will be looking for a cheap new pair of
Converse All-Stars…
Malcolm
Saturday, September 20th, 2008
Alright Scamps?
Having had a rather heavy week involving a gig on Monday, which confused me greatly, and having been out to dinner three times in a week – actually one was technically lunch but it was dinnertime by the time we’d gone from the Ivy to the Dog and Duck, to the sparkly gay bar next door for buy-one-get-one-free Cosmopolitans (ouch!) I’m having a weekend of doing NOTHING, except watching X Factor (yes, yes it’s my guilty pleasure), making chocolate cake (like that’s not a guilty pleasure!) and compiling a playlist on the old iPod entitled ‘Second Album Inspiration’. It’s really random stuff, but it kind of makes sense to me in that kind of Country/Soul/Gospel/Bacharach/Scott Walker/60’s pop/Rock ‘n’ Roll kind of a way that the new record seems to be heading.
It goes like this;
The First Cut Is The Deepest – PP Arnold, Jolene – Dolly Parton, Perfect – Fairground Attraction, These Arms Of Mine – Bettye Swann, Thousand -Dollar Wedding – Gram Parsons, No One – Alicia Keys, I Will Always Love You – Dolly , Way Over Yonder – Carole King, The Age Of The Understatement – Last Shadow Puppets, Walk On By – Dionne Warwick, Wild Horses – Rolling Stones, Warwick Avenue – Duffy, Love Hurts – Gram & Emmylou, Fire & Rain – James Taylor, Run – Sandie Shaw, Distant Dreamer – Duffy
I’ve been listening to Dolly quite a lot lately, and of course Gram and Emmylou (sigh!) Rusty says ‘Don’t Fear the Country’, and we’re taking heed. Alicia Keys always sounds so desperately sad. I love Eddi Reader too – what an amazing voice. (I’m hoping all this will go in the ears and come out the mouth…somehow…) I’ve got Fire and Rain in there for pure sentimentality. It was the first song I learned to play on the guitar, sitting at the bottom of my stairs singing and attempting to strum along for my mate Faisal. We were 15 and I wanted to join his band. He said forget about the guitar you can sing instead. Ho hum…
I’m so very super excited about New York
Loves ya,
Ali x x
