Lucky Soul » Booze

Celebrities, Strawberries, Clowns, and a Lemur

admin — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:51:00 +0000

So we’re back from our little sojourn by the Black Sea, having drunk a wider range of cocktails involving Martini than we previously knew existed. The most important thing to say is that we survived. Ali, Andrew and Paul flew to Moscow early for a bit of sightseeing, while Ivor, Rusty and I were still slaving away in our day jobs, which meant we had to fly through the night, cross Moscow in a rickety minivan (with a bar across the seats like you get on a rollercoaster) and then hang around in another airport for a few hours.

We eventually got to Sochi, and eventually managed to check in and I got some sleep. Meanwhile Ivor was hard at work (he’s never out of the office), Paul took a dip in the Black Sea, and Rusty was getting on the vodka, having power-napped at various points in the journey.

We were playing at the Elle magazine aftershow party for Russia’s biggest film festival, along with a masterclass from the dancers from the Russian equivalent of Strictly Come Dancing.

The doors opened, and the beautiful people came in to get their hands on the food and the booze – a giant ball of strawberries, disconcerting fruit/meat combinations, and cocktails involving Martini. But no beer. I guess it isn’t very glamourous to drink beer.

Everywhere we looked, paparazzi were bombarding people with flashbulbs. The only trouble was that we had no idea who the famous people were. Apparently Martin Scorsese had been there earlier in the week, but we had to be told by a helpful British actor that the people in front of us in the queue for the free booze were “Russia’s equivalent of Pamela Anderson” and a clown.

Needless to say, they’d finished off the booze by the time we got off stage, but thanks to the editor of Elle we managed to wangle ourselves past the security into the after-aftershow, where there was even more Martini, and a pool. When the booze ran out there, it was time for bed, then back to Moscow, where we just about had time to spot a lemur in Red Square before getting an early night, so we could get a scary 4am taxi to the airport and back to Heathrow.

Malcolm

Tell your friends:

I love music, and I love festivals

admin — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:41:00 +0000

One of the weird things about being in a band is that I very rarely hear any new music. Because I’m working 9 to 5, rehearsals and gigs take up most evenings, so I hardly ever get to watch any bands.

My friend Matt decided to have his stag weekend at All Tomorrow’s Parties vs Pitchfork, at Camber Sands, so I got a note to let me out of band practice, and joined 23 other lads to terrorize the bowlie kids. We had a cracking time. I didn’t see that many bands, what with the venue being indoors on the hottest weekend for ages. And the fact that we were mostly drinking at the chalets, and playing a weird Norwegian stick game (which we kept winning – although we didn’t understand the rules, so we may have been cheating).

The first night, Matt was persuaded to wear a Chewbacca costume (although he didn’t take too much persuading), and the next night someone produced a pink panther suit for him.

The picture gives you a flavour of what happened when the singer of Les Savy Fav spotted it – there are more pictures on flickr

In amongst all the carnage, I learned a few things this weekend:

lots of bands are full of men with beards
lots of bands have swearwords in their names
lots of bands have multiple drummers
the keyboard player from The Hold Steady looks suspiciously like Super Mario

‘Graceland’ by Paul Simon is coming back into fashion for some reason, possibly connected with the success of Vampire Weekend
“if you shove a pink panther suit on a bearded fat man, you just can’t go wrong”
I have a new keyboard hero, Joel Robinow of the fantastic Howlin Rain
you can have a lot of fun drinking tequila from seashells
you can have a lot of fun playing the drinking game we invented.

here are the rules:

take several bottles of clear spirits, such as vodka, gin, tequila, sambucca, plus some water
pour some of each into a selection of shot glasses, while the players aren’t looking
ask each player to pick a number, then they have to drink the shot down in one without sniffing it first

I’m not sure what to make of all this, but I thought I’d share it with you.

Malcolm

p.s. hello and thank you to everyone I met and talked nonsense to, especially Stuart, Marc the ironing board surfer, and Mike from Howlin Rain

Tell your friends:

So What’s Hamburg Like…?

admin — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 10:22:00 +0000

It’s a cliché in Rock ‘n’ Roll Tour terms to say that it’s the people you meet on the road that make touring special, but I’m slowly coming round to that way of thinking. Last week we were on the road again to Hamburg and the Reeperbahn Festival. For those of you who are unaware, and I admit I was until I got there, the Reeperbahn is one of the most notorious Red Light districts not only in Germany, but in Europe. I was unaware for approximately 3 seconds after having got to the main street of the Reeperbahn whereupon I was met with pictures of a scantily clad ladies and a sign reading “SEXCES” (see what they’ve done there).

We managed to get to the hotel without seeing too many naked people and got to the gig on time due to the highly efficient German crew. The gig was great, playing in a small venue again with the crowd about 6 inches away from you reminded me of the time that we played the Windmill in Brixton and got Phoenix Phil and Tamla Tim up to wave their “Shake” and “Shimmy” signs. In Hamburg there were no signs, but there was a crowd who were very much up for having a good time. So good in fact that when I started the now traditional clapping in the middle of “Lips Are Unhappy” the crowd thought, ‘bollocks to your tempo’ and sped up to such a degree that we played it like the Chipmunks on heat. Perhaps not the greatest rendition of lips, but at least the people liked it.

Which brings me neatly back to touring, meeting people and why they make it special. After the show we were obviously on the look out for some beer, but with 9/10ths of the band happily in relationships, we were after beer but no boobs. So we came across a bar. It was run by a guy called Peter. The bar was called Peter’s Place. It had bottles of Becks for 2 Euro. It was great, and what’s more the people in it were great, telling us about all the best places in town to go (Luciano’s for Bock Wurst, the fish market on the Harbour) and introducing us to a new drink. The Mexicana. Or as we dubbed it The Maxi-Caner. The Mexicana is essentially a Bloody Mary, but it is only the size of a shot. From what we could gather it was a shot of vodka, tomato juice, Tabasco, and other mystery ingredients in a shot glass which you downed. 3 of those and you were reconsidering the other options that the Reeperbahn had to offer.

I’ll end this blog with 2 further points.

1. Peter’s Place is so famous that Peter has his own fan club, and not only that fan club membership cards. Of course, Lucky Soul are now fully paid up members:

2. After a large amount of Mexicanas some of LS did go onto sample the delights of the Reeperbahn. The question is who…? Answers to the usual address

We’re back on the road for the European Tour today, so I’m sure you can expect more Blogs from the rest of the band including the ever elusive Mr. Atkins

Over and out

Ivor

Tell your friends: