I love music, and I love festivals

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

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:

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






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

here are the rules:

1. take several bottles of clear spirits, such as vodka, gin, tequila, sambucca, plus some water
   
2. pour some of each into a selection of shot glasses, while the players aren’t looking
   
3. 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

Biscuits, Burgers, Bananas

Monday, September 10th, 2007

The trouble with gigs that go well is that it just makes going back to the day job that extra bit more unpleasant.

Monday mornings are bad enough at the best of times, but when you’ve spent the last few days doing what you’d much rather be doing full-time, the idea of sitting in an office for eight hours doesn’t appeal much.

The Brighton gig last night was great. It was our first gig there, but a lot of the crowd were singing along, and the people of Brighton definitely win the award for best dancing of the tour so far. It was a nice little nostalgia trip to go back to Brighton – Toby and I have got a lot of good memories from gigs with our previous band. Disappointingly, I didn’t have time to go to Grubb’s Burgers, but we were able to feed the jukebox at the Heart and Hand. And there were Oreo cookies on the rider.

Still, we’ve got more gigs this week to look forward to, including a trip to Spain. I’m really looking forward to Thursday’s gig at the 100 club, which will feature an extra special extended LS line-up. Anyone who came to the gig at the millennium dome (or the Hope and Anchor last new year’s eve) should have an idea of the treats in store…

Malcolm

Sunday is my day of rest

Sunday, July 22nd, 2007

Especially after getting back from Newport late last night, having spent Friday up in Glasgow for my granny’s 100th birthday. The jet-setting rock and roll lifestyle never ends…

Having said that, I’m taking a break from the band for a couple of weeks as I get ready to get married on Friday.

Meanwhile the rest of them will be hard at work getting ready for acoustic sets at the merc festival in carnaby street next sunday, and then the Vibrasons festival in Pontevedra (in the northwest corner of Spain) the following week while I’m on honeymoon. Weirdly I’ll only be about 50 miles away from Pontevedra, in Santiago de Compostela, but I’m resisting the temptation to go along and watch. I’m sure they’ll have a great time, and our friends from Elefant records in Madrid will be there to look after them.

I’ll come back refreshed and looking forward to getting out on our first tour in september.

Malcolm