Wednesday 25 August 2010

day 7

I'm sat in the living room in Alex and Katrin's house right now and David Spoons is sitting next to transforming Wuppertal SV slowly but surely into european contenders on Football Manager and Graham is writing in a book (actually he's not writing, he's just drawing pictures of dicks). Paul Green is showering listening to Madonna, Paul Jones has just returned after getting lost on a bike, Tony was doing some exercise upstairs and I haven't seen John Wallace all morning but I think he's catching up on some sleep.

We had a really quiet night last night. The night before we played a kind of acoustic show in Katrin's Dad's basement which was really incredible. We had such a laugh. His basement is basically like a little bar with loads of guitars and amps and a piano in. We mixed up all the songs so some were voo songs and some were 28 costumes songs and we played erika on the piano. When we finshed all our songs we covered a few and did Hungry Heart by The Boss, Aside by The Weakerthans, Blue Suede shoes with Katrin's dad on guitar and no-one else by Weezer.

When we got back to Alex's place we had such a boss time...it was mental! We were all dancing in the living room and going hell for leather on the booze. I think we got to sleep around 8 or so.

The gigs have been such good fun to play so far. The Ex-Haus gig was great and we made some more friends there I reckon - we invited a few people outside after sound check for a game of kubb. One of the lads was unbelievable at it.

Tonight we're playing in a cafe/record store in Trier and then tomorrow we leave Alex's house in the morning to go to Offenbach. I didn't realise that we would be staying here for so long, it's been a week now, but as always Alex and Katrin have looked after us so well and just been the perfect hosts and I genujnely feel lucky to be able to count them as friends.

It's a bit subdued in here today...everyone's either had to much sleep or not enough but we're leaving the house in a couple of hours to go the cafe...

Also, just had an offer to play another gig in Berlin with The Boss Hoss. They're a dead massive german band that dress like cowboys. GOD!

Saturday 21 August 2010

Day3 of tour

Yesterday was a dead good day - we went to grab some boss pasta with Alex and Katrin and then hit the park in Trier for some Kubb action. Kubb is one of them games that you just can't help but get totally involved in emotionally, spiritually and fucking fiercely when you play it! Needless to say I lost every game we played! It was Tony, John and me against Paul J, Gray and D.Spoons who tonked us every game. When Katrin and Somaeh turned up we grabbed them to play on our team and they can throw a kubb stick. It was dangerous and people nearly died. We played a wider and longer pitch which made even more exciting when you did actually throw successful Kubb.

I spent the morning learning new Voo songs with Gray and then teaching him how to play Inside/Outside, which took about 3 seconds. The we watched the highlights of the liverpool game then listened to paul play the keyboards to Erika which sounds mega and all that type of stuff.

Tonight we're playing in Luxembourg and we're leaving in a minute so I better go and help pack the van.
Last time we played at this venue they had one of those sound limiters that knocks all the gear off if we play over a certain level. It went off before we even played a note last time and the police turned up half way through our gig. One thing that was boss about it though is that the promoter took us to this amazing Italian restaurant and got all of us some tasty meals and delicious red wineand then me and gray wrote a sexy song in the back of the van afterwards. I hope it's as exciting this time.

BYEEEEEE x

Friday 20 August 2010

Tour Days 1 and 2

We started off the tour of Germany with a gig for Voo in Tunbridge Wells at The Forum. It was a dead special gig because it was supporting The Wedding Present which is, for me and Paul Jones, one of our favourite ever bands. They were incredible and I also think it was the best we've played, certainly since I've been in the band. We had a good chat with David Gedge too afterwards who is just a lovely fella and boxed us off with a few beers from their rider to boot!

We left the next morning and arrived in calais at round 2pm and made it to trier at around 10pm after getting a bit lost and ending up travelling alongside a canal for a bit, complete with fishermen and everything. It defo wasn't the right way to Germany.
The van is small there's not much room to be swinging cats but luckly for us were not after that, we just need to sit in it. It goes and it goes well (so far) which is the most important thing. We stayed up til 4 or 5 last night drinking boss german lager and having a laugh and right now we're going to go into Trier. I'm still half asleep so apologies if it's not that funny or interesting...hopefully after a cup of coffee I'll perk up a bit. Or a beer.

Wednesday 11 August 2010

list

Haven't got much time to write this so just a quick one. I've been to Wuppertal, Munster, Saerbeck, Dusseldorf and now I'm in Liverpool. I've been on boat to party, been to watch a game of football, seen Philipp, Carmen, Rolf, Briggitte, Udo, Udo's son and his son's and his wife, taught Philipp and his friends the Fernando Torres song and sung it non stop for 3 days, seen Dan Hanks and Claudia who should be back now but we're staying at our place and had a dead nice coupla nights with them, said goodbye to edda (boo) for three weeks...
Now I'm about to go out to meet gray and practise with voo.

Sunday 1 August 2010

Owls are NOT stupid.

I'm sat in my living room. It's 8.58am local time and I've just ate a Brotchen (cob of bread) bought minutes ago and baked an hour ago from the shop downstairs. I'm considering whether to go and make a coffee but I've just remembered that we have no milk so that puts an end to that consideration. I'm also considering ending my blog right here. Nah, I won't do that but I haven't felt like writing this much the last week purely because I haven't really done that much. Work has dried right up and I'm still waiting to be paid so I've not had any money to be going out so much, although Edda has taken me to a few decent places...one of them being the zoo! I haven't been to a zoo since I was dead young...definitely more than 10 years ago. It was magic. The bestest bit was obviously the monkeys but the brown bear was also boss. It's definitely a bit sad though too - I know some of the animals wouldn't be alive it weren't for zoos and stuff but when the masive birds like owls and eagles need to fly, not live in a cage. They eagle in particular looked very sad. i kept on imagining my friend John Wallace doing his impression of an owl when I was looking at the owl because he does such an accurate impression of an owl in flight. I thought of that and I also thought of Alan Partridge too which is funny because sometimes John is alot like Alan Partirdge. John hates owls.

One good thing about not working so much recently is that I've had loads of time during the day to write new stuff so I've been doing lots of that. Mostly for Silent Sleep, which is the project I started just to do some gigs on my own out here. They're all really sad songs and really quiet too. I'm off my head though because one hour of the day I'm writing these songs and getting dead excited about them and playing shows but then the next hour I'll start planning some 28 Costumes stuff and get dead excited about that but then the next hour I'll be thinking about Hallo...I Love You! and then thinking of new ideas for that. I can never stick to one thing for more than an hour or so. My concentration span is tiny. Like an owls brain.

I'm going home soon which is going to be nice. First off I'm going to Wuppertal to watch the first game of the season against Munster, which is kind of a derby I think and then we're heading to Saerbeck again to see Edda's dad for a few days and then I'm flying from Bremen to Liverpool. I'm really looking forward to seeing all my mates and my mum and my brother and sister. It's weird - I feel like I've been away for YEARS and it's only been 4 months. Playing a gig on the 12th in Mello with Voo and then on the 18th we're supporting THE WEDDING PRESENT!! I still can't actually believe this is happening. The Wedding Present are on eof my favourite ever bands and loads of the reason why I write songs the way I do and we're supproting them. It's going to be off it's head. The day after this Voo and 28 Costumes are going to Germany to tour!! It's going to be such a good month. When I get back I'll be shooting the first video as Silent Sleep too for a song called 'Come! Let us run away!' and it's a really sad and fairytaley affair.

Dan's coming this week...YERSE!