Where did the good times go?

Well it's only 2 days now before the very first Liquidation. I'm nervous and excited and all those usual feelings you get when you just have no idea how something is going to go. There are about 110 people confirmed as guests on the facebook page but that's not really an accurate figure. I think about half of those people live in countries very, very far away from Germany so the likelihood of them actually attending is very slim. Jules is arriving tomorrow night just in time to go watch the Liverpool game somewhere and Liverpool have just sold one my heroes, Fernando Torres, to Chelsea for a record £50million and bought another record signing, Andy Carroll, from Newcastle for £35million. Nuts. So the game against Stoke on Wednesday night is one I really want to watch (not to actually see Andy Carroll play - he's injured at the moment, but to see ANOTHER one of Liverpool's new big signings, Luis Suarez).

On Friday Hendrik started to film his documentary and spent the whole day following me around. It's nowhere near as daunting and as intrusive as I thought it might be. In fact it's the opposite and I very rarely noticed he was there at all. In the morning I went to play football as I always do on a Friday and he filmed the whole game from loads of different places. I normally play an OK game of footy but for some reason, even though I honestly didn't notice him filming so much, I played atrociously!! Every shot was spooned west and...oh man, it was awful. I'm going to have to insist that he comes again when I play better!!

After footy I went to practise with Nick and Mic, the 2 lads who are going to play guitar and bass with me when I do the Silent Sleep EP launch party on the 12th Feb. Again, Hendrik blended into the background and we cracked on without giving him a thought.

The gig later that night was really nice. The venue, Antjes Oekselund, is mad. It takes yo uages to find it because it's in this courtyard with no lights and it's tucked away in a corner, but when you walk in it's kind of like this magic space. The first thing I noticed was this dead creepy manequin child holding a load of helium balloons. Through the back there was a bar and next to the bar was a smoking cubical. A tiny room with an ashtray and a stool in. Royalchord, the band I was supporting where absolutely lovely...2 girls and a load of dead nice old keyboards (including an omnichord, which I want badly) making beautiful and sad songs. One song that stood out was called 'The Good Times'. I'll post it here at the end of this.

A few months ago I spent the morning chasing a Brazilian dancer around Berlin whilst being photographed. It was for the Go! Team's new video for their song 'Rolling Blackouts' which was made by James and Violetta, who are becoming really good mates here. I don't think you can see the video in the U.K. just yet but I'll stick it up here when you can - it's great...all photographs and stop motion and dead stylish.

Here's that video and some photos of the gig from Friday...