TOUR DIARY: London [BACKSTAGE PASS: Youthmovies]

TOUR DIARY: London

Posted on April 18, 2008 11:35 AM
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Sunday – London Scala

It's a seven am start today, we've got this Liveroom tv session for the internet, which is something that's pretty hard to get psyched about this early in the morning. Loading up four flights of stairs to record for ten minutes, everyone's hung-over from pre-tour breaking in rituals and Andrew is sick with no voice to speak of. We settle straight away for a passable attempt at playing the songs convincingly, and load out down the four flights to get to the Scala in ten minutes time and do it over. When we arrive a box of our record will be waiting for us, so everyone's keen to get there and have a pop on them.

We load in and go to the bar next door where there's a rock and roll dejay playing early 7" vinyl through a gramophone machine, he's wearing a tweed suit and a beat up trilby, making him look like a auction show presenter. His name is Wheelybag. He's running competition games and Al and Graeme play a couple of rounds of chicken and spoon, with some mothers and toddlers. You've got to knock a felt chicken off someone else's spoon whilst not losing your own; Al and Graeme faired pretty well being the only guys and only ones over the age of six. Al won a cuddly duck and basked in the glory of giving to the youngest kid in front of his mother, the kid put it in his mouth straight away.

We get back to the venue, Dead Meadow are there and we try and get acquainted, they're kind of closed books, I think it's just the scars of years of being owned by the bud. We play the show and get away with it… the Scala's always been pretty hard for us, it's kind of boomy and we're just too loud and disjointed for it to work properly. It's probably our best time though. It feels good to be selling the record now, everyone agrees it's been a long time coming and it's great to see people are excited about it… loads of the guys that helped make the record happen are here tonight so it feels like an occasion, our love goes to Debbie, Hayley and Stacey especially, there rare examples of people in the music business that are not only good people but also good at what they do. Debbie's our point of contact at the label, and easily the best thing about DIS.

With everything wrapped up we're going to drive to Manchester, the show's in Glasgow tomorrow so we need to break the journey's back some. Just outside London the van we stole from foals starts pumping carbon monoxide into the interior through the vents, it's a recurring problem that costs us two hundred quid a time and makes us all sick for days. Obviously losing the van to the garage on the first day isn't ideal; we stick it out and get to Paul Wong's studio in Leicester in the hope we can borrow Tired Irie's van… it's all cool but they have shows in a couple of weeks time when we're meant to be in Europe, at least we've delayed the inevitable, there's some god that wants us to fail. Paul Wong's hospitality is famous. He greets us at four in the morning, he's practically nocturnal, with food and smoke and drink, some of us quiver out more or less as soon as we get there (the monoxide really fatigues you), but those that fight it are treated to new tracks by Tired Irie and the Flight of the Conchords. Sam gets his night terrors and looks like a stuck pig.