Broken Records

Fest Interview

2010-07-16T16:32:54Z

You know it's getting round to the time of mayhem that is the Edinburgh Festival when Fest magazine/blog starts revving up. Jamie recently took some time out to talk to them about new albums and hometown shows. You can read the full article here

Tickets for the Edinburgh Edge Festival show at soon to be re-opened Liquid Rooms are available online via tickemaster.co.uk

Blog - New Recordings

2010-07-09T11:49:53Z

It has been a bit quiet on here of late, as we have been either locked away in the studio in Glasgow or frantically trying to work out how to play the new tracks live (we're now calling Dave "Davey Four-Hands Rick Wakeman Smith"...). We took delivery of a bunch of fully ready-to-go mastered tracks the other day which was very exciting. Despite the fact that they bring back painful memories of six hours playing the same beat over and over again (apparently they say drummers are fitter than footballers, it must be true as it was on the BBC website, but for those of you that know me I am what may be called the exception to prove the rule), they have been on repeat on the stereo for the last day, if only just to remember the various changes. Don't tell the guys I said that...

We were recording with Tony Doogan in his studio in Glasgow which involved commuting, something you never thought would be a part of being in a band, and of course eating innumerable takeaways, Thai curries and Tesco microwave meals, washed down with endless cups of strong Columbian black (that's coffee by the way. Rock and roll...).

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We test-ran a few tracks last weekend at the Body and Soul Solstice weekend near Mullingar just north-west of Dublin. They seemed to go pretty well despite various technical gremlins (when you haven't played for a few months and have that kind of "ooooh, how's this going to go?" nervousness going on, that's when the equipement decides to throw in some extra random-factor obstacles) and it was a beautiful sunny day in a great location in the grounds of the odd-looking Ballinlough castle. We decided to camp for the night to avoid any last-minute dashes for the ferry from Larne, as the Irish roads are unpredictable at best when yoe get off the motorways. Although this proved to be more complicated than we thought as Rory gone done himself a mischief in the night and had to go for some x-rays the next morning. Whoever had me in the sweep for "first member to be hospitalised on tour" had the winning smile wiped off their face well and truly. Despite the worrying sight of him strapped to a board getting loaded into an ambulance, this was merely precautionary and he is doing grand. Although he had to go all the way home with a neck brace on which made him look rather like Avid Merrion of Bo! Selecta fame.

We have another run out at Kelburn Castle this weekend (seems we're all about the castles these days...), then off to Europe next week for the National shows mentioned in the previous blog. Yay!

As we are moving back towards having stuff going on/ to talk about I should be back on the old blogging a bit more frequently, so watch this space for further exciting episodes...

'Nearly Home' used in latest trailer for 'Lost'

2010-04-21T16:25:40Z

Any folks who regard themselves as both Broken Records fans and Lost fans will have no doubt spotted 'Nearly Home' being used in the trailer for the recent "Everybody Loves Hugo" episode. For anyone who first heard us through this advert, here's the full version of the song from last year's "Until The Earth Begins To Part" album:

Diary - First Day in Austin

2010-04-07T16:20:13Z

Tuesday saw us with our first day proper in Austin. We got up sharpish in the morning (having been up for about 24 hours the previous day everyone slept pretty soundly...), and those of us staying with our host Sue were particularly chipper due to the liberal use of her espresso maker. We headed in to the convention centre in the middle of town to get our wristbands, with only minor confusion as to whether we were Broken records or the representatives from "Broken Wreckords", whoever they may be. This left us with a whole day free, so Sue took us to "Juan in a Million" for breakfast, insisting that we hit the "Don Juan Breakfast Tacos" which left everyone a bit subdued afterwards by their sheer scale...

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As it seemed to be a day for trawling the pubs, we met our hosts a little later in the afternoon and headed to the East side for some "getting to know you" action, in the most appropriate format of getting shown round their favourite boozers. The east side was supposedly the cool end of town, and the bars all had a kind of run-down garage or old shed-type vibe about them, with loads of people milling about outside drinking cans of Lone Star (the Texas equivalent of Tennents, and a drink so cheap that, according to Sue, "You have to double-fist if you're on the Lone Star", ie. drink two cans at a time).

It became clear around this point that I was not going to be able to keep up the pace with Sue. Maybe for a day or two, but at some point in the week I was going to bale. Or die.

We spent the evening going from one place to the next, playing pool, watching bands, hitting some of the free parties, and generally having a bit of a ball. Not knowing my way round town by this point, it is hard to say exactly where we went. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it...

Sleep came pretty easily on account of the Firemans 4, and was more than welcome what with the St Patrick's day gigs coming up on Wednesday.

Tonight's installment: St Patrick's Day of Doom

SXSW Diary - Part 1

2010-04-03T18:24:26Z

As one of these Luddites who doesn't have an iPhone or any sort of international roaming wifi machine, all the SxSW blogs have been stored in my head and will spew forth in the next few days. I will begin at the most natural place to start, the beginning...

I woke on Sunday morning with a hint of a hangover from the previous day's Six Nations draw with England, with no idea why my alarm was barking at me, until the penny dropped and I leapt out of bed. Of course, we were heading towards SxSW today. The seven o'clock start wasn't hugely appreciated but the drive to London was aided by Gill's "nostalgia beats" on the stereo. We were staying at the flat at the 4ad offices in Wandsworth so met Roger in the neighbouring pub for a beer and a crack at the pub quiz, while Rog dished out some useful advice on how to stay alive in Austin - "Don't smoke roll ups, they'll think you're smoking pot and they will shoot you; don't drink in the street, they will shoot you; don't smoke indoors, they will shoot you," etc.

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This was my first time in America and I spent much of the first few hours marvelling at just about everything from the weather to the size of the sky/vehicles/bottles of Pepsi/roads etc. It's certainly true that everything is that bit bigger in Texas. Dallas itself was not as glamourous as I had been led to believe in 80's TV shows, and it seemed to go on for ever. Indeed, it took us about three hours just to get out of the place, so we decided to stop near Waco for a massive plate of unidentified meat smothered in barbeque sauce. It was around this point that I realised this was not going to be the healthiest of weeks. And that we realised we didn't know what sort of "gas" was meant to go in the van...

The drive down to Austin was one of extreme flatness, peppered with massive advertising billboards and soundtracked by the American Family Network radio phone-in, a rather worrying introduction to the more uninformed side of right-wing America. Never have I heard so many statistics made up off-the-cuff (and for my day job I work at the MORI polls, so that's saying something). We had been told that Austin was a bit of a liberal outpost though so we were keeping our fingers crossed...

It was around this time that we were pulled over by the cops in an exciting low-speed pursuit, as Gill drove on looking to find an appropriate junction to pull off at. These were nervous moments as they do have both guns and tasers round these parts, so hands were made visible and sudden movements avoided...

"Do y'all know why I pulled you over?" said the lady with the flashlight and high powered weaponry.

"Em...no." was Gill's honest response.

It transpired to be nothing worse than a missing headlight, and as it was a hire car that we were dropping off the next day they let us go on our way, with the warning that Austin P.D. may pull us over again on the way into town. I was delighted to be able to tick off one of the things on my "Things to do in America" list, "Get pulled over by a highway patrol". I was going to offer to pay the officer to taser Gill as a photo opportunity (and to tick off another item, "See someone getting tasered") but she seemed too nice to buy it so we went on our way.

We arrived at East 33rd in Austin quite late on, about ten or so, and met our hosts for the week. There was some nervousness on all sides here as they had kindly offered to put up four large and hairy Scotsmen (and one German) in each house, which must've seemed like a good idea at the time until the practicalities of a large band actually bowling up to your house come into play. For our part we had no idea what to expect, and as everyone was knackered we made our introductions, had a quick beer and a chat, and organised our beds, leaving the more serious "getting to know you" business until the following day when everyone would be a little more lively.

We had made it to Austin unscathed, the question was, would we leave it unscathed?

Coming up in our next installment:

Antics! Shenanigans! Gigs! Jalapenos! Margauritas! More gigs! Shuffleboard! And more meat than you can shake a barbeque fork at...

SXSW Show List

2010-03-13T16:58:56Z

'A Promise' Featured in 'Skins' Episode 4

2010-02-19T10:23:00Z

So, it turns out that our song 'A Promise' is the ideal soundtrack to comedians/actors making up. The song was used at the climax of last night's Skins episode.

If you missed you can watch the full episode online at 4oD, and the song is here on iTunes (and many other places of course!)

News! Live, SXSW, Skins, New stuff....

2010-02-16T13:27:22Z

Sorry we've gone a bit quiet on you over the last few weeks. We thought we'd just take a bit of time now to have a ramble about what's been keeping us out of trouble/getting us into trouble recently.

LIVE SHOWS

It's probably been most noticeable that we haven't had many live shows this year and the calendar is still looking quite blank over the next few months, but we'll explain the reason for this later. We started the first show of the year at the Eurosonic festival in Groningen, Netherlands on the 15th of January, followed by a special Burns Night show at King Tut's in Glasgow. You can read Andy's much funnier account of these snowy escapades over on the myspace blog.

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But enough of these misty-eyed ramblings - both shows were a lot of fun to play, despite some slightly embarrassing moments (to the gentleman at Hidden Door who knew the words to Wolves, a thousand thank-yous!). Alongside the usual numbers we threw in a couple of new tracks and a very nice version of Nearly Home performed in the style of eagleowl! But most importantly a huge amount of credit needs to go to the organisers of both events. The effort that went into converting The Roxy into a maze of multimedia art installations and performance spaces was staggering, and the Sick Kids Sunday organisers put together a brilliant line-up of local acts including Meursault, Woodenbox with a Fistful of Fivers, Sparrow & The Workshop, Eagleowl, James Yorkston & Adrian Crowley, and a last-minute slot by Rob St John. On top of that a goodly amount of money was raised for charity! It was really great to see so much happening in Edinburgh with everyone donating so much of their own time and energy to put on two very successful events.

SXSW

The one exception to the lack of upcoming live dates is our trip out to Austin, Texas for the South by South West (SXSW) festival in March. This is another reason we've been a bit quiet - the bureaucratic nightmare of trying to arrange working visas as well as trying to sort out the logistics of flights, transport and kit hire for this many people and for the cheapest way possible has become something of a full-time job over the last couple of weeks! Seriously, if anyone has ever had to try and get a US Visa/Work Permit you'll know it's an enormous pain in the arse, but I think we're nearly there. We've got the final interviews at the US embassy shortly so the main task for this week is to get our (well, mainly my) thick winter growth of beards trimmed down to something slightly less "Taliban-esque"!
Thankfully we've had some help with all of this from the Scottish Arts Council who have very kindly provided some funding towards the trip as well as putting us on at one of their Scottish Showcase events while we're out there. Exact details of where and when we'll be playing while we're out there still need to be finalised, although we can confirm that we're playing a 4AD/Bella Union showcase at Buffalo Billiards on Thursday 18th March with Midlake, Efterklang, The Low Anthem and Peter Broderick. If you're going to be in Austin for SXSW we'll be putting up details of the other showcases on our website, myspace and facebook pages when we have them, or keep an eye on the SXSW website for more updates.

http://sxsw.com/

"LIES" SINGLE

To coincide with our trip to the US, 4AD will be giving our "Lies" single a digital release there on the 15th of March. It was originally released as a limited edition 7" back in 2008 and has apparently gone on to be our most successful single. It even made it to number one in the Indie charts in Qatar. Twice. Now it's America's turn so let's see if we can get it to the top of the Billboard charts there (just the once will be fine, twice is a bit greedy)! Full details on where you can download it will follow soon. In the meantime, here's the video for it on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuDUiVwNpdc

SKINS

We've been led to understand that our track "A Promise" will be making an appearance on this week's episode of Skins (Series 4, Episode 4, Thursday 10pm on E4. All the fours.). Now we've got into the habit of never believing something's going to happen until we're on the plane/the money's in the bank/the lawyer's arrived to bail us out etc, so we'll see what happens. No matter what your opinion of Skins is, the music selection is always excellent and eclectic. Recently we've spotted them using tracks by Max Richter, James Yorkston, Electrelane, an entire episode of Debussy pieces, and the splendid opening sequence of an episode that had no dialogue for the first five minutes while Mogwai's "Cody" played in its entirety. So we're quite excited to see what they do with "A Promise", and for a fleeting moment we might just be "down with the kids"!

NEW MUSIC

So, the main reason we've been pretty quiet on the live front is that we're all holed up busily working on writing and demoing songs for the second record. We recorded a new single with Glasgow based producer Tony Doogan (Mogwai, Delgados, Belle & Sebastian) back in November and it's due for release later in the year, so we'll keep you posted about developments with that. As usual with us it doesn't have a title yet (and almost certainly won't do until someone actually forces us to put something down on a record sleeve!), but we've been dropping a working version of it into live sets since the summer so if you've seen us since then there's a good chance you've heard it!

We're currently putting Rory's burgeoning Garage Band skills and patience to the test, and he's been home-recording rough demos of some of the new tracks, although I think it's just a ruse to make sure his violin goes really high in the mix! We're planning to go back into the studio with Tony when we get back from SXSW so we're unlikely to be doing any more live shows until summertime comes around. As always, we'll keep you posted with more album details and live shows when we have them.

GENERAL STUFF

Apart from all of that we're all very well thank you, and this is what we've also been doing with our time:

Gill: Being driven slowly insane trying to code a 'new-look' version of our website.
Rory : As above, being driven insane by constant requests from everyone to change things in the demos.
Arne: Continuing his quest to make the perfect cup of coffee with his fancy espresso maker. It was great during the demoing - he just kept appearing with amazing coffees for everyone in these little glasses with expertly frothed milk. If the band goes tits up he's going to have a bright future as a Barista!
Ian: Pretending to be Neil from Meursault at every opportunity and bemoaning the imminent loss of his luxuriant beard in a bid to make getting through US Customs run a bit smoother.
Jamie: Writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing. And probably playing a bit of Championship Manager as well.
Dave: Catching up on a lot of our boring band admin work and doing whatever it is that Dave does.
Andy: Playing with his shiny new electric drum pads so he doesn't disturb the neighbours and contemplating his banjo-led Bluegrass/Techno fusion side-project.

Keep checking the website and sign up to the forum, plus facebook, myspace and twitter for updates and hopefully see you all soon!

ianbrokenrecord

Broken Records on 4AD 2009 Sampler

2009-12-17T18:21:58Z

To celebrate another succesful year, 4AD have put together a sampler containging tracks from all the acts with releases in the past 12 months. From our album, Until The Earth Begins To Part, they have include 'If Eilert Loveborg Wrote A Song, It Would Sound Like this', alongside tracks from the likes of Deerhunter, Future Of The Left, The National and St. Vincent.

You can preview the tracks below, and get the download by clicking the link at the bottom:

Edinburgh Christmas Show - 9th Dec

2009-11-24T16:26:21Z

*Update: Tickets are expected to sell out over the weekend, so try and book soon if you don't want to miss this!*

We're really excited to be able to announce that we will be playing a show back in Edinburgh on December 9th at Cabaret Voltaire. As we haven't played on home turf since August, we can't wait for this night. Thankfully Withered Hand isn't sick of spending time with us after joining us for the Scottish leg of the last tour, and will be supporting us once again along with potential 7-a-side football opponents, Jesus H.Foxx. It looks to us like it's going to be great, so come along and share in some good old christmas spirit. Tickets are £7 in advance and you can get them from TicketWeb.co.uk

'Out On The Water' Digital E.P. Out Today

2009-11-02T13:40:36Z

Just a quick note to say that the 'Out On The Water' E.P is released across the interweb today. Tracklistings and further info can be found in the post below. It can be downloaded from any of the following trustworthy retailers:

Also, as off tomorrow you can find us on tour around the UK, from down South, to far up North. Hope to see you along the way!

Thanks,
BR

New EP & Tour

2009-09-12T09:20:00Z

We're very pleased to announce that 4AD will be officially releasing our limited edition Out On The Water EP. The EP is a home recorded collection of previously unreleased tracks, demos and b-sides which we put together in November 2008, prior to the sessions for Until The Earth Begins To Part, with the help of our sound engineer Simon Kasprowicz.

Originally the EP was only available on CD for a limited period at gigs and at Avalanche Records in Edinburgh. 4AD will now be giving it a digital release on Monday 2nd November.

The tracklisting is:

1. Out On The Water
2. The Crumbling Wall
3. Lessons Never Learnt (original B-side to If The News... single)
4. A Warning
5. All So Tired

To coincide with the release we'll be off on a tour round England and Scotland. You can catch us at the following places:

Tuesday 3rd November: The Duchess, York
Wednesday 4th November: Masque Theatre, Liverpool
Thursday 5th November: Bush Hall, London
Friday 6th November: The Cooler, Bristol
Saturday 7th November: Tait Hall, Kelso
Sunday 8th November: Oran Mor, Glasgow
Tuesday 10th November: Perth Theatre, Perth
Wednesday 11th November: Cafe Drummond, Aberdeen
Thursday 12th November: Ironworks, Inverness
Friday 13th November: Skinandies, Thurso

Festival Diary - Part 3

2009-08-28T10:36:03Z

There are probably few feelings worse in life than standing in a confined, stinking plastic box, attempting to answer the call of nature whilst simultaneously trying to avoid dysentry, when the sound of an MC saying "Ladies and gentleman, please welcome to the stage...Broken Records!" floats from the stage, some hundred yards away, to your ears. You are then faced with a dilemma - to arrest mid-act and risk having to carry a pair of piss-stained jeans to Germany and back, or to take the extra minute to finish up, which will necessitate a sprint to the stage doing up your trousers, to the amusement of the backstage crew, as Ian and Rory play the loop at the start of Nearly Home over and over again on an otherwise empty stage. I opt for the latter.
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Festival Survival Tip #6 - You get more "bang for your buck" if you get down with the lentil brigade.

Sunday saw us heading south to The Big Chill, in glorious sunshine. We unloaded the van a few miles from the stage (that may be a slight exaggeration) and myself and Kas sat with the gear to wait for a trailer. Some hours later (that may be a slight exaggeration), a trailer arrived and we drove round to the stage, past the enormous abandoned tower of Vitamin Water(TM), and having only injured one or two suicidal pedestrians on the way. Once everything was in order I went off for a vegan burger (see Tip #6 above) and caught up with some friends while working on my "Scotsman's Tan" (deep red). This brings us neatly round to the opening paragraph, when a few of us got caught out by an enthuasiastic clock, but having arrived sheepishly on stage we went on to play an enjoyable set. It took quite a while afterwards to get all the kit back to the appropriate loading point so we hung around backstage looking forlorn until they gave us some more free beer, then set off for the delights of the Travelodge (I think - I really need to start keeping a diary. Maybe we slept in the van. Who knows? Who even cares?).

Monday saw us into London in the afternoon for a "courtyard session" for The Fly (video available in previous blog). As drums were deemed a bit much in this case I undertook some "very important" jobs such as going to buy batteries and smoking, leaving Jim, Rory, Arne and Dave to do some cool acoustic-ness. Then we went round to the Royal Festival Hall to load in ahead of the evening's support slot with The National. The venue was more than impressive in scale and the staff more than helpful in demeanour, indeed there appeared to be a lady assigned to our dressing room (actually, three dressing rooms, each with it's own piano...) solely to slice ham and follow me around wrapping things up in cling film as I casually made a sandwich. The stage was great, the layout of the seats was a little intimidating from my position on the riser but the half hour set was over so quickly I didn't really have time to think about it. We packed up sharpish and headed upstairs to one of the boxes to watch The National, the first time I'd seen them and they really were very good. A lot "harder" than I was expecting as well. Afterwards I managed to lose everyone whilst looking for an errant hi-hat stand and ended up six floors up trying to find the mysterious Artists Bar. When I did finally find it it seemed to be filled with very tall drummers (we were just missing Mick Fleetwood for the full set...), and Ian accosted me in a flap having just blurted out some "I want your babies"-style banter to the very tall drummer of the Bad Seeds concerning their Latitude set. I managed to avoid any similar incidents by not speaking to anyone at all until we were crushed in a tiny lift at the end of the night (which, according to the safety notice could have held another three people - a likely story). We had a look for a bar afterwards but it seems that getting a late drink in London is a trickier business than in Edinburgh at the moment (although the 5am licencing won't last forever...), so we went back to our long-suffering friend's flat in Brick Lane for a few tins and a kip.

We had the following day off, a few of us having to meet at the Festival Hall to pick up the gear at five but with the rest of the day to ourselves. As I was running perilously low on finances by this stage of the game, I had taken the liberty of memorising four pages of the A - Z the previous night, in the hope that I could avoid public transport and spend the day exploring the locality on foot. After spending some time in a park, I found my way to the British Museum, and spent most of the afternoon there before navigating my way south (I did actually use the position of the sun for this, as by this point I had completely forgotten what the map looked like). We loaded the van and sat by the river for a beer before heading back for some tasty dinner and drinks at Brick Lane, and a thoroughly refreshing sleep.

Wednesday saw us heading to Germany for the first time (as a band. Obviously Arne has been there lots...), to play the Haldern Festival. We stayed in Rees (I think), on the Rhine, arriving some time after a lot of the local eateries had already closed, but managed to find somewhere that would sell us pork and chips with a gallon of mayonnaise and some tasty beers before heading back to the hotel. It was a nice evening for walking and the town was quite sleepy, indeed the only things I saw stirring on the way back were rabbits, lots and lots of rabbits. Our room had a small balcony so I stood out and watched the lights of the boats heading up the Rhine for a bit before Kas returned from the pub and climbed up the balcony, taking some of the edge off of the peacefulness...

Festival Survival Tip #13 - Beware the Irish, beware drummers.

We took breakfast in the hotel dining room, which made the most of it's location by having full length windows all the way round the side facing the river. There were constant boats and coffee, the wheels of industry and the ham rolls were turning, and I left feeling ready for the day. We decided to stock up on cheap beers and pastries at Lidl (over the bridge, left hand side...), before heading to Kalkar for some extravagent ice creams and strong coffee in the market square and a walk down to a windmill. We then headed for the festival site, Arne charming passing cyclists with his witty chat, of which I understood nothing, arriving in the early afternoon. We were playing in a big speigeltent, all wood and mirrors, with big screens outside for the punters that couldn't fit in. It had all the humidity of a sauna and as one band had dropped from the bill our set had increased to an hour which was a royal workout and a chance to test some new material too. Afterwards we went for tea, a ludicrous feast of meat and tasty bits, washed down with copious amounts of beer, self-service taps of which seemed to be available all over the backstage area. We went back to watch a few bands and meet Arne's family before they set off, then headed backstage to our dressing room/caravan to grab a few more beers. Things start to go downhill a little around about this point, I recall talking to some ladies from Liverpool and then Kas going to bed at a shockingly early juncture, the meal having taken it's toll. A few people went to the lake for a swim, and I ended up doing the rounds of the campsite with an Irish fellow from one of the other bands, also a drummer. At some point we picked up some of the stage crew who we had met earlier that day, who also helped with some of the more difficult campfire translation (do you have any cigarettes? etc.), my last recollection being sneaking into the backstage area with some 2 litre water bottles to fill them from the free beer taps.

I awoke in Belgium (?) with my jacket over my head and a bottle of apple juice clutched in my hand, although I had had breakfast backstage with Dave earlier that very morning, apparently. If I did it wasn't at the forefront of my memory, but as we didn't have a gig that day I didn't worry too much about this state of affairs and tried to spend as much time sleeping as possible. It seems we missed the ferry but got on a later one ok, and after a restorative McDonalds (bleurgh) things started to look a little better. We made it to Toddington alright and set about monging in front of the telly and dozing. The next morning was a lot better, until we stopped the van to put some air in the tyres, and it wouldn't start again. After a while someone from the AA arrived, and did a remarkable job of fixing the engine, for a jakey (geddit?). Although his parting words were, if you stall it or stop the engine, it'll never start again. So no pressure for the drivers.

Festival Survival Tip #21 - It is the responsibilty of the driver to check oil, water, and tyres DAILY.

We made it to Summer Sundae in Liecester without stopping the engine and found our way to the stage, albeit a little on the late side. It seems that communications between the festival and ourselves had been minimal since it was booked and there was a good bit of trying-to-work-out-what-was-going-on going on, but we got on alright and played fine. As it was in the middle of Liecester the volume was reportedly set low enough to have a normal conversation pretty much right in front of the stage which meant that there was maybe a little impact lacking but all in all I think it went over ok. By some miracle of engineering the van started again afterwards and we were able to head back to Edinburgh in time for the Queens Hall show the following Monday.

Special Guests for Queens Hall, 17th August

2009-08-10T13:58:59Z

We're delighted to announce that the excellent My Latest Novel will be joining us for the Queen's Hall show in Edinburgh next Monday (17th August)

Tickets are still available online from ticketmaster.co.uk, priced £10 (plus booking)

Festival Diary - Part 2

2009-07-29T12:01:56Z

The last couple of weeks has seen us playing at Latitude Festival and Truck, playing two different ends of the spectrum in terms of stages, the first being the main stage at Latitude which was quite an experience. One of the few times where we have felt there was almost too much space on the stage! We arrived there later than we expected on Friday due to the storm that seemed to follow us all the way down the M1, but an advance party had set off the day before and when we got there at around nine in the evening they had already set up all the tents which saved a load of hassle, thanks guys!

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The next morning we arose around half ten and made our way over to the stage for about midday (again an advance party had already gone that way looking for showers and clean toilets, well they had been there a day longer than most of us). We unloaded all the bits and bobs, got our risers set up, of which we had three, one for Dave and one for Arne as well as the usual drum riser, then headed to the dressing room to drink coffee, read papers and generally timewaste until stage time. Once we had done our line check we were told to stay on the stage and just get started as they were trying to run the stage a little ahead of time, so we didn't have our usual minute or two to get proper nervous/worked up which was a bit weird. It took a few songs to get the sound sorted on stage as it was just kind of "floating away", but everything came together alright and the crowd grew steadily throughout (I think - to be honest I wasn't looking out front much, despite being in the rare position of actaully being able to see everyone). And it didn't rain!

Afterwards we packed up and headed round for tea, which, having only had liquids for breakfast, went down a treat. Although they didn't have the World's Best Chocolate Cake they had last year (the award for Best Cake 2009 loks to be going to Oxegen so far, but it could still be beaten...), they at least partially made up for it with a tooth-dissolving treacle tart. The advance party from Thursday were also staying for Thom Yorke and Nick Cave on the Sunday, but the rest of us who have less of a love of life under canvas made our way back home that evening.

We had a bit of a week off last week, before meeting up at nine on Saturday to drive down to Truck festival in Oxfordshire. This time we had good weather for the drive and we were there on time despite the van sporadically and mysteriously limiting itself to 45 miles an hour for long periods. The festival is on a farm and it it a nice compact site, plenty of local traders on so on, and normal food and beer prices which is always good. We got parked up near the stage and went to see a few bands, caught some of We Were Promised Jetpacks in the Barn Stage (located, unsurprisingly, in a barn) which had signs around the walls saying "Warning - These walls are made of asbestos, Do Not Touch", which was an interesting location for a loud, vibration-heavy rock concert. The sun stayed with us until stage time, this time we were playing on the Market Stage, a small "big top" style tent with an easily-undulating stage which gave the impression of playing on a boat when everyone started stomping away during Nearly Home (we even managed to bounce the trumpet clean out of Dave's mouth). It was a good set, pretty fast and energetic, good crowd, and had a bit of a "held together with sellotape" vibe. Afterwards we headed over The Field Of Money (I hadn't managed to walk past here once all day without finding cash lying around) to the Didcot Rotary Club Food Tent, where acquired a burger and some coffee before making the long drive back to Edinburgh, arriving at around 05:30 on Sunday morning. Just in time to fall asleep until mid-afternoon...

We don't have anything on this weekend so it's back to practicising until we head off to Belladrum the week after that. I don't really know what to do with myself to be honest. I need to take up some kind of (free) hobby, suggestions welcome. Anyways hope you all had good weekends, remember Monday is just another day and it will be over soon.