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[spiderhill]

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Here's a live recording of 'All Aboard The Andrea Doria' from our London Social show. Complete with SOME APPLAUSE at the end. 

[spiderhill]

Tour diary: 12.05.12 - The Cellar, Oxford

HOMETOWN SHOW! 

Feels a bit weird writing about a gig in The Cellar as part of a tour, given that I've played there about 200 times in several different bands, plus there was a week gap before this, but never mind.  

Not much to report, as there wasn't a journey to speak of, and it was pretty nutter-free, being Oxford, but still lots of fun. Local music mag OMS promoted it, and Nought and Wild Swim were excellent in support.

Unfortunately for us, since one of the support bands played for over 40 minutes and there was a tight curfew, we had to drop a song from the set and we were denied an encore though the audience wanted one so that STILL COUNTS IN MY BOOK. 

We landed our new song 'Baychimo', having spent much of the same afternoon in rehearsal finishing writing it, but it was an amazing surprise to see so many people so enthusiastic during our set. Not only that, but someone came from London to the show and agreed to put out our next record - more news on that soon. 

The clip above is a tiny live shot from 'Then Venice Sank', just to give you an idea.

Setlist:

Equus Ager

American Steam Company

Baychimo

Alba Adriatica

The 100 Gun Ship

Then Venice Sank

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Tour diary: 18.05.12 - The Cavern Club, Bristol

Video clip - tiny extract from 'Alba Adriatica' live in Bristol

Last night of the 'tour', a week later than the Oxford show, and my third show in Bristol, having played twice before with Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element, both for the same promoters. The Cavern's a lovely dingy little underground rock pub-type venue beneath a pretty standard city centre pub, and the show is fabulously DIY: the soundman is still unwrapping the brand new PA he's borrowed for the night from its original plastic wrapping when we get there. 

The promoters, from the wonderful band Big Joan, go back a long way with me, having done several Oxford-Bristol gig swaps in the past and introduced me to amazing bands like Ivory Springer, Geisha and Sammo Hung over the years. Had an idea this would be a busy, well-run show and true to form it was a blinder to close the tour. Longest soundcheck we've ever had, with the soundman adjusting aspects of everyone's sounds to the PA and the room, and possibly the loudest we've been in an enclosed space. They ran the show like a club night, with 45 minute DJ set changeovers, first band on at 10pm and bands till 3am. Oh, and the first act happened to be the excellent SJ Esau, as a special treat. 

The last show was also Mike's birthday, so we gave him his birthday card during the set and the audience were kind enough to sing him a full version of 'Happy Birthday'. A joyful way to end our little tour. 

Setlist: 

Alba Adriatica

American Steam Company

All Aboard The Andrea Doria

Melusine Romance

Baychimo

- Happy birthday Mike break - 

Equus Ager

The 100 Gun Ship

Then Venice Sank

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Tour diary: 04.05.12 - The Blue Room, Blackpool

Yep, Blackpool. Do you know how far it is from Brighton to Blackpool? No, nor did we. Especially when it's bank holiday Friday and you hit M6 hell. Cue an eight hour drive, during which:

- Jim became 'Mystic Jim' by being able to predict what card you'd picked from the deck EVERY TIME (sample base = 1 attempt)

- A game of Ships Top Trumps lasted for over one hour, sending at least two of us insane. The other two were sent insane by a game of 'band name and football team mashups' that lasted for two days. Fiorentina Turner?

- We took approximately six hours of footage of the road, the van interior, each other asleep, our own faces etc.

Onto the show - a very rough and ready affair (ahem, much like Blackpool), with two stages at opposite ends of the venue, and the theory being a constant flow of bands from one to the other. And this was a festival held for six days over two bank holiday weekends. Seventy-two bands, an epic amount of stress for a promoter to take on, and surprisingly few hitches actually.

We ended up being one of the hitches by the sound engineer being surprised that we needed any DIs, despite using three synths and a sampler, so they had to run upstairs and dig one out of some dusty crate or other. Doing this run of gigs in random situations, often without soundchecking, has made us much better at dealing with potential problems and how to cope with them, and tonight we just played on the floor in front of the stage. It went OK, though the reaction was hard to gauge, and driving TWO THOUSAND MILES to play five songs is quite funny if you think about it for too long. 

Good things about Blackpool: seeing our friends Alright The Captain playing an awesome set; fish and chips for three quid; the beach and the sunset (provided you were facing away from the town centre).

Of course, the one thing you can't prepare for is the audience - must have been over 100 in the venue when we played, but at least seventy of them were HAMMERED by the time we played. Seriously, I bought a round for four people and it cost eight quid. No wonder everyone in Blackpool is permanently drunk. 

The evening took a more serious turn when someone got stabbed in the fried chicken shop over the road from the venue while we played - three police cars, an ambulance and a police cordon, and later the CSI unit. Bought the Blackpool Gazette the next day to see if there was anything in it about the stabbing, but it was just full of stories about other stabbings on other days. Scary town. 

Setlist:

Equus Ager

American Steam Company

Melusine Romance

The 100 Gun Ship

Then Venice Sank

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Tour diary 03.05.12 - The Hope, Brighton

Not far to tootle down to Brighton, though it took us about as long to find parking as it did to drive there. Seconds away from just ploughing the van into the sea and running off down the beach. 

Brighton was our favourite day all round, I think. An early trip down there gave us plenty of time to see what being on tour is all about, i.e. pissing around in interesting places while you wait for soundcheck. Cue cliched list of Brighton activities - zombie shooting in the arcades, trying to avoid the horrifyingly-aggressive seagulls divebombing us for chips, a spot of record shopping and a couple of hours wandering round junk jamboree Snooper's Paradise, trying to unearth some treasures from a warehouse-sized jumble sale. Came THIS close to buying an autoharp, but thought better of it.

As for the show, it was the first ever gig that our friend Shaun had put on, but it didn't show in anything other than his massive enthusiasm for it (no jaded promoter cynicism here). The Hope is a great little venue, lovely sound, great soundman, and the show was packed. Shaun's band Wrecktheplacefantastic kicked off with a raucous set of intelligent punk tunes (I got the impression they'd listened to some Fucked Up somewhere along the lines - a good thing), with local experimental hit-the-fuck-out-of-guitars-and-drums trio Kellar improvising until the lights came up at the end. 

Best heckle of the tour - upon being asked to buy a CD so we could afford the fuel to get to Blackpool the next day, a drunkard shouted 'I'll give you petrol'. We tried explaining it was a diesel van. He just kept shouting 'I'll give you petrol'. So did we for the rest of the night. 

And we got two more offers of people to write lyrics for our songs. This now seems to be the most common interaction with any audience members. 

Setlist:

Alba Adriatica

Equus Ager

American Steam Company

Melusine Romance

All Aboard The Andrea Doria

Then Venice Sank

The 100 Gun Ship

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Tour diary 02.05.12 - Casey's, Canterbury

An early start due to being lobbed out of the hotel, an elaborate egg-based breakfast at a swish Spitalfields cafe, and on the road to Canterbury in the bleak, grey May rain. Personally, my first attempts at driving the hilariously-massive van, which could easily have ended in disaster given that we only had to pay the first THOUSAND POUNDS of damage on the insurance excess. Rock n roll.

Anyhow, an entire afternoon in Canterbury, spent in tea rooms, looking at the cathedral from the outside (£12 to get in? COME ON CANTERBURY) and finding a shop specialising in nautical, and therefore Listing Ships-themed goods, and a pub with the UK's finest array of specialty rums. That round of Krakens before soundcheck not a good idea.

One of the gigs on the tour had to go not so well I guess, and this was it. The venue was a tiny enclosed bit of an old Irish pub, which we entirely filled with kit - a kind of wood-panelled fishtank for bands. 

Attempted the new song in soundcheck - sounded absolutely hideous. Resolved never to play it again. Eventually we got a decent sound out of the PA, and the whole thing was very pleasingly DIY - hats off to Alex for making so much effort to put on shows in a town where there seem to be no venues and, at least on a wet Wednesday, precious little appetite for live music. 

Also a delight to play with Canterbury's only surf-doom band Speedwitch (unless there's a surf-doom scene down there), a colossal sheet of riffing audible right across the city centre, punctuated by incongruously meek mutterings of 'thanks very much' between outbursts. 

Audience of about twelve people, I reckon, and two images to leave you with. Firstly, a drunk girl dressed as a nurse staggering past the van as we loaded out in the rain and slurring 'maximum respect for playing at Casey's'. And secondly, drinking rum in a Travelodge on the A2 out of plastic cups as the rain came down outside, and yet still thinking to myself 'this is the life'. 

Setlist:

Equus Ager

Skipper's Daughter

Melusine Romance

Alba Adriatica

Then Venice Sank

The 100 Gun Ship

All Aboard The Andrea Doria

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01.05.12 - 93 Feet East, London

And so on to the 'tour' proper - we'd just been driving home after the last few shows, so they were really just a bunch of gigs close together. Now we'd hired a van, booked some crappy hotels and were travelling together for the next week. Would we drive each other mental, kill each other and/or split up before the week was out? Only time would tell. 

Pretty bad start - it took us two and a half hours to get the van from five miles away, with one of the band (who shall remain nameless) forgetting their driving licence and thus ESCAPING driving duties for the entire week. Still, we got to the venue by the allotted 4.30pm time (when will we ever learn to turn up at least an hour after we're told? It's an unwritten rule) and promptly lost the soundman for an hour. Much mirth on and offstage shortly thereafter when he asked uber-complex jazz-experimental band Nought to 'just play a verse and a chorus' from one of their songs. We'd picked the lineup for the night, which meant we got to play with long-time favourites Nought (who would join us for the Oxford show too), Oxford neo-prog mob Flights of Helios and the flu-struck though still delicately-gorgeous Rome Pays Off. 

Great show for us - big, booming sound through a PA designed for club sound, so it made our synths sound like lasers shooting the sides out of battleships. A few fans (i.e. people NONE OF US ACTUALLY KNOW) turned up before doors opened, bought CDs and T-shirts, and then asked for photos with us after we'd played. That's never happened before. Much merch sold, a potential single release discussed,and a late late curry - this is the way all shows should work out. 

Though the evening ended in abject failure to find a late drink even in East London - thus, our aftershow party was conducted in the exquisite surroundings of the Liverpool Street Travelodge bar, open till 5am every night to show repeats of Morse to alcoholic and insomniac businessmen.

Setlist

Equus Ager

American Steam Company

Then Venice Sank

Alba Adriatica

All Aboard The Andrea Doria

The 100 Gun Ship

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Tour diary: 28.04.12, The White Swan, Aylesbury

Ah, Aylesbury. If I told you that we loaded out through a pub absolutely packed with drunk people, none of who saw us play, into the pouring rain, and overheard a woman screaming 'I didn't do it' at her boyfriend until she was hoarse, you might think we had a crap time. As it was, this was actually a kinda fun show, and much better than our last visit to the town. 

Not much to see post-soundcheck in a rainy Aylesbury, so it was a case of ordering dinner that had PLASTIC IN IT, then heading back to catch 1877. This band boasts the biggest pedalboard outside of Kevin Shields' house, and do a nice line in repetitive, drum machine-led but kinda groovy industrial stuff. I think they're going to remix one of our tunes next. 

During the quietest bit of opening track 'Skipper's Daughter' (fast becoming the ginger stepchild of the set, not much beloved of most of the band, which makes me want to stick up for it), an amazed voice exclaimed 'you're good' in a way that had to have been prefaced in his mind with 'I thought this was going to be shit, but...', causing us all to crack up mid-song and politely thank him for the compliment. We managed to land a brand new song for the very first time - it's changed a lot in even the two weeks since then, but it was good to give something completely new a go. And a third encore from a crowd that more than made up in enthusiasm what it lacked in numbers. Orderly queue formed at the merch table for tour CDs afterwards, and as we were packing up the undoubted highlight of the night, with the following exchange between Dave, our drummer, and a drunk woman who looked as if she may have been pushing fifty:

- 'Have you got a girlfriend?'

- 'No'

- 'Are you gay?'

- 'No'

- 'Take your top off then' (wanders over to talk some more). Best chat up lines ever - nothing like cutting to the chase. There seems to be at least one nutter at every single gig. I think the venue provides them for colour. 

Setlist

Skipper's Daughter

American Steam Company

Melusine Romance

Baychimo

The 100 Gun Ship

Alba Adriatica

Then Venice Sank

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Encore: Equus Ager