Live Pic (from Hamburg)...

... there haven't been too many live pic's of the band on this here blog, so here is one of the band from Hamburg !!!

I think we're Cologne now ...

... the beating of my heart is the only sound ! (groan!). Koln (or Cologne): back in 1988 when I was in The Mighty Lemon Drops we finished up a long European tour here, coincidentally our good friends & neighbours Pop Will Eat Itself had done exactly the same thing the night before, & came along to our gig to have a bit of fun ! I can't even begin to describe what a drunken carnage our ahem "gig" was that night ... let me just say that when it came time to play / perform our "single", the one that the German record company (present & out in force) had put a lot of time & money into promoting, I don't think there was a single Lemon Drop on stage ... I do remember that Craig Jennings, tone-deaf & pissed-drunk PWEI manager handled lead vocals ... if that gives you an idea !!!! We were never invited back to Germany !! ... Anyway, this time, with EWITFRN it was a bit more civilized ! Dyan & Eddie did a long interview for a German TV show, & while the club (Blue Shell) was a bit more rough & ready than the comfort of the previous nights luxury in Frankfurt, they looked after us well & gave us these amazing HUGE bottles of delicious Wickuler beer !! Gig was great, though we opt for a relatively early night as we have a big drive to Switzerland tomorrow, but not before clearing out the fridge of that amazing beer !!! Oh by the way, forgot to mention about yesterday in Frankfurt: they also put us up in a ridiculously trendy hipster hotel, a room each, so we had a hotel-room "nightcap" that became a party, finishing up the rider, listening to David Essex & The Boomtown Rats & watching youtube video's (including an amazing one of Ian from Art Brut f**king himself up really bad crashing a bike, that you must see!)

Sunday night in Frankfurt ...

... to quote that great Desperate Bicycles b-side John Peel used to play back in the day .......... ok I made that one up, there is no song ever written by that title, to the very best of my knowledge at any rate !! We arrive late afternoon at the venue "Mousonturm", which is an art gallery, venue & performance space. It is not some crappy underfunded half-arsed space like you would see in the US, it is brilliant, big, clean & really well run ! (it actually looks like it used to be a hospital ) ! And again, like in most of Germany, their hospitality is second to none ! After eventually figuring out how to operate the self-locking dressing-room (shame there isn't a picture of that one!) we enter a world / room of cold-cuts, amazing beer, fine French wine, Vodka, amazing bread & free wi-fi ! As if this isn't enough there is an amazing Indian restaurant next door, so we do curry night ! Mmmm! I have attatched a couple of pic's of Eddie & Dyan happily whiling away the time in said dressing room, and another one of the cold cuts !!! PS I leave a note for old pals the reunited The Woodentops who are playing the following night ... I had no idea they were back together !

Hamburg ...

.... is ****ing freezing ! Berlin was cold but the streets of Hamburg are covered in frozen ice ! We are staying at a nice small hotel run by a very friendly chap on the famous Reeperbahn where some band The Beatles once stayed, alongside some other less dubious artists ! (see pic !). The venue, built in the late 1800's, used to be one of the first movie theater's in Germany, & has been a gig since the late 60's (we are told Bowie played here in the early 1970's!). After soundcheck I buy the German "Rolling Stone" magazine as there is an article & review on EWITFRN in there & "Creeque Allies" is on the cd attatched to the cover ! ... shame it is in German as I can't work out if the review is complimentary or not ! Anyway on to the gig: to be honest I was a bit knackered from the previous late night, but did my best & thanks to the promoter giving us a litre bottle of Jack Daniels! it was actually one of the best gigs of the tour !! I even recovered enough to have a bit of a dance at the indie disco afterwards, being Saturday night n'all that! (& thankfully there are no pictures available of that !).

Berlin ... some extra pics!

First one is of Mini-Zeb, a chap that did an interview in the dressing room with Dyan & Ed, who Chalkie pointed out looked like a scale-model of Blood Arm guitarist Zebastian Carlisle, so I made him stand on a table & strike the Zeb guitar pose ! Second one is of my nightly stage "cave", a den of my equipment consisting of some drums to my left, my amp behind, "drumphrey" the machine with the backing tracks etc to my right, my pedals in front and my lovely 1971 les Paul gold-top ! Amiable German hippy sound-engineer optional !

Do the East Berlin ....

... is the most obscure song title reference I have used so far on this blog (it is an ace punky track from the early 80's by The Uninvited, released on a Stoke Musicians Collective compilation album called Cry Havoc ... you still awake at the back there??). We eventually arrive in Berlin at around 7pm, after a couple of pit-stops at German service stations, some great sausages & some great beers too (no wonder the Germans drive at a zillion miles an hour on their autobahns!). After soundcheck we eat thai food in the dressing room & Dyan's friend Graham shows up, a Scottish ex-pat who also helped make three of the FR live backing tracks ! Gig is great ... again we are nervous as to how the Germans will take to our band / concept / name, but I am still here typing this so all was fine obviously ! Funny as they were fine about us making fun of Germans & the French but they didn't find the bit where we make fun of U2 funny at all ... go figure !! We have an uber-late one, & Bekki leaves first thing in the morning, then the four of us do a bit of sight-seeing & Dyan buys an overpriced supposed actual piece of the Berlin Wall in the form of a fridge magnet (which I reckon is probably just a random piece of concrete spray-painted ... !!).... on to Hamburg!

Edith Piaf and All That Jazz ... in Paris France....

.... that line is from Wasted Youth's "Paris France"... anybody from the post-punk-Peel generation get that one? Anyway, the start of the "difficult" drives (though nothing on what is to come tomorrow!). Eventually we get to Paris & we are sharing a dressing room with The Fiery Furnaces, who we are supporting ! Also crammed in said dressing room are about ten of the venue's staff, legs up, drinking their way through our rider... in fact Eddie walked back there & one of them was using his laptop ! Anyway, we are all nervous about the gig ... performing a verbal historically accurate account of the outbreak of WW2 to a roomful of Frenchies will do that ! (the first line Eddie sings is "When the nazis marched on Paris, the French were quite embarrassed, I think you know what I mean"). Surprisingly again nobody get's hurt (or maybe the French are literally still quite embarrassed !). Dyan is a big Fiery Furnaces fan & we all watch the gig. Afterwards Bekki & I are talking to the nice guitarist bloke & it turns out we have mutual friends that he knows really well & mentions being in some other band & after a drunken grilling from moi it turns out he was in a band called Sebadoh & his name is Jason !!! Ha ha .... I had only played a gig with him & said mutual friends in Straight To Video a few years back ... small world !!! Eventually Chalkie rounds us all up & we start the BIG drive to Berlin ... well we drive out of Paris into Germany & get a room in the early hours in one of those weirdly efficient German moto-lodging places ! Berlin tomorrow ! PS: I already posted a pic of the gig so I have posted pics of Dyan, Bekki, Ed & Chalkie having dinner & one of some "profound" poetry that the singer bloke (tosser) out of Stone Temple Pilots felt he needed to write on the wall of the restaurant we ate at ! x