The last couple of weeks have seen torrential rain turn to bright sunshine. Long live the sun, we say. The Ben and Jerry's festival on Clapham common was an ice cream dream, with a great view from the stage of the happy cone and tub scoffing thousands, and the clouds held back their tears. We went on after the brightly coloured Kate Nash- we asked her to sing Jackson, but she turned us down- and had a blast. I watched the Bees after us- a friend of my brother's was watching The Bees at Glastonbury when a real bee landed on his hand. That didn't happen to me, and I felt disappointed. I think the band should bring on a monstrous bee hive and start whacking it at the start of their gig, to guarantee some real bee landing in the audience.
The following week we flew to Dusseldorf to catch a bus to Cologne, to play with 80s legends http://www.thenightingales.org.uk at the equally legendary Blue Shell club. The Nightingales were amazing, so good that I bought their first and latest albums and have been spitting with enthusiasm since.
We drove to the Haldern festival next to play in the ornate Spiegel tent (http://www.spiegeltent.net) and had a brilliant gig. Hot sweat. We met up with some friends from Holland who run the online Incendiary magazine, drank some fine German beers and generally basked in the sunshine, the first we'd seen for weeks. We played frisbee, watched bands, and sat around a fire swapping gig tales late into the night with The Magic Numbers.
The next day, marc and I got a lift to the airport with a festival driver. "Oh, you are much nicer than The Waterboys," he said. "The singer man is an arsehole." He had phlegmed up and gobbed it onto the dashboard of the car, then berated the driver for not cleaning it up, apparently. Even from a four year old, that's reprehensible behaviour, but from a granddad singer with only one song? Deary me.
We've got a couple of small London club shows- in revamped old public toilet in Sheperd's Bush on 20th August, and at The Waterrats the next night, before we pile in the van for the Reading and Leeds festivals. Right now, the sun is shining and it feels like summer has finally arrived.
Yours,
Eamon
