Feb-March tour diary part 3

Monday 13th March - Glasgow
The rest of our shows in the UK went very well. The gig in Sheffield was moved from a flatteringly hopeful thousand capacity venue to a more modest 400 and the audience that night were particularly spirited. It almost went horribly wrong when we came on stage to play and realised all on stage power had gone down. I wasn’t too concerned as some well-paced drinking beforehand made it seem quite funny (thanks to Paul for the wine). Gigs in Sheffield always seem to be disastrously over staffed, too many cooks etc. Some sweaty and hairy men in shorts with torches scrabbled about for a while and eventually came up with a temporary solution and luckily the show went on trouble free.
Playing the Leicester Charlotte again brought back some old memories, as I don’t think we’d done it since our first tour in September 2004. Actually to be honest I couldn’t recall playing there with Brakes before but I know it’s the kind of place where you always have a good show, and that’s exactly what we did. Our manager had come up to see us so we went to a nice curry house on the way to our hotel afterwards and had a big feast. Whilst taking a trip to the toilet Alex had to help a guy who’d fallen out of the cubicle after vomiting, tried to stop himself going down by putting his hands in the urinal before finally slipping on some urine and falling on his ass. Another normal night in Market Harborough I presume.
Our hotel that night was half hotel, half old people’s home. I only found this out the next day but I had wondered why two Filipino ladies in nurse’s uniforms had handed our keys to us. I did not sleep well that night. Around 8am I was woken by the slamming of doors followed by the sound of a small child running and screaming into the hallway before slumping down whilst a man screamed “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” repetitively at the child in an insanely manic voice. It seems every tour we do we’re subjected to people going mental in hotel corridors in the wee hours. It makes me glad I’m not a psycho or know anyone who is and also rather depressed that a lot of people have to suffer daily from someone else’s incapability to control their temper. This put me in a rather odd mood so I was glad to get out of there when we left.
We took the long straight road out of the Midlands and into Norfolk towards our final show of the UK tour in Norwich. An ex girlfriend’s cousin had told me good things about the Arts Centre and he wasn’t wrong. Housed in an old church this place had that swirly colossal effect on the live sound that would probably make a good place to see Spiritualized or Sunn 0))). Norwich was a bit of a ghost town on a Sunday and given the dire weather we were wondering whether anyone was going to come, but they did. Both Bobby Cook and Absentee sounded fresh that night and once the room was filled up the sound in there was pretty good. We had a good one and the audience were really appreciative despite a few confused faces I glimpsed, but that’s fairly normal for a Brakes show. It was a shame to part from our support bands, especially Absentee who we were getting to know pretty well. John and Melinda from the band had added their voices on ‘The Most Fun’ and ‘Jackson’ respectively for a bit of end of tour camaraderie, and very good they were too.
After the show we drove back to London where Eamon and I stayed at the Channel 4 health correspondent’s house again, whilst Tom and Alex stayed in Camden. They had to get up mighty early to get down the U.S embassy and apply for visas to go to South-by-Southwest in a week’s time. I slept a bit better that night despite going to bed close to 4am but the bed was damn comfy and the next day was the first day in 12 without a gig. Eamon and I met up with Tom in the morning and drove back to Brighton.
The plan was to re-group the day after next and set off for a little Euro jaunt, but until then I had nowhere to go and just wandered the streets with a bag of sweat riddled clothing feeling like a total bum. I even avoided bumping into people I knew through fear of them thinking I’d gone a bit wrong. After feeling sorry for myself for too long I decided to sort myself out so I went to an internet shop and tied up some loose ends, then headed to a launderette and washed my stinking clothes. I find launderettes strangely calming; perhaps it’s the wafts of soapy heat emanating from the machines or the gentle whirring sound they make. It certainly gave me a bit of time to re-align my brain and calm down a bit from the debauched horror that is touring. I eventually went round to my brother’s place and stayed there for a couple of nights and watched lots of TV.
Unfortunately there had been a mix up concerning the White brothers retrieval of their passports from the U.S embassy. This meant that instead of leaving the day before our show in Groningen, driving halfway and staying the night in Amsterdam (and probably having a bit of fun while we were there), we had to drive all the way from Brighton to Groningen in one day and then do the show. This was going to be pure torture and to make matters worse we missed the 9:15 ferry by 8 minutes, setting us back over an hour.

Once onto the mainland Andy drove for his life across the flatlands and got us there at about 6:30. My bum and my brain didn’t feel very nice but the venue was awesome. Apparently J. Mascis is a shareholder in Groningen’s Vera club, it figures too. The walls are adorned with thousands of old posters, band photos and flyers from the club’s 25-year history and it just reeks of geek rock. The place even has in house accommodation for bands, which makes so much sense and made our lives that extra bit easier. There wasn’t a particularly large turn out and it seemed that most people weren’t too familiar with our more recent material, which was a shame but we enjoyed it nonetheless.

After the gig we had a few drinks in the downstairs bar and I discussed immigration policies with a friend of Richard’s called Richard too. Then Chris and I went to FEBO, the self-serving, money slot fast food vending machine for drunk people. Whilst I waited in line for some chips someone threw half a deep fried breaded snack (also known as a bammy hap) at my back and then ran off before I had a chance to see whom the culprit was. I then realised that the centre of Groningen was overrun with extremely drunk and brutish young men who (as well as wrestling each other to the ground in the middle of the road) were shouting what could only have been the rudest of comments at any woman who walked by, in unison.
The next day we were booked to play a place I didn’t even know existed called Hertogenbosch. Despite being unknown to us all, this city was rather sizeable and quite pretty from what I saw. We turned up at about ten to 5 and were told by the mechanically anal sound crew that we had until 5:30 to sound-check. I asked one of them why this was (assuming that there was a cut-off point due to sound restrictions) and he said “because you are an hour late” which I found rather hostile. In our defence there had been bad traffic on the way but it seems to upset these people if you stray from the schedule. We managed to squeeze an extra half hour out of the blighters anyway. There was a very popular coffee shop near by where the city’s smokers formed an almost constant queue to buy goods.
Unfortunately the turnout was sparse again that night. There was a curtain across the stage between bands and seeing as I hadn’t been out front I had no idea what the audience looked like. The curtain was raised when we were all in position to reveal a scattering of people in the venue; most of them huddled up the back by the bar. We got stuck in and played pretty well. There was a lanky and excitable young man with a bowl haircut who was steaming drunk and was flinging himself across all the space in front of the stage while his girlfriend looked on slightly embarrassed. We were just about to play ‘The Most Fun’ when he suddenly appeared right in front of us offering his services as spoon player if we gave him a t-shirt in return. So up he got and joined Tom and Eamon round a mic like a young, Dutch, spoon playing Bez. It was hilarious and did well to soften off the severity of playing a town you’ve never heard of to not many people.
We came off stage, all a bit bemused, and then ten minutes later a man came in with a DVD of our entire show, mixed with edits and everything. And as if this wasn’t amazing enough, we watched it and we were bloody good. With faith in ourselves renewed we headed to our hotel, which was a folk pub with a medieval looking barmaid wearing a velour cape adorned with butterflies. Some of us stayed down in the bar where the Trappist beer on sale made us chat rowdily about music.
After Chris and I watched a couple of episodes of Michael Palin’s Himalaya series, the next morning we set off for Antwerp. I had been looking forward to this our only Belgian show on the tour, partly because the venue is so good but also because I love Antwerp. My friend Jon had moved to the city to be with his Belgian girlfriend Inge 8 months ago and I was finally going to get to visit having been promising for months. I’d walked around Antwerp a bit when we played there almost 2 years ago with Admiral Freebie at the same venue. It was only now that I realised I’d only walked around a very dull area of the city populated mainly by very well off media types. There was a whole other side to this place that I was soon to discover. Jon took me up to the cathedral, showed me a few nice bars and let me in on some local quirks before I had to dash back for sound-check.

The gig was supposedly a double headline although we were on first and hilariously titled Belgians Absinthe Minded were on afterwards. They had these weird robot lights that swivelled and arched like giant desk lamps. Our sound-check was unusually difficult that day for some reason. We were all a bit knackered and were just messing around much to the annoyance of Chris.
Our ex-pats in Amsterdam chums Richard and Damien came over and I spent the rest of the time between sound-check and gig drinking extra strong import Guinness with them backstage. Stage time came around and we went on to an enthusiastic and young audience. It was a bit ramshackle in places, both Tom and I managed to rip our pedals apart with our feet causing temporary loss of signal and Alex was suffering from a moving kick drum. Reports were good afterwards though. They’d sounded pretty good in sound-check but Absinthe Minded bored me senseless after the first two songs. Then to introduce the third song the singer said “Now its time for some funky shit” which really you shouldn’t say unless you’re Isaac Hayes or Samuel L. Jackson, and proceeded to get fresh with a wah pedal. It wasn’t until the bassist swapped electric for double bass that their true abilities were revealed but I was more interested in going out.
Richard insisted we go to a place called Café Beveren by the river. He’d described it to me earlier but nothing had prepared me for the reality of what would follow. To be fair the café had a sound jukebox and good beer but it was the clientele that provided the most entertainment. Definitely popular with the older demographic, all were dancing sleazily and singing loudly to popular oompahpah-esque Dutch and Flemish sung hits of yesteryear. There seemed to be one lady of about 70 years old who was the ringleader, she had insisted on kissing us all upon entry to the bar. Drunken bald men would take it in turns to dance with her and at one point she was tightly sandwiched between two of these men, all three bodies gyrating perversely as the euro ballads barked loudly from the speakers. I was in shock, Richard and Damien looked worryingly comfortable in his place and Jon just didn’t know what to think. He’d lived here for 8 months but had never seen anything like this before, and furthermore when Inge and the rest of their friends came to meet us most of them didn’t want to come in because it was too embarrassing.
There was one other feature of this place that I actually found quite interesting. At the far end of the room taking up about a quarter of the bar was a huge, self-playing organ music machine thing. It worked much the same way as a player piano or an organ on a merry go round with an enormous wheel of slotted cards relaying the information to all the instruments. This thing had it all, accordion, piano, saxophone. It even played its own drum kit. I was astounded. It seemed to have a mind of its own too and would pipe up every ten minutes or so at which point the jukebox would be shut off and everyone would go mental. It was like an Idol to these people and they were here to worship it. We left café Beveren at about half 3 and I felt as if id come a little further into understanding Belgian consciousness.
My evening was far from over if Jon had anything to do with it. At his instance we went to another bar a bit further north, as to what it was called I haven’t the foggiest as I’d consumed enough beer by then to stock a small pub on a Friday night.

The good thing about drinking on the continent is you don’t get a hangover. In Britain tax is paid on beer when its brewed, therefore the breweries want it to last longer so that they don’t have to keep paying tax again and again so they add chemicals to preserve it which make you puke. In France, Belgium and other beer loving countries tax is paid when the beer is poured, no need for nasty chemicals, no hangover, everyone drinks more beer and the bars and breweries make more money. It’s just another sickening fact that makes me want to emigrate. Anyway, it seems Belgians generally like to sing loudly in bars as everyone in this bar displayed the same high spirits as the last but with a little more decorum. Ween’s Voodoo Lady was played which made me extremely happy. A friend of Inge’s called Merel accused me of having hatred in my eyes to which I protested, “how do you know what my hatred looks like? We only just met”. It’s been said before that my normal facial expression does look like I’m incredibly pissed off but this girl was convinced I was made of pure evil. The truth was that she looked identical to a girl who used to live down the road from my parents and that freaked me out a little but it was still a bit full on.
After a couple of beers I was cajoled into going to a club even further north in the eastern European quarter of the city. We had to cycle through some pretty rough areas and at one point were surrounded by pimps and drug dealers, whooping at us as we cycled through. Eventually we got to our destination, an abandoned warehouse with a sound-system and some mirror balls. It was purely functional, no décor whatsoever and due to a leaky roof, the floor was black slimy and people were getting shit all over their white shoes. The place was filled with stylish Europeans all dancing to the kind of euro beat and novelty tunes that would be deemed as ironic in some circles back home.

The bar served beer, wine or bottles of cava and apparently the place was littered with Antwerp’s young, rich and famous. Jon introduced me to a few people and bizarrely they all knew who I was and what I was doing in town, some people even recognised me from the gig. Antwerp is quite a small place like that, very similar to Brighton, not much happens without everyone knowing about it. I was starting to wilt with exhaustion after a while so I convinced Jon and Inge (whose place I was staying at) that it was time to leave. As we were leaving on our bikes some idiot did a running mount onto the back of my bike almost veering me into a car. A few nudges in his ribs and he fell off screaming “EAT MY SHIT!” as I cycled away from him. I felt guilty for staying up all night but it was nice to be basking, drunk and exhausted in the morning light. Jon still didn’t want me to go to sleep but I had to get a few hours kip and at around 8am I finally got my head down.
It was a beautiful morning when I woke and a brisk stroll in the right direction later and I was back with the van. It was the last day of the tour and we were all on our last legs. Having not really slept the night before I was feeling a bit odd when we got to Amsterdam. I decided to check in to the hotel and have a bit of alone time whilst the others went into town and enjoyed all the Dutch town has to offer. I was slipping in and out of consciousness and kept forgetting where I was. I wanted to go out and explore but remembering some good advice I decided that it was wisest just to do nothing and conserve my energy for later. We were playing the small room at Paradiso whilst heavy rock legends Saxon did the main room. There was a small crowd of odd-looking rock fans hanging around the venue, to chance upon a glimpse of a member of Saxon whilst we loaded in. It was disconcerting to say the least.
We played relatively early to a good-sized crowd. Our old pal big Nige was there and had brought a few of his long-term employers The Arctic Monkeys along. In between songs you could still hear that Saxon were rocking out downstairs. It was a little distracting. It was probably the best show of the 4 in Europe, we played well and the crowd were appreciative. Afterwards we decamped to the local jazz bar for an end of tour toast featuring a lengthy and varied rendition of ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ complete with some cheesy guy scatting. I could have stayed there for hours but tomorrow was an early start partly due to my travel plans back to Glasgow.
It was another beautiful morning the next day and I think we all would have liked to have hired bicycles and got stoned but it wasn’t to be. Tour was over and it was time to go home. The ferry from Calais was overrun with euro teens, all spotty and not knowing where they could and couldn’t smoke. Other than that it was a happy journey and I got dropped off at Gatwick with more than enough time to catch my flight.

Feb-March tour diary part two

Thursday 1st March
Nottingham


Well here we are back in England after finishing our Scottish tour on the 27th. After leaving Forres somewhat hastily, a little scared, we drove the short distance to Inverness and headed for Moray Firth radio station where we recorded a few acoustic numbers. The lady there, Marion let us run loose in their CD library room. There were piles and piles of promos, which were otherwise unwanted so we took our pick and made away with them. Titles included embarrassing indie relics like Rialto and The Supernaturals as well as the Phil Collins hip hop tribute album.
Got to our venue, The Raigmore Motel just in time to see the second half of the Carling cup final and John Terry get booted in the face. Looked painful I must say. This bar more than resembled the one from TV show Shameless and had some rowdy Sunday drinkers to go with it. They were particularly unsympathetic when the boot met the face although one of them was reading a local paper with a fucking huge picture of us on the front. Id heard it was going to be a rowdy show. Some band called The Enemy were supposed to play another Inverness club but had cancelled and their coach load of fans from Keith or somewhere were all coming to see us instead.
I was so wretchedly tired and/or hung-over between sound-check and gig that I just laid on one of the beds in our hotel room cum dressing room and tried not to fall asleep. I find when you feel like this on tour the worst thing to do is give in and sleep, it just makes you feel worse on the whole. We all wondered why we weren’t just staying here instead of the hotel down the road. Well apparently we would have been allowed but The View had been caught filming each other masturbate by a maid and subsequently bands are no longer allowed to stay there. Thanks guys!
Plenty of people recognised Alex and Tom and some couldn’t quite comprehend that this was a different band with different songs. At one point between songs in our set a rather sozzled young man got up on stage and squared up to Tom. “Are you Electric Soft Parade?” he inquired and demanded we “Play it! Play it!’ The chap was soon wrestled out of the building, not by security as there wasn’t any, but by our soundman for the evening. The evictee was one of many who were forced to leave that night. One fellow objected to his dismissal so much that he attempted to head butt his way back through the front door. Meanwhile Merch man Matt had to take his biro back off someone who’d nicked it to use as a weapon to stab another guy he was arguing with. Rowdy indeed!
The gig was a laugh all in all, a bit cold at first but All Night Disco Party got them dancing and kept them dancing right till the end.
We had a very scenic drive the next morning down the A9 to Edinburgh. Id not spent much time in Edinburgh so once id met my better half (who’d come over from Glasgow) we took a walk around. It’s quite a beautiful place although the endless parades of shops selling Scottish paraphernalia is a bit in your face but then I suppose it’s the same in any capital city.
The gig was a volatile affair that evening. The sound wasn’t great on stage so we just went for it. The crowd were a little subdued compared to Dundee and Aberdeen but we didn’t let it effect us and we had a good time. The bare-chested guy from Dundee who I’d mentioned in my previous post was there having his own personal mosh pit. He sang Jackson with us too. I spoke to him afterwards and enquired as to why he hadn’t been at the other shows like he’d promised and it turned out he’d eaten a dodgy burger from the place down the road from our Dundee venue and had been somewhat ill for the last 3 days. His symptoms didn’t sound pleasant at all and he made no exception to give me all the details.
After Edinburgh we drove back to Glasgow and I had a night at home and got to wash my clothes. The next day we had our last show in Scotland, which was in Cumnock, Ayrshire at a hotel called The Mercat. I know what you’re thinking, Cumnock isn’t on the gig circuit, what the fuck were we doing there? Well The Mercat was our chosen venue for the competition we ran with the ‘Hold me in the River’ single. Winner Jane Caruthers’ parents owned this place and had a function room upstairs which we turned into a Brakes’ club for the night. About 30 people were in attendance and apparently (according to Matt) it was the best gig ever. Those Cumnock folk sure know how to drink and before long we were knocking back vile, sugary Alco pop cocktails and singing along to Queen songs. The people in Cumnock were so friendly and accommodating that the whole experience was a joy and couldn’t have gone any better. At some point in the wee hours I got the spins and had to retire to a bed and sleep off the booze.
Come the morning and we were all a bit worse for wear but had to pack up and get away early for our first UK show in Manchester. Scotland had battered us hard but we’d all had a good time. Playing the Academy 3 (or the hop and grape as most people know it) was a bit of an upgrade for Brakes. Last time in Manchester we’d played the Academy 4 downstairs and had packed it out so we were all wondering whether it was going to feel a bit empty tonight. But before all that we had to do an in-store at the virgin mega-store. In-stores can be great but this one was presented like a gig with a stage and lights and loads of photographers and just felt a bit staged and false. We were all knackered and it all felt a bit weird especially with an audience as quiet as this one. They were utterly silent. Alex’s stool broke so he had to turn a flight case on it side and use that instead and everything very nearly went wrong but we got through it. A signing and an awkward photo shoot in front of a big virgin banner followed the performance.
Back at the venue and our new support bands Bobby Cook and Absentee were opening for us, and the venue seemed reasonably full. The gig was tainted with multiple string breaks but it was good fun, I even broke and A string whilst playing with my fingers. Luckily we’re all wise enough to carry a spare these days so any delay was minimal. Somehow we mustered the courage to perform ‘No Return’ as an encore. It was the first time we’d ever played it in front of an audience and it didn’t sound too bad. It had been a long day and we were all feeling somewhat shitty from the night before, so rather than predictably heading to big hands for post gig boozing we went to our hotel and hit our beds.
After a much-needed spot of kip we journeyed to Nottingham (gun capital UK) for our first ever show there. The hotel we booked into before getting to the venue was a bit like the Bates’ house in Psycho and it was next to a graveyard so Andy checked in while the rest of us stayed on the van in fear of being stabbed or shot. At the rescue rooms sound-check was a bit odd due to some quite old monitors and some questionable acoustics but we got there in the end. We were all glad to have our soundman Chris ‘flu jab’ Pollard with us again as we’d done the front of the tour with in-house engineers.
Despite being horrifically exhausted we played a good energetic show to as sizeably grateful audience and it brought the life back into us. Having not played in Nottingham before it was lush to see so many new faces and we’ll look forward to returning soon. The hotel turned out to be pretty nice and we got back in time to catch (and laugh at) the last hour of the NME awards on telly. Comical highlights included The Klaxons’ almost puking and over swearing as they accepted their award and Mick Jones’ embarrassingly sweaty guitar playing with Primal Scream’s show closing performance.

Och Aye! Brakes tour feb 07 installment 1

Sunday 25th February.
The Loft
Forres


Its 5 days into our tour and I’m feeling like shit. I think my body clock must have been knocked out of whack by that overnight bus journey I described so fondly in my last entry and it’s left me a little poorly. It’s just a physical set back though. Generally I’m quite content and enjoying this tour thoroughly. The tour kicked off in London at the Astoria where we played an NME awards show supporting label mates The Long Blondes. Our set was a bit ramshackle, had to dust off a few cobwebs but we enjoyed it nonetheless. Doing a London show at the front of the tour was a little strange, especially as id been in Glasgow for two weeks. That night Eamon and I stayed at channel 4’s health correspondent’s house. There is a reasonable explanation as to why but it sounds more impressive if I just leave it at that.
The next day was a travel day, London to Edinburgh, which almost sent me mad but luckily it meant I could catch a train back home for the night before starting the Scottish leg of our tour the next day. The following afternoon I jumped on a train and rendezvoo’d with the rest of the crew in Dundee. The weather was pretty dire and did my initial impression of Dundee no favours. Nice old ship by the station but generally quite grey and made of concrete from what I could see. My opinions on the place were soon to rise however as the gig was blinding. We’d had some Dundee folk at a few of our Glasgow shows before so we knew they were nuts but that night they went the extra mile. Later on one well wisher confessed to us “I was off ma face and when ya started that first song an I just had ta take ma shirt off an start punchin’ people”. Happy in the knowledge that we had such an effect on our fans we headed to our hotel to rest for the next day.
It was off to Aberdeen the following morning. I managed to catch the studio gibli animation Castle in the Sky on telly before we left which was nice. Not a great distance to the Granite City so we had a bit of spare time when we got there. I bought some new commando socks from a very good naval clothing store by the docks and then went to see Hot Fuzz at the cinema with the rest of the dudes. It was a lot funnier than I thought it’d be, the ending is a bit drawn out but some good casting, especially ex Bond Timothy Dalton.
Had some very good battered haddock from a highly recommended chippie for dinner and then did the show. It was probably up there as one of the best we’ve ever done, definitely the best we’ve done for a while. There had been some speculation from an anonymous source when the show was booked as to why we were playing Café Drummond and not Tunnel’s where we’d played before. I have to say I preferred this place much more. It had loads more character, good sound and a black and white large chequered floor, which always scores points in my book. Shame on that person for suggesting that Café Drummond wasn’t an adequate venue for us to play. It’s simply not true and highly recommend playing there for any band wanting to play in Aberdeen.
We got pretty fucked that night, probably another factor in why I’m feeling slightly tender today but Aberdeen had done us proud and we left a happy band. On the way to Forres we took a slight de-tour into whisky country and stopped in Dufftown (not to be confused with the beer theme-park in the Simpsons) for a spot of lunch. Popped into a fairly extensive whisky shop that had some fine malts on its shelves. Unfortunately they were all a bit pricey so I didn’t make any purchases.
A short drive later and we’d arrived at our venue for the night. The Loft is a converted barn, on a farm in the middle of nowhere in Morayshire. It was dead quiet there, nothing but sheep and midgies. Al from our support band Le Reno Amps almost had a mass allergic reaction to a chicken dish at dinner. He can’t consume any fish or he swells up and there was definitely something fishy about this chicken, like it was made with fish stock or something. Everyone agreed it tasted of fish but the owner of the venue and the chef insisted it hadn’t been near any fish at all. It was all a bit suspicious and left everyone in an odd mood. Al’s lips eventually returned to their normal selves luckily.
It seemed like no one knew who we were when we started playing, which for the most part was true. After about the half the set I started noticing that a few people were singing along so we had some supporters there. I wasn’t looking at the audience much though, the stage was so small that I had to stand sideways and kept knocking my head against the sloping timber roof. Ouch! We got to know some of the crowd afterwards who all turned out to be fairly nuts and stinking drunk. There was one guy who’d driven for 4 hours all the way from Carlisle with his son, that’s some serious dedication. Because this place was in the middle of nowhere all attending had to get taxis back to either nearby Forres or Elgin or wherever they were from. Taxis were turning up and people were just fighting over them, it was quite entertaining. We retired to our mobile home and drank whatever booze we had until about 5am with the hilarious Le Reno Amps boys keeping us entertained with several quality anecdotes.

UK TOUR Nov-Dec 2006

28th November 2006
We were all coasting this tour exhaustion by now, waking up in the morning was emotionally and physically punishing. My body was crying out for more sleep that morning but the alarm spoke the truth, it was time to get up. I made my way to the meeting point and we set off for cardiff and the first show of our headline uk tour. I think we'd all forgotten what it was we were actually doing and about halfway through the journey i suddenly realised that the next 9 gigs were probably going to be damn fun. The Point in Cardiff is an old church, quite large but re-furbished inside so its generally lost a lot of its churchly charm. Our support band tiny dancers turned up with lots of equipment. Their tour manager was Neil who we'd met when he was tour managing editors. They had some very nice merchandise that was apparently hand sewn by the singer's girlfriend. As their merchandise had a production team of one this meant that there was only one scarf and although it was a very nice scarf and i could afford it, i didn't want to take it away from a more deserving, scarf wearing tiny dancers fan who'd appreciate it on more levels than i would.
We took the time after sound-check to go and have some supper with seth riddle at his favourite italian restaurant. The walls were adorned with photos of seth and his cerys as it was here that they'd had their wedding reception. It was good to see him and the food was satisfying. You can always trust a good meal to remind you how exhausted you are and shortly after the meal i started to wilt. "One thing for it" i said to myself (another sign of fatigue; insanity) and decided to drink through it as they say. A few pints of guinness later and we were on stage. Not a massive turn out but those present seemed to enjoy themselves. Tom's new game of throwing a pineapple into the audience backfired slightly when the girl he threw it to must of taken her eye off the fruit and it delivered a substantial whack to her upper left leg. I don't think we're insured for fruit related injuries to fans, if you're reading we are sorry and hope bruising was minimal..... please don't sue.
There was no hotel booked that evening, it was another night at sea.. well four hours or so across the irish sea from fishguard to rosslare. I cant really remember much about it but it was quite rough and i resisted going to bed as long as possible to drink stella in the restaurant with tom and matt instead. The next thing i remember was waking up in the van being told we had a radio interview at 10 am. It was a tough call but eamon and i went and did the interview for phantom fm straining to act normally. "Fuck you look tired" said the dj when she came out of the studio to greet us. It went quite well really and i was even sharp enough to stop her from playing Porcupine or Pineapple because of the swearing. We hopped back in the van and checked into our hotel. Eamon and I did another interview, he drank wine i drank two strong coffees. There was a distinct lack of cohesion in our thought patterns, we'd end up rabbeting at him about stuff that bore no relation to the questions and he just said "erm" a lot. From there we walked back to our hotel and slept uneasily for a few hours.
It was quite a small venue we were playing in Dublin but we knew it'd be a good show. I watched all of tiny dancers' set that night and thought they were pretty good despite only just fitting on the stage, their sound man steve did a good job. Our set was a ripper, people were digging it, singing along and bopping up and down. We left the stage and some guy just climbed on stage and followed us into our dressing room. At first i thought he was a mate of someone else in the band until he started falling about the place completely drunk. The promoter came back and removed him, it was a shame as he'd obviously just had a really good time and overlooked the situation. I felt a bit bad afterwards as our t-shirt selection couldn't cater for a man who was of the extra large variety and id neglected to order any of his size. Next time mate, i promise. By now we were truly knackered and had to retire to our hotel for some sleep despite the place turning into a massive club and filling up with dublin's young and careless.
It was off to Belfast come the morning and after a slight delay caused by some problems with the one way system, we were off. Tonight's show was at queen's university union. My grandfather went to queens but i don't think the union was there in his time. We were playing a late show as part of a club night so in effect, we were (as i like to say) the entertainment, which means not everyone is necessarily there to see the band; it could get nasty. By the time we went on everyone was hammered and up for it and there was definitely a brakes contingent who were more than excited. During disco party a girl fell down and seemed to get her head wedged between the stage and the left side of the p.a. Tom and I glanced bizarrely at each other as we watched her friend yank her out from where she was stuck. I asked her if she was ok once the song was through and she seemed to be fine although obviously very pissed.
That night we stayed in another b'n'b. Andy is very particular at making sure our accommodation is cheap and cheerful and as little like a travelodge as possible. Lets just say every night is interesting. On checking in to this particular place Andy requested if it was possible to lengthen the end of breakfast from 9 to 9:30. "Do you want to stay here or not?" was the response he got. It didn't matter as we had to be up early to get the ferry back over to the mainland.
We'd heard there were only 7 tickets left for the king tuts's Glasgow show and by the time we'd driven the picturesque drive up from stranraer it was sold out. A sold out show at tut's is a thing of beauty, they even give you a bottle of whisky as a prize. I was already pretty chuffed to be home and this time i had a bit of time to do the right thing and take my long suffering girlfriend out for dinner to make up for not actually being home, ever, at all. The food they lay on at tuts is great, don't get me wrong but we wanted a bit of privacy so went to a nice fish restaurant just down the road and had a splendid time. The gig itself was lush, there was this big american guy going nuts right down the front and the whole place was rammed and dripping. Big thanks to Le Reno Amps for supporting us again, love those guys. Some woman went up to eamon afterwards and said one thing; "Lesbianism!". What she meant we'll never know. The inner exhaustion was starting to really build up now, you can put it off and try and ignore it but its always there making you weird. Once your duties are fulfilled for an evening there's little you can do to stop yourself flopping into a heap on the floor but at least i was at home in my own bed, for a change.
We were up and off to Leeds the next day. We had not played in Leeds for a while so it was no surprise that the gig had sold out and had been upgraded to the larger room of the cockpit next door. Our soundcheck was a bit shitty that day. Something was set up wrong with the pa, like the thing wasn't running on full power or something, it sounded toss and the in house engineers seemed too incompetent to fix it and didn't really give a shit. One of them had stupid spiky hair and kept saying "Id better ring Sean". I gave in to the fact that it was most likely going to be a bit of a shitter and that we'd just had to get through it the way it was but it turned out alright and the place was heaving, again. Im not used to doing headline shows where you can see several hundred people in the audience. The front row were quite chatty and kept offering their hands for high fives. I obliged a couple of times but realised that it probably looked a bit shit from the back. We had some japanese dudes down that day filming for a program for mtv2 japan showcasing rough trade bands. I hope we get to go out there next year, maybe australia too. After the show we were laid to waste again, just shattered and we all just wanted to go to bed. That nights b'nb was one of the freakiest. Me and eamon's room had a toilet in the corner and a shower next to it, separated from the beds with a frosted glass panel. It was also opposite a brothel which Andy unfortunately mistook for a late night bar with embarrassing repercussions.
It was a short dash over to Manchester the next morning. I made the mistake of having a nap on the way which totally screwed my brain for the rest of the day. My body desperately wanted to shut down and go into what i call 'repair mode'. Id never played the roadhouse before and id heard some bad things about it but it seemed like quite a cool little gig. As i was leaving after sound-check to go to the pub a guy was enquiring with an employee as to whether there were any tickets left. It was sold out and he looked really disappointed so i put him on our guest list, that was my good deed of the day. The gig was really good that night, packed out again and bloody hot. We did a good trade in t-shirts that night too and pretty much sold out of stock.
We drove down to birmingham the next day for what would be i think the 4th time we've played the bar academy. When we arrived we saw that on the sign outside it said Monday: Breaks. This was annoying so we had it changed to the correct spelling pronto and then all went our separate ways to do a bit of shopping. There were a few CD's i wanted but i was disappointed on a whole with the major chain's selection in birmingham. Borders in particular had gone quite down hill from what i remembered. I suppose the proximity to christmas forces them to fill their racks with guaranteed sales, compilations and snow patrol for 3 quid. Shopping centers really are dangerous things and before long i found myself in John Lewis gazing in wonderment at all the nice things i could buy. Luckily chris phoned me and told me to come to the pub where he and eamon were drinking winter ale. A quick half and then it was time for sound-check. The bar academy is quite small and there is no dressing room or backstage area to speak of so our rider was flung down on a fusbal table which we stood behind at the back of the room. Stuffy commented that it looked like we were presenting a student cookery program. It was a pleasure to welcome stuffy/the fuses as second support to the tour. Id never seen them and they were very good. Not too many people there when they started but it slowly filled up. Tiny Dancers played and looked a bit cramped again, then it was our turn. It always feels like you are playing to the front row at the bar academy as the stage is pretty much on the same level as the audience and there's only about ten foot of width to it. We had fun though and the gig was a bit different, lots of improvising and spontaneous stuff. Afterwards we chatted to lots of people as well as the tiny dancers who had been given a box of wine as an apology for not being allowed back into the venue by the security after they'd had dinner. On leaving birmingham we listened to scritti politi's cupid and psyche 85 album which really pissed everyone off except for me then we drove into darkness for miles before reaching our destination at a strange country club somewhere near stoke on trent. The room was huge and very warm with flowery decor and a trouser press. I was confused and delirious, i had to sleep but first i watched some telly to wind down and discovered that whichever fuck wrote the new lil' chris single has shamelessly ripped it off the buzzcocks and should definitely be hung.
I was still annoyed about this come the morning and hadn't risen in time to make breakfast which was apparently very good, but it was the last day of 8 gigs in a row and that was something to be proud of. To London we drove and we were there in no time. As usual all our phones started buzzing with the late guest-list requests but as tonight's show was another sell out there was little we could do. The venue at kings college is on the the top floor of the union and is positioned at a convenient bend in the river allowing a spectacular panoramic view. Our dressing room was all the way down in the basement so getting from there to the gig took repeated lift journeys. The room had a big table and many comfy yet serious looking chairs around it. In the corner was a white board with various slogans like "knowledge=power" written on it and questions like 'what do you want?' and 'how are you going to get there?'. This was encouraging thinking for our london show. After sound-check Eamon, Sam, Chris and I went out for some food. After a bit of wandering we found a sushi place on high Holborn. I was feeling adventurous and ordered some sea urchin which arrived looking like the faeces of a very ill dog. With this in mind i just couldn't stomach it and had to leave it uneaten. The gig was just starting to fill again for stuffy and the fuses who sounded even better than the night before. There were many people to greet and talk to, people who work for us and who we work for interested to see how we're getting along. Like the growth of hair, its hard to notice if your band is getting better. I think you'd know if you were getting worse but playing the songs night after night really tightens you up to a point where you don't really have to think about it. Its no accident that London shows are booked at the end of tours for this very reason. It seemed to be a mixture of people who loved our first album and those that had recently gotten into our new album in attendance that night. You could spot them apart quite easily. Good to see a bit of a moshpit down the front, unfortunately the pineapple made it back onto the stage and my hands got all sticky with its juices.
After two days off we finished the tour at Brighton's Pavillion Theatre. Brakes had never played this place although id played there with every other band i've ever been in. Id also seen a lot of shows at the theatre whilst growing up in brighton, everyone from silver sun to god speed you black emperor. I was feeling a bit tender that day as being back in brighton had awoken the party monster in me and the previous night had been spent drinking far too much vodka with old friends. We were a bit disappointed that the promoter hadn't hired in a p.a that was going to be loud enough for us and the audience. Subsequently sound-check was a bit chaotic. Eamon and Tom then rushed over to resident records for an acoustic in-store. There were about 40 people there, I stood outside breathing in as much cool air as i could. I could see eamon and tom through the window performing but couldn't hear them. Instead there was a gypsy man singing tender love ballads whilst gently plucking a guitar. That was my soundtrack to their gig, it was all quite surreal in my delicate state. I walked back to the venue in time to catch the vile imbeciles, our first band on. The band is the new project of ex 80's matchbox guitarist and my old flat mate Andy Huxley. They were awesome and i was glad they played although Andy had convinced himself that everyone was going to hate it which pissed me off. The place slowly filled up, friends and family arrived, Stuffy played and the audience were very quiet. I was in one of those "I cant do it!!" kind of moods by the time we were due on stage, of course i actually could and i did and it was all good. Much reveling was had afterwards. Some of us relocated to the gloucester club for more drinking and shouting in each others ears and when it was late enough to pretend that its early enough for breakfast, we did just that. The food is awful at the market diner but the experience of being there is great, so many different kinds of people, mostly drunk but all eating fried food. For me thats where the tour ended, with double servings of black pudding and too many chips.
A Merry Yule to you all, thanks to everyone who came to see us over the last few months, see ya'll next year.

killers dates and spain

Holy Moley!
Instead of making regular updates i've been writing as i go with the intent of bombarding one and all with this essay detailing the first two weeks of recent brakes activities. Hold on to your braces, its a bumpy one!
First up was this mega tour with da killerz. These guyses were putting on quite a show, a real high spec operation. They even brought their own floor. The tour for us started in brussells at the ancienne belgique and we had a good one. We've always been a bit unlucky in brussels so it was a relief to have a incident free time there. Being a support band we dont really have time between souncheck and show to get up to anything like eating out or doing a bit of sightseeing. I was lucky enough to have a few friends who live in antwerp come to the show so i got taken out afterwards. We ended up in a quaint little aged bar that had tobacco stained books nailed to the walls and 10 inch records hanging from the rafters. I drank lots of Leffe, smoked many cigarettes and then wobbled back to our hotel which was further than i thought. I kept my eyes peeled as eamon had an incident in that area once that ended up with ex-merch man keith the gypsy being mugged for his phone. I got back safely and after a sleep we headed for Paris. A remarkably strange thing happened just before we left. The van was a bit stinking so i filled a box with anything that was rotting or detritus and carried it a few yards down the road to a big bin. Eamon lifted the lid up for me and when we peered inside there were two pipettes set lists staring back at us.

This was even stranger seeing as i was to see bobby cassette later that day in Paris.
It didn't take long to get there and as we were driving in the shit weather passed by and the sun shone down on the autumnal parisian streets. I was looking forward to playing the bataclan, i've got a few live albums that were recorded there so i was interested to see what the place was like. There was a little stretch of grass and water features in the middle of the boulevard and i appreciated the fact that the journalists asked us if we wanted to do the interviews there because of the nice weather. From there we could see the venue was painted all manor of bright colours. Back in our dressing room and the french had been as generous with their rider as usual with all sorts of cheeses and meats and everything we'd asked for on our rider. Unfortunately no promoter supplied us with the red jacketed squirrel walking a tightrope in a miniature circus big top accompanied by four circus trained mice doing tricks as requested......yet. We took the stage feeling happy and the crowd seemed up for it. When eamon revealed we were from brighton, uk there was an almighty cheer. It became obvious that lots of the audience were british. 80% in fact as i later learnt from kiilerz tour boss jeremy. This seemed bizzare but understandable for a band their size. As these shows have gone on we've come to realise that the killers are a band people are willing to go to great lengths to see and seemingly make a weekend of it. Their presence in every town is noticeable, you overhear people talking about the show, all the hotels are booked up with people going to the show. Our gig was good that night and afterwards we had a drink with bobby in the bar next door. They served entrecote and good red wine but played kasabian, editors and the rakes on the stereo for all the anglaise.
The next day we set off for the long drive to amsterdam. I made a start on a brakes tour film i'm making with imovie and my mobile phone. It might take me a while to edit and it's going to be pretty crude but hopefully it'll be done by christmas. We arrived a little late and we were instantly rushed into a few interviews. Somehow I ended up doing a couple on my own and they were most enjoyable, well informed and intelligent interviews. Questions you could give proper answers to and a few that took a bit of a think to answer. We sound-checked the main room at the paradiso and then just hung about for a bit before we played. We'd only ever played the smaller room there so we were looking forward to it. There wasn't much room on stage so i felt a bit boxed in when it came to the gig. Tom threw a pineapple into the crowd, as carefully as possible of course, you could do some damage with one of those, the crowd seemed to appreciate the free fruit. We played ok but it was nothing on paris. As we were trying to squeeze our gear off stage i suddenly got doused in beer. I looked up to see where this alcoholic shower had come from and saw that a lady was carelessly dangling her drink over the balcony and letting it spill down onto the stage, and more importantly onto the killers' guitar tech's workstation. I flung a few optical daggers her way but she was off on one having a good time and not really thinking. Trying to forget about the dousing i carried on loading off stage until a plastic cup then hit me on the head. My initial reaction to all this was that someone must have really not liked the show but i think that was just me being paranoid and that it was probably just accidentally kicked through the gaps in the railing or something. Anyway, it fucking pissed me off and i was in a shit mood until a lot later. We had a few booze treats backstage and then went off to find our hotel. Amsterdam can be a confusing place to get around and we got a bit lost but found it eventually and after convincing the receptionist that we were booked in to the establishment, those of us that still had a thirst headed out to find a suitable drinking spot. We ended up in a jazz bar that we'd been to before, a long, thin and smoky place with a band at one end and a bar at the other. It was quite late already but it seemed to stay open for a hell of a long time. Some of killers' crew showed up along with big nige, our old driver, now back-line tech for the arctic monkeys. What with eamon's bro steve being there too it was quite a party. Apologies to those who we'd arranged to meet there earlier, we just couldn't get our shit together in time. Ta for coming though.
We had a day off the next day and we engineered it so we could stay in amsterdam and travel by night on the ferry to harwich. It was a glorious autumnal day and amsterdam was gleaming. Amazingly we managed to find a restaurant that we'd been taken to on a previous visit to the city and there we had brunch and planned our day ahead. We couldn't resist a wee cycle around vendal park so we all hired some bikes and set off. It was lush bombing around looking at the birds and the trees. The park seems to be home to lots of tropical birds for some reason, i think they were parqueets or something like that, bright green with a mighty squawk. Saw a couple of herons too!

Tom had a couple of pre-rolls he'd purchased from a local smokery so we stopped for a wheeze. Maybe I'm getting old but that stuff is pure toxic trip weed, not for the faint minded and seeing as i was feeling slightly of that ilk given the previous night's reveling i went a bit funny after a couple of toots. Once back on the cycles i started not being able to see anything that wasn't moving the same speed as me, quite dangerous really. By this point we were lost, everything started looking the same and we must have been around the park six times before we worked out how to leave. We took the bikes back and wondered what to do with the remainder of our day. Conveniently enough the nearby cinema was showing Borat just before our designated leaving time. 80 minutes or so and a lot of laughing later we departed amsterdam and headed to the hook of holland for our boat back to england.


After a satisfying sleep at sea we headed to wolverhampton for the first of the 4 uk shows we'd be doing with brandon and co. It was saturday and the following day was another day off so on the way we checked into a weird little b'n'b at the foot of the peak district with the intent on spending our day off with a hike and a pub lunch. The place was called the dog and partridge and was fucking weird. The reception was adorned with hundreds of teddy bears all shapes and sizes and we seemed to be the only people there. We had a spot of lunch and then headed to wolverhampton. The gig was good at the civic hall, i had family present so i was a little nervous but we had a good one. I was interested to find out what the killers' uk audience would be like but they were as reserved and polite as the fans in europe, give or take a few obsessives who boo'd for the sake of it but thats to be expected really. We drove back to the dog and partridge after the show and had a sleep.
There'd been a weird two day flu bug going around the band, eamon had it first then me, then al and now it was tom's turn. He was too ill to come for a walk the next day and opted for some bed action instead whilst Alex stayed in wolverhampton with his girlfriend harriette. So it was eamon, tour manager andy, sound guy chris and myself who headed to Hartington for a day out. We bumped into a few keen hikers who gave us directions for a nice 3 mile walk.

It mainly followed the path of a picturesque river in a deep valley then headed up through some cow fields before coming downhill and back into the village. We had a nice roast and a few pints whilst watching some bizarre pagan morris dancing thing out the pub window. It was a good day off.
The rest of the uk shows were fresh. In manchester we went boozing at big hands and got quite merry. Then in hull we played a sweet gig in a 5000 capacity ice arena and then watched casino royale at the odeon next door. It was most entertaining. Glasgow was great of course. I got the chance to go home and wash my clothes which really needed to be done. It was nice to be home if just for a short while. We got the killers an Aerosmith cd and the second series of green wing as parting gifts. They were quite pleased with the cd but a little confused by the dvd, hopefully they'll find it funny. It was a good experience all in all, a good way to tighten up for our own tour and sound practice if we ever become as massive as they are. I'm not sure if their crowd would have all been into us but as long as a few people came away impressed then thats ok.
That night we got about an hour and a half sleep before we had to get up and off to the airport. We didn't want to miss the chance of supporting the killers in glasgow and we also didn't want to have to cancel our spanish tour so our flight to bilbao had been arranged to make sure both were possible. This meant flying from glasgow to amsterdam at 5 to 6 in the morning, then amsterdam to paris and finally paris to bilbao. It looked horrendous but we got through it, delirious with the exhaustion and quite excited about going to spain.

Andy got sacrificed at Charles de Gaulle for the sake of a kick drum pedal that they wouldn't allow us to take as hand luggage. He waited for the next flight and checked it in the hold. It seemed ridiculous seeing as we'd taken it on two flights already. When the rest of us got to Bilbao the exhaustion kicked in and we all started to trip out a bit. Luckily our hotel was posh as fuck and we weren't treated like peasants when we got there. A few hours and a much needed bath later and we headed to the venue for sound-check. The band we were supporting are called surfin bichos, an established spanish band who had been big in the 90's and had apparently re-formed recently. There was a bit of confusion between us a their crew at first, not helped by the language barrier and the fact that Andy was still in paris. All confusion was eventually smoothed out and we had a good first show. I was feeling sick with exhaustion afterwards so i sat at the back of the room and watched the main act.

A guy came up to me and said "next time do not say goodbye, you must play four more songs!", I took this as a compliment. Surfin Bichos sounded alright although a lot of their songs reminded me directly of other songs but just without any distinguishable melody. They seemed like quite dour individuals too, no smiles or jokes and hardly any inter band eye contact during the gig at all. We hit the hotel for a bit of kip but were back up at 5:30 am for departure to madrid.
A coach had been laid on to take both bands and their crew down to madrid and to barcelona the next day but when it came to it the headliners opted to travel separately which left just us, their crew and a film crew. The film crew must have been making a film about the band getting back together or something. They were filming everything all the time. I managed to sleep most the way to madrid which was a blessing as I'm usually really bad at sleeping on the move. Chris and I went for a stroll once we'd arrived, loaded out and checked in.

We went in search of this cable car thing called the teleferico that dangled above a park to the west of the city. Unfortunately when we got there it was seasonally closed, then it started to rain and before long we realised we were wandering through the equivalent of the west end of madrid, all theaters and tourist shops. Found a doll shop with some freaky evil looking things in the window.

Good to see a bit of the city although it seemed to be just as over-populated and stinking as any other capital. The gig that night was good, the venue was a plush old theater converted into a club. Had a caiprinha in a bar afterwards where the barman had half a moustache and beard. We got driven back to our hotel by this wired dude who was the spitting image of cheech from the cheech and chong movies. He gave us some rather crude stickers of his band A Palo Seko which means straight up or a single shot if ordering a drink.
It was another early start the next day and a coach journey tainted with interrupted sleep and bumpy roads, amazing scenery though. Our promoters rep sylvia was concerned as the hotel we'd booked was apparently in the worst area in barcelona where all the hookers and drug dealers hang out. "Perfect" we thought. We checked it out and it wasn't all that bad, sure there were some fruity ladies and plenty of suspicious looking fellas but there was quite a community spirit about the place really.

Sylvia was an amazing rep, constantly trying to make sure everything was going well and to plan, she was just looking out for us. Playing razzmataz was a delight as always. Eamon, Andy and I stuck about after (for lack of better judgement) as we wanted to see Clinic (who were playing upstairs) and drink more booze. They were lush, it sounded awesome in that wee bar but then they are just a sorted band, the right sounds and the right playing. Id never seen them before and for some reason they reminded me of motorhead even though that makes no sense at all. The club filled up and soon there were 4000 people bopping around to indie disco. We left at 6ish and got a cab back to our hotel. 

The Next day we drove to valencia for the final show of our spanish tour. We'd hired our own transport so we could have a lie in and get there on our own steam. It was a beautiful day and we drove right the way down the coast. We stopped at services and had some weird paella that included some unidentifiable meaty substance. Tom said it smelt like a giraffe's cage and Eamon bought a mini baseball bat adorned with cannabis leaves. At the venue the manager said he'd found us a motorised plane that was about the right size for a gerbil but he couldn't get the gerbil or the squirrels. We appreciated the effort though. Had a good one that night, the crowd were a little more up for it than at the other gigs, must be the sunshine.

It all caught up with me that day and i was ready to put my head down. I spoke to our driver more about surfin bichos outside. he told me that they hadn't released any music in 12 years. "Why did they reform" I said, "for the money" he replied. I went back to the hotel while the others were taken out by sylvia and co to the only place that was still serving booze, a hooker bar. The next day was a travel day, we flew at seven pm but had time to get some authentic valencian food down us which included more giraffey paella and some very garlicky prawns. Back in hove and i had just enough time to wash my clothes (by now a threat to humanity) and sleep before commencing our uk headline tour in Cardiff.

Brakes Away!

So it begins. Brakes stand together, squinting into the future at the months worth of touring ahead of them. It'll be a month of firsts what with some of the biggest shows we've ever done taking place when we support the killers over the next week and a half. We'll be on telly for the first time too as well as heading to spain and, of course, doing our own tour around the uk. Hope to see some of you if not all of you along the way. Keep your eyes peeled here for updates, images and amusing anecdotes from the debauched world of brakes on tour. Wish us luck!

p.s thanks to all who came to our fopp instores and to all of you who've bought the new album thus far.

TA-RA

MArc

brakes in the cold

Last thursday i arrived at glasgow bus station and looked on the board for my coach to manchester, it wasn't there but then tom appeared and low and behold, we were getting the same coach. Not very surprising really, it was cheaper than the train. Megabus can be a sickening experience if you pick the wrong day but it was ok on this occasion. A woman got on the bus at preston with a big basket ful of cheap sarnies, crisps and chocolate bars. She was quite a vocal lady and as she was leaving the bus she popped her head up the stairs and said "does anyone want anything from me before i leave the bus?". I thought this was quite nice but all she got was some asshole saying "i dont want nowt, go away!"
We got to manchester early and hopped in a taxi to strangeways where we were booked to play the warehouse project formerly a boddingtons factory. It was some corporate affair for a certain vodka brand. We arrived just as the long blondes were setting up. It was freezing in there and tom and i had to wait around as the rest of the brakes party were running late.... no surprise. It was clear that we weren't going to be able to soundcheck at 4 as planned so we had to right it off as we had a date with mr marc riley over at the bbc which was far more important. Once the others had turned up we unloaded our gear and then headed to the studio.
We had to rush a bit when we got to the beeb as we were due on air at 7 but we got soundchecked ok and started with hold me in the river. Mr Riley was a top bloke, he even gave us a tenner to go to the bar with after the first track! We did on your side and cease and desist as well.



After all that we headed back to the warehouse. It was bloody cold in there and not too many people either, felt a bit lifeless to be honest. We went onstage following a dj set by m-peoples' mike pickering and played the best we could with numb hands. I dont think we'd paid much attention to what set we were going to do as it started hard and went a bit soft in the middle.



Its hard now we've got all these new songs, we actually have to think about it where as before it was just play as many songs as we can as fast as we can. We stuck around to watch the other bands and then headed to our accommodation which was bang in the center of town. Had a bit of trouble locating it at first and we were freezing walking around in a panic. Funnily enough it was just behind where we'd parked after all that. Slept for about 3 hours and then got up and off to the west country.
It was a beautiful drive down, all of worcestershire and gloucestershire in full autumnal glory.



Got to stroud and drove up the winding hill road to shortwood where our friends ben and bella were having a leaving party in a field. Ben and Bella and their four kids are starting a new life in new zealand. It was damn cold in that field, luckily i had my nordic army jumper that id purchased in oslo in february but even with that on the cold still got in. It was the toes that seemed to suffer the most and we had to keep dashing in the van to thaw out. Once they got the roaring bonfire alight everyone was much happier and all got merry.



There was lots of nitrous oxide going round which made proceedings quite interesting. We took the stage in all the clothes we had and played a blinding show. Everyone danced and bounded around and it was a joy to give the dudes a proper send off. They've been to quite a few of our gigs when we're down that neck of the woods and i'll miss having them around. Good luck you guys!!!!!!
It got quite late and we made a move to cuckoolad cottage where eamon grew up to sleep for a bit. Had a slight nightmare getting in due to a sticky key butwe got in eventually. Bit of tea and toast and off to bed it was. A fun couple of days had by all. Dropped tom at truck studios on the way back where hes doing some recording with restless list and then headed back to brighton. I think the sleep deprvation mixed with a sub zero climate has left me with some illness so the rest of my weekend is going to be spent sucking lemons and watching tv.
Adieu