Hi there
I know its been a while but i thought id try and avoid doing this for a bit. Didnt want you all to think i fancied you or something.
Anyway.... Last weekend saw brakes hitting the hi fi north and south festivals in newcastle and winchester respectively. It was windy up in northumberland, the site had recently been approved for use as a wind farm which we all found hilarious. It was brakes' first gig on an exposed outdoor stage such as this one and it took a lot of concentration what with the mighty gusts blowing in from the north. I didn't play particularly well, a little out of practice i guess but it was fun anyway. At least it didn't rain during our set as it did for most the other bands. Dirty Pretty Things had the worst of it, it even hailed on them..arf. Good to see Maximo Park boys and Editors. Bumped into our old friend Malky, the best tekkie out of glasgow, what a big bearded baby he is. After Editors we set off in our oversized splitter bus with bunks. At about 4am i woke up boiling hot and i was sure to be in a coffin falling into hell so i had to get up. Those bunks aren't made for men my size. I sat it out the rest of the way and saw the sun rise over the misty hampshire hills. Once we'd arrived down in winchester i went back to sleep. Turned out that this leg of hifi was actually homelands but re-branded for this glastonbury-less year. So it was a majority dance audience despite the organisers trying to win over the indie crowd too. Our friends ben and bella came down from stroud with their kids who were all very excited by being at a festival. The weather was better today although we were playing in a giant tent so it didn't really matter. Watched the envelopes from sweden who had the unfortunate duty of playing first. There were maybe 60 people lying around this huge tent watching them and i don't think many people got it but we enjoyed them. We played with them in sxsw so it was good to see them again. After trip-chill-funk-groove meisters crazy p's performance it was our turn. We started well, then eamon broke a string and everything was a bit haphazard. But when we were on it, it sounded great. During one lengthly awkward gap someone shouted "get on with it". I looked down thinking "oh shit" only to find that it was ian brown being the cheeky monkey that he is. We met him afterwards, he played with the kids and was a genuinely nice bloke. Someone decided along the way that we should stay all night and lots more booze started appearing from places thanks to tm steve. It all got a bit messy and then the next thing i knew we were in the van again driving off. It wasn't long before we stopped and steve got breathalised. Obviously he was clean but the local piggies were just out for a nicking. They must have not liked the look of him because they insisted on taking him down the station for further testing. It was weirdly fortunate that this had happened though as we soon realised that alex wasn't on the bus. Pete (sound engineer, also not over the limit) drove us the short distance back to the festival where we found alex asleep in the dressing room. We then heard from steve that all was fine and they'd drop him back where they'd stopped us. Even on leaving the site for the second time there were police everywhere just waiting for someone to make a mistake. A good opportunity to make the numbers up i guess. Steve got a nice video of his interview as a souvenir so we all watched it when we got back to brighton.
So that was all jolly good fun! Now.... some of you might know this already but brakes are off to nashville to record our second album very soon. I'll try my best to give you updates as well as some lovely photos. Wish us luck ya'll..
Marc
