Spain and Belgium

Hola!
Tis the morning after my return home from one of Brakes' most grueling yet satisfying euro jaunts to date. Last friday (which now seems like an eternity ago) we set off from brighton at 5am to get a 7:30 flight from gatwick. Our driver Michael who usually picks us up in a practical people carrier was today driving a disco bus suitable for tasteless stag do's and the like. All strobes and lurid coloured leather seats. It had a dvd player with the NOW 2006 dvd in it. We all zoned out to such pop delights as Girls Aloud, Kylie Minogue and that awful boy band who formed from the ashes of Blazin Squad whose name i cant remember. It all left us feeling rather sick.
At Madrid airport we were met by our chaparone for the day from the wonderful sinnamon records of spain who i cant praise enough. They were the guys who had set up this whole two tier festival. It seemed like quite an operation to pull off too so extra hats raised to them for that. We drove to our hotel, dropped off our stuff and then made our way to the festival site which was about an hour away. It was hot and dusty there, seemed like some sort of demolition site or something.
The artist area was quite plush. A huge marquee being continuously pumped with cool air was divided into roughly 40 separate rooms varying in size depending on the band. Our stage time wasn't until 2am so we had a lot of time to kill. We did a few interviews and then burned time by having a little sing song in our room. Several Proclaimers songs were attempted, half of Wreckless Eric's whole wide world and then the whole Tenderfoot album in simplified skiffle form. Much fun. The singer from The Long Blondes later remarked how our singing had eased her nerves. There was also a free bar which remained surprisingly empty for most of the night.
Caught The Dandy Warhols' set which was cool. Saw a bit of New Order who are these days sounding so jaded that they have to shout 'C'mon!' and 'Here we gOOOO!" in between lines to rally up the crowd. Primal Scream sounded pretty fresh, i hadn't seen them for six years but it was all good, especially the songs off Xtrmntr. Got to meet Mani briefly before their set too which was nice, he's a leathery faced fellow. Saw a slither of the aforementioned Long Blondes who unfortunately had some sonic difficulties but did their best all the same. Then it fell to us and we were knackered but up for it and we played a blinder. Courtney Taylor of The Dandy Warhols politely filmed half our set for us and a good job he did too. We got to the end of our set and realised we still had 15 minutes to fill so we had to drop in a couple of slightly under rehearsed newies but with a little concentration and a bit of luck we pulled through it. We were most chuffed when we left the stage.
What happened next was a bit of a black out for me as my brain had pretty much shut down, we didn't get any sleep though, i know that and everyone was in a bit of a state when we got to the airport. The flight to Barcelona was pretty much full of stinking bands and their crew. I found it quite amusing. It was quite an old plane and it made funny noises which didn't put my nerves in a good place. Eamon kept speculating how if the plane had gone down it would have cemented us a place in rock history just like buddy holly and lynyrd skynyrd, we all told him to be quiet.
It was supposed to be cooler in Barcelona but it didn't feel like it. All the summercase related bands that were on the flight got on the same coach too and we made our way into barcelona. We had to endure listening to The Feeling do a spat of phone interviews but luckily we were first to get off as we had a nicer hotel, hahahaaha. It was bloody lush, right next to the festival and very near the sea. I had a shower and headed out with joe and steve to get some tapas. The tapas was good, so good that i then had to go back to the hotel and sleep for 4 hours. It was still relatively early in the day so it didn't matter and besides, i don't think id be alive now if i hadn't got that kip then. Once awake, Eamon and i did an interview in the hotel bar where we were interrupted by a somewhat merry bobby gillespie who stumbled into our table all limbs-a-flailing before realising he didn't know who we were and moving on. He looked like he's been head-butted from the gash on the bridge of his nose.
The layout of the barcelona leg of summercase was very similar to madrid except it was on concrete. I'm assuming the site was built and used as part of the olympics that were held there 14 years ago. The backstage free bar seemed a bit more popular today and several acts were getting thoroughly stuck in already. Catering was of the local variety and i couldn't help but sample both the salted cod carpaccio and the chicken in prunes. We had some friends out woth us as it seemed everyone did, i guess barcelona is a little more appealing to visit than madrid, but it all lead to a much more relaxed and friendly atmosphere.
We played another good show and revised our set to include the new songs that we were more confident to play after madrid. Both nights we'd cleverly left disco party to very near the end, as that song is what most people have heard if they've heard anything by us. Sure enough people were shouting out for it for almost the entire set but we made them wait. Back at the artist area things had gone from friendly and relaxed to deranged, slightly violent and generally quite volatile. It was time to leave so we headed back to the hotel where i wasn't going to sleep again. It was a shame having been booked into some of the nicest hotels id ever been in and not get a good night's sleep there. Eamon showed up just before i was in danger of nodding off and we babbled at each other for a while before heading down for our 7am lobby call. But no-one was there except bobby gillespie again who looked like he'd psychologically transgressed into a simpler life form and was trying to escape from his own body through his mouth. So eamon and i who were giggling manically through sleep deprivation decided to play frisbee outside. It was a good game and many wandering people who were departing the festival got involved along the way. Everyone else was very late but we didn't mind. The fact that we might miss our flight to brussels seemed hilarious.
An hour later we were running through the airport to get to a desk where we could check in and make it to the gate on time. Steve pulled some tour managing skills out of the hat and came back with all the tags we needed in his hand. So the panic was over and we were leaving spain to go to belgium. It didn't seem right. Everything always goes wrong in belgium for brakes. At least the weather was good, it was easily as hot as barcelona and not a cloud in the sky.
The entire production management, catering and even our dressing room for Dour Festival was in a school, which was a bit odd. Our room which we were sharing with two gallants had a poster in it that said 'i like babies' with pictures of lots of odd looking babies. It also had a sink in a cupboard which i must confess wasn't only used for washing our hands. I was feeling pretty weird at this point and when i got cut off from my girlfriend on the phone i smashed it on the floor. I needed to calm down so i had a few tokes on a bong tom had made form an evian bottle.
We did a bizzare radio session that felt more like an interrogation. Eamon introduced 'if i should die' as a song about love and death to which the dj responded by telling us someone had died at the festival the previous day by jumping off a cliff.... we didn't really know what to say. Onto the festival site we drove and it was even dustier than madrid. There seemed to be a lot of crew with not much to do all topless and smoking joints. Our tent was warm, too warm so i asked steve if i could have one of the industrial fans that were lying around to cool me off during our performance. Being the mega TM that he is this was sorted out very quickly. It was a career milestone for me, i never thought the day would come when id have my own fan on stage. I shed a tear of joy. We did the same set we'd done in barcelona and given that we were almost dead i thought we played bloody well. There seemed to be a few people who new who we were and even a big guy in a brakes shirt. It was a sparse audience but having that small cluster of singing enthusiasts made all the difference.
I had to get some peace after all that so after a brief return to school and an argument with some women who wanted to chuck us out of our dressing room, Joe and I went to the hotel. We were unaware all day of where our hotel was and its a good job too because it was in bloody france! It sounded more ridiculous than it was as it was merely a 45 minute drive but it was just a bit of a shock to end up across the border in the small hub town of valenciennes. We had a nice meal though and a good sleep followed before heading back to brussells airport and finally home yesterday morning.
All in all a good start to brakes' euro festival season, see you at truckfest if you're coming.
Marc