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.
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