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.
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