Wotcha!
The Luminaire show was a blast, always a pleasure to play there especially on Mr Andy Ingles birthday. The proprietor himself looked more than embarrassed when we wished him a happy birthday from the stage. Luckily for him we didn't play the song. We tried out a few previously unplayed live album tracks and they seemed to go down well. Last night brakes continued their assault of the london live music circuit by doing 2, yes 2 gigs in one night. We soundchecked at the borderline where we would be topping a bill also including the hours and the mescalitas as part of a new rough trade club night. Unfortunately we had to miss out on seeing both acts as we had to dash northwards for a 20 minute set at the islington accademy as part of the festival awards show. We bigged up truck and end of the road and played pretty well, the audience was a little subdued but i think we left an impression. After that we hotfooted it back to charing cross road and re-grouped backstage at the borderline. The Hours were still on and seemed to be having a good show, lots of people there to see them. We took the stage at about 9:30 and had a good show, sweaty, loud and at times painful. Did plenty of tracks off the new album which are all starting to sound good live. On the way home tom had a slash in a bush in brixton and disturbed a couple of canoodling fellas who fled shamefully into the night. This weekend we will be making preparations for our video shoot for 'hold me in the river' which we'll be directing and shooting ourselves. Its going to be a brakes classic.
Backstage at Trash having a cintilating conversation
brakes bus shot
On thursday we left brighton quite late and headed up to east london for a show at adventures in the beetroot fields at uber club, fabric. We were all feeling a bit tired out as we'd just spent the last 3 days shooting our video for hold me in the river. Its going to look pretty diy but we had loads of fun making it and i think that'll come across. It was certainly more fun than having to stand around for hours occasionally pretending to play your guitars whilst film types discuss lighting. Anyway... got to fabric and it was writhing with young trendy types. I could have sworn some of them were 14/15 but Eamon later reminded me that as you get older 18 year olds start to look younger and younger, how depressing. We took the stage about 11:30 and played pretty good. Tom and Eamon broke 3 strings between them which slightly slowed down proceedings (bloody guitarists) but the audience didn't seem to mind. Disco Party went down the best as usual but generally people were in quite a dancey mood which was nice. We left the venue about an hour later and headed back south. I got dropped off at gatwick so i could catch my 06:35 flight back to Glasgow, trust me it was a lot cheaper that way. Id never slept in an airport before, I imagined id just find a comfy bench and snooze off the time i had before my flight but to my astonishment every seat in that terminal was occupied. I tried to read but my eyes kept crossing so i resorted to lurking by a large seating area until someones flight came up and claiming their patch as my own. I got about an hours kip until i had to go check in. Good to be home if its only for 6 days until our next gig. Today me and the mrs donated some blood. Its my 3rd time since Brakes did our collective donation before 'give blood' came out. Its definately something more people should do, it doesn't hurt, its relatively quick and you get a free glass of orange squash and a tuc biccie afterwards.
Salutations Brakes Posseeeeeeeeeee!
Im sitting in the dressing room of the luminaire in kilburn awaiting stage time for what will be our first gig in a wee while. Tom and Alex have been on the road with the ESP and it sounds like they had a grand old time. October tends to be quite a debauched month for the Beatty family, what with my mothers birthday, my brothers' birthday and mine (funnily enough we were born on the same day 3 years apart) and to top it all off the same said brother got married only this weekend just gone. All the band were present at the reception and a good time was had by all. Congratulations Rich and Kirst!!! Needless to say im feeling a little tender and we haven't even started touring yet. In the meantime we've been putting the finishing touches to artwork and discussing new t-shirt designs. The new ones look pretty fresh and there's more of a variety this time so look out all you memorabilia nuts. Eamon and i did an interview with phil from the stool pigeon last week. He bought us a good few pints of ale to whet our tongues and we had a decent chat about pretty much everything. There should be a two page piece in next months article. Also did a 'brighton walk and talk' for music week where we took a journalist and a photographer around a few places in town. I was a bit useless when it got to talking about 'the brighton scene' seeing as i live in glasgow but it was still kinda fun. Plenty gigs coming up and we're doing a video soon!
Take care of yourselves... and each other
marc
Golly gosh, it has been a busy summer, and brakes had one more festival shaped hurdle to leap before they could close the book on 2006's festival season. We all trundled down the M27 towards Salisbury for the End of the Road festival at the beautiful Larmer Tree Gardens. Peacocks roamed freely, cider was drank and a good time was had by all. It was a perfect end to a successful summer's hard gigging for brakes. We had a healthy crowd watching our slot on the garden stage and we enjoyed the show tremendously. BSP took the stage after us and it was a joy to hear them play after so long. Various Brighton chums then joined forces at the delightful bimble inn where a nonsense jam ensued. Various things got knocked over and broken and i bowed out before the chance of being throttled by a wayward brass instrument came my way. Apologies to anyone who got seriously hurt.
Hats off to Sofia and Simon who did a great job organising what was one of the best festivals of the summer. Im hoping it will be the first of many end of the road festivals, i can honestly say there was nothing wrong with it at all.
Hey there you crazy kids!
Brakes have been back on the festival scene playing north, south, not east but also the west of this kingdom. We re-grouped in the first days of september up in Glasgow. Those punks at Jack Daniels got us to play a gig at the hard rockin' Cathouse club on Union Street and filmed it for a show due to be broadcast on the channel 4 channel some time soon. We did a posh interview too so you guyziz gonna get to see some brakes faces on your visual screens in the near future, holy moly! The show itself was a pumper, good crowd, good times. Thanks to all those dudes who came down from dundee especially to see us although next time do us a favour and leave your BSP t-shirts at home, as much as we worship the sea power Brakes are not them and its just kind of weird. I promise there will be an abundance of new brakes merchandise to acquire very soon.
The next day we were up early to fly to Dublin in time for our show at the Electric Picnic festival in Stradbally. It was a bumpy ride, high winds rocked that little plane around like it was made of paper, quite fun. We got picked up by a lovely man named Seamus who gave (stand in tour manager) Matt and I some good tips on giving up smoking. Matt was wearing patches and complained that they were making him hallucinate at night. Seamus drove us out of Dublin and through county Kildaire explaining a lot of interesting facts about horses along the way. We got to our hotel which seemed to be very golf orientated. Seemed like the kind of place where men go on holiday to play golf all the time whilst leaving their poor wives to soak in the executive spa facility. It definitely wasn't Brakes' bag that was for sure. Someone even looked at me funny when i asked for directions to the toilet. Turned out this wasn't our hotel, ours was nearer the festival thank god! We got to a place called Port Laois, found the hotel which looked a lot like the other one but without the golf crap and headed to the festival site for some fun.
It was a nice festival, everyone looked happy and non-threatening and there were kids and none of those stupid fairground rides or minging burger stalls. Had a little wander around, saw SFA who were great. Had another wander around and then went to see a bit of Belle and Sebastian who sounded lush despite being a bit quiet. I very randomly bumped into a girl who used to work in a cafe in Brighton where i used to eat brekkie every sunday. How we recognised each other was a mystery. I wanted to see Sparks but also didn't want to miss any of Yo LA Tengo so i got a good spot in their tent and waited it out. A girl asked my name, I told her it was Marc and then she introduced me to her friend as Paul, so i called her Sophie and that pleased her a bit but then she tried to steal my beer so i left. YLT were cool despite the sound in that tent being dreadful.
The next day it rained early but brightened up towards the afternoon. We were on later in the evening so once again i had a wander around. Saw Aberfeldy who were playing in the same tent as YLT and suffered equally to the bad sound and chaos of that stage. Riley the singer made a very witty joke about Razorlight's 'In the Morning' hit being about date-rape and enthused at how much they'd enjoyed their recent tour with James Bl(c)unt. Time passed slowly as ever before shows but eventually we took to the stage. Our tent was pretty massive and there was hardly a peep there to start with, it filled up gradually though and this pleased me as it meant that there was either very little or no people leaving the tent. We were a little confused at times but generally it was a good one. A good time in Ireland all round, only down side was that Matt had taken up the chuff again. Two days with Brakes and he was like a little smoking monkey.
After a boozy evening in Stoke Newington the next day, we went shopping for clothes in central London. None of us like shopping that much but it was surprisingly enjoyable. Tom was waiting in the queue for the till of Zara and the woman in front of him managed to cash up £1500 of clothes and she looked miserable as fuck. We were hoping she was a stylist or something and not some sick shopaholic weirdo.
That evening Eamon, Tom and myself went to sheppards bush to see Yo La Tengo....again. Well, im a fan..alright? They were most pleasing. All the songs off their new record sounded great to me and i haven't even got it yet (always a good sign) plus they did a few arthur lee covers and old fave stockholm syndrome as encores. Bumped into Becki from Da pipettes and Paul of maximo park. Glad to say they were both well.
Another day came and it was time to so some brakes work that didn't involve playing music.... a photoshoot! woohoo. We all posed, pouted and got our faces wiped by a swedish lady while the owner of the bar we were using as our set, Franco, laid on the beers. Prego! It was a bit stuffy down in that bar (Trish's of Greek Street) but the shots looked good and we got a variety of setups done with the help and genius of top camera dude Dean Chalkley.
We had a day off after that but then we got on a ferry and went to Bestival from where ive only just returned. Id never been before, well not to the festival but its location Robin Hill is where i used to play a great deal as a child. It was really nice to be back on the isle of wight. We took the back road so we could drive up the hill from where you can see all 4 corners of the isle, beautiful. Me and Eamon were staying the night so were erected our tents and then headed down into the arena. Did a quick interview for Radio 1 and then watched The FAll. They were superb, new band, sounded good. It was little chilly as nightfall came and the nerves were upon me so i felt a bit strange. Had a look at the tent and it wasn't as big as i thought it was going to be, didn't feel so nervous after that. Watched tilly and the wall who are quite entertaining with their tappy clappy folk. Our time to play came round, appropriately prompted by a cash number we took the stage and played an absolute blinder. The audience were singing along very loudly and were very appreciative. Luckily the whole thing was filmed by the Jack Daniels people as they were sponsoring the tent so we've got two really good gigs on film.
Scritti Politti did a great show after us, bit of a mind fuck as they were one of the bands my dad played constantly through the 80's. I love his voice.
We met with friends and made merry afterwards. There were people there who i wasn't expecting to see, pleasant surprises etc.. Before i knew it it was 5am, had to go to bed.
I woke at 9:30 and just had to get off the site. Everyone there was being real squeamish about the bogs. Maybe we're just a bunch of scummers (im pretty convinced of that actually) but these people were just being pathetic, like they'd never been to a festival before. There were as many showers as toilets in the artist camping and more of a queue for them too. The toilets were full of shit but they should have emptied them during the night. So I walked into the countryside until i feared dehydration, lack of orientation and a peril at the sun's mercy. I returned to find eamon had been woken by a boy called daniel who'd decided to have some fun with the horn of his fathers car at just past ten am. He was in a bad mood. We left shortly after this debacle and didn't look back.
Seems like a lot for 8 days huh? Good times for Brakes at the moment, album sounds fresh and i hope y'all going to like it as much as i do.
See you at End of the Road if you're coming.
Marc
Hi
The last few weeks saw brakes play 3 more of our summer bookings at festivals in europe and at home. First up was electric garden. None of us knew what to expect from this first time kent affair but it was pretty good. Had a nice drive there in the van, had to take a de-tour at one point for warnings of long delays. The kent countryside was all looking very picturesque until we saw a huge white crucifix engraved into a chalk down near Lenham. That scared us slightly so we made our way quickly to the site. Got there just in time to see Field Music who, despite some obviously crippling technical difficulties, sounded cool. It was very hot so we spent most of the hours before our performance lying around drinking cider. Gig was good. We were up against the charlatans and mystery jets so the tent wasn't packed but those who were present made us feel very welcome and seemed to have a good time.
I spent the next few days seeing family and friends before heading off to oslo very early on wednesday. Last time we'd been in oslo the whole country of norway was under about 20 inches of snow so it looked a lot different than i remembered. We went straight from the airport to the John Dee venue, the same place we'd played in february. Although variety in the places we play is a good thing we weren't too annoyed to be playing here again as john Dee is directly above a ten pin bowling rink. After dinner we got a couple of games in before heading upstairs for the show. second support cam from The Dears who brakes had played one of their first shows outside of brighton with at bath moles in mid 2003. How the tables turn. We had some technical difficulties which hindered our performance somewhat but it was still pretty cool. My friends vegard and elisabeth were there and had bought a lot of their mates so it was good to have the support. Headed out to a bar called mono afterwards, made me a little homesick as there is a mono in glagow too.
The next morning i put the telly on and realised there was no way we were going to be able to fly home as planned due to the terror alert in britains' airports. As glad i was that nothing on the scale of what the british intelligence claimed they'd prevented had actually happened, it was extremely frustrating to think of the disruption back home and the paranoia and anxiety the events would cause for years to come. I dont think i'll be too comfortable flying to america from now on. So in the meantime we got to spend an extra day in oslo and moved to a better hotel. It was ironic because a girl we'd met the previous night had begged us to stay an extra day to go to the outdoor part of the festival. Managed to meet up with some pipettes who had just about got out of the uk after hours of waiting around at stanstead. I headed down to the festival with them to catch Liars. They were lush as always, well maybe that's the wrong word to use but i fucking love them, their performances have no boundaries and rely on rhythms more than tunes. Plus they seem to repulse most of the people who see them which is always funny to see. After that i watched a bit of Nordic death metalers Enslaved who really didn't rock at all and then it rained loads and i got very wet and started feeling ill. I decamped to the hotel which wasn't far and had a kip, something i do quite a lot these days. Some of the schedules we've been keeping recently have been so tiring that you just have to sleep whenever you can or you'll fall over. I awoke later that evening and we all went out for more fun. The next day at the airport a norwegian news presenter and her cameraman got us to do an interview about the terror crisis. I think she was looking for a bit of chaos for her story but when she asked us if we were worried about going to the uk we just said "no, not really". In fact the flight was fine, no delays or problems at all.
The next day we left early again to drive to leicester for summer sundae. We were all quite chuffed to be playing the same stage as the proclaimers, in fact there's been talk of a proclaimers cover being thrown in the repertoire. We were playing in de montfort hall so we were safe from the turbulent weather. BBC radio 6 got us to do a quick session with phil jupitus, he's shaved his goatee off! Bumped into steve lamacq who scared me slightly by pointing out the uncanny simmilarity between the new razorlight album and the boomtown rats, or more poignantly, jonny borrel and bob geldof. Saw howling bells who played before us, quite like their sound. Our show was cool, healthy sized audience and a good reaction. Shortly after the gig i made my way to leicester station to travel back to glasgow. Unfortunately my train to nuneaton was canceled which threw my whole schedule out of whak. I went to see the station manager where there were two girls also travelling to glasgow in need of an alternative route. After standing in the station managers' office for about an hour he finally got his shit together and worked out that we could go to donnington, then newcastle and then the train company would pay for a taxi from newcastle to glasgow. It seemed a bit of trek but this is how i got home, walking through the door at about 2am, 7 hours after i should have left leicester. The glamour of it all!
Well.. here we are in portugal!
I arrived slightly later than the rest of the troops cos... well it´d take too long to explain but lets just say i thoroughly enjoyed my free bloody mary on b.a. Its fucking hot here. I got to the hotel and looked out the window to see that we are by the sea. So i headed out armed with my camera and smothered in sun cream. About 5 minutes after id left the cool confines of our hotel i started sweating and all the suncream got in my eyes and really hurt! Then i realised my slr was out of battery so i couldn't work out any shutter speeds, bugga. Off to the site now, its 3 hours down the coast apparently so it should be a good drive.
Ta-ra
woke up at 1 today, first good sleep since i don't know when. came down to find a string section hard at work in the lounge. the studio is adjacent to our wee house thingy we shall be living in for the next two weeks, and therefore leads, microphones and whatnot seem to trail in and out of doorways randomly. marc and eamon made what will probably be the first of many trips to the supermarket earlier this afternoon, puchasing wine and fish, while our stringheads, anna, aby and rob got some lush string parts down on a couple of brand newie's, expertly arranged by al....nice. eamon's just started vocals........all's well. curry tonight, hopefully.
more when it happens.
tom
Got woken up by a bloody peacock this morning! I didn't know they could make such a horrible noise. This end of the road festy we're doing has peacocks, i hope they're not as noisy as this one. As Tom said, good start yesterday, strings sound great, eamons singing better with his feet on british soil, despite the heat. One thing i miss about the states... fucking air conditioning. Truck was splendid as always, we had a real family vibe going on with my bro and his wife to be and my girlfriend and lots of friends all present. A merry time was had by all. Unforetunately our sound engineer Joey Knuckles had to go to hospital in the middle of the saturday night with some lung trouble. He's resting up now but we'll sure miss him.
Watford? Need i say more, those who were present know what went down. It was one of the funnest and sweatiest gigs brakes have done ever. Kind of like a musical sauna. So hot it makes you a bit woozy. Thanks to everyone involved.
Brighton horn legend Phil Sumner is rearing his horrible face today for some blowing.
Speak to ya'll soon
Marc
