Navalie

Typing this on the road to Glasgow. Got 4 hours to kill and plenty of technology at our fingertips so might as well make the best of the situation. I should really be looking at the loverly scenery and rolling green hills of northern England... my oh my do those cows have large udders... Disco has fallen asleep again after reading half a page of his book. We're spending a lot of time together so conversation is starting to either run thin or return to topics we've already covered... the sheep around here sure are very woolly... ooh, stone walls around paddocks...

Sorry it's taken so long to get back onto this 'ere blog thing but we've just been having far too much fun and playing some fricking amazing shows and just getting generally carried away in the spirit of touring, so the blog has taken a momentary back seat. It really doesn't help that every single pub you go to, of which there seems to be one every 50 meters or so (sometimes even less) in whatever direction you walk, which has an entirely new range of beers or ales for incredibly cheap prices. I have never had so much variety in good quality beer. Really not conducive to productivity and blogging.

Anyway, where was I? Gigs, yes. Where to start? Our shows at Liverpool Sound City were so well received it almost hurts. Playing one of the opening slots at the world famous Aussie BBQ show in the back courtyard of Heebie Geebies left an indelible imprint on the memories of many a local and international punter. Rave reviews and incredibly professional looking photographs that have emerged from the show would indicate that people there love the shit out of us. Scousers tend to wear their hearts on their sleeves and speak quite freely about whether or not they like you: not a bad word was said.

Three hours later, we found ourselves playing the hallowed halls of Screenadelica, a pop culture exhibition of heavy/alt/rock/punk music poster art. Evidently word of our live show has spread amongst the locals and festival-goers as within the space of two songs, our audience has gone from about 5 to a nearly 2/3 packed room. Our lack of setlist structure and between song banter, fly by the seat of our pants approach soon become the talking point of the town. We were bailed up for 3 video interviews outside the venue. People here are lapping it up! Don't worry folks, so are we!!!

For getting around, we've employed the assistance of the world's cheapest GPS navigation system. We have named her 'Navalie'. Navalie is a psychopathic drunk/junkie and wants to either get us completely lost or have us burned to death in a fiery automobile accident. Her future employment with the band is on very thin ice and she's soon going to find herself in a canal somewhere if she doesn't pick her act up. Somehow though, she managed to get us to Manchester, where we played a fairly early opening slot to a handful of Uni students at Sound Control. Whilst on stage it seemed like none were all that interested nor impressed, we soon realised after packing down that a few were actually quite into it. We definitely made a few new fans, including one of the scariest but nicest people you'd ever want to meet: the bouncer, Dave. Look out for him on the Mixed Martial Arts circuit in years to come. He's only small but he could quite probably kill 10 people around him within 4 seconds using nothing but one of his testicles. Then there was Maria from Brighton who was just so amazed to "...see a real man up on stage, really y'know, singing properly". Thanks Maria, now everything I do is being done as a real man. Sometimes it's just good to see a real man eating soggy chips and a veggie burger.

Now we're off to Glasgow to play at 13th Note Cafe, a place that apparently serves absinthe. This point has been drilled into us by the very friendly and enthusiastic James Riddell, who helped put the show together for us. I have a sneaking suspicion tonight is going to be a very, very interesting night. My liver is already trembling... ooh, windmill... then we're back to playing in Liverpool on Saturday night at The Shipping Forecast with our fellow Brisbaneites, DZ Deathrays.