Houston, TX - March 15th




We arrived at our Houston hotel about 4AM. The night was clear and balmy, the moon full and clean. The hotel was in a removed complex a few miles away from downtown. The surrounding foliage and landscaped forestry looked very dark and yet, in the shadows a new building behind ours, I could see the magnesium flare of someone welding together its iron skeleton. It was beautiful in a way, secret almost. I felt like the last person awake in Houston (at least, if not all of Texas). I felt quite alone. I was thinking that this seems to be a big part of touring life, going from the sweaty extremes of being at a crowded frantic rock show to being in the silence of a hotel in the hours before dawn, and alone.

Touring’s also about living an hour ahead, or a week ahead. Everything on tour is just about to happen, life is lived ahead of time – and for me, especially, I work in an environment where I’m planning weeks ahead of the event. So much so that when we do play shows they seem almost over before they’ve begun, and I’m thinking about the next thing to do, the next tour on the horizon. It’s such a transient world too: today’s guest list, today’s set list, today’s car times as insistent and essential as they are right now have no historical relevance (maybe the set lists do serve as souvenirs). Once the moment has passed, it has passed. I quite like that aspect to things – and it certainly makes time pass quickly – but it’s an unreal existence. It’s like never being able to enjoy a meal because you never stop planning the next one. For example: I’m typing this in Denver, Colorado. I’m on the 17th floor of our hotel. It’s snowing outside. I’m rewriting my notes from Houston last week where the air was warm and where I sonambulantly checked-into a hotel on the 4th floor in the silent pre-dawn; I’m also thinking about the scheduling I have to do for the band’s promotion later this week in Las Vegas and San Francisco and the routing issues I have to address for hotels and travel for tour dates in the summer in Europe; I am texting Albert who is on the band’s bus with Julian two hours outside of Phoenix, AZ where the sun is shining (they didn’t want to fly). I am actually anywhere but the 17th floor of a hotel in blizzard in Denver, Colorado. I think for those that tour, this dislocation can be part of its attraction.)


The band have played the Verizon Wireless Theate before. The audience felt loud but somehow static. Maybe the room was somehow restrictive. It wasn't bad, just a strange juxtaposition. Everyone enjoyed the show on stage.

On the way out of the Houston show Nick slid down a banister (it was a long banister and begged to be slid down). Half way down he lost his balance and slow-flipped backwards, landing painfully and loudly on his head, then on his knees and his feet. The stairs were concrete and steep and he kept rolling when he landed. To his credit he eventually sat up
And said, “Thankfully, I am all right.”
Then he went out to sign autographs.
Albert took the Eagles of Death Metal Bus to Austin to spend the day of at south By Southwest.
People were so nice in Houston but everyone kept calling me Gordon (much to Danny's amusement).

I think I need a new haircut. I can’t think of another way to nip this in the bud.



Dallas, TX – March 16th & 17th.

Our hotel was in the middle of nowhere. It was a very nice hotel but it was a very remote hotel too surrounded by reclaimed prairie, land pegged and stringed for the development of a business park, and interstate junctions. I rented a car first thing in the morning. The reception said that Avis was a couple of minutes away. It was about 7 miles. In New York terms that’s another state.

Fab and I took Nick to the hospital to get his toe x-rayed as he thought he’d broken it. The hospital wasn’t busy but it took 3 1/2 hours to get processed. While sitting restlessly in one of several waiting areas Nick and Fab decided to form a new band. They found the name of the band on a portable X-ray machine: kiloVolt. (kV).
In the next waiting / examination room it took so long for the doctor to arrive that Nick and Fab started to examine each others ears and eyes with the medical equipment in the room - those little lights that doctors use to check-out your ears? The arm-band for blood pressure (Fab inflated it so much that Nick’s hand started to go blue before the Velcro strap gave out and the armband popped off Nick’s arm.)
When the doctor finally arrived—-about two minutes ahead of all of us experimenting with the pure oxygen feed line—-she seemed puzzled as to how all of her examination equipment seemed to be set incorrectly.
Nick was fine, he’d just bruised his foot badly. It took a long time to find out but it’s better to be safe than sorry, right?

Later that night, Fab, Nick, Matt, Nikolai and I went to go see V for Vendetta at the local I-Max. We stopped by Taco Cabana on the way and had the best Mexican fast-food ever. (we got lost looking for a proper Mexican restaurant although we did see—-and resist—-the neon glow of Zone d’ Erotica store by the interstate. We also passed a store called Janitor’s World. It’s a sad indictment that everyone was more vocal about Janitor’s World. I have to be honest though – Zone d’ Erotica could have been called Zone D’Skank and it would have seemed more appropriate.)

We stood in line for the movie, all excited and quite literally full of beans. Once seated Fab and Matt went to get candy and then we settled in. Two minutes before the movie started Nick spat out a milk dud and held it in his palm. “It’s not my day,” he said quietly. Sitting in the middle of the milk dud was Nick’s gold tooth.

The movie was excellent. Really well scripted, very very timely, and I think we all found it inspiring and chilling. It’s strange to think that in England we still celebrate burning Catholic dissenters every year. The movie resonated with all of us over the next couple of days. Every time there was a mention of something fearful on the news we’d all exchange knowing glances. Sadly, I don’t think any of us felt that we were being paranoid or even subscribing to wild conspiracy theories. Just watch the news. In my mind they all blink too much.

We spent the morning of the show getting Nick’s tooth repaired at a Moroccan styled-dentist’s office. It felt like an East Village coffee shop. He and I picked-up brochures for taking care of bad breath to leave on the bus. We’re all getting paranoid about personal hygiene. As the brochure said: There’s Nothing Funny About Bad Breath.

Storms hit Dallas just before the show. Fab played drums for the last song of the Eagles of Death Metal with Sam and Josh: three drummers, and they even swapped kits halfway through. Sam's leaving the Eagles tour now Josh is joining it. We'll all miss her as she's such a presence and an amazing drummer. It took us a long time to get back to the hotel in the rain afterwards. When we did I stayed up late listening to Neko Case and Fiona Apple. Like Jessie from the Eagles says, let’s hear it for the Ladies.



Denver, CO – March 18th-20th

Flying to Denver was slow slow slow after we check-in with a nice lady from American Airlines. The flight was delayed some and the TSA staff arbitrarily sent people through these strange air blowing machines as part of the security check. Nikolai found out later--when he protested about the process--that the TSA employees are obliged to ask you to remove your footwear and if you don’t they can blast you with something (air, probably?). When Nikolai said he didn’t want to get sprayed by whatever it was all the TSA people came down heavily on him until one guy ascertained that Nikolai hadn’t been given the choice of removing his footwear. No one else tried to follow this procedure, they all just got aggressive and confrontational straight away. Like I said before, there’s been a loss of dignity somewhere along the way. Had there not been just one vigilant TSA Supervisor (and credit where it’s due, the guy who figured out what was going on was a real gent) then would Nikolai have been banned from boarding a flight because no one gave him the courtesy of an explanation, or taken a minute to find out what the problem was (or acknowledged that the TSA Staff had fucked-up)? Would this have had other repercussions for him? I realize this maybe sounds alarmist and that I might be making a mountain out of a molehill but sometimes I don’t really understand how process of accountability works in these situations and it makes me nervous.


We sat under a TV monitor and watched the CNN News bulletins. We jooked that they sounded uncannily like the news bulletins in V for Vendetta. And then there was a trailer for Nancy Grace's vicious show and it wasn’t funny to make jokes about it any more. She reminds me of the two minutes hate from 1984.


Arriving in Denver Nick, Nikolai and I sat together on the Monorail that took us to baggage claim. It felt like we were in the future. The blank announcements when the doors opened and closed, the vague sense that we didn’t quite know where we were going and yet the knowledge that the benign airport authorities would tell us what to do.
In the future you will always feel like you don’t quite know what’s going on and because of this you will be permanently confused. But it’s okay, because you won’t be allowed to make a wrong decision.

The drive from the airport into Denver was strange. The airport is on a high plain and it feels like you’re on the moon. In fact when the plane landed it was easy to imagine herds of buffalo running to get out of the way, so remote and undeveloped did it feel (erm, Lunar Buffalo?). It felt like Iceland in some ways; remote and lunar and eerily beautiful.

Denver itself was gauzed in low cloud. The buildings looked both gothic and futuristic. It was easy to imagine small jet craft whizzing around between them like in the Fifth Element or somesuch. By the time we arrived at the hotel we were all tripping on some low-level paranoia. Albert asked, “Is Denver like Tulsa and Dallas? You know, where some people look at you as though you’ve done something wrong because of your haircut? I’ve felt like I was just about to be arrested for the past week in Texas and Tulsa.”

(Side note: Austin doesn’t feel like this (and nor did it feel like this when we met people at/after the shows who were all unfailingly cool to hang out with), however two things did come up in Austin: A) Ryan had to go to the emergency room because one of his teeth became unbearably painful with some heinous infection just before the Stubbs show. He waited for hours and then the doctor treated him with undisguised contempt, as though Ryan were faking the agony to score pharmaceutical level painkillers. He wasn’t. He had to stay in Austin for a week after because he couldn’t fly and risk the cabin pressure on the tooth, as per the instructions of his NYC dentist over the phone. The Doctor simply made a call on the way Ryan was dressed and hung him first. B) Julian and I got a ride with the show runner back to our hotel. We were chatting with the guy about living in Austin and how cool we thought the town seemed. It’s a cultural centre, there’s a lot going on and it seems to welcome art and artists. Julian said to the guy, “This place sounds amazing. Like the perfect place to vacation or something. What’s the downside to living here? There’s got to be some downside, right?”
The guy answered. “Yep. There’s all these pockets of liberalism….”)

The Denver show took place ahead of a blizzard, it sounded bad and the bus and truck drivers all got worried about the darkening skies outside. Inside The Fillmore is a great venue and aside from some shortness of breath because of the altitude everyone had a good time on stage. The blizzard came and went and looked to me like the gayest storm of the season. Still, if you’d listened to the news you’d have killed your fattest neighbour by now in case your tinned food supplies were to run out. I know I did. And I’m f***ed if I know how I’ll manage to finish all of him before I have to leave for the flight to Phoenix tomorrow morning.