The Late Show With David Letterman - Mon Feb 27th

Monday morning – we got back from the UK tour on Friday afternoon so there’s no breathing space between the two tours. Better still, because Letterman doesn’t tape on Friday, they now record two shows on Monday which means our call time is 5AM as we’re the first of the two shows. It was the coldest New York night in February and it’s the first time ever that the studio at The Late Show has felt warmer than outside. “That’s because the A/C has been off all weekend,” announces one crew member, heading to turn on the A/C. Sure enough, later that afternoon the studio is down to 48 Degrees (no one knows why: is it to avoid sweating? Do people really laugh more easily when they are cold? It’s mystery….) Still, temperature aside, it’s good to do this show as the staff and crew are always unbelievably on top of their stuff and the day runs smoothly.

Julian, Nikolai and Albert met Bruce Willis backstage who was also a guest on the show. In fact, while the band were playing, Bruce and one of the cast (a man dressed as an elderly lady – I don’t know why either) were standing next to each other nodding along to the track. Bruce digs The Strokes. He said so, it’s official.

I was the last to leave the studio and on the way out I met (read: harangued) Ricky Gervais coming in to record the second show of the day. I invited him to the New York shows but he couldn’t come because he was flying back to England the next day. It’s a shame that no one got to meet him as the band are all big fans of the Office and his live stand-up DVDs. Nick enjoys the Monkey News on his podcasts too.


New York City- March 1st, 3rd & 4th

Playing New York again was exciting if a little stressful. Everyone’s friends and families were there and we had no time to rehearse the production (normally before the start of a tour we build the show somewhere and run through the set list with the band to make sure everything works – we didn’t have time at the start of the US tour s the first day was slow and stressful for the crew). At the first show in New York everyone was excited backstage and a little edgy. The setlist was written, and rewritten, and rewritten and Nikolai relaxed by throwing knives in the dressing room. It’s a form of relaxation he picked-up in Belfast where he discovered a zen calm by trying to spear a plate full of lemons and limes and where we’d stuck the dressing room setlist to the wall using a meat knife. In New York the only thing he came close to spearing was Albert. (Later in the week Julian came down to the venue earlier to relax by playing baseball inside Hammerstein Ballroom – you’ve got to make use of a space like that in New York, right?).

The New York shows were so social it was ridiculous. Each night it was physically impossible to get any more people into the dressing room (that didn’t stop everyone trying, though…). After the first show we had a party in a pool hall for the band and about 200 of their closest friends. It was good for everyone to relax together after a manic week of the NME awards, Letterman and then a New York show.


Nashville - Mon 6th March

Albert and Julian flew ahead to Nashville the day before the show so they could hang out with the Kings of Leon. Also, on the first showday of the tour proper, they could lie in bed in the morning and relax rather than travel. The rest of us flew at lunchtime on the day of the show and checked into our hotel before heading down to the venue.

The Ryman is a beautiful building. I think it’s a national monument(?). During the day they run tours where you can pose for a photo on stage holding a guitar and singing into an old-fashioned mic. I’m not quite sure how this worked out but I think a group of tourists from Shreveport, LA have themselves some photo’s with Brian and Matt and Jamie posing in the background.

In some ways Nashville felt like the first night of the tour, now that we were out of New York. I think the band were surprised by the reaction of the audience a little as they were so overwhelmingly warm….

After the show we threw a surprise birthday party for Juliet at the hotel. I got the Kings of Leon to help blow up balloons and hang decorations. Everybody loves a party, right? Especially with balloons.

On Tuesday we played baseball with the Kings of Leon. It took a while to decide on teams but in the end we rejected The Strokes VS The Kings and euphemistically chose Nashville vs New York. The Kings had some tasty looking baseball caps – they were definitely the better attired team, although The Strokes have all their own catcher’s mitts. Our friend, T R Lewis, arranged for us to use a baseball diamond at David Lipscombe University (Thanks again Andy!) where they even turned on the lights for us at dusk.

Fab tore his pants and his knee sliding for a base. Julian and I collided trying to catch the same ball (I never understood how this happened when I saw it on TV. Now I know…). Ryan and Nathan respectively pitched for each team until Julian pitched for New York during the eighth. Caleb hit hard but was caught out each time by T R Lewis. Nick Valensi played some good third base and Fab covered the outfield while Julian fielded at second base. It was (mostly) even-stevens until the eighth innings when the Kings caught a break and tore ahead to win the game. I don’t think we need to concern ourselves with final scores here, do we? I mean, who cares….? Although history may be written by the victors you’re reading this on the a blog written by The Strokes TM so no thank you very much; we shan’t be vulgar and discuss scores here. Not until we beat them next time, in the new branded apparel we’re going to get ourselves.

Thanks to TR Lewis, to Andy and everyone at David Lipscombe University for allowing us onto your diamond. And thanks to the guys who joined us to make up the numbers early on before all the Kings of Leon team had got themselves out of bed.

And Christ did we creak the next day.



Atlanta - Weds 8th March.

On the way to Atlanta we watched Kill Bill 2 on direct TV on the bus. You have to love it when Darryl Hannah gets hers. And not because it’s Darryl Hannah, I’m sure she’s very nice in real life and I wouldn’t really wish her an agonizing blind death in a skeevy trailer. Not unless she messed with me with a snake, of course. In that case a good blinding would seem almost hospitable. That’s fair enough, right?

I’ve needed a new computer since Bristol on the UK tour when my PC got infected with some spiteful virus from an online casino. In Atlanta we stayed near the Apple store and the morning after the show both Fab and I bought one. We then spent the rest of the day calling each other to check on how they worked. When my keyboard lit up automatically at night I nearly called Fab to tell him ("Dude, guess what?! Close your curtains and keep the light off, it's wicked!"). Then I realized I needed to get out of my room and speak to some people, preferably adults.

Albert, Fab, Nikolai, Danny, Rob and I went to Bones steakhouse for dinner. The food was excellent and we all gorged on meat and all manner of deliciousness. Plump and pink and feeling warm with a post-prandial glow we stepped out into the rain to look for a cab. Danny pointed out we were only yards from the scene of a shooting the night before; suddenly we were all sober and clear eyed and making jokes about dying in a ditch. Just like we always do after the crème brulees.


Kansas City- Friday 10th March.

For years I’ve only had one absolute rule. (You really don’t want to know it, honest...). But now I’ve got two. the second is: Never fly Delta, not if there's the option of crawling to your destination through a river of broken glass first. Every time I have this year it’s been an arduous, discourteous experience.

This is the second time that I’ve had nothing but grief from the moment we arrived at the airport. Coupled with the fact that the woman who checked us in didn’t seem to know what she was doing and was the single most pointlessly officious person I’ve met in years, checking-in was an Olympian test of patience. And I hate people with bad manners. It’s interesting, in some ways, to watch angry people act out their rage, although admittedly not always when they’re messing with your day. There is the pyhrric consolation in that if you look closely you can see them get smaller in front of you.

It seems that since the security has tightened at airports the airlines have used this as an excuse to grind their services down so much so that unless you're traveling up the front you no longer can expect service or courtesy. Maybe it's the subtle change in power that airline staff now have. Before 2001 staff were probably less stressed and I feel there was a focus on some semblance of customer service. Now it seems that staff are solely there for safety and procedural enforcement (Unless you've paid a lot of money for your ticket) and under these auspices some staffers often treat the customers with a thinly veiled disdain because maybe they're no longer accountable to the customer? Is it just me who feels that walking through an airport from check-in to getting on the aircraft has taken on some kind of Orwellian timbre that wasn't there five years ago? I feel that an awful lot more people now have some arbitrary power over one's ability to go about one's business and, judging by the tone I've had used on me, and that I've heard used on others, it feels to me that some level of respect has been eroded in the process of ensuring safety. Maybe I'm being over-sensitive? And God knows I think the security measures should be stringent and rigourously enforced, but it feels like we lost some dignity along the way and I don't know that we needed to. Or maybe this is just how things are and I'm just an over-privileged white git who resents having to explain himself to anyone as he goes about his business? Especially when they don't ask nicely....


Still, what do I really care about this tedious witch who no longer bothers with good manners or hiding her bitterness? She’s doubtless still resentfully checking-in people she hates every day and I’m not. The flight wasn’t much better – both Nikolai and I were silently mouthing “Let me off” to each other as the plane slew through the queasy turbulence for the first 40 minutes of the flight. Two words, Delta. Staff Training.

After the grim purgatory that was flying Delta things got better when we arrived at the venue in Kansas City. Dave from Sprint came down and hooked us up with a prototype Wireless Router that means we can go online while on the bus and traveling. I was so grateful a small, sparkling tear escaped my eye. That hasn’t happened since Albert took me to Rocco’s in Melbourne in 2003 and I saw all those rows of hand-made ankle-boots.

We loaded up the bus with the entire dressing room rider and just before the band came off stage the after-show BBQ food arrived. As we headed off for Tulsa after the show the bus was all sweaty rock-stars and BBQ ribs and sausage (which Nick appreciated dipped in the sauw-cah, please; dip it in the sauw-cah). I another world, the scene would be a spread for Hombre Magazine. I had to go to my bunk in the end. It was too much for me, really it was.

Tulsa, OK - Sat 11th March

We arrived in Tulsa around 4:30AM. It was deserted. I find so many American cities are like that and they’re spooky and kind of thrilling. I put on some Neko Case from my Ipod to stop the room feeling so empty and I watched the city from the window. Only a few cars were passing on the interstate and the lights at the intersections were changing for no one. The city seemed abandoned. Neko sang about Deep Red Bells and Tulsa felt very, very isolated to me. I felt a long way from anywhere I knew.

In the morning I discovered there was still no one around, except some fans who were also staying at the hotel. The girl at reception couldn’t tell me where to find anything to eat beyond the hotel restaurant (which looked pretty bleak). Outside, the city looked like somewhere you’d see in an episode of COPS. The few people I saw were in cars and there seemed to be lots of blank concrete comprising downtown that hadn’t even been personalized by graffiti. I come from a small empty City so I felt some sense of connection but I couldn’t help wondering what you’d have to do here to keep yourself together if your ambitions stretched beyond what the City had to offer. I felt like there must be a level of despair rusting the foundations of so many aspirations.


After a manic show in Tulsa we hung out at the venue before driving overnight to Austin. It was one of the few times that we’ve been able to hang out with the Eagles of Death Metal. Aside from being a great band they’re boss people to hang out with. We love them so hard. And so should you. They do love everyone back harder. (It’s looks like the last days of Rome on out on tour with them).

We ran back to the hotel to get the last of our belongings and as I left I was accosted by a guy I’d seen at the venue who was waving a multi-colored light sabre around. Seeing the earpiece to my walkie-talkie as I walked through the lobby he ran alongside me, Albert and Nikolai saying, “Oh man, FBI. You’re the fucking FBI man. I ain’t scared of you, FBI man. Ain’t scared at all.”
When we got in the elevator he tried to join us but there wasn’t really room, so he dived into the opposite elevator and said “I’ll see you downstairs. FBI man.”
Sure enough he did, muttering curses about the FBI following him all the way to the door.

Outside, three Police cruisers had stopped a car containing four girls who were headed to the hotel after going to the R Kelly concert. That’s six po-lice for four women. It was time to get out of dodge.


Matt came with us on the band bus. I typed letters to friends in the back lounge while Albert played guitar and Julian hooked-up the Xbox 360 and did a quick survey of the games he’d been sent. The front lounge was full of everyone else. They were watching Airplane.

Austin, TX - March 12th-14th

When I woke up we were driving into Austin on Sunday morning. Nikolai and I were the only people awake. The hotel rooms weren’t ready so we went for breakfast at a restaurant called Iron Cactus, which coincidentally was the first place The Strokes played in Austin at their first South by SouthWest. We had the Mexican breakfast buffet, by the way.

Austin was warm and sunny and we felt like we’d finally arrived in Spring. It was good to be back in Austin. The only downer – and it’s no small thing – is that Neko Case plays on Friday when I’ll be in Dallas. If there is a God, she’s got a vicious sense of humour.


Because the South By Southwest takes over Austin and there aren’t any hotel rooms available for late check-outs we had to check-out of our hotel early on show-day. We went to the venue to hang out – Julian played catch with Matt to keep his baseball eye in. Fab, Albert and Nikolai went to do a radio interview. Sean Na Na played on the bill as a special guest. The evening was manic with Sean coming onstage to sing Under Control again, like he did in New York. After the show we hung out for a while before taking the bus to the next hotel in Houston. No one wanted to leave Austin, we’d had a good visit.

On the bus after the show Albert made his specialty signature dish: Toasted Sombreros. Nick and Fab ate those bad boys right up, too. Everyone watched episode after episode of the David Chapelle show which the band’s agent had sent out to the band as part of a DVD care package for the bus. It was a three hour drive and I fell asleep in my bunk. When I woke up at the hotel in Houston Nick and Fab were sleeping contentedly – Nick on the sofa in the front lounge, Fab on the floor. Like full cats.