New Career in a New Town:

One of the very best things about this tour is waking up in a different country and culture every day. In Spain I woke up as we passed the hills behind Barcelona (they're as definitive as the hills behind San Francisco as you drive in from the airport and as easy to recognise). We got to the hotel for our showers in Castellon which is a strange town near the festival. It doesn't seem to have any town there and was closed for the three hours we were there on a Saturday afternoon. It was the same as last year, spooky and quiet and empty.

Benicassim is a big chaotic festival. It's good fun and has great bands but it's managed strangely. The press are allowed to run all over the backstage area so in effect every artist is being asked for a five minute interview every five minutes by everyone, which gets old quickly. I spent a month advancing everything in detail, even down to what type of electricity our bus would need to run the Air Conditioning while it was parked only to find out our passes weren't at the hotel ready for us and there was no immediate bus parking available for our bus.

It's not bad, and people are so nice, but it's just faintly amusing and/or irritating to have to do something three times over or ask for the same question three times over to get things done. Where are the towels? Can I get the sandwiches we have on the rider (requested at 5PM - arrived at 12:30AM)? I got shown where the showers were only to have to spend another half an hour looking for the person with the keys to unlock them (Por favor! Tienes usted este llave, por favor?). The catering was good, once you got through the wall of stormtroopers collecting meal tickets.

Still, each festival has its own character and this one is undoubtedly Spanish. Best thing (I say this with hindsight) was the band went onstage to open the main stage at 9PM. All was good until near the end of the set where they're playing the song 101 and the entire main stage power went down. Lights, PA, everything. God bless the audience for finishing the song while the band bravely spanked their mute instruments. The audience were the bolocks, totally. The band went off, the stage got back-up power back on. The stage manager begged me to put the band back on.

They went back and played one more song and the head electrician told me we had to come off stage while they swapped generators. Thing is, everyone got slightly aggressive and arsey as though we were being awkward when I said. "Okay. but if we come off again then that's it. We're not going back out there again for a third time."
The electrician seemed to take this as a threat and wanted to have a pissing competition "This is not your decision. You don't decide this."
"Actually, I do decide when the band go on stage. But he (the stage manager) is telling us to go back on and keep playing. You're telling us to come offstage. There are thousands of kids out there who don't think the show is over. Who makes the decision? Right now there are three of you telling me different things and I don't know any of you. Where the fuck were you five minutes ago when the power went down?"

We came off stage, which was fair enough--bad shit does happen, but it was a typically panicked response to a situation that needn't have happened. At the T in the Park fesitval the people who stop and start the shows are given very big red laminates so their authority is obvious from both the band and the festival production side of things. There's not some baldy cunt turning up with a mouth full of sandwich getting all shouty all of a sudden. Oh well. If I wanted predictable and dull I'd work in a bank or in the promotions department of a record label.

We got out of Benicassim at 3AM after watching The Arctic Monkeys. They're great. I like being at Benicassim, but it's more fun when you headline, then people don't look so surprised when you want towels in the dressing room. Or food. Or showers. Or electrcity onstage.

We got to Nimes at lunchtime the following day. The gig was in a Colliseum. Catering was up and running and it was amazing. The sun was out but it wasn't too hot. Three of my favourite bands were playing. I saw old friends from the other touring parties. It rarely gets better.

Love playing at French Festivals. Cool, hip, well catered, on top of their game, organised. The pictures say it all. We shared a compound with the Monkeys, there were suitcases and dirty socks everywhere. Bands are the same whether they're from Rotherham or New York City.

The Arena in Nimes. 2000 years old. Albert went onstage after the pre-show entertainment of polar bears eating some giraffes and some bloke called Brutus bludgeoning some Christians to death with the pelvis of a donkey.



If you look closely you can see Albert's catching a (blurry) ball pitched to him by The Arcade Fire who were playing football on the floor of the arena while Albert soundchecked.



An empty arena at soundcheck. All of us (esp. the Americans) bemoaned the fact that if this had been in America then no one would have been allowed to walk around inside for fear of litigation. Inside the Nimes Arena one could climb all the way to the top tier on uneven stonework without handrails, pathways, safety lighting, a guide, or elevators. In the US, some pointless twonk would trip and sue the colliseum because in America no one's responsible for themselves for anything at all ever (unless they're successful).



Albert onstage. Incredible show. Already my favourite gig of 2007. Both the Arctic Monkeys and The Arcade Fire were great (even though the Arcade Fire had some technical problems they're such a good band it doesn't matter). Apparently Alex from the Monkeys had his first woman flash her boobs at him while they were playing. That's something a man always remembers, I'm told. Singers the world over can compare where their first time was. Usually, it's Australia.....



Sunset over the Colliseum.





And this is The Arcade Fire onstage when it got dark.




We drove overnight from Nimes to Charles De Galle Airport where we got off the bus to fly home while the bus went back to the UK until the next leg of the tour. It took so long to go through security that when I texted our bus driver with a message when we got to the gate, he'd already driven to Calais. One strange thing about CDG Airport is once you got through security it has the worst selection of food of any airport anywhere in the whole world. Even La Guardia has more choices. Strange, for a country with such amazing food. I wondered if it was a final Fuck You from the French, as if to say, "Oh, leaving France are you? Well if France isn't good enough for you then eat some crappy food you filthy splitters...." Such a shame as it's a nice building. Steve got ripped-off trying to buy phone credits too and once he complained the woman got all beligerent with him in French. Nowhere's perfect and it is Paris, after all....

They did have a HUGE departures board one could read while you waited in the interminable line to got through security. It was like the best menu I'd ever read. I wanted to get on so many flights - to Beijing, Hong Kong, Hanoi, Sydney...the list was endless. In fact the only place we all agreed we didn't want to go to was Houston, TX.



Jamie gave me a special sweetie for the flight. I have never slept so well in poverty class. Never. And then when I got home and couldn't bear to watch any more TV with crap scripts (why is 90% of US TV full of macho bollocks? Everything last night was full men saying the kinds of thing Bruce Willis says in Die Hard movies - even on BBC America. It's so poncy. Our security guards are really really hard and they never say anything poncy. On every TV show all these fey twonks with manorexia are all trying to be tough; so desperate. And people believe it! They should meet our friends Colin and Bubble and Paul and Smogg and Danny....).

I fell asleep again for another 9 hours. Yay me. Back home in a bed that doesn't shake all night. All I have to do now is turn my sense of humor off while I'm away from my touring friends for ten days and I'll be right at home. Apparently I am too sarcastic. I always find it's people who can't keep up who say this. And people who can't keep up dismiss all wit as sarcasm to avoid having to admit they can't keep up. I think humour is a sign of intelligence (although I agree excessive sarcasm is the bastion of cowards. It should be a spice, not a portion). But I'm off on another rant here when I should be out enjoying living in New York City.

Today, life is good. There are divine moments every day, if you can find them. It's not even noon yet and I've already had a couple.