Do You Remember the First Time?

I came to Lisbon about 16 or 17 years ago with a girlfriend. I was a spotty twenty-something with possibly the worst shorts known to man. Walking around the Prata again tonight reminded me of being here in (something like) 1990. I remember being very skittish back then, and very excited. I would get anxious when the dealers hissed "Hashish" at us down near the Tagus; tonight I barely looked up from my book on the subway as the token Saturday night crazy loudly created in front of everyone's faces. I've lost the naff shorts too somewhere along the way. When I first came to Lisbon I'd hardly traveled anywhere and now I gauge my excitement levels when I go somewhere new against my first trip to Lisbon, or Amsterdam, or Berlin.

Last year when I was here with The Strokes I was a little overwhelmed by the gothic decay of the place (It seemed like the kind of place Nick Cave would kill you in); tonight I found it endearing. I walked up to the Barrio Alto for the view in front of the Port Wine Institute but the park was closed for rennovations and the funicular (who doesn't love a good funicular,eh?) was on blocks for repairs. However, the Barrio Alto is as byzantine as ever and there were good buskers singing Fado for the tourists on the streets. Nothing ominous about the place at all. I guess last time I was feeling a little overwrought being half-way through a ten-week tour of the world.

What I should have done last year is prayed at the Bank of the Holy Spirit. Or maybe my Portuguese isn't what it should be? I'm a little fascinated as to how this bank works - is it really taking deposits for Catholics to cash-in on the other side like I learned as a kid? How do you make a deposit? Can you accrue interest on Good Deeds, or is it just like a crappy checking account? How does one marry the Holy Ghost and rapacious commerce? Or is it just me that thinks this is more hypocritical tartuffery...? It's probably just me. It often is.



The architecture in Lisbon reminds me of South America and the language sounds like Russian. The subway echoes Deco design and is full of clean-lined marble. The public buildings are as grand as anywhere else in Europe. Below is an example of a more recent design - it's the train station at Oriente. Huge and flowing and overbearing and spacious all at once. Loved it.



Mr Eiffel built an elevator here. Bugger was at it everywhere, wasn't he? I guess back in the day no one wanted to walk up the hill to the Barrio Alto. Or maybe Bob Eiffel just went to unsuspecting cities with his meccano. "You know what you lot need....? What you need is a big fuck-off lift right in the middle of town and I've got just the stuff you need for it outside in the van left over from another job..."

2651 Romeo

Yesterday I took a flying lesson. The hardest--or at least the most trying--part of it was getting to the Essex County Airfield in New Jersey. Even at 11AM on a Tuesday morning navigating the traffic entering the Lincoln Tunnel was a chore - it felt more like a Friday. In fact, since I got back from tour, New York's felt hot and oversubscribed. Either more people are here because it's the summer or more people are out on the streets because of the weather. Either way, too many people. Not enough speed. Go play down your own end.

My instructor was late. Not the most auspicious of starts and while he was polite and apologised, I didn't feel reassured when he told me he was late because he'd got lost on his previous lesson--they'd tried to land at the wrong airfield.

Still, once I stepped through a door into a hanger full of small single prop Cessnas I didn't care so much. There is definitely something exciting about aircraft, especially piles of them in a big shed. He rushed us through the pre-flight checklist where I felt like a kid waiting for the batteries to be put into his Christmas present.

This is what we flew in. its a Cessna 172.




Taxiing is hard - you steer the plane on the ground by moving the rudder with your feet. I was crap at that; it was like my Salsa lessons except without the tinkly music and the B.O.

Then we lined-up for take-off.





When we got to Five Hundred feet the instructor gave me the controls and told me to turn right while still climbing to One Thousand Feet. It was exactly the same feeling as first driving a car where there are too many simple things to do at once. It pitches, rolls and yaws; it accelerates or stalls; it drifts off-course. The mild wind bounced the aircraft and buffeted us around, which gave the feeling of flying diagonally.

I kind of got the hang of it soon enough (thanks, in no small part, to X-plane 8.60 the simulator programme I've been practising on / playing with instead of writing and/or advancing Albert's next European tour - Sorry Albert....) and suddenly there I was flying over New Jersey; looking down on the I-287, turning 180º above Lincoln Park Airfield at 1200 feet and doubling back for the instructor to bring us in to land. Sitting in a cockpit for landing is a rush like few others. And I've tried many.

In the far distance you can see Manhattan. And below us, the good people of Montclair, NJ: you poor, unsuspecting fools....







It was the toppest fun I've had in a long time. I'd love to be good at it, or even competent. It's completely addictive (or maybe that's just me..?) and, I imagine, a lifestyle one could immerse oneself in--like surfing, or diving or somesuch. I could see how one would want to, but not necessarily how one could afford to.

For now, I might try taking cheap introductory lessons wherever I can. My next chance will be Baginton Airport but in truth I've got my eye on Santa Monica Municipal to try flying over Venice Beach and the Pacific. How boss would that be?

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.

Cheese is all you need.


I love being in Europe. Love It. We drove from Suffolk (north east of London – no one knows where it is) from the nice but dull Latitude Festival to Köln, where the hotel had gummi bears on reception and a line of nice old German people checking in before us. A long line. I gasped in quiet desparation and then, moments later when the über efficient reception staff had processed the line, I gasped in quiet admiration. Gots to love Germany.

Sleeping on a bus isn’t proper sleep so the first thing I did was pass out on my fluffy and immobile bed. I woke up with a strange German man in my room delivering complimentary fruit. I was so dazed I thought I was in my apartment and I kept asking him how he’d got in until he left --after he’d delivered the fruit of course. He was German after all.

That night we went to The Rhine to watch the fireworks. Köln have a display on the river for a reason no one understands every year. God bless them for it, they were amazing. Thirty minutes of perfectly synchronized fireworks. Only in Germany (or Switzerland, or Japan…) could the fireworks not miss a beat for a 30 minute pop/classical medley.



Germany was so hot. Almost unbearably so and even with the (wimpy) AC on our bus after 10AM we are all melting – no surprise, it’s like a big metal oven sitting in the sun, is our bus. We all of us woke dehydrated and with our tongues three sizes too big. And it smells great in there of course. Nine men, in a big, hot metal box baked by the sun. Oh yeah. Best thing is, when I wake everyone up and the band all get up at the same time. It’s like Dawn of the Dead. This morning when I did it me and Brian (our backline tech’) watched them getting out of bed and sang Thriller for a soundtrack. It looks uncannily like the video only they aren’t all in sync as they grope for their socks, toothpaste and trousers.





In Heidelberg, the venue was next to the river Neckar. Vineyards clung to the hills either side of the vally, smoke drifted from small farm fires through the trees, and the local Heidelberg roller-skating club circled the town. It was a bit like a monster movie town with a castle on the hill above the houses – obviously where the evil Baron Heidelberg was conducting strange and Godless experiments on innocent farm lads and lasses from the neighboring countryside. There was a lot of scaffolding up around it. I think this week Evil Baron Heidelberg was having new windows fitted.





Brian noticed an interesting cultural moment in Subway (serves him right for going to Subway in Germany, I say...) in Heidelberg where an American family were ordering their food. They used words like “Give me, I want” etc. In Europe this is universally considered bad form and quite rude as it’s too direct and too much of a command. In Europe people use requests rather than commands. I’m not critical of this myself as I know how it works in America and I know it means something different, but it does jar when heard overseas. I was faintly amused as I’d wager that, if told, the Americans would take offense to be told they were giving offense…or am I being uncharitable?

In Vienna it was so hot it was unbelievable. Hotter than it was in Vietnam. There was a general residual odor of unwashed bods too, which was special. A salty, spicy smell. No Viennese Fancies there. No Teen Spirit either.

The venue in Munich was in the middle of the city centre. God knows how our driver got the bus and the trailer down there. I couldn’t look, even though I was supposed to be navigating. Just to make it interesting as I argued with some nice Bavarian men who’d parked in our reserved parking (to be fair, they read the reserved sign and once they realized there was an official sign in true Bavarian style they pissed off. Good Bavarians obey all posted signs, it seems) a Copper turned up and squirted his sirens behind us to get us to move. I went over and gesticulated in the manner of inarticulate bus-parkers the world over and he took one look at me stood standing there in my tracksuit bottoms, calf-fur clogs and me Ooga Booga tee-shirt, rolled his eyes and reversed away to from whence he came. Ooga booga shirts scare German rozzers. That is, quite literally, sticking it to the man.

We had a day off in Dijon, France. We had to stop to give the driver a chance to sleep. It’s a beautiful town even though I was as sick as a dog and could barely make the effort to get off the bus. The people were friendly and indulgent of the three ill-advised words of French I know and the town was ornate and bite-sized enough to enjoy and see in one day. Sure enough, both plates in my evening meal came with mustard style creams and sauces. Delish.

I thought, even with the promise of delicious mustardy type sauces on everything, that Dijon might be a bit of a dull place to live, flirty waitresses and impish-eyed bakery sales women notwithstanding. And at night ye-olde town centre was overrun with bored kids on skateboards like provincial towns everywhere. For a moment I felt a bit sorry for them until I remembered that Paris was only 2 hours away and the south of France only 3 hours away. Spanwny gets. They deserve to be bored. No existential angst there, not when you can get on a train to the Riviera.



The show in Angouleme (above) was another winner – amazing catering – lamb stew, spectacular cheeses that defied naming but were all stronger and more pungent than the last, bread you’d want to be buried in and a view of the medieval town from the festival site that really set a certain tone. The French have a lot to be arrogant about and to be honest, outside of Paris, I’ve encountered nothing but friendliness and hospitality in France. (The shame of an Englishman admitting this). I miss the European cultures living in America. New York has its own thing, and so does SoCal too, but the middle of America feels the same to me for 2500 miles – I’m sure there are differences, its just by using the same money, language, and chain retail outlets, the subtleties of difference go over my head. We’re off to Spain now – I just woke up and saw Barcelona out of my bunk window and again we are somewhere different for another day. A whole new plate of cheese to look forward to.

Back on Hard Ground:


Belfast was nice and clean after Oxegen and the ground didn’t ooze when I trod on it and people didn’t kick mud at me. We also went for a ruby which was a rare treat. Spicey food that tastes spicey - not like in the US where spicey means slightly vinegary, the like hellman's mustard.

Then there were four shows around England that were good fun, mainly because I always enjoy the first week or so being back in the country. Our ferry was delayed so we had to rush from Stranraer to Liverpool but we did get time for a fuel stop at some random little backwoods trucker gas stop. Next to it was a weirdy supermarket - ALDI maybe, somewhere super cheap anyway that sold brands that ripped off big brands. Like cornflakes that weren't Kelloggs but came in a box designed to look exactly like Kelloggs. Anyway, Brian found these biscuits which were aptly named as we were going to Liverpool, home of the original E's.....





We went to Portsmouth too, which has these three islands in the middle of the estuary – I thought they looked like WWII gun enplacements, but in fact they were built by Henry VIII (not personally). It was good to see the sea. And there’s something special about the English coast for me. It’s not spectacular in the sense of Big Sur or expansive like, say, the beaches near Perth, Australia but it has a certain something you don’t find anywhere else. The sea was grey/green and choppy and a large Brittany Ferry sailed within a couple of hundred yards of the esplanade and it looked brilliant. There are divine moments every day if you’re lucky enough to catch them. This is our bus on the sea front with one of Henry VIII's defenses on the left of the picture.



I put 2p. into an arcade game and won a quid - in 2 pence pieces. I carried them around all day but finally got fed up with them and left them in the dressing room. The wanton excess of rock and roll.




We got to the Latitude Festival the following morning and the artist showers didn’t work, and the dressing room wasn’t ready, and the promoter was being stingy with meals but I decided instead to enjoy looking at the woodland around the site rather than get bummed out. Like Albert’s always saying: happiness can be a choice.

Here's the lake behind the stage. It looks delightful.




A few yards along the path were lots of spent shotgun cartridges. Hundreds of them. I was hoping someone was trying to off the festival hippies living in tents by the lake but I never heard any shots. Unless, of course, they'd killed all the hippies before I'd arrived. There's a thought...I guess happiness can be a choice...as well as a warm gun.





And here are Matt's drums waiting patiently in the trailer to go onstage. The show was good but it was poorly managed.






I read Alex James’s book – a Bit of a Blur yesterday. It’s very good. It’s very Alex too. He’s very witty. All of Blur were/are – although none of them made a career of being a caddish fop quite like Alex. He always came out with the best one-liners, and in the most fey voice possible. I remember him criticizing my French once as we went into a Parisian night club (Lilly la Tigresse, maybe?) and I’d tried to say thanks to the doorman. Alex, of course, speaks excellent French – I speak only three words of French and apparently I’d got all of them wrong. I quite respect the fact that he knew what good manners were even if he chose to be ill mannered most of the time, or at least very haughty. That's much classier than just being an oik outright. I remember he also put the staff at the George V in their place as we went back there to party after the MTV Awards Paris once, which is no mean feat as they are the snottiest hoteliers among the snottiest people on the planet. The book’s well-written and candid but in a way that doesn’t really betray any confidences--the only person he really tells-all on is himself, which is gentlemanly of him. He doesn't dodge himself either - he acknowledges he was a brat but also understandably says, to my mind at least, that it was his job. Which I think it was (although I was glad to not have to look after them). He doesn't excuse himself with a load of rationalising, self-aggrandising bollocks. It may be my age but I’m not so sure that there are any pop stars around in England these days with the class of Blur and Pulp? They certainly had some panache.

I also read Pearl Lowe's book All That Glitters, which was disappointing. While she's candid about her drug use that's the only thing she's really candid about. She dodges around so many issues I felt she was spinning a version of events and I wasn't supposed to notice. Certainly it seemed that she only wanted to be in a band as an excuse to be famous, not because she wanted to write or be a musician in the first place-she blew too many opportunites for that and Powder were never more than a very peripheral band. It rings false that she cared about being a singer when, given every opportunity to succeed, she blew it. I can't remember a song of Powder's or anyone talking about that Powder gig that blew them away. Pearl's desire to be famous without doing anything to earn it plays a repetitive key note throughout the book. The whole Gavin Rossdale paternity test fiasco is written to emphasise that Pearl was only trying to sort out who her daughter's father was and then it was the evil lawyers who made her follow up on the paternity test and subsequent maintainence payments. It all reads a bit disingenuously, as though Pearl wants us to believe she never thought of any of this by herself. Pearl as some kind of naif wandering through Britpop and without a conniving, ego-driven bone in her body. It reads like she's selling something. But that's junky style, in essence. There was something hollow to the tone of the remorse in the book to my ears. Whatever, it's okay as a book, but Pearl's only real issue, in Pearl's eyes, seems to be her drug addictions, on which she pins all her selfish behaviour. As a drunk myself I think this is a cop out. I think ones addictions are only symptoms and dealing with the addicition might be difficult but it's not addressing the root of the problem. The self-justification wore a bit thin after a while. She's very candid about her drug use. She's been clean for 2 years. Good for her. I really hope she stays that way. It's hard work. And I hope her daughter stops having photo's taken with spotty youths sucking her breasts. There's got to be better ways to get everyone to notice you. She could do some work and become good at something instead.

** Just read this quote on The Times online.
"Daisy was indeed revealed to be Rossdale’s child. Pearl sued for Daisy’s school fees, which Goffey had paid since she was six.
“This guy’s a millionaire, he can at least give Danny back the money he’s spent,” says Pearl "

I've no interest in defending Gavin Rossdale - sounds like he's being a bit snide BUT insisting that now he's minted he should be reimbursing Pearl's boyfriend for money spent over the years on private education seems to contradict the motives given in the book for clarifying the child's paternity, s'all. Bless her, I think she's got a point, but she's such a complete merchant, and I think I'm irritated because no one's supposed to notice this, as though everyone's dim or something and will believe all of Pearl's flannel. Wonder if it would be such a big deal if Supergrass were charting higher?

Crazy Celts.

Got to Glasgow via Amsterdam. Lost 11 pieces of luggage on the way. I felt guilty that none of it was mine – just for a minute until I changed out of my dirty clothes and into my clean ones. Mmmmm, yes, fresh socks….

Glasgow Airport still smelled of fires. When I saw inside the airport where the car had crashed I was horrified. If they had driven through the doors successfully hundreds would have been injured. The doors led into the main international check-in area. It was a Saturday, the airport would have been running at full speed. I felt angry and indignant and full of cheer when I heard the stories of brave and hard Glaswegians who tackled the bombers. One guy called John Smeaton is a local hero for tackling them and in true Glaswegian style you can buy him a pint online. He has over 1000 pints bought for him at his local pub. Another guy, a cabbie, saw the bomber who was on fire after they’d just rammed his cab. He got out and kicked the bomber in the balls. After the incident the police took his sneakers for forensic evidence so the local paper took him shopping for a new pair of Nike’s. The way the airport has recovered and the business-as-usual attitude of the people I met working there was inspiring. And hearing more about how these dickheads are operating now that I’m in the UK just makes me angry and intolerant. Fuckwits, the lot of them.

This was the scene less than a week after the attack. Nuff 'sect to everyone at Glasgow airport.



I spent four hours at Glasgow Airport later trying to get the bags back in a cycle of well-intentioned futility. 200 bags had gone missing on flights from Amsterdam to Glasgow alone that day so our 11 were part of something greater….and consequently not a huge priority for anyone else but me. I got 9 back before we left for the first show, with visions of random pieces of luggage (including the drums) following us around Europe for 2 1/2 weeks.

The luggage that did arrive in the hotel lobby with Marc and Albert.



There were apparently no Wellingtons to buy in the whole of Glasgow. I bought some cheap knock-off Timberlands instead. They worked. The mud at T in the Park was a bit of a drag. At the Oxegen Festival in Ireland it was a soup.

After Albert’s set at Oxegen, and once everyone had got back to the dressing room – giving Connor Oberst a ride on the way as he was trudging along the service road by himself (he’d seen some of CSS and we were discussing the praises of their singer’s glittery spandex which reminded me I’d wanted to see them too)—I set off into the public areas to see CSS. They’d finished by the time I got near their stage, which was a drag, but I couldn’t believe the mud. And more to the point, I couldn’t believe that people were so completely at ease in the mud. I walked across the site a couple of times to see The Hours and Brian Wilson and The Killers and a bit of Daft Punk and in the course of it I saw:


The Oxegen Refugee camp. This is general public's campsite as viewed from artist's catering. The red cross were due to visit with soap later that afternoon...




Sinking boots.




People passed out (this guy had to be stretchered away by Medics). Some people tried to help him, others just took photo's of him with their camera phones. It was sad. He was in a coma. Security heckled him with a loudhailer, laughing at their own jokes like a bunch of wankers.





People dancing to My Chemical Romance – it seems that if you like a band you get to kick mud up in the air at people – see the back of my jacket for reference. Check out the guy in the centre of the picture. It was mid-afternoon and he could barely walk and was content to fall over in the mud, so much so he's invisible here. This wasn't the exception to the rule...



Some people were so covered in mud that they’d abandoned all pretense of hygiene and were throwing themselves, and each other into the mud (Brian, our tech’, saw a pond of mud with 6 guys in it – if you got too close to them, they jumped you and rolled you in the mud). In fact, covering each other with shit seemed to be the order of the day and an accepted hazard of being at the festival. I guess I missed that memo. I can’t figure out why you’d spend all that money to roll in shit. It can’t be comfortable. Maybe it’s fun? Either way, I made a good target.

But at night, it’s strange sight to see. I liked watching Daft Punk’s amazing light show – I think it’s difficult to be witty and awesome all at once, which they were. The Killers were a bit bleh, Brian Wilson's set sounded great although it wasn't such a spectacle. The Hours were great - Anthony looking like a Sheffield Springsteen all through his set.

I watched, stood in a slurry of mud, as drunk people who could stagger at best had no chance and were falling like flies. There was an otherworldliness to the place at night as the damp truly settled in; people stood spaced-out staring glassy-eyed at nothing, the Ferris Wheel looked pretty, although it was surrounded by a legion of muddy starey-eyed zomboids. The end is nigh.

Can You Believe IT!!!! I'm a WINNER!!!!

See this email below....I'm so excited.


From Reddot_coca@winning.com


COCA/REDDOT PROMOTIONS
BZ/GP004 ONLINE DRAW
OUR REF:#457UCRP

AWARD WINNING NOTIFICATION

We are pleased to inform you of the result of the just concluded annual final draws held on (30th June, 2007) by Coca-Cola in conjunction with the Reddot Promotion, your email was among the 3 Lucky winners who won £1,000,000:00(One Million British Pounds) each on the THE REDDOT/COCACOLA COMPANY PROMOTION.

However the results were released on (2nd July, 2007) and your email was attached to ticket number (7PWYZ2007) and ballot number (BT: 12052007/20) The online draws was conducted by a random selection of email addresses from an exclusive list of 29,031 E-mail addresses of individuals and corporate bodies picked by an advanced automated random computer search from the internet. However, no tickets were sold but all email addresses were assigned to different ticket numbers for representation and privacy.

The selection process was carried out through random selection in our computerized email selection machine (TOPAZ) from a database of over 250,000 email addresses drawn from all the continents of the world.

This Lottery is approved by the British Gaming Board and also licensed by The International Association of Gaming Regulators (IAGR). This lottery is the 3rd of its kind and we intend to sensitize the public. In other to claim your £1,000,000; 00 prize winning, which has been deposited in a designated courier. However, you will have to fill the form below and send it to the claim manager of THE COCA COLA COMPANY for verification and then you will be directed on how to claim your £1,000,000:00 which has already been deposited in the Bank in your favour.

FIRST NAME:............................
LAST NAME:.............................
AGE:...................................
SEX:...................................
ADDRESS:......................................................
EMAIL:....................................
PHONE:..................................................
OCCUPATION:......................................
COMPANY:.........................................
COUNTRY:..............................
TICKET NUMBER....................................
BALLOT NUMBER...................................
AMOUNT WON......................................

Please you are advised to complete the information above and send it immediately to our claim manager through email for prompt collection of your fund.Contact the claim Manager immediately via:

Name: Mike Davies
E-mail: claimdptm@winning.com
Phone +44 703 1897254
Website: http://en.red-dot.org/newgallery/page.php?id=48&lang=en

You are to keep all lotto information away from the general public especially your ticket number and ballot number. (This is important, as a case of double claims will not be entertained). Staffs of Coca-Cola and the Reddot Design Company are not to partake in this Lottery.

Accept my hearty congratulations once again!

Yours faithfully,

Ms Tessy Grahams
Promotion Manager

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX



See you in Hawaii. I'm rich, goddammit it. Rich!


btw, I'm updating Albert's Myspace blog too on tour - check out the link in the sidebar......

Catalina:

Ever since I started visiting LA I was always mildy curious about Catalina, a dark shadow in the Pacific haze off the coast of LA. Seems most people either come here when they are kids or the never come here at all. Kind of like Lundy off the coast of North Devon, without Tarka the cowing otter.

I like to take photo's of places I've been. And I mean exactly where I've been. Here's the hotel. It's author Zane Grey's old house. All of the rooms are named after novels of his. I know you can't tell which one it is unless I point it out so it's that nice one, at the top of the small foreground hill on the right hand side, just down from that gazebo thing, which is actually a chime tower that didn't chime much. Got it? Good.....



And here's the harbor, including the spot on the far side of the quay by the red roof on the dockside where I took the picture of the hotel from above. This is a small obsession of mine. Once, me and my friend Scooby, flying on fresh, self-picked mushrooms (Fillongley in da' house!), spent the night walking from one side of a playing field to the other to see where we'd been (and to see if the trees were really smaller over the other side of the field as they appeared. They never were). I never really got over that.

For my birthday one year, Scooby bought me a brand new toilet brimming with brussels sprouts. He deserves credit for that. That was an original gift. We had to make our own fun back in those days - before nintendo and PS2. F*** guitar hero - give me a royal doulton full of sprouts any day.



Avalon (above) is a very pretty town. And very quiet. Hardly any cars, mainly very expensive-to-rent Golf Carts, which I liked. Must suck to be a teenager though - and I thought there was bog-all to do in Coventry....

There are semi-submersible tours. I went at night to see the spooky fish. I saw a couple of Lobsters and a bit of flappy seaweed. Nothing even a bit spooky, though. Not any halibut hauntings, shark stabbings or fishy frightenings or anything at all alliterative, late-night and creepy. Not like New York, I thought. Halibut Hauntings? I ask you...come on, Hattie.



The sub looked like a dodgy French club when we first got on (should I say 'Boarded'?) but I simmered down later when they turned the lights out and it got all A Life Aquatic. The best bit was seeing the phosphoresence in the dark....



Here you can see me actually thinking in Ringo. It's the submarine. That and the fact that the only rhythm I have comes from being raised Catholic.




Here's a view inside the hotel room. The room was named after Zane Grey's novel The Vanishing American. It wasn't that nice a room - kind of tourist vacation quality - but I liked it. I liked because it wasn't the usual kind of hotel I stay in on tour (they're nice, usually, very nice, nicer than me, mostly. But they do get a bit samey) and also because of the way the light fell on it, it seemed quintessentially Californian, especially as the sun set behind the hill out back. Gots to love the light in CA.





Mmmmm. Delicious California.

On Catalina they have Buffalo. In fact they're not really Buffalo (Buffalo live in Asia) they are Bison. They were intrroduced to the island by a film crew who were filming a version of Zane Gray's The Vanishing American. (Wheels within wheels, eh?) After filming the film crew left the Bison behind saying they didn't know how to round them up. Now there are up to 250 Bison yomping around the Island. They were cut from the movie. They are big and hard-looking.



The Wrigley Family (they of the Chewing Gum fame) were the first to try to develop the island for tourism (and to institute rules regarding its conservancy after they sold their shares). They have a ranch still in the middle of the Island called The Secret Ranch because you don't see it until you're on top of it. They still keep Arabian Horses there, which are beautiful. I guess they thought the same about me. Espeically this guy. I didn't know whether to be intimidated or flattered - I was both. I mean....crikey! Was Catherine the Great really into all this....? (Way to Go, Catherine. And I really mean: what a way to go...)



I had to sit down for a minute with some people my own age. Turned out nice again.



The road led up to the Airport in The Sky, which is a very small airport only capable of landing DC3's (which are still in use from Long Beach bringing the mail). They built the airport by leveling the tops of two mountains and flattening them enough to lay a runway between the two. This is the view from near the end of the runway.



A cute little airport - kind of like Long Beach or one of those Deco feeling airports (Burbank too, maybe?). I like airports and I like planes.

We were told under fear of God himself not to go out back near the rich people's planes. It was like being on a school trip. I think in America people worry about both litigation and liability too much and also about people doing dumb things like wandering on to a live runway, although you'd have to be pretty stupid to do that, no? I guess that's what irked me about the warning. By implication the guide was calling everyone a f***wit. Maybe I was just being touchy....?

It must be very nice to have a private plane to fly to Avalon of an afternoon. From the ramp you could see Palos Verdes Estates on the mainland through the afternoon haze. California is beautiful. I don't know anyone from PV or anyone who knows anything about it - it seems pretty luxurious to me. But then again, coming from Coventry, so does almost everywhere in SoCal.







And this was the view in front of the airport. Go on, tell me you wouldn't have had a look if you'd seen this. I showed my friend and he asked. "Did you take that picture because it looks like a penis?"
"Yes." I was quite proud of myself. I had a camera full of willy jokes.
"Oh." he said, not quite infected by my ebullience. He gave me a look full of love even though I was a dopey twat. In fact he sounded the same way my mum did when she found out I'd started smoking. I could tell he didn't think it was all that funny. I resolved there and then never to share my todger pictures again. It would be my secret hobby that I couldn't even tell my best friends about.

But then it was time to update my blog and...and....and they're funny, goddammit.



The ferry back to LA leaves in the evening. Even got back in time to feast. Delicious day, no?



I am listening to Keren Ann a lot. Too much. Soon, she'll be calling Gwen Stefani to get advice on how to get me to stop.
But until then....

Solstice Canyon.





A quiet, beautiful, almost private place just off the PCH. It's a lovely mile and a half walk along a path through undergrowth filled with rutting animals to the boulders and waterfalls where I clambered, desperately trying to convince myself that I was somehow still seven years old and not a million and a half years old, like I am.

Look, here's me clambering. You could be forgiven for thinking I'm stalking game from this photo', or at least doing something daring. I'll let you think that. I definitely wasn't trying to navigate my way up the waterfall without slipping on dog pooh or potato chip packets; no, I wasn't, not at all. I was exploring and stalking, like a wild man. Yes.



Note I have my hair partially tied back. I think men (or me, specifically) shouldn't tie their hair back in pony-tails as it looks well, a bit pony. So this is my compromise. It's a partial pony, favoured by French Alpine skiers. Better be a bit of a wanker who can ski than a complete tosser without any style who can't.

Of course, I could get a haircut. And aside from the fact that it would give me cause to visit the lovely Mika one more time this month, it would also mean I'd have no hair. And that, friends, would mean I'd look exactly like a right banker in all my suits.

After Solstice Canyon I ate delicious fried evilness while admiring the pacificness of the pacific. Top trumps. It took two and half hours to get home. Gots to love LA.

I went to see the Watts Towers in Watts. I tried to visit them before in January but I got lost in Watts. Not the best look for me, was that. I drove around in smaller and smaller circles trying to find my way back to the freeway, waving at all the nice young men who were enjoying the afternoon sun by communing on the street corners. It was quaint. I called my friend Rob in London as I was driving around. "I just called for a chat." I said. "I'm er, a bit lost in Watts."
"Are you scared?" he asked from the comfort of his house in south London.
"No." I said. "I just called for a chat."
"From LA to Streatham, on your mobile?"
"Yeah. So?" I kept thinking of Reginald Denny stopping his truck at the intersection of Normandie and Florence just after the Rodney King verdict. I like to class myself as English but on this day I had to admit I felt white. Sad that, isn't it? But maybe not so unusual, only unspoken in polite circles.
"Just asking." he said.


This time I didn't get lost. I liked the Watts Towers. The strangest thing about them for me was that after Simon Rodia spent 33 years building them he just upped and left them behind, I think he gave them to his mate or something. That seemed very sad.






It has been nearly a month since I got back from Vietnam. I was missing lording my inherent wealth over poor people. Can you believe there weren't any poor people here for me to gloat over? Look at this place - shameful. Not one measly beggarwoman or hungry child outside the Watts Towers. How am I supposed to prop-up my insecure personality without paupers smiling up at me as I shower them with small coins? This isn't a proper vacation, that's all I can say.



Afterwards I went to see Gwen Stefani (in concert, not at her house or anything like that. I'm not allowed to do that anymore--by law). I like Gwen Stefani - she's like a larger than life cartoon character, which I think is an essential attribute for a pop star. I wasn't expecting her manly talking voice though, that threw me a bit. I didn't get to see the No Doubt reunion and I missed What Are You Waiting For, which is my favourite, as I'm old and prefer getting into the car and out of the parking lot before seventyleventy thousand people do the same thing. I heard the song as I walked away and it reminded me of Harley, as he rings-out PA systems with that song when he's mixing shows. I was going to tell him but I read on his blog that BA had lost his luggage for days so I thought this: I bet Harley couldn't give a monkey's willy about me hearing that Gwen Stefani song from the parking lot right now, so I didn't tell him. But I was thinking of you, H. Hope you got your bags. And the home address of the guy who manages luggage for BA.

Now the Solstice has passed I enjoyed this cheery thought. From now on we're on a downward slide through to December 22nd. Days are getting shorter, life is pasing us by, winter is rushing headlong at us and soon our feeble aching bones will be shivering under bitter winds and against spiteful, driving rain.

And I'm in a good mood these days, too.