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My little tour (by Econoline) - part 2 So two days off, but still no van. So Antonio is consigned to bad TV and playing with his organ on his own (had to get an organ gag in somewhere!). Here's what we did next Friday 9th Leicester Lamplighters A day off work is a marvellous thing, even when you like work there's something nice about waking up at 10 'o' clock listening to a bit of the test match on radio 4 long wave having some cheese on toast and milling about. So that's pretty much what I did before I popped out to see Richard Moonkat, and go and drop some stuff off to be fixed, oh and leave just enough time FOR MY HOUSE TO BE BLOODY BURGLED! And not just by a normal burglar but by one with a little dog, charming. I didn't even notice we'd been burgled (because the guy hadn't been in my room or the front room or the room with all of ec's gear in). It was only the guy over the road who noticed this one man and his dog theft duo leaving our house and that our front ground floor window was open. Although he could have come and told me when I got back at 2.30 (10 minutes after he noticed this guy leave) instead of at 4.30 when I was about to leave for Leicester. Therefore ensuring the due to the police's lightning response (they eventually arrived at 8.30, luckily my flat mate arrived at 6.15) ec' was not exactly on time to the show. We made it though with seconds to spare. We managed to avoid getting kicked in by the severe 80's metal posse (listening to Aerosmith, the Crue, and Alice Cooper's "poison" downstairs) and step over the couple dry humping in the corridor to play a reasonably tight set to the 11 people who had hung around on the off chance we might make it through the torrential rain. This did include Tim Ann Arbor (who sounded great as we were parking the car!) and Phill and Kate (the bassist of Reynolds and recorder of our album and his dedicated Art teaching girlfriend) so prop's to them for coming from Northampton. It's always nice to see a familiar face, especially one that applauds a segue, and helps load the gear out. We get home, after a break for a very nice "proper Cornish" pastie (superior to Ginsters I have to say), at around 3 am wake up my rather peeved flat mate - whose stuff had been robbed. And so to bed. Saturday 10th Norwich Kafe Da Another arse aching 4 and half hour drive through driving rain, blinding sun and 45 minute standstill traffic jams to get to scenic Norwich. A lovely little town, but they seem to have not heard of the invention of the car and it's christingly impossible to drive into the middle of the place without using a pony and trap. After driving round for about a year we finally managed to find somewhere to park (admittedly illegally on a pedestrian area) and went and found Charlie Oil Red O (who was putting on the show). So he came and helpfully directed me up several cobbled lanes, roads that looked like someone's drives and appeared to be going away from the venue, while the rest of ec' manfully went and got pissed in an Italian restaurant. Thanks you selfish bastards I'll just load all the gear find somewhere to park, and then hang out in the venue ON MY OWN for an hour and a half. Yeah cheers. Although thankfully the beautiful Lisa from Bearsuit was on hand to take me to an equally bizarre dead end lane/bridge/park type semi road that you could at least fit your car on. In fact I have to mention that walking through scenic Norwich with an extremely stylish young lady made me feel like the filthy unshaven, ripped jeans and obscene t shirt wearing grebo loser I so obviously was, from now the iron is out in my house and the beard is off! Sennen opened with their Red House Painters style noise, Lisa and I replayed our roles as judges at UEA's battle of the bands last February, and gave them poor marks for stage presence, but they did have a lot of gyp and had to go offstage 'cos one of the THREE guitarists broke some strings. Anyway no sign of my band, so I sacked them all but reinstated them as we actually kicked ass when they finally showed up having polished off two bottles of white wine the greedy pigs. We were all drunk and screwed up everything but we looked like we meant it and the place was rammed with the punkers we played to when we opened for The Dismemberment plan last year, and Norwich's indie brigade, which interestingly, features an unnaturally large number of rather attractive people OF BOTH SEXES. Which as any regular indie rocker knows is so rare as to be downright unnerving. This prompted many comments of the nature of "hubba, hubba", "let's move to Norwich" etc. Although these were replaced later in the evening with "I'm going to be sick", "someone's' pinched my ass" and "no I really am going to be sick". Wine before beer, feeling queer. Or in my case beer and tequila and no dinner, because SOMEONE had to stay and make sure nothing got thieved, feeling fucking mental. Good job I couldn't find the car. Cat On Form were as fiery as usual although spilling water on the PA is, it turns out, a bad thing, and makes it break… a shame, it's worth noting that Ady "I live to drive" Foley drove from Glasgow to Norwich that morning and Norwich to Brighton that night after the show. A true hero, buy your Cat on form singles from him at Vacuous Pop. For the Econoline crew there was allegedly much dancing to songs of the calibre of "blame it on the boogie" but Piers swears he wasn't drunk enough to do "the worm", although he may have instigated a round of "the box". All I remember is a fire alarm and sleeping on a chair. Still that's rock and roll for you. A fitting end to our mini tour, a mini bacchanal. 6 hours of sleep and 12 hours of hangover later I was back in London watching The Simpson's with my best girl. The beat undoubtedly went on someplace, but I went to bed. We will be doing this all again, but more so, when our album "Music Is Stupid" comes out on October 14th. That tour "touring is stupid" is already slated to hit, Brighton, Tunbridge Wells, Manchester, Bath, London and hopefully Scotland, Wales and somewhere down in the south west. May God have mercy on our mortal souls. Econoline part 1