London

So, we went to London.

I met everyone at Newcastle station at 10:35am. I was fifteen minutes late, which is pretty good going for me. We struggled through the ticket barriers and over the bridge with a trolley full of gear, and lugged it all into the guards van, who looked confused when we offer him money, totally oblivious to fact it's supposed to cost £5 per item.

The guards van itself is pretty exciting, it has a mesh cage type thing and makes me want to play a song to hordes of screaming teenage girls like in A Hard Days Night, but I realise that if I do this I won't get the window seat, so I make a sharp dash to coach D before Joe can claim shotgun.

Southbound on the east coast mainline

Who says the south east has no decent scenery?

The journey is relaxing- I take close up photos of peoples faces, eat cheese and marmite sandwiches and bitch about all the bands in the NME. When we pull into Kings Cross things get a little more stressful- we all bicker about how exactly to get a taxi to the venue, and the gear to person ratio required for effective band transit. "Smile!" I say to Kate, and she grimaces as I take the photo. I take a photo of Joe's face, of James' arm, of a passing taxi. "Fuck off with the camera, Calum!"

I take the tube.

Taxi stress

At Great Portland Street normality is resumed, once I eventually find 229 (the venue). The Heartbreaks are the only other band there, and we have a lovely chat with them, complimenting each others songs on the Fierce Panda ep we trekked down here to launch, and after various hours spent wandering around in the rain, we're back at the venue for soundcheck.

I'm feeling slightly rubbish at this point, what with the holes in my shoes and the fact that some guy is taking up the ENTIRE sofa opposite ours by lying, stretched out, reading a book, despite being fully aware that half of team BM are standing around with nowhere to sit.

However, this feeling of despair is not to last, as Kate hands me a veg samosa, David Wala arrives and sofa guy gets shouted at to "get up and put yer rubber gloves on, those toilets need to be spotless by 8pm!"

Our unsuccessful attempt to reserve a table

The gig was great, and contrary to popular belief, the "London Audience" didn't stand there motionless, barely raising an eyebrow at the end of each song. In fact, everyone seemed quite into us, clapping and cheering and letting me get away with the most banal banter known to man. Tom Robinson came down to see the set, as well as Chris Trew (Newcastle promoter), various friends of various band members, and some distant relation of Joe's, who rather amusingly mistook me for Josef for a good five minutes. It was also our first gig using DSC's Hammond organ which proved to be just as much of a success as the gig itself.

The Heartbreaks were up next, and boy, were they great! I'm going to do another blog post about them sometime soon, so I won't say all that much here, only that they sounded like Elvis Costello and The Smiths, held at gunpoint by Phil Spector.

The Crooks, The Hoodlums and The Molotovs were also excellent, but we were all pretty tired by this point and I couldn't appreciate them as much as I'd have liked to. Being the fools we are (more on that later) we packed the gear away in a little back room, and left 229 for bed (or rather, a sleeping bag on the floor of some student halls, thanks to the charming Chris).

Portacamel- Kate at the Saatchi

The next day was great fun- Sister Ray, smoothies, Rough Trade (who had sold out of the 'Zip It Up' ep, and where we all were interviewed for a Italian documentary about vinyl), a calzone for lunch, then over to the west part of the city to meet some people at a music publishing company, and finally to the Saatchi for an hour or so.

Meeting back at Kings Cross, Joe delivered some awful news- James' bass guitar has been stolen. Obviously we were all pretty pissed off about this, cause 229 was supposedly locked up all night, and why anyone had stolen a bass and left Joe's guitar was a mystery to all of us. But there was nothing we could do except promise to raise the funds for a new guitar as soon as we possibly could. It meant we left on a bit of a downer, though.

I was pretty upset on the train ride home that the only vegetarian 'winter warmer' meal they had at the cafe/bar was some thing with flatbread and mushrooms, so I bought about five chocolate muffins instead. The train didn't get in till 00:30, and then there was a struggle with amplifiers and organs, a taxi home and a nice warm bed, until my early morning 'New Deal for Musicians' meeting the next day. But my New Deal advisor seemed pretty impressed, at least.