Life on the road.

Well, last night's rehearsal went pretty well, and we're all looking forward to the first gig tonight. John the new bassist seems to know what he's doing, and the rest of us have actually remembered how to play our songs. Most of them, at any rate. Looks like it won't be an utter shambles. That'll be nice.

That's all for now. More updates as we go.

Far too bloody long.

Back in 1998, Esthero released one of the most beautiful albums I own: Breath From Another. It's pretty much the only Canadian Latin hip-hop jazz recording on Earth, and it's fantastic: a great selection of thumping beats and odd loops, lush sweeping string orchestras, and Esthero's perfect use of her perfect singing voice. Seven years on, and I'm still listening to it regularly.

And now there's a new album, with the exceedingly dodgy and ill-boding title of Wikked Lil Grrrls. Of course I shall buy it, but seven years? Seven bloody years for a second album? It'd better be good.

Gratitude.

As every living organism now knows, Daniel Craig is the new James Bond. What interests me is that, at his first press conference, he told the world that his favourite Bond film is Goldfinger.

"Hi, Daniel. We'd like to offer you one of the best acting jobs in Hollywood, making you one of the most famous men on Earth and quite insanely rich. We picked you because you're the best. You're great. You'll be just perfect as 007."

"Thanks very much. It's an honour. You guys don't match up to your predecessors, by the way. The quality of your work has been going downhill for the last forty years, frankly, and I'll say as much in public. Cheers."

A question.

If anyone's reading this who has driven from Aberdeen to Glasgow, could you tell me roughly how long it takes, please? I'm guessing about three weeks.

Thank you.

An observation.

Oddly enough, the only track on Coldplay's new album which doesn't sound like either James or U2 is the only one on which Brian Eno makes an appearance. It sounds like Snow Patrol.

Insanity and stuff.

The French are renowned for their post-modern philosophical performance art, but this, even by their standards, is just brilliant:

A Frenchman born under the sign of Aries who sued a newspaper for giving him an unfavorable horoscope was told he was wasting the court's time and ordered to pay 350 euros in legal fees.

Fined? There's no justice. They should have given him the Turner Prize.

He was actually rather subtle:

The man complained about a prediction earlier this year that Arians would "rediscover the emotions of adolescence especially in the field of love, where the desire to have fun will overtake the need to build something longer-lasting."

He told the court that he was a "serious father" and risked being typecast by employers as a "skirt-chaser" and therefore unreliable.

So his complaint wasn't even that the prediction failed to come true; rather, he was concerned that it would lead people who believe horoscopes to believe that he would cheat on his family. In effect, he was trying to sue the paper for libel. The more I think about this one, the more convinced I am that this man is some kind of genius. And that he should have won his case.

Meanwhile, in those crazy Netherlands, some TV producers are experimenting to see how many people they can offend and whether they can break the law on air:

The live Spuiten & Slikken show — which can be translated either as Inject & Swallow or Ejaculate & Swallow — starts on October 10 on the Dutch youth channel BNN, which last upset viewer sensibilities with a programme entitled This Is How You Screw.

"We're not setting out to shock, but to inform," said a show producer, Sjoerd van den Broek.

Yeah, I can tell from your choice of title.

(By the way, can I just say how fascinating it is that the Dutch use the same word for "ejaculate" and "inject". Wouldn't "shoot up" be a good translation?)

"The idea is to treat these subjects like a piece of theatre, to review them, if you like. There's been endless idle chat about these matters, but never an adult critique."

Main presenter Filemon Wesselink (26) is billed to go on a pub crawl, take heroin in the form of a pill, and try LSD at home on the sofa under the watchful eye of his mother. He will also retire into a locked room and try to establish whether oral sex is better from a man or a woman.

No mention of whether his mother will also be supervising the blowjobs.

Some Viennese artists have knitted a sculpture of a 200-foot-long pink bunny-rabbit that has fallen to its death from the sky and landed on an Italian mountain. And they've explained themselves using poetry:

The things one finds wandering in a landscape: familiar things and utterly unknown, like a flower one has never seen before, or, as Columbus discovered, an inexplicable continent;
and then, behind a hill, as if knitted by giant grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy.

Yes, this is their America.

And, finally, a master criminal is stealing milk off doorsteps in Berkshire and leaving notes:

Do you like dry cereal? Hope so because we've drunk your milk.

Yours Sincerely,
Your Neighbourhood Milk Thief

 

A good read.

That Mrs Solent has got all prolific lately, and she's on fine form too, which is good news, what with her being the Greatest Blogger In The Universe. I particularly like this post:

A lot of these people are very bad-tempered since the panda-lovers stole their initials, and have taken to using cosmetics in an immoderate manner. I do not know what the EU was thinking of, sending wrestlers round Europe to take people's blood.

Pure class.

And another.

Those few of you feigning interest in my upcoming musical goings-on will be thrilled — thrilled, I say — to hear that a fifth and final date has been added to the Squander Pilots Tour of Scotland: St Andrews Students' Union on the 19th of October. We're going to be playing in the Beer Bar, a place very much like Glasgow's 13th Note, only with higher ceilings. I haven't been there in nine years. Ah, memories. It was in the Beer Bar that I first kissed... ahem. Married now.

As perviously mentioned, Mr John Clarke, bassist with Kasino, will be playing bass with us for the duration of this tour. I initially mistyped "previously" in that last sentence, but the result kind of suits John, so I'm leaving it. John is funny, bald, wears loud shirts, and is a close personal friend of Franz Ferdinand. The band, not the dead Spaniard. The Glasgow music scene's just so insular. We all know each other. And a lot of us hate each other. But let's not start that rant. Water under the bridge now. Mmm.

Anyway, so here's the full run-down:

Wednesday 19th October:
    Students' Union, St Andrews.
This, apparently, is going to be a "jam session" with a proper band stuck on the end. It's very flattering to be called a "proper band". Anyway, you can probably only get in if you're a student at a Scottish university. We'll be on dead late, after the non-proper bands have finished their youthful jamming, so, by the time we're up, Alun should contain an entire cauldron of tea. If that ain't rock'n'roll, I don't know what is. Come to think of it, that's probably true.

Thursday 20th October:
    The 13th Note, Glasgow.
Ah, here again. We love this place, with its sticky floor, its gloomy darkness, its rickety old mended-with-tape stuff, and its general filthiness. Course, I've not been there in nearly two years, so, for all I know, they've painted everything white and hung some tapestries. But probably not. Sir Brendan O'Hare, undisputed Friendliest Musician in Scotland, will be on engineering duties. And Mr Ronnie Brown, former Squander Pilots bass-player, former Nibushi Shang Hong bass-player, and current player of bass with The Digerati, will be singing with us on our non-hit but critically acclaimed single Given. It'll be like a supergroup, but without the drum solos.

Saturday 22nd October:
    Caledonian Backpackers, Edinburgh.
What a silly name for a venue. Will there be any actual backpackers there? I don't know. What there will be is lots of electronicish music: Asa, Replica, some DJs, and us. The gig's being organised by Baby Tiger, an organisation founded and run by a man whom I met when his first band, Desert Rose, who were awful, played a gig with my first band, Psychic Disaster, who were even more awful, at the Beer Bar in St Andrews Union. Coincidence or dream?

Sunday 23rd October:
    The Tunnels, Aberdeen.
The furthest North we'll ever have played. Luckily, John's a highlander, so he'll be able to translate the lingo for us. But will they use the same money as us? Will they have telephones? Will they worship the same god?

Then a brief break while I DJ at my sister-in-law's wedding. Then...

Friday 4th November:
    Monty's, Dunfermline.
Our last gig this year is one of the new live shows from Is This Music?, the magazine dedicated to putting Dunfermline back on the pop-music map. An honourable vocation, I think we can all agree. Also playing will be Genaro.

And then I'll sleep till Christmas. Oh, hang on; no: I'll go back to work and sit in a dazed stupor, occasionally falling asleep at my desk and getting keyboard face.

Here are some posters. They're not that interesting.

This is going to be so much fun. And a massive pain in the arse, too, no doubt. But so much fun.

A strange sensation.

Last night, something very rare occurred: I got enough sleep.

God, but I feel weird.

In other news, I am now Google's top result for "strangle a manatee in the nude".

Fixing things which ain't broke.

What a frustrating experience. All I want to do is to put some vegetables in a bag, prior to taking them to the checkout and buying them. This used to be easy: tear off cellophane bag from convenient roll, put objects in bag. However, Sainsbury's, in their finite wisdom — that's the same wisdom that has led them to keep breakfast cereals in the freezer section — have joined Tesco in the Inconvenience Revolution and replaced the old rolls of bags with innovative new Pinch & Pull technology, sometimes known as Pinch & Pinch & Pinch & Pinch & Pinch & Poke & Pinch & Scratch & Tear & Shake & Pull & Pinch & Thump & Pinch & Swear & Scrabble & Pinch & Pinch & Screech & Give Up & Just Don't Bloody Buy Anything, Then. Why? Why, why, why, why, why? It's a bloody trademark, which means that someone has invented it and is making money out of licensing it, which means that a supermarket has made the decision to spend more money on something that gives them no advantage whatsoever and makes shopping more annoying for their customers. Other supermarkets, seeing this, have decided to follow suit. Just what the fuck is going on?

And don't get me started on bathplugs. "Look! It's so smooth and flush and neat and smooth and it lifts up magically when you pull this lever and there's no unsightly chain!" Yes, but it doesn't let the bloody water out of the bloody bath, does it? Aaaaargh!

It should not take this long to buy carrots.