We are the best Sonic Youth covers band you'll ever see.

Jesus H Christ on a jumping castle, my head HURTS!
But we'll get to that later. First things first, let's heap some more venom on the entity that is fast becoming my eternal fucking nemesis. Easyjet.

"Got a gig in London on thursday, huh? Better start walking, shithead. Hahahhahaaa!"

In theory it's simple. You book a flight, you turn up, you get on the plane and go somewhere.
In practise it's like a massive dose of blue-balls. The bitch doesn't put out and you end up back at your flat, tired and angry.
Yes indeed. Once again I hauled my stinking carcass out to BCN International and spent many hours in the cramped and wretched confines of terminal 1C only to have the flight cancelled on me. I'm starting to suspect that Easyjet doesn't actually have ANY AEROPLANES!! They just borrowed a few at the start to create the image of a functioning airline and then dropped them off back at the hire joint.

Anyway, craaaazy old Aaron hopped to it and booked me on a British Airways flight at lunchtime thursday and I flew in James Bond style right into the city of London.

See you on monday, baby. I'm off to play bass in London, innit.

I had only just exited the terminal when Aaron drove up in an old Toyota Landcruiser with the word "minge" spraypainted in huge gold letters across the bonnet. The nest of business geeks and yuppie voyagers waiting for cabs stared at me with a mix of pity and contempt as I clambered in and we took off with a great belch of foul black smoke.

Inside the car there was a hideous odour, like decomposing cat-food, but when I started rolling down my window Aaron jabbed a forefinger into my neck and starting screaming at me.
"Keep you hands to yourself." he yelled. "This is a friends car, and I don't want you fucking it up."

He seemed tense and irrational, so I put my hands in my pockets and tried to doze as he ran red light after red light all the way into Shoreditch (innit).

Cargo. They've got a Banksy out back. Ooooooooooh!!!

When we pulled up outside Cargo he suddenly became listless and depressed so I left him listening to a classic rock station while I loaded our gear into the venue and became aquainted with the various people we had to deal with over the next 6 hours (promoter, front of house engineer, waitresses ect).
Aaron finally came out of the strange funk that had afflicted him and we managed to soundcheck and commence drinking without incident.

The show itself was loud and enjoyable, and the boozy hep-cat crowd (who were really just waiting for headline act "Ruby Suns") coughed up some decent applause.

Aaron comes out of his mental hole long enough to "Rock Out".

I checked some of the Ruby Suns act, which seemed like a big barrel of fun, but I was suffering from post-gig jitters which fucked with my attention span. So I shuffled outside and wandered distractedly around the beer garden, smoking and avoiding eye-contact with people until I was confronted by something short and dark and sexy.

Lord have mercy. I just made a mess in my jeans...again!!!.

Ye Gods! It was Gothenburg promoter/selecta/woman-about-town Sara Shakarchi!!!! (see Civic Chronicle #6.2) I braced myself for more insults and beer-shoes, but her attitude seemed to have softened since we last met and she chatted amiably with me and introduced me to her friend Tilde Evelina, a young Svensk singer/songwriter/foreign policy wonk and Chopin enthusiast.

I relaxed somewhat and basked in the glow of these two lovely and talented ladies, who smoked all my cigarettes, quizzed me about Australian politics and made me look (to casual observers) like a winner.

Sometimes it's nice to live a lie, just for a couple of hours.

The comedic icing on the nights cake came from Aarons beautiful but trouble-prone lawyer fiance, who fell into conversation with the Ruby Suns singer and praised, in all sincerity, "that Paul Simon song off Graceland you guys covered."

Seldom has the elephant in any room been exposed with more blithe and offhand style. Poor bastard.

It gave me a nice idea about how to fuck with Aarons' head. I can just pay some chick to walk up to him after a show and say "You guys are the best Sonic Youth covers band I've ever seen, but you should get a singer".

Next issue I'll go into some detail about where and how I got the screaming, churning, horror-fat hangover that has just soaked up 2 grams of Ibuprofen without blinking. It involves bad Swedes, 400 euro jeans, Turkish hippies and an East End strip club, so you know it's going to be a champagne post.

P.S Thanks and shout-outs to Clemence and Bird On A Wire promotions. Also check out http://livemusic.fm/ who interviewed us before the show and have blogged nice words about our noise.