Well, we're 11 shows into our Autumnal Assault on Europa and I've managed to complete and post only 2 episodes of what will surely become the most terrifying documentation of human endeavour yet seen on the interwebernet, 30 Nights Of Bushweek!

Honestly, this is going to be impossible. So with a heavy heart I have to inform Ramy, Rebecca and the 6 other people who read this blog that I'm going to have to wait until the dinged tour is over and then compile my notes and snaps and get blogging. 

So it'll be a couple of weeks until you can read more about the hilarious exploits of The Baaron Von Nibbles and his elderly sidekick. In the meantime, remember that breakfast is the most important meal of the day...and that I love you all like my own children.

Last tour we had the dubious luxury of much downtime, which allowed me to blog the living snot out of every shameful, degrading episode along the way. But this tour is a much tighter, more muscular beast with not much time for fucking around with vanity projects.

Never-the-less, I still intend to post for every gig, and give you the deets on every time Baaron Von Nibbles loses his shit.

I might just run a bit behind, yeah? We're talking weeks here.

Anyway, I'll keep this one brief. It's not that our journey from London to Eindhoven was uneventful, or that the gig didn't involve many ugly confrontations and minor injuries, but I'm supposed to be on-stage for soundcheck in 10 minutes and the Baaron will whip me like a stepchild if I dally.

So here's a few happy snaps for you to ponder, with explanatory captioning. Let your foul imaginations fill in the yawning blanks.

Here is a happy image. It's me with the two university chicklettes we picked up on the road to Dover. They were participating in a UNICEF sponsored "Charity Hitch-hiking" competition and were desperate for us to smuggle them out of England. The Baaron and I felt that it was grossly irresponsible for an organisation like UNICEF to condone hitchhiking, so on the other side of the channel we raped, tortured and killed them, and then salted down slices of their flesh for…….

Sandwich meat! Mmmmmm....undergraduate goodness.

We spent the channel crossing drinking rum cocktails, snorting lines of paracetamol in the dunnies and playing "Buckhunter". Predictably the Baaron stomped my arse. I just don't have the killer instinct, and plus my eyes are too squinty for sharpshootery.

The venue was like a live-music shopping mall complex, with it's own staff cafeteria, many giant dressing rooms equipped with all manner of comforts, and two main band-rooms (one 1200 capacity and one 400). When it came time to play, I became hopelessly lost on the way down from our dressing room on the fifth floor and ended up in a boiler-room underneath the main stage. I had to call the Baaron be rescued by the stage manager because the boiler room door locked behind me. Just like the Tap. No shit.

This is the stage we played, seen here pre-us-being-awesome-on-it, and obviously pre heaps-of-Dutch-hipsters-going-bazonkers-over-our-shit.

We were playing on a bill with 65 Days Of Static, a successful British crescendo-rock outfit. No points for guessing who headlined.

The 65 DOS guys seemed like righteous bros' to begin with, but scuffles and cursing broke out between us when they refused to share their fruit-loaf. The Baaron gave their tour manager a savage wedgie, which actually drew crack-blood, but I just copped a stray elbow in the nose and had to be carried back inside crying.

In summary, it was a goode gigge. We kicked some ass, made some awful noises, had a short but brutal pillow fight back at the hotel and woke early next day ready to do it all again. Aaahhh, the sweet, sweet eccentricities of life in a travelling' band.

Call the state militia!

*BUSHWEEK - Australian colloquialism. An unreasonable demand or behavior.

"Don't eat all the fuckin' Twisties, Nathan, ya cunt. Whadaya think this is, bushweek?"

I feel inferior to The Baaron in many ways, not least in the fields of songwriting and self defence. But what really plays on my inner-most fears is the size of our pedal boards.

  

The Baaron. Modest in size, but full of home-made gizmatronics and battle-hardened stalwarts.

 

Me. Small, and featuring not one but three Behringer pedals, the cheapest, nastiest effects on the planet. And one of them isn't even mine.

Christ, this is heading in the wrong direction. Better just stick to the facts.

The feelings of power and musical authority that we bathed in during our time at Abbey Road began to evaporate very quickly when we got down to the brass tacks of actually playing music again. Lugging gear up stairs is a great way to combat delusions of "celebrity" and "arrival". By the time we were set up on stage at the Luminaire our mortality had reasserted itself. Back to the whipped-dog, penny-pinching reality of a small-venue tour.

The Baaron handled the landing of his ego with much more grace than me, because when the chips are down I am thrice the wanker he will ever be.

But the Baaron has other talents, hair-trigger violent rage being cheif among them. Frustrated by an intermitant buzz in his monitor wedge, he suddenly lifted his right leg, his knee almost touching his chin, and brought his boot-heel down with full force.

The speaker-grill caved in like wet cardboard, but miraculously pulled up just short of the cone, so no major damage was done. Evil Andy Inglis (pronounced Ingles) let out a blood-curdling shreik and had to be restrained by his bar-staff from beating The Baaron bloody with his silver tipped cane.

But you know what? We never heard that buzz again. Full marks, Von Nibbles.

 

The Baaron and The Box. A fairytale constantly in the making.

 

Evil Andy explains the proper procedure for resolving technical issues to a visably non-plussed Baaron.

But what would a gig-night be without this kind of barely avoided blood-letting? Lame, my freinds, lame. I want no part of that kind of neutered experience, and neither do my colleagues. 

Anyway, given that this was the first night of the tour, and given the threadbare rehearsal shedule that preceeded it, we managed to not-suck pretty convincingly.

One day I'll be able to fret my high E without looking.

Baaron Von Nibbles gets intense.

But tonight belonged to headline act "The Chap", who prog-popped the living bejeesus out of the healthy crowd, who responded by going just about as bazonkers as any London crowd could ever be expected to go. We managed to sell a t-shirt to a drunk girl, though. Top notch.

Hanging at the merch stand. The Baaron shows his contempt for social norms while his lawyer fiance tries to play "Flight of the bumble-bee" into my eye, on a beer bottle.

In summary...

PRO

- The Luminaire is awesome

- Decent crowd

- Minimal violence

- One guy told me we were the loudest thing he'd heard all week.

CON

- The Chap stomped us.

- Aaron lost his favorite jacket

- A guy from the opening act was sent to hospital in an ambulance for mysterious, possibly drug/crime related reasons

Fair enough. Next episode we will get all Dutch on your ass, as we drive to Eindhoven to support 65 Days Of Static and pick up some Delft pottery.

*BUSHWEEK - Australian colloquialism. An unreasonable demand or behavior.

"Get ya fuckin feet off the fuckin couch, Nathan. Whadaya think this is, ya cunt, bushweek?"

Imagine, dear reader, a thrill of expectancy, a call of destiny, an awesome sense of genetic superiority and God-given entitlement, the like of which has not been seen since Hitler's Thousand Year Reich was aborted in the womb.

You walk straight past all those mongoloid tourists and pathetic pop bands taking photos of themselves on the famous crosswalk, straight through the gate past the mind-numbingly puerile graffiti, up the stairs and right through the front doors of.....

Abbey....
Motherfucking...
Road....
Studios.

Holy fucking shit. Pinch me, Grandma.

I paused before entering the building and stood on the top step smoking a cigarette to rub it in, while curious geeks lined up along the fence and stared at me, trying to figure out if I was Sting's ugly cousin, or something.

Every year, thousands of drooling retards from all-over the world are seized by a compelling desire to be photographed crossing this storied "zebra". Not us, Boss. We was here on BIDNESS!

Despite being old and bald and so broke that I had to breakfast on The Baarons' discarded toast crusts, I felt more powerful than four Bowies, two Enos and a Slash. I chatted with the chirpy receptionist and was escorted up the stairs to Room 7 for our mastering session with the highly-skilled yet amiable Alex Wharton.

Alex and the legendary EMI manufactured TG console, which made our new single sound exactly like "Penny Lane".

Alex proved to be a total bro and a wizardly engineer, but never-the-less he moaned and screwed up his face constantly, whining that our track was too long, too loud and had too much low frequency action to be cut onto a 7". Eventually Aaron had to slap his face a few times, which seemed to help, but he remained pessimistic about his ability to satisfy our demands.

Alex explains that the £80,000 cutting-needle on the mastering lathe might break if he makes the track any louder, but The Baaron will have none of it. "No guts, no glory." says The Baaron, as Evil Andy Inglis provides glare-support from the couch.

The DMM lathe, cutting our masterpiece into a copper plate.

Stacks of failed copper plate masters on the floor beside the DMM lathe. It ended up taking 46 attempts and nearly 8 hours to get the cut. Alex was weeping hysterically after about the 18th, but he soldiered on and finished the job, like a true professional.

While the B-Side was being tweaked for the lathe I ducked out to find a toilet. The photographs of Kate Bush on the walls and all the rare/vintage gear-candy had given me a painfull erection, so I was keen to "pop the top off one" so I could concentrate on the process.
But turning a corner I walked straight into a huge, dark-suited man with an earpiece and the face of a torturer. He stopped me with a flat hand to the chest which forced all the air out of my puny lungs and almost knocked me to the ground.

"Sorry mate", he gurgled "you're going the wrong way."

Behind him a door opened and another freakishly enormous thug stuck his massive head out and fixed me with an icy, "I break legs for cash, but I'll break yours for FUN!" type stare. He muttered something into his wrist microphone and I instantly knew that I was about to be stomped into jelly and thrown into a dumpster, by professionals, for reasons I might never understand.

So I quickly stepped back a pace and asked the first monster where I could find a toilet. He rolled his eyes very slightly and then took me by the shoulders, turned my whole body around with a quick, powerfull jerk and pushed me off the way I came.

Later on Alex revealed that I had strayed too close to Studio 3, where Lady Gaga was currently holed up, and that I was lucky to have escaped unhurt. Apparently her security team had already severely beaten one of the junior in-house engineers who tried to sneak in for a look.

I was this close. I could fucking smell the fame, leaking out of the air-con ducts. It was kind of cinnamony.

Anyhoo, when I gotsed back (after washing my pee-stained underpants in a sink), Andy had gone down to the cafeteria and Aaron was in the throes of a nauseatingly girlish giggle-fit, bouncing up and down on the couch and snorting like a truffle-pig. I found this confusing, since his nitrous-oxide canister was back in the car, under the drivers seat.

The source of his mirth was quickly revealed. On orders from The Baaron, Alex was busy engraving "Ben sux" in tiny letters on the master plate. I didn't dare stop him, for fear that he'd slip and scratch the audio, so now 500 vinyl nerds will learn that, yes indeed, I "sux".
I mean, assuming the fucking things sell, that is.

Alex uses an engraving tool to slander me on disc.

There's the B and the E. Damn that naughty Baaron. 

Andy returned from the cafeteria with a can of Coca Cola for me and, to The Baarons' joy and amazement, a napkin signed by Lady Gagas' professional dog-walker (The Baaron is a celebrity dog-walking enthusiast and has a large collection of celebrity dog-walking memorabilia).
Aaron wouldn't let me look at the scrawl on the napkin, and as I tried to twist his arm behind his back I tripped over a box of Isobel Campbell master-tapes and spilled Coke all-over the couch and our newly-boxed-up master-plate.

They say it's traditional to do some coke off the boxed master after cutting a disc. This is not what they mean.

Andy instantly gripped me by the throat and started groping around for something to stab me with, but The Baaron, swift as a cobra, put a sleeper hold on him and Andys' fingers slowly relaxed their crushing hold on my windpipe.

"The Tour starts tonight, Andy. We need this fuck-head alive." The Baaron explained.

So Inglis left the room and went in search of something else to hurt and I busied myself trying to get some water onto the couch before it stained permanently.

Cold water and cloth. Get fizzy off couch.

With our new single engraved in copper and covered in fizzy, Alex then gave us a quick tour of those parts of the building that weren't under the control of Gagas' thug patrol.

Good enough for us. We got to wander around both studio one and two, and even got a look at the studio one control room (although we weren't allowed to take snaps). I made sticky in pants. Twice.

Studio 2. Where the Beatles hung tough while Yoko slept in a bed in the corner.

Studio 1. Amongst many other things, this studio was used to record the soundtracks for the Lord Of The Rings, Star Wars and other wacky underground cult movies.

So, with our soon-to-be-number-one-smash done and dusted, we bid farewell to the rarefied airs of Abbey Road Studios and made our way to The Luminaire, to sound-check gig number one of the Civil Civic European Autumnal Assault!!! Banzai!!!

But that's another story, innit.