half past america

prologue


hi all. if yr not from america or canada, then there's not much point reading this. srs, its just a big lunp of text that will do nothing for you. having said that, writing such a warning is probably going to make you read it more out of curiosity. so, read it, and then trust us next time k?


if yr from canada, then you should read this and substitute mentions of america for canada wherever possible. sorry, yr in this too but im just trying to save on text. i realise this might be a massive cultural faux-pas, but whenever we've thought of touring america, canadas always been part of that. yr like the cherry on our mental tourmap cake.


sweet?
essay tiem nao.


k right, easily thee most frustrating message we've received in the last few months, about 100 times, over every Digital Social Interaction Media we have, goes like this:

Hi! i love your band! you should come to [insert name of american city/town/state] and play a show!


we're fucking tearing our hairs out.

a good 80% of the music we listen to comes from america. half our mailing lists are american. most of our facebook interactions (SRS BZNZ) are with americansss. we made 2 albums there, played some of our most fun ever shows there (hi rob!) and even once waited in a courtyard in texas for tim kinsella cos he told us he'd be right back, and we've hung out outside the holdsteadys rehearsal room just long enough to look suspicious. also, slightly obscure canada reference, i used to have a job handing out pamphlets in a road called albert street. ANYWAYS, we want to go tour there so bad we've resorted to flippantly replying, sure, buy us plane tickets and we're there. srsly, we're asking kids we've never met to buy us airfare, in the vain hope that one'll be super rich and take us up.

PLEASE AMERICA, WE HATE THE BEATLES AND KASABIAN AND ELLIE GOULDING. WE WANT TO PLAY THE STAGES THAT THE PIXIES AND THE PLAN GREW UP ON AND WE'RE STUCK IN THE COUNTRY OF THE FUCKING COURTEENERS BEING DECLARED THE FUTURE. seriously, the day mark linkous died, the nme, our countries most famous music rag and funded by a hair gel company, gave an award to paul weller.

so, let this post be the end of the frustration period and the start of Actual Positive Action. we are like, TOTALLY coming to america. somehow.

we toured ireland this year, and, it was kinda awful. lovely people,like, but no promotion, no excitement, we've never felt so much like we were being processed thru the system. financially and morally, it was a major fail. and then we went to south africa and played thee most perfect fun tour ever, and it completely hammered home the value of punk ethics we'd kinda forgotten about, what with agents and cone-tracts and barfly tours.

sorry, im rambling, but there is a point. we want to build some kind of giant box of information
so we can plan a tour that will be perfect and amazing and not land us homeless in some lonely state, playing to a dozen random people who possibly have never heard of pavement, and make us wish we'd spent the airfare on water bills or rent or something.

and this is where you come in, mr/ms "hi come play my town plz". in a probably unprecedented level of demographic interaction, we'd like to hear from all of you lovely eager people. please write to us. tell us where you live, what venues you go to, what the shows are like, what local bands you think we'd fit a bill with, etc etcy... be as detailed or as vague as you like, we'll read everything and reply to everyone. if you know any local promotors/labels/distros, general Good People to know For This Sort of Thing, then send us their details too. plz nothing like YOU SHOULD TOUR WITH LC!!!! stuff, cos, although its true and just, we have as little say in that as you do and we want to concentrate on practical, achieveable stuff like persauding sam zurich to let us crash his house

when we have this big sack of mail then we can sit down with a big map and start pinning little flags in. although we'll more likely use Teh Internetzz, which worries me slightly cos i dont know how you do that neat split window thing on windows 7, and that'd probably be pretty handy.

but yeh, hopfully this right here is the start of something superawesome. involving like, promo tshirts and free stickers at last and superawesome guerilla ad campaigns where we get you to graffitti ghosts and the words "the english are coming" in public places in return for a goody bag and a toasting. too far?

anyways, it starts like this.

please write to:

johnnyforeigner@hotmail.co.uk

and put team america/SRS BZNZ as the subject header so we dont lose it amongst offers for cheap nikes or late notices from our studio.

tldr?

if you want us to come and play in yr town in america or canada, please write us stuff about yr scene or venues or whatever and send it to the above email. then we'll collate all this stuff into a big paper maiche house and dance about in it. awesomes.

thanks for yr time, and, with a bit of luck, see you soon..