i don't know whats worse, my enunciation or my handwriting, but anyway, words for the two new songs on the every cloakroom ever e.p. click on them and they grow bigger, like rubbish tamagotchis.
for the chains:
things i would have swapped for heart shaped sunglasses, 2001 - 06:
feel free to sing along at home to yrself or make weird acoustic versions to put on the internet for our amusement. also, i still actually would actually like some heart shaped sunglasses, actually. kthxby!
we didnt mention it at the time, but, when we landed in cape town and all our clothes and instruments didn't, we declared war on KLM, our airline. losing our bags is kinda unfortunate but a risk you generally get used to, being treated so impersonally over an £1800 arrangement isnt. ANYWAY, the morning after our stellenbosch show the 5 of us drove to the airport to fly to joberg, and we had the best flight ever.
kulula are so laid back and friendly, it was the most alien ive felt in a foreign country for ages. our gear was loaded on the plane with no hint of excess charges or damage warnings, the inflight trolley sold real food at normal prices, and the pilot used the intercom to talk to the passengers like he was their dad taking them out for a joyride. i had a row of seats to myself so i was mostly asleep, but i did hear "if you get bored you could read the safety instructions. thats serious buisness" "i'm sorry we didnt pack enough meat sandwiches" and "now flying over joburg, i'm locking the doors" amazing. I'm going to ask them for sponsorship.
anyway, we landed and had to wait for ben to fetch the spare keys to his car on accout of having left the actual keys in a cubbyhole as a result of smoking too much because of us smoking so much. It was fine tho, we did what all touring bands do when stuck and watched southpark, stopping only when our laptop and us nearly got run over by some dude stealing a mercedes and driving up the kerb leaving us and a load of police with guns drawn looking angry. we excused ourselves and took a sleep deprived trip to the glam world of SHOWBIZ TELLY. MK is like MTV for south africa, srs bznz, we rehearsed each song 3 times, did mock interviews and walkons, did makeup, made small talk with underwear-deprived presenter lady, and then went on in a sleep deprived hustle like presidents being taken to the last helicopter out of the blast radius. it was kinda awkward, like an instore only with super bright lights. my guitar broke for a bit, to make up for it, i did bunny ears behind the presenter. swings and roundabounts innit.
massive love for teh kidss what came down to watch us, especially him with the carpool plan and her with the awesome quality homemade tshirt
we did another thing called my mk celeb, in which we pick the top ten music videos, like, EVER. we were super excited till we read the list, so we just picked the bands we'd heard of. watch it, if you like hearing us talk about things we know very little..
and then we went back to bens amazing big house and ate nandos and collapsed asleep on sofas. actually i made a painstakingly perfect bed out of a pile of blankets and pillows and it was ace..
you may notice a massive continuity gap here, i wont pretend. safrica burned us out so much, i needed a few weeks to sit rocking in a chair to recover. but yeh, heres some more stuff that happened:
we played a show at klein libertas in stellenbosch. klein libertas is an amaaaazing venue, it started off as a theatre and expanded for bands and its run by this awesome family who also invented ramfest. we choose the indoor stage cos we're goths, but between bands everyone went outside and drank on the grass, it was total festival atmosphere.
we found out, one of the worst things to do before soundcheck is go to a wine tasting. conversely, one of the best things to do after driving around in the sun and loading gear into a venue is go to a wine tasting. weird huh? anyway, we sat at that bar up there whilst a lovely old lady patiently explained the history and delicate flavour of each bottle whilst pouring us a glass. i dont really remember anything past the colours. and the last one tasted of stale battleships and was magnificent.
we'd ride like this all the time if we could..
anyways, we came back and did soundchecks and interviews and hung out talking to peeps outside, it was well lovely. THIS awesome band played, we sobered up, which is a lie, and did a show. here's some ominous pictures our friend thomas took for us:
it was one of those gigs where everything breaks but its still fun. we allow ourselves 1 per tour. thanks to rudi for playing guitar and lending guitar!
i wish i could find some photos from outside where everyone was sitting, cos it was lovely, but you'll just have to imagine. we had milk moustaches from these weird milk drinks whose name i got too drunk to remember.
we met dawid, who i guess is like the public face of ramfest, he's an awesome super energised guy and we taught him how to do the double devil sign with both hands. it seemed like a fair trade for a couple of shows, like. we ended up, like all good nights, with rounds of free jaigermeister and a drive thru mcdonalds.
after this it gets a bit hazy. the next 48 hours involve a plane flight, a live tv spot, a prerecorded tv spot, a fucking amazing gig in a garden, and not a lot of sleep. in reality im going for dinner and then i'll come back to it, but, yknow, story...
we finished recording musics our POP HIT with peach. mr red bull came and filmed us and interviewed us a bit to be made into one of them artist special things that run for 2 mins as filler and annoy the fuck out of everyone. sorry! it was fun tho. if anyone sees it plz tell us cos we wont be around when it runs. look out for a few inapropriate laptop displays. Peach is kinda like an astronaut with a moustache, but the rest have no place on public television, ahaaaaaaa.
mmmmmmmm, recordy.
we ended a bit early to try and catch sunset somewhere romantic. anja and ben took us to the top of table mountain in a rad cable car that looked totally like a 2001 film set.
table mountain is like some weird oldschool rpg game made flesh (well, rock). you exit the cable car and yr delivered onto this small island like area, its just above the clouds, so you look over the edge and see just white nothing, its well erie. theres various paths and bridges crisscrossing around, and these weird creatures that suddenly appear in front of you. you can hack them up and use them too boost yr vitality, but they were too fast for us.
heres on of aforementioned creaturlings (left) , apparently, it's dna strand apart from an elephant. TRUE!
then we went and stared at the sea till the sun went down, then we had pizza round ben and anjas friends, then we came back here and stared at the mountain from our mansion balcony. srs, we have a mansion. LUSH.
is that enough making people jealous now? weve one more day of collabullating left before we drive to stellenbosch for a gig and some vineyard action. this pop hit making is hella fun, we cant wait for the world to hear it and red bull to give us free wings.
here is some south african we have learnt
jonni badlandurs = johnny foreigner ass buggy = ashtray is it = innit robot = traffic light
little colour changing man = chameleon swahzi = relaxed, very relaxed, thanks
we're not taking this seriously at all, tis awesome.
we just found out we get to play a live session for MK, thas like safricas massive music tv channel. we get to play the whole of coast, we're trying to get ben to plug his keytar image machine thing into the cameras too, tis going to be awesomesssssssss.
soundcheck was sounding amazing so we defd it off for the beach. this here, cold english folks, is clifton beach. will smiths house is behind us. it rotates 360degrees so he's permantly facing the sun. true!
this is anja, our tour manager, gutting a south african sea snake.
our gig was aces btw. dom our promotor printed out bazillions of lewes ghostees and plastered them everywhere. massive thank yous to assemblys lovely stage crew who broke all our gear downfor us cos we were busy with the gin and the redbull. ugh. THANKS GUISE! anyways, we went down ace, despite having to follow kidofdoom, whom you should very much listen to and are totally our new favourite postrock band (non violin category)
the very tall man with the keytar is our friend ben. instead of playing notes and noises like one would expect, he plays images. we have projector screens either side of the stage and he triggers loops and pictures like, IN REAL TIME! its so totally rad, theres so much stuff, loads of lewes floaty stuff, and monsters, and a robot that kills bon jovi, and a Cat That Shoots Lazers From Its Eyes. fembots are coming soon, apparently. Our Heads Assploded. we hadnt seen any of it till last night, its totally distracting but looks amaze, and its bare fun having someone else running around on stage. thanks to ryk and richard kidofdoom for doing the extra guitar bits for us!
we're at the redbull studios in cape town for 3 days with this splediferous fellow, his name is peach and us and him are making a POP HIT. its a "collabullation"! srsly. that name must have seemed a lot cleverer after 10 gallons of taurine, or whatever it is thats making our eyes blur. anyways, tis well fun. were colouring stuff sleazy and using midi, whoever she is.
redbull studios is such a rad scheme, its a free studio where anyone can come in and make a song, yknow, just because. they have amps and a fuckload of gear and in house engineers and an infinite redbull box, hence my typing this at 10000 mph. we had the same thing in birmingham in the olden days when the MAC first started but they stopped it cos people kept stealing the gear.
