Festive
Like a professional athlete with a victory-parade camcorder I’ve been taking snaps from the festival stages we’ve been lucky enough to play this summer. When we finish things of at the Monolith Festival in September I’ll assemble them all here, but in the meantime you can follow our progress on the Vice Magazine UK blog.
Speaking of festivals, the Meredith Music Festival near Meredith in Victoria, Australia, announced their lineup today and we’re a part of it. It seems, however, that the Dickhead Policy (scroll all the way to the bottom) has yet to be released. We eagerly await it’s unveiling.
More Australian and New Zealand dates will be unveiled soon as well, so stay tuned.
Five more shows left on this tour: Reading, Leeds, Push Club @ Astoria 2, Club NME at Reading and an in-store at Rough Trade East this Saturday, August 23 at 4 pm. Yeasayer, who seemed to have followed us at every festival this summer are on at 1:30 pm so come early.
Here they are getting a Holy Fuck lesson from Graham before we opened the mainstage at Lollapalooza a couple of weeks ago:
I guess we’ll see on Saturday how much they learned…
rough trade, australia, meredith, yeasayer | Comment (1)Paper
One year ago today I played my first show with Holy Fuck! How about that?! I have yet to receive a traditional gift of paper from any of the dudes, but it’s 4 in the afternoon, so who knows what the rest of the day holds.
The first show in question was an afternoon slot at the Camp Bisco festival in upstate New York. It was not the most auspicious of debuts in that it completely sucked. I did, however, get to see Slick Rick play and visit the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame the morning after the gig.
Since then we’ve played over 160 shows, at least a dozen live sessions and about 20 studio dates. We’ve taken about 40 flights, a few trains, buses, boats and countless vans while touring in Canada, the U.S.A, Mexico, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Spain, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Czech Republic, Denmark, Holland, Germany and Greece. Good times.
Today we’re at XL Recordings in London testing out their brand-spanking new recording studio. We’ll be here for the next four days working on some hot new jams which may or may not appear on our next record. Snooper’s Paradise came through again yesterday and we picked up a new drum machine that should get a good workout in the studio. While in Brighton we also played the Loop Festival. Or it played us, I’m not sure.
Before I go butter my strings, let me introduce you to our newest furry friend, who we met at the Lowlands Festival in Holland: Randy the Setlist Squirrel…
Cowboy Cat might want to watch his back.
studio, snooper's paradise, xl, randy, cowboy cat, brighton | Comment (0)Run for the Roses
Well, while our name gets raked over the coals back home we’re having a dandy time here on The Continent. And at no expense to the Canadian taxpayer! The German taxpayer on the other hand…
Driving from Stuggart to Hasselt, Belgium today the abundance of wind turbines in Germany is hard not to notice. Really makes me wonder where all the wind turbines are in Canada. There sure is enough wind - and this past week more than enough hot air - and the technology is no longer too costly to consider. Although it’s not so affordable that both candidates for the U.S. presidency can be excused from missing a crucial vote on tax credits for alternative energy producers and investors like they did a couple of weeks ago.
(Geez Louise, all this European hospitality seems to be giving me a North American hate-on, eh. Watch out Mexico, you’re next.)
Pukkelpop is on today’s agenda. In what could be diplomatically referred to as an adventurous decision in festival programming we follow Drive-by Truckers who are preceded by Henry Rollins doing spoken word .
I’m excited about the show because I washed my “uniform” in the hotel bathroom sink last night. This is the first tour where I’ve tried the rock uniform - meaning I wear the same clothes on stage every night so that only one shirt and one pair of pants get drenched in sweat. While this allows me to travel light, it also allows me to kill most houseplants with my stench after about three shows. So get ready, Belgium - I’m starting fresh and, much like the tiresome windbag on our flight from Toronto to London last week who wouldn’t stop complaining about the smell of the dirty diaper belonging to the infant in the row behind her, my arse will smell like roses.
roses, pukkelpop, germany, belgium, wind turbines | Comment (1)Magnum
We just arrived in Oslo, it’s 3 a.m. and Matt and I are watching Magnum P.I. Pretty standard Scandinavian fare. No Magnum P.E.I., but it’ll do.
The last time we were in Norway - less than a month ago in Bergen - I stayed in my hotel room for two hours carving a piece of bone so I could repair my broken bass (second of that tour). Again, pretty standard Scandinavian fare.
We’re playing Oya later on today, or tomorrow depending on how you look at these things. My Bloody Valentine are playing as well and they may very well top Radiohead who we saw at Lollapalooza last week. Could be tough though, as Radiohead’s amazing light show is run off battery power! Dig it.
sctv, oslo, norway | Comment (0)Hullabalooza
We’re in Chicago and about to set off from our in hotel in 15 minutes. We play the mainstage at Lollapalooza at around noon (or something early like that), but I feel like I’m on my way to a pancake breakfast. A pancake breakfast hosted by Radiohead, mind you. I’m sure Ed would be an affable spatulist.
Anyway, wish us luck… We haven’t been vaccinated for Obamamania, hopefully I’ll be around to post an update later on.
pancake, lollapalooza, chicago, radiohead | Comments (3)
