We'd long finished the Tuesday night gig in Birmingham & drawn Xs on our hands with black biro so we could get in free to the club across the road. I'd had a pill & was having fun, pretty pissed aswell but by this point of the tour it'd become habitual. I was even being complimented on my dancing skills by a break-dancer who was "trained in ballet". Ripper.
After things closed we took a small party back to the van in a car park around the corner, I think the idea was to drive back to the hotel. But someone turned the sirens on our tour bus on & "Ravey Davey" our sound engineer was dancing on the roof, so I got up & joined him.

There was a car driving around the car park in broad circles. Hanging precariously out of its window was Mr J Reeves & that Simon out of Klaxons. The car was going at about 30mph and accelerating, I don't know who was driving. They screamed in girly delight anyway, and i stomped and shouted drunk nonsense, probably clapped my hands a bit. Great. Then it started raining & Dave decided to get down, I decided to lick the sirens.

By now the roof was getting slippy, I'd lost my footing a couple of times but it was only when I decided to get down myself that I actually slipped, fell & felt the sharp thud of tarmac against my back. Luckily Iain, our tour manager had broken my fall, meaning that my head first plummet was more horizontal. But it still fucking hurt. I looked at my arm, the wrist was swollen like a tennis ball. Fuck.

An Ambulance was called & I screamed for a joint; I got a pipe. I was convinced it was just dislocated & pleaded for volunteers to pull it back in. No one. Then I tried, idiotically, to do it myself, by clamping my hand between my knees. Luckily I was restrained. Headlights appeared a few times but it was just the car, which, incidentally, Simon had fallen off, tearing the ligament in his leg. The break-dancer appeared again, shook my left hand & told me I had the potential to be a great dancer. Well, thanks mate, I appreciate that, but right now I just want to be fucking drummer.

The paramedics walked me to the Ambulance & asked me how many beers I'd had. I didn't know at the time that this would affect how much morphine they could give me. Thank fuck they didn't ask about anything else, cos i was being quite honest. We got to the hospital, where they declared me the injury of the night. Brilliant. They banged in the morphine & I floated into the x-ray room. Apparently I'd smashed it up pretty good, they'd need to do surgery – fine, fine. Just get it fixed, I've got a gig in New York in 3 weeks. They just looked sympathetically at me & gave me some laughing gas through a pipe. "Don't worry, you can't overdose on that" the guy said. So I stuck it in my mouth. The gas started giving me insane natural reverb, all the sounds of the hospital; clicks, whirrs, bleeps, a nurse laughing, all on an unending loop, round & round, picking up new sounds each time. Fucking brilliant. Maybe I looked like I was enjoying it too much but they took it off me & put me to sleep on a ward.

Surgery was the next day, I was hung over but they wouldn't give me a sip of water. Then; anaesthetized, 3 hours in theatre putting a metal plate & 7 bolts in my wrist. The merry band SHITDISCO had visited me while I was in there, then cleared off to Northampton where the next Hotel was booked, not even leaving me my toothbrush or a book. Luckily I had a drip of morphine every five minutes to make the day time TV interesting enough to pass the time: Ricky Lake on the mortal dangers of ecstacy, Jeremy Kyle sending single mothers to boot camp & Play TV on every channel after 11pm. They kept me in overnight, and then again the next night. My morphine machine kept on getting jammed & I tried to look innocent & un-junky like as the nurse came & fixed it repeatedly.

Then on the Friday, they told me I was going, booked me a taxi to the train station & found me a sling. It was the first time I'd been on my feet since Tuesday night & I got the train to London, feeling lightheaded in the queue & wearing the same filthy, tarmac stained t-shirt id worn on the night I went in. Then, arriving, walked down to Camdem & Koko to see everyone. They'd hired a session drummer for the rest of the tour, Mark, who'd previously drummed for Gang of Four. He'd only had a day to learn the set & was currently sat with headphones in his ears going through it one more time.

It was bizarre asking your own band what time they're playing. Even weirder watching from the side of the stage as they batter through the first two songs of the set. It felt wrong, to be honest & I felt like a spare prick. So, after gobbing a pill to counter the morphine withdrawal, I found a cymbal stand & Iain set it up with a cowbell. By the time I Know Kung Fu started I'd ran onstage and started battering living fuck out of anything I could reach with my left hand & a drum stick. I even tried my hand at a bit of backing vocals, (screaming in pain, mostly) & a bit of screeching nonsense at the crowd through the megaphone. All in all, I enjoyed myself. But afterwards, as jolts of pain shot through my back & arm I worried that I was pushing at limits that should be left alone. I was in uncharted health territory afterall, I'd never been in Hospital for this long before or taken this many varieties of painkillers in a day on top of a pill & booze & running about like a prick. I went to a squat party that night, but decided that continuing on the rest of the tour, even on cowbell duties, would be suicide. The next day I got a train up to Leeds for some much needed rest. And to contemplate the fact we won't be going to New York simply because one night I danced on the roof of a van in the rain. Fuck.

It’s when we’re loading out of the venue in Nottingham that I realize we don’t have any booze. I mean, we’ve a few bottles of beer, there’s the remnants of a bottle of vodka kicking about in the van.
But we need booze, lots and lots of booze; and quick. It’s a Sunday night and it’s coming on for 11 o clock. My head sinks into my hands.
It’s all over, that’s it. Jesus Fuck! Why didn’t anybody think of the booze!

Luckily that’s what we hire tour managers for. Iain’s on it, a consummate professional, a Mother Theresa for the Rohypnol generation. He’s on his phone and yes, something’s happening... There’s the promoter, and they’re having a chat and here’s some bar staff and, Allah fucking AKBAR! They actually appear to be carrying crate after delicious crate of booze into the back of the van, and spirits too! Iain you are a fucking genius.

We get in, and park around the corner, waiting for the people who’s party it is to turn up and direct us there. The vans already pretty full, Iain’s a bit dubious about carrying this many people as there’s Cops fucking everywhere. The crates of Grolsh are taking up a lot of space aswell, although they double as seats for our extra passengers. Our hosts turn up, cram in & we van to Radford to set up.

The house is massive, two floors and a large kitchen/living room that we set up in the corner of. People don’t start arriving until 1am & we relax with a few games on the table football at the top of the stairs. Before long the house is rammed & we decide to start. I get on the kit & start hitting things but the bass breaks for awhile so its just me and James & Steph Klaxons on cowbell & choc block; the crowd gets into it though. Then we’re on, starting with new one, 17 Virgins. The crowd responds appropriately; jumping up and down in unison like a pack of deranged rapists.



People are falling into the drums & amps & we have to fight for space as the crowd keeps surging forward. Joe stands on the bass cab, Joel’s on the bass drum, Jan tries to stop the keyboards from getting crushed, fighting off the crowd with one hand as the sole microphone gets left for a three way vocal collaboration between Joel, Steph & James. Steph Klaxon takes over completely for Disco Blood, delivering a stunning staccato rendition, “Disscccoo Feeeeling in my blooood…” Then straight into I Know Kung Fu & James Ford hops on the synth keyboard playing half & half with Tom from Haunted House (who, against medical advice, has been dragged out on the road with us, yet again). The crowd shift up a gear, if possible, and the entire living room becomes a barely contained mosh pit. I fucking love this shit.




There’s someone to my right fucking about with a guitar, I vaguely remember kicking him off the drum kit at the start of the night but its only when I see him with a cowbell in his hand that it dawns on me that it’s the lead singer from The Rapture. I start laughing manically, this is fucking nuts. Joel starts playing House of Jealous Lovers, I shift into an offbeat & Luke Rapture starts screaming the lyrics into the mic. It doesn’t get much better than this. The end of our set merges into an all out jam, with The Rapture’s bassist picking up the bass & Luke getting on the kit, I bang the cowbell till my hands are sore. Then after playing for a good hour & a half I stagger off for much needed joints.

A half hour later I walked back into the living room to find Luke Rapture still on the kit and a selection of various randoms jamming on the guitars, a girl stood on the bass drum with the mic, not many people dancing, but it was about 5am now. I asked for the sticks back & got the guy on bass to play the riff from Peaches, ‘Fuck The Pain Away’ The room started filling up again & dancing recommenced. The whole thing ended at around 7. As I carried cymbal stands to the van I saw a police car parked outside but they just drove off without saying anything. One fucking amazing night.


!! MORE PHOTOS & VIDEO COMING SOON !!

Also here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzTKU0ZjYMw

Day 5: my bones ache almost as much as my head now. I've got the onset of a cold looming over me, or is it hypothermia? Parkinsons? AIDS? It wouldn't surpirse me, there's only so long you can drink with Klaxons before you wind up catching the big one. But there are anti-viral drugs you can take these days, and with a good diet... "its not the death sentence it once was" - Or so a heavily tatooed photographer told me the other night in Sheffield.

Which reminds me: Sheffield. It was fun. Joe and Simon Klaxon dragging a projector screen from its moorings down on the heads of anyone stupid enough to be in the way, Simon running with it to the door before being clobbered by five bouncers who took it upon themselves to dish out some mean justice and split his eyebrow open, squash his nose against a pillar and kick his ribs until they hurt. KILL ALL BOUNCERS. As Primal Scream should have said, if they had any sense, which they don't. Then trying to find our soundman, who had climbed onto an airconditioning unit, 20ft from the ground, bringing a dole chair with him, and sitting - just sitting, watching the night pass by, before having to argue with yet more bouncers who wanted him to get down. So he did what any reasonable citizen would do, climbing into the airconditioning system and crawing around the club, attempting some kind or warped James Bond escape routine. But getting caught short on the way round and having to piss on all fours in the very same air conditioning tubes. Good times & wet knees.

Its good to have a soundman whos on our level, rather than one we have to attack with instruments. Saying that, he's already been sacked 14 times so far. He reckons he's going for the big 100 before the end of the tour. I think its entirely possible. Maybe he enjoys it too much. The only way he'll learn is if we dock the cunts wages. Then perhaps he'll be less inclined to blast 2 grams of gak up his beak in a single afternoon & concentrate on getting the levels right.