There’s been a large amount of radio silence on the blog of late. There are several reasons for this, not least the fact we’ve been touring so much the last year we’ve barely had time to wipe our arses let alone write down what’s been going on. Although I’d like to take this opportunity to assure you, we have been wiping our arses.

So what haven’t we told you. Well condensed, here it is: My caravan got trashed by Nazis, at least I think they were Nazis. They spray painted a swastika, (badly) inside the caravan and smashed all the windows. It was a right mess. Insane with rage I tried to blow it up with some fireworks but failed miserably, which only added to my distress.




Anyway, since we had this weekly tour diary on Channel 4’s Transmission they broadcast me discovering the smashed caravan on TV and guess who saw it? My old friend and ex-landlord Mr Khan. Up until this point he didn’t know I was living there rent free, (see previous blogs) and understandably this new information made him livid. So while I was away on tour, his son came round with some petrol and torched it. My lovely caravan, my home on wheels: up in flames. The fire burnt so hard it melted some nearby wheelie bins. When we came back to Glasgow on our UK tour to play a house party in the nearby 51 West Princes St (see photo below), I went outside in the morning and discovered the scorched remains, a rusting frame and two melted tyres. I thought I might shed a tear but I didn’t.

Party we played on 51 West Princes St. Photo: Danny North

Out in Texas for SxSW, we spent our days drinking free booze with Errors and as I remember Joe licked our soundman Glover’s eyeball on a balcony. Good times indeed. We also got one of our shows pulled after 3 songs because of a curfew, which made us quite mad. Joel pushed over the PA and I threw my sticks in an, admittantly innocent, engineers face and apparently broke the other bands drum kit with a microphone, although I don’t see how this was possible.



Then we did that UK tour with To My Boy. It was a lot of fun & the first time we’d toured the UK in a big sleeper coach. I can’t overstate how good those things are, you can just keep on drinking all the way to the next town. It truly is a technological marvel. Joe stole a massive fake tiger from a service station and we danced around with it while listening to Paul Simon. Then for reasons still unknown, Joel started vomiting in Aberdeen and didn’t stop for three days. It was grim. He was in a lot of fucking pain, & as you know it’s a repeat of this which meant we had to cancel our North American tour recently.



Then we went on a European tour, which included one of the biggest audiences we’d ever played to in Groningen at their annual free festival. Then in Rotterdam I met the artist Stanley Donwood’s assistant and she told me, to my utter disbelief, that he had wanted to come to the gig but had to prepare for a show that weekend at the VIP gallery there in Rotterdam. She took my address & a few weeks later I got a signed print through the post. I couldn’t quite believe it. He’s a fucking legend. Thanks for that Stanley!


Above: Groningen Free Festival

After the tour me and Joe flew out to Porto for a DJ gig at the Casa da Música. Klaxons were meant to be playing but due to Jamie getting “ill,” Simon & James Klaxon had flown out to DJ instead. After some vodka in the dressing room we formed a horrible plan. Borrowing instruments from the only band that was actually playing, we formed The Shitsons. Joe on guitar, me on drums, James Klaxon on bass and Simon walking around with the microphone in his mouth screaming the words. We did semi-literate covers of Gravitys Rainbow and I Know Kung Fu followed by some directionless dance-jazz then exited the stage to confused applause from a crowd that had turned up to see the Klaxons play a headline set. Not this.


After that we did Glastonbury, which was nice. Acres and acres of mud and sludge and people crying into their wellies. Joel even turned up without any wellies, preferring instead to trot around in gaffa-tape repaired plymsols. He was covered head to toe in mud within half an hour of getting on site. We were originally scheduled to play on the Friday which would have left the rest of the weekend to lose our minds. Instead our set was on Sunday, which meant we had to piece our minds back together after a weekend of hammering them to shreds. We played after Kissy Sell Out and it great, although I don’t know how anyone can dance in wellies. You have my respect.

We did a 2 week tour of European festivals over the summer, taking in Italy, Germany, Switzerland & Austria. Melt! Festival had to be one of the best we've ever played, surrounded by enormous, backlit Soviet mining vehicles. We shared a tent with The Horrors & The Presets. For some reason we parked our bus directly underneath the main fireworks display, & had to run for our lives as the sparks and spent cartridges fell all around us. I got to see Stereo Total for the first time & joined in the stage invasion. But the highlight of the weekend was hearing the singer from Snap! shout "SHITDISCO!" in the middle of her set. Fucking right.
Then we went out to play Furia and Eurockeennes festivals in France. We set off from London in a slow moving convoy of traffic and after the Sat-Nav sent us 80 miles in the wrong direction we got to Dover to be told we’d not only missed our ferry but missed the one after it too & we’d have to wait an hour for another. We had to be on stage by 7pm. Long story short: we missed the gig. So we went to the hotel & got some sleep, walking past Frank Black in the hotel bar as he drank a bottle of champagne to himself.

We set off early the next morning for Eurokeennes, determined not to repeat yesterdays fuck up. It was a long drive but we got to the site with hours to spare. The stage was on a beach and the weather was gorgeous, we played a bit of ping-pong and we were taken out for a ride around the surrounding lake in some speed boats. Everything seemed to be going great.



Arriving back on shore, we found soundman Glover with his hand over his mouth, distraught. His pale, gaunt skull then recounted to us the story of how he’d taken the keys for the van to get something out of the back and left them ontop of one of the amps. He then got in a conversation with the passing singer out of Maximo Park about something or other, and absent mindedly slammed the van door closed. The door came complete with an ultra-secure deadlock; as soon as it closed it was locked for good. They were the only set of keys.
We didn’t really believe what was happening for the first ten minutes or so, everyone kept trying the door, as if it’d just magically pop open if the right person pulled the handle. Then we tried ringing some lock-smiths, but it was a Sunday evening in the middle of the countryside in France. There would be no lock-smiths, and we were meant to be on stage in three hours.



Meanwhile someone asked me and Jan to walk around the festival talking to a camera about what was going on, and half a dozen people shouted nonsense at me in French and asked me if I could sell them some acid. I couldn’t. But you can see that (very poor) video guide to Eurokennes on YouTube.
When we got back, the Fire Brigade had arrived and they proceeded to cut two big holes in the back of our hire van. Glover stuck his hand through the holes to no avail, but Ryan our Tour Manager eventually got them. I can only imagine what the Fire Brigade thought of us. We got the instruments out and played the fuck out of them once we got them on stage, relieved to have played at least 50% of our booked shows that weekend.



We spent the end of the year moving to London, Joe & Jan had already been down for awhile but me and Joel decided against the option of comfy flats & instead moved into a couple of squats in Elephant & Castle. Inside it may be as cold as Glasgow but there's more room for parties than the caravan & 61 combined. I moved into The Toilet Factory already inhabited by about a dozen Chechs & various members of Ratty Rat Rat We've had two parties so far, each one rammed with at least 700 people. The first one Ratty Rat Rat, Mystery Jets, Talk Taxis & The Metros played, but it was closed down before we could play live. Gutted. (The NME.com article on the party described one of my female flatmates as having the "look of the criminally insane.)


Ratty Rat Rat playing at the Toilet Factory

The second one, we DJ-ed & Man Like Me & Ratty Rat Rat played. Patrick Wolf was supposed to be headlining but he couldn't get past the frothing wild-eyed mob of people trying to get in through the back door, so he had to go home. The police turned up & surrounded the place with 6 meat wagons at about 2am & threatened to dig up the pavement with JCBs & rip up the electrics if we didn't turn off the music. So we complied, until they went away at least. We're not gonna have another one until we leave, since last time the neighbours retaliated by turning off our water. When we do have it, it should be a no holds barred mind bender. Until then...