LC!

Here is an overview of our past fortnight, in the form of statistics, rubbish camera phone pictures and superlatives.

We visited these cities, in this order:

Coventry
Southampton
Exeter
Cardiff
Manchester
Newcastle
London
Oxford
Leeds
Glasgow

Percentage of venues which didn’t have toilet roll backstage:

60%

Percentage of promoters which took any notice of the fact that we informed them a quarter of our band are vegan:

20%

Best related quote: “Yeh, sorry, I didn’t know what vegan meant, so I got you some nuts”.

Percentage of Sold Out gigs:

70%

We owe a huge amount of thanks to Nick Coppack of Manchester United Football Club who invited us to Old Trafford to do an interview for the magazine and have a tour. To be recognised by your favourite football club, I can tell you, is an amazing thing. It was also incredibly flattering that Nick was a proper fan of the band and came to the show afterwards and made requests. I could never tire of discussing mid-’90s league cup defeats, so thank you Nick.

Thank you to Les Savy Fav for DJing at our aftershow in London, and thank you to Wichita for organising such a spectacle. I was in a bad mood after the show due to getting punched in the face after going into the crowd and somebody wrestling the microphone from me and refusing to give it back. To rub insult to injury, after the gig they approached me and told me I was a great “modern poet”. Yuck. Who even thinks like that?

So spending the night dancing to ’90s club hits amongst good friends was an awesome tonic.

This is a picture of Stuart off of Copy Haho standing on Tim off of Les Savy Fav’s shoulders:

I had three of The Best Nights Of My Life on this tour.

1. A travel lodge, a putsch on a WH Smith and reckless abandonment of all regards of common decency.

2. After our Friday gig in Leeds. Dananananaykroyd, our own private disco, the first time we managed to get a DJ to play Dexys, dance offs with people I miss far too much, and conga lines.

3. Best gig we’ve ever played in Cardiff. Infront of family. It felt like a home coming. Watching members of some of my favourite bands crowd surf to our music. Silent Disco with newly found best friends and pals who’d come from out of town, alike. This is a video of us performing Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks with Calum off of Dananananaykroyd and Alexei off of Johnny Foreigner.

When we all got swine flu. I look forward, in ten years time, to being able to say “I survived Swine Flu”. Hats off to Kim who soldiered on through gigs despite vomiting non-stop for two days. Hats back on to all the “media outlets” who somehow managed to spin a badly informed news story out of three caps heavy tweets I made.

Thank you ever so to Rob from Sparky Deathcap for coming on tour with us. Having him as the 8th Campesinos! is something we’d love to make permanent if we could afford to (which we can barely with 7, so we’re gonna have to get famous or something). His musicianship really adds something to us playing live, and means I don’t have to play any instruments. Something I’m very grateful for. Also, his solo sets at the start of the evening were always amazing. I cannot say enough that I think Sparky is the best songwriter in the UK at the moment, and to have the chance to play in his backing band was a real honour. I hope we get to do it again sometime soon.

Copy Haho: We’ve made friends for life. I couldn’t have dreamt of meeting four people as hilarious and nice and just amazing to be around as them.
I would never complain about being in a band. There are loads of negative aspects, believe me there are, but they are far outweighed by the opportunities we have to play our music and to have a platform for the things we want to say and to create.
But the worst thing is saying goodbye.
You travel the world meeting amazing people. You forge really close bonds in no time at all. And then at the end of a tour you say goodbye and resign yourself to the fact you live hundreds of miles apart, and that the next time you’re in their city, they’ll probably be elsewhere, making other new friends to break their hearts. It’s like a divorce that neither side wants. And oh my god, the poor kids.

“but with XBOX Live, hope and skype I could find you in a keystroke…”

Never has this been so true as it is with Copy Haho.

Thank you dearly; Joe, Richard, Stuart, Rikki, Rob, Todge, Jason, Stan, Lewy, Ceri, Gavlar, Jason and Stacey. I love you all.

Everyone who came to this tour, thank you.
Every gig felt really special, and I feel like with fans friends like you, we can achieve everything we’d ever want. Thank you for letting us be a band, and see you soon.

The Joiners is on an odd street.  There seems to be a large amount of take aways on the street considering its size, and as the only establishments that warrant take aways are few on the street it seems quite odd.

We ended up in Hudsons.  We had aimed to go to a Chinese but this caught our attention first.  Hudsons is a Caribbean restaurant serving items such as Jerk Chicken, Goat Curry and Red Snapper.  We were the only people that were in there, and the owner/chef seemed very keen to entertain us.

I went for Salmon Creole.  The menu description didn’t really seem to describe a creole.  I was expecting something similar to a Gumbo.  What appeared was a Salmon fillet covered with Cajun spices and grilled.  It was actually very nice.  The outside had been blackened to a nice level, allowing you to experience the crunch as your teeth hit the soft salmon flesh inside.  The spices left a nice tingle after you had finished chewing and they weren’t overpowering that you couldn’t taste the salmon or needed a glass of water to quench the fire in your mouth.

The salmon came with a nice salad of apple and tomato.  The sweetness of them contrasting nicely with the spice of the salmon.

Despite us saying that we only had 45 minutes the chef took longer than that so we ended up having to take the food away.  Don’t eat here if you’re in a rush.

But it was great value, great food and they even had a record player playing.

It’s rather bizarre to think that we have not played UK centric shows in a year, the last two gigs have made it seem like we have never been away. We have quickly settled back into the routine of sitting in a splitter driving along the M roads talking utter rubbish whilst  longing for  M & S themed service stations.

Those of you who attended the concert last night in Southampton can adhere to the fact it was a heat pit akin to the ninth circle of hell and the stage was littered with sprinkles of sweat. I would like to give a special shout out to the guy who informed me he braved the humidity despite the fact it made his hair frizzy. Well done.

The Juno Keyboard did not have such a good time and stopped making a noise that was pleasing to the ears. It was kind of like this “duhhhrrrhhr” noise….BUT Rob “Sparky” Taylor saved the day by distracting the audience with a long winded joke about a child on a death bed whose dying wish is for a golf ball,  if you missed out it was bloody funny and will be remembered as a golden gig moment for generations to come.

Coventry was also rather great, with the venue having a particularly fetching outdoor area with Palm trees straight out a LA beach party (I would imagine, I have attended none but I have watched The Hills.)  We also got to meet the lovely Copy Haho for the first time who made a few of us jagermesiter cocktail things, which had an elaborate name but in essence were said spirit and red bulls. I think they are meant to stimulate you before leaving you twitchy with a itching sense of your own mortality. Myself and Kim also got invited to go and dance with four drunk guys dressed like security guards who were attending the club night afterwards but the haunting sounds of a Lady GaGa remix did not tempt us (it was not even paparazzi, thats a tune.)

But all this waffle is leading up to a favour I have to ask…

I had a unfortunate incident a month ago where my camera met some water and they didn’t get on, so I borrowed my mums camera but she lost the connecter wire thing so….. I cant upload pictures.

I thought maybe YOU would like to send me some pictures of the gigs for documentation/making the blog posting look sexier/sexy photos of us for me to pleasure myself over! However only send one image which you think really summed up the gig experience for yourself, and the ones I like the most will get used. Remember my criteria is vague, and my judgement is awful. Send your pictures to tourphotojoy@live.com

Thanks

Ellen x

So we were told that the venue had in house catering.  What actually happened was that they ordered food in for us.  It was nice of them to do that because it meant that we didn’t have to go and find anything, but this meant our choice was limited.  We had food from a place called Oregano.  Supposedly the best place for food in Coventry.  It was basically a take away pizza joint.  I decided, perhaps to avoid having a pizza a lot on this tour I would opt for one of the pasta options.  I went for Spaghetti al Carbonara, which instead of coming with bacon or pancetta, came with sausage.  I thought it would be worth trying.

The food appeared about 30 minutes before we were due to go on stage, so I had a few mouthfulls.  The pasta was al dente, which was good.  The sausage gave it a funny flavour and it looked like a regular sausage just sliced up, fried and chucked in.  No chorizo I can tell you that.  The sauce was creamy but it needed a lot more garlic and black pepper.  There was a faint taste of cheese but I doubt it was parmesan.

The one good thing about it was when I came off stage and had some more it hadn’t congealed or dried up.

The pizzas looked good, but if this is the best place in Coventry well…