Howdy folks,
It’s been too long. I know. Not had much to say last while. Hope I have more in the months to come as we make the album of our lives. I’ll post when I have something to say. Or I have nonsense to say. Or both. With me one does not rule out the other.
So we have reached the end of a tour begun in October of 2008. Brazil is nowhere near where it began but it is where it all comes to a halt two years to the month later. Tomorrow night we play the Natura Nos Festival in Sao Paulo. Our first Brazilian show ever. We have a lot of mates who have played here before and say the crowds here are as good as anywhere in the world so we’re very excited to find out if that is true. Everyone has been so lovely to us out here already so I’m sure it’ll be a blast.
We were taken out last night to an amazing Brazilian barbeque place (although out here I guess they’re just called barbeque places). It was my first experience of such a thing. The meat comes around (different cuts of beef, pork, chicken, human) on skewers and you have a little beer mat that has one green side (for ‘go’) and a red side (also for ‘go’, kidding, it’s for ‘please stopbringing me meat for the love of god’) so whilst your beer mat is turned to green they just keep bringing various skewers of awesomeness until you either die or have the good sense to turn your fucking beer mat over stupid! It’s a brand new way to eat for me. Not unlike tapas I suppose but withtapas you decide what you want (invariably ordering too much never mind for your stomach but often for your table too) but with what happened last night meat just kept coming and the only thing I remember doing that was anything like a signal to the staff was taking my seat in the first place.
The other bit of wondrousness that was new(ish) to me was the Brazilian classic drink the Caiprinhia. I say‘ish’ because I’ve had them in the UK. A very good one is too be had (if James is working) at the Stravagin bar on Gibson Street in the west end of Glasgow but the ones last night were made at our table. I’m pretty sure they do it like that so you can see what goes into it and aren’t stupid enough to order more than, say, one! Basically it (for the uninitiated) consists of sugar and limes crushed together in a pestle and mortar which teases about two centimetres of sweet and sour juice from the lime. The rest of the glass is filled, to the brim, with Cachaca. Cachaca is made from sugar cane and is about 38% alcohol, a few % less than Vodka. So the drink is pretty much a 250ml glass of pure spirits and enough sugar to root your teeth out where you stand. I’ll not say how many were drank but not a soul this morning could remember anything. Anything at all! In the decade and a half of this band’s life there has never been a next day total amnesia like the one shared this morning. There were bruises, cuts, half remembered cab rides to god knows where and Jonny’s face looks like it was pawed by an angry bear. And who’s to say it wasn’t? Thank you Brazil. Thanks for inviting us to your party. Then destroying us. We’re all still laughing mind you. It’ll take more than startled bears and forget-me-nows to ebb at our good spirits (oh I said spirits) but the soundcheck was a tough paper-round. A tough paper-round indeed. Last show of the tour tomorrow though sono doubt it won’t be the last Caiprinha we have in our lives. Or in fact our week. Back to LA on Monday though for clean living by the sea, the reconnection with our marbles and the formation of what I hope to be our masterpiece.
Yes we are to record our sixth album in LA (yes sixth as Up To Now does not count, don’t you hate Best Ofs if only for making the discography untidy) in the next few months and it is our intention to have it out midway through 2011. It will not come out until it’s perfect though so there is no date set in stone. It’ll happen when it happens.
Thank you everyone for the 100 Millions Suns tour. Our crew who worked on it, the bands who toured with us and us with them and to every one of you that came to see us play, it’s truly a heartbreaking waste of time without you. Believe us, we toured from 1995 – 2003 (although thank you to the 20 people a night that used to come see us).
A tour ends and an album begins…
GaryL.xx
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