Jeff from We Versus The Shark is blogging his band's UK experiences on the road with Pulled Apart By Horses for Athens Georgia online arts magazine Flagpole. Thanks to both for allowing Jeff's tour diary to be carried on the STA blog and here's chapter 2.
Second Installment: Nice Castle, Guys (23/03/09)
A proper update would probably be in order. Instead of the revving up/down of time, i.e. minutes become hours, hours become days, etc. you can basically throw time out of the window on this tour. My cell phone is off -- no international usage -- and I have no watch, plus I'm still shaking off the lingering effects of jet lag; suffice to say, my sense of "when" is markedly dulled, to say nothing of "how," "why," and so on.
We've got four gigs under our belts so far, and they've gotten exponentially better every day. That probably has less to do with the tour getting "up and running" and more with the holy gradient towards the weekend: everything has the potential to suck until you get to Friday. And as such, our Glasgow show on Wednesday was a fine warm-up to four enthusiastic Scots. We retired to nearby Edinburgh at the apartment of Gavin, our affable tour manager. I slept in and effectively missed out on all sorts of awesome castles--thanks, guys. In theory, they looked like this:
Next stop was Newcastle, where good buddies of Pulled Apart By Horses were waiting at their dynamite venue, The End. Club on the ground floor, apartments of the staff above: ideal. A photographer kept doing that move where he tosses the camera every which way without looking through the lens so there are a few pictures on the internet of us looking like spastic giants; many, many chins. The show wrapped up with Neil, our illustrious touring guitar player, reciting the entirety of Notorious B.I.G.'s "Juicy" immediately before we adjourned to the nearby gay bar, Camp David.
Then we played Barrow, which was a sort of out-of-the-way place full of kind folks who couldn't stop reminding us that we have no business coming to Barrow. It was all meant with a sort of goofy self-deprecation, and while I know young people are supposed to hate where they're from, we were sort of taken aback. The show turned out just fine, and afterwards we got our first dose of ASDA, Walmart's UK proxy. Just as terrifying!
And last night was our Pulled Apart By Horses' hometown show in Leeds. A note on Pulled Apart By Horses: this is a pretty wacky group. It's sort of like the spastic hardcore genre stripped of all and any pretensions. They put on one fuck of a show, and we've been struggling to keep up. Not only that, but offstage they're hyperactive as all get out, compared to our sort of, I dunno, generally bookish/spaced-out vibe. Neil is sort of a social godsend on tour for We Versus the Shark; whereas we sort of huddle around quietly until the set and then stumble around sweaty and brainless afterwards, Neil is always up for a pint and quick with a joke. He is also blogging over here.
I'm going to try to do these with more frequency so I can be a bit more detailed. Pictures and videos will be on their way as well. I'm at the mercy of wireless networks and time, so please be patient! Next stop: Sheffield.
Jeff Tobias
Second Installment: Nice Castle, Guys (23/03/09)
A proper update would probably be in order. Instead of the revving up/down of time, i.e. minutes become hours, hours become days, etc. you can basically throw time out of the window on this tour. My cell phone is off -- no international usage -- and I have no watch, plus I'm still shaking off the lingering effects of jet lag; suffice to say, my sense of "when" is markedly dulled, to say nothing of "how," "why," and so on.
We've got four gigs under our belts so far, and they've gotten exponentially better every day. That probably has less to do with the tour getting "up and running" and more with the holy gradient towards the weekend: everything has the potential to suck until you get to Friday. And as such, our Glasgow show on Wednesday was a fine warm-up to four enthusiastic Scots. We retired to nearby Edinburgh at the apartment of Gavin, our affable tour manager. I slept in and effectively missed out on all sorts of awesome castles--thanks, guys. In theory, they looked like this:
Next stop was Newcastle, where good buddies of Pulled Apart By Horses were waiting at their dynamite venue, The End. Club on the ground floor, apartments of the staff above: ideal. A photographer kept doing that move where he tosses the camera every which way without looking through the lens so there are a few pictures on the internet of us looking like spastic giants; many, many chins. The show wrapped up with Neil, our illustrious touring guitar player, reciting the entirety of Notorious B.I.G.'s "Juicy" immediately before we adjourned to the nearby gay bar, Camp David.
Then we played Barrow, which was a sort of out-of-the-way place full of kind folks who couldn't stop reminding us that we have no business coming to Barrow. It was all meant with a sort of goofy self-deprecation, and while I know young people are supposed to hate where they're from, we were sort of taken aback. The show turned out just fine, and afterwards we got our first dose of ASDA, Walmart's UK proxy. Just as terrifying!
And last night was our Pulled Apart By Horses' hometown show in Leeds. A note on Pulled Apart By Horses: this is a pretty wacky group. It's sort of like the spastic hardcore genre stripped of all and any pretensions. They put on one fuck of a show, and we've been struggling to keep up. Not only that, but offstage they're hyperactive as all get out, compared to our sort of, I dunno, generally bookish/spaced-out vibe. Neil is sort of a social godsend on tour for We Versus the Shark; whereas we sort of huddle around quietly until the set and then stumble around sweaty and brainless afterwards, Neil is always up for a pint and quick with a joke. He is also blogging over here.
I'm going to try to do these with more frequency so I can be a bit more detailed. Pictures and videos will be on their way as well. I'm at the mercy of wireless networks and time, so please be patient! Next stop: Sheffield.
Jeff Tobias
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