Hello my musical munchers, here is a tasty bit of Dog Days Volume Two for you to browse over. Chew it, nibble it, consume, CONSUME! I'll be selling the full thing on the State Lottery tour next month for £1. Come to one of these shows:
UK TOUR with THE STATE LOTTERY & EL MORGAN & BANGERS
SAT 2ND JUL - THE JAM, BRIGHTON
SUN 3RD JUL - EDGE OF THE WEDGE, PORTSMOUTH
MON 4TH JUL - THE CRICKETERS, KINGSTON
TUE 5TH JUL - PORTLAND ARMS, CAMBRIDGE
WED 6th JUL - PRINCE OF WALES, LEAMINGTON
THU 7TH JUL - THE VICTORIA INN, DERBY
FRI 8TH JUL - ROYAL PARK CELLARS, LEEDS
SAT 9TH JUL - PLUGGED INN, SUNDERLAND
SUN 10TH JUL - THE BANSHEE LABYRINTH, EDINBURGH
MON 11TH JUL - RETRO BAR, MANCHESTER
TUE 12TH JUL - THE CROFT, BRISTOL
WED 13TH JUL - MOZARTS, SWANSEA
THU 14TH JUL - CAVERN, EXETER
I'll be attempting to mill about the shows like a social fairy. You see I have entered a new phase of my life, that of the "great crust romantic". I am trying to force myself into enjoying being social, sexy in a non-creepy way, and crusty. It's a damn hard juggling act. Hope you like these two entries!
Thursday 26th May
Budapest, Hungary
There are days on tour where you could happily stay in one place for ever and said a fond farewell to your previous existence. I didn’t want to leave Zagreb. Iva is a fine human being to spend time with and Croatia still has so much to offer but we’ve got other more pressing priorities – like driving all day long in Nibbler. Tonight we’re playing underneath “The Party Hostel” in Budapest which is a pretty exciting prospect. I imagine loads of sexy tourists going wild all night long with little or no morals.
I can’t remember the drive to Budapest so let’s assume it wasn’t any fun at all. Crossing the throbbing Danube at 6pm was euphoric. I think Bram Stoker summed it up nicely in Dracula that crossing that banging river feels like you’re crossing a border between the east and west. Things seem slightly spicier and more erotic across that body of water. I also love that feeling whilst on tour that nothing else in the world matters – the feeling of being free and punk, if that makes any sense.
After idling around the party hostel courtyard for a couple of hours drinking beers and smoking cigarettes (courtesy of Papa Roo), the rest of the bands turn up and we begin the proceedings. Tonight we have the displeasure of playing with some sexist Brazilian cunts called Strip No Altar. They are complete turkeys. Before one song their bassist announces,
“This song is about guns, violence, and drugs!”
They have Strip No Altar panties for sale and their album cover is two scantily clad women getting up to some typical “hetro fantasy” lesbian nonsense.
They have dubious lyrics such as:
“I just wanna smoke some crack, I just wanna find a big bed, so I can take my bitch there.”
When they sing the line about smoking crack their drummer pretends to smoke his drumstick...my God. I was a bit drunk and found them completely laughable so shouted for an encore, they didn’t need much encouragement and quickly played one of the sexist humdingers they played earlier in the set. Fuck! Andrew rightfully got really mad at me for spurring them on.
I forget the name of the other band, but I liked them. They sounded like ALL. Anyway, no food or no place to stay tonight and paid very little money. We organised to stay in this guy Peter’s spare apartment in the Gypsy district of town, so no erotic party hostel fantasy tonight. Peter makes sure that we understand it’s very basic accommodation – no shower, toilet flushed with a bucket of water, odd Gypsy neighbours etc. The building itself is incredible, it looks like something out of a WW2 movie – it’s so old and battered. There’s bullet holes in the front of the building from the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and you can see a line where a bomb hit it. Despite its raggedy looks I thought it was quite charming. I sleep in the van for security. A poor choice – our parking space is right next to the hottest back alley piss spot in town and throughout the night I am rudely awoken by men relieving themselves against the wall. Haha, grim.
Friday 27th May
Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Before leaving the UK Andrew and I blacked out Nibbler’s windows with this stick on film. A tricky procedure that we messed up a couple of times before getting it stuck on bubble free. This morning I utilised these blacked out windows by jerking off in peace, knowing that the people who walked past Nibbler wouldn’t see lil’ monkey playing with himself. Haha, how pathetic (and creepy and illegal).
Micah the Finnish dude who played drums in the ALL band came and got the apartment keys from us as we sat in Nibbler finishing off our nutritious breakfast of crisps, cheese, horseradish sauce, bread and a suspiciously named “Orange Drink”. This meal doesn’t help the fact that we’re all greasy as fuck today and have got to spend the next eight hours making our slimy way to Romania. After sleeping in the van and eating breakfast in the van there’s nothing I like to do more than to spend all day in the van. 300c and Romanian roads, what a fiendish combination! Once we cross the border it doesn’t take long for the Romanian road celebrities to make an appearance – Gypsies on horse and carts, stray dogs, storks in massive nests atop of telegraph pole, fucked up old men who look like Super Mario bumbling about the pavements, half built Gypsy mansions with metallic oriental style roofs, and roadsides littered with people selling bowls of berries.
To see us through this marathon journey we take sustenance from crisps and warm water served at van-temperature. I feel myself turning see thru. Once we arrive in Cluj there is an onslaught of beautiful girls roaming the streets, “full on, non-stop” as the popular phrase says on all the Romanian shop fronts. As we enter into a pesky traffic jam we see the prettiest girl we have collectively seen sat in the back seat of a taxi. Oh Taxi-Girl……your name doesn’t really do you any justice. Sorry for staring.
There’s a festival happening in Cluj to celebrate 800 years of the city so the whole place is rammed with people. This city is something else…so amazing. At the venue we meet the promoter Paul and Schlitz, a band we played several dates with in Romania last year. It’s nice to be so far from home and in the company of friends, plus Schlitz are a totally kick-ass punk rock band! For dinner we are brought a bag full of cheese and radish toasties, argh! They are pretty tasty but the bread and cheese diet is leaving me feeling like a human wreck hanging from a meat hook, I’ve gotta eat some vegetables. Roo and I venture out into the city and come across a green grocer which is still open at 9.30pm. A bit of greenery perks me up and we go and check out the festival which is happening in the square. Up on stage is a terrible Euro-pop duo singing a twatish song with lyrics that Roo interprets as “I’m so greasy all the time, I’m so greasy I want to cry.” They’re singing about being on tour! Once again the show is packed out with about 150 people and some very desirous girls are in attendance, if only I wasn’t so greasy that I want to cry!
The first band “Sk. Ank” (yes, you read that right) play for nearly an hour and cover Jimmy Eat World and Blink 182 in a horrible ska fashion. People go completely apeshit for them. Strip No Altar have followed us like a horrible eggy fart and are playing tonight as well. For fuck sake. They get up on stage and perform their worn out hedonistic diatribe. Grow up and fuck off. They sing about drinking loads of booze too but I have yet to see them drink anything besides water. They are the worst kind of sexist pussies who should be flogged and driven across the land. They perform their hit song “Boomerang”, the general gist of which is “women always return no matter how much of a prick you are”. Urgh. There is a little break in the music and their singer announces “Now I will show you why the ladies ALWAYS come back…” For a moment we all thought he was going to flop out his humongous wanger but no, he just played an uninspired guitar solo. Come on, get your dick out for the lads mate.
I start to feel pretty nauseous and physically broken shortly before we go onstage at 1AM and struggle my way through our set all higledy pigeldy. I am disappointed in my performance and feel annoyed at driving all this way only to suck. Andrew has enjoyed a bit of booze before playing and tells me that he thought I played pretty good, which is ok by me. Much merriment is had after the show and sure enough the 60% Romanian moonshine makes a welcomed appearance but I won’t be enjoying it as I’m driving tonight, alright! Seeing Schlitz again was so good, really friendly guys too. Their punk rock deliciousness is easily better than 90% of the bands we play with but of course they don’t get the recognition they deserve cuz they’re from the ass end of no where. Their bassist Dan was pretty drunk and he jokingly asked, “You’ve been here once before, so why the fuck have you come back? Didn’t you learn?!” Being a young person living in Romania must be pretty difficult, unemployment is rife and it’s difficult to get out. Gotta roll with the punches I guess. But what the fuck do I know? It might rule. Anyway, in my opinion Schlitz were the best band that played this night and I wish them all the best in the future.
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