your foot in my face is what keeps me alive

At the weekend we ran the gauntlet. Friday night: train to London, tube to hotel in King's Cross.
Saturday morning get up at 5am, taxi to Waterloo, catch Eurostar to Brussels at 6.30
Arrive Brussels at 10am, 1 hour taxi ride to Pukklepop Festival site. Play cribbage for three hours, laugh at silly major label rock bands with silly hair and silly leather trousers. Spill cup of tea into my lap. Onstage at 2.30, no soundcheck. Play to 2000 people for 40 minutes. handful of kids down front sing along to songs from Flashlight Seasons then look slightly bewildered when we launch into our loudest and best rendition so far of Song From Under the Arches. Then we play Entertainment too fast, and bring the noise for ten minutes with Black Holes in the Sand.
Offstage at 3.10, do two interviews in aggressive mood, state that all garage rock bands are cattle, there needs to be a cull and they should all be rounded up, shot and melted down to make glue, get in taxi, terrifying one hour ride back to Brussels Midi station, constantly staring at the clock, worried we will have to spend a night sleeping on floors. Check in with 2 minutes to spare. 3 hour Eurostar to Waterloo. Tube to Paddington. 8.30 pm train to Bristol, 2 hours, arrive at Bristol Temple Meads at 10.12 pm. Taxi home.
Next morning, the stunningly reliable Keith from Big Joan arrives in his van, drives us for two hours to Baskerville Hall in Wales, hang around at Green Man Festival for two hours, play set at 5.30, no soundcheck. Same set as before, loud. Good. Very good, but in my sleep-deprived torpor I play one song in completely the wrong key, but Paul follows with impressive improvisational skills.

Get home at around 10 pm.

My chief problem with travel is the cost of disgusting food and drink on public transport. Cup of tea that tastes like it was scraped from the barrel of a gun, £2. Dead sandwhich, £3.50. Dampness: £2. Sopping wet yet strangely tough cake, cold as a grave, £4. Toilet facilities you wouldn't wish upon a child molester £0.20 a shit. Clinical depression, growing misanthropy, constant low-level sense of dread, £gratis.

aaaaah fuck

I was recording on the PC when a massive bolt of lightning appeared in front of the window. I unplugged all the computer equipment and hid in the bedroom. God and myself don't get along at the best of times, but recently i've been particularly sinful, dabbling in the black arts (reading Colin Wilson's The Occult), visiting pagan sites (Avebury, Wiltshire) and worshipping false idols (Steven Seagal). It wouldn't surprise me one bit if he decided to wipe my hard drive via the forces of nature.

What happened to Christina Ricci's tits? One minute they were there, the next minute they've gone. Your heroes let you down.

Need to make a truly crucial decision?

http://www.random.org/flip.html

Let the Gods decide for you.

Need to blame everything on a religious conspiracy?

http://www.veling.nl/anne/templars/

Let the Knights Templar do the work for you.

Want to upset Christian and Empiricist fundamentalists alike?

http://www.hermetics.org/ebooks.html

Go worship false idols.

Need a software multi-tracker that doesn't make you want to hang yourself?

http://www.mackie.com/products/tracktion/index.html

Here is Traktion in your hour of need.

Spoke to the hippy today. The cheque arrived, after six weeks, but it wasn't enough. We gave her £180 for a months rent plus £60 as a third of a deposit to be paid over three months.

Hippy: Hello?
Me: It's Nick. I got the cheque. It's not enough. You still owe me £60.
Hippy: Oh hi mate! Good, you got the cheque. Oh right, so that was £60 as part of the £180 deposit, yeah?
Me: Correct.
Hippy: Well, you used it for a week and-
Me: You cannot possibly charge us for using the room. Send me another cheque immediately.
Hippy: You were happy to use the room-
Me: We used the room for a total of 10 minutes. The kebab shop owner came in and told us we couldn't continue. You failed to conduct even the most basic enquiries into its suitability as a studio. You didn't make it clear to the kebab-shop owner that there would be bands playing in a room adjacent to his shop, whilst ensuring us that he was 'cool with it'. You wasted our time and money in a completely irresponsible fashion. I could even charge you for taxi fares to and from the studio, but i'm not going to. It has been six weeks now. I have given you remarkable leeway.
Hippy: (passively) don't shout, look don't get angry-
Me: I think I have every right to be angry, you are taking the fucking piss out of me. Send me the money immediately.
Hippy: I don't have the money right now-
Me: Find the fucking money and send it to me immediately. I have your fucking keys. I won't return them until the cheque clears. Send me the fucking money or i'll make duplicates and give them to everyone I know.
Hippy: Look, okay, okay
Me: I look forward to receiving the cheque. Goodbye.

(click)

Tried to relive the first buzz. Watched Hard to Kill again.

Idea for a film:

L.A. Pool Party Massacre

Fretwork, new signings to Atlantic Records, have just completed their debut album at Sheer Rock Face Studios in Hollywood. Produced by Lou Giordano and Butch Vig, it's gonna be fucking massive man. I mean, these guys are HOT. The MD of Atlantic phoned and he loves it. Platinum all the way. There's this massive party going on at the studio. It's, like, only 9 o'clock and already these two college chicks are making out in the swimming pool! This one guy is standing on a table, pouring champagne into the drummer's mouth. They're playing the album really fucking loud through this humongous sound system and everyone is fucking digging it. Then the coke turns up, and woah this shit is really something. There must be like, 40 or 50 people at this party, and everyone is getting wasted. Then a guy in a hockey mask turns up and murders everyone with a power sander.

city after city
granite grey as morning


Back home now. LA was the last stop. I was ambivalent about returning home. LA is a fantasy world, especially when you are staying with wonderful hosts in a ranch house on Hollywood Hill, complete with swimming pool and excellent company. I had an 'after-show party', and met 5 other Warp artists all of whom were called Brian. Everyone stayed up till 3am, apart from me. I went to sleep at 10.30 and slept for 13 hours.

I watched 7 Steven Seagal films this week. My favourite thusfar is Hard To Kill, in which Seagal plays a man who is very hard to kill, primarily because he is very hard. Lots of people want to kill him though, but he's way too hard for them, and completely turns the tables on them by killing them instead.

The Black Holes in the Sand EP (or mini-album as it features six tracks and clocks in at over half an hour)has been mastered and sounds great. We plan to release it early October.

Chicago is flat. I didn't get to see much of it, but what I did see was flat. I played at the Empty Bottle to a good reception. Got up horribly early to fly to San Francisco which is where I am writing this. I slept some more on the plane with the aid of 20 mg of Diazepam....yeah... but i'm still very tired and disorientated. I've been shown lots of the key Bay Area sights when all I really want to see is the inside of my eyelids. I've crossed three time zones now and as far as my body is concerned it's already tomorrow. In fact it was tomorrow yesterday.

I'm writing this in the office at the back of a gallery space in downtown SF. I play in an hour or so. Someone is going to get me some weed. I just ate an amazing Thai meal, the delicate sophistication of which was totally wasted on me. I would have been happy with a bowl of porridge and a nice steaming mug of morphine. SF is hilly and temperate. I can relax with hills; I grew up around hills, Bristol is built on seven of them. Plenty of cover. Plenty of places to hide.

Tomorrow we fly to LA. Then on sunday I fly home. The only thing i've dreaded on this entire trip is the bit where I arrive at Heathrow and have to run the National Express coach travel degradation-gauntlet back to Bristol. Note to all travellers: if you must brave the vile onboard 'toilet', check there is water running from the taps. Last time I spent a three hour coach journey with soap eating into my hands. National Express have no respect for human dignity and if they were an individual I would tie bricks to their feet and throw them in a sewer.

That morale-corroding thought aside, i'm actually having a really nice time. Went to the legendary Amoeba Music store on Haight; bought a Michael Nyman CD, a copy of Sugar's 'Beaster' for $2 and a copy of Depeche Mode's 'Violator' for $7.
I'm also digging into Can's 'Future days' which is reliably excellent.

Last night I played at the Mercury Lounge, NYC. It was good. Two guys drove four hours from Boston to see the show, which is both touching and bewildering. I drank my regulation straight double tequila before playing, but unwisely took someone up on another after the show, forgetting the liberal measures served in US bars. We sold about ten CDs. I talked very loudly and with unwarranted conviction about nothing in particular for a few hours then got in a taxi, ate a Danish pastry and ended up in bed somehow.

This morning I woke with a very bad headache and a mood as black as John Ashcroft's soul. After braving the car crash tourism horrorshow that is Canal Street (it's like Oxford Street, Carnaby Street, Portabello and Camden High Street all rolled into one, but about 10 miles long and more intense). One comforting thing about NYC is that people are as nonchalant and unfriendly as they are in London, so there is no real danger of culture shock. My hotel room is tiny with an enormous television filling the room like Magritte's apple. I broke the window trying to open it far enough to get my head out so I could smoke a joint without setting off the smoke alarm, and broke the 'safety-catch'- (presumably to prevent people throwing themselves to their deaths, which the hotel would no doubt be sued for), so I couldn't shut it again. Thus the first night was spent with ear plugs in.

I renewed myself on a brunch of corn beef hash and two eggs at a superb diner on 6th Avenue. I bewildered the staff with repeated requests for mugs of hot water, to which I added my middle-class tea bags from England.

On the plane I chose the 'Yes, I am feeling horny' option from the in-flight entertainments, that filthy old goat Bertolucci's latest mid-brow skin-flick 'The Dreamers'. Two very beautiful Parisian intellectual boho kids initiate a cautious, bi-curious wide-eyed american boy into their incestuous menage-a-trois. They all get naked and fuck each other. Presented against a vacuous backdrop of student protests, the film is utterly meaningless but boy is she fucking hot.

I noticed that the Stone Roses' eponymous debut album was voted best British album of all time in some poll in some magazine somewhere or something. This made me feel the way the death of Princess Diana made me feel: that I have nothing in common with 99.9% of people in this country. Apparently we are allowed to like Morrissey and The Cure again though, so that makes everything okay. So here is my poll of records that I own which will never be featured in 'best of' polls, nor benefit from some sort of retrospect revival.

The Chameleons - Script of the Bridge (very good album, handicapped by cover artwork strongly reminiscent of Marillion)

Slowdive - Just For A Day (listen to 'Primal', look me in the eye and tell me your unsatisfied...)

Fairport Convention - What We Did on Our Holidays (how a band can be this good and this bad in the space of 45 minutes is quite miraculous)

Suzanne Vega - Suzanne Vega (this is of no merit whatsoever; i just keep it around to annoy people)

Ride - Smile (the first two eps. fuck you! Ride were awesome)

Pet Shop Boys - Actually (shut up. you know nothing. PSB rule)

Iron Maiden - Killers (the finest heavy metal record ever)