sherwood forest...
Sun 08 Nov 2009 | Views: 3144 | Comments: 25
You join us in Nottingham on a sleepy Sunday...
The last couple of shows, in Leeds and Manchester, were fantastic. Two of the best so far.
Newcastle was decent, but slightly let down by more vocal (and inebriated) members of the crowd, who made it a bit of a struggle for the band.
Without going into detail (as I promised the gentleman in question I wouldn't...) a couple of people found out the hard way, that screaming demands at simon, don't always yield the intended result, and we found out that the same people don't tend to be quite so vocal when there aren't 1900 other people around them, and they're no longer an anonymous face in the crowd.
A good principle to remember though - the people standing onstage in front of you aren't performing monkeys. And more importantly, they're acutely aware of what you shout, and they only need to hear it once...
So... Only Revolutions comes out tomorrow. Which is exciting on a number of fronts, most importantly the fact that everyone now gets to hear it properly, on CD. I think some lucky people have already received their box-sets, Hope you're enjoying them. A lot of work went into getting those bad boys together. A lot of work. A certain lady at 14th Floor lost many nights sleep pulling it together. Nice one ms Ivory.
Even the regular CD is beautiful. And if you pick up the CD/DVD version, take an hour to check out the film that we brought back in pieces from los angeles, and was loving assembled in the west end of glasgow.
The tour, as i mentioned has been lovely.
Nice to see a few familiar faces in the crowd as always. We've seen friends both old and new on this tour, which has been marvellous. And as lovely as it has been to see people in real life, I've still managed to successfully offend a handful of people on the messageboard, by questioning their morals and decency for downloading the band's album, and posting up their "reviews" before the final chord of Whorses has died out, and more importantly ... (I also, if you're interested, took issue with the negative things a few of the more contrary members had to say about the record, but it didn't seem to go down particularly well. In future, I'm going to remember some wise words from a friend, regarding anonymous people on the internet. In the present, I'm going to hang back from posting on messageboards, and stop poking the proverbial monster with jagged sticks...)
I'm hugely looking forward to someone coming up to me at a show though, to have an actual chat about such matters. We seem to lack a bit of decent healthy debate on tour, likely since we have a wonderful team of people, of a similar mindset, so it'd be nice to meet some people with, shall we say, contrasting ideas?
I'm treading a reasonable karmic balance however. Every night of the tour, I've taken to going outside the venue for half an hour or so, just after the doors have opened, to have a look for ticket touts. They seem to have dramatically increased in numbers on this tour, and indeed, on the amount they're charging for tickets.
My favourite game at the moment, is to intercept the transaction just before money changes hand, and give the unfortunate souls some free tickets, in return for a small donation to one of the charities that we help on the guestlist (Biffy guestlist places generally come with a donation to charity)
Needless to say, after a couple of instances, it starts to really piss the touts off. Particular the guys in Leeds. They were particularly vocal about their disdain for such a charitable activity...
The ps3 has returned to the fore, during the daylight hours... As well as the ping pong, of course... Did I mention the ping pong table previously...? We have a beautiful blue ping pong table, that bears the band logo...
Today, it has been Fight Night that has held everyone's attention... aside from Ben, who has been knocked out a couple of times already.
By me, i might add, which might be the first time I've beaten one of the band at anything on the ps3...
We were utterly devastated to learn that Nottingham's Selectadisc store has fallen victim to the recession (or the hordes of aforementioned downloaders, who no longer visit record stores) and has closed its doors for the final time.
I can't really express how much that store meant to us. I visited on my first ever biffy tour, and have gone back every single time we've ever been in Nottingham. We once phoned up when we were late to arrive, and managed to persuade them to stay open for 30 minutes later than normal, so we could try and nip in... Which we did.
And now its gone. Its fair to say that I've had some palpable contempt regarding this today.
It has, however, reinforced my love for the noble record shop.
Its bordering on an endangered species.
Very upsetting. Condolences to Nottingham.
Tomorrow we roll into the (new) Birmingham Academy. Then on to a day off in Norwich (anyone know of a football pitch in Norwich that we can use to destroy the Manchester Orchestra boys at 7 asides?) followed by the show, and then finally Brixton.
Before we reach the end of the tour, however, we have one thing left to do... we were given a rather special gift, by a rather special friend of ours, last night in Manchester... We might be a few days late, but when you're given a massive box of fireworks, it seems rude not to set them off at some point...
Nice one GK.
So... more soon... I hope you are all well, and keeping warm as the days get colder..
tour manager Neil.
PS. As always (and I need to say this, as i've got in trouble before) no part of the text above is permitted to be reproduced as news, gossip or anything else in any sort of publication... :)