a circle is just a curved straight line.

24/01/07

We’re in Liverpool today, at the Carling Academy.
Last night, we hit the Glasgow Barrowlands.
After rolling into town at 3am, some of us got to see our girlfriends for a few hours, until returning to the venue at 11am, whilst others got a few further hours in their tourbus bunks.

Hello again,

still on the internet I see?

James and I took a little jaunt down to XFM Scotland, where James chatted to Martin Bate, an XFM DJ for a bit, after which we returned to the venue, as Ben and Simon were coming in from the bus.

James, being the flame-haired trooper that he is, has been handling the band’s press engagements solo for the past couple of days, as Ben and Si seemed to be coming down with the tour plague that has swept through the greater-touring-party with the vengeance of 10 angry men. As such, we figured it was best to keep them warm and in bed as much as possible.

Not surprisingly, they didn’t take much convincing, bless them.

Thankfully both of them (and most of the other people affected) are now feeling considerably better, as we roll in and out of Liverpool, into our day off in Birmingham tomorrow…

Anyone with any suggestions of how to spend a day off in Birmingham, feel free to let us know on the forum.
I’m fairly sure it’ll involve a bit of light television, some dinner and early to bed at the hotel.

It may also involve a curry, however, I’d like to set something straight right now…

I might actually have ranted about this before, on this very page, for which I apologise, but I’m in the zone now, and don’t really want to go back through old diaries to check…

Birmingham, as you may know, is famed for having many Indian Restaurants, and seems to pride itself on providing the best curry in Britain… Not a specific restaurant, obviously, but just in general…

regardless though, it’s a fucking lie.

Every curry I’ve ever had in Birmingham has been reasonable at best.

Maybe I’ve been going to the wrong places, but I don’t think so… everywhere came recommended, and every time I was disappointed.

Coming from Glasgow, we’re all fairly spoiled in the way of indian food, not least for the fact that the band’s manager is good friends with one of the main men at one of Glasgow’s best Indian restaurants…
The reason we’re spoiled, is because, unlike Birmingham, Glasgow really does have the best Indian restaurants in the land.

Sorry Birmingham… You’ve got a fairly nice shopping centre, with it’s big bubble-mirror things on the outside, a lovely Apple store, and a wonderful food court in Selfridges. You’ve got one of the slightly nicer venues in the Carling family, you’re possibly the home to Heavy Metal, what with Sabbath and Priest, but the home of the best Indian Meal in Britain, you are most certainly not.

And what the fuck is up with giving us Ocean Colour Scene…? I mean, really…? Was that a joke on the rest of the country or what? Some massive city-wide injoke? Did you split the millions of pounds they made from their tepid and insulting musical output amongst yourself, and giggle as the rest of the country fell over themselves to fill your dirty pockets?

I’m getting off the point, as I tend to do on these entries…

Indian food… we’ll give it another go tomorrow, I expect, but this is very much your last chance to impress the Biffy family, Birmingham… your last chance.

So Glasgow last night…

you guys (hello incidentally… sorry for ignoring you whilst I was chatting to the Birmingham folks) .. you were fucking LOUD last night…
The general consensus amongst the team, was that last night was the favourite Biffy Barrowland performance… apart from the points near the start of the set where half of the front section of the audience ended up on their backs, turtle-like, with the other half trying to help them back up again before someone got hurt.
We already had a broken nose during the Audition’s set earlier in the evening, when they managed to get 20 or so guys in a clear space in the middle of the room, to batter the shit ot of each other… a ‘Wall of Death’ i think it’s called, but as I’m now 24, I feel out of touch with the youth and what they get up to in the crowd’s at shows…
Nice to see that loads of pints still get thrown around though… Churd and Adam were both onstage before the band had even kicked into semi-mental (the first song of the set) mopping up beer and such…
If they hadn’t been so involved with cleaning up the stage, there’s a good chance that one of them would have waded into the crowd, and had a few words with ‘he-who-used-to-have-a-pint’…

I mean, It’s all good fun when you cover your gig-going peers with cheap sticky lager, but when your gig-going-peer is replaced with James’ pedal board, that’s when motherfuckers have to THROW DOWN.

word.

It was a really great show though… you all did yourselves proud last night… you did the band incredibly proud.

What else…

keep your eyes peeled on iTunes, for a ‘celebrity’ playlist from the biffy boys (including a couple of ‘tour favourites’ from the team as a whole)

Saturday Superhouse has been put on the upfront playlist at Radio 1… which is quite exciting 🙂 I think that might be the first time the band have been on some sort of radio 1 playlist… hopefully over the next 7 weeks leading up to the release, it’ll climb on to the C, B or even (dare I say it) the A list.

Our friend Edith will be spinning the record a bit next week as well, which we’re incredibly thankful for. Nice one miss.

Back to on-tour gossip….

Some fast facts for you:

Guitar Tech Churd almost broke the violinist from I AM GHOST’s violin a few nights ago, by standing on it… it survived though, thank fuck… Quite interestingly, they’re metal enough to have a 5-STRING VIOLIN… that’s pretty fucking metal.

I’m pleased to hear that many of you have been winding up merchguy Gordon… he’s sussed it unfortunately, because ONE OF YOU TOLD HIM… Whilst I was delayed in the departure lounge in Glasgow airport, after going home for a birthday on a day off, I asked Gordon to escort a couple of local journalists into the venue in Southampton to interview the band…
Our ‘enterprising’ journo friend decided to completely fuck the game by telling him what was going on, thus negating the whole operation. For fuck sake.

We have the lovely Simon from kerrang! onboard the good ship Biffy for a few days… I believe he’s keeping a (slightly more regular than ours) tour blog over at kerrang.com which will be worth a look… He has taken the place of the equally lovely Emma from Kerrang! who was with us for the first half of the tour, writing an article about the Kerrang! Tour 2007 as a whole…
exciting times.

The Bronx are fucking amazing. And lovely people. And they have the hands of history’s stranglers, and really really really want your blood.
They’re also playing a show in London, directly after the Astoria show on Saturday, at FROG in the Mean Fiddler, the fucking workhorse maniacs.
Love them to bits.

Unfortunately we won’t be able to catch them, as we’ll be on our way to KOKO in Camden, where the band will be DJing, and we’re going to try get there in time to catch the end of Gallows, who we’ve been hearing lots of wonderful things about.

It’s almost showtime, and I want to go catch the end of The Bronx… new music from Arcade Fire has been filling the dressing room for the past hour or so, and as wonderful as it is to embrace the Neon Bible, I want to go and listen to some loud screaming.

speak soon,
much love.

TM neil.x