Turn it down…
26/03/09
Australia, day 8, March 2009…
Its a bit too humid for us pale scottish boys at the moment (well, guitar tech Churd is from Preston, but we’ll gloss over that…)
Australia, day 8, March 2009…
Its a bit too humid for us pale scottish boys at the moment (well, guitar tech Churd is from Preston, but we’ll gloss over that…)
So hello world… welcome back to the Biffy blog, which 3 people asked me about in the same 24 hour period, after months of inactivity… random, but worthy of a mention I guess.
So we’re still down under… Here’s a little status report for you:
Ben has turned a little bit red, but has managed to evade serious sunburn… James declared himself last night, to looking "fucked"… He does look a bit tired, but personally I think he was being a bit tough on himself. Simon looks great actually, though managed to graze his forehead last night, when he cracked the microphone off his head during ‘Love Has A Diameter..’ which has left a little criss-cross patterned graze. Nothing too serious though.
Its actually the aforementioned Richa(u)rd, who has suffered the most at the hands of Australia’s natural resources, in this case a burning sun, which has made him a little bit red in the face…
Well, if you must go out fishing at every opportunity…
So today is our last day in Australia, before we fly to Munich tomorrow.
We started in Perth, as you may recall, which was grand, before we flew to Melbourne, and had two days off (unheard of!), which was spent enjoying the city, and doing promo – It also turns out that Ned Kelly’s death mask, looks strangely like Ben, from a distance… Richard and I went to the Victoria Library to see it, and got a bit of a fright when we did.
The band and I caught up with some old and close friends from Scotland in both Melbourne and Sydney, Richard had friends in a few places (to be honest, he’s got friends everywhere, that one. The nicest man in rock and roll), and I misjudged a situation in Brisbane, and had a spare 90 minutes in the afternoon to see a friend, 60 of which were spent on my own on a riverbank, 15 in taxis, and 15 actually with said friend. Its never simple.
Tonight, we are in Sydney.
The band played at the Metro theatre last night, which was probably the best show of the tour, just pipping Melbourne.
We will be spending our final evening in Australia going out to watch Pete Wentz attempt to host the MTV Australia Music Awards. Good luck big boy, I hope you’ve got some decent chat hidden up your sleeve… (I suspect he will, considering his sleeves were likely designed by one of his clothing companies, soft drink companies, or another arm of his glove-spanning operation)
We are looking forward to seeing Kings of Leon perform; Apparently the Killers and Kaiser Chiefs will also be playing, as well as Sia (used to be the singer in Zero 7… is that right?).
The band will also be running the gauntlet of the red carpet, which we’re told is hosted by Audrina Partridge, someone whom we didn’t think we were familiar with, until a quick check revealed that she’s that actress…. no, sorry, that model… no, that’s not right either… tv presenter? She’s that girl from The Hills anyway… No, not that one, the other one… The one that I think moved to New York or something… Nope, the other one that moved. Yeah, thats her.
So, a fun evening should be had by all… Aside from the aforementioned, I suspect, who might just crack under the weight of great expectation. It’d be hard to top Katy Perry at the MTV Europe Awards, icily dismissing one Jared Leto with some serious panache.
We’ll be seeing some more of you next week across Europe, which should be fun… You’re in for a bit of a treat, the band are on great form at the moment. I think Ben has been working out… In fact, I know he did in Perth, the morning after we arrived in Australia.
The setlist in Australia has been quite a mixed bag – Saturday Superhouse was left off, to then make a return appearance, and …Match, has been put right at the end of the main set now, which makes a change, as its been in the first three for the past couple of years… The Ideal Height and Convex Concave are holding fast in the set, after being rolled back out for the UK shows in December…
Despite my hardest efforts (or the odd flippant remark at least), Bonanzoid Deathgrip and Got Wrong have yet to return…
I presume quite a few of you are wondering if they are going to play any new songs – They didn’t in Australia (not at the shows, at least…) but I guess you never can tell… It’d be killer, as some of the new material is screaming out to be played fast and at extreme volumes, in small rooms… Its not my place to talk about their new music, beyond what the band have already revealed in various interviews (which I’m sure a quick bit of googling can find you) but they’re very much settling down with their new songs now… Just like Puzzle wasn’t Infinity Land Part 2, the new record won’t be Puzzle Part 2. Roll on May 1st…
What else… Would you have any interest in us running a Twitter page? Or do you prefer the blog? I don’t think we’d do both, as one would suffer from the other… Twitter seems a bit hip, although I do enjoy reading about Calvin Harris being served the wrong vegetable, Stephen Fry killing a prostitute, or Shaquille O Neal going to small diners.
I’ll leave you with some random bits of music that we’re listening to at various points:
Frightened Rabbit (still), on the rooftop of a Melbourne Skyscraper, as the sun goes down… just before it started to rain… Natalie Portman rapping on the Lonely Island album…"all the kids looking up to me can suck my dick, it’s portman motherfucker, drink til i’m sick" – rap perfection… New Gallows… Various Australian support bands, of particular note, DZ from Brisbane, who were fucking outstanding… New Mastodon… thanks to the lovely victoria from warner australia for that one.
OH! Eastbound and Down… a new HBO comedy show – check it out. Incredibly funny.
And Lost is more and more astounding every week. Simon and I were chatting about it last night, in particular about how it could quite literally go anywhere – the whole time travel thing means that they could literally justify anything, albeit in a longwinded fashion… What do you think the chances are that Christian Shepherd is actually just an older Jack Shepherd? We thought that seemed reasonably plausible, although it was around 3am, at which point most things could have seemed fairly plausible… His coffin confuses matters, but whatever…
Anyway,
I hope this has been of some interest to you… something for everyone.
tour manager neil.
ps. great news – we haven’t encountered one spider in Australia yet – I can’t express how happy I am about this fact.
pps. I’d like to apologise for the quality of writing on this update – I literally had 8 minutes to do it in, so the punctuation, grammar, spelling and general tone may not be up to the high standards you may have come to expect from this diary… I’ll try and get back on top next time around.x