NME Tour Diary

January - February 2006

You've Reached Your Final Destination
Big day off today and, for the first time this tour, we didn't book a side gig to fill the gap. Instead we drove down to London and went a'strolling. And it isn't over yet -- no, no! Keith and I are here in some random Cafe Nero on some random Soho street having a capuccino and discussing film. Specifically, we're going over "Final Destination 3", which we just caught in the lovely Cineworld at Leicester Square.
It's generally agreed that the "Final Destination" franchise is the most artistically interesting thing going on in cinema today, but might it also be the most viscerally satisfying? Where else can you go to see kids get sliced, slashed, sluiced, juiced, baked, chopped, burnt, crushed, skewered, and really nervous? Not really anywhere. In this installment they introduced a new element: naked teenage breasts. Which then get cooked like cornish game hens under super-hot hotlights. Too much? Very likely yes. But one hesitates to rule against the creators of the "Destination" series prematurely. The fact is, they have grossed us out in the past, sometimes to awful degrees, and yet it's always proven cogent, even brilliant, under cold critical light. Scholarship will very likely bear out the necessity of this latest offense as well -- cooking the teenage breasts.
Cooking the breasts of the young ones -- artistically responsible? Socially constructive? Probably!

We Are Scientists - 2006-02-10 19:50:14

Handraisers Caught Out
During last night's show in Birmingham, I asked whether anyone had brought a dog to the show. A small but notable portion of the audience had. I then asked whether anybody had brought a snake. Again, several dozen audience members indicated I had their number. What I couldn't help but notice was that it was for the most part all the same people who raised their hand about snakes as had raised their hand about dogs. In other words, all these folks who brought their dog ALSO brought a snake. A little weird, right? Quite a coincidence, right?
Or something else was going on.
See, dogs and snakes don't get along. They never have. Dogs hate snakes more than they hate standing still. Snakes hate dogs so badly that they'll launch themselves down a dog's throat just to choke him to death. And yet several dozen people had brought dogs AND snakes? Together? A dog and snake sitting peacefully next to one another in the car's back seat on the way to the gig?
Not. Fuckin. Likely.
No, what we had there in Birmingham was a bunch of handraisers. I'll bet there wasn't a dog or a snake to be found in the whole room last night. Just a couple thousand good clean kids, and periodically, mixed in at random intervals, a lousy handraiser.

We Are Scientists - 2006-02-09 16:55:32

On the Zealotry of Manchester
Manchester tonight, night one of two at the Academy, which I remembered as larger than it is from when we last played it (with Editors, those lovely, virile, perfectly coiffed natives who oversaw the British leg of our journey from boys to men). And it was a f*cking great show, and when I say "f*cking great", I mean that without hyperbole, which in the past, on this blog and elsewhere, has been among my vices (and to which I fully intend to crumble later in this post, if not this very paragraph). (I'm drunk.)

So yeah, it was a f*cking great show, but I need to stop dancing around the following factoid: I GOT HIT IN THE HEAD THREE TIMES WITH BEER.

TWICE CANS AND ONCE A PLASTIC BOTTLE.

Did it hurt? No. Of course not. As a child I was whipped by my pappy daily; he used a length of barbed wire wrapped tightly -- like a samurai sword's handle -- with leather lash. His "rose thorn whip", he called it. So did it hurt when these kids lobbed their near-finished bevvies 'cross my visage? With admirable accuracy? No, it didn't. In fact -- and here I realize full well that I'm revealing too much, but: it felt pretty alright. It felt good. The little f*ckers.

See, I've got a kid. True. And this reminds me of when he used to toss handfulls of veggie-sludge across the table at me from his fully-stabilized, seatbelt-equipped chair at the dinner table. Just kidding. He's only just a month old -- he can't throw sh*t. (Seriously, sometimes I stand two feet away from him and taunt him with the most crazy, most taunting faces you can imagine, and all he can manage to do is wail his displeasure. I set marbles, rocks, chinese stars right there on his lap -- can't even manage to pick them up, the little fool.) But these Manchester kids, I think what happens to them is that they feel an immense upwelling of love inside themselves and, like a silk-skinned lawn ornament, their arms course full of that love and go rigid and -- THWONG! -- there goes the bottle they were holding.

That's how I choose to take it, anyway. The alternate possiblity is that they see my protective lenses and think, "Can bounce thing off that hard shiny!"

We Are Scientists - 2006-02-04 22:09:18

[it is worth noting that your host, Ellie, is entirely responsible for the next entry. For it was she who showed Keith the way to the Barfly]

On Discipline
Guys, I've added another item to my already impressively stringent catalogue of rules pertaining to on-tour protocol, and it is this: after the show in Liverpool, you SHOULD go to the after-party at a local bar, and you SHOULD fraternize with the fans who have congregated there, but you SHOULD NOT accept every drink that is offered you, and you SHOULD NOT do numerous shots of several different varietals of the more burning alcohols, especially if one of them is that awful, red cinnamon-tasting one that goes down like a cat down the gullet of a python, all hisses and scratches, and then you SHOULD NOT leave the after-party with a group of enthusiastic fans who have promised you a sweet house party at 3:30 am, but if you do and they call the host of the house party and get no answer, you SHOULD NOT follow them aimlessly around town, past the studio where Coldplay supposedly recorded a bunch of stuff, looking for any open bar, and when they give up and offer to take you back to their student flats for some beer, to be delivered by an off-license, you SHOULD NOT follow them to a weird part of town and up some stairs and past their unconscious roommate who has fallen, senseless, across the doorway, and you SHOULD NOT keep agreeing to stay for one more beer even though you're too drunk to remember how to get back to the bus much less who you are and whether or not you're in We Are Scientists or the Mystery Jets, and when it turns out that two of the guys are journalism students who had interviewed you earlier in the night and are now voicing their disapproval of your band's interviewing style, which involves near-total avoidance of every question that's been posed in favor of ruminations on Lobster-gods and the like, you MUST NOT agree to continue the interview then and there, drunk, at 4:30am in the hallway of a student flat, nor should you begin a political rant against George Bush and his ilk at great volume, nor should you allow the kids to then put “The Great Escape” on their stereo and pick you up on their shoulders and hoist you around the room like a protesting rag-doll until you follow your own lyrical advice and finally make good your escape, staggering back toward the bus like a deranged refugee. If, though, on the way to the tour bus, you happen to witness a drunk girl stumble over the curb and land, face-first, on the sidewalk, you SHOULD feel free to laugh.
- Keith

We Are Scientists - 2006-02-03 14:56:23

THAT is power
Liverpool University tonight, the Academy. A blinding success. A blinding, colossal, nearly unfathomable success. Well, it wasn't that good, but it was very, very good.

The kids, they freaked. Kids' eyes kept shooting out of their heads when we'd go into the chorus, and that doesn't always happen at rock shows. It's sort of a cliched thing, a stereotypical "rock show" thing - kids' eyes popping out of their eye sockets like two goldfish jumping out of a bowl onto the kitchen counter - but it doesn't actually, in my experience, happen that often. Yet tonight it did. Because tonight was good.

Tonight I watched as one guy, so mindlessly psyched that we were playing "The Great Escape", pulled his own head off his shoulders and tossed it onstage. HIS OWN HEAD. Dropped dead on the spot, I assume, but his point was made, whatever it was - that he possessed uncommon strength, perhaps.

Earlier, as we launched into "It's a Hit", a girl near the front ripped all her clothes off - just *tore* them off, like a werewolf through a chicken's feathers - only to reveal *another* set of clothing underneath the first. This second set of clothes she later tore off during "The Great Escape", though with substantially more difficulty than the first set cost her, more like a werewolf tearing into a knight who's got on chain mail. And indeed, she was wearing chain mail under her first outfit. That's how cold it is in Liverpool today.

If things were nuts for us, they were a bag of nuts for Arctic Monkeys. I was reminded, as I watched their set, of the film "Conan The Barbarian". In it, James Earl Jones plays Thulsa Doom, the leader of a massive cult called [something I can't remember], and in one scene Thulsa Doom explains to Conan (played by an improbably muscular Arnold Schwarzenegger) the nature of real power. He gestures to a spot hundreds of feet above where a female acolyte is perched on a ledge, and calls out to her: "Come to me, my child," he says. "Come." She steps off the ledge and a few seconds later pushes a crater into the stone floor near Conan's feet. "THAT is strength, boy," he tells Conan. "THAT is power." Not that I think kids would jump to their deaths if Arctic Monkeys asked them to, but I think that if one of these kids were standing on a ledge a meter or two above ground? And the landing was hard, like carpet or something? And the Arctic Monkeys asked the kid nicely to leap down from his perch? The kid would leap right the hell down from his perch and possibly turn an ankle doing it.

Oh, and we finally watched "Commando" last night, and it was f***ing amazingly terrible. In a good way, obviously. There's a scene where Schwarzenegger's avatar - one 'Colonel John Matrix', I believe - drives a bulldozer through a gun store's wall in order to get at the goodies within, then spends about ten minutes shopping. When the cops show up, he is genuinely surprised. As though the 911 call would come through - "Yeah, hi, a dude just drove a bulldozer through the wall of Billy's Machine Gunnery and Grenade Counter across the street from my apartment" - and the operator would just say, "Sounds serious - we'll check it out in the morning." At the end of the movie, a weaponless Matrix tricks his enemy into giving up his gun with this tactic: "Come on, Bennett, you don't need the gun." Bennett happily tosses away his gun and goes hand-to-hand with Matrix, who has roughly two stone on him; a minute or so later Bennett stands pinned to a wall by a steel pipe that runs through his chest, and realizes that he really did need the gun. I would recommend this movie to anyone.

-Chris

We Are Scientists - 2006-02-03 00:41:43

Dougherty a Lycanthrope?
So Pete Dougherty, as everybody in the world living now or at any other time in human history knows, is finally going to serve some time, and reactions have been mixed. You've got your "Finally this man will have a chance to heal" camp, your "Wha-? They still put people in jail for taking drugs in the civilized world?" camp, and your "Get ready for a bloodbath -- Pete Dougherty is a werewolf who uses opium to suppress The Change; now that he's off the junk, he's going to put his spiny claws all over the insides of half a dozen fellow prisoners once a month" camp. There're points to be made in favor of each, but none stands up to a critical once-over quite so solidly as the werewolf theory (my theory). ---- Congratulations, British Law: you've put an innocent manwolf behind bars. ---- Newcastle tonight; the show starts in just a few minutes. Excitement is in the air the way sometimes you'll get dandelion seeds or hundreds of birds at once or dread in the air. But let me come clean: I'm most excited not about the show, but about the *aftershow*, because after the show we're coming back to the bus and watching Michael Schwarzenegger's "Commando". We discovered this film on the bus's movie hard drive today and have been holding in the crap of anticipation with squeezed butts all day. I apologize for that metaphor about the crap in the butts, but I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE for how much I'm looking forward to seeing "Commando", feat. Kirk Schwarzenegger. ---- Is this supposed to be about the NME Shockwaves Tour?
- Chris

We Are Scientists - 2006-01-29 19:34:02

A look back
So, I guess we're going to have to do some backtracking here, as our intentions of pumping out the first few day's worth of news for this blog in a timely fashion have already been trampled beneath our rampaging lust for the party on the road. It has been too long - hours, almost days - since we last caroused on tour, and so it was with no small amount of chagrin that we were met with all manner of setback as we attempted to make our way to Ireland for the first show of the tour. Fuel pumps failed on the plane (not in midair), leaving us stranded in New York for hours and causing us to miss our connecting flight in London and opening the small window of opportunity that the airline needed to misplace our guitars. Luckily, we caught them in their little scheme before they could airmail our instruments to Senegal or burn them in a furnace or whatever it was they intended to do, those villains. Finally, we loaded Michael into the stowage compartment of our brand new tour bus - which we've dubbed the Mineshaft Canary, for reasons concerning both its color and the general sense of foreboding with which we were consumed upon spotting it - and got on our way.
The tour was off to an appalling start, and it was now clear to all in Camp Scientist that it was simply going to be awful. ---- That's when we met The Mystery Jets. Allow me to recommend now that if you're ever afforded the opportunity to share a dressing room with the Jets, you should weep with joy at your good fortune. These kids are as sweet-natured as a pack of Labrador Retrievers, and about three times as cute (luckily, they are about 300 times as intelligent, to boot). Kapil - to be known as "Kaps" from now on, per his request - immediately won me over by constantly humming aloud the guitar part to "The Great Escape," a habit that, five days into the tour, now makes me want to crush him. Kai, the band's heartthrob (is this true? I don't know - I'm just making this up as I go along), has managed to master the art of brooding, although whenever you pause to ask him why he's staring off into the void with an expression of great despair, he immediately snaps out of it and is suddenly as jovial as ever. I will get to the bottom of this mysterious tendency before the tour is over, my friends, and you will read about all of Kai's dark secrets right here. Will, Blaine, and Henry are, too, unimpeachable gentlemen, although it should be said that some member of the Mystery Jets keeps eating all of the hummus in our dressing room, a crime that normally calls for swift, cruel justice. The Jets, though, by virtue of their winning personalities and impeccable harmonizing skills, have earned immunity from the court of We Are Scientists. They can do no wrong in our book. But, if they want to lay off the hummus, you know, that's cool with us. ---- Next, we met Alex of the Arctic Monkeys, about whom so much has already been written already that it strikes me as an almost criminal act to add myself to the number of journalists who have typed his name into their reports. Suffice it to say that the hype surrounding the Arctic Monkeys does no justice their personal warmth and friendliness. If they also happen to be a phenomenal band that causes the kids and the media to lose their collective minds, well, that's of secondary import. Does it make any difference that, every night, they drive the crowd into an absolute frenzy, causing friend to trample friend in a desperate bid to draw closer to the stage? Does it matter that, at the show in Glasgow last night, I could have sworn that I spotted a petite teenaged girl draw strength from the music of the Arctic Monkeys in the same way a werewolf draws its strength from the full moon, actually growing fur and fangs and terrible claws and attacking and drinking the blood of nearby fan, whose screams were lost beneath the even more primal howls of the crowd as they chanted along with Alex, "I'll bet that you look good on the dance flooooor"? Because, I'm fairly certain that that's what I saw last night. ---- Maximo Park, too, are an amazing lot about whom I'll undoubtedly unload heaps of treacly praise in the coming days, but I've been trying to structure this report on the bands by presenting them in the order in which they appear on the bill, and, now that I've reached the Big MP, my eyes hurt and my brain is burned and I think I'd rather just go watch their sound check now. Which I get to do for free. Every day. ---- This tour is ridiculously awesome.
- Keith

We Are Scientists - 2006-01-28 16:15:34

Keith escapes doom
Yesterday was the first day off on the NME Tour, and Michael and I misused it. Keith's girlfriend Christian had just flown in and was dog-tired by 11, so he escaped the vortex. Michael and I, we did not; down, down, down we went, a steep frightening descent into the spiraling gyre. Wine at dinner, a couple of ciders at Buff Club, whisky after whisky after whisky at the Art School with the gentlemen of Cinematics, back to a house-studio for hours of beer marination. ---- This afternoon I awoke wanting nothing -- *nothing* -- so much as to be dead.
- Chris

We Are Scientists - 2006-01-27 16:45:01