A LOW HUM

The flight to London was actually too short for me. It was only like 6/7 hours, I was really enjoying watching some cheesy movies and really didn’t want it to stop. The last few days had been such a stressful, sleepless emotional rollercoaster that it was actually awesome to not be able to do anything and just watch some crappy Hollywood movies, I was so worn out that I loved “The Bucket List”, bigtime, and I know that isn’t a good sign.

Customs London was THE crappest customs experience yet. Warning to all bands, man, get a DAMN good story and get your acting face on. Rhys and Nik went separately from Me and Ash, and were on the verge of being kicked out of the country, I don’t know when I became such a damn good straight faced liar, It’s actually quite disturbing the web of elaborate lies I can weave on the spot. I manage to talk Nik and Rhys out of their imminent booting out of London and with some big sighs of relief, we walk out of the airport onto the street.

Like NYC, nobody in London has a car so I couldn’t wrangle a pick up, a taxi to town costs 60 (s)quid…or almost $160NZD, the tube was 4 quid each, so we to tube it to Nik’s sister place who we were staying with. Was a classic hour carting all our gear, drumkit included through various tube stations onto different trains and transferring to other tubes. I had to learn the tube system in a hurry…but wow it’s amazing. On one of our rides I asked a lady standing nearby if we were on the right train (the very first person we speak to in London), she asks me straight away if I’m a kiwi, she then tells us she is too, not only that, she is from Khandallah and she went to Onslow College!!! (like 3 out of the 4 of us) And she is friends with some of the “Rhythm and Vines” dudes, who were actually partly organising a show we were playing at 2 days later. CRAZY small world.

Below is the “Box” we had to cart around the tube. It had the drumkit in it and was ridiculous and heavy. You should have seen the ladies face when we checked it in in NYC. Haha, most flimsy packaging ever… I was glad to see the back of this box.

I’d told some people previously to arriving in London that we were staying in Maida Vale, upon which I received the typical kiwi “Flaasssh” in response. I had no idea, but we were staying in a really, really nice area of London. While most of our mates and other bands live in the Shoreditch/Hackney (Crackney) areas of London, we were just 5 mins down the road from Regent Street and the flashest/poshest area of London.

Our pad in London

Nik’s sister Julie, her partner Seeby (who is simply ridiculously proud of his brother’s band “Zitty/New Friend” – Some of you may have seen them play at an A Low Hum show) and their flatmates hosted us over the first few days in London, they were expecting Nik for one night, but they got all four of us for a week! (Typical bloody kiwis) and were really amazing, making us some incredible dinners, making us sandwiches, and helping us work their futuristic washing machine. Julie and Co. really saved our ass that first week in London. Their house is just 1 min away from a Tube stop, so was a great base to getting around the city, but first things first….the main priority was to buy a CAR! I had two days before the first show in which to buy a car, so I had my work cut out.

I’d been checking out cars on ebay for the week or so before hitting London and had a few in my watchlist. Once I hit London there was only really one option that we could afford, it was a Ford Escort Station Wagon for 500 Pounds. I bought online and then started the mission to collect. The car was in Oxford, so first I had to get out there. I caught the Oxford Tube, which is actually a Bus, and is an amazing bus with free wi-fi, but I happened to catch it on a day in which there had been bad flooding of the highways, so it took around 3 hours for the 1 hour ride to Oxford. Once there I got picked up at the station by the parents of the bloke who owned the car, they were a wonderful couple who took me back to their home where they take care of a dozen pre-schoolers, amongst the screaming of toddlers, they made me a sandwich and juice, and then let me use their phones to try and arrange insurance.

Arranging car Insurance is NOT easy in the UK. Basically you need a UK bank account (which incidentally is very difficult to open for a non-resident – can take months!), an IDL – international drivers license (which I didn’t have) and a heap of money (which I definitely didn’t have). You need to have a car with an MOT (their WOF) and you need to also pay for compulsory Road Taxes, which you can’t pay for till you are insured. I called a dozen companies, none of which were happy to insure for a short term, eventually I just had to tell a few lies to get insured (again with the lies), I had to find a policy that I could take out for a year, but cancel after only three months without paying a penalty, The parents of the guy I was buying the car with were then good enough to let me give their bank details to the insurer, I said this was simply because I’d only been in the country for a day and hadn’t had the time to open one of my own yet. Basically I had to bluff my way through making it appear I was staying in London for ages. Insurance here costs around $1800 a year for basic cover.

Basically, I couldn’t sort out the insurance over the phone first off, so had to go back to London empty handed…I won’t go into the WHOLE explanation of what a hellish nightmare picking up the car was as I’m bored of telling it already and I’m only ¼ of the way into the story…basically, I got a car, got it insured, got it legit and basically had a hernia doing so. If you go the route we did and decide to buy a car and insure it for a short term, email me first for some advice.

So yeah. Got a car. Now just have to pay $50NZD a day for parking.

Fiona (Ex-Coolies) had responded to my desperation email, and as she does for most kiwis in NYC, offers to host us for a few nights, so after exhausting Martin’s hospitality we head over to her and her husband BJ’s apartment. While I stayed back at Fiona’s place and did more crazy emailing, managing to sell all our backline through craigslist.com – the US version of tradme.co.nz, Fiona took the boys into Manhattan and gave them a tour of Times Square, The spot John Lennon was shot, Letterman etc… Me and Sally just ate some more Pizza.

The night after our show Die! Die! Die! Were playing at a free outdoor festival with Wire. We head down to watch it and really enjoyed Die Die Dies set, it was really awesome to see them playing to a couple of thousand people in another country. I really didn’t want to watch Wire as I am a big fan and I went to Auckland a few years ago to see them just after the reformed and they were so crap, it was only recently I finally started listening to them again, however, against my better judgement I watched them…and well, looks like the Wire records are going to the back of the closet for another couple of years. Stefan from Pumice was also staying with Fiona and us and lamented with me on the bitter disappointment of watching a great band play a shocking set.

Die! Die! Die! in NYC

Everything you hear about NYC is true. The drivers are impatient idiots who spend ALL day honking. Even when you know its coming, you cannot prepare for it. Driving around Manhattan is absolutely insane. A band we played with in Des Moine warned me about parking letting me know how they had received $600US in parking tickets while in NY. I hadn’t received one single parking ticket all over the US so far, so was pretty confident, but made sure I kept an eye on it anyway. Over the 4 days in NY I racked up $195 in fines. Basically, if you park in the city you WILL get tickets. Seriously…each time I got a ticket I was less then 10-15 minutes over the time on the meter, and unlike NZ where they give you fines on a sliding scale of time over, and it starts at only $12, in NYC they immediately issue you a $65 beast.

Sally saved my sanity in NYC, I was close to exploding so many times, there is nothing worse then stressing out, dealing with crap and then getting back to the car and having a massive ticket waiting for you, but having Sally there really helped me keep it level.

NYC is really going off all the time. It is ridiculously awesome and really, if you are going there on tour, make sure you give yourself plenty of time to party…there really are parties happening everywhere, at anytime, The OTA boys totallydid the NYC thing, went to several rooftop, flat, and apartment parties over the couple of days we were in NYC (photos below) as well as Fiona taking the on a classic NYC tour of times square, the John Lennon memorial, Letterman etc..

The boys with Fiona and BJ

Some Party

By the last day I had managed to sort most things out and it was a happy coincidence that we happened to be there at the same time as an absolutely awesome party at a place in Brooklyn called Goodbye Blue Monday. It was a free, day long festival with bands playing indoors and out. BJ whom we were staying with was playing a set with his band “Puttin on the Ritz”, who do like punk, offkilter, improv, spastic jams of showtunes and classic swing numbers. It was perhaps the freshest thing I’ve seen in a longtime. The band were hilarious, I was totally enthralled the entire set, and their set will remain one of my fondest memories of America… there is some youtube footage that goes a little way to captuiring the moments here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=zE8xNnOJE54

There were two other fantastic bands at this festival as well, USA is a Monster and Big A Little A (Aa) I was standing ontop of a table to watch the Aa set…very fun band, kinda like Pig Out but totally crazy, with two drummers. At the end of their set I tried to step off, but made a total spectacle in what can only be described as the most incredible Hollywood fall.  I think Sally described it best in her bulk email here: “his chair tipped over and his legs flipped out over his head, nearly kicking a girl in the face and a dude in the crotch. He went crashing down in a really spectacular way, narrowly missing all the sharp metal objects sticking out everywhere. Chair went flying across the room. In typical Ian-style everyone was giving him high-fives and congratulating him on such a stylish maneuver.”

USA is a Monster at Goodbye Blue Monday

On the last day, Jordan from the band Polka Dot Dot met me in NYC to buy the car off me. It was Sunday and the DMV was closed so we couldn’t do the paperwork, he just gave me the money and I gave him the vehicle, we worked out that we would just do the paperwork whilst I was overseas as he didn’t need the car for a few weeks. Turned out to be one of the stupidest mistakes I have made in my life…more soon.

The guys had an awesome time in NYC, they wouldn’t stop going on about it. I pretty much spent 5 days on the internet, ate some Pizza with Sally and saw a few bands…kinda like my life in Wellington.

First night in New York can only be described as “living the dream”.

We had arrived late-ish into the city around 9pm, luckily Nik had pre-arranged through a friend of his and Ash’s, Erin, to crash at her place. We had hoped we could stay there for the whole 5 days or so we were in the city.

One lesson we just didn’t seem to learn all throughout the US was to ask people for their apartment number. Most of the people we stayed with lives in an apartment and most of them never tell you what apartment, just the number on the street. Tonight was no exception.

So. We arrive at an apartment in a dodgy part of Brooklyn, we just buzz a random number and then try to describe Erin to the bloke on the other end, he recognises her, buzzes us in and tells us to head to the third floor.

Nik had been showing me the emails between him and Erin so I was confident that it was all good, however, upon knocking on her flat door we learn 3 things. 1 – Erins flatmates have NO idea that we are staying there. 2 – Erin left for Berlin that morning. 3 – The entire apartment is being fumigated for Bedbugs that night and everybody in the building is currently vacating.

Such a ridiculous situation I burst out laughing. Even if we convinced Erin’s flatmates that we were kosher and could stay the night, we would all die of a gasing anyway.

I decide the best idea is to drop our gear off at the venue we are playing the next night so we can empty the car out and to sleep in the car again. First night in NYC and we are sleeping in the car, though I made sure I parked outside a sweet spot just off Central Park, not Harlem.

Me and Nik had also sent off a couple of desperate emails to anyone we knew in NYC to see if we could wrangle some last minute accom over the next few days.

Sally had flown in from Canada where she had just been to the Sasquatch festival with Heather. Next day, me and Sal had a little classic tourist tour of NYC checking out Wall Street and the oldest part of the city, Ground Zero, taking heaps of rides on the subway and eating some decent Pizza…ya know, what you do when you check out NYC. Was classic timing, I had pretty much the most stressful days of my life ahead of me, trying to sell the car, sell all our backline, organise 4 days of accom in NYC, organise our alibis to enter the UK, send merch to Europe, keep booking some more UK/Europe shows, book our ferry sailings for UK-Europe, organise getting a car in the UK…all the while trying to spend some time with Sally as I wouldn’t be seeing her for another 6 months! AND trying to experience some of NYC.

I spent most of my days in NYC on the internet, basically the only thing that kept me sane was the fact that internet at The Cakeshop was free and The Cakeshop is AWESOME! It’s like the best possible cuba street café, playing amazing music, I heard more kiwi flying nun sounds over those couple of days then I’ve heard in my life, the venue is below and that is where Over the Atlantic played that night.

The show was sweet. We were kinda freaking out cause it was organised last minute only like 2 weeks out and a support was only booked a couple of days before, there ended up being a really decent amount of people at the show and it went well, not a highlight of the tour, but def better then we thought it would be.

Nik had heard back from his friend Martin, who I would later find out was actually a friend of mine and Sally’s also, but from a completely different context to Nik’s. Crazy small World. The boys went and stayed at his place while me and Sally went and slept in the Car. Martin has an absolutely amazing studio apartment and we all ended up staying there the next night. To get to his house you have to go up a few flights of stairs and then walk across the roofs of three different houses. His studio is on top of the roof and is as classic a New York artists loft studio apartment as you can imagine.

The path to Martins House

So many of these posts I want to start with “STRANGEST SHOW EVER”, and Arlington ain’t no exception. This was nuts. It could be the weirdest show on the tour….but its early days, so I don’t want to jump the gun just yet.

We had arranged this house party through Your Black Star who we met in Pittsburgh. They organised for us to jump on the line-up. We were staying with Todd in DC who put out the first OTA record and he had made us some awesome vegetarian burgers and an amazing looking dessert…so we left kinda late, after we managed to stumble upon the house – Middle of NOWHERE, we were really confused… It was totally conservative squaresville, rural properties, big white houses and very quiet.

We were meant to kick off the party at 9pm…but had arrived quite late at around 9:10pm, genuinely late…not just ya know, playing for time so we could start later. We expected the party to be in full swing, but I drove up the empty driveway and parked in the yard of the house which appeared totally dead. I looked through a few windows but couldn’t see anything happening, I knocked on the door and walked inside…the band Your Black Star were sitting on a couch with two other people watching TV.

Sweet Party.

We get directed to the garage which another 2-3 people are hanging out in and we start setting up. Casting each other those glances, you know…the “what the hell are we doing here”, we set up the backline. By the time we finish setting up the gear a little group of a dozen jocks had gathered in back of the garage and the band started.

What happened next can ONLY happen when you have the following ingredients.
A) A garage in a family homestead in a rural area of a very conservative area of the US
B) A dozen jocks and their girlfriends
C) A house party organised by somebody who looks like Marky Mark of the funky bunch
D) A College town
E) You book a show knowing nothing about it or the people putting it on.
F) A keg of beer, Paper Cups, Ping Pong Ball and a trestle table.

OK. Now try if you can to picture this:

OTA play at one end of a garage. A clear space of around 3 metres infront of them reaches a Trestle Table, on that trestle table are a whole bunch of plastic cups and behind the table are a bunch of jocks playing “Beer Pong”. Two people play, one at each end of the table, one player tries to bounce the ball and then have it land in the other players cup…if he does, the other player has to skull.

The Beer Pong table with the stage in the background

Played a stranger show? Doubt it? Imagine if you can, the constant cheer of jocks as they have to drink and hearing the bouncing of ping pong balls in the gaps between songs. Maybe two or three people watching the band (maybe)

I am pretty damn confident that this will remain one of the weirdest gigs I’ve booked a band to play for a very long time. After the show we hung out with the locals for a while and had some fun with the jocks..and marky mark

Rhys meets the locals

Alright….I’m back on the blogging action. Its been an absolute madhouse the past couple of weeks and with limited internet available its been hard to get this happening…however, I’ve written a bunch of blogs now and will be updating this pretty much every second day for the next while, sorry for the delay.

On the way to Philly we took a little detour and cruised through Lancaster in Pennsylvania to take a cheeky look at some Amish folk. We had been driving around with no luck for a wee while, just seeing lots of poor attempts at people cashing in on Amish tourism, basically a bunch of kids dressed up like Amish cruising around in very un-genuine looking carts. We were about to give up, but I decided to press on and took a random road out to the country, and after about 10 minutes, it was like we rounded a corner into the very heart of Amish country, carts everywhere, dozens and dozens, little Amish kids running all over the fields, we all fantasized briefly about growing up Amish, briefly.

On the way to Lancaster we found Toms petrol station. Easily my favourite of all the US petrol stations. The US is very unlike NZ, instead of the half dozen nationwide chains, the US has heaps of State only chains. Toms easily has the best logo of all of them though.

We were meant to play a house party in Philly, but since the landlord of the house had been getting grumpy about all the drunk kids it was moved to a proper venue. We were looking forward to the Philadelphia show because it was one of the few shows in the US that we actually ended up playing with choice bands. We were playing with Video Hippo’s, a really awesome (VERY “Flying Nun” ala Gordons/3Ds sounding…well live anyway) band from Baltimore and also DD/MM/YYYY, a band from Vancouver on their way to meet up Crystal Castles with whom they were doing a big tour with soon. The show was really great and we enjoyed the whole night. It was freaking me out how much the singer of Video Hippos looks like Mark or Marineville…but that’s just me.

No Idea what this guy called himself, but he did a choice spoken word thing before Video Hippos set

Perhaps the best thing about Philadelphia is we discovered how cheap and awesome Chinese food is in the US. Bummed we hadn’t discovered it until now, picking up $3-4 Chinese meals was a great way to get some rice and vegetable intake. We almost exclusively on Chinese for dinner from here on for the rest of the tour.

At one of the Chinese restaurants we went to this night (yes…we were on a Chinese food bender) we ran into a band from Australia who were also on tour! We got talking and knew all the same people. One of the guys had even seen Disasteradio when he was there a few months ago. It was nice to hear some good ol’ aussie accents.

Both OTA and DD/MM/YYYY crashed back at the house of the organisers, so it was very cramped. I spent another night in the car, though was actually slightly scared for the first time ever. Being on some random street in the east coast…only a few blocks from one of the dodgiest areas of West Philly…I was kinda nervous, but it’s the good thing about working myself ragged, is I don’t have enough energy to analyse about how sketchy a situation I’m actually in and soon go to sleep.

The folk we stayed with in Philly