(Click on the thumbnails to see the full-sized pictures.)

Electric Ballroom, London - 26/4/01

Arriving at Stanstead the day before the gig on a classic grey series afternoon is made a little bit better by the rainbow that is smashing into the countryside like a rocket, and there are lots of rainbow thoughts floating down with the dust as the explosion settles .... like "I don't actually think Captain Beefheart was thinking about these when he said 'sun zoom spark', I think that was those sunbeams you get on a cloudy day when the sun breaks through the clouds and huge spokes fly off it like a bicycle wheel .... but maybe it was rainbows?" is one of them, there are others.....

Evening is a chinese meal with my mate Jon, the other half of Snail, and home to cherry blossom in the garden that will soon be gone .....

NEXT DAY: Go to Camden market with H for prescribed shopping. There is weird stuff on the buildings there and a great Softs poster that is nicked later but I knew that'd happen so I photo'd it first. We shop 2 shirts from a stall in the market one of which is so totally a Robyn shirt (darkest blue with white polka dots - £13.50, $20) that I give it to him later but not till I've worn it for the gig.

Brilliant crowd packs the place out so the gig's great, amazing would be a better word, with loads of faces we recognise. The gremlins are out onstage today but IT'S NOT SONIC - I have to retract my 'Glasgow' accusation 'cos I checked it with him and he strenuously denied it. Anyway, they are strangely varied in their attacks today - my bass gear is working but Morris's snare isn't, then Robyn's wah-wah busts into blinding feedback during Queen of Eyes (which I really like) and eventually I bust a string tuning it too high on Moonlight so the rest of it's on 3 strings which I always enjoy too! - this sort of stuff gives an edgy kind of wonder to the gig. I can't really hear anything separate on stage, just pure metal, which is good too. Incidentally, I think we have finally evolved a near perfect set-list, all things considered, which is - Sideways, KoL, QoE, Tonight, Pervert, Mind, Rhymney, Jealous, Destroy You, Leppo, Human Music, Stones, Moonlight then encores (Astro-D, Airscape, R&RT, Hots, FoD, Mr K). Hots is turning into this amazing slow groove that it never was before so we'll have to go back and play it to the jesus candle girl. Everything is going great until the last Mr Kennedy which to be honest I think falls a bit flat tonight, but that might just have been us and the crowd being totally exhausted ..... it was a great night, one to remember, and if I know there is a higher level and we touched it only for moments and a whole gig full of those kinds of moments would be something really special, that should not take away from it ... but we are STILL just limbering up is what I think. Oh and incidentally, the world will never know how many micro-nano-inches I was away from persuading Robyn to wear the fulham shirt for the encores last night (his idea actually, to start with) ....

Party upstairs at the ballroom. Bit of a problem getting up there because some of our friends haven't apparently got the right colour passes. They should have been pink but others that work for some of us eventually turn out to be bluey green pictures of the queen. Hiromi dealt with this problem differently and got herself a pass of every available colour - that's the photo pass which is green, the Access All Areas (apparently the after show party wasn't an area) which is orange and the party pass which was pink. The party was a bit like this -

this is Kim, Stella from the Bellestars, Lil, Alex, Phil and even Scott from the YFF

here's a guy with pink hair that I think I recognise but I'm not sure where from

some people in the corner of the room

and Andy King, who played sitar on Positive Vibrations

Oh yes, and here's Steve wondering why of Otis only the stone remains the next morning.