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

Norwich - 22/04/01

Well, before the gig is simple. This was a train journey from Liverpool Street to Norwich having briefly popped into work to get something on the way. Work, incidentally, looked more like a fairy castle than I am used to, which was nice, but anyway, I am not actually back there properly for a week or two although I have been dropping in.

Then it was - get to Norwich, soundcheck with Hessu, food, and pictures of Sonic. Sonic Boom's Ear is our support act. Basically, what he does is the equivalent of going out there with his back to the audience and then slowly doing a painting which takes about half an hour to finish. Except he uses sound not paint. We think Sonic is great. He gets his best reception of the tour tonight. Kim is looking aquiline.

This is Sonic.

And this is Sonic at work.

Lee said "are we going to take off in a moment?" when she heard his set, which I interpreted as a reference to space ships. Meanwhile Robyn was backstage coning his frst ever Brtish soft boys gig cone or something like that. When he had finished, we were ready but it was a bit empty. Spencer was there. Spencer got us the Dingwalls video and is slightly the UK Eddie Tews. He was at Cambridge, Bristol, Brighton and Norwich so far, but he might have a word to say about that because if you look at your UK map you'll notice that so far we've done a complete circle of the lower half of the country for the first 4 gigs so the soft boys routing effect is obviously not confined by national borders. His mate who was with him tonight was at quite a few of those too. I told him a thinly scattered crowd which is what there is in Norwich made it a genuine original soft boys flashback experience.

Bit of a SxSW beginning. Got on stage and me Fender JAZZ was mute. Eventually worked out that it wasn't plugged in and the amp wasn't switched on. DeWitt! As for the rest of the gig, well we tried, but I am afraid we are not too great as a student party band (which is maybe a pity) although in fact, given a bit of notice, we could probably give it a decent shot. But trying to deliver Leppo and the Jooves as as a substitute for "We are Family" is not a best fit scenario. But the students did get grooving during I Wanna Destroy you and Pulse. The gig was fine but nothing special like Bristol. I wore Morris's flower shirt and looked up more and that seemed to do the trick, me-wise. Jealous was good and at the end Sonic came and did nice stuff on Sideways and Astronomy Domine.

Back to the hotel with us all having a party in Robyn's room. Howie is there and he was there in 1980 so we can reminisce. There's a picture of him in the Matador UM CD booklet. He did our gear, but he's tour managing now. The thing with Howie was we never let him drive if we knew he was under the influence of anything. So there was that time when he drove us to the Hope and Anchor tripping but we didn't realise until after we'd got there and he packed away all the gear after the soundcheck but before the gig. Robyn pointed out the error. So afterwards I drove us all back (after Howie had unpacked the gear again and we'd done the gig). We were laughing about that tonight, and Robyn pointed out that in fact tidiness was always Howie's thing when he was tripping because there was that other time when he hoovered his lawn to clean up the leaves. HEALTH AND PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT WARNING: The Soft Boys do not condone the use of mood-altering chemicals or 'influence', legal or illegal. Better to live in Brighton and get into sea air if you must. Or listen to Underwater Moonlight.

It's quite a long party in Robyn's room. We miss the Young Fresh Fellows and are slightly worried by the news that Peter Buck was in a bit of trouble on the plane over. Hopefully he will be available on thursday when we play the Electric Ballroom. The non-excludable possibility of capturing the unified heavyweight championship of the world from the Rolling Stones in a straight one-on-one battle of the bands hangs like cigar smoke in an old man's club ..... and the Electric Ballroom should be fun.

— Matthew