The basic
facts - So on this tour as far as I can remember we've played
the following songs: Kingdom of Love, Old Pervert, Where are the
Prawns?, My Mind is Connected to your Dreams, Mr Kennedy, I Wanna
Destroy You, Queen of Eyes, Insanely Jealous, He's a Reptile,
Each of her Silver Wands, Evil Guy, Sleeping with your Devil Mask,
The Lizard, Human Music, Leppo and the Jooves, Tonight, Pulse
of Your Heart, Train Coming Round the Bend, Astronomy Domine,
Sudden Town, Underwater Moonlight, Only the Stones Remain, Bells
of Rhymney, You'll Have to Sideways, City of Shame, Face of Death,
Rock and Roll Toilet and (at last!) I Got the Hots for You. 28
songs. Usually we did a 13 song main set and 2, sometimes 3, encore
sets. Half the shows - Boston, Toronto, Seattle, San Francisco,
Hoboken, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles - were sold out or
very nearly.
Thanks first
to Gerard at Matador, and to all the amazing characters who turned
up on the way, the jesus candle girl, Eddie Tews (f*ck capitalism),
woj, elevator girl, the rubber band and anton barbeau, ferris
- that was some of them. And Robyn for ... well, he's amazing,
I know most of you'll not get to meet him, but he is as special
as you all might think - amazing MIND, amazing MUSIC ..... Morris
for his beautiful drumming and singing all the way through, never
not smiling, never freaking out, never not being brilliant, he
is THE soft boy ...... much the same could be said about Kimberley,
but to him also for making the difference, guitar-wise .......
I'll thank myself for the bass and the tour diary (and on that
point, hugely also to Tracy for building the site and doing the
funny links and recently Laura with the tour diary/captions and
in the early days Theo with the java for helping .... then huge
thanks to Paul, Ryan and De Witt for keeping it all going and
the YOUNG FRESH FELLOWS for living up to their holy name and to
Michèle for being here and being a big part of the good
mood ..... thanks of course to Rick Gershen for coming on the
road and being a bit of a teacher about this whole thing althogh
he might not like it put that way ...... thanks to Patrick, Donovan,
Nils and Ben and Nicole and all the others at Matador for big
stuff they did behind the scenes, for doing the reissue at all
and for great great packaging which just made such a difference
...... thanks to Thomas Dolby for an amazing guest stint at the
Fillmore which helped make that a famous night ..... and thanks
to everyone out there for keeping this thing going through the
years so we could come back with was has to be one of the best
surrealist jokes of my life to that brilliant headline and a glitterball
at the Fillmore .... the journey from obscurity to oblivion doesn't
necessarily include either of those things and if it is going
to be like this, it is worth the price of the ticket at least.
Where we go
from here, well it's first stop UK ...... and there's another
studio record brewing at the moment. What I've heard so far, it's
different from Moonlight. I think it's kind of an equal mixture
of Moonlight and Can of Bees in places, but more intimate than
either of them. People who've heard "Mind is Connected" on tour
will know what I mean. When we did the first sessions in January,
it felt better than anything we've done because it happened so
quickly, even faster than Moonlight, but the finishing off may
be the hardest bit - and you shouldn't talk about things until
they're done so please forgive my superstitious silence.
So one of
the most inaccessible, obscure, invisible and non-existent bands
in music become all friendly and available and here. Funny eh?
Or like that one day in AWAKENINGS? There's questions still unanswered.
I think the Fillmore was the big clue. Or the big joke. We'll
see.....
Matthew
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