Hotel Stories

PHIL - CUT OFF YOUR HANDS

As I write this blog the hotel I'm staying in (in Auckland) has just been hit by lightning! Which apart from being very amazing is kind of annoying, as now the TVs reception isn't working! I was watching the new single from Band Of Horses on the music channel and at the same time remembering fondly how I got to see them play in the weekend at the Summer Sonic festival in Japan, they were great!

Another flash of lightning but still no thunder.... Oh wait, a quiet one.

So anyway, following on from Nick's blog last week, which took us to the end of our Australian tour, we made our way to Tokyo to play at the SS festival! This was the first time any of us had been to Japan let alone been there to play so we were all totally excited and were looking forward to going. We arrived at the airport however to find that our plane had been delayed which meant we ended up spending something like 8 hours at the Melbourne airport and missed being able to go out that night in Tokyo! Another reason for that was our hotel was in Chiba, which although it was only a 2 min walk from the festival it was an hour train ride to the parts of Tokyo we wanted to see.

The next morning we had our rehearsal and following that we made our way to Asakusa to visit some markets and a temple. We then spent the rest of the afternoon looking around Harajuku and Shibuya until we couldn't take the heat anymore and looked for a bar to get a beer. We ended up finding this amazing restaurant in Shibuya where we each ended up spending about 5 or 6 thousand yen on dinner and drinks. After dinner, and after quickly going to meet some people from Warners Japan who are putting out our record, we met some friends and went to this rad bar (called Beat Bar) and spent the rest of the night drinking!





(The TV is now working again you'll be glad to know).

So the next day was show day and we were surprised with how many people turned up to see us play considering we haven't released anything there. People were singing along (or trying to) to some songs and in all we found the experience of playing in Japan to be new to us. For example: in between bands' sets they don't play any music – there is silence where there would usually be a cd or something, and also (later in the day) people use that time to have naps! Also because they are so into music, we had people coming up to us saying that they had tried to meet us at the airport…

The Dandy Warhols new song Mission Control just came on the TV, I like it!

After playing we spent the rest of the day at the festival watching bands (Band Of Horses, Hot Chip, Sex Pistols, etc…), drinking and hanging out in the backstage area. All artists could get a free massage so we did that, except Nick chose to get acupuncture instead. We flew out the next night after spending the half the day at the festival watching Vampire Weekend and others play and the other half at the shops buying gifts/presents for our friends back home.

So we've now been back in New Zealand for two days, both of which have been full of press interviews for NZ TV, radio and print. We leave Auckland tomorrow tho to fly to Christchurch/Mt Hutt to play the MTV Snow Jam festival, which apart from playing includes us getting filmed going jet boating and hopefully getting to go snow boarding (but that depends on if we can get free gear).

This is my favourite song at the moment after seeing it in a Twin Peaks episode - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmJzy0WrSXY.

Bye for now!

Phil xo