Between helping my Aunt and Uncle get settled in at their new place, rehearsing, and being a fuckin’ tall dude with a fuckin’ tude, I’ve had little to no time to catch my breath. I’ve been without Internet for 3 weeks, and that involved walking down to the Starbucks every goddamn day multiple times PER day, HEARD OF IT, to get access to the world wide web. The first day, a Starbucks employee came up to me, and with my iPhone out, attached to my computer, asked if it was mine. He looks next to me at these two guys who had been hanging out—milling about, even—around my table. Starbucks employee says, “maybe you should put your phone away. Thieves operate in this area (long look to the guys next to me again). These assholes get up right then and walk away. Cops were in there most days. Turns out, being across from Harrods makes you a Starbucks that crooks want to take advantage of. So needless to say, the Internet in this awesome house is a joy.

This past week, I’ve played 3 gigs in various places. Jeeps, the group I’ve been playing in since I stepped foot in Berlin, played in Camden. I was then hit up to perform with William Nein at his CD release party, which I proceeded to take a big shit on because of how nervous I was. And yesterday, had a gig in Winchester, a city an hour outside of London, with a band called FOE.

This story will be made all the more interesting with some photos of the people involved, so here is a photo essay of the band.

Glen: Lead vocals, guitar, songwriter, wine, global

William: Bass, backing vocals, lagers, Berlin

Eddie: Keyboards, backing vocals, spirits, Stockholm

Right. So there’s that. We had this Winchester gig with FOE, who, after a bit of research, we discover is kind of on the up and up—on Vertigo Records (subsidiary of a major label), press coverage in most major British music publications, as well as the BBC, and has played huge venues opening for bands such as Atari Teenage Riot. When you have a rap sheet like that, you’re going to make idiot amateur idiots like me nervous. But we were preparing adequately, and were feeling pretty good about the show.

Glen and our friend James rent a car and some hotel rooms, and we decide to make a trip out of it. Winchester was the capital of England at one point, and stories of its rise involve battles with Vikings, old clocks, and, turns out, a huge cathedral—the longest in England.

As I walked along that path in the first picture, I found it strange that it ended so abruptly, as you may notice. My friend Marcin and I decide to walk across the grass here. 

You can spot the gravestones, and just beyond this creepy looking tree, is a poorly-lain brick path that we decided would lead us to the front of the cathedral. Turns out, those bricks are several hundred years old, and were where the Kings would lead a procession inside. So, quite possibly the least appropriate place to be walking.

Anyway, the gig is at this place called the Railway. We didn’t know the name of the venue, or how to fucking get there. We just knew it was by the station, and that FOE would be there. Railway. Station. You do the math.

We find it. It’s closed. Big deal. We decide to walk around a bit more and grab some lunch.

That’s James, AKA Jet Tea. Gig time was approaching. The fun begins.

William and Eddie turn up after taking the train down from London. We get to The Railway for soundcheck—me eager for a whiskey coke to temper the nerves I had at the prospect of a) playing a sizable gig like this one, and b) making eye contact/potentially speaking to the lead singer of FOE, who I found pretty goddamn attractive as it was, plus, I think her band actually rules? Difficult situation either way.

Starts off well. Glen, William, James and I start off with a pub quiz and win 3 pounds. Good omen. I drink an Old Speckled Hen (ALE), which goes down smooth and refreshes me. Another good omen. Then the actual business starts.

With their status as the headliner/semi-famous band, FOE has their own sound person and get a long soundcheck. Fuckin’ whatever. Big whoop. I see the singer, and she’s clearly dating one of the guys from her band. Hey, that’s shit, mate, but that takes a burden off of me. Now I don’t have to sweat looking cool up there, which may as well be rocket science for me with my haircut and size.

That’s all fun and good till we realize that the sound guy that is running the board for the rest of the bands feels that he is pressed for time (he isn’t), and that my showing up without a snare drum was the biggest deal since Watergate (it wasn’t).

“You showing up without a snare is walking a dangerous line, man.”

“Oh. Good luck.” (when I tell him I’m going to ask one of the other drummers to borrow a snare. Say good luck as twatty as possible and you’ll nail it.)

The drummer from FOE says it’s fine for me to use his snare. Saves me big time. Nevertheless, I’m always a bit apprehensive about hitting other people’s shit, because in the event that something DOES break, not only am I fucked, but another, more generous person is also. I felt a little timid using my left hand to hit the drum, but I’m not sure that was possible to avoid with me. That’s LIFE.

We get up there after the first group who managed to suck all the funny out of the room. They had to play before the doors even opened, so, as their guitar player astutely observed, “that was a tough gig.” You bet, guy.

We go up. Not a lot of people yet. The other bands are there, except for the headliner. We proceed to play marginally well with a few fuck ups here and there. We had all imbibed a bit more than we set out to, but the result was an energetic set that has made it impossible for me to move my neck at all. More of our friends turn up, which is great, and they make us feel right at home and me like less of an asshole when I take the mic and sing a bar of “When You Wish Upon A Star.” I hate myself.

FOE goes up, and they play really well. They kill even, and I’m not just saying that. They’re a great band and are going to be really famous, which is cool because someday I’ll get to say I played a show that they were on.

FOE has a stalker, by the way—a truly obsessed fan that I think has followed them on tour. I know he took video of us, and he took video of us dancing between sets to Weezer, so if this post manages to turn up in your RSS feed that you use to fetch “FOE NEWS LIVE CD HOT GIRLS WOMEN HAIR MOUTHKISSING” Google results, you weird me out, man.

The show turns into a burlesque night after the gig is over. A bunch of people dressed up as possessed doctors is apparently burlesque now. Reading that last sentence makes it sound like I’m some type of expert on burlesque shit, but fans of the blog will remember that I did go to another similar thing on New Years.

They painted mustaches on everybody. I was pretty tight at this point, and I know a photo was snapped of me by a photographer. The doctor who was painting the mustaches stopped at a toothbrush style, or a HITLER, as it has been known since that dude went and fucked it up for everyone. Thankfully, he acknowledged my pleas and finished with a kind of handlebars-y bullshit. Everyone said I wore it well, which could be an insult in disguise.

We got out of there around 2:30am. I decided to walk back to the hotel with our friend Charlie, and since we only had two rooms for 10 people, it involved a bit of coordinating to get everyone in there. Not to mention, everyone was pretty juiced, and we had a refrigerator full of other spirits, which we thankfully didn’t even make it into, because otherwise, this post would be so unreadable and angry it would make me SICK.

Here are some other photos for your viewing pleasure: