myspace madness

So, having set up a myspace.com/reunionsquare thing, the messages and requests for friendship are hurtling in faster than I can deal with them.
I set it up whilst supporting JJ72 and didn't realise how popular it, or indeed i, might become. Flippin lovely! ANyway, as a result I'm bloggin on there too now, when I get the chance. This place might suffer a bit as a result, I'll do my best to multi-task. Cheers

the jetlag express

The journey to Japan goes without a hitch.
Stuffy and I surprise the steward by requesting warm sake with our meals. We're trying to be traditional.
Customs doesn't take long to get through and within moments we're all outside and bathed in the clammy heat I will always associate with Tokyo. Helpful translators and qhite gloved drivers abound.
The large Tokyo Prince hotel is reached after a good hour or so of Tokyo traffic.
The record company are taking us for dinner. This is always a good thing as going out in Japan is otherwise an extremely expensive habit.
We eat well, and the call of bars is too loud for any of us to ignore. Also, it's Edgar (Charlotte's boyfriend) and John (bass)'s first time in japan, so it wouldn't be fair to deny them the traditional getting out of your face.
After an initial drink in a bar that could have been anywhere we end up in a little place called The Cavern watching an all Japanese beatles cover band. They're excellent and amusing. White Russians for all.
When STuffy wakes up he has no recollection of how he got to bed. John's a very unwell looking boy, and I'm still a bit pissed. Thankfully the drive to Fujirock festival is a good three hours, so we've time to sleep more in the bus.
Some gorgeous scenery later we're at the sprawling hotel where all the bands stay for the festival. I leave the guitar tech vomitting in our room and head out for a wander with Edgar whilst Charlotte does press. We don't get to see much, but it is ace. Then we get absolutely soaked through as the heavens open on us. I spend the next twenty minutes in the dressing room trying to scrape hair product out of my stinging eyes.
The show goes off with only a couple of hitches. Some funny power they have over there, and some of our equipment gets just as confused as we are now the jetlag is settling in nicely. The audience screams away at us and we jump about like madlings. Ace.
OUtside our dressing room we bump into and briefly chat with Dave Grohl. He's flippin lovely and, rather upsettingly, looks younger than all of us. I surprise myself by not being the slightest bit star-struck, which I always expected if I ever met him. Maybe the fact that I still have ego-mania running through my veins having just come off stage that it cancells it out. John, however, isn't so lucky and has to visibly hold onto the wall to steady himself after shaking Dave's hand. Hah hah! Very cute.
We watch Coldplay from the side of stage, who are very pleasant, if a bit dull. Then see Foo Fighters from the stage to, who are very entertaining and Dave does a bit of drumming, which makes my night, having never seen him behind the tubs with the mighty Nirvana live.
The rest of the evening is a bit of a blur.
Meet J Mascis and Murph of Dinosaur Jr- very cool indeed!
Get trollied with Ricky from The Kaiser Chiefs, who's very nice and very red faced. Charlotte throws him from his chair and then hurls one of his shoes across the bar in a fit of boysterousness that receives a cheer from all in the bar.
...and suddenly, it's time to get on the bus and go back to Tokyo for an eleven hour flight! No sleep, no shower... rock and roll!...
And now I'm back home, waves of hot sweaty jetlag washing over me every twenty minutes. Confusion and duty-free cigarettes.
Man, I love Japan. It's always such an insane whirlwind time. Here's hoping next year I get to do it all over again.

When Drink and Web Collide

Oh, Christ on a bike!
Having read through my last post, I decided not to delete it, but let it exist as a remeinder that getting shit-faced and posting your immediate thoughts, verbally dihorretic as thay are, is never a good idea. How very dramatic and embarrassing! Ha ha.
Ah well, it's the beginning of a gloriously sunny week here in London, at the end of which we play Koko in camden (used to be the Camden palace). Should be a good giggle as I'm told most of the audience are coming dressed in burlesque gear. Including the boys. Blimey.
After that it's my beloved Japan for the Fuji festival with Charlotte. Yay! Only there for three days though, so I'm gonna be the most jet-lagged dribbling fool when I get back. Confused, moi?

Down Came The Rain

We arrived onsite at the Wireless Festival, Hyde Park, on a glorious sunny day. We joke about the photos from Glastonbury cirulating. The one with a guy up to his neck in water, swimming only yards away from the porta-loos. With a couple of hours to spare we contemplate a light lunch, perhaps followed by a haircut at the free Tony And Guy Tent backstage. Then the sky turns very dark. And then the air turns very wet.
Despite the rain, the crowd is in it's thousands and it appears to grow while we're jumpin about. The rain holds off for our thirty-five minute workout and then absolutely pisses down almost on cue with the last chord. Nice!
Then we hang around, see a few old chums, I embbarrass myself by not recognising a guy a played three shows with in the same band, and we all get a bag of free hair products. Very rock n roll, I'm sure you'll agree.
Ahhh, the festival scene is beautiful, man. Roll on Fuji!

The Unbearable Hotness of Being

Absolutely flippin drenched.
And that was just soundcheck.
Last night was the hottest, loudest, sweatiest gig we've ever done.
And it was fucking ACE!
It always helps when the audience are rocking, and golly were they ever. I love seeing moshing and jumping and crowd surfing and just general smiling and cheering. It's great. I'm surprised there was no fainting, like there was in New York, though.
I got to meet the fans afterwards, which is always pleasant, some of whom had come all the way from the states. Dedication. Amazing. I never followed a band around england, let alone the world.
A word to the wise, though. Avoid crap mexican food before a show. It can make for uncomfortable encores!
Hyde Park festival gig tomorrow. I adore festivals. Even if we are going on before The Bravery, or Duran And The Ants as Owen (guitarist) has dubbed them. Ug. But we do go on after The Psychedelic Furs, which is mucho coolo. Hope the do pretty in pink.
More sunburn and too much warm white wine, then.
Chonks

What Not To Wear

Ahh, gig day.
Decisions, decisions. The daft red shoes that took me around the u.s.a in March? The 60's style slim-fit levis? Do we go with team neckerchiefs? The answer to all of these is:probably.
Tonight we play Goldsmith's college. It's a sort of homecoming for Graham; he went to college here, he squatted in the neighbourhood, and now he's about to be awarded a fellowship... which is nice. I better he never thought that was going to happen when wobbling out of the student union surviving on jacobs crackers.
I, on the other hand, have never been to New Cross let alone inside Golsmith's. For me, the area is synonemous with muggings and more recently incidents of the "happy slapping" phenomenon which is sweeping great britain. This is where groups of teenagers beat up a stranger and film it on their mobile phones. Something to show off about at school the next day. In my day we showed off our yo-yo skills, but there you go.
This all follows two days of rehearsals with Graham and the boys. Great to be back. We spent most of the time giggling mid-song because we were all so happy to be playing together again impromptu dances were cropping up and, for some reason, they were increadibly camp. Three new songs to display tonight too, so memory at the ready for those new backing vocals!
Better go now. I still haven't chosen which of my various lucky socks to wear. It's the hottest day of the year here too, so sweat in buckets is expected. Yum.

The day before tomorrow

Woo hoo, phew, thank the lord above and/or below: rehearsals start tomorrow and don't stop until I fall off the stage at Goldsmith's College, London on the 22nd. It's been a while, at least it's been a few weeks since I earned any money jumping around with a guitar... but perhaps I should introduce myself first.
I'm Toby, I play guitar and sing in my own project, REUNION SQUARE (see www.f-shine.com). I also play the bass with my friend Graham Coxon who used to be in a group called blur. Sometimes I play guitar with my other friend Charlotte Hatherley who's normally in a band called Ash. A couple of years ago I did a tour playing guitar and keys with JJ72 and before that I was signed to polydor with an ill-fated group called Thirteen:13. Sometimes I use the internet pseudonym Theydon Bois because it sounds like an upper-middle class twit but is actually a tube station in east london somewhere (I think Peter Sellers used it in early skits with the Goons) and I think this is funny. Really.
When I'm not writing and performing my own stuff infront of small audiences for no money, I'm jumping around like an idiot playing other people's songs, with them, infront of usually quite big audiences for a quite reasonable ammount of money. This is gooood.
I'm not sure why I'm doing this blog thing. My sister's really into it and says it's empowering and quite the thing to do online these days. I think I'm doing it for the same reason I write songs`: I'm fairly convinced I'm intersting and that other people will think so too and am constantly seeking recognition and validation. I'm 29 years old and am still sure I have time to be a fully fledged rock star in my own right, heh heh.
I've travelled around the world showing off infront of people who occasionally shout my name out, ask me to write it on something for them or pose for a photo with them. This is also gooood.
Anyone in a band that says they don't, at some level, enjoy these aspects is a fucking LIAR. I know very few people in this industry who picked up a geetar because they had some dark, artistic need to spleen vent through the medium of rock and if they didn't they would die, and don't care what anyone thinks because it's art, man. Bollocks. They picked up a guitar because it looks cool. And chicks dig guitarists. And chicks are cool. Apart from my friend Charlotte, who is a cool chick, but probably picked up a guitar because boys think girls who play guitars are cool. If you really didn't want attention you would work in a library.
I don't know how to put photos on here yet, but I'm told it's easy, so pop in here for hilarious on-the-road tales and pics soon!...
Not that soon, mind. As I said initially I'm just rehearsing for the most part this week, and nothing THAT funny ever happens in rehearsal studios. Unless, of course, you find paying £4.50 for a cheese and coleslaw sarnie funny. In which case you'd piss yourself laughing every lunchtime where we rehearse.
Anyway, this is where I'll be unloading thoughts and experiences on the road to rock stardom. For my own pleasure. What anyone thinks is irrelevant, this is art, maaan... please validate me...
Chow for now, T x