The Blind Club

Tour Not Bore

Berlin

Berlin, originally uploaded by harkathon.

schoene toene = beautiful sounds

American Woman

Tour Not Bore

->>>>>> TOUR NOT BORE <<<<<<<<<<-

Tour Not Bore

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SUMMER READING



















"...in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's forest jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through...for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into her peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!
...But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing - straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!"
(from Moby Dick, included in The Black Veil by Rick Moody)

AKA, as our American friend and tour manager Ben would say, "Tour not bore!"
Or, in more testing times, "Don't you know tour is short for terror?"

(Ben, pictured below on arriving in Seattle after a 15 hour drive).

bow tie ben, originally uploaded by harkathon.

The Black Veil is one of many baggage-allowance-pushing finds that originated in Half Price Books, Seattle. Highly recc'.

P.38

"...I wish that I could remember more of this, that memory wasn't just a series of desires, a series of protective encasements for identity, like chain motels at the edges of canyons..."

bed

, originally uploaded by harkathon.

Dorks on Parade

Prague

Prague, originally uploaded by harkathon.

Prague, originally uploaded by harkathon.

Prague in January 2007.

Cafe Slavia, Prague, originally uploaded by harkathon.

Cafe Slavia, Prague, originally uploaded by harkathon.

whereabouts 3

Hudson

(click images to view big)

Hard Format

When my band played at CMJ Festival in New York last year I picked up a unique merch item. As we arrived at Union Hall in Brooklyn, Loxsly were packing up and their resin paperweights caught my eye. Individual and handmade, they incorporate slides from the artwork to their album "Tomorrow's Fossils" and bits of nature from their native Texas. I love discovering new ways in which people translate the sentiment of their music into hard format.

I'd never heard of Loxsly before, and the experience of stumbling across them proves that however I might have tried to keep up with the lists and lists of (welcome) recommendations that fly around such festivals, talking to the band holding the door open for you and diligently visiting the merch stand can be just as valuable.

whereabouts 2

patty's

Central Cinema Seattle FTW.

whereabouts

Seattle, February 2010 // one

Utili-kilts

I'm spending the next few weeks back in Seattle, I love this city but somehow forgot about its population of Utili-kilts. Utility kilts.
Today this bare-legged chap in Capitol Hill kindly reminded me.


















Met with universal disdain from all my Seattle-ite friends ("all three strikes"), these troubling garments would surely warrant a stabbing in actual Scotland and are apparently usually found wrapped around guys who work in IT.



Enjoy more eye-stabbing terror at http://www.utilikilts.com/
Prices range from $187.50 - $566. I shit you not.

HTB

Excerpts from 'Horse the Band's Guide to Touring'

DO

Lower your standards to lower than they have ever been before.
When you start laughing in the midst of a horrible, mind numbing, financially devastating, morbidly depressing and pathetic situation, you are living at the top when you’re at the fucking bottom.

Wear your seatbelt.
Dying on tour is sad. I mean, when it comes down to it touring is pretty silly and self-indulgent. No good reason to die.

DO NOT

Be a pussy.
Really no one cares about you, and especially not your problems (unless they’re their problems too) just take it and don’t constantly be complaining or trying to get better shit than everyone else. It really doesn’t matter. And everyone notices and talks about you behind your back. You become a joke.

Sleep, in general, much.
Sleep is much better spent sprawled across tile or jigsawed between benches in airports, or drooling on yourself upright in the van than “during the night”. Nighttime is for living. Daytime is for regret/sightseeing.

Say the same thing every night.
You are supposed to be pretending to be an artist.

nugget

"There is something disturbingly yet comfortably contained about touring. On the one hand you get to focus on your craft, but on the other there is an aspect of detachment and singularity about it. It's easy to become self-absorbed as opposed to outward-looking."



Dave Okumu of The Invisible
(one of my favourites of '09)

The Slits

(click to view big)














Doncaster Dome, December 2009. No photoshop, just grainy beer-splattered 35mm.

Los Campesinos, Brixton Academy

grainy 35mm fun