It's Friday and I am off in exotic lands, so just a short post with pictures for the Friday attention spans.Last week, we went into the studio to record a song for Borrowed Tunes 2, a tribute to Neil Young.  We chose Wonderin', and Kev sings it.  Good times, as they say.  Anyway, I took this photo in the parking lot, which I've titled "Three Germans, a Hybrid and a Commie"Then, this one I took yesterday, because Ed was laughing at my hair, though I can't for the life of me understand why:And, lastly this:Have a good weekend

I spent the last couple of days in Los Angeles, participating in a conference on DRM (Digital Rights Management), and guess what? I won!  That's right, from now on, there will be no more DRM!  Okay, well, maybe not, but my point was heard, at least (My point being, largely, that DRM has been a detriment to the music business and should not benefit from anti-circumvention legislation).  In Amoeba, the amazing record store in Hollywood, I picked up a copy of the MusiCares tribute to Brian Wilson, which we performed at in 2005.  I hadn't seen it before, but I watched it with great interest.  You don't have to, though, because really the best part is this:Also, having lunch yesterday, I found this delightful convergence of signs:

The crack seems to be on the inside of the screen; I can't feel it with my finger.  And it's spreading.  And no, I won't use a holster (too geeky even for me) or a case (I need it all the time, and quickly). 

After dropping my Blackberry a thousand times, this morning, turning it on, whilst still plugged into its charger, it dropped and cracked. Just as I am about to spend a week flying around the globe. Crackedberry. This is what happened when I had my first Blackberry back in 2000 or so. I dropped it so many times that the cracks just spread and spread until the screen was unreadable, and I didn't go back to one until last year. I'd sworn off them, in fact. Bulky, nerdy (my carrier doesn't have the slimmer Pearl or the cooler 8800 yest), I mean who needs 'em? Damn, I don't want to be so available all the time, I once said. Now I can't live without it. Its full QWERTY keypad is a godsend, and I'm a texting, emailing, web surfing fiend on it now. I just hope this crack doesn't continue to spread all week. That would suck deeply, though it may just be a message from Electrogod to, in the words of my friend John Sulek, just lay off it for a bit.

Maybe we should just tear it all down and start again .

This sucks.  I can only guess that flickr's next.  Oh well. Life was good there, for a while. 

And so does the fact that Kurt Vonnegut is dead.  So many of his books changed the way I thought as a teenager and as a young man.  He was always sad and bitter, but he always approached the world with a fresh viewpoint and a keen sense of satire.  It made me very sad to see that decline into misanthropy in his last book.  Now, at least, he has what he's wanted for so long.

We're home. Back in our own beds, and in the clothes we didn't pack for Europe. And jet lagged? No, I don't think so, at least not me, as I barely slept at all over there, and stayed mostly on a North American clock, so I just slept seven hours and I feel as lifeless and lethargic as always. The tour, as you can imagine, was a huge surprise for us - the audiences nearly everywhere were larger than they'd been for the last couple of tours, and the people were so nice to us. And the shows were good, too. And those of you who were there or bought the downloads will have the opprotunity to hear our two musicals in the works: Babycorn! The Musical from the Glasgow Barrowland, and Twister! The Musical from The Dublin Olympia. And I love how defensive so many of you are about my mention of Glasgow's great audiences. Can I not have a favourite? And can it not be you? No, actually, please keep defending yourselves, for though I didn't mean my praise of them to come off as a critique of you, it's all just making us better people, isn't it? Ok, maybe I am a little jetlagged.

Holy fucking shit. For the last several years, when people ask where our favourite city to play is, we always say Glasgow, to which people respond with balnk stares and disbelief, I'm sure expecting us to say New York or Los Angeles or Toronto. "But they SING" we say in their defense, " and when they hate something, they tell you - loudly - but when they love something, they tell you equally loud." From the first time we played here, at King Tut's Wah-Wah Hut back in 1992 whenthe whole audience sang "What A Good Boy" at the tops of their lungs, we've been hooked. So, when we got here tonight, I prayed that our memories hadn't been exaggerated and that it would actually be worth writing home about. Thank god we hadn't overstated ourselves; tonight was almost certainly the best, loudest crowd we've ever played for. I don't know how else to express it, but it was a deeply joyful night and I thank everyone who came. Tomorrow at the Barrowlands should prove to be no less exciting. But first I have a whopping 3 hours of sleep to get before I have to get up for morning radio. God damn it all...

It was a warm and sunny day off in Glasgow today, in contrast to the snow and cold they're having at home right now.  Just the thing my guilty conscience needs.  Tonight, Kevin and I went to see Laura Veirs.  I've been a huge fan of hers since Carbon Glacier came out a few years ago, and had the opportunity to see her open for Sufjan Stevens a couple of years ago, but the sound sucked at that show.  It was so nice to see her in an intimate setting tonight, where no one in the audience talked, and the music could just wash over you.  She sings songs about the most some of the most unerotic parts of science: geology, astronomy, entomology, and makes them alluring and dream-like. And a truly amazing band, too.I'm endlessly amazed at how well these shows over here have gone; bigger crowds than last time, the USB sticks are flying out the door, and the vibe is truly amazing.  I can't wait to come back, and I haven't even left yet.Tomorrow is Glasgow, which is a town we always tell people is one of our favourites to play, so we'd better not disappoint them!We had to say good bye to our support act and good friend, Boothby Graffoe after last night's Birmingham show, as he's off to get married.  We wish him the best.  In his honour, I'll post this photo, that I took in Brighton of Boothby and Jim on the Super Booster, a ride I was to scared to board, but they rode three times:">

Yesterday was a day off in Bristol, and while it's a lovely town, it was cool outside and I spent most of the day in my hotel room, as I plan on doing today. Sure, I walked around for awhile, found some food at a good organic place on the harbour. Met some crew for a pint at night. But largely sat in my room and read and played guitar. Sometimes you just need those days to collect your thoughts and get some rest. I just read Ian McEwan's newest book, On Chesil Beach. I'm a huge fan of his, and always get excited when he puts out a new one. On Chesil Beach is a slender volume, but just as packed as McEwan's other books. They're amazing works, always with a central event, a tiny explosion, that the book revolves around. Sometimes, as in Enduring Love, it's at the beginning. Other times, as in Atonement, it's somewhere in the middle. Here's it's a lot closer to the end, and I sat there, letting the book simmer away, waiting for whatever it may be to come to fruition. And to describe what it is would make the book seem stupid or slight, when, in fact, it's far from that. It's a book about the moment in the beginning of the sixties when old English values gave over to new English values. About (as so many of his books are) tyranny and idealism, about desire and digust, and about love. It is one of the saddest things I've read in a long time. So I stayed in and played guitar. Today is better than yesterday. I'm so glad.

The shows here have been going astoundingly well.  Nearly 5000 people came to the London show, and that's without any real media exposure.  I mean, that's the biggest crowd we've had here since we played Wembley Arena on the Stunt tour in 1999.  I think this internet thing is really working.  Amazing considering I didn't even believe the internet existed until a couple of years ago.  And I only started to believe it once I realized that the internet is just something I dreamed.  It's a series of dreams, all connected in one central dream that I'm having right now.  And it's a good fucking dream. Please enjoy these photgraphs.Like this one, from the toilet of a European tour bus:
  European?  I'm a sitting.or this one, of me and two of my favourite tv shows of the 1980s
or this one:Yes they do.  Yes they do.