Upset the Rhythm's Kingdom Tour!

Cambridge 12/2/2012

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:53:00 -0500

We spent the night at Lloyd and Anna’s, where we tried to recreate our band cocktails from Drinkify. The Gentle Friendly cocktail requires 6 ounces of marijuana per serving so could not be replicated. The next day, we hung out in an Arts and Crafts Weatherspoons, where the phrase “The condiments are under the tapestries” was actually employed. After mooching around a bit we explored an abandoned childrens’ TB hospital on the outskirts of Birmingham.

We then went to Cambridge where we played the last night of our tour at the Portland Arms. We were fired up by very hot chilli.

Things got a bit wild.

Then we did some obligatory end of tour photos!

Thank you to all the promoters that put us on, the friends that put us up, and all of you that came out to see us. We had the best time!

Journey to Leamington Spa 11/2/2012

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:22:00 -0500

We left Glasgow early and used St Mary Wreay in Cumbria as a convenient stopping off point. This church was refurbished by Sarah Losh in the 1840s and 50s, who used it as a memorial to her sister and an expression of her creative passions. It is an unusual and moving place to visit.

In the graveyard were the remains of two completely eviscerated animals. There was a wooden unicorn on the other side of the road.

We also stopped at a truckstop somewhere between Cumbria and the Midlands.

The venue we played at in Leamington Spa was the room under the Assembly Rooms. This is usually used as the after-party space for the big bands that play the Assembly, but is also hired out as a separate entity for shows. I hope the photos give you some idea of what it was like.

Way Through set up:

Kat and Nick messing with Tammy Wynette’s caravan, possibly under the influence of mead.

Dave joined Peepholes for the last song.

Things got a bit strange after we had some sambuca. This is us fighting with the mummies.

Then we found a dalek in the backroom and tried to bring it on to the dancefloor.

Sadly it wouldn’t fit through the door.

Back in the van. Leamington was awesome - a great crowd with some proper synth nerds. Highly recommended.

Travelodge

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:42:41 -0500

All our Glasgow friends were out of town, so we took advantage of some cheap prices for a bed and a shower and stumbled into the otherworldliness that is the travelodge at Glasgow airport. Having done many late night stints in travelodges, this particular experience reached new heights of oddness.

Expecting the bar to be deserted when we arrived we found it full of people sending off a relative. Where he was going we never found out but the send off consisted of his mammy repeatedly strangling him and saying “please don’t go”. Other elderly relatives weeped into their wine glasses, sang and became increasingly disorderly. Eventually, at about 2am they all started to leave “for the Ramada Inn bar”.

Once they had left their prime position near the TV was taken by a man who we thought was an engineer as he spent ages adjusting the set. We decided to sit over with him, and watched something really graphically violent on the sci-fi channel. He didn’t interact with us at all despite the fact we surrounded him. He was still there the next morning.

The room next to ours was occupied but the door was open. We spent too long watching a Scottish tv channel which comprised messages to friends and relatives over birds eye view style footage of cliffs. There were four nails on the wall in our room and Chris put our shoes on them.

Holy Island and then Glasgow 10/02/2012

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:56:00 -0500

We decided to make the short drive to Holy Island to see Lindisfarne. We had checked and double checked the tide times and were confronted by a barrage of scary photos on our way to the causeway.

We successfully made it to the island and were confronted with some of the coldest weather and definitely the starkest landscape of our tour.

We went for a quick walk but the cold wind bit too hard so we retreated to the safety of a pub where we agonised about getting back over the causeway. So we had a five minute sprint around the meadery (drinking mead in the back of the van being a new pastime from hereon in) and then bundled back in the van. We did actually have to drive through quite a lot of sea to get back to the mainland.

Glasgow was warm, the venue (Nice n Sleazys) was awesome and Chris and Dave ate haggis. We went for a walk and bought cream buns and then saw that there had been a siege in the city centre as a man had holed himself up in an italian restaurant with a bomb. We watched a police press conference on the street and then back to the show. Everyone seemed surprisingly unbothered. Here is Chris working on the setlist:

The promoter Fielding (Cry Parrot)

We had to load out in a matter of minutes of finishing the show as some DJ night was starting. This happened at several nights on the tour, and there was never anyone there to see said DJs. Chris managed to run over two rats and disturb a couple having sex in the alley behind the venue while fetching the van.

Apparently this is a song by Neo and features Pitbull. It was...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:19:00 -0500

Apparently this is a song by Neo and features Pitbull. It was played constantly (along with Ed Sheeran, but that’s a whole other post) on radio one. We were fascinated by this song because of the line “Can’t somebody sexy see I’m hurt, tonight” and the implications of this.

Deserted medieval village and a megalith on the way to Newcastle

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:05:00 -0500

As we didn’t have far to go between Leeds and Newcastle we did a bit of sightseeing. First we went to Malton for breakfast at the Hidden Monkey cafe, which was very good. Chris asked the waitress if she called jacket potatoes “jackie pees”. She said she didn’t.

Here is Kat, a.k.a Miss DIY and her method of transportation. Digging those pink wheels.

Then we drove to Wharram Percy, a deserted medieval village (a DMV if you are into that thing, which Way Through are at the moment after seeing a fine example near Hounds Tor in Dartmoor recently). Luckily, English Heritage had put some signboards out, because the amount of snow meant you couldn’t see much archaeology.

The centre of the village complex is the abandoned church which has a tower that has fallen apart. It is a strange and bleak place and was good for an inter-band snowball fight.

» Wharram Percy - FIELD RECORDING 10-02-12 »

On the way out of the car-park we got the van stuck in the snow. Cue twenty minutes of pushing. The bright idea to lay cardboard (from record boxes no less) under the front wheels resulted in us being sprayed with tiny pieces of card. It is hard to push a van when you are laughing.

This is the Rudstone megalith, the largest single standing stone in England. It was incredible, and is situated in this very unusual position, next to the church.

There were some offerings underneath, probable remnants from twelth night.

Back in the van, where we had a hairy journey. This is Simone, our tour manager. We picked her up at a service station on the M1.

We spent many happy hours laughing together in the van.

Extra blanket for the back seats.

We drove the back way to Bridlington so that we could go along the Woldgate, a small piece of road that has been painted and repainted by Hockney over many years. Amazingly you could recognize individual trees.

After nearly getting stuck on our way across the Yorkshire moors (we saw plenty of cars in ditches and did most of the journey at 20mph) we reached Newcastle. We were playing tea shop called Teasy Does It. There was excellent food and cakes, and it was a really fun show. It was Julia’s first show under the “Even clean hands can cause damage” name (an archivist perhaps?) and she made a great little zine for the event.

Here is Chris joining in with Peepholes on their last song.

Leeds 7/2/2012

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:05:04 -0500

We sped up the M1 to Leeds and played a show in the games room at the Brudenell Social Club.

First night back on the sauce:

Chris making a valiant attempt to keep up with UTR business while on tour.

Thanks to Nash for the show, the hospitality and the top grub and the Brudenell posse for their usual welcomingness.

London 6/2/2012

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:34:00 -0500

We played a very busy Cafe Oto on Tuesday. Thank you to Hamish, James and all the Oto volunteers for a very fun evening.

As this was an Upset The Rhythm show, Chris had to do a bit of multi-tasking.

Behind Kat there is a woman covering her ears. This came to be the default position for this tour.

Here is Daniel Noort, UTR volunteer par excellence holding down the fort.

These lovely Way Through t-shirts were designed by Chris as part of a project about Samuel Palmer and Shoreham, for which there is an accompanying zine. Steve (Chaos vs Cosmos, below) screened some for us and they look super. Here is Steve being forced to do our merch. Thanks and sorry about that.

Visiting the Marston Oak and Cardiff 5/2/2012

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:04:00 -0500

The next day we drove into Cheshire to visit what is arguably the oldest oak in England. I say arguably because there is certainly some dispute about this, as the tree’s exploded structure means it is pretty difficult to date. The birds were going crazy in the new snow, and we walked up someone’s driveway to get to the tree, after asking a woman in a field where the tree was.

Debut press shot from ‘Meat Planet’!! Mean-n-moody synth punx from Marton, Cheshire…

There had been a big rugby match on the Sunday and the queues for chicken curry and chips were massive in the chippies of Cardiff. A big shout out to Ben and Siobhan who travelled all the way from Hereford for this show!

On the way home from Cardiff we went to Avebury, which was pretty spooky at 2am. Here were are being possessed by demons. Nick sat on the devil’s seat, as you can tell from the picture above.

Manchester 4/2/2012

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:32:00 -0500

Perry and Laetitia from Comfortable on a Tightrope braved the snow to put on this show for us at Kraak gallery.

Next morning I got up to go to the bathroom was freaked out by this sight when I got back.

Heading north and the Devil's Arse

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:15:00 -0500

On Saturday we drove to the Peak District on the way to Manchester. We went to a cave system called Peak Cavern (where the second largest cavern in the world is located, called Titan, but which you can only reach if you are a hardcore caver. We are not hardcore cavers). There we saw a particular feature called the Devil’s Arse.

You get to walk through a pretty village called Castletown on the way to the Devil’s Arse.

We entered the cave as a tour had already just started. For about ten minutes we were completely baffled by a demonstration about rope making. Chris asked at the end of the presentation why it was relevant, and it turns out that is what the caves were used for over time. A woman in attendance helped with the ropemaking demo and insisted on keeping the rope.

The tour guide had a dog that was completely besotted with a boulder. The dog was called wassock and she ran up cliffs and stood on boulders to provide example. The rest of the group on the tour seemed to be europeans and they did not see that this was funny.

The Devil’s Arse was so called because of an an underground river in the cave system and where the river goes down into the rock it swirls round and occasionally makes an incredible farting noise which can be heard in the valley below. In the dim and distant past the local inhabitants would ascribe this noise to the devil having a good fart in the cave.

The caves were a big tourist attraction in the nineteenth century and this is allegedly Byron’s signature. When we left the cave it started snowing like mad and by the time we got to Manchester there was several inches of snow in the city, which was eerily quiet.

This was an antique shop in the village. A notice explained that if you chose not to buy anything you would still get a Max Bygraves LP for free. The owner called claire a tart. We left.

Brighton 3/2/2012

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 09:36:28 -0500

The show was a the Green Door Store in Brighton. We got caught in tailbacks and spent most of the day in the van.

As a result I don’t have any pictures of the show.

But it went well, despite it being a little chaotic. James Tranmer did an excellent job with sound as he knows all our foibles. After the show we ate some couscous.

Rich reacts in horror that it isn’t mini eggs.

It was a weird start.