before i get to the whole "what i did at the end of my summer vacation" saga (dont worry, its good saga, picture saga, low attention span theater), i need to acknowledge my darling mets some more. im watching the game as i type, and they just showed this dugout exchange between mr willie (were close like that) and jose reyes. and found myself getting misty eyed. i swear this is reaching pathetic levels, with me sitting and WEEPING watching the new york mets because this team is so damn good. its like, its not even just a stats game (though, to all you fuckers who insist on pointing out that as good as they may be in the NL, that the mets may have trouble against the AL post-seasoners, ill have you know that the SNY bros just likened the current mets lineup to the best of the AL). so anyway, its not just the stats. its a team of players, of brothers, of personalities. at first i was worried about my boyfriend shawn green because he seems so silent, i wasnt sure if hed be able to mesh with the characters already established in the club house. but i see him smiling more and more. hes feeling it. im certainly feeling it. I LOVE THIS TEAM.
ok ok enough sports. lets talk trips to the UK, because i just had one. this year was my first year attending the leeds festival, as opposed to reading. the leeds site itself is an easier layout than reading, and the vibe is decidedly chiller. i totally get why bands prefer that half of the festival, though personally i found myself bored half the time (the one major pitfall of having friends with jobs to do). after the thursday night kerrang festivities in london, i loaded onto team TBS' bus to head to leeds. in the "file under rocknroll" category, matt and i stayed up in the back lounge til 5 am doing... wait for it.... a new york times crossword puzzle. yeah, i come prepared for adventure. angel spiced things up a bit with a vivid fascination about unmentionables, and when i finally passed out in my impossibly tiny bunk it was a really solid sleep. that is, til we got to leeds. the bus parked right behind the main stage just in time for the first band of the day to soundcheck (or something). and that first band may or may not have been... mastodon. for those of you unfamiliar with mastodons canon of work, they are very very loud. just what i needed at 10 am. but no bother. some smuggled coffee from catering and i was on my feet ready to take on day one of leeds.
this is what the main stage looks like through groggy 10 am eyes:
the day rolled on without much eventfulness. the TBS guys played a great set and had to take off for the rock en seine festival in paris. so i found my buddy nick in the signing tent and proceeded to terrorize the radio one tent for a good portion of the day. we dont know whos bus this was, but it ruled:
the only new band that stood out to me that day was klaxons, whos set gave me the feeling kinda like how the arctic monkeys did last year. i dont think theyll have quite the same impact, but youd be hard pressed to find a more exciting tent experience at this years festival. that night i head back to leeds proper with sean and deb from drownedinsound and spent the night drinking at some oddly middle-aged posh hotel with metric and klaxons. in keeping with the festival tradition, i crashed on seans floor wrapped in an amazing duvet, and woke only to answer the door for our finangled free breakfasts (way to go drunk balls sean!). saturday in leeds marked the arrival of my darling mystery jets.
have i ever mentioned how much i love mystery jets? i love mystery jets. i love that i can drag them with me to watch panic at the disco and that they actually humor me and tell me that "its not that bad." i love that they tolerate my love of emo strictly because im american. i love that they gatecrash their own interviews:
i love that they live in a place that looks like this:
(thats the foot bridge you take to get to eel pie island. yes, ive finally seen the island and it is just as magical as i ever imagined).
i love that william still uses a discman and cant understand why incessant blowing of a pennywhistle on a public train to reading would be annoying (as demonstrated here by my man kaps):
i finally made it to reading on the sunday and was reunited with my london loves kim and david (not to mention my new york transplant loves andrea and mark). the word was going around the guest area that hope of the states were going to break up after the festival, and seeing as their last album was part of our soundtrack to 2004, andrea and i made a point of attending their set. we stuck around the radio one tent for the start of goldie lookin chain but then i got the call from the amazing emmizzlevandizzle to meet her and team TBS in the signing tent. reunited with my day one gang, we head back over to the main stage to get good placement for the my chemical romance set. i gotta tell you, seeing a band get bottled from onstage is awe-inspiring. it looked like something straight out of the ten plagues. i have to give MCR all the credit on the planet for playing so amazingly well despite the shower. and despite eddie from TBS fucking with their sound before they hit the stage:
(ok, thats very staged). the crowd looked amazing as swarms of my chem fans tried to out-rally the angry slayer crowd:
later in the day, kim and david and i found ourselves in our usual day three position - standing in front of the main stage waiting for our yearly nostalgia trip. what started with the darkness years ago continued with green day, foo fighters, and now motherfucking pearl jam. drunk uncle eddie was so freegin amazing that even he started to cry onstage. he thanked the crowd for the reception and proceeded to play every song we wanted to hear. this is us during "rearview mirror." we really like that song:
my fun ended there (temporarily). i had left my bags in the TBS dressing room, expecting the kids to stick around til the bitter end of the festival. alas, they took off for heathrow before the final set was done. with my bags in tow. as in, with my passport. and all my clothes. and you see, the real rub here is that i was heading to edinburgh early the next morning. FROM LUTON. this is imran, kim and david trying to cheer me up:
i took approximately 2039840928 busses from reading to the heathrow area to get to the TBS hotel to retrieve my belongings only to turn right back around and start the journey to luton. thus began my scottish adventure.
roddy picked me up from the airport in edinburgh and took me to... the edinburgh book festival. this is roddy giving me the whistlestop tour of edinburgh, and me not listening to a word he said:
we drove to glasgow and went out drinking with ailidh and michael. roddy attempted to document "an american in a glasgow bar." please note the artsy drunken blur:
after a couple of pints we picked up some wine and head back to roddy and ailidhs place, where she proceeded to read mine and michaels tarot cards. i cried:
the next day, roddy and i drove to rosyth, a small town outside edinburgh where idlewild are currently in the studio. this is what idlewild look like in the studio:
and this is the amazing little house we were staying in:
the new material sounds fucking amazing. i cant wait to hear that record. since ive been home ive done a stolen transmission VMA non-after-party that had a lot of old faces (james, the killers, gideon, thursday, the cooper temple clause etc etc) stopping by, a lot of TCTC entertaining and a whole lot of catching up on the work front. im spent. but ill still be at the annex tonight.....
ps - kim and david - midtown. sweet 16.
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