On the road back to Melbourne

We have just played our last 3 shows of 2009 in Sydney.
We are back in the car again early in the morning and are now about 2 hours from the concrete hi rises and terrace houses of Sydney’s city.
Driving through the bone-dry, bone-coloured hills, underneath a factory of heavy dark grey clouds, lined up and moving slowly along through the otherwise blue sky on their invisible conveyor belt.
It’s the first time I’ve looked at this landscape for a while and I feel quite intrigued and inspired by it. I have the idea that sometime soon I’ll come sit on these hills for a few weeks, write some songs, watch the stars and probably read a Bill Bryson book… That is until Damian, making some strange falsetto noise in my ear, distracts me from the outside world. Pretty soon we find ourselves trying to laugh without using any facial expression whatsoever. It goes on for about 5 minutes before the outside world distracts me from him again.
The clouds have now joined forces to become one big black blanket and are now releasing all their raindrops. It’s coming down pretty damn hard on the windscreen and on to the bone earth.
I start thinking about how contrasting this world is compared with what we have been looking at in France and England. The rolling hills have turned from green to brown and the old stone villages and churches have gone, replaced with volcanic boulders and skeletons of trees.
Even though I know that the land here is in drought it still looks incredibly beautiful.

Right at this point in our journey back to Melbourne we go through cycles of speaking deeply of philosophy, the world, music, and life then falling silently into our own thoughts, listening attentively and singing along with whatever music is playing on the car stereo, then out of nowhere we spark into some incoherent, slightly sleep depraved idiotic humour. Most people would probably respond by looking blankly and slightly bewildered. But in the state of mind that we are in we just double up with laughter and continue to spiral further and further from anything comprehensible. Occasionally it is broken briefly by me fucking up my laugh with an unwanted snort.
Then as suddenly as it starts it stops. It goes back to deep conversation again.
This cycle should probably last another 3 or 4 hours before our arses fall asleep, our joints become fused and we become slightly irritable and plain old over it.

I can see that these long trips in Australia travelling from city to city packed with all our gear like sardines into Nick Cheeks’ car are going to be quite common for us in this coming year.
I look forward to playing more shows, seeing more of this country and becoming the band we really want to be…..

X

N.M.

Coming Home

The excitement of air travel seemed to wear off after about 8 hours squished into a tiny seat not knowing which way to put my head, cause any which way is uncomfortable and didn’t allow me any sleep. I thought maybe I should try drinking some scotch to send me to dream world but instead I just ended up with a splitting headache and a serious case of pink eye. But somehow along the way I was apparently so engrossed watching the flight path on my screen (Or maybe it was Transformers) I didn’t notice that a flock of seagulls or some other sort of aggressive bird tried fighting for the best nesting spot in my hair. They departed, Obviously, but left me with this amazingly weird mess of tangled and boofed hair on the side of my head….????

Anyway that is all over now and I have a 14 hour stop over in Singapore before I continue on to Melbourne.

I do look forward to getting back into the studio and start Jamming with the boys again. And to tell you the truth get a good coffee and some sun. I’m beginning to become ghoulishly grey coloured…. That with my “Pink eye”, Birds nest, and sleep deprivation I’m sure the Australian customs will quarantine me and want to put me down cause they think I have some sort of new exotic French Farm Animal disease. “grippe de chèvre sale moche”….

But….. If I do make it out of customs then I will see you soon. For our next few shows in Melbourne and Sydney….

I should go and I’ll write again soon. When I am more awake and make sense!

Much Love

Monsieur Goat Flu!

X

N.M