The U.K. Part I

High Wycombe - Well after the ordeal of going through British Immigration, which we're not going to talk about on here, but needless to say we made it... we made the drive to High Wycombe, which is a smallish town just outside London. The show had changed venues a few days beforehand and we were a little worried about that. It turns out that it didn't matter (though the prog rock nerds in the band were a little disappointed it was no longer at The Roundabout). We played at a place called the Nags Head, which has a lot of history associated with it. According to local legend, David Bowie and The Rolling Stones had played there. So logically, we are the next David Bowie and/or the Rolling Stones, as were all the other bands at the show. The bands we played with were great dudes and they tolerated our multiple stories from the past few days. We'd be playing more shows with them too. Afterwards we went back to the house of Action and Action. Internet! Showers! American TV! Chili!


Exeter - Actually, this was one of the cooler venues that we've played. It was called the Cavern, and lived up to it's name with it's... caverny qualities. And it was right in the middle of a sort of bustling downtown/college area. Rumor had it that the kids just got their student load money so this show was gonna do well hopefully. It was on a Monday night though so we couldn't tell. In the end, the turnout was decent.Afterwards, we went out on the town for a bit with some of the dudes from Ono Palindromes. They took us to this bar where Scott said he got the most amazing burger ever. Better than Kumas? Scott said he thought it was....

Speaking of which, it was on one of these drives, all of which kind of blur together, that we went on a chip binge. Got all kinds of weird-to-us flavors like roast beef, prawns, worcester sauce and ham and mustard (which was a lot better than it sounds). Kinda balanced out the mostly healthy vegetarian/vegan meals we've been getting at the venues.

Southampton - We got to this venue early and we walked around town. There was an awesome record store nearby where this guy who looked like a British version of the owner of Mays Records....Or for those of you unfamiliar with Mays Records, he looked like The Cryptkeeper from Tales from the Crypt. He was wearing a blown out white sweatshirt stained with food and smoke that had a duck on it that said "Somebody in New Zealand Loves Me". Jerk chicken was consumed at Hudson's.


We also found a "fine art" gallery that had nothing but clown paintings. Clown dangling a hot dog on a fork and making a dog dance? Yep! Clown playing a saxophone? Got that too!

The show had a pretty rough load in (upstairs) but we managed. Action and Action played again, and this time it was their lead singer Ambrose's birthday (along with Mark's). Fun show. Very hot upstairs though, possibly surpassing an outdoor show in Orlando in the middle of summer last year.