so ellen thought we should be all clever and do a podcast…not realising that we’d need know how to upload it…so here I am 4 hours later hoping that this time it will work.
oh and we put an EXCLUSIVE little treat at the end…so don’t give up when it get’s a bit boring.
lots of love aleks xoxo
oh yeah, to listen to it you have to click here
Since we missed several festivities since we last wrote it seems appropriate to say happy new year and happy easter, we hope you got as many Lindt bunnies/giant kinder eggs as your heart desired. My parents buggered off to Russia for the week…so I got NOTHING. I’m still angry. And I hate all of you smug chocolate-d to the brim bastards.
OK I think I’ve recovered now so we can actually get on with filling you in on some of the Los Camp shenanigans of late. Since we last rambled several important events have occurred in the lives of Los Campesinos!
In no particular order
• We released our debut album “Hold on Now Youngster” to critical acclaim from Glamour Magazine. Sadly they did not throw a free suscription into there 4 out of 5 star review.
• We released “Death to Los Campesinos!,” our first “proper” single and it got to number 490 or sumin like that
• We got unsuitable prefix’s before our names in a article in NME. For anyone that’s confused by that – Ellen no longer has pink hair…I still have flame hair though, so I’m not bothered.
• We met Louis Walsh and Sonia off Eastenders
• We made a fanzine and it was pretty.
• We went to SXSW and had the best time ever. Officially.
• This blog got published in NME again, so therefore Aleks and myself are published journalists. That’s sooo going on the CV.
But to start with we began the year with a jaunt around the UK, Ireland and Europe with our lovely friends the supremely talented Johnny Foreigner (for the first leg anyway) We also got supported by a cast of sometimes younger, more sprightly and infinitely more talented troupes of musicians e.g ultcult and sparky deathcap who made us in awe of them/jealous of there skillz and slightly aroused.
We also did our first live TV performance and got to hang out in a green room, the drinks AND biscuits were free and Louis Walsh told me (Ellen) I looked like Dido. He also kept making reference to me being a Russian hippie. And so far more suitable adjectives are born: “Dido lookalike Ellen and Russian hippie Aleks”.
We started out the tour of course with the Bath Moles type gig which involved some Panther Girl moonlighting from Aleks and our first experience of people knowing the words to the album before it was released (you cheeky people.) Yes, I can now tick ‘being a Panther girl for the night’ off my list of things to do before I die, a lifelong ambition of many I’m sure. Oh and we were gifted our second cherry pie of our band career…keep ‘em coming…please.
We sold out King Tut’s in Glasgow meaning we were given a free bottle of whisky, enough to motivate anyone! This was despite copies of the Stool Pigeon being readily available in the venue – the album got 1/5 (or maybe it was 2, I can’t quite remember but something tells me 2 is a bit too optimistic.) The rest of the tour seemed to also go rather swimmingly with a gig in a rehearsal room/aircraft hanger in Reading, some self indulgent drunken performing in Portsmouth which lead to some livejournal slash fan fiction about Neil and Gareth’s onstage antics.
If we were going to write some fan fiction about these two it would go something like this:
“Neil shredded out a fat solo on his guitar whilst making eyes at Gareth who so totally wanted to do him, and they lolled about it before they made out on stage and it was the sexiest thing ever OMG!.”
We may release a book.
During the first half of the tour, we had the best tour manager ever. And thinking of his moustache and hat still makes our little hearts swell with love…Dan WE LOVE YOU. We also gained a new merch guy who got more phone numbers from potential lovers on this tour then any of us have ever got in our tiny little lives, so if you think being a rock star gets you the bitches and the ho’s, think again. Merch guy.
We then moseyed on over to Europe where we celebrated the album release day in Amsterdam. We performed a gig (you can watch it somewhere on the www but finishing reading this blog will prob be more satisfying), and were given a bag of easter eggs which has 400 different flavours, see if you can name that many flavours of chocolate….or anything. Go on, I dare you. Which reminds me, over Easter in the paradise that is Birmingham I saw a giant bull made entirely of jelly beans. It’s like the Bullring bull only better coz it’s like edible and colourful and stuff.
Back to business though…We went to Europe and it was chic and europey, and one venue had a large “DO LOS CAMPESINOS!” sign, so obviously our band sluttiness is infamous. That was also the same gig where free condoms where handed out, so we are also some form of aphrodisiac! We played with Kula Shaker in Halden which was nostalgic, and did the Black Sessions in Paris which was a bit of a honour. Tom managed to accidentally offend Antwerp by speaking in French instead of Flemish but we also managed to offend them by being generally rubbish. We saw the beauty of the eiffel tower on a chilly day filled with the colours of the autumn leaves, we slumped against the soft cushions of the back lounge of the bus whilst watching the wonder that is the back to the future trilogy (I can’t believe you just off-handedly mentioned the back to the future thing. That fact does not deserve to be reduced to just part of a sentence, it needs it’s own paragraph or blog. It was one of the biggest achievements of tour for me…) and Aleks, Tom and myself went on Italian MTV and got asked about the music scene in Glasgow.
We also went to SXSW and drank margaritas and sold our souls for various free sunglasses and hair products (well we did) and saw Why? and Fight Like Apes and Times New Viking and they were all amazing, and we once again felt a little bit humbled. I also got to wear my straw hat which was obviously very exciting (and no it doesn’t make me look like a ginger version of Kooky Kooks Luke) and visited the Mecca of Wholefoods coz apparently the chain was established in Austin.
Sadly there wasnt much in the way of celeb spotting, except did see a man who looked like Bill Bailey. Aleks saw the NERD and Harriet saw Robyn! Also I tried playing the fun game of how many people were wearing there sunglasses in a inappropriate context, I think it rounded up to 40,000.
Me, Ellen and Harriet did an interview where the idea for our side project ‘Periods and Make-up’ was born. Watch. This. Space.
I also celebrated my birthday there in a lovely bar called Coyote Ugly (LIKE THE FILM) where I had to order a drink between two dancing ladies pretending to lez up. Best Birthday Eva! Also I saw bats fly out of a bat cave whilst on a dawsons creek style jetty and I think they were trying to spell out Happy birthday. But I also saw a duck being raped….I dont think that was for my birthday.
This is how excited she got. The duck rape is taking place just out of shot.
We leave you with one of the best comments we’ve eavesdropped this year so far:
“I can’t tell if that person’s a tramp or trendy”
Aleks and Ellen x.o.x.o
this is my favourite time of the day when we’re not on tour.
3pm: come dine with me (best thing on tv)
3:30pm: countdown
4:15pm: deal or no deal (often coupled with a nap)
5pm: golden balls
6pm: friends
6:30pm: hollyoaks
usually sat with one or both of my sisters, and my mum.
one of the things I think about often as ‘gareth off of los campesinos!’ is how truthful i should be with my opinions. i mean, if 18 months ago somebody had come up to me on the street and said “what do you think of <insert name of band I don’t like here>?” then I would happily, gloriously have rattled off a list of reasons why they are awful and why anybody who likes them is very foolish.
but since being in a band that for some reason music press and some humans are vaguely interested in I find myself facing questions like this quite a lot. I think the best thing to do would be to refuse to comment, or reply with something like “can’t i just speak about bands i like instead?”, which i did do for a long time, but that got boring. It’s not through a desire to be controversial at all, but just to be HONEST. i’m a ‘music fan’. and music fans talk about bands that they like and bands that they don’t like, right? it’s natural.
so now I’ve been asked to do a question thing for a broadsheet newspaper, and it sets me up with questions like these:
“I couldn’t marry someone who liked…“
“The worst song I have heard is…“
what’s a boy to do?
I just saw an advert for crusha milk shake syrup stuff. It’s animated by the people that do rathergood.com. i remember spending a lot of time on that site when i was about 17. but basically, this time round in a post-’LOL cats’ world, I can see this being a pretty succesful ad-campaign (oh yeh, it has comedy cats in it, that’s my point).
i should write something about band stuff shouldn’t i? I’m mostly doing this because there have been no blog posts for a long time, and it’d be nice to keep it alive. But I’m not much up for writing about stuff that happens on tour, because i’ve already told my parents, and if i did it would probably look like this:
“HUMMUS IN FRANCE HAS DAIRY IN IT!! WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT!?!?!”
we just got back from SXSW though. it was a really great experience and put british festivals to shame (we said this about lollapalooza last year. i guess there’s just a lot more money and a lot less rain involved in those things). i got to see so many bands I was desperate to. Mika Miko, High Places, Times New Viking, John Maus, etc. the weather was glorious. i took my shirt off for a bit and wore shirts and sunglasses because there was no other way.
Listen to more: High Places, Mika Miko, Psychedelic Horseshit, cLOUDDEAD.
every time the bank asks me my ‘occupation’ i die inside a little.
Go here: shabba
what are your best dating tips? mine would be:
“always go out with someone who likes you a little bit more than you like them”.
and one day i will DO IT!
i’m gonna start work on issue two of ROMANCE IS BORING very shortly. some really exciting people have already said they will contribute. it’ll be ready for the april shows. probably.
garethx
Happy 2008! It’s been a while since we whetted your appetite with the first part of the blog so we thought it was time for the second instalment. Let’s face it, what more do you need to help beat the post New Year hangover than our witty ramblings?
Previously on the los camp blog… (ha, I’m really enjoying going all out over this two-parter thing!)
We supported Broken Social Scene, and the venue was rather beautiful but the fact we had to get up at half five in the morning really really sucked…
…to be continued…
…this was to fly to Japan but the airline was rubbish so it didn’t make up for it. Myself and Aleks kept getting knocked in the head by some slag of a air hostess who i found rather patronizing and the film selection was appalling. [Ellen’s still bitter her screen didn’t work properly…] However the fact we found ourselves in Japan made up for it, even if it took us four years to fly there and we lost a day or something.
Japan was a incredibly surreal and bizarre experience, we’ve heard enough stories to realize that fans there are a little excitable but I did not think this would apply to us. We were most surprised when we showed up in the hotel and there were two girls waiting to have their photo taken with us [post flight – urgh that was NOT a good time, I’m surprised they recognised us], and were also present when we returned from dinner for more photos. It was a rather humbling experience of “Our you sure you want our photo again, we are not The Enemy.”
I feel there should be a separate note about the food in Japan, we ate out for dinner the nights we were there and it was a never ending conveyor belt of food, it just kept coming and coming…. and it was so good you couldn’t not have a little bit of everything. It was not so much fun for the vegetarians amongst us due to their rather healthy obsession with fish and chicken, but luckily they had a equal obsession with Tofu. I still have no idea what the hell that is made out of. We also tried sake, and it was….kinda disgusting. [Plum wine is tasty though, and at the end you get to eat the plum; which is quite exciting…if you’re easily excitable. I am.]
We played at British Anthems with a couple of bands we like such as Blood Red Shoes and the Pipettes (who we didn’t get to see because of promo). The audiences behavior
was completely different to anything I have ever seen before, it would make a really boring anthropological study. They remained incredibly quiet between bands, all polite and courteous, and then when we started they went absolutely mental. We played in front of 2500 people (which is a lot for us) and it was one of the best gigs we have ever done. They clapped for everything, you kind of felt like you could do that thing where it looks like you were taking your thumb off and you would get a
four hour standing ovation. It was maybe the highlight of our tedious little lives. We also did a signing and got given a bag of presents including a guitar lighter (which
Tom nabbed and made into a bass) and some xmas cards. [There were also lots of requests for ‘cuddles’, and you know, any excuse to molest people and we’re there so that was quite endearing. Maybe our hugging reputation preceded us. ]
We did a meet and greet in HMV which was very bizarre, we all stood in a line and just shook peoples hands. We also gave out some more renegade hugs [even though it was against ‘HMV rules’ or something, but hey punk rock, innit] It was incredibly surreal and my hand shakes began to feel false by the end. We also went and saw The Pipettes DJ at some tiny little club which had adopted a London theme (they had flags) and Aleks was not happy with the playing of “Gotta Get Thru This” by Daniel Bedingfield. She found his sentiments insincere. [It was a low point…I think I left shortly after that. But I did get to walk through the ‘love hotel district’ on the way home which I didn’t realise at the time. No one tried it on. Ollie was luckier, he got chased down the street by a keen lady of the night. We think it’s because he has a lovely young face that women want to corrupt him.]
That whole night was like some weird indie disco wedding, it was all “Oh look its him out of the Klaxons” or “That’s the guy from The Enemy. This is weird.” Fun was mostly had by dancing to Girls Aloud. Also the guitar tech from The Enemy tried to start on Neil, we are still not too sure as to why… We also did some Karaoke with Blood Red Shoes, who sang Total Eclipse of the Heart with Gareth. Tom chose “Build me up Buttercup,” whilst myself and Neil did Weezer’s “The good Life.” Ollie indulged in Phil Collins (that self righteous one about the poor people and how we need to notice him and how he is so worthy and a idiot.) I think the finest moment was Harriet, Aleks and myself attempting “Wuthering Heights,” i think we all realized that perhaps we needed to know more then the
chorus to make the song some kind of success. But it was nice to fulfill a cliche.
We also saw various bits where Lost in Translation was filmed which the Japanese must love being asked about. [We also spent most of our days in a office doing promo. So although it sounds like we saw a lot of Tokyo, we didn’t. We mostly saw the inside of a office. We made our mark on it however with Neil leaking permanent marker on a white couch and Ellen’s spillage of pink nail varnish on a white carpet. We also got to hold those MTV news microphones, and for one photo session they put on our album and told us to dance on a table. Yep. Oh and they gave us a long pink tube to play with for one of the photo shoots which entertained us for a long time. Probably too long. You could tell they regretted giving it to us by the end.]
Overall I think we would like to go back to Japan so when people asked us what we thought of Japan we could say something more than “The toilets are electronic! They are warm when you sit on them! It’s amazing!” I hope this was not the longest most boring and pointless piece of writing you have ever read. If you have read “If no one speaks of remarkable things,” then it isn’t. Because that book sucked. This xmas Aleks is going to Russia to meet relatives and hopefully buy me things. I intend to see some musicals. Everyone else is going to enjoy some time off so we can all come back refreshed for next years tours. [we’ve gotta learn how to play those songs on the album at some point…]
Lots of love, Ellen and Aleks x
Hello and other festive greetings, I trust this blog finds everyone eating mince pies or at least contemplating the eating of mince pies. We managed to witness the xmas build up in Canada, North America and Japan so my brain is now riddled with carols and Cliff Richard songs.
The last two and a half weeks was a lovely finale to a extremely surreal year, we witnessed sunshine, frost bite inducing snow [has anyone else heard that apparently when you get frostbite your fingers feel like warmed marshmallows, ie, crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside??? Ellen informed me of this a
couple of days into our trip and I think that lovely image is definitely worth sharing with as many people as possible] and Gareth wearing little blue pants and a knitted gimp mask at dinner. ( He had clothes on under the pants, which in a way makes him a bit like a fetishized superman) (Pictures to follow)
The plane ride to LA was rather touching for us all as we were able to watch the masterpiece that is Ratatouille, which made some of our more sensitive members nearly cry, perhaps because of the parallels between the morals in the story and our own lives. The take home message is that “Anyone can cook,” and I like to apply this to myself as “anyone can make music.” Apart from that awful brother/sister duo on The X Factor.
They really should be stopped. Or maimed.
We started out our adventure in LA which was a sprawling hubbub of confusing juxtaposition. There was poverty combined with the promotion of celebrity glamour (e.g people begging outside the kodak theatre where the Oscars take place) and a lot of Scientology related buildings. It’s WEIRD how seriously they all take it - there was the L Ron Hubbard Celebrity Community Centre (which we were assured did a lovely brunch), the L Ron Hubbard Christmas display, the L Ron Hubbard life exhibition and the various L Ron Hubbard workers trying to convince you to do “personality tests.” It apparently is the religion of now and in
La would go perfectly with your Hermes bag and small obligatory dog.
But LA did contain Ameoba records, which has everything. No, honestly, everything.
We also made a video out there, which sounds far more glamourous than it
actually was because it was filmed in a recording studio so it could have
been anywhere. But it was nice to sit around in the sunshine. I can’t say
too much about the video before it is aired to the five people who will
watch it, but it does involve small furry things which meow. I may have
said too much. There is also a starring role from our lovely sound technician/
tour manager Todge, which is maybe not Oscar worthy but should be
given a nod from the Baftas. [Actually it’s up on youtube now so CHECK IT.
And don’t worry, although it’s hard to believe given the skill of our acting,
we are all alive and well. Although I have pulled a tendon in my knee.
But that has nothing to do with the video.
There was also an afternoon spent in Melrose in the hopes of celebrity
spotting (unsuccessful) which saw us discovering some ‘interesting’
Necromance shops featuring human bones, posters of how to perform
surgery, books with titles like “the most fashionable clothes for
mourning”, and my personal favourite– black toilet paper.]
We did some shows also in LA, San Fran, New York, Boston, Ottowa,
Toronoto and Montreal. San Francisco seemed to be where the
crazies liked to hang out and generally talk to themselves, while we
were having cocktails I witnessed a man continuously lifting a plastic
bag up and down for an hour at what we thought was a bus stop. It
turned out to a lamp post. He wasn’t waiting for a bus.
He was just slightly eccentric.
New York was particularly fun as we got to play with our friends
Johnny Foreigner again who were there recording their debut
album, it also meant we got to go to Whole foods again which is perhaps
the most magical food store in New York. [or the world] There was also
a good two hours where is seemed Bright Eyes might come to our show,
which where perhaps the most nervous of my life, I turned down cake
because I was so nervous. He couldn’t make it, my dreams were dashed.
[and you missed out on cake]
Boston was where we first witnessed lots of snow leading to cold feet
and constant giddy excitement from Neil, who really likes snow.
[aaaaaaand they gave us freshly baked WARM cookies when we arrived
at the hotel. Pretty sweet.] In Ottowa we got apples in the hotel and
some people received free champagne on their arrival. It was also
where we got our bags throughly searched at the airport, with Gareth
getting his toothbrush and ipod (!) swabbed for drugs. How cliched
do they really think we are, we are strickly a heroin injected into the
eyeball sort of band.
It was also where seven shots of a mysterious substance turned up
on the right hand side of the stage [the crowd did try to help us solve
the mystery by calling out that the drinks were called ‘Tracksuits’
…which didn’t really help]. We all accepted it politely and drank some
(apart from Neil because he just isn’t cool) and luckily it wasn’t
Rohypnol. It was alcoholic Irun Bru.
Toronto was where we were reunited with one of our favourite
places, and caught up with some lovely people from Arts and Crafts
including our favorite driver Aaron, who we convinced to come to
Montreal with us the next day and miss work. His constant farting
in the car made this journey rather difficult. [The drive was so
loooooooooooong– why can’t they just build cities closer together???
It’s just open space in between…it SO wouldn’t make a difference.
But luckily we were entertained on the way by our new driver
Sam and his stories of how as a wee lad he excitedly volunteered to do a
presentation on Toxic Shock Syndrome thinking it sounded really cool…
until he realised it was to do with tampons. Gutted.]
We had heard so much about Montreal and were all rather excited
about getting to see this lovely European style town where the fact
they spoke French and they weren’t IN FRANCE was a huge novelty.
I attribute that statement to myself, novelty for me is of course
normal life for the Montrealians.
The thing about being in a band and that is places you want
to see…you wont, you will see the street you are on between
sound check and performance, which means you will see the
restaurant/ Tim Hortons you eat in.
We supported Broken Social Scene, and the venue was rather
beautiful but the fact wehad to get up at half five in the
morning really really sucked…
…to be continued…
As this blog has turned super long we thought we’d give you
lovely readers a break. That is if anyone persevered to get to this
bit. Also it gives us something to do when we inevitably get bored next week.
So stay tuned – Part 2 to come. Lots of love, Ellen and Aleks x
Bonjour, Guten Tag and alright,
Since our last blog update we finished our little jaunt around the
headed off to the rather chilly shores of
do some European shows, and eat some Apple Strudel and Crepes.
And drink lots and lots of lovely chocolat chauds.
First of all a little summary of the end of the
“What if there was no light at all in the world?”
And “What is a wide on?”,
We also gained some new vocab courtesy of YSP: Marm, Toque and Nylons
There was also the night of the hair extensions
As you can see my hair extensions provided much amusement for everyone after
our show in Southampton, with Devon’s Chad Kroeger impression being completely
faultless.
We also got to celebrate Halloween with some traditional cross dressing in
and I felt very at home with my new persona of Elliot.
The dresses modelled by the boys are from H & M but unfortunately were kind of
hideous and so cant be recycled by us.(These images are lovingly pinched from
our forum)
We then defied spatial logistics and got YSP and Attack + Defend to come on
stage and hits things with us for our “encore” of police story.
Apparently, in
Mostly because there aren’t enough songs that we can play well enough to
include them in the show. Also, our only other encore was in Camden, which
was not planned and involved a thirty second out of tune rendition of Clunk
- Rewind - Clunk - Play - Clunk - Again.
Needless to say we got booed.
And now we have to have a moment of silence to mourn the loss of our touring
buddies You Say Party! We Say Die!, Sky Larkin and Attack + Defend.
We miss them ever so much, and perhaps the whole tour is best summed up
by this lovely picture and the genius song of ‘Done Some Gigs’ which lots
of confused and unsuspecting Exeterians (or would it be Exeterites??)
were subjected to after the last gig.
And then we parted ways – Y!S!P! to fly to
of luxury in Taunton Travel Lodge and us to embark on 2 hour journey back to
We have been playing the Les Inrock tour for the last week with Elvis Perkins,
The Noisettes and The Editors and we were briefly reunited with YSP at the
realise that watching videos of them on Youtube to fill the gaping hole in our
hearts wasn’t really a replacement for them being there.
We have luckily been distracting ourselves from the pain by enjoying the
awesome catering on offer in European venues, watching copious amounts of
Arrested Development and Curb Your Enthusiasm and playing the same
nights/venues as some talented bands such as Blood Red Shoes and The Gossip,
whom we managed to watch play in Toulouse. This was pretty much the most
amazing thing ever, and they are perhaps some of the nicest people ever
considering they didn’t mind us hassling them to sign things. We also briefly
adopted Nathan the guitarist due to a missed flight and a mental bus driver
disappearing with his passport. In fact
Bermuda Triangle because our very own replacement driver failed to turn up
there, having boarded the flight toToulouse. And the flight landed. Spooky…
This meant our initial driver had the mammoth task of an 18 hour journey back
to the UK. So we stopped for a day in Paris on the way back. Which was pretty
sweet.
In fact
the confined space of the tour bus took a bit of getting used to.
Most (!) of the shows went pretty well and the audiences were lovely and
patient even when we weren’t up to scratch.
So now we’re having a little break at home before we go toAmerica. Ellen is getting her highlights done (I also just went to see 30 days
of night, it was rather disgusting. I dont just sit in hairdressers for seven
days avoiding my natural hair colour. Sometimes I see films.)
Ollie is visiting his belle in Edinburgh, Harriet is smoking pink vanilla
cigarettes, Neil is all crusty and itchy due to a unfortunate case of chicken
poxs, Gareth is eating eggs in baps, Tom is finally getting to play with his
new guitar and I’m bumming around Cardiff trying to get old friends to hang out
with me.
Anyway, lots of loooooooove from all of us in the LC! Camp
Gros Bisous, Ellen and Aleks xxx
p.s We leave you with this, Gareth doesnt just wear cardigans you know.
hello hello hello to anyone who actually finds these interesting, we just like having an excuse to look through our photos.
here’s some photos from ireland: just to prove we went
thats us chillin’ (haha ellen is a comedy genius) in the fridge in belfast
there were bad omens for the tour in belfast considering the power went off as soon as we started our set. but we feng shuid and cleaned our chi and started the tour anyway. we also made tom felate a banana…
The first memorable thing to have happened was the bread face we made in bristol…(on another note Ollie is currently continuing his quest to try and fit into as many small spaces as possible. This week he is attempting to get into the kitchen cuboard in The Cockpit. He is currently in the cuboard. He just fell out of the cuboard. People are laughing, i think he may be crying in pain. Possibly concussed.)
Back to the bread face, all appreciate the glory and wonder of its kiwi eyes and banana smile. We were so proud of the success of this initial experiment that we thought we would make him a brother. He is closely modelled on his siblings, apart from the additional banana eyebrows and extra detail (note the lifelike haribo eyes.)
(bread face)
(bread face 2)
We have been touring with the wonderful You say party! We say die! and dead good Sky Larkin, who have been brilliant company and have been fairly embarassing to play after due to the fact we suck bottoms compared to them. The photo below is a example of YSP!WSD! majesty when we all played in Manchester together, although you cant really tell she is wearing a amazing gold dress. Krista is a shining star in a dark night. Devon is a dark knight mounting a shining star. Derek is an explosion of stardust onto the face of Steve who is painting glitter on Becki. (Their words not ours.)
(Y!S!P!)
Before the gig in Manchester Neil decided to try and to prove that we are the second most punk rock band in England by letting us write on him in eyeliner. He then removed his shirt during the second song prompting his mum to worry that he had got a rather hideous new tattoo. We also did a interview in Manchester with a certain someone who wasnt very careful when texting a friend during the show and a mutual friend reported to us afterwards that this certain someone said that some of the band were fit, and perhaps dirty and looked like they like to experiment in bed due to their appearance. The bands response to this is that we are all very hygienic and extremely boring in bed.
(punk yer!)
In Glasgow we were given some brilliant Fan art which is Niall’s own interpretation of our little faces, and bodies. He has also included himself in the picture, but at first we just thought he had mispelt Neil. It is now sitting on our Dashboard, and if anyone wants to make us some more to perk up our van we would be very grateful. I would also like some febreeze to save time on washing. If we get two we might be able to set up a fan art page on our website….
(fan art)
We had a aftershow party in Glasgow (our very first organised aftershow party) at the Garage, we think however the staff are perhaps….muppets. They took our whisky off us at the door, they searched Ellen to the point of sexual abuse asking her to tell them where her Weed was because “they were going to find it and throw her out.” Ellen does not smoke weed, but the fact she roaches her rizla packets for rollies because she cant be bothered to buy filters made the security suspicious. This also makes them stupid. But the party was extremely fun despite the music of Good Charlotte/30 Seconds to Mars being continously filtered through to the area we were in.
Doug from Sky Larkin and Gareth demonstrate their gunts in Newcastle. This show was possibly the most rock n roll one we have ever played. There was a stage invasion, and someone tried to steal the melody horn. Someone suceeded in stealing the glock beater, and the korg was knocked over. The glock beater has been passed down for many generations in the Campesinos family, so I am asking the person who borrowed it to turn themselves in to their nearest police station before things get ugly. Yep. Alek is Russian, Tom is Italian and between them they can summon enough mafia to make you feel very uncomfortable.
To add to the Rock n Rollness of the evening Harriet and Ellen thought it would be appropriate to don their best bread hats as they headed to the aftershow DJ set which we all did just down the road from the gig. An exclusive album track was played much to everyones apathy, and the classic “Gravel Pit” by the Wu-Tang clan was pulled out. Gareth played M.I.A like 8 times.
To make everyone leave he had to play the most requested song of the night, which was deemed some Pixies song, and was counted by a show of hands from the eight people remaining.
and that is a runthrough of all our adventures so far. we’ll keep you updated. lots of love and hugs, ellen and aleks and the rest of LC!
Hello there! How often should we actually be writing this blog thing? I have a feeling we’ve been a bit rubbish. Sorry. I guess we’re not interesting enough to write too often and frequently get distracted by shiny things. The main news in campesinos! camp is that (as of yesterday) we’re all back in the UK. What’s up with it being so cold, eh?
This return means we’ve finished recording and mixing the album so early next year it will be fresh for your little ears.
Ellen: We also got to mix the album in a very interesting area of Toronto which was a hang out for drivers with a penchant for loud bass heavy music. Each evening they would crank up the volume and stand stationary around their cars just kinda looking at each other, it seemed fun and often I wanted to join in. This was balanced out by charity workers who would do team building exercises each morning which involved group singing, clapping and generally dancing around like idiots. One of them enquired as to whether Aleks and myself wanted a job. It was tempting.
The hotel we stayed in was also rather odd, one morning we woke to hear a mexican band practicing in the room next door and were then greeted by a man stroking his pet chameleon in the lift (not a euphanism.) Apparently lots of mafia/gangster get-togethers were held there, under the guise of baby showers and weddings. Despite this strangeness we’re missing canada muchly but there is also something quite nice about being reunited with home comforts like daytime australian soaps, the sunday times, chavs and good old british sarcasm. On the flight back, Ellen and myself had our excess baggage fee waved because the guy found out I was at medical school (on hiatus) so if you’re ever in the situation, I suggest subtly slipping in dissection room banter or something.
The flight was exciting as ever, with a tear being shed over our last chance to indulge in canada’s staple drink of clamato juice, ie a touch of clam juice mingled with tomato juice. i know - crazy…Ellen dropped a muffin on the floor (Ellen is upset about this still). Then the flight attendants moved Harriets violin without telling her. so yeah, we know how to have fun.Ellen: I however had a nasty shock when returning home to Cardiff, in my absence my flatmates had turned my room into some sort of brothel for their visiting friends drunken encounters. I have decided to get a big lock, lazer system and bear traps put in place for our next trip away.
We start our UK tour on Saturday, so we’ll get to see lots of places none of us have been to like Colchester whilst indulging in lots of Alan Partridge/Curb Your Enthusiasm
Ellen: Also I have a new tattoo so come just to see that if you like, you can prod it if you want.lots of love Aleks and Ellen and all of LC!
PS – We wrote this blog one week ago and then just kinda didn’t get round to publishing it. Coz we’re silly. Since then we’ve been to and come back from Ireland, where we put ourselves to shame by not drinking very much Guinness and sounding more Somerset than Irish when we tried to do the accent. We also discovered that none of us can play pool very well. And Gareth got told off by the receptionist at the Holiday Inn because we were indulging in the legendary chant ‘Need a Wee’ when we got back after the Belfast gig. Gutted. That’s probably the craziest its gonna get on tour – so yeah good times…
Hello,
It has been a while since we have written an actual blog, so it is difficult to know where to begin on filling you in on our North American adventures.
Lets start with the important stuff; we ate Sushi and Twinkies, we drank Amaretto Sours and Mountain Dew and we saw Ashlee Simpsons new nose.
Then we settled in the lovely township of Quinte West to begin dissapointing everyone with our as yet unnamed noise concept debut. During our three weeks here we have learnt a lot about ourselves, mostly about Ollie and his wonderful Mary Poppins style of existance.
From this point forward this blog is called “An Ode To Ollie,” Ollie has embraced the town and has climbed up a mountain (literally not methaphorically) and surrended his wild locks to a local barber emerging an even more handsome version of himself. (At this point Ellen would like to add that she has also sampled the local hairdressers, unfortunately her experience was not as pleasant and she had to have her hair done twice due to a translation issue.)
Ollie has also taken it upon himself to wash up, tidy, put away and cook and generally amaze us all with his Delia Smith/Martha Stewart/Nigella Lawson housekeeping ways. He has also upped his Oestrogen levels by doing the Nell McAndrew “Ultimate Challenge” workout dvd with the ladies of the house…Mr Motivator has nothing on him, so keep an eye out for “Exercising with Ollie Campesinos!” at your local Woolworths branch this Xmas.
We have also celebrated a Campesinos! birthday whilst being here, with Harriet reaching the ripe old age of 22. There was wine, beer, nibbles (oh the nibbles), more wine, more beer and some champagne! There was also a tasty Tiramisu (lovingly prepared by Tom) here is a photo of it on Gareths face.
Tom was slightly dissapointed to find that the crackhouse next door was being torn down during our second week, we have left him to get over this loss by encouraging him to visit the “massage parlours” which are dotted around town.
We have been indulging in some wonderful tv treats, such as the brilliant and thought provoking America’s/Canada’s/Britain’s next top model, arrested development (hopefully that balances out the superficiality of the aforementioned programs) and have viewed one of the most heart warming, tear jerking and mentally demanding films ever to be made: the intellectually stimulating “In Her Shoes.” This film was not given enough credit when on general release, according to IMDB it wasnt even nominated for an Oscar!
The “men” of the band have been watching football whilst playing football manager and talking about going to play football at the local football pitch.
The recording has been going well, with good progress being made whilst consuming vast quanities of Dorito’s, Ben and Jerry’s, cookies and for the smokers of the band far too many Marlboro Lights (other cigarettes are avaliable.) There is also a rather disturbing sewn image of Barbar in the studio which has led us to not only question the moral implications of enforcing monarchical ideas in childrens cartoons but inspired us to make our most interesting work to date. Hopefully. Maybe.
On that note, we’re off to see Superbad, coz it looks well good and Mr Beans Holiday finished yesterday before we had a chance to enjoy that visual feast. Gutted.
Also, Ellen has lost her bank card and Aleks’ bank won’t let her take any money out so if any of you generous souls would like to wire some money our way it would be much appreciated. Can you still wire money? Anyway, thats it kids. lots of love and hugs from Alek, Ellen and everyone in the LC! camp
Take home message:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/live_from_congress_the_skull?utm_source=EMTF_Onion
A photoblog carefully constructed by Aleks and myself (Ellen), which took longer than originally planned due to our limited knowledge of html…..
But here it is in all its glory, some snapshots from our adventures in North America…featuring us and other much loved members of the Los Campesinos! family such as our tour manager/sound guy/ extraordinarily talented eater Todge, AAAAAAAAron our wonderful driver and Mingey our slightly disfigured gingerbread mascot.
Firstly, some sightseeing in Toronto
Our Team Mascot Mingey outside The Days Inn Hotel in Toronto
A tender moment…
Us in front of the famous green screen in toronto…
We ain’t no fools, we don’t pay for official photos…we take photos of official photos…
We like giftshops
Mingey goes to Hillside Festival in Guelph
Pimp bear of Guelph
Roof of Van=punk rock.
Gareth gets his very first Do-Rag
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TODGE! at Hillside
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I think these photos speak for themselves
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Harriets preferred beverage
Pimpin’ in Chicago
We also did a gig
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A couple of gigs
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and some Karaoke
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Big Ollie face, small Ellen.
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Gareth, Neil and Harriet meet M.I.A. and Neil is amazed by her sparkly pants.
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And some bongos
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Neil, Ollie and Gareth got free skateboards at Lollapalooza
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This is how excited we get when people invite us round to their houses…
Cardiff bands invade the Horseshoe Tavern toilets in Toronto…
An example of ways of entertaining yourself at border control
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Bus fun:Ollie does sensitive male…
Todge eats food
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Gareth sleeps
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right next to Lordi
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Shots New York style=very scary happy people
Dear American Apparel, Please send us some more pants…
Take home message: Always brush your teeth
Before a gig starts make sure you are capturing the moment instead of playing your instrument
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