Artsy

Yesterday we went to Tate Modern in London. Yeah, we may have an “unprintable” band name, but we’re some high-brow dudes (note my sophisticated omission of the definite article in the previous sentence) - don’t forget it. The highlight of the visit for me were a few pieces by Thomas Demand of Germany.

Only three festivals left! Lounge on the Farm today, Oxygen tomorrow, and T in the Park on Sunday. That means only six more flights til we return home, for a grand total of 18 flights on this tour. 18!!! That leaves a pretty dismal carbon footprint, I know.  We’re working on it…

Cowboy Cat rides again… For the first time.

Many of you have been hounding us for months now about where to purchase our insanely popular Cowboy Cat t-shirts online. Well, we finally got off our asses and did something about it - Cowboy Cat shirts are finally available online through MapleMusic: http://www.maplemusic.com/dept.asp?dept_id=3079.

Cowboy Cat, for his part, couldn’t care less, he just wants to continue riding our coattails around the globe. Here he is enjoying some Polish vodka in Bergen, Norway…

Pole Position

Small Music Festival > Big Music Festival.

This equation continues to prove itself time and time again, most recently with Festival Nowa Muzyka that we played a couple of nights ago in Cieszyn, Poland. The smaller size affords us more time to hang with our hosts, not to mention all the positives that come with playing to a smaller crowd. Not that Glastonbury wasn’t fantastic, it’s just so giant and the audience is about 50 metres from the stage.

In Canada we’re blessed with very small festivals like the Wolfe Island Music Festival, or the multi-stage but still small festivals like the Hillside and Dawson City Music Festivals. (I’ve been lucky enough to play all three!) Festival NowaMuzyka is well on its way to such levels of awesomeness. Especially if they continue to book bands like Battles, who battled through major technical issues to deliver a blistering finale of a set.

In celebration of Battles’ conquest, Brian rode the red bull for all it was worth and we discussed the almost always ill-fated idea that is the opening band “spontaneously” joining the headlining band for the last song of their set as evidenced by yours truly on one of the drums in this sad clip (note: Brian thinks the clip isn’t so bad, we’ve agreed to disagree).

Now we’re in the Norwegian town of Bergen, which is easily one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. A big festival canceled but some local promoters picked up the pieces and we’re lucky enough to have been invited here to play a small show tomorrow night. It’ll still be light out when we hit the stage at 11:30 pm. The last time I did that I was in Dawson City, Yukon. Which reminds me, happy Canada Day!

(B)asshole

From the Don’t-try-this-at-home Files: don’t throw your principal instrument to the ground the night before playing the biggest festival of your life cuz it could very well break in two:

My poor bass had taken so much similar punishment in the past, but I guess it was fed up with my idiocy and decided to teach me a lesson. Ah well, like they say: you win some, you lose some. Or, in this case, you lose the championship game by scoring in your own net.

Thankfully, Biffy Clyro was kind enough to loan me one of their back-up basses to get through Glastonbury, saving me from having to use the cheapest bass in all of the United Kingdom, that I had purchased in Bristol during a mad scramble earlier in the day (and that broke three songs into last night’s set in Cieszyn, Poland). It all worked out fine in the end and we made it through our John Peel Stage set.

Thankfully for us, Glastonbury was not muddy in the least, so I was able to take it in with relative ease. The rest of the guys earned their Glastonbury stripes by trudging through the slop last year, but I got off easy. A guy like me needs to be eased into a festival like Glastonbury though, since its population is greater than that of my home province.

Matt and I caught White Denim blowing the roof off the Queenshead Stage and then Buddy Guy tearing it up with his way-too-slick band on the Jazz World stage. Now if White Denim was Buddy Guy’s band we’d be talking about serious shit.

easyJet took us to Poland the next day. It seems to me that their baggage handlers could stand to take a cue from their courteous flight attendants and not treat my bass like a Guantanamo detainee. But then it’s clear that I don’t treat the bass much better myself…

And on that note of self-defeat, I will retire to my quarters at Katowice’s Stadion Slaski (no idea how we ended up staying at a soccer stadium, but it is kinda neat) and prepare some photographic evidence for a recap of our time in Poland.

Glastonbury

Today we arrived in London to get ready for our first run of European festivals this summer (excluding of course the raucous start we had in Barcelona):

We’re warming up tonight with a show at Proud Galleries in Camden. There’s currently a Sid Vicious photo exhibit here, so as a tribute I will be getting fucked up and miming all my bass parts while Mat our sound engineer does the real work from behind my amp. Has the makings of the best Holy Fuck show of all time.

Tomorrow we head to the Glastonbury Festival where we’re playing the John Peel Stage. Hopefully the hippies are kinder to Jay-Z than they were to Kanye. And hopefully we don’t drown in the mud as it’s already been raining and continues to do so today. Brian is set as he has his Canadian-branded wellies:

We’re on tomorrow afternoon at 2:30 and you can tune-in to our set on the BBC. After we play I plan on hitting the treadmill with Amy Winehouse for a bit and then watching CSS before we head for Poland at 4 am.

More from the mud tomorrow!

Holy Fuck vs. The Porta Urinal

We played Primavera Sound in Barcelona, Spain a little over a week ago. For more than one reason it was the craziest festival experience of our collective life. Thankfully we had a professional basketball player on hand to put everything into perspective. More from us later, but for now, here’s Paul Shirley…

—

I watched Holy Fuck play at the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona on Friday night. Their set was great. Unfortunately, they were almost outshined by a toilet.

I wasn’t familiar with the Fuckers before receiving an email from bassist Matt McQuaid last fall. Before ordering me to check out his band, he told me of his affinity for my writing. (I wrote a book relating my experiences in professional basketball.) Since I’m a sucker for musicians, I found their webpage and then, on a whim, bought the eponymous album.

I liked what I heard and the record soon found itself in moderately heavy rotation as I drank my way through a season on the island of Menorca.

This spring, as it became clear that the Barcelonan I was dating wasn’t joking and actually did like me, I started to plan for summer in that city. While making a routine check of pollstar.com, I eye-scrolled down and noticed a festival chock-full of the sorts of semi-obscure but wonderful bands that give me a reason to get up in the morning. Among them: none other than the employers of my new cyber-friend Matt.

I raced to my computer to send him an email. Or rather, it only took me six days to get around to sending him an email. Strangely enough, the very day I sat down to write, I found an email from him:

“Paul, quit stalking me. I’m not interested in hearing the remaining 25 on your list of 101 ways to prepare a cucumber using only an Exacto knife.”

Wait, that was the guy from Animal Collective.

Matt asked if I would be interested in a guest pass when they played in Barcelona. I asked him if the pope shits in the forest. A few weeks later, I found myself happily in attendance at Spain’s best music festival.

Matt was kind enough to secure a pass for the aforementioned Barcelonan, so I didn’t have to pull my “tall dude wandering a concert alone and creepily” schtick. We arrived in time to watch one good Autolux song and three bad Autolux songs. When they finished, I realized that the plan Matt and I had made—to “meet somewhere in front of the stage where Autolux is playing”—had been a poorly-conceived one. When we had talked, I hadn’t realized the scope of the festival. I had assumed that the Spanish wouldn’t be able to pull together anything more than a few tents and a keg of shitty beer. I was wrong. About the tents. The shitty beer part was correct: the festival was sponsored by Estrella Damm, which ranks somewhere around number 78 out of the 79 or so beers I’ve tried in my life.

When the Autolux crowd cleared out, my girlfriend and I hiked across the grounds to see Man Man, about whom I’d heard a great deal, but from whom I’d heard nothing. There, my new favorite member of Holy Fuck tracked me down. In between Man Man’s hysterics, we chatted about…well, mostly about his band.

Like most of humankind, I have a few unreasonable wishes. I’ve always wanted to ride on a galloping horse, for example. And I still hold out hope that I might get to go to Space Camp some day. But my A-1, most pressing desire is to be in a rock band.

That’s never going to happen, of course. My musical ability peaked in fifth grade at the piano recital I didn’t completely fuck up.

That being a rock star is my greatest secret wish probably explains why I go a little gaga around musicians. To me, good musicians are what Karl Rove is to Southern Baptists. They’re my deities.

Matt was warm and friendly and Canadian, and he answered all my dumb questions without making fun of me. Most interestingly, he said that he doesn’t get nervous before shows. As he said that, all hopes that he is not seven times cooler than I am flew right into the Mediterranean Sea.

We parted ways with Matt soon after Man Man. He had to get back to the hotel, and we had to go watch Cat Power. We walked toward the entrance.

And then I saw them.

Lined up behind the normal Port-a-Potties, like a dream from the future, were the most amazing toilets I’d ever seen.

These masterpieces brought together everything I like about Spain: a simplistic view of life and a relaxed take on pissing in public. Each square unit had four receptacles, divided by walls to keep neighbors’ eyes at bay. No doors, no flushing mechanism. The user steps up onto his corner of the square, does his business, and steps off. No fuss, no worries. Unless, of course, the user happens to be afraid of having people see a rear view of him whilst peeing.

The genius is in the simplicity. Guys don’t really care about doors and walls when it comes to urinating. In fact, most of us like to pee outside. The only problem: the general public doesn’t like random penises flailing about. But the four-sided design solves all that. Non-users don’t see any naked anatomy. And users get a no-strings-attached outdoor piss. Everyone wins.

When I laid eyes on the Stonehenge of toilets, I knew I had to try one. Unfortunately, I could only force down so much Estrella. (Insert beer/urine joke here.) It didn’t look my bladder was going to be in need anytime soon.

I resolved to concentrate on needing to pee.

But then, Cat Power had to go and be terrible. I forgot about the toilets for a while, as I cursed her under my breath. I had three reasons to be mad: 1. I love her album The Greatest and so had high hopes. 2. I had sold my girlfriend on attendance by playing Cat Power for her. 3. I had picked watching her over watching A Place To Bury Strangers and could see and hear their show—which appeared to be a real rock show—in the distance. It was like eating a hot dog next to a Ruth’s Chris.

The next distraction was The Go! Team. The good news: They were distracting because they were wonderful.

I had some time to think about peeing before Holy Fuck. Still, nothing. I wasn’t even that distracted by The Rumble Strips. I just didn’t need to pee. It seemed that my new-favorite urinals were going to go unused, at least by me.

When Holy Fuck took the stage at the un-Holy hour of 4:30 in the morning, any chance that I would concentrate on anything other than music took an hour off.

They were, quite simply, amazing.

I rate my live music experiences by the number of times I get chills on the back of my neck. Holy Fuck, just before sunrise in Barcelona, caused multiple chills.

I realize that what I just wrote seems a little over-the-top, especially since I’m writing this only because one of the members of the band I’m writing about got me in. But I don’t have any reason to be so nice; they’re not paying me and, short of me becoming a Holy Fuck roadie, I can’t imagine I’ll see them again anytime soon.

So trust me when I write that it was one of the best live shows I’ve seen in years. I would compare their show most closely with that of Mogwai, another loud, mostly-instrumental band that’s not from the US.

Most of all, I appreciated that it looked like the band was having fun on stage. Matt and I had spoken early in the night about our distaste for musicians who play it too cool, who are afraid to look like they’re trying. That was not a problem for Holy Fuck. They bounced around like teenagers, playing their instruments with glee.

When my hour of bliss was over, Matt came out and we talked about their show. He seemed tired, but happy. After 10 minutes, I bade him a fond farewell and started up the stairs and began the long walk out.

As I made the same trek I had made earlier in the night, the pre-dawn light glanced off the urinals in the distance. I thought about how long it had been since I’d been on this side—the wrong side—of sunrise and then, wham, my bladder was full.

Holy Fuck was forgotten. The hour of musical near-perfection faded from my memory. I was finally saddled up on the toilet of my dreams.

But then, disaster. The receptacle was full of pee. No matter, I thought. Whoever had designed such a beautiful thing must have surely taken this into account. This is probably normal.

It wasn’t. As I added to the pool of stale urine, a line of pee dribbled down the side of the bowl. It was overflowing…onto my shoes.

I walked away in disgust. I had had such high hopes.

I’ve gotten over the disappointment. Anyway, I didn’t really want to say that the highlight of the Primavera Music Festival was a toilet.

When, really, the highlight was Holy Fuck.

Juno

That blog title ought to insure some mis-directed visits to our lonely little corner of the internet. Now to get down to business…

Last night the Juno Awards were handed out in Calgary and we lost. L-O-S-T. Talk about a good way to ruin a European tour! And as anyone who knows us will tell you, we’re one competitive bunch, so we were frothing at the mouth. However, the results of today’s globeandmail.com online poll have served as salve for our wounds. Because if you can’t trust an unscientific poll on a newspaper’s website then what can you trust?

The Juno Awards weren’t all sorrow and bitter disappointment for Holy Fuck as our friends, labelmates and bandmates Wintersleep walked away with the Juno for Best New Artist! And deservedly so as their record is fantastic. However, when an eight year-old band with three records wins Best New Artist it suggests to me that the possibility of Ryan Malcolm winning Best Female Artist is not so far-fetched.

Tonight we’re in Brighton, one of my favourite stops in the UK. Unfortunately, Snooper’s Paradise, the junk shop that is the source of about half our set list, was closed and we couldn’t procure any more hit machines. Free Blood is currently playing but I’m caught in a bass trap as I write this so I’m going to move and watch them coax and cajole the crowd with their hot soul and dance concoctions.

The Neverending Story

Oh, hi there… Sorry, I didn’t see you, I was flossing. Um, we just played Manchester and it was fantastic.

It seems that the last time we spoke we were on our way to see Aimee Mann film a live concert DVD in Los Angeles. Well, the sound was bunk (weird venue), but it was still a trip just to see her and to top if all off we got thrashed on free Grey Goose vodka. As a result Brad was pretty vocal about her lack of drummer, but I was just glad he didn’t yell “Play Magnolia!”

(P.S. If you haven’t seen the Aimee Mann Christmas Trilogy, do it now.)

Anyway, a few days after we played Los Angeles we flew to Mexico where I immediately proceeded to lose my wallet. Thankfully I found the wallet in short order, only to have my computer totally go bonkers. Which is the excuse that I’m going to use to explain the complete lack of blogging and posting of photos in the interim. Sort of a dog-ate-my-homework kind of excuse, but one becomes pretty dependent on their laptop when they don’t live at home for long periods.

However!, the computer is back up and running now (albeit not as fast as it once was) and we are back on the road after having a well-deserved week off. So, many untold stories from the last tour and upcoming adventures from this tour will soon be appearing. In the meantime, entertain yourself with this little remix we did one morning in L.A. a few weeks back (Brian’s got a great story about that coming down the pipe), seems someone went and entered it in a contest for us…

M.I.A. No Longer M.I.A.

In my estimation the goal of a truly great music blog is to be as far ahead of the curve as possible. Well, there’s ahead of the curve and there’s Gorilla vs. Bear. They posted our remix of M.I.A.’s ‘Paper Planes’ before we knew they’d even heard it. Hell, I didn’t even know we’d finished mixing it! Anyway, we think it’s pretty cool, pay the gorilla and bear a visit and take a listen.

We’re on our way to Los Angeles today and we play Echoplex tomorrow. The highlights of our trip to L.A., however, are the following:

1. Tonight we’re going to see Aimee Mann (!). Jesus Christ I’m excited.
2. Tomorrow there is a Speedcabling competition. Speedcabling! If there was ever a sport created specifically for us - and there was not - this is it. Speedcabling is, simply, “[…] a competitive sport in which contestants race to unravel a bundle of wires.” Tomorrow’s event conflicts with our show so we might just have to blow that off. I’m sure Gruff can do a solo set or something…

Dust in the Wind

Everyone in the band is sick with the flu but me. So this morning I took it upon myself to do a little research on my favourite bodily humour and yours: phlegm. My most important discovery was that clear or healthy phlegm (or what I would refer to as “snot”, ie. ‘Buddy, pipe down or I’m gonna kick the effin’ snot out a ya!’) can signify the most infectious period. This is important information considering the close quarters we share.

More on snot: according to Wikipedia it’s slang for nasal mucus and not phlegm. (Up for debate if you ask me, but I’m no immunologist.) Regardless, our snot got a real workout yesterday as we were in the midst of a dust storm here in El Paso, TX. Take a look at the skyline of Juarez, Mexico, obscured not by pollution, but dust:

Next stop on the Driving-Through-a-Country-and-Western-Song Tour 2008 takes us to Tucson, AZ tonight. And if Super Tuesday lives up to its name for a certain “conservative” candidate we might be partying well into the night with the locals.