Monday, August 25, 2008

Brighton

I started this leg of the tour like I start every other, asking myself "What should I load onto my Kindle?". Just kidding. I actually brought along the same borrowed copy of Jonathan Lethem's "Gun, With Occasional Music" that I've had with me on the last three legs, but this time I'm really going to finish it and not be distracted by radio dial name that tune and the Guardian's cryptic crossword. I had a good chance to make some headway on it during the flight over, since Delta's in-flight entertainment system kept crashing, which surprised me because everytime they re-booted I saw the penguin logo letting me know it was based on Linux, which is supposed to be pretty stable, right? I would've expected that kind of thing from Vista, but come on Red Hat, does Steve Jobs have to do everything? We've landed in the U.K. during another Bank Holiday, when the banker's of this great nation finally take a break from making our American Dollars even more worthless against the mighty Pound and flock to the seaside in Brighton for pitcher's of Pimm's and rounds of Dolphin Derby at the pier. I joined them there as I was trying to get over jet lag and had my first taste of the South African delicacy Biltong. One of these days when I really get this blog laid out with graphics and photos and stuff I'll add some hyper-text links for things like "Biltong", but for now you'll just have to Google it on your own. I'm sure it has a very detailed Wikipedia page, but suffice it to say it's pretty Jerky-y. While down on the pier, I also saw a poster for Brighton's leading Oasis tribute band, Oasish, which is an adjective that I'm definitely maybe going to start working into my vocabulary. And it made me think, what's a better name for a Blur tribute band, Blurry or Bluresque? After strolling around for awhile, it was back to the hotel, which was completely overrun by brides-to-be on their "Hen's nights", another British tradition like afternoon tea and knife crime waves that I'll never quite understand.

Anyway, about the gig. We had some pretty typical first night technical/sound problems, but the crowd was wildly forgiving and actually one of the best audiences we've played to in a while. They even laughed at some of our most pathetic attempts at humor, puns so bad I think I've erased them from my memory forever. And they didn't object to the fact that we broke at least two of Vampire Weekend's four cardinal rules as laid out in the new issue of Uncut. We might have even broken all four, depending on your definition of disco drumbeats and rock'n'roll cliches.

After the show, I was informed by my British friends that in the final ranking of Olympics success, every other country in the world put China first, as they won the most Gold medals. It was only the American media that didn't differentiate between a little thing like finishing first and finishing third and figured our over all medal total should put us on top. We've been known to discount trivial things like the popular vote count too, so I guess there's a precident.