What Zachary Did in the UK

April 30- We were rudely awakened at the Quality Inn of Stoke this morning by a fire alarm. As we waited outside for the “all clear,” a busload of cowboys stormed onto the scene. An ambush! I curled up on the ground and play dead in case they decided to take hostages. Then a hotel steward emerged from the building and said we were free to go back to our rooms. The cowboys entered the Inn with us and put on their best behavior. Shaken and confused, we went back to sleep for a while. I have yet to figure this one out. Mic (our tour manager), Dyan, and Zebastian all confirm that there were, indeed, Cowboys charging the hotel. A shared hallucination?

Dyan went home early after the show last evening (which was, I daresay, the best of the tour thus far) so our posse—your Blood Arm boys plus those of Maximo Park –became a Man’s Club. It is a common assumption that when a group of boys is fed all the liquor they desire and left to their own resources, behavior will degrade to the basest of levels. Windows will be broken, villages burned and looted, any woman in the path left pregnant out of wedlock, etc, etc. Not true for us. We talked about our feelings. Lucas was proud of his performance that evening, and upset that no one had said anything about it. Zebastian thought Lucas’ brilliance went without saying, but affirmed that he was particularly stellar that show. Nathaniel misses his mother. Zachary feels incredibly alone sometimes, even when we’re all in the van together. Duncan misses his mother, too. The night ended in a group hug. And Zach puking.

There was a strip joint across from the hotel and I can’t stop thinking about it. In the States, men and women stick dollar bills in the strippers’ undergarments. Here, the lowest form of passable currency is the pound coin. Do people slide the coins into the strippers’ unmentionables? The answer remains a mystery.

After a blown tire and a long wait for a service truck, we finally arrived at Phil’s (City Rockers Records) Oxford home for a late-afternoon BBQ. Phil has an adorable son and daughter, who spent the majority of their time running about singing ‘All the Girls.’ “It’s kind of Narcissistic, isn’t it,” Phil says. “You marry someone who looks a lot like you so you can have children who look just like you. I love it.” A few glasses of wine into the gathering, Phil brought out a photo from his party days. In the picture, he’s wearing a ruffled flamenco bare-midrift emblazoned with tiny swastikas (the Hindu symbol of peace, he insists) over the whole of the garment. Ex-post facto, I’m thinking it would have been funny to call him Prince Harry. Now I’m thinking I should have just told you I called him Prince Harry on the spot. I mean, how would you know I didn’t? So I said to Phil, “You look like Prince Harry in that photo!” HAHAHAHHAHAHA!

It’s particularly touching (in the most literal sense) how much a TBA performance affects the children of England. At the end of our show in Oxford, a group of five young girls attacked Dyan and Nathaniel with hugs and kisses, then begged the duo to autograph their sweaty arms and legs. Dyan swears she was bitten at one point. By the time the young ladies found their way to me, ink was smudged up and down their arms and they were clinging to torn bits of Dyan’s dress. I wondered if my friends were still alive. I felt something like braces stick into my arm. Moist hands seized my arms and bear-hugged me. I signed a forehead in self-defense… I’d say it felt like rape, but I think I liked it.

Now I’m looking at the sleeve of my shirt, and Nathaniel’s autograph somehow transferred itself from one of the girls’ arms and made a home there. I wonder how much this is worth on EBay?

On to Manchester!

May 2- The Jabez Clegg in Manchester was a mess when we arrived on the scene. The wooden stage was sagging and rotting apart, the PA system was missing wires, and it appeared likely the show would have to be cancelled. (We’re not prisses, mind you. If someone were to jump on the stage they’d have fallen right through.) Thankfully, Mic and Chris (MP’s tour manager) were able to whip the promoter and his hired hands into shape, re-tool the stage, rewire the PA, and the doors were allowed to open—albeit an hour late and without soundchecks for any of the bands. Then, right as I was about to take the spotlight for my Master of Ceremonies duties, an idiot DJ started spinning the ‘Attention’ single. This is bad form under any circumstance—especially insulting after that headache of an afternoon—but we took the tattered platform as if nothing as happened and the band gave one of their best performances of the tour thus far. (I later witnessed three beefy security guards pummeling the DJ in a back room, hopefully not on our behalf. However upset we may have been at the DJ, TBA endorses violence in no way.) The people of Manchester are wonderful, the Jabez Clegg, however, is not. It was wonderful to reacquaint ourselves with some familiar faces from the last tour as well.

Whenever one turns on the television here, all there is to watch is Snooker coverage. It’s related to American billards in that the competitors hit ivory balls around a table with cue sticks, but in Snooker the table is much larger and there are a lot more balls, and they take some of the balls out of the pockets after someone hits them in. None of us really get it, but it’s oddly hypnotic. Anyone care to explain? And while you’re at it, what’s the deal with Cricket?

We’re driving into Glasgow right now for a show at King Tut’s tonight, and we have tomorrow off. See you soon!

-Ben Lee