tour-itis pt 1

We’ve parked the van at Bristol Temple Meads railway station and we’re hanging out, waiting for Thomas, who stayed with The Mission and Magic Numbers’ manager George last night. Jen is idly watching pigeons mooch around, when suddenly she starts, making a “euch!” noise. She’s just seen a pigeon get caught under the edge of a taxi wheel and squidged onto the road. The other pigeons ignore it, except for the dead pigeon’s girlfriend, who is stood frozen still, staring at the body. Then another taxi wheel rolls in front of the corpse, momentarily obscuring it from its transfixed partner, who immediately forgets it happened and wanders off, pecking at the tarmac. Out of sight, out of mind. Then, down flies a seagull and tries to carry off the pigeon’s body, but it’s too heavy, so the seagull drags it around the car park, trying to get as far from people and other seagulls as possible, eating big chunks of pigeon as it goes. I’ve got some super-gross footage of it.

Anyway, up by the taxi rank there’s a signpost that says: “Do not feed the pigeons or the seagulls. Let nature look after itself.”

After Bristol we’re at Matt Eaton’s in Stroud, though he’s on holiday with Alice on some Scotch island. I finally score a copy of Finish Your Chips, which is a quiet masterpiece. Richard Harris should’ve heard this album. Also, wondrous and for too long inactive Brighton band The Tenderfoot are staying as well to use the studio downstairs. They seem to be distracted from music-making by Seinfeld DVDs though - and so are we, to the point where leaving is dragging out til just the end of the next episode.

After Birmingham Glee Club we’re put up by Tom’s friends/fans Roy and Debbie of Tinternetradio.com in Tamworth. It’s an impressive, slick Midlands online broadcasting operation run out of their garage, which has been done up to a pro standard. They do that cool thing of combining a sweet family domestic life (me and Jen stay in their daughters’ room which is Bratz To The Max), yet they ain’t forgotten how to party - half the gang are still up at 5am and we get through a serious amount of Roy’s brandy before flaking out. The morning brings a mint (as in lovely, not mint-flavoured) omelette, followed by a messy messy interview for the radio.

In Cardiff I can’t find anywhere to park. I drive around in a rage for 40 minutes and end up in the Civic Hall, miles from the venue. They need to sort out that alley! Black Kids are upstairs and it’s sold out, except that when Thomas pops up there, apparently the sound is awful and there’s people leaving. Tough on a band to be so hyped that you have an audience who predominantly don’t know yet if they actually like you. I thought Myspace got rid of that - but no, nothing defeats the desire to fit in. No dis to Black Kids though, I’ve not heard them live, they might be wicked. Also I get a warm feeling when I notice they’re in one of Tarrant’s vans. Looks well swish.

Afterwards we’re put up by David Mysterious and our old friend Welsh Tim. Except it doesn’t quite work, calling Welsh Tim “Welsh Tim” when you’re actually in Wales, since everyone else is Welsh too. Here, he’s just Tim. David is an ace bilingual psyche-folk artist from the same Aberwystwyth antifolktronica clique that produced Pagan Wanderer Lu and he only just moved down to Cardiff two days ago, which is problematic because he doesn’t know where he lives yet. He’s a sweetheart with William Hague’s laugh, though he won’t thank me for saying so. I like William Hague’s laugh… The next morning we have the finest breakfast of the tour (in fact the finest since that hotel on the A1 two months ago and possibly better) at a café opposite one of Cardiff’s tertiary colleges. Welsh Tim, if you read this, what was the café called?

I hate the bilingual road signs in Wales. I know the Welsh language is being culturally regenerated at great effort and expense (and fair play to that) but the problem is, when you read a road sign you need to interpret it very fast in your brain, while doing several other things at the same time (and remaining in control of a half-ton piece of metal hurtling along at high speed). Bilingual road signs trick your brain into briefly trying to interpret what the second bit means - while for a split second generating enormous adrenalin, because your subconscious thinks that there’s something you ‘need to know’ that you haven’t understood yet. Then - every single time - your consciousness catches up a split second later that it’s just the Welsh version of the same information. Thing is, it doesn’t matter how much you drum into yourself while driving that these are bilingual signs, the brain goes through the same, immensely irritating, process, over and over.

I’ll challenge any scientist to tell me that doesn’t happen. And unlike, say, California, where there’s a large Spanish-speaking population that doesn’t speak English and needs information in Spanish, in Wales there’s not a single non-English speaker left alive. So the roadside imposition of bilingualism is purely a cultural statement and in practical terms utterly unnecessary. Fuck you Wales, for your insistance on making the roads a tiny bit more dangerous for reasons of pride! I’d rather the signs were JUST in Welsh and us Englishers had to learn the familiarity of language to get about - at least we’d know in advance that was the score. But of course, Plaid Cymru couldn’t stay out of bed with New Labour when it came down to it, so you don’t even have a proper SNP-type thing going on. Look at Scotland, they’re not bothered so much about Gaelic and they’ll be independent in a few years, if the Tories get in in Westminster!

Ahem.

In Wolverhampton, the Little Civic smells of sick. It really does, I know venues are traditionally stinky places (and, if anything, got worse since the smoking ban) but the Civ really properly smells, til you almost gag. We were also nervous on arrival because there were 3 support acts listed and me and Thomas were each only allocated 25 minutes. Luckily the rep Juliet is well on the ball and sorts things out toot-sweet, squeezing the timings up without having to kick anyone off. Nice.

The smell is offset by seriously one of the best curries any of us have ever eaten, when we splash out and go to Bangladeshi heaven Bilash up the road, on Jon Clayton’s texted recommendation. As usual where food is concerned, and even when he’s not on tour with us, Jon is Prince of Rightness. I can’t praise their ochre (sp?) or their paneer dishes highly enough, Ben argues persuasively that the special pilau is the best rice ever and the fresh mango lassi is spectacular. The tour party contains several good chefs (both Thomas and Johny boff on about food preparation quite a lot and Johny does it for money) and we’re all blown away.

the meat trade

Having a fun time on tour, to the extent that me and Thomas have vaguely talked about taking it to the USA in autumn - now that would be wicked. So far on this tour I’ve seen 9 lizards of one kind or another, which must be a record.

In Glasgow we managed to lock the keys in the van - left them still in the ignition! This was because the key had a hairline crack, so we’d got in the habit of locking and unlocking doors from the inside, to reduce wear until we had a chance to get a couple new keys made. After swearing quite a lot and getting nowhere with the AA, we just left the van outside the house overnight (you couldn’t see the key in the dark and it was a posh area), then I got up at 5.45am to watch the van til we could phone a mobile locksmith. £45 later, we were rescued - and of course it took him about 15 seconds to get in, with one of those scary locksmith devices.

Then we went and got new keys cut. We were told that the key cutting man used to be an infamous local pimp before retiring into ironmongery. What a career change!

So it’s a week later and, during our day off, I catch up on laundry and watch some films. Across town, Thomas makes a gourmet meat paté from a Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall book. Thomas White is a meat freak, people… he’s got a dream and it involves a whole pig’s head. I suggest (how good an idea is this!?) that we cut the paté into manageable slices, clingfilm it up, put a sticker on it saying “Thomas White Paté” and sell it on the merch. That would SO rule, at least for the few days before it went off in the van.

What is it with classic fantasy literature being ruined by shitty films? It grinds my gears! Watched The Golden Compass and Studio Ghibli’s dismally embarrassing attempt at Tales From Earthsea in the last few days and they both need someone to get a severe beating for their sheer shiteness. Goro Miyazaki (son of their legendary master Hayao Miyazaki) is simply not up to the job. I can see why Ursula Le Guin was so uncomfortable with the cartoonised Earthsea - I wonder where Pullman stands on The Golden Compass.

When we were kids, our house had a ban on any Disney cartoons that adapted (read: ‘fucked up bigtime’) classic books, like Winnie-The-Pooh and The Jungle Book. Good move T-T Snrs, I’ll be carrying that one forward if I ever have sprogs of my own. There’s honestly not much worse in the world than a Walt Disney re-imagining of Winnie-The-Pooh, it’s on a par with Robert Mugabe or those idiots in Burma.

The Lizards, The Scientologist and Marc Riley

Me and Tom White jump in the Electric Soft Parade van (a well customised and lived-in Merc sprinter that steers like a dream compared to the last one I drove) and head north for the first leg of our co-headline tour. I’m increasingly secure driving these beasts and after the last blog entry, I’ve started planning a coffee-table picture book of tour splitters and their bands. Awesome idea, Chris.

Before leaving town we scoot across to Metway Studio, where Tom’s brother Alex is demoing with The Pipettes, to drop him off a spare guitar. Chatting outside the van on a sunny Brighton morning, suddenly a lizard runs along the pavement. It’s about 3 inches long.

We get to York in reasonable time but then the Satnav (she’s called Madame Swish) lets us down (that’s twice so far) and it takes 40 minutes to find the venue. They’re nice about it though - lucky we’re acoustic or there’d've been no chance of getting checked. I forgoe a soundcheck, so my set is entirely acoustic, but it goes well and I enjoy myself more than expected.

Tom reprises his monumental Nina Simone cover, which took the room apart in south London a couple of days before, in a venue that didn’t deserve us.

In the evening Charlie phones to tell me a funny story: walking with his daughter, they spotted a lizard in the street. I can’t believe it, it’s a 2 lizard trip.

After York, we’re hosted by Sam and his friends, who’ve just finished college. It’s a household of musicmakers and fans, yet it’s spotless and comfortable - which is rare - and you can feel a slight air of sadness that they’re about to go separate ways. 

The next morning, eating breakfast in a café, we’re leaning into a conversation about appalling religions and obviously Scientology comes up, thinking about that poor kid who is being taken apart by The Met for waving a banner at a protest that used the word ‘cult’ with reference to Hubbard’s Hoons. Suddenly the middle-aged woman on the adjacent table introduces herself with a broad smile - she runs York Scientology Centre. Cripes! She launches into a broad defence of her ‘faith’ that within one minute is becoming a brazen attempt to recruit. That took balls, it must be said. Well, either balls or the funneled focus of unquestioning faith. She’s full of holes but friendly and (I think) sincere. Her starting point plays down the religious side almost entirely - describing instead a benign business networking opportunity and a chance to self-improve. Quickly though, she openly accepts some of the looming tenets I find most disturbing, while determinedly dressing them up as positive spirituality.

Interestingly, despite running a centre in a town, she is still a volunteer and not doing her OT levels (or whatever they’re called) yet - so one gets a real feel for how deep members have to go before they start to gain any ‘intuition’. No answers, anyway.

I’m not going to call her the 3rd lizard of the trip because that would be mean (!)… But the whole time we were talking (which must have been at least 30 minutes), her companion - an unsmiling younger man - sat silent and still, not reading or even looking around curiously, waiting for her to finish, seemingly eternally patient. If you told me he hadn’t blinked I wouldn’t have been surprised. Or that he can re-grow his leg if you bite it off.

We say goodbye and drive to Manchester. Matt Thwaites’ band Restlesslist are doing Marc Riley’s show on BBC6Music this evening and Tom is drumming. On the way, we do a quick stop-off at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where a young sheep escapes and has to be harried back through an open gate by punters. Then we rumble over the Pennines and park up at the Beeb, where we head for the bar.

Restlesslist are storming, doing complex, instrumental psyche prog-pop (spacerock?). Bloody ace - and it’s nice to meet Marc. Refreshing to see a DJ at that level actually playing entirely from CDs (and some bloody brilliant ones to boot) and just wanting to talk music, not bollocks.

And when that’s done we’ve got to make it to Glasgow for midnight…

 

Great Escape #1 - splitter parade

There’s only one real reason for music industry schmooze-fests like this weekend’s Great Escape here in Brighton. Forget the breaking of new acts, the crazed networking, debauched suits, the famous American bands doing surprise afternoon shows on balconies, or the hopeless local bands playing to four people for no money to feel vaguely like they’re part of something…

Nope, it’s all about Splitter Van* Envy. We’ve got the whole range, right here, right now, parked everywhere around town. It’s like an eccentric car rally down here. From the most beat-up hand-customised transit to the pimped psychedelic graff paintjobbers to the most luxurious sparking clean dark blue Merc sprinter, you can measure a band’s status, career intention and punk-rock credentials purely by glancing at what they drove their gear down to Brighton in.

The very biggest Great Escape bands have showed up in coaches, sometimes towing their gear in a large wheeled cube behind them. But 90% of performers who aren’t at that level are pootling around in a splitter.

In the middle of all this, we decide to transport our gear to and from our G.E. gig at Arc in a taxi. When I say “we”, I mean me. Not my brightest hour. We stop at a ramp leading from the street to the seafront - the is apparently the nearest to the venue we can get because the gates to the seafront can’t be opened. So we unload all our gear onto the street and the cab drives off. Only then do we realise we’ve been dropped off by the wrong ramp and we’re almost half a mile from the venue. After ruling out any other options, we’re forced to wheel and carry all our shit in stages to the venue, along the front. Bastard bastard bastard.

Loading out the next day is almost as tough because it’s just me and Jen and I enthusiastically try to be the alpha-male by carrying the two heaviest items up the steps to street level in quick succession and nearly throw up.

* If you’re uninitiated and don’t know about splitter vans (you poor poor thing), the key thing is to look out for a big ‘white van’ style van, except it’s got an extra side window behind the normal front doors, often with tinted glass, which is evidence of a second bunch of seats, in front of a separated rear area for equipment, only accessable from the back (hence the name). Any situation that requires more-than-3-but-less-than-11 humans and a load of equipment will be best served by a splitter - a lot of Post Office and railway maintenance team vans are splitters. They are a core delineation of rock’n'roll and I LOVE THEM.

post hols ramble

Now I really know I’m back in the UK: nothing works. Virgin Broadband died for 12 hours last night, leaving half of Brightonia (the half daft enough to have switched onto their lamentable service) with no phone or internet. Hmm, I wonder if we’ll get 12 hours’ line rental refunded. Of course the fuck not.

Then today, back online, I just spent almost an hour swimming through a complex online form for the DVLA, digging out obscure information and reference numbers, trying to update my ancient paper driving licence to one of those newer photocard ones. They say on the site that you can do the whole thing online, so I get right to the end, sigh with relief, hit ’send’, then they say - “oh, now you have to post us a load of the same shite you’d've had to post if you hadn’t wasted half the morning on this daft computer faff.” You know scientists say sperm swim the equivalent of the Atlantic Ocean made of treacle, to get to the egg. Well the egg is a fuckload better reward than a poncy new driving licence. (the stuff I send includes my passport it seems - nerve-wracking given the DVLA’s pisspoor record on losing other peoples’ stuff) Especially frustrating because the form already made me give them all the details of that stuff, like my passport number. Christ, I hope it wasn’t a dodgy site!

I just finished a history of the English language which I can’t recommend highly enough. David Crystal’s The Stories Of English. He’s the shit - and he’d love that I just wrote that. I borrowed it from Mum & Dad after cruising their (headily extensive) bookshelves for a language history to suggest to a friend. Then I felt like I couldn’t recommend it without having a go myself and it’s outstanding - he totally changes how one perceives Standard English vs. dialects / informal spoken English. Rewrites a lifetime’s snobbery, to be honest.

My Dad is directing a play at the Nuffield Theatre in Southampton this summer. It’s Ayckbourn’s Woman In Mind and it coincides perfectlywith Blissfields, so I’ll get to go. My Dad’s an ace director, especially Shakespeare which he adapts and gets people to really understand what they’re doing. The best Juliet I’ve ever seen, of any level of theatre, was a school production in the early 90s (I think) where the girl (she was probably only 14 or 15) totally owned the role. Can’t remember her name but it was incredible and no pro actor has ever topped it - even mighty princess of petulance Claire Danes ;o).

I’ve been thinking about writing a lot recently because I’m probably going to be a regular columnist for the first time (of which more another day) and my biggest weakness as a prose or text writer is inconsistency of style. I flail around from one paragraph to the next, in a similar way to speaking posher or commoner depending on the company. Sometimes I have no actual personality at all, just a complex mirror of whoever I happen to be talking to. If you could ever be bothered to read back through these blogs, one clear vibe you’d get is that they often feel like they’re written by a different person. Perhaps they are.

I’m going back on the road any day now, doing a blend of solo and band gigs, which is always a little weird because the guitar parts (and arrangements) are often almost the same but with a couple of tiny differences. Lord help me if I veer into a solo version halfway through a band performance.

Speaking of princesses, in an interview yesterday I was asked what CAPITAL was about and I replied “Kylie’s cancer… the victory of the Impossible Princess over the dreaded C.” Now I’m feeling pretty danm guilty about that response!

this is what you get

This morning it sounds increasingly like they’ve rolled out of the suburbs and taken back the London Mayoralcy from Red Ken, placing it in the unsavoury inky-pinky hands of Boris. Yup, he’s a funny guy - probably fantastic company over a scotch or a line of charlie - but would you really leave him in charge of your house and/or kids for a week while you went on holiday? Simply, no fucking way. Some prime Boris for ya…

“That is the best case for Bush; that, among other things, he liberated Iraq. It is good enough for me.”

“Labour’s appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools, and all the rest of it.”

“The best fate for Africa would be if the old colonial powers… scrambled once again in her direction; on the understanding that this time they will not be asked to feel guilty.”

“I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed so it didn’t go up my nose. In fact, it may have been icing sugar.”

“Both the minimum wage and the Social Charter would palpably destroy jobs.”

Finished watching The Wire yesterday, got through the final ever episode and then dived straight back into earlier episodes of Season 5 because Rifa hasn’t seen most of it. Like only the very best TV, it’s just as good the second time around. Without spoiling anything, the climactic few episodes are almost impossibly moving. Even as they wind down, they’re not pulling punches.

Most of my new songs are really upbeat. I wonder how the next record will end up sounding, since all the demos sound so psychotically positive (and acid-fried) compared to everything on Capital. Three animal songs already down and there’s a whole bunch of lovey dovey stuff as well, most of which will inevitably get rejected for sheer sickliness. Probably just relieved because I won’t have to live in London-Under-Boris.

a small funny thing

This morning I got a scary looking official letter through the post. We’d been talking money’n'mortgages over breakfast, which inevitably meant thinking about my feckless fiscal past, so my first thought was it was from some horrid collection agency out of nowhere.

But of course it wasn’t, it turned out to be from Almex, who operate the ticket machines from London buses. Apparently I had some cash swallowed by a bus ticket machine recently and phoned to complain, so they sent me a sweet apology with - get this - £2 in coins sellotaped to the letter!

The thing is, I have no recollection whatsoever of calling them up. I do vaguely remember having to catch a bus down to Victoria after the 100 Club gig recently (because of the tube early closing) and having a drunken fight with a ticket machine. In the heat of the night, I must’ve got my complaining hat on, which can’t have been very nice for whichever hapless Kolkatta-dweller picked up the call.

Brilliant. Two squid. Vote for Ken. FYI it was two 50ps and a £1 coin. Hats off to you, Nick Stevenson, Contract Manager of the London Bus Project.

tour diary #4 - white light white heat

I’m back on the road unexpectedly: a few days ago Frank Turner’s keyboard player Ciara had to quit his tour just before the end, to go join The Kooks, so now I’m filling in on piano and organ and doing unannounced opening slots as well, which is a total blast so far.

I’ve always switched over when the Kooks come on the radio, til the other day some highbrow critic (I think it was on Radio 4) said they had one of the best young lead guitarists around, on a par with Johnny Marr or Bernard Butler. Since then, whenever their songs come on, I have to stick it out and listen properly to figure out if he’s right. And it turns out, even if namechecking Marr is overstating it a bit, the guy has a point: whoever plays lead in that band does work in some shit-hot creative bits’n’bobs. It’s just you have to endure that glottal scenester warble (and the worst lyrics outside Scouting For Girls) to get to it. But I’m listening now, god help me.

Last night we played Cambridge Barfly. It was rammed and holy chaos. I knew it was going to be a toughie when the wifi only worked in the room with no power points. When we get there, there’s a bunch of local supports advertised but Frank’s tour is a full-up bill. We’re reassured there’ll only be one local opener but in fact this is two singer-songwriters sharing the stage and alternating songs! (They’d never met!) Meanwhile a third Cambridge act is bumped but plays a storming set out on some grass near the venue, earning big props from Frank later on.

Back inside, they have one fiery white light aimed at the stage and no aircon. It’s so fierce it smells of burning flesh and pretty quickly (like, when I’m still doing my solo set) the place is too hot to exist in. Frank gets less than a third into the set before we’re begging to get this light switched off - but there doesn’t appear to be a lighting person, so tour staff have to fuck with the lights til they manage to swivel it sideways. We’re also having piles of technical problems, battling sulking DI boxes and wet leads. Luckily none of this shite affects the soul of the gig, which is outstanding.

A funny thing - remarkably similar to playing with Jim Bob despite the big differences in style - because of the addictive nature of Turner’s massive singalong choruses, his and the (devoted) crowd’s shared vibe transcends the actual musicality of the show a bit. Not that the band isn’t bloody great - they’re (we’re!) absolutely blinding players. But (far more than my own band shows I reckon, where the rockout is more internalised and confrontational) tonight we’re clearly slaves to a higher connection. We’re a backing band in the classic sense, I think. It has the same energy as when Jim hits full stride on Touchy Feely or Mrs McMurphy and it’s hugely freeing of responsibility. Hmm, that’s poncey.

I wonder how far along that road I’d be, if I’d had the courage years ago, early on, to develop the chorus-and-party-fried vibe of material like ‘Bubble’, ‘Flirty’, ‘Injured Popstars’ or ‘Sellotape’, instead of trying to move into (perhaps fallacious) ‘artier’ territory. So this is what Turner does when I spend time in the company of his songs: reminds me how ridiculous I am, instead of simply entertaining and connecting with people. Ha! Never mind. I swear I’m not down about it, the opposite in fact.

It’s Evan’s stag tonight - sending you all the drug-addled love in the world.

xxx

Taxing unconventional people

Absolutely shocked, swerving across the M6, I find myself agreeing with Freddie “far-right” Forsythe and Ken Clark when they lecture Labour minister Angela Utter Fucking Twitface Eagle - on Radio 4’s Any Questions - about the government’s new tax rules. For her part, Twitface is so breathtakingly supercillious, snotty and arguably downright dishonest in response, she deserves everything she gets.

There’s no question they’re robbing from the poor to give to the upper-middle. But I think there’s another group of people who’ll lose out from the killing of the 10p base rate, who haven’t been mentioned or had any publicity so far: this tax change penalises people who choose unconventional non-mainstream career / life paths, eschewing profit-motive for moderate comforts and “small success”.

Exactly the kind of thrifty, low-key, untrendy, Presbyterian types you’d imagine Gordo might’ve been looking out for.

For example, on Any Answers (yeah sorry, I know I should’ve switched off what is usually a proto-fascist ignoramous talkshop but I was trying to recover my driving skills), two separate callers, both losing out, described unconventional lives: one bloke makes a moderate living in a high-end, low volume craft industry (for some reason I imagined he was a carpenter making chairs, no idea why) and the other has a bit of land and tries to live self-sufficiently, only generating a small cash income for stuff that *needs* to be bought. Both of them are getting slammed by the new taxation.

And that made me think: what about artists, craftspeople, sole traders? Often these are people who have a moderate fiscal income, although they’d tend not to think of themselves as ‘poor’, simply because their needs and aims are simpler and less grubbily corporatised. Outsiders. Mobile communities. A tax increase for the different. It’s a pity Dimbleby Jnr didn’t make a connection between the two callers, because it’s worth exploring this idea of “small profit” ideals being victimised by legislation.

I’ll lose out myself of course, because in real terms I only make small profit as a pop musician and a high proportion of my income falls into that lower tax bracket. Now I’m totally pro paying taxes (and I hate the avoiders and moaners) but this takes the rank piss. I might as well go and find a coke-addled 40k City type and give him £200.

Funnily enough, Rifa stands to gain from the changes because she brings home a lot more than me. How we laughed.

In The Dressing Room

thinking about touring and not touring…

In The Dressing Room

Let me sit alone this evening
I’m going back to the dressing room
Try to figure out how I’m feeling
About the things we were planning to do
10 years gone and I’ve stopped believing
That the music is all I need
But I can still talk to the audience
Better than anyone close to me.
Are you even close to me?

Lights up, hats on, playing on the BBC
(the best one, the best one)
Lights out, hats off, sounding like a hit to me…
(the best one, the best one, the best one)

From the start, you were in a different league
You’re beautiful and you’re brave
You don’t deserve to be betrayed
But it would be easy to walk away
After 5 years working in the same place
Coming on the same face
Sticking it in, sticking it out, shake it about
Never really much of a love affair
But you weren’t there, there’s nothing for you to say
It’s none of your business anyway

Tits out, shoulders back, everything’ll be OK
(the best one, the best one)
Lights up, hats on, same thing day after day
(the best one, the best one, the best one)
Lights out, hats off, travelling alone again
(the best one, the best one, the best one)

Lights up, hats on, putting on a show tonight
(the best one, the best one)
Tits out, shoulders back, everything’ll be alright
(the best one, the best one, the best one)
The truth is the best song anyone can ever write
(the best one, the best one, the best one)

from the ‘This Gun Is Not A Gun EP’