2004 north american tour

frank's tour diary

entry #1 - september 14, 2004, atlanta

Our first extensive tour of North America since 1993 started this evening in a near-deserted car park outside a record shop in “Little Five Points”, one of those districts you find in many American (and some British) cities where nearly every shop is stocked with overpriced shirts of imitation polyester (if such a material exists), Judas Priest sweatbands that cut your forehead when you use them, and Wonder Woman memorabilia. We played a half-hour acoustic set, which was livened up considerably by the participation of Kaiser the dog, who ran around the little stage, leash and owner trailing behind him. I kept calling the dog Caesar by mistake (John told me it’s the same name anyway) but made up for any slight by introducing him to another dog during the last song. Actually, god only knows which genders we were dealing with.

The real kick-off came a few hours later at the Variety Playhouse, and it was perhaps too robust a start; I have a sore throat now, at any rate. The audience were extremely respectful and attentive, save for a couple of chatterboxes up the front. There is a battalion of our audience who like us so much that they feel compelled to tell everyone else around about them how great we are, saving their most voluble praise for when we play “Country Air”. I suppose they don’t get many chances to show us off. One creepy moment: I was talking to the audience about how talked about their country was these days; saying how coming to the States at this time is like meeting a famous celebrity, when a threatening voice from the crowd advised me to “be careful” about what I say…

Then at the end of the gig, we met some nice, fellow-nerd cool kids from Georgia who were under the impression I gave the audience the finger as we left the stage. I was actually doing the “Bring Me Sunshine” dance (Morecombe and Wise never had that problem). We cleared up the misunderstanding in the dim alley out back.

entry #2 - september 15, 2004, carrboro, nc

Arriving at the Cat’s Cradle, the venue manager updated me on the behaviour of my sister’s recently-acquired husband Glen, who is Franz Ferdinand’s tour manager. On this tour, our van and trailer has been spluttering into towns like Carrboro a day or so after FF zip out on their spacebus, and according to first reports, the new brother-in-law seems to be conducting himself in a respectable fashion. He could be paying off these venue managers, I suppose. And so the over-protective, suffocating brother role I thought I’d forsaken when my sister turned 25 has been assumed once more.

Carrboro is a verdant college town, full of stock pretty girls on bicycles, boy golfers-in-waiting and as-yet fresh-faced stoners, none of whom seem to mind being looked at through binoculars. I have a moderately powerful (8x42) pair with me that have brought interesting details out in the blandest passing landscapes; maybe I should’ve worn them onstage last night, if only to follow an interesting pool game that was being played out at the back of the room while the band decided how to start “All The Dark Horses”.

As in Atlanta the night before, a small turnout made us feel very appreciated, and a little special to them. Could’ve done without the Scottish fannies in the crowd shouting for “The Sash”. Neil, who is in charge of merchandising, spoke to these dudes after the show and swears their accents were fake: “yon van yooz are drivin’ is real totey!” etc.

entry #3 - september 16, 2004, washington, dc

We boarded the van for the trip to Washington DC (think Hooray for Everything from the Simpsons and you’ll have an accurate picture of our travel arrangements) and pointed the thing towards the nation’s capital. The van seats the 8 of us comfortably, and looking around me, I see a sight to make any mo-fo liberal parent proud: everyone is holding a real book (even the driver has a map in one hand), and I believe they are all reading them too. Usually, band vans are an existentialist’s nightmare: every ear plugged, every head wired into the individual’s taste, with each person determined to drown out the selected communal programme playing on the van stereo until, bored with their self-imposed detachment, the frazzled re-convene for a niggle. It’s plenty more economical the bookish way – at least the van does more than 30 miles per argument now.

The last time we were here, in 1993, “Whatalotashitington DC” was the broad appraisal – though we had a cheek. This time, a helpful crew at the venue and some rocking bass guitar from davy – as well as better songs played more confidently - help banish the bad memories. I’m starting to see the different faces in the crowd now as opposed to the mush I saw at first. To generalise, American faces are not pointy; Scottish faces are pointy.

entry #4 - september 17, 2004, new jersey (off day)

After a hairy drive in amongst the world’s busiest traffic, we’re safely ensconced in a New Jersey hotel with an evening off. There’s no partying for me because my throat’s a bit sore, so while the others head into the cityest city in the world, I’m stuck in here with only two bottles of warm Heineken, a sweaty sandwich and, what’s this? The Yankees vs the Red Sox live on channel 2? Yes!

entry #5 - september 18, 2004, new york

The Empire State Building looks very tall in the Manhattan skyline now that the WTC has gone, and kind of lonely without its big twin brothers. Not long after September 11th, I went to see A-Ha in Glasgow with my sister – she was revisiting her teenybop years, I was indulging in a fondness for continental Europeans singing in English that started with Abba (or possibly Pussycat) and continues today with the Concretes – and I remember when they played their Manhattan Skyline song it seemed to strike everyone in the Armadillo with the same, unexpected melancholy. Well, the pretty part of the song did anyway.

Before the soundcheck, we visited the studios of KROQ New York to play and talk, only one of which we do well. The concierge, upon hearing the name of the band said, “It’s just as well for you Frank’s dead.” I presented no rebuttal. The DJ who was supposed to interview us has a reputation as something of a crazy, um, DJ type. Crazy as in Howard Stern or krazy as in Chris Evans we never got to find out because he was detained elsewhere; I was relieved about that after meeting his supposedly more-subdued surrogate. They’re all very nice there as it happens, and there’s nothing a little brashness can’t get you in this city. The session and interview were being recorded for broadcast after the gig: “So hey, great gig last night, guys…” etc. Bounders. “Only Tongue Can Tell” was requested, “Got Carried Away” was what they got; “Only Tongue Can Tell” was requested again - this time for DJ’s personal mp3-listening pleasure - and was played. Which song was broadcast on the show I’ll wonder all my days. They did seem awfully interested in when we were leaving town…

“Yar playin’ the fookin’ Bowery Bahlrooom?” said Welsh Rafe when he saw our itinerary. When I get back to Glasgow, the only thing he’ll want to know is, “How was the fookin’ Bowery Bahlrooom gig?” No matter how stridently you say every gig is important, there is a tension to a New York show that belies that claim. If we were going to play just one truly awful show on this tour, tradition dictates it would be this one, but as things turned out, it was a breeze; a very enjoyable gig. Afterwards we played some songs at a post-gig party in the 169 bar; mysterious cocktails were mandatory. It had been a long day. And thank god a healthy crowd came and clapped at the Virgin in-store earlier in the day; I was worried there would be no-one there. I really mean thank god, too; Hurricane Ivan chased more than a few people into the store who’d never heard us and some of them declared themselves converts.

entry #6 - september 19, 2004, philadelphia

How many bands have walked onstage in Philadelphia to the Rocky theme? We didn’t succumb to the dumb in this instance, but the idea to do so did enter my brain as we all sat in the dressing room staring into space; it was out of there in a nanosecond, I promise you. I think a poisonous Chinese meal caused me to hallucinate prosaically. We’re using “Let’s Go Away For A While” from (yawn) Pet Sounds as an intro. Other songs used in the past: “Witchi Tai To” (Harpers’ Bizarre); “Slides” (Richard Harris); “Consider Yourself” (cast of “Oliver!”); our own “Outside”; “Cockeye’s Theme” (“Once Upon A Time In America” soundtrack); “Dancing Queen” (pre-revival, of course) and some daft one-offs. We did toy with outro songs for a time, but our innate abhorrence of theatricality prevailed.

In the Trocadero theatre itself, there’s a preposterously high stage that might serve well when the place is packed out, but is an isolated plateau for a band with “selective appeal”. Ideal presentation platform for the support band’s array of expensive guitars, mind you. Someone has just reminded me that the Troc was originally a burlesque joint, wherein a high stage was just the ticket. If only I’d known I’d have packed a kilt.

entry #7 - september 20, 2004, boston

Spent the afternoon hassling the venue crew to get me tickets for tomorrow’s game at Fenway Park, following around anyone who’d make promising noises and annoying them as they tried to plug in this and mic up that - nervously stressing all the while that money WAS an object, in case they thought I was some limey loadsamoney just looking for local colour. Fenway Park, Wrigley Field in Chicago and Yankee Stadium are the three places I’d really love to see a game, before they’re knocked down and rebuilt using municipal money legislated by corrupt transient city officials (who’d probably do better to build a new library or “fix that hole on Main St.”) and named after a drug company. Nothing doing though. The season is coming to a close – autumn equinox approaching – and there are thousands of Boston-based fair-weather fans to be catered for first.

Thought I should go for a walk during the drum soundcheck because I haven’t moved my limbs for a fortnight. So I marched down the street and around the corner and across tram tracks and dodged the potholes until I felt I’d had enough of a stretch, then I went to drink a shandy and read the Boston Herald. It’s funnier than the Glasgow Herald, but not as funny as the Irvine Herald. The Irvine Herald thinks nothing of using words like ‘tenner’, as in “The defendant was convicted of a breach of the peace and fined a tenner.’ Crosswords compilers in the US aren’t the swines that they are in the UK, either.

Another really enjoyable gig, with plenty of faces from the past - all as stunned and happy as we are that we’ve produced such a great album after so long. The new songs are learning to walk upright at last, though Roddy, who has been playing the piano and organ on a lot of them on this tour, will be taking off the stabilisers and returning to Scotland for a week, while we are in Canada. Don’t worry, girls of America, J.R. Hartley will return in Chicago.

entry #8 - september 22, 2004, montreal

It’s just your bad luck if the customs officer assigned to interrogate you has had a bad day. Borders are often places of conflict, especially so in these trustless times, and one stray piece of merchandise popping out and rolling onto the ground as the trailer door opened was our undoing. To the uniformed grump, this neatly wrapped t-shirt was proof that we were just loaded up with more garments, posters, records, trashcan lids with our faces on, pictures of weightlifters eating cake, bumper stickers and badges than the Canadian economy could deal with; that nothing could be more mirthful to these disrespectful Scottish oiks than to pull the wool over the silly moose at Canadian customs. Of course, that’s not our way, but no assurances to that effect could stop this guy from stripping our trailer (or making us strip it, rather) and ordering poor Neil to count out 600 promo posters on the tarmac. Then, when it was clear we were clean, the tour manager got a lecture on how dark the day would have turned had anything been found.

Okay, it’s not a very urbane statement, but what the fuck is with all the French being spoken in this part oh! Canada? It’s real French too, with shrugs and stuff, and the guillotine for not playing “Who’s He?” “Parfoit la nuit, Il m’appelle. Il est seul…” is as far as I got (again).

There must have been all of 60 people in the Cabaret Music Hall, and they saw what I think was the best ever performance by the band since it formed in Irvine in 1987, though not the most animated. Strange it was then, that as I was sitting in the dressing room wondering what went right, a guy called Darren should come in to the dressing room who vaguely knew Davy and John from those gloomy days (I think he said he’d moved from Irvine to Canada around about the time we were starting up) and he opined we were coming along quite nicely.

entry #9 - september 23, 2004, toronto

On a wander around town before the soundcheck – a nightclub is not a nice place to be on a sunny afternoon – I thought I heard the C&W song “You’re The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly” coming from a record shop, but stopping to listen carefully, it turned out to be a different, newer song called “Live Like You’re Dying” by some joker named Tim McGraw. I don’t know who this dude is, but he’s funnier than Half Man, Half Biscuit. A kabillion-piece string orchestra swells portentously under the understandably grave vocals of a terminally-ill cancer victim: “I was in a kinda daze, when I heard about the x-rays…” The guy’s at a loss as to what to do with himself; he wants to make sense of the awful news. All very run of de Mille, so far. Just as I was wondering where this was all going in the short term, a horrible chorus is announced: “So I went skydiving! Snowboarding! I went 3 minutes on a bull named Fu Manchu!” It’s probably a good idea to pursue outdoor activities when you’re dying, though I wouldn’t get on Fu Manchu myself, for fear of jiggling lots of dormant, un-metastisised cancerous cells awake.

There were a few more people at tonight’s gig than in Montreal – about 300 more. A group of girls who were too young to attend the 1993 Toronto show said they were happy we’d come back, but unhappy about getting old; I also spoke to 2 guys who had waited 11 years - and travelled many miles - to tell us off for cancelling a gig in Vancouver back then.

entry #10 - september 24, 2004, ottawa

I don’t watch breakfast telly, it starts too late for me - got to get abed by that time.  Canada AM invited us onto their show this morning, which meant hanging out in a soundstage from 6.30 trying to make music – shades of the “Let it Be” film – going through one song a dozen times for sound and vision.  At 8.30, a little doll woman came in and asked me one or two questions live on air with a terrified look on her face, then invited us to play “All the Dark Horses” for those who hadn’t gone to work yet.  The band counted and kicked in, I kicked my microphone out of its socket, and the viewers got an instrumental with their corn flakes.

Drove the 5 hours to Ottawa, a city not dissimilar to old Warwick, or York.  It has a replica Big Ben, some beautiful parliament buildings, and Molly from Warner’s, who took me and John out to a couple of radio interviews – the first of which was with a nice woman who used to work on West Sound in Ayr.  I probably met her when I was a studio technician (tea boy) in Kilmarnock because I helped record the first two or three West Sound Burns’ Suppers (“The World’s Largest Burns Supper,” they claim) for broadcast on the station.  They were grand occasions, with none of your Nigel Reeses or Denis Laws giving the toasts.  There was Magnus Magnusson, Clement Freud – this “Just A Minute” fanatic was pretty thrilled about that – and the great Andy Stewart, who nearly chopped his arm off doing the Address to the Haggis.  We were closeted away during the supper itself, monitoring our machines from a back room in the Hospitality Inn laundrette, and not able to see anything.  All we heard through the speakers was Andy Stewart saying “…Great cheftain o’ the puddin’ OO-YA BASTARD, JESUS FUUUCK!”

Not one of our better performances at the club; just as well Joni Mitchell didn’t show.  

entry #11 - september 26, 2004, detroit

Travelled out to a town called Ann Arbor to do 30 minutes live from the architectural section of the town’s premier book store. Norman Foster or Frank Lloyd Wright (yep, that’s me out of architects) may have lost a sale or two in that time, but us song-structuralists sold a few coffee-drinkers and wrap-tools on our sound.

Tonight’s show was above a bowling alley – no US tour is complete without one – and, having met a coffee-shop troubadour beforehand who does “Drunken Chorus” in his set, and having heard many shout-outs for that song throughout our gig, we called the gameboy up to show us his chops in front of a typically sweet TCS crowd. He played all the wrong chords (according to Paul) but got an ovation anyway. Unfortunately for me, this inspired Frank - a dandy in the front row – into presenting an articulate case for Jeff to sing “Obscurity Knocks”. I had a quick look at Jeff - he looked cool - so we got him up onstage. It was strange watching the rest of the band with a new, prettier singer. I always fancied the manager’s chair; you know, a move upstairs…

entry #12 - september 27, 2004, new york, ny

Someone told me that the centre of Chicago was modelled on Glasgow.  Is this true?  I’ll look it up at the next bookstore gig.  As I walk around the area near tonight’s gig, I see no obvious resemblances between the two – maybe they meant that “go” sound at the end of each city’s name.  Certainly for one, there is no real culinary similarity - I could never find such an array of affordable food anywhere in fair Scotia.  I’ve been getting into Jewish food on the tour and, aware that I won’t have an opportunity to feed myself so when I return, I think I’m trying to make myself sick of the sight of matzo ball soup and cold beet borsch before we fly away.  Mind you, an ersatz plate of MBS could easily be fashioned back home by boiling up some Knorr’s chicken noodle packet soup and gathering all the noodles into a soft, brain-shaped tumour for sectioning with a spoon.  And nothing could be simpler than Glaswegian cold beet borsch:  take a jar of pickled beetroot (Marks and Spencer own brand, if it’s giro week), remove all the beetroot, drink the juice.

The last time we played in Chicago was in 1993, with Radiohead, who had just released their first record.  The members I met were very courteous indeed and called us “the trashees”.  Our second album was out by that time so I felt it behoved me to furnish advice along the lines of, “If you make another record, I’m sure it will be good!”  Tonight, the crowd welcome us back for two encores, and each trip up the stairs from the pool hall/dressing room – three in all if you count the start of the gig – was punctuated by a different trashee whacking his head off a water pipe and putting their neck out for an average of two days. 

entry #13 - september 28, 2004, minneapolis

These days, to those of us who hate to fly, there are only three kinds of people walking around in airports: terrorists, slap-happy security personnel too busy clowning around with each other to catch the terrorists, and other human bodies made up of the many parts that may or may not be found amongst the wreckage.  Within this last category, I’ll sub-categorise my travelling companions, charting their usefulness in calming a nervous passenger at the gate:

John – asks if I’ve taken my tranquiliser, because knowing I’ve done so calms him down somehow.  1/10.

David – regards all abstract fear as uncool, but I know he’s married to someone who is scared of him flying, so I gain little comfort from his bravado.  3/10.

Stephen – tells me to never EVER mention the possibility of a plane he’s boarding going down again.  0/10.

Paul – bombards me with statistics and incorporates scant, but adequate knowledge of physics into his re-assurances, almost making me fall in love with him.  10/10.

Roddy/Davy/Neil – the random factor innocents who have to die to give the tragedy the necessary meaninglessness.  2/10.  Conversely, can sometimes present themselves as insurance against what would be a band calamity.  9/10.

This early morning agony comes after the concert in Minneapolis’s Fine Line Music Café, a very clean and hospitable joint peopled with helpful staff.  Unfortunately, the monitors had a freedom to roam up and down the decibel range whenever they wanted, resulting in some quaint tunings on my part.  The in-house monitor engineer did his utmost to help, but there seemed to be no technical reason for these variations in volume.  Afterwards, he told me the place was haunted, and did I see that ensorceling black squirrel run across the stage during the soundcheck?  To which I naturally replied, “Do you think my plane will crash tomorrow?”

entry #14 - october 1, 2004, seattle

Our first stretch of free time on the tour is spent in what appears on the way to the pub to be a quite beautiful city.  Any seaport tends to remind me of Glasgow, but why is that when I know that the Glasgow of today is nothing like these busy, ships’ traffic-laden cities?  I’m always thinking at those times also of my dad, who worked on the Clydeside yards, so maybe some inchoate, dreamy memory is trying to reach me, but rather than try to make contact with this important thought, I walk on with the rest of the lads to watch Celtic lose in true-to-form fashion (i.e. in stupendous, last-minute torture) to a bunch of cheating Italian runts.

Later that night, a few of us discovered our hotel rooms to be next to those of a touring chorus line, in town to perform “Oliver!” – a musical already mentioned once before in this diary.  I’m sure they were positively entranced by my insisting we run through the entire score, apparently to highlight my knowledge of only the opening lines to every song bar two.

The gig at the Crocodile Café turned out to be a really rocking one, despite me feeling nauseated throughout.  During the fourth or fifth song I felt myself falling faint, but meeting all those theatre people had obviously instilled me with a trooper’s fortitude, so I asked the lighting guy for lots of green - to camouflage my sickly pallour - and soldiered on to the end.

entry #15 - the end of the diary

It seems that every letter I write starts with an apology these days, this one is only different in that it is all apology.  I just want to tell those who are interested that I’m sorry, but I’m not going to finish off the diaries, mainly because I’m too lazy, and also – stretching it a bit here – I don’t think any new entries written so long after the tour’s end would be commensurate.  I hope you got a kick out of those I did post, and to everyone in California, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Texas who I didn’t get a chance to write about - thanks for the fun and for such a great reception.  Oh, and sorry about not wearing all the daft hats that were proferred.

We are trying to arrange further trips to see you all in the new year, so until then,

Lots of love,

Frank

xx