Finally! Ok...I'm in Liverpool and I finally have opportunity to blog. We arrived here on friday. we were told the only place in town with internet access was a mcdonalds. once we got there however, it proved to be quite a challenge to use. you have to purchase prepaid unit cards from the counter...30 minutes for £1. The terminals are not very user friendly though. there are no mice...that is to say there is no mouse at the computer. the keyboard is inside the counter. the keys are metal and they protrude from a flat shelf. since there's no mouse, you have to use your finger on the screen to move the cursor to click on things. You can imagine, at mcdonalds, along with all the greasy food, what the screens must look like. Blech! (we have lots of purell). That was Friday...it's now noon on Monday, the 29th. Memorial day for you, a "
"bank holiday" for the folks over here. I'm on the second floor of a mall outside a Virgin Megastore and across from a "nosh n coffee" coffee stand.

(Before I go on, please forgive me for not using capital letters. the shift key is half the size on this keyboard and many other puctuation marks are in different places than i'm used to. It's a million times better than micky d's, but it's still no treat) Now that i've gotten that out of the way, let's move back a couple of days to when we actually arrived in the UK.

Thursday, 24th May -
Our flight left Newark the night before atabout 7 PM and we were scheduled to land at 7AM. It's 5 hours difference from NY to London. as the sun started to come up, I was looking forward to seeing the isles from the sky. there was little more to see that clouds though, i'm afraid. once we got below the clouds it was quite an amazing sight. everything here is soooo lush and green. it's really indiscribable. i've never seen anything like it. we're told it's because they got so much rain this winter....one of the worst winters in the past 20 years or so. I'm starting to understand why the Brits like "football" so much. It's perfect "pitch" as they say.

I had no problems coming through customs thankfully. we made our way to the rental car place. We have a Peugoet mini van. it's quite spacious, but with 5 people and 5 people's bags, it was already quite full before we left the airport. We had to drive from London/Gatwick Airport into London (at rush hour) to pick up some gear (my guitar amp and a few drums). We got a bit lost. city streets are not labeled very well. there are no street signs as we know them. if streets are labeled at all, they are on the sides of buildings or on fences about waist high. we finally got on the road out of London on our way to Sheffield at at about 2:30 PM. Our sound check was scheduled for 6:00 and we had a 4 hour drive ahead of us. A this point, we had been awake since 2:00AM Wednedsay morning and we still had a show to play. we arrived in Sheffield at close to 7PM. We mad a few pit stops along the M1 (highway). The rest stops are immaculate in comparison to the ones in the US. My favorite had a Marks & Spencer in it, where I looked for Jackie's tea! It was only a mini one though so they didn't have a full selection. (Marks & Spencer is like a department store with a whole foods or trader joe's in it as well). Out back of this particular rest stop was a pond full of goldfish. A few people were tossing the bread crumbs. they were zooming around in little schools.

So anyway...the show went quite well, all things considered. Thank you to Hayley for booking us! Cheers to "seaweed biscuit". Th venue was called "D'n'R Live" The ceiling was very low and this would proove to be a hindrence later as I hit the headstock of my guitar on it a few times...can't stop the rock! : P You'd think I would have learned my lesson after a few times, but I didn't and I launched into a jump. I promptly hit my head on the ceiling! Luckily there was some sort of padded sound proofing so it didn't really hurt, it was just surprising. The crowd at the show was interesting. They had a bit of an LA vibe...too cool to have a good time. They were attentive, but not overly boisterous. It was hard to tell if any of our MySpace friends showed up, but I did notice the place cleared out after we finished. It was the most pack it was all night for our set. I took that to be a good sign. I s'pose I could have taken it as they didn't like us, since nobody introduced themselves as knowing us from MySpace, but since they stayed until we were done and didn't file out early, I'll opt for the former assment. At our next show, we're going to ask if anyone knows us from MySpace.

After the show, I stuck around till the night was over. Talked to some of the locals. Even signed an autograph. (Cheers, Tammii ). We became quick friends with the sound guy. he even said he's going to try to come to our show in Barnsley on Wednesday. It's just down the road from Sheffield. At the end of the time, he told me to select my beverage and he was going to teach me to drink like a "northerner." I chose Guiness, foolishly. You see, Northerns chug! I took down 7/8ths of the beer, which I though was admirable, and I only stopped because I saw him stop, thinking there was no WAY he could have consumed a Guiness that quickly, but he had! He was sporting the largest Guiness mustache I've ever seen...way bigger than any "got milk" mustache and he wore it like a badge : P Good guy. Hope to see him on Wednesday. Perhaps a rematch is in order...this time I'll do it with a lighter beer...a Carling perhaps : )