We flew into the bright lights of NYC to be greeted by our lovely tour manager Joe...
complete with jaunty cap (oh how we've missed that cap), fancy tour itineraries and
personalised baseball card laminates.

It has to be said, the initial delight of having a laminated baseball card with our
names on it has kinda worn off - me and Ellen have had some pretty confused looks
from bouncers when trying to get into our own shows by waving our laminates
at them. I guess they kind of have a point.

But yeah, New York was awesome as always; we only got to spend a day there but
we experienced some new places in Brooklyn:

[in front of a blue wall somewhere in Brooklyn]

Gareth got excited about some glorious vegan-friendly fudgy cake, me and
Ellen got excited about the chance to raid through Beacon's closet, everyone
else was probably excited for some other reason...more importantly though,
we went bowling.

Here is the interview and video of us bowling
http://www.thetripwire.com/features/2009/01/22/bowling-with-the-band-los-campesinos/

And I'm not mature enough not to gloat about winning, so woohoo (I, Ellen,
would like to now point out that I may have come last, but it was my
choice to fail so dismally). I think the boys are recovering slowly but surely.
We played an instore at Soundfix, and then raced across to Habouken where
Titus Andronicus were playing with Vivian Girls. Sadly, our poor little
jetlagged selves couldn't handle a late night so we had to leave promising
the Titus boys plenty of future partying on tour.

So the first proper show was at Baltimore...this is what it looked like
from where Ellen was standing:

She drew it whilst playing bass and juggling with knives. It was our first
chance to hang out a little with the Titus boys; the start of something
beautiful.

In Carborro we celebrated Tom's birthday:

there was cake, animal birthday candles, an on-stage birthday singalong...
everything to make him feel every part the birthday boy. He loved it:

We played 3 shows in Florida, where the tour motto of Bromance was born
after Titus and the boys shared a hotel room for the night. We can't elaborate
on what happened, but how about we just all let our imaginations do the
work.

While we were in Tampa, Gareth spent the whole day on a mission to
claim the top 3 places on "Puzzle Bobble" leader board, only to be creamed by
a local after her first go on it.

The Bottletree in Birmingham was one of the prettiest venues we've ever played,
and had an amazing array of things to keep us amused in the backstage area:
rubiks cubes, massage chairs, Connect 4, 'The Complete Guide to Erotic Cinema',
Rosie O'Donnell's biography, Hulk boxing gloves, an ataris, some lint.

Then we played a show in Memphis where the crowd were probably the best
we've ever had. That made us happy. The next day we realised two of our
glock beaters had mysteriously disappeared...So we're going to go ahead
and throw it out there that perhaps they may be somewhere in Memphis...
Of course it could just be that we lost them. We're pretty scatty.
Either way: Glock Beaters Number 11 and 12 (average lifespan is 3 months) we miss you.

[Memphis]

We had some time off in New Orleans so we all got up to some interesting things:

Todge had a cheeseburger for breakfast.
Ellen got her hair done so now she's a bit ginger. I'm talking her through it.
I went to a Voodoo temple and got some blessed "success" oil. Me and
Ellen dabbed some on yesterday, so I'm sure success is imminent.
Ollie and Tom sampled the local doughnuts, bought some postcards, did
some laundry.
Gareth found a vegan friendly cafe.
Neil found a burger place.
We all tried typical Creole cuisine which was yummy and then we might
have had some group outings to establishments on Bourbon Street.
We probably watched some Family Guy somewhere along the way.

[Your favourite bloggers on Bourbon Street]

To sum up we've learnt some important lessons so far:

1. Pickled products are the height of popularity...some "favourites"
we've come across are pickled pigs feet/noses and pickled sausages

2. Eric from T.A. can solve any rubiks cube
3. Barely Legal>Big Daddies>Little Darlings
4. Which venues can cater for vegans.
5. No one leaves N.O.L.A. with any dollar bills left in their wallet.
6. I (Ellen) am fairly certain I am not a cylon. But I can't be sure.

The audiences have been amazing throughout, thank you lovely
people for coming and making us feel welcome and liked.

Lots of love, Aleks and Ellen xxx

p.s
http://www.mtv.ca/news/article.jhtml?id=13595
https://venuszine.com/articles/art_and_culture/reads/5063/Comic_America_New_York

p.p.s

somewhere along the way this happened...

We hope you managed to make it to one of the Shred Yr Face gigs. No Age and TNV are quite something live...The experience was catalogued to some extent on www.shredyrface.com

We're off to Europe tomorrow (!) where we'll be joined by our wonderful labelmates Sky Larkin and Lovvers and that's definitely something to look forward to. Mostly because of the food. Ollie's excited about apfel strudel, Tom's excited over proper pizza and pasta, Gareth's excited about the vegan restaurant in Munich, us girls can't wait for the wealth of continental cheese and Neil wants to put on some lederhosen and have a big old knees up in a beer hall. So yeah, you better still love us when we're fat.

p.s

some photos of the tour can be found here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/gallery/2008/oct/28/shred-yr-face-tour?picture=339074497

and I (Ellen) completely cheated on this blog and whored myself out to Kruger because they pay me in pie here

http://www.krugermagazine.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&Itemid=62

I can't believe you can be bought so easily Ellen. Note my disapproval. You could've at least shared the pie.

Oh and our new release is in shops now, not just internetland. It's the prettiest thing we've ever seen and comes with lots of extra goodies....

xoxo

But first things first, here is some information about what we are up to next, as it is best to live in the future rather then dwell of the dwindling past. We have this lovely tour coming up with the mighty No Age and the wonderful Times New Viking, it is called "Shred Yr Face" and in no way does it promote mindless body mutilation. We're just all for the metaphorical shredding of faces with the hot licks and riffs of swirly guitars. Anyway we are playing a variety of dates which are on our myspace and this here website, and it would be lovely to see some of you people there, to see what you think of the new songs...which we know none of you have been naughty and downloaded..... because if you have I will give each and every one of you a spank of the bottom. (That's from Ellen by the way...we'll probably have a separate queue at the gigs just for all those people that turn up to get their bottom spanked by her.)

Back the past, we did this month long tour around the North of The America land and briefly went up to the majesty of Canada, and we did it all with a tour bus and a driver called James. The first thing to note about the tour bus was the width of the aisle, the ceilings on the mirrors and satellite TV. It was a fading rock legends dream. This made the bus orgies we had much more satisfying, practical and stimulating. It also made us able to watch Tila Tequila obsessively and introduce our support band Parenthetical Girls to UK life via The Antiques Road show. I think we also managed to watch that Lindsey Lohan film about being lucky/unlucky 3 times in total...it just kept getting better, who knew McFly were such talented actors?!

The first half of the tour was with Jeffrey Lewis and The Jitters consisting of Dave, Helen and his brother. They were talented, intelligent, lovely and amazing to watch each night and they even joined us on a day off in Michigan for a Cook Out at our tour manager Joe's house. Cook Out is basically a barbeque except it sounds better. In fact everything always seemed just that little bit better when Joe was around...we think he won best tour manager at last year's Academy Awards (a category often overlooked, much akin to best sound editing)

(at the beach after the Cook Out)

We played some new and interesting places such as Minneapolis (in DinkyTown!), Detroit (at a rock and bowl club...where a wedding was being held downstairs) and DC. We then went back to some familiar territory in New York, where we also got to step outside of Manhattan and explore New Jersey and Brooklyn. We also got to reignite the odd love affair we have with Wholefoods, and rue the fact it is yet advanced upon British shores.....

(Minneapolis)

(before the show at Music Hall of Williamsburg)

Ellen: I also got to spend ]]> Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:39:04 -0700 http://virb.com/loscampesinos/posts/text/837171 http://virb.com/loscampesinos/posts/text/583539 so ellen thought we should be all clever and do a podcast...not realising that we'd need know how to upload it...so here I am 4 hours later hoping that this time it will work.

oh and we put an EXCLUSIVE little treat at the end...so don't give up when it get's a bit boring.

lots of love aleks xoxo

oh yeah, to listen to it you have to click here

OK I think I've recovered now so we can actually get on with filling you in on some of the Los Camp shenanigans of late. Since we last rambled several important events have occurred in the lives of Los Campesinos!

In no particular order
o We released our debut album "Hold on Now Youngster" to critical acclaim from Glamour Magazine. Sadly they did not throw a free suscription into there 4 out of 5 star review.
o We released "Death to Los Campesinos!," our first "proper" single and it got to number 490 or sumin like that
o We got unsuitable prefix's before our names in a article in NME. For anyone that's confused by that - Ellen no longer has pink hair...I still have flame hair though, so I'm not bothered.
o We met Louis Walsh and Sonia off Eastenders
o We made a fanzine and it was pretty.
o We went to SXSW and had the best time ever. Officially.
o This blog got published in NME again, so therefore Aleks and myself are published journalists. That's sooo going on the CV.

But to start with we began the year with a jaunt around the UK, Ireland and Europe with our lovely friends the supremely talented Johnny Foreigner (for the first leg anyway) We also got supported by a cast of sometimes younger, more sprightly and infinitely more talented troupes of musicians e.g ultcult and sparky deathcap who made us in awe of them/jealous of there skillz and slightly aroused.

We also did our first live TV performance and got to hang out in a green room, the drinks AND biscuits were free and Louis Walsh told me (Ellen) I looked like Dido. He also kept making reference to me being a Russian hippie. And so far more suitable adjectives are born: "Dido lookalike Ellen and Russian hippie Aleks".

We started out the tour of course with the Bath Moles type gig which involved some Panther Girl moonlighting from Aleks and our first experience of people knowing the words to the album before it was released (you cheeky people.) Yes, I can now tick 'being a Panther girl for the night' off my list of things to do before I die, a lifelong ambition of many I'm sure. Oh and we were gifted our second cherry pie of our band career...keep 'em coming...please.

We sold out King Tut's in Glasgow meaning we were given a free bottle of whisky, enough to motivate anyone! This was despite copies of the Stool Pigeon being readily available in the venue - the album got 1/5 (or maybe it was 2, I can't quite remember but something tells me 2 is a bit too optimistic.) The rest of the tour seemed to also go rather swimmingly with a gig in a rehearsal room/aircraft hanger in Reading, some self indulgent drunken performing in Portsmouth which lead to some livejournal slash fan fiction about Neil and Gareth's onstage antics.

If we were going to write some fan fiction about these two it would go something like this:
"Neil shredded out a fat solo on his guitar whilst making eyes at Gareth who so totally wanted to do him, and they lolled about it before they made out on stage and it was the sexiest thing ever OMG!."
We may release a book.

During the first half of the tour, we had the best tour manager ever. And thinking of his moustache and hat still makes our little hearts swell with love...Dan WE LOVE YOU. We also gained a new merch guy who got more phone numbers from potential lovers on this tour then any of us have ever got in our tiny little lives, so if you think being a rock star gets you the bitches and the ho's, think again. Merch guy.

We then moseyed on over to Europe where we celebrated the album release day in Amsterdam. We performed a gig (you can watch it somewhere on the www but finishing reading this blog will prob be more satisfying), and were given a bag of easter eggs which has 400 different flavours, see if you can name that many flavours of chocolate....or anything. Go on, I dare you. Which reminds me, over Easter in the paradise that is Birmingham I saw a giant bull made entirely of jelly beans. It's like the Bullring bull only better coz it's like edible and colourful and stuff.

Back to business though...We went to Europe and it was chic and europey, and one venue had a large "DO LOS CAMPESINOS!" sign, so obviously our band sluttiness is infamous. That was also the same gig where free condoms where handed out, so we are also some form of aphrodisiac! We played with Kula Shaker in Halden which was nostalgic, and did the Black Sessions in Paris which was a bit of a honour. Tom managed to accidentally offend Antwerp by speaking in French instead of Flemish but we also managed to offend them by being generally rubbish. We saw the beauty of the eiffel tower on a chilly day filled with the colours of the autumn leaves, we slumped against the soft cushions of the back lounge of the bus whilst watching the wonder that is the back to the future trilogy (I can't believe you just off-handedly mentioned the back to the future thing. That fact does not deserve to be reduced to just part of a sentence, it needs it's own paragraph or blog. It was one of the biggest achievements of tour for me...) and Aleks, Tom and myself went on Italian MTV and got asked about the music scene in Glasgow.

We also went to SXSW and drank margaritas and sold our souls for various free sunglasses and hair products (well we did) and saw Why? and Fight Like Apes and Times New Viking and they were all amazing, and we once again felt a little bit humbled. I also got to wear my straw hat which was obviously very exciting (and no it doesn't make me look like a ginger version of Kooky Kooks Luke) and visited the Mecca of Wholefoods coz apparently the chain was established in Austin.
Sadly there wasnt much in the way of celeb spotting, except did see a man who looked like Bill Bailey. Aleks saw the NERD and Harriet saw Robyn! Also I tried playing the fun game of how many people were wearing there sunglasses in a inappropriate context, I think it rounded up to 40,000.
Me, Ellen and Harriet did an interview where the idea for our side project 'Periods and Make-up' was born. Watch. This. Space.

I also celebrated my birthday there in a lovely bar called Coyote Ugly (LIKE THE FILM) where I had to order a drink between two dancing ladies pretending to lez up. Best Birthday Eva! Also I saw bats fly out of a bat cave whilst on a dawsons creek style jetty and I think they were trying to spell out Happy birthday. But I also saw a duck being raped....I dont think that was for my birthday.

This is how excited she got. The duck rape is taking place just out of shot.

We leave you with one of the best comments we've eavesdropped this year so far:
"I can't tell if that person's a tramp or trendy"
Aleks and Ellen x.o.x.o

3pm: come dine with me (best thing on tv)

3:30pm: countdown

4:15pm: deal or no deal (often coupled with a nap)

5pm: golden balls

6pm: friends

6:30pm: hollyoaks

usually sat with one or both of my sisters, and my mum.

]]> Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:29:38 -0700 http://virb.com/loscampesinos/posts/text/524638 http://virb.com/loscampesinos/posts/text/394928 Happy 2008! It's been a while since we whetted your appetite with the first part of the blog so we thought it was time for the second instalment. Let's face it, what more do you need to help beat the post New Year hangover than our witty ramblings?

Previously on the los camp blog... (ha, I'm really enjoying going all out over this two-parter thing!)

We supported Broken Social Scene, and the venue was rather beautiful but the fact we had to get up at half five in the morning really really sucked...

...to be continued...

...this was to fly to Japan but the airline was rubbish so it didn't make up for it. Myself and Aleks kept getting knocked in the head by some slag of a air hostess who i found rather patronizing and the film selection was appalling. [Ellen's still bitter her screen didn't work properly...] However the fact we found ourselves in Japan made up for it, even if it took us four years to fly there and we lost a day or something.

Japan was a incredibly surreal and bizarre experience, we've heard enough stories to realize that fans there are a little excitable but I did not think this would apply to us. We were most surprised when we showed up in the hotel and there were two girls waiting to have their photo taken with us [post flight - urgh that was NOT a good time, I'm surprised they recognised us], and were also present when we returned from dinner for more photos. It was a rather humbling experience of "Our you sure you want our photo again, we are not The Enemy."

I feel there should be a separate note about the food in Japan, we ate out for dinner the nights we were there and it was a never ending conveyor belt of food, it just kept coming and coming.... and it was so good you couldn't not have a little bit of everything. It was not so much fun for the vegetarians amongst us due to their rather healthy obsession with fish and chicken, but luckily they had a equal obsession with Tofu. I still have no idea what the hell that is made out of. We also tried sake, and it was....kinda disgusting. [Plum wine is tasty though, and at the end you get to eat the plum; which is quite exciting...if you're easily excitable. I am.]

We played at British Anthems with a couple of bands we like such as Blood Red Shoes and the Pipettes (who we didn't get to see because of promo). The audiences behavior
was completely different to anything I have ever seen before, it would make a really boring anthropological study. They remained incredibly quiet between bands, all polite and courteous, and then when we started they went absolutely mental. We played in front of 2500 people (which is a lot for us) and it was one of the best gigs we have ever done. They clapped for everything, you kind of felt like you could do that thing where it looks like you were taking your thumb off and you would get a
four hour standing ovation. It was maybe the highlight of our tedious little lives. We also did a signing and got given a bag of presents including a guitar lighter (which
Tom nabbed and made into a bass) and some xmas cards. [There were also lots of requests for 'cuddles', and you know, any excuse to molest people and we're there so that was quite endearing. Maybe our hugging reputation preceded us. ]

We did a meet and greet in HMV which was very bizarre, we all stood in a line and just shook peoples hands. We also gave out some more renegade hugs [even though it was against 'HMV rules' or something, but hey punk rock, innit] It was incredibly surreal and my hand shakes began to feel false by the end. We also went and saw The Pipettes DJ at some tiny little club which had adopted a London theme (they had flags) and Aleks was not happy with the playing of "Gotta Get Thru This" by Daniel Bedingfield. She found his sentiments insincere. [It was a low point...I think I left shortly after that. But I did get to walk through the 'love hotel district' on the way home which I didn't realise at the time. No one tried it on. Ollie was luckier, he got chased down the street by a keen lady of the night. We think it's because he has a lovely young face that women want to corrupt him.]

That whole night was like some weird indie disco wedding, it was all "Oh look its him out of the Klaxons" or "That's the guy from The Enemy. This is weird." Fun was mostly had by dancing to Girls Aloud. Also the guitar tech from The Enemy tried to start on Neil, we are still not too sure as to why... We also did some Karaoke with Blood Red Shoes, who sang Total Eclipse of the Heart with Gareth. Tom chose "Build me up Buttercup," whilst myself and Neil did Weezer's "The good Life." Ollie indulged in Phil Collins (that self righteous one about the poor people and how we need to notice him and how he is so worthy and a idiot.) I think the finest moment was Harriet, Aleks and myself attempting "Wuthering Heights," i think we all realized that perhaps we needed to know more then the
chorus to make the song some kind of success. But it was nice to fulfill a cliche.

We also saw various bits where Lost in Translation was filmed which the Japanese must love being asked about. [We also spent most of our days in a office doing promo. So although it sounds like we saw a lot of Tokyo, we didn't. We mostly saw the inside of a office. We made our mark on it however with Neil leaking permanent marker on a white couch and Ellen's spillage of pink nail varnish on a white carpet. We also got to hold those MTV news microphones, and for one photo session they put on our album and told us to dance on a table. Yep. Oh and they gave us a long pink tube to play with for one of the photo shoots which entertained us for a long time. Probably too long. You could tell they regretted giving it to us by the end.]

Overall I think we would like to go back to Japan so when people asked us what we thought of Japan we could say something more than "The toilets are electronic! They are warm when you sit on them! It's amazing!" I hope this was not the longest most boring and pointless piece of writing you have ever read. If you have read "If no one speaks of remarkable things," then it isn't. Because that book sucked. This xmas Aleks is going to Russia to meet relatives and hopefully buy me things. I intend to see some musicals. Everyone else is going to enjoy some time off so we can all come back refreshed for next years tours. [we've gotta learn how to play those songs on the album at some point...]

Lots of love, Ellen and Aleks x

]]>
      Sun, 18 Nov 2007 16:45:41 -0800
      http://virb.com/loscampesinos/posts/text/330252
    
    
      
      http://virb.com/loscampesinos/posts/text/280973
      hello hello hello to anyone who actually finds these interesting, we just like having an excuse to look through our photos. 

here's some photos from ireland: just to prove we went 



thats us chillin' (haha ellen is a comedy genius) in the fridge in belfast
there were bad omens for the tour in belfast considering the power went off as soon as we started our set. but we feng shuid and cleaned our chi and started the tour anyway. we also made tom felate a banana...

and that is a runthrough of all our adventures so far. we'll keep you updated. lots of love and hugs, ellen and aleks and the rest of LC!
]]>
      Fri, 19 Oct 2007 21:12:16 -0700
      http://virb.com/loscampesinos/posts/text/280973
    
    
      
      http://virb.com/loscampesinos/posts/text/256255
      Hello there! How often should we actually be writing this blog thing? I have a feeling we've been a bit rubbish. Sorry. I guess we're not interesting enough to write too often and frequently get distracted by shiny things. The main news in campesinos! camp is that (as of yesterday) we're all back in the UK. What's up with it being so cold, eh?

This return means we've finished recording and mixing the album so early next year it will be fresh for your little ears.



Ellen: We also got to mix the album in a very interesting area of Toronto which was a hang out for drivers with a penchant for loud bass heavy music. Each evening they would crank up the volume and stand stationary around their cars just kinda looking at each other, it seemed fun and often I wanted to join in. This was balanced out by charity workers who would do team building exercises each morning which involved group singing, clapping and generally dancing around like idiots. One of them enquired as to whether Aleks and myself wanted a job. It was tempting.



The hotel we stayed in was also rather odd, one morning we woke to hear a mexican band practicing in the room next door and were then greeted by a man stroking his pet chameleon in the lift (not a euphanism.) Apparently lots of mafia/gangster get-togethers were held there, under the guise of baby showers and weddings. Despite this strangeness we're missing canada muchly but there is also something quite nice about being reunited with home comforts like daytime australian soaps, the sunday times, chavs and good old british sarcasm. On the flight back, Ellen and myself had our excess baggage fee waved because the guy found out I was at medical school (on hiatus) so if you're ever in the situation, I suggest subtly slipping in dissection room banter or something.

The flight was exciting as ever, with a tear being shed over our last chance to indulge in canada's staple drink of clamato juice, ie a touch of clam juice mingled with tomato juice. i know - crazy...Ellen dropped a muffin on the floor (Ellen is upset about this still). Then the flight attendants moved Harriets violin without telling her. so yeah, we know how to have fun.Ellen: I however had a nasty shock when returning home to Cardiff, in my absence my flatmates had turned my room into some sort of brothel for their visiting friends drunken encounters. I have decided to get a big lock, lazer system and bear traps put in place for our next trip away.

We start our UK tour on Saturday, so we'll get to see lots of places none of us have been to like Colchester whilst indulging in lots of Alan Partridge/Curb Your Enthusiasm DVD time on the van, Marks and Sparks food and unbeatable Travel Lodges for accomodation. We've never been on tour for that long before so the blogs might get progressively more angry/ bitchy/ whiny. We're playing with some awesome bands, and they're definitely worth seeing even if we're not.]]>
      Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:41:18 -0700
      http://virb.com/loscampesinos/posts/text/256255
    
    
      
      http://virb.com/loscampesinos/posts/text/236464
      So, this is the first entry in what will hopefully be a throughly entertaining blog. We've got a really exciting summer ahead of us and thought that perhaps some of you might be interested in hearing what we're up to as it happens, when it happens. Kind of like a less prolific version of Jeff Stelling on Soccer Saturday.

Realistically it's probably just going to turn into a stream of consciousness barrage of in jokes and insults fired at each other, but there's a slight possibility it might include stories about meeting famous people at festivals, me being sick on trans-atlantic flights, album recording rituals, malnourishment and interesting stuff that David Newfeld teaches us about compressors. Whatever happens I can guarantee there will be a photograph of Neil's bum posted at some point. It's inevitable.
]]>
      Sat, 22 Sep 2007 14:02:39 -0700
      http://virb.com/loscampesinos/posts/text/236464
    
    
      
      http://virb.com/loscampesinos/posts/text/236463
      This last week has been rather a manic one in the lives of LC!, and a more than suitable transition from studenthood into being pop stars/heart throbs, I should hope.

We've been shacked up in Rockfield Studios, Monmouth since last Monday, recording some tracks with our good friend David 'Newfy' Newfeld. As I type, the track which we intend to be our next single eventually is nearing completion as just before tea, Tom laid down some fancy organ sounds and now Ollie is doing some drum over-dubs. The track is sounding pretty magical, and we're all really proud of it. I dunno if we should say what song it is yet, so I'm being coy, but it's one we've never recorded before, and hopefully you'll like it a whole bunch. Hearing the track take shape and Newfy working his magic on it finds us sat, open mouthed, amazed. The guy is a genius. The songwriting's still shit mind you, so don't go getting excited or 'owt.
Rockfield is a place of musical legend, and loads of massive artists have recorded here. Aleks is inhabiting a room which was once slept in by Liam Gallagher and there's a piano that's been tickled by Freddie Mercury (and now Tommy C!). All these reference points have just served to make us feel less rock and roll than ever though. We're pretty much the least debauched band ever to have been here I think. Four of us have Macbooks attached to our knees at all times, and Tom, Neil and myself have done little else than play Football Manager (Me: Bristol Rovers, Tom: Tottenham Hotspur, Neil: Crewe). The nearest we've come to any sort of bust up is when Harriet discovered it was Ellen who'd taken a bite out of the Brie, but we all managed to hold it together.
This weekend we played the O2 Wireless festival. And had our minds totally blown. We'd never played a festival before and so had no idea what to expect, but came away loving it. I don't know if Wireless is a good representation of what to expect from festivals as it is astoundingly corporate, but we did our best to bring down the system by getting as much free stuff as possible. Aleks got a free haircut, and we all got free Ray Ban sunglasses, just for having our photo taken. It's ridiculous. AND it was a free bar so we spent most of the time stumbling round drunkenly, amazed at all the famous people amongst us. Free, free, free. Some Notes:

o	The Cribs are lovely. Despite being our 'label mates' we'd never had chance to meet them before, but they KNEW WHO WE WERE. Like, kind of recognised us and everything. And they told us brilliant stories and stuff.

o	Kate Nash and her band were also lovely. Like, really, really nice. And Kate has amazing dresses, and she tapped me on the shoulder and said "Hi" at one point and made Ellen hugely jealous of me. Good times.

o	Ricky off of the Kaiser Chiefs doesn't know who we are. Sad face.

o	You Say Party! We Say "We love you".

o	Tom lent Duke Spirit his capo, and they were also SO NICE.

o	Other people spotted: Chris Moyles, Edith Bowman, Alex Zane, Gary Lightbody, Snow Patrol's accountant, Mick Rock, Ollie Campesinos!'s parents

o	I'm being too nice about people, it's probably quite sickening. There were a few people we met who weren't so nice, and a certain band that I'd like to destroy in every way possible but I don't know if we're ready to moan about anyone just yet. We'll wait until we need to sell an album or something.

And as for the actually playing gigs part: amazing. The great thing about festivals is that there's no proper sound-check, but the fifteen minutes before going onstage is totally manic with everything being set up and a super-fast line check. So the adrenalin really pumps, and suddenly you're onstage playing in front of thousands of people. Thousands of people who apparently for some reason quite want to see us play, and will maybe clap and cheer and sing and dance and basically make us feel great unbelievably happy. So thank you. Again. 
So yeh, I hope this blog thing's gonna be a good idea. It's a nice way to keep in touch I think, and hopefully we can tell you some good things some time. If any of you are going to Glastonbury this weekend, then we're playing on the Friday at 1:20 on the Park Stage, and it'd be really lovely to see you.
love you x
ps. we thought it'd be ace to document the recording and festival with photographs. Which we did...but didn't bring any leads with which to upload them to our computers. Darn. So here is some of us being idiots infront of our Macbooks.







EDIT: Oh my god, it's  1:35am on a Wednesday morning and me, Tom and Neil are playing Table Tennis whilst listening to Sebadoh, Parenthetical Girls and Jens Lekman on rotation. This is the best thing IN THE WORLD!!


]]>
      Sat, 22 Sep 2007 14:02:39 -0700
      http://virb.com/loscampesinos/posts/text/236463