april 21 – spaghetti bols, brixton academy london debut

slept decently, ate a wonderful lunch of “spaghetti bols” (bolognese) out in the backyard prepped by the fabulous emily, who also rehearsed us for the day’s coming interviews. allen’s relationship with olivia, the 18 month old, blossomed somewhere in there. he was giving her instructions to clear the table which she somehow seemed to grasp, saunter over with her newly useful legs, picking up teacups and bringing them back to al. emily was slackjawed in amazement...
headed to the venue relatively early, much to do at brixton academy with the two interviews, soundcheck, and wurly exchange. brixton is not such a great neighborhood, tons of people wandering the streets, open market, stall vendors, with a big rock venue smack in the middle. when we showed up there was already a line to get into the show, as it was sold out so i guess people like to make sure they get a spot down front. new wurly was waiting for us, but my distortion pedal was missing so we had to track that down and get them to bring it back, easier said than done.
1st interview with terri knudsen, an independent journalist doing some sort of exposé on artists who perform at the hotel cafe. she’s norwegian (loves grandiosa), lives in london, and is trying to bring stuggling american artists to england and do some promotion through her website, incitingscenes.com. she did some filming of soundcheck as well, which was a little nuts due to brixton academy’s layout – lots of slapback from the house, so we had to crank the monitors to hear ourselves properly. it’s quite a venue – i’d been there many years before to see the pixies before the broke up and reformed – you can really feel the history of shows in there, and it’s not so big that you get lost.
2nd interview with clickmusic.com, who had some sort of contest to win tix to the show, won by harriet jackman. met gil, the interviewer, my kind of dude with a david lee roth shirt on, and yet another vereker, tom, on camera.
grabbed a quick dinner with alanis’ band and her fiancé ryan reynolds (van wilder) who had joined the fray.

put on a good show where we subbed in “overflow,” what al claims to be the best song on the record, to good response. emma was there, as were adam’s parents (his father teaches theatre in rhode island, and comes to england every so often as part of that program), hanging in the vip area above the audience. another new set from alanis, organized by her band, always nice to see. capacity crowd thrilled. much insanity at the merch table afterward, always a good sign. my voice has been compared to many different people on this trip, including elvis costello, lenny kravitz, peter gabriel, and phil collins, the latter always with a “don’t take this the wrong way, but you kind of sound like...” met some l.a. friends and hung out with the alanis band after the show in the vip bar, as usual last people around, taxi home. taxi driver very charming, plenty of english humour which is one of the wonderful things about this country.