NY Blog - Tuesday 20th March 2007
Hi Everyone!
Well it's been mental out here in the US! I LOVE IT! I thought I'd drop you all a quick note to let you know what's been happening. Some of you may already know bits of this so sorry for repeating myself!
New York was brilliant! I stepped off the plane in the afternoon and thought I'd go to bed for a while since I'd only managed 4 hours sleep but once we got to the Soho area where we were staying I just had to get out and about, it’s an amazing place! I wandered around myself for a while and managed not to get lost. The clothes shops are brilliant but unfortunately our PDs don't stretch that far! Everywhere you look there are take-aways selling pizza slices and the smell of coffee from the trendy cafes is overwhelming. So within 1 hour of arriving my diet was right out the window! Who cares?!
So on the first night we went out to dinner in an area called Little Italy with the record company that we're on in America, Four West Records. Free grub..fantastic! Bearing in mind I was still on the go after only 4 hours sleep and it was getting late, myself, Gill and our manager, Dougie went off to find some live music! We wandered in and out many bars looking for a good band and finally settled on a place called The Cake Shop. It turned out the owner of the
place was married to a woman from Inverness....free drink! Once the band was finished (they had 2 drummers - I was in my element) the owner took us round to another pub which he owned called The Library. It's amazing how
you can meet the right people....jammy or what! After much hilarity and announcing to Dougie that I was birlin’, I was dragged against my will back to the hotel, slapping every street sign Michael Jordan style all the way home. Mission complete.
Tuesday arrived in a bit of a blur.....the gin spin was still very much there! Got bless Ibroprofen. It was gig night so I had to get my act together. We were playing at The Knitting Factory which is one of the great places for a band like us to play in New York. Before all that though, we had to go the Empire State Building to get our visas extended as we are going back to New York to take part in Tartan Fashion Week (diet is back on!) later on the tour.
Once we got the paperwork out the way we decided to go to Ground Zero for a look. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to go, thinking that it would be a bit ghoulish. It's just a building site now but you can see the foundations where the twin towers were which demonstrates how massive those building were. A canopy has been erected with tributes in the form of pictures and quotes from people who were connected to it all in some way and the atmosphere is quite sombre. It's probably the only corner in New York where people don't speak much. We didn't hang around for long and all split up to go round the shops and generally donner about. I went for a haircut and walked the whole length of Broadway right back to the hotel in Soho.
I'm going on here but keep with me.
We went to the The Knitting Factory at 6ish to do our soundcheck. The gig itself was really good and Tippi did her usual singing on the bar and pulled a curtain down, much to the manager's delight.
After the gig we had to do the fake and shake with a lot of people. You wouldn't think it's tiresome for me to talk a lot but my cheekbones were starting to hurt with the grinning and I just wanted to collapse into my bed for a sleep but no....the record company wanted us to go for dinner and meet all the people who'll be working for us in America. Again, there goes the diet! It was 10pm at night and I had to go to a Chinese banquet! I'd already had my tea so I just picked at the odd prawn. Finally I got to my bed after singing Shirley Basset songs and New York New York all the way home....had to be done.
The next day we were up at some ungodly hour to go to the chaps house who runs New York Tartan Fashion Week. Sean Connery has been in his house and everything - I think they’re mates! It was a fancy apartment right next to all the posh shops.
He was a Scotsman who has lived in America for a long time so his accent was quite transatlantic which intrigued/annoyed me! He had lots of dead animals hanging on the wall and you'd have though you were in a Scottish Stately home. We discussed what we would wear mincing down the "runway" as they say in the business. We looked at some stunning jackets by designers with double barrelled names that I can't remember. We'll be keeping it rock n roll since we're not Betties. We're having skinny jeans made for us and we're going to try and get tartan converse. I don't know what t-shirts we'll be wearing yet but I'm sure they'll be great!
It’s not the kind of thing us rock chicks would normally get involved in but it's important for us to be there meeting certain people…apparently. So, once we got all of our meetings etc out of the way, it was time to go to Galapagos, in New Jersey for the gig. Another cool venue, great people and cool bands. We blew them away with our in your face antics and wrapped up business in New York on a high!
The next day it was off to Austin, Texas to play at SXSW festival and I was really looking forward to this. I didn't think anything could match New York but I was wrong! I'll send my stories form Austin next as you're probably getting a numb bum by now. We've just met Matthew Perry (Chandler from Friends) at Warner Bros Studios in LA and I need a gin to calm me down! Tune in soon to see how that came about!
I'm away to get the slap on for tonight's gig.
Bye! x
