Less Talk More Problems Tour

So the Less Talk More Problems tour has wrapped up. It was a huge tour and sold out the whole way around the country. And you may or may not have heard on the rumour mill yet, but PhDJ is slightly responsible for a wee bit of an accident at the Brisbane show after-party at Common People. We dunno, but it may or may not have to do with Jake Stone and PhDJ dancing, jumping, falling over and breaking and resulting in Jake's broken ankle. And it may or may not have involved Warren G's ‘Regulate'. To hear the full story check out PhDJ's blog on www.levityland.com

Yo!! The Bluejuice and Paper Scissors ‘Less Talk More Problems' tour stops nearby this week. Tonight sees the boys hitting the Oxford tavern in Wollongong, and Saturday sees the boys playing live at The Cambridge in Newcastle then partying hard afterward with PhDJ and DJ Fle at after-party at The King Street Hotel afterward!!!

PhDJ has been slaving away at iMovie for the past 2 weeks and learning some video editing skills!!! So episodes two, three and four of the ‘Less Talk More Problems Tour Video Diary' will be hitting the web later this week. So keep your lids peeled!!!

BLUEJUICE/THE PAPER SCISSORS TOUR DIARY
EPISODE 2 - MANIA, THE ESSENTIAL FESTIVAL & PERTH

Sydney - Friday Night - Essential Festival/The Gaelic Club

Things are generally feeling like they are crunching down around me at this point, and a panic attack seems imminent. I know this sounds sudden and without cause, but that's what I'm like. I arrive at the venue feeling like the world is a small, depressing paper cup that is headed over Niagara Falls, and I am sitting inside it freaking out. In reality, I am sitting inside a Japanese restaurant with Stav and Fiona, freaking out. I can't really talk, so I read Girlfriend Magazine and stare at Stav and Fiona instead. I think they feel awkward about the staring, but what am I going to do? Stop staring? Yes.

We walk down to the venue and I bump into Sarah Blasko and Nadav Kahn on the way in. Blasko manfully tries to make me feel better. I don't mean she pretends to be a man who is trying to make me feel better, or that she tries to make me feel better by pretending to be a man, but that she puts in a real effort to make me feel better. I explain that I am feeling a little under-the-weather, and she and Nadav assure me that moods usually mean you'll have a good show. I agree, eying the street like a maniac, failing to make eye contact and generally acting like Robert DeNiro in ‘Taxi Driver', but less attractive.

My mood won't lift, so after talking to Al (Red Riders/Straight Arrows) for a bit, I go into a special little room with a toilet in it, far up in the back regions of the club, and do my little stretching-and-vocal warmup thing. By the time the show is on, I've been warming up for an hour and a half, and I'm excited and ready. We go out and smash it in half. It's the best half hour of performance I've had in a while, but that's not to say we're generally average; we just had a REALLY good one at this gig.

Here is a link to a photo that explains what it felt like - http://www.flickr.com/photos/irinasphotos/903187187
I am the man, and the show is the horse. After the show, I work at the Hopetoun, which is fine.

Perth - Saturday - The Plane

We are getting really good at getting on and off planes quickly now, and so I find myself sitting next to PhDJ, watching Entourage on his computer.

It's the greatest show in the world, I've realised. Or at least, it's a very good show, and it's the greatest distraction from our boring-arse flight ever. Marty (PhDJ) is very funny; even though it's already up to season 3, he gets me up to speed with every major plot development in the show thus far. His attention to and enthusiasm for detail is both astonishing and hilarious, but also extremely helpful if you don't want to sit there going ‘who's that guy?' and ‘why is she giving him that look' all the time.

The plane lands eight episodes later, and me and Martin are all googly-eyed from watching too much laptop. I also had too many painkillers on the flight, and wanted to throwup for about three of the four hours.

Perth - Saturday - Amplifier (The Venue)

This is a great venue, probably my favourite band room in Perth, so I'm excited about doing the gig. It's a bit like going out to a large-scale indie club, in the sense that it has a big regular walk-up crowd that will eventually mix with your door list and see the end of the show. You want to do a good one, because you'll pull fans you wouldn't get otherwise.

The show itself is fantastic. They give us a bottle of Tequila, so we all sit downstairs getting drunk. Our drummer, who rarely does anything crazy except for BEING CRAZY as a person, is surprisingly drunk. It's hilarious.

Pretty soon we're on, and I'm having fun, except that it's a big room (450-500 capacity), and it's full as, so there's lots of physical work to be done. Meanwhile, sound is surprisingly good (thanks Afro Dave), and pretty soon the whole club is rocking. It's a drunken barfight of a live gig out there, everyone jumping around and the girls in the front row are giving you those looks that speak volumes. I think they are saying something like ‘Hey, this is fun/terrifying. Also, I love you. Please continue to perform, but don't kick me in the face or jump on my head.' I do accidentally jump on someone's head, but I make up for it by giving her half a middy of straight Tequila. She seems happy with that.

The gig ends beautifully, the new songs go well, the old songs go well, and the bits that don't go well, I fake my way through like a stormtrooper. Success! I wonder if the polka-dot girls had fun...

Now we get properly drunk. Stumbling here and there, dancing with randoms and endlessly texting inane shit that doesn't make any sense at all, I am having a great night. PhDJ plays a killer set of indie, classic hip hop, reggae and dance. I go to the toilet, and find the most disgusting cubicle ever. Someone did a sh*t, then peed on the sh*t, then the next person shat their pants, and then threw the pants on the sh*t, and then shat on the pants. Then someone else peed on all of it.

Eventually, we eat McDonalds and go home. I go to sleep, and wake up to hear that Ivan and Tom from The Paper Scissors have been vomiting all night until Ivan though his ‘...eyes were going to explode.' Gross. Fun tour!

Hello guys, sorry I was sick last week.

My band Bluejuice and our friends The Paper Scissors started a nationwide, double headline tour a week ago. Our first stop was in Adelaide, followed by a sold-out Gaelic Club show the next night. I've made a loose collection of notes based on what happened. Don't expect it to be exciting, funny, or good.

BLUEJUICE/THE PAPER SCISSORS TOUR DIARY - EPISODE 1

Sydney - Friday - 8:30am - The Airport

Nothing exciting happens at airports, except that you feel like sh*t and you see other bands, who also feel like sh*t. No-one should have to check in this early, in this kind of line. It's inhumane by virtue of the fact that there are too many humans around. I see Dan from Cassette Kids, who are flying to Brisbane to do some kind of corporate horse racing function. Bands do a lot of these kinds of gigs if they can get them, because they are worth a stack of cash. Dan seems unruffled by the hour, and looks so good that I suspect he is wearing foundation. I, however, look like a 28 year old corpse. I'm first to arrive, but everyone else dribbles in. I'm surprised when The Paper Scissors guys get there, because I'd forgotten we would be sharing planes and vans with them. It turns out to be a good thing, though I realise how used to just hanging out with our band I had gotten.

Adelaide - Friday - whatever o'clock - The Steak Restaurant

The plane ride is unmemorable, but the arrival sees us going through the AVIS car situation, picking up our 12 seater and loading it with gear. You do that a million times. Jerry listens to funk classics on the car stereo, and I hope the Paper Scissors think that we're cool, even though we clearly aren't. Our tour manager/sound guy Afro Dave is telling us a story, and it's hilarious probably, but I am very hungry. He recommends we eat at a steak restaurant, which does great steak for, like, a million dollars. We eat the steak (mine is a bit small), and I decide to drink some tequila and beer until I find myself trying to lie down in the park.

Adelaide - Friday - Whatever O'Clock - The Accommodation

It's a nice, three room apartment in the Quest style. I immediately snag the largest available bed, knowing that I will lose it to someone if I hesitate even a moment. Ultimately, you will all sleep somewhere. Don't worry about your bandmates; they know the rules. I get up and realise I have no idea where I am. I wander down the street with Stav and our drummer Ned, and try to find a place to eat that isn't a kebab shop or a strip joint. We're playing at Jive Bar tonight, but the last time we were here was touring with Butterfingers playing a terrible old theatre restaurant that still has an enormous plastic skull on the roof. There's an erotic lingerie shop in the basement, and the window displays are straight out of suburban porno. Scary.

TANGENT WARNING!!!
It's also worth mentioning that we did that show after driving all the way from Sydney to S.A. in a single day, having started at 3am in Yass after a show at Manning Bar and 3 hours sleep. Stav forgot to tell the accommodation in Yass that we were arriving in the middle of the night, and consequently we had to scramble for a pub room. In an incredible stroke of luck, the lady who was supposed to be at the accommodation front desk was drunk at one of the pubs, and we persuaded her to come back with us and let us into our shitty room. We then went to sleep for three hours and drove to Adelaide.

Anyway, so Stav, Ned and I end up eating shit Malaysian in a really cool back alley that has a Pancake restaurant. Their front door was emblazoned with the slogan ‘This Door Never Closes', but it was closed. In fact, the only way you could read the slogan was if the door was closed.

Adelaide - Friday - Showtime - The Venue

We're at Jive, which is a great little 350 person club with a mezzanine. It's small, and the arch over the stage has the remnants of a mural on it that makes me think of school plays. The backstage area is laughably small, and since the club is filling up and we're doing the middle of the bill tonight, I retreat back there with a few beers. ‘Fire, Santa Rosa Fire' are supporting - an indie disco band with some interesting, almost calypso influences. They're good (if a bit green and shaky), and I watch from side of stage.

Our turn next, and I'm right in the pit of anxiety as usual. It's a sell-out, which is good news, but I'm freaking out anyway. This is normal. Show's slow to get going, too many mid-tempo songs up the front. I can tell this by the frequency of me turning around to yell obscenities at Ned, requesting ‘more energy' and screaming more figurative things like ‘F*cking COME ON!!!' along with other things that aren't even words. At this point I usually feel quite nude on stage. Nude in the sense that I am without tools. Ned tries to do what I ask, but soon realizes I'm being irrational, and ignores me. Forth song in though, and the new one ‘Facelift' just really works and suddenly it's a whole different gig. Everyone is jumping up and down, grabbing for the mic, and I'm lost in the kerfuffle. This is exactly where I want to be. ‘Vitriol' kicks everything into hyperdrive, and Paper Scissors Jai comes out to play guitar on ‘Phantom Boogie' and ‘Reductionist'. I leave the stage feeling like the king of the world, it was really one of the good ones.

Paper Scissors come out and play a more laidback set, but people are still right in there, crushing around the front of the stage in a ball and singing along to ‘Yamanote Line' and going mental for ‘We Don't Walk'.

Adelaide - Saturday - Drunk O'Clock - The Accommodation

We end up going over the road to Supermild, an RnB club. I order cocktails, and am soon so drunk, I am dancing with a large group of Indian girls. I must look like a total knob, because I am GENUINELY trying to pop and lock. I also am doing that ‘hat-grab' that Justin Timberlake often does. He usually does it with a real hat, but I am doing it with an ‘air-hat'. I wake up at the accommodation, and we leave for the airport.

Adelaide/Sydney - Saturday - Hungover - The Plane

In order to make me feel better about my hangover, Afro Dave tells me extremely explicit stories about touring a certain US hip hop act whose rider included coke and strippers. He tells me in graphic detail about their post-show antics while two rows of old people and a young family look on in silent horror. My hangover gets worse, and I sleep on the food tray.

THE END