Day 8 - Leeds Cockpit:

For some reason, the name of this venue has always raised a smile. 
For this reason, some people think I can be childish, and immature.....
to them, I just say 'poo off, bum bum face'

Anyway, it's been a while since we visited a lot of these venues of old, 
and since our last visit, someone has 'pimped' the cockpit! The stage is 
bigger, and the area at the back where we load the gear in is now much 
better.....not very interesting for you, but bloody exciting stuff for 
us :-)

We now, load the gear in with relative ease, no stairs anymore, woo hoo! 
The only problem is we have quite a lot of extra gear in the form of 
lighting........this is all contained in flight cases which weigh roughly 
the same as a pregnant rhinoceros.

The bigger stage soon became smaller again when we set everything up. I 
often can't get my head around why a melodic indie rock band like us has 
soooo much gear....it's mad. And you should see the wiring on stage.....
lets just say you wouldn't want to release a chinchilla.

I spend the majority of my day writing tour diaries and catching up with 
emails in the dressing room, on a healthy diet of coffee. Gig time 
really seemed to creep up quickly today, and I couldn't help but feel 
like I wasn't ready. Time for operation Red Bull.......always sorts us 
out if we're flagging. The set seemed to work really smoothly tonight, 
and I could see many faces being blinded by our light show, in this 
small room.

After the gig, we went back down to the bar to meet and greet all of our 
fans, there were plenty of eager well wishers which is always nice, as 
we like to see if they enjoyed the show. It was in this bar, that I met 
what could be inspiration for a future comedy sketch show character. I 
call him 'Angry Leeds Bloke'. This very amusing chap, had a skin head, 
looked quite hard, and really loved our gig. He did however think that 
we are under appreciated and that the crowd in the Cockpit should have 
shown us more love......key quotes, edited for obvious reasons, were - 
'You have to be a bleeping student band in Leeds these days, all these 
bleeping bands are bleeping bleep, and they're just bleeping fads I 
bleeping hate it. You guys were bleeping great tonight, and you can 
really bleeping play, but this bleeping crowd just don't get it. If 
you're not the Arctic bleeping monkeys, you amount to bleeping nothing 
in Leeds, it all bleeped.

I had a grin the whole time.

We then relocate to the bus, where all of Luke Toms posse join us for a 
big old knees up. It was a very funny night, and we felt guilty that we 
engineered the severe drunken state that Luke Toms was in, as he had a 
lecture very early the next morning........oh well!

Not a bad night overall really, goodbye Leeds, Newcastle here we come!



www.lewisslade.com/thirteensenses