The Amazing Race!

The Australian version of The Amazing Race is finally going to air next week, so I think it's pretty safe to assume that we didn't make it onto the show, then.

This is why.



In our defence, it was 3am and we couldn't figure out how to put the photographs the right way up. Also, we had underestimated just how damned interesting we are and so were forced to cull this from about 11 minutes worth of us talking shit incredible footage to fit the 3 minute brief.

Happier in the Canyon

Seeing as songwriting is about the only thing I've done lately that even remotely relates to this blog, I'm going to milk it. The surprise song has been utilised as a weapon of love on the occasion of our guitarist's engagement party. A weapon of love. This band is dangerous, man. We make people cry. Curse this talent!

The song is called "Happier in the Canyon" and Jacob started writing it as an ode to the day he proposed to his lady love. He wrote all the music and some words in the bridge and then went "uuh, I don't know how to finish this" and asked if I'd help him make it into a real song. Of course I obliged. I wrote some stuff about rivers and stars and life journeys and it was all very straightforward and simple and sweet. I'm usually a bit uncomfortable being so direct in love songs. But, sometimes when you know the purpose of the song, it just kind of writes itself. And best of all, I think she liked it.

Stay awesome, LCD Soundsystem.

Just because I know I won't have time to do a proper blog tomorrow, here's a video commemorating the fact that LCD Soundsystem will be playing their last gig. Ever. It makes me a bit sad when I think too much about it. So I won't think too much about it.

My last day working with them was almost 3 years ago to the day, at Le Bataclan in Paris. Apparently I was in Paris. I didn't see any of Paris. But everyone was speaking French, so I must have been somewhere in the vicinity. It was a rushed day, and James was throwing away his tour shoes, so I asked him to give them to me and I'd see how much I could sell them for at the merch desk (the answer was 2 euros). In Barcelona a few days earlier, the band had let me play with them during soundcheck which was fricking cool. It was the repeated piano part for a track called "All My Friends". That night in Paris, they started playing it, and I suddenly remembered they were leaving for New York, and I wasn't able to go with them, and I'd have to go back to my crummy little flat in London that I'd not even lived in yet, and I dissolved into a complete sobfest. It might have been considered pathetic, if only Amos the tour manager had not appeared out of nowhere that very moment and gave me a huge hug while they performed it. And when it finished, they all waved and yelled at me from the stage and hollered that they loved me, in front of 1500 sweaty French punk ravers. I stood on the merch table and bowed.

This was that song.