Monday 18 March

Columbia - Burgers, burgers everywhere, but f**k all cash to eat!

Hit a bit of a financial wall with all the long travelling days and fuel costs, but we will survive. Bob’s ass is looking mighty tasty at the moment though. (Note to self – don’t eat fellow band members!)

Got to Columbia, Missourie, at 4pm and loaded the gear at Mojo’s. ‘The Mink Lungs’, who played with us in Dallas, are also on the bill tonight. Really good to hook up with them again. Met another band, Muckerferguson. One of them was from London. They’ve just been supporting ‘They Might Be Giants’ on an American Tour. Good band -quirky, comedy pop! One of their songs – ‘Part-time Rockstar’ could have been written about any one of us!

We played at 9pm to the other bands and nobody else. Simon has just turned into a hot dog before my very eyes.

These times are sent to test us. I’m sure we’ll look back and laugh at this from our mansions in LA or we will die of hunger. Let’s hope it’s the former. Said our goodbyes to the bands, swapped CDs (we hope to hook up with everybody again when we play the Knitting Factory in New York) and then headed off to drive to Minneapolis through the night.

The weather starts to get worse as we head North. Snow and icy roads. Got to Minneapolis at 9.30 Tuesday morning. Checked into hotel and crashed for 4 hours.

Chris