Tour Diary

“Can we have more baby-oil for the girls please?”

Saturday 13 May, 3.30pm (Come Together Festival, Henley, Oxfordshire):
We’ve just come offstage after our set at the Come Together Festival in Henley-on-Thames. Playing nearly an hour’s set before lunchtime left me feeling a little light-headed, but it was a great lark and everyone seemed to have a good time. We met the guys from Wire Jesus, an excellent Reading band who you really should check out if you get a chance (www.WireJesus.com). Oh, and for the record, the Come Together Festival does a mean buffalo-steak wrap. That’s all I have to say.

Thursday 18 May, 1pm (An abandoned warehouse, Brentford, London):
Someone we know who works for a media company has asked George and I to fill in as extras on a Ministry Of Sound music video. As a result, at midday on a Thursday lunchtime we find ourselves underground in an abandoned warehouse off the M4, dressed as pikeys and cheering on two lubed-up bikini-clad dancers who seem to be engaging in some kind of passive-aggressive mating ritual to a thumping house track. Apparently they’re shooting the uncut version later on (featuring a parade of topless Page 3 models), but to our consternation we have to leave early in order to get to a Lightyears gig in Berkshire. Nevertheless, today’s events have allowed me to fulfil a lifelong ambition – to be standing on a darkly-lit film set, surrounded by models, whilst the director yells into a megaphone, “OK, people, can we have more baby-oil for the girls please?”. You just can’t write lines like that.

Friday 26 May, 13.45pm (M1, just north of Birmingham):
We’re on our way to Liverpool to make our second appearance at the world-famous Cavern Club for the International Pop Overthrow Festival. The journey, thus far, isn’t going spectacularly well. Tony is advocating “rounding up all drivers with caravans, at dawn, and shooting them in the face”. Caravan drivers provoke the most violent of rage in Tony. Luckily a couple of Mexican 3-bean wraps and a bottle of lemon-scented sparkling mineral water calms him right down. The north looms on the horizon.

Saturday 27 May, 3am (Matthew Street, Liverpool):
We arrived in Liverpool at about 6pm and made straight for our hotel, a building which is an architectural refugee of the 1970s and makes no bones about it (let’s just say that the TVs run a medley of Upstairs Downstairs, Rising Damp and Mork & Mindy). The chain-smoking proprietor greeted us with the opening gambit “Wow – you look like The Beatles!”, which I initially interpreted as quite a compliment until it occurred to me that she probably says that to every party of eager Southerners she’s about to bill for 120 quid.

The gig at The Cavern was awesome. The IPO Festival is completely free and there are bands playing wall-to-wall, for hours on end, over a period of five days. There was a big crowd in tonight, including some friends of ours from the BBC who are up in Liverpool filming a turn-of-the-century episode of Casualty called Casualty: 1906. Afterwards we spent some time chatting to an impressively coiffeured Finnish band called Flylow and a retro pop act from Switzerland called My Name Is George. Apparently they’ve never actually met anyone called George so hanging out with The Lightyears was a real coup for them. It’s now 3am and we’re wandering around the city centre trying to find the Aachen Hotel, which has definitely moved since we checked in this afternoon.

Saturday 27 May, 8pm (M1, just outside Chester):
We’ve just played our second Liverpool gig of the weekend (at Lennon’s Bar) and are speeding down the motorway for a night’s rest before supporting New Model Army at the Clapham Grand tomorrow. We’re right in the middle of a conversation about how journeys are always quicker on the way back when Tony remembers he left his rucksack in the venue – alongside a £400 iPod, £200 headphones and about 300 Euros in cash from our Alps Tour. The detour adds an hour and a half to our trip. Just as well the tourbus is fully stocked with flapjacks then.

Sunday 28 May, 10pm (The Clapham Grand, London):
Justin Sullivan from New Model Army is currently playing the headline slot at the Darryl Kempster Memorial Gig at the Clapham Grand (in aid of Greenpeace). We played an earlier slot, at about 7pm, to an enthusiastic crowd of hundreds. They’ve even opened the Upper Circle tonight, so there are people chilling out up there as well. I have got lost six or seven times trying to find the dressing room. Rock.

Monday 29 May, 11am (Lightyears HQ, Chiswick, London)
24 hours to go until we jet off to Korea. Before then, we’re playing a slot at the Watlington Festival, which is a good hour and a half’s drive from Lightyears HQ. Which could prove a challenge in light of the fact that George’s car got impounded this morning. In Wandsworth. We left it outside the Clapham Grand last night and when George returned to find it at about 10.30am, it wasn’t there.

It is for this reason that we are currently embroiled in a kind of Lightyears equivalent of the TV show 24. George is Jack Bauer, out on the street fighting international terrorists (a.k.a. the Wandsworth Council Car Pound), and I’m that funny blonde girl at CTU using state-of-the-art government computer technology (a.k.a. Google Maps) to direct him around the city. I’m half-expecting George to arrive at the pound and find the car crushed into a small, sad cube, but fortunately this isn’t the case. Nevertheless, the pirates charge us £200 for the privilege of reclaiming our vehicle.

The sting of this morning’s episode is relieved somewhat by a cracking show at the Watlington Festival. The place is absolutely heaving, and there’s a hardcore of long-haul LYs fans who sing along to all the album tracks and, impressively, the new ones as well. Afterwards we beat a hasty retreat back home, on account of the fact that none of us, not even one of us, has even considered starting to pack for our Korean Tour. Which starts tomorrow morning.

Let’s hope we make it. Watch this space for Part One of the band’s Asian adventure…

Chris Lightyear

Going head-to-head with Liberty X

Saturday 6 May 2006, 6.30am (Lightyears HQ, Chiswick, London):
We don’t have to be in Aberystwyth until 3pm, which should mean not leaving London until about 10 in the morning. Except that Tony has decided we have to set off at 7.30am in order to make it to the Red Lion in Llandyfaelog by midday to watch Crystal Palace in the Championship Play-Off Semi-Finals. And so the day does not start well for me – I care not for Crystal Palace, and I care not for Llandyfaelog. But being in a band is all about compromise, so I put on a magnanimous face and get in the car. Could be a long day.

Saturday 6 May, 12.30pm (The Red Lion, Llandyfaelog, Wales):
Llandyfaelog is not exactly what you’d describe as a metropolis. Or even a polis. I’ve heard that scientists at a university in London have recently developed a perfect sonic vacuum, contained within an isolated room coated in state-of-the-art sound-proofing, which purports to be the quietest place on earth. I bet it’s got nothing on Llandyfaelog. So far the only signs of life we’ve encountered are a couple of sparrows and an ill-proportioned dog.

Soon though, we happen upon the pub and step gingerly inside. Tony has chosen this far-flung corner of Wales because George Whitfield, an old band-mate of his, lives just round the corner. George is yet to make an appearance, however, so we’re still on our own. There is NOBODY in the pub. Indeed, a quick glance around the main room reveals a few children’s toys, a very small television and seemingly no bar – it’s as if we’re in somebody’s front room. In fact, as time wears on I become convinced that it is somebody’s front room. That is until a big bloke in a football shirt turns up and heads through a door we hadn’t previously noticed, returning shortly afterwards with a pint of lager. This guy turns out to be our only fellow punter for the ensuing two hours. Which may be down to him being the only permanent resident of Llandyfaelog.

Saturday 6 May, 1.45pm (The Red Lion, Llandyfaelog, Wales):
The football hasn’t gone well, at least not for Crystal Palace, and so our thoughts turn to food. Tony has promised us a bountiful, rustic pub lunch in return for dragging us out of bed at the crack of dawn to watch his team lose 3-0. You can imagine our consternation, then, when the landlord appears with two plates of stale Tesco value sandwiches containing a pink substance approximating ham and a few pieces of rather sad-looking cheese. And so, with our hunger unsated and Tony looking markedly sulky, we press on to Aberystwyth.

Saturday 6 May, 11.45pm (May Ball, Aberystwyth University, Wales):
It’s nearly midnight, which is when we’re due to start our set. There are at least five stages of music at tonight’s event, and we’re headlining the Marquee Stage, starting about fifteen minutes after Liberty X kick off in the Union Auditorium. A lot of people have headed in to see them, which could affect our numbers. As luck would have it, however, they don’t prove too popular with the crowd and someone in the audience manages to smoke-bomb them before they’ve reached their second song – as a result, the fire alarms go off and hundreds of people come streaming out of the Union in a mass evacuation. This is our chance. Tony OKs it with the soundman and we jump onstage fifteen minutes early. By the time we’ve hit the closing chords of our opening number, we’ve managed to poach nearly a thousand fans from Liberty X and the Marquee is absolutely heaving with people. It’s a great gig and is absolutely packed from beginning to end.

Chesney Hawkes is headlining in the Union at the same time as we’re headlining the Marquee, so we miss his set – but we do get to meet him afterwards. I’m surprised by how thin he is, and to be honest he looks like he could do with a good square meal. Nice bloke though. Liberty X haven’t stayed to party with the hardcore, which is perhaps not surprising in the circumstances. Other celebrities kicking around include the Bodyrockers, who you may remember from their 2005 Top Ten hit “I Like The Way You Move”, and Tabby, the Irish guy from X Factor. Now, I don’t wish to propound Irish stereotypes, but this guy has nicked all our booze! When we return to our dressing room after the show, the beer and the vodka has all disappeared, leaving only a half-drunk bottle of Diet Coke and a cheese and tomato sandwich. Since his dressing room is next to ours, and he’s totally plastered, the evidence speaks for itself…

Sunday 7 May, 5.30am (St Andrews Court Hotel, Seafront, Aberystwyth):
We’ve partied hard, and the sun is just coming up. If we want to capitalise on the hotel’s cooked breakfast, which we do, we need to be out of bed in just three hours. Urghsadflsg. Time for some kip.

Sunday 7 May, 1.30pm (M4, England, Civilisation):
It takes a long time to get out of Wales. Aberystwyth is further away from a motorway than any other town in Britain, including John O’Groats. Luckily, we’re still trading on the energy from this morning’s Full English, which, extraordinarily, we all managed to get out of bed for. Once back on English soil, we sing a hearty version of “Land Of Hope & Glory” in celebration of our return home. We have officially conquered Wales and colonised it in the name of LIGHTYEARS. Rock on.  

Chris Lightyear

Why you should always lock your roof box

Tuesday 24 April, 4am (Withington, Manchester):
Our UK Tour kicked off tonight with a gig upstairs at Manchester’s Fuel Café. We headlined the show, supported by our new cheeky Northern friends Avenues and singer-songwriter Tom Barnes (accompanied by George, an extraordinary violinist who played her instrument like a lead guitar). A big crowd turned up and we ended up commandeering some of them for a bit of an all-nighter. It’s now 4 in the morning and Manchester isn’t here anymore because we drank it. We’re driving to Scotland tomorrow so I set my alarm for 10am. We’re due to leave at midday.

Tuesday 25 April, Unspecified Time (Withington, Manchester):
I wake, hazily, with an uneasy feeling that I may have overslept. I turn on my phone. Apparently it’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon. This really cannot be true. We should be in Gretna Green by now. Apart from anything else, only tramps and unemployed people sleep until 4pm. I search desperately for an explanation, and eventually recall that I inadvertently smashed up my phone onstage last night and the battery came out, resetting the clock. Jeepers. So it’s Scotland or bust.

Once on the road, everything calms down. Having travelled a lot in this car recently, we’ve fully pimped it out with the essential ingredients for a stress-free Lightyears tour. At the risk of shattering expectations, I’m not talking about Jack Daniels, acid tabs and Playboy bunnies. I’m talking about mini-flapjacks and Bill Bryson audio tapes. But, boy, do they take the edge off a long journey.

Tuesday 25 April, 11.30pm (The Jazz Bar, Edinburgh):
We’re sipping Gin & Tonics in Edinburgh’s coolest jazz venue, basking in the aftermath of a rocking return to one of our favourite cities and watching a bloke with incredibly fast-moving fingers teach his six-string bass a serious lesson. Niiiice. Our gig at Whistle Binkies went really well tonight so after the jazz band finish we find the boss of the place and blag ourselves a slot here for tomorrow evening. Apparently he has space for us just before his bi-weekly 6-piece Flamenco act. Should be an interesting musical segue then.

Wednesday 26 April, 11.45pm (The Outhouse Bar, Edinburgh):
This evening we played a stripped down acoustic set in the Jazz Bar to an audience made up almost entirely of highly-stressed undergraduates who really should have been revising for their finals. They’d all come down for a musical interlude in the hope that it would help settle their shattered nerves. It’s not much of a surprise, then, that the minute we come offstage they all retreat to their bedrooms to overdose on Pro-Plus and Fermat’s Last Theorem. As a result, we head off into the city in search of fun elsewhere.

Sadly, the bouncers at the Opal Lounge refuse to let me into their oh-so-fashionable nightclub this evening on account of the fact that they don’t believe I’m over 18. This is an incident for which I quite understandably have the royal piss ripped out of me by the boys; however, when I’m 57 but look only 50, who’ll have the last laugh then? In place of the Opal Lounge we grab a couple of pints in Dirty Dicks and watch a couple at the table next to us inadvertently set their newspaper on fire, and follow this by drinks at The Outhouse, where the DJ plays Michael Jackson and the A-Team theme tune. Rock.

Thursday 27 April, 9.45am (Tour Residence, Edinburgh):
I’m jolted from a peaceful slumber this morning by Tony bursting into the room babbling something about aeroplanes. “We’re flying to Korea at 10.15am… yeah? Is that OK with you guys?”. I want to inform Tony that since I’m yet to decide what colour pants to wear today I’m hardly in a position to contemplate trans-continental air-travel, but he’s disappeared before I get the chance to explain. However, it soon becomes clear that he’s not talking about today – he is in fact on the phone to our booking agent in Seoul, sorting out the flights for our Korean tour. As I’m feeling frisky, and in an effort not to be outdone by the drummer, once I’m out of bed I book the flights for our American tour too. Then we drive to Derby.

Thursday 27 April, 11.15pm (The Vic Inn, Derby):
There’s always one duff gig on a tour, and as we pull up outside Derby’s Vic Inn it starts to look like this might be it. Pasted onto the outside of the venue are posters for bands with names like “Legalised Murder” and “U Slut”. Hmm. This may not be our kind of place. Plus it turns out that the headline band all hate each other and are right on the verge of splitting up. I fall into conversation with the guitarist and ask him what went wrong. The words “Pandora” and “Box” spring to mind. “Bloody lead singer wants to move to Camden” he says, with notable venom. Ah.

As it turns out, it’s an absolutely cracking night. We’re sharing the bill with The Masterplans, Avenues and the now-deceased Dead Melody (yeh, I know – not just a clever name). There’s a great crowd down and the place is rocking. The Masterplans, not even out of school yet, are a compelling mix of Arctic Monkeys charm and Libertines guitar riffage. And Dead Melody, despite palpable inter-band tension, turn out to be great as well. Plus there’s a big wolf wandering around the venue all night (apparently he’s a permanent fixture). Before we’ve even left the place, plans are afoot to return in the near future. Tomorrow, it’s destination: The South.

Friday 28 April, 12.30pm (Motorway hard shoulder, just south of Derby):
Today we suffer at the hands of a minor road accident. They say pride comes before a fall, and in our case this translates as “poking fun at Northerners comes before the roof box on your car flies open and unleashes half your gear across the fast lane of the A70”. This incident makes two things clear: 1) If you’re planning to drive at 70 miles an hour, it really is best to lock your roof box and 2) If you’re going to make jokes about how much better everything is in the South of England, wait until you’re inside the M25. 

Saturday 29 April, 3am (The Troubadour Club, London):
It’s 3am and, somehow, we’re still in the club. There was a massive crowd in for tonight’s gig but, by now, they’ve all supped their last Budvar and jumped on a night-bus. We’ve stuck around for an end-of-tour knees-up with the Avenues boys, who are showing us a thing or two about drinking ‘Derby-style’ (i.e. a lot). Tonight’s show went really well – the place was packed and I even spotted someone in the audience who looked uncannily like Dr Fox. Plus a whole bunch of LYs fans who saw us in France, on our European tour, came down with the express purpose of hearing “Emily”. As a result, we ended up playing it twice. And they all danced like maniacs. What a night.

Saturday 29 April, 8.30am (Lightyears HQ, Chiswick, London):
I wake up this morning haunted by a distant, yet inescapable, feeling of terror. There’s something we’re doing today that’s… complicated… and involves… getting out of bed… quite soon… I wonder – FERRY! We’re taking a ferry, that’s it – to the Isle Of Wight! Shit, erm, where’s the band?! Where’s the stuff? Head aches. Erm. What time’s the ferry? I have no idea. Where actually is the Isle Of Wight? Do we need passports? Must get to the Bureau De Change.. aargh, no time. Wait, it’s not a foreign country. We’re all good. Rock ‘n’ roll. Put some trousers on. We’re good to go.

Saturday 29 April, 4pm (East Cowes, Isle Of Wight):
The Red Funnel ferry has safely delivered us into East Cowes on the Isle Of Wight. Which, as you can well imagine, yields a barrage of jokes about coming into cows. We’ve got a few hours to kill before the private party we’re playing at kicks off, so we locate our hotel and make haste to our room where we discuss how funny it would be to throw the TV out of the window. And how tragic it is that we’re just not that kind of band. So instead, Tony has a nap and George and I settle down in front of Grandstand.

Sunday 30 April, 11am (East Cowes, Isle Of Wight):
Had a superb time last night. After the gig we took up residence in the Members’ Lounge of our hotel and generally made a nuisance of ourselves – smoking cigars with the other guests (yep, it now comes back to me that I had a go at smoking a tofu sausage), stealing those tiny hotel shampoos from the housekeeping closet and talking very, very loudly at each other. I had a boozy and extremely vocal argument with a drunk blonde woman in defence of Michael Jackson, in which it’s wholly conceivable that I accused at least one of her close family members of being a sex offender. Purely to make a point, you understand.

And so our UK Tour reaches its conclusion. Time, now, to go into the studio and record our new single…

Watch this space for updates.

Chris Lightyear

Al The Loveable Stoner

Tuesday 11 April, 6pm (Rond Point, Meribel, French Alps):
Those of you who’ve met Tony will know that, just occasionally, things irritate him. I don’t know whether it’s the lack of meat in his diet, or his over-exposure to cheese, but there’s a certain bio-chemical quirk in his personality that makes him particularly susceptible to getting bloody well pissed off. Ipso facto, he’s spent the entire day fuming over last night’s mysterious disappearance of his irreplaceable Lightyears jacket. He is therefore almost entirely overcome with joy when a chap named Al turns up at this afternoon’s gig claiming to know the whereabouts of the missing jacket. This news is genuinely quite astounding. I could hug the man. Tony actually does, which to be honest seems to take Al by surprise. “Yeah, dudes, I found it outside the pub last night. It’s wicked, man. Safe.”. However, our excitement gradually gives way to suspicion as it becomes obvious that Al is basically a bit of a stoner and doesn’t appear overly interested in actually giving the jacket back. I take his number (something else which puzzles him – he probably thinks I’m making a romantic advance) and he agrees to bring the jacket along to our gig this evening. Simple. Or so we think.  

Tuesday 11 April, 11.45pm (Scott’s Bar, Meribel, French Alps):
No sign of Al when we start the gig tonight. Time passes, we finish our set and yet he’s still nowhere to be seen. Our pal Al. Al The Jacket Man. Tony gets a little bit mad and phones his mobile and, to our surprise, Al answers. Apparently he’s come out on the lash tonight actually wearing the jacket! Cheeky beggar. Tony establishes Al’s whereabouts, jumps in the car and speeds up the mountain to an abandoned bus-stop where, oddly, Al has suggested they meet. For ten minutes, there’s no sign of him. For Tony, the red mist begins once more to descend; but then, suddenly, from deep within the silvery Alpine fog, emerges a silhouetted figure. Who seems to be stripping. It’s Al! Once again reunited with his jacket, Tony leaps back in the car and makes haste away from Al with, I imagine, some urgency. Mission accomplished.

Friday 14 April, 3am (Lightyears Chalet, Saint-Bon, French Alps):
We’ve just played the last gig of the French leg of the tour. In less than five hours we have to get out of bed and drive to Belgium. When we get to Belgium, we will have a short holiday of roughly four and a half minutes before getting up onstage and playing another gig. Best get to bed then.

Friday 14 April, 8am (Outside the LYs Chalet, Saint-Bon, French Alps):
The car is packed, the chalet that has been our home for the past fortnight is locked up, and the open road stretches out endlessly beyond us. John, who won’t be playing with us in Belgium, is flying back to the UK this afternoon. He’s quite delighted to have actually managed to book a flight at all, having spent half an hour on the phone yesterday to some dappy French travel agent who, as it turns out, had been trying to book him a helicopter ride for most of the conversation. We say our goodbyes and head our separate ways. For us, it’s Belgium or bust. 

Saturday 15 April, 1.30am (De Trukendoos, Kortrijk, Belgium):
A big crowd turned out tonight for our Belgian debut, and everyone seemed to have a good time. In fact, after the gig we met a bunch of teenagers who had found us on MySpace and travelled 30 miles to come and see us play. As is often the custom round here, we were hauled back onstage for about 27 encores, and as a result we’re pretty knackered by this point. We’re trying to pack the car for the gazillionth time this tour and two drunk Belgian lads are, despite their best possible intentions, starting to annoy us. “You Ingleesh men, huh? Yeah. You must know Gascoigne, yeah?”. I hope it doesn’t crush him entirely when I confess that whilst I’m familiar with Gascoigne’s work, I have never made a personal acquaintance with him. They hang around for ages, offering their assistance whilst struggling to stand, but they eventually slope back inside the pub once it becomes clear that we really don’t know Gascoigne. Our European adventure draws to a close, and about half an hour later we all crawl happily into our respective Belgian beds, kindly provided by a friend of Tony’s, to snatch some much-needed (but short-lived) sleep before it’s time to get back in the tour-bus and head for Blighty.   

Saturday 15 April, 7pm (Heythrop House, Oxfordshire, UK):
We’re playing a private party tonight. In Chipping Norton. Which some bands might interpret as a come-down after 2 weeks in Southern Europe, but we soldier on nonetheless. After the show we return to our respective homes and proceed to sleep for about 48 hours. Just a week to recover, then, before the UK leg of our World Tour begins. Rock and roll.

Watch this space for the next instalment of The Lightyears World Tour Blog 2006…

Chris Lightyear

“Poke me and I’ll hurl”

Previously on The Lightyears European Tour blog…

…Monday 10 April, 11.30am (Lightyears Chalet, Saint-Bon, French Alps):
Tony’s looking fragile this morning, having spent the entire night fighting a losing battle with a seriously hardcore stomach bug. Everyone’s nervous he may not make it out the door, let alone to the venue. And we have two gigs today. Outside, the weather is taking a turn for the worse… 

Monday 10 April, 3.30pm (Somewhere in the French Alps):
………..Four hours later, we’re stuck in a snow-storm on the side of a mountain. Tony is just about holding up, although only really on account of the fact that he’s sat in the car under a blanket, not moving. At all. The look on his face says “Poke me and I’ll hurl”, so we’re leaving him well alone. Meanwhile, George, John and I are standing outside in the cold, hopelessly underdressed for the frankly Arctic surroundings, trying to figure out how to fit snow chains onto the car. First of all, I should point out that I personally made every effort to equip myself for such an eventuality. When we left the UK I packed a warm coat, a hat, a scarf, sturdy gloves and steel toe-capped, wool-lined industrial rigger boots. It’s just a shame I elected not to actually bring them with me today. As a result my feet are soggy, my jeans are heavy with snow and miniature icicles are beginning to form on the end of my nose. I knew I shouldn’t have given up Scouts.
Snow chains are, take it from The Lightyears, an absolute bugger to fit. Especially if the ones you’re using are entirely the wrong size for your tyres. Sympathetic holiday-makers occasionally stop by us to wind the window down and offer encouraging remarks along the lines of “Yes, they’re really hard to get on if you’ve never done it before, aren’t they?”. Snow falls. A lot.

Monday 10 April, 5.30pm (Still, somewhere in the French Alps):
In theory we should have been on stage half an hour ago. Instead we’re standing in the midst of a blizzard trying to figure out how to fit snow chains onto the car. Having managed to blag two different sets of chains, both, as it turns out, the wrong size for a Vauxhall Omega estate car, most of us are just about ready to curl up and die. Tony may already have done this, although none of us are prepared to stir him and find out. Unfortunately, the nearest shop selling chains in our size is in the opposite direction to the gig. We have no choice, therefore, but to set off down the mountain again. The car is, if I’m honest, skidding about a little more than you would usually hope for, especially considering we’re 1500 metres up and all that stands between the car and the cliff-edge is a pile of rocks and a couple of quivering shrubs. And so we struggle onwards, soaked through, teeth chattering, creeping along at a speed that would make an armadillo scoff. Today seems like it may never end.

Tuesday 11 April, 1.30am (Le Pub, Meribel, French Alps):
It’s been a long haul, but we’ve finally made it. We come offstage at Le Pub in Meribel in the early hours of Tuesday morning and collapse with happy exhaustion. George, John and I end up in a bizarre, shouty conversation with a guy who’s come along to the gig dressed as Buzz Lightyear – he seems particularly pleased with himself, and rightly so. All’s well that end’s well… or is it?

Suddenly, Tony appears, looking panicked. We’ve all been keeping a safe distance from him tonight, on account of the whole projectile vomiting debacle, but it now seems that something different is causing him anguish. His Lightyears jacket has been stolen. They come as a set, the LYs jackets, and with one lost, we are nothing. There begins a frantic, but ultimately fruitless, search for the missing item. By now it could be anywhere in the Alps. The future of the band hangs in the balance.

Will Tony ever set eyes on his jacket again? Will the band ever find the right-sized snow chains? Watch this space for the final episode of the Lightyears European Adventure 2006…

Chris Lightyear

Postman Pat, Pete Doherty and puking

Tuesday 4 April, 3.30pm (Lightyears Chalet, Saint-Bon, French Alps):
Everyone’s looking a bit battered by this point, as the hefty gigging schedule starts to take its toll. Tony is beginning to regret his decision to drum whilst standing up, on account of the fact that our 2-hour sets leave his leg muscles spasming like a crack addict with an embolism. He is now concerned that the audience will think he has Parkinson’s Disease. John is sitting on the sofa, head in a book, fingers in a rancid pot of vinegar, in a vain attempt to relieve the massive blisters on the ends of his fingers. My voice is suffering from last night’s gig and I’m sounding more and more like a cross between Joan Collins, Barry White and that girl from The Exorcist by the second. Finally, George, though remaining the most upbeat of the band, is on the phone to our booking agent – apparently, outdoor gigs at the Rond Point in Meribel have now been permanently banned by order of the Mayor since we rocked the place too hard yesterday. Nice to know we’ve left a legacy then.

Tuesday 4 April, 11.45pm (Ski Lodge, La Tania, French Alps):
It’s Cross Dressing Night at the Ski Lodge in La Tania. Excellent timing for our first gig there then. To my surprise, we turn out to be the perfect soundtrack to a bunch of 6-foot transvestites staggering about downing dirty pints and picking fights with Australians. Plus fifteen of our mates from Reading turn up so, all-in-all, a successful night.

Thursday 6 April, 11.30am (Lightyears Chalet, Saint-Bon, French Alps):
Tony has run short of war stories about touring Denmark in a transit and has been reduced to keeping us entertained with golden nuggets of wisdom concerning flower-arranging. Apparently you must always – I repeat, always – display your blooms in odd numbers. Later on we have a full-blown row about whether or not it would be artistic suicide to play the Postman Pat theme tune in our set. Tour hysteria has, it seems, finally set in.

Sunday 9 April, 4.30pm (Ski slopes, Courchevel 1650, French Alps):
George, John and I have spent the weekend snowboarding down the slopes of Courchevel. Tony has declined in the name of professionalism – “Boys, boys, boys… if you break your arm, what’ll happen to the band for the next six months?”. The three of us have taken a rather more cavalier approach to the whole thing; I mean, how hard can it be, really, to play guitar with a ruptured spinal column? Whilst travelling down the mountain, I find myself surveying the snowy landscape and trying to find a plausible explanation for my extremely valuable ski-pass being entirely white. I’d have loved to have been a fly-on-the-wall at that board meeting. 

Monday 10 April, 11.30am (Lightyears Chalet, Saint-Bon, French Alps):
Tony stumbled into the living room this morning looking like the abandoned love-child of Quasimodo and Pete Doherty. He’s been up all night battling a rather graphic stomach bug that’s left him, as it were, ‘mostly empty’. We have two gigs today, and he’s starting to worry that he might not make it through them without “honking on the drum-kit”. Provided he can hold off until the finale we can always say it’s part of our act.

Will Postman Pat rear his ugly head at tonight’s gig? Will Tony’s drums escape the tour without being splattered with puke? Watch this space for the next instalment of the Lightyears European Adventure…

Chris Lightyear

LYs hit the Alps

Here we all are, munching freshly warmed baguettes with a side serving of prime quality French ham, sipping a round of hazelnut coffees and soaking up the fresh Alpine air. Beyond the front door of our chalet stands a magnificent, snow-topped mountain range, speckled with clusters of expensive-looking ski lodges and, outside in the street, portly men in stripey blue and white smocks stroll whistling down the street, adjusting their onion necklaces and shouting at children.

Here’s a brief account of how we got here: 

Thursday 30 March, 7pm (Berkshire, UK):
We have literally never been this organised. We are now on our second practise pack of the car (bear in mind that, when you’re trying to fit two large speakers, two monitor speakers, stage piano, bass guitar, electric guitar, drum kit, hundreds of leads, a 4-foot long hard-case, mic stands, keyboard stands, guitar stand, guitar pedals, guitar amp, snare case, microphones, sound module, speaker stands, mixing desk, camera, tripod, clothes to last 2 weeks, and three people, into a Vauxhall Omega, you really do need that second practise pack). John, who is coming on tour with us to play bass, has challenged us to get all this stuff into the car in under 2 minutes. We accept the challenge, and therein lies our first mistake. It’s roughly at this point that George rams the keyboard through the car window.

Friday 31 March, 2.30pm (Slough, UK):
We should be well on the way to Europe by now. Instead, we’re at Autoglass in Slough. Which has proved to be one of life’s crueller turns. The tour has been pushed back 24 hours.  

Saturday 1 April, 4pm (somewhere on a French autoroute):
Today, everything has run smoothly. George, Tony and I are in the Omega and John is taking the plane. Whilst in the car we consider how funny it would have been to have stayed at home in London, and then to have called John up in the evening to say “We’re not really going on tour, we just thought it would be hilarious to fly you to Geneva and see if you could make it back. April Fool!”. Ah, the benefit of hindsight.

Sunday 2 April, 11am (Saint-Bon, French Alps):
Finally, and triumphantly, at 2am last night, we arrived at the chalet. As it turns out the one thing we forgot to bring was bedding, which, considering it snows here 9 months of the year, can reasonably be regarded as a little bit stupid. As a result we ended up sleeping under moth-eaten blankets we earlier deemed not fit to wrap our equipment in. Rock ‘n’ roll. This morning John and Tony made a trip to the local boulangerie and somehow managed to spend 40 quid on a joint of ham and a piece of cheese. Well done lads. The proprietor obviously saw you coming a mile off. 

Monday 3 April, 11.30pm (Le Pub, Meribel, French Alps):
We are in the process of playing our second gig of the day in the imaginatively-titled “Le Pub” in the frighteningly swish ski resort of Meribel. Everybody here is richer than God. It’s sort of like a big theme park for really posh people. One thing I can say is that they know how to have a good time, and by half-way through our first set the whole crowd is moshing, stage-diving and pretty much climbing the walls. This place has footprints on the ceiling – ‘nuff said. 

And I guess that brings us up-to-speed. Stay tuned for another blog over the next few days…

Chris Lightyear

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