Crippled Black Phoenix/On the Road

Last Night we went to see Crippled Black Phoenix at Pole Etudiant in Nantes - they were great and it was lovely to see Joe; Chipper, Matt et al. I reviewed it for The Fly:

"With eight people on stage there's a huge capacity for chaos, but instead this strange brew of old rock hands, Bristol noiseniks and a teenage drummer called Crippled Black Phoenix are carefully controlled. Justin Greaves' grand compositions weave their way around Joe Volk's pastoral lyricism, cutting from choral interludes to majestic, textured riffs to great washes of feedback with sympathetic ease. If The Fly was Art Monthly we'd make some apt comparisons to renowned painters of somber and portentous landscapes, but we're a music mag and know shit about art. We know what we like however. We like this."

It's a strange sensation being on the road. I figured originally it would be a little like being on tour and in some ways it is of course, but there are some rather crucial differences. For instance, you don't know where exactly you are going, what your itinerary is, or what you are going to do once you get there.

For a former tour manager, always used to setting out on the road with a firm route, timetable and ultimate aim in mind, this has been quite an adjustment to make and I don't feel I have yet made it. For instance, despite the fact I'm driving a mobile home that we can sleep in at the drop of a hat (or, rather, shift of some cushions) the idea of not knowing where we are going to stay goes against all my instincts and makes me quite edgy. When I was inter-railing around Europe aged 18 accommodation was always the first thing I sorted out upon arriving somewhere new; on this trip, partly because we've got our own bedroom on wheels, but also I suspect because we rarely seem to hit the road before 12, we've often been turning up to places without the first idea about where to stay/park. We're currently in a Cafe in La Rochelle, a very pretty old town that seems to have been Broadmeaded rather comprehensively, with a vague idea that we will find a campsite on Ile de Re but the lack of exactness in our plans is making me slightly tense. The fault here is entirely my own - my control-freakery refusing to be jettisoned along with the other remnants of the rat-race the we left behind when we quit our jobs. Hopefully it'll fade in time.

On the plus side, being away from everything that we know has made things more interesting for Kate and I; we are rediscovering each other again. When we were living in our cute little flat in Bristol, our understanding of each other was defined in part by our relationship to each other but also by what we did and who we were. Kate is no longer "Kate who reads the news" and "Kate who does Fine Tuned" or "Kate who sings in Hot Flush" or even "Kate who meets friends for lunch" or "Kate who makes my lunch for work" - Kate is now "Kate who is my wife and co-traveller". It's a whole new Kate who only I know and that makes me feel very special indeed.