I'll write more later...

I'll try and do this without the benefit of pictures... the net's a bit slow today, and I've already spent hours resizing and uploading stuff for Facebook already - the pictures are here (it's a public album, you don't need to be a Facebook member to see them).

Anyway... we left Auckland on Sunday morning, John, tariqa, Jess and I. Telling the story of a 10-hour road trip can't be that exciting if you weren't there, so I'll leave it to the pics to explain, with a little extra emphasis on the fact we tailed a car with the number plate "DFVADR" for a while. We had a sharpie pen and some A4 paper on hand, so I scribbled out "MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU", Jess held it up to the windscreen, and we got some upturned thumbs. Sweet.

Anyway... the gig was awesome. Little Pictures opened the night and were pretty cool - guy and a girl, she sings, he sings and plays samples/keys with drumsticks on a pad not dissimilar to the one I once saw Peter Hook play in a New Order music video. Collapsing Cities and Connan & the Mockasins followed, so we had some pretty hard acts to follow. Blink got on stage during the Mockasins' set, big old analogue clock in hand, as they were nearly a minute ahead in counting down the new year, at least according to the clock Blink was carrying.

Anyway... luckily, at least from our point of view, we felt like we put on a good set. It had its mistakes, its setbacks - like Kent's guitar strings breaking twice, and eventually having to commandeer a Collapsing City guitar... me trying some half-hearted attempt at a stage dive that culminated with me stepping on a guy's crotch in my attempt to get back on stage, laughs all round... and an actual, real, fight in the moshpit. I was wearing my Nirvana shirt too, and the temptation was there to recreate that scene in Live! Tonight! Sold Out!, but without a bouncer it would've been kinda silly. John was on fire, it wasn't like we hadn't practised in over a week at all... really! During one of Kent's guitar string changes, I called for someone who could play the keys in Eb, meaning the key of Eb, but somehow we ended up with not someone who could play in Eb, but TWO guys who could play Eb... the note. I was laughing the whole time they were on stage, copying what they were playing, while the audience probably hated it. Christy and Heather, two of the stars of our last Wellington trip were on hand to invade the stage during Disco Peril, and yeah. At the end of it we were pretty thrilled with how it went, and Tommy Ill took the stage to close out the night.

Anwyay... I rate it in our top 3 gigs... competing with Vegas Girl and this awesome show we did at the Schooner which no one saw 'cause they were all at the Fancy New Bands gig at the Kings Arms which we'd just played at. I'm not sure if the Welly guerilla gigs count...

Anyway, on the way home we saw a sign reading, "Pony Poo: $1 A Bag", and that was pretty much the highlight of that entire day.