Last night’s show at my friend’s loft here in Edinburgh.  The above shot was taken just prior to showtime and the picture above that is the “official” attendees list.

Edinburgh holiday party for musicians.

Last night, our friend Norman had invited us to go and see his band, Teenage Fanclub, perform at the O2 ABC Theater in Glasgow.  This was a homecoming show of sorts as Norman and the band are originally from Glasgow, so we were pretty excited to go.  I had no idea how popular this band is!  People were losing it!  In a good way I mean.  It was a great show with the only downside being that because the last train back to Edinburgh leaves at 11:30pm, we literally had to run out of the after-party and down the street to the station in order to catch that last train.  As a bonus, The Arcade Fire was playing in Glasgow last night too, so the train was PACKED!  Should’ve taken a picture of that, but couldn’t really move my arms.  Anyway, here’s a shot of Norman et al on stage.

Two nights ago we went over to my friends Douglas and Maria.  The snow had trapped a group of American musicians here in Edinburgh, so that they couldn’t make their Glasgow performance.  Douglas wanted to have a bit of a “jam” at his place and invited us along.  I’m so glad that we decided to brave the weather and walk over.  It was such a great time and we convinced Tony (one of the trapped Musicians) to come out and play some with us at our show last night at Medina.  After the Medina show, we went to Sandy Bell’s for a late-night session.  That’s where this picture was taken.  That’s Tony with the banjo.

At a concert in an incredible Edinburgh loft.  I’m performing here next week.

It just hasn’t stopped snowing here in the past 5 or 6 days.  One would expect this in the highlands, but down here next to the sea you just never expect more than a “dusting” of snow.  I suppose it’s fitting as I’m sitting here reviewing final mix candidates and trying to get the artwork together for ‘Pleistocene’.  Maybe I’ll name my next record ‘Southern Pacific Vacation’ or something like that. 

In the previous post, I’ve posted a final mix candidate for one of the tracks from ‘Pleistocene’.  I’m so excited about this record that it was hard to pick one to share.  It’s really meant to be a full-album-listening experience, but hopefully this one track will at least let you in on some hint of what we’ve been getting up to.

Bandolier from the forthcoming album, ‘Pleistocene’.

The ‘Brah (Edinburgh) in the snow.  Like a medieval winter wonderland.

Stupid Delta.  We get on the plane and then in typical Delta fashion we are told that there’s a slight delay while they finish some routine maintenance.  Obviously not all that routine or else it would’ve been completed before they loaded us all onto the plane.  An hour and a half goes by and finally they tell us that the maintenance is finished, but now there’s a lot of water in the aft coming from the bathroom, so they need to figure that out before we can take off.  Another hour and now we’re getting pretty close to the 3-hour rule (They get fined pretty heavily per passenger if they keep passengers on a grounded plane for 3 hours or longer), so I’m now starting to worry that they’re going to start off-loading us.  Finally we get the word just in time that something was screwed up with the bathroom sink, it’s been fixed and now we’re backing away from the gate.  Another 40 minutes or so of taxi time and finally we’re in the air!  

Once up there though, there was a multiple hour debacle concerning the in-flight entertainment system.  I mean yes, I realize that not so many years ago there was no in-flight personalized entertainment system but you know what, it also wasn’t all that long ago that people thought leeches cured diseases.  It’s a different time people!  A time when I expect my 8-hour flight to have some entertainment options to lull me off to sleepy-time.  After what can only be described as the greatest display of unorganized unprofessionalism I’ve ever witnessed, the in-flight entertainment still wasn’t working properly so I assume they just gave up.  My iPod was out of juice and of course with Delta (unlike with many other cross-Atlantic carriers) there is no power at your seat, so that was that.  I tried to go to sleep, but the seat itself was really uncomfortable.  Even more so than usual on an airplane.  As we were landing, the inept flight crew was apologizing profusely about the massive inconveniences that everyone on board had had to put up with over the past 8 hours.  They assured us that once we de-boarded there would be a delta representative with vouchers for free future travel.  Free is the only way I would EVER fly Delta.  Even then, I’d probably have some hesitation.  As stated in the previous post, I never would’ve bought this flight had I known it was operated by Delta.  So we finally land and taxi to the gate.  Then the flight attendant comes on over the loudspeaker and says “Ladies and Gentlemen, we’ve just gotten word from Atlanta.  I’m sorry that we’ll not be able to offer you vouchers at the gate as previously stated.  You’ll need to visit Delta.com in order to redeem your vouchers.”  You’re kidding me.  So I’m just gonna go to the website of the largest airline on earth and there’s gonna be a link there that says “Were you on that crappy flight from JFK to AMS?  That totally sucked, right?  Well, no worries brah.  Click here to redeem your sweet free travel voucher.”?  Yeah, sure.  Basically what she was saying was, “I thought that I worked for a company that was made up of decent fair-minded human beings, but it turns out that I work for jerk faces.  Giant jerk faces who know that if they tell you to go to their website instead of giving you the free vouchers that most of you will never pursue it.  Personally, I’m now considering alternative employment.”

I did have a really nice Dutch guy sitting next to me though, and making jokes with him about how miserable the flight was really helped to pass the time, so a big thanks to him.  Other than that, the only positive thing I can say about that flight is that it got me here safely, and in the end I guess that’s all that really matters.  Stupid Delta.