Always say no to strangers

Saturday 11 November, 8.15am (NYU Dorms, Manhattan, New York):
Ooh… arghuihr. Dull throbbing. Eels? Ate an eel. Why? Hmm. Some kind of potent Japanese alcohol. Half of me is on an air bed. The other half is on hard floor. Erm. New York! That’s it. Oh jeez, radio interview! Today! In New Jersey! Go Team Lightyears! Eghuisdpolk. Perhaps not yet. Wait for throbbing to subside. Then go.

Never eating eel again.

Saturday 11 November, 12.15pm (LYs US HQ, Riverton, New Jersey):
Thankfully, the 2-hour train journey from New York proved to be enough to gently coerce us back into a respectable state. Trains are very clean and quiet in the US, but the ticket inspectors are terrifying. One of ours actually had a gun. I mean, in England, fare-dodgers get a stern talking-to and a strongly-worded letter. Here it would seem they get shot in the face. But I imagine it gets the message across.

We’re now back at Jon’s apartment in Riverton, grabbing a bite to eat before our interview and live session on WXPN Radio. However, when I log into our e-mail account I find a message from the program director at the station apologising for having to cancel our interview, as their baseball game coverage has been moved and the entire day of scheduled music sessions has been called off. This is a bit of a blow. WXPN is the most popular public radio station in America – it has an audience of 5 million people and was the station that broke Keane in the US. They’ve been very supportive of The Lightyears this past year so it’s a real shame that our slot has been postponed. Seems word has spread to our American fans already – there are postings on the WXPN message board lambasting the station for cancelling our session. Power to the people! Sadly, though, in the States, sport always wins through. Seems we’ll have to wait until our next US tour…

Saturday 11 November, 8.30pm (Milkboy, Ardmore, Pennsylvania):
Our disappointment at missing out on the radio interview has been eclipsed somewhat by the near sell-out crowd at Milkboy tonight for the climactic show of our tour. Plus the venue promoters heard our soundcheck and asked us to come back and play again tomorrow night, which is cool. Milkboy’s a great place – it’s a coffee house so the audience are all completely sober, if somewhat wired on espressos. And they do the greatest Peanut Butter Milkshakes in the northern hemisphere.

As a special treat tonight we are being joined onstage by “live artist” Luc Sonnet, who uses state-of-the-art computer technology to “paint” images whilst the band play – images which are projected onto a screen behind the musicians during the gig. He is debuting this pioneering technique for James Blunt next week and, having heard about our American Tour, called us earlier to ask if he could test-run it on us. If I’m honest, it’s slightly weird, but kinda cool nevertheless. I fall into conversation with Luc after the show and eventually come to the conclusion that this dude is either a) the most well-connected person I have ever met or b) a massive nut-job. I give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s the former, which leads to a long discussion in which he promises to secure us support slots for Elton John, Coldplay, Keane and Ben Folds Five. I express my gratitude for his offer of help. Next he invites us to go and live with him in his 17^th century chateau in the South Of France. So I make my excuses and beat a hasty retreat.

I should have listened to my Mum – always say no to strangers.

Sunday 12 November, 7.15pm (Milkboy, Ardmore, Pennsylvania):
We’re back at Milkboy for our unscheduled Sunday night headline show. Many of our fans from last night have come again, and there are also a bunch of new faces in the audience. We open the set with Fine, and all is progressing as it should until I notice that the lights on my sound module have started flashing sporadically. The tiny LED display is going mental, and the module keeps changing between voices without any apparent cause. I’m pressing the buttons but to absolutely no avail. It seems to be in the middle of some kind of seizure. I’m trying to keep things going but it keeps trying to change my voice from “Grand Piano 1” to “Baroque Trumpet”, which to be honest is not really sitting in well with the rest of the band. I have absolutely no idea why this is happening. Tony looks at me from across the stage and mouths “Are you OK?”. He later tells me that the expression on my face was roughly what he would expect if I’d just been told that my entire family had been crushed to death in a freak meteorite shower. The song ends. We’re about to launch into the next number when George turns to me and communicates that he has broken a string. Fantastic. We’re now down to one instrument.
Through a combination of luck and perseverance, I manage to solve my problem – which turns out to be due to a stuck button on the keyboard. Tony, meanwhile, has been keeping the show going by virtue of some quite ingenious banter on the subject of American Football (a sport about which he knows absolutely nothing). When he’s finished, we bust out an improvised 2-piece rendition of You Are Wrong whilst George fixes his guitar with a fork. Two minutes later, George appears miraculously onstage and joins us for the final chorus, and once again we are a complete band. The rest of the gig goes smoothly and the sun eventually sets on our 2006 American Tour.

Monday 13 November, 6pm (Detroit Airport, Michigan, USA):
We are sitting in Taco Bell at Detroit Metro Airport, sharing a Dr Pepper through three straws. Taco Bell, if you’ve never had the pleasure, is wonderful. Tony’s practically in a state of nirvana – a hot, delicious 3-bean wrap for under 75p… seriously? We are all knackered. Detroit has a mile-long mall but I think it’ll have to wait for another day. Royal Britannia here we come.

Tuesday 14 November, 9.15am (Gatwick Airport, London, England):
Jetlagged, tired, and still – to be frank – a bit drunk from the flight, we emerge blinking onto British soil. Everyone’s there on the runway to greet us – tabloid journalists, the Queen, Les Dennis. They’ll have to wait for their exclusive though. I’m heading home to eat digestive biscuits and watch Fawlty Towers.

It’s good to be home.

Chris Lightyear

Sandwich-ageddon in the Big Apple

Thursday 9 November, 12.30pm (Outside a deli, Manhattan, New York):
Sitting on a plate in front of me is a sandwich that’s going to change my life. I mean, I’ve had some pretty momentous things happen to me in my time – my first word, Cub Scout initiation, house burning down etc – but I really do feel like this is it. The motherload.

Most people criticise Americans for being a tad on the large side. But if their on-average mightier girth contributes to the continued existence of sandwiches like this, then by George I applaud them for it. OK, so I’m asking you to imagine Vesuvius, right – the volcano – but instead of pyroclastic rock you’ve got pumpernickel bread, and instead of divergent tectonic plates you’ve got a delicious tower of maple-roasted turkey, and in place of hot gushing streams of molten lava you’ve got honey and mustard sauce. Basically it’s bad-ass. It’s Sandwich-ageddon.

God Bless America.

We arrived in the city about half an hour ago and our New York host, Jon’s son Dan, immediately took us to the nearest deli to quell the appetites we’d spent the 2-hour journey from New Jersey forming. So now, the November sun is blazing, our stomachs are replete with insanely delicious sandwiches and we have a whole day ahead of us in the Big Apple. Life is good.

Thursday 9 November, 11.45pm (NYU Dorms, Manhattan, New York):
Right. We’ve done the Rockefeller Centre, the Empire State building, Macy’s, Sach’s 5^th Avenue, the Statue Of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, Bryant Park Ice Rink, Ground Zero, Little Italy, Times Square and Dunkin’ Donuts. We’ve basically acted completely unashamedly like tourists. This, however, is a privilege of being on tour and I refuse to be ashamed of it.

Tomorrow night we are playing the Baggott Inn in Greenwich Village. Coincidentally, at precisely the same time, Guns ‘N’ Roses are headlining Madison Square Gardens across town. I sense a head-to-head coming on.

Friday 10 November, 9pm (LYs Photo Shoot, Times Square, New York):
We are standing in our trademark Flying V photo-shoot stance in front of the American flag in Times Square. Our photographer Rob is busy dodging tourists and trying to get the perfect shot in time for us to get back to the Baggott Inn for 9.30pm. Rob has snapped us underneath Washington Arch, on the subway, in some phone boxes outside a Broadway theatre and now in front of what turns out to be a military recruitment centre in Times Square. We are, of course, wearing our LYs army jackets. Two burly Navy guys, fully uniformed, walk past and eye us with heavy suspicion. Their expressions seem to imply that they simply cannot imagine what we are doing. Oh, and also that they could totally take us in a fight.

Time to head back to the venue, I think…

Friday 10 November, 10.30pm (Baggott Inn, The Village, New York):
We’ve just finished our first ever show in New York. Everything went smoothly and an impressive crowd turned up – it turns out that lots of our fans in London have sent their American friends down to check us out. Adam and D, however, who have made the 3,500-mile journey from Derby, UK, take the prize for furthest distance travelled to see us. Good work chaps.

I fall into conversation with the proud father of the youngest band ever to play at The Baggott Inn, which is a strictly-policed 21+ venue. He tells me that his son’s band, Blackout, now 11, have been gigging together since they were 8. Apparently they were chaperoned to and from the stage and immediately dispatched from the building the minute they strummed their last chord. It sounds like he’s pushing them pretty hard – they tour constantly and have a punishing schedule for a band who probably still have their own tree-house. I contemplate dropping into conversation something along the lines of “Let’s hope he doesn’t pull a Macaulay Culkin on your ass and burn out on crack-cocaine before he’s 18”. I decided against it in the end though and, on reflection, I’d say that was a good move.

OK, now here’s where things really start to get interesting. We’ve been invited out to a bona fide NYU college party. You know, the kind you see in movies where big-necked frat guys guzzle lager through funnels and all the girls – by day simply your run-of-the-mill university students – turn out also to be professional strippers. And everyone drinks out of red cups, instead of straight from the bottle. I’ve always found this rather quaint and assumed it to be a common fiction adopted by Hollywood, but no – they really do drink out of red cups! Regulation ones, too! You can buy them all over the US. I find this astonishing. I tell some girls this at the party but I think they fail to grasp the true impact of what I’m saying. They do like my accent though, which I have Hugh Grant-ed up a little bit, just for effect.

Sat 11 November, 3am (Japanese Restaurant, somewhere in New York):
I am eating an eel. I really wish that I wasn’t. That’s partly because it’s 3am, but mainly because it’s an eel and eels are slimy and disgusting.

At some point, we get back to the dorm, collapse in a heap and catch a couple of hours sleep in preparation for returning to New Jersey tomorrow for our radio interview and the climactic gig of the tour – a Saturday night headline show at Milkboy in Ardmore…

Chris Lightyear

“Fresh from London, Finland – The Lightyears!”

Wednesday 8 November, 10.30am (LYs US Residence, Riverton, New Jersey):
I am sitting in front of a plate of Heinz Baked Beans on toast and a steaming hot cup of milky tea. It’s so English I could almost be in Chesham, or Little Todding. However, I am in fact in the god-dang ho-diggity United States Of America! Yee-haw. And all that.

To my astonishment, we arrived last night in one piece with all our instruments and bags intact. Our US tour manager Jon Clifton met us at Newark and drove us back along the legendary New Jersey Turnpike to his home in Riverton. Riverton, founded in 1851 by wealthy Philadelphian merchants, is a picture-perfect town full of ridiculously large houses. Jon, who has an apartment in one of the ridiculously large houses, has very kindly stocked his cupboards with British food products to make us feel welcome.

Tony whiles away most of the morning writing a song about lycopene, one of the principal ingredients in tomato ketchup. Man, tour delirium. Already?!

Weds 8 November, 9.45pm (World Café Live @ WXPN, Philadelphia):
Our first show is a charity event at World Café Live, which is in the same building as Philadelphia’s world-famous WXPN National Radio, America’s most popular public station. We are due to be interviewed on WXPN on Saturday. Tonight the place is full of trendy radio types who keep referring to us as “cats”. “You cats from London? That is sweet. You guys are sweet.”

We hit the stage, introduced by comedy troupe The Waitstaff – “Fresh from London, Finland, it’s The Lightyears!” – and unleash our music for the first time ever on the American public. And they like it. Whooping is pretty popular over here in-between songs, especially when you feed the audience lines like “Hello everyone! We’re all British and this is our first ever show in America!” (over the course of the tour, this line turns out to provoke near-apoplectic hysteria every time I use it – and I use it a lot).

As we hammer down the closing chord of Miles Away, Jon whisks us off the stage and reminds us that we have to drive 45 minutes across town to get to our second gig of the evening. Before I can get out the door I’m accosted by a journalist covering the night who wants to interview me about the charity, which promotes the work of challenged athletes. He asks me what I know about the cause. I reply: “I’ve always been aware of challenged athletes competing in sport, what with the popularity of the Paralympics and so on, but I’ve never been directly involved with promoting it. Which is why I’m really pleased to have played at this charity event.”

And this is what was printed (under the headline Never Fathomed): “I never before wondered if people with disabilities could do sports,” said Russell. “Honestly, it never occurred to me”.

It’s alright though. The hate mail has started to die down now.

Weds 8 November, 11.50pm (Grape Street, Manayunk, Philadelphia):
We’ve just finished our second gig of the night at Philly’s ever-popular Grape Street venue. This place has been around for a while and the stage has previously been graced by the likes of Jeff Buckley and The Black Crowes, which is pretty cool. Backstage, our trademark LYs military jackets are attracting a great deal of attention. People ask where we got them. “Camden”, we reply earnestly. They stare back agog. “Camden??!! Oh my god. That’s brave. Wow.” We later find out that Camden, New Jersey, is just round the corner from where we’re staying and is the most dangerous place in America. We decide not to confess that we’re referring to a different Camden. I mean, image is everything.

Tomorrow, New York. We’re gonna be a part of it.

Rock and roll.

Chris Lightyear

“Is that a home-made pipe bomb in my pocket or am I just pleased to see you?”

Monday 6 November, 4.45pm (TK Maxx Clothes Outlet, Clapham):
I am in TK Maxx in Clapham Junction. Where all the rock stars hang out. There is an extremely valid reason for me to be in here, namely that I am searching for an appropriate travel bag to carry my sound module (the flashing box that stands next to me at gigs) to the United States Of America for our upcoming tour. To my astonishment, it doesn’t take me that long to find the perfect bag for the job – I mean, it’s absolutely ideal. It’s exactly the right size to take on an airplane and even has a handy pocket on the front for cables and plugs.

Unfortunately for me it also happens to be a designer ladies handbag.

Oh, sod it. If David Bowie can get away with it then so can I.

Tuesday 7 November, 3pm (32,000 feet above sea level, Atlantic Ocean):
Not that surprisingly, I have spent most of today on the receiving end of a merciless ribbing about the handbag. Still, UK customs allowed me to take my module on the plane without administering a full body-cavity search first so as far as I’m concerned the bag was a triumph. We are, as I write, enjoying the third of a great many Gin & Tonics that will eventually see our passage through into The New World. The U S of A. America.

It occurs to me that I’ve been dreaming of this moment ever since I first formed a band with George when we were 13. A small, glistening tear forms in my eye. Although this may be more to do with the fact that I’ve been trying to watch Date Movie for an hour now and it’s still, still, really really awful.

Tuesday 7 November, 6.15pm EST (Customs, Detroit Metro Airport, USA):
This is it. We’ve arrived. Problem is, we haven’t truly entered US territory until we penetrate the notoriously hard-ass last defence that is US Customs. We wait in line for a long, long time. Innocent old ladies in anoraks are dragged away, screaming, into smoky, poorly-lit basement rooms, uniformed men stalk the corridors wielding massive cattle prods, fresh blood drips from the ceilings. Well, perhaps not, but it’s a bit bloody scary nonetheless.

My turn comes to step up to the heavily-shielded examination booth containing a bank of blinking computers and a straight-faced Customs Official who, I think, looks like the kind of guy who’d be unlikely to appreciate jokes of the “Is that a home-made pipe bomb in my pocket or am I just pleased to see you?” variety. I hand him my passport. He eyes it for a while, giving nothing away. There is a pause. He stops, looks at me, and pauses again. As if by magic, another uniformed official arrives. They both look at me.

“Etta”, he says. “Do you have a stick?”. Do you have a stick?! These are not words I was hoping to hear at this point in proceedings. Etta produces a 4-ft battering pole from her trouser-leg. My testicles crawl up inside my body. This is it. This is the opening line from one of those horror stories you read about Brits on holiday. I swear I can hear the rubber slap of latex gloves being donned in a nearby interrogation room.

The male official waits. And waits. I struggle to keep my eyes off the big stick. Finally, he says, “You’re free to go”. Heart thumping, I proceed gingerly out the other side. Fearfully, I turn back and see Etta using the stick to adjust the OPEN/CLOSED sign hanging from the ceiling.

Tuesday 7 November, 7.30pm (Airport Bar, Detroit Metro Airport, USA):
Just to clarify, the reason that we’re in Detroit Metro Airport is that we are flying to New York via Michigan. This – for those of you not familiar with the geography of the US – is a bit like stopping off in Uganda on the way from Bristol to London. Still, we’re in a foreign country now and have a few hours to kill so we may as well make the most of it. Which is why we’re on our third pint of Budweiser in the Airport Bar. We have fallen into conversation with Steve, an American businessman on his way back to Washington DC, who has turned out to be an absolute diamond.

“Seriously,” he’s telling us, pint in hand, “you British guys can say anything over here and Americans will immediately think you’re charming and intelligent. Everyone loves the accent”. This turns out to be true. Steve is very much on the ball, which is a relief, given the nature of his opening gambit, “So what part of Australia are you guys from?” (he was teasing us, of course, but it took on a particularly humorous resonance for me the following day when somebody actually asked me that question for real). Steve takes our business card and promises to look out for us in the charts, whilst we, slightly tipsy, head onwards to Terminal 46 to catch our connecting flight.

Wednesday 8 November, 2am (Newark Airport, New York, USA):
Finally, after many, many delays, we reach our destination. Question is, have our instruments? Furthermore, has Jon Clifton, the living legend that is our American tour manager, asphyxiated from boredom waiting in the airport parking lot for our massively belated arrival? We turn the corner into the luggage retrieval area. Outside the rain is lashing down. Bags…? Instruments…? Tour Manager…?

You’ll just have to wait and see.

Chris Lightyear