Vancouver ex-pats Dandi Wind were kind enough to send us this collection of random anecdotes from their October tour of England. You can catch their infamous live show/80s art-spasm on December 14 at Mesa Luna. It’s all ages! (unlike this tour diary, which is for mature readers only).
LIVERPOOL
“The tour was off to a good start—Szam forgot to bring a jacket and wore the shittiest full-of-holes shoes imaginable. We flew into London in the morning and had to get to Nottingham by train to catch a car ride to Liverpool that night. When we got to Nottingham we were met by Ricky, our “tour manager”, who immediately told us his radiator had blown up the day before and thus we were going to be losing loads of money on this tour buying train tickets. We also met “Mossy”, this dood who sleeps occasionally on Ricky’s floor, who was recently let out of a mental asylum and is a chronic masturbator. We could already feel the magic in the air.
When we arrived in Liverpool in we had the nice surprise that Szam’s keyboard wouldn’t work and despite traveling 20 hours that day we wouldn’t be able
to play our first show. We were totally bummed out—but Ricky DJ’d for the crowd who actually chanted “O-ASIS” and tossed bar glasses at him. After the gig Ricky fooled about with a girl in an inflatable Lamborghini—we decided not to mention to him the strange sores all around her mouth.
NOTTINGHAM
All of Ricky’s friends in Nottingham kept saying how great the Liars Club show would be, and it totally was—it was completely sold out and tons of people knew the words. The audience was going crazy, it was super sweaty and it felt like we were in a Dead Kennedys video from 1981 or the Devo video for “Come Back Jonie”. It even ended in a stage invasion that knocked out the sound system. Also a girl got her tooth kicked in during a crazy mosh! In honor of Nottingham we wore Robin Hood outfits: actually Szam was more of a medieval knight and Dandi looked a bit like Peter Pan. Mossy did backing videos of women shitting onto a camera for like 10 minutes. After the show Ricky smashed a coconut on his head leaving, him with a gigantic bloody goose egg
for the rest of the tour.
BIRMINGHAM
In Birmingham we traveled with Punish The Atom, a fun Buzzcocks-esque band from Nottingham. The show was fine, nothing especially memorable but Ricky DJ’d the night to an amazing close by mixing “Scatman’s World” with “Whoomp There It Is”. Then on Punish’s tourbus, Ricky attempted the worlds first NUDE CROWDSURF inside a tour bus on the WAY BACK from the gig. He then stuck a carnation up his arse (see figure A).
LEEDS
In Leeds we played a disastrous all-day festival that was practically empty—the only memorable bits was this synth band’s lead singer looked exactly like The Captain (the Vancouver icon) fronting Human League dressed as a communist! Also, Szam ate pork scratchings.
MANCHESTER
In Manchester, we played with Theoretical Girl from Essex. She and Dandi were corralled for about two hours by this wistful Irish geezer named Jeremiah who only talked in song and kept demanding topics to sing about. Every song had the same melody and each sentence ended with the phrase “Don’t you know”. He would conclude each song by saying “Have you ever heard a song like that?!” He was interested in singing about lockets and fields of barley BUT we got him to sing about Kate Bush and science. Hilariously he DESPISES science so the song was all like “Scientists are bastards, they can’t cure death–don’t trust them”.
Weirdly he didn’t even drink alcohol in our presence, just nine cups of tea. Inevitably he took the mic from Dandi right as we finished playing and started (get this) freestyling over “Hand to Phone” by Adult. I wish we had a recording.
Although the Manchester gig was pretty small, it was a fun night which included ordering eight pizzas from a “Canadian” pizza parlour run by Turks. When Dandi and a girl we stayed with were waiting for pizza these two mean looking drunks bust in the pizza parlour and said “We’re in the mood for SEX,” and left. Evidentially the area where the show was held was rather unsavory.
LONDON
We played about six shows in London—we traveled there twice from Nottingham and Ricky stayed up for four consecutive days both times. The crowds in London are generally too cool for school but we had a good time at White Heat and Queens of Noize. Also it was pretty mental to play at the infamous Fabric club—it was oversold and there were apparently 2200 people in the building. The subwoofers downstairs are so powerful you almost lose control of your bowels.
The first London show was by total fluke with Vancouver’s own Stinkmitt at Club Motherfucker. It was totally crammed but Stinkmitt showed up so late we
frantically had to switch positions on the bill and they only got to play two songs. I wish they could’ve played longer as they’re always a blast to watch. Though Maren did say they played that same club five times that week(!) [This does not surprise us in the slightest—ed.]
We also played at the 100 Club, which was once an infamous punk venue but is now a Granville Street-style blues bar/lounge. The show was really early (like 6pm) and considering that quite well attended. Because there was so many bands we only played like three songs, but we did open for Selfish Cunt, who were fucking AMAZING live, entirely due to Martin Selfish’s absolutely frantic performance. Dandi’s in love! He literally put Iggy in his prime to shame. He kicked over several tables and threw cellphones and pints into the wall. Totally insane and actually dangerous. This was the best show we saw in
England—most stuff going on in London is deathly boring at the moment. Incidentally, when “Acrtic Monkeys” put something out in North America next year you’ll see what we mean.
Between shows Dandi did a photoshoot for a magazine called “Less Common” using clothes from this mental clothing store called Kokoh Tozai that has the
most outrageous streetware imaginable. Apparently MIA buys her clothes there and the designer is the guy who did the Bjork swan costume a few years back. They have for instance, a size XXXL tweety bird sequined poncho for 1500 pounds. They lent the mag these two amazing hats; one that was about four feet high and made of exotic Papa New Guinea bird feathers and another that was a military helmet with beautiful gold quail feathers throughout and REAL wings attached to the side of the head. Very PC.
Apart from a lot of traveling, watching daytime TV and visiting museums, those were the highlights. We’re going back in January again to tour for our new European EP. Our album Concrete Igloo is out now in North America. It has 10 videos on it so buy it. And we’re playing our first Vancouver show in nine months on December 14 @ Mesa Luna (all ages).
www.dandiwind.com