Manchester United! Manchester… unexcited! That’s pretty much what it seemed like. Two days in a row of people staring. At least in Manchester when we played I saw some head bobbing, and there were four kids, nay, six… holy crap. There’s that 64. I’ll explain later.
The funnest part about the kids in Manchester was they stood directly out of the circle of light that we could see. So there could’ve been 10 kids or 300 and we’d never have known. After we got off, I guesstimated there was about 80.
I met one of my infamous online bugaboos, one TawmDee. This kid would lay into me on IM about old Impaled, or how much we sucked compared to Carcass so much I almost blocked him until I figured out he was actually a fan just giving me some shit. So turns out, he’s about 5 feet tall and weighs maybe about 110 pounds. Yup… that’s Impaled fan material right there.
The rest of the evening basically had me yelling at my computer because of the really bad wifi connection I was paying way too much for. There was a point I made a cigarette run for our tour manager. I asked the owner of the shop for some Marlboros and he said “10 20.” I was like, holy crap, I didn’t know cigarettes were THAT expensive in the UK! I had to go back in the rain, get more pounds, and then come to find out, the owner was asking me if I wanted a 10 pack or a 20 pack. I had no idea they sold them that way. Fucking limeys.
Oh, so 64. These kids laid into us for about 30 minutes about how important a number 64 was. One of them had it tattooed on him and he made me sign a 64 onto a record. If anyone can figure out why this is so important, please go inform someone else. I think I heard enough.
The only other funny thing was when I was watching Monstrosity and some kid on the side of the stage who’d sold them pot earlier decided to drop trou and wave his penis at them. Then a skinhead so in character I thought he must be a cartoon came and started pushing him around.
Oh, another funny thing, some guy kissed me on the cheek after kidding around about how he was gay for liking Impaled. Then he left. I still don’t know whether or not he was kidding, now. Oh, actually, there were girls during Monstrosity grabbing guys and pretending to butt ram them. Then some guys started doing it. Quite a “festive” evening.
Oh yeah, also Nick Barker (ex-Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir) came to the show. Some crack was made about me being kicked out of the tour bus and being replaced. I said “good” and they added that Raul would have to come and Nick would play drums for Impaled. I said “no way” and Nick took it personally. All I meant was I didn’t want to hang out with Raul.
Glasgow, Scotland was the next day. I like Glasgow. A lot. There were loads of crazy people I could hardly understand despite them speaking English. It turned out this was kind of “our” night as Impaled did smashingly. See, the town had this crusty/punk/metal mix that worked out nicely in our favor. We play loosely, or as others might put it, badly, so the punkers seem to really dig it. It’s like “Aye! ‘ere’s a load of meta’ heads that urn’t fraid to get rrrrrrraw.” We met some really cool people. Sean met some Iraqi store owner who had quite a few unfavorable things to say about our homeland. We met a lady who told us about “monk rock” and loads of drunk weegees (people from Glasgow) and partied with them late into the night. I think I partied a little too hard. I looked in the mirror this morning and couldn’t recognize myself past the luggage under my eyes.
The weegees were awesome, just out for a laugh, but when we started getting into politics and the like, they seem to be intelligent and know what they were talking about. At least, the bits I could understand seemed smart.
Today we rolled into Leeds. I jumped out of the bus, after not leaving my bunk for many an hour, and headed out to find a toilet. Or as the weegees might’ve said, a “bog.” At least, I planned to make it a bog, if you catch my drift. Well, I wandered for about a half hour, and no luck. So I wandered back. The bus was gone. Uh… yeah. I thought this was the club, but all the doors were locked. No bus. No club. No working cell phone. I’m not sure how many times I called myself stupid.
Well, as it turns out, the bus was around the corner. Note to self… cling to the bus. This was a warning.
Sean and I walked about town for a bit and came back, only to find out we were going on in 15 minutes. Oh goody. So we jammed up on stage, got ready to go, and… emptiness. The whole show area was empty. There were people in the bar. I called them on the PA to come on in, it was pretty embarassing in front of the other bands. Well, we started, and people did wander in. And it was as if there was an invisible force field keeping them 15 feet away from us. They seemed appreciative, but I really can’t tell. There was a pair of headbangers, and a really nice goth kid who I wasn’t sure if he was blind or not because he didn’t look me in the eye. But he liked the set. Maybe it’s best if he was blind.