Ha! I am a blog-liar, clogging up the blogosphere with my sordid lies, because I never did update the blog from California as I said I would. Wymeswold is not in California, as becomes quite obvious when you travel from one to the other. Anyway, I wanted to close out the tour story while I'm still vaguely in tour mode, because otherwise I am just some fool writing a blog from his bedroom and nobody thinks that is cool. I haven't been to sleep for a lot of hours and my body clock and my brain clock are having a full on fight, so forgive me if this is a little non-senscical. I will do my best.
I felt pretty recharged after my stay in Half Moon Bay and was certainly in much better health than when I arrived. Adam and I drove up to San Francisco where we met up with Rhys and his charming young son Daniel. The four of us went out on the town, prompting one smart-arse to suggest Three Men and a Baby as a Halloween outfit (we later discussed this and abandoned the idea because NOBODY WANTS TO BE STEVE GUTTENBERG), and tried to have dinner in a crepe restaurant. Well, I succeeded and Adam succeeded; I won't name names, but one of the Williams boys was over-tired and distracted by the ceiling-fans and this meant the other had to keep taking him outside to calm down and couldn't eat his tea. Manners can be hard to learn.
I said a tender good-bye to Adam Lipman, which was a little easier to stomach given that he's coming to visit me in England in December, then Rhys and I dropped Daniel off with Jenny and did the only sensible thing two old friends can do in San Francisco on a Tuesday night: drank loads of beer and played game after game of Ms Pac Man. It was super fun to hang out with Rhys and he and Jenny laid on a fine British breakfast the next morning, containing earl grey tea and marmite (in different vessels, obv) before Rhys battled through the awful SF traffic to drop me off at the bus station from whence I was transported to San Luis Obispo.
San Luis Obispo is famous for 'Bubblegun Alley'. Yep. It's otherwise a pretty pleasant little Californian town with a young hip-looking population. I spent a couple of hours hanging out with Rodi who set up the show for me, and it was interesting to go and chat to some of the people at the Occupy SLO camp, where a faction of occupiers had apparently split off because there were 'too many homeless people' hanging out there! We went over to Cafe Kreuzberg where Rodi and her friends organised a guitar I could borrow and I set up to play. The cafe was big and fairly crowded, but most people weren't interested in watching an obscure British guy singing his obscure British songs, so I was mostly playing to a small group of Rodi's friends and a couple of drunks who kept requesting songs I didn't know how play. It wasn't a spectacular show, but it was fun to be able to sing 'properly' again now that my throat was a bit less constricted and I made off with a haul of about $4 in donations and a handful of muffins that the cafe hadn't sold that day. Not too bad!
I had a vague lead for a show in Los Angeles the next day, but this turned out to be a dead end so I spent the whole of the next day travelling down the coast to San Diego. A lot of the road goes right along the beach, which was pretty fun. I arrived in San Diego feeling kind of grotty and jaded, but it was awesome to be met by my friend Taryn, who took me to to a totally banging late night burrito place where I ate very well. At least the food was good: I think I actually ate it pretty inexpertly and got guacamole down myself, but Taryn was polite enough not to point it out. Next day, I had a fun morning strolling around Taryn's neighbourhood in the beautiful, summery sunshine, then when Taryn got back from work we went out shopping for a Halloween outfit I could wear. We soon decided it would be more fun to drink lots of beer, which we were ably assisted in by the beautiful Michael K. Sherk. Mike was my touring parnter for the 12 week US jaunt I made in 2004 and I hadn't seen him since, so it was cool to hang with him. He knew about some kind of open-mic/pot-luck party going down outside of town, so we all set out to go there. Unfortunately, when Mike tries to drive me out of San Diego it makes his car break down. This is what happened in 2004 and this is what happened in 2011 when his car started billowing smoke. At one point we thought it might be about to explode, but it didn't do anything so dramatic, and we got towed to a nearby garage where a friend of Mike's picked us up and took us to the party.
I played a couple of songs to a small crowd, but it was fun to sing for Mike and Taryn. Then Mike played a cool set, featuring the future-hit "I'm Afraid Of The Dark" which he co-wrote with Adam Lipman. Then karaoke happened. I will award one motivational post-card to the first person who can correctly identify the song I am singing here:
We all stayed at the Sherk family home in Encinitas and it was great to see Mike's wonderful parents Annie and Jerry the next morning. Jerry runs one of my favourite pages on the internet, where he posts photos from his days as a defensive tackle for the Cleveland Browns and his later career as a sports photographer. There are some amazing shots, which you can check out here.
We spent a lot of the day dossing about watching bits of Halloween movies, then later Mike and I went out to another Halloween party/show that night where we busted out our intense cover version of the Misfits' classic 'We Bite'. I got a pretty nice sing-along going to my only vaguely Halloweeen themed song, 'I'm a Ghost'. Then a dance party happened and I threw down some of my patented dance moves when New Order came on the stereo. Some of you might have seen this move (and the corresponding look of disdain on Anja's face) replicated on dancefloors across Great Britain:
We had another slow kind of day after this before heading back to San Diego where Mike dropped me off and where Taryn and I went out for yet more halloween fun. Americans love haloween. I honestly am not generally a karaoke person at all, but for some reason (the fact that I had become so accustomed to performing night after night? Boooooze?) I ended up singing again. This time, Taryn and I did a stirring version of 'Don't You Want Me, Baby' by the Human League which I am informed was captured for the ages on film. Let's hope, for all our sakes (especially Phil Oakey's) that this video never ever hits the internet. Here are Taryn and I celebrating our triumphant performance by playing a game of hat switcheroo and shooting 'blue steel' at the camera. At least I guess that's what I'm going for...
Taryn and I went home to watch an episode of the X-files which we were assured would be terrifying but was just stupid and the day was done. The next couple of days were spent very pleasantly in San Diego, hanging out with Taryn doing not too much. I had my first, wonderful, Trader Joe's experience, made some vegetable moussaka (inspired by Slam Noble, the lyrical bazooka), drank some bad "bull's blood" flavoured wine, finally watched 'Evil Dead', ran through some lawn sprinklers and had several other life-changing experiences. On my last night, Mike came in to town and we went out for a fun night of drinks, pizza and shuffle-board. I said my farewells to Mike that evening and to Taryn EARLY the next morning when she kindly dropped me off at the train station where I began my near 7000 mile trip back to Wymeswold. It was a really great way to end the trip and I am very grateful to Mike and to Taryn for showing me such a wonderful time in SoCal.
So that was 6 AM on Tuesday morning (Californian time) and here I am at the other end of those 7000 miles at a shade before midnight on Wednesday. My brain is too befuddled to try to make any kind of grand conclusion from all the drivel that I have seen fit to blog over the past 6 weeks, but I can at least say that it has been a wonderful experience and one that I am very glad to have gone through. I met up with some of my favourite people along the way, made a whole load of new friends, spent time in some beautiful and fascinating places and generally had a ball every where I went. I am extremely grateful to all the people who have helped me out along the way and owe so many people drinks, meals and hospitality that I will be paying back the debts for years to come. At least I hope so: come see me in London!
Oh, and thanks to you, dear reader, for bearing with me through all the waffling, the drivel, and the sentences that didn't make any sense. I'm new to blogging. I will be very cross with myself if it takes me another seven years until I take myself out on tour again, so hopefully I will have some more adventures to inelegantly relay to you in the not too distant future. Until then, may peace bewitch you...
Yours,
Hugh John Noble
xx
