Foreigners in America. Episode 2.5.

I'm not going to say why, but I really need to get more productive with posts about last year's Johnny Foreigner US tour. It's just ridiculous that I've been back in South Africa for almost five months and I've only blogged about the first and second day of the tour! Here's something that should have been squeezed in between posting about our magical adventures in the Sprinkle Kingdom on the first night and our sold out show in Philly the next night! Soundtracked by the lovely sounds of Beulah and made by drumming/ casioing/ filming/ editing/ eating machine Junior Elvis Washington Laidley, it's a wee video of the band leaving Vermont, heading through to Philly and being re-united with your humble narrator.

Foreigners in America. Episode 4. Philladelphia and Johnny Brenda's.

After our very late night of very awesome awesomeness I'm less than impressed to have Junior waking me up so early on Tuesday morning.

Jun: "Ben; we need to leave in a half hour."
Sleeping Ben: "...but... what about the burritos?"

Indeed Evan had promised to make us burritos before we left, but that never happened. Instead we had to rush to the venue to be there by our call time of 3. We'll landed arriving well ahead of time and then sitting around for hours, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to Jun dragging me out of bed...

If on that Tuesday morning I knew what a luxury it would land up being to actually wake up in the city we'd play that night, I'd have appreciated our day in Philly a bunch more than I did. But that's not to say I didn't enjoy our day in the hometown of the Fresh Prince. We head to Target to get a sheet for visuals. Then we go to radioshack to buy some batteries. We leave with 3 times clampable little lamps (so the band can still see thier pedals when the visuals out), 1 times iPod DJ console for Lex and a brand new casio keyboard that's bizzarely still being produced with an identical soundchip to the one used in the one from the mid 80ies that Jun plays on. With this godsend back-up keyboard in hand we finally break out of Radioshack and head through to the venue. Outside, for the first time, I lay eyes on the colossal godzilla bus Los Campesinos are touring in. Inside I quickly get half introduced to some of the Campesinos and their merch girl Kelly. Then I hang in the venue, working on editing the video from the previous night's awesomefest, while the Campesinos soundcheck. This takes forever. Eventually we head to the downstairs bar for a draught. Sitting in a little row at the bar we're joined by a stranger I initially think is an American. This misconception is soon corrected as said stranger sweetly introduces himself as Rob Campesino, the band's newest member and the kid that needs to play the most different instruments. While his job description sounds pretty cool, it'll still be a while before I understand just how cool it is. Fast forward a few hours. The venue is now packed. The show has sold out. We take to Johnny Brenda's awesome stage, and as the band play our Top Gun intro tune I stand looking back at the huge screen that's slowly rolling down from the ceiling. As the screen become fully extended, Top Gun ends and Jun starts bashing out the opening beat of Feels Like Summer. 20 seconds later I'm throwing myself around said stage and proceed to have 40 something minutes of totally awesome times. The next thing I know the screen is crawling back up towards the ceiling and our set is over.

Head backstage for few minutes, catch my breath and then head back out to try find Jeff and Nic, the Sprinkle Kingdom Knights that were able to make the show. Before I find them I'm approached by a dozen different people, each telling me how much they enjoyed our show and chatting to me about the fact that I was using a keytar to trigger visuals. It's so nice getting such positive feedback from the audience. Maybe it's that we're a band from overseas, but back home, after a show, I'd never have so many strangers come over just to say they liked what I was doing. Eventually I find Nic and Jeff. We hang out and then realise it's almost time for Los Campesinos to start their set. We squeeze back into the venue and what follows is just awe-inspiring genius.

Guitars, keys, glock, tambourine, vocals & drums! This is why Rob has the most fun job.

Hearing the Campesinos live I can understand why they took so long to soundcheck. Right now the band's eight boys and girls sound more like 1 unified whole than any band I've ever seen. Despite being so many kids playing so many instruments, their sound is so coherent, as if it's a fully produced recording being assembled right in front of me. When Lex told me we'd been invited to tour the states in support of Los Camp i was obviously insanely excited. But considering my literal inability to speak when I met Q and not U back in 2004, I am kinda relieved that I'm not a crazy Los Camp Fan. AT least I'd be able to speak to the kid while we toured with them. I was into the band massively in thier early days. Somewhere there's video footage of me DJing them for the first time in June 2006 at a Sovereign Academy party. I was playing a demo of You me Dancing! and just having the time of my life, so I happy I could share a song like that with a dancefloor of people. I'd excitedly followed the band's progress from that single, got Ri to pre-order me a vinyl copy of their 10" EP "Sticking Fingers into Sockets" and did the same thing when the band released their first album "Hold on now youngster". But, while i loved that album, I stopped following the band there. Since then they released 2 more full albums, but for some strange reason I never got hold of them. So I was kinda glad to be able to be supporting the band, not being this fan-boy that had a copy of everything they ever released. Now, seeing the band live for the first time, I'm even more glad to have missed the last 2 albums. Seeing Los performing them right in front of me and hearing these songs for the first time is just too awesome. The combination of being in this fantastic city, getting to play it with one of my favourite bands and the sheer joy of seeing Los Camp live has left me feeling totally high. We hang around, eat what is most likely the best burger I've ever had and drink beer that's surprisingly great considering the label says "Fish Town". Lex gets mad drunk, Francis get's mad at mad drunk Lex. Lex responds by bringing half the Philly friends we've made to the Canadream and making a ton of noise. Francis freaks out some more. The night ends under the watchful eye of a giant kitten. Sitting on the floor of Nic's lounge it feels like a total sequel to ending last night off sitting on the floor of the Sprinkle lounge. As it grows later and later we eventually deiced we should head back to the Canadream. I climb into the bed I've been left with. As I try find some way to get comfortable I wonder about the child this space is supposed to sleep. Is it a midget child? Or maybe one that's had his legs sawn off to fit into this thing...

Foreigners in America. Episode 2

(This second episode of Johnny Foreigner's USA adventures picks up from here)

After I get the call that The Foreigners have finally arrived I jump up and run out of the Sprinkle Kingdom and into the streets of Philadelphia. A block down the road I spot the massive RV that says Canadream all over to it and head towards it.

Seeing the kids again is awesome. I also get introduced to our tour manager Francis, driver Mike and legendary guitar tech Dan. Since tonight isn't a proper show Francis leaves with Mike to go sleep. I catch up a little with the kids and fan out over how cool this little Philly community seems. Jun informs that Algernon Cadawallader (a band he gave me last year and I went CRAZY over) are friends with The Sprinkle Gang. I freak out. The Sprinkle Knights are freaked out that I'm freaking out so much because Algernon are just regular Philly friends to them. In fact, it turns out a bunch of them play in a band that just finished recording an album at the Cadawalladers' warehouse!

While I'm totally in the mode of just wanting to hang out, I'm starting this tour without a sleeping bag. To remedy this Martin offers to drive me to the nearest Target (which turns out to be not so near). Although I'm stressing about missing the party it's great getting to drive around and see this city I'm so quickly falling in love with. By the time we get home from shopping Lex has bought me the cities' most famous food - a Philly cheese steak... ...with waffle chips on the side... ...and (thanks to our shopping trip) I have a dozen bottles of Doctor Pepper to wash it all down with. The Cheese Steak is delicious, but I'm way to excited to eat more than half of it. Martin takes Jun and I up to the balcony on the 4th floor of The Kingdom and we check out the view of the city at night. Head back downstairs and hang in the lounge for a while. Nic walks into the room "hey guys - Skateboards are about to start!" Rounding everyone up like rock and roll cattle Nic drives us into basement and I proceed to have my mind melted. Skateboards are perfect. Super fun, high energy, instrumental stuff. Jon is doing some way crazy synth, the guitar and bass sound like they're high fiving each other and the drummer is a big hairy beastman totally loosing his shit. It's too awesome. My brain can not actually fathom the carnage that would go down if this band could ever play in Pretoria.

Bonjour are next which proves to be a huge surprise. Jeff had described them with a vague "indie" tag, but seeing them now it's a major throw back to early 90ies Chicago. Perfect scream/talk vocals and layers of noodley guitars have my brain screaming "Cap'n Jazz" and my lungs screaming "fuck yeah" after every song. Also, the crazy grizzly man is back behind the drummers freaking out as hard as he did with Skateboards a half hour earlier. We head up to the house to hang for a bit. What's happening in the Sprinkle Kingdom is as perfect as any house party I've ever been at. This reminds me so much of Hotbox back home. But with Sprinkle Kingdom the balance between house and party leans even more to the house side. There's no cover to get in, only a jar that's passed around for people to contribute what they can. There's no bar, people just bring their own booze. Martin and a new friend whip me up a glass of gin and aloe juice, which is way cool. Again the night reaches the point where someone travels from conversation to conversation, fulling everyone in on the fact that the next band is about to start. This whole thing is just too beautiful. I head down the staircase with the silliest grin on my face, too in love with the amazing community we've dropped into for the night. As different as they were from each other, the similarities between Skateboards and Bonjour have me thinking I've kinda got this Philly scene pinned down musically. As soon as Omar start that illusion is well and truly shattered. Just one boy and girl, both members of Omar scream a bunch. The girl plays guitar, the boy plays drums and between two generate an absurd amount of noise. It's punk as fuck. We're next. While everyone else evacuates the basement we start setting up. We all plug in. To prepare for the visuals the only light in the places is unscrewed. And then people start flooding back in...

Foreigners in America. Episode 1

So where we left off; Jun gave me magical sounding name of a venue in Philadelphia. I made my way there and was confused and frightened to discover nothing more than a little house that looked pretty trashed from the outside. With the foreigners (and their tour manager) all on British phones, and me not able to call outside of the country, I couldn't reach anyone to hear how far they were from Philly. More importantly, I couldn't find out if I was at the right location or if, at any minute, some West Philly crackhead was gonna show up and stab me for sitting on his porch. But, unable to reach anyone all I could do was sit on that porch and wait, drawing some comfort from the faded Disney Land poster stuck to the inside the window. Confused, afraid, separated from the band and feeling lost in America, this was totally one of the low points of the tour. Luckily it doesn't drag out for all that long. A SUV pulls up next to the house, a dude steps out and walks towards me with a face that's either angry or confused. I struggle to explain what I'm doing there and rattle off a few incoherent syllables. "Oh you're in the band?".

Confused dude (Martin) lets me into the Sprinkle Kingdom and the place changes from scary to magical in a flash. While it's got nothing on the smashed glass, cigarette butts and lingerie catalogs that covered their porch, the house is still kinda a mess. To a messy guy like me is immediately welcoming. Feels like there are synths lying around and hand drawn signs stuck up in ever room Martin lead me through. And then there's the basement. Right off the bat I love this place. Martin introduces me to two more Knights of The Sprinkle Kingdom. Jon (who's sick and doesn't wanna make any physical contact) and Jeff (who does). The dudes fill me in on the supporting acts for the night. Omar, Skateboards and Bonjour all sound like cups of tea that could be mine depending on my mood. Jon heads back to his room, Jeff and I hang in the kitchen talking about Weezer and Islands and "how the fuck do people that write such good songs and then suddenly start writing really bad songs?". Jeff needs to go skype his girlfriend, but he tells me to make myself comfortable;

"We've got food and we've got video games?"
"I think I'm just gonna work on my visuals a bit"
"Okay cool... Oh yeah! Today is Columbus Day - there's an arcade a few blocks away that's free all day!"

Obviously unable to choose working over free arcade games I get directions to this spot and head out into the streets. Things suddenly seem a bunch less scary now that I know I'm in the right place. Also - there are squirrels. When I reach the arcade the place is packed. Virtually every game is being played by as many players as possible. I land up walking around the whole arcade 3 times, unable to find anything to play. Even without getting my game on this pretty cool - people stopped bring new arcade games into SA almost a decade ago, leaving our surviving arcades depressing graveyards for decomposing "House of the Dead" and "Dance Dance Revolution" machines. Now, seeing new arcade games, ones on a level with next generation consoles, is pretty damn sweet.

Eventually I get to jump into teaming up with some guy on this really frantic gears of waresque rail shooter which we finish. Then I move onto what I've been eyeing since I got here, a Star Wars pinball machine. I head back to The Kingdom after a few hundred balls. Land up hanging out for ages with Jon and Jeff. Start getting a sense of the community that's based around their basement and others like it across the city. It seems pretty damn awesome. It turns out Jon is childhood friends with Anamanaguchi, hence them playing here a few weeks back. He has his own 8-bit (well kinda 8-bit) project called George and Jonathan, I download it, we listen while we chat. Then, to fill them in on the South African music I keep talking, about I play the band this. Jeff feeds me pasta. Jon and I geek out about synths. My phone rings. It's Junior. The Foreigners are in Philly!