The Lackloves

11.26.02 Welcome to the tour diary. Let's go. We arrived in London at about 10 a.m. and headed straight to the hotel. Once again we had quite a ride with our hired driver. Without going into too much detail, he may need to increase his insurance policy after the "incident." Second such incident in as many trips to/from airports for us. Same thing last month on the way to LaGuardia after CMJ. Okay, he rear-ended some bloke. Just trying to catch on with the local "street lingo," as the youngsters say. Nobody injured, a few minutes lost exchanging information, and back on our way. We immediately spent about four hours in some pubs, acclimating ourselves to the locals and enjoying a pint or seventeen, mostly Guiness "Extra Cold," Stella Artois (premuim ale in London, the equivalent of Schlitz in Belgium where it´s brewed. The miracle of beer marketing), John Smith Extra Smooth, and the old standby Strongbow. Very tired, very tired, very tired. Tomorrow is a new day, with more rest and new adventures. Hey, what do you expect? It was a long flight. Yes yes?

11.27.02 Ok, we finally got to a computer to update the site. Today we hit the tourist spots, with Don Moore as tour guide. A few stops: the Tower Bridge, Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, etc. (Note to self: Don´t update the website while drunk.) This town is old. Of course we popped into a pub or two to gather our wits. We returned to the hotel to discover that we were supposed to be at the club (Notting Hill Arts Club) at 4 p.m. for soundcheck. It was now 4:45 p.m. After Mike made a few quick calls, we get a cab and drive to the club. It turned out the be a great show, about 35 minutes of pure rock & roll. The Brits received us well (Simon -- at least we think that was his name. If we're not sure, we'll call him or her "Simon" -- the soundman: "You sound like a barbershop quartet with distortion pedals!") and we followed up the set with drinks at the bar, absinthe for Jack. The rest of those pansies wouldn´t try it. Poured in three layers with Bailey´s and Kahlua (or the British equivalent thereof). After drinking the top layer, Jack wasn´t sure which layer was which (should have been a good indication right there. Jack knows what Bailey´s and Kahlua looks like). Carey from Outragous Cherry: "Well, did it taste like paint thinner?" Jack: "Yes." Realizes several minutes later he´s never drunk paint thinner. Mystery solved.

11.28.02 The morning greeted us with a 7:30 a.m. wake-up call and a cab ride to our new hotel, which is actually a sweet (suite?) two-bedroom apartment. Nice. We shower up and jump in a mini cab (much cheaper than a regular cab, and frowned upon by regular cabbies) to Paddington Station for an hour train ride to Oxford and an interview and two song acoustic set at 107.9-FM with Noel. Great guy, great time, great coffee! Went over very well and we played acoustic versions of Down Deep and Emily. Jack pounded on a water bottle with a drum stick, while Nick played tambourine and Don & Mike played acoustics. The tracks will be released on a forthcoming CD Noel is releasing for charity. Afterwards, a stop into the Hobgoblin pub for a pint or two of Scrumpy Jack, then onward to a pub called the Gloucester Arms that must be about 700 years old. Hell, all the pubs are about 700 years old. Pints, fish and chips, steak, cheeseburgers, 70s rock and punk on the jukebox, and quality time getting to know labelmates Outrageous Cherry ("easier done than said!"), then back on the train for London to see our favorite Aussie bartender, Paul at The Hope. This is a great little pub directly next Scala House, our new hotel. This was our Thanksgiving night, pints of Guiness at the Hope. Jack and Nick enjoyed some Pizza Hut prior (one of the most vile pizzas available normally, but in London - delish!) while Mike retired a bit earlier with a take-away pizza from Pizza Express. No American Football, no turkey, but a great match between Liverpool and Leeds...Once more, Cheers!

11.29.02 Nick is writing this at about noon local time. I just returned from a visit to the Tate Modern Museum and a stop at St Paul's. Very impressive museum, a few Pollacks, Warhols and some cheeky video art. Simply loved the naked guy smacking himself in the face with a boxing glove, while pleasing himself at the same time. It frightened me and intrigued me at once. I couldn´t look away. It was a great building right on the Thames by the Millenium Bridge. We go to BBC for a live broadcast at 3 p.m. with Liz Kershaw. We believe it is on digital radio, BBC 6. Check out the BBC website to see if it is broadcast. Wait, most of you are asleep! Tonight it is the Dirty Water Club, which Jim (an Englishman with great early 70's hair) said was the place for live rock on a Friday night... It's sickening but....Cheers!

11.30.02 Pubs visited thus far: The Horse and Carriage, the Cock and Bull, the Bull and Finch, the Finch and Bull, the Bull and Carriage, the Finch and Carriage, the Cock and Finch, the Horse and Bull, the Cock and Horse, the Gloucester Arms, the Northampton Arms, the Boston Arms, the North Gloucesterhampton Arms, the Horse and Carriage Arms, the Elusive Camel, the Randy Ferret, The Flexible Goldfish, The Curious Mule, the Horseless Carraige, The Goblin, The Hobgoblin, the Hobgoblin Arms, The Horse and Goblin, the Finch and Goblin, the South Gloucester Gobliner, The Westminster Arms, the Black Horse, the Red Horse, the Blue Horse, the White Horse, the Black Horse Arms, The Westminster Courts, The Westminster Courts Arms, The Millharbour Court, the Dickens House, the Hobgoblin and Finch, The Hobgoblin and Finch Arms, the Shakespeare's Head, the Shakespeare's Horse, The Shakespeare's Horse's Head, The Shakespeare's Bull Arms, and The Hope. See if you can figure out which of those I made up. Also, we'd like to give a shout-out to all our homeez in Lizzondon, yo. Great shizzow last night muthafuckas. Props to Mark and Donna, Lee, Liz at the Beeb, Fiona, Noel in Oxford, Paddy, Ian, Nigel, Simon, J-Mac, mah boyee Ian, Simon, Simon, Simon, Ian, Nigel, Tracemaster M, Austin Vince, Ian, Paul the Ozzie, and Nigel. And last but not least, the hostest with the mostest, sheeeeeeit: Nigel. Peace out.

12.1.02 We are in Madrid. Nobody speaks any English here, despite what we´ve been led to believe. Dateline Madrid, 10:05 p.m. local time: Obtain international calling card and call Luke and Dedrik to say hi during the Packers/Bears game, which we can´t get an update on to save our lives. Sounds like life is good back ´cross the pond, good to hear some familiar voices, and speaking the King´s English to boot. Odd how four hours in a foreign speaking country puts one out of sorts. Packers up by nine in the 4th quarter. Excellent

12.2.02 Okay, a lot of people do speak English here. More so than we speak Spanish. Amazing how quick you can pick it up though. Late night carousing in Santa Ana Plaza, up today not feeling so hot. But at least got a reasonable night´s sleep last night. That hasn´t happened much on this trip, what with the jetlag and all. Beautiful day, but we are concerned about this bright glowing orb in the sky that we cannot identify. The locals call it "el Sol". Not sure what the hell it is. By the way, the airline lost Jack´s bass and two of Outrageous Cherry´s guitars. Either that or they were stolen. Possibly by Richard Ashcroft, former Verve lead singer, whom we saw at the airport in Madrid. Anyway, that pretty much bites hard. OC borrowed one of our guitars for their 9 a.m. TV appearance here, which we get to do tomorrow. The Spanish Regis and Kathy Lee? Gotta go make some phone calls to British Airways. More later. (Nick:) I miss Lee!! Lee if you´re reading this, please come to Madrid... and stop at the Hope and pick up Paul on your way. Jack´s bass turned up this afternoon and we headed off to an instore appearance at a local record store. The half hour set went great and we met a young lady from Port Washington, Wisconsin. Seems she runs a little shop over here and teaches Spanish on the side. Ok, Jack continue.... Incredibly beautiful city, Madrid, and I'm not just talking about the women (although even the garbagewomen look like supermodels). The architecture is extraordinary, and the city is very clean. Everybody smokes, everywhere. I got yelled at in Spanish by a women in a little store. I'm not sure what she was yelling about, but I'm pretty sure it was for not smoking. Also, there's hardcore porn infomercials on TV. Pornomercials, we call them. They were like what we have here for the cheesball 800 lines ("Are you lonely? I am. Call me at 1-800 blah blah blah"), except with hardcore porn on them. The question is, why would one need to call the number?

12.3.02 11:45 p.m. Right now, my bandmates are out and about in Madrid. I have a really bad hangover. And I am sitting in an internet cafe listening to Spanish techno music. My name is Jack Rice and today is the longest day of my life. Seriously, it´s really long. It makes Jack Bauer´s day in "24" look like a stroll through a field of posies. Note to self: Don´t drink 5 glasses of red wine with Paul Collins from the Beat at his bar in Madrid at the end of eight hours of already drinking everything else alcoholic ever invented, and then try to get up at 8:00 a.m. to spend 15 hours at two Spanish TV stations taping two Spanish TV shows. But I´m getting ahead of myself here. Right. Where was I? Oh, by the way, check this out: ¿Çñ. Cool. Okay, so let´s backtrack to Monday. It´s fuzzy, but I seem to recall that Mike went off about 4 p.m. to do a radio interview while Don, Nick and myself went to the record store to set up for the in-store show. Huge place called FRNC or something, four letters starting with F. FNAC, that's it. Except it wasn´t a record store really, but a huge department store. We played in a little conference room type place. As people started filing in, we realized that many of them were rather long in the tooth. Apparently the older folks like to pop in to catch the free entertainment. One woman, perhaps 80 years of age, plopped herself down right in the front row. We figured she´d bolt out within 30 seconds of the first song, but no, she stayed AND came up to Mike and shook his hand after! As Nick mentioned, we then met Jennifer Schlueter from Milwaukee, Port Washington actually, who heard Mike´s radio interview and came on down to see the show with her friend and English language student Carlos from Colombia. Great guy, and very interesting character, Communist, photographer, running for mayor of Madrid on the Immigrant Party (?). Anyway, Jenny was pretty amazing, and bilingual which was nice, but I'm not sure how Japanese and French are gonna help us here, ha just kidding. It was English and Spanish. Anyway she offered to take us out on the town and show us the sights. So Mike, Don, Tracey from RQ, and myself followed her around all night. Went to some cool places, but then, right when we were coming to our senses and thinking about heading back to the hotel (sound of window of opportunity closing), she mentions that Paul Collins from The Beat (cool early 80's-ish power-pop sort of band for those of you who don´t know, and if I´m not mistaken the reason that the [English] Beat were called that in the US) not only lives in Madrid, but owns a bar called the Manhattan Martini Bar, and said bar is located right in the neighborhood we´re in. So we went there. Walk in, place is empty (it was pretty early -- you know, midnight), and there´s Paul Collins standing behind the bar. Hung out there for a good two hours drinking wine and whatnot, and making him play us The Beat. He is a hell of a nice and very cool guy. And his mom called him on his cell phone while we were there! I would love to write more, as I didn´t even get into the TV thing today, which was perhaps the most surreal experience any of us have ever had, but I´m falling asleep at the keyboard here and I don´t want to get rolled in a Spanish internet cafe, and I still have to negotiate the gauntlet of guys thrusting flyers in my face for the strip bar next door to the hotel. Also, I´m not entirely convinced that I´m not still asleep and dreaming that this whole day occurred, in which case I will hurl myself out of the 4th floor window of our hotel to the street below when I really do wake up. More later.

(12 hours later) So the first TV show was in a big TV studio, as you would imagine, with a huge stage. Large dance-floor type area in front where we figured there would be a bunch of people hanging out. Outrageous Cherry played the same show the previous day, and said "Expect the worst and you won´t be dissapointed." Of course the first thing that happened to them was the rented bass amp started on fire as soon as they plugged it in. Anyway, got a new one and other than the fact that I was worried about vomiting on national television, which would have been pretty cool really, the show went well. The kids they brought in to watch us, by the way, were 14 in number, neatly arranged in two rows of seven right smack in the middle of the dance floor, and appeared utterly disinterested. They got paid 5 euros to be there. So that was the non-wierd show. Gotta run now, we have to go look at palaces and shit. More later. Adios.

I'm back. By the way, at that first show, the cameramen were smoking, the soundmen were smoking, the stage managers were smoking, the janitor was smoking, the kids in the crowd were smoking, and the guys in the recording booth (!) (big no-no!) were smoking. So, after that we went to lunch at the cafeteria at the station, where everybody was smoking. Then into the van with Serapi the driver and Carlos from Houston Party Records (the Spanish distributor), who also served as our guide and translator, and onward to Telemadrid, the other TV station, but not before Don forgets his jacket with passport in it at the first TV station so we go back to get it. Getting into Telemadrid, like getting into the BBC, was a lot like getting into the White House, except not as easy. So after we submit to fingerprinting, blood and urine samples, retina scans, and full body cavity searches, we're in. Oddly enough, everybody is smoking. We thought that taping started at 4:30 and would take about an hour, but find out that it starts at 7:30 and would take 2 hours. It's about 3:00 now. I contemplate which would be least unpleasant, sitting around for another 6 hours in the condition I'm in, or a painful suicide. Decide to wait. We go to get coffee at the cafeteria where Carlos (who's a bit of a ladies man) gestures to the next table where four Spanish supermodels are sitting, as if to say "You are American rock stars, go talk to them". I respond something to the effect of "Carlos, I'm not even sure if my head is still attached to my neck, how am I supposed to go do that?" Anyway, Mike, who was off doing a radio interview with Pacopepe Gil, noted Spanish DJ of the show Plastico Elastico, then arrives, and they drag us off to makeup. Don, Nick and I get smashed in the face with one of those powder things (boom! done. Next!), and Mike gets the full treatment, lip stuff included. I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille! And closeup is was, as we will soon see. More waiting, then they take us to the set, and the stage manager, who was smoking, explains the format. This is where it gets wierd. The show is kind of a variety show, set in a bar. The set is actually a bar, with a stage, tables, and, well, a bar. Replete with alcoholic beverages. The idea, I think, is we portray the bar band, and the show kicks off with us playing a song, then we just sort of wander off the stage, go get a drink, and sit around the bar mingling with the people, who are all drinking. And smoking. The cameras are kind of filming everything that takes place, and occasionally they will focus on one particular table, or the couches, where someone is being interviewed. The interviewer and interviewee are wearing microphones, but on set you can't hear what's going on. There's a few people who are hosts of the show, and a few Spanish celebrities there. One guy, who I think was named Paco, was a big Spanish star in the 70s and 80s and is mounting a comeback. He was sort of the Spanish equivalent of Scott Thompson of Kids in the Hall, but considerably more flamboyant. While they were interviewing him they kept showing clips of him singing show tunes with drag queens all over the place. So this goes on for a while, then they tell us to go play another song, so we do, then more interviewing, smoking, and drinking, then another song. Near the end of the show Mike gets interviewed, we sit at a nearby table and I decide (because we're supposed to be sitting around this bar acting natural and pretending to have conversations), that it would be funny to sit there swearing repeatedly in English. So Nick has one eye on one of the monitors and whenever the camera was on me he'd go "Jack, you're on, go!" and I would mouth, in natural conversational style, and enunciating very carefully, "C$%#s&cker, motherf%*!er, son of a f@$&ing bitch, etc. etc." So we'll see if that makes the final cut. Mike, meanwhile, is being interviewed by Ana, a charming woman who spoke excellent English, and I think he would be chagrined to know just how close his closeups in fact were. Oh, I forgot, before the show they decided that Mike and Don's clothes were inappropriate so they sent them off to wardrobe for a change. Mike comes back wearing a rather snug fitting zipped sweater, with an even snugger fitting t-shirt underneath with the word "AVAILABLE" emblazoned on it in flourescent orange letters, and Don had a really tight black t-shirt on that said "RELATIONSHIP" with a diagram of two white stick figures and one red stick figure. I have no idea what that means, but we think our popularity in the Spanish gay community will escalate from here on out. Whatever we have to do to sell records.

12.4.02 Last day in Spain. Big show tonite at Moby Dick, one of the finer live music venues in Madrid. Would like to make the most of the last day. So Don goes off to look at more palaces, while Mike, Nick and myself wander around shopping with Carlos, and Carey and Aren from OC. Carlos purchases a smart looking new cap, Mike buys some fine shoes (line of the day, Mike, upon leaving one shoe store and spotting another next door: "Mas zapatas!" I guess it was the delivery. Perfect comic timing. You had to be there. I laughed and laughed. Like an idiot, really.), lunch, and back to the hotel to prepare for the gig. 6:30pm, arrive at Moby Dick. The theme here seems to be whales. Very cool club, looks to be made of a lot of old wood. We theorize that perhaps all the wood is from old Spanish ships. Nobody confirms or denies this, so we'll go with it. Soundcheck goes well, it's one of the better sounding stages we've been on, then on to the Irish pub next door, where Tracey, who evidently enjoys shopping, showers us with Christmas presents. Dinner, set list preparation, etc., then back to the club and it's showtime. The show goes great, the place is packed, everybody is into it. Jenny introduces us en Espanol, all I can understand is "......Milwaukee, Wisconsin...... .mucho Cervesa......mucho Harley-Davidsons......" Afterwards we hang out, watch OC, sign CDs and drumsticks (must remember to bring Sharpies next time-signing a drumstick with a ballpoint pen just doesn't work), and meet Alvaro, or possibly Alvano. It was hard to hear with all the noise. In fact someone told us his name was Alberto, so that's how we signed his CD. Sorry, amigo. I think we got it all straightened out though. A very cool guy in a wheelchair who always comes to see Rainbow Quartz shows. He was up front rocking the whole time to both bands, and stayed dancing to the bitter end. After OC, more hanging out, dancing (even I danced...almost as odd as Nick dancing in London), and finally cab it back to the hotel around 5am. Poor OC has to catch a flight back to Detroit early and they need to leave for the airport at 6. We get to sleep in til 8. Good night.

12.5.02 Dateline Milwaukee 9:33pm CST-Home. Long day. Never can get used to when you wake up in one city and later that day find yourself in another city, especially one halfway across the world. Seems highly unnatural. Tired, hungry, jetlagged. It's 4:33am in Madrid right now. It's been brought to my attention by several friends that this tour diary makes us look like a bunch of drunks, and in re-reading it just now, I see that they are correct. Oh well, when in Rome. Or London. Or Madrid. Or Milwaukee. All in all, a successful trip that we will certainly never forget. We would like to thank the following people for making it so: In London: Lee Conlon, Paul Woods, everybody at Scala House, Mike Bennett and his lovely and charming sister (whose name I forgot-must have been the Absinthe) (Raleigh, that's it!), Liz Kershaw, Mark and Donna, that one girl at that one pub, the guy who did the Jack the Ripper tour, Paddy, Ian and everybody at Notting Hill Arts Club, The Briefs, The Contrast, Austin Vince, everybody at the Dirty Water Club including the soundman who I'm pretty sure was Joe Jackson, and Fiona Husband. In Madrid: Carlos Conesa (couldn't have done it without you!), Jaime Hernandez, and everybody at Houston Party. Serapi, Jennifer Schlueter and Carlos, Paul Collins, Amaya, Alvaro or Alvano, everybody at Moby Dick, Ana, Pacopepe Gil, and everybody at Telemadrid, everybody at Radio 3, and everybody at FNAC. Outrageous Cherry (Matt Smith, Larry Ray, Carey Gustafson, and Aren Ruth). All the fans who came out to see us and/or bought CDs or t-shirts, we love you, you rule. And most of all, Jim McGarry and Tracey Maloney, and everybody at Rainbow Quartz. This tour diary will be continually updated as we get time, think of more stuff, get pictures, and all that. Check back later. I can't believe I have to work tomorrow. Peace. -Jack