Dirt Jake Replicas: Waving the CD in the Air and Giving Our Elevator Speech About Being From the US (London)-- Local Cut

Dirt Jake Replicas: Waving the CD in the Air and Giving Our Elevator Speech About Being From the US (London)

July 17th, 2008 [10:00AM] Posted by: Dirt Jake Replicas | 1 COMMENT

June 19th
Shameless Self Promotion
(Day 3)

I am not sure if I had mentioned in the last blog that everything closes SUPER early here. We’re talking 6 pm close time for nearly EVERYTHING! But another thing is that everything opens late as well! And on Sunday a 4 pm close time is the norm.
Luckily we can snag breakfast at THE GENERATOR. Another beautiful day and another stressful drive through London traffic.
I would say the only bad thing that I have seen in London is that they have this thing called a congestion fee. If you drive downtown during business hours you have to pay this crazy fee for something like 8 to 16 quid–and that’s like $16-$24 each day! And then parking is measured in 6-minute increments in some places!!!!! Hahahaha. Very expensive. First thing today we have to pick up our gear from a warehouse that ROCK-IT owns. They are such an amazing company. At the warehouse we find out that our gear is right next to John Mayer, Him, and Mogwai’s gear! Yeah I know what you are thinking–they got close to real rockstars!

Oh, you’re not? Well we did! It was freaking awesome. We took so many pictures! (I thought of you right away Mike from Moses, Smells the Roses!). The guys at rockit are kickass. They seemed very excited about our tour because they don’t meet many independent bands doing it all on their own. They really made us feel as though we were doing the right thing.
I am not sure how but all of our gear, all of our merch, and all of our suitcases fit inside the van! Packed as hell but it all fit. I will try and post pictures to give you an idea of what we were dealing with. Wait till you see Ashley’s cave!

The first venue we are playing at is called the Greyhorse. It is located right next to RAM JAM!!!! Awesome. Our friends in Slow Burning Car set us up with this place, and I believe the history is that someone big like the Stones used to play here??? All I know is that we arrive super early. But we are able to find parking pretty close, which is a major plus. Dakota, Adam, and Julius go for a walk and begin to promote the show as Ashley and I stay back at the van to stuff our promotion CDs with fliers and stickers.Thank god the guys bring back a pizza for us…

Promotion lasts a long time but we still have a few hours to spare so Ashley and I go for a long walk searching for a GPS cigarette adapter and a place to hook up to the internet to speak with you fine people. No luck on either one. We asked a few people and they all said Starbucks was the place to go. Not for the adapter, but for the internet obviously. Turning the corner we realize we are right in front of the Starbucks!!! GREAT! Now all we have to do is open the door. A simple task, right?

Wrong.

Their is a guy on the other side of the door so I go to open it for him so he can get the hell out of our way and we can get online! <-Kidding. But yeah the door doesn’t budge. OH! It must be a PUSH not a PULL. That must be the problem right? Of course. We move in for the push--and DENIED! The man inside looks totally confused, but probably not HALF as confused
and embarrassed as Ashley and I. So what do you do in this situation. The only thing you can do--take off and run. We tore ass around the corner laughing our asses off and figured this was a good sign to give up on the internet for the day. We reach the van just in time to move it to another location. We land a spot right next to the venue. Even better. But we still have hours to wait. Those next few hours will be spent watching a crotch rocket alarm begin to beep and then blare WAAAA OOO WAAAA OOO for at least a few minutes then finally turn off just in time to begin beeping again. Even though not a single soul nears the bike. Exciting, huh? Definitely one of the most exciting parts of the day!

After load in we decide to pass out more CDs to try to get people to the show. Now if you have never promoted before….you should TOTALLY come with us sometime. It is always a blast. We usually do it drunk but even when we do it sober it is a blast. I love peoples' reactions. And so many funny encounters happen. We have had people threaten us, people completely ignore us as if we were not there; we've been kicked out of places and had crazy bums make sexual advances!! The list goes on. My favorite person today was this girl that was riding by on a bike. She rode right past me and said she could not stop. So then I ran after my next victim, her friend that was directly behind her. Waving the CD in the air and giving our elevator speech about being from the US on tour. She just kept smiling and riding. I somehow caught up to her! She really just slowed down because she wanted the album but didn’t want to act like she did. We talk for a minute and she seems really excited and I look ahead and who is waiting? The first girl!!!! Kickass. Got you girl!

Not many people arrive for our set, and we basically play to the bands. It was a good first show--especially for not playing in a while due to our gear being shipped out quite some time in advance. The most memorable part was when the power went out because of our transformers. It scared the shit out of me! I was super concerned that most places would not be able to support our transformers and we would be left without instruments to play.

On a side note (for anyone that doesn’t know) the UK uses a different plug and power output so we had to spend a large chunk of cash on mega heavy transformers so it could support our gear. After the initial trip of the breaker there was never another problem. When we loaded the gear back into the van and put the van in drive to pull away we saw a gigantic fox just roaming around the streets!!! Very different from seeing raccoons. Now, even though we have still not slept in forever, we are going to drive to Halifax tonight to our friend Brian Watson's house so he can let us in the flat. Pretty excited to meet Brian. I will definitely let you know how it goes tomorrow!As for right now, it is time to drive, drive, drive.

Sleep well
-Joshua of Dirt Jake Replicas

John Mayer’s Gear