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 Multi-instrumentalist and vocalist TOM GRAY of UK indie-rockers GOMEZ gives Rave an exclusive glimpse at the first few pages of his Australian tour diary…and you thought rock & roll was all dope and groupies!
> All right...swallow the painkillers, the echinacea my wife insists I imbibe, the glass of fizzing Berocca. Hope the large and delicious Adelaide breakfast stays put inside. Let the waves of nausea pass. Good morning Australia. Cough, cough, cough etc, etc. Why did I smoke last night? Did I imagine that adding that to the libation and jetlag would leave my voice sounding like a skylark? Good god, I feel like a sack of rubble. It took 27 hours to get here and just four to get completely shit-faced. > We play the Governor Hindmarsh in Adelaide tonight. Over the past week we've played festivals in Portugal, Belgium and three in the UK. Ian has gone viral and his belly with it. Spent the morning, afternoon and evening on the throne phone. The rest of us are just lagging behind. We take to the stage in a near euphoric state of disorientation and manage to wade through our set. Ben is convinced after the gig that everything sounded slow. He's right, but everything seemed to be moving slowly with it. I pop out of the smokey (to the point of suffocation) dressing room and run into legions of lovely kids waiting for a squiggle. Our fans are as sweet and patient as ever. Except for one inebriated customer who wants to commiserate about the lack of We Haven't Turned Around in the setlist. I watch his moustache bounce up and down as he waffles on at me. Sorry, sorry, next time etc. > We dive into a van out back and skid off toward our hotel. I sit up with Ben and Dajon having a beer, talking about nothing much until about 2.45am, then stagger back to bed. Alarm rings at 6am. I've dreamt, rather unsurprisingly, about needing to get to the airport to meet my missus. I begin another hotel breakfast in earnest. The crew and band appear in dribs and drabs while I sink vegemite on toast with four cups of english breakfast tea. It seems everyone has been stung by extremely expensive phone and internet charges so there's quite a to-do at the hotel reception. I quietly munch to the sounds of Stevie Wonder – excellent morning music. Blackie has a phone bill for $140. Ouch. > Now I'm in Adelaide airport and the whole place looks like its made out of expensive chopping boards. The middle classes of Australia must have nowhere to slice their celery. A pale Hotel-chic airport, although I like the Lloyd-Wright gently sloping ceiling. Families and businessmen swarm about me. One fella has the most extraordinary rat's tail mullet I've ever seen. He must use it to talk to the cosmos or something. What he chooses to discuss with said cosmos I can only imagine. I imagine engine size and speed is a hot topic. He's stood up to accept his medication from his wife. Maybe that controls the growth of his hair homunculus. > We have to get to Darwin to do promo. Promotion: that nebulous, dark matter that makes up 30% of making music for a living. Today it’s radio. Everyone assures me that most Australians have never been to Darwin. I don't know whether to take this as a good or bad sign. Let's hope it’s a jewel. It turns out that today is not even as bad as its gonna get in terms of sleepless nights. Apparently we finish our festival appearance in Darwin at 1.30am and have a 5.30am lobby call to fly to Perth, to do a show that night. I can hardly control my anticipation. > And so, sitting on a Boeing 737, watching Dajon struggle to open his complementary box of cornflakes, hemmed in the middle seat between him and Dave, our tour manager: the filling in the manwich, I will leave you. A month of shows ahead of me and very little chance of a good kip… Gomez perform at the Tivoli on Saturday September 2, supported by the Vasco Era. Current album How We Operate is available now through Shock.
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