The week before last we played Al's bar. Al's bar looks like a giant pizza. The graffiti is scrawled so thick that it is the walls – perfect for that photo shoot. The first band made me feel as though I was in London circa '77. Looked and played like the Clash but unfortunately without the same panache. The second band was a little better. Trashy, Cramps-styled, guitar, their main drawback being that the bass player had no headstock on his bass (remember Pseudo Echo?) and looked like he may have played in Dexy's Midnight Runners. But I'm being cruel, they were all nice and they all played to more people than we did. We played to our entire LA following which has now swelled to around 5 people and it was televised live as you know. Two guys around our age are very keen to record us and as soon as they can find some downtime at the studio they work in we'll do it — free. It also just happens to be the studio where around six or seven Neil Young records have been mixed plus there's around 400 amplifiers to choose from so ...here's hoping.

We drove overnight to Arizona and stayed at a guy called Andy's house. He had a great record collection, pretty much everything you need and a very sweet guy. Arizona is authentic western and makes you wonder why they made all those movies in Italy. Big cactuses, crags. The venue was an art gallery. Freight trains would scream past on the hour making beautiful howling clashing empty noises as they blasted past the warehouses. We got fed at this gig which was nice. The first band sounded a bit like the Doors crossed with Detroit-flavoured Died Pretty, the second band was Wise Folk Malcontent (Andy's band) a bit of indie pop plus a couple of real nice Red House Painters type songs. Unfortunately almost everyone left after they played and our show had a very tangible spirit of depression and lethargy about it. I guess our hopes were a little too high. I've gotta go now but needless to say things are actually looking up on the gig front and label front. We have some time off – I'm washing dishes, Richo is romancing in New York – don't know what Ben is doing.

love Jamie