Well we’ve been waiting for cool (cool to us?) stuff to post.  And here’s something, Artrocker came down to our London gig last week, and reviewed us…check it out below…

http://www.artrocker.tv/live/article/club-smith-the-camden-barfly-london

Sweet huh?  Seems like it’s great when we go to London right? Well guess what, we have another London gig! 12th June we’re coming to Buffalo bar in Islington, playing at 8.15 before Hey Sholay. Sweeeeeeet.

You know how googlemail puts targeted ads in the side panel? I don’t think it works, as mine has Holidays in Majorca, Leeds Carpet Cleaners, and Pensions. Fully sure I’ve only been up for cleaning my carpet this month. Step it up Google.

I’ve put a track you might have heard live on there for first listen…here is the extended outro we do live, if you’re wondering how to dance to it…

Well we’ve finished a nice little run of gigs off the back of the big tour in January, and confirmed a couple of great festivals (see the sidebar on the right), so all very exciting.  Last month we got interviewed by local Leeds magazine Vibrations…got some new pictures from the awesome Brad Pettman too, all on there…check out the magazine below:

See more of Pearl’s photos HERE  – they are ace.

A few people filmed parts of our set too…this one below is pretty good, a bit shaky at first but levels out…

Here’s a review from the Fly on our Birmingham gig with Kaiser Chiefs. you can read it online here:  http://www.the-fly.co.uk/reviews/live/1012114/1012114/

Click to see big

Brudenell Social Club 10 Feb Thanks To @cgleti

Here’s one of the tracks recorded for our album, a bit of a mood setter/slow starter and all that. Get you in a laid back vibe, like R Kelly bump and grind before you knew about his behaviour.

Some blogs have said some really nice stuff about it…look!

“ they are shaping up to give it one hell of a kick up the arse” – Artrocker HERE

“Club Smith may hold the keys to the revival of British guitar music” – Music Broke my bones  - HERE

“the band have not been letting up, and steadily have been permeating across the online community sharing their love of The Smiths (really had to think hard about that one) cruising with The Maccabees-style guitar indie – and it has indeed got to the point where this foursome’s music can be brought to bear around their contemporaries…”  Killing Moon Records – HERE

“Beautiful & Useless remains firmly fixed on the RotD playlist after we were sent it last week. The chorus has proven unforgettable” - Record of the day – Today! – HERE - admittedly this is a different song…so completely irrelevant.

That’s nice isn’t it. There was one russian one but I don’t know how to speak russian…yet.

I forgot to mention we got to see this awesome keyboard in Derby!

The Wasp

That blew our tiny minds for a long time. Plymouth Pavilions on Saturday was enormous…Look!!!

And the crowd was incredible! Additionally the other support band All the Young dedicated a song to us to say goodbye, what lovely chaps. We have had such a great response on this tour it’s been quite humbling.  We sold 900 tour cds and vinyls which was pretty nuts, and we’ve been treated really well by all the crew, bands and venue staff.  We even got Champagne from Kaiser Chiefs on the last date…

So to say we’re charmed is an understatement.  I’m pretty sure we’ll return to all the places we’ve been fairly soon, most likely this year. So thanks to everyone who has come, we’ve got our own bit of touring starting this week which is proper good and what not…

Club Smith - Lee, Sam, Vijay, Neil

Kaiser Chiefs - Peanut, Ricky, Simon, Nick, Whitey

Club Smith in Derby - Picture courtesy of Sarah Abigail Bottomley

And so the tour rolls on, after Southend on Sunday we moved onto London to do our own show.  It was surprisingly busy and responsive for a London show, as such is the bustle of the capital we often fear being drowned out by people’s thoughts of getting ahead and what not. We also met a lovely bunch of people called Apple Eyes.

We then went to hit the travelodge.  However our rooms had been given away, apparently it’s standard practice to overbook by 5 rooms? I pointed and shouted at the guy whilst wearing an 80s mac and the angry Rick Astley routine seemed to work and he booked us into a hotel 10 miles away.  We got there and we weren’t booked in. We went back to the travelodge and he sent us another 10 miles away. We slept there and when we got up travelodge still hadn’t paid for the room. We were very outraged so booked into a spa.  If there has ever been a more middle class/middle aged solution to a problem on tour I’d like to know it.

Here are 2 of our comrades on tour. The man on the left is Will who does our monitor sound, and the man on the right is Dudley who is selling our merch and driving us.  They are both heroes of ours.  Will has no volume control on his voice and Dudley has no control over whether what he says is appropriate, so it’s a great combination.  One guy shouting all the time the other dishing out outrageous faux pas.

Guildford was great, as was Derby.  We’ve sold an outrageous amount of cds and vinyls on tour now. A guy with Kaiser Chiefs told us it was probably enough to chart, which is a bit nuts.  We still have time on the merch stand to deface a Jim Davidson flyer though…

Club Smith at Llandudno

So three days into the tour and it’s been quite incredible fun.  The crowds have been amazingly responsive to us, the crew and other bands are really friendly and helpful, and we’ve sold out of our tour cds to the point that we need to courier in some new ones for the next gig tomorrow.  The down point is every time we get to accommodation our group flips coins to see who won’t sleep in the same room as me due to snoring (I BOUGHT A BLOODY SNORE GUARD TOO), which is a real blow to the confidence…bastards.

Above is a picture from LLandudno.  North Wales is pretty cool, some nice cliffs and a right rowdy bunch for a crowd…all of whom were massively charming after.

Here’s a picture from Reading in soundcheck…

The Hexagon was some kind of awesome 80′s spaceship type building with outrageous garish dressing room and posters of heritage act stars in the catering room (Gaby Rosling in various musicals).

The gig was again great, and I’ve managed to cut open two fingers now playing guitar.  I like the idea of saying it’s down to being right active on stage and what not but it’s probably due to being pretty bad at playing guitar properly.

Above is a picture from outside Southend Pavillions, where they’ve just finished a round of legally blonde the musical and last night hosted Kaiser Chiefs, All the Young and Club Smith.  I think this was our best gig so far, we’d gone out for Lee’s birthday after Reading I thought I was going to cry 2 minutes before stage time I was so hungover…but I think it brought the best out of us.  Really could do with a good cry though sometime soon, been a while.

Tonight…London our own gig at the Garage in Islington!