Latitude.

I played in the poetry tent at Latitude last week.

It was the first time I've been camping in about ten years. I think it was Ian and Dyan's first go at camping in a while too.

We all bought the cheapest tents we could possibly find: £20 from Argos (the shop not me). Unfortunately they were all NME endorsed tents. They came with the NME logo on them and a picture of a guitar. Which was fine for Ian but when I tried to swap mine for one that had a picture of a microphone on it they looked at me like I was mad.

I just presumed everybody going would be as cheap as us and have bought the same cheap tent. I even brought some ribbon along to tie too mine so I would be able to identify it from the thousands of other NME tents I imagined would be at the festival.

When we got there it turned out that we were the only people attempting to sleep in what was basically a shit wendy house. No need for the ribbon.

I'd been asked to play the poetry tent by Luke Wright who is a brilliant poet who wrote this blog about embarrassing himself introducing Art Brut a while back.

I'd said yes to playing the poetry tent without really thinking it through. My vanity said yes before I'd had a chance to stop it. I'd been flattered that someone had thought I was capable of playing a poetry tent.

As Latitude got closer though I bottled it and decided to bring a band with me: (p)Art Brut. Ian from Art Brut and Dyan from EWITFR...N and The Blood Arm. We were supposed to have rehearsed all the week before but then I suddenly got sick, so only managed to squeeze two practices in before we got there. We spent the entire day before we played rehearsing behind the Poetry tent, which must have pissed the actual poets off. Wendy Cope seemed especially nonplussed that she hadn't brought her guitarist with her.

Anyhow in the end I think it went quite well. As a concession to it being a poetry tent, I dressed a bit like Phil Juppitus, as that is how I imagine all poets dress. And as I had been sick all week I did the entire set sober, which was a bit strange for me but fun nonetheless. After we played I suddenly felt much better. Perhaps my debilitating sickness had just been a case of stage fright. Serves me right for thinking I was a poet.

Latitude was a brilliant festival. I hope I get to perform in an inappropriate tent again next year. Perhaps I could appear in the literary tent without having written a book or maybe I can do whatever that weird stilt walking thing into the lake was. Or perhaps I'll just buy a ticket.

I think the two best things I saw were Paul Heaton in the Word Tent and Belle And Sebastian on the main stage. Both were incredible. I had to leave early Sunday so unfortunately missed my mate Jim Bob reading from his book in the Literary Arena. I have read it though and it's brilliant. Go and buy it.

I made three postcards for Latitude but have sold them all sorry.

Five Children’s Books You Should Read.

Here is another one of those top 5's I wrote for something else. But am now putting up here.

This one is about children's books

I still read children’s books. It is a little embarrassing, but whenever I’m in a charity shop (or “thrift store” to you Americans), I can’t help heading over to the children’s book section and searching for a Three Investigator or Famous Five book I may have missed out on. Don’t get me wrong, I can read. It’s not that I’ve not got past a certain reading level, it’s just that there is something very satisfying about zooming through a book in (at the very most) a couple of hours. Here are my top 5 favourite children’s books.

5) Archers Goon by Diana Wynne Jones. I first found out about this book as a child from the BBC adaptation that was on at tea-time. I missed the final couple of episodes and couldn’t stop wondering how it turned out. More than a decade later Chris Chinchilla (Art Brut’s original guitarist) lent me his battered copy. I read it as a twenty-something and still thought it was brilliant. I don’t want to tell you the plot as it will spoil it, but you should go seek it out.

4) The Diamond Brothers series by Antony Horowitz. I love this series of books about a dimwitted private detective and his smart-mouthed younger brother. I love puns and wordplay, and these books are full of them. How can you resist a series of books whose titles are all plays on the titles of other famous films and novels? The Falcon’s Maltesers, The Blurred Man, The French Confection, The Geek Who Stole Christmas and South By South East. I’m eagerly awaiting the new novel The Radius Of The Lost Shark.

3) The Three Investigator series by various authors. I’ve loved The Three Investigators since I borrowed The Mystery Of The Haunted Castle from the library when I was seven. What is there not to love about a junior detective agency which has its secret headquarters in a junk yard in Rocky Beach, California? The early books all had a foreword written by Alfred Hitchcock who the trio would always go and visit to tell him about a solved case in the final chapter of the book. When I was growing up, Jupiter Jones was my hero. He still is a bit. In the books he is described as “stocky.” I used to overeat to be just like him (which I also still do a bit).

2) The William Brown series by Richmal Crompton.William is a mischievous schoolboy whose heart is generally in the right place, but he often gets into trouble anyway. And because so many of these books were written over a period of nearly fifty years (1921-1970), with William and his friends remaining the same age, they have also become a fascinating look at how a small village life in England changed over that period. Don’t read them for that reason though, read them because they are hysterically funny.

1) Raging Robots And Unruly Uncles by Margret Mahy. I was given this as a birthday present when I was very young. It has a complicated plot about a family of brothers whose father is trying to educate them to be evil villains, and their cousin Prudence whose father is trying to turn her into a prim and proper lady. It involves a magic doll, an evil robot and a Library/Garden/TV Repair/Bus Service/ Parrot Aviary/ Fortunetelling business. Read this book, if only for the last paragraph. It is one of my favorite paragraphs ever written.

Indie Tracks Postcard.

I've made a couple of postcards for Indie Tracks. Here they are on my desk.

I'll be selling them with our Merch at Indie Tracks.

They are £35 for a set. The set includes either the Indie Tracks logo or a scene from Indie Tracks.

Each set comes with the picture on one canvas and the postcard back on another. I fill in the postcard part with what happened that day.

I can make some more if needs be. But only if you are going to Indie Tracks or really really want to be there.

If your interested you can email me at eddie.argos.resource@gmail.com

Latitude Postcard.

Latitude Postcard.

I've been making Postcards as Merchandise for the last couple of Everybody Was In The French Resistance...Now shows. For reasons I go into here.

I'm playing Latitude this weekend. In the Poetry Arena. I think I'm on at about Midnight on Friday. Im playing re-workings of Art Brut and EWITFR...N songs with Ian on acoustic guitar and Dyan on the Piano. I cant wait.

Anyhow I've also decided to make postcards for all the festivals I'm playing at this summer. This is what the one for Latitude looks like. I'm making three of them. They come as a set on two pieces of canvas (5x7") and are painted in acrylic. I fill in the blank part of the postcard with what happened that day. They are £35 for the set of two.

I can be contacted at eddie.argos.resource@gmail.com

See you there. X

Top 5 Thursday. Food I Miss When I'm In The US

I have been writing a series of Top 5 lists for a website. We were going to put one up every week. I'm writing something else for them instead now though. So I have a stockpile of these that I'm going to put up on my own blog(s) every Thursday

Here is the first one.

Top 5 Delicious things from the UK that I miss when I’m in the US.

My girlfriend lives in Los Angeles so I spend a lot of time there. America has a lot of very tasty food. I love the fact that it’s OK to eat cakes for breakfast and their eggs are for some reason a lot tastier than the ones we have at home. There are some foods I really miss when I’m there, though.

5) Yorkshire Puddings.

Actually, it’s not just the Yorkshire pudding I miss; it’s the entire roast dinner. In the UK, it is tradition on a Sunday to have roast beef, pork or chicken with roast potatoes and other assorted roast vegetables. It’s a bit like what Americans have for Thanksgiving, but we have it every Sunday. My favourite bit is the Yorkshire pudding. Yorkshire pudding is made of batter and left in the oven to rise whilst you roast your meats. On the plate, you use it to soak up all the gravy. It is pretty tasty. I recently ate in a ‘British’ restaurant in Palm Springs and they served it with a salad. A bit weird, but I wolfed it down anyway (sans gravy) to satiate my craving.

4) Vimto

Vimto is a cordial that you mix with water to make a delicious fruity drink. They don’t really have cordials at all in America, let alone Vimto. This is odd, considering that Americans add sugar to absolutely everything, so you’d think they’d like the option to be able to add a sugary mix to water. Somebody recently brought me 7 bottles of Vimto to one of our shows. I did them all in one day.

3) Bread

All bread in America is terrible. I don’t know what they do to it. Its either filled with sugar and additives, or if it’s the healthy option, it seems to be made out of sawdust, seeds and bits of old twine. I really miss a nice medium sliced loaf of white bread when I’m in America

2) Bacon.

I always forget that American bacon is different than UK bacon. I order it in cafes, and when it turns up all petrified, crispy and inedible I always wish I’d ordered something else. Bacon in the UK is sort of like Canadian bacon but longer and more delicious

1) Cadbury’s Chocolate.

Most of the chocolate you get in America is disgusting. The absolute worst is Hershey’s. Hershey’s Kisses look like old dog poo that’s not been picked up by the owner and left to dry in the sun and probably tastes even worse than that. I would rather eat poo. When I’m in America I really miss Cadbury’s chocolate, especially the recently reissued Whispa Golds - a bubbly chocolate filled with caramel. Seemingly reissued just to fuck with the fact I'm supposed to be on a diet.

Lyric Free-Cycle

There is a thing called free-cycle in which people put items they no longer want on to the internet in case other people would like them and then if other people do want them those people can come round that first persons house and collect them of that person for free.

Thats not a very good description but you get the idea.

I've been writing lyrics all day. This involves me going through my phone and looking at all the ideas I've had, funny little rhyming couplets and what not. I threw a lot of them away as I was clearly mental and or drunk when I saved them into my phone

for example

"This Kanye West, Taylor Swift thing. Looks as real as proffessional wrestling"

being just one that I've thrown away. (EWITFR...N were going to write a song about the MTV Awards).

As I was banging my head on my desk earlier trying to think of lyrics. I thought it would be nice if there was a writing version of Free-cycle. Im sure someones got the lyrics I need somewhere and I may have the lyrics they are after saved in my phone.

I was going to start it and call it 'Lyric Free-Cycle' but I think half the fun of writing lyrics is chasing down that elusive rhyme. Also I think it might cause a problem with my publisher.

So I've decided not to start it. You can if you like but dont send me the link as I think it will spoil my fun.

EWITFR...N Live on Geekweek

About a month ago Everybody Was In The French Resistance...Now were live on Geeweek.com.

I've only just figured out how to find the archived shows. So here it is.

I should probably tell you that this is after Ian had gone back to the UK. So it's Nathaniel from the Blood Arm stepping in. Although he has stepped in so many times now I'd say he is actually a member of EWITFR...N wether he wants to be or not.

I should also let you know that when we got to the venue we found out the PA didn't work. So had to rework our set and perform it without a P.A. or any amplification for the instruments or my voice. Luckily we are incredibly talented so you probably cant tell that there is anything wrong

Thanks to Geekweek for having us. It was a lot of fun.

Enjoy.