Wednesday 17th October 2007

I was tired and dressed in a suit, with clip-clop heels and a photocopied smile. I was sitting in The Head of Steam after nine thinking about how it might be nice to have an early night, to get up early tomorrow and play with my wine glass synth. Yet by the time Mark from Vandaveer had announced from the stage that he and his colleagues from tour partners These United States were without a place to stay this evening, I realised that things were about to take a turn for the random. Gloriously random, as it turned out. The guys played spectacularly well, we pitched our offer of beds, sofas and lifts to them, and within an hour our house was playing host to Washington DC's finest folk troubadours, as they stood in the kitchen talking about how they regularly played softball with Ian MacKaye at weekends. Luke cooked, I poured drinks, and the five of us talked long into the night about the very essence(s) of life: namely running a label, maintaining enthusiasm and momentum, creative freedom, honest and sincere criticism and In Rainbows. A crucial evening in some respects, since it reconnected Luke and me with people who have the same crazy drive and ambition as we do, an ambition that at times seems so ridiculous and futile. At time of writing I feel part of something bigger, something underground and powerful on account of its restlessness, its refusal to play by the rules, its insistence to make things happen. Even if it means d.i.y.-ing a tour of fifteen shows in two weeks, across three countries, using only trains and rucksacks, as Tom, Mark and Jesse managed to arrange in less than two months. Proof then, that this kind of thing can be done, and an example we at Ex Libris fully intend to follow.