USA

Slowdive supported Catherine Wheel

From the Holding Our Breath Official Fanzine Part 4: Slowdive – Tour Diary, pages 25-29, written by Rachel Goswell:

It looks (The Black Cat) too big venue for us. We all groan when we see the size of it. Various people are milling around. The two support bands, Lorelei and Le Bradford are there setting up their equipment. This is supposedly a 500 capacity venue, tho' it looks bigger. Apparently, when it's full it doesn't look it due to fire regulations. We find out Carter are playing at the 9:30 club, and we get our usual paronia trip about no-one turning up. We end up with around 270 people, over twice as many as Carter. It looks respectable enough and the gig goes surprisingly smoothly. First nights are notoriously plagued with mistakes, but tonight we play reasonably well. Steve from Lorelei kindly offers to put us up for the night. Totally amazing house. One hundred acres of land. Unfortunately, it was raining the following morning so we didn't really venture out"

From the Holding Our Breath Official Fanzine Part 4: Slowdive – Tour Diary, pages 25-29, written by Rachel Goswell:

Maxwells. A lot of bands play here (apparently). The stafe is tiny, come to think of it the venue's pretty small too! I meet Sheila, we talk, she hands Plume number 5 to us. Everyone in the band enjoys reading Plume, so it's cool to have the opportunity to write this. The lads play a lot of footie nearlytaking the lights out in the process. Le Bradford support us again and kindly lend Nicky their bass amp. The gig is really hot. We sold it out, HA HA!!! The only access to the stage is through the audience. The dressing room is down some staurs below the restaurant next door in what can only be described as a sweatbox. Visions of the stafe being a sauna come to mind, but surprisingly it's quite cool up there. Gig goes well, we decided against doing an encore due to have to fight thru the audience again. Bloody lazy aren't WE??!!!

After the gig things get quite eventful. Talk to a lot of nice people. I meet a female who noticed my Take That necklace (yeah, yeah come on call me a saddo I don't give a shit). She then shows me a lot of photos of them. She works at tower records and they did an instore there. She writes to Robbie. She gives me photos of Robbie. I'M IN HEAVEN!!!!
She also spots the Ren & Stimpy stickets on my guitar, and she says she has a spare Stimpy doll that talks which she'll bring to New York tomorrow. Some people some damn generous!

On leaving the venue at some unearthly hour, being totally pissed out of my head (that's drunk to you americans!), I find I've lost my glasses. Panic ensues, me & Simon go back in the venue to hunt for them while the van drives round the block. We can't find them, so we go back defeated to the van and lo and behold in the middle of the road are my glasses. Relief. Exciting stuff this touring lark innit? We drive back to Sheri's an crash...

From the Holding Our Breath Official Fanzine Part 4: Slowdive – Tour Diary, pages 25-29, written by Rachel Goswell:

So, Providence. We've never been here before (it's about an hours drive from Boston). The venue is around 500 capacity. Paranoia sets in yet again. I get handed a local free paper ("The Nice Paper"), by an SK person (a couple of them are here and will also come to Boston tomorrow). Quite funny really, we're the cover story. I did the interview over the phone a week before we came out and basically spent the entire time slagging SBK (as you do). The lovely interviewer (a miss Wendy Borges) printed the whole damn lot! Good on her! Give the woman a drink! We went out to a much classier tucker joint tonight. Everything was far more relaxed and friendly. I get back to the venue around ten pm and horror of horrors the venues virtually empty! My worst nightmare! We're not on till midnight, so I just hope that it'll fill up. Two support bands tonight -Difference Engine and Purple Ivy Shadows. By all accounts both bands were good. By the time we go on the venue is looking respectable (around 300). Indeedy the gig goes well, and everyone gets suitable paraletic later on. Neil goes off with Difference Engine for a smoke or two, and the rest of us find a lovely hotel to rest our heads. Bliss!!

From the Holding Our Breath Official Fanzine Part 4: Slowdive – Tour Diary, pages 25-29, written by Rachel Goswell:

The gig was sold out tonight. Really good atmosphere, I think we played everything 100 times faster than we should have done, and Neil was none too impressed by the rest of us, but still a good time was had by all. Bit of a one off with regards to the alcohol intake before the gig. As a rule, well normally anyway everyone is pretty much sober until after the gig is finished. Oh well. It has to happen once in a while!

From the Holding Our Breath Official Fanzine Part 4: Slowdive – Tour Diary, pages 25-29, written by Rachel Goswell:

It turns out to be a good evening. The Roxys sold out (Hurrah!). Everyone's in high spirits. I totally missed Super 31 but I caught some of the Rosemarys. What I saw was really good. Their projection show is really cool. A band worth catching if you get the chance. I know they have an LP due for release soon through Twentieth century Fox??!! Rodney from KROQ introduced us this evening which was quite weird but still, the gig went very well. Afterwards carter turned up in the dressing room. We know one of their crew-Mole- from Reading (don't ask me why he's called Mole). That was really fun. We've never met them before, they all seemed really pleasant. I was suitably pissed by the time they appeared, and i kept saying to Fruitbat "what are you doing at fuucckkkiiinnggg ethereal gig then?"
He admitted that he hand't really wanted to come but he was glad he did as he really enjoyed it! HA HA! He then went on to say that Carter had played here around three weeks ago and only got 200 people in (it's a 600 capacity venue), and kept saying "You lot are doing really well over here aren't you?"

We got chucked out of the dressing room by a nice cleaning lady, who, I swear, put bleach everywhere. Good way of getting rid of people! Everyone kind of split up after that. Went off of the viper room (had to be done!). Weird night on monday. There was like this bizarre mixture of people on stage playing sort of really naff country and western songs, and these fat women with cropped tops and shorts, really, really pissed, dancing country style. A truely bizarre experience