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London, England – Saturday, April 19, 2008

2:00pm

The Shape of Broad Minds tour has taught me something new about the art of hustle. We’re done with the first leg of the tour, having played London, Oslo, Zurich, and just arriving back in London about 10 minutes ago, I can’t help but notice the strange pattern of taxi drivers attempting to tack on extra charges at every opportunity. One guy told us that we had to pay him extra pounds because the flight was a little late. What that has to do with us, I still don’t know. Another guy told us that we had to pay extra because we had a bunch of luggage. I asked him how often he carried passengers to the airport without luggage and he mumbled something in broken English before just giving up on his attempt to overcharge us. The best part about taxi drivers that try to take advantage of tourists is that they make it seem like it’s company policy but insist that you pay them off the record and will take U.S. currency, Euros or whatever you have just as long as you can cough it up, in cash. It’s such a pain in the ass when you’ve just finished playing a long show, only sleep for about an hour and a half and then have a flight ahead of you and more business in the next country. I’ll have to quote dude from the NRA and take the stance that these greedy taxi drivers won’t get a single dime, extra. They’ll have to pry it “from my cold dead hands…”

On another note, our show for tonight has been cancelled so we’ll more than likely take it easy, check out Flying Lotus who just got in town and prepare for our early morning flight to Italy where I’m sure another driver will be waiting to play games. Let’s hope not.

At least the shows have been good. The crowd in Zurich last night wanted more than one encore. We did almost a whole extra show’s worth of material before it was all over. We went back to the hotel and even though we called it an early night, I couldn’t sleep because my schedule is completely off.
I would really like to lay down now but my hotel room isn’t ready yet. Gonna crash soon.

In tribute of London