The Cinematics met in Dingwall and are currently based in Glasgow but it seems like Central Europe is beginning to feel like home for the band. Next month the guys will return there for 19 shows in support of second album ‘Love and Terror’. Ticket details below along with extracts from their 2009 tour diary:
Incidentally, The Cinematics’ vocalist Scott Rinning (pictured above) was very unlucky to miss out on the Dear Scotland Greatest Ever Scottish Vocalists shortlist. Perhaps he could have challenged Alex Harvey and Jim Kerr? That poll will close in approximately 14 hours.
Guitarist Larry Reid kept a diary of the band’s last European tour on the Cinematic’s myspace page. Here is what Larry wrote about the band’s adventures in Dusseldorf, Münster and Munich:
The Cinematics Tour Diary: Day Nine (Dusseldorf, Germany)
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When we pulled-up to the venue today, we were met with a promoter who thought he was James Bond. He had a nine-foot canvas portrait of Sean Connery behind his desk and slurred any words with an “s” in them, which made his English less understandable. When he told our tour manager, Mikey Mac, that there was no catering, no rider and no dressing-room for the gig, I thought Mikey was going to succeed where Doctor No, Scaramanga and Goldfinger all failed.
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After a short negotiation- presumably without the need for laser-saws or piranha-filled pools- Mikey convinced the promoter with the licence to spill that it would be in everyone’s interest if he gave us a medium-sized stack of money to go and buy ourselves a nice Italian meal.
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In the restaurant, Scott and I asked the chef especially if he would cook us a pizza and some pasta with an inordinate amount of chilli and garlic, in order to stave-off the cold that we were both suffering from. When the food arrived, it became clear instantly that the good fellow had followed our instructions to the letter.
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The show itself was very good. The venue was quite small, but filled to capacity with hip, young dandies, making it a very warm stage. I couldn’t help but worry throughout, though, that these poor kids must have wondered where the blinding whiff of garlic was coming from.
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The Cinematics Tour Diary: Day Ten (Münster, Germany)
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The venue tonight reminded me of the uncomfortable visits to my great auntie Regina’s house in Ireland as a child. There were pictures of cats everywhere, and a faint smell of urine and old people. Of course, this place was approximately 40 times larger, sold beer and didn’t have miniature religious shrines in every corner.
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Every time we do an interview for radio, TV or a magazine at present, someone asks me how I managed to fall off of the stage in Utrecht. This must be the power of the internet at work. I’m glad people somewhere find it entertaining to imagine me doing a kamikaze-dive off the stage, but I wish to goodness my ankle would stop throbbing, in order that I could party after these shows.
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The promoter for the show also DJs in the club afterwards until the wee hours, but he was enough of a saint to get up first thing in the morning to cook us by far the best breakfast we’ve had on the tour so far. We’re an awful band for relying on kindness in the kitchens of strangers.
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The Cinematics Tour Diary: Day Eleven (Munich, Germany)
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The show tonight had been cancelled, rearranged and cancelled again twice this year, due to a conflict with our former booking agent. The situation was entirely outside of our control, but we remained determined to repay the faith of our Munich-based fans by giving a titanic performance.
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In the dressing-room, before the show, Scott and I did a handful of interviews with magazine journalists, to promote the release of our new album. I remember doing similar interviews with the same journalists some time last year, when I first joined the band, and I remember that some of them were mildly hostile and certainly far from sycophantic. This time round, however, having been furnished with advanced promotional copies of Love and Terror, the journalists were very complimentary about the band’s new direction, saluting the raw sounds and genuine lyrics.
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I always say that I don’t care much for the opinions of music journalists, and this applies to gushing articles as much as hatchet reviews, so I only hope that fans of the band, old and new, will agree that we’ve made a good album. We know ourselves that it will take until our third album for the band to go stratospheric, but in the meantime we’ve put an awful lot of ourselves into Love and Terror, so I dearly hope that the songs will resonate with people.
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On-stage, I’m reminded of the slightly more conservative nature of music fans in Bavaria. At one point I managed to whip-up a rich feedback that the Jesus and Mary Chain would have been very proud of, yet when I looked out at the crowd I saw some people putting their fingers in their ears. Munich is an impressive town, filled with intelligent and beautiful people, but I fear it is not yet ready for that level of pure rock and roll expression.Larry Reid, October 7, 2009 at blogs.myspace.com/thecinematics
Photo Credit: Eleonora Birardi
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO8MgtDDMzE