Guest Blog: Official Secrets Act Part 4

The sun is shining down hard and full on the hills of North Wales as OSA head home from their first Irish tour. Tired, happy and not as eager to get him as they thought they'd be after a month on the road.

Dublin was pretty perfect yesterday. The sun was shining as we rolled into Grafton Street, the Liffey was all shimmery and thick and we could have almost hear Joyce's words leaping off the street. THe only problem being that they were all in crazy grammer experiments and only Alex could decipher them cause he's clever like that.

Pulling up at the venue there were 20 or so 15 year old girls milling around and looking fan esque. Now we're building a fan base and taking our time to play every place we can get to, but I don't think that we have had a massive breakthrough in the 10-15 year old pop market yet. Low and behold we find out that upstairs in the academy tonight a new boyband called clozure are playing. (What is wrong with an S I wonder?). If there could be a more graphic demonstration of the difference between the pop world and our world it was this. 1000 screaming girls, choregraphed dance routines, tribly hats and no live band in the venue, and then upstairs you had Clozure. (ArfArf)

We supped Guiness down the road with some fans/friends who had come up from Galway and over from London and Al finally got to sample the delights of the Super Macs. We also got some lovely One Euro Fifty sunglasses which i would later have pickpocketed while walking through Temple Bar later that night.

The gig was probably the sparsest attended of them all, but we did have some people going pretty crazy for it all at the front, and we tried to give everything for our final show including the most aggresive version of Girl From The BBC ever. It was like Metallica up there or something. When we'd finished and guitars were strewn around the stage and some in the audience someone was heard to shout with solid timing"You Don't Get That With The Kooks!". Too true sir, too true!

After load out, and signing some OSA posters for frustrated Clozure fans (Anyone wanting to launch a pop band, two tips. 1) People love free stuff. THe minute we got out free posters we were suddenly flavour of the week, 2) Let your act go out and see the fans after the show. There must have been 30 kids waiting for 45 minutes and no one came out to see them. If we ever start selling out big venues then I will do my best to still be on the merch stand. Even if i just get in the way.)

Then it was partying at Thomas Reids till stupid o clock with some fine folk who had come to see us play, and then an hours sleep on a sofa in Waterlooville and a ferry back home.

We are now driving through the most insanely beautiful scenerey I think i have ever seen in the North Of Wales. Sun shining through the trees, lambs in the field, steam trains rattling by. You do get to see some amazing crazy stuff when touring in a band, and we definitely got our share in Ireland and are pretty keen to come back, so hopefully see you in Autumn. Please come check our stuff out at myspace.com/officialsecretsact if you haven't already, and I will leave you, sitting comfortably in the van, somewhere in North Wales with The Decemberists playing so beautifully on the stereo. Good times, definitely good times.

Kind Regards
Lawrence
OSA