The Vichy Government - gigs

Playing HMP's night at a newly reopened venue in London Bridge, handily next door to a hospital. Major label whores the Mighty Roars cancelled a few hours before so Vichy headlined by mistake. Opening the bill, Tokyo 10-piece the Shinonome Orchestra were dubbed "the best band ever" by Andrew. Between bands a little man in a Mike Flowers wig pretended to be French and played TV ad jingles from the early 80s.

On their biggest UK tour to date, The Long Blondes kindly decided to waste a little of Geoff Travis' money on us. This gig was very enjoyable because we got a hot dinner, our own shower and a fridge full of booze.

Back to Scumbury's excellent Guided Missile night (Henrik Larsson got a dedication) for a politely received set. Also playing were Headless, The Hells and Future of the Left. Intro music- Magazine, Definitive Gaze.

Don't start me. Live debut for We Have An Open Relationship.

We returned to the London stage in furtive fashion, dipping our toes with an absurdly early set at Alex Luxembourg's club night on Oxford St. Pink Grease were amongst the three completely crap bands that followed. Intro music: Bernard Hermann, Vertigo Prelude

Like Trotsky in his Mexican villa, back to preach at the converted in perhaps the only venue in the country yet to blacklist us. This was a well-attended Sonic Midwife night with Popular Worksop and Korova. We aired Little Fishes II and Bunuel/Deneuve tribute Tristana for the first time. Intro music: Love, The Red Telephone

We played The High Society's end-of-exams party for students at Nottingham Poly. We didn't go down very well. Headlining were LA hipster dufuses The Blood Arm. We were told that the night before the gig, the boy who'd designed their posters got mugged and suffered... a broken arm. There's clearly something in those statistics.

In an event without the slightest whiff of incest about it, Vichy were special guests at the launch night for the debut singles from The Resistance and The Autons, both on Repeat Records. The Portland also seemed to be accomodating the entirety of the Cambridgeshire Real Ale Society -all in bold yellow t-shirts- which bestowed a slightly Twin Peaks atmosphere upon the gig.