Letting The Snakes Crinkle Their Heads to Death [by Joe Wilson]
	North America, Winter 2002 [by David Westlake]
	Huddled Masses [by David Westlake]
	Joe's German Diary [by Joe Wilson]
	The Germ of Panic [by David Westlake]
	Clothes That Make You Cry [by Joe Wilson]
	Placebo Tour Diary [by Liam Howe]
	Shame [by David Westlake]
	Diary Abajo del Pueblos [by Joe Wilson]
	The Hum of Plastic [by Joe Wilson]
	What We Do [by David Westlake] They headed south under a veil of secrecy, two by car, two by train. They had no map and told no-one where they were going, just "away" for a while, for headspace, for peace and quiet and freedom and sunshine. How they smiled when they saw London receding behind them into its permanent cloud and drizzle. They could be free from it all for a time. The people, the pressure, the grey inside and out. This place has lizards, butterflies, geese, cows, bees. It is silent like London has never been, a thick fat comfortable silence and, thank god and the precious baby jesus, the sun is out. "You’re a fucking idiot" "Fuck you, fuck off" How well we relate when the sun is shining and we’ve had a drink. Someone makes a point, someone replies with the same point put differently, different words, different angle. Ends up with "fuck you, fuck off you fucking fuck." There was a point somewhere along the way but we’ve all forgotten it, there’s years of petty irritation that we never quite resolved, day to day shit that we never got out of the way. People might not realise the amount of time we have to spend together, if we are touring we are sharing rooms for 6 months at a time, waking up with each other, hung over and gone on together, sick of the sight of each other. So there are arguments, yes. We have finished song 1. It is called "POLAROIDS" Laurie Anderson meets Cyndi Lauper meets O.M.D. meets The Undertones. Or some such crap...that’s the kind of talk P.R. people come out with. It’s a good tune, it’s up-tempo, it’s pop music. It’s the first ever time all four pimps sang on the same song, even the straw-haired drummer. We are now on a tune called "THINK HARDER, THINK DUMB" Yes, you’re going to love this one, get dancing, go on. It’s never been a natural thing for the pimps to go uptempo, we have always avoided going totally ‘house’ but this tune kind of heads in that direction, but crashes into Frank Black along the way. We find it difficult to settle on one specific thing. Maybe that’s a weakness but if it sounds too much like one thing we tend to drag it in a different direction to avoid classification (or something dumb assed like that). Christ , it’s quiet here. We’ve got little Chris recording his vocals outside and the atmosphere swallows it up. There’s a farmer on the other side of the valley wondering what the fuck "Loretta Young Silks" means. He hit a note the other day and we heard a dog howling a reply somewhere far away. The guy who owns the local bar wants us to play some songs for him and his drunken clientele. We might preview the new album to a couple of pissed-up French farm hands. How’s that for exclusive....... Oh god, the English abroad....Oh god, the ex-pats. There’s a reason they didn’t want to stay in England ( maybe they were driven out). There seem to be a lot of them in these parts, Daily Mail readers the lot of them. Little Englanders. Not evil or bad or wrong but depressing nevertheless. Defensive, driven by herd instinct and a mistrust of the ‘other’. We had to talk to one whingeing idiot today and he went on and on about the French and how awful they were, how they knew nothing about real food, they had no sense of humour.....we look around us and there are French people smiling in the hot sunshine, kissing their greetings to each other, laughing and joking. Young people holding hands, Grand-meres holding babies, flowers, trees, sun. But this guy, the Englander is there on a fold up chair under a nylon umbrella, with socks beneath his sandals showing signs of sweat. The bitterness.. "I wouldn’t bother with that, not here, no...yer French, you see, yer French haven’t a clue about sophistication. It’s all image, their food might look good on the plate but does it taste good? Does it? Course not, it’s yer bleedin’ French food. Rubbish... " WELL FUCK OFF BACK TO ENGLAND THEN, YOU’RE BRINGING US DOWN.GO BACK TO YOUR MONDEO AND SCREAMING AT THE KIDS AND SNEERING AT THE NEIGHBOURS AND COMPLAINING THAT PEOPLE HAVE NO RESPECT ANYMORE.........Well, no, we’re glad they left. God, the cabin fever....... Lost the will for a couple of days. But here we go again. We’ve finished 7 tunes and we’re pretty excited about them. We are having another go at "polaroids" as it sounds a little limp. It’s close but it aint right. Corner is out there right now trying to rough up his voice a little, yelling into his hands he sounds like a kidnap victim. So the kitchen is full of the smell of melting computer parts. Chris, the clumsy oaf, spilt his beer over the keyboard while doing a spot of programming. We dived on the keyboard draining out the fluid just in time to avoid an explosion but not quick enough to avoid damaging something, somewhere in the chain. The computer, the centre of our lives is sitting there, dead to the world (HAL). Clutching at straws we have placed the keyboard in the oven(gas mark 3 for twenty minutes until piping hot throughout). This is never going to work but we might get a good hit off the fumes. We are being slowly poisoned by cheap red wine bought in plastic canisters. It is twisting us up like something out of ‘Jacob’s Ladder’. It costs next to nothing and kills brain cells quicker than poppers. Corner is screaming his eyes out in the next room. My head is being ‘done in’ as we speak. Another scream... soon the gendarmerie will arrive with a swat team. STOP THE SCREAMS, LORD, STOP HIM. We debate haircuts. With this much time away from the real world we can try stuff out in relative safety. Corner is skirting good taste with a frightening moustache, I’m trying a kind of trashy thing out. Liam has had his cut by Joe and looks a little like Alan Shearer. Where’s the sun gone.... Joe has taken on the cooking duties and we are realising he has been ‘hiding his light under a bushel’ He has come up with some pretty crackin’ meals. He could make a treat out of an old boot. He did ‘lemon sole with caper butter and a roasted pepper and tomato salad’ last night and we all just sat there in stunned silence, like, when the fuck did he learn to do this?Yes this is the pimps cookery page. We aspire to the level of the lifestyle magazine. We will shortly be providing you with a handy pull-out gardening section and a shopping guide. So we are settling into a routine. Get up at 9, faff about sorting our caffeine levels, start work at 10.30, work till 2 by which time Joe has created a spectacular spread of the ‘come sample nature’s bounty’ variety, work through till 10 for dinner, then work till about 1am. It’s a bit of a shag working this hard when there’s a swimming pool sitting there idle but I guess it’s worth it. It is good to get away from all the shit we’ve left behind and focus our ideas on the new album. We are determined to make it as direct as possible. We allowed ourselves too much time with ‘Splinter’ it dragged on and we put everything we had into it. As a result we love that album cos it took a whole year out of our lives and was a kind of therapy for us at a strange and complicated time, but we are making a concerted effort to be quick with this one. If you have an idea you should try to make it as understandable as possible, not obscure it and twist it beyond recognition. In the past we have possibly been a little guarded with meaning. But we are determined to be transparent. We want to make people dance again. We used to enjoy that. It’s not all angst after all. Oh, Herr Doktor... Late night German T.V. Please stop.... If Becoming X was a predominantly ‘electronic’ album and Splinter tended towards the acoustic then it looks like Number 3 is going back towards the electronic. Though this is pretty inaccurate. All three are as electronic as each other inasmuch as they all were basically constructed on samplers. And they are all as acoustic as each other in that we use a voice, an acoustic guitar, a bass guitar, a drum kit and various bits and pieces. So, when I say this album is more electronic than the last that doesn’t mean we have changed the way we work. It is exactly the same (except the sunshine). A sampler is just a complicated tape recorder and the raw materials are sounds. Sounds sampled from records, from our instruments, from t.v., from the outside world. It’s just collage. We sit here, hour after endless hour introducing sounds to each other. Sometimes they get on well, sometimes they hate each other. We prefer the latter, it makes for something a little less mundane. The sun is back. Work is becoming difficult. We are two weeks in, half way through our little trip. We have finished 9 songs: POLAROIDS KIRO TV SICK THE FUEL LORETTA YOUNG SILKS BLUE MOVIE BLOODSPORT BLACK SHEEP THINK HARDER, THINK DUMB We have tons more to do. But that’s not bad, nine songs in two weeks. Escaped to the local bar again last night. "Tony’s"... It’s a small quiet village drinking hole with a smattering of ex-pats. I’ve been there a few times now with Ian and each time we take a different third party. The first time was with Chris on a ‘letting off steam’ night, then we took Craig, our manager, last night we took Liam. There’s a very specific class thing going on there. Lacoste shirts, deck shoes, beige against sunburnt faces.(Not Liam, the people in the bar) They remind me of the kind of people who used to sit on enormous gin palaces around Torquay marina (getting a bit childhood memory here) chewing the fat. In the absence of anyone else it’s O.K. to sit with these people and hear their slightly troubling views. But if I was feeling more militant then, Christ on a rubber bike, I would be trashing the place. The complacency, the endless crass Daily Mail politicising. This guy, an accountant who’s into Grand Prix, was asking me what we are going to do about the work force. THE WORK FORCE? What work force? Don’t ask me, I haven’t done a day’s work in my life. And I recommend it as a lifestyle. He was telling me about a high court judge who owns a home around here somewhere and organises it so that he sits in court from Tuesday to Thursday each week in order to have an uninterrupted long weekend (every weekend) here in sunny France. Now, I don’t want to sound obvious but surely there’s something awry there. What possible understanding of people could a man with this lifestyle have? When he’s not sipping fine wines by the pool he’s sending people to prison. Sitting here listening to the album tracks to date. They sound fine. Very fine. Working on MIAMI COUNTING for 4 days now and, finally, a breakthrough. It was getting a bit ‘blood out of a stone’ for a while. Should we just sack the tune completely, it was going nowhere. But after a struggle it’s become hard as nails. It started out as a ‘honeyz round the pool’ type tune. Laid back summer vibe. Then it went all Dr Dre. Now it’s just huge. We broke a self imposed rule and allowed a distorted guitar. Corner went at it like dog with a bone, his guitar was squealing with feedback, his sinewy, wiry arms straining in a rictus of rock n roll angst. Much like Michael J. Fox’s guitar solo in Back to the Future. "I guess you guys ain’t ready for this yet, but your kids are gonna love it" The paranoia around here is quite stunning. We went to "Tony’s" again last night for some food and, after our meal, Tony shut the door on us to protect us from his huge dogs. A couple of us freaked out, "he’s locked us in, he’s fucking locked us in. What does he want with us? Fuck this, we’re getting out....the door’s got no fucking handle, why’s he doing this to us?" Just as our levels of paranoia are peaking the doors crash open and these two huge fucking dogs come hurtling in like Satan’s messengers and run rings around our table while we all yelp and whinny in fear, then, slowly Tony enters the room with a slight smile, the smile of the serpent, calm and considered. The dogs, silenced by Tony’s entrance, take up position at his side as he sits and lights a cigarette. We left shortly after that. We are genuinely quite perturbed by Tony, the lynch-pin of the village. One of the massive, slathering dogs is called Arkan. He has named his dog after an infamous massacre-ist and ethnic cleanser. Strange cogs are turning in his head. We have pretty much finished now. There are more tunes to come which we will record back in London. We had a champagne moment and then Chris went back to the computer to start tweaking an endless tweak. Some more song titles for you: M’AIDEZ AFTER EVERY PARTY I DIE O-TYPE Thirteen songs effortlessly tossed off the wrist, quick as you like. No messing about, no over-analysis, no expensive studio. We’ve stripped it down to the raw skin and teeth.And now, at home again in London, I read in the paper that Loretta Young has died. There is a tune on the new record called "LORETTA YOUNG SILKS" after the practice, invented by her cameraman, of placing silk stockings over the lens to achieve a soft focus. The song is about vanity and soft focussing yourself and, as such has nothing to do with Loretta herself but out of idle curiosity we went on to the official Loretta Young site and downloaded a pic of her that looked back at us every day. Sneaker Pimps do not believe in the pre-destined but there was something pretty spooky about the fact that she died the very day we left the house.