San Francisco update.. and upcoming London gig

It's been a scorcher in London. Can't get the new CDs by The Magic Numbers or Arcade Fire off the stereo and the new singles by Special Needs and Hard-Fi are making a good soundtrack. It's just a little over 2 weeks before we head out to San Francisco to record the second album. Our efforts to try and persuade airline companies to help us out with some reductions in return for a credit on a potentially world shaking album (more of that later) have all been rebuffed. Sometimes you get a personal touch though, like this one from Delta Airlines (we really tried to big up the fact that producer Jeff had produced The Killers album..

"I am so sorry for the delay in responding but we had to check in with the appropriate people to provide a response.  Unfortunately, our reply is going to be that we are not able to help with your request.  As you may be aware Delta, along with most of the other US carriers, are under extreme financial duress in the current economic environment and are indeed fighting for our very survival.  Although we may have been able to help with these type of request in the past, our current situation does not allow us to help as we are only honoring the commitments we have made to myriad charitable organizations at the start of the year.
 
We certainly wish you luck with the band.  The Killers put out a great album of music and we wish M.A.S.S. the same type of success.  We encourage you to continue to check out delta.com where you can always find our lowest fares and where specials are often run that might help meet your needs" (Delta Airlines 7th June 05)

So no go then, in the end, the cheapest flights we could get without taking days to get there was with Mr. Bransons Virgin Atlantic but even then we had to use three quarters of our total living and accommodation budget because flights go up in July when all the little kiddies are on their hols and mum and pa want to take them off to the US.. what's wrong with Skegness and Brighton?
Anyway, this makes acute the problem of where to stay in SF, close your doors and windows and pretend not to be at home SFians because M.A.S.S. are .. DESPERATE!!!
We've started more communication with producer Jeff now though (he is currently producing a band called The Sounds). On Thursday we were in the rehearsal studios putting together the final list of song demos which we think should be candidates for the album and we'll be getting them over to him next week. Still some work to do though...
On Tuesday (June 21st) it's summer solstice day and we are going to do our last UK gig before the recording in LONDON @ 93 FEET EAST - Some of you, who we might loosely term um.. 'fans' expressed a bit of quizzical interest in the fact that sometimes our set in Europe is 80-90 minutes whereas the most we play in the UK is an hour, well on Tuesday we are going to do a longer set so will be good for many reasons. Two bands we have invited over from France, SYD MATTERS and STEEPLE REMOVE join us. If you are in UK London, see you there. If U R in San Fran.. see you soon...