RÜFÜS

Friday 3 August
Headed to Canberra, meet everyone at Gigpiglet, Surry Hills, to jam pack our van with all our gear, Liz and her gear, and Ryan (our lighting guy) and all his gear. Everyone's very excited, particularly Ryan – it's his birthday!

Laptop party all the way to Canberra. Stop at Swamp in Fishwich to get some audio stuff sorted. They hook us up, hard. Few suss characters lurking the porn shops! Load our stuff into Trinity Bar for soundcheck. First soundcheck of the tour is always a bit of a punish. Get everything sorted eventually. Sneaky video interview for Canberra guys Fro and Mo; good dudes. Check into our hotel, Hugh from Trinity Bar has hooked us up in a place that's well-and-truly out of our price range. Everyone chilling at the hotel, trying to catch some sleep before the show.

Hugh from Trinity takes us all out to dinner, pretty refreshing for a venue owner to look after us like that! Head to the venue to watch Elizabeth Rose do her thing. The crowd are into it! Venue reaches capacity just before we go on. Good crowd makes it a really fun set for us. We top the night off by getting the crowd to sing Ryan a massive happy birthday. Couple of chilled drinks and a hefty pack up. 

Saturday 4 August
Four or five hours sleep later we're driving to Sydney. Worst start to the day; James our drummer gets a speeding fine. Ring triple j and have a nice on-air chat with Sarah Howells; she is super-friendly. Arrive at the Standard midday and start prepping for the show. Full on Rüfüs working bee. We have to set up a projector to make the new visual show we have work. Very excited to see how people respond to the visuals, spent the last four weeks working on them. Standard are letting us paint a giant Ü on the walls, we rope our manager and a friend into painting it for us. It looks sweet. Check out ticket sales and it looks like it's going to be a sell out. Soundcheck etc…

Crowd gets there early to catch Movement. They play a sweet opening set. We're getting ready for the show and miss Liz Rose's set. Venue is absolutely packed. Lights and everything look great. The crowd are really into the new set. We get Elizabeth Rose up to do Stars Ago with us. Tyrone jumps up on the bar and sings to her across the crowd. Big percussion breakdown to finish, New Navy are in the crowd, but they don't storm the stage this time… Brisbane and Melbourne next.