45 45s @ 45 : SWC STYLE (Part 14)

A GUEST SERIES

32 – Heartburn Destination – Dracula Legs (2014 Too Pure Records)

Released as a single March 2014 – Unknown Chart Position

I’ve told some of this story before. A few years back I had to pop over to a place called Dayton, which is a city in Ohio (and the birthplace of Kim Deal, Pixies fans) for a few days. I arrived around 10pm in the evening and after a quick pit stop at a bar for a spot of dinner I end up at my hotel. The hotel is ok, its downtown and in a relatively nice area. I decide that having been up for about 26 hours, I should try and get some sleep.

Try as I like, I can’t, as the moody bloke from Faithless, sang, get no sleep. For two hours I look out of the window at my surroundings, I take a few photos out of the window of things like traffic lights, a passing truck, I unfold and refold my tshirts and I still refuse to feel tired.

I think about going for a walk, but as I get to the hotel door I see a police car tear along the road and I think better of it. So I check out the hotel, the pool and gym are both shut. The lounge reserved for residents is pitch black. There is a small bar downstairs, which is empty, but open. I ordered a rum and coke and watch what I assume is a re run of baseball game (one of the teams are the Cubs). By now it’s about one am, still not tired (on reflection I was massively over tired). It was then I spotted the staircase.

When I’m away from home I tend to take a running kit with me. Running is a great way to see a city, especially if it is just waking up. However, in my sleep deprived state, call it delirium if you like, I thought for some reason at one thirty in the morning, it would be a really good idea to change into my running gear and run up and down the fire escape stairs in this hotel.

So that is what I did. There were eight floors, twenty four flights of stairs, and at first slowly I begun to trot up and down them. By the fourth loop I’d got the time down to just under 5 minutes. I was having fun. Then the somewhere between the fifth and sixth floor I was told to knock it off by the night duty security guard.

He marched me back to my room – gave me the number for room service, and wished me good night. I switched on my ipod and within an hour I fell asleep, which I probably should have done about five hours ago. The first song I heard was ‘Heartburn Destination’ by Dracula Legs.

Dracula Legs are a five piece band from London who burst out of nowhere back in 2014. They play a brand of indie rock that I once described as sounding like the kind of music that Nick Cave would make if he moved to countryside and took up organic gardening. I’m still not quite sure what I meant by that but I stand by it, because that it is what it sounds like. A rollicking four minute rockabilly indie stomper. The organic gardening analogy sounds better I think.

The single was backed with this

Cold Licks

SWC

Dracula Legs, Orwells, Simon & Garfunkel

YAAAAWWWWN. A GUEST POSTING FROM S-WC

Nope….I’m not being rude.

S-WC used the word ‘Yawn’ in the title of his e-mail. Here’s the rest of his whimsical words:-

Jet lag. Wonderful thing. Its about three am, I am in a place called Dayton in the United States of America, which for those of you who don’t know, is in Ohio. I have been here for five hours, and have had about twenty minutes sleep. The whole place is unsurprisingly quiet. I’m really hungry as well which is not helping my mood. There is an all night shop down the road, but it looks quite ‘edgy’ so I’ve raided the mini bar. I say mini bar, it had some peanuts, a small warm bottle of water, some ‘chips’ and a shoe horn in it. The shoe horn was a bit rubbery but strangely tasty. For some reason still unknown to me, the Americans don’t do kettles or tea bags. Christ there is not even a gym. There is a bar, but its shut.

So then I looked at the info they leave in the room so you can get your bearings, saying that I appear to be on the 11th floor in the biggest hotel in the area, I might just be able to find my way around. However, Dayton appears to have lots of museums, a University Campus and that’s about it. Down the road, is a suburb called Kettering. My fingers are crossed that it is more lively as the UK equivalent. Apparently the Steve Miller Band played there once, so there is hope. Once when on an overnight stop in the UK version of Kettering I went to the town centre to find something to do in the evening, I managed to pick up a ‘What’s On in Kettering’ leaflet and it just said ‘Fuck All’.

So as I sit there wide awake in the sixth biggest city in Ohio, ‘the Gem City’ (named after a racehorse and not, you know, jewels) I reached for my ipod. I was trying not to as I listened to it much of the way over on the flight, but if needs must.

The weird thing about music is that is somehow, in the strangest or simplest of situations, it can lift a mood. By the end of the first track I was feeling slightly better, and I was smiling by the end of track two and track three made me do a little jig around the small box room I was in.

I now think that, you know, this place ain’t so bad, I arrived safely, the family are well back home, my luggage wasn’t lost. As I type now, I feel calm – the sun is being to rise across the skyline and this being America I can look forward to a heck of a breakfast, consisting of waffles, blueberries and maple syrup. I’ve also spied a Krusty Kreme Doughnut shop from the window, about a five minute walk in the other direction from the dodgy all night shop. Bonus. Also I get to go to Chicago on Sunday, so I should probably cut my whinging.

So here are the first three songs on the iPod this morning. I thank them for lifting me out of a rubbish mood. Its also a little odd how iPods have this habit of picking songs that suit the situation.

mp3 : Simon & Garfunkel – The Sound of Silence
mp3 : Dracula Legs – Heartburn Destination
mp3 : The Orwells – Blood Bubbles