(Posted on behalf of King Curly)

It is safe to say that many Americans expect a super-sized helping of emotion in their songs just like they do with their food portions. They like it so much that that they are prepared to overlook the authenticity of it. Evidence for this wild generalisation can be found by watching American movies/tv and listening to their music.

Extreme Reverb has been taken up most keenly as a way of super-sizing the emotional content of any given song. To stay in the game we have learnt to find the amount of reverb we are comfortable with – and then to triple it
for the performance.

The nodding of heads and closing of eyes in the audience tells me we are in the ballpark.

Everything is big here as you have heard. The meals served are impossible to finish. We have also wondered at the huge number of cars on the road – disproportionate with the employment levels in the country -so where are
they going if not to work? John suggests American’s might think driving counts as exercise (petrol is very cheap).

But we can match the Americans when we feel like it. A couple of days ago we visited the Harry Houdini Museum in Scranton PA  He is a great hero of mine but I was disappointed to hear that he was only able to hold his breath for 4mins 16 seconds. When I was at my peak I could swim underwater the full length of a 50 metre pool. As part of our tour the guide asked the crowd to test themselves against Houdini and Zoe caused a great sensation by winning with a relaxed 3 minutes something (see photo).Like our most famous racehorse Pharlap, Zoe has the advantage of massively super sized internal organs.

Lots of good shows since last I wrote. Notably at Spikehill in Brooklyn NY where we had an enthusiastic crowd whichincluded people who actually already were fans reminding us what a massive population lives there.