Woah, Columbus? Kooks cock snooks

There's a chance to look at the inside-head-thoughts of Luke Pritchard and The Kooks in today's Guardian music and film section.

There's his view of America:

Ask if they are prepared to do anything to break America and you are told: "But that makes it sound like a bad thing to drive around playing shows in all these crazy little towns you'd never get to see otherwise - how could that be bad?"

"Crazy little towns", eh, Luke?

Their first tour of the US was in 2006:

Los Angeles Safari Sam's (September 24)
Club NME, Los Angeles Spaceland (25)
San Francisco Pop Scene (26)
Brooklyn North Six (28)

Here's their 2007 American tour itinerary:

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (April 29)
San Francisco Slim’s (30)
Portland Doug’s Fir Lounge (May 2)
Seattle Crocodile Café (3)
Chicago Metro (5)
Columbus The Basement (7)
Toronto Government (8)
New York Irving Plaza (10)
New York Irving Plaza (11)
Washington DC 9:30 Club (12)
Boston Paradise Rock Club (13)

And here's where they're playing next month:

5/18 San Diego, CA - House of Blues
5/19 Los Angeles, CA - The Wiltern
5/22 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
5/24 Vancouver, BC - Commodore Ballroom
5/26 Portland, OR - Wonder Ballroom
5/28 Salt Lake City, UT - Avalon Theatre
5/29 Denver, CO - Ogden Theatre
5/31 Minneapolis, MN - Fine Line Music Café
6/01 Milwaukee, WI - Turner Hall Ballroom
6/02 Chicago, IL - Vic Theatre
6/04 Toronto, ON - Kool Haus
6/05 Philadelphia, PA - The Fillmore @ TLA
6/06 Boston, MA - Paradise Rock Club
6/07 Washington, DC - 9.30 Club
6/11 New York, NY - Terminal 5

Good lord, you've really gotten off the beaten track there, Luke. With the possible exception of Columbus Ohio, there's nothing that an pensioner's whistle-stop tour of the States wouldn't have visited. And Columbus is hardly "a crazy little town": it's the state capital of Ohio, 15th biggest city in the US, population of three quarters of a million.

Could Luke be trying to romanticise his band's "struggles"?

He bridles when the Sophie Heawood suggests they might be posh:

But suggest they are posh, and there is a murmur of dissent - their frontman may have boarded at Bedales, the liberal school in Hampshire, but, he says, he felt out of place there among the offspring of millionaires. And they didn't all go to private schools, they protest - new bass player Dan Logan was home-schooled - and what does class matter anyway?

You have to be quite desperate to try and live down your well-connected, fluffed-pillowed roots to offer "being home-schooled" as an example of a tough background. It's right up there with "I'm not posh; my chauffeur doesn't wear a cap".

The band try and fight the accusations that their music is a bit limp, but actually wind up demonstrating exactly what the problem is:

"The thing is," says Pritchard, "talking to other friends in bands, whether they're signed to indies or majors, they seem to have a lot more meddling from their label. But because we deliver pop songs - in their terms, songs they can work with - they always leave us to it. Our A&R guy only came to the studio once while we were recording the album."

Now, that could be a sign that the label have such faith in The Kooks that they don't need to worry about what they're up to. On the other hand - actually, the same hand - the label have such confidence that the band are going to deliver something so commercially attuned, they don't need to worry. If a cow learned to cut its own arse up into steaks and to make beefburgers with its own eyelids, you wouldn't need a slaughterman.