The photographer for the band posted this on Big Heavy World today:
UK Customs and Unrestrained
by taylor cook. on Tue Dec 30, 2008 9:18 am
First day of tour and Zeke and I got detained by customs for like, 6 hours.Fucking ridiculous.Then, to top things off, they were all "oh, you're totally not getting through. we're sending you home".So Zeke and I had to tell them what was up, and they got in contact with everyone else in the band, and eventually said to everyone else "you are not staying here. you are going home" and took their passports. At that point, we were all pretty crushed. And I think they could tell, because at least one or two of the customs agents were totally trying to help us out.After a long fucking time and a nap in the detaining room, Zeke comes back in from being questioned again, and utters the magic words "they're letting us in".About 20 minutes later this aretha franklin look-a-like customs agent motions for us to leave the room, and we got our bags, and got the fuck out of the airport before they changed their minds.Now our passports are all flagged, though. So that kinda sucks. But at least we made it.Head of customs had only this to say: "well, it wouldn't be very beureaucratic of us to not let you in."Apparently UK-US relations are at an all time low, so they're doing whatever they can to make sure americans don't hate england.
So yeah, we almost didn't make it into the UK, but we did at like, the last minute.
