Christmas holidays.

The last few days I have felt like this:


I am back at work today and I feel like this:



I just saved myself 2000 words.

You can't Blag a Blagger.

We played Reading this weekend with a bunch of people we have played with before and a few I have not seen before. The gig itself was in a pub after a last minute venue change, so while there was a noticeable lack of stage, lighting and door-entry money, we’ve played shows in pubs before on a donation basis, so it wasn’t unusual at all and despite the sound often being pretty bad at shows like this (at least when actually playing), they are often pretty fun too. The football was on before we got there and went on for a while so the place was full of people that didn’t look like they would be sticking around to watch a bunch of people singing with guitars after it had finished. As predicted, as soon as the football ended the ratio of people with piercings and ripped denim to Reebok Classics shifted pretty hard. It was obvious the pub, without the gig being on, would have been basically empty. As the place was filling up, I went to get some water – I always drink a ton of water before playing as my voice quickly gets dry in venues with cigarette smoke blowing in from the door and from having to raise my voice to get heard in the general din of a pub. I asked for 2 pints of water and the barman shook his head and muttered “fucking hell”. I didn’t take that as a good sign. The lady behind the bar told me if I wanted more water I would have to buy bottled water because they were there to make money. I told her I was singing tonight and I need to drink water, but she said she didn’t care as they had money to make and they only allow gigs to get more people in the door. She didn’t even have an answer for me when I explained that people were coming specifically to watch bands tonight who would never have been at her pub without us all playing the show. I decided at that point I would not buy a single drink at this place and got my water from the tap in the bathrooms.

Did she think that by refusing me water I would then decide to empty my wallet at her bar? Does getting water for someone really result in fewer overall sales? I just don’t know where to start with this sort or attitude. I got it once in Norwich as well and I think it’s only going to get worse. Playing shows isn’t a cheap hobby* and I am so grateful when we get given a few beers by the promoter, maybe some food (especially if we are touring) but at the very least, I don’t want to get shit for wanting to drink water at a show I am playing. If pubs are closing at a rate of 50 a week then attitudes like this cannot be helping and I hope the Blagrave Arms in Reading can realise that before they fall victim to the recession as well. In Europe it’s a totally different story, every band will tell you that. Getting paid, getting food and beer and a place to sleep is standard and they somehow all seem to manage to keep their venues open. Josh said we should consider charging the land-lady for getting to hear us play considering she didn’t pay to get into the pub or donate to the bands. I like that idea. We’ve got costs to cover as well, right?

*despite my long-term goals and commitments to this band, at this point in what some may call a “career” I can’t really describe our band as anything other than a time and money consuming hobby which I love. I hope one day I can call it something else, and then bitch about music being my job.

* This isn't any sort of "dig" at the promoter of the show, I know most promoters have issues with their venues and they way they are treated when putting together shows and although I only briefly spoke to Ian, he seemed like an awesome dude and the show itself was well attended and rad. Thanks Ian.

Purple Turtle Footy

Yo neighbours. I found this on the Youtube of us at our first full band show. Thanks to Strike a Chord for filming it!

Dan

The Year of The Tiger.

We’re in this months Rock Sound magazine (!) as one of the bands to watch going into 2010. That’s awesome, right? I’m pretty stoked on that but it puts some pressure on us too, which again, I sort of like as well, hopefully it will keep us on our toes and productive. The one thing I am terrified of happening to us is becoming stale. I'll rename us A2010gies, i have none for the rest of the year.

Anyway, with great press coverage comes great compromises. Primarily, the photo we sent them for the article got cropped and only my head-flailing hair and my telecaster headstock made it into the magazine. That.Is.Crazy. Even Joe got in it and he’s just a drummer. My ego is taking serious punishment today. Below is the photo in all its uncropped glory.

Anyway, mega-money magazine deals aside, not a lot has been going on except a lot of practicing and a lot of sitting about in traffic on our way to practice. You know that bit in the Truman show when Jim Carey is trying to get from one side of town to another and the big-wig executives want to delay him by telling all the people and cars to suddenly block his path? I think that’s happening to us every time we get in the car and it's really, really frustrating. Finally, it is time for this band to skip getting a van and go straight for a series of microlights.

Try stopping us now Boris!

Forget the LHC

Proof that Black Holes exist, on earth.


The LHC is now a waste of time. This is a really scary photo of me. I look like The Grudge.

Plus, Joe, being handsome, below. When we do a horrible band photo for some massive magazine or something, I'm going to get him at the front of the shot with the rest of us in the background, looking away awkwardly, showing off tattoos. Rad. Thanks for the photos Jim. That 5D is bloody amazing.

Fighting a Crystal.

Not long after I moved to London I was coming home from work with a friend and got on a train from Stratford to Homerton, which is a particularly untrendy part of Hackney. It’s the sort of place where people dress normally and listen to genres of music that exist for more than 10 minutes. In my standard lifelong-norm of jeans, hoodie and t shirt and now being in some form of punk band, I liked living there because I wasn’t forced to accept my own uncoolness on a day to day basis like I do in Shoreditch.

The train is an overground service and runs, at best, intermittently in the evenings, especially late at night. It was cold and I remember my scarf tugging at my beard and my breath trying to freeze itself to my skin. A guy sat opposite us on the train and asked what we were up to and, not being a huge fan of conversations with strangers while sober, I probably said something regarding coming home from work and being cold. Presumably, this was the opener he was waiting for, as he spent the rest of the journey talking about himself and his band and how awesome he/they were. I’m pretty sure he referred to his music as a “movement” as well. Just as soon as he had sat down, he left at Hackney Wick after having probably the most one-sided conversation of my life, and possibly even his. I didn’t know what to say, really. I didn’t care about his band, I didn’t care how awesome they were or how successful they might be. And it wasn’t because I have a problem with people that are excited about their bands, or talk a lot; it was because I was cold. So very, very cold.

People in bands do often seem to like talking about being in bands and playing gigs and its generally pretty boring conversation even for other people in bands. Bad gig stories? I could listen to that all day. Want to talk about gear? I’m a geek, I love that. Had a shitty tour or played with a terrible band? Tell me everything. But spend longer than one sentence describing your “sound” and what “messages” you want to “convey” and your “art” and I switch off and I’m lost forever. I guess I’m an asshole like that. I don’t like talking about that stuff at all.

I practically rushed home to check his band out, with probably some expectation of some overblown self-indulgent minimalist techno beat or something. I had no idea what to expect, as in all his conversation with me, he never gave me any real idea of the style of music they actually made. Anyway, I didn’t like it, as I expected. It wasn’t really bad, I just found it boring and pretty run of the mill. Maybe I never listened to it with an open mind, I don’t know. On listening to it now, I still feel the same way.

Well turns out they must be doing something right. I just saw them on the front-page of Myspace. So the question is, are they an awesome band, or am I an asshole?

I always preferred the name:

"Crystal MethHeads".

The Homestead

The Homestead in Southampton is awesome. I figured I would just get straight to the point today, I don’t feel like beating around any sort of bush and building up to anything. I’m just not in that “lets get some tension in my writing” sort of mood today.

Anyway, The Homestead has seen some amazing shows in the last few years, all of which have kicked off in the conservatory at the back of the house. When we started playing shows we did a lot of acoustic shows because, for some reason, we struggled getting shows where we could drum, but people putting on acoustic stuff seemed to like us. I never liked those acoustic shows, generally, but we did it because a gig at that point was better than sitting about talking about playing a gig. I’m glad no-one ever went to those shows. I think I have covered this dark period in our history before, right? Anyway, I heard about the Homestead and wanted to play there – photos I found on the infoweb made it look like the funnest place in the world and I wanted to be there, a part of it. We actually wrote them a real letter and sent them a CD and it never happened. Turns out the people who live there actually have real lives, jobs and serious drinking to do and putting on bands they have never met in their own house might not be their highest priority.

It took Sam Russo to get us in. He played there on a tour with Itch from the Kizzle Bizzles and a bunch of other dudes a few months before and he managed to wangle us a show there with him and Mike Scott and Kelly Kemp and someone else and it kicked off. I mean, it literally kicked off with pyramids, crowd surfing and big-old-sing-alongs before turning into a full on drunk party led by Kelly Kemp after Sam Russo got crowd-surfed out of the conservatory into the kitchen to finish off his set. It was one of my favourite gigs/parties I have been to in a long time. The next morning I remember waking on a mattress by the front door and slowly making my way to the kitchen to get some water. My feet were sticking to the floor, my head was pounding. My voice was long gone and I had to create a trench to the sink between bottles and cans. I felt bad that the house had taken such a battering before remembering that it was mostly the housemates who had encouraged half the antics, including one game of “spin till you fall over with a broomstick on your chin whilst wearing a wolf mask”. I thought someone might die playing that game.

We play there again on Saturday with Russo and the Mega Games 2, probably our oldest friends from playing shows and I could not be more excited. I’m not expecting a party like last time – that might be too much to hope for, but the overwhelming thing about the Homestead is how friendly and awesome everyone who lives there is and how welcoming they are to people coming into their home and I just love it there. House shows can be hit and miss, and for me, acoustic shows are the same, but the Homestead is the exception to every rule.

Long live the Homestead!

Before I forget

This is Josh. Rubbing the Belly of a MANATEE.

Amazing.

Some more Florida Photos.

This was taken in a National Park, somewhere in Southern Florida. This is where we saw a real-life Armadillo. I have nothing funny to say, it was just such an awesome place to hang out for the afternoon. No Gators though.

PJ takes Golf really seriously. I think it's because he thinks he is part Scottish or something (not that I have ever seen him drink Irn Bru). He took this game by a clear 10 points. Josh came last, if it matters proclaiming "Golf is shit anyway".


I think this was taken just before Defiance Ohio played at the end of Fest. I think Jim is praying that we might survive the epic crush that was about to swallow us whole for 45 minutes.


Ema works in a school and wears her "Bangers" T-shirt regularly to work. No one has said anything to her yet. I wonder how far she could take this. Should I buy her a t shirt with "Shagger" on the front?


This was during Calvinballs wrecking-machine of a set. Probably my highlight of Fest, they just smashed it.


Wolinski!! He gets the ball and does fuck-all! WOLINSKI!


This is the mess from when me and Josh busted up the roof in the side-stage during Bangers. Low Ceiling+roof tiles+Bangers+crowd surfing=Mess. They'll make the next one better.


After we played our set at Flacos we all sat about outside the venue and let the steam slowly evaporate off our bodies. It was the hottest show I have ever played and complete chaos to try to play. American War played after us and I went back into the furnace and caught the last part of his set, it was awesome. Go listen: www.myspace.com/americanwar


This is Andrew Cream from the Ruined. Having a great time.



This was almost too funny. Thanks to Chicken Little who allowed Josh to pretend to play this for us.

So theres a ton more photos, but most are barely even interesting to me, and I'm in half of them.

x

cRap.

Speaking of rap, since Josh started adding Grime to our in-car playlists a few months back after having been into Kano for over a year it made a massive change to what we listened to in the hours of driving we were doing at that time. Before I started listening to a lot of the music I listen to now I used to swap tapes with friends that mostly consisted of rap and hip-hop and I have been re-finding those songs on the internet a bit recently. It's been an eye opener - I'm not sure I can profess to having the best hip-hop collection of all time at all, a lot of what I used to listen to a lot was a bit shitty and it's no massive surprise I got tired of it. But some of it is awesome and it's been cool listening to some of those songs again, songs I got burnt-out on years ago, but feel fresh again now.

Talking to PJ about rap has been interesting too, as his tastes are pretty diverse and yet he is no big fan of most rappers and I struggled to see why at first. I think part of the problem for a lot of people with rap is that it carries a lot of negative baggage, images of idiots in MTV cribs episodes, semi-naked girls draped over Ferrari's, terrible lyrics, Snoop Dawg and unnecessary violence. It can be hard to look through all of that and find the good stuff. Its the same in every genre though, for every good punk band there's a million Good Charlottes and Confides. For every Elton John there is a James Blunt. I don't really have a point, other than if you look hard enough, there's some awesome rap out there I think everyone can relate to and enjoy. I tend to like artists who use bands at least some of the time. This one by Sage Francis is a particular favourite of mine and the use of the band in this version has a really interesting effect on the tone of this song, which lyrically, I wish I had written myself.

Just catching up, really.

I’m completely OK with linking to stuff about us on the internet. I don’t care if it comes across as self-indulgent or self promotional. This is our website! We pay £25 a year for this site in the hope that some people will look on it, like our songs and come watch us make noise and talk shit. If I don’t link to stuff on the infoweb about us, its likely no-one will ever see it and know that at least someone else is willing to talk about our band. So here you go, two reviews. One of Fest, one of the American Steel show in London.

Fest review

London Gig Review

Speaking of American Steel, that band is sweet-as. They killed it in London and then killed it at Fest. I bumped into the singer on some street in Gainsville while in the process of bombing out and told him (possibly multiple times) that this time next year they will be too big to play a venue at Fest. I stand by that, although I do apologise to American Steel for being so drunk and disorderly. I hope they appreciated the sentiment. I planned to write a bit about Fest actually, but like the last tour we did, I sort of left it too late and now it seems like forever ago, lost in several drunken hazes and the worst flight of my life. What I can say is that I learned a valuable drinking lesson (pace myself, don’t drink gin if you intend to stay upright for more than a few hours and dear God, do not talk to people in bands who you respect when you are essentially the drunkest dude in Gainsville. Sorry Eric O Pioneers)

Anyway, I saw a ton of bands, we played a fun as hell show in the hottest room ever and best of all, Small Brown Bike played before us with an acoustic set. This is brilliant. I’m not sure how much this is common knowledge, but some shitty venues and shitty promoters ask you to apply to play their venues or nights and make you fill in a form stating details about your band and who you have played with and what tours you have done. If I ever feel like playing a badly promoted gig at a shitty venue for probably no petrol money again, I can now fill in the form and say “Small Brown Bike supported us”. That is worth it’s weight in….poop, probably. Personal highlights of fest were basically all the UK bands I saw and the dinner I had at the Reggae Shack. Marvelous.

After Fest was over and I had said goodbye to my new Fest buddies Kyle and Eric (who I happened to stumble into about 20 times across the Fest) we went and hung out in Clearwater, Florida for just under a week, which was also sweet-as. We swam with the Manatees in Crystal River and saw a real-life wild Armadillo (!) What a wild week.

If Tyskie made holidays, this would have been a right Tyskie of a holiday.

This was the temperature during our set. Thats 31 degrees C.

This is the view of all our sweet-asses from outside Flacos. Probably cooler out there, but not by much.

This is the end of todays blog. Thanks x

Identity Crisis.

I've been listening to Lil Wayne recently.

A few blogs I read mentioned Lil Wayne in them over the last year or so, he seems to be the punk-rockers choice when it comes to rap so I went ahead and downloaded the Carter 1, 2 and 3. Yeah, I didn't pay for them, whatever. Lil Wayne is always banging on about being a "cash money millionaire" and I figure neither him nor "Cash Money Records" label or Apple corps needed my money, considering what I had heard of him wasn't all that great. I have a fairly solid track record of buying albums I download and like, so whatever. I'll do what I want.

I don't really like it. Money saved! It's listenable, but I'm not sure he is the greatest ever, as he often professes. I'm not sure he'd even get into my top 20 rappers list (if I had one). One thing I noticed though, was that Lil Wayne seems to have an identity problem, to such an extent that he put out a song called "I'm me", which should definitely reduce the amount of people who claim he is anything other than himself. I'm not sure who those people would be, google had no answers when I searched for "people who claim Lil Wayne is anything other than himself and/or Lil Wayne"

Here's a non-comprehensive list of things Lil Wayne has himself claimed to be:

I'm a monster
I'm a venereal disease like a menstrual bleed. (personal favourite)
I'm A Beast
I'm DBoy
I'm a Rottweiler

He is a diseased rottweiler-beast who Dboys part-time at the monster nightclub, or something. Deconstructing rap lyrics is pretty pointless really isn't it? I don't even know why I typed this. Go listen to Kano if you want some rap, he's awesome. Failing that:

Calvinball+Bangers bring the roof down on Fest.

We survived Fest. Barely.

More later. I'm tired.

ps: Calvinball:

America tomorrow.

I finish work at 6 today and go home to pack everything I think I will need in the next 2 weeks into a rucksack and my guitar case (despite having no idea what I might actually need) and go to America first thing tomorrow morning. I have insurance documents, flight details, hotel print-outs. I have suncreams, ipod chargers and sunglasses. I will forget at least 1 essential item and stress about losing my passport at least 20 times in the next 24 hours. I love flying, but I hate airports and I especially hate airport security considering I have an ability to lose things that are actually in my hand and a passport and wallet are very lose-able items. Tonight is going to be a bit of a stressful I think.

Today I feel like this.


ps: We still need backline for our gig at fest as well, if you can help us that would be great. See you in The Merica.

Ema Smith is Genius.

New shirt design, available (if all goes to plan) at Fest in all sizes. White on black shirt, or black on white shirt in S and M sizes only. If you want Ema to custom print your favourite shirt or want a coloured shirt done you can send it to us and we'll do it. Contact us at emaisawesome@aplogiesihavenone.co.uk and we'll let you know what to do.

American Steel and Rooftops

On Monday I scammed out of work early and headed to Mornington Crescent on the tube to meet everyone in our band at the Purple Turtle in Camden for the American steel show. It was the first gig in a long time where I have travelled alone to a show and it feels like even longer since I went to a show and didn’t have any gear with me. I was thinking on the tube that in a few hours I would be putting all our practice over the last few months into action as we played our first full-band show and how the Purple Turtle is the worst venue to have that sink-or-swim gig. I’ll get back to that though. I don’t usually pay attention to anything when riding the tube. It’s a lowlight of the day, made only less slightly dim by the fact that it’s usually the only time in the day I can listen to my headphones or a read a book in the 10 minute chunks between walking, changing trains and waiting. But Monday, as I was riding to Camden I started looking around the carriage at people and trying to imagine where they were going and what they were thinking. The Mother and two children of a young Indian family sat opposite me, with the youngest in her pram, slowly mashing a biscuit into her gums and getting baby spit all over her face while the older daughter who was maybe 6 years old sat quietly in her seat, arm outstretched to her younger sibling across the arm-rest holding her hand. The Mother sat next to me, facing her children. They all had their hoods up and coats on despite the heat slowly intensifying around me 50 meters below the ground and I never heard any of them speak a word. They looked nervous as they quietly alighted at Southwark, just one stop before me. I wondered where they were going and what seemed to be making them all so tense. I wondered if I looked as nervous as them and if the youngest girl in her pram, who stared at me constantly was thinking the same about me. Then Grade shuffled onto my ipod and stopped thinking about anything at all immediately.

I don’t like Camden much, but I do like the Purple Turtle and I do like Aisha who has put us on a few times and it always lovely. The venue is perfect for middle sized bands touring the UK with a capacity of several hundred, a good height stage, excellent sound and a soundguy who actually tries to make the mess of noise on-stage sound work-able while playing. But that’s its biggest downfall for this show. We were elevated 4 feet of the floor for everyone to see us. Everything we played and sang was pretty clear to everyone who was there. If we fucked it, everyone would know immediately. Nerves kicked in a little in a way I’m not that used to, a way that felt like the way it used to feel when we never really knew how it was going to go and if we would be utter shit. In the end, we played as well as we do in practice more or less and it was awesome fun and I was settled that we didn’t have to hide behind bad sound or a low floor to get through the gig. We pretty much blasted our set and said very little, I think we all felt the same way- like if we did the first few songs fine then we shouldn’t disrupt ourselves with too much spaffing, like avoiding cracks in the pavement. I was happy, I had a massive sense of relief after we played but that was quickly replaced with a feeling of disappointment that we had to wait almost 2 weeks to play as a band again. Rooftops were awesome, as usual, and American Steel may be a new favorite band that I have yet to get into completely. I watched Tommy instantly break his no-drinking-for-a-month rule, which was my favourite part of the night on the excuse "someone else bought it for me".An awesome night.

Thanks to Strike a Chord for the video.

Fly FM.

Practice the other night with PJ and Joe was awesome. We’ve been practicing our set rather than learning songs and it all came together and sounded awesome, so if everything goes to plan on Monday, we should play ok. I don’t now why that needed to be said, if we play bad now then I blame myself for over-hyping and jinxing us. Fuck.

Yesterday we did a live set and interview on Fly FM radio in Nottingham which was our first experience of that side of things. It was an odd experience. I practice guitar sitting down most days, but I only ever really play and sing standing up, with everything loud and destroying my higher frequency hearing (must buy earplugs), pouring sweat into the F hole on my Telecaster. That’s my comfort zone. Acoustic house shows are pretty much the same, except I’m usually drunk and I can never really hear myself over the noise in the room or shouting along. I like that. I’d imagine a lot of people who play in bands like the relative anonymity of being on a stage, hiding behind the noise, separated onto a stage. The thought of a live, acoustic, sit down performance was a million miles from my usual band experiences and I was, to be honest, terrified. I can’t put my finger on what I was nervous about though, my voice these days holds up ok since I started focusing more on my breathing and control and I have played these songs literally thousands of times. Was I afraid I would fumble chords and words? Nerves can do pretty terrible things to your concentration and tension, but we managed to play everything pretty much as we did in practice. A win, I think. We did an interview as well which was completely unplanned and the usual level of spaffing occurred. I’d love to have sat about and talked more shit as opposed to mostly playing our songs. Mp3s of it all are coming soon.

After the radio thing we blasted straight to a gig in Loughborough which had already got well underway by the time we got there. It was a ska night but I think we went down ok; it’s hard to tell, I think most people were pretty drunk but it was good fun. It was about then that I realized for the last year or so, I have spent tons of my Friday nights relatively or completely sober lugging gear back and forth from the car either side of playing a show to play to people that are getting buck-wild because it’s the weekend. It probably seems like a strange way to spend a Friday night, leaving the venue and driving home till 2am instead of getting loose with your friends in a pub or club somewhere and pouring back into your house with a nights worth of funny photos and stories to share. I guess it is, especially when you consider that some of those shows are epic fails in terms of attendance or getting paid. I was going to try to say something positive to wrap this section up, but the truth is, sometimes it’s draining. Sometimes though, it’s fucking amazing and I’d happily spend everyday in those moments.

Overworked.

On Saturday we played two gigs in a day. I think it's the second time we have done it, but my memory isn't so good these days, so maybe we have done it a few times. Driving to Southsea for the first show saw us get caught up in hells traffic jam, where we sat almost motionless for the best part of two hours without having even left London. We never, ever learn. Driving in London is the worst experience possible at times, other than maybe that feeling you get when you realise you have left your wallet on the bus, or left the oven on the house. After the show we got straight back in the car and sped drove carefully to Dorking for the pre-fest show that was looking like the line-up of the year. I felt bad that we were at the first venue for less than an hour. I don't like doing that.

By the time we got to Dorking we had missed a bunch of awesome bands and everyone was completely hammered. The hours of car-time started easing off a bit whilst I hit up the offy. No-one is reading this for a review of the gig - it was unreviewable. The photos are probably circulating the interslice somewhere but needless to say, it was rowdy and semi-naked. What you want to know is "how awesome is your new amp"? Right? Well, its heavy. And not in a stoner-doom style heavyness. Its about the weight of me, in an angular corner-y configuration. PJ pretends he can lift it easy to make me look pathetic, but I can see his face go a little redder when he does. You don't fool anyone, Jonathan. But yeah, it sounded OK. It didn't start sounding awesome until we had a practice on Sunday and I had time to knob-tweak it into sounding "punchy and warm". So yeah, I love it now. I'm not sure what I am going to do with the internet now that I'm not spending hours looking up reviews on amps and whatnot. Maybe I should get into MMORPG's start commenting Youtube vidoes.

Pj played with us this weekend, so it was our first show as a 3 piece. Actually, thats a lie, Sam Russo played bass with us for a few shows when we toured with him. He only did one song with us, but it was well fun. We could probably trace the expansion of our band back to those gigs. Anyway, PJ is our Bassist now, and Joe is our drummer. I'll try to get some sort of "band photo" in black and white with us all looking awkwardly sideways and cool.

Negi.

Today my beard is itching my face and my throat is persistently dry. I cannot stop scratching my neck and drinking water. It's not helping. It's just one of those many days that I don't feel comfortable in my own skin. Some days my clothes just feel too close, or fingers feel slow. Maybe my potassium is low or something. Probably best if I eat pizza and ice cream tonight.

I spent all the money I didn't have on a new amp this week. Fingers crossed that when it gets here that it's as awesome as the Internet says it is. The internet wouldn't lie would it? Needless to say, our gigs are about to get a little louder. You might want to bring earplugs next time. I always get buyers remorse when handing over a lot of money for anything. I get paranoid that I have wasted my money, or that I should have researched harder or been wiser and saved smarter. I've never had much money saved up, so I always ping between getting-by and really-skint on a month by month basis and I'm getting sick of it. I'm going to have to get used to "really skint" for the next year or so now but the pay-off is that our band will sound slightly, if hardly noticeably, better. Probably. I'll start saving money after that. I promise.

Fuck, we got confirmed to play with American Steel next month. I didn't even have to hassle for that show. Once everyone hears my new amp we'll probably get a call from Bono or something asking us to come support them. Ben Weasel would be well happy about that. It's an interesting question though. Would you take your band on the road with U2 if you got asked to? Despite the fact that it would be the least "punk" thing you could ever do? Would turning down the chance to play for hundreds of thousands of people across the world be a good price to pay for the chance to keep your hands clean of the money made through massive labels and corporations in the world of music? Luckily, I'm pretty shit at guitar and so the odds of this situation needing any serious thought are slim.

Some serious talk now. Bangers have a new song. Its amazing, as usual. Almost more importantly though, Grade have a new song up on their myspace. It's incredible. I've been back onto Grade for a week or so now, basically just re-running Under The Radar over and over again. I actually got goosebumps whilst walking down Mare Street yesterday. I'm crossing everything for a UK tour and a new record. Maybe I should ask if they want to take us with them? They probably haven't heard about my new amp yet.

Londown.

Everyone seems to be moving to London. I don't know what's going on - the recession seems to be driving people into the city, where jobs seem few and rent seems high and I know this seems crazy but it's happening. I've struggled with London for the last few years, I don't feel at home here at all and yet I know I can't move back to Oxfordshire where I came from. No where else in the country has people that I even vaguely know to say anything other than "Hi, hows things?" to and so I will stay here, until my friends move away or I can afford that over-the-top mansion in the Lake District with the petting zoo and multiple water slides or something else that gives away my inability to grow-up. With more people I know living here the more I feel less stranded but it doesn't actually help anything at all - if you live 5 miles away from each other here you might as well live 50. London is too big - for everyone I know considering moving here think "Hackney" please.

We're still homeless and if it wasn't for Ema and her awesome housemates I'd probably have slept at work by now on a pile of lost property jumpers and scarfs that smell like beer and floor and bring me out in a rash on my face. I can't wait to find somewhere to move into and alienate our neighbours immediately. I've been toying with the idea of getting a new amp recently and my GAS is at an all time high. Despite being broke and being about to get broker (is that a word?!) after buying my America flight, I have been watching ebay hard looking for a good deal on an amp that is far too loud for me and will be a ball-ache to carry upstairs. Our new neighbours will love it, whoever they might be. We looked at a place last night with the agent who owned it and the girl that lived there was trying to give us pretty subtle but clear hints that the place was shitty and over priced. Thanks for that, whoever you were. We won't me moving into your house. The internet can't seem to help us now. I'm rambling really. I just needed to write something that wasn't a response to an e-mail complaining about Andrea Bocellis concert last night. (Customer Services department, large arena) Back to all my favourite websites to kill some time.

Insert random photo:



Cheers, Dan

Self-Promotion

I'm not comfortable in telling people about our band really. I'm not ashamed of anything we have done (except some of the very early gigs where, looking back, we were undeniably terrible) but I just don't like putting what we do in peoples faces. I'd rather people saw us at a show, or picked up our CD and then listened to it and liked it and then came to see us again. I imagine most bands are like that, except for the really cocky bands that you often see on Shut Up Bands. But we've been lucky so far, any sort of press we have had has been with people I either know and like, or people who have contacted us and been friendly with no agenda. There is an element of having to "play the game" in this country in order to get some serious attention on your band and so far we've avoided that almost entirely. These things aren't easy. Regardless, I am posting here some blatant self-promotion - I figure, you're on our website, you probably like our band (or hate us and read this out of some sort of self-hate or self-justification) and might want to read some more.

Shattered Glass Magazine did a feature on us (page 45) and Punknews reviewed our record

I feel like a sell-out now.

Dan

It's Official.

My parents were so impressed when I told them we were going to America to play a show. They asked me a few more details and when they found out we were having to buy our own flights and it was in only 40 or so days I could feel the mood shift a little. I think they know I have no money and I'm shit at organising anything, let alone getting halfway round the world to play a show where I will know absolutely no-one (except some awesome Uk bands who are trekking over as well)

If I'm honest, I still need to settle into the idea that in 40 days I will climb into my overdraft and credit limit and get on a plane to go and play someone elses gear in a room of strangers on the other side of the world. It un-nerves me a little, probably because I have never left Europe before and know that the whole trip relies on us playing well but also because I haven't booked my flights yet so I'm unsettled. I'm excited though, I'm desperately happy that we get to play to more people and I cannot wait to watch a ton of my favourite bands shoulder to shoulder with a ton of people who also love those bands. lets hope we play early in the fest so I don't have to worry about blowing my voice out while screaming along with Bomb The Music Industry or something.

So we have a fest page now and it's streaming "Re-arranginging The Dust" from our newest EP if you haven't already heard that song.

http://www.thefestfl.com/fest8/bands/A/apologies-i-have-none/

*insert happy Dan, Josh and Scammy Russo picture*


*Ps: Scammy is in this picture because everything is better with a bit of Sam Russo. Who do I talk to about getting Sam Russo to headline the Fest?

"Mainline Florida, oh say. Mainline Florida, O.K."

There's still so much to sort out that I am trying not to get too carried away, but we got accepted to play Fest this year and it's going to be awesome. We'll be playing (hopefully, if all goes to plan) with a drummer and bassist. We're just getting into practicing as a 4 piece band and it's still in the early days, but we are all keen to pull everything together in time for Fest, which will likely be our first full-band show. That seems massively risky doesn't it? I'll write more about the full band thing soon, I could go on for hours about it, but this isn't the time or the place. Anyway Tommy, get your flight booked, we're going to Flo-Rida.

This post is entirely about other bands.

Things go a bit quiet from us for a while now, we don't have many gigs lined up and we're really just working out some new songs stuff. I'll explain about the "full band" thing soon, its just that it's 5.59 and I want to leave work on time. Here's some stuff to listen to in the meantime, in case you missed it.

Our good friends just started a new band. Its awesome. I saw their 3rd ever show and already they are tight and the songs sound really banging. Check them out here:
http://www.myspace.com/rooftopslondon

I have been listening to Bangers A LOT recently. Their split with Break The Habit is really good so you should also check them out:
http://www.myspace.com/bangersbangers
http://www.myspace.com/wearebreakthehabit

As always, if you somehow missed out on the greatest dude with a guitar ever, go listen to Sam Russo.
http://www.myspace.com/samrussomusic

We still need a house.

Vanity post.

Dear whoever took this photo:

Thank you. This is the first photo of me playing guitar, in colour, where I am not completely bright red.

I should play under a blue light more often.

Much Love

Dan

Welcome, September.

I remember taking this photo. It was ages ago, probably sometime in late 2006 or around that time. I had this incredibly bad digital camera with a fixed focus and a shutter-lag of about a second which made framing photos almost impossible and any photos that I managed to get were usually blurry or badly exposed. I loved it. It was like the digital equivalent of Holga but without the light leaks and expensive processing. I think I lost it or broke it, I guess when your camera is £25 you take less care of it but I was gutted when I realised it was gone. I have tried to curb my losing-and-breaking habits more recently, but it's a habit of a lifetime and I still seem to lose my things. Most recently, I left my entire bag in a park in South London. Ipod, wallet, keys, everything.

I remember what I was thinking when I pressed the shutter button and waited the second or so until the picture was taken. It was the night we tried to record a rough version of Justine's Housemate using Joshs Ibanez Artcore guitar through his Peavey Amp. At this time, I didn't even own a semi-good electric guitar, let alone an amp, but it didn't stop our enthusiasm for putting a band together. The semi-acoustic Ibanez dwarfed me and I didn't like playing it standing up. I tended to use an old Strat knock-off that had seen far better days instead, despite its bad tuning and dodgy jack. No matter how it was tuned, F Major was way out. We spent hours that night trying to get a good sound from the Ibanez/Peavey combo and it just wasn't happening. It just sounded shit. Nothing we did could correct the fact that the song we liked playing just would not record how we wanted it to. I think we were about 4 hours in when we deleted all the guitar tracks and resolved ourselves to defeat. I took this photo right as we gave up. The photo below shows Josh, 1 second later, turning off the laptop.

Soon after, I got my first "real" electric guitar - An Epiphone Les Paul. I didn't have it very long. It wasn't very good either and I didn't like the weight of it and the fact that it always sounded "heavy". I accepted there and then that good gear costs money, recording was always going to be a brick-wall and that everything, everything takes 5 times longer than I think it will when it comes to band related stuff.

I think I finished a song last night. I started it 5 months ago and I don't consider that to have taken long at all.

Apologies, I have Balls in North Dakota.

On the last date of the tour, we thought it would be cool to have people from each of th 3 bands do a "full band" ending of an Onsind song as a sort of significant, fun way to call an end to the whole trip. Because the van had to be back early the next day and we were about 250 miles from Oxford where the van had to be in 12 hours, we couldn't finish the tour and then hang out for a bit afterwards like I wanted to - we basically hit up the last show and within a few hours we were driving home which was a bummer, so this was a nice way to close off our time together. Someone fimed it, so, here it is. A once only, 3 band version of "memoirs" by Onsind, practiced only once.

Ladsontour/they'retakingourtour/Wolinski! etc

I had this vision of updating this blog every night on tour, to somehow document what went on and how it made me feel or whatever and its been 10 straight days and this is the first time I have typed anything other than a response to a work-related e-mail. It’s not that I didn’t have time while we were away to write, we had hours of down-time everyday whilst driving, or the endless waiting at venues before the show starts. Most nights we ended up back at someone’s house and I could have easily done it then, but there was one problem and it held me back constantly on this tour and prevented any sort of outlet whilst we were away.

My laptop was in my bag.

And it wasn’t just any bag, it’s a fairly full rucksack full of clean and dirty clothes, a damp towel and underwear – getting my computer in and out of that bag everyday just seemed so much effort. I did my best to “bank” my thoughts as we went and pretended like I would pick up after a few days and catch up. Well I didn’t bother and I really wish I had now. The short version of my account of 10 days in a van with Calvinball and Onsind is essentially this: Someone would drive the van for hours to get to the venue and we would load in (usually up or down stairs with what always seemed to be twice as much gear as we actually needed). We eat (we were generally very well fed by the promoters) then we wait. Play. Sweat. Immediately load out. Drive. Talk shit at someone’s house until it was too late. Sleep.

Nothing deviated from this day-to-day schedule too much, except some periods of sitting in the park and walking around town centers looking for guitar shops. It doesn’t sound too exciting when you break it down to its basic components, but when you break anything down to its basic parts; you are often left with something that on the face of it, sounds equally bland. “Wake up, go to work, try to stay sane for 8 hours, go home, eat, play guitar/hang out with friends/drink too much, go to sleep” is my usual off-tour routine which doesn’t, on the face of it, look much more interesting either, so a casual “wrap up” of tour is basically pointless now because it will consist of all the boring shit that dominated a lot of our time while all the genuinely awesome aspects of the tour I can’t bring myself to write because you really had to be there otherwise it would sound like a horrible list of in-jokes and un-funny recounts of hilarity. Some things, I guess, are best left alone in that sense. I had the best time though.

Calvinball and Onsind were both spot-on each night and instead of getting tired of hearing them, the complete opposite happened. They both seemed to get better as the shows went on as if the hours in the bus, lack of sleep and almost constant tiredness actually fueled them. Somehow, my voice held out for the shows despite singing for about 90 minutes a day, at times it even felt stronger than usual. Maybe it needed the practice? Being home last night felt good: a day without an evening of loading in and then out, a rest for my ears and arms and voice. A bed was good and the sleep and a few hours to myself seemed to calm my mind which hadn’t seemed to rest for days. I don’t miss the van today. I miss the company, but I don’t miss the hours of motorway. Give it another day and I’ll be itching to go again. I think I already am.

48 hours to tour.

I've taken the idea of practicing at home for granted. For the entire life of this band we have had a drumset at home and enough space wave my telecaster about without breaking windows or hitting it on the cymbals. This is all I ever needed. It meant practicing was easy - everything was always set up and ready for us right at home with a quiet drumset and unplugged mics on stands- we could do a 30 minute practice, we could practice for 2 hours. We could practice, have lunch, watch a South Park and them pick up right where we left off and really, considering how much we have to work and do other stuff, this suited us perfectly. No wasted hours of driving to a practice space, no charges. No excessive PA volume, no headaches. Our neighbours bore the worst of this, but over the years, we have saved a ton of money in practice spaces, so its a win for us and a lose for the neighbours. Erm...sorry about that.

The honeymoon is over. On leaving our house when the lease was up, we dumped everything in the Big Yellow storage companies possession including our practice kit and began sleeping at friends and waiting to go on tour. Its not been too bad at all, but I like practicing when I want to, not when the practice space actually has space for us. So last night we decided to hit up a last practice before our tour with Calvinball and Onsind and I found a studio in South London that seemed a balance of cheap and "not completely like some hell-hole from the hostel film" and had a slot for us. We have used another practice space in the past to flesh out parts with real drums and to practice our mic control, but the experience left us with ringing ears, heavy hearts and feeling overall completely shit. Last nights practice space was marginally better and had better sound and a surprisingly productive session, but the whole experience made me feel so lucky that we have never had to do it long term. Lugging all our shit into a 4th floor room, setting up, yelling for a few hours and then driving home minus £31 in your wallet is like booking your own terrible gig that no one shows up for and where your playing just gets progressively worse as the night goes on.

But there's no substitute for playing with real drums, real mics and at proper volume with a PA, - it makes the transition from practice to gig more fluid and from one practice, I already feel more confident playing our new songs live. But I cannot wait to get our own place again and move the drums back in for the majority of our practice. Until then, I need to get some better earplugs, my epithelium hurts.

Spelling Lesson.

I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.

Sorry Keiran. Kieran.

Madchester

At some point earlier in the year, Andrew Cream, guitarist in The Ruined and promoter under the name Last Lung asked us to play a show with his band in Manchester. Manchester is about 4 hours and 200 miles from London and driving there and back in a night is a nightmare. We did it once and said "never again". Its also terribly expensive in Petrol in a way that the show will never be able to cover. I took the show and figured I'd at least get one show between London and Manchester on the way up and one on the way back to minimise driving and petrol costs. But then Calvinball went and asked us to tour with them and Onsind just a few days later and so all my attention went on booking up a tour with them and the Manchester show just sort of sat there like the last Dog in the pound, just kind of patiently waiting for some attention.

That attention didn't come and so the drive to and from Manchester in one night was looking more likely. On the Saturday I had to go back to Didcot to see my family, and Josh knocked off the first 70 miles or so and went to Peterborough to watch Neil Sutherland and Friends play the Xoo bar. Sounded like a good gig. The day of the show I had to jump on a train to London, to get a train to Peterborough and meet Josh and Keiran (our unofficial roadie/merch girl/hype man) and drive to Manchester. Well, it all went ok on the train, despite destroying my wallet so the train company score 1 point for the well timed trains, but they lose 5 points for a 100 mile journey costing almost £50 (and I hold them responsible for the muffin, see below)

The gig was pretty well attended, very fucking loud and a pretty mixed bill of punk, ska and horror punk(!). I broke only my second string during a set and realised that the backup guitar I bought a year ago, that I have never used live, is completely useless as it won't stay in tune or sound good. Anyone want to buy a used Epi Les Paul? No? Well the set ended on a low point, which was a shame because the rest of it was really good and really fun to play. Nothing like ending on a bad note (literally). The Ruined played last and were awesome.

Come 11pm, it was time to hit up the Motorway and drive home, and it was only at this point that the terrible logistics of our gig planning were becoming obvious. We ended up bombing out at Keirans house at 2.30am and finishing off the journey home at 8am the following morning to get to work in time. Josh said he couldn't focus on the road or signs for about 40 minutes before we gave up. It's times like this that I realise how much DIY punk relies heavily on friends, luck and hard work. Who wants to drive 8 hours in a day and finish at almost 3am? Who wants to be at a venue for 5 hours, only to play for 30 minutes? Who wants a bunch of people staying over after shows and leaving to the next town and leaving you with their mess? Well, we don't always want to, but we'll do it if we have to. Thanks again Kieran - people like you (and your parents) help keep people like us going. See you next time!

Muffin to lose

This muffin is criminal, right when i was relying on it the most. National rail once again have me by the balls because I want to travel the 60 or so miles from London to Didcot and feel that £20 is a fair price for a one way trip on crowded train that takes 45 minutes. Its not a fair price by anyones standards, but at least tonight I got a seat and the seat next to me is taken up by my bag and a bass guitar that is as much company as I really want right now. But this muffin, fuck man, all I wanted was something that might make me feel less like tonight was a big fucking lose. Does anyone else start spending the second they realise they have nothing left? Like once you have reached the bottom, you are finally free? After getting stung for a ticket that will in all likelihood never get checked on this journey I barely cared about the extortionate £2 for a honey and lemon muffin from some faux french cuisine outlet in Paddington station. This muffin is, quite easily, 4 days old. I know this because it crunched when I bit into the piece I wrenched off the top. That's the best bit! I would love to get off the train and slam it back onto their glass counter and tell them that despite missing my train and getting an overpriced ticket/muffin combo, I was not going to be taken advantage again tonight. I want them to eat this shit that they peddle to late night commuters who long for their bed and the conversation of someone other than a ticket robot. I want them to suffer the same disappointment that I felt. I want them to know that despite today being a massive ball-ache that this journey didn't have to be the massive kick in the groin that I didn't want. It could have been a quiet train and a nice muffin, a sip of water and an episode of Peep Show, but instead I am dying inside from this block of muffin scratching through my insides. I swear right now, I will never buy another item of food from a train station, and by my calculations, If I bought 4 muffins a year at £2 (not including inflation) then, if I live till 75, I could save just short of £200 in my life. Fuck you muffin, I'm practically rich because of you.

This post seems to be mostly about Onsind.

At the very start of 2008 I think, I posted about our band on a website, trying to get people to listen to us and managed to attract the usual semi-cynical replies from people that hadn't listened to our band telling me that no-one was interested in our Music.No problem really, its all you can expect from pushing your band on people to a degree and its why I've never been comfortable about doing anything to promote what we are doing beyond playing shows, giving away Cd's and trying to keep our various online presences up to date for anyone that is interested in us. Still, someone DID listen, and they liked us, and they offered us our first show beyond 2 hours drive from our house. Probably our first real show outside London really. JC at Discount Horse records went as far as to book us a headline slot with Onsind in Durham as well as the possibility of playing a house party and another gig on our last day. It was our first real trip for a show. I wouldn't call it a tour, but 3 shows up north in one long-weekend was beyond our expectations at the time and I guess it was our first real experience of the hospitality that DIY punk can offer. Not only did we get paid for the show, people paid for our free Cd's, we got fed, taken on a tour of the Durham Cathedral, played a fun house party and got squeezed onto a daytime show (although this show was beyond odd and the fairly large crowd that were in attendance almost entirely consisted of people in bands who were either about to play, or who had already played). I remember feeling like we had conquered the world on the 7 hour drive home that Sunday and I have always been excited to pass through and see everyone again.

This weekend we loaded up the car with tents, sleeping bags and gear and headed back up north for a weekend festival called Full Throttle where we would spend the weekend with our northern friends. The EIGHT HOUR DRIVE would have killed us off easily had we not been staying with Will, who took us on a refreshing walk with his Dog around Sedgefield as soon as we arrived and the hours of driving seemed to drop off us all quickly (except Ema, who slept almost all the way there). Thanks Will, your hospitality shall go down in the permanent records of Apologies, I have none as being 5 star.

The festival was largely made up of bands I had never heard of and the attendance was mostly people i didn't know - not a problem at all. On checking the bands prior to leaving, I accepted that the line up wasn't made up of too many bands that i would ever love but again, not a problem, I was looking forward to spending time with everyone, watching friends play and wandering between tents in case I caught anything I liked. We were to play the main stage at 4pm - its a big tent with a smallish stage and I remembered playing it last year and struggling to get into the set. The barrier in front of me and huge open, well-lit space made playing feel awkward. It was the same this year so it was hard not to come away disappointed. Its hard to create a good atmosphere when you are dwarfed by a PA, barrier, bright sunlight and 1/10th full tent and i started drinking pretty heavily as soon as we finished. Our friends mostly played in the smaller tents late at night and I couldn't help but feel jealous that we weren't playing the same spaces at the same times. Disappointments like that are hard to shake and are compounded by a sense of distaste for my own self-pity when maybe I should be thankful I even got to play and that people took the time to listen. The rest of the weekend was largely made up of sitting about talking shit and watching bands, some that I liked and some that I didn't. I think the acoustic tent was the premier tent of the weekend for me, it was small and busy and was the last tent playing each night. I barely got through the last night after bombing out on Gin but i recovered in time to see Onsind give probably the performance of the weekend. It was literally amazing. It was really good to end the weekend on such a brilliant set and I think it helped to correct the tiny part of me that didn't want to let go of my own disappointment - it really can be pot-luck as to when you get an awesome show or poor show, but it also helped to focus my own mind on what i can do to get through the more difficult shows. It rained that night and the field turned into the muddy bog that it had promised to do just a few nights before, like the clouds could finally relax. I felt relieved that the rain had held off this long and so I stuffed my new, but muddy tent back into into its too-small bag and got back into the car for the drive home. I am still wearing the mud stained shoes I spent the weekend in - I should buy new ones really, these will never feel the same again but I own no shoes at all other than these. I would love to post pictures of the weekend, but Ema lost her camera on the first night (if anyone was in the Bishop Aukland, Lower Wham area of Butterknowle at the weekend and found a canon Ixus, please let me know!).