Happy new year

Hi.

I was going to wrap this year up by listing and describing my favourite shows that happened this year and I never finished that because it sounded like a whole bunch of backslapping of people who are my friends and it all sounded a bit cliquey. I'm not into that. The people who smashed it this year, well, I've already told them that I thought they were awesome. I know that when you tell someone they were awesome right after they played it can come across a little dishonest at times, other times it's just a horrible time to be starting a conversation while packing stuff away, but I hope those people know that what they have done has stayed with me.

For me, this year has been great, it's our first full year as a 4 piece and I feel happier and more content with what we are doing than ever before. We've played a lot of shows this year, been to Europe twice, been around this country more times than I can count and played with more than a handful of bands that I have a huge amount of admiration for. Next year we'll be putting out a full length (finally) and touring hard as usual and hope we can change things up a little and do a lot of new things, musically, and otherwise. I'll talk more shit here and tell everyone about gear and stuff like that, because that stuff is universally accepted as being awesome to discuss. Right?

I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who put us on this year, everyone who let us stay at their house, fed us, partied with us and mostly, everyone who came along to our shows and made sure we didn't just play to the bar-staff and the promoter. We've been there, it's not fun.  I also want to thank the bands we have toured with this year - Rooftops, Just Panic, Imadethismistake, Crazy Arm and Dan Postin for being the best dude I have met this year. Touring can be tricky, even at the best of times and I would do it all again with all of you.

I am rambling now, I feel I have too many people to mention and I have mostly said all this to people already so I'll leave it here.

I cannot wait to get back onto the road next year, see you all then.

Dan
x

ps: New website soon. Myspace is dead and I am abandoning it ASAP.

Dear Apple inc.

Dear Apple Inc.

Thanks for the e-mails through December reminding me to buy various Apple products as Christmas presents for my loved ones. Had you been advertising iPod shuffles, Nanos or accessories for Apple products at a reasonable price, I might not have been so keen to immediately delete your e-mails. However, you thought it perfectly appropriate to remind me to buy iPads for my loved ones. A £500 gift. How about a Macbook pro? Only a grand!

And yet the only things you know about me, are that I bought my laptop from you four years ago in your refurbished section to reduce the cost to myself and I have bought nothing from you since then. I have only been in touch with you to have my laptop repaired a number of times because of random faults and the fact that your magnetic power supply cables frequently melt and become a fire hazard. My laptop died this year, only four years old. By any standards, thats pretty shit for eight hundred pounds.

Thanks for e-mailing me today, reminding me, only 4 days after Christmas, where I bought nothing from you, that I should "treat myself" to an iPad. Even my Dad knows that the iPad is a gimmicky, expensive, underpowered toy.

Merry Christmas.

Dan

Last Minute Christmas presents!

We have just upped our new shirts and ceramic owls to our shop. Any orders we get will be shipped the same day or the day after if you are buying for Christmas. The owls are limited to about 100 and we sold a bunch on tour so not too many left. They come giftwrapped and strung with ribbon.


Dan

The worst day our band has ever had. Ever.

We bailed on a show for the first time ever at the weekend. To make things worse, it was the last date with Crazy Arm on our UK tour together. I was beyond gutted. We all were.

Our London show the day before was a difficult show for us, we spend a cold half an hour jump starting Crazy Arms van which had died and the PA had some problems which pushed the show back and meant that the vocals were a struggle to hear. Only one monitor worked so we had to switch positions at the last minute after setting up and the soundguy was hassling us to get going. Not a great start. I want to say a huge thanks to Dave McManus for organising the show though, his Everything Sucks nights are always busy and always well promoted, but for me, the show just lacked something on my part. I wasn't happy after the show and after the nightmare load-out where we can to carry our shit for about 400 meters on icy paths across multiple journeys to where we managed to park the van didn't help. I just wanted to go home and start again the next day. I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye to Crazy Arm who were heading to Plymouth after the show. The next morning I felt much better, a little easier about the night before and ready to play hard and round the year off on a good note.

In 3 hours we travelled from East London to West London. Fifteen miles. The motorways were jammed, snow was falling hard, cars were slipping all over the place and it seemed impossible to make it to Plymouth in time considering Crazy Arm took seven hours to get home the night before and this was on clear roads with minimal ice. We call up the train company and ask about possible trains and PJ cracks up in the van after being told that it would cost four-hundred-and-thirty-pounds-and-eight-pence with a four-person super saver deal. No chance. We hadn't moved more than 500 meters in the last hour and it seemed dangerous and impossible. It took a further three and a half hours to get home and we had to spend another 45 minutes digging the van out after dropping Joe home on the way. The van had slipped against the curb and we had to use wood, boiling water and direct pushing on the side of the cab to get it free. We google mapped our journey - 30 miles in the best part of seven hours. We checked how long it would take to walk that distance - four and a half hours. Once I got home I felt delirious. No way to spend the day. No way to end a tour. No way to end the year.


I want to say a massive thanks to Crazy Arm for asking us to come out on this tour with them, they are probably the best band in the country and watching them every night was incredible - they play tighter and harder than pretty much anyone I have ever watched and they are the very best dudes. Their new single Ambertown is out now, its classic Crazy Arm and mega-banging. A huge sorry for bailing on the show. I promise we did everything we thought possible. Thanks to everyone who put us on, put us up and PJ for cooking most days. This tour has definitely been an education and we are all keen to get started next year once everyone is home from Christmas and New Year and finish up this record.

Day 6 - On the A14 to Norwich

It seems stupid to keep a tour diary when we're driving only a few hours between shows in our home country and staying at, mostly, people we knows houses. There's something comforting but fairly risk-free about touring in the UK that doesn't keep me on my toes the same as I feel when we tour Europe and everything feels a little terrifying and home is more than an overnight drive away. I've eaten well, slept well and am wearing fresh clothes each day. The van smells ok and loading in and out each night has felt a little to easy. I don't feel like I'm on tour. I feel like I'm hanging out with my friends, old and new, and playing a show each night between bouts of sitting around swapping stories and discussing other shit that happened on other tours while PJ cooks. That said, and I realise that everything above might sound negative which I definitely don't intend, this tour has already been really good for us and fun beyond words. Its been an education watching Crazy Arm every night, they really are about as good as you can get and even their worst shows are better than most bands best. Every night after they play I want to jump back behind the monitors and do our set again. I am looking at everything we do as a band and trying to work out how we can make what we do a bit better, sound a little more defined and push us a little harder. I can't wait to get home and go over all our new songs and write parts that I can't play so that I can force myself out of my comfort zone and make things a little different whether we keep them or not. I'm excited about everything at the moment and I think these ten days is what we have needed for a little while to eek out a little more from ourselves. There's four shows left, Norwich, Leeds, London and Plymouth and I feel like we're just hitting our stride. I could keep this up, weather permitting, for much longer than ten days, although a few nights in my own bed would be awesome right now.

/ramble

Dan

Ps; if you bought something online from us over the last few days, its all being posted today or tomorrow. You'll have it by xmas, sorry for the delay.

I am laying on the floor in Warren from the Attika States house.

3 shows into our tour with Crazy Arm and I have learnt a few things already. We're always dead careful about where we park our van, we're worried about people hitting it, getting parking tickets or leaving it in the way. Crazy Arm do not give a shit how they park there van and at first I was thinking that maybe we were over cautious and we should just do whatever we liked, like Crazy Arm do. They got a parking ticket yesterday. One-nil to us!

I'll share some more learnings, such as how Crazy Arm refuse to turn their amps down, and how they seem to need 12 hours sleep another time. Needless to say, they are killing it every night and we are constantly looking at our own performance and trying to work out how we can raise our own game. They are amazing. 7 shows left, come hang out. Bring earplugs.

Dan

Tour starts today.

Today we go to Exeter to start a ten day tour with Crazy Arm. We have a bunch of new shirts, ceramic Owls and a grip of lozenges. We're ready.

Hope you can make it.

Dan

7" review.

Hi. The good people at Pop 'Stache have done an article on our 7" - mostly about the packaging and presentation - all of which were done by Ema Smith. Have a look, I think the article is rad. Whoever wrote it, thank you for taking the time to do it, its much appreciated.

We go on tour on Thursday with Crazy Arm for 10 days.

I hope we have a heat-wave in the UK.

Dan

PJ, you can have your strap back.

I borrowed this guitar strap off PJ about two years ago when my awesome blue strap died after Josh stood on the plastic adjustment part and it broke. It's been through a lot. In that time it's been through probably a few hundred gigs, a few thousand hours of practice and probably a few bucketfuls of sweat. I had to leave it to soak after our euo-tour in the summer because, well, it wasn't exactly fresh. But it carried on and never broke. Never slipped. Pj, you can have your strap back now with my eternal thanks. It probably needs retiring soon and I wouldn't trust it on any guitar that you could risk dropping. It's wearing out, but holding on ok. It could be said that I owe you a new strap. We'll talk about that.

Soon to be unveiled on the Crazy Arm tour - my new tweed guitar strap. Yeah. Tweed.

Dan - 28 years old, fashion sense of a 70 year old farmer.

March

Yo. We're already planning for a tour in March next year and we're hoping to have a lot of the new record done by then. We're planning to go to England, Wales, Scotland and both Irelands. If you want us to play your city, town, party, let us know, we should be able to squeeze some in. Hit us up on contact@apologiesihavenone.co.uk and we'll talk business!

Ps; Mike Davies played us on this Radio show last night. It's on the iplayer for a week.

Dan

Southampton to Brighton.

Driving to shows recently has meant driving in the dark on the way and driving in the dark and the cold on the way home. When we were heading towards Southampton last week to play with the Riot Before, I find myself riding shotgun, slowly nodding off to the sound of the fan and the mumering of voices in the back. Everyone is asleep or falling asleep except PJ, eyes on the road. It felt like we were driving home from a show, rather than driving there and I could have happily got in bed once we arrived. We parked up outside the venue and someone told me it was minus 2 degrees outside and so loading in was done quickly and efficiently. I planned on squeezing in a skate before the show, but my feet felt like blocks and no amount of warming up would ever warm me up enough to use my muscles. I felt like playing in my hat and jumper, but everytime I have tried to do that my hats slipped over my eyes and my jumper gets tangled up with my guitar strap. I have resolved to only play shows in a t shirt, Function over fashion, whatever the weather. The show was an odd one - the stage layout meant I had to play on the other side and I just can't ever get my head round that. People stayed and watched and sang a long and so even though I felt strange playing stage left, it felt fun. Thanks to Ricky for putting us on. Last night was similar. A cold drive, a quick load in. A cold start to the show. A constant of Brighton shows is that they always feature at least one drunk rambling guy who either dances all night in his own unique style or tries to somehow sabotage the show by grabbing the mic or yelling at the bands, you can predict it before even getting to the venue and setting up. This show had a crew of dancing people who wanted us to "big up" something or other. I had no idea what was going on and i don't think they did either. I wondered if they paid in.

Our tour with Crazy Arm is in 10 days and we won't play a show between now and then and I wish that wasn't the case.

Photos from The Old Blue Last

The Old Blue Last show was awesome fun. The venue has a great stage and sound and the show had been promoted well enough that despite the clash with the Kingston show that had Above Them, Calvinball and Our Time Down Here on the bill, it was still rammed. Loading out of the venue is a ballache - you have to carry gear through the downstairs bar which is always completely full of people that don't seem to want to get out of your way. We had to park about 100 metres down the street from the venue too. Thank god I was drunk or it would be been a nightmare. Thanks Aisha for putting us on. The Menzingers were completely amazing at this show. I think there is a video somewhere of them at this show. Oh, it's here.

 PJ was white hot for this performance. Honestly.

These owls are for sale dead soon.

Dan

x

The ups and downs of this morning.

I quite often wake up right before my morning alarm goes off, like something in me doesn’t want to be woken by a machine, that it wants to wake on its own, in its own time. So this morning I find myself, exactly a minute before my alarm is supposed to go off, grabbing my phone. My eyes blurry from sleep guide my thumb to hit the “snooze” button and go to drop it and fall back asleep for 9 more minutes, as if those 9 minutes will make any difference to how rested I feel and how terrible it will feel to get out of bed into the cold and take a shower. 

Just as I go to drop my phone though, I see that I have two e-mails and I cannot resist checking them, despite knowing they are likely to be inconsequential timewasters. Another minute lost deleting useless binary from my life. Viagra spam. Delete. Twitter “friend add”. Delete. Wait. What? Did that say what I think it did? I try to recover the deleted e-mail but it’s gone and I have to wait until I get to work to check what the message said. I feel excited, like the most awesome thing has happened and I have to wait an hour to check it. I can’t help feeling that this could be the day that everything becomes amazing. I am totally stoked. I log in to my work computer and can’t find it and eventually give up in frustration. Maybe I imagined it. It wasn't meant to be. Suddenly, I check my other accounts and finally I find the e-mail.

There it is.

A friend request on twitter from Kanye West.

Kanye West.

This is the greatest thing that has ever happened.

Then my heart sinks.

It’s not Kanye West. It’s “Kanyewestnews”.  A fan-based street-team for the voice of our generation.

What a shitty morning.

Our new owls.

Ema has made us some ceramic owls for our merch box and did a step by step on how you turn a chunk of wet clay into something that is awesome. The owls are available at shows and online really soon. The ideal christmas present for someone you love!

Dan

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How to make owls, by Ema Smith.

Step 1: I wedged the clay to get rid of any air bubbles and dry it out a little. This really hurts my arms. Will soon be resembling a body builder. Sort of.

Step 2: Next I rolled the clay using wooden guides to make sure all the owls were as fat as each other.

Step 3: I had to leave the clay slabs to dry out a bit and then cut out 100 owls. Next, I tidied up all the edges, put a hole in each one and then left them to dry for a few days.

Step 4: I loaded the kiln and bisque fired them to 1100 c in my lovely kiln in our living room. Safe to say it was pretty warm in our house that day.

Step 5/6: I enlisted the help of Dan and Josh against their will (please note Josh's scowl) to help glaze the owls whilst we watched the apprentice.

Step 7: I loaded them into the kiln and fired to 1017c. 12 hours later... I removed them from the kiln and applied the ceramic decals I had made to the glazed surface (whilst making 50% of calvinball a roast - that's what you call multi-tasking).

 Step 8: Loaded the Owls back into the kiln AGAIN but this time I fire to 800c to fix the owl decals. 

 Step 9: Gatta 'helps' thread ribbons through the owls.

Step 10: We wrap and pack them!

emiloumakes.co.uk

Punknews reviewed us.

Our show with The Menzingers in Manchester got reviewed by Punknews the other day.

Check it out here! www.punknews.org/review/9750

5 stars.

!

Dan

Saturday, in London, for one night only.

...for the second time in a week! The Menzingers, Apologies, i have none and Leagues Apart all on the same bill!

If I was Geordie, I would say "Hoots man! I canne waait for the gig, it'll be a reet laff!" or considering we have been accused of being cockney I'll just say:

"Ere, geezer! This gig will be maaaad buff".

I have lost my way with this blog posting.

Dan

x

Just Panic tour is over and I am back at my day job.

From Friday night to Monday night we drove about in a silver van and played shows up North with Just Panic who were completely awesome. All the shows were good fun and everything finished off in classic style in Manchester with an awesomely busy and fun show followed by the standard trashing of Kieran Kellys house. I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who put us on, Chris, Sean and Keiran and the Just panic guys who arranged Liverpools date - you are all dudes.

Thanks to everyone who came along and everyone who helped us out with floor space. Thanks to everyone who lives at Kierans house and sorry about the mess and noise at 5am.

If you still haven't checked out Just Panic, get on it now before they become massive so you can tell your mates that you have had their record for ages and are thus way cooler than they are.

Erm...thats all for now. See you in London on Saturday night for another banging show with the Menzingers?!

Dan

Just Panic tour starts today

Heyoo! We left Joes studio in North London about an hour ago and nearly left London, before Joe realised he forgot his cymbals. We're back at the studio now for our second attempt at going on tour with Just Panic. Bolton tonight. Get down!


Dan

Sink, venues. Sink.

Do you know whats really frustrating? Venues that get funny when you ask for water. That sucks and I have written about it before, but it really sucks and is totally inexcusable. Most venues are cool about this kind of standard hospitality, but the ones that aren't well, I hope they sort it out before people stop going there. 

You know what also sucks though, and is much more common? 

Tiny sinks. 

It seems like most venues have these incredibly tiny sinks and so if I try to keep my hydration under my own control and avoid bothering or somehow offending the bar staff by asking for something as trivial as water, my plans are totally foiled.

Well, venues, I have your number. No matter how small your sink is, I can beat you. I have developed a method of almost filling any bottle no matter how ridiculously small your sink is. Through a system of folding the bottle and tipping it backwards I can drink your water in quantities previously thought impossible without a hosepipe. I have scored a victory for the bands. Your porcelain water-protection devices have fallen to my technical prowess. I have won.

You know what really sucks though? The other night when I was getting pissy trying to fill my bottle up but bragging that I had managed to do it, I realised that there was free bottles of water for the bands.

One-all.

Dan

Don’t Panic.

A while back we played with Fake Problems in Manchester and the guy running the show had us on at like 5.45pm and while driving up to Manchester I was pretty sure we would play to no-one. In reality, the room was pretty full by the time we played ad totally full by the time we finished and I was totally stoked on how it all went and the fact that anyone gave a shit about what we were doing. The rest of the night was really awesome but it was a band I had never heard before, Just Panic, that I got really into. We didn’t see them again for a while, but somehow I picked up all their recorded stuff and didn’t really listen to it much until after we played with them again in Derby this year. After that show I got the 7” and then re-listened to everything of theirs and we had it on in the van for a few weeks. They flat-out rule.

We figured that seeing as we’re playing Manchester with them next Monday; we should do a few dates together before the show. So we are.

Formally announcing the Just Panic, Apologies, I have none mega-weekender!

12.11 – Gigs, Bolton
13.11 – Caledonia - Liverpool
14.11 – 1 in 12, Bradford
15.11 – Tiger lounge, Manchester

If you are around for any of these shows it would be awesome if you came, I promise you good times and quality rhymes.

myspace.com/justpanic

Dan

Ps: If you aren’t in Bradford on the 14th, but are in Manchester, go to the Bomb The Music Industry show. That band is completely worth your entry fee.

Bomb The Music Industry - Saturday.

All I seem to do these days is post about tickets and where you can get them and for some reason that seems entirely lame despite the fact that knowledge is power and tickets guarentee you entry to shows that you might be interested in going to.

Aaaanyway. This Saturday we are playing with Bomb The Music Industry and everyone knows this band is completely rad and we are stoked to be playing with them again. Last year Jeff from BTMI came over to the UK on his own and did a sort of solo/ipod show which I'm not sure everyone totally got, but I thought it was absolute genius and I sort of fell in love with everything he is doing. It's basically a party and some shows could really do with a bit more of a party atmosphere. The show is at the Peel and tickets are available through Banquet records here.

I am so excited about this show. Cynics and Bad Ideas are playing too, both also awesome.

Dan

*Flyer designed by Banquet records, Edited by Dan Bond. In MS Paint.

The Riot Before are coming to the Uk.

The Riot Before are awesome and I have been waiting for them to come over for ages now. Last year at Fest in Gainsville I was queing outside the venue they were playing for an hour, stressing I wouldn't get in, drinking a giant can of American Beer to calm my nerves and hopping from foot to foot. We didn't get in. I admitted defeat and went to watch Broadway Calls and Strike Anywhere. I bombed out later that night and was in bed by 10pm. I blame the Riot Before for that.

Anyway, we are playing with them in Southampton soon and I recommend buying tickets to avoid stressing about not getting in and thus drinking yourself into a hole. The venue is apparently 50 capacity, which means, minus the other 10 dudes in the other bands, there will be probably 40 tickets on sale. As president of the Apologies, i have none ticket hotline, I urge you to buy tickets!

Dan
President
Apologies, i have none ticketscam inc.

Train Tactics

Techniques for ensuring no one sits on the seat next to you on a busy train:

1) Sit on the seat nearest the aisle and put your bags on the window seat. Be prepared to have to move everything if someone calls you out though. This one is quite effective but expect dirty looks.

2) This is an extension of #1. If you have a laptop, get it out! No one can ever be bothered to ask you to move your computer, bags, coat etc to the window seat!

3) Sit on the window seat, but spread your legs into the legroom for the aisle seat. Headphones in! Pretend to be asleep! This is almost guaranteed to work because one wants to wake a sleeping commuter. Additional points if you put a coat over your face. Double points if you snore.

4) Put food wrappers on the other seat. This always grosses me out and I never ask people to move their sandwhich packet or leaking coffee cup. This is a dity move, but you'll be cruising along solo, so who cares?

5) Eye up people as they walk the aisle looking for a seat. The odder you come across, the more you might look like someone who wants to talk to strangers, the more you look like someone who will take up more than just your seat, the better. The least effective, but probably the most fun.

People did all 5 of these tactics on me this morning on the train to London. Assholes. I eventually scored a seat next to a dude who put all his papers across the aisle seat. I asked him to move them and he sighed and did it as slow as he could. Sitting next to him right now. Yeah that's right green jumper man, I BEAT YOU.

Crazy Arm Tour, December 10-18th.

Crazy Arm asked us to come on tour with them in December so obviously we immediately told them about our completely ludicrous rider requests and warned them of our outrageous behaviour when in the company of people we don't know and told them that they would need to sort a roadie for us because there is no way we're lugging our own shit around. They said that was cool and so we're going on tour and I am excited already.

At the moment we're going from the 10th to the 18th or 19th around the UK. Some confirmed dates are up on our Myspace and we're just filling in the gaps at the moment and hopefully we'll do a London show so I can sleep in my own bed mid-tour. Does going home in the middle of tour mean that you are actually doing two tours back to back?

If you haven't bought the Crazy Arm full-length yet, you are absolutely missing out.

Dan

Chelmsford tomorrow.

Our first show since our last short tour in Europe is tomorrow. Its at the Barhouse in Chelmsford and its a benefit for the Motor Neurone Disease Association.

If you are in the area, come along! It's only £3 and the cause is one that we are happy to back and be a part of helping to fund-raise for. 

The address is:

The Bar House

16 Victoria Road, 

Chelmsford

CM1 1NZ

See you there!

Dan 

More sales speak.

Following yesterdays no-nonsense approach to ticket selling, I have more tickets to push in an equally pushy way.

The venue for this show, The Old Blue Last, is in the heart of Shoreditch and if you haven't been to Shoreditch before, watch the TV series called "Nathan Barley" and you'll have a fairly accurate idea of what certain parts of the  seemingly "trendy" part of Hackney are like. It's a place that can verge on the rediculous at times but it is also home to good parks, a seemingly peaceful atmosphere, an entire road of curry houses and a 24 hour bagel shop where you can eat and be full for a few quid.

I really like Shoreditch - you can do anything you like there and no one cares because everyone else is either completely self absorbed or busy taking photos of something with a vintage camera and will probably miss what you do anyway. It's a fun, liberal place and playing a show in Shoreditch, just 20 minutes from home, in arguably the trendiest of places seems a lot of fun to me. That, and the room for the show is tiny and awesome. We haven't played London in a while and the line up for this one is great.

GET YOUR TICKETS HERE

Dan

President.

Ticket Sales inc.

Manchester with The Menzingers

Right, this show is going to be mental. It's like the whole line up is made up of bands that I think are awesome and dudes that I think are totally buff. The day before this show is Bomb The Music Industry, so you if you live, or happen to be, in Manchester on the weekend of these shows you better pace yourself because you are gonna have a good time.

You can get a ticket in advance for this, which I basically never do and I always figure no-one else does, but I think it might be worth it if you plan on coming because if you want to come and then can't get one because everyone else panic-bought a ticket online then you'll feel a right mug. GET YOUR TICKETS HERE.

You can get a cheaper ticket for both the Menzingers show and the Bomb The Music Industry show as well.

Thats enough promotion for now. Remember that we're also playing with the Menzingers in London on the 20th November too, so if you want to attend the very unique line-up of us and the Menzingers in one night, but live in London, we have you covered.

Love,

Dan.

Toilets of Tour.

 

Thats the whole trange of toilets, from relative luxery...to a latrine, in 3 days.

Photos from tour. Round one!

 Joe at the Eiffel tower. He's not really leaning on it....its miles behind him.

 

Meet Simon. The tallest guy on tour with the smallest cat on tour.

This is at the first venue on tour, in Paris. I have no idea why we posed this.

Pj getting pinned by a 6 month old dog with the softest fur this side of Dijon.

France and Germany.

6/10/10 - Manchester.
Traffic was bad on the way there and we barely arrived in time to set up, sound check, get food and then play before immediately packing up and driving back to London. The show was at the Retro Bar and it seemed really busy when we played. I was nervous in a way that I haven't been in a long time as we started, we changed the set around and played a new song and I felt uncomfortable and awkward for a bit while I settled into it. The show was awesome fun. We packed the van and drove back to London as we had a ferry booked for 10am the next morning and we just couldn't stay. The motorways were full of accidents and roadworks and we got 3 hours sleep before getting back up to drive to Dover. It was completely worth it, but the next few days might take their toll, especially on PJ and Josh who drive.

7/10/10 - Paris.
We finished our last euro tour here and it was the hottest, most fun show we played on that tour, which was, on the whole, pretty hot and awesome. It felt good to start our time in France on a really positive show. The nerves from the day before were gone and the new songs felt almost as natural as songs we have played hundreds of times. Our tour friends, Zombies Are Pissed played great, I'd never seen them before, but I'm excited to watch them each night. I spent the morning with Joe making our way back to the others who stayed at another house across Paris. The more time I spend here, the more I want to live here.

8/10/10 - Dijon
As soon as I hung the phone up and looked around, I realised I was lost. I had assumed that Dijon was tiny and that randomly wandering while taking in nothing of my surroundings would be a good idea. This area looked nothing like where the venue was, it looked like a whole different town, one that I had never been to. I played it cool when I finally made it back and rejoined everyone, as if I hadn't just almost completely panicked. The venue is a small basement, hot and sweaty, busy all night and with a good atmosphere. We played last and despite my fears that people wouldn't stick around, they did and quite a few people knew all the words. That always gets me. Definitely on my list of places to return to as soon as possible. With a map.

9/10/10 - Koln, Germany.
I like mixed bills, its fun to watch bands where I can't pin their influences immediately. Driving into Germany for one day seemed like horrible planning, but despite the drives both sides, it was a really fun show and lots of people picked up records so I am keen to go back as soon as possible. The venue was called "Club Scheisse". Club Shit. It definitely wasn't.

10/10/10
The show for today never happened so we had the day off and around 9pm it feels very strange not being tied to a venue, loading gear and thinking about playing. Our next show is about 8 hours away so figure we'll drive more than halfway to Paris and spend the evening walking the streets doing little else. The 5 hour drive turns into 8 hours and we arrive later, hungrier and more tired than planned. Gwen put us up again and a few of us walked to the Eiffel Tower and killed a few hours before going to sleep. It didn't feel much like a day off, but we all hope to wake feeling good. I fall asleep itching to play a show whilst Gwens cat tries to sleep against my face.

11/10/10 - Angers
I wake up early with Josh and we get on the Metro and walk around Notre Dam. Its impressiveness is superseded by my total surprise that it's free to go into and look around. I realise that I haven't had a decent camera in too long and too many awesome places I have been are lost to grainy, badly exposed photos from cameras that I have had over the years. I'm told tonights show is the most likely to be the quietest of tour, it being a monday with no local bands. Its pretty much rammed and the show is good fun. We sleep at the venue so everyone relaxes knowing we don't have to move the van or load the gear and we fall asleep on a giant 10-person bed made of several mattresses side by side.

Gig review - Off With Their Heads.

So it seems that no-one ever reviews shows anymore, at least not the smaller shows that are usually really fun. Is that because there isn't much to say about a bunch of (usually) guys (unfortunately) playing in dinky venues up and down the country? Maybe it's because everyone knows at least a  few people there who know some people who know the bands or something and no one wants to get critical about this kind of thing. I don't know. I like reading reviews though, especially ones where people talk all kinds of shit on everything and everyone. Please keep it up anyone who is a furious reviewer, I love your work. Anyway, our show in Derby with Off With Their Heads got reviewed and no shit was spoken, it was just all very kind stuff. Have a read here: letsgetdangerous.wordpress.com

The gig was awesome, despite running quite late and getting home at 5am. Off With Their Heads were real good dudes and this is a photo of them from the side of the stage, where us VIPs were hanging out*.

Hunky guys.

Dan

* If you consider the VIP area to be also the area where bands stored their gear and had terrible sightlines and was at no point called the VIP area.

Mega-dealz

We still have 2 shirts left in our "shirts that we don't have enough of to bother selling at shows" mega deal. They are both handscreened American Apparel shirts in size medium. We are selling them for £6 each and if you are interested, just e-mail us! contact@apologiesihavenone.co.uk

On a similar note, does anyone else think it's not lame at all to wear bands merch at their shows? I do it all the time. Break the rules!! Be free!!!!!!1

Dan

Does anyone know anyone in France?

We are having problems filling two dates in france for our October visit. At the moment our trip looks like this:

7/10/10  - La Miroiterie, Paris 
8/10/10  - Deep Inside, Dijon 
9/10/10  - TBC 

10/10/10  -TBC  

11/10/10 - l'Etincelle, Angers 
12/10/10 - La Place, Caen. w/ RVIVR

If anyone can help us with the 9th and 10th anywhere in France that would be awesome. We're on tour with Zombies are Pissed, so its two bands, one van. Bargain.


Swell.


Dan
 

Full set from Bradfords "Set Sail Fest".

Hi. Our good friend and ex-Serf Combat dude Toby filmed our whole set in Bradford the other week.

Part one is below, you can see the rest here on his website Aloadofstuffthathappened.

Thanks Toby! Also, thanks to Dave WOLINSKI! for lending me his guitar when I busted a string. Guys awesome.

The next show is in Manchester and it feel like my second home. I cannot wait.

Dan

How we fixed the van.

On the way to Derby for the awesome Off With Their Heads show, we picked up Jugs and Pookie who play in Rooftops and Jugs immediately busted the window in the back of the van. I don't blame him, these things happen randomly sometimes and could have happened to any of us. They do, however, seem to happen a little more often around Jugs than anyone else I know however. Odd.

Anyway, we did what we always do, and covered the entire door in tape and shit. It held just fine for the rest of the day and no-one saw the weak spot in the van and decided to break in and take our stuff. Win.

So a few days later, after we have moved the entire drumset, amps, merch and everything else we take to every show into our front room, we get the metal parts to fix the van and bust out the hand tools and get to work like REAL MEN.

Once we had carefully drilled holes, jig-sawed wood and taped everything else up, the job was done and we put the fucking kettle on.

At no point did we wish our Dads were helping us (!)

Our next show doesn't seem to be for ages. I'll remind you closer to the time.

Dan.

Tonights show in London is Cancelled.

Hi. Please remember that tonights show at "Everything Sucks" is cancelled.

If you want to see some cool bands anyway, go to Dorking! They are putting a sweet show on there with Brothers, The 255s and Porches at 8pm. It's only 30 mins from central London.

Sorry!

Dan

This is today!

• Off With Their Heads
• Apologies, i have none
• Leagues Apart
• Pacer
• Rooftops

!!

Come on down! This is Rooftops last show for a while, PJ explains why here.

Gonna be well banging.

Dan

Some random shirts leftover.

When me and Ema were screening shirts we did some designs more than others and we now have a few leftover that we can never be bothered to set up and sell at shows.  So, we're selling them here and these are the last ones we have.

If you want any of them, please e-mail us at contact@apologiesihavenone.co.uk with your address and which shirt you want and if we still have it, we'll give you the paypal details.

The top shirt is a Medium American Apparel shirt in white with a hand-screened blue Mouse print.

The second is the Owl design, on American Apparel, Handscreened in white ink on black shirt. It's a Medium too.

The last one is a version of the very first shirt we did, with a larger print. Its hand-screened on American apparel in white ink on black shirt. It's also a medium.

We just put some large shirts on the shop as well, they are the Mouse design and we didn't do many of them.  I'd call them rare, but we have only ever printed like 400 shirts so far and so any of our shit can be considered rare.

See you all in Derby with OFF WITH THEIR HEADS?!!

Dan