Manchfester weirdness.

Ema decided it would be cool to film our whole set at the Manchester show so she set the camera up, worked out the sound levels and placed the camera at a great angle to view the show. Except she put the camera on the bass cab and so the show sounds like a dubstep rave or something. Despite the sound making the footage all but useless, on looking back through the thirty minute clip there was some solid gold footage. At one point in our set Matt tried to choke me out with a wrestling move. I didn't tap out.


ManchFESTer weirdness from emilou on Vimeo.

Here are some moments from Sam Russos set too, it was amazing.


Sam Russo, ManchFESTer from emilou on Vimeo.

Our next show is Punk and Bowl in Bristol and I am already excited.

Till next time!

Dan

Manchfester

The first chord in the first second of our set in Manchester saw a surge of people bash into our guitars and knock them out of tune. Perhaps moving the mics into the room was a bad idea, we quickly retreated behind the barrier but it didn’t seem to help. For most of the set I couldn’t even see my mic or hear any guitars. I had the best time. Thanks to KIERAN for everything and sorry about your house.

This is the last song we played at Manchfester, Rearranging the Dust.

AIHN - Rearranging the dust, ManchFESTer from emilou on Vimeo.

Drunk Girls Love Me!

So I get the e-mail - we're doing kareoke and I have to be in soho straight from work to get drunk and celebrate a birthday. I totally forgot about this. I'm sitting at work in the clothes I wore yesterday to the gig at the Old Blue Last which unknown to me, have picked up some black marks all over chest area of my t shirt. I don't have a sweater with me and so I figure I'll just buy a plain shirt on the way to kareoke, it's apparently a nice place so I want to look, at the very least, a little bit clean. I take the tube to Oxford Street and it's fucking rammed the second I get off the tube and I can't help but wonder why everyone in the world knows about Oxford street but forgets that it is like the human equivalent of an ants nest. I roll into Top Man and go looking for something suitably plain and cheap to buy. It takes ages to find a plain t shirt and I realise that they have cut the neck holes about a foot wide on all their shirts. I don't understand at all. The only shirts with a normal neck hole seem to have semi-sexist images or alcohol based humour on them.  

If lost return to the bar!

I bail and head to H+M. It's closed. Fire alarm. I stroll down to Uni Qlo and its the same as Top Man, all massive neckholes and dumb shit on the front of the shirts that I wouldn't wear even if someone had scrawled a giant dick on my chest that needed covering. I'm running out of options here and so as a last resort I go into M+S and find a plain grey t-shirt and pay the disinterested guy five pounds and head to the Kareoke bar. I take the shirt out to check the shape on the way and realise that the shirt is basically a square - it's equally as wide as it is long and looks completely stupid. I decide to wear my T shirt as it is - looking grubby is the better option here.

I am bewildered with fashion at the moment.

New shirts.

Hi. Happy Tuesday. My ears are ringing today - we practiced all Sunday, all yesterday and then I went to the Old Blue Last in east London to watch a show. As if my brain doesn't get bombarded enough with volume.

We just put the new shirts online on our store. They designed by Ema Smith, printed by Get a Grip and are printed using water-based inks on sweat-free cotton made by Earth Positive. I think the company is really cool, have a read about them here, they claim their products use less pesticides, no fossil fuels, pollute less water and are responsible for a 90% lower carbon output than other factories.

I think it's a great idea for bands look into using sweat-free products for their merch, the costs are a little higher than common shirts like Gildan and Fruit of the Loom but it's possible to keep your prices reasonable while still making enough money to keep merch on your table and petrol in the tank. While I am not a fan of statements like "reduce your carbon footprint!" we can all do a little and I think we’d all like to see improved conditions for workers in overseas factories. Have a look at the prices for Earth Positive shirts and bags on Get a Grips website – they are an awesome company and can source Earth Positive as well as other sweat free manufacturers.

Our next show is Manchester this Saturday. We're playing a new song. I can't wait.

Dan

This post is mostly about other bands.

A few of the bands we met early on when playing shows are still going and are just getting more and more awesome. The first I want to talk about it is Onsind, who I think get more mentions on this blog than any other band and, well, that seems fair considering they are probably one of the best bands going at the moment. Their previous records have been on fairly regular rotation on my ipod for the last 3 years now. They just finished their new record called “Dissatisfactions” and based off the songs I have heard recorded and the others have heard live, I am super excited. Ultra-catchy, super-uplifting but never cheesy or clichéd, please go listen to the new songs and prepare to buy their record. http://www.myspace.com/onenightstandinnorthdakota

The other band is Mega Games 2 who relocated to the Homestead before it closed and self recorded a couple of new records. The acoustic guitar and melodica remain, but with the addition of drums the dynamic has shifted a little and songs seem to dig a little deeper and a soar a little higher, like everything has found its place and nestled in tighter. You can download their new stuff from here: http://killyourown.bandcamp.com/

You can download all of Sam Russos stuff from there too and it would be crazy not to.

Our next show is Manchfester and we’ll bust out a new song we were playing on tour which is a banger. That’s right, I said it. Our new song is banger. What would you expect me to say? “Yeah we got a new song, it’s pretty ok” ? No way!

Well banging.

Dan

The Birds Nest 2

Probably won't be playing the Birds Nest anymore. We're cursed.

x

The Birds Nest

Not long after moving to London I find myself in the Birds Nest in Deptford watching a horrible band try to squeeze onto the tiny stage with no idea of balancing their levels and so all I can hear is the bass guitar. Everyone around me is drunk and if I wasn't also drunk I would realise that I am completely lost and shouting louder than I need to at almost total strangers, surrounded by some tough looking guys with faded blue tattoos. At some point in the night I ask if our band can play here sometime and the guy just tells me to turn up on Monday to play the open mic night. The butterflies started then. It was a good few weeks later that me and Josh returned with one acoustic guitar, a knock off Les Paul, no amp and about 5 songs. We played at about 6pm to no-one and were most likely horrible to watch. We played sitting down and it was our first ever show. We got offered a proper show there a few weeks later and so back we came, with all our gear on our backs and in our arms and played electric guitar and drums. The guys doing the show split as soon as we arrived telling us they had a gig of their own to play and that the other bands most likely wouldn't turn up, but that the bar had money for us. We drank our pay before we even played, all ten pounds of it. A few of our friends turned up and watched us stumble through a short set that finished with josh kicking over his cymbal stand because he wanted to keep playing despite us running out of songs. It was our second ever show with drums and we were terrible. In my head, I wrote off the Birds Nest, somehow palming off the blame for our performance on the venue and swearing we wouldn't play there again and me and Josh started a new routine of practice and started taking steps towards consistency in our playing. I've only been there once since and I still felt some bitterness towards the venue despite knowing that we were entirely responsible for ourselves at the times we played there.

We're playing the Birds Nest tonight, probably 3 years since we were last there and I just don't know how to feel about it. The line up is great, with all the bands who have toured with imadethismistake playing, but I am uncomfortable playing there again. At the very least, if we can play ok tonight then I will feel satisfied.

Freiburg, Germany
The last show we arranged was a squat in central Freiburg which was only finalised a few days prior to the gig. As soon as we arrived a small riot occurred out side the main entrance as apparently someone from the squat had burned a German flag and the fifty or so German fans gathering outside didn't seem to take kindly to that. It very quickly broke up once the police arrived, but it put a downer on the night, all of us expecting them to return after the match, especially if Germany lost their match and bombed out of the world cup. The venue was a wooden room at the back of the area and the small stage had monitors and a soundguy waiting for us and the show itself turned out to be both busy and fun with great sound. Maybe we were a welcome distraction from the incidents earlier in the evening, I don't know. I had a good time though. The football guys didn't return and the memory of the fighting that happened earlier was washed away while we wrapped the night up sitting around a camp fire talking shit about drum finishes.

Paris, France
Waking up in the children's play-room, which was our bedroom for the night, at 8am was tough, squat shows always run late. Paris was only 5 hours away but we all wanted to get there as earlier as possible to hopefully take a walk around town. The drive sucked and we didn't arrive at the venue until about 9 hours later and didn't find somewhere to park until close to 7pm. We briefly drove past some of Paris' landmarks and it only made me desperate to come explore more. Talks started about relocating the band to Paris at some point in the future and if there is a city I can imagine living in as much as London, it would be here. The show venue was moved twice due to venues closing but there were a good number of people there, including some friendly faces from our previous France shows who had come to see us off. I was lost in sweat and cymbals for the whole set, grabbing breaths of hot air between chords, just hanging on to stay conscious at times. It was the hottest show we have played since Fest and I had the very best time, such an awesome show to wrap things up with.

Kiel, Germany

The drive felt like forever due to traffic jams and we arrived late to find that venue already busy. I'm always concerned at shows like this that people are there for another reason or they will leave after the local guy plays because no one knows who we are. They didn't though and the show was fun, if ridiculously hot. I realised that at every show so far there has been at least a few people who know the words to at least some of our songs and that is freaking me out a little to think that people in towns and cities I have never even heard of or visited are rotating our records enough to pick up the lyrics in a language which isn't even their first. As I changed my strings in the backroom after we played and I could hear the show going on through the door I felt very lucky to be here doing this. There's only 2 more shows until we come home, I wish this didn't have to end.

Weiner, Austria
Pj cooked crazy beans for breakfast/lunch today. This was accompanied by roast potatoes, carrots, broccoli and Tofu and It.was.awesome. If you plan on touring, bring someone like PJ, who likes cooking and eating, it will make everything better, I promise. I have dodged so many meals from gas stations because of PJ and I cannot thank him and his appetite enough. The venue was just right, with great sound, a small stage and monitors, making playing easy and fun. We switched the set up tonight because it was clear that people at the show had been to multiple shows in Austria, which was, to me, incredible considering we have never played here. I don't want to leave, I like it here and everyone has been so awesome to us. I can't wait to come back and tour here again. Tomorrow we have a long drive and a gig in Germany on the same day that Germany will either progress to the next round of the world cup, or bomb out of it completely. This could go either way.

Near Stuttgart, Germany
As soon as we arrived we were offered food and mohitos and the uncertainty of the show and how it might pan out faded quickly. The house was busy and everyone seemed excited about seeing us play that night. Germany won the football so spirits were high. The venue was tiny and busy and despite sweating the most I have on tour just watching imadethismistake, the show was awesome fun. Uli and everyone involved in the show were awesome and I cannot thank them all enough for ensuring that our bellies were always full and our beers were always topped up. As this show was their first show and was basically just a favour to us as we had nothing booked in the cities that day, we were all apprehensive that playing a tiny town with someone who doesn't often do shows might be a big disappointment and somewhat awkward. Thankfully, we could not have been more wrong.

Oberwart, Austria

The drive today was short and for some reason I wished it was longer. I like the peace in the van sometimes, shutting myself off into headphones and dozing along the motorways that weave through the the countries we fleetingly cruise through. I don't tend to look out of the windows enough - occasionally taking a look to the left of me reveals that we're somewhere beautiful, but equally often, that we are somewhere flat and uninspiring. I was only part of the way through the new Eminem record that I pirated when we arrived at Oberwart. The venue was large so winding my amp up was possible tonight and I thought everything sounded great out front. The mix of local bands and us meant a positive crowd that didn't entirely get lost in the large room and I was content after we played that things had gone about as good as they could have. We had an encore demanded off us, which is always a good sign. We finished on "Mabley Green" which we haven't been playing much on this tour and I enjoyed every second of it. The day off yesterday just made me itch to play tonight and for now, that itch feels scratched. I cannot wait to play again tomorrow.