Ven-durr.

I get back into Stanstead the other day and go to collect my bag. My hands are sore from carrying luggage all morning and my arms have tanned into a t-shirt shape on my body from the Spanish heat. I just want to get my bag and get home, but the train and bus journeys ahead of me fill me with apprehension. This day is going to get worse before it gets better and that’s just the price you have to pay for leaving the country on holiday. It kicks you out on the way out and kicks you on the way back in. So my semi-broken luggage bag comes round on the rotating bag transporter and I would just love to ride it for a lap to see what it felt like, but I resist the urge and drag my bag off and drop it to the floor. Time for a drink. Time for a snack. This day is going to get worse before it gets better and I think the overpriced vending machines are a small price to pay right now. The choices are standard in the machine and show no originality and Ema chooses the shortbread chocolate and the bar gets stuck in the machine. I don’t really want shortbread, but buying another seems to be the only way to get the other one free. I pump in another 70p and out comes the first bar and the second one gets stuck. I knew the day was going to get worse before it got better, but I had no idea how quickly it would happen.

I wrote my first ever confectionary-based complaint letter today. Welcome to middle-age Dan.

Dan

ps: I listended to Onsinds new record this week. It completely rules.

Mega weekender

A few weeks after moving into London, Josh found a punk show on the internet that was going on a few miles from our house and we decided we should go. I Google mapped the route and had no fucking clue about where the venue was or how we would get there, but apparently there was a bus that went there from our house and we just had to walk a little at the other end. Despite this only being a few years ago, no one had internet on their phones and I didn’t know anyone with a sat nav. if you were lost, you were lost. The second we got off the bus in Stoke Newington, I was lost and I realised that all I knew about London was a handful of very specific routes from one place to the next. If forced to deviated from them routes, I was immediately lost. I might was well have been in Bumblecomethropplewaite in Norfolk*. I had this horrible unnerving feeling that I would never know my around the city or understand the bus maps and would constantly just need to follow Josh around and do whatever he did. That feeling lasted about 2 months.

Well the show was kind of strange, but Mega Games 2 played that night and they were pretty cool so we gassed with them a bit about playing shows and going to fest and all that shit that people with guitars and beards like to talk about and we sort of kept in touch and ended up playing some of our earlier shows with them in peoples houses and odd venues to people who quite often didn’t seem to get what we were doing. That all seems a long time ago now.

Anyway, The Mega Games 2 was really awesome, just a guitar and melodica and some rough recordings of great songs. They are now a full band though, with bass and drums and are just called Mega Games now. We’re doing a weekender of shows with them in September and I am stoked – it seems like we should have done this ages ago. Have a listen to their stuff, its rad. You can get a record free here: Killyourown.co.uk Or listen online here: www.myspace.com/themegagamestwo


The dates were playing are:

10 September - Hectors House in Brighton
11 September - 1 in 12 Club, Bradford (All day benefit show)
12 September - The Marquee, Norwich

Come check it out yeah?

Dan

*That place doesn’t exist.

Moving homes, no broken bones though.

In January our new flat looked like this as we moved in.

On saturday, our flat looked like this as we moved out, only 8 months later.

I hate moving house. I hate moving house the day before Punk and Bowl, which turned into a 19 hour long day of driving, loading gear and watching bands.

Long weekend.

Dan

Brickin nuggets.

Apparently, not serving Chickin Nuggets is enough to drive some people to attack workers at McDonalds. Sure, the breakfast menu has a wide variety of beige coloured goods to bloat yourself with, as well as low quality coffee, but why no Chickin Nuggets?! ARGH!!!

My favourite part of this video is that after the woman verbally assaults the staff, physically attacks them, bricks the window and drives off, the next customer slowly starts pulling up at the window, all quite normally.

"Erm....where is my Bacon McMuffin?"

People are INSANE!!

Dan

It's not easy to make us look pretty....

..but it is easy to show how sweaty we can get. Robert took some photos at the show we played at Sub in Austria and they turned out great. The show was one of my favourites on tour, the guys who put us on made sure we had everything we needed and were comfortable after the long drive, but more importantly, they promoted the show real well and it was busy and sweltering by the time we played. I can't wait to go back. Have a look at Roberts website, a ton of awesome bands have passed infront of his lens. www.hot-shot.at

Thanks Robert!

Dan

How to pirate our 7"

If you want our 7" but don't want to pay for it, forget searching Google for a torrent! There is a better way! Find a friend who has already bought the vinyl, gather some varying types of silicone and liquid plastic and pirate it!

If anyone shows me a working pirated vinyl copy of our record, I will give them my test pressing.

This is the greatest thing that today has brought me. (Slow day)

To the seas!
Pirate Dan

Kill Your Own

Our friend Ian has set up a website called "Kill Your Own" and its full of free music from some of the countries finest bands, as well as some difficult to find demos and obscure releases. It's a great site. He has just put up our record "Two Sticks and Six Strings" on there, so if you don't have a copy (and it's sold out at the moment anyway) you can pick one up there for free, or for a donation. If you also want to donate to the site itself, that would be awesome - the running costs of a site like this escalate quickly and I think it's a great resource. Download our record here.

In other news, this is a photo of me and Josh at SlamDunk festival earlier this year, with one of the girls from the Millionaires. Their mics didn't really work during their set, so they stormed off stage but hung around for photos. Alkaline Trio played that night and were unbelievably awesome.

Odd day.

Dan