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.