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: