The end of the world is nigh.

I always get super hyped on end-of-the-world disaster movies. I don’t know why, but they have always really excited me. I’m definitely a sucker for mass devastation CGI and seeing huge parts of the earth being destroyed in full Technicolor. It’s awesome. I’d probably find myself quite settled at thought of dying if I knew that everyone else was going to die at the same time, which probably makes me an asshole or something. Whatever. Anyway, my point is that none of these disaster movies has ever satisfied me. I see the trailers and I get so excited, but after watching the films I always feel let down and I think I finally figured out what it is about these films that is leaving me flat.

Firstly, Hollywood films, in general, do ridiculous stuff that is completely at odds with real life and the way people really behave in high-stress situations. The distinction between “goodies” and “baddies” is always painfully obvious and the behaviour of the characters always seems detrimental to the film. I’m willing to believe that an asteroid is going to destroy earth, but I’m not willing to believe that Will Smith can fly an alien fighter plane into a mother ship, upload a virus and take down the entire fleets shields. This isn’t why the films kind of suck though.

Secondly, the dialogue in the films is horrible, almost universally. I know these movies have huge budgets that they have to recoup and so the film is aimed at as wide demographic as possible, but you don’t need to make a pun when you dodge the meteor, or kill an alien. It would be entirely unlikely that on out-running a huge gaping chasm that is widening down the highway, the ex-drug addict-turned excellent father would say something like “I thought I quit crack years ago!” This isn’t why the films kind of suck though (although it’s a close second)

The 3^rd reason is why I think these films kind of suck. It’s the happy endings. I mean, most of these films don’t end on an exactly “happy” note, but the sky is always blue and the destroyed world looks kind of pretty and there’s this overwhelming sense that everything is going to be ok. ARE YOU PEOPLE CRAZY? ALMOST 6 BILLION PEOPLE JUST DIED! EVERY PERSON AND BUILDING YOU EVER KNEW IS GONE! THE WORLD IS ENTIRELY DESTROYED! I’d love it if a director had the balls to actually have the humans all die out. It’s not like it would really take much to make us all extinct and I think that would be a rad ending to a film. Am I the only one?

*I watched 2012 yesterday and whilst it was entertaining, our team of “goodies”, led by John Cusack (who I think is awesome usually) manages to out-drive Los Angeles collapsing into the pacific, learn how to fly a light aeroplane and then outrun the huge chunks of rock spewed by a volcano, learns how to fly a jumbo aeroplane and land it on a glacier whilst driving out the back of it in a sports car and then sneak into a military compound and get aboard an ark, fix the complex machinery inside the arc to ensure they don’t crash into Mt Everest. Thank god the film was pirated.

Evidence of rocking

This is how much we "rocked" in Reading the other day on our first gig with the van.

Only the day before I was this awesome.

I wish I could say I'll miss Joshs car, but, you know, it kinda sucked.

Dan

Our 7" artwork.

A long time ago, when the band was just Josh and me, we realised that we have no artistic ability and artwork for our band would be entirely best handled by someone who was actually skilled. For an example of our artistic brilliance, check the "artwork" we did for the Done record (although we mass produced that record using stamps and stuff, so we were pretty limited, alright?!)

This was when we asked Ema to design our website and eventually our first proper record and all our shirts so far. Since PJ and Joe came on-board, our artistc abilities have increased by, I think, about 0% so we asked Ema to do this record as well. Heres what she did for the 7".


Fingers crossed it will be available for the Rooftops tour, but the way these things often go down means we can never be sure. Pressing takes something like 6 weeks and happens usually in Taiwan or China and it's their New Year celebrations at the moment. We're just sorting out all the masters at the moment and then we play the waiting game.

I hate waiting.

Dan

Big news.

“APOLOGIES I HAVE NONE RELEASE TRACK LISTING OF THEIR FORTHCOMING 7INCH RELEASE”

Apologies, I have none are proud to release the tracklisting for their forthcoming release, ending months of speculation. The record, to be released on an as-yet-to-be-announced date in April, will come on 7inch coloured vinyl (black). The tracklisting is as follows:

• Joiners and Windmills
• Sat in Viccy Park

That is all.

Dan Bond

Vice President

Apologies, I have none inc.

This weekend was pretty busy.

We got the van this weekend. I wish I had some photos of it, but I don’t. I mean, I don’t even have a camera and I don’t like borrowing Emas camera because I will inevitably lose it. Needless to say, the van is awesome. Its silver and everything. There’s tons of space for everything we bring to shows (which always seems twice as much stuff as we’ll need) and space for PJ to nap all the way to everywhere. We.are.finally.a.real.band.

Before we picked up the van we played a house show with Break The Habit, Russo, Cynics and Wooderson. It was in the basement of Elliot’s house in Brighton and loading our shit down the stairs was the standard nightmare I should be used to by now, but never seem to. The room was tiny and the show was packed and awesome. Sam Russo blasted out a bunch of songs, some of which I didn’t know and were amazing, literally amazing. Sam Russo is the best song-writer of our generation, right? Giles/Cynics, was excellent – he just gets better every time. I’d never seen Wooderson before but they were really awesome and for some reason I have managed to miss listening to them properly so I am totally going to check out their myspace. Break The Habit play with tons of energy and get pretty rowdy when they play, it’s always fun to watch them and all their stuff is for free download right now, so definitely get all that and then go watch them play and buy their records. We had only a few minutes to set up and get going because PJ was slowly dying of man-flu and was getting the train back to London with Joe so we only played a few songs but it was probably the most fun show we have played since Flacos in Florida at Fest. In fact, the show was very much like that show – really rowdy and sloppy and fun.

Anyway, the next day we played in Reading.

My friend Jim doesn’t drink beer. He’s never even tried it. He doesn’t drink cider and I’ve never seen him drink wine. That pretty much leaves spirits, of which I have seen him drink a lot. At bars he usually gets a huge glass of vodka with a tiny bit of lemonade in it and he’ll go through a bunch of these while getting buck-wild and sweaty. Anyway, our band was the lemonade in Jims massive glass of fast, hardcore punk. I mean vodka. I guess that was a long way of saying “we were the odd band out at the Reading gig last night” but it didn’t seem to matter at all, it was fun show to play and all I really want to talk about is how awesome Moral Dilemma were. They are another band I have managed to miss seeing live and last night they just seemed a step above the majority of bands playing that style of music. They just know how to dial in their equipment to sound good, they don’t seem to make mistakes and they play fast and hard. The PA system sort of blew early in the night and so the vocals all sounded, well, shit, like a 50s radio that was hardly tuned in properly. Anyway, despite the bad vocals, Moral Dilemma were awesome and everyone kicked off.

I’m tired today and my voice hurts. 2 back to back shows without monitors and my voice feels a little pissed off with me. Would bringing my own monitor to gigs be really un-punk? Forget it, I’m going straight for in-ear monitors and my own soundguy.

Laters
Dan

We're having a house show.


I cannot wait.

Dan

This weekend is looking mighty busy

Google says, on average, about 8 people will come to this site today. Maybe as many as 13, maybe as low as 5. It all depends. On weekends this place is dead, probably because people aren't paid to be stuck behind a computer screen just to make enough money to blow at the weekends on SNES games, or whatever you guys are up to these days. Anyway, thanks for coming today, whoever you are. You are in an elite club today. Say hi.

Right, so this weekend, according to my google calander (jesus, I might as well tattoo google on my face) is looking busy. Ryans Bar tomorrow for a gig with PJ and Gaby, Brighton House show on Friday, gig in Reading Saturday, work all day sunday and then show Ema a good time on Sunday night (which is valentines day, you should know that.) Our car is still dying, but we are, potentially, picking up a van this weekend.

8-0

Thats a smiley for *shock face*. If all goes to plan, we'll be cruising in a sweet van from now on. And yeah, so a van is way less friendly to the planet but have you even seen PJs bass guitar case? THAT THING IS MASSIVE. It literally barely fits into the Xantia Estate car. Photos of the van and us posing around it while looking like a real band very soon. I really want Timmy Westwood to pimp it for us and put in 12 sub-woofers and eleventeen LCD screens in places we just don't need them. That would be awesome.

In other news, despite not being a huge fan of all dayers, Jugs has put together such a sweet line-up that I am super stoked to watch pretty much from start to finish. Well done Jugs, well done. If you haven't met jugs before, this is me, Josh and Jugs, looking stoked below.

Whattaguy.

Laters

Dan

*Edit. We had 14 people here yesterday. Thats enough for a football team and 3 subs. WOLINSKI!

Before we move on.

We recorded earlier this week. More on that later when I upload some photos and more boring videos that show the absolute tedium that is the recording process. The songs we finished sound like they should end up sounding "banging" and stuff by the time the post-recording processes are done. I'm real stoked on them. The art is done for the new record actually, but if I blow all my awesome news shit today then I'll have nothing to post later in the week, you know?

ANYWAY.

Sometime last year we got a small flurry of requests to donate songs to charity releases and that, to me, sounds like a great way to help bring in some money to a worthy cause and also help us to maybe get our songs infront of people who might never have come across us before. Its the sort of situation you can call a "super-sweet-deal" if you were from the 90s and had long hair and a skateboard.

The problem is that we hardly finish songs and at that point, we were in a massive slump in terms of writing songs and so after we agreed to do the first one we had to turn the others down because we just didn't think we'd be able to get it done. I managed to write and demo a song really quick around that time and we ended up recording it at home a few weeks later - the quickest a song has ever come together for us (and likely ever). The charity release never came out on CD though and nothing ever seemed to happen with it all, which really bummed me out because the artwork and line-up on the record was looking kind of cool and I thought we'd have actually had some sort of positive effect for our hard work. Shame. Anyway, before we put out some new songs in a few weeks, I thought I should post up the link to this song, as it never got offered for download in the past and the charity record is obviously never going to happen. If you are feeling charitable, feel free to buy some stuff here and help out the people in Haiti or something.

I Hope This Is Quick.mp3

ps: Grade upped another new song on their website, go listen, it's a banger.

Chow
Dan.