Apologies Friends, Gaby & I Have Rooftops

It's been a while

2011-11-18T14:19:00.000-08:00

I've been keeping my head down, working a pretty cool job at the School of Oriental and African Studies, trying to save up some cash and practicing as much as possible before we head out on tour with I am the Avalanche and the Hostage Calm in a couple of weeks. Things off stage have been moving along real nicely for Apologies as well, we have some really fun stuff coming up, including a release show for our split with Calvinball and One Night Stand in North Dakota next Wednesday, November 16th at the Old Blue Last (it's free, come on down!) and lots of cool stuff happening next year including lots of touring and the release of our first full length (more on that to be announced in the coming months).

There's a couple of things I've been reading recently that I thought might be worth sharing with people.

Firstly, I recently discovered a blog called My Sober Year. It's a fascinating, anonymous account of someone who was recently set up by someone working with the Florida Police and charged with possession of marijuana (apparently a felony in the state of Florida). As a result, they can either go to court (where they will almost certainly lose their case) or take part in something called "drug court" where they have to completely abstain from any drugs and go to meeting 4 times a week (this decreases over time) and take regular drug tests. It's a really heartfelt account from someone who has been forced into a pretty terrible situation, but has decided to embrace this and try to completely abstain from all drugs, legal or illegal. This includes caffein, alcohol and any unnecessary medication. They are keeping a journal of their physical reactions and emotions at http://mysoberyear.tumblr.com/. I would highly recommend reading this blog.

The other thing I have just finished reading is Jello Biafra's account of when he visited Israel and Palestine. On July 2nd of this year, Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine were supposed to play a show in Tel Aviv. After much debate between the band members and fans of the band, they ended up pulling out of the event. Jello still felt he should visit the place, as he has been very involved in the struggle for the freedom of the Palestinian people. His writing with regards to his travels there is fascinating. I am someone who has always been interested in finding out more about the occupation and its consequences, but have also always been rather confused about its roots and history and what it is actually like on the ground. Jello gives a passionate, very level-headed, 2-sided account of what he saw there and his take on the whole situation. He also explains in a clear and simple manner, why certain things are the way they are out there. It is probably, to date, the most useful and informative thing I have read on the Israeli-Palestine conflict. It is long, but well, well worth reading and includes photos and video blogs as well. You can find it here: http://www.alternativetentacles.com/page.php?page=jello_israel

Germany Belgium Home

2011-09-27T15:16:00.000-07:00

Our last 2 days consisted of a show with this outside the venue:

Also on the bill that night were smile and burn, a German band we'd played with once before in England on their last UK tour. Sadly, their singer has broken his leg rocking out since we'd last seen em and he had to play the whole show propped up against a stool. Despite this, he managed to absolutely smash it, which impressed me greatly.

After a good night's sleep we headed towards Belgium for our last show of tour. After somehow literally ending up in the wrong town, at a completely different venue, a stroke of luck hit us: the owner of the wrong venue we showed up at knew the owner of the venue we were supposed to be at and hooked us up with them and gave us directions. The show was with Lemuria, who we'd met before and love and Cheap Girls, who we hadn't. Their next record is being recorded by Tom Gabel, I'm stoked to hear it. On the way to the show we stopped to fix some van troubles and I met this awesome beagle:

The show was cool but kind of quiet, and due to a misunderstanding we ended up with no place to stay, which meant we camped on some grass in a service station that night.

It's not really a glamorous end to tour, but, well, that's what happened.

I can't wait to get out on the road again! This week, we're playing Crazy Arm's record release show and then heading out for 3 shows with Samiam and Off With Their Heads. See you there!

You know you're in Germany when... (part 2)

2011-09-27T14:55:00.000-07:00

...this is what awaits you in your host's crapper:

Auenstein take 2

2011-09-27T14:52:00.000-07:00

The drive the next day, as all German drives seem to be, was traffic ridden. It was worth it though, as we were playing Auenstein. Playing Auenstein is awesome. If you wanna hang out with really nice Germans that will cook you food that they grow themselves, give you loads of beer and rock the fuck out with you, go play there.

Also awesome, is this puppy that showed up after we played:

In the background: Maurice. Probably the craziest German on earth, almost definitely the funniest.

Mighty Sounds

2011-09-27T14:31:00.000-07:00

So with my only hangover of tour, we set off to the Czech Republic - the only country that we were going through on this tour that I'd never been to before. We were met with this view as soon as we crossed the border:

It became apparent fairly quickly that the £15 tent me and Joe bought together was not as big as we'd hoped. Here it is on the left, next to Dan and Josh's tents:

It said it was for 2 people! Bloody Argos...

Mighty Sounds turned out to be fucking awesome. It was the first proper outdoor festival that we'd ever played and I really can't wait to do more of them. We watched the King Blues kill it and then Madball get on stage and be tough. Awesome. The day of our show we went swimming in our underwear in a lake we found on the edge of town:

That rather nice sunset is deceiving however. Our show was almost cancelled due a massive storm that came through the festival. Our tent stage was taken down and we were told we might not be able to play, only for it to be put back up and told that the main stage had been taken down and that the main stage bands were being moved to our stage. Eventually all stages got back up and running though and we played what was probably my favourite show of tour. Nice big stage, lots of jumping.

Much, much later on, Joe fell asleep in his clothes.

Vienna/Wiener Neustadt

2011-08-08T15:00:00.000-07:00

We wake up at promoter Rob's house in Graz in the baking heat and play streetfighter II in our underwear on his Super Nintendo for a half hour or so. I kick Josh's ass as Chun-Li. We head to the local supermarket and find nothing worth eating so, on Oil and Water's recommendation, decide to head out to a local burger bar that, as well as meaty burgers, serves a couple of different types of vegan burgers and wraps. We eat there and it's good and pretty cheap! Shortly after that I am extremely pleased to find an ice cream parlour that serves organic ice creams and sorbets for €1 a scoop! I take a scoop of mojito and a scoop of mango. Dissapointingly though, I'm still sober after my scoop of mojito. It's at this point that it really hits me how awesome Graz is and I'm kinda sad to leave.

However, I'm not sad for long as we're off to Vienna! We arrive in good time but the seemingly crazy street numbering system means we spend an hour and a half looking for the venue. We get there just in time though: Just as we're having our dinner another CRAZY storm breaks out. The lightning is so close and bright that I actually see it fizzle out rather than instantly disappear. I head back inside when it starts hailing seriously big hailstones.

Our friend Alex shows up, he's already wasted and telling us stories, something he's good at. It's great to see him. The show is fun, Oil and Water kill it once again and we head back to crash at Alex's house:

It's kinda late by this point and Alex has to go to work the next morning. He has to get up in around 4 hours actually at 7am. I go to sleep and wake up at 9am needing to pee and see Alex sitting up in his bed, his eyes half open, seemingly gazing at the wall behind me. He is clearly hanging.

"Hey dude, shouldn't you be at work?" I ask him.

He takes a second, makes eye contact with me and then just says "absolutely."

He assures it'll be fine and he heads off to work. Meanwhile I go back to sleep and wake up around 10.30. I make satay tofu and veg for lunch (get the recipe here: http://apologiesfriendsgabyandihaverooftops.blogspot.com/2011/04/i-hate-service-stops-leeds-to-newcastle.html). It is awesome. For some reason we take forever to get going, and by the time we get into the centre of Vienna, which we really wanna check out, we get a call saying we actually have to be at the venue early that night (shows tend to start very late in Europe when compared to UK shows). The drive is a short one and on arrival we see some familiar faces from the previous 2 shows, which is both humbling and reassuring. I'm not a huge drinker, but tomorrow is our only day off of tour and we plan to spend it at Mighty Sounds Festival, which we are playing in a couple of days, so that night I take advantage of the free booze for the first and only time on this tour. After the show, I head to a bar with Joe, Alex and Zock from Oil and Water. Alex tells us more crazy stories about how certain members of his family believe the earth to be flat (!) and how his parents sat him down and asked him who his cult leader was when he told them he had decided to adopt a vegan diet. Around 3am Zock gets a phone call and is excitedly talking in German to his friend on the other end of the phone. His friend Steffy just called and she's making veggie burgers and has invited us all round to share them with her. By this point I'm so drunk I can't finish my last beer and give it to Joe and Alex who polish it off. Burgers sound like a fucking great idea to me so we head over to Steffy's. Her burgers are astounding. Crispy on the outside, soft but firm and chewy on the inside and really flavourful. She serves them with avocado salad, one of my favourite things ever. Alex gets a piece stuck in his throat and his voice goes totally weird:

I'm having an awesome time. However, the beer in me makes me realise all too late that I have forgotten to take photos of what I've just eaten. Gutted. Just when I think things can't get any better, Steffy shows us her living room. It's entirely painted like a screenshot from super mario brothers:

And THEN i meet hazy, Steffy's adorable dog. I'm so incredibly excited by this point that I don a trendy hat and glasses, both belonging to Zock:

Before heading home, I take a photo of Alex looking particularly fresh. We all think he looks like an animal here. See if you can guess what we were thinking...

It's a sloth.

Graz

2011-08-07T14:44:00.000-07:00

Wow, where to start? Austria is probably my favourite country to tour in. I've been through there 3 times now and always found beautiful cities, welcoming people and awesome food. Along with a warm welcome, booze and awesome show, this is what was awaiting us when we arrived in Graz:

DELICIOUS home made seitan steaks:

Vegetable and veggie sausage kebabs:

Chocolate and raspberry cupcakes:

Pear cake:

5 different kinds of salad and MORE seitan steaks:

On top of all this was home made burger sauce, bread and mashed potato. We ate in a huge group before the show, on an outdoor terrace overlooking Graz whilst listening to the Ringers. It was good to be back in Austria.

This was also the first night of tour where we played with another band. That band was Oil and Water and they totally blew me away. the 3 guitars take you all over the place, sometimes gruff, sometimes tranquil, I highly recommend them.

Tubingen

2011-08-06T01:32:00.000-07:00

The next day, what should have been a fairly average drive is turned into a rather long one thanks to the first of many crazy ass storms that we would witness on this tour. A quick supermarket lunch stop off introduces us to a new concept: bread from a vending machine:

(Here Josh is also sporting a €3 bottle of champagne)

The other thing that turned it into a longer drive than it should have been, was the fact that I was tested for drugs at a gas station by the German police. Possibly irrationally, I get nervous around police at the best of times, and our friends' bands have told us a couple of horror stories about the German police force in particular when they've toured through here before. So I was pretty scared when a cop approached me and said something in German. Once he realised I couldn't speak German, he asked me in English whether I'd been drinking. I told him, truthfully, that I hadn't had a drink since 4 days ago.

"But you smoke hashish, right?" A weird way of asking that question, I thought.

"Uh, no." I do smoke sometimes but hadn't done so in a couple of weeks. He offered me a drugs test so I accepted. "But first you have to pay" he said.

"Uh, pay for what?"

"Your gas"

Well of course we're gonna pay for the gas, we're not crooks!

So I wander off to the public bathroom with this policeman. On the bright side, if you're being drugs tested you don't have to pay to pee at a German service station, so we are let in free of charge (bonus!). Now, I have trouble peeing in front of people I don't know at the best of times, let alone when it's a cop who's drugs testing me and I don't even need to pee in the first place! It takes me about 5 minutes, but I manage to fill the cup he's given me. I'm unsure what's going to happen, as I've been told that THC stays in your system for about 6 months if you smoke it. Can they do anything to me if that's the case though? The truth is I have no idea, which is what's making me nervous. I go to hand the cup back to him and... I spill it. I'm thinking "fuck me, he's gonna think I'm trying to get out of this test and arrest me anyway!" Luckily, I didn't spill it on him but in the sink and he assures me there's enough left in the cup to do the test. A misunderstanding due to the language barrier leads me to momentarily believe that he's telling me I have cocaine in my system, something I am unpleasantly surprised by, seeing as I have never taken cocaine. This is cleared up though and the test shows negative for all drugs and alcohol. He lets me go. Phew.

Meanwhile, outside, some more cops are investigating our van. I come out of the toilet and this differently dressed policeman in a green uniform makes me say something that sounds like "vibor." He then makes me say "helga" and says "my girlfriend" to me. I am confused and the 4 or 5 officers that have gathered around the van are laughing at me. We ask some German friends what this means later on and it turns out he was making me call his girlfriend a bitch, or something to that effect. Bizarre incident over, we carry on to Tubingen.

We arrive at this venue:

And are greeted by this man:

That's Basti. Very lovely man. He gives us this food (ps. I have a weird neck in this photo...):

Accompanied by salad and followed by this food:

That's a vanilla and chocolate cake and the photo above it is spatzle (I believe), which is a traditional German pasta from the region, with a lentil, carrot and veggie sausage sauce. There was a bottle of vinegar next to the plates that Basti told us we had to top the pasta with (only a very small amount was required). It was AWESOME. Later, Basti tells me that there are various ways of making this pasta, and that different regions of Germany boast about whose technique is the best. I found quite a good explanation of this here: http://www.germanfoods.org/consumer/facts/guidetopasta.cfm.

We talk about the history of the region, and how Basti feels he is lucky to live in a fairly liberal part of Germany, where venues like the Epplehaus are partly funded by the city council. The venue also runs as a youth centre with activities and free internet access for young people. The shows are cheap and there's a bar, a kitchen and a sleeping area with clean sheets and many beds. The venue has been operating like this for decades and I hope it carries on strong.

Outside, a slogan I quite like:

And another one, that I can get behind possibly even more than that last one:

Koln

2011-08-06T00:45:00.000-07:00

The journey from London to Koln didn't feel as brutal as we expected it to, the break on the ferry really helped us out I think. A stop to check the van's tire pressure revealed the fact that Belgians like extremely long words:

We actually arrive at the venue kinda early and instantly come across a reminder that Germans do indeed like to party is posted on the wall in front of us:

Our friends Martina and Tobi, who are putting the show on that night arrive shortly after us. We met them last time we came through this town and they were awesome so we hit em up again this time. A friend of theirs starts cooking: stuffed courgettes with some sort of spelt flour filling. There was also salad and other awesome stuff to go with this but I forgot to get photos.

Before the show we indulge in the generously offered free drinks and play table football (which, seemingly, everyone in Europe plays and everyone in Europe is really good at!). Joe hits himself in the nuts with one of the bars during a tense match:

Considering we were the only band playing that night, a really surprising amount of people came out to the show and I guess a few people remembered us from last time as we notice people singing along during our set. We hang out with some nice people after the show and get a good night's sleep at Martina and Tobi's awesome house.

The next morning, Martina has gone to work by the time we wake up, but Tobi is still with us and treats us to scrambled tofu, rolls, veggie meats and spreads:

I realise there's been some sizeable chunks taken out of my food in that photo but I got kind of excited about eating it and forgot to photograph it first.

We hang with Tobi for the morning and talk about our friends' band, Bangers, who played the same venue that we played the night before on their last European tour. Their drummer, Hamish, has written an amazing zine about that very tour (which lasted 7 weeks), detailing the ups and downs (mostly downs on that tour according to Hamish) of being in a small touring band. The zine is called Dog Days and I highly recommend you get in touch with Bangers right now and get a copy.

We say our goodbyes and thankyous to Tobi and head in to the city centre to check out Koln and stock up on strings and sticks and stuff. Koln has:

1. An awesome cathedral.

2. Some sort of military buskers that use giant 3 string basses.

Well done Koln! We will definitely be seeing you again!

You know you're in Germany when... (part 1)

2011-08-06T00:23:00.000-07:00

...this is what the first limo you see looks like:

Want a bass case?

2011-07-02T03:31:00.000-07:00

This is my bass case. It's old. I've had it for a good 6 or 7 years. It's also very heavy and pretty beaten up, kinda falling apart a bit, but still definitely usable and big enough to store all your cables and pedals and stuff as well as your instrument (and a lot better than touring with a soft case. Still can't believe it when I see bands do that. Do you hate your instrument? No? Buy it some protection then!). It's been to a lot of great places with me (like the ironically names club scheisse in Koln, which is actually an awesome place), as well as a lot of shit-holes (I'm looking at you, Birmingham). Like a lot of my stuff, I've grown pretty irrationally emotionally attached to Casey (that's my case's name I've decided). But, the truth is things haven't been smooth sailing between the 2 of us recently. I feel like Casey isn't the same they (Casey is not gender specific) once were, that they have become a burden unto me and that I, in return, am simply dragging them around when really, they want to be put to rest.

However, I believe there is still hope for Casey, that they could be given a new lease of life! What Casey needs is someone new. I can't offer them what they want (a rest) anymore, and they can't offer me what I need (a way of carrying my bass around that doesn't come close to breaking my back every time I pick it up and result in Joe, Dan and Josh constantly making fun of me (even more so than usual I mean)).

So Casey, this is goodbye. I will be buying a new, lighter bass case this week before we go on tour next Monday. If you would like to give Casey a new home, the 2 of us will be very grateful. They won't ask for much and neither will I (you can have Casey free of charge in fact if you so desire). So if you're interested in an over-sized, beaten up tattered bass case, email me on pjandgaby@gmail.com or pj@apologiesihavenone.co.uk.

Old Blue Last

2011-06-22T02:49:00.000-07:00

Thanks so much to everyone who came down to the Old Blue Last last night to watch Slow Science, Attack! Vipers! and Apologies, I Have None. The show was everything I could have hope for and more. It was our first show in over a month and it has really picked me up. I'm feeling really excited about everything we've got coming up in the coming months: a full length record, a 3 way split with ONSIND and Calvinball, and lots of touring. I really can't wait to get cracking!

Irony

2011-06-18T02:57:00.000-07:00

Images like the the one above always make me laugh. I mean, the pig is clearly serving ribs and a bacon sandwich! That's some dark, cannibal pig shit! He is literally saying that he will cut his own ass off and cook it for you! He seems pretty happy about it too... Or sedated. I can't tell.

Anyway, along similar lines, these Percy Pig sweets contain gelatine. Pretty ironic already, but specifically, it's pork gelatine. "Hey, what shall we make these sweets of happy little piggies frolicking in a field out of?"

"Boil their organs and bones and mostly use that. And some pink stuff."

Well done Marks & Spencer.

I Hate Service Stops - Guest Writer L Morgan

2011-04-30T01:21:00.000-07:00

So at our last show L made this freakin amazing stew. It was topped with these seeds cooked in soy sauce that made it extra special. I asked her to send me the recipe as it really was the nicest thing that was cooked for us during the whole 2 weeks we were out. L plays sings amazing songs under her real name, L Morgan as well as playing in the amazing band Livers & Lungs and she also puts on shows with her man Tim under the name Southsea DIY. She has also done a split 7" with Kelly Kemp, the Arteries and Bangers where the Arteries are basically L's backing band and they do 2 of her songs, and Bangers are Kelly's backing band and they do 2 of hers. It's honestly so damn good. Make sure you look all of that up! Here's her amazing recipe:

Roasted Sweet Potato Stew Recipe

This is to make approximately 6 ½ litres of tasty vegan food for hungry, nutritionally starved touring bands. Everything should ideally be in season and bought from your local green grocer as it’ll cost half as much and taste twice as good! Most veg can be substituted for something else; nothing about this is set in stone!

You will need…

6 medium cooking onions

2 large courgettes

4 smallish leeks

A bunch of celery

10 medium tomatoes

2 large sweet potatoes

8 large carrots

6 or 7 large flat mushrooms

5 cloves of garlic

200g pearl barley

600g washed red lentils

1 tin butter beans

1 tin kidney beans

3 sprigs fresh rosemary

3 sprigs fresh oregano

Olive oil

Dried Italian seasoning (this will do for all herbs if you can’t get/afford fresh, but check local gardens for rosemary, it’s everywhere and if you don’t take the piss, they won’t miss a sprig or two.)

Marigold reduced salt vegan stock

Garlic salt

Salt & Pepper

A blender (unless you have hours to spare!)

Wok or large frying pan

A large baking tray covered in tin foil

A small baking tray covered in tin foil

A large pot

Beer to drink as you slave away

(1) Put the oven on to about 180/200 degrees or gas mark 6. Have the large and small baking trays covered in tin foil in there to heat too.

(2) Put the onions in the blender, whiz till finely chopped then place in a bowl to one side. Do the same with the leeks and then celery remembering to chop the ends off and clean them both first.

(3) Chop mushrooms into quarters and courgettes in half down the middle before chopping into 2cm pieces. Also quarter the tomatoes.

(4) Peel the sweet potato and wash, top and tail the carrots. Chop both into about 2 cm chunks and place on the hob in a pan of boiling water for 10 minutes to par boil. Make sure the water has salt in it, but not too much as you’ll need the water later for stock.

(5) Heat some olive oil in the wok. Get the oil good and hot then add the mushrooms. Add a little salt to the mixture as this will pull the water out of the mushrooms and help them to cook better as well as seasoning them. If too much water comes out drain it off into a cup and place to one side before returning the mushrooms to the heat. Add pepper and some Italian seasoning. When they are cooked and taste amazing, take of heat and place to one side.

(6) Heat some olive oil in the large pot. Add the onion and cook until it starts to go slightly see through, not brown. Add garlic, salt, pepper and a table spoon of paprika. Stir. Add leeks and celery to the mixture and stir. Make sure the heat isn’t so high that it begins to catch and stick while you’re doing other stuff.

(7) The sweet potato and carrots should be nearly done. Drain and keep the water then put them back in their pan. Drizzle some olive oil over them and stir making sure they are all evenly covered. Place on the baking tray, season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with more paprika. Place in the oven for 25 minutes.

(8) Add the courgettes, butter beans and kidney beans to your large pot and stir. Then add the pearl barley and washed lentils as well. Put 4 teaspoons of marigold vegan stock into a jug and mix with 1 litre of water from the sweet potato and carrots. Add this and the mushrooms plus any mushroom juice to the pot and stir. Leave to cook for about 5 mins.

(9) Take half the fresh herbs, rub them together briefly in your hands then add to the large pot along with the rest of the water from the sweet potato and carrots. Taste the mixture and season accordingly. You may need to add more water as you go along, this is fine as long as you taste as you go and add more seasoning if needed.

(10) Take the tomatoes and place them on the small baking tray, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with garlic salt, pepper and dried herbs. When the 25 mins is up for the sweet potato and carrots, turn them and check they’re not burning. Return them to the oven for 20 more minutes and put the tray of tomatoes in there too.

(11) When the time is up add the roasted sweet potato, carrot and tomato to the pot and fill to within an inch of the rim with boiling water. Taste and add seasoning if desired. Add the other half of the herbs, rubbing them a little as well. Finally, add two tablespoons of wholegrain mustard stir and remove from the heat.

(12) The residual heat left in the pan will continue to cook the ingredients long after you remove it from the pan so any more heat at this point would simply kill the flavour. It’s tastier if it’s been allowed to cool down too which is handy when you have to carry the bloody thing to a venue!

(13) Chow down! Nom nom nom.

Xxxxx El

I Hate Service Stops - Glagow to Portsmouth

2011-04-29T12:43:00.000-07:00

It's a short drive from Montrose to Glasgow. About 2 hours. We'd slept very well in very comfortable beds the night before. Joe still managed to sleep in the van for the whole ride though:

Played in Glasgow with Moral Dilemma, which was awesome because a) they rock and b) I got to speak French with Chloe, their bassist, which is awesome coz I really miss speaking French. The house we stayed in was a rockabilly/horror themed house, with amazing artwork and paraphernalia. Gutted I didn't get any photos.

We had to get going pretty early as we had managed to hop on a show the next day in Bristol (long drive, falafel lunch) with Chixdiggit. Very interesting live show. I watched about the last 15 minutes of their set. I think they played 2 songs. The rest of their time was taken up saying things like "people in the Midlands are grumpy coz they don't have their own Scotch." Well, no one outside Scotland has their own Scotch. Scotch is from Scotland. That's what makes it Scotch. My dad once told me that some people in Japan started a town called Scotland so they could make their own Scotch. They got shut down though. Presumably by angry drunk Scots.

This was also the night we met homophobic Dave, as we've now called him, who did our sound. Well, I say he did our sound, all he actually did was tell us about how some venue in Bristol is now "well faggy and full of fags," then when we started and Josh's mic didn't work, he sort of stood awkwardly by Josh, sort of vaguely tried to fix it, didn't, and then left. Probably still got paid though.

Well we didn't stick around in Bristol after the show. We headed over to Josh's parents' place in Exeter and slept in beds. Awesome.

The next day I made a simple veggie sauce pasta. £6.50 to feed the 4 of us. Here's what you'll need:

- 2 red onions, peeled and chopped

- 4 carrots, peeled and chopped

- 3 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped

- 2 or 3 handfuls of raisins

- 4 sticks of celery, washed and chopped

- A bag of spinach, washed

- 1L of passata

- Some fresh basil, or dried if you don't have fresh

- A couple of pinches of sugar

- 3 tablespoons of olive oil

1. In a large pan, fry the red onion and garlic in a tbsps of olive oil for about 5 minutes:

2. Add the carrots, raisins, celery and spinach and fry for another 5-10 minutes.

3. Add everything else except the basil and heat through for about 15-20 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, add 500g of pasta to boiling water and cook until al dente (around 10 minutes).

5. Once done, drain the pasta and mix in with the sauce, along with the basil. You're done. This dish is so easy. You can really use any veg you like, that's just what we could find in the local shop that day.

That night we were playing in Truro, the furthest South West we have ever played, and the first of 3 shows with Crazy Arm (the last 3 shows of this tour, in fact). We got there around 5 and wandered around the small town centre. Found a pretty awesome cathedral but couldn't go in as there was a service. Some nice old man welcomed us though and was excited to tell us all about the history of the cathedral.

The show that night was well attended and fun. It was great to see Crazy Arm again and Roo from Bangers did a solo set of Bangers songs, which was awesome for sure. We headed back to Plymouth that night and crashed at Darren from Crazy Arm's place. The next day, I made probably the biggest chilli I have ever made. Darren had a huge pan and it fed 8 of us for 2 days for £16. 50p a head per meal! This could be a record. It's a sweet chilli with apple juice and I think it's a little different to your usual veggie chilli (in a good way). Here's what you'll need (again, you can really use whatever veg you want, this is just my preference):

- 1L apple juice.

- 1 tube of tomato puree

- 2L passata

- 3 cans of kidney beans, drained

- 3 cans of chickpeas, drained

- A bag of soy mince OR a pack of Linda McCartney sausages, microwaved then mashed up with a fork

- 8 carrots, peeled and chopped

- 4 courgettes, washed and chopped

- 4 red peppers, washed and chopped

- An entire celery branch, washed and chopped

- 4 onions, peeled and chopped

- 2 leeks, washed and chopped

- 6 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped

- 2 tsps cumin

- 2 tsps cinnamon

- As much or as little chilli powder as you like

- Salt and pepper to taste

- Olive oil for frying

1. Fry the onion, garlic, leeks, carrots and celery for around 5 minutes. Next add the spices, and a splash of water.

2. Add everything else except the apple juice and tomato puree and stir in. Then add about half the apple juice and half the tomato puree. You want enough to cover all the other ingredients. If it seems to thick, add more apple juice. If it seems to thin, add more tomato puree. You can also thicken it by letting it simmer for about 10 minutes with the lid off.

3. Let it all simmer for about 20 minutes and serve with rice or toasted pitta bread.

The show that night was one of, if not the best show of tour. Crazy Arm absolutely killed it. We finished the night getting hammered at a lock in thanks to one of Crazy Arm's pub-owning friends. The next day we checked out Plymouth and it's sea side. This area is called the Ho. *Insert crass jokes here* It has canons:

In fact, we found out that an old ship was going to be destroyed and they had decided to give it a traditional send off. There was a castle by the shore that was gonna fire canons as this ship went past, and the ship was gonna fire some back. So we decided to wait for this. We waited a while. Nothing happened. We got kinda bored. Ice cream was purchased:

Then, without warning, it happened! And it was actually pretty impressive and worth the wait!

After that we headed off to the last show of tour in Portsmouth. It was sold out, which was very exciting. It even had one of the those "Sold Out" signs plastered over it!

It was really good to play in front of a lot of people. Our friends L and Tim were putting this show on. They're also organising one of the stages at Southsea Fest, you should look that up coz it's gonna be awesome.

L also made the best food that any promoter made us on this tour. My next post will feature a guest recipe from her.

After everything was over we decided to take a couple of photos with Crazy Arm. I really like the difference in Dan's facial expression in these 2 photos. Try quickly hopping between these 2 photos and keep your focus on Dan.

See you next time!

I Hate Service Stops - Durham to Aberdeen

2011-04-27T01:59:00.000-07:00

So later that day, after trying to eat my lunch whilst watching Blood Diamonds (not an easy thing to do), we set off to Durham. It's a quirky place. There's the Clive Owen wall at the house we stayed in:

And there's this at the Fishtank, where we played that night:

Seriously though, I do love visiting and playing Durham. ONSIND played and it was teriffic. Again, why have you not checked them out yet? Incidentally, we're almost done recording our split with them and Calvinball so look out for that soon!

We said our goodbyes and gave our embraces fairly early the next day as I wanted to get to Lancaster (where our next show was) as early as possible. I used to live there when I was a student and have very fond memories of the place. I wanted to just walk around and go to some of the places I used to hang out. Dan found a skate park, so spent a while skating there, but I took Joe and Josh up to Lancaster's Ashton memorial, which has it's own little foresty area, grass fields and a great view of the whole of Lancaster and beyond.

We wandered around the small town centre and even went past my old house, where I lived for a year with 7 other friends:

I went back to Singlestep, a vegetarian cooperatively run shop selling nice veggies, chocolate, vegan stuff, artwork and magazines, including Adbusters, which I used to buy from there all the time. I hadn't read it in ages, and I'd forgotten how interesting insightful it can be, I would highly recommend picking up a copy or at least checking their website out (www.adbusters.org).

It was a big old nostalgia fest in the best way possible. So glad I went back.

In stark contrast to the wonderful time I had during the day, 3 people watched us and Just Panic play that night. But hey, we got to see those dudes again and the next day, we played Aberdeen, where post-show clubbing in animal masks ensewed:

After that, we drove to my parents' place, about 45 minutes out of Aberdeen in the lovely little coastal town of Montrose. Word to the wise if you're low on gas when leaving Aberdeen around 1am: There are no gas stations open between Aberdeen and Montrose at this time of night. AT ALL. We miraculously made it to Montrose by the skin of our teeth, the van literally chugging it was so close to empty. The next day, before heading off to Glasgow, I made shepherd's pie. PJ Shepherd's pie to be precise (coz that's my name innit?). It cost £10 to feed 6 of us. Here's what you'll need:

For the filling:

- 1-2 tbsps of olive oil for frying, plus a bit extra for spreading on mash
- 1 cup red lentils, washed
- 2 red onions, peeled and chopped
- 1 leek, washed and chopped
- 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
- 4 large carrots, peeled and chopped
- 2 cups of soy mince (if you can't find any, just get a pack of Linda McCartney sausages, microwave em then mash up. That's what I did this time as vegan mince is sometimes tricky to find in Montrose and it makes an excellent substitute)
- 4 celery sticks, washed and chopped
- 1/2 cup peas
- 1/2 cup sweetcorn
- 6-12 chestnut mushrooms (depending on their size), washed and chopped
- 2 tsps marmite or any yeast extract
- 2-3 cups of vegetable stock
- 1/4 cup tomato puree
- 2 tbsps of mixed dried herbs

For the mash:

- 750g of potatoes, washed and chopped (peel em if you want to, but I don't think it's essential. I like keeping the skin in my mash, personally)
- 3 tbsps of vegan margerine
- and pepper salt to taste
- a couple of splashed of any non dairy milk

- 1 head of broccoli to serve on the side

1. Fry the onion garlic, carrots, leek, celery and mushrooms in a large pan or wok for 5-10 minutes on a medium heat, stirring occasionally. Add the lentils, mince, tomato puree, marmite and soy sauce and stir them all in. Next, slowly add the vegetable stock until you have covered all the ingredients. You want everything to cook in the sauce, but you don't want the whole thing to be too watery: that's why you want to add it slowly.

2. Put a lid on the pan or wok and allow to cook for around 10 minutes, then add the herbs, peas and sweetcorn and cook with the lid on for another 10 minutes, or until the lentils have softened and the flavours have blended. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. If it's too thick, add a bit of stock. If it's not thick enough, add a bit of tomato puree.

3. Meanwhile, prepare the mash by boiling the potatoes in a pan until soft. Drain them, return them to the pan and add the margerine, salt, pepper and milk. You can also add a bit of olive oil if you're that way inclined. Mash it all together, taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.

3. Once that's done, place the pie mixture in a large roasting/baking dish:

4. Spread the mash out on top of the mixture and brush some olive oil on it

5. Wack it in the oven for about 20 minutes at 190 degrees, or until it's bubblinghot and the mash potato is nicely browning/crisping up. Serve with some steamed brocolli (once steamed, i like to add a dash of soy sauce and sesame oil or toasted sesame seeds to my brocolli, but that's optional):

6. Eat it, enjoy it, then go with your dad to the amazing Lunan Bay beach in Montrose and get him to take photos of you jumping off sand dunes and have an awesome time getting totally covered in sand and placing extra sand in Joe's underwear:

Under the Influence

2011-04-26T08:22:00.000-07:00

I'm interrupting the last tour updates to let you know that we were played on the Mike Davies radio 1 punk show last night, and that they aired our "under the influence" as well! That's basically where we each pick a song we like and talk about it, then they play it! Simple! Awesome! You can listen to it on BBC iPlayer until next Monday, by going here and clicking on "Listen Now":

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006wq52

Thanks!

I Hate Service Stops - Leeds to Newcastle

2011-04-18T02:32:00.000-07:00

Woke up in Leeds and got cracking. We decided to stop to do a generic supermarket stop that day and made 2 of these each, plus fruit and some biscuits for £12:

Eating in the van can be fun!

Buy a bag of tortilla wraps, 2 packs of falafel, a pot of humous, a pot of guacamole or salsa (or both if you're feeling adventurous!) and a bag of pre-chopped "stir-fry veg." The bag we got was £1, was really big and had loads of good stuff you could eat raw like red cabbage, carrots, bean sprouts, sweetcorn and red onion. Put all that in a wrap (or 2!) and enjoy! There was even left over falafel to snack on during the rest of the day.

About an hour into our journey to Newcastle there was a loud bang, which was our tire exploding. But, like real men, we jacked the van up, put the spare on, and popped the metaphorical kettle on. The job was a good 'un.

Our arrival in Newcastle saw us greated by promoter Daz, one of the loveliest we met the whole tour, and his adorable pooch, Tobey.

Watched Above Them play last night and they were awesome (obviously). Why haven't you checked them out yet?

The next day I made a satay stir-fry. This was served with noodles and poppadums, along with fruit and biscuits for after, which came to £12.40 to feed the 4 of us. Here's what you'll need:

For the sauce:

- 2 thumb-sized pieces of fresh ginger

- 3 cloves of garlic

- 1/2 can of cocnut milk or the equivalent amount of creamed coconut and boiling water

- 6 tbsps peanut butter

- 250ml passata or the equivalent amount of tomato puree and boiling water (work with what you can find, people, that's the touring spirit!)

- Soy sauce to taste

- A couple of tablespoons of any oil for frying

For the stir-fry:

- 2 blocks of regular tofu

- Whatever veg you fancy (in this case I used red onion, kale, peppers and carrots)

Roughly chop the garlic and grate the ginger. Fry these together in a tablespoon of oil for a couple of minutes, like so:

Next, add everything else. If the sauce is too thick, add some water (although you want it quite thick. Thick is nice!) and taste (always be tasting!). If it's not thick enough, add some tomato puree and/or peanut butter. It should look a lovely orange colour, like this:

Put a lid on that and just leave to simmer on a low heat. Next, chop your tofu and fry in a tablespoon of oil in a separate pan until golden brown. Wash and chop the the rest of your veg and add it and fry until softened and heated through (5-10 minutes).

Lastly, stir the sauce into the stir-fry, serve with rice or noodles and sprinkle with finely chopped spring onions (if you wanna be fancy). I couldn't get a non-blurry picture of the final product (hence the separate non-blurry ones above), but here's what it vaguely will look like.

By the way, this tastes awesome.

I Hate Service Stops - Manchester to Leeds

2011-04-05T05:01:00.000-07:00

So after a typically raucous evening and a great show that night in Manchester for Moving North's 1st birthday, we headed out to Just Panic's house in Liverpool away from the masses of unwashed bodies on the floor at our friend and promoter for the Manchester show Kieran's house to make some lunch. Unfortunately I forgot to get a photo of the red lentil pasta I made in Liverpool but it's damn good dish so here's what you need and how you make it for 8 people (it cost around £5 to feed 8 people, less than £1 a head).

- 4 celery sticks, cleaned and chopped

- about 250g of red lentils

- 8 carrots, peeled and chopped up small

- about half a tube of tomato puree

- 6 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped

- 4 tbsps of olive oil

- 1kg of pasta

- salt & pepper

1. Wash the lentils and boil them along with the carrots and celery for about 20 minutes. Drain and retain the water, you'll be adding some of this back into the sauce later.

2. Add the oil to a large pan and fry the garlic for about 30 seconds. Next, add the tomato puree and stir for about a minute. Then add the lentils, carrots and celery and enough of the retained water to cover everything.

3. Boil the pasta in some salted water until al dente (about 10 minutes) and add salt & pepper to taste to the sauce. Reduce the sauce if necessary whilst the pasta cooks. Combine the two. Eat it. Feel happy that you just ate an awesome meal for next to no money.

I actually ended up cooking 2 meals that day as I also made some super soup for everyone in the evening. I was damn tired after a late night in Manchester so I had a nap on Ste from Just Panic's bed after lunch and then cracked on. Super soup is awesome. It's so damn easy and healthy and tasty and cheap. Here's a photo:

Basically, buy enough veg for however many people you wanna feed (in this case we bought butternut squash, spinach, celery, carrots, courgettes and onions but you can really use any veg you want), 500g of rice and some vegetable stock powder or cubes. Peel and chop all the veg and put it in a big pan. Add enough boiling water to cover it and add stock powder or cubes to taste along with a good glug of olive oil. Meanwhile, rinse and cook the rice separately (you don't wanna cook the rice in the same water as the veg as the rice will release all it's starch and you probably don't wanna eat that). Boil until the veg has softened drain the rice and add it to the soup. Add more water if you want more broth. Boosh, you're done. This dish cost £10 for 8 people.

We watched Just Panic play that night (something you should definitely look into doing yourself) and I got drunk for the fist time that tour. I figured I'd done enough cooking the day before so that day we went and got a £3.50 breakfast before heading out to Leeds, a beautiful city I've decided. After we were kindly fed dinner by promoters Rich and Peeky, I decided I fancied some fruit, and set out in search of a green grocer, supermarket, corner store, or anywhere that would sell me some fresh fruit at 8pm on a Tuesday. My optimistic outlook on life was shattered when I came to the sad realization that, quite literally, the only place open that sold fruit in that part of Leeds was McDonald's. I did something that night that I haven't done in about 9 years. I stood at the yellow arches and gave 69 of my hard earned pence to the Gods of fast food in exchange for a fruit bag, and pondered the irony that this was the only place I could eat something healthy right now. What can I say? I wanted fruit.

I Hate Service Stops - Nottingham to Sheffield

2011-04-04T07:25:00.000-07:00

So we came off a 2 week UK tour just the other day. Overall, it was a great time. A couple of duff shows here and there, but overall, an experience that gets better and more fun each time we go out, which is definitely the way we'd like to keep it going.

As promised, I kept a food journal on this tour of everything I cooked or put together. Eventually, I want to put all these into a zine with loads of cheap recipes that will serve as a guide for bands who wanna eat cheaply on the road. I mean, presumably, all bands wanna eat cheaply, I think some bands just don't realise that it's actually pretty easy and that you don't have to buy crappy overpriced burger king from a service stop. We usually take a bit of money out of what we were paid from the show and eat with that. If we're cooking for another band, we ask em to chip in for their half. Everyone gets cheap tasty food, everyone's a winner.

Before I start I will just say this: Some places you stay at will be impossible or very difficult to cook in. You will encounter houses where there are no sharp knives, where the pots and pans are comically small, where there will be no chopping boards, no can openers, seemingly, no hope. But don't despair. We got by great on this last tour and all I brought with me was a sharp knife for chopping. We will probably be looking in get a few basics for our next tour such as a large pan, a can opener and some basic non perishable food such as rice, pasta and spices, but this is just to make things slightly easier for us, they are by no means necessary. You can almost always get by with next to nothing!

The first recipe I made was at a house in Nottingham the day after our first show of tour, in a small room upstairs of a pub. The show was pretty packed, which was a real nice surprise as it was our first time playing Nottingham as a 4 piece. The dish was crazy beans (i.e. baked beans that are way better than just plain old baked beans). Here's a photo, and the recipe, reprinted from an old post:

Buy a pack of Linda McCartney vegan sausages (£1 for a pack of 5 in Iceland! Any veggie sausage will do really, Linda McCartneys are just the cheapest usually) and a few cans of budget beans in tomato sauce (around 17p a can from sainsbury’s). Chop up the sausages and fry em til golden brown. Set aside. Fry some onion and garlic in a big pan, add a bit of paprika, a bit of tomato puree and some soy sauce and stir it around. Then add your beans and your sausages, a couple of handfuls of peas (or other greens - in this case I used spinach and it went great) and heat though until piping hot. Add a bit of boiling water if it seems too thick. Serve on toast. This is dish is a good source of protein, fibre and iron (when made with peas or spinach), but it is quite carb heavy so I wouldn't recommend having it every day. It is, however, one of, if not the cheapest dish I've made on tour. Including a banana each to go with this, this cost us £10.44 to make and fed 10 people (us, just panic who played the show the night before with us, and the 3 people whose house we stayed at). Or just over £1 a head.

Later that day saw us take the first of several very short drives to our next show, which that night was in Sheffield. We managed to hop on a Not Shy of the DIY show with Same Old Steve, Sssnakes (I never know how many damn "S"s there are in that band name), Bangers and Pure Graft and again the turn out was great. It's still a massive relief when people arrive at the show. There's always that niggling feeling at the back of your mind making you wonder if anyone will actually come and see your band that night, and sometimes it's hard to totally relax until they show up. We arrived early in Sheffield and hung out in a nice square, from where I called my grandmother and told her we'd been on the radio. She actually seemed pretty impressed so that was nice. There was a nice fountain:

And a tropical plant house:

Some late night giggles and shit talking with the other bands staying at promoter Craig's house took us to lunch time the next day in the form of scrambled tofu with toasted pitta bread:

I love scrambled tofu. It's dead easy to make. Here's what you'll need to feed 8 people:

- 2 blocks of regular tofu

- some turmeric

- 2 onions, chopped as finely as you can

- 6 cloves of garlic

- 2 leeks

- a bag of fresh spinach

- 2 or 3 peppers

- 2 or 3 sticks of celery

- salt and pepper

- 2 packs of pitta bread

- some soy sauce

- oil for frying

1. Fry your onion and garlic in a big pan until softened (about 5 minutes). Chop the rest of the veg and add it all to the pan. Fry, stirring occasionally, until the veg has softened (about 10 more minutes). Throw in some salt and pepper.

2. Crumble the tofu into the pan (I just crumble it with my hand but you can mash it up with a fork before hand if you prefer) and add a about 3/4 of a teaspoon of turmeric. Stir it all around and add soy sauce to taste. Heat everything through until the dish tastes how you want it to and is piping hot. Serve with some toasted pitta (which is very nice when stuffed with the tofu mix).

This dish is full of protein as well all the good stuff that comes from eating a variety of veg. For 8 people this dish came to £20.16, or approximately £2.50 a head, which is far less than you would ever pay in a restaurant or cafe to have that amount of food served to you. This also tastes better and is better for you. We had a bit of veg leftover from this dish, which we used the next day to make red lentil pasta, but I'm done typing for today so that'll be in the next post.

Derby cancelled - wanna put us on?

2011-03-16T02:42:00.000-07:00

Our show in Derby, scheduled for March 28th, got cancelled last night. If you're doing a show anywhere vaguely in the midlands that night that you'd be happy for us to hop on to, please let us know, we don't want a day off! Or if you'd be up for setting up a last minute show for us, please get in touch. bookings@apologiesihavenone.co.uk. Thanks!

Mike Davies Punk show

2011-03-15T03:55:00.000-07:00

Our interview with Mike Davies and live Maida Vale session were aired last night on Radio 1. You can check it out here for another week:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00z2vth/Punk_Show_with_Mike_Davies_Apologies_I_Have_None_in_session

Make sure you check out next week's show as well as they'll be airing our Under the Influence where we basically pick out good songs by other bands and tell you stories about them!

Also, we're going on tour on Friday. Come hang out, it's gonna be awesome!

Shed the past. Keep moving forward.

2011-03-04T01:22:00.000-08:00

Over the last few years I've definitely come to think of Holloway Road as my road. It's far from perfect but it has a lot going for it. I dare say I'm proud to live there. I love it. It has an "alternative" scene that doesn't have the touristy aspect of Camden:

or the wanky aspect of Shoreditch:

We've got the Big Red pub, where rockers, old punks and metal heads gather before or after shows, where you can get Jagermeister and put Bon Jovi on the jukebox (a winning combination any day of the week). We've got Vivien of Holloway, making amazing handmade 1950s style rockabilly dresses and clothing. We've got Haunted tattoos, who do awesome tattoos in a horror themed tattoo parlour. We've got the Garage where I've been to see some of my favourite bands like Against Me! and Hot Water Music. We've got new stuff popping up too: The Horatio is starting to put on shows and run some club nights and a new Swedish cafe right next door called Curious Yellow, where you can get some awesome home-made food and drink.

Don't get me wrong: there's also plenty of Chicken Cottages and another Sainsbury's is opening by Holloway Road tube station, but overall, it's a great place to live.

Until very recently, we also had the Gaff. Then this happened:

Before:

After:

It's not like the Gaff was my favourite venue ever, or even had loads of shows that I was necessarily into, but it was part of Holloway's charm and something that made Holloway Road different - in a good way. I remember playing there with Defiance, Ohio; one of the funnest shows PJ & Gaby have ever played. As Dan put it, what chain coffee shops don't realize is that the more they keep popping up everywhere, the less interesting the areas they are in become, and the less reason people have to go to those areas in the first place. For as long as I live, I will never drink another cup of Costa Coffee. I wish they'd get the fuck out of my road.

Flapjacks and Radio 1

2011-02-05T08:32:00.000-08:00

I haven't updated this blog for over a month now and for that I'd like to apologize to, like, all 4 of my readers. However, the truth is things have been pretty uneventful. This has been intentional though, this isn't a complaint. I now have a few things I thought were worth sharing though so figured I'd put this post up.

We've been practising really hard and writing some new stuff which we hope to finally record for a full length by early Summer. A lot of this practising was because yesterday we recorded 4 songs for a live session for the BBC Radio 1 Punk Show. It will air in mid-March and I am super stoked. Here's me with my pass (I was very excited):

Yeah that's right: I'm a "visitor." Made it to the big time...

And here's me hanging out in studio 4 like it's no big deal:

(By the way, I am fully aware that this doesn't make me a big deal. Just so we're clear.)

The session was awesome fun and I'm really happy with how it came out.

On a (not completely) separate note, I made these the other day (I will get to why this note is not completely separate in a minute):

Chocolate coconut flapjacks

Our whole house smelled of syrup, it was awesome. The recipe is adapted from BBC Baking Made Easy (and it really is the easiest baking recipe I've ever seen!). If you want the original recipe for plain flapjacks just do a search for "BBC Baking Made Easy Flapjacks" and you'll find it. I made a plain batch before and they were very nice, but I just thought I'd try something a little different with them. Here's my adapted recipe:

- 175g vegan margerine (I used Pure but pretty much any brand will do)

- 175g sugar (I used a dark brown sugar but any sugar will probably be fine)

- 175g golden syrup

- 275g porridge oats

- 75g dessicated coconut

- Zest of 1/2 lemon

- Pinch of ground ginger

- A plaque of your favourite chocolate

Heat your oven to 150 degrees centigrade and line a 20cm square baking tin with baking paper. Put the margerine on a low heat in a medium pan and begin melting it. Spread a small amount of the melted margerine onto the baking paper in the square tin. Add the sugar and golden syrup to the pan and stir. Once the margerine has melted and the sugar has dissolved add everything else except the chocolate and stir. It should become a sort of sticky mess. Place in the tin and pat down with a fork. Bake for 40 minutes.

Whilst that's baking, melt your chocolate in a bain marie (that basically means boil some water in a pan, place your chocolate in a bowl and place the bowl in the boiling water) and then spread it evenly on the flapjack mix when it's done baking in the oven. Let the whole thing cool until the chocolate has set and then cut into whatever sized pieces you want. Enjoy!

Now I said this was sort of related and here's why: Call me a cheap bastard (many have), but when I go on tour, I don't like spending lots of money. The fact that I tour already means that I don't work a full time job and therefore don't have the financial income of a full time job. I see lots of bands go on tour and just blaze through money buying terrible food and overpriced snacks from motorway services and gas stations. Well these flapjacks are just one example of how you can avoid doing such things. Make a batch before you head out and take em with you in an air tight container where they will last for around 5 days. They're tastier than the factory made cakes and stuff you get at gas stations and a whole lot cheaper (a batch of about 15 flapjacks costs me about £1.50 to make). Just by doing that, you've saved yourself having to buy any snacks if you've got a sweet craving for the first 5 days of tour.

When we tour, I try and cook at every opportunity I get. Cooking is incredibly cheap when compared to buying food from a restaurant or cafe, even when it's from somewhere that seems inexpensive (for example, when we toured with Crazy Arm I cooked a meal for 12 people that cost just over £8, and there were leftovers), and for a band like us that's saving up to record a full length, and not getting paid much more than our travel expenses when we play a show, it's practically a necessity (I also like to eat relatively healthily on tour and cooking means I get to decide exactly what I eat). I will therefore be keeping a record of everything I cook and eat on our next UK tour (which is March 18th to April 1st by the way) and turning it into some sort of blog/zine, which I am hoping will serve as a guide to how to eat/tour cheaply and easily (and of course tastily!) when on the road. My recipes and tips will be mostly if not entirely vegan but should hopefully be useful for meat-eaters and veggies alike. Any catchy names for the zine (preferably pun-based) would be much appreciated.

Bridgend to home

2010-12-26T16:07:00.000-08:00

Something that was confirmed for me at the Bridgend show: I really don't like Weatherspoons. I actually left my nachos. Couldn't finish em, they were that gross. They also put chunks of beef in Rachel's nachos. Overall, not a good day on the Weatherspoons nachos front.

The show at Hobo's in Bridgend was unfortunately pretty low turnout wise, but I got to see a bunch of my nice Welsh friends and hang out with Holly, promoter Rich's Bichon Frisé, so that was pretty rad. here she is with Tim.

In true rock n roll style, all 9 of us spent that night drinking tea and watching some period drama christmas movie.

The consequently hangover-free drive to Cheltenham the next day saw us stop off for some very average food in Cardiff in the form of a randomly concocted wrap. Couscous, salsa and salad in a wrap just isn't that exciting.

I realised i had actually been to Cheltenham once before on the first tour I played with neil Sutherland & Friends. We were playing the same venue again and it was well attended, which made a nice change from the night before. That night I got wasted for the only time this tour and went off on many a tangent. I like asking Joe to tell me random facts about his life. I feel very close to Joe, but having only known him for less than a year and a half, I keep discovering new interesting things about him (did you know he has a 4 star rating in kayaking for instance?). Jon also tried to explain Crazy Arm's tuning to me and Dan. Needless to say, that night he may as well have been trying to explain their wacky tuning to a couple of tranquilised dalmations. We didn't get it. The next day I made a sweet potato, red lentil and courgette curry the next day which was fucking awesome if I may say so. That's a curry which included sweet potatoes, the vegetable, not a "sweet" as in awesome curry which just included regular potatoes. Although the curry was sweet (as in awesome). OK, I made a sweeeeeeeeeet sweet potato, red lentil and courgette curry. Bam.

Next: Birmingham.

So. Yeah. Birmingham.

No I'm kidding I actually had a rad time here, the show went real well, it was well attended and I had a lot of fun hanging out with our friends Kay and Andrew (Andrew plays in Bangers and Kay prints all our t-shirts through her company Get A Grip. You should check both those things out).

Next we headed to Norwich for a show at the Wildman. We needed this. It kicked off like no other show on this tour had so far. It was tiny and totally packed and I had the best fucking time. I also got to see my old university friend Tierney, who's been travelling and organic farming in Austrlia. She even came to have lunch with us (I made super soup on this day using all the leftover veg and stuff we had left that wouldn't fit in the curry) and brought us some home made bread! Thanks Tierney!

Darren reckoned we might have trouble getting to Leeds given the weather, but we made it no problem only to arrive and not be able to find the actual venue. Joe hopped out the van and asked the first person he saw "excuse me, do you know where Santiago's is?" The man replied "Oh, are you in Apologies, I Have None? Yeah it's right this way." Turns out that man was the promoter, Rich. How helpful!

And thank goodness we did find it as this was once again a super fun show! In fact, we loved it so much that we asked Rich if he would put us on again in march on our next tour! Looks like he will too!

That night we opted to drive home to London as apparently more snow was heading in from the North. it was pretty rad to sleep in my own bed that night, and the next as we were playing Everything Sucks, an awesome club night run by 2 awesome guys called Dave and Ian. Despite having a few technical issues, like amps buzzing and my tuner dying, I had a good time this show and it was freakin packed so I was stoked. I was bummed that everything would be over by the next night. Turns out, it already was over. We didn't make it to the last show and I don't wanna write about it. Dan laready did anyway, here: http://www.apologiesihavenone.co.uk/.

This tour was awesome. Crazy Arm are awesome dudes who will park their van on a double yellow line and then all get hammered. This encapsulates the way they live: For the moment. let tomorrow deal with itself. And that's fucking rad.

Exeter to Bristol

2010-12-12T03:13:00.000-08:00

So we're 3 shows down, with 7 more to go! Currently sitting by myself at my friend Dave's house. I was exciled here due to my cat allergy, the rest of the guys are at another place.

I am having a fucking fantastic time.

Some highlights so far:

- Gaby's new thing is to take my phone when I'm in the shower and send really sexually charged texts to my friends. An example of this would be "I think about you when I'm in the shower, all nice and soapy," recently sent to Dan. About a week before tour, she sent one of these to Darren from Crazy Arm:

"Dude, sometimes I think about you when I'm making love to Gaby. We really need to talk. I don't want it to be awkward when we tour together."

Assuming, correctly, that this was a joke, Darren wrote back basically saying that he was flattered and looking forward to touring together. Over the week that followed, I kept telling myself "I really should write back just explaining that it was Gaby's doing" but I never got round to it. Anyway it turns out that Darren showed the text to Crazy Arm guitarist Jon, who wasn't at all sure whether it was a joke or not, which consequently put the seed of doubt in Darren's mind. So basically, for about a week Darren has been asking himself whether I really do think about him naked whilst I'm making love to my girlfriend. Maybe he still is asking himself... who knows?

- We won hatebreed tickets via twitter. You had to tweet in your best "moshcore related tweets." The example they gave was "someone call the RAC, here comes the breakdown!" Ours included:

"Someone call weight watchers, it's about to get heavy!"

"There seems to be a surplus of flour in the room. Must be all the windmills..."

"Someone get the ninja turtles in, there's gonna be some serious shredding!"

"Someone call Gillian McKeath, coz this shit's about to drop!"

And finally, the one that won it:

"Someone call the crash test dummies, there's gonna be a mmmmmmmoshpit!"

The show was last night in Birmingham so we couldn't go but that was a fun half hour in the van.

The shows have been going great, Crazy Arm are an amazing band and real good guys, I'm massively excited for the rest of this tour.

Crazy Arm!

2010-12-09T02:33:00.001-08:00

We're off on tour with Crazy Arm today! I am VERY excited. First stop, Exeter! See you there!

Radio 1

2010-12-09T02:32:00.000-08:00

We got played on the Mike Davies Punk show again, and our upcoming tour with Crazy Arm got mentioned, which is pretty awesome. You can check it out here for another couple of days:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00w5nhr/Punk_Show_with_Mike_Davies_Alexisonfire_in_session

We should also hopefully have some exciting news related to that soon!

I'm always trying to impress my family members when it comes to the music I'm involved in, and I'm always trying to show them that I am doing well and that there's a possibility I may one day even be able to do it for a living, and not have to work shitty temping jobs when I'm not on tour. I told a certain family member of mine about getting played on Radio 1, thinking they'd think that was pretty awesome. When they seemed kind of uninterested I said, jokingly, but trying to get some sort of reaction out of them "weren't you swelling with pride when you heard my band on the BBC?"

"No."

My family doesn't beat about the bush.

I started jogging today

2010-11-22T03:31:00.000-08:00

I did some stretching in my living room and then ran a grand total of 10 minutes to the sound of Rage Against the Machine's Evil Empire (seriously, how awesome of a song is Vietnow? Anyone agree?). I ran from my house to Tufnell Park, stopped and walked around for 5 minutes, and then ran home. I was seriously out of breath by the end but it was actually pretty good! I'm gonna try and run 10 minutes every day this week.

In totally unrelated news: Thank you so much to everyone who came out to see us play with the Menzingers and Leagues Apart, we had a fantastic time! Also totally unrelated: we're playing with the Riot Before on Wednesday in Southampton and I cannot wait! It's at the Soul Cellar in Southampton, which is really small so make sure you buy a ticket in advance or get down early if you wanna get in! Saw them at El Paso the other night (brilliant) in Shoreditch (rubbish). I feel like Shoreditch has some awesome venues and some great shows, but really is full of the dumbest people on the planet. You may think I am talking of those commonly referred to as "hipsters" or those that are "trendy." Alas, you are mistaken. Here is a list of incidents that have greatly annoyed me that took place during the last 2 times I drove through Shoreditch:

- As I rounded a corner the other night, looking for a parking space after unloading our gear for the Menzingers/Leagues Apart show, a man pushed his friend in front of the van - yes, on purpose. Apparently death is funny now. Luckily I hit the breaks and the guy didn't break his neck or any other part of his body.

- As I drove down Commercial Street another night, some people were waiting at an island in the middle of the road, which is fine but it was NOT a zebra crossing. One of the girls thought it would for some reason be awesome to put her bare leg out at 90 degrees to her body in front of the van, forcing me to swerve and almost go up onto the pavement. What a dick.

- That same night on another main road, a lady decided she would simply not look in either direction and simply walk out and then stop in the middle of the road, not on zebra crossing, forcing me to slam the breaks on, before she slowly (eventually) meandered off into the night, not even noticing the giant van that had nearly ended her life.

- Whilst we were walking back to the venue to get the rest of our gear after the Menzingers show, Dan stayed by the van, where he noticed someone just casually leave the cue he was in for a nightclub and try to open the door to our van and get in. When asked by Dan what he was doing, he simply answered "I'm trying to get in the van." Lovely, fuck off please.

I could go on but you get the idea. I do not look forward to driving through there again.

Just Panic

2010-11-17T15:21:00.000-08:00

Bolton

We left Hackney at 10am, we got out of London surprisingly fast, "we'll be there around 3!" we naively thought to ourselves. Our optimism was short lived however, as realised, having just got out of London that we had left some pretty vital equipment at the studio. We drove back into London, which added about another hour, and then back towards Bolton. We picked up our tour buddies Just Panic from their local pub where they keep their gear. They were sitting quietly enjoying a pint, quite rightly in less of a rush than me. We loaded their stuff into our van and set off. We hit it off right away and then was never a dull or awkward moment for the rest of the 4 days. It was a short tour but I still think that's a good sign.

We got to Gigs in Bolton, a town that reminded quite a lot of when Rooftops played in Newport (see previous post: http://apologiesfriendsgabyandihaverooftops.blogspot.com/2010/01/my-new-favourite-band.html). The venue was nice and the promoter Chris a friendly chap. Not that many people stayed to watch our set as the show went on kinda late but it was still good fun and that night I realised that Just Panic really are an incredible live band. They're gonna be big, you heard it here first!

That night we drove back to Southport for a lovely night's sleep at Ste's parents place. After the amazing shower I had (which I switched on using its digital screen! Awesome!) we shot some pool, watched some Dog the Bounty Hunter (a quite incredible show - I highly recommend you watch at least one episode) and I made crazy beans for breakfast for everyone, followed by lentil sauce pasta for dinner. This was also the day that me and Ste realised that we have completely opposite tastes in many things - be they musical, tv-oriented or alcoholic - which just seemed to keep randomly coming up for some reason! Here is a list of some of the things that I really like that Ste really hates:

- Bagpipes

- Queen

- Amaretto

- Desperate Housewives

- Dogs (can you freakin believe this one?!?!? Come on Ste!!!)

And likewise a list of things Ste really likes that I care less for:

- Whiskey

- Kids (ok you probably think not liking kids is as bad as not liking dogs... what can I say? I'm standing by this one dammit!)

Ok so that second list wasn't quite as extensive but if I can think of anything more I'll put it up.

Liverpool

We drove the short drive to Liverpool, where the show was in a tiny room upstairs of a pub which really felt like a house show. Just Panic played last on this one and really stole the show. This was definitely their town and their crowd. I really enjoyed playing that night, although I think a few people didn't really dig what we were doing as we cleared the room pretty fast, save for a dozen people. It seemed like those that stayed had a good time though so that's all good by me! Dan tweeted throughout Just Panic's set (as Just Panic). I don't know how Twitter works (I mean, I called it "Tweeter" by accident once for god's sake!) but I'm assured that it was pretty funny so go check it out.

After the show we headed to Just Panic's new house in Liverpool city centre. And when I say "new" I mean just that. They're doing it up themselves and living in it at very low rent cost so the house isn't really ready to fully live in as such. A few people headed out to sample Liverpool's night life (which is apparently pretty nuts!) and me and Josh hit the sack on some mattresses upstairs. We were up before everyone else as we had to move then van and we decided to go check out the cathedral nearby. A very impressive site. It looked kind of evil to be honest with its stained red bricks and domineering central tower. One sign said it was the largest Anglican cathedral in the world and another sign said it was the 2nd largest one in Europe. Liverpudlians: real answers to cathedraltruth@apologiesihavenone.co.uk please!

Bradford

A short drive brought us back to Bradford, where we had played the awesome Set Sail Fest a few months ago. The crowd wasn't quite as substantial this time (3 paying entries), but we didn't mind - with the other bands, sound guys, their girlfriends and staff there was probably about a dozen people watching and I still had a really great time playing. Thanks for helping us last minute Sean!

Manchester

I'm just gonna keep this simple: This show fucking rocked. The Tiger Lounge, a little venue with no stage that we've never played before in Machester, was pretty packed out and every band that played rocked real hard. This was the most fun show of the 4 days. I looked out during 100 Club and could see tonnes of fists in the air during the end part of the song. That felt fucking awesome. The Menzingers were awesome and very nice and I'm really excited to play with them again this Saturday in London. Old Blue Last - be there!

We headed back to Kieran's afterwards where I got high and had a rollicking good time sat on the couch laughing with Joe for ages. I hit the sack but couldn't sleep for ages. The drive back to London wasn't fun but it was totally worth it.

I'd like to thank all the promoters: Chris, Sean and Kieran and of course the awesome dudes from Just Panic. There were also a few people who came out to more than one of the 4 shows. You all know who you are and I'd just like to say a massive thank you to you guys for doing that. Your support means a lot to us!

Mojitos anyone?

2010-11-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

Our next show was a pretty last minute affair. The promoter, Uli, had actually been in touch with us for a while but he had been attempting to find someone else to put us on. In the end, he decided to put the show himself in his own town. He told us it was a small place (both the town and the venue) but that him and his friends really wanted to see us so we went for it. Well how pleasantly surprised we were! The town, Auenstein, was a small, pretty place, with a few happy scattered football fans, celebrating Germany's victory in the world cup that day. Lovely, but by no means lively. We pulled up at the venue and the owner told us that Uli and his friends were waiting for us at their friend Maurice's place up the road, where they had made us dinner. He gave us directions and we set off. Well it turns out they hadn't just made us dinner (and what a dinner!) but were also intent on making sure we played our show as totally intoxicated as possible. We pulled up and our new friend Maurice ran outside, practically beside himself with excitement:

"Heeeeeeeeeeeey!!! The pommies are here! Who wants a mojito? a beer? a spliff?"

Mojitos! It was like we'd entered a free all you can eat and drink buffet in a luxury German wonderland! Maurice's house was buzzing with drunk, happy people who seemed pretty stoked about the show. We headed down and played what was the sweatiest experience I've ever had in my life. Here's what Uli was like after the show:

Needless to say, it was fucking awesome. We headed back to Maurice's where we carried on drinking and I fell asleep on blow up mattrace in the hallway.

The next morning we started packing up, only to see Maurice cracking open another cider for breakfast.

"Dude, is that a cider?" asked dan. Maurice's answer was simple but awesome:

"You can't stop abruptly!"

I can't wait to go back to that place.

Our penultimate German show was up in Kiel near the Danish border. The venue was already busy when we arrived, an encouraging sign as there was only one local act and we didn't know if people would stick around to watch us. But stick around they did! A few people even spoke to us about our friends' band One Night Stand in North Dakota, who had played town a few months back. The show was a real good time, as was the food. Here's how stoked I was on the food:

Thank you, nice lady who made the food whose name I unfortunately can't remember.

The following day we had a wee gander around Kiel, where I found actual Duff beer! This seemed very unexciting to pretty much every other German person I met, but I didn't know it was actually real so I was pretty stoked!

Now, I realise that I look pretty hammered in this photo, but I can assure you I was simply drunk on happiness!

The next day was spent at some friends of Postin's near Nuremberg. Their house was an idyllic little place in a totally peaceful village. They fed and beered us, another example of total strangers showing incredible generosity.

It wasn't long before we headed off to our last gig, another last minute show (also organised by a guy called Uli!) in a squat in Freiburg. The place was amazing: A colourful, totally hand created area with enormous tents, vans and wooden houses including a bar, a stage and a kitchen. It had been built up on some disused land and was surrounded by a big housing cooperative, where we would stay later that night. We got there fairly early so we chatted and hung out with the promoter and played some table football. Joe joined our game half way through, and started to absolutely whoop everyone's ass at it. Turns out he plays every Thursday. I've been in a band with him for over a year. I wonder what else I don't know about Joe...

The evening had a fairly sour start. Germany was playing another football match that night and a fight broke out between the squatters and a pretty large group of football fans. Apparently a football fan saw someone from the squat burning a German flag, which is what started the whole thing. I don't know exactly how it happened but it was pretty unpleasant, and even though the whole thing was broken up within a matter of minutes by the cops, we felt nervous that they might come back, especially if Germany lost their match (which it turned out they did). The squatters had a meeting to discuss what to do if they did come back and briefed us on the non-violent tactics they had decided on.

Luckily though, they didn't come back, and by the time we played, everyone there's spirits seemed high again and we played a fun set! Joe rocked. Hard:

After the show we were shown to our sleeping place. We were staying in the children's play area of the housing cooperative. It had everything you'd expect: a rocking horse, a ball house, a bed with a slide (immediately shotgunned by Josh) and about 80 soft toys. Being high at the time, the whole thing was a bit surreal. The place seemed to do something odd to us...

The next morning was an early start to our last show in Paris. The drive, like most drives to Paris seemed to be, was long. The show was awesome though, as well as extremely freakin hot. We saw a few friends we made on this tour at that show as well which was nice and Josh ended up getting "PARIS" DIY tattooes accross his knuckles, coz he's well 'ard innit? There's some cool videos of both sets from this show at http://killedbyvideo.blogspot.com/2010/07/apologies-i-have-nonei-made-this.html. We all love Paris. I love how incredibly recognisable it is once you've been there. If you've been there and you see a photo of pretty much anywhere in that city, you'll know it's Paris.

So that's it. Another tour over, another great time, another weird facial expression from Dan:

This post might be mostly about food

2010-11-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

So I've got a night to myself with nothing much to do and I decided to attempt to finish (or at least crack on with) the rest of my blogging about the longer of our last 2 European tours. I believe in my last post about it, Posi on, I left you after our first Austrian show. Well, we spent the next few days either in awesome surroundings with kick ass people, or playing fun shows!

After our first Austrian show we had a day off, and we were invited to spend it at our new friend Tom's house. Tom used to play in a band called the Antimaniax, who I really like so it was cool to meet him and hang out. Also, he had a dog. This ruled.

The house was a freakin mansion, a large, beautiful house shared between around 8 people. It had a lovely garden with a hamoc, as well as a MASSIVE basement with 2 rooms which used to be a wine cellar. Apparently, in just one of those rooms, they have an annual party and around 700 people showed up to the last one. We're talking BIG rooms.

I spent a lot of my time there doing what I miss most when on tour: chatting with Gaby and cooking. There was a cheap store to get good food nearby so we hit it up. It was also right next to a very large sex store. I thought this might be worth sharing:

Giant double-sided dildo related shinnanigans behind us, I decided to make some breakfast: scrambled tofu:

And here's us all enjoying it with our friends from Astpai, who had helped us loads with shows and stuff on this tour:

We chilled out that day, which was fucking lovely and later on I made carrot, celery, pea and red lentil sauce for some pasta for dinner:

And again, here's us all enjoying said food:

I had an absolutely great time at Tom's. It was a well needed day of rest but also made me excited to start playing shows again. Our next show was a short drive away at the Oho in Obberwart. I had played there a couple of years ago and had a great time. The venue is pretty big so I was kind of nervous as even if a good number of people showed up it might still feel empty, but there were local bands and our friend Cis had done a great job of promoting it so it felt pretty full! As the drive was such a short one, we decided to go hang out in Oberwart. Most of the guys went to a guitar store, but me and Joe decided it was too hot for such tomfoolery and that we were to get ice creams. This was also the day I officially broke veganism. I've never been a particularly strict vegan (I find the strict attitude tiring and essentially pointless) and I'd been thinking about my veganism a lot on this tour. It's not always easy being vegan on the road, and I had also put my time in for the past 5 years. I still lean towards veganism but have decided that I don't have to always rigidly stick to that lifestyle and basically, I wanted to see what dairy ice cream tastes like. Anyway, I'm not here to debate or even really talk about veganism (done plenty of that in my time - bored now : )), I am here to show this photo of this freakin monstrosity (I mean that in a good way) of an ice cream:

Holy fuck. It was awesome. I could barely finish it it was so rich and creamy! For any vegans shaking their heads at me right now, I still think vegan ice cream is awesome too! : )

Later that night we slept in one of the less enjoyable sleeping areas of tour: a practice space where the ratio of spiders/flies to humans was firmly in favour of the arachnid/insect populace. Not nice. We did however get some cheap food the next day, and I cooked up some crazy beans (see previous post entitled "how to put on a successful DIY show" for the recipe) with roast potatoes at a friend's parents' house accross from where we slept. Here's Kyle digging that:

Suitably grubbed up, we took another short drive to our last Austrian show in Wiener Neustadt. Here's a photo of Josh seriously rocking the fuck out at that show:

We took it easy that night and went to sleep in Alex from Astpai's parents house. I love staying at parents' houses. It's an awesome luxury compared to most nights on tour (not that I'm complaining - I'm grateful for any place to sleep!).

I was sad to leave Austria, it had been damn good to us. Damn, damn good. But more fun awaited us in the land famed for beer, schnitzels, wieners and lederhosen: Germany!

A good few days

2010-10-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

France and Germany

2010-10-14T07:24:00.000-07:00

We (Apologies, I Have None) just came off touring France and (briefly) Germany last night. I'm not gonna write about every individual show this time as every show without fail was fucking awesome and I don't feel like I need to go into each individual night.

I was kind of worried before we left for this tour. A couple of dates weren't filled in until the last minute (although, to this day, we have had nothing but an awesome time on every last minute European show we've played!) and I had no idea whether people were gonna even show up to some of the shows. It's always that way when you're playing places you've never been to before but the guys who booked things for us (our tour buddies, Zombies Are Pissed!) did a great job and every show met and exceeded my expectations.

We haven't toured since July (which I know isn't actually that long ago, it just feels like it) and we've all been working trying to save up money for touring/recording. I was itching to get back on the road. Working our boring jobs had been wearing all of us down a bit and I think it made us all especially grateful for this last week of shows. I arrived in France, tired from hours and hours of driving and 3 hours of sleep due to accidents on the motorway both on the way to and from the show we had played in Manchester the night before (which was fucking great fun by the way - the show, not the drives). I left France, however, feeling positive, re-energised and downright amazed at how people will go out of their way to ensure that you as a touring band have the best possible time you can have. No other activity that I have ever participated in can rekindle my faith in humanity like touring has. In Paris, people we'd never met cycled out at 2 in the morning to take us to their home and give us their bed. In Dijon, people danced with us at night and made us breakfast in the morning. In Koln, we hopped on a last minute show that turned into one of the most fun nights and subsequent mornings I've ever had on tour, including a feast of music, beer, great food and vegan chocolate cake. In Angers, the squat we played in was turned into a giant bed for us all to drunkenly sleep in after sitting down to a home cooked traditional French meal and dumpstered fresh French bread (some of the best damn bread I've ever had!) with the local promoters that lived in or around the venue. In Caen, we were greeted by strangers who gave us crepes, jam and tea in their home before serving vegan beef bourgignon and roast potatoes and treating to an awesome show with my new favourite band, rvivr. Every show gave me a buzz. I loved every second of it. If you're a cynic, hit the road.

I know I haven't finished writing about our previous European tour. Sorry about that (all 4 of you that actually read this) I'm gonna try and get that done asap. In the meantime, our next show is in Chelmsford on October 26th. See you there!

Rooftops is over (for now)

2010-09-09T03:59:00.000-07:00

I got a call from Greg the other day. He told me that after some unfortunate personal circumstances, him and his partner Cara have decided to up and leave the UK. They'll be flying out to the Fest together in Gainesville (where Greg will be playing bass with one of the most awesome bands ever, Caves) and then travelling the country for the foreseeable future. I'm bummed that we're not gonna be able to play shows anymore, but I'm stoked for Greg and Cara to have an awesome adventure together.

That said, we're still playing the Derby show with Apologies, I Have None, Leagues Apart, Pacer and Off With Their Heads on September 15th! We'll be trying to organize a last show somewhere in London before Fest as well and trying to get as many good friends down as possible to give Greg and Cara a good send off. I'll post something about that here and on the Rooftops Myspace as soon as anything is confirmed (so that all 4 of you that actually read my blog can be informed about it : )).

We're not officially breaking up or anything because, who knows? When Greg and Cara eventually come back, we may well pick things up again. But for now, we're putting Rooftops to rest.

Posi on

2010-08-06T07:05:00.000-07:00

The thought of reaching Slovenia (or more specifically its capital, Ljubljana) was keeping me going. It was a long drive (11 hours), but I had such a great time last time I was there on the PJ & Gaby/Neil Sutherland tour, we'd made really good friends and stayed in touch with the guys from the band In-Sane who were putting the show on. Ljubljana, is also a very beautiful town, as well as a very cheap one which makes hanging out there pretty awesome.

Our spirits were lifted when we arrived at the amazing venue, the Tavarna Rog - an old disused bike factory that had been squatted for around 5 years if I remember correctly.

The place was enormous, it could easily have held a thousand people. Unfortunately that was about 9,992 more people than actually turned up but we had driven 11 hours and we were determined to put on the best show we could for the people there. We played our sets and as we packed up and I headed to the merch table, 10 people showed up (it was around 1:30am by this time), wondering why there was no music going on. Things just don't go how you want em to sometimes.

Having shared an 11 hour drive, Josh and I hit the sack along with Kyle while the others went for a late night wander into town. The next day we got some cheap food and hung out in Ljubljana. I got melon sorbet. It was awesome.

We climbed the same hill I had climbed last time I was there to go hang out at the castle which was at the top of this hill and had some awesome views. Here's Kyle looking excited about that fact:

So I left Slovenia happy and priviliged to be visiting this amazing place, but also really hoping that after 2 shows in a row that didn't really go according to plan, things would start to pick up show wise. The next drive was relatively short and we arrived in the wonderful town of Graz pretty early, around 5. We were greeted by smiling faces and warm embraces and were immediately made to feel at home with some fantastic food including, chickpea curry, green salad, kidney beans and rice and raspberry chocolate cupcakes as well as some bottles of beer. Things were looking up! The venue, called Sub, was real nice too, some awesome graffiti and the perfect size, it would be packed with about 40 people there. Here's Joe walking out of Sub, seemingly saying "uh, aweomse!":

We had gotten there early and had some time to kill in Graz so decided to go for a walk. We climbed this:

from the top of which we saw this:

By the time we got back to to the venue it was around 8:30 and there still weren't many people there apart from the other band (the Pirate Plant, awesome band by the way. 7 members, including a lady who plays a ukelele through a marshall half stack!). When you live in the UK though, you sometimes forget that people in Europe just don't show up to gigs early. By the time the show started it was 10pm and the room was PACKED! There were around 70 people there, we could barely move it was awesome. This show turned out to be the best show we'd had on tour so far and our spirits were raised to a new high. A few people from that show even ended up coming to both our other Austrian shows, something that I found amazing and truly humbling. They know who they are and I want them to know that we're incredibly grateful for their support. We headed back to the amazing house were staying at after, chatting and hanging out with a few of the lovely new people we had met, along with a few familiar faces (more on this house in the next post!).

We got some photos of this show but there are some way better ones that you can check out here: http://www.hot-shot.at/concerts/2010_06_29/

Heterosexuality is a construct

2010-08-06T04:23:00.001-07:00

That's the title of the new One Night Stand in North Dakota song. It's the kind of song that the punk scene needs. It's the kind of song that any scene needs to be honest. I think what I love about it so much is the fact that they probably knew that not everyone would like it; that some people would not feel comfortable fists in the air chanting "I am not a heterosexual man!" But they wrote it anyway. To me, it wasn't written to be popular, it wasn't written for any other reason than to say that discrimination based on sexuality isn't good enough, and really, if punk rock wants to be an accepting scene, a welcoming environment for everyone (something it really should be but definitely isn't) then this is the kind of song we all need to be singing. Truly awesome song writing comes from just writing because you want to, or even better because you need to - and ONSIND have just fucking nailed it.

They've just put it up on their myspace. If you do one thing today, go and listen to it. www.myspace.com/onenightstandinnorthdakota

Going home can be weird

2010-07-31T05:21:00.000-07:00

The day after Davos we took what turned out to be a 6 hour drive back towards Geneva to play in Gland. The show that night was cancelled, which was a bummer. We were left with no option but to fork out a load of doe for pizzas from a restaurant (no supermarkets are open in Switzerland on a Sunday), which is an expensive feat in Switzerland, and to sleep on the floor of my old band's practice room (at least the pizzas were good). To kill some time before that point I decided to take the guys to see the village I grew up in. It's totally beautiful and I figured I'd like to go back and see it.

I was wrong.

That's the house I grew up in. I love it. I love it so much. I didn't move from that house between the ages of 1 and 18, so it's safe to say I have a pretty firm rooting there. Even after I moved out to go to university, my parents still lived in it and I visited 3 or 4 times a year. It was somewhere I could show up to at any time, somewhere I knew I'd always be welcome. It was a safe place where things were constant. My room was the way I left it, the way I liked it. It always felt like home, even though, really, I've started a whole new and awesome life in the UK.

This visit was the first one I'd made since my parents moved away to Scotland. They never owned this house, they always rented it. Going to visit the house, even though it was something I really wanted to do, made me feel sad. It almost made me sick. I didn't dare peer in through the windows - my mum tells me they've redone the floors. I don't care what the floors look like per se, it's just that the house isn't the same anymore. Nothing is constant now. My room isn't the way it was for 24 years. I'm no longer welcome in this place. I'm a visitor, a tourist. Nothing here is mine.

That's kind of how going home felt this time around. Just different. My roots feel like they're being dug up and replanted somewhere else.

Josephine

2010-07-31T04:11:00.000-07:00

The next day we headed towards Davos and the loving awaiting arms of Jurg, a lovely dude that I've played lots of shows for before in various bands. The show itself was cool and we were welcomed by a big crowd and some lovely curry. I had 3 helpings. I wanted a 4th one. We were forced to play rather late, as a band from the Italian part of Switzerland (I forget their name) insisted on playing before us so they could drive home that night. This wouldn't have been so bad if they hadn't taken half an hour to set up and then played an hour long set. They were nice guys and all, but sometimes I'm surprised by people's selfishness and lack of common sense. We played our 25 minute sets to a lot less people than were there earlier. It was still fun though.

The really awesome part of that day though, was, weirdly, when we got a flat tyre on the motorway on the way to the show. We pulled over onto the hard shoulder, set up the red triangle, and took turns donning the 2 fluorescent yellow jackets we had with us. Here's Postin and Joe modeling them:

As we were quite near a motorway entrance when the puncture happened, we were motioning to oncoming drivers to steer well clear of the van, just to be safe. Despite this, a car pulled over right near us. We were confused and not sure what they wanted (none of us spoke German and we were well into the German part of Switzerland) so Kyle went up and asked the driver, an older Swiss German gentlemen, "is everything alright?"

"Oh yes, everything is alright." He answered in near perfect English. "I just saw the girl waiving and so I thought I would pull over" he said, pointing at Joe, now in close range in the man's line of vision.

Kyle paused for a second and then replied to the man "oh yeah don't worry she's fine."

ps. The drive from Geneva to Davos is probably my favourite drive ever. So beautiful.

Borders, clubbing and cupcakes

2010-07-31T02:24:00.000-07:00

Switzerland is the only country that we were playing on this tour that isn't in the EU. This basically meant that, as EU citizens without Swiss work permits,* we weren't technically allowed to come and play shows there, sell merch etc... We'd recently heard bad stories about bands crossing the Swiss border (as recently as last week in fact when Matt, who drove Neil & Friends and Imadethismistake in the UK told us about how the Skints (the band that he drives for full time) got all their merch confiscated). Needless to say we were a bit nervous, as getting all our merch confiscated 4 days into a 17 day tour would suck to say the least. We stopped at a service station on the way to Switzerland and spent a good hour unwrapping, unfolding and distributing all the t-shirts, bags and stuff into people's personal luggage in an attempt to make it look like they were part of our personal clothes. We wrote "PROMO" and all the boxes of cds and records that we had, to try and imply that we weren't actually selling any of it. We put all the personal bags we could in the lock box in the back of the van in an attempt to further hide them should border patrol decide to search the van. We went all out, the works.

On top of that, we got directions from my friend Luke, who was putting on the show in Geneva that night, for a way in to Switzerland that avoided main roads and main border crossings, hoping that this would make it even less likely that we would get stopped and searched.

As the Sat Nav kilometres counted down I got more and more nervous. I put so much time and effort into organising this tour, I would literally hate for something as senseless as border control to fuck the whole thing up for us. As we came off the motorway, Postin commented on how he didn't like seeing me nervous, that it was out of character and discerning. We followed the direction Luke gave us and followed signs for Geneva. I knew we were real close and I didn't say a word for the 10 or so minutes approaching the border. I kept thinking we were about to cross into Switzerland but another corner would appear that needed taking, or another turn in the road would reveal yet more distance between us and a sense of relief.

At one point, we passed a small, empty stone hut on our left. A disused bus stop, I presumed. It was so insignificant and tatty that surely it could not have been anything else. It didn't even have a door on it. A few seconds later, I noticed a road sign with familiarly styled writing on it. Wait a minute... that's a Swiss road sign! Are we in Switzerland? The next sign I saw read "Bienvenu a Carouge" (Welcome to Carouge - Carouge being a suburb of Geneva). We're officially in Switzerland! That hut - THAT was the border! We had spent hours of planning and nervousness for THAT hut! Still, better safe than sorry.

We arrived at Tiki's, dropped our stuff and reassembled the merch before heading off to the local skate park for us to hang out and for Bondy to skate. I took some photos.

Did I mention that Postin and I also know how to rock the ramp?

The show itself was fun (going to Tiki's is always a good time), if a little disappointing in attendence. I didn't care about the small number of people as such, what I cared about more was that a lot of friends that I expected to see there just never showed. However, I was very grateful for the people that did show up and the free PJ burgers (oh, did I previously mention the veggie burger in this place is named after me?) and free drinks went down very well. The show also happened to be both a Friday night, and my birthday (well technically my birthday was the day before, but we thought we'd celebrate in Geneva in good company). This meant 2 things. 1. We went clubbing and I. Clubbed. My. Tits Off. Anyone who knows me will know that throwing shapes is not my area of expertise, but let it be known that, and these are master clubber Josh's own words, I went "BUCK WILD" in that club. Word.

Secondly, and more importantly, it meant that I received a SECOND present from Gaby (on my actual birthday, I had alreay received, via Dan Postin, a hand made personalised Walking Dead themed card from Gaby (I love the Walking Dead. It's a comic by Robert Kirkman, go check it out). It had zombie puns and everything! It was awesome and more than enough of a kick ass birthday present on its own). So imagine my surprise when I found out that Gaby had ordered these to be delivered to Tiki's:

Bam. Vegan cupcakes (an extreme rarity in Switzerland, believe me) with guitars and my fucking name on em. Here's how excited I was about this:

This made life awesome.

* Although I lived most of my life in Switzerland, I was born in London and so have a UK passport. I lost my Swiss work permit when I moved back to London so I am technically a tourist when I go home and, like other tourists, am not allowed to spend more than 90 days per year there.

Ah ouais, c'est bon.

2010-07-20T11:42:00.001-07:00

We set off from Hackney.

Many hours later we were in Caen, France.

That's me hanging out by a nice wall in Caen. Very beautiful town, very awesome show. We arrived for our first ever show in Europe not knowing what to expect at all. It turned out that we were greeted to a first class meal, local cheese, bread and wine, and a room full of people. Couldn't have asked for a better start! Caen is really beautiful, as is most of France:

Simon, who put the show on, showed us around the town the day after the show and then hopped in the van with us to Laval for our second of 3 French basement shows.

Laval:

Dijon:

Both shows were good fun. Laval is a quiet, pretty little town. There was about 20 people at the show, there was even a couple of people singing along, something I found really amazing seeing as it was basically our first time ever playing Europe.

The Dijon show was hot as hell, sweat was dripping from the ceiling. 2 young kids played before us. They both played acoustic guitar in an open tuning. One played with his guitar on his lap, tapping the harmonics on his guitar with one hand whilst playing trippy chords with his other. It. Was. Fucking. AWESOME! We asked them if they wanted to hope in the van with us and play with us the next day in Geneva but they later let us know that their parents wouldn't let them.

Both the Apologies set and the Imadethismistake set were great fun, with people singing and dancing along to both bands.

The next day we were treated to pain au chocolats, we said our goodbyes to Simon (who needed his passport renewed so couldn't risk crossing the border with us), and to France in order to head off for our first Swiss show of tour!

Durham, Bristol, Home.

2010-07-16T00:35:00.000-07:00

It's always a good sign when you arrive at a show relatively early and there's already a bunch of people hanging out outside the venue, waiting for the show to start.

It's an even greater feeling when a bunch of them remember the last time your band played their town and how much fun everyone had.

Kyle and I had been talking about Durham to Neil, Postin and Alf since before tour started and how awesome it was gonna be (we played here acoustic over 2 years ago) and I was worried that we had actually hyped it up too much. However, the show turned out awesomely, definitely the most fun UK show of the tour! We saw a bunch of old friends and played with 2 really awesome bands that you should check out: Sunday League and No Fit State. Daniel and Nathan from One Night Stand in North Dakota put the show on, as I have doubtlessly said before, you need to check their amazing band out. I will try and post a video of this show as soon as I get the tour vids off Kyle.

We stayed at Daniel and Nathan's place and the next morning I made crazy beans (if you want to the recipe for this, it's in an older post called "how to put on a successful DIY show") with hash browns for 11 people at about £1 a head. It was awesome.

We had a bit of a trek to Bristol for the last show of the UK leg of the tour. We arrived to be pleasantly surprised by the fact that the awesome Clayton Blizzard was playing (he wasn't on the flyer for some reason)! He rocked, as always, and we set up our shit, knowing at the back of our minds that this would be the last Neil & Friends set for a while. The highlight of this show was probably when we mentioned, during the Neil & Friends set, that we had been inventing Dan Postin sings all tour, and someone in the audience that we didn't even know actually busted out "There's only one Dan Postin! One Dan Postin!"

We headed back to London that night and I spent the next few days off hanging out with Gaby and practising with Apologies before heading off to France for an awesome 17 days!

Day 4, Van 2

2010-06-14T09:14:00.000-07:00

Wow tour has been pretty special so far to say the least. Some amazing highs, a couple of lows, but made forgettable by the awesomeness that has happened so far.

The fun started before we even left Hackney. We had 20 minutes to load all the gear into Josh's van before the camera near by automatically generated a huge fine for us to be stuck with for staying the "red zone" outside Josh's house too long. With this in mind, we hurried to get all the gear in the van. I climbed into the back of the van and started bungeeing the drums in on top of the lock box. In my rush, I didn't hook one of the bungees in properly, and felt the full force of it's wrath right in my face. That's right, not 5 minutes into tour, i got hit right in the face with a fucking bungee. There was a lot of blood. Imadethismistake drummer Postin decided to freak out and have a good old flap despite the fact that I was decidedly calm about the whole thing. Gross close up of the scabbed up scar:

Here's me looking really cool with a plaster on my forehead:

So tour was off to a bloody start. But we hit Bridgend in good time and played a fun show. We were so incredibly well taken care of by the lovely guys in Question the Mark, who put the show on. Them and their families were so welcoming when they didn't even know us.

Due to mine and Alf's cat allergy, we stayed at BT from Question the Mark's grandmother's house. A lovely woman indeed, but who seemed to have some interesting ideas about toilet hygene. I don't mean that she herself was unhygenic, though. Let me explain.

Her house was a relatively small house, and we slept on some floor space in her living room. She greeted us and told us that there was only one bathroom, sort of apologising for it as there were 5 of us. We assured her that we could all share one bathroom, that some of us would shower tonight, some tomorrow and that everything was fine and dandy. However I don't believe she agreed as she told us (in a charming Welsh accent) that she would put a bucket in the kitchen "just in case." A bucket. I wasn't sure if I had heard her right but she indeed produced a large yellow bucket, supposedly for us to number 1 or number 2 in, which she placed in the kitchen and again reminded us that there was only one bathroom so we might as well use it. Everyone else seemed to go along with it and tell her "thank you, if we need it we'll be sure to make use of it." I later discovered that, like me, everyone did actually think it was pretty weird and hilarious but obviously weren't showing it (I'm assuming she won't be reading this blog so I don't feel too bad writing about this, I just had to). Kyle considered just using it to make her happy but decided against it. I was sure to tell BT that we were extremely grateful of his grandma's hospitality, and he agreed that it was indeed very amusing.

Well after some really humbling Welsh hospitality later at BT parents' place we were feeling very posi. We took photos of us (and BT, see below) looking happy and hopped in the van.

London here we come! Hit the gas Alf!

Alf? Alf why isn't the van moving? Alf? Oh. The van's dead.

Yep, the fuel pump was fucked. After 2 hours of chatting shit to insurance companies we got a breakdown guy out (who turned out to be racist and homophobic) who towed us from Wales to London in this thing:

It was a pretty low point compared to the high we were on just hours before. For hours we discussed possible solutions to our situation that seemingly went nowhere. However, we made it to the London show and all I will say was, it was amazing. Apologies had set up and were about to play without me by the time I got there (Joe had leave early to work). They started the first song as they saw me and I stuck my bass amp on stage as they played. I joined in half way through the song after tuning up and the rest of the night went amazingly, it was a really fun show, 100% worth the terrible day we'd just had.

The next day Neil and Kyle hopped on the National Express to go play the Newcastle show acoustic whilst we sorted out getting another van to finish tour in. Once we'd done that, we tried to have a nice relaxing rest of the day in London. We went to Hamstead Heath,

and then to the aptly named "Loving Hut", an all you can eat, pay what you like vegan buffet, with our friend Jas.

Getting a new van sorted mean that, through mutual friends, we met Matt and Cecile, who turned out to be fucking awesome and, for a very reasonable price, took us all the way from London to Edinburgh overnight in their van to carry on with the tour.

It took fucking forever, including a 6 hour stop in Manchester so that Matt could sleep (not an unreasonable request). We made it to the Edinburgh show feeling re-energised and positive. The show was great fun and we slept in an actual apartment above the venue.

We got high and Kyle asked me if I wanted to go buy groceries to cook breakfast the next day. A midnight adventure to the 24 coop sounded like great fun seeing as it was a 5 minute walk away. We ended up looking for it for approximately 2 hours. It was a nice walk but I had to hit the sack.

We spent the majority of the next day hanging out in Edinburgh, castle visiting, vegan brownie eating (see below) and kilt admiring.

This was also the day the concept of "The Dan Postin song." The Dan Postin song is not one song per se. I can be applied to any popular song really, simply by replacing the lyrics or melody with the words "Dan Postin." Try it. It works to the Batman theme tune, the Smells Like Teen Spirit guitar riff or to popular football chants (video of Dan Postin exiting a bakery after relieving himself whilst we sing said football chant to follow soon).

We left my favourite city for what was a quiet but fun show in glasgow. we were well taken care of by the 2 lovely promoters and slept in what was one of the most disgusting set of dorms I have slept in in a while.

I hit the sack early after the Glasgow show as I knew I 'd be getting up early to go visit my grandmother and mother in Helensburgh, a lovely little town about 40 minutes out of glasgow. Postin though, bless him, decided getting up early was not on his list of things to do that day. After telling me, in the nicest way possible, that touring with me was like living under a military regime (there is quite probably some truth in that statement... but it's a military regime of fun! I bet he was grateful when he got to Loch Lomond! : )), he decided to go back to sleep on the ground outside the van as we waited for the others, and they van key, to arrive.

We arrived around 1 o clock and I sent the boys and cecile off to the beautiful Loch Lomond (I didn't think that having 7 punks invade my grandma's house was the best idea in the world). It was lovely to see her again and she made me some of her famous parsnip soup. It's out of this world, hands down the best soup I've ever had.

I couldn't stick around for long though as we had to get to what was to be the epic Durham show. You'll read all about that in my next post (all 4 or so of you that actually read this thing).

A bad day

2010-05-25T08:05:00.000-07:00

I'm going on tour for a while this Summer. I'm incredibly excited, as touring is what I love doing the most, and this tour is basically gonna be with almost all my best friends. About 2/3 of it is going to be in Europe as well, another huge plus as far as I'm concerned, as I love playing in Europe and I'm going to some countries I've never been to before.

I (along with a few other people) have been working on this tour for the best part of a month and a half now, pretty much daily. It started out going well, shows were getting booked up fairly easily, but after a while it became quite stressful. People weren't replying, people seemed more interested in watching football than booking or coming to a show, venues were closed for summer. I'm not complaining, because I know the end result will be more than worth it, but I basically became consumed with this tour. It took over my life and I forgot about other things. Important things. When you want to do nothing but be on tour all the time, it can be hard sometimes not to act selfishly. You feel like if you don't give everyhitng you've got, every ounce of your being, then you're not gonna get to where you want to get, you're not gonna get to play the sort of shows you wanna be playing with the bands you love in the places you love being.

But the truth is you can't forget about the other things that make up your life and who you are... or you will go fucking mental and you may end up letting down those around you. I realise now that I can't let myself get this consumed by something, it isn't healthy, and it isn't fair on those I love. Next tour, an agent, and therefore a tonne less stress - that's my resolve!

About a week ago, I was having a bad day tour-wise. It felt like every email i got from peope was telling me "no thanks, your band sucks", "we can't help you coz our venue is on springsummerautumn break from early february to late november", or "we'd rather go watch the world cup." Meanwhile, it seemed like other bands were having no trouble booking up tours and I was getting bitterly jealous like I sometimes do. I was officially bummed.

Just when I thought my day couldn't get any worse i got a call from Neil (Sutherland) telling me that our drummer and bassist couldn't make this tour. I'm not going to go into detail about this here, but needless to say I was about as low as I could get at this point. I felt like all the hard work i had put into this tour was just being brushed aside by others' lack of organisation.

I don't know what the future holds for Neil Sutherland & Friends, but for this tour, I will now be playing drums, and one of the most awesome dudes ever, Kylewilliam from Imadethismistake, will be filling in on bass. As far as I'm concerned, this is a dream come true. I love these guys and can't wait to play music with them. Instead of letting this unforseen event get me down, i'm grasping it as an opportunity to do something I've never done before and probably won't get to do again, at least not for a long time.

We still have quite a few dates to fill, but I'm feeling optomistic and happy. Tonight we're playing with a band I love: the Dirty Tactics. See you there.

How I Spent my Easter Vacation

2010-05-20T13:02:00.000-07:00

Stuck in Switzerland

2010-04-17T07:47:00.000-07:00

Gaby and I were supposed to come home from Switzerland this morning. That was before we found out that all flights out of Switzerland were cancelled due to crazy Icelandic volcano ash, and that the earliest tim we could get back to London was Thursday night.

I guess I can deal with not going back to work and hanging out in Switzerland for an extra 5 days, but I hope you all now, it's a struggle.

Back off the road

2010-04-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

Well we're back off the orad and back at our respective jobs, or in my case, in switzerland helping my parents move out. It's kinda sad coz they're leaving the country to go back to their native scotland, which means I won't have a place to call home whenever I come back here, but in between helping my folks get things ready, Gaby and I are having a good time. Here is a photo of me enjoying life:

Pretty much every tour I have been on has involved a certain level of stress, mostly due to my/other people's/businesses' lack of organization, in the days leading up to tour. This tour was no different. Whilst me and all my band mates were very organized and stoked, the company that we got the Rooftops EP printed at, basically dicked us over and we had to rush press 100 copies of the thing for tour, at an extra cost to ourselves. It was worth it though, as they look great and we actually had cds for tour. If you'd like a copy of said masterpiece (ha!) please visit http://rooftopslondon.bigcartel.com/. here is us looking happy that we got em:

Right! shameless plugging aside this tour really was awesome. Jugs decided to do all the dates with us, and we were really stoked to have him with us every step of the way. he lived entirely up to his reputation as a crazy asshole:

Coincidentally, that's us in Lincoln. Awesome cathedral, highly recommend checking it out. The show in Lincoln was utterly rammed. Like, there were probly 200 kids there. most of em not there to see us, but still awesome to play to loads of people! The night of the Lincoln show was also the night of shakey face. Shakey face is a simple concept, where one relaxes one's facial muscles and simply shakes one's face frantically, whilst someone else takes a photo of it. It's AWESOME. If you are with friends, in possession of a camera, and are at a loss as how to best pass the time, shakey face is your answer. Behold:

And my personal favourite:

That's Pookie. take him on tour with you. You won't regret it.

Rather than go into every show in detail, I'll just say that I'm pretty sure everyone involved in this tour had a wicked time. I mean, we had 9 shows and they were all awesome! We played with some amazing bands and I would particularly like to recommend that you check out Three Summers Strong, Bangers, This Business is Closed, This Hidden Switch, and Mutiny on the Bounty. The London show was probably my personal favourite, and was a great way to end a great tour. We played with the awesome Fashanu, ONSIND and Imperial Can (Chris from Ghost Mice's new band). There's some cool photos of that show, and of the the rest of the tour on the apologies website http://www.apologiesihavenone.co.uk/. Apologies will be hitting the road again in June/July and playing some real fun shows in the UK in the meantime. Thank you so much to everyone who came out to the shows, who put the shows on, who fed, who put us up and who put up with us. We can't do this without you, so we're eternally grateful for your support!

How to put on a successful DIY show

2010-03-27T05:00:00.000-07:00

Being in a DIY band brings with it all sorts of wonderful shinnanigans and great times. However, the truth is that I want to make a living out of playing music. I believe it is possible to make a DIY tour at least financially sustainable, so that it is something one can keep doing in the longer term. Over the years, I've met many great promoters who have taken fantastic care of the bands I have played or do currently play in and to them I am eternally grateful. It is people like them that make what we do possible (along with all the people who come out to the shows and support us in other ways of course!). However, I have also played my fair share of shows where we have basically been, in my opinion, unnecessarily dicked over by promoters who have not done their job properly. I've put many many shows over the years, and whilst I don't claim to be an expert on all things DIY and punk rock (or on anything for that matter!), I do think I know how to put on a show and ensure that both bands and promoter end the evening entirely happily together. Especially after reading Brett from The Riot Before's tour diaries, I realize how much promoters can sometimes just not put any effort into putting on shows for bands that nmake a tonne of effort at what they do.

So promoters, or potential promoters, I give you PJ's guide to putting on a succesful DIY show!

There are a few basic things that you need to consider when putting on a show:

1. You need to make sure that you can at least cover the band(s)' travel costs when they come play a show for you. This isn't usually all that much, a 4 hour drive will probably cost about £50-£60 for a band. If you're doing a donation-based show, make sure you mention to the audience that their donations would be greatly appreciated and that the bands need money to pay for gas, food etc... Remember to go around with a hat or some sort of container to get donations from people. If people are enjoying the show there's no reason they won't make a donation. If you choose to charge entry on the door, my usual rule of thumb is to charge £1 per band playing (i.e for a 3 band bill £3 entry, a 4 band bill £4 entry, £5 for 5 bands etc...). I usually take £10 out of that myself if I'm putting a show on, which easily covers the cost of making food (see point 3) and photocopying flyers/posters. If you make enough money and you wanna keep a little bit for the hard work you've put in, I don't see anything wrong with that, but you have to make sure that the bands are taken care of first. They should be your priority.

2. You need to make sure you have somewhere for the band(s) to sleep. This doesn't mean that you need to put em up in a 5 star hotel, most bands are happy just to have a roof over their heads and are happy to sleep on a couch or floor (bands: pack some blow up matraces, pillows and sleeping bags with you when you go on tour. They're a life saver if you have to sleep on the floor!). If you can offer them anything better than that (like a bed, for example) that's a welcome bonus, but I wouldn't say it's essential.

3. You need to feed the band(s). Again, you don't have to take em out for a fancy meal, just a bit of nutritious grub will do! Bear in mind that when bands tour they generally don't have the opportunity to cook for themselves and so if you don't feed them they'll be forking out around a fiver each just to get dinner the night of the show. If there are 6 or 7 people on tour spending £5 each, that's like an entire day's worth of gas money that could have been saved if you as promoter had just made em a bit of food. For £5 you can easily feed 10 people (and you can then take £5 out of what you make on the door or through donations so you don't even have to spend any money yourself! (see point 1)) Make something simple: Pasta with tomato sauce, for example, is dead easy. It doesn't have to be gourmet. Trust me, the band(s) will be very grateful that you have made the effort to feed them and will be happy they don't have to fork out for yet another tour expense. I don't think a lot of people realise what a big difference it makes. A touring band will probably just have driven for a good few hours to get to the show and will be hungry as a result. Remember to check if anyone in any of the bands has any dietary requirements like allergies or if they are vegetarian or vegan. I usually make the following recipe for bands, as it is delicious, quick, easy, filling, dirt cheap and can be served at room temperature and therefore easily transported to the venue without having to worry about re-heating it (serve it with some plastic cutlery and paper plates):

5 spice moroccan cous cous salad (if you don't have all the spices or the exact same veg as below, it doesn't matter, just make it with whatever you have!):

What you'll need:

- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/4 tsp turmeric
- 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp ground ginger
- 1/4 tsp ground cumin
- a pinch of cayenne pepper or chilli powder
- 1 and 1/2 cups of plain instant cous cous
- 2 and 1/2 cups of vegetable stock
- 3 or more tbs of orange juice
- 1 tsp sugar
- Salt
- 1 and 1/2 cups of pre-cooked chickpeas (basically a can of chickpeas from any store or supermarket)
- 1 red onion
- 2 peppers (any colour you like)
- 1/3 cup of dates
- 1/4 cup of raisins
- a handful or 2 of peanuts

1. Heat one tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat in a saucepan or frying pan. Add all the spices and cous cous and cook, stirring, until fragrant, around 2 minutes. Be careful not to burn. Stir in the stock and bring to the boil. Redunce heat to very low, cover, and cook until all the liquid is absorbed, about 5 minutes.
2. Transfer the cous cous to a large serving bowl and fluff up with a fork.
3. In a small bowl, combine 3 or more tablespoons of olive oil, the orange juice and the sugar and salt to taste. Stir well.
4. Add all the chopped veg and peanuts, as well as the dressing and mix in. Bam - You’re done.

If you’re feeling extra generous, and you wanna send the band(s) off the next day with breakfast (not at all necessary but you will be the band(s)’ favourite promoter ever – guaranteed! Afterall, you can just take an extra £3 or £4 quid out of what you made the night before (bands would rather you did this rather than not feed them and give them, say, an extra tenner) to make the following recipe), then make em this quintessentially British dish with a twist: PJ’s crazy beans on toast (foreign bands will love the fact that they are in England, eating beans on toast! Well, the ones I’ve made this for have found it pretty cool anyway : )):

Buy a pack of Linda McCartney vegan sausages (£1 for a pack of 5 in Iceland!) and a few cans of budget beans in tomato sauce (around 17p a can from sainsbury’s). Chop up the sausages and fry em til golden brown. Set aside. Fry some onion and garlic in a big pan, add a bit of paprika, a bit of tomato puree and some soy sauce and stir it around. Then add your beans and your sausages, a couple of handfuls of peas and heat though until piping hot. Serve on toast. It’s filling, full of protein and literally doesn’t have to cost you anything (and think of how much money you’ll be saving the bands at no cost to yourself and how much they will love you and tell other bands and their friends how awesome you are! Trust me, they will! : )).

4. Make sure you promote the show as much as you can. Flyer flyer flyer! Make sure you flyer at local shows and put a link on the flyer where people who might not have heard of the band(s) playing can check out their music. Get posters up in local shops and record stores. Promote like hell online as well. Punktastic, myspace and facebook are great places to advertise your show, but if there are local online message boards and websites you should use these too. Get some posters up at the venue. Tell everyone you know about it, get a buzz going around how awesome your show is gonna be!

5. Have at least one cool local band play your show so that if people don’t know the out of town bands that are playing, they’ll still come and see the local band. It’s probably not a good idea to put on a show with only out of town bands, although of course this can be doable. Also, try not to have tonnes of bands from different places as this will add greatly to your costs of having to cover bands’ travel expenses. If you’re confident you can make enough money to cover all the bands in such a situation then go for it but just be aware that it will mean you may need to gather some extra cash for em.

6. Pick an appropriate venue. Try and find a venue that you can use for free, or that won’t charge you a lot to let you use it. These are more available than you might realise, and often, places like local pubs will let you put a gig on at no expense to yourself. Remember not to pick somewhere too enormous if you don’t think you can fill it. If you’re putting on an acoustic show, cafes and bookstores will often let you use their space for free. You could even do the show at your or a friend’s house!

If you have the above bases covered, there’s no reason that you can’t put on an entirely successful and really fun show. There’s no reason, when doing a show, that the promoter or band(s) need lose any money, and there’s no reason it need be anything but a totally rad time. Shows are important, they bring communities together and allow people to share a great passion. But if bands or promoters keep losing loads of money doing it, it can’t carry on.Remember, I’m not trying to say that bands should be making hundreds of pounds every show or give up, I’m just saying that if the above points are followed, touring should be sustainable, that’s all. If you can’t cover most of the above points, then maybe it’s best to reconsider whether or not you should put the show on. Lastly, I guess just remember to have a tonne of fun, that’s what all this should be about! : )

Mixed feelings

2010-03-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

Where to start? There’s good news and there’s some not so good news. I think I’ll start with the good.

We had a great show in Harrow the other day (both Rooftops and Apologies) at an all-dayer that Ollie (Jugs) put on last Saturday, right after a fun show in Exeter the night before (just Rooftops that time). Our t-shirts have arrived, the look very lovely, if you like what we do, please pick one up on tour (which starts this Thursday in Brighton by the way! www.apologiesihavenone.co.uk/tour.html for all the details). There are some good vids, pics and recordings of sets from the Harrow show that you can download at www.apologiesihavenone.co.uk and at http://aloadofstuffthathappened.wordpress.com. I won’t say much more about it, other than thanks very much to Ollie and please check out the stuff above!

In other good news the Apologies 7”s arrived in time for tour and the Rooftops cds are on track to be ready in time too!

In not so good news, today I told my boss that I would be leaving for tour on Thursday Well, this in itself is good news. I’m incredibly excited about this tour. What wasn’t so great was the way work took it. See, I’m a temp. As such, that means I can legally and guiltlessly leave any job I’m working without notice. That is, afterall, the nature of temporary work. It’s terrible if you want job security (the employer can also fire you without notice at any time), but pretty great if you are in the same situation I currently find myself in: needing some time off to do a killer tour with awesome people.

The bad news is the way work treated me when they found out. My boss was really pissed off and considered me inconsiderate, despite the fact that I am easily replaceable (as I write this, they have already found someone to replace me). She was even kinda rude and childish, using sarcasm and avoiding eye contact with me. I have no time for people who take a temporary post room job so seriously and I’m really happy to be leaving, although I will miss the handful of nice people I have met here. That’s all I’m gonna say about that, as I don’t really want to talk about work. Work is rubbish, that’s why we play in bands, right? Well it’s one reason, anyway : )

I’m afraid though that I have to finish this post on a downer. Yesterday I received some bad personal news from Ollie, which means that he won’t be able to come on this tour with us. It sucks on so many levels for him and for us but I can’t and don’t really want to go into any details on it. I know he was incredibly excited about this tour, and as if the news he received wasn’t bad enough, he now has to deal with not doing something he really wanted to do as a consequence. It feels horrible and unfair talking about this, but, at Ollie’s request, Joe will be playing guitar for Rooftops on this tour, so tour will be going ahead as planned. Obviously Joe doesn’t feel great about doing this, but Ollie wanted Rooftops to do the tour, even if it meant it’s most vital element couldn’t be present.

I’ve been reading some old blogs by Brett from the fantastic band The Riot Before recently. He talks a lot about feeling guilty about having fun on tour, when bad stuff is happening in the world, and how he manages to deal with it. In the end, he resolves that having fun on tour isn’t something that should make you feel guilty (for a full explanation, and a fascinating insight to life on the road, i recommend you start at the beginning of his blog www.theriotbefore.com), but I can’t help feeling that I will be feeling pretty guilty doing this without Ollie.

TOUR TIME!

2010-03-26T09:31:00.001-07:00

WOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

The longest week off I've had in a while

2010-03-12T04:58:00.000-08:00

After being given a right hard time over it by my boss, who seems to think that the world will end if I don't come in to the post room at work for a couple of days, I got this week off to do the Rooftops record and play a couple of shows in and out of London. On Monday we got cracking with the Rooftops EP and got all the drums and bass done. All was well. Next, we had a day off on Tuesday for Apologies to go play in Norwich with the Peacocks, one of the only bands from Switzerland who have broken out and tour extensively, so we're all pretty proud of them back home. The show was fun. All was well. Then came Wednesday. Wednesday brought with it 12 and a half of studio time. We had to get everything finished on that day so we started at 10am and finished at 10.30pm. Around 9pm I started to become kind of delerious. Greg was doing his vocals for the last song when he said "can we take a bit of time on this one coz I really think I can reach some good notes if we take a bit of time with it." Oh yeah! We've only been here 11 hours! You take your fucking time buddy! As soon as he said what he said I just burst out laughing. I couldn't stop, I was crying for about 15 minutes, the underused muscles in my cheeks and stomach (my stomach muscles are especially underused) straining from laughter. An hour and a half later, we were done and ready to not see each other for a while. Except that we had a gig the next night. It was at Ryan's Bar in Stokey. Question the Mark played, Cynics played and Leagues Apart played. All those bands are awesome, check em out. The show was fun although there was a bit of a dissapointing turn out. I felt bad because it was the first time Leagues Apart and Question the Mark played London and I wish more people had come down to check out some new bands. I hear people complain quite often about how they're sick of seeing the same bands all the itme, well come down and see some new ones then! Well I guess people in London are spoilt for choice. So much goes on in this city, which is awesome, and I love London, but sometimes I miss living somewhere like Geneva where I grew up, where if there was a show on, you just went, that was that, coz there wasn't much else going.

We were supposed to have a PJ & Gaby show in Cardiff tonight with Question the Mark but unfortunately, due to circumstances outside of our control, we had to pull out, which I hate doing. The promoter (Andy) seemed really cool and Andy, if you're reading this we're very sorry and we'll make it up to you.

Rooftops are off for 2 dates with Men next weekend including the mighty North West is Best Fest in Harrow! See you there!

The good, the bad, and the phlegm from my chest

2010-02-21T05:33:00.000-08:00

It's been a little while since I've updated this. I'm sorry about that. Between coughing my lungs up, playing or attending shows/practicing when I should be resting and getting better and working one of the shittest jobs I've had since I gardened with racists it's been a busy few weeks!

Despite the title of this post, my perpetual oral snotting and my new mind meltingly dull job, things have been pretty awesome! We had our first PJ & Gaby show in a while at Ryan's Bar in Stoke Newington a few weeks ago with Wegrowbeards, Bastad Rats and Break the Habit. Although we didn't play too great, I made it through coughing fits and still had a great time. There's a video of us playing that show on a great site run by a lovely man called Ian: http://www.strikeachorduk.blogspot.com/.

In other PJ & Gaby news, we were really pleased to receive 2 nice surpises this week. The first was that our friend Corey sent us over some copies of the Mancubbers compilation that she asked to be on. It's a compilation with several awesome artists covering Mancub songs, all of whom were all somehow connected to Ben Hutson, who played as Mancub before tragically passing in a car accident on his way to a show. She also sent us several copies of her zine "We Are Mancub," which is also a tribute to Ben. Lastly, she sent us a lovely letter as well as several copies of the Mancub full length cd. The artwork and packaging everything she sent us is DIY as hell and looks really beautiful. All of it will be available through us or at our shows, or you can visit http://mancub.bigcartel.com, which I highly recommend you do. Thanks Corey!

The second lovely surprise is that our awesome friend Luke Hilly from back home in Geneva got in touch to say that he has put out a 7" record with our song Time Well Spent on one side and his song Political Jam on the other. It will be available through us and at shows in a few weeks! Look out for a full band PJ & Gaby/Luke Hilly 10 track split 12" soon too! Thanks Luke!

The day after the Ryan's Bar show I travelled down to Brighton to play an Apologies show in our friend Elliot's basement. Seeing my illness was at a pretty low point then, I decided to get the train home that night, whilst the others stayed and partied and then drove to Oxford to pick up our new van (more on that later though)! The show was amazing, the basement was tiny, the other bands playing were awesome (Wooderson, Cynics, Sam Russo and Break the Habit) and a great time was had by all. I sat behind the drums on the drum stool in the corner, sipping ginger and lemon tea that Elliot made me, watching the bands that played before us. I don't know if other people who play in bands have the same experience, but even when I'm feeling pretty sick, I just push it for the half hour we play for, feel pretty much ok and forget about my illness whilst we're playing and then go back to feeling lousy afterwards. That was certainly the case that night, and I had to pack up and grab my train real quick after we were done. Our drummer Joe came back to London with me and I attempted to get all the phlegm out my body before barely making this train in time. It was nice to have his company on the train and we chatted about growing up in places we weren't born in (Switzerland in my case, Hong Kong in his).

The next night Joe, his girlfriend Wendy and I got the train together again, this time to Reading where we had a show with a LOT of crusty punk bands that we really didn't feel we fitted in with, and the awesome Moral Dillemma. Apologies have played shows like this before when it was just Josh and Dan, where they didn't feel they fit the bill at all but have seemingly gone down alright with the crowd (I attended a couple of these as a fan in fact), so I wasn't too sure what to expect. Firstly, I should say what an amazing job the promoter, Paula, did. The show was absolutely packed out, she made food for all the bands (meaty food and vegan food!), there was booze, there were soft drinks (including my favourite - ginger beer!) for sick people like me who didn't feel up to drinking that night, and she covered our petrol money and then some. On top of that, she is just one of the loveliest, friendliest people ever. Go Paula.

I don't remember any of the other bands' names apart from Moral Dilemma, who I will just say were fucking tight and brilliant, and are kick ass awesome people with a great attitude. By the time me, Joe and Wendy arrived, a band had started playing. The singer started explaining that this next song was about members of American army who left their fellow soldiers to die in a battlefield or something instead of rescuing them or something, I wasn't too sure what he was talking about, but fair enough, that's what your song's about, let's hear it. But before playing he went on to state that if they were British soldiers they would have had the balls to go back and rescue them coz we're fuckin' well ard innit? Military patriotism and racism at a punk rock show, great.

We were on after them, and it was a good time, although people were just basically kicking off to any sort of music that was being played. A few people were singing along so I figure at least a few people dug it, hopefully anyway. We finished our set sweaty and content when the bassist from the next band came up to me and said simply "dude, can I borrow your amp?" Hello. How are you? Yes I had a great time playing the show thanks. Oh I'm so glad you enjoyed our set, that's so nice of you to say so! Well yes you're right it is kind of inconvenient to lend my new really awesome bass head to a complete stranger who also apparently appears to be a rude douche but of course you can borrow my amp!

No! No you freakin cannot borrow my amp! You didn't even say HELLO to me! Now don't get me wrong, I've had to borrow heads a couple of times too, and people have helped me out and I'm very grateful for that, but I always asked them as early on as possible, was extremely grateful and thankful to them, and always asked very politely and nicely, assuring them that I would take the utmost care of their equipment, which I always did. I do lend my bass head out to people who ask in such a manner but not to people who say "dude, can I borrow your amp?" without even bothering to introduce themselves. What a twat.

Well, probably the highlight of the evening for me was seeing our brand spanking new van! It's silver and huge (hence, it's tentative title of "Vanosaurus" or "Vanosaurus Sex" due to it's sexy silverness as well as its large size). we drove it home that night. It was the first time I'd had the luxury of heating a wheeled vehicle for a while, which was nice (you may have heard that Josh's car is slowly but surely dying a painful death). I absolutely cannot wait to take it out on tour with Apologies and Rooftops in April. Photos soon.

We had a few days without shows until we got asked to play with the amazing Nothington at the Purple Turtle in Camden, after the Living Daylights unfortunately had to pull out of the show. Wegrowbeards and You, Me and the Atom Bomb also played, and they had some wicked new songs they busted out. Their new album is coming soon so look out for it!

I had listened to Nothington a little bit but didn't know their music too well. Gaby was really excited about coming to the show, being a gigantic Tsunami Bomb fan, the band which 2 members of Nothington used to be in. They absolutely blew me away. I bought both their records and have been listening to them all day. Cannot recommend them to you enough.

We had a great time playing that night although we all seemed to struggle to play a little bit. It was like there was something just stopping us from quite getting there that night. Having said that, I don't think we played badly or anything, we just weren't quite our musical selves that night and none of us were sure why. Still an awesome time and still satisfied with our performance that night, just not over the moon about it.

Last Friday, Rooftops headed back down to Brighton to play the Brighton zine fest gig with a freakin great line up: Sauna Youth (with ex and current members of the steal and captain everything!), This Business is Closed, who we've played with before from Norwich and are fuckin awesome, The Social Club (which is Lew and Blake from Captain Everything's new band) and the awesome Arteries from Wales. We were really excited to be playing with so many great bands, and it gave us the kick up the ass we needed to make sure we played at our best. We had a really great time playing, in fact it was probably our most fun show so far. It was really awesome that that night Rooftops was all about having fun, like it usually is, as we've been having a bit of a nightmare of a time recording our upcoming EP. That night really reminded us of how we want things to get back to, all about playing awesome shows and having a great time. Recording has proved rather stressful for us and that show just made us feel wonderful again.

We stayed the night so that we could hang out at the zine fest the next day. I stayed with my friend Izzy, an amazing vegan chef who was extremely lovely and hospitable and fed us tonnes of amazing blueberry pacakes in the morning. Also staying with Izzy was my friend Tom, who I hadn't seen in a while so it was awesome to catch up with him. I also got to know Tony from Gordon Gano's Army a little better that night, as we ate falafel and traded tour stories before going to sleep that night.

I got a call at 8 in the morning from Jugs and Greg. They were wasted and on Brighton beach. I might save that story for the next post : )

Sick of feeling sick

2010-02-10T03:18:00.001-08:00

I feel like total shit today, pretty much have done since friday. I'm sick of the taste of flegm in my mouth every time I cough, and of the pounding pain in my head and chest that accompanies it. And I have shows tomorrow, and Friday and Saturday. I'm especially annoyed coz these shows like particularly good fun, and I won't be able to enjoy them if I still feel like this. Any miracle cure suggestions welcome.

The Eccles Gym

2010-02-06T07:03:00.001-08:00

The Eccles Gym in Manchester is a tough looking place. I imagine people who eat whey protein shakes for breakfast go there and talk to each other about how their abs are looking super tight and ripped whilst working out, before heading home and eating a live pig.

It also happened to be right next to the studio where we were recording some songs for the upcoming Apologies 7". We're really happy with how the songs have come out and the 7" will be out in time for our April tour with Rooftops. Here's some generic studio photos:

After 2 days of fairly small amounts of sleep and very shit microwave food, I headed back to London to get back to work. I craved real home cooked food like crazy. Which is why I am extremely happy to tell you that my breakfast this morning (cooked by Gaby), was amazing. Marvel:

Scrambled tofu with a toasted bagel, pomegranate jelly, a veggie sausage, hash browns and a cup of rooibos earl grey.

Cottage life

2010-01-24T07:40:00.000-08:00

One of the great things about touring is when you get to stay at a parents' house, or in this case, adorable little cottage in a village near Exeter actually called... Cockwood. That made me happy. Apologies had show in Exeter the other day, followed by one in Peterborough the next. I arrived real late at the Exeter show, which I hate doing but there wasn't much I could do about it as I had to work and then get the train up there. The show was fun and sounded good on stage which is always nice, lovely promoter too (John from the Cut Ups). I didn't get to look around the town or anything, which was a shame.

But the cottage experience was indeed very nice! After many uncontrolable giggling fits, we fell asleep in actual beds and awoke to be treated to breakfast by Josh's parents! Many thanks to them.

The drive to Peterborough the following day can be described in 2 simple words: "extremely" and "long." We all got delicious curries at Abdula's take away though and played what was a very fun show with the very awesome Leagues Apart. Couldn't really hang out in P-town either, as we had to get back that night for Josh to work the following morning. Next show: more time hanging in out in town, that's my resolve.

My new favourite band

2010-01-23T09:21:00.000-08:00

We had our first little weekender tour with rooftops recently and it went freakin great. We figured this would be like a little test for our band: if we didn't kill each other by the end of the weekend then we could probably carry on making music together. It worked! : )

For the first show we hit up Southampton for a show with what I think is the best British band going at the moment, crazy arm. Also on the bill was a band I'd never heard before called the dissociates. They played kinda post hardcore fugazi style stuff. It was cool.

The show was in a place called Goblets, recently taken over and turned punk rock venue by our friend Hannah. It was a small pub with no stage, perfect for this kind of show really. It was pretty packed out and there were loads of lovely people there that I hadn't seen in a while. The show was a good time and crazy arm finished with 3 covers: fugazi, black flag and another band. I forget which one.

Despite having gone to Southampton several times before to go to and play lots of shows I discovered a new part of the town that had previously been hidden from me: Champagne Charlie's. Possibly the cheesiest liquor store I've ever seen. From what I remember, it was sparkly. We bought a bunch of cheap cider and Hannah let us stay at the pub for a lock in after the show, which was a great time.

We left at around 3am. Being somewhat more of a lightweight than I used to be, due to basically drinking a lot less often these days, I was pretty hammered. I walked back to my friend's house where we were staying that night with Jugs, who was, predictably, also very very drunk. Jugs spotted a nightclub on our way back and decided it would be an awesome idea to go in. I tried to explain to him that I was hella tired, and didn't have any money on me, and even if I did, spending it in a nightclub was not top of my "how to burn twenty odd quid" list. He assured me that he would pay for everything and ran off towards the club going "Adventure! Adventure!" I followed him to try and convince him that he was way too hammered to be allowed in anywhere. By this time he had already reached the bouncer who told him plainly "sorry mate the bar's shut." For most people this would be a pretty straight forward situation: The bar is shut, therefore I am unable to purchase alcohol on these premeses and should seek entertainment elsewhere. However, this is not Jugs's way of thinking. He proceeded to get out a ten pound note and show it to the bouncer.

"Are you sure the bar's shut mate?"

He pushed the note back towards Jugs explaining "Yep. The bar is definitely shut."

Expecting this to finally convince Jugs that there was really no way we were going to be shaking our booties to the latest club bangers that night, I started walking home, only to hear Jugs asking the bouncer again "are you sure the bar's shut?" pushing the £10 note against the bouncer's chest.

"The bar is SHUT mate!"

Giving in at last, Jugs conceded defeat and accompanied home where I slept a great night's sleep in a hallway.

The next morning we headed back to Goblets where we could apparently get a vegan breakfast for £4, but unfortunately the lock in had meant that Hannah wasn't quite feeling up to getting food ready. Sadly, as we were in a hurry, this left us with no choice but to go to Weatherspoon's nearby. I have to say, the food was average, but the price was amazingly low. £2.65 for a full veggie breakfast! This was to be the first of 2 Weatherspoons meals for us that day as NOTHING was open in Newport (where our next show was) except for kebab shops, none of which did falafel. So after arriving in Wales and dropping our stuff at the venue, I sat down to a delicious £1.99 plate of tomato pasta that tasted in parts warm, in parts cold, and most definitely like it was from a packet.

Newport is quite a place. We arrived there early, around 4 and dropped all our stuff off at what was a pretty awesome venue. We met the promoter, John, who was a lovely man, and then headed to go check out what turned out to be a pretty dismal town centre. I always feel bad slagging off other people's towns but everything just seemed so homogenised and uninteresting that I'd be lying if I said otherwise. I could have been anywhere, and that's not a great feeling when on tour. However, the show itself had loads of awesome bands playing and was a hell of a good time. Things started early, around 6. Question the mark, a local band, opened up and I was well impressed! Very latterman-esque so you know I was gonna be hooked on that shit. We played right after them and I really enjoyed it. Everything sounded great on stage and I think we played the tightest of any of our shows that tour.

All the bands who played that night were honestly great, I was having a great time seeing loads of new acts (like this hidden switch) and ones I'd seen before (like above them), but one band really stood out for me: caves. Holy shit, my new favourite band. If I had to describe them (describing bands is something I am notoriously awful at doing) I'd say they were somewhere between lemuria and against me! So pretty awesome as far as I'm concerned. We met all of them as it turns out their drummer Dave was putting on the show in Bristol the following night, and them and their friends were just the most lovely bunch of awesome people. It really made for a great night in a shit town : )

Having said how shit Newport is, I have to explain that I would definitely go back for another show there, were it offered to us. Everyone at the show was super friendly and I had a great time, I just didn't like the town centre itself.

I did go out to get chips after the show in said town centre though, and I'm afraid it reaffirmed my worst fears about Newport. Firstly, I was accosted by mad (by which I mean madly drunk) people twice within 5 minutes. The first of these two invasions of my personal space happened just round the corner from the venue with 3 extremely drunk and hard looking lads, asking me for money. Quite why they thought I had more money than them is a question that will sadly remain unanswered but they decided to get rather aggressive about it. Luckily they were so hammered that as I wandered away, they became distracted by something else, possibly something shiny.

The second instance was slightly more amusing than the first. I found myself a chip shop and wandered in, honestly not expecting to hear an extremely drunk girl shout the phrase "Oi! I've seen you in a magazine! I wanna FUCK you!" at an unnecessarily loud volume. She was really rather aggressive about it. Now, I know what you're thinking: it's more than likely that this girl had in fact NOT seen me in a magazine, and was probably so drunk that, basically, anyone, including myself, would do that night. However, I am choosing to believe that she does in fact read Rock Sound, and recognized the extremely attractive back of my head.

By the way, I should hope it needless to say that I did not pursue this romantic endeavour.

During my time in Newport town centre, I also noticed that it appeared a certain dress code was in place; an unwritten law of how to look on a night out in Newport, if you will. Presumably, all women not dressed in a miniskirt with at least an inch of make up on were not allowed to be seen, as there were literally no women not dressed in this way. For men, a certain short haircut, or total lack of hair, seemed obligatory, as was a checkered or stripey shirt, and beige trousers. With everyone (literally everyone) being drunker than Shane MacGowan at Christmas, I'm pretty sure some couples must have swapped partners, without actually realising they were taking a different person home to the one they came out with.

So that was Newport. That night, we headed over to Bristol, not far away, as Dave from caves had kindly offered to let us sleep at his. We figured it would be a good idea, as we then wouldn't have to drive to the show the next day, and we could spend all day in Bristol, a town we all really like in rooftops. We got up relatively earlier, and after consulting Dave's giant wall map of Bristol, headed into town to get some breakfast/lunch. We had a lovely walk and ended up having luch at Cafe Kino on Ninehill road, a cool little cooperative veggie place. I had a super dahl! :-D I also had a chai latte. If anyone has no had one of these, I highly recommend that you try one. In fact, gaby will be starting a blog about her love for chai lattes soon, I would get in touch with her about where to get good ones etc...

After finding, and almost having time for, Laser Quest (gutted they didn't have a free slot for us. That shit is AWESOME!), we then found Reverb, a chain instrument store with electric drumkits, and me and Pook were in seventh heaven. We could have stayed there all day, testing the various settings such as "industrial junk" and "80s arena." Electric drumkits are awesome.

We would have stayed there all day but we had a show to get to. So after getting a bit lost, we headed back to Dave's, grabbed our stuff and headed over to the Croft where we were playing that night. Lots of awesome bands on the bill again, including this hidden switch, bangers and of course caves. Check those bands out. My old friend Jess, who lives in Bristol, came down for this show so it was really awesome to see her again and catch up. We went for a dinner in a really great little place. I forget what it was called but it's pretty much opposite the Croft and has been converted from offices. For £5 I had roasted pumpkin with friend tofu, harrissa paste, roast potatoes, rocket salad and purple cous cous. Ooh and you get free soup and bread with every meal! The best food I had all tour.

We just had time to catch caves's set and then had to head home that night as duty called in the form of work the following day.

Good freakin times anyway. I cannot wait for the next rooftops weekend tour in March with men! Check the myspace for all the dates!

Serendipity

2010-01-23T08:34:00.000-08:00

The other day at work I had a great conversation with a colleague who turned out to be an actor. She works to pay the bills and rent but aims to make her living off of what she truly loves: acting. It made me feel really good about temping to pay the bills and rent, and pouring all my real energy into music. It was nice to be told that I am doing entirely the right thing for once.*

I also discovered that another colleague used to play in a punk band called black tax and had been on tour with paint it black. It was a lovely surprise and we spoke about music, touring and bands for ages. It turns out we know loads of the same people. She had never heard of any of the bands I play in : )

Whilst discussing this pleasant coincidence with another colleague, he told me "she was the only one in her band who had a proper job." He then corrected himself straight away: "Well I should say constant job. Proper job isn't really fair."

Everyone here is so open minded and seems to have a really great attitude to things. I am pretty bummed that I can only stay here a short while longer, as in about a week's time, they will probably run out of work for me.

I love the Dogs Trust.

* This isn't entirely fair. Lots of people I know are entirely supportive of the way I try to do things, I am writing above about the older, more "sensible" generation. It was just nice to hear such avid encouragement from someone I didn't expect to hear it from: someone with a full time office job.

Far from terror-ble!

2010-01-13T13:02:00.000-08:00

So I'm back from an awesome time back home in Switzerland. Gaby and I were out there for 2 weeks for Christmas and new year's and it was definitely one of the most fun visits there since I moved to London 3 years ago. I barely saw any of my friends, but I did get to go snowboarding and go hang out with Luke Hilly (who we're doing the next PJ & Gaby split with), his wife Sam and their 1 year old son Liam in their chalet in the middle of the Valais (the valley). I shit you not. Awesome.

It's been a bit of a reality check coming back - I'm almost out of money and looking hard for work but to no avail so far. Musically though, things couldn't be going much better!

We started (and almost finished) doing the demos for the new apologies recordings the other day. Gaby is the best, PJ smells of poo - YEAH! poobumwilly. The end. Byebye.

Thanks for that Gabs. Right as I was saying I shitting love recording. I really do. I love seeing (well, hearing) songs come together piece by piece, I love getting a nice sound and listening to songs get better and better as the sound engineer works on them. No one else in any of the bands I play in seems to feel quite the same way as I do about it, but I literally could spend all day recording for days and be a happy happy chappy. So I was stoked to start recording these demos, especially since the songs are eventually gonna end up on what will be the first recording I've been involved with to be released on a 7"!

Despite this, I still managed to fall asleep after laying down my bass parts. But not before trying out my new Orange Bass Terror amp (hence the awesome pun in the title)! The thing is freaking tiny. Pookie calls it the toaster. But man it packs a punch! Anyway I realise that most people that don't play an instrument or play in a band probably don't even know what this is and so won't be in any way interested by this post (unlike all my other, far more fascinating posts) but rest assured that my bass tone is now far from terror-ble! :-D I've also purchased a new bass: a second hand fender jazz bass, it's colour is tobacco sunburst and it's lovely. That's not the name of its actual colour by the way, like "strawberry blonde" or "autumn dusk" or some wanky shit like that, that's just what it's called when guitars fade from that orangey red in the middle to black on the outer parts of the body.

In other recording news we're also about half way through recording the as of yet untitled rooftops 6 track. Rooftops has also started working on some new songs and I'm really excited about the sound that the band is developing. We're off for a mini 3 day tour this weekend and this time, we've practiced! I'm real excited, it's the first time we're gonna be doing 3 shows in a row outside of London or somewhere nearby. We're hitting up Southampton, Newport and Bristol on the 15th, 16th and 17th of January respectively.

See you there!

Harrow, and I'm Basingstoke(d) about Punk n Bowl

2009-12-18T08:01:00.000-08:00

So after no practicing at all, we had our first rooftops show since Wycombe with Lords. It was in Harrow, where our guitarist Jugs has recently moved, and it was the first show he's put on since the move. He's put on a lot of shows and always does a great job. I guess this time though, despite his best efforts, he couldn't get the people of Harrow motivated as we only got 10 people through the door. I know he tried real hard, but I guess you can't force people to get interested.

The venue was really cool. In a little room in the upstairs of a pub, we set the PA up and things were looking good. However, from my point of view, this show didn't go well. A whole bunch of factors made me feel incredibly self conscious and I couldn't relax or get into what I was playing. Right before we played, I asked the bassist from Crocus (who were headlining) if I could borrow his bass head and he said sure. However, the bassist from the band before us had left his lead in the input and the head was on the floor. It was a small space and I was stepping over loads of shit to get my bass. In the process, I caught the lead on my foot and fucked up the input. My heart fucking sank. I felt fucking terrible; I'd just asked this guy if I could use his shit and now I'd gone and fucked it up. In the end, we got it working no problem and he was incredibly cool and nice about it but I still just felt bad and it put me off my concentration. I wasn't even stomping during our set, despite my previous stomping-related injury now being entirely healed (which I'm sure everyone is massively relieved to hear). Personally, I can't remember the last time I was so dissapointed in myself for playing so badly. I felt like I'd let the others down and just felt gutted as I left to catch my last tube to get up at 6.30 for another incredibly shit day at work with yet more racist colleagues (see Chatham post for disturbing details - the latest incredibly ignorant comment was actually from a different colleague to those previously mentioned (it's like there are no non-racist employees in this fucking company! It's like I've inadvertedly joined an actual racist gardening firm!). He tried to claim that the reason we didn't receive a tip from a certain customer was because he was Pakistani. Apparently Pakistanis don't give tips or something. Unbelievable).

I've noticed that my last few posts have actually been pretty negative so I'm gonna throw in some good stuff now.

The first thing that did actually make me happy about the Harrow show was that the dudes from Crocus and the NY-Hill Stillness (a French band they were on tour with) were SO nice! Absolutely lovely guys. The NY-Hill Stillness also fucking tore it up, but I had to miss Crocus to go get my tube unfortunately. Anyway I was real excited about a French band playing coz I really miss speaking French and seize any opportunity I can get to speak it. I went up and introduced myself and one of them was like "I know you, I swear I know you... you're PJ Shepherd!" I was like "yeah I am..." Turns out this dude had put me on in France 6 YEARS ago when I was playing on my own before Gaby joined me. It was on a farm in the middle of France, 6 hours away from my house, with Captain Everything. The farm was called "L'Esprit du Rock" (The Spirit of Rock) and we played on the back of a massive truck that was sinking into a swamp. There were goats running around and shit, it was fucking AWESOME! My Swiss friends and I still talk about this incredibly random show to this day. The world (and the punk scene) is very tiny. : )

Despite the next day at work being utterly shit, it did turn out to be my last, as I ended up taking today off (reasons to be given later). I headed over to Jugs' place to get a ride to Basingstoke, where we were playing that night with Attack Vipers! and the Arteries. For various reasons, including Jugs being wrongly clamped, we were pretty late, which I never like being, but once we got there I start getting massively (Basing)stoked! It was packed out and I started getting really excited. I was ready to hit the fucking nail on the head after my disastrous performance last night and everything sounded great on stage. Lots of nice people there too which always helps. We started playing and I was real into it straight away. I was really feeling it much more than the previous night. From my point of view, everything went great, I thought we played well and there was a good atmosphere.

The second we finished Greg turned around and said "well that was the shittest we've ever played." Pook threw his sticks on the floor and went into a most un-Pook-like strop (Pook is usually the most chilled out relaxed ude ever, and to be fair, he was only mad at himself, not anyone else). He dropped his sticks a couple of times but I didn't think he had played badly at all! I still don't really understand what happened, it's like I was at a different gig to everyone else! People I didn't know were coming up to me and telling me they enjoyed it so I'm still maintaining that we did alright. : )

Anyway we stuck around for the awesome Attack, Vipers! and the Arteries who were both great, and then decided to head home when the show was done as I was supposed to get up at 6.30am to get to my last day of work the following morning. We had to drop Pook off at home as well so it was looking like i was gonna be home quite late, but I figured I'd just bash through my final day and sleep at the end of it. Well it ended up taking us 4 hours to get home. It was the first night that it properly chucked down with snow and we were blazing it at a grand 10 miles per hour on the motorway for most of the way home. By the time I got home it was 2am and I wanted to get up for work about as much as I wanted to eat Pook's knob cheese so I decided to slack it off and felt better for it. : )

A couple of days later and it was time for the iconic Punk n Bowl. Cheap bowling, cheap food and booze, loads of awesome bands in 50s themed rock n roll bowling alley, I fucking love this thing. I was supposed to play 2 sets, one with Rooftops and one with Neil Sutherland and Friends, but sadly, Neil fractured his arm the day before the show and couldn't make it. What a selfish cock.

Love you Neil. : )

The Rooftops set went great, apart from Pook actually breaking my snare skin. Other than that everyone in the band was finally happy with how we played, and we all proceeded to eat pizza and get drunk. Loads of lovely people and fun catching up. Good times, not much else to say on the matter!

In other news we've started recording the Rooftops 6 track EP, the drums and bass are done. Joe from Apologies is recording it at the studio he works at, and I'm mega excited.

I'm in Switzerland now for 2 weeks to be with my family over Christmas. This means no shows and practicing, but I'm insanely happy to be here, it's gonna be great. Shows will be back in full swing when I get back starting with a Rooftops 3 day mini tour of southern England and Wales around the 15th of January. Check the dates on Myspace and see you there hopefully!

Reading and Brighton

2009-12-15T09:03:00.000-08:00

2 practice sessions, each followed by a show makes for a tiring but awesome weekend! I played Reading with Apologies on Saturday and in Brighton with PJ & Gaby on Sunday.

The Reading show was at a pub called the Blagrave Arms. A bunch of cool people that I've played on the same bill as in various bands many times before were playing so it was nice to see a few familiar faces and it made for a relaxing atmosphere in what was in some ways an unwelcoming place. When I walked in to the Blagrave, my first impression was that this was a place that doesn't usually have punk rock shows. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate anywhere that lets punk rock shows happen, but I'm pretty sure this place just let the show happen in order to make more money than they perhaps would have on an average Saturday night. The football was on the big screen when we arrived so we couldn't set up and I spent a while just chilling out, being stared at by various footie fans who had clearly never seen anyone with a nose or lip ring before. One drunk guy even came right up, pointed at me and kindly and loudly explained to me that I would set the metal detector off at an airport. Hilarious. I have literally never heard anyone say that to me before. I wonder why people that do that never say the same thing to women with ear rings. I think it was the same guy who came right up to our friend Sam Russo during his set, whilst he was playing, and tried to shake his hand and begin a conversation with him in the middle of his song. Why are people so incredibly rude, disrespectful and inconsiderate?

Anyway I got thirsty so thought I'd go grab a glass of water. However, I was warned by Dan's girlfriend Ema that I may have to pay for it, as Dan had apparently been told that he would have to pay for water from now on as he was taking the piss. It just seems crazy. You should always serve water to people who need it anyway, but especially to people that need it to sing, that have driven a few hours to come to your town, and who are bringing punters into your pub, who are in turn buying drinks and making you money. Personally, I never drink before playing a show and if I'm denied water, I'm not gonna buy a soft drink instead so I dunno what they think they're achieving by telling people that. It just makes them seem unfriendly and unreasonable. It stands in stark contrast to so many awesome places I can think of that run entirely successful busniesses without treating bands like dirt. One of these places is the Yorkshire House in Lancaster. I used to study in Lancaster and I was talking to Mike from Smokey Bastard about it (turns out his sister, Kat, was on my course!) before the show. I used to play at and put on shows at the Yorkshire House all the time. It's run by an awesome couple. They have a bar downstairs and a gig room with its own bar upstairs which is only open when there's a show on. Tonnes of awesome bands have played there. They let you hire the room for free, you charge what you want on the door and you keep everything you make. They even provide a PA and a sound guy (who happend to be Kev, one of the owners), again for free. They just get it. They love live music, and they understand its importance. Places like this are, sadly, a dying breed, at least in the UK.

Anyway, nostalgic reminiscing on my behalf aside, once the show started, I began having an awesome time (I would also like to stress that all of the thing above are nothing to do with the promoters Stu and Kim, who were both awesome, did a great job and obviously did and could not have had any control over the things I mentioned above). I was itching to play the entire night but I enjoyed watching everyone else play. What sticks out the most in my mind about our show is a dude jumping all by himself, in the middle of the crowd, during one of our songs. He was the only one jumping and he was a little shorter than everyone else so I could just see his head popping out from the crowd to the rhythm of the song, his lips shaped in an "oh" shape, following the lyric to the part of the song we were playing. It made me crack up so much I had to look down at my bass!

All in all, it was a great time, despite meeting a few weirdos after the show. I have, however, decided that they are not worth mentioning here : )

We headed home right after the show as we were up early for a PJ & Gaby practice the next day before hitting up Brighton. To cut a long story short, the day started in a rather stressful and disorganised way. I was stoked to go to Brighton, I always am, but unfortunately we got there a little too late to chill out and go get cake, something Gaby and I enjoy doing. I was feeling good by the time we got there. Buz from the Punker Bunker was putting the show and not only is he lovely but he really knows what he's doing and that is always comforting. We were also very excited as I can't remember the last time we played a show with 5 foldback speakers on stage and everything mic'd up! Our friend Claire even pointed out "wow, you're playing somewhere that isn't someone's lounge!" We'd practiced a new cover song, Shortcomings by Mancub (check our myspace for more details of why we play this song), and I've been really enjoying playing it. Playing the show itself was really fun, although the crowd was mighty quiet. So much so that I could speak to them between songs without using my mic. Although this makes things more intimate, I definitely feel more at ease when people are a little bit more rowdy. It makes me feel less self conscious and more relaxed. Our notoriously drunk friend Tommy was there though, slurringly singing along as always so he made up for it : )

Dan Potthast (who was headlining) was a lovely man and random hand, the band before him, fucking ripped it up. They reminded me of ska-core like I used to hear and play back home and got me thinking about some of the people I miss from Switzerland.

After a few free Becks' we headed home to sleep lots and lots.

Next show is Rooftops on Wednesday in Harrow!

Southsea

2009-12-02T10:51:00.001-08:00

Last Saturday I had my first PJ & Gaby show in a while. It was the first of the 2 remaining shows that we have this year so I was stoked. Dan couldn't make it unfortunately, but we had a splitter pedal that runs my guitar through both a guitar and bass amp and so kinda gives the band a bit more beef if you are lacking a bass player. Let's be honest, it was every bit as good as if Dan had been there.

KIDDING! Dan, you and your fat bass riffs were missed.

Despite Dan not being able to attend, and the fact that Josh had gone out raving the night before, possibly doing drugs, probably listening to lots of trance or grime or whatever it is the kids are listening to these days, being his bad ass self and gone to bed at 7.30am, we began practice at 1 and made it to Southsea, where the show was at, by 6. I knew of the other bands playing, and knew a couple of their members, but I hadn't actually heard of any of them. Despite this, I was well excited as L was putting the show on at the famous Fawcett Inn, and L is awesome and always puts on great shows.

I was also stoked coz I got to use Dan's rad new amp (for news of how this amp has both increased Dan's happiness and his ego, please visit apologiesihavenone.co.uk. Am I ripping on Dan too much in this post? I'm gonna say no). We were there in plenty of time, which means I got to relax and not rush, something that really helps me before playing a show. We even got fed delicious food and got given some cider, making an already great time even radder.

Fenside opened things up with what was only their 3rd show, and despite a couple of technical difficulties, were unbelievable tight considering it was only their 3rd show and how technical their music is.

Playing our set was great, people seemed to get quite involved and I just felt really chilled and happy during our show. I hadn't played live with Gaby for ages and it was so cool to see her rockin' the keyboard once more.

About 2 songs from the end of our set, I pointed out that the dancing drunk guy who usually rocks his shit at every fawcett inn show was nowhere to be seen. About half a bar through the next song he seemed to just appear from the shadows from whence he had previously been lurking to grace us all with his incredibly drunk dancing! He even made our friend Jimmy dance like a puppet. However, when the next band played after us (Pure Graft), I discovered he was not actually a very nice drunk dancing guy, and was not in fact the usual jovial character I was thinking of but an altogether different person. On closer inspection, with the way his hat was kind of half flopping off his head, he did actually look like some sort of horrible coked up sleazy smurf. Anyway him and his friends started being twats during Pure Graft's set and got several warnings from L. They ignored said warnings though and she through their asses out. 3 of em! 3 drunk guys! She just grabbed em and threw em right out. L, if you're reading, I was very impressed, much respect.

Once they were gone, people came forward and if the music hadn't been so loud I'm sure a cheer would have been audible.

One other highlight of the night involved cider. But not just any cider. I had been informed by Josh, who had in turn been informed by Dan, that the Fawcitt Inn brewed its own cider called... the Fawcett Inn Cider (read it aloud again quickly). This excited me very much, as I love cider, and was determined to get a pint of Fawcett Inn cider for myself after we played. Now obviously, this would be a joke name for a cider but I did actually think it at least existed. However I was greeted with "are you taking the piss?" when I asked the bar maid for a pint of it. I was quite taken aback, as randomly taking the piss out of bar maids, or anyone really, is not really something I do. I assured I wasn't and she looked at me like I was a fucking moron. "What do you mean it doesn't exist?!" I was well dissapointed. Josh also thought it was real. Apparently, Dan had been having us on and had succesfully tricked us! What a bastard (I love you Dan : )).

Sssnakes (is that the right amount of "s"s? I don't know) finished the night off. I met them afterwards and I must say they were sweet sweet dudes.

Altogether, a wonderful night from my point of view, thanks very much to everyone that came along, hung out with us, sang along, whatever.

Right, I'm off to practice the bass lines for the new Apologies songs. Next show is Rooftops with Lords this Fridasy in High Wycombe at the Roundabout. Stoked!

I stomp too hard

2009-11-23T03:53:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has watched any of the bands i play in live will know that I enjoy a good stomp whilst playing. I like to use my left foot usually, as I find stomping with my right moves my instrument around too much and I have trouble playing properly, despite wearing both my bass and guitar higher than the average player.

Anyway, I like to stomp to the rhythm of whatever song we're playing. It's like a little habit, the same way Chris from Neil Sutherland & Friends frantically shakes his head as he plays bass, or the way Dan from Apologies also apparently engages in some sort of head moving activity (not something I've personally noticed, but something he mentioned to me before our show at 12 Bar last night). And I guess it's more difficult to carry out such things whilst you're drumming, unless you're Pat Thetic from Anti Flag.

Anyway yesterday, my stomping got me in trouble. I had a matinee show (hmmm, I just realised the word matinee sounds a lot like the word manatee) in Brighton at the Hobgoblin with Rooftops. It was really cool, there was a good crowd watching us, which I always find humbling because let's face it, no one knows any of our songs. The atmosphere was good, as was the line up. I was having a rad old time playing, as always, when I got somewhat over excited. The breakdown at the end of our second song came in and I gave it a right royal stomp as the first beat kicked off. However, whilst obviously looking extremely cool as well as rhythmical, this very stomp was to be my demise. I had stomped too hard! I felt a dull, growing pain in my left heel. I was sad. But I carried on, ignored it and had a wicked time playing the show, knowing in my mind that Dan and Josh would later make fun of me for having a stomping related injury.

Aside from the show Brighton was a great time. I went to say hi to Buz in the Punker Bunker (the shop is struggling, please consider buying your records from there) and went to a comic book store with Pook, which was basically a form of torture as I knew I wanted everything yet could could buy nothing. Before the show, I went for Mexican food with Toby from the awesome band Serf Combat. I have decided that he is one of the loveliest people I know. Go watch Serf Combat and go meet Toby. The others are all very nice too though : ) Another great thing about that show was that Davey was there. For those of you that don't know Davey, he's a legend. I mean the guy is a living legend. Always drunk, and always at every show in the world. He must have clones of himself coz I don't know how he can go to so many shows in so many different places. When I saw him I said "Hey, how nice of you to come all the way to Brighton! Shame I can't stick around to hang out afterwards as I've gotta get back to London for another show." "Oh yeah, that's Apologies and Moral Dilemma at the 12 Bar right? I'll be there!" Legend.

The only thing that annoyed me was the barman. He gave me a hard time (on 3 separate occasions) for ordering water, implying that I was a pussy etc... I just don't get it, he gets his wages no matter what he sells, what difference does it make to him what I order? Well you know what buddy, it's 2pm on a Sunday, I don't fucking feel like getting hammered right now (plus I never drink before I play a show) so gimme some god damn water, you fucking jock jack ass!... is what I was thinking in my head but in reality I just quietly said "and can I have some ice please? Thanks..."

I got to see a few people I hadn't seen at that show as well and it was nice to catch up. I couldn't stick around long though as I had to shoot off back to London for a show with Apologies at the notoriously small staged 12 Bar. I was stoked to be playing 2 shows in one day as I had unfortunately had to miss the Apologies Homestead show in Southampton the night before. It was an acoustic show though, and Dan and Josh probably did just fine without me on this occasion.

I made it back to London just in time to scoff a falafel and chill out for a little bit before we played. Despite my inability to carry out my usual stomping, the show was still good fun and we even got a couple of free beers. I thought we played well, although I literally could not hear my bass at all. I couldn't stay right til the end of the night, but what I saw of Moral Dilemma was great, the seem to really love what they do, which is awesome. I also got to meet Chloe, their bassist, who is French, and so we got to speak French together, which was real nice as I really miss speaking French all the time like I used to back home in Switzerland. If you speak French and you wanna hang out at a show, please do come say hi : )

Next show is PJ & Gaby in Southsea on Saturday November 28th!

Chatham

2009-11-16T11:16:00.000-08:00

Played an Apologies show last night in Chatham, Kent. The drive there was traffic ridden, like any good Apologies, I Have None drive to a show. Although this was a ball ache, it did give us the opportunity to all have a good chat. I was telling the others about my job. It's been a bit shit going back to work after being off having a blast in Florida for 2 weeks. I've had a few long days and some rough shit involving some asshole builders and my rather bizarre colleagues. For those that don't know, I work for a gardening and landscaping company. It can be fun sometimes, and other times it's literally awful. The fun days usually involve gardening in the sun (when it's not too hot), planting trees or doing relaxing work in, say, a traditional Japanese style garden. The awful days usually involve terrible weather, tedious jobs, ridiculous hours or my massively racist, sexist, homophobic, violent, creationist, conspiracy theorist colleague. This guys just hates everything.

It always amazes me when people that possess any of the above qualities (if you can call them that), express their views as if they are perfectly rational, normal things to have. We were driving through a predominantly Jewish part of London on the way to a job one day when my colleague noticed an Orthodox Jew walking along the street about 15 metres away. He (my colleauge) motioned as if he were loading a gun and proceeded to pretend to shoot the man. He then uttered the words "one down." I mean, what the fuck am I supposed to do in this sort of situation? How the hell do I react to that? It was surreal. Did that just happen? When I asked him what he had against Jews he replied "look man, I'm not a proper racist, I just don't like Jews and I don't like black people." Right. You're not a proper racist. Just how many different minority groups do you have to hate to be considered a "proper" racist? Are there classes you can take in racism to become a "proper" qualified racist? Anyway he tried to justify it to me by telling me how Jews are apparently "buying up" Poland (where he's from). Needless to say, I didn't get it.

His reason for disliking black people apparently stems from one of his conspiracy theories. Due to the advanced nature of certain ancient civilisations, such as the Aztecs or the Ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids, he believes that we were placed on earth by aliens as part of some sort of test or experiment to see how we would evolve (the dinosaurs were the first attempt of this experiment, apparently, and were wiped out due to not evolving in the way the aliens hoped). Black people, he believes, were placed seperately by the aliens and are somehow different to us. Again, needless to say, I very much did not get it. When I tried to explain that there wasn't any evidence supporting anything to do with his theory or his racism, he said to me "you're always basing everything on evidence and facts. I'm gonna call you evidence boy." Gosh, I'll be using logic and reason next!

I also found his views especially weird because, as a Polish person living in England, he has probably been on the receiving end of some racism, and maybe that would make him understand how stupid and messed up the whole concept of racism is.

A few days later, he noticed my "fight homophobia" patch on my bag. He literally could not believe I wasn't homphobic. He could not understand it. After trying to tell me how "unnatural" and "disguisting" it was, my other colleague chipped in with his own attempt at justifying his prejudice: "cats don't fuck dogs man." I beg to differ.

A quick Google search for "dogs humping stuff" also found the following:

On a serious note though, it's hard to know what to do. I don't wanna just shout at this guy, as I don't see it helping anything, but it's hard to be around him sometimes. At first, I thought about talking to my boss about it, but this guy has been working for this company for 8 years. At some point in that time, this has all bound to have come up with my boss. Afterall, it only took a few weeks for him to bring it up around me. Therefore, my boss probably knows all about it and obviosuly hasn't done anything about it, despite the fact that he could get fired from many other jobs for saying some of the shit he's said to me. I've thought about looking for another job, but in this job I'm self-employed, meaning that I can choose what days I work and what days I don't. This is obviously awesome for playing in bands and a luxury that is not afforded to employees in most jobs (although I am currently considering what my other options are workwise). I don't really wanna ask to change teams, because then it will look obvious and I may well get a hard time from them. Suggestions welcome.

So anyway that was my contribution to the conversation on the way to the show!

When we arrived at the Tap 'n' Tin, where we were playing, I was pretty stoked. The venue was a good size, not too big or too small and it seemed like there was a pretty good turn out. Torn Out were playing too and I really like hanging out with those guys so all was looking well. There was even a little back stage where we could keep our bags and gear.

There was a definite ska theme to the night with 3 of the 5 bands on the bill being some sort of ska band. 2 ska bands played before us and then we got ready go. I was surprisingly relaxed before the show, despite there being quite a big crowd. The show somehow crept up on me though and all of a sudden we were playing and my arm was shaking as i struggled to hold on to my pick and hit the right notes. It took me the length 100 club to get into things and after that I was relaxed and comfortable. However, after approximately this same length of time the crowd started farely swiftly dissipating. I looked out and saw that the few people that were left were standing towards the back, looking pretty uninterested. I was pretty gutted as I thought we played pretty well and everything sounded awesome on stage. It was especially disheartening as the last show we played was the Fest, which was fucking fantastic. But hey, it happens. I'm gonna tell myself that people were expecting and wanting us to be a ska band, and we weren't : ) Tyrannasorus Allan headlined and ripped it up.

Just before that though, we headed outside for a can of K and came accross 2 young lads no older than 16/17, one from Northern Ireland, one from Scotland. Both in the army and definitely on drugs, they told us that they were on their way to the Tap 'n' Tin. When we told them we had just played there they became extremely impressed and decided to give Dan all their contact details, and take all his, and assured us that they would spread the word of Apologies, I Have None farther than a thousand sporans. It was weird to think that kids so young were in the army and could leave this world any time.

After Josh hitting the wrong buttons on the Sat Nav on the way back, I got home at 2am, just in time to get 4 hours sleep before work the next day. It's ok Josh, you will live, for now.

Nexy show the Homestead on the 21st! Can't wait!

I have a blog. Awesome. Oh and Fest

2009-11-12T14:23:00.001-08:00

Music has always been a very important part of my life, but probably never more so than now, so I recently decided to (in between cans of K and contemplating just how awful my job can be sometimes) start a blog where I could write about all of the bands I play in (hence the somewhat ridiculous blog name and URL). Whenever we play shows or get up to anything interesting I will be writing about it here (as often as possible). I've really enjoyed reading blogs from other people in different bands, so hopefully those who have exhausted every other possible means of entertainment, and have already read everything else that exists on the internet, will find some solace in my ramblings.

I really want my blog to be honest. However, I'm really scared of offending or upsetting anyone. I don't just mean here, I mean in general, in life. I enjoy debate, but I hate conflict, I can't deal with it and don't know how to. I don't really know what I can do about this, but it annoys my because it basically means that I can't put some of my negative thoughts about certain situations or people down here, and so I may be giving a misleadingly positive impression of what's going on. That's not to say that I don't enjoy my life or don't love the majority of the people that surround me, both on the road or at home, because the truth is that most of the time I really do. I guess I'll just try to make this as accurate as I possibly can without totally sharing some of my darker experiences. What am I talking about anyway? Playing in 4 bands is awesome and perfectly normal, and in no way have I taken on too much : )

I just got back from Florida where I played my 4th show as Apologies, I Have None's bassist at the Fest in Gainesville. The Fest in general was awesome: great atmosphere, great bands, great food and I got to play what was hands down the most fun show of my life (oh and I got to meet Cristy C. Road. If you don't know her, type her name in a search engine, she's awesome). I've recently been noticing a certain small but annoying amount of cliquiness (that may or may not actually be a word) and machoism at certain shows back home in London (and to a certain extent the UK in general - I'm not gonna name any people or bands, and this is not to give the impression that most people in the scene act that way. On the contrary, I truly love most people I know) but I have to say that during the Fest all that bullshit completely disappeared. All the UK bands at the Fest showed an incredible amount of support for each other and also fucking tore it up at each show they played. I think we can be proud : )

I was excited, but also extremely nervous about our show. There was a misunderstanding with the Fest organisers, who thought we were an acoustic band and so put us on the acoustic stage. I was worried that we were gonna be the only really loud full band and that people might be put off. We also had the extremely daunting task of playing right after the incredible Small Brown Bike, who were playing an acoustic set under the name Big Black Motorcycle (clever eh? : )). They played amazingly. Playing their songs acoustic added a whole new dynamic to them I thought. I was worried that everyone would leave after them but I couldn't have been more wrong. I was amazed and humbled by how many Americans who had never seen our band before stuck around to rock out with us, as well as all our awesome British pals who had come out. The room was tiny and fucking boiling (33 degrees centigrade according to a thermometer on the wall) and it kicked off like no show I've had the privilege to be part of before. A sweaty mess after half an hour of pure joy, I was buzzing for hours afterwards. Thanks so much to everyone who came down and missed Good Luck to see us. It means everything.

The other amazing part of the Fest for me was getting to know our new drummer Joe. This was only his 2nd show as Apologies' new drummer. A month and a half ago, none of us had met him or knew who this ginger charmer was. He has really settled in perfectly with us both musically and in terms of his personality. Bless his heart, he drunkenly tried for an hour to get us in to a frat party on our first night in America. For the record, in case anyone's thinking of trying the same thing, "but come on, we're English" just doesn't cut it with frat dudes, even in your most charming accent : )

Despite not getting into what would have been our first ever frat party, we did meet a lovely man called Benji dressed as an angel, who took us to a halloween kegg party down the road where we proceeded to have a great time (despite being the only people not in halloween costumes) by drinkung beer from little red cups just like in the movies. By this point only Joe, my friend Jazon from back home in Switzerland and I were left of our original group as Dan, Josh and our 2 friends Jim and Beech had gone clubbing somewhere unknown to our drunken minds. Joe was obviously missing them a bit too much, as he proceeded to spill his guts in the bowl at said kegg party (sorry Joe : )).

Other Fest highlights for me included the Bridge and Tunnel show we went to after this party and the Madeline show on the Sunday. I first met Madeline when Gaby and I played a show with her and Defiance, Ohio in London a few months ago. She was awesome, we hung out a bit and swapped records. I felt like we had gotten on really well. We then played a show with her a few days later in Southampton where we went up to her to say hi and she said "Hi, I'm Madeline." "Yep, we met you a few days ago..." but to her credit she did remember us after I told her that. I had emailed her to let her know I was coming to Fest and that I was stoked to see her set. So I went to say hi to her after her set and, bless her... she still didn't remember me. Madeline, if you're reading this (blatantly, she's not, as she has probably forgotten who I am), I am merely recollecting this in a light hearted manner, am in no way upset or offended, and still think you're awesome : ) Rather than assume that I am a somewhat forgettable character, I will simply assume that you drink excessively : )

After the Fest finished, we decided swimming with manatees would be the most awesome thing we could do next, and it was.