EUROPE PART 2

Hey, we liked Europe so much, we decided to get back there as soon as we could. We all flew home to play 3 shows in the US, Toronto, Chicago and New York, our only shows that summer in the entire continent, and then flew back to Europe to focus on more major markets like Zagreb, Colchester, Kutna Hora, and Myslowice, where compact disc technology is starting to make some major important breakthroughs.

The first show was in Colchester, which is the oldest city in the UK. Don't worry though - it still looked like every other city in the country except for London. We played in a nice church/venue that had give up all the pretense of being a church (except for the old time graveyard outside) and had great sound and sightlines, but there was little sign of Jesus or any of that nonsense. A lot of eldery people showed up to our show, which was great, because they will probably start coming to this website to write lame comments that will make our skin crawl. When we drove downtown after the show to get some food, the second we stopped the bus it was mobbed by people. Not fans, just people who were drunk or high, and our giant green bus probably resembled a giant bud, so these people flocked to it like bees to honey. Somehow they all had markers and start tagging the bus as soon as it stopped, writing like "Baz" and other inane British shit all over it.



We had to bail, because we had an overnight drive to Knebworth park to play Sonisphere.(which is basically just on the other side of London from where we were) because our van is really slow. We got to the park at like 3am, did a pee and got back in the bus to sleep in the parking lot. I think thats how Oasis did it when they played Knebworth anyway. As you know, we are a hard band to categorize. You may find us playing along side Mission of Burma, or The Gossip. Today we played a big metal festival with Metallica and Nine Inch Nails. The headliner for our day was Limp Biscuit I think. This was the vibe:

Which, I feel is a pretty good characterization of our sound - punk, but with emotion, you dig?

After our set Damian made us all do this autograph signing, that 4 people showed up to. It was embarrasing, but we met a kid who's mom was in The Dolly Mixture, and who's dad we think is Captain Sensible. He's the kid not getting autographed


This is what the line up looked like (The kids actually in line were for the band after us):



Then we got back on the bus for a 2nd overnight drive within the UK in a row. Again, just to the other side of London. We got to Luton (or something) at like 4am and basically immediately started to line up. I lined up for almost 3 hours to check a bag, and then got in another huge customs line. We flew to Helskinki and where there for about 20 hours to play Ankkarock (which I think means "Duck Rock" because there were little ducks all over the program). The rider was like 80% weird Finndish candy, and 20% snap peas whole in shell. A few weird Finnish bands played that we saw in the paper the next morning, then us, then two big US indie bands. We were back at the hotel in bed by 8pm and out of the country by noon.

Back in England, we headed all the way west to Newquay, the country's very own laid back hippy surfing village. Aside from the Relentless Energy Drink banners that had been placed on every flat surface in the city (they were sponsering that weeks surfing competition), it was very pretty, and we even saw some detached houses, which was a first. The venue overlooked the bay. We would have gone in but everyone in the water was wearing a massive wetsuit, since you know it was still only August and probably still freezing.



Then Sandy did a shoot for Good Housekeeping:



Next - and if you have a compass handy, you will probably be pretty confused by now -we headed for the Czech Republic. After filling up on Cornish pastries and watch women in 18 inch heels pass out all over the place, we got on the road for a 22 hour drive straigh east into the heart of darkness. We learned many things on the road over those two days, none of which can be repeated here.

Despite having been in a van for the good part of 2 days straight, we got to Kutna Hora with only 30 minutes before our set. Kutna Hora is a very small gothic medieval town with no paved roads and all connect buildings that turns it into a giant (well not that giant) maze. Add to that the show was taking place in the backyard of some random church that seemed to be connected to other churchs on all 4 sides. Not that many people live in this town, but many appear to be HEALTH fans.



Kutna Hora also features probably the grossest building I've ever been in. The Sedlec Ossuary is like a reall regular church basement, except instead of being filled with hardcore kids, it is filled with bones. Not fancy bones or famous people bones, just piles of really dusty, dark, gross bones. They have a website, and it looks like a geocities-era black metal bands website. Apparently some monk sprinkled dirt on a cemetary on the ground many years ago, which made it a popular vacation spot for bohemian corpses. The demand was so large that they had to build an ossuary to store all the skeletons. Apparently because they were bored, or because lego hadn't been invented yet, at some point they just started playing around with the bones and making chandeliers out of the spines and shit, and little crosses out of femers. Pretty grim. And there was thick dusk on every surface of those 40 thousand skeletons.



Thoroughly creeped out, we drove to Poland to play OFF festival. They meals were in this fancy restaurant on site and we had many meats and peirogies with dill and kraut. Our set was in the middle of the forest mostly, and was cool except for almost the entire set some weird old guy was staring at Ben like Hannibal Lector, I think I even caught him licking his lips once or twice. I'm assuming he posts here. They divided the audience into two sections to make room for the Polish slip and slide.



I was so happy to be there I literally split myself in two so I could experience it twice at once.



After that I gchatted Sandy to talk to her to several feduciary aspects of the band, and later caught Ben and Jonah both pretending to be her the whole time.



Where was Sandy? Oh thats right, pretending to be a ghost:



The next morning on the way out of Poland we were so tired from moshing to Spiritualized the night before that this cute moment happened for a brief moment in time:



Until Damian put a coin in Josh's mouth and Josh punched me in the neck.

We got to Essen to play some other fest. It was taking place in an old 1940s machine gun factory. It looks like two huge train stations connected to each other - it was massive. I don't know what was going on in Germany in the 40s, but whatever it was they must have needed a lot of machine guns.

After the show we cut our roadies hair. Remember I was telling you about the bones church? This was more gross. Adams dreadlocks were older than most of those bones in that church by like centuries. Here is a series of pics for you high-girl-with-braids-cutting-gross-dreads-while-high (german) fetishists out there (and you know you are).











It was a horrifying experience for us all. We learned a lot about the mysteries contained in a vintage set of thousand year old dreads. Afterwards we put some of them in a pizza box and tried to trick John Josephs into eating on of them like a pizza, but he wasn't impressed and beat the shit out of all of us repeatedly. But later I saw him smoking one of the, nuff said. See you next time, Europe.

FYF

Here is a poster for the next show we're playing. I guess you would call it "Fuck Yeah Fest Fest" or something. Or like FY Fest. Or FYFF. Anyhow, we're playing, and then going on a surfing holiday.

OUCH

Don't stand near Ben while he's playing unless you are a babe.

GLASTO

Hey, our biggest fan and Liberian human rights abuser Andy Capper wrote something about our Glasto show for his mag Bizzare. It didn't end up getting printed, but here it is:


My name is Little Andy and this year I won an internet myspace competition to rock out with my favourite pop punk band in the world Fucked Up!

I was whisked to a secret location near an airport where I met the singer, Mike Haliechuk at his awesome tourbus

The guys in Fucked Up are like totally chilled out guys. They have a crazy onstage presence and all that and their lyrics are about riots and shit but the guitarist Sandy Miranda and bass player Ben Cook like nothing better than hanging out in the tourbus listening to romantic folk music while the singer Mike thinks up of awesome new riffs.

Being backstage with the guys is also totally awesome. They play Dead Kennedys on Guitar Hero while waiting to go on stage after the band Rolo Tomassi who make absolutely CRAZY music that sounds like nothing I have ever heard before.

Wanna take the word "CRAZY" into a canon and fire it into space? Here goes...Rolo Tomassi's singer is a girl!!!

And she has her own fashion label called... wait for it......"DOUCHE BAG!" Man i laughed so hard with all the guys backstage while drinking free whiskey and getting really drunk while everybody else was sober. This is the Rolo Tomassi's girl's stuff, it's like hair bands for girls. Totally weird. Totally wild!

Damian is the guitarist and leader of the band and right now he's about to get totally wasted on a drink named after a racist oi band from Boston!...
Only joking!! Dame "The Abraham Man" is TOTALLY STRAIGHT EDGE and would never drink booze. (I drank that whole bottle and was secretly doing cocaine the whole night).

I only watched a little bit of Fucked Up's set because I was outside talking to some awesome babes who also hang out backstage at punk shows but this was the end bit when Damian does a guitar solo and hugs all the little boys. Kinda weird. I was wasted by this point.

And then we drove 16 fucking hours to Glastonbury in this bus. There is an awesome creative tension between Mike and Damian and they are always fooling around about how much they hate each other when they actually love each other. This is what happened when I asked them to pose for a photo together! Great joke guys!

Then all the guys in the band played a joke on the bassist Ben Cook (he used to be in a "NYHC" style band called Linkin Park), by buying him wellies that are totally made for chicks! The joke's on you "cookster!" (That's his nickname)

Hey Sandy what's wrong?? You better turn that "frown upside down" cos today's the first day of summer and you're due on stage at any minute!

I totally watched the guys from the side of the stage and it rocked my ass off. It was then I realised I had totally mixed up all their different roles in the band and that Jonah was in fact the singer and not Mike.

I didn't see all of the set because I was doing drugs in the toilets but this is the singer, Jonah (sorry Jonah), warming up his vocal chords at the side of thestage. That T-shirt is a reference to how awesomely pumped he is about singing punk songs.

After the set we smoked Montechristo cigars and doused ourselves in Aquad Di Parma like yuppies. Then we walked and sneered at all the people who were't in punk bands.

Get the joke much? Cos there's only one girl in Fucked Up (keyboardist Sandy Miranda), it tends to be a big of a "sausage fest" (not that I'm complaining!). Just after this photo I said to the Jewish percussionist Josh Zucker that Glastonbury "reminded me of a concentration camp".

He gave me back an icy glare and told me that my comment belittled the 8 million victims of Nazi torture in World War 2 and everything went rapidly down hill from there.

Attn Creeps

It's getting a bit much.

SUMMER PART 1

Hey wow, we're done our annual touring of the European festivals tour, 2009. Last year as you may remember, we ventured into the summer, fresh faced and onstage at sunrise on some of Europe's greatest festivals. We played in front of upwards of 100 people at T in the Park in Scotland, after arriving so late that not only did we have to sneak into the festival because our gate had closed for the night, but we had to take our replacement band offstage as they readied their instruments to start performing. We played Reading and Leeds to thousands of adoring fans, as Damian would unveil that years coup-de-grace, the now infamous "Mangina", that would later be featured in rags through the world, from Spin, to NME. We played Zoo8, which would get shut down after 2 days of mismanagement and cancelling performers. At Lowlands, we would spend most of the rainy day next door at Wallabi world, riding rollercoasters, and at Eurockenees we made friends with rappers and played to thousands of French hippies at 3 in the morning. What would 2009 bring?

The summer started in Barcelona, where 10 months earlier we had experienced one of our lowest moments (no, I'm not talking about missing Barca vs Real, a game that was happening a scant 40 miles out of grasp) but Damians meltdown inside a ski mask. This year we were primed for success, and arrived at Primavera festival with the freshest of intentions. After a drug addled afternoon, we took the stage at around midnight. Sandy played one song completely in the wrong key for some reason (addled...), but the rest of the set was triumphant. The night ended for me at 5am, after trying mercilessly to get to sleep on the 20th floor of a hotel room facing the festival, which throbbed with techno loud enough that I thought maybe I should be paying admission. Some of the band would fly home directly afterwards to finish school and concentrate on artistic and familial responsibilities, while the rest would stay in Europa to engage in more romantic but wistful endeavors.

Our work related activities started up again towards the end of June at the festival seasons gleaming and muddy crown jewel - Glastonbury. Almost 200,000 people come to this cesspool of chips and dirty every year, almost 5 times the number of people that inhabit some of Europe's more elegant COUNTRIES (ie Monaco, where I'm writing from now bitches). They bring with them flip flops, tents, alcohol and really strange British taste in music. We arrived in our ridiculous green bus at noon, were offstage at 5, and bumbling our way towards Dover by 7, now weighed down with many extra pounds of mud and "wellies" ("galoshes").



Andy Capper came with us and when he got fed up with our tour style he took a taxi home to Shoreditch.

Then we played some shows in France and Belgium during the week that were boring. Except that one day where Sandy got tricked by this horse into getting electricuted by a fence:



This was our hotel the next morning somewhere in Belgium. It was right next to the Casino, where the night before Coolio had played. Europeans are weird.



We got to Denmark the following Wednesday to play Roskilde, which had some heavy hitter acts (Kanye, Coldplay, Oasis). Sorry to say, we didn't meet any of them. The band before us was some weird steam barbie style act that none of us understood because they were that European. Before our set the stage manager "got all in our faces" because he obvious reads blogs, and new that our performance would feature some extra curricular activities from Damian and he was really worried and basically we felt like we were in trouble, but it was cool in the end and we behaved. Except Sandy somehow ended up in a wheelchair:



I played football for a few hours with some kid, and we all thought it was cute;



The next day in Muenster, we played after The Cro Mags and that was really weird too.

A few days later we played a really weird festival in Rotterdam that was thrown by the city government and I couldn't stop laughing for almost the entire set because the only members of the audience I could see were:
1) the guy holding up his 1 year old baby, wearing a Mr Bungle shirt
2) A few homeless people taking turns laying down in the middle of the crowd, and dancing in super slow motion
3) Some little kid with a like "Kiss my balls" tshirt or something
4) A million goths

Also Damian made them do a huge wall of death, which, if you fully understand his love of the band Municipal Waste, is hilarity on the grandest scale. Or maybe I meant to type tragedy. After that we drove east to play in more weird places. First stop was Zagreb Croatia, where we played in an old military bunker outside of town or something, which was actually really cool and the show was sick. Someone asked Jonah what is 2 favourite bands were, and this was his answer:



The interview got him so pumped that he had to start doing jumping jacks right there.



A few days later we found ourselves in Budapest Hungary and discovered that the club was less than a mile from one of Europes finest natural spring bath houses. We got there too late to hang out in the steam rooms, but we did get to spend a few hours lounging in the pool with a lot of really fat hairy dudes, and we basically had to form a human shield around Ben full time, for reasons you can probably (and probably regularly do) imagine.



Later that night we noticed that had been booked into the hotel from The Shining, and so accordingly, a few of us were murdered that night





Then the next day, wow. We weren't even supposed to play this festival, but we extended the tour in order to get to Novi Sad to play Exit Festival. It takes place inside a fortress, and Korn was playing, as well as like 50 euro DJs. That was pretty much the whole festival. We got treated like Serbian royalty, which mean we got 9 rooms in Novi Sad's finest hotel and were promptly kicked out the next morning at 9 so that Kraftwerk could get into our rooms (I am not kidding). Crossing the border was nuts. There was a huge line up of cars and it took us like almost 2 hours to cross. Dudes were pushing their cars so they didn't waste gas. It was like a big party in the street, except really hot and no babes and no party things at all. But there were a lot of people hanging out in the street, thats for sure.



Also some of us met Korn:



We went to the airport the next day, and it was bad vibes. The airline never processed Damians ticket so we had to buy a new one right there. Also, the airport is named after Nikola Tesla, so I was thinking maybe all the planes were running on some kind of electricity that hasn't been invented yet. Plus Korn was checking in like an entire festivals worth of gear. There were atheletes from all over the world because Belgrade was hosting some kind of "sports" festival. We ran into runners from Australia and like 150 japanese people, who mostly just laughed and played cards. Sandy posed next to a few of them:



They were playing "asshole", which probably explains why they were giggling so much.

All in all, tour was really fun so we all agreed to try it again sometime. And we did! Like a week later we were back in Europe. But that will be for next time. Also unfortunately we forgot to ask for any money to play, oh well!





Thanks to Bram for driving and loving No Age, and Anna "Montana" Bewars for making us drive from Rotterdam to Zagreb.