First of all I need to say a few things about Friday 24th May and the week that followed.

On Friday 24th May Rivalries released a music video for Built To Last exclusively on the website for the music magazine Rock Sound. The video is the post below this for those that haven’t seen it. The video was so fun to make all of us in Rivalries were both excited to release it and full of anticipation about its reception. The fact it was exclusively on rocksound.tv over the bank holiday weekend was a bit of a big deal for us and should no-one watch it could mean Rock Sound loose any interest in us in the future. Well … I can’t go into figures, but the video was the most viewed page on the Rock Sound website that day. That put a massive smile on all our faces over the weekend.

The following Tuesday we released the video on YouTube and got an even more phenomenal (for us) response. We honestly thought a few mates would watch it and that’d be it. By the end of that week we had over 400 views and that number continues to rise, 758 as of Tuesday 18th June. So, to everyone involved in making it … Jaz, Katherine, Luke, Emma, Davey, Cat, Natasha, Laura, Mike, Nic, Kane, Alfie, Ren, Perkie, Mariam, Lydia, Daniel, Katie, Marie, Danille, Asha, Cameron who came up to Oxford to be in it (sorry if I’ve forgotten anyone there) plus Tommy, Neil and Vince (the band) and finally Anthony who came from France to film & extensively edit it! You are all awesome!

Right so jump forward to two weekends ago and The London Diehards (minus Tom because he had better things to do) flew over to Bremen to play for a promoter whose name I can’t remember. I know it’s run by Sven but the company name escapes me.

Anyway Steve picked Tel and myself up around 10am (hooray, no 5am get up times) and we drove up to Stansted. The journey was quite painless. I’m reading World War Z at the moment in preparation for the film that comes at the end of the week (I prefer to have read the book first so it isn’t spoiled by the film) so I spent most the journey reading that. We got to Stansted, parked up and got the bus to the terminal where we instinctively went to the bar. At this point I was still on the wagon so I skipped the Guinness breakfast and continued reading. Ciaran arrived soon after and dished out copies of the new split (Live Bad and Die Hard - my idea that was) that should have been available when we were in Sweden. They look awesome. Digipacks are my fav casing for CDs and these are no exception.

Security was, as always, a simple affair. Although Tel did get pulled up for having too much moisturiser. Personally I think they were suspicious because he has it disguised as hair gel!

Steve was served cigarettes by a man in a kilt, unfortunately there were not pictures of that, and we went (instinctively again) to the bar. I’m convinced the only reason they tell you to get to the airport 2hrs early is to coerce you into spending money at the bars. There’s one for you conspiracy theorists out there.

When we finally went around to the gate we bumped into my good friend, ex band-mate and mentioned above in the list of video extras, Alfie and his girlfriend Iza who were on their way to Poland for 2 weeks. Unfortunately neither of us had the time to wait and catch up as our respective flights were boarding.

Ahhhh Ryanair we meet again. In truth Ryanair isn’t a terrible flight it’s just so damned uncomfortable, who ever invented the seats must be a sadist, and the pilots seem to just dump the planes out the air back onto the ground without any grace. Other than that the job gets done.

We arrived in Bremen at about 5pm local time and were meet by Sven, Hoggie(I think that’s his name) and a lady I can’t remember the name of. Didn’t even see her after we arrived at the venue.

En route in their people carrier we were offered Becks (I declined) we discussed the different types of Becks, we drove past the Becks brewery and generally just had a big Becks filled car ride.

As soon as we arrived at the venue we sound checked. I was using the the drummer from Bruise Heads gear, he has an odd choice of breakables. The snare is terrible. So flat, open, hollow, there is no top end or crack to it, it’s like the shit tin snares that come with starter kits with names like Power Beat! Snare aside he has a strange choice of cymbals for an Oi band. All Staggs (nothing wrong with that, I love Stagg for cheap, no nonsense cymbals, best low end brand!) but he had a 12” splash & 14” crash plus a little 12” china. I’m used to 18” 20” & 21” sizes, it took a bit of time to adjust but thankfully the small sizes worked. I think probably because they were Staggs. Any other brand probably would have been terrible. The ride he has was amazing. Like my Z3 mega bell only a lot cheaper! I’m going to buy one as soon as money will allow which basically means once I have bought the next gen iPhone as soon as it is announced and the new MacBook Air, which I am probably going to buy tomorrow because temptation is starting to prove a little too much.

By the way I am a massive Apple enthusiast, they are simply the best computer hardware & software manufacture. Anyone that want’s to dispute that, be my guest. I watched the Apple WWDC Keynote Monday last week and I’m extremely existed for their new products. Especially OS Mavericks, it shits all over Windows!

While on that subject. Gutted Microsoft, they have been making wrong turns for years. Internet Explorer (the worst of all the web browsers), Vista, Windows 8 & now XBox One. This is really the start of their demise. The only thing going for them (XBox aside) is that they are cheap. Actully that’s not quite true. Their software is expensive and constantly being updated but as soon as more offices start to make the switch to Apple (it’s happening slowly), Microsoft is fucked! No-one is going to buy XBox One … every XBox 360 owner on every forum and article I have read is going to make I the switch to Playstation and I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft makes some serious U-Turns on the system either before or shortly after release.

Anyway, back to Bremen …..

I bent my front door key out of shape trying to tune the horrible snare with the horrible old school flat head screw driver tuning lugs and still failed to get it to sound any good!

Next we were shown back stage (which was actually behind the stage for once) where we were showered with nibbles, booze, and later food.

On the booze front there were 2, very large chiller draws full of Becks Gold. There must have been 2 crates in each draw and later on in the evening when all the booze ran out, they were topped up … I love European shows



Food arrived from a catering company no less, this is how you treat a band ladies, gents and promoters alike, you pay their travel, their accommodation, give them more beer than they can drink and hire a catering company to feed them. Awesome! It was some sort of meat in soem sort of sauce with an assortment of veg. The best bit was the potato in cheese sauce, like cauliflower cheese but with potatos. It was also go good everyone (London Diehards and Bruiseheads) had two plates worth, before the final band (Schusterjungs, had arrived. I hope we left them enough :/

The next few hours passed by with me continuing to read World War Z and it’s at this point I decided to throw myself from the wagon and start drinking. It was free booze that I figured would only go to waste (haha) if I didn’t partake so I went head first into what I assumed would result in the mother of hangovers the next day. Waiting for things to kick off which they did around 8. I set up the merch table while Bruiseheads played and instantly had a queue form for tees and CDs - Europeans love buying merch - which kept me busy until we went on stage.

Apparently the sound at the front of the stage was pretty shit, only really hearing drums, for me though, for once, I could hear everything quite well and all in all we played our best. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, to the point that one fellow was moved to try and steel a fold back monitor … each to their own.



Once we came off stage I was back on merch, selling nearly everything out and disappointing a lot of people by running out of mediums and larges … not because we had all the mediums and larges we have, but because Ciaran didn’t pack them all, the tit.



When I finally got backstage I was tasked with signing drum sticks, not as uncommon as you might think, and finally got the chance to sit down. I joined Tel for what we hoped would be a quiet rest before we carried which is when the King of the German Skinheads came over to talk about anything and everything. I call him the King of the German Skinheads because he was a big mo-fo, and this is the nickname we gave him, though no-one quite remembers hows to pronounce his real name, Casse Waker or something like that. From this point on there was no shutting him up. From now until we got a cab home he was talking and talking and talking, even when Schusterjungs came off stage and everyone else joined us back stage he kept on. I’m sure it was lal very entertaining stuff, I even tried to teach him to drum at one point because he was asking how, and I stupidly thought I could teach a 50+ year old drunk German the basics in 5mins! Ha! When I should him a paradiddle, Right Left Right Right etc … he started boxing the air! Nutter!

By about 1am we were ready to go, a cab was called for us and we went to the hotel. We had been given reservation numbers to punch into a code at the front door to get in and then again into our room doors. Being drunk we had trouble reading the numbers and entering them into the keypads, so what should have been a fairly simple operation felt like we were breaking into the hotel. Especially as we had a room each and had to go through the process 4 times.

By the time I fell into bed it was 2am and I was asleep almost instantly, only to be awoken at 8.30am by Tel texting me asking if I was going for breakfast. Bugger getting up yet my head said and I went back to sleep.



About an hour later I woke up feeling absolutely fine, christ knows how that works but I got up, showered at went to catch breakfast before it ended as I released I was quite hungry. God I wish I hadn’t bothered. It was quite literally a bread and butter meal, with little more than bread, butter, some other sandwich spreads and orange juice. Maybe it’s because I was there half an hour before the end and they were out of all the good stuff, maybe its because it was a really cheap Ibis hotel and it was a shit breakfast. For 7 Euros!!! Glad I wasn’t paying.



Tel’s mate who lives in Bremen came to meet us for a coffee before we left and was still unable to get my name right. The entire nighe he had been calling me John … don’t know where he got that from and I didn’t bother to correct him. As we got into cabs to go back to the airport we shook hands and he said he’d add me on Facebook (not that I use it too much) and I told him that he was welcome to try. I would now comment that it would be good luck finding a John who doesn’t exisit, somehow he did manage to find me … how do people do it?!



The trip to the airport took no time at all, considering the journey from the venue (10mins from the airport) to the hotel took ages so we were about an hour early and they wouldn’t let us through to air side until it was time. It was a really small airport so they don’t just let you through to the otherside (literally just through a glass door) until 2hrs before the flight otherwise it’d get really crowded. As we would soon see.



We sat in McDonalds until it was time to head through and once we did we sat at the little cafe opposite our gate people watching (Cairan fantasising about what he’d liketo do sexually with the more attractive ones) until it was time to board. We were due to board at 2pm for a 2.30pm flight. At 2pm the plane hadn’t even arrived. at 2.30pm they announced it was delayed for some reason or another and this went on for at least an hour, probably a bit more, until we finally saw our plane arrive and pull up to the gate.



We jumped in the queue and not long after we board the plane. The plane, incidentally, which had been sat outside another gate the entire time we were at the airport. Fuck knows what that was about!

Unfortunatley for Ciaran he didn’t get to sit next to any of his much desired and fantasised about passengers, instead he got stuck with a lady so large she had to have a seat belt extender. How someone that size fits into a seat on Ryanair is beyond me, they is barely room for me and I’m not all that tall or big!

I slept for most the journey back which to be fair isn’t long and we landed around 4pm local time. The same time Steve’s car park ticket was due to expire! Marvelous. We imagined big yellow clamps and large, unfriendly, privately contracted men with small nasty parking tickets once we arrived back at the car. In fact we experienced the complete opposite. Unicorns! No not really unicorns, although they would have been cool. We explained the flight had been delayed to the man at the car park exit barrier and he let us through. How nice of him :)

And thus ends another trip away with the London Diehards.

This Thursday I am playing closer to home, at The Intrepid Fox in Tottenham Court Road with Underclass. It’s Free! Last time Underclass had a gig I crashed the car. This time I’m taking the tube. Hopefully that doesn’t crash!



Peace and paradiddles.