Wednesday 24 December 2008

2008 in pictures pt.1





















Photos by Holly Erskine, Matt Spalding, Lucy Johnston, Lucy Bridger, Bart Pertman

Tuesday 23 December 2008

RT guest review on ClashMusic

Recently I was very fortunate to be given the chance to see one of my favorite bands M83 play at Nottingham Arena by internet words guru Mike Diver. In return for this I did a guest review ClashMusic. You can read it here

Tomassi year in pictures to come soon!

james

Tuesday 16 December 2008

plans for 2009...

we have some pretty exciting plans for next year.

firstly, we'll be embarking on our first trips to germany and the netherlands in january, playing at eurosonic festival on our way. we'll then join the bronx and fucked up for the shred yr face 2 tour in the UK. sweet bill, eh?

this is potentially the most exciting thing we have going on though; a singles club! in 2009 we'll be releasing 4 exclusive 7"s containing new and exclusive material. whilst i can't divulge too much right now, expect splits, covers and sweeeet remixes. you can pre-order this now from here for a reasonable £16. get involved.

james

Sunday 14 December 2008

4 days in

to yet another tour!
we had a couple of days in LDN before we started to sort out various tomassi bits. this included a BBC session for huw stephens that included a xmas cover of east 17's stay another day. i don't know if its aired yet but if it has you can listen back here.

after we did that we went down to rak studios to do some backing vocals on the new gallows record. we got to record with gggarth who's done stuff for rage against the machine. not bad. unfortunately though i screamed myself hoarse and have consequently lost my voice. i can speak ok but the last few shows haven't been amazing. nevermind.

we joined foals in oxford on thursday as support at the first of their oxford homecoming shows. this was really fun. everyone was in a really cool mood, the show was great and the aftershow stuff was a blast. cough medicine DOES work as a mixer with vodka.

we're now 2 days into our tour with the ghost of a thousand. today is exeter. good food, ok weather, pleasant times.

james

Monday 8 December 2008

NYE

Photobucket

for those of you without x-ray eyes, tickets available fom here:

Saturday 29 November 2008

do you dub(lin)?

so we made it back from ireland in one piece, although pieces of us were left behind...
a few of us got a bit too excited and maybe drank too much. this resulted in one case with vomit on the side of our van. it was pretty funny i think.

but yeah, more to the point, we would like to say a huge thankyou to foals for taking us over to ireland with them. it was personally my first time even visiting dublin and belfast so to go play shows there was an awesome experience.

we will definitly look to return next year and hopefully do some headline shows.

thanks to alex, fin and tom for completing the tomassi road experience yet again and to all the lovely people we met, hung out with, talked music with and danced with.

pictures to follow soon.

james

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Sup, Ed Tomassi's First Blog

I'm breaking a trend. James has done a great job so far in being the only Tomassi blogger. From now on, i will join him in letting everyone know what we have been up to.

This month has seen up play shows almost every weekend, with two more weekends of show to come! This leaves us all with a lot of free time during the week. James knocks about in Nottingham now, and this week the Joes have gone to Oxford and Edinburgh to visit relevant girlfriends, while Eva has been sewing at home in her room. I have done several things.

Firstly, I was bored a few weeks ago and bought an xbox 360 with pro-evolution soccer 2009. It's brilliant. I am getting quite good at it and will be taking challenges on xbox live early next year. If anyone wants to get beaten, let me know.

Also, last night was gig crazy in Sheffield! Youthmovies, Dananananaykroyd and Fucked Up were all in town. I had to apologise to the Youthmovies men and go to the Danan... show in order to see Calf by Calf and Pulled Apart by Horses support. It was sweet! Youthmovies DJ'd after the show, and a lot of really good dancing happened. Best dancers of the night were Nat and Graham. Hugh was a close third.

So yeah, bring on this weekend. I am well excited for GenghisTron, Behold the Arctopus and The Network on Saturday. It could possibly be the best show ever.

Bye for now.

Ed

x

Friday 14 November 2008

DJ Set on Monday

Photobucket

I'll be playing songs between 10.30pm-11pm and then 11.30pm til close.
Three Trapped Tigers are well worth checking out too!

Monday 10 November 2008

b-b-b-b-breakdown

in 3 and a half years of touring we have been incredibly fortunate to have never had a problem with a van whilst we've been on the road. that was until last night. after finishing up at hokaben festival in london, we loaded up and headed north. all was fine. we needed fuel so we stopped at northampton, pretty much exactly halfway between london and sheffield. everyone got out, used the services and got back in the van as normal. then it wouldn't start. bearing in mind none of us have much experience with vehicles ourselves, we had little to no idea what to do.

fortunately, a guy in a breakdown recovery sort of van was parked near us. we tried a push start to no avail. he did all he could and left (it was 1.30am). we rang bean's dad, whose van it is, and asked his advice. we waited and tried again and it got to about 2.30am. we then pushed the van from the service area into the petrol station to fill up and see if that helped. it didn't. we called martyn again and he got out of bed and drove down in another van to try help.

whilst waiting, to entertain ourselves, we played a few games which i'd recommend if you ever get stuck. one person went into the petrol station, hid an item and everyone then had to go in and try and find it. the attendant looked a little freaked out but indulged our primitive form of entertainment. 

i eventually went to sleep (probably the most sensible thing to do at whatever time past 3am it was. martyn eventually appeared and with his superior knowledge of automobiles, sorted it out. this was at 5am. we got home at 7am. brutal.

Tuesday 4 November 2008

oh, what up internet?

holy shit.

long time no update. basically, ive not had regular internet access recently. despite not being on tour a few cool things have happened. firstly, our music video was finished! you can watch it below. i would suggest viewing it in high quality.



whilst i usually don't really care about peoples comments on our band online, there were a few things posted about the video that i wanted to clear up. firstly, we made the video because we thought it would be fun. it was done as a favour by a friend of a friend. we had no preconceptions as to how it would come out afterwards and are all really happy with the end result. it wasn't all posed and none of it was rehearsed. we simply put on a free all ages show locally (something we haven't done for SOOO long), invited our friends and made a night of it. its a pretty foreign thing for a band like ourselves to do a video so we wanted it to be as much of a normal show as possible. we all think the guys who filmed it did a sweet job in capturing that. so yeah, watch it and tell us what you think.

in other news, eva is 'officially' cool now. said the NME. read their blog here.

more shows and hopefully new jams on their way soon.
james

Sunday 19 October 2008

TOUR UPDATE!!

yeah the last few days have been pretty sweet.

we played our best manchester show pretty much ever at the academy! killer sound (thanks fin), awesome lights and i had a lot of fun. was really cool to see some crowd movement during our set too! i think we've all been a little suprised with the good reaction with had from some of the blood red shoes crowd.

friday we played brainwash festival in leeds, headlining at royal park cellars. it was forward russia's last show for a while next door at the brudenell (same festival, alternating venues) so loads of people were about. it was great to catch up with some bands and folk and i had a good time playing. some pretty interesting events prior to the show:

1) on the way to the show we had a scrape in the van. alex got a bit upset (totally justified) but fortunately the van still works fine. the damage was purely superficial.

2) on the way to our friend robyns flat prior to the gig, some wasted guy was lighting fireworks in the street and having a wicked time. it was pretty funny until he put one next to an electrics box and it shot across the road and missed me an eva by millimetres. potentially catostrophic!

following the show we drove to joe n's girlfriends flat in edinburgh and slept, got up and drove to aberdeen. brutal.

Thursday 16 October 2008

DAY2 - LEEDS

after a pretty hideous day off, we played the cockpit in leeds.

having only played the small room a few weeks ago i was pretty up for returning, knowing we'd play to an almost entirely different crowd. the show was an early start/finish because of a club night and change overs had to be pretty prompt so we were on at 8.15. to be honest, it was possibly the most of enjoyed playing for months. there was just something about how everything came together. the lights, how it sounded, how busy it was, the response we got from the crowd. i can remember just looking up mid-headbanging and catching glimpses of the other tomassi's and seeing how much they were getting into it and it really made me enjoy myself all the more.

after the set we got the opportunity to catch up with our friends who are studying in leeds which is always an absolute treat. we did an interview for leeds student radio with our buddy graham which went really well. we got asked some really interesting questions rather than the mundane 'how did you form?', 'what are yr influences?' etc. so look out for that if yr in leeds!

we return to leeds on friday to play brainwash festival. i think we're headlining at royal park cellars. scary! i was disappointed to find out that dananananaykroyd had pulled out but its for recording so totally fair do's. im so pumped to hear their album. awesome.

Tuesday 14 October 2008

blood red shoes tour

DAY1 - portsmouth
got picked up from nottingham by the other tomassi's at midday. they were late but at the last organised pick-up i kept the others waiting for 2 hours so probably justified. portsmouth isn't as far away as id initially thought so we got there in reasonable time, did 1st day of tour things - introduced ourselves properly to the other bands and their crew etc.

it was cool to revisit a place we've only played once (at the pyramid centre with gallows earlier this year) and to know we'd be playing to pretty much an entirely different crowd. wedgewood rooms is a nice venue and fin and their inhouse monitor guy made it sound fucking massive. this was pleasing. im usually apprehensive about seperate monitor people because it usually sounds empty onstage making it much harder to enjoy but this guy totally knew what he was doing.

1984 seem like thoroughly nice chaps. its pleasant to be touring with a french band and their accents and the way they word certain english things are really cool. they described us postponing education to do the band as 'making an adventure' which i thought sounded very romantic. as romantic as fish and chips and becks can be...

blood red shoes were real nice to us and it was cool to see them properly for the first time having only seen them at leeds fest before. i dont really think you can judge a band properly on a festival set. but yeah, they rocked it. was also really cool to find out that reuben from johnny truant was teching for them. hes a nice chap.

we drove home after the show as today is a day off. this is my first time back since moving to nottingham last week and it feel foreign. had a pretty dry time as all my stuff is in another city!

roll on leeds tomorrow...

Sunday 12 October 2008

blood red shoes tour...

after having a few days off, we go on tour again tomorrow!
dates are up here so check it out and get involved. we are of course very excited to playing again and to hit up some places we didnt make it to on the hysterics tour.

thats all for now...
x

Tuesday 7 October 2008

last day of tour!

ok, so essentially the notion of keeping a tour diary totally went to shit. it wasn't because none of us could be bothered but more that we were actually busy being on tour and enjoying all the amazing moments that the last week has thrown at us. i think sometimes its easier just to let things happen rather than chronicle them so desperately.

even so, here are a few concise highlights of the last few days:
  • returning to a venue we played in leicester last year to 4 people and playing to over a hundred.
  • fuzz club - in general an amazing show. both us and throats had a wicked time and destroyed the club night. some more than others (namely me....).
  • being suprised by the turnout in cheltenham and meeting alex holy roars family!
  • the company of throats and their crew.
  • sams house and how excellent the food was.
and the lowlights:
  • technical problems in hereford completely spoling the gig for us. i apologise to everyone who was there!
  • getting thrown out of fuzz club. it was funny sort of but i was a total dick. apologies to the promoter simon who treated us brilliantly all night. sorry!
  • the idiot who broke the microphone during throats set and then did a runner.
  • tour having to end today.
we have white heat tonight then return home for a few days off before heading out again with blood red shoes. id like to say a huge thanks to everyone who has been involved with this tour on any level. all the people who came to the shows, bought our merch or just spoke to us after the show. we've had a fantastic first album tour and are itching for the second one.

cheers,
james

Wednesday 1 October 2008

hysterics days 7&8

DAY7 - YORK
today we returned to the junction. a venue we'd have a lot of fun at earlier in the year.
unfortunately, the day started on a pretty bad note. i recieved a phone call from stephen m!m! to be told that on their way back to where they were crashing after nottingham. they'd had an altercation in the street with some other folk and a fight had ensued. this resulted in their bassist luke breaking his hand/damaging some tendons in his hand meaning they couldnt make the show. shit times. we wish him a speedy recovery!

after the initial disappointment of them not making the show, we were again disappointed on the food front. i'd worked myself up to get wagamama. i was totally in the mood for noodles. having convinced the others it was a wicked idea, i asked the promoter if there was one in york. he said he'd never heard of it. burn. half of us ended up settling for one of the work chinese take-outs ive ever eaten. oh well...

onto the show itself, we were pleased upon returning to the venue that it'd filled up nicely. a couple of friends id not seen over summer had come so it was cool to catch up. we played and despite the chap doing lights not really managing to match what we were doing onstage, it was a lot of fun. during the last song we managed to get a human pyramid that touched the ceiling! amazing scenes. return to sheffield.

DAY8 - CAMBRIDGE
having seen them once earlier in the year, i was seriously excited to get throats on tour. cambridge was their first show and in the intimate portland arms i knew they'd totally kill it. i managed to get a sneaky preview of their tracks from the forthcoming split with the network (buy this from holy roar!) so was looking forward to hearing the new jams which, of course, did not disappoint.

following the show, we tried sorting out some party plans but to no avail. we returned to chateau spalding in derby and went to sleep. dry.

Monday 29 September 2008

tour days 5 & 6

DAY5 - GLASGOW
epic drive. i think i slept the majority of the way there or it just went really quickly. we've played upstairs in the bar of glasgow barfly so it was refreshing to find on arrival that we were playing the real venue downstairs. we set up and, as usual when in glasgow, went to monorail records. picked up the first los campesinos album (finally!) for a bargain £5.99. also bought endless summer by fennesz. definitly worth a listen. we had a bunch of press to do and one particularly nice gentleman had made us som 'aztec cookies'. amazing scenes. we love food so having them after eating some wicked veggie food at 13th note totally made my night.

personally, ive had mixed experiences of our times in scotland so to play to a really full room of people who seemed genuinely into what we were doing was really pleasant. its made me look forward to our scottish dates in october a lot more. driving master matt spalding decided he was up for the drive back home after so we went full speed ahead to sheffield. what a machine.

DAY6 - NOTTINGHAM
i was particularly looking forward to this show all week. i love the social as a venue and im moving to nottingham really soon so any time spent there gets me totally pumped up. we met up with friends and watched a dismal arsena performance against a hull team that fully deserved their victory. bad start to a good night...

our good buddies brontide opened up and played a wicked set they wear their influences proudly on their sleeves and if yr into bands like battles and russian circles, you should definitly check them out. what would be mirror!mirror!'s unintentionally last set of tour (more to follow...) was of the brilliant standard they'd set themselves all week. this band are rapidly on the rise and its been an absolutel pleasure to spend a week in their company.

as it was our last opportunity to fully extend our party arms with m!m! we all hit stealth vs rescue rooms after, accompanied by brontide and a whole host of friends. it was nice to have a few drinks, do a bit of disco dancing and generally have good times. we all stayed at different places and on the way back to where myself, ed and joe n stayed, party cohort tom warner decided it would be a good call to play a little joke on bean. recently, joe n has dscovered he's slightly intolerant to gluten so tom called bean up and said joe had bean rushed to hospital, we were all in a waiting room and that he would need to make his way to the square and await further instructions. this was followed by a series of texts between ed and bean, shown below:

bean:
ive just got called by tom warner. is mate alright? whats going on? x

ed:
basically the doc says his face is swollen like a bag of tsatsumas. hes in surgery. we're all in a&e. meet eva in the square. steve will get you a taxi from there x

bean:
jesus. what meet in the square tonight? i dont know where i am!

ed:
hes out now. doc says hes ok now. his face is only a golf bal per cheek. fins deliberating canceling york. what do you think? x

bean:
i dont mind. its up to mate see how he feels. i dont know how fast i could get to where you said to meet x



was this out of order? yes. what is funny? yes. was eds use of a letter t at the start of satsuma a stroke of genius? i thought so... but yeah. we're total dicks. in a bit nottingham x

Saturday 27 September 2008

hysterics tour - days 3 & 4

DAY3
after staying at matts on tuesday night, we headed to ikea. yes, ikea.
matt had been raving about their 75p veggie hot dogs and we had to check it out. it was definitly worth the detour. everyone filled up on super cheap food and we made our way to the barfly.

initially we had all thought we were in the smaller room upstairs so i was a little apprehensive about being told we were in the big room, especially considering there was literally no advertisement for our show. even so, we still got a good amount of folk down with a lot of help from the opening support your biggest fanclub. mirror!mirror! also totally killed it tonight. not sure if it was because it was a home-town(ish) show for the but they were on particularly fine form.

we drove home after as ed needed to be at home on the thursday morning. i believe this is when the 3 player DS tetris battle began. myself, joe n and our merchboy tom have since been at loggerheads playing. tom is easily the most accomplished at the moment but this will hopefully slide. almost certainly not in my favour though. updates to follow.

DAY4
leeds. we were all pretty excited about this show because we have a bunch of friends who are all studying/living in leeds. also, we've done a few supports slots at the cockpit but never actually headlined there ourselves. even so it was supposed to be at the brudenell (which is one of my favourite venues) i was still excited to be headlining the cockpit.

the gig was promoted by james brown (yes, james brown) of pulled apart by horses. this was an excellent start because we know him and like his band. he was very accomodating, brought us our vodka and we got on with things. various friends arrived and we caught up and then before we knew it, due to the new 'nailgun' (ouch), clubnight, we were on. we played a different set and it worked much much better. a lot more energetic. we were all really suprised/flattered with the amount of people who turned up and are grateful that so many folk wanted to come.

after the gig we seriously got on it. there was a slight altercation with a band that played the other room and were in the other dressing room. basically, dont steal other bands booze, yeah?
cocks. it was ok though because ed had hidden the litre of vodka and seeing as though we ran out of mixer i was drinking it straight. mistake number one. this mistake was pre-empted with the other mistake of eating at 'wokon'. totally gross, flavourless noodles because pitza cano wouldnt deliver to the cockpit. so i started dancing and having a pretty good time. then i took a phone call outside and must've been totally all over the place because the bouncers wouldnt let me back in. so i ran in anyway and then got thrown out. then i was sick. everywhere. fucking noodles. tom got a wicked photo of it which will no doubt appear online soon.

that concludes day 3 & 4.
james

Wednesday 24 September 2008

hysterics tour - days 1 & 2

we're on tour again!
this time its a little different as we're touring in support of a release. its strange but thats something we've never done before. 

our album came out on monday and we started with a free show at the old blue last in london. we had been told to expect it to be busy-ish due to 'online reaction' to the fact we were doing a free launch show and other factors but i dont think anything could have prepared us for the amount of people that turned up. totally sardines. we had mirror! mirror! and the ghost frequency come down and play and they both put on excellent shows. we went on a little later than initially anticipated but fortunately, everyone stuck around...

we started playing and people were nodding. we hit a heavy bit and everything went a bit mad. alex 'holy roar' fitzpatrick began what became a running theme through the set - stage diving. im not sure we've ever had anyone stage dive to us before and it probably wont happen again but at this show, probably everyone that was anywhere near the front had a go. it was fun (although in places a little frustrating because of equipment getting unplugged/wet with booze) but we cant really complain. it all added to what was an amazingly fun night for us all. my personal highlight was having to tackle someone at the front, off the stage because he literally wouldnt get off and kept falling into joes guitar stuff. if there is any pictoral evidence of this particular move, i would be grateful to see it. also, it was pretty awesome to have a room full of people sing happy birthday to me. thanks a lot!

so yeah, we finished at the old blue, all sweat and smiles, and headed down to the macbeth where tiger (this is music london) had kindly arranged an afterparty. we hung out for a bit and caught up with various friends and i had a go at DJ'ing, controversially playing 'all the things she said' by tatu. i thought it went down pretty well (more DJ sets please!). it finished there at 2 and we tried our best to find more fun but ended up getting stuck waiting for buses. i got back to where i was staying in new cross at about 4.30am. nevermind.


we all convened the next day and made our way to bristol. in boring news, we were late because of traffic but all was ok when we got there. me and ed were particularly stoked that the promoter tim had provided us with a litre of vodka. this is the first time we have recieved vodka as part of our rider. good times. the show ran a little late and with an 11pm curfew, it wasnt looking so good when we started at 10.35pm BUT all was well and we managed to play a full set in the end. we made our way across to derby after the show to get matts van fixed and we're at his house now. his mum was really sweet and made us tea and coffee and loads of toast. exactly what was needed!

we have birmingham today and there will be updates every couple of days from different people.
keep fucking the idiots.

james

Sunday 21 September 2008

the start...

our year starts here.

hysterics is released tomorrow and we begin our 2 week headline tour tomorrow. it feels strangely juvenile to still associate september as being the start of the year but for us, it is.
everyone is totally pumped to get back to playing shows and to bust out the new jams live. having essentially had the summer off in terms of touring, its been a long wait to this set of shows and we're going to do our upmost to make sure they're as special and memorable as possible so please come down and get involved!

we have a few birthdays to celebrate whilst we're away so be prepared. i turn 20 tomorrow and our merch boy (bitch) tom is 19 on the 29th. good times guarenteed.

so yeah, buy the record, come to a show, have a drink.
see you somewhere along the road...

james

p.s new lovvers, throats and data.select.party will all be amongst yr favourite releases of the year. incredible stuff.

Saturday 13 September 2008

vive la france

last weekend we went to france. it was our second time out of the UK with this band and the second occasion that we've had the opportunity to play in paris. needless to say we were all pretty excited about it.

we headed down to london the day before with our driver 'magic' matt spalding. on the way to collect eva from work i realised i didnt have my passport and she probably didn't either. good start. so setting off an hour after we intended we eventually got to holy roar HQ at 11ish. we were up at 6.45am the following day to head off to folkestone. the eurotunnel is a weird experience. we've used the ferry in the past and it ALWAYS make me want to throw up but with eurotunnel we were underground for about 20 minutes, then in france. easy!

we made it from calais to paris pretty easily but couldn't initially find the venue. i used my pigeon french and we got by. it was hidden behind a big hedge. we were fortunate that everyone at the venue spoke pretty good english. i feel incredibly rude expecting everyone to speak english but my french really isn't good enough! so yeah, after soundcheck we headed into the area of paris we were in (bagnolet) and had a mooch around. we saw loads of vans with amazing graffiti on the side and tried to hire bikes but couldnt work out how to use the machine. we tried walking to the eiffel tower but were disappointingly too far away. maybe next time...

from our brief experiences of gigs in europe, its a huge contrast to the UK. the way bands are treated is incredibly different. before the show, all the bands sat down together and were fed hot meals. we were brought out bread and red wine and everytime it ran it, it was replenished. amazing! needless to say we got a little tipsy and then had drinks tokens on top of that. we checked out the other bands and waited for our slot. we were fortunate to play to a good sized crowd who were very receptive. having not played so much recently, it was refreshing to kick it live again and to enjoy ourselves. i accidently punched an amp behind me and cut my thumb pretty bad and had to keep wiping the blood on my shirt to not dirty a borrowed keyboard. nice.

after the set we hung around at the club night for a while, used the drinks tokens and talked to various nice people. everyone was exhausted by the travelling pretty early on so we headed back to our hotel, slept, found food the next day and then made it back to the UK. all in all, a sweet weekend!

james

Thursday 4 September 2008

leeds festival

whilst we're a little late on this and it may not be totally relevant now, here is our (my) review of what i saw at leeds. despite the initially crap weather and slipknot pulling out, we had a pretty sweet weekend.

arriving on the wednesday to get the spot we get every year we were greeted with rain. rain so hard that evas tent flooded so badly that she had to go home and come back again! thursday was no different with mud being consistently churned up and wellingtons becoming an absolute neccessity. i went to see grammatics play the dance to the radio stage on the thursday night. they, of course, totally rocked it but had to cut their set short quite considerably due to the pidgeon detectives (eurrggh) secret set running over. booze ensued and thursday night quickly became friday morning.

friday saw the remaining members of the tomassi party contigent arrive. having sorted out a guest ticket at the last minute, joe n found himself in the haven of guestcamping; a flat, grassy paradise compared to the battle of the somme-esque vibes of blue valley. jealous in the very least! a huge oversight in the colour of wristbands meant that you could simply turn yr brown weekend wristband inside out and it would be black: the same colour as the guestbands. upon realising this i took advantage of it all weekend, only being stopped on a few occasions. this meant we got to see more of the youthmovies boys and spend some time with lovvers. festivals are really fun for catching up with other bands.

in terms of blagging into 'restricted' areas i totally won. i managed to also get into the arena crew campsite, which you needed a photo laminate for, using the above trick and the distraction of my partner in crime whilst i climbed over a fence. if anyone from festival republic reads this, please dont let it put you off booking us next year! i was drunk and it seemed like an amazing idea at the time.

onto music, which is what this post should probably be about...
highlights of the weekend for me:
friendly fires
late of the pier
youthmovies
digitalism
simian mobile disco
yeasayer
these new puritans
wild beasts
los campesinos!

all the above bands totally killed it. i would go into detail but alcohol consumed there and the time which has passed has impaired my memory of what exactly happened. i just remember all of them being especially good fun.

i managed to get a guestpass for the sunday and thinking that the traditional sunday night trouble would kick off, i moved my tent to the guest area where i thought it would be safer. in a massive stroke of irony, after being out, i returned to find my tent and all my stuff had completely disappeared. after searching for half an hour, i found my tent on its side with the contents of my bag emptied inside. fortunately, only my sleeping bag had been stolen which i settled for but found really trivial. bastards!

so yeah, good weekend!
props to the penistone set, youthmovies, lovvers, tom warner, alice thomas, matt and katie, everyone that wore our shirts (we saw you!), thomas sadler, jack, william bowerman and moody of course.

see you there next year hopefully.
james

Wednesday 20 August 2008

london times

we spent the last 2 days in london.

monday night we played a kerrang awards show with you me at six. they were an absolute pleasure to be in the company of, as always, and put on a good show. it was a bit of a strange one (again) for us, as we were playing to their fans who were totally dedicated. some had been there since 10am apparently! the set went down better than anticipated. i thought id be all punx and try pull off a stage dive, no one caught me and a landed on my back in the middle of the crowd. rock'n'roll or something... was very very funny in hindsight and id had just enough carlsberg to not really feel the fall.

tuesday, we hung out at alex holy roars flat til the early afternoon, got a parking ticket and played lots of multi-player DS tetris. i got loads of new music to listen to off al's mac which i was particularly pleased about. we headed to camden to meet up with the throats boys before their show at the underworld with gallows. throats seem to have the worst luck ever! weeks after having to cancel a tour due to van issues, their van broke down again on the way to london leaving their guitarist mark stranded. after several phone calls he eventually made his way down on the train and got a taxi to the venue. we lent them some gear and they went on and played one of the best live sets ive seen all year. i dont know if it was because of how pissed off they all were or what but the passion and intensity of the performance was something ive not seen for a long time. i had a lot of respect for them for doing everything to get down to play the show. we'd have probably given up at the broken down van but they persisted and it was all worth it. i literally cant wait to share a stage with them for a week in september/october.

so yeah, london=fundon. we're all off to leeds festival this weekend and no doubt will have some words to write down when we get home.

easy now,
james

Sunday 10 August 2008

a week in the world of...

so this week we went down to london to do some press for the release of our album.

it was a pretty gruelling two days but we got to speak to a lot of interesting people and hopefully answer all the questions that people might have to ask us. theres some really cool features planned so keep yr eyes peeled over the next few weeks if you want to see what we have to say about our record and ourselves.

hassle will be hosting a track by track explanation about hysterics which was a lot of fun. take the majority of whats said with a pinch of salt and try and ignore how haggered we probably look!

on thursday night we got to go see some pretty cool bands at the macbeth in hoxton. white williams and zombie zombie notably stood out for me. it was also great to see some friends; tom throats, steph gallows, steve lovvers, the no pain in pop crew and plenty of others.

yesterday we played summerslam in wolverhampton. a bit of a weird one and we didnt fit the bill too well BUT it was a good day, we got treated really well and got to hang out with some bands we've met before. big shout outs to furthest drive home and we are the ocean for being dead nice. our set was perhaps a little rusty so apologies for anyone that came to see us. we'll be back later in the year in much more razor sharp form i would hope. thanks to the kids who dance, the kids who threw things at us and the kid RIGHT at the front who called me a wanker. much appreciated!

final bit of news. we have a mailing list now and you will be rewarded for signing up to it by getting access to a free download of scabs from hysterics. visit www.myspace.com/rolotomassi and add yr address to our list to get scabs and get excited. buzzing.

james

Tuesday 29 July 2008

in the summer time...

...we sit around and wait for our record to come out so we can tour again. eva is on holiday and the rest of us are at home, enjoying the heat and trying to be as productive as possible.

in recent news, we came second in the second annual BSM 5-a-side football tournament. we entered a team comprising of half tomassi and half mirror!mirror! and did pretty well considering how good some of the competition was.

first hysterics review appeared online here. still another 6 or so weeks til it comes out and we're literally counting down the days.

shows this month:
9th - wolverhampton, civic hall (onstage at 8pm!)
12th - nottingham, the maze
18th - london, camden barfly

our summer in pictures will appear soon.
easy now.