milleniumhog

I'm done with this blog, I'm moving to http://www.robinhawkins.blogspot.com

Bye bye!

Frost, old friend from school and I went out last night for a catch-up, did some quite solid drinking and had a great night. I woke up with a bit of a sore head this morning as a result though. I just went for a run now (I'm trying to train for a half-marathon) and every step, every bead of sweat felt amazing..it must've been an endorphin rush and flushing out last night's toxins and all that. Total result.

We managed to get another track recorded yesterday. It's just 90 seconds of brutality, I don't think it's going to make it as a single, but it was great fun to record. There was a nice, complicated bass line for me and I think we may have found the brown note when we were messing about with effects pedals, so I'm happy.

TTFN!

It has been in the region of YONKS since I've done anything blog-shaped. It has been quite quiet (that must be a bad pair of words if you're dyslexic) in Automaticland, so there's less to say. Also, I've never been particularly good at keeping up a blog, so there's probably no-one checking any more. Still, I feel like I should be contributing and being more of a web 2.0 kinda guy, so I'll try this again. Also, my dad's been telling me that there needs to be more blogging activity on our site. Point taken, Dad.

So, what news? I have a twitter account. THE AUTOMATIC also has a twitter account. I'm not awful at updating mine at the moment, it's still new and exciting to me. This is my personal one, and the band one (I just typed "bad one" by accident. Go nuts, Freudians) is here. We've been writing and demoing a lot as we've had a plenty of time at home, and it beats twiddling our thumbs. I have no idea when that stuff will be entering the public domain in any form, so no promises, but I'm pretty happy with it. We've been experimenting with a new way of writing lyrics, a totally unremarkable technique of making tea or coffee, sitting in our living room with acoustic guitars and writing by committee. I've still written most of the words, but it's so much quicker and easier to have everyone else suggesting lines, verses, themes, alternative words and phrasings and for us to end up with something we're all happy with straight away. In the past I've just hidden away and tortured myself for two weeks over a half-baked idea and ended up with one weak verse, which does slow things down..anyway, snapping back to the point, the new stuff sounds sweet. It varies a lot from song to song - I'm going to hold back from trying to describe it, I don't believe there's an effective way of describing how a song sounds in non-technical terms (the NME lies to you).

Although we've been busy musically, there has been fair opportunity for thumb-twiddling in the past weeks and months and I've been taking full advantage of that. I've played a lot of xbox, messed about trying to teach myself trumpet (I can play the Family Guy theme, in a farty kinda way) and had a go at oil painting. Painting is a bit trickier than I thought. Either that, or I'm naturally shit at it. I'll leave it there - I don't want to detail the minutiae of my life over the last however many months, those are just some of the more random bits. If life is a box of chocolates, then those bits were, I dunno, the strawberry creams.

Laters everybody,

Rob

A quiet day, mostly based around showering, eating, the basics. We were in Jury's Inn, which is the scene of a few rock 'n' roll hotel smashing nights. That wasn't happpening this time! Everyone was knackered.

Iwan, Frost and I went to a pub and watched the football while I got really, really hungry. I get food rage when I'm hungry, which is like some vampire blood-lust type thing. I can't think about anything, my IQ drops fifty points and get pissed off and grumpy. It's ok, I had a roast dinner and no-one had to die.

Viva Machine turned up later on and a group of us went to a bar I remembered called Oporto. Badly lit and well-stocked. Dai and I made lists of our top five bourbons, I drank a few of my top one (Gentlemen Jack). Then we went across the road to a place where you should get a prize if you can find the toilets. An enormous, steroidified bloke was sitting next to us with a lady, and quote of the night was "Oh, you see that massive bald bloke there? I dare you to slap him on the back of the head and call him a faggot". Viva Machine, trying to get us into trouble, crazy Swansea bastards!

Cafe Drummond's load-in is up eight flights of stairs over four floors, the buggers. This is because Aberdeen is built on top of itself, sorta paradoxically..obviously, there aren't an unlimited number of Aberdeens stretching up and down into oblivion forevermore, that would be ridiculous. Infinite Scotland..

I bought some books here, including "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintanence" by Robert Pirsig. About seven pages in, I've got the near-irresistible urge to annotate it, which means two things. One: it has a significant philosophical element, and two: I'm going to really enjoy it. Geek, moi? Yeah, actually.

Gig..the crowd were mental to a precise limit; there is zero trouble. It makes me think of those goats that faint when they get shocked, although I don't know why. This is nothing like that in any way. This is just an obtuse tangent thrown up by my over-enthusiastic imagination, sound knowledge base of animal trivia and tired and chemically stimulated brain. Anyway, I was saying - I worry sometimes if it looks like someone's going to get munched in our crowds, we're about having fun. We've already had someone bust their nose to a hit single in this tour. Here though, people just knew exactly how to have a wicked time and not wreck themselves/anyone else. The promoter says there's never any trouble here and I believe him. Outside, just before the gig, I round the corner by the venue to a cry of "stop kneeling on my neck!". Riot police have a satisfied look about them when they're pinning drunks to the ground.

To Leeds!

I've written before about how much your first sight of life outside the bus influences your day, gives you a clue as to your fortunes or generally just sticks in your mind. Today, I saw a man hanging out his washing, right next to the bus. Hmmm..that's not usual..there's an Esso garage twenty yards away too..we must have parked up somewhere for drive to get some sleep, I thought to myself. I got up and had a look around, and found that we were exactly where we were meant to be. The Raigmore motel, in Inverness. It's an old-school travel lodge type affair, with an exact replica of the Phoenix Club bolted onto the side. I started laughing as I looked around, I wondered if we'd been booked for a wedding reception by mistake.

I made a sarcastic comment to Jis as he went in for a look, mostly because I knew he'd freak out and I wanted to encourage that, then I fucked off for a swim. It was painful, I suck at front crawl. I walked back into town by the river Ness (yeah, the one with the Loch with the Monster) and I swear I wouldn't have know it from the Taff back home. Rivers are just large bodies of flowing water though furrows in the ground, see one you've seen them all..it's the civilisations on their banks that makes them memorable, like the Vltava running through Prague and the Bosphorus in Istanbul. Oops, bit of a tangent there. Back to Inverness, where I bought genuine authentic Scottish kitsch memorabilia for my family. Snowglobe, anyone?

The gig was shaping up nicely when I got back, Jis and Stan swore a lot, I lost money to Noel Edmunds in a gambler and old men drank and talked about traditional Scottish music. Because we were playin in the Raigmore, The Raigmore Motel provided the dressing room. We weren't on until quite late (well, relatively..10.30 or something), so for slightly too long we were sat in a hotel room full of booze. The room reminded me of a scene from "No Country For Old Men".The gig reminded of "Braveheart"..damn, gonna have to justify that one, just for a Scottish theme..it was like a battle, but everyone was on the same side. There were also many casualties to the stink bomb that some bastard dropped. We lost half our crowd to sulphur..

I can't blame them. The stink was horrible.

Noteworthy occurences: Paul humps Peter Hill's face, live on stage. I introduce him as a sexual predator as a result. Many people end up in our dressing/hotel room after the gig, one of them acquires a souvenir - Frost's phone. She feels guilty and posts it to Norwich for us to collect.

Good gig!

First thing I do every day on tour is get my Jungle Book on and look for the bare necessities of life (yep, I'm talking about finding a loo). I've been to Dundee before, we played the Reading Rooms. I remember there being about seven people there, although I doubt many more would fit! We all went swimming that day too, and I fucked up my sinuses on a water slide..anyway, that was then and this is a few days ago.

I actually found town this time, quite nice, although I'm bored of the generic shops. I found an indie record shop which I think is called Groucho's, where I think I bought a Jethro Tull "best of"..much uncertainty.

The high point of the day was going for a curry with Frost and Paul across the road from the venue. When we were almost at the door an ancient Scot in a ridiculous turban burst out and asked "table for three?". The situation was delicate, we all had to try really hard not to laugh at this man a lot! Not a bad curry either, we shared a green naan the size of an elephant's ear.

The View turned up to say hello, which was nice of them.

Good gig, small stage. Haven't had a bad gig yet, really!

Mike arranged a super-fun day off of joy for us all today. Auchterhaus is a outdoor persuits kinda place. We had no phone reception because of the hills that had been BUILT (they built hills!) to contain the noise from the shooting. Awesome.

If I can get it together to do this, I'll post some footage of us clay pigeon shooting. It was awesome. We had a go at quad biking too, and a crazy car mobile thing with two steering wheels and the rest of the controls shared between everyone in the vehicle. Teamwork prevailed, we were the shit. When quad biking, you wear a white, waterproof jumpsuit thing to keep your clothes clean. Pete put his coat on over this though, schoolboy error! One muddy coat.

I like that the first time I ever shot a gun I hit my target. It went downhill from there, but hey! I feel well prepared for a Shaun Of The Dead type scenario!

I ended the day with a steak. Brilliant.

There were two matches on tonight: Liverpool vs. Arsenal, and Football vs. Us. Liverpool was the first gig that hasn't sold out on this tour. It was still pretty well attended and the crowd were up for it. There was a mist in the air when we went on stage, which means it was going to be humid. It was a sweaty one, I enjoyed it. There was a guy a few rows back who listened the first chorus of every new song and sang along to the rest, word perfect (well, it seemed to be from my lip reading). What I guy. He gets the fastest learner award.
Liverpool won, so we got a lot of mileage from the footy. Paul's been doing a sports report on stage every so often, it took up pretty much all the time between songs today!

I didn't go very far in Liverpool. I've been there so many times before that I just couldn't be bothered! I'm a bit bored of the generic high street too - Zavvi, Schuh, HMV, Boots - it's the same thing every day. It's great knowing that I can get a DVD for three quid anywhere in the universe but it wears thin. That's why York was nice, lots of boutiques and independent or smaller shops.

Things that sound great in a Scouse accent:
Guacamole
Chicken Teriyaka
Bert Bacarach
Purple Curtains

I like York, it's an old and picturesque town but pretty lively and full of cool shops..which is why I spent £50 on cool T-shirts..then bought a Stanley Kubrick box set..

I also went for a swim because there was no shower in the venue and I was starting to feel the ming!

Paul, Iwan and Pete (I think it was them) bought remote control cars, which have seen a bit of action and got covered in mysterious sticky stuff on the bus. They now occasionally move by themselves, when switched off..

York Fibbers does good fajitas, they're famous amongst touring bands. I ate too much, I was stuffed.

Gig was good. A guy who interviewed us for..I can't remember the name of their blog..had his nose broken in the pit and re-set it himself in the loo. Hard man!

Us (Ze band and tour friends) and Viva Machine had found a Wetherspoons which was mostly pretty disappointing..I bought a towel..Christ, maybe I should start taking drugs, this is well boring. What's happened on this tour?

Well, there's the different kinds of pain visted on my left hand by my own clumsiness. On the first night I slammed the middle finger of my left hand in a solid, heavy, metal flight case, leaving a purple line running across the middle of the nail and a slight dew of sweat on my forehead from the dull, strength-sapping throbs of pain. I didn't do serious damage but it hurt like a bitch. Then a couple of nights ago I was making a brew of honey, lemon and ginger (good for the the throat, kids) and I scalded the index finger of that hand. Again, no real damage but a different finger and a different (but equally exquisite) kind of pain. I gouged out part of the middle finger on my right hand on a loose nail somewhere too..

The gig in Stoke was cool. There was a giant circle pit..well, there was a circle with no-one in it which the more enthuasiatic kids ran across occasionally. There was a lot of crowd surfing too, three girls at the front had people twice their size landing on their heads over and over again. I was dreading a broken neck situation at the time!

After the gig I did not go to Jumpin' Jack's, which I'm glad about. I turned back when Frost, Paul and Pete went in and just watched Back To The Future II on the bus with Iwan and Viva Machine instead. Frost, Paul and Pete couldn't have been in there longer than five minutes when they came back.

Fin.

I've played the Soundhaus before. My first memory of Northampton will also be my lasting memory of it. The bus arrived there overnight, so when I woke up I looked out of the little window in my bunk to get a snapshot of my neighbourhood for the day. The first thing I see is some graffiti crudely sprayed onto a wall opposite the venue saying "Jihad Warrior"..

The venue's a good one. We only played the small room before, but it was a well-attended gig and a great crowd considering how small a band we were then, so I was looking forward to playing. There was a great aftershow, too. We were in the big room this time and I wasn't disappointed.

There's not really too much you can say about a good gig - we played well and the crowd seemed to enjoy it. You were either there or you weren't, I'm not even going to try to give a blow-by-blow account. If something fucks up, there's plenty to tell! Paul made some friends and enemies by talking football during the set. Afterwards, someone was overheard saying "Pennie didn't annoy me half as much this time!!!"..er..

After the show there was a club night but a few of us had heard about a house party from some of the staff in the venue, so Frost, Stan, Pete and I walked over there while it snowed down by the bucketful. Everyone at this party was battered when we arrived, it was hilarious. The house was absolutely packed, it was like an episode of skins! I spent most of the time talking to some guys out the back. It was still going strong when we called it a night at some point after 4am..

That's pretty much it!

Gloucester's only an hour from Cardiff so we came home. I woke up in my own bed, score! Actually, so far I've only spent one night on the bus. It was boiling hot and I was already covered in sweat from the Exeter gig. I was so slimy the next morning.

Anyway. I'm going to see Future Of The Left tonight. They're loud bastards. If you haven't heard them, do it, they're awesome.

Right, er, I'm still in bed, the only think I've done today is brush my teeth so I've got nothing else to say. Bye!

Total contrast! Gloucester Arts Centre is huge! There's a stage big enough that we aren't smacking each other in the face with our guitars, for one. It holds 400 people and we sold it out, go us! I'm a bit surprised (in a good way) that so many people still want to come and see us after being off the musical radar in the UK for about a year, good times! It was a mixed audience, too - plenty of young folk in some sort of perma-pit who would probably have moshed to Sigur Ros, right up to the grown-ups lurking in the shadows at the back by the bar.

It was so different to Exeter..that had a kind of mad, frenetic energy that came with being in a tiny, packed sweatbox where it's hard to breath and no-one can tell what's going on. Tonight, more people were just standing and watching, which is what I've been expecting. Being between your first two albums is a unique position - you don't have enough of a back catalogue to play oldies from start to finish, and you want people to hear the new stuff too, especially as we've put so much into writing and recording it and it all kicks ass. Because of that, we've been playing a set that's half new stuff. It's gone down so well though, I can't complain!

This venue had a lovely dressing room, a shower, washing machine and tumble drier, great staff - all the things we're going to need and miss two more weeks into this tour! D'oh!

It's weird how familiar a tourbus feels after not very long..it feels like I've been away for a while and now I'm living out of a suitcase and sleeping in a two-foot wide constantly moving bunk again I've come home!

The actual gig part was a little less familiar - nothing was different from gigging before, there were no new experiences (apart from using the in-ear monitors maybe) but I'd forgotten a lot the stuff that I'll be going through on a daily basis for a month. I'd forgotten that when I know what time I need to be on stage, then in the hour before my body automatically charges itself with adrenaline. I started to go a bit crazy before this first gig! You can't go anywhere far away or engage your mind with much else in the hour before a show so all my attention goes to the show, and I just have to wait. Today being the first day of the tour, that felt like a really long time.

The show was great, a sell-out and a really enthusiastic crowd. A lot of people wanted us to play b-sides from our first, limited edition single. Hardcore! Because Exeter Cavern is about the size of an armpit, the first thing I did was bash into Frost and totally de-tune my bass. We opened with a new song, "Light Entertainment", so hopefully no-one really noticed. Speaking of new, when we introduced Paul there were a few surprised faces..I don't think they'd realised he wasn't Pennie!

After the show, our manager was involved in lewd acts with the drummer from our support band, Viva Machine. They got a bit, er, high-spirited and managed to scar Paul and Pete (merch, photos) for life. Good times.

Just in case anyone's reading (and I remain skeptical!), here's out latest tour dates. Looking forward to seeing you all out there!

March

28 Monmouth Blake Theatre (14+)
29 Wrexham Central Station (14+)
30 Caernarfon Galleri (14+)
31 Brecon Brycheiniog (14+)

April
02 Exeter Cavern
03 Gloucester Arts Centre (14+)
05 Northampton Soundhaus (14+)
06 Stoke Sugarmill (14+)
07 York Fibbers (15+)
08 Liverpool Academy (14+)
10 Dundee Doghouse (14+)
11 Inverness Raigmore (16+)
12 Aberdeen Cafe Drummond (14+)
14 Leeds Cockpit
15 Hull Welly (14+)
16 Tamworth Palace (14+)
18 Middlesborough Sumo Club (18+)
19 Leicester Charlotte (14+)
20 Norwich Arts Centre (14+)
21 Hitchin Club 85 (14+)
23 Brighton Audio (16+)
24 Southend Chinnerys (16+)
26 Portsmouth Wedgwood Rooms (14+)
28 Plymouth White Rabbit (14+)
29 Cardiff Point (14+)

Rob x

God bastard dammit, I repel hardcore bands!!! I come to the USA and whatever band I'm listening too at the time fucks off across the pond and plays in/around Cardiff, without fucking fail. They're sodding well doing it on purpose. This time it's Gay For Johnny Depp, last time The Blood Brothers (incidentally - or maybe coincidentally - now defunct. I have been eternally denied.). Shit shit shit shit shit.

Anywaaaaaay, it's been 22 weeks since I last put cyberpen to cyberpaper to broadcast details of my itinerant existence. So what's been going on? Well, Pennie left, Paul joined. We simultaneously developed a vitamin D deficiency and wrote a cracking album in the illustrious surrounds of Warwick Hall of Sound. It really is a wicked album and you really do start to get irritable when deprived of natural light. I had a Christmas with the 'rents and girlfriend which was great, a comfortable expanse of not much to do with high-cholesterol food and drink and good company. I got a cool watch and a digital media-player-doohickey-type-thing.

And then the band and our manager flew to LA to get the album recorded. I saw the north pole from above, which was breath-taking. Also, I sat next to a guy who designs roller-coasters. My knees seized up and the jet lag was horrendous, my face went numb! I'm now sitting in our apartment adjusting to the time difference. We start recording stuff tomorrow.

Saaaaaafe!

Rob x

I've had a slightly out-of-the-ordinary day..ok, I know I'm in a reasonably successful touring rock band and my average day would be fairly out-of-the-ordinary for a lot of people, but for me, today has been unusual.

The oddness began last night, but past midnight, so it definitely counts as today. Y'know, technically. I received a text from a UK number on a phone that no-one texts (my email phone - I know, I'm a flash bastard) written entirely in French. I've got some rudimentary French skills so I was able to divine that it was a wrong number. I replied in my primitive, caveman-esque version of the lovely French language, explaining this and that I was English and apologising for my Francais. I'm sure I do to foreign languages what Hannibal Lector does to people. Anyway, I thought that was it and went back to messing around on this roll-up rubber Piano I've got and composing 'til about 3 AM.

I've never woken up in Philadelphia before, so that counts as another unusual thing I did today. When I checked my phone I found another text in French, from the same girl, asking me, as a Brit, what there is to do in London. This is hardly fair: yes, I have GCSE French, but no-one in the world speaks GCSE second-language French (perhaps some French people with learning difficulties) and definitely not my mystery French tourist. Anyway, I've ended up having a text conversation, on-and-off, all day, as her friends who lived in the UK were away. I got away with it: through a mind maimed by a good five years of substance abuse (a GREAT five years) I managed to dredge up enough understanding to hold it down, with a bit of googled vocab. I am unduly pleased with myself and feel very smug indeed.

Other things that will stand out from today are: getting a photo of me flexing the guns by a statue of Rocky Balboa; eating a genuine Philly Cheese steak (that's good bad food, folks), and waiting for hours and hours to get on a broken tour bus. Ok, the last one happens quite a lot!

Good stuff.

Taraa!

Rob x

It fucking gave me heatstroke and sunburn. I went skins in Phoenix when it was 45C and didn't fry then!

We weren't allowed to swear during the show today at all - the same goes for the rest of the Floridian gigs. It's no swearing or get arrested. My theory is that curse words rile up the Alligators, and they'll come out of the swamps all pissed off and eat babies. I've yet to have that theory substantiated, but hell, no one's told me otherwise.

It was a good but long and sweaty day today. There was a great thunderstorm off in the distance this evening, accompanied by mental drum solos from a drum-off being held at the barbeque. Proper weather they've got over here. Only about thirty people watched us today as we weren't on 'til 7.30. They had fun though. I guess it was an "intimate" show..

Right, back to my thumping headache and peeling back..

Stay safe, y'all. Hyuck.

Rob x

There are Dragonflies that you'd need an Elephant gun to kill. I'm surprised people don't saddle them up and ride around on them, they're massive..

I've had a good day, apart from dodging the Dragonflies as they swooped down to try to carry me off to feed their grubs. It rained so hard yesterday that the Houston Warped show was postponed 'til today. It got moved into one of these enormous stadiums that you can (and they did) drive lorries into. It's air conditioned too, which is real nice is heat like this. I saw The Fabulous Rudies play today. They're the barbeque band, meaning they cook up a load of burgers every night in return for being on the tour. They've got a kind of Ska thing going on, they reminded me of Adequate 7 in places, but mostly they've got a Sax player and a trombone player. Score. I've asked them if they're up for playing with us on Gold Digga and they've said yes, so Atlanta's going to be awesome.

Right, I can't remember what I was going to say in this blog thingy..

Our accents are going down well, it pays to be British out here!

Fact of the day: Texans really do all say "y'all".

Rob x