"Who is Conan O'Brien & Why Is She So Sad?"

In the wake of deciding hardcore isn't our thang anymore I've been tapdancing on my pedalboard and gradually the new songs are coming through. I've previewed sections for Rich & James and I think we're in agreement that we're heading towards playing shows that degenerate into epic dance parties and not people trying to hurt each other in the name of scene points.*

Vocally i've been working ideas with Sean's voice in mind and there's gonna be a lot more for myself, Rich & J-Bizzle to do in terms of back ups. Overall the new tunes are stylistically pitched somewhere between Phoenix and Foals. That's purely my current opinion though, once they're played by people who aren't solely myself and a drum machine they could end up somewhere else entirely. I can't see a drummer as creative as James being content robotically laying down the basic disco beats i've been demoing so who knows?

The two main new songs are called Berlin and Living Ancestors. The latter's probably closer to completion and having literally just listened back to the demo again i'm going to have a total modesty failure and say that it sounds fucking amazing. Because it does.




* Not that this ever happened while we were playing the heavy set. There was never enough of an audience for any noteworthy pit action which is both a pity and a relief.

Listen to:
Future Of The Left - Travels With Myself & Another
Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Pixies - Surfer Rosa

This Honkey Grandma Be Trippin'

So to get it out of the way: Yes. The battered mars bar was actually pretty tasty. The gig was not tasty. The gig was awful for everyone...except for James who was cheered like some kind of prodigal son returning to Windsor.
Anyway that gig/show/concert/disaster marked the end of this current phase/era/chapter/nightmare of Abandoner. We sat down, had a long chat and decided that hardcore is often (not always but often) a fairly limiting genre that is hard to stand out in. I personally am sick of playing with bands who sound the same at every gig we play and I'd happily never play another chug chug breakdown riff if at all possible, Sean understandably doesn't want to scream anymore and there seems little point in continuing down that road.
To that end we're writing a new set from scratch, one that'll hopefully open new doors for us in terms of what promoters will put us on, what venues we can play at and most importantly, what bands we can play with. If we get any offers we'll still thrash through the old set while we work on the new one, but once what we're preparing is complete we'll be well and truly leaving the past where it belongs.
I have no idea how long this is going to take. There's literally no point at all in us rushing this and coming back with a set of half finished ideas so we're gonna take our time and hopefully return with something that's uniquely ours, as we want to have our own sound from the beginning.
I don't know if we'll write these too often in the meantime, we're aiming to put home demos up as they're finished to give people an idea of where we're going with this. If it sucks then our friends will tell us so and we'll keep working until we know we're on to a winner.
V

Intertherapy

Thanks to myspaceTV I can pinpoint the Saved By The Bell theme song as the moment from my youth that put me off guitar solos forever.
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=28609380&searchid=1bf4f2aa-a3a7-407f-82e3-b50600302de5
Sick bass fill on 00:32 though, seriously it's like the session guy forgot what he was meant to be doing and just bared his soul on those high notes.
Ultimate companion site: http://sbtbqotd.blogspot.com/
We're playing in Windsor tomorrow, last gig for a while. We're on first at around 8 i'm guessing. This is great news as i'm informed that the fish & chip shop opposite the venue sells battered mars bars, something i've always found revolting/wanted to try.

Vince

Time For A Change

The heat has brought about a major change in the world of Abandoner.


Tea is out.


Milkshakes are in.

We still exist

Seriously, we do. I have no idea if anyone besides us read this (it might just even be me) but I'm gonna do it anyway.
Musically I think we're about to go in about fifty different directions, I have two songs more or less ready that are fully weird but fully great at the same time. Much more in the vein of Mastermind...than the other songs, except even less heavy/hardcore. I want to expand on the disco beats and glitchy drum patterns we touched on in that song and try to come up with something fairly unique that people will come to think of as the Abandoner "sound".
We've done some new photos but we're getting some fancier newer ones soon at which point we'll be getting a new myspace up, our merch should finally get sorted, we'll take ourselves seriously enough to start booking regular shows and what I'd really like to do is get the two aforementioned songs recorded and put them out as some kind of self released single. Part of me wants to do it on vinyl with maybe a CD included with each or some kind of download code. Is that silly? Super limited vinyl is pretty fucking cool, as is hand numbering stuff.
Anyway, this is probably all news to the rest of the band let alone anyone who's stumbled across this blog, so i'll call it a day there.
PLAYLIST:
Phoenix - 1901
Eels - Lilac Breeze
Sonic Youth - literally anything on Eternal, it's like being wrapped up in a warm fuzzy sheet
Enter Shikari - Same with Common Dreads, I can't get over how good it is.

tvbegoodtome

If you don't watch/love 30 Rock then there's a good chance you're an idiot.

Anyong

Yeah so we played at The Rising Sun in Slough at the weekend...I still wish we hadn't.

Me: "That was the worst gig we've ever played by some considerable distance".
Johnny: "That was the worst gig ANYONE has ever played by some considerable distance!"

Despite the fact it was a 21st birthday party, the drunkest person in the venue was still Sean which was pretty impressive. I'd decided I'd reached my limits earlier in the day when i'd somehow managed to flail my own hand into a goalpost. My thumb is still abnormal.

Anyway, if you were there then i'm sorry. If you weren't then you missed a dizzying low which I hope will never be repeated.
V

adayinthelife

via text:

James: "Is one o'clock ok for everyone tomorrow?"

Vince: "Oh god, we don't have to practise do we?"

James: "What do you think we are, a band? No, we're playing football."

First Shows...

And so.... the band we have come to know and put up with as Abandoner... have succeeded in doing one of the major things bands are supposed to do.. we play some shows WOOOOOHHH YEAAAAHHHHHHHH WOOOOPWOOOOPWOOOOP wow gosh thank you all very much for that warm and supportive response... the applause was unnessecary but appreciated nonetheless... the flowers were just plain inappropriate, who threw them?? Jared was that you?? Go home Jared. This isn't a triumphant musical.

However, playing our first two shows were, I'd like to think, somewhat of a triumph. Nothing went ridiculously wrong, with the possible exception of the facebar gig in which guitar malfunctions caused two of our songs to be abruptly... erm... paused? But we picked it up again and I think it went down pretty well. Go us. Our stage presence is somewhat of a spectacle I'm told. Heres some feedback from our cellar bar gig for y'all:

'You were insane at cellar. Really really really liked it. Best hardcore band ive seen in years.' - Somebody from the other band said that.

As for sean causing six hundred pounds worth of damage haha.. rock and roll. I think we were let off that because we're 'still young' or 'just starting out' or words to those effects.

Anyway, roll on april 16th in Langley for more tea fuelled mayhem, hopefully this time with less guitar tomfoolery and more song-title-rememberance...

stay tuned folks...

J

ps there is no jared. I made him up...

Abandoners top 5 domestic violence songs...

A very serious matter that I feels needs addressing.

Maybe we should write a song about it...



5. Independence Day - Martina McBride

"She tried to pretend he wasn't drinking again
But Daddy left the proof on her cheek"


4. Luka- Suzanne Vega

"They only hit until you cry
And after that you don't ask why"

3. Behind the wall- Tracey Chapman

"Last night I heard the screaming
Then a silence that chilled my soul"


2. Face down- Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

"do you feel better now?
as she falls to the ground"


1. Never again- Nickleback

"The living room becomes a boxing ring
It's time to run when you see him clenching his hands"


All very moving songs with a serious message... But what's YOUR favourite domestic violence song? Answers on a postcard...

Rich

x

Band? What band?

If Rich is allowed to post completely irrelevant crap (shinfo?) then so am I. We were meant to be recording this weekend but Jeff who captures our walls of noise on tape had a family emergency so all being well we're tracking next weekend instead. Anyway to pass the time i've been working my way through this gem of a blog:
http://www.avclub.com/features/my-year-of-flops/
Basically the format is man-reviews-films-that-underperformed-either-critically-or-at-the-box-office-or-both. One of which is the Nicholas Cage disaster that is the Wicker Man remake, (http://www.avclub.com/articles/my-year-of-flops-case-file-21the-wicker-man,15203/) which led me on to these glorious best of clips:
http://www.ifilm.com/video/2823451
If the sight of a man inexplicably dressed as a bear even more inexplicably punching a woman in the face doesn't make you at least giggle then God help us all.
"NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES!"
Vince

Boredom = Internet = Pointless blogging = More boredom

Finding it very hard to be sociable today, so I've turned to my good friend, the interweb where I plan to stay for as long as possible...

Pretty sure any kind of human interaction would kill me.

I'm currently lacking a TV, DVD player, CD player, phone charger (and my battery is nearly dead), any kind of gaming entertainment system and light, which really isn't helping the situation. In fact, all I have is this laptop, which I'm kind of scared to use as the charger exploded yesterday when I plugged it into the extension lead. (Hence the lack of the previously mentioned electrical items)

I wish James would text me back. Tut tut.

Rich

x

We also do other things:

Another post in quick succession! I figure it's worth mentioning a few of us are also in other bands that should be listened to at the earliest opportunity.
Rich plays guitar in Here Goes Everything: www.myspace.com/heregoeseverything who also feature Tom on drums. Tom was in the band that eventually became Abandoner up until I did my trademark "i don't like the songs/we're not ready/moanmoanmoan" routine that led to us basically splitting up and Tom and Gareth (who used to play guitar) buggering off to further their educations.
James & Johnny play drums and bass respectively in You Win Again Gravity: www.myspace.com/youwinagaingravity I'm convinced Gravity Wins Again has a cooler ring to it, but apparently they'd lose Futurama cool points. Can't have that.

I think that's everything, Sean's too busy drinking and I play far too much Pro Evo to bother having anything else on the go. Obviously Abandoner is the best band as we have more friends on the internet and that's what really counts. None of this playing good songs rubbish.
Vince

Gracious Ghost

We stuck a new song online last week, it's called Gracious Ghost. I say new, it's actually pretty much the first song we ever wrote but we never quite got it right and the version we recorded this time last year was from definitive. Anyway, we got there in the end and the lyrics are as follows:

We will slowly burn tonight
You never looked so beautiful
and everything will slowly burn away
as we sink to our hell.
A gracious ghost tried to pick me up
it felt like I was being swallowed whole
but I saw light and hoped for land.
Mistakes, they remain.
Feels like the ocean washed them away
And my skin, stained with regret
now has reached the horizon.
We are here, we are waiting.
Taken from my throne and I could swear i'm slowly sinking to the bottom.
Everything seems so perfect looking down from here...

We're just waiting to get the final mix back of the other track we recorded (Apologies To Alaska), it was as good as done until someone said "let's try it with some cello". Oh Jeff, what have you done? We'll put that up as soon as we get it, then we're recording again end of the month.
We will play some gigs eventually, I was thinking about starting to message promoters when I blew up my PC...maybe fate just isn't a fan of the 'bandoner. That really was the worst use of an apostrophe in the history of the written word.
I still haven't found out what that restaurant eventually got named.
Vince

News and stuff.

I really hate reading shitty blog posts by local bands who talk like they're U2 or something and start going on about how they have "MASSIVE NEWS COMING SOON" or whatever, then it turns out they've taken a new shitty photo of themselves looking stupid. SHUT UP YOU MORONS! YOU'RE PLAYING FOR FREE IN PUBS! NO-ONE KNOWS WHO YOU ARE! They don't know who we are either, but the difference is we're well aware of that. That massive news bit wasn't aimed at Lavondyss by the way, I'd quite like to be on an Arusha tour.
Rant over.
Anyway we recorded a couple of demos last weekend with Jeff at Room 2 in Langley, we'll put him in our top friends or something so I can stop bigging him up every time we do anything there. One's the like first or second song Sean and I ever wrote, the other's barely a couple of months old and was constructed since Johnny joined but both will be included when we (finally) start playing gigs. We should get the first round of premixes back before the weekend, then we can all sit around and argue about what we want to change and then finally the songs'll go up on the myspace. I'll probably chuck the lyrics on here then too.
There's a new restaurant opening at Wexham Park Hospital which is just down the road from us, there's a competition to name it. The best i've got so far is The A&Eatery so if anyone can beat that please let me know (although a standing ovation should go to my man Jona for suggesting TGI Not Infected). I keep thinking about hambulances.
Night.
V.