Hey, how's things?

Not as good as they are for me right now...just winding down from the post-show euphoria in the passenger seat as we cruise smoothly down the M6 on our way home. (side note - we wouldn't be cruising this smoothly if kev hadn't performed some running repairs to the van just before we left..he's not just a pretty face you know). Manchester was awesome fun tonight, we didn't know what to expect but the bands that we met during the day were cool and the show turned out waaay better that we thought.

Today was real summer..baking heat and no real breeze, we loaded out of the show late night and it was still sunsets and warm evening air. Gorgeous.

New songs worked well. Everybody rocked out at the end of the new album ender...right on cue. I am supposed to be working on lyrics right now but I am pretty much just switching my brain off and laughing at dan singing along badly to less than jake...kev lay in his bunk on long journeys until it's his turn to drive. He claims it's because dan's driving scares him, i'm not sure how much of that is a joke...hehe.

If you haven't heard the news, new found glory are touring again, make sure you pick up tickets as they will sell fast due to NFG being one of the best live bands around. Believe.

Will someone please buy a copy of kerrang this week for me..I don't wanna read it but there is a hot pic of hayley from paramore and that's gotta be worth having on your wall.

Last thing - apologies to maunder for saying that alexa from popworld wasn't that hot. I am now desperately in love with her. This happens to me a lot, i'm either an eternal daydreamer or just a sad loser who watches to much tv....yeah yeah, I know.

Max x

Spent the morning working, but the songs out of my speakers weren't Less Than Jake (for a change), they were our brand-new set of demos. Changed loads of tempos from the last time round (all faster, slow songs are for suckers.) and they sound awesome. There's a total of 13 demo's kicking around at the moment, we've demo'd a total of about 15 or 16 and we've scrapped a few more while they were being written. Even if nobody likes this thing, we've done our jobs.

Weekend was cool, met more new people, and some old faces were kicking around our town too. I even remembered to grab some snappy snaps so you could see my friends in the dark corners of bars...i am good to you.

I don't normally post stuff like this, but I went to give blood today so I
thought i'd tell you what it's like and try to get you to go along if you
can.

Quite a few people I know have needed blood at some point in their lives and
without people taking an hour or so to donate, they would have been in
serious trouble. You basically phone up and make an appointment, walk in and
answer a few questions (nothing too personal, they just wanna make sure you
aren't gonna give someone an illness)..then they take the blood, which takes
like 10 minutes (it's pretty uneventful, to the point of boredom really).
Then you get a free drink, crisps and biscuits (if nothing else, it's free
food) and you're done.

I know a lot of people have problems with needles, but you don't have to
watch or anything and it doesn't hurt...so suck it up and be a man (or
woman) about it.

For more information, go to www.blood.co.uk and there will be a number to
call for an appointment.

So that's me done preaching for today, I don't do it too often and you can
ignore it if you like. Onto better subjects...new demos are sounding better
than ever as we started to add some real guitars rather than just pointing
mic's in the vague direction of dan's amp and hitting record. I think we now
have 13 demo's or something like that, not sure how many would make it onto
an album, but we're getting there.

This is pretty much all i've seen this week...

But I have taken some time off to hang out..happy birthday to my friend Ben,
we rolled out on monday night and he was getting all philosophical about the
meaning of existence (you can tell he's getting old whenever you start
thinking about that stuff) and laurie tried to convince me that drummers are
considered 2nd class citizens and will rise up to overthrow the singers and
guitarists of the world. He's full of shit though because he is an excellent
guitarist and I think he just wants to be a frontman...I think he'd be good.

Also spent my thursday afternoon (after all morning in the studio with dan)
in the park eating subway and listening to all american rejects with the
only person who's really changing my mind about anything at the moment.
Everyone else is reverting to type, when they should be breaking moulds. Me?
I am staying still and keeping my head down. Is it worth the inevitable
fallout? I have no idea. Ignore me, i'm rambling.

Time to go,

Max x

back in front of the familiar warm glow of screens. the warm fuzzy feeling is either comfort, or indigestion from breakfast.

got back from london and headed straight to practice. our rehearsal area is freezing in the winter and baking in the summer. despite the cooling, gorgeous summer day outside, it was getting hotter and hotter - i came home dripping with sweat (we decided to run through all the new stuff and as we've been working so hard, it took longer than half an hour....busy boys eh??).

We wrote what is designed to be the last song on the album last night (or at least finished writing it). You see, this isn't a collection of random stuff that we've thrown together...far from it. Dan and I talked about albums that we love the ending of and pretty quickly worked out that we aren't into a slow, drifty ending with fade outs and repeats. With that in mind, we rocked the whole thing out - put it two hooks and kick in even harder towards the end. vocal outro. job done.

"we've got this down to a science baby, we don't make mistakes, we don't intend to make"

since we put everything else on hold, our output has gone through the roof (i.e. we've actually managed to write something), we've finished what is lovingly referred to as 'the lesbian song' and the last song on the album. they all need polishing and playing live to double check them (and yes i'm still behind on my lyrics, but if a guy like me can't come through to save the game in the dying seconds, then i don't know who can).

this is what mixing looks like right now - it's what i'm gonna be seeing a lot of when we finally get round to recording some songs.

if you can find a copy - check out a song called 'overkill' by colin hay. i saw it on a tv show and went out of my way to check it out...it was worth it.

dates are now starting to get booked for the new schools tours. it's gonna be awesome playing the new songs for you guys....we will probably have some words and names by then...although standing in front of a few hundred people, most of whom are under 16, and saying "this song is for a lesbian who i have a crush on" would be worth half a smile....and probably get a bigger cheer than dan's new guitar solo (kidding dude - it's actually pretty good this time round). hood up, volume up, middle finger up.

i hope you're ok. i really do. i probably never tell any of you, but that's just how it goes i guess.

time to go, see you around, max x

So I just got on the train home from london, it air-conditioned which is
handy as it's fucking hot outside. I should probably be typing something
more useful into this little machine that pretty much runs my life, but it's
a long ride so i'll get round to work later.

Foo's show was really good fun, I got too drunk and pretty much ignored the
support bands in favour of hitting the bar (20 minute queues, what the fuck
is that about??). I know motorhead are legends and everything, but it's just
not my thing. Alcohol and sunburn again, we're nothing if not predictable.

Got to see my friend jack for the first time in a long time which was cool, (that's him and maunder in the snappy snap), and the familiar faces were there too so a good day was a guarantee.

I am getting a little restless as we haven't played a show in almost three
weeks or something like that, apparently in day-to-day life people don't
applaud when you finish anything...and nobody sings along if you burst into
song on the high street. Is this what life without a stage and a microphone
is like? Fuck that.

Before I hit our nations capital for the weekend, me and dan finished
recording our parts for a random little thing that i'll get kev to post up
on MySpace for you to hear. It is a testament to the fact that I need to get
a life. I'll finish mixing it tomorrow.

Max x

anyone who knows me, knows that i am a massive New Found Glory fan, so this makes me super happy.

if you don't love NFG, there is something wrong with you. yes, andrew maunder, i am looking at you.

max x

So i'm writing this on the bus due to our van being towed to the garage to
get repaired. Fuck knows how much that's gonna cost, but if it's anything
other than free, I can't afford it.

The guy with the tow van was one of those huge, monosyllabic, 25-inch neck
guys who say little and seem to think even less. He was cool to me, but I
always feel kinda lacking in testosterone around people like that. I guess
if you own a huge van you are expected to be manly and built like a brick
shithouse...I am neither of these things, i'm just a kid in a band who needs
a fucking tow. Whatever.

Had my head down the past couple of days trying to get all my day-job stuff
out of the way before we start playing shows again. Made some progress, but
never enough.

Another new song last week, my hook went down well with the others I
think...they have been thin on the ground recently as I have been pretty
harsh when i'm picking ones I like enough to take to rehearsal.

I love my iPod. Despite it breaking constantly. I love the fact that I can
be walking down a street in our little town listening to bands like ours
from all over the world. They probably don't even know that kids thousands
of miles away love their songs, it's magic.

So I didn't make it to the Foo Fighters show in our home town on Monday, but
it looks like i'm going to the huge London show this saturday. Huge shows
like this are hit and miss, usually good atmosphere and cool to hang out in
the sun, but bad sound and being so far from the band that they are actually
in a different postcode kinda suck. Guess i'll just get drunk.

Ok, the kid behind me is staring over my shoulder and reading this so i'm
gonna go...i'll catch you all soon, there are shows up on the website that
have us back where we've been before, I want to see familiafr faces.

Max x

As of now, I am only buying clothes from eBay. seriously. have you checked that shit out? they have 06 designs for like a quarter of the price that they sell for in stores and fashion sites. some of it is probably knocked off or whatever, but fuck it....ask me no questions, i will tell you no lies. been a while since i picked up any new stuff - the stores are so expensive and i resent paying extra just so they can put cool soundsystems and plasma screens in the store. i'm a guy, i'm only in there for like five minutes anyway.

can we talk for a second about the new fall out boy video? i saw it for the first time a month or two ago online, and it's now on mainstream tv here in the uk. the full thing is just over 6 minutes, you can check it out here. i know they wanted to push some boundaries, but i just don't think they made it. it's a few too many ideas (most of which seem to have been borrowed from mediocre vampire flicks) shoe-horned less-than-glamorously into a video that seems incongruous to the song itself. i hate it when people spout opinions without backing it up so i'll give some examples.....the music is cut in and out of the video seemingly as an afterthought when it comes in for the final time, you can hardly hear it behind the fight scene sound effects...the wire effects look cheap and half-assed...the plotline is introduced with a 40-second vocal intro, but it peters out with a whimper at the end. don't get me wrong, i am a big fan of fob, and they normally seem to set themselves pretty high standards, but i think they took it a little too far this time. what the hell do i know? have i sold millions of records? no.

ok, that concludes todays random rant, it's saturday night and i am glad to be in. going out is over-rated.

max x

There's a store in my home town that sells knives and playstation games in
the same window display. There are the shops that used to sell us alcohol
when we were kids with fake ID's and bad ideas. The square in the middle of
town plays host to everything from blood drives to preachers offering to
save our souls. The faces are familiar but not in that good way that makes
you feel like home, just that you know you've seen them before in the same
place, doing the same things. The monotony of reality.

Our new songs scream in my ear as I walk down this street for the millionth
time. We are a long way off finishing this record and I know it. I keep one
eye on this screen and one eye on the crowds looking for a girl to be in the
new video. Let me know if you know anyone who you think could do it. We are
picky though, so make sure.

Max x