I'm not sad anymore.

Listening to lots of my old albums tonight.

There’s some pure gold here

Alexisonfire. First record. Mind blown again.

One year later.

So yesterday was a year since i started at Cineworld. If i’m being honest about it, i actually really like my job and the people in it.

It got me thinking that it also marks roughly a year since i left AMMP (A Major Motion Picture for the retards among you). I figured it was time to have a wee look back at everything we did, and you know what i discovered?

I’m so fucking proud of everything we did.

For a band with no label support, no agent and an undeservedly bad reputation online, we did so much and did it a good deal better than a good number of our contemporaries. We funded, recorded and self-released 2 and a half EP’s (I say two and a half as the third was recorded, but never released), which on listening back are still pretty damned good. We toured the entire country a good few times, playing everywhere that would take us (and some places that wouldn’t) and sleeping in tesco car parks every night. Again, we did it all off our own backs in a piece of shit van that probably wasn’t even road legal.

Our gear was held together with duct tape cause we couldn’t afford to replace it. We played shows without drumkits, PA’s and even considered just playing our EP on a boombox and doing a dance routine when the power failed in Kettering one night. We got pretty good at improvising, playing each others instruments when injuries occurred and I did lead vocals a few nights when Adam fucked up his throat. The point was that it didn’t matter how we were doing it, or how back and heartbreaking doing it was. It was the fact we were doing it that was important. No matter how many times we got trodden down or drove all the way to Cardiff or Yorkshire to find a show was cancelled, we still just said; “Fuck it. Let’s find another hell hole to play in (or a cheap hotel to get drunk in).” It was worth it all to be with our best friends, on the road doing something we loved.

This might all sound a little self-righteous (it is a bit) but this isn’t supposed to be about my ego (again, it is a bit). If you take away anything from this, it should be that you can do anything if you want to, but be warned that it won’t last forever. But to expect something as good as that to last forever, i fear may be missing the point. The best part isn’t the lasting, but that fact you went and did the motherfucker in the first place. I’ll always look back fondly on my time in AMMP, and i still consider all the guys to be some of my closest friends, but i sure as shit don’t miss waking up in the freezing cold van with a gear stick jammed into my back. Nor do i miss the nightmarish logistics of going on tour. But i do miss playing music, and more than that i miss my friends. The saddest part is i don’t actually remember the last time the five of us were in a room together. I see the guys separately now and again, but for the most part we’ve all got so much of our own shit going on that it’s rare that any of us even have the same night off at any point during a month.

“What’s your point?”, I hear you ask. My point is that i had the greatest time doing something i wanted to do since i was 10 years old and i first heard a Cheap Trick record. My point is that i did it all without any of it being handed to me and i did it all with my best friends. My point is that I’ll always know that not only did we do it, but we were pretty fucking good too. My point is that i bothered to try and doing something, instead letting shit just pass me by. My point is that if i can do it, anyone can.

 And even though since i left, the band has split and we never released our last record. Even though it’s something i don’t think i could even bring myself to physically or mentally do again, there’s still a little part of me that thinks;

We could have fucking made it.