Ive never been one for writing blogs but today as i was driving up PCH i started thinking about the last 10 years and everything that has happened.. something occured to me.... the gig that kickstarted Lostprophets as we now know it was right there smack at the beginning of the decade.. February 3rd to be exact.
At the end of 1999 we had just finished the Fake Sound of Progress demo. We had spent somewhere in the region of a year writing and recording at frontline in caerphilly and that demo was the result. It was very different to the previous demos we had done in everyway possible. Recorded by stu, the tunes were massive, it had a great little inlay designed by Ian, it was the blueprint for what we were to become.
I was putting on gigs in Cardiff around that time so i booked Earthtone9 to play the mighty bogiez and we were gonna play and use it to launch our demo. The rest of the bill was filled by cardiff ska punks Project Pigeon the mighty tripcage. Things were a little different back then. If it had been now, we probably would have self released it as an EP or something but we were 5 (jamie came later) poor kids from ponty so a couple of shoeboxes full of maxell c60s bought using my makro staff discount would have to do. I booked the bands, Ian designed the posters and a T- Shirt, which if anyone has one of these theyre pretty damn rare, we only printed around 20 of them... actually i think i still have a poster in my nans attic, i'll have to dig it out. we paid some fella who had the monopoly on putting posters up in cardiff at the time.. who'd have thought it? we used to put all our own up, driving around in a car with wallpaper paste but this guy who got paid by all the clubs to put theirs up tore them down... nice one! I believe we went under the name of The New Noise Collective or something like that.. I did all the booking and stuff whilst in work using makros phones..ooops. I was refitting a store in birmingham at the time but spent half my days calling people trying to get us gigs or booking bands to play cardiff.
On the day of the gig i call Bogiez and speak to dungeon master (if youre from south wales and went to gigs in the 90s you know who im talking about.. legend.. master of the umba noise) to ask him what time to load in etc and he tells me that the club has closed down.. no PA, stage torn down.. i call Clwb Ifor Bach, who in the past have never let us put on shows there, tell them the scoop and they were awesome and let us do the gig there.. My 2 house mates were equally awesome standing down by bogiez redirecting people to the welsh club. I cant remember much about playing that night, i just remember the vibe.. we had around 200 heads in and it was banging, people went off for all the bands and it felt like it was the start for us. we gave all our demos away, sold a couple of shirts and started the buzz around south wales.
That was almost 10 years ago.. February 3rd 2000. we start our next UK tour February 4th 2010.. 10 years and 1 day and 4 albums later... maybe im looking too deeply into it but i feel like that has some meaning. Back then we did everything ourselves and we've returned to that ethos with The Betrayed and its just as exciting now as it was 10 years ago. even more so in fact as i truly believe this is the best album we've done to date.
Its been a crazy decade for me as im sure it has for the other guys.. and its all been made possible by people supporting my band and im incredibly humbled by that and eternally grateful. Aside from my family this band is all that ive got.. im not a rich kid, i dont have an acting career and i certainly dont have a trustfund waiting for me. Thank you all once again. i do infact have another project in the pipeline and i'll tell more later, very excited....
...and speaking of family, 2009 was the most amazing year.. my daughter is the most incredible little thing. she'll be side of stage in feb in the little pink ear defenders..
So kiddies, if we believe the movies when i write my next blog in 2020 we'll then have flying cars, hover boards, replicants, game shows where we hunt criminals, all which will be irrelevant as we would all have died in a nuclear holocaust anyways..
I spent the millenium over chiplins house with all my mates chilling, i spent 2010 writing a blog.. never have been big on new years but i am very very excited for 2010.. battle ready, combat tested
