Bang up to date.

I was just about to go make some dinner when I heard the words 'I'm making paella, do you want some' from downstairs. Fuck yeah.

So I've used what would have been cooking time to update the links on here. I've added a lot of friends blogs that I have found since I last updated it. I like it when I find out people have blogs so if you have any suggestions then feel free to leave a comment, though I don't really read any blogs from people I don't know.

I'm so glad I started this, and I'm glad that a lot of my friends do it too, I think blogging is a great thing to do and especially good for long distance friendships. Nobody can make videos everyday (apart from Barry Aldridge, who can make nine) so it's a good way to stay close to people.

I've found that about twitter as well, I thought it more than likely I would stop using that site after a day, but it's nice to interact with people, even if it is just a line or two back and forth, just that bit of regular conversation - it's what's missing from a lot of online relationships.

So the house party tour idea went down well! I was looking at a map earlier planning a route in my head! I know it won't be for a long time, but I can't wait!

Well that's all for now. I encourage you to have a look at the links to the right of this page for some blogs, and to start one yourself if you haven't already.

xxx

Idea

Possibly the greatest idea of all time. Possibly not, but it's a belter.

The idea is a little bit stolen from Willy Mason, some of you may come to realise, but actually it came from Pav who just said to me,

"If you made a video saying 'come stay at my house, address is...' I guarantee people would come knocking"

That sentence did make more sense in context but that's not important. When I read that for some reason I thought, turn that around... Don't give out my address obviously, but get people to send me theirs and get them to organise house parties at which I will play. TOUR ORGANISED.

Ok, it would be quite a lot of work and there is the possibility of people saying they will organise a big party and then I turn up and there's two people there, But I know people who I trust in most cities in the UK so I could get friends involved. Plus I could bring some people if the hosts were happy with that. Basically I just wanna drive around the country for a few weeks with my guitar meeting various friends along the way and playing gigs in random peoples houses. Will probably wait until next summer so people are on holiday and I have a cd or two to sell, which I reckon would cover the cost.

I could get support acts too! Made up from my friends! Like I could get Tom to do some around here and Ed to play when I'm north of the border... I got loads of musical friends dotted around this beautiful country!

I'm so fucking excited right now.

Thoughts?

This is Tom

In the video I uploaded today I used a bit of a song that a friend of mine recorded and I would like to take the time to introduce you to him, so guys - this is Tom. Well it's his band: Midnight Hideout, which is similar to Blue Skies in that it may as well just be his name, as it's just him. I appreciate that probably nobody reading this will like his songs as much as I do (I doubt even his parents like them as much as I do!) but if someone introduced me to his music I would love them forever. As it happens nobody introduced me to his music so that's a weight lifted off the hypothetical person who might have. We actually met when we both played at some gig at the Vic in Derby, he found me on myspace before hand and that's where we keep in touch, which is basically just me telling him how good his latest song is. I swear sometimes it seems like I only login to myspace to accept friend requests from youtubers and to check to see if either he or Jack has uploaded anything new.

His music is an interesting mix of genres, if I had to settle on two I would go with acoustic and electro. The majority of the more electronic sounding songs (Including the one from my video) have been taken off his myspace to make way for a more recent 4 track EP called 'Too Calm To Crunk' which is the most stripped down acoustic sound I have heard from his recordings, though there's still an element of electronic production, especially on the opening track, 'Too white for funk'.

This was supposed to be a simple recommendation not a review, you don't need me to tell you whether you like it or not - all you need is a link, so I'll try to keep it brief. Actually I can sum up my thoughts by telling you about one of my lists.

I have a lot of lists in my head about my life - things I want to do in the future mostly. I have one that I will attempt to give a title to now: 'People I must either make an album with or go on tour with before I die.'

Ok so it's not going to be hosted by Jimmy Carr on channel 4 any time soon, but it's one of my most important lists (and those shows are shit anyway). There are currently only three people on this list, so I'm not being unrealistic and listing everyone whose music I love... although one of them does live in Australia so I'm also not expecting this list to be completed any time soon - it's a 'before I die' list for a reason.

Anyway, that was a small segue into my mind. Yes, Tom is on the list - that was the point. I may introduce you to the other two at some point, but for now, if you're interested go have a listen to Tom's myspace. The first track is a new one and less accessible than the others, so I wouldn't start there. If you're the sort of person who will decide after one track then listen to either 'Wodka Wodka Wodka' or 'crzy teens...' which I will leave you with the lyrics from.

Yu Crzy Tns Jst Dnt Knw Whr 2 Stp

All the empty houses, how they trusted us not to make a mess. We made a mess of everything.
It's so hard to clear up in the morning.

Well I'm learning to sing what I write and then I'm packing up my bags, making every night a Friday Night. Making every pub the Vic, well you know how we love the toilet circuit because the locals in the corner have got their own shit going on, so I'll never run out of material.

Well it better be a long hot summer because we've got weeks and weeks of long hot summer plans
(like road maps and transit vans).

By the wonder of the internet, clicking on this sentence will take you to Tom's myspace page where you can listen to his songs.

Enjoy.

Twitter

I've been holding off getting a twitter because I have too many sites, but I went on there today to take the name MusicFromBlueSkies so if I did want to use it I could have it, plus so nobody else could get it and be a fake Dave (like the bebo account I just got deleted). Anyway, it turns out the username is too long so I took fromblueskies instead so it kind of looks like 'twitter from blue skies'. I dunno - everything else was taken!

ANYWAY none of that is the point. The point is as soon as I confirmed my email I was taken through to the site and it seems without doing ANYTHING I'm already following Barry Aldridge! Just look at what greeted me...

Remember Worcester?

A three car convoy for a three hour drive. We all met the family we'd never see again. It was the hundredth time we'd seen them play live, but that's not why we were there.
"We're with the band." Holding up a guitar.
"Yeah, come in lads - there's an open bar!"
Food, free rooms and an inflatable slide, which if you're going to break your toe, must be the best way. Each painful step takes you back to the moment you'd say, 'the most sensible thing to do at this point, is for us four to race around this inflatable slide.' And that's a beautiful moment to be remember.

Even outrageous hangovers, early checkouts and a three hour drive the less exciting way couldn't take the smiles from our faces.

Phone conversation between cars (with poor reception):

Which way do we go?
No right turn.
Right? What? Which way?!
NO RIGHT TURN *points to 'no right turn' sign in front*
Straight? There's no fucking road straight! Fuck it, I'll get out and ask them.
...
Ah. No right turn. Left then.

This was a strange and nostalgic post for which I apologise, but I'm in a strange and nostalgic mood tonight.

Ha, Adam always referred to that weekend as 'If Carlsberg made parties.'

Got a bit of a cold

It's barely anything, but I can't sing. As a singer this is quite annoying. I have a cover song all ready apart from the vocals. I really like it an I'm excited about uploading it but now I have to wait and I don't even know how long for.

I had a thought the other day when I was on a lifeboat off the south coast of England. I remembered getting the mystery package, right at the start before I knew who was behind it or even that anyone else had got one, and I thought, I never saw this coming. Who would have thought where the journey that began with a mystery package would have lead to?

Well I was just reading Ian's blog and I had a similar thought. I first met Ian in Bristol during a 6 hour live broadcast from inside a glass box. He drove for a couple of hours to come see us just for the hell of it (I think that's the case, could be wrong!) and now he's a proper friend whose house I stayed at the other day.

I like to think about when I first met people, Mhazz is another one I remember, she found me through my Hot Hot Heat cover and told me she wrote her youtube link on the singer's shopping list.

Remembering how little things start friendships is cool because you start to look at all the little things that happen in your day and wonder what could happen as a result.

In other news I privated a few more old videos. I realised something, hater comments don't get to me on videos that I'm totally (or at least close to) happy with, but they do when a little part of me agrees with what they're saying, even if they are saying it in a manner that can only be described as 'cuntish'. So a few more have gone, now that I have quite a lot of videos I don't think it matters that much. In fact it's quite good to see that none of the ones I want to private were uploaded since I got my new camera, so they are all over five months old, which is at least some indication that my videos are getting better.

Lately I haven't been so happy when going through comments and stuff because I'm always thinking the next thing I see will be someone telling me I can't sing, and usually I'm right. But hopefully that should have changed now because it's only a few videos that I get those comments on and now they're gone. Last time I did this people persuaded me to put reptilia back, I know a lot of people like it and it probably did attract a lot of new people to my page, but the comments do grind me down. So I'm definitely not putting it back for a while. Most people who care that much should have downloaded it by now anyway. Oh speaking of, I changed the songs on my covers myspace, so go have a look, there should be some you don't have.

Goodbye lovely people, if you can't think of what to wish for when you see that first star tonight then I'll take a healthy throat for tomorrow please and thank you.

x

Hi

So I'm sat on my own in a computer room at Winchester university. Didn't see that one coming!

I'm actually with Ian but he's gone to sort some stuff out, should be back in ten minutes or so, and Tom will be joining us later on too. We just decided to extend the little weekend get together a little longer as my train ticket is an open return.

Since I have some time here I may as well start back on Friday.

On Friday I went to Poole at the invitation of the Royal National Lifeboat Institute, also known as 'mystery package people'. The weekend was basically one of questions and answers in both directions, but the main aim was to answer the question of 'who are you?' that had been directed at them from so many youtubers. So they sent out train tickets and we used them. Not feeling all that great but happy to be well enough to go, I took a five hour train journey to the south coast. In Southampton my train split in half. This was planned, which is far less problematic than an unplanned split in half, but still it confused me as both halves seemed to be going to Poole. So basically I guessed and guessed wrong, meaning I went the slower way. However at a very similar time Charlie was writing a blog, which perhaps some of you read, that included the line, "I MISSED MY STOP SHIT"and going beyond Poole from the other direction had to go back on himself which meant getting on my train... Of course neither of us knew this until we stepped onto the platform and saw each other just a few carriages apart.

We had a wonder around and found the RNLI college that we were staying at, even though at one point a very large fence almost had us beaten. we walked in and saw three people looking at us and after a few moments of awkward, they decided that yes; we were those people off of the internet.

That night we just relaxed with a few drinks. People kept appearing at irregular intervals and by the end of the night Johnny Durham, Jazza, Mhazz, Ian, Tom and NSG had joined Charlie and myself.

I've just thought, if Ian doesn't come back... What would I do? I have no real idea where I am, no means of transportation and nowhere else to stay. Ah, I think that's his car - emergency over.

That night we all went to ASDA and bough birthday cake because at midnight it was both Johnny and NSG's birthdays, I was glad they both said they had really enjoyed their birthdays as they'd given up their normal plans to be with us.

On Saturday we had to get up ridiculously early (for me) to start doing things. Alex had already arrived by the time I got to breakfast having not slept that night but waited around Waterloo station for the first train. I won't go through everything in detail because this is already getting long and a video will follow but basically they showed us around the place. Oh and NSG "died in theory" but thankfully not in practice.

In the afternoon we went out on one of their lifeboats, which was so good. I haven't been on a boat in... Well I can't remember to be honest, I'm gonna say fifteen years. Living in Derby (pretty much the most central city in England) the opportunity doesn't arise very often. Or ever.

It was annoying having to wear all the gear but worth it when we went out one by one onto one of the smaller boats they have. I loved that part, the driver was jumping over waves and turning sharp corners, it was kind of like riding a horse because your feet were in stirrup style things. In fact, I'm going to put my reputation on the line and say that they were stirrups. But the main difference between the speedboat and the horse was probably the face full of water you got every now and then... But after the first one of those I realised that keeping the mouth firmly shut was sensible and I enjoyed the rest of the ride very much.

There were a few more tasks and talks when we got back, which I got through although I was outrageously tired. Then it was time for dinner and drinks, it was so good to relax again. That night Ian, Tom, Johnny and I stayed up in a totally empty building (apart from one creepy security guard who stuck to the shadows.) We played the piano, scrabble, seeing how much sugar Ian could get in his mouth... It was fun.

Sunday, everyone left at eleven apart from Charlie, Tom and me. We had a wonder around Poole (it's not great) and Tom and I planned with Ian to come here to Winchester. So that's brought me full circle, Ian and Tom are back, we are going to get pizza, so I will leave you there.

Back home tomorrow... Probably.