Cargo and the Christmas Wasteland

28th December. Who the hell thought this might be a good time to have party? It really isn't. At one stage it could have been, but most of the people who thought they'd be up for it realised they weren't. Enough said.

We made it home with 20 quid in our collective pocket, which almost covered diesel costs. Bring on the New Year.

The Croft, Bristol

Three years ago, we were hassling as many places as we could in Bristol for shows and there were no takers. Although Bristol has a great scene for live music, it's mostly enclosed and it feels good to finally begin working our way in with this show and the upcoming New Year's Eve gig too.

A great, packed gig (bar a couple of electrical power upsets) and wonderful to see friends we've made all over the past few years who happen to have congregated in Bristol. You know who you are.

Whilst we're in the process of forumulating a new improved gameplan for getting the attention of labels and making a living off what we're doing, the main goal that we set out to achieve four years ago remains the same: to lay it down as hard as we can to as many people as possible.

Sorry, no photos.. misplaced my camera, but it turned up by the end of the night.

None of us have a clue about vehicle mechanics but we reckon the starter motor has gone. Watching the band rally together to push and bump the van into ignition has started to become a major part of entertainment for our fans.

Back to Clockwork in Bristol for New Year's Eve for another smashing one. Advance tickets are £10, so be there for a non-extortionate non-overhyped all-nighter.

Boileroom, Guildford

After getting back in the early hours, having had varying degrees of sleep (ranging from 15 minutes to a few hours), we're back to our hometown to finish the weekend off. The party doubles up as a celebration of Stuey turning 28 on Monday.



Some wicked support acts - Megiddo and The Retrosexxxuals. Aside from a chicken curry that was more like a curry with chicken-flavoured marshmallow courtesy of the in-house Boileroom chefs, it's another fine night.

With me also turning 28 later on in the week, it's a reminder that time is ticking. As Nelly pointed out, it's halfway to 56. It's also about the 4th anniversary of Subsource forming, and we're definitely at that stage where we'd really like something to happen now. Although we've come a long way and we're faring better than many bands we've met along the road, there is definitely an air of stagnation creeping in. A 3-pack of Magic Trees for the van is helping immensely.

The Waterside, Carmarthen

The Jolly Good promoters know how to prepare a party. To have the stage ready for us, they drove their van on a 30-mile trip to get it there. It took four trips.

Carmarthen's a small town where there's rarely much going on apparently, so we had a good crew pitch up. The age 16+ policy worked towards our advantage. Been thinking for a while that we might appeal to a younger crowd and the night proved it. They went nuts. Best gig since the festival season.






Very well looked after by our hosts - definitely will be back! Touching to have people there who saw as at shows earlier in the year. (Including Small Nations festival and the even the infamous Antiworld show)

Peterborough

Sometimes you find pockets of cool people in the most unlikely of areas. A few people here were excited about our arrival having seen us before at Synergy (SE1) earlier in the year, which was nice. From what we saw of Peterborough though, it's definitely been the biggest shithole out of anywhere we've been recently.



The curry places sell fried chicken, burgers and kebabs - the kebab shop sold pizza, fried chicken and curry - it's all pretty wrong and it all sounds like one big recipe for e.coli to me.

It was a pissy day, and we'd had the good sense to fix our driver side windscreen wiper for £225 earlier in the week. It still seems expensive to pay that much to be able to see whilst you're driving.

The Spirit and Soul club itself was fairly damp and cold, but the people were friendly (we'd managed to speak to most of them throughout the course of the evening). Two thumbs up for tea and cake being sold downstairs.