Matt Pocket

Fucking Friday

2007-06-15T09:51:40Z

So, its been way too fucking long since I did anything.

One of those things is a post to my LiveJournal, its being such a long time for no reason whatsoever other than the fact that I am lazy, being a bit down about the band, and had an absolute eternity of college work to finish in order for me to pass my HNC and get some more blood money from my evil corporation.

It's friday, I'm bored, I am going to be bored all day, MSN is broke, and I have absolutely no intention of doing any work or college work. I finish at 11.30 on a friday afternoon. Take jaz to work then sit on my ass all afternoon thinking of all the better things I could be doing if I werent such an ass. I have a friday feeling, but its certainly not the Pointer-Sisters-Crunchie-Eating-Roller-Coaster-Riding induced friday feeling. Not all all.

I'm really hungry too, which is always a drag on a friday morning. Good job I only have 4 hours to do today, otherwise I might kill someone and eat them, with me being such a cannibal and all.

My head is mashed.

I am typing random bollocks.

I am also very very very disappointed in my friend, Sir Thomas Knott. Who has failed to write one inspiring LJ since my absence. His famous little rants are reduced to "XXXX is a dick!", and "XXXX can eat a bag of dick!" and "Go and buy XXXX's album/dvd/etc because it is clearly awesome!". I hope he reads this, bucks up his ideas, and then gives me a phonecall or something to let me know how much of a twat I am, and tell me to "eat a bag of dick!". Its been too long knotty, we need good times to sort things out...

It also looks like Stash Pocket are doing something again. I dont know if I will be a part of it. Mike, Alex, and Andy (new drummer) are playing the M club without me this weekend. Fuck knows whats going on there. Fuck it. I'm jealous.

Anyway, I'm going to do something useless for a while longer. Say hi. I need some fucking helloness going on.

Matt

mattpocket @ 2007-04-04T14:48:00

2007-04-04T13:49:36Z

Seems like ages since I posted anything up here, it’s not like I’ve been busy either.

Right now, I am at work.

I am bored as hell. Pissed off cos Stash Pocket is once again fucked up. Waaay too hot. Wishing I could do a million and one other things rather than being here.

In other news, I got a few orders to build some effects pedals for people. Which is cool. I finally got an all valve amp, although I might have broken it. Last week, I saw Johnny Vegas at Stafford Services, he said alright to me and showed us the proper way to mock him by repeatedly chanting “Look at me monkey!” He then proceeded to attempt to reverse his VW Golf R32 into another car whilst leaving the car park.

That’s it for now.

You know when you are so bored and annoyed you can’t do anything at all?

Monday Morning Blues...

2007-03-26T07:30:56Z

I am back at work once more, and so here comes the Monday morning blues. The cure is to write an entry for my livejournal. Anything but work.

Anyway, as some of you may know (if anyone apart from knotty actually reads my livejournal) that we had some trouble a while back with the band and Alex and Ash arguing. This resulted in Alex quitting/getting kicked out. We got another bassist, Dave. Dave could not make the commitment to the band cos of college and stuff. Dave quit the day before we were meant to go on tour with The Disappointments. We asked Alex if he'd come back and play the tour. Ash wasn’t happy and after the first night said he was going to quit. We convinced (dragged) him to play the second show, we all had a mint time (including the legendary sighting of naked guy). Ash said he loved the band way too much to quit, and Alex seems to be on his best behaviour, and the brothers are currently living in peace. Hopefully, this is the last we'll hear of any splitting, fighting, quitting, etc...

While Dave was in the band we booked some recording time to get a couple of tracks down, one entitled '98 (at the time) and one entitled Forget Remission Call The Mortician (at the time) and clocks in at less than 30 seconds. After Dave left and Alex returned we decided we were going to go to the studio anyway and do the songs (as Alex was in the band when we originally wrote the tunes he already knew them). We went for a day and managed to get all the music done, with only a few hiccups and it was sounding ace. The bad part was we wanted to do vocals and having to wait a week to do them was well frustrating. However, it did give me and Mike the chance to re-write the lyrics for the whole song (98) and the song came out the other end entitled "Running Hot & Cold". We also re-wrote Remission and called it "Pull The Plug". We were really happy with the new lyrics (as the old ones were crap and made no sense whatsoever). We recorded them the following Tuesday, with some mild problems with Mike's voice box. The songs sound ace, we are £300 down, but the songs sound amazing. I'd definitely book us to go back again, we had a well good time, and the results are way better than we expected. Pull The Plug will be released on punktastic records in July as part of punktastic un-scene 4 - a homage to the fat wreck release "Short music for short people". This is ace.

It's certainly been a nice weekend. Fairly chilled. Plenty of food and drink. Me and Jaz have been home alone (and looking after her little sis) while her dad and step mum are on holiday. It's been nice having the house to ourselves and cooking loads of meals. We made a killer Sunday dinner yesterday, and teriyaki chicken noodles on Saturday.

And yesterday, get this.... wait for it.... I WASHED MY CAR! Did a fair shit job of it like but it’s washed all the same.

Me and Mike also went shopping on Saturday; we went to three guitar shops and didn’t buy a thing. We must be kicking the habit. Mike nearly brought an old school gameboy though, but changed his mind while he was in the unnecessarily large queue. That should have been a No Regrets, Spur-of-the-Moment purchase, but the queue made Mike reason the decision and he decided against it. Oh well, pokemon will fight another day.

You know what; I don’t think there's much else to tell you. We haven’t done that much.

I think me and Jaz are going to see To All That Fail Tonight at The Glebe, I promised Steve we'd go last time and never made it, so hopefully, finger crossed, we'll get there tonight.

I better do something, that's what they pay me for. Hopefully Mike will email me in a bit, and maybe someone will talk to me on myspace or something.

Stay on the bricks,

Peace.

WHEN THE SHIP GOES DOWN!

2007-03-13T08:16:04Z

Right, well I just read the best summary of our tour, better than I can do. So go read that. Knotty from The Disappointments (who we were on tour with! DUH) wrote it (Tom-Knott.livejournal.com) We pretty much spent three whole days together, so we had a similar experience. We had a LOAD of fun, and (if they don’t get too famous for us) I am sure a Stashappointments or Disappockets tour will be hitting the road again soon. We'll have to see how busy they are later in the year. What I will say is that I fucking love The Disappointments, no matter how much I try (jealousy, I suppose) I cant get away from the fact that they are an amazing live band, and are always so tight it makes me sick. They have a song, I don’t know what it is called (on the set list it said "like smack", but it has the best pause/shoutback ever! The song stops dead and you hold on to your blood vessels and scream "WHEN THE SHIP GOES DOWN!!!". That song is verging on No Charades territory, maybe better (yes, I did just say that). I love it, the first thing I did when I got back off tour was see if a song of that name was on their soon to be released record. Unfortunately, I don’t think it is. Otherwise I would buy a thousand copies of that album and play it through a thousand CD players so I would hear a thousand shoutbacks, or some similar epic thing to do! Either way I love it. We've had some real good times over those few days, and dancing, and singing, and sharing the stage for No Charades was legendary. It's at times like those that your "real" nine to five dullness seems oh so far away.

We were in the studio yesterday, which went way too quickly. We were doing '98 and Remission (a 30 second epic which will be released on punktastic records - a compilation of 30 second songs by British punk bands) After hearing the first, and then the second song develop over the afternoon I wish we had enough money/time to record our whole set. We were at Prism Studios, with Shaun Lowe producing. First of all, we were enjoying ourselves straight away because the place smells nice (unlike madhouse), it has space (unlike madhouse), it has a lounge thingy (unlike madhouse), and we knew we were going to get a sound a million times better than madhouse. Unfortunately, Ash had to work in the morning which meant instead of starting at 10am we actually started the first guide at more like 2pm, at which point Ash's snare skin broke through. DRUMSKIN! Anyway, we had a mint day, and I actually managed to play two rhythm tracks pretty damn well, and pretty damn quickly. I was worried that Mike would take over and try to do them himself, which actually made me pretty angry last time we were in the studio. To be fair, I was wank, but with a little more time I would have done it. This time though, I think I actually had less problems than Mike (my bit is WAAAYYY simpler than his, plus he hadn’t wrote his lead parts yet! Typical stash pocket) I only had a little hang-up on getting the palm-muted riff of '98 (which now has a different name but I can’t remember it at this hour). Unfortunately, I am saying unfortunately way too much. We didn’t get to start the vocals, and we have to wait til next Tuesday to do them now, which sucks, because so far both songs sound amazing! I'm just dead frustrated now cos I don’t get to hear the finished article for a week or so.

In other news, Stash Pocket are getting signed to Knotty's record label: Sweet & Sour Records, haha

I think Jaz has been dead pissed off with me lately, mainly down to spending so much time away, and her spending so much time at work. I think events have just conspired against us lately, and it's gotten to her. I just hope, now things are getting back to normality that we can resume where we left off. I can’t remember what we were doing a week ago; I can’t even remember my own name half the time. Jaz will remember, she has to remind me to do everything. She's got one of those ridiculously large brains! haha She got an A and a C (two marks from a B) in her exam results last week, how good's that. Clever girl. She makes me feel so dumb sometimes! haha I'll just keep staring in to space, and she'll keep telling me off for being a spaz and we'll live happily ever after... I love her...

Over and out. More news to come.

The Great Stashappointments Tour

2007-03-07T07:44:41Z

DRUM SKIN!

Haha we had a well good time at The Palms last night, although it isnt very tropical. The other two bands were sweet, and "DRUM SKIN!" was shouted way too many times.

I've got a busy day ahead and then I'm shooting off to wakefield, with work being a small stain on a really cool tour.

Unfortunately, me going on tour, means I dont get to see Jaz for a couple of days. Which sucks ass. I will be running up a nice phonebill with plenty of calls and messages over the next couple of days.

This might be the last time I post until friday now, but still, you know we'll be making a racket in some godforesaken hellhole. (wakefield - thursday, southampton - friday)

Anywho, I've got shit to do. So I'd better get on with it. I need a poo.

Love you Jaz, and stay in touch!

Matt xx

It's been way too long since I last wrote in my journal...

2007-03-04T17:56:16Z

I am going to try and do a big update... so here goes...

I'll tell you a load of stuff you already know first...

Alex left/was kicked out of Stash Pocket... this came about because of him not being able to get along with his big brother, Ash, our drummer. They were always fighting, and Alex sometimes went missing or did not even show up. Which is a shame, it was really hard to lose him, but something had to be done. We now have Phillip Schofield, I mean Dave Schofield, on bass, he weighs two stone, is blonde, and can jump and spin higher than tigger on pills. I hope I havent stepped out of line writing this, there's no hard feelings between the band and Alex. We even invited him up on stage to sing some songs for us at Nantwich last week, for old times sake. We had a ball, and we got paid loads of cash! Which was nice...

Also, last week, before the Nantwich show, me and Mike went to birmingham to PMT, a massive guitar shop. Which was really cool, but really depressing at the same time. All those guitars and not enough money. I left my car in Stoke after meeting up with Mike, and we drove down in his car, when we got back some fucker had put a screwdriver through my car door, broken in, and nicked my CD player and my bag - which contained half a dozen assignments - including one which my other mate Mike had leant me. It was 17 pages of double sided A4, hand-written, it took him a month to do and he was going to murder me when he found out. I phoned the coppers and they basically told me they werent going to bother doing anything. Since Stash Pocket had two gigs that night (yes! two gigs in one night!) and we were already late we had to get going. En route, I told my mate Mike his assignment was long gone. We played the rigger, which was fair shit, as I was in a right awful mood and thought one more snide remark from the soundman would tip me over the edge towards murdering him! Anyway, I'd cheered up a bit by the time we got to nantwich civic and we played a 15 minute set (something to do with a fire alarm had put them behind schedule) and then we went home. It was a real treat of a day, I didnt know what to do with myself. Anyhow, here comes the happy ending: I went back to stoke the next day and searched all the dives under the arches of the traintracks and guess what I found! The little fucker who broke into me motor had emptied the contents of my bag onto the floor. I suppose he was looking for valuables, but since all there was in there was paperwork, he fucked it all off and stuck the CD player in there to avoid looking suspicious. So I lost a bag that Jazzie brought me :( and my CD player (which was worth about a tenner - and Jaz's dad gave it me) and I got a hole in my door, but I was oh so happy I found that college work, and now Mika is my friend again.

Dont think much eventfullness has been going on this week, just chilling out mainly. I fixed the door of my car yesterday.

We are embarking on the long awaited "tour" with The Disappointments this week. I use little quote marks because we have gone from nearly a week of dates, to just three. We should call it "The Poor Excuse For A Tour" tour, and we'll sell out every night. If each venue can only hold 5 people that is. Anyway, looks like we wont be getting on The Disappointments launch show either, which is a big letdown, because when we first planned the tour I thought we'd agreed to include the launch show as part of it. But, as things, went deadlines drifted by, and no-one confirmed the date for the album release, let alone the launch party, until a few weeks ago, by which time we would have had no tour at all because is would have been all too late. So we booked us and The Disappointments a tour, and now we dont have the launch show. Bad news. Oh well, at least Rig Up Explosive playing means the hardcore kids get to floorpunch some beatdowns, we'd never be able to do that.

Love you all, but not too much. (except Jaz, I love her loads, obviously, because I got told off)

Over and out!

On the D/L...

2007-02-06T09:21:34Z

Some bad shit's being going down lately, in the Stash Pocket camp, I'm not going to go into details but you'll be hearing some big news from us real soon, so keep your eyes open and your ear to the ground... Don't worry, it's not life threatening, we just have a big wall to climb...

We need to sort some shit out...

That's it, everything else is at green status...

Love.

Blink. It's gone.

2007-01-29T15:58:18Z

Damn, I can't believe I haven’t written a thing since last Tuesday. This last week has gone so blisteringly fast it's untrue.

We got our logo finished at long last:

We played a punkscene.co.uk show in Leicester on Friday, which was ok. We had to stay there all night though because we lent some bands our amp or something. I forget what it was we lent them. We had to sit through some really bad music, from this band. It was like a cheap medley of Amen, Zakk Wilde, with a load of shit metal thrown in. With the ugliest front woman I've ever seen, just for good measure.

Mike drank a lot of Jim Beam and coke, I nearly wrote off my car several times, and we got pissed off because we didn’t get paid a penny. Apparently it was a "flyer show", which means we were meant to hand out flyers, people circled our name, and gave it to the guys on the door, with the number of flyer received with our name circled governing how much we got paid. So, this means that we are meant to hand out flyers before a show that is 80 miles from our home, cos that's going to turn out real well! It would have turned out better, if someone had told us this was what we were meant to do! Cheers mate!

Anyway, Mike made a fuss and got the princely sum of a fiver out of them... Damn, I hate it that stuff costs money. I'm sure we could all work out a fair way that everything is free but we all get along without screwing each other somehow. Meh.

We also played a charity all-day show at The Rigger, for cancer research. There were a load of metal bands on, luckily we were on second and could do one fairly sharpish. We had a fun time and played two new songs, which we didn’t forget... surprisingly.

I am yet again at work, and it sucks big-time.

It's nearly home time though, but I have to wait for Jaz to finish work at 5.30pm. This means there is no time to go home before hand, but it’s late enough to piss me off waiting round. Oh well, she's worth it and she'll pay me back when she's a high flying lawyer. In the meantime I will have to make do, and dream of our millionaire lifestyle of the future! haha

We are also meant to be going swimming tonight, which I thought would be cool, but now I am really hungry. I usually eat a shed load of food before we go and I am hungry when I get out, so I don’t have a clue what it'll be like tonight. Hopefully, Jaz will be pissed off with working and decide she wants to chill, in which case: it's munch time big-time!

Anyway, that's enough LJ for one day. Until tomorrow, when I am bored again.

Peace out, keep yer chins up!

My face hurts... it's so cold!

2007-01-23T07:42:17Z

Well, another day has begun, I have just arrived at work having had to freeze my ass off to scrape the frost off the car. Scraping the car has to be the second worst thing about owning a car, second only to owning a broken car.

I made a right feast to bring to work for my dinner, double veggie burgers with lettuce and mayo for breakfast and for dinner: a yummy bowl of pasta and veggie "meat" balls. Yum-yum! The only problem is, I left them in the f#%cking car! I was concentrating on getting to the office warmth as quick as possible, neglecting to pick up the carrier bag (or should I say bin bag?) full of munch. Oh well, I will have to trek down before breakfast to get it. Whoever decided to put my office a quarter of a mile from the car park needs a stern telling off.

Anyway, live-journal is done, onto more internet, and then maybe a little work! hahahaha

I hope everyone's ok?

Muchos Lovos,

Matt

Sunday Morning...

2007-01-21T09:12:12Z

I'm chilling in bed, jazzie by my side, and with a warm cup of coffee... cant be bad! Sunday's are a real treat!

Once again the evening approaches where ducklings drink and eat and be merry! It is the eve of monday, which is bad, but monday-eve is cool in itself. It puts off the feeling of dread about going to work tomorrow...

I finished my first scratch built effects pedal last night, its called a LofoMofo, but I might rename it to something pockety. It makes my guitar sound all lofi like its coming down the phoneline or some shit... which is the reason I made it, if you listen to The Downfall you will hear the kind of effect I was going for, its about 40 seconds from the end I think and its just one guitar on its own.

Anyway, I am up for a cracker of a monday-eve so I better get my arse in gear, Jaz is up for some serious drag-matt-round-hanley shopping! haha

Peace out motherfuckers!

Sunday

2007-01-14T15:56:38Z

So far today, I have washed my car (well, I watched jaz and her dad wash it!), watched a bit of TV, played some sega, lay in bed, bummed on the internet, and there is plenty more to come. Sundays used to be shite, but if you've got stuff to do: they aren't that bad...

Also, they are better if you've got something to look forward to...

like a BBQ! Yeah, here at che duckling we BBQ all year round! Yum yum!

And because its a sunday, it probably means that the other ducklings are coming up, and that means BEER TIME! Jazzie has a new, double, bed too, so I could even get merry and kip here! Jobs a good 'un!

What a beaut!

I hope everyone else has had a good weekend, mine has been coolio!

Peace,

Until tomorrow, when I will be ranting about the downfall of Matt Martin within BAE Systems, if I get chance... work has been so busy it's denied me my fill of myspace and livejournal...

Have fun.

PS. PAYDAY TOMORROW!

1998...

2007-01-10T09:31:26Z

Me and the rest of the mighty Stash Po's wrote a new song the other night, its really poppy, and its got such a great melody.

I love it.

I am trying to do the lyrics for it, I've done the chorus, but I've not had chance to do the verse.

Its doing my head in!

I just really want to sit down and get it done, I might have a good go at it tomorrow before I go college. Hopefully at least get a melody down for the verse, then its easy from there.

Mmm... I wonder how many people have read my journal since I started it?

Oh no, not another Monday!

2007-01-08T09:45:38Z

Aye, it's here again, the dreaded start of the week, the day furthest from the weekend...

I had an ok weekend though, the big ducklings came round last night and we had a drink and a chat, but I think everyone was tired and noone partied, or even sung karaoke! Disgraceful!

I've got a fair big job on today at work, not an interesting one, but its got a deadline. For some reason I like deadlines, cos otherwise I wouldnt motivate myself to carry out such a boring task (making copies of 150 drawings before wednesday). Anyway, I'm well on the way to finishing it, and hopefully I'll get chance to nail my Mechanical Principles and Project Management assignments before college on Thursday. I hate college so much this year, the work is so far above my dumb 'give me 150 drawings and a photocopier" level of intelligence.

I'm probably going to write more than once today I think, break up the copying innit.

If off for my daily double-egg bap now... breakfast has been so boring without bacon and sausages. I'll think of the happy pigs I havent eaten.

Haha, and it's band practice tonight, and The Disappointments are in, so it will be good to see them again. But I'll miss Jazzie, I am already!

Bye-for-now x

What do you think of casual violence?

2007-01-06T23:48:18Z

What a fucking joke?

I wanted to take my sweetness out for a date, but she insisted on us getting the bus home... rather than a taxi. While we were waiting at the bus stop some youves (little fuckers with nothing better to do) came over, and said "What do you think of casual violence?"... I tried to tell them to clear off, to which I got the reply: "Do you have a phone!?"

Oh dear, well we got on the first bus that came, luckily it headed in the right direction and we got home safe and sound... what posesses these fuck-faces to go around looking for a "fight" (considering I was on my own apart from Jaz) and asking for my phone! FUCK EM!

Anyway, a couple of Strongbow's and a VERY large whisky (poured by Jaz) later, and everythings good...

And it's time for bed... waheyyy!

Peace to all fuck-faces!

xx

The First Week Back...

2007-01-05T10:25:46Z

Damn, this week has gone quick. I started back at work on Tuesday, which was the worst day at work ever... the first day back after a week off is HARD work. It never used to be, I used to be a "morning person" but it seems I just love my sleep these days, and after a week of lying in its hard to get used to the sound of the alarm again (Even if it does play Bane). I think I have jaz to thank for converting me to lying in! (love you!)

The super-duper-speedy way in which the week has come to a close has come about as a result of a number of things:

Work. That kills eight hours of the day straight away, even if it is mind-numbing lately.

Jaz. She's always good at keeping me busy, and her moving into her dads has certainly done that!

Stash Pocket. We are currently trying to finalise the week long tour we are doing with The Disappointments (www.myspace.com/thedisappointments). This is taking a lot of organising. A load of phone calls, an outbox brimming with messages, and no replies. We will book this tour, WE WILL!

I'm going to take Jaz out for a meal this weekend, if I can get us a table. We are going to Roberto's in Hanley. It's a little family-run Italian, its really nice for a date. Mmmm... pizza! I cant wait to take Jaz out, it seems like ages since we've gone on a "date" and I am looking forward to wining and dining her. Lord knows, she deserves it.

Err... thats all I can think of now.

So. Peace.