Early Thrasher: The Channel

Hi there assholes. This is the 100th blog entry I’ve made since July 2007. You have all experienced a glimpse into my life I would rarely accord anybody. Feel special. Then move on. I have.

Today is gloomy in Newcastle upon tyne. This is the first of 2 trips I’ll be making here today. I’m sitting opposite some rather exuberant Irish people talking about sitting “on the bog for 45 minutes” and how they’ll definately need 2 bathrooms. Awesome conversation. I’m sure they’ll be talking about their night at Tiger Tiger pretty soon. Not that university students are predictable and dull… why would I imply that? Why would I imply that in order to succeed this far in and eduction system, you must have learned to be an automaton. To regurgitate information on cue and without question anything.

Feel good blog of 2008? I think so.

Tonight, Peter Gelderoos talks Pacifism at the Star and Shadow and we (aka me and the mallancoaster) attempt to obtain his permission to record his words of wisdom.

Channel launches… like… for reals soon. TTYL.

Its a glorious day in Newcastle today. Warm outside. Bright. Fresh. Nice cool breeze. I love it when its like this. It always reminds me of the previous summer when I’m at my lowest. For some reason, in winter “last summer” always seems like some sort of dream world which was amazing. Last year was probably the busiest and best summer I’ve ever had. So much fun, so many good shows with Mad Conductor, Intro5pect, New Bruises… the list goes on. Awesome. Then we did our little record. So much fun.

Speaking of recording the stress is setting in for the next few songs. I’ve got lots of titles and quite a 2 thirds of the music… I think. So far we’ve got – “Mediocrity gets you everywhere”, “Those Glory Days”, “This is the Arguement” and “Insurrection”. Very different themes from the last batch of songs. Well. Not really. A few different themes after another year of deliberation, but some recurring stuff from the material we wrote in late 2006 which doesnt get much “live time” these days, and isnt well recorded.

I’m excited to start writing as a group. We begin next week slowly. I have 2 of the songs written. I need to co-write another and decide whether we should have an intro or a really short song as our 4th. I was also thinking about something Dan was saying to me the other day. That us and Pure Graft should do a split. That’d be cool since we’re kind of similar bands and if they could get 4 songs together… lets face it maybe we’d sell more with an 8 track split than a 4 track solo EP. Its something to think about anyway.

New site launches at the end of this week with lots of webovision. Stick around.

I think I need to go home early to finish working on a song. So exciting.

Oh shit. I have to interview an actor who is pretending to be a client today. That kind of sucks but is kind of funny at the same time. Me and this canadian guy are doing it together. Pretty cool, eh?

Our new new website launches soon. I know the last one was pretty short lived, and one of the most ambitious sites I ever built, but it was more of a blog than a channel. I want to get back to the video side of things. Once the fad is over again maybe the blog will come back… But I can blog about politics all I want over at Tear it down anyway. Why sour this place out.

Basically as soon as we finish up post production on Encounter, the new site will launch. We’re hoping the 1st of Febuary. Then we will set about gradually collecting footage for our greatly anticipated reality TV show. Its about time we had a reality show here at the channel.

We’re going to start paying attention to the ratings again. They have been low, obviously since we’ve posted no new videos recently. I think we need a viral marketing campaign. Like… have… big green early thrasher logos appear on the white cliffs of dover… or… big chunks of shit with my face stapled on them attached to some peoples faces.

Thats all. Just a short one today. More tomorrow probably. 16:9 rocks. I made a new header – that’s our new colour scheme on the new site. Very exciting.

People. We are resurecting the Channel. Its official. We will relaunching with a 16:9 aspect ratio video player for our new clips and movies, meaning high quality video will be streaming to your awesome new widescreen monitors… or… maybe it’ll look kinda shitty on your laptop from 1991. Get a new computer!

The site will be changed up again with the emphasis on our new player, featured content and of course RSS feeds from this blog. There will also be an on demand area.

Thats all I want to say about it right now, we kick off the new season next week with 2 new videos. The first is a documentry, the second is the channel’s answer to “Cloverfield”. Something we have been working on since September last year. We call it… Encounter! Just got some music to overlay and special effects to add it. We’re almost ready for the premier.

Then, we got more stuff up our sleeves. Hillarious new shows. Yes. Genre defying shows. You wont know whether to laugh or cry. We have a reality TV show coming to the Channel! More on this later!

Today is the big day. The Shitty Limits will be performing a set of their finest songs in our practice room with Offshore Radio, Pur Graft and Reality. Should be fucking mint provided the owners fuck off, the place is empty and a nice amount of people show up.

Just saw mallan and mooched around Newcastle with him assualting old women, paying metro fines, buying sandwichs and telling those stupid fucking questionnaire cunts that they’re gonna die. I’m not even kidding. Pretty funny. Malsy moves into his new house next week. Class. Cant wait to pop round. Hopefully there’ll be a house warming party? I dare say!!! ahem.

Got to remember to bring a mic stand… Cd’s…. and a CD player tonight… should be alright. Need some entertainment whilst we set up and in between sets. I pray to god (not) this goes to plan. I’m really looking forward to it… and if it goes well thats bliss. If the owners or other bands are in then that’ll be sickening.

Encounter has made it to the first cut today. Unbelievable. This thing is gonna be out before you know it. We need the special effects clips to be sent to us, Jonny’s scenes which he has edited to be brought over, the whole movie to be colour corrected and music to be overlayed. Oh…. and we have some dubbing to do for the aliens voices. Kind of a lot to do really. Hopefully most of this can be accomplished on Friday night which I have allocated for music/re-editing/colour correction.

Expect a documentry to be released just before the movie. I’m talking… this weekend. Also, maybe a some site move-arounds.

Yesterday I mentioned a new season. It may be difficult but I think we can make it at some point in the future. What would you guys prefer, lots of short content often, or some long, painstakingly shot content less often? I’m interested to know. We need a new opening for the show. I’ll make one pretty soon I guess.

My neck has been seriously hurting over the past few days. Y’ouch. Dont know what thats about. Yesterday my legs randomly got painful while I was walking and I had a huge headache. I’ve been feeling dizzy and have had tingley hands too. I’m sure something fucked up is happening to me. Doc says its nothing. Fair dos. Hope he feels good about himself when I suddenly collapse and die.

Anyway. Enough of this. Got some work to do for my degree in Law.

Hi everybody. I’m currently editing our feature length move “Encounter”. Tonight, I indend for the first cut to be completed and for me to go through and colour correct most of the shots. Get them how I want them to look. You know the deal. We are planning to release this thing in Febuary! A whole 6 months after we originally intended to release it.

Progress is currently being hindered by my video camera acting up. It will not play back tapes. It will not really accept tapes… it just keeps telling me to eject them. What a nightmare. Need to buy a new camera. Shouldn’t have just bought a Gibson SG. Only kidding. I love the SG. But I may need a new camera.

We have some new content on the way actually! A little resurge. Not only do we have Encounter coming up, but hopefully a nice documentry by Jonny soon.

There are plans in the works to shoot another documentry, all about our run up to a new season of Early Thrasher. This is going to be a lot of fun. We need more crazy shit here. We need some more videos. If me and Jonny go out for lunch… its going on the channel.

So stick around. Things are getting interesting. But this is only going to casual. The new season will probably be around 5 shows… plus our documentry special. Awesome. Stay tuned for “Ben Lyons This Morning” and “Horse Head Banging Pots and Pans: The 1 Hour Special”.

I’m going to start trying to take more video and post more updates here at the channel from now on. Its so cool how I documented my summer on this blog by posting every day and making goofy videos. Its like an online diary. So here’s what I’ve been up to over the weekend for those of you who are interested.

First off, I was off uni all week and I feel shit about it. I really need to get down to some work. Today I’m being a good boy. Thursday was rad. Rich and the leeds massive came back so we all went out. I drank ridiculous amounts. We met Callum, Lesta and Mallan in Independant. That was awesome. We had an amazing time. We werent satisfied when Indy closed so we took the party to the Glass Spider. Mint. Stayed there till 4 or 5. Still werent satisfied. Continued drinking at Rich’s till 6/7am. Pretty fucking killer.

Friday was recovery day. Recorded some songs with The Revolts. Canny good.

Saturday was also fun. Spent the evening at Strads with the leeds people. Jord, Ash and some other lass joined us. That was fun. Then we headed to Independant to be greeted by Jonny, Joanne and Mallan. Good times. I put lipstick on and started talking about Kat Von D. Regretable.

Sunday was kind of fun too. Woke up feeling rough but me and Jonny decided to do lunch. Went to Quiznos and bought a huge sandwich. Really massive. Delicious though. We got double cheese melts with tomato, mushroom, mayo, lettuce and cucumber. Fucking ridiculously delicious, but they were so big we couldnt finish them. I also got some pick and mix. Sweet.

Went to HMV. Looked at horror DVDs. Laughed at one called “They Nest”. Hillarious.

After a quick power nap I went over Ash and Jays to see the baby with Helen and Rich. Their baby is fucking lovely. He’ll be walking in no time.

Oh my god! Tony Forbes got ran over drunk and broke his elbow! Crackers.

Should have shot some video of our lunch. That would be funny. Stay Tuned for our new magazine show “Ben Lyons This Morning”.

Oh hi there idiots. Over the past couple days some people (a minority) have informed me that they cannot see the content on Earlythrasher.co.uk (the channel). I have some advice for these people.

 1) Get a better computer. Its not 1991.

2) The site works fine. If you can’t see the content then see point #1 above, or be aware that the organisation from which you are accessing the site has blocked my RSS feed aggregator.

3) If this is the case… then just click the wordpress link at the bottom and it’ll take you to the old blog. Bitch.

 I just realised that the people who actually need to read this… probably cant. That is funny. Oh well.