i found ...

i found this today on my computer and it was only half done and was for a website that never got made. so i stayed up tonight and finished it. was gonna post it on bombshell but didn't want it torn to shreds.THE PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF SPUDGUN So I guess I've been here from the start. So yeah, I guess it's sorta up to me to tell the whole story. I'll try remember as much as possible if anything's wrong or sounds like bullshit, I probably didn't make it up, I'm just sorta sketchy about a lot of the details (stupid brain cells), but I'll try my best to give a truthful account of my days in this wonderful band I called home, Spudgun.1997-1998 (???)- THE START (Ross (vocals, guitar), Simo (guitar), Lani (bass), Boasty (drums)) It was the summer of 1997. I was in year 9 I think (I'm pretty sketchy with these earlier bits). Anyway, a dude called Ross started at my school. He played guitar, so I thought he was cool (I didn't know anyone else who did) and he liked Nirvana and Rage Against The Machine. So I asked him if he'd want to start a band, he said yeah cool. He had about a billion songs he'd been writing forever and yeah we sort of started "practising" them. I got a friend of mine who played drums called Boasty to play with us. We never really ever got into the whole basis of the songs, like translating what he wrote into performing it as a band. He said "I'm playing this" and I'd go "allright well I'll make up something to go with it as we go", the songs sounded different everytime we played them. But it was really good fun and we felt like cool motherfuckers playing in a band. We didn't even have a bass player. I still have tons of tapes of us we recorded on my old school tape deck. They're pretty trashy, I have a feeling in 100 years, someone's gonna find them and think it's the most insane out of control original music ever, but really, it was just all over the shop. But still Ross did have a pretty good voice and knew how to scream pretty damn good. Boasty was also a pretty damn good drummer. I actually don't know what happened to either of these dudes. I haven't seen them in a long long time. Oh yeah, Lani. Well she was sort of our bass player. I don't think we ever practised with her, but still for a while we were telling everyone she was in the band (again I fully can't remember, haha).1999- STARTED ACTUALLY GIGGING/ PRACTISING (Ross (vocals, guitar), Simo (bass), Blake (drums)) then (Dave (vocals, bass), Simo (guitar), Blake (drums) I don't know what happened but eventually Blake just started playing drums for us. I guess he was just a lot closer to me and Ross and played drums, so it worked for us. But I'm way more than glad, he did (I don't know where woulda ended up without good ol' Case on the sticks). We sorta started playing stuff that was really slow grindy sorta rock. Like Nirvana being played at half the speed. I remember me and Ross would have to catch a bus to near Blake's house and then push our amps and guitars in a shopping trolley the rest of the way. Anyway, I guess we sorta started taking this a bit more serious. We would go to Blake's, practise, get drunk and go for a swim, it was great. Our first gig was on Tuesday 12th January 1999, at the Emu Plains Community Centre. It was an all ages gig. We'd just showed up to watch a friend's band and then when a band cancelled I just went up and said "We're a band, can we play?", then said "cool". So we played. Borrowed someone's equipment (Porn Drug, now known as Tocata) and did about a 20 minute set of very unrehearsed tunes. It was awesome though. I still remember seeing people dance to us. It was a great show, even if we probably sucked. Well not probably, did. A week later, we recorded a demo at a friend's dad's studio. We did 4 tracks including a cover of the Doors song "Light My Fire". It's really funny to listen to now, but I wouldn't have changed a thing about if I could go back. I have no idea what happened but 2 months later Ross was shipped off to boarding school by his parents and we had a new singer and bass player, I was playing guitar again and we were playing punk rock tunes. We played a few parties and school events with the lineup of me, Dave & Case in the coming months. We'd rock up to the place, get drunk (yes, even the school events), play and just have the time of our lives. We also met our sister-band Slavegrinder (now known as SSFD) during this time. Then, I dunno what happened but Dave was kicked outta the band, I think cos we had to cancell a show or something cos he couldn't make it. We were very "serious" about our "careers" at this point. So serious in fact that we did one local show with just me and Case doing Frenzal Rhomb and Nancy Vandal covers. Definately one of our finest moments. Next show we got our "merch guy" Budge to play bass and I sang. I taught Budge all our songs in one afternoon, he'd never touched a bass before. Born bass player he was. We did a few more shows that year. One where we gave out pamphlets onstage about how to put on condoms properly. Oh and we gave away a toy monkey, the beginning of a lot of sillyness to follow.Also at some point our friend, Chloe started coming to rehearsals and playing saxaphone with us. That was ace. 2000- PERFECTING THE ONSTAGE FUCKUP -Simo (guitar/vox), Budge (bass), Case (drums) then Dave (vox), Simo (guitar), Budge (bass), Case (drums) We started 2000 like (as we thought) kings. We had managers (one of whom looked EXACTLY like Jen from Dawson's Creek), we had a following, a very popular website, sponsers (yes, sponsers. The best of which was a surf company in HAWAII! haha) and we were all nearly 18. Towards the start of the year we entered the pristigious Collingwood Hotel Band competition. We got through to the final round, a festival in Liverpool. Nobody really went to it though. Still we got to play on a REAL stage in a city other than Penrith. Oh yeah and we came 4th or something. We did our final party show on the 18th of March. We were through with the whole party scene. We were passed it. And what better way to celebrate it than to play a gig on top of some car park in Penrith... which ended up being probably the second biggest crowd we ever played to. It was pretty huge. We met basically all the people we would go on to be good friends with in the Penrith "scene" at this show. Oh and the whole pudding thing came from this show. I can't really be bothered telling that story again, fuck it. Following this show we recorded our first proper EP, "Get Some Pudding Up Ya". A mish-mash of whiney pop punk (years ahead of it's time I might add) and metal. We recorded it at Zen Studios with a dude we thought was God cos he'd recorded Toe To Toe. Turns he was just a grumpy man. We broke one of his microphones, so I guess he was allowed to be. The majority of the shows for the rest of the year were in Penrith, Parramatta or the Blue Mountains. Oh and we played the Iron Duke. We were all underage but as the place was robbed the night before no one seemed to care and as they had no registers, gave us an endless rider (or so my memory serves me). We pulled out all the stops, comedy wise at this show. We couldn't go wrong, there was even a joke about a brick made and Budge just pulled out a brick from somewhere and... yeah well I guess you had to be there. We got some bad reviews in street press, the internet and zines, lots of them. But at least we were getting them. Also we headlined a show at the EVAN theatre in Penrith Panthers. I dunno if you've been there, but its a HUGE fucking venue. Well we headlined there. That's right, us. 2001 - A SPUD ODDYSEY - Dave (vox), Simo (guitar, vox), Budge (bass, vox), Case (drums), Ben (guitar) Fresh out of high school. A band of adults we were. We decided to shun our Western Suburbs roots as best we could and head into the big city. Yes, the road was tough on a young band, all 45-60 minutes of it. Playing shows in the city was a lot different to playing to our now quite extended group of friends back in Penno. We had to actually play songs, whole ones, in tune and in... time. We had a pretty hard time making any kinda break, but we soldiered on like awesome ninja soldiers and teamed up with whoever we could. City shows came and went. They were all fun. Great fun, even when amps blew, strings broke and band members tried to choke each other in frustration. March came and we played Western Sydney's annual Grounded festival. Pretty much as far as most Western Sydney bands were sposed to go. You were seen as "making it" if you played it. This year they had Grinspoon, Testeagles, Superheist, One Dollar Short & Irrelevant playing. We played to our biggest crowd ever (I'm guessing), Dave gave out prawn crackers during the set. People skanked. We even got a Spudgun chant before we came on (during the band before us' set mind you). Yes, the life of a high profile Penrith band was great. We went on to play shows with Mental As Anything, the Sick Puppies, Downtime and even a show with Scandal'us. We even kind of did a tour with some friend's bands. Oh yes, we were some name dropping bitches at this point. Checky was managing us, Budge was dating the drummer from Polystigma (ahar!) and we got stoned in some guy from Crank's house. Oh we were heading places, my brothers. We recorded our "Up To Scratch" album again at Zen Studios with that guy who recorded Toe To Toe. It was released on our own label, Ball & Chain, which released a couple friend's bands too (we also put on shows with the name). It was 11 tracks ranging from melodic hardcore to punk rock to even ska. It had some pretty good reviews all of which basically saying it wasn't as shit as they'd expected. We had 500 pressed, of which only around 380 we got rid of. 2002- WE LIKE TOURED AND SHIT - Dave (vox), Simo (guitar, vox), Budge (bass, vox), Case (drums), Ben (guitar) then Dave (vox), Simo (guitar, vox), Budge (bass, vox), Case (drums), Fatty (guitar) 2002. Spirits were high. Very high. Though mostly from the weed. We organised tours to Melbourne, Newcastle and then Canberra. Melbourne. Our first inter-state tour and of the most dis-organised things ever. An opening spot at the Arthouse with Something With Numbers, Volition and some others. We get there and the accomadation hadn't been booked properly. We get onstage and my amp blows after 3 songs. Actually that's all the bad parts. We learned from it and hit Newcastle... Budge's bass playing got very very good, Dave's voice got better and better, Case got a lot better at drums, Ben started playing solos more and all together we basically just stopped trying to be funny and tried to just play the songs better. Newcastle was just a wash of drinking and damaging things. We played a ska show and some seedy pub to nobody. The people at the ska show hated us (cos we didn't play any ska songs) and I'm sure the people at the other show would have hated us if they were there. We were banned from the place cos a guy we were with scraped "GudSpun" into a table in our hotel room. Which sucked cos the dude organising the tour was a good guy. At this stage in the band, we were actually playing pretty tightly, well we thought. Playing mostly music in the then hardly touched melodic hardcore genre with a few bits of Lagwagon sappy stuff throw in. Back in Sydanay we played a few city shows, one at the Green Square that got me in a bit of trouble, but we won't go into that now... plus some other not-so-notable venues. In our hometome of Penriff, we played a 'Save the ADI site' show. Quite ironic being our singer was a real estate agent. But we were all mostly genuinely down for the cause and wrote a song for the event, which we never played again. The aptly-titled "Save The ADI Site, Motherfucker'. Then came a very strange, very dark, un-comedic like era for us. We kicked out long serving guitarist Ben. Relationships within the band became a little on the homicidal level and he had to go. Replacing him for the run of shows we still had booked at the time was our friend and Double Standard guitarist, Fatty. He eventually left his other band to join us. Canberra was awesome. They ate us up. I don't know how starved for music they were there but we sold about 20 CDs one night. Obviously nothing amazingly huge but it made us feel quite nice and bubbly. 2003 - HELLO NEW GUITARIST GUY - Dave (vox), Simo (guitar, vox), Budge (bass, vox), Case (drums), Fatty (guitar) Fatty fit in well. Our sound changed a bit. Yeah, just a bit. A more *cough* mature sounding punk rock evolved. Oh and I guess we started screaming a bit more (Yeah dude, The Used are rad). We spent most of the year writing and demoing our next EP of all new material scrapping all the newer stuff we wrote with Ben. Every now and then we'd play either the sticky-floored Club 77, the Green Square or the Kelt's Bar in Blaxland. We got to play with H-Block 101, a feat pretty much everyone else in the band overlooked. Went back to Canberra and played the ANU Bar and some other place. Caused a lot of ruckus and that's about it. Our only Western Sydney show was played at the Blacktown RSL in October. I smashed a guitar in our second song, it felt cool. Budge and Dave sung in harmonies like a choir full of angels. We were appearing more in street press than ever and getting community radio airplay and interviews a bit here and there. That's basically the whole year. Yep, that was it.2004 - IT'S OH SO QUIET - Dave (vox), Simo (guitar, vox), Budge (bass, vox), Case (drums), Fatty (guitar) First show of the year was played at Penrith's "Backdoor" venue in January with 2 bands I thought we'd never play with; Kid Courageous and Best Kept Secret. We were pretty out of place to say the least. The second best set we ever played. The place was packed with kids who'd never seen us before. All of a sudden the whole scene was different. No one knew who we were. We'd been away so long a new scene had emerged. So what did we do to combat this? Take 6 months off to write and record. 3 months into the writing we demoed what would end up being our last recording. Before the demo was even mixed the band was no more. Fatty had been kicked out, everyone was basically unhappy in the band and soon enough the plug was pulled on the whole thing. The demo quality was terrible. The greatest songs we ever wrote were destined to be forever remembered in terrible quality. We were all bummed.In true the-band-has-to-break-up-to-actually-get-anywhere fashion, JJJ's punk and hardcore show Short.Fast.Loud started playing a fair bit of us. Mostly songs from the 2001 demo. A couple weeks later, a final show was organised with Fatty back on guitar. So we went back into the rehearsal studio for a couple months before the show. It turned out to be our greatest show ever, that hardly anyone saw. The only review we got was on ROFL's myspace page that although quite witty was hardly a favourable one.And so ends the tale of Spudgun. A little band from Penrith. There really is no moral to the story, except maybe that being in a band is cool. The End.

the posting photos from the thing you did on the weekend post

Austin, Pabs, Jeff, Me.Al, Pabs, Swanny, Bec. This looks like a cool band photoMe and Pabs took this as a Myspace emo picture. Much time was considered trying to fit my Thursday shirt into it for extra emo points.the greatest photo of Vixen EVER!I ran from the other side of the party to get in this photo and jumped on the table to get in it. i dunno who this girl is, but man, she is quite purty.yes. group photoSoph, Me, Vixen and Pabs.Yes. There you go.

Only my friends are allowed to read my brain numbingly boring stories, love letters, letters to the press, emo song lyrics and thoughts on old people being allowed to eat ice cream. To become my friend forward your resume to me, containing three references of former friends so I can deem you worthy or un-worthy.Thank you for your time.