and you'll miss it.

okaysies, i'll try and keep this brief.

Blink 182 are playing the NIA in birmingham on July 1st. There's no supports confirmed. You can totally see where this is going can't you. aim high or stop playing with that rifle.

three reasons.

1) its fucking blink! they pretty much invented what we do. well, okay, the pixies invented it but we're too young to call them our own and that generation never got the guitars to sound loud enough. It's weird, our band seems to tread a fine line between indie world and rock world. there's this big gulf between the two that belies the fact its both people with guitars playing songs to more or less the same demographic, and nothing shows this up more than when interviewers think i'm joking when i tell people that blink song structures, sense of dynamics, chord sequences, harmonies, guitar sounds, drum fills, are totally aspirational.

2) its fucking birmingham! a wise taxi driver once told me, you can't be a hero in yr own town. it totally doesn't bother us that we're more likely to be "recognised" in tokyo or toronto than birmingham, but, just for once, it would be nice to pull off something spectacular in our own back yard.

3) its the NIA! where i work irl, counting boxes of merch on and off trucks, selling overpriced tshirts and explaining the concept of "skinny fit" to tragically obese teenage girls. It's a pretty rad job if you ignore all that stuff and the long hours, complete disregard for health and safety procedures, and card machines that don't fucking work ever. Just so y'all know, this preplan is mostly kellys idea, not just a way to boost my ego over my friends at work so i can roll up backstage stoned at 1 in the afternoon and be say - hey, you load all these boxes off and count everything and sort it into sheet order and count it again then get the additions off another truck and count them and then merge them into the first lot and count them again and agree the figures and divide them amongst the stands and recount them and make a display and arrange the stand and sort out the fucking card machine, i'm going to go stand on that big stage and play guitar really loud.

but that'd be pretty sweet also.

SO GUYS, HOW THE FUCK DO WE ACHIEVE THIS? Blink are like, in another world to us. it's not like we know someone who knows them, there's like a full 7 degrees of separation and all of them degrees are full of other peoples motive to put some OBVIOUSLY LESS APPROPRIATE support band on the bill instead.

suggestions please? are you related? do you share a house with their agent? do you know a guy who knows a guy?

our (clueless) gut feeling is, if we can get their attention, we'd be in a better position than trying to worm our way thru agents and the necessary industry bullshit. Those guys were/are a properly working band, they put in countless hours diy punking themselves around before they broke, and as such it'd be nice to believe they had respect for bands who do the same thing; more at least, than for bands who use major label money to appear from nowhere into the mainstream, and would traditionally be shoehorned onto a major tour like this.

so do we just try a frantic twitter campaign? sky writing? DO THEY GOT FORMSPRING YET?it's not like we're asking for a ride home after; a 7.30 opening slot to a half full arena will be legendary to us.

so yeh. please write any ideas in the box below and we'll get back in a few days and form an actual plan.

chances are this will never happen, fucking lost alone will play, and you can come up to me on the merch stand and give me a commiseration high five.

but for now, let us discuss the intangible possibilities of what ifs and maybes.

okay goodnight

xlex