As I went to use the toilets at work yesterday, I passed a man slipping a couple of quid into the slot of the pub's condom machine. He tugged hard on the handle, but received nothing.
"For fuck's sake!" he shouted, skulking out the toiled empty handed.

Just a wee anecdote for you there. Here's hoping it tickled you.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway...
Once again the Findo PR machine has taken a bit of time to swing into action, but better late than never, eh?
This Saturday sees the last Crufts for the forseeable future. They have, so far, been a success well beyond our expectations and this weekend's should prove to be no different.
For four pounds come and see Tangles and The National Jazz Trio of Scotland at Nice N Sleazy in Glasgow.

Hope you can make it.

x

[The following has very little (if anything) to do with Christmas, it's more of a 2009 roundup written during advent. The title of the blog came first and the content much later, after a nap.]

Man! It seems like only last year that I was writing a Christmas blog all about Christmas.
What are you getting for Christmas this year? Is it a Findo T-Shirt?
No of course it isn't, we've sold all but a handful, and those that are left are built for fatties. Jurassic Park! etc. etc.
[That's the end of the Christmas bit.]

This year has seen some interesting changes in the Findo temperament. The last vestiges of education have been ripped wholesale from Gregory; this scholastic demise a progenitor of our final transformation into one conglomeration of destitute musicians, working unskilled jobs to fund our dream of mega-stardom, coke addiction, outrageous rider demands, guns, bitches, and bling etc. etc.
A handful of highlights from 2k9:
We have become a touring band, of sorts, and have wowed critics across the nation with our bizarre and fruity performances whilst supping gently at the collective teet of our Bros in Erms. We brought Crufts into your lives and dressed up like Japanese men. We played Scotland's most corporate festival and Scotland's least.
2009 has been a good year. It feels the least like a year of missed opportunities since we first decided to put aside our differences and bring the rawk lol
And it's not over yet. For you Scotchmen and Scotchwomen there are still three opportunities to catch us play: Dundee this Saturday 12th, Glasgow (Crufts no. 4) Saturday the 19th, and Edinburgh on Sunday the 20th.
Our final Crufts for this session will include guest appearances from Tangles and Bill Wells. Pure fab.
Plus, remember - the second Friday of the month can mean only one thing.... BEST IN SHOW lol

Should Findo not see you beforehand, we wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

x

Here are a couple of very awesome songs recently brought to our attention by David








just thought i'd spread the love
x

When we left Everything Everything at the foot of Brick Lane on Thursday morning I hoped that the palpable sense of longing saturating my gut would subside over time. It really hasn't. Each morning I've woken up with the disappointment that there are no more shows to play, only jobs to return to, food to be bought, keys to be cut, beds to be made, washing to be industrially bleached. It's a wee shame. Findo heart EE big style.
But lo! It's not all doom and gloom. No way.
There are some very special events raising their navels above the horizon.
This coming Friday is BEST IN SHOW #3 - The penultimate BIS, the one where we finally refine our dj skillz and provide you with non stop mega chart hits and slammin dance anthems to the break of 3am.
Then, just 8 days later, it's CRUFTS #3 - YMO spectacular, Tokyo Knife Attack and Adult Emergency perform. It's at Sleazys on Saturday the 21st of November and as ever it will cost £4. Expect masses of spamming in the run up.
Right, Tommy's here now, better dash.
Cheerio.
Findo x

We took a breather today. Let's not make any bones about this tour, it's been about as intensive as a casual paddle around a small sink. We're not The fucking XX. It's a bit unfortunate that we're completely unused to any kind of strenuous gigging - even the slightest of stretches is sure to tip us, weeping at our lack of sleep, scrabbling around in vain to grasp at some last scrap of dignity, into cataclysms of blind, inane jabbering. I'd say our current condition is comparable to this chap's, except it's very likely that the milky chubster isn't battling with his diminishing sanity like Ghengis with a bout of the Alzheimer's.
A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE LAST FEW DAYS:
Birmingham - good show. Sold lots of merch. Loadsa dinner. Stayed with Matt. LMAO at American Psycho. Slept on floor.
Northampton - not so hot. GB's voice is a bit shagged. Cut the set short. Stayed with my bro and Anna. Nice to see the femly. Slept on floor.
Reading - belter. Venue's in an industrial estate. We compete admirably with Bloc Party who're playing down the road. Stayed with Pete. Slept on floor.
Bath - hallowe'en. Weird show. Manage to convince our new BFF Natasha to let us sleep in her house. Slept on floor.

The floors of people's houses have been the only solid consistency of the tour so far. The knowledge of our lot lingering about like a fart, jarred in order to be sniffed at the end of each day. Hey! I don't mean to sound ungrateful. It's definitely better than sleeping in a bus shelter or chancing it with a grotty lumber with a fishy fanny.
We just haven't slept too good.
So, with a day off on the books, we visited Anne in Bristol and ate as much vegetation as Sainsbury's afforded, then booked ourselved into a bloody steller youth hostel in Cardiff.
Maximum rocknroll you motherbitches!

There are still a few dates you can catch us play this week:
Cardiff tomorrow
Brighton on Tuesday
London on Wednesday
Kingston upon Thames on Thursday
Cream yourselves at the opportunity, because we're not going to be back for at least... I dunno... three weeks?

Love,

Findo x

Going on tour - yeah yippee yeah,
Gonna play well good - probs we hope yeah,
Gonna chill with EE yeah - OMG yass,
Gonna get some hot ass - no that's not true.

Going to Leeds soon - yeah u-huh that's right,
Gonna see Yorkshire - post-industrial,
Gonna check out Edinburgh - Scotia capital,
Gonna fuck up Aberdeen - Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Going on tour now - sexy sexy Findo time,
Gonna have a bro-down - oh man I totally love you,
Gonna pump my synth hard - burp fart "ohhhh" scribble,
Gonna awaken your senses like mood lighting and incense.


I can't sleep like it's Christmas Eve 1995.

x

Hiy'all,

Did you have a good weekend?
Ours was mixed, we played with Micachu and The Invisible which was excellent. Those of you who saw us play may remark on Gerard's decision to go beserk and attack large portions of our equipment as "bizarre", "an indictment of their (alleged) feminine credentials", or simply "very funny". We're still coming to terms with the hospitalising of Gav's laptop. This coupled with Best In Show (thanks to all attendees) and Greg's birthday have caused something of a distraction, consequently we've been pretty sloppy in our preparations for CRUFTS #2 (a bit of a travesty on our part).

The line-up for this month's Crufts is looking excellent. From Edinburgh and Glasgow come North Atlantic Oscillation, a blissful blend of melancholic post-rock, kraut, electronics, and pop. Wonderful.
From the great Stonehaven in the sky come Copy Haho - they are bursting with the incisive lyrics and ripping guitar licks without being hook shy. We've played a couple of gigs with these guys over the last month and live they are an immense proposition.
Oh, and we're playing also.

If on Saturday you decide to come to Sleazys, all this will cost you only £4.

x

In our last blog we gave you details of the next Crufts on the 17th of October, you know, the one with Copy Haho and Isosceles. I meant to give you a heads up about Crufts #3 on the 21st of November, our very special and exciting project.
Those of you who have lived in Glasgow for the last wee while might remember a Devo tribute act/Glasgow super group that did a show or two (and a wedding, I think) a couple of years back. They played at the ill-fated but very excellent Do The Do at the Art School's Vic Bar back when I was a snivelling wee youngling. The idea of doing a tribute act stuck with us. Persistent Findo stalkers may recall this interview with Diskant where we half-jokingly talked of doing a Yellow Magic Orchestra covers band. This idea has finally come to fruition.
So who the ruddy fuck are YMO?
"Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) are a Japanese electropop band formed in 1978, known for pioneering the electropop music genre.^[1] The principal members are Haruomi Hosono (bass), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums and vocals) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboards)"
Ryuichi Sakamoto? That name sounds familiar. That'll be because as a composer he's won pretty much every major award for writing film scores you can win. He's also doing an extensive European tour over the next couple of months.
My first memory of being conscious of YMO was in 2005, not long after I'd started playing with Greg and Gerard. We were driving back from The Substation in Rosyth and Gerard had Solid State Survivor on in the car. I hated it. (This is definitely the first song of theirs I ever heard. Couldn't really have asked for a better introduction.) It was such unbelievably sugary pop, absolutely laden with happy happy happy synths and cheesy disco rhythms. Melodically it was unusual to a Western ear, but despite it's immediacy the chord structures were immensely complicated. I thought it was a joke band, it was simply too much for me - think of an Irn Bru enema during your first ecstasy experience. Greg and Gerard didn't do me any favours, I'd moan about having to listen to them in the car or round at someone's house, but they took no heed (thankfully).
For me at this time "respectable electronic music" meant Drukqs or Ultravisitor; downbeat, super techy programming, icy, metallic synths and bursts of noise, not shiny bubblegum electropop. But the songs were getting stuck in my head, and I was at a point where I was just about starting to appreciate the purity of analogue sounds. Eventually I relented, the period of bitching making my about-face all the more humiliating, but it was worth it.
Letting YMO into your life can seem like a scary prospect, maybe for you it's just a little too much, but I emplore you to stick at it. The more I listen to them, the more I hear their influence on Findo's own sound.

Joining us on the night will be Graeme Ronald. Graeme has played with pretty much every decent band to have come out of Glasgow for most of the last decade (I hope saying that doesn't make him feel too old, seeing as he's not remotely). One of the bands Graeme played with were called Multiplies, itself a YMO reference.

This show will be THE most fun.

Please come.

Hello buddies.

It's been a wee while without whistling word of our workings, so here's the first (and last) of our quarterly Findo updates.
AUTUMN TIME
Don't you just love it? The smell of cold in the air? The leaves turning to richer shades, greens and then warm dark reds and browns with every changing day, you know, AUTUMN colours? The darkness at night becoming almost tactile? Ohhhhhhhh. It's a wonderful season. The memories of going back to school? Starting uni? Ohhhhhhh. It's an exciting time. Ohhhhhhhh. That first bright, frosty morning? The mushrooms peeping out beneath the dew of the grass? Ohhhhhhhh.
What a season to behold.

So, to the facts. Firstly a thanks to all of you who made it down to Crufts #1. It was a massive success (honestly, that's not just casual hyperbole, it was a belter). Everyone played well, there was a friendly and enthusiastic atmostphere, and we took much, much, much more on the door than we'd expected. Ta. Here's to next months (17th Oct.) where we will be joined by Isosceles and Copy Haho. At only £4 it's an absolute bargain.

We've got a couple of one off dates around the country over the next couple of weeks. Birmingham with Dananananaykroyd and Copy Haho on Tuesday the 29th of September and then we're off to Belfast on the 3rd of October. The 3rd is the first Old Firm match of the season, so we're glad to be getting out of Glasgow....... We're supporting Micachu and the mercury nominated The Invisible at the Captain's Rest in Glasgow on the 9th of October. Afterwards it's our second night of BEST IN SHOW at Sleazys where we will cover you in dancing music for dancing to. £3, all money goes to a good cause, i.e. funding the....

TOUR WITH EVERYTHING EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!
I'm so excited I think I'm having a baby. There's a couple of dates beforehand, the aforementioned Crufts #2, and we're also playing at the Cupar Arts Festival in Fife on the 16th.
EE are doing extremely well for themselves at the moment so it's an opportunity for us to cling to their coat tails. Clingy clingy. They are brilliant. I think the shows will be busy and exciting and full of dancing people. Look at our/their page for a full list of dates and venues.

The release of our Japanese album is earmarked for the 30th of December, so start saving your yen so that you can buy it on import at HUGE EXPENSE.

I'm sure I've forgotten to tell you things, but I have to eat and then go to work now. Sorry, it'll have to wait until next quarter.

x

"When you're in love with a beautiful crew bus, you'd better watch your friends."
So the myth goes, anyway.
I was in love with a blue Ford Transit for much of last week. Polishing it's exhaust after long journeys to fresh-faced cityscapes, I would remark things like
"If only I could get through this
I get through this you sexy van

Give me just a second and I'll be all right
Surely one more moment couldn't break my heart or your carbaretor
Give me 'til tomorrow then I'll be okay
Just another day and then I'll hold your steering wheel tight

When your love is falling like the rain against your windshield
I close my eyes and it falls again against my pubes lol
When will I get the chance to say I fucking love you ohhhhhhhh
I pretend that you're already mine, which I guess technically you are. look i've got the receipt of purchase.
Then my heart ain't breaking every time
I look into your headlights

Said I'm gotta get through this
I gotta get through this
I gotta take my, take my mind off you and the road.

Give me just a second and I'll be all right
Surely one more moment couldn't break my heart or a variety of your working parts.
Give me 'til tomorrow then I'll be okay
Just another day and then I'll hold you tight

If only I could get through this
If only I could get through this
If only I could get through this
God, gotta help me get through this
If only I could get through this
God, gotta help me get through this
If only I could get through this
God, gotta help me get through this
If only I could get through this.."

When you get home from a week of old friends, new friends, old vans, new venues, cheap booze, expensive parking, long waits, short shows, few opportunities to expend het up sexual energy, plenty opportunities to make crass innuendos, epic card games, and short, quiet trips to service station toilets, you hit what I call POST-TOUR DEPRESSION, where the value of everyday tasks needs be questioned and normal life seems like the reserve of sad-os with wee winkies.
It's not. That's just what it seems like.

We're away again soon. Come and see us if you get the chance.
x