We are proud and honoured to be a part of a cyber-guerilla campaign to takeover the pop charts AKA "Storm the Charts".
You're probably saying to yourself, "yeah right.... how many times have I heard that one?"
But this one is absolutely legit.
You may or may not be familiar with Rage Against the Machine Vs X-factor Christmas showdown and how the Rage conquered the X through revolutionary fan power!!
Now these good people want to take things one step further, or perhaps I should say 40 steps further and are planning a complete wall to wall occupation of the charts and we stand shoulder to shoulder with Storm the Charts and are proud to be playing a part in this revolution.
Firstly, seasons greetings to one and all, we love Christmas, people who think it's irreverent to hate it are the kind of people who go up to a DJ in a room full of people dancing and ask if they could change the music.
We're not very good Christians here at Valence, just kind of any-excuse-for-a-party kind of folk I guess.
To celebrate we've recorded a special song, probably the most miserable Christmas song ever composed but a Christmas song nonetheless.
Anyway, there's so much I want to say I just don't know where to start or who to stick the boot into first.
Ok, the tour... That was where I left off, my plan was to keep some sort of road-blog of our German tour.. but the best laid plans of mice and men and all of that, what can I say? In fact most of the time we were away my phone was uncharged and we had about a bazillion other things to think about, technology-wise it felt like the autumn of 1989, I used an old-school payphone a couple of times and spent most of the time we weren't playing or partying either behind a steering wheel or asleep in the back of the van.
The tour was a good time, we were well looked after, playing to packed clubs most nights and over indulging in the extreme.
We played nightclubs, theatres, rock venues, cocktail lounge bars, strip clubs etc, never really knowing what was coming next.
And of course the whole time Mikey P kept us entertained, I definitely recommend Mikey P for every tour.
When people take the piss out of German efficiency they're actually saying, "Hell yeah!! Everything's fucked and nothing works properly in our country, we're so cool yeahhh!!" Which in layman's terms is basically conceding that you're retarded, call me a geek but personally I'd rather play a club with a PA system that actually works.
So we get back and of course it's straight back to the usual nonsense that we just take for granted, but this time from an unexpected quarter.
I regard myself and my band as revolutionaries. Perhaps a term or an idea that sounds like something that was annihilated in Jonestown back in the day or was simply bored to death by a bunch of evangelical Crass fans a long time ago, something of an anachronism perhaps?
The problem with both of the above was the fact that they were touted as "great" ideas, and as the smart money always knows; the worst ideas are the ones that come packaged as "great" ones, the end will always justify the means and throw up characters who spread the opposite of what they preach.
But what has taken its place? The X-factor-i-shuffle generation? Hollyoaks? Ant and Dec?
Could Simon Cowell be the modern day Jim Jones?
I'm not sure.
But I guess it is what it is and if that sort of Kool-Aid doesn't do it for you, don't take it.
No..... My gripe is with people who seem to be like-minded and then turn out to be no different to the very thing I thought we were kicking against.
I can't really be bothered to elaborate and apologies for being so cryptic.
In the meantime here's a clip of us playing in a pornographic toilet in Munich.
