Blog On The Motorway

In a year that has been dominated by the reformations of some of the biggest bands in rock history (AIC, Pavement, Rival Schools, hell even Led Zep) an announcement crept out the other night that will make absolutely no impact on the worldwide music scene but managed to make me and a very select group of metalheads happy as a collective of pigs in excrement. Will Haven have reformed.

Will who? You may well ask. Will Haven (not a person) were a band from Sacramento, California, friends of the Deftones and Far, and purveyors of one of the most ungodly rackets ever known to man or beast.  Thunderous and tectonic riffs and the guttural and hugely emotional roar of lead singer Grady Avenell.  They split a few years back and reformed again with another singer, but never had the chemistry of when Grady was in the band. But now he is back.

I met the band when they were touring their third album,Carpe Diem. They were playing at the Manchester Academy, and myself and my friends Rich and Barker arrived in plenty of time before the gig, as we wanted to see both the support acts, but also because we were determined to go backstage and meet our heroes in the flesh, young and lacking in shame as we were.

Our friend Moira had worked at the venue and had told us a secret way to get backstage without hassle, but when we arrived we quickly found that a redesign had made this nigh on possible. So after a while we retired to the bar.  We had been there only a few minutes when in walked the band, minus Grady.  We tried to remain as calm as possible, and were going to wait for them to sit down before we approached them, but then their guitarist Jeff looked over and spotted Barker’s home-made Far T Shirt, and they all made their way over.

They asked if they could sit with us, and we stammered our appreciation, and then for about half an hour they sat with us, chilling and talking and laughing at our jokes.  They may have just been a struggling metal band who still had their day jobs back at home, but this was like meeting the Who for us.  They were the sweetest and loveliest guys you could meet.  Later, we saw them again as we milled about between support acts, and I met Grady, who took my song suggestion and gave it pride of place as their opening encore song.

Of all the bands I have met they remain my favourite, no matter that nobody has ever heard of them.  They were probably shocked to find that a bunch of kids from the other side of the Atlantic had been so humbled to meet a band that struggled to even get a record deal in their native land, but not as shocked as I was to find that the old adage of ‘never meet your idols’ can thankfully be absolutely wrong.

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Last night was the climax (oo-er) of Gray’s 48 hour tweetathon, and in the last few hours he got loads of high profile support from the likes of Jonathan Ross (who even donated £50) and he smashed his £1000 target with hours to go. I was there for the last hour and I must admit that everyone got a bit emotional at the end, when Gray posted as his final tweet the theme from Cheers. Well done mate, and lets hope all those new followers stick around to check out Cross Blogination!

Tomorrow I will be doing something a bit different as it is Blog Action Day in support of action on Climate Change.  I haven’t decided fully what I am doing for it yet, but if you have a blog and would like to get involved, check it out.