Metal 2 the Masses and UK tour!

M2TM

On Tuesday we once again competed in the Metal 2 the Masses competition to play Bloodstock Open Air. And we only went and won the heat!

Last year we got through to the finals in Preston, only thwarted at the very end by the unstoppable brutal catchiness of Sa-Da-Ko.

This year we are competing in our home base of Manchester and the first heat saw us pitted against Our Fatal Legacy, Sacrament, DamageScape and Repulsive Vision, with RV scoring the runner-up position and making it through to the semis.

Fuck a Duck! The line-up was intense and every band put on an incredible performance. I know for one I'll be checking all these guys out again in the future. To be honest I don't think any of us thought for a second that we would make it through the heat, let alone take first place. A massive thanks to everyone who made the night possible and to all our friends and fans that came along to support us – it was an awesome night!

Anyway, we're competing in the semi-finals on Tuesday 28^th May, there's a date for the calendar! Let's see if we can make it to the finals again!

What we learnt:

• We should probably practise before big gigs like this.
• New songs have new lyrics. This means Russ has to learn them.
• Footprints fans WILL get naked.
• Whitty will fuck up if he thinks he's fucking up, even if he isn't fucking up.
• If Paul does something wrong everyone has to stare at him to make him feel small and unloved.
• Ross's arse is mesmerising.
• Ian can have two hours sleep, get drunk and play everything wrong, and no one will notice.
• Truly awful, undeserving bands, can be winners too!

Tour

Now is a crazy, exciting and stressful time in the Custardverse. Tomorrow we embark on our first UK tour, alongside our pals Scumface.

The amount of planning and effort that has been put into this (especially by Mike and Ian) is ridiculous. I certainly have a new-found respect for mid to low-level touring bands, not only is there a lot to organise but it's bloody expensive!

Having said that we absolutely cannot wait to get on the road (providing the transport all works) and kick some serious arse.

Whenever we find ourselves with some spare time and WiFi I'll write a blog update to log how much is going wrong and how much we all want to kill each other.

Tour dates are below:

FEB
Fri 22nd - Nantwich - The White Horse
Sat 23rd - Glasgow - The 13th Note
Sun 24th - Arbroath - The Millgate
Tue 26th - Preston - The Ship Inn
Wed 27th - Huddersfield - Bar 1:22
Thu 28th - London (Camden) - The Unicorn

MAR
Fri 1st - Birmingham - Scruffy Murphy's
Sat 2nd - Manchester - Retro Bar
Sun 3rd - Eccles - Wangies (w/out Scumface)

New Shit

Oh and, if you haven't noticed yet, our split EP with Scumface is now available to download. You can get 'Gone Fisting' and 'Good Honest Scumbags' here for just £3.

The pledge was a complete success, raising £1416 to help pay for production costs and car rental for the tour. Thanks to everyone that was a part of that, we will hopefully be sending everything out before we go on tour, providing it all arrives!

For anyone that missed out on the pledge we will be selling physical copies on tour and we also have some rather sexy shirts to flog.

Basically wrap your ears around our music, get your arse to a show and buy all our lovely stuff so we can eat and drink on tour!

Fucking A.

FitC xx

The Bobbin, Lancaster - 10/01/2013

Thursday saw FitC's first gig of 2013. With so much effort being aimed at getting the EP and tour on the right track, we'd barely even given the gig half the thought we should have. It was doomed to be a bit of a mess. And what a fantastic mess it was :)

We all had a fucking incredible night all round. First off the turnout was far greater than any of us had imagined and a good number of people there were there to see us. Turns out we have a small following in Lancaster, despite never actually playing there before.

The set

We winged it. I'm not sure we'd all been in a room together since November so we just scribbled down a few songs that we thought we knew best and went for it. Obviously it could have been better but I think we pulled it off. Either that or the crowd were too pissed to care. Either way works for us.

As always, seeing a room of people realising the lyrics to Swallow (Or it's going in your eye) as you're playing it is hilarious. Followed by everyone joining in for a chorus of "Swallow my jizz!" Epic.

I feel I should probably apologise to the guy from Above the Waves who got a face full of my crotch at some point. When I pulled away I wasn't sure whether he was going to laugh or cry... I don't think he was either.

All-in-all it went a lot better than any of us was expecting and that's all down to the crowd reaction. We'll be back soon Lancaster, mark my words!


Shout outs

The other bands: Bit shouts out to Ark, The Fighting Keegans and Above the Waves. Unfortunately we had to leave before AtW so that we could all get back to Manchester but what we saw of the other two bands rocked!

Ewan: Big shout out to Ewan for putting the night together despite his limited experience in doing such a thing!

The bar staff: Big shout out to the Bobbin's bar staff, who helped to make the night as fantastic as it was by making sure everyone was lubed with booze. Especially to the dude I dedicated Every STD in the Book to. I think he took it quite well.

And a bit shout out to the chaps from Bloodyard and Vandal Hearts who came out to see us too :)

Journey home

The journey home was hell! First of all Paul missed his train after it changed platforms without an announcement. This meant that we had to get all five members of the band, plus equipment, into my little Peugeot 206. We managed to cram everything in...just.

I have never driven in such fog...Seriously we could not see anything for most of the way home. We were just blindly following streetlamps in the directions Whitty's SatNav said we should go (and it didn't have a fucking clue).

When we FINALLY got back to Ian's we realised something that made us all feel a little sick inside... The boot hadn't been shut the whole time. And I don't mean it hadn't closed quite properly, I mean you could lift it open quite easily. By some miracle none of our gear had fallen out...

What we learned:

• We can play a classics set with very little practice with very little going wrong.

•  We can fit ever member of the band, plus our gear into a cramped Peugeot 206 if the need arises.

• We can pass for a signed band! Who would've thought that?!

• We can do 70 miles an hour down a motorway and realise only when we get back to Manchester that the boot wasn't shut properly. Thank god for the lack of speed bumps.

• Lancaster girls are sexy.

Positive all-round!

Next up! Salford on Friday with our good friends in Shades of Avalon!

Happy New Year!

Okay, 2012 was our biggest year yet. No doubt about it, we owned that bad boy. But now it's gone and here we are facing 2013, still vaguely hungover and wondering what the hell happened and where that unusual stain came from.

New EP and UK Tour

This year is lining up to take 2012 by the cock and jerk it so violently it gushes a custard fountain of awesome. On Sunday we're going to lead Paul into a room with a drum kit and explain to him that we need him to hit them a lot, much like he would on stage, but without the rest of the band. And that we're going to record it.

Assuming of course that he understands the hieroglyphs we draw for him, we will have the drums recorded for our new split EP with crap punk band Scumface. We have five exciting new tracks to insert into you when we're done. I'm not sure if the boys would allow me to tell you the track names so early in the game but they're not here and I'm the front man, which makes me the best, so fuck them.

Here are the track names (in no decisive order) to whet your genital buds on:

1. Wasted
2. Taking the Black
3. Blue Waffle
4. Heat of the Moment
5. Jizzbolt

We're on a tight schedule to bang this out quickly and effectively, something that a handful of girls and a rabbit will contest that I'm not very good at. "What's the hurry Russ?" I hear our purely hypothetical readers cry. Well we're going on tour in support of the EP this February, that's what!

Our first UK tour! Only six and a half years after we formed! Aren't we doing well? Yes, we will be cramming into a car and a van with Scumface and heading out around the country to spread our noise, much like an STI might spread from waffle to waffle in a brothel's scissoring marathon. Assuming they exist.

Locations aren't fully confirmed but it's looking a little bit like this:

Scumface + Footprints in the Custard. The 'What a Mess' tour 2013

February 

22 - Leeds - ?
23 - Glasgow - 13th Note
24 -
25 -
26 - Preston - The Ship Inn
27 -
28 - London - The Unicorn

March
01 - Birmingham - Scruffy Murphys
02 - Manchester - The Retro Bar

03 - Eccles - Wangies

If you have any ideas on how we could fill the gaps above (bear in mind the locations and travel feasibility) then please do get in touch!

I saw the tour artwork last night and it looks sexy as hell! Expect posters, T shirts and the like to be flying at your face from all angles in the near future. As well as updates on how the recordings are doing, perhaps studio diaries. It all depends how sober or awake I am at any given point.

Speaking of T Shirts... We'll be setting up a pledge shortly in order to raise money for the tour. As you can imagine, driving up and down the country is no cheap feat. We'll be selling T shirts and the EP, along with other merch and bundles. Not sure how much he knows about this, and I don't really care, but we're going to sell Ross out for blind dates. He's our sex mule now.

The Rest of the Year!

When the tour's done we'll probably die. But assuming we don't we've got a lot of exciting things planned for the rest of 2013 too. SCARfest in Stoke springs to mind! Three days, two stages and over 80 bands! We're playing the same stage and day as Lawnmower Deth and Evil Scarecrow. That's enough to get a raging chuff-on, even if it's not until August!

What else... Oh yes! Last year we got to the finals of Preston's Metal 2 The Masses, only missing out on the spot at Bloodstock by a brutal set from Sa-Da-Ko. This year we're getting involved with M2tM again but this time in Manchester! Expect to see us spunking ourselves dry at Grand Central sometime soon!

In fact we're seemingly quite determined to play Bloodstock this year. You can also vote for us to play on the Wychwood website here.

We're also working on putting together a live record. We've already began collecting live material from various shows we've done in the past year and we'll be looking at building on that and picking the best ones to stick together. We're also amassing a surprising number of B-Side tracks that haven't quite made it onto our albums or haven't quite been finished. Expect a possible B-side collection to emerge later in the year!

Oh and let's not forget we're beginning work on album no. 3! But let's not jump the gun just yet ;)

But First!

But before all that, we've got a few gigs lined up to get us into the 2013 swing of things. Thursday 10th Jan we're playing in Lancaster for the first time ever! That's at the Bobbin. Friday 18th Jan we're playing in Salford for the first time ever, with our mates in Shades of Avalon. That's at The Crescent. And last but definitely not least we're playing Grand Central's Metal Rites festival on Sunday 20th Jan, joining Shades yet again, as well as old buddies in Sa-Da-Ko and loads of other great Metal bands.

My balls are like raisins after all that. Let's make 2013 the Year of the Weasel!

BOOM!

Love you

Russ xx

Rounding up 2012!

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Big update because I've been too busy fingering myself to care about anything else

So yeah, I was supposed to post things here wasn’t I? To be honest I’ve been so busy being famous that I just forgot all about it. But y’know, I can’t leave my fans waiting can I? After all they’re the ones that have to gargle my wilkins backstage and - well I don’t want to piss them off to extent that they bite.

We’ve had a couple of exceptional gigs over the past few weeks. We’ve been played on four different radio stations. We’ve been interviewed on one (special shout out to Ross Cummins). We’ve started filming our first music video. We’ve got another exciting gig on Saturday. Everything’s coming up Footprints!

I’d like, in attempt to be vaguely coherent, to break things down a little bit (maybe into sub-blogs or mini-blogs or whatever the hell you want to call them).

January 19^th – Ragnarock – Rumes, Preston

I have to say – this gig was incredible. The crowd response was intense. A FUCKING conga line?! You guys are genius. The guys that put the gig on were superb. The sound on stage could have been a little easier going but it was more than made up for by the atmosphere. It was nice to play on an actual stage again too, although we don’t want to get used to it just yet.

A few hiccups here and there, such as everyone falling over cables and pulling them out. But it was all part of the show. The bands we played with (Fire in the Empire and Bury the Conscious) were so fucking tight compared to us – but I don’t mind saying that we totally stole the show. I put it all down to windmilling, cross-dressing and generally just not giving much of a shit.

All in all a big success! Cannot thank the crowd enough for the amazing reaction. Pretty pissed off that I had to drive home so I could get to work early (that’s not rock and roll) but I believe the other guys had a rather thrilling (if wet) night.

What we learned:

• Preston is still epic
• Footprints fans are by far the craziest fans we’ve yet to experience
• Don’t trip over leads
• Saffin’s snow angels on the dance floor are inspiration only found in the deepest depths of intoxication
• Jumping off a six-foot stage doesn’t sound as high as it feels when you’re doing it
• Make sure your mic is working before you begin your set
• Free beer is free
• Girls don’t get their boobs out when we heckle them, because we’re not KISS yet.

February 1^st – New Revolution – Retro Bar, Manchester

Our first Manchester gig! This, along with the Rumes gig and that mammoth one back at Nantwich Civic Hall in 2007, is one of the best gigs Footprints have ever played. Seriously, the combination of a cramped, sticky, sweaty atmosphere and lots of people singing along to all the words.... Well I went and did a big spaff didn’t I?

I couldn’t tell from where I was but I think we pulled the biggest crowd of the night again (if we didn’t then I’m just going to believe that we did anyway to satisfy my large, throbbing, veiny ego). And it was definitely the tightest we’ve ever been (in terms of musical integrity – my arse was pretty lax).

There wasn’t quite as much crowd movement for this gig as the last one, but I’m going to put that down the small space. Everyone is forgiven because everyone was singing! And it was awesome to see people coming from so far afield to see us! Liverpool, Preston, Crewe to name a few.

Massive shout out to the other bands of the night Propax, Carnage, Shades of Avalon and Junker, they were all great guys. And cheers to Ste for putting the night on! It was all brilliantly organised and ran as smoothly as a hand would over an underage girl’s fanny spot.

What we learned:

• People know the words?!
• Green lights blind bass players
• There is a fine line between being merry and too drunk to play a gig – Russ tight-roped that line
• Me and My Ironing Board sounds awesome
• Tommo really, really dislikes attention
• Tiny stage means Russ has to spend time with the commoners in the crowd
• Uhm...can’t remember I was drunk.

And the rest!

Yeah so we’re filming a video for the song Every STD in the Book at the moment. We’ve done our first shoot and it went brilliantly. Chris (sorry, ‘John Nocturne’) has been brilliant with us thus far, just giving us this opportunity is incredible. Just the sheer thought of seeing a Footprints video involving strip poker, penile discharge, masturbation, vomit, cake baking ape scientists, and corpse burying is enough to bring stiffy central to pantyland.

I won’t give any more than that away right now. Next shoot is on 4^th March. We might need some folk to be extras in it too, so get in touch if you’re interested.

Other than that there’s some BIG NEWS coming up. I’m talking something mightily girthy. And of course there’s this fundraiser gig on Saturday 11^th at the Whitworth! Get on that! There’s cheap booze, bands, cake, art. Lots of things really. Oh AND we have a special guest drummer in the form of Sam Bucanan (of Bathroom Crooners fame) because Tommo’s away solving world hunger or some bollocks like that. We attempted to teach Sam the songs last night... The drummer doesn’t need to know the songs right?

BIZZLE

Russ

xx

THE GIG!

Well, well, well... Last night was incredible. I don't really know where to begin!

Maybe I'll start by saying last night was by far the best night I've had in ages. Thank you so much for everyone who came down to The Dog & Partridge and supported us. The crowd reaction and participation was truly astounding and, well, scary. To look up and see a swarm of folk wearing Footprints in the Custard t-shirts and singing along to the chorus of 'Things I Would Do Sexually to Hayley Williams' was disturbing to say the least. But in a good way, I felt pretty damn sexy all night after that (although that may have been the tutu?).

Of course everything didn't go perfectly but on a whole it went mostly according to plan. Mostly losing my voice half-way through the set, Ian's bass strap snapping, Tommo forgetting how 'Up Your Altar' goes... All things to improve on for next time.

I'd like to make a few special thank-yous. Thank you to Beak and Shaun for getting all the artwork sorted, you guys have been amazing. Thank you to Ruth for screen-printing all the t-shirts, they look fantastic. Thank you to Donny for making the banner and sorting out all the merch on the night, I mean let's be honest, we'd never get anything done without you. Thank you to Crosso for being our psycho-fan. Thank you to everyone that came all the way from Crewe to see us (Maj, Jay, Matt, Sam, Andy, Dad), that was amazing. Thank you to Kyle for coming along and supporting us and getting involved for the finale. Thank you to Mark for sorting everything out and giving us the gig! Thank you to the D&P for having us and supplying us with booze. Thank you to Hello Bamboo for just being awesome in general - fucking loved your set.

Then of course we all proceeded to get well and truly shitfaced. I don't entirely remember all of the night but it ended up with me playing Mario Kart, so that's no bad thing. Oh... and Ian got up in the middle of the night, took off his jeans and pissed all over them. That's how this band rolls.

What we learned:

• Tutus are cool
• The Great Outdoors has too many lyrics
• Preston's beer is so cheap you piss on your clothes
• We can make £100 in a night if our merch girl has big boobs
• Tutus are cool
• Last minute planning is stressful
• Russ's car is definitely not built for band gear
• Mario Kart is easier when you're hammered
• Jager shots before a set is a good plan
• Our fans are incredible
• More girls like us than previously thought
• None of the aforementioned girls went down on Russ
• Russ is going to have a cry-wank
• We need more gigs
• Tutus are cool

Russ

Holy fuck the CDs have arrived. I've just been frolicking around with them naked. It was by far the sexiest thing that's ever happened to me, apart from that time I met a girl who was called Hayley Williams and I tinkled on her lady mess (that actually happened).

So, yeah. If anybody fancies a copy of the album we're selling them for £4. Although of course if you don't want a physical copy you can still download it for free from the Bandcamp or the Facebook page. Also T-shirts and ink have arrived and The Amazing Ruth will be screen-printing our merch shortly. £6 for a shirt or £8 for a CD/shirt combo. Minted.

In other news the Christmas song, which I can confirm is named 'When Santa Spaffed in my Stocking', is in production. It's sounding awesome and it's catchy as hell. That should be landing in your face in the next few weeks if everything goes according to plan.

Perhaps the most boner-worthy note is the gig. The Dog & Partridge in Preston will be hosting the event. There will be beer, there will be squirty cream - Oh God yes. That's the 29th, we'll be playing with the, frankly hilarious, Hello Bamboo. Can't wait.

A possible gig in Manchester for the 6th December and more gigs in the pipeline for 2012. Plenty of new songs shagging their way into production too. Whitty's a musical monster. Especially looking forward to the disturbing 'Make War Not Lovecraft' which details the sexual explorations of a veteran sea-dog when he encounters a cephalopod.

Also we seem to building a lot of interest globally, which is bloody exciting. A rather nice Russian dude called Dmitry is reviewing our album, we have a growing fan-base in North America and Brazil, which is bizarre, and YouTube reckons all the women that like us are between the ages of 13 and 17.

We're genuinely really busy at the moment, it's awesome.

Oh yeah, I gave Kunt from Kunt and the Gang a copy of our CD last night. I don't remember what I said to him because I was wasted but I'm pretty sure I was awesome. I also remember talking to some hot goth chicks but I imagine that didn't get anywhere because I woke up fully clothed and with a wet patch on my floor.

I digress. Mainly because I've ran out of things to talk about. So if you want a CD or a shirt just give us a shout. And make sure you're at the gig!

Peace

Russ

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