Alex Band UK

It’s been too long! Sorry I haven’t written in a million years, but man has sh*t been completely nuts.Well, we all know Sean’s gone, which is bizarre news… I’ll get back to that later. I’m on a plane right now flying home from Paris, wondering… would they let you bring a parachute on board with you? I mean I know no knives, guns, etc. allowed, but, for some stupid reason, I would feel safer in a plane with a parachute in my carry-on. I mean, when was the last time that big pathetic life vest you blow through the little yellow tubes saved any lives in a plane crash? Granted if you jumped out of a plane falling a thousand miles an hour, you would probably be ripped apart by the pressure before you could even try to breathe the oxygen that isn’t there or freeze to death first… But, couldn’t you hold your breath until you’ve fallen to a level where there is air, then pull the rip cord just in time to safely land in the middle of the Atlantic and try not to get eaten by hammer head sharks and giant squid the size of oil tankers, while you doggie paddle your way back to good old America? Lots of time, lots of retarded thoughts. No matter how many times I’ve flown, there’s still a sigh of relief and appreciation of life after you land.Anyway, I just pretty much adjusted to the time change in Europe after a week and now I’m coming back home!Wow… how scary do you look in the dead orange lighting of the airplane bathroom after sleeping on a fork and drinking to much complementary champagne?So how did we get this point… Well, we last left off mid-radio tour in the States when things still felt oddly normal. There has definitely been some high highs and some low lows. Let’s start with a high.After some great radio shows and two sunny days off in Florida, it was the night before my 21st birthday and we were an hour away from going on in Miami. I was just warming up and doing all my pre-performance rituals when the radio station announces to me that Steven Tyler from Aerosmith is on his way in to our dressing room! Huh? To make a long story short he’s a fan of our music and it was my birthday surprise. Aaron and the band knew about this all day and had rehearsed and learned “Walk This Way” by Aerosmith and we were going to perform it at the closing of the show with frickin’ Steven Tyler… I was going to sing one of the coolest songs ever written, with one of my biggest idols ever, for 15 thousand people, in, like, less than thirty minutes!… FUCK! I have absolutely NO clue what any of the words are for that song! I mean I’ve heard it a million times, I’ve grown up with it… “Hey kiddie shmiddy… blah dah feet flying up in the air… me she’s foolin… I knows you poolin? something something… Walk This Way!” I got that part! As my heart starts pounding I realize:1) How am I going to learn all these words with no CD in, like, a few minutes.2) What a complete moron I’m going to seem to him when I have to say… “I’m your biggest fan… this is amazing… I can’t wait to sing it with you… heh heh heh, I don’t know the words! “Anyway, as the nervous sweat beaded off my palms, in walked Mr. Tyler. Immediately he took over the whole room and eased everyone’s racing minds by being, seriously, one of the coolest, most down-to-earth people I’ve ever met. After we talked about lots and lots of stuff and I asked all the questions I’ve always wanted to know, I had to tell him I had a little problem. He right away said “Hey man, you think I know the words to my songs? I have monitors at every show with all the songs so I can see them for myself!” So, he wrote me a verse to sing with him and we both were casually glancing down at it taped to the stage by our feet. The performance was an incredible rush and he even sang a little Happy Birthday to me! This was by far the most amazing experience I will never forget. Thank you thank you thank you to Steven Tyler for liking our music and doing that for me and to Y100 FM for putting it all together. It made the stroke of midnight on what was now my 21st birthday really start off with a bang. So that’s my little story about that. The next day, on my actual birthday, we flew to Dallas, Texas to headline a big show. I got so many cool gifts from you guys around my Bday. I especially liked the collages, mini-Ferraris, and silly attempts to actually give money to the Ferrari fund! You guys are nuts! This one girl gave me a huge envelope full of E-mail’s you all sent me with BDay wishes! I sat there for like two hours and read every one of them. Thank you guys! You’re so sweet! That same girl even made a South Park drawing of the band which was so freaking hysterical! The show was fun and the band stopped in the middle of “Could It Be Any Harder” to bring out a cake and sing “Happy Birthday” to me, which seems like a tradition in The Calling these days. That night, before I passed out from exhaustion, Sean decided to completely, randomly announce his departure from our band and told us he was going to play with LifeHouse. This really came out of nowhere and I was shocked he told me on my Bday and shocked he was only giving us a week’s notice. I will admit I was upset, but, like I wrote in that little letter I sent you guys, there are no bad vibes and we love Sean and we were really sad to see him go. I don’t hold it against him in any way, it just makes my life harder. To clear things up to you guys and Lifehouse fans: when I said that Lifehouse was a band I once respected, I meant that exactly how it sounded. What sort of people would offer and take a member of our band away from us to better themselves? Yes, it was Sean’s decision to go, but there should never have been an offer in the first place. I like Jason, the rest of the guys, and their great music and I apologize if I offended anyone, but I’m sure you can see where I’m coming from. Also, contrary to what some of you might think, we are a band, just as much as Lifehouse, no different in structure… Yes, Aaron and I write the music, as does only two members from Lifehouse sometimes, but that doesn’t stop us from being best friends, heading towards the same dreams and goals, completely unified. Our management does not control anything pertaining to the inner workings of this band, we do. So the girl who calls herself “Emily” on our forum can chill out. You have no clue what you’re talking about. Stop contaminating our FORUM! You are the weakest link, Good-bye! So, case closed, and we move on. The rest of our little radio tour went off without a hitch and Sean was super-cool, finishing all our US shows with us. Even though we all knew what would happen in a few days, Sean and us were all professional and really enjoyed every minute until the end. His last show with us was in Modesto, California and we had a blast. You did good Sean. My Grandfather passed away out of nowhere that same day, so it was a lot to handle. The words and emotions in our songs take on a lot of meaning when something like that happens and I know a lot of you have experienced the same. One of the greatest thing in my life is to hear of our fans’ hardships and know they rose above them with the help of our music. With everything going on in the world right now and most of us living in fear of just leading our daily lives, I always take a second and realize how lucky we all are and we need to love everyday to it’s fullest. Honestly I was a little scared going to Europe next, but I had my partners, my friends. We left the next day as a foursome to conquer France, Spain and England on what was, luckily, what I like to call a full bullsh*t tour. Lots of talking, lots of photos, and lots of European TV shows that won’t let you really play. So, we were able to pull it off just fine. No Doubt was on our long flight over to Madrid. I’m such a pussy cause, literally the whole flight, I wanted to go up to Gwen and introduce myself, tell her what a big fan I am and how much we love their music. But no, I suck. I had, like, a thousand-and-one chances to do it, too. There goes my philosophy. I’ve really been wanting to go to Spain for a long time, so it was exciting to be there even if it was only for two days. I like to go somewhere new and beautiful and try to win people over… It’s a challenge and it’s like starting over again in every new country we go to. It was good to go back to London where we now had some great fans to support us. The head of our street team there in London and her friends were really nice and showed us support even at all the cheesy TV shows where we had to play along to a track. Nothing rock-and-roll about that. That’s one thing I love about America… TV is a little more real with bands. What you see is what you get. But not in Europe. Billy likes to plug his bass directly into Aaron’s guitar for those things, which adds a nice touch. And don’t even ask what Nate’s doing back there, secretly playing his double-kick drum patterns, Slayer-style, along to “Wherever You Will Go”. You know, what was really cool, was at “Top of The Pops,” we got to see Robert Plant, lead singer of Led Zeppelin, perform some new songs. I’ve been a huge fan of Zeppelin since I was born and my Daddio used to blast it in the house. You could just hear the history of all the drugs and sex and drugs and drugs in his voice… Man, what an incredible life he’s had. Aaron and I luckily got to play a few songs acoustically for Capitol radio there with some winners, too. The DJ kicks ass and, when he told me he had a new Ferrari, I was like, “you bitch!” So later on he gave me a model one that he signed “dreams.” Thanks man! It turned out the Sultan of Brunei (one of the richest men in the world) has a teenage son who’s a fan of ours and had flown all the way from the little Island of Brunei to see our acoustic set (and to buy some clothes cause he’s definitely into fashion, the way he was all dressed up “bad ass”). It was funny cause he rolled up in, like, a bullet proof Mercedes cars with at least five big bodyguards and had this whole royalty thing down like he was right from the movie “Coming To America” (if you’ve never seen it, rent it, Eddie Murphy at his best). But, he was a super cool guy. So if you read this, dude, thanks for coming so far to see us and I hope we can play for you and your sister some time with the whole band. Rock on! It’s really strange to think our song is playing literally everywhere now. I get such a kick out of seeing all the fans on this website from so many different places. Could this get any better? So we did our work in good old England and headed over to Paris, France! In all the many times I have traveled to Italy and all over Europe growing up, I never got to see Paris. My grandfather, who, as I mentioned, just passed away, was born and raised there so it was really moving to see it now. I’m definitely in love. Hands down, for my taste, the most gorgeous city in the world, by far. We actually had a day off there but I was so burnt by then, I slept till 3 PM. I didn’t want to experience Paris for the first time without my girlfriend (and she’d kill me if I did!), so I’m saving it. I did see a lot of the city while we were driving around all day doing press and that was enough for me to fall in love. Wow, and the food kicked serious ass! I got Billy and Nate to try caviar for the first time which was funny and I swear all we did was silently grunt in approval for hours at the dinners. I’m a big fan of the “Moulin Rouge” movie so it was weird to see the real thing as it is today. We even got to see a sex museum with some of the most twisted and surprisingly artful things dating from hundreds of years ago to the present. Our hotel, as stunning as it was, was a little creepy cause we were right next to, literally attached to, the American Embassy. These days, with all the horrible bombings and hatred towards our country going on, I was a little hesitant staying there even though there were tons of cops in full-body armor patrolling the area and all the streets were closed off. God, if I hear about one more f*cking idiot ending his own life and killing tons of innocent people, I’m going to scream! What the hell is wrong with these people? I pray that things in Palestine and Israel can be changed for the better. We’ve got it pretty good in the USA. So I’m here, still on the plane. I’ve watched the same crap movies like three times, choked on the dry roasted peanuts, spilled cranberry juice on myself and now I’m contemplating if gas masks are legal carry on. When I was a little kid, once on a flight to Europe with my family, I spilled milk, a lot of milk, all over myself. So my Mom said she’d hang up all my clothes and underwear in the airplane windows to dry. So I put a blanket over me and chilled there naked for the last few hours. As I fell asleep, a stewardess was coming by checking everyone for seat belts for landing and when she got to me she yanked my little blanket off to check. Aaah! That was a wake up I’ll never forget. So anyway, now it’s home! Home is good for a change. Although our little break will be full of auditions and rehearsals, it will still be nice to go home. We’re heading back overseas the first week of July for like three days and then I bet you can’t guess what we’re doing for the summer? Hmmm, maybe… touring some more! This time with a new teammate, a new song, and maybe a cover or two. You guys keep it real for us. You’re the driving force behind The Calling. Thanks for sitting through this pathetically long diary entry… Uh, I’m sick of myself by now. Go check out the teen choice awards website and vote for us! That would be so cool to win an award… I know who I’d thank first. Your Fearless Leader, Alex Band