Memoirs Of A Gangsta

My name is Pete Bilton, and I speak with a Russian accent 13.7% of the time! For nostalgias sake, sometimes I go to my old Myspace page, and read old comments and messages and just look back on my life through my teenage years a little to remind myself of where I’m from and things I’ve done.
I was doing it the other day and came across my blogs (they were just THAT good).
If you ever visit my Myspace blog page, it literally tells the story of me since I was 17. My very first blog was just before my 18th birthday. Every year I would post a blog about everything that has happened and where I’m at, kind of as a postcard from the past to future me. I didn’t write one last year for the first time since then. SO, I’m going to try and somehow describe the past two years of my life. And if future me is reading, sup man! You look ridiculous in that shirt.

TWENTY TEN
The last blog I posted was a couple of days into 2010, Nathan had just joined LOST? and we were writing demoes. I was particularly excited about a new song I was writing called ‘Playboy’. Which is fucking bonkers because now that song has like 15,000 views on YouTube. Which I know on the grand scale of things, isn’t much, there are videos of cats with millions of views after all. BUT, 15,000 times someone has pressed the play button and taken the time to watch a video of me and my boys touring the world to the soundtrack of a song I wrote about touring the world. No one can convince me that that’s not an achievement, if they do I will deep fry their genitals. 
2010 was a strange year, the first half was reasonably slow paced and quiet. We were quietly writing our EP in our rehearsal room in Norfolk. Then in April and May we went to a studio to record it.

PICS OR IT DIDN’T HAPPEN 
We decided to make our record at a place called Leeders Farm Studio. It’s a huge studio in Norfolk owned by Dan Hawkins of The Darkness.
I remember walking in to record on our first day, we met our engineer Owen properly and set up all of our gear in this giant live room, I didn’t want to touch anything because it was all insanely expensive and I’m just insane. I spent the entire first three days of recording playing table football and darts with Nathan….or rather, beating Nathan at table football and darts, BOOYAH. Then at one point we’re laying down some early guitar lines and Dan Hawkins walks in. That was the first of a few experiences that blew my mind in 2010. Not to mention suddenly noticing that my guitar lines are like beginners guitar compared to this guy and feeling entirely inadequate at life. The next day I got to the studio and Dan was just chilling in the kitchen and started talking to me, made me a cup of coffee. It was one of those moments you sit back and take a mental photograph. Here was a guy that I’d skipped a Blink 182 meet and greet to see his band a few years earlier, just chilling in HIS kitchen drinking a cup of coffee he made for me.
So fast forward a couple of weeks to May 31st. We decided to go to Slam Dunk Festival in Leeds and hand out flyers promoting ourselves for a bit. Somehow we ended up in Sherwood Forest walking around. For some reason beyond my understanding, we thought it’d be funny to build a little wooden hut style monument in the middle of the path through the forest. Some guy appears walking down the path about 300 metres or so away, again for reasoning I still don’t get, we decide to drop the sticks and yell ‘FUCKIN GO! GO! GO!’ as if we’d been caught doing something bad like a witch ritual or some shit. So we started running and laughing, then, and here’s the bit that really gets me, the guy starts fucking CHASING US. So I’m genuinely a little panicked at this point, you never know if he’s packing a piece! Then we hear one of the worst sounds you can hear when running away from a crazy man in the woods. Barking. Of course the guy had some bastard dogs chasing us too. This was fast becoming one of the weirdest moments of my life, I genuinely considered for a moment whilst running, that this crazy dog man may actually end it all, and all because of a stick house.
We got back to the car park and stopped running and laughed all ‘haha, the fuck was that about, eh!?’. Then Rob was all ‘he’s still coming! this guys like terminator!’ so we belt it towards the car, pile in and fucked OFF!
I checked the time on the car ride home, 00:02, June 1st 2010. So I decided to check iTunes, and there it was, LOST? - Pics Or It Didn’t Happen. That’s the reason I’ll never forget the moment that our first EP went onsale. Out there in the world there’s some dude that one evening chased four guys through Sherwood Forest with his dogs for reasons forever unknown to the world!

@LOSTBAND
A couple of weeks following the release of Pics, I decided to go to the bands twitter, and just got it in my head to follow every single person I could find that liked the bands that related to us a little and just talk to them. I did this for about a week, and everyone was being SO nice, I was a little baffled. Then out of nowhere our followers started increasing by about 100 a day and people were talking about us and our little EP! Soon 300 became 1,000. Then 2,000. Our first sales report came in from iTunes, in the first two weeks of release, we had sold 200 EP’s. Which again, doesn’t sound huge, I mean it’s no ‘Friday’, but when we recorded that EP we didn’t know what was going to happen or if ANYONE would listen. This was another ‘woah’ moment of 2010. 

SUMMER
The year had it’s downsides too, everything kind of piled up at once during the summer. Our good friends Army Of Freshmen were coming to tour the UK and play Sonisphere Festival, we always lend a hand as tour crew for the guys so we were busy organising the tour when my cousin Heather passed away. She was in her twenties, it was completely unexpected and she just went and laid in bed one day and didn’t wake up. She just stopped living. That hit me a lot harder than I’d ever expect, it’s not the kind of thing you think about, or should ever have to think about. 
It does make you evaluate your life a little when someone close to you passes, and especially in such a way. She didn’t put herself in a dangerous situation, she was healthy, she had no enemies, she just went to bed. It made me decide to take life up a gear or two. 
A few weeks later we left for tour with AOF, and like every rollercoaster, it does have it’s ups. Sonisphere was the obvious highlight of tour, we had VIP passes to a major festival. GOLDEN! It was all a bit bizarre really, we met Oli Sykes just hanging out at his Drop Dead store at the festival (I’m pretty sure to this day Rob still has a boner from it), I was walking around backstage and bumped into Charlie Simpson, then got stopped by a tattoo magazine and had a photo shoot right there and then, it was just a mental weekend. At the end of the tour it turned out that Army Of Freshmen were playing Islington Academy in London, the same night that we were playing The Relentless Garage, literally just down the road. So we set up their show, drove down to our venue, soundchecked, got dinner, played a big HMV battle of the bands, won the BOTB, drove to Freshmens show and celebrated. That was a really cool night, I’m still certain that being on tour with AOF the week leading up to the competition and experiencing a taste of the good life helped us win that night. I think we still all regard that night as one of the best shows we’ve played, we played SO hard. That was the first time I’d walked off stage thinking we could actually put on a bit of a show if we want.
I started to look at life a bit differently after that summer. I felt like I’d been on autopilot for a while and it was time to take the reins again. Over the winter it’s usual for bands to quiet down a little and I went back to work at HMV with Roger for our last Christmas working there. It was genuinely the most fun I’ve ever had and I think ever will have at a job. 
The other main stand out moments from winter 2010 are meeting some incredible people in the most unlikely of places. At the HMV competition we met a girl called Cayleigh and her friend Michael. They invited us to play a guest spot at their towns Battle Of The Bands, so we said we would. Huntingdon is a small town, like, really small. You wouldn’t expect there to be many people around, it’s like the shire in Lord Of The Rings, only with less wizard visitors. We soundchecked in a really clean, long venue hall. It sounded great, I was happy, off we went to explore. I felt a little sick so went to the van to try and sleep it off. It got to about twenty minutes to stage time and the guys came out to get me, I walked inside and this empty hall, in this little town had FILLED with some of the most energetic people in the world. It was another of the best shows we’ve played, and from that crowd I made some of the greatest friends in the world that I still talk to on a daily basis. I think that’s what I love about our band, when we play a show, we make friends with the crowd. We don’t just meet people and leave, the majority of my closest friends I met at shows. SO, 2010 was a bit of a crazy year for me. I started the year as a quiet guy with some songs in a band with my friends. I ended it with memories that I’ll always regard as some of my best, and there were people out there in the world that KNEW my band. It felt a little like our baby steps were turning into strides….


TWENTY ELEVEN
A couple of days into 2011, I got a call from Chris Jay. He was explaining that Army Of Freshmen had been asked to play some major festivals in Europe with NOFX, The Used, Dashboard Confessional, The Blackout and all manner of bands and that they were playing a UK tour around it and that they wanted LOST? to be the support band for the tour. Um, YEAH!
So the following months leading up to the tour in April, we did some ‘band training’, writing new songs and practicing more than the usual hours. We released our song ‘Playboy’ with a video and sent it to the tv channel Lava. They rejected the video at first saying it wouldn’t be airing on the channel. Back in 2010, at one point All Time Low had posted some tour dates for the UK and a petition was started (what!?) for us to support them. It was unsuccessful, BUT during that time if you searched for ‘All Time Low’ on twitter the top tweets were about us. It made me realise how blessed we were to have friends around the world that’d go to such an extent to help us achieve something amazing. So when Lava rejected our video, it happened again. All of a sudden my twitter feed starts filling up with tweets to this tv station telling them to put our video on, two days later I get an e-mail saying ‘your video is now available for request on Lava TV’. I owe everything to the people that take time out of their day to help my band. That video went on to be number 2 in the most requested video charts above Paramore, My Chemical Romance, All Time Low etc. It was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life seeing our video on TV. I’m still so proud of what that video achieved, it’s a video that I edited myself of footage that I filmed on my personal camcorder. The fact that people cared enough to do all of these things for us was incredible. So, I wanted to get out and meet these people! The tour rolled around and we headed out on 2 weeks that changed my life. 

THE SPRING BREAK TOUR
April 13th, 7am. We’re sitting in the van at the end of my drive way, and I’m holding the sat-nav, writing the destination as a hotel in Strasbourg, France, quietly shatting my pants. Fast forward an entire day of driving, and channel tunneling (managed to squeeze in an episode of The Fresh Prince on the chunnel!), then driving through France. It’s about 9:30pm I’m doing the last driving shift and we’re all exhausted and I’m seeing Disney characters in the middle of the road I’m that sleepy. I remember getting angry and shouting at the guys when they were telling me where to go, haha. We FINALLY got to the hotel and they had given our rooms away, and Dunc The Punk, Army Of Freshmens tech was not enjoying his conversation with the French man on the reception at all. Anyway, we relocated to another hotel, Nathan and our tech Jon had a room, and me and Rob had a room (Roger met us later in the tour). All of the trip we’d been complaining about being tired and wanting a bed. Me and Rob were in bed for about 5 minutes, then he turns and says ‘dude, lets go get some food’. So we grab our coats and the keys to the van and went straight back on the road again in search of somewhere to eat at 10pm. Luckily we found a place called Quick, which is a fast food joint kind of like Maccys, we struggled with ordering to the French lady, just pointing to things really and looking like complete idiots, we were a long way from the shire! I couldn’t understand what the lady was saying to me until the scariest, tallest, butchest, thug of a man looked at me and said ‘DRINK’. I just about creased myself, never has the word drink sounded so scary. 
It was a really cool night to me, it was so simple, we just went and got some dinner. But it was more than that, here was me and my best friend that I’d sat next to in a maths class in high school and started a band with, driving through France! For two guys from quiet villages in Norfolk, I was pretty proud of what we were doing.
SO we spend the next day with the freshmen and go to get some drinks at a chinese restaurant and have a meeting to talk about the tour. Next day we get up early and head to the venue. I say venue, it was a full on fucking arena. 
We go to catering after soundcheck, no big deal, just NOFX sitting at the next table. The Beatsteaks walk in and out. I just sit back and watch all of these bands that I love hanging out wondering how in the shit I ended up here.
The show is insane; 12,000 crowd members, great bands, nearly got in a fight with some Germans, met some really cool people, back to the hotel.
Next day we head to Folkestone for day 1 of the UK tour. That whole tour was insane, we met so many great people and it’s like all of these little twitter icons that had been talking to us were becoming real people in my mind. You start to recognise people and we played some acoustic shows in car parks after we played in the venue etc. Beautiful time! Then we head back over to Belgium for Groezrock Festival! This was where shit got pretty bizarre. We’re at this amazing hotel, with full on two level suites, we head outside while the freshmen play a round of miniature golf. Fast forward 14 hours and we’re sitting in a dressing room in the backstage ‘village’. You walk past all of the doors to get to our room and read ‘The Blackout’….’NOFX’…..’Goldfinger’…..’Cute Is What We Aim For’. That was a bizarre experience itself. AOF had played and we were all drinking and hanging out, then Roger who was a little sizzled just strolls into The Blackouts room, and introduces us. They were SO friendly and nice, and that theme kind of continued all weekend. I was having conversations with all of these people, talking about my tattoos with NOFX, sitting at a picnic bench having some beers with Sugarcult, talking about California with Dashboard Confessional, sitting on The Used’s drum riser whilst watching Saves The Day. Just wonderful, friendly people. Being in a band, you come across a lot of egos. A LOT. But the thing that irritates me, is it’s ALWAYS the bands at small shows around the UK or whatever. Every established band that I’ve ever hung out with at these festivals or tours has been friendly and more often than not. It always makes the hugest difference when people react to you that way, it makes the whole experience more positive, so I think as a band we all carry that with us and try to treat everyone with respect and just be friendly! So we continue to another festival and long story short we end up walking around Amsterdam until the early hours. The less said about that trip the better, but we end up in a cab back to the hotel at like 4am or something and the driver has got Pink Floyd on REALLY loud and is singing along whilst turning around to face US, not even watching the road. That moment will live with me forever! Scary bastard driver! So next day, we wake up, we head to the ferry, we sleep on deck, me and Rob spend about an hour on massage chairs, we get home, we drive to Norwich and that’s that. In such a blur, I think Chris from Kut U Up described tour in the best ever way on the film ‘Riding In Vans With Boys’. If you’ve never seen that movie by the way, go and youtube it right now, it’s the best insight to being on tour ever, and it’s completely accurate!

SUMMER……AGAIN
So tour was done, and I spent a good few months getting over it to be honest. I was genuinely having flashbacks of Roger passing out at Groezrock, Nathan jumping on Jon in the hotel room until Jon beat him up, the crazy man trying to sell me drugs in Amsterdam. It took me until about July to return to normality again. 
In just about every blog on Myspace mentioned the beach house I visit every year with all of my friends called Idle Hour. This year I went for a week and it was incredible. It was so so hot every day I got sunburnt to shit, met some incredible people, had probably one of the most amusing conversations of my life with some random girl called Kate that came and sat next to me outside and said ‘let’s bond pete’. I think it took about 5 or 6 minutes for her to become one of my best friends. That week was one of my favourite memories. Waking up and hearing the sea, walking down to the beach. Bonfires on the sand. Skinny dipping, of course. Nathan falling straight through a massive window. Perry going missing and having to go out on a search party for him. There’s so much that happened in that little week that will stay with me forever.
A few weeks later I decided to go to Leeds Festival at the last minute with the same people that were at the beach house. That too was an incredible week. I drove up, spent a night with great people, then went to the festival. Fucking ALL sorts went on at the festival. One morning I woke up in a strangers tent. It was completely empty, just me in it, and it was miles away from my camp. I had my sleeping bag with me which was weird. To this day I have no idea how I got there or who’s tent it was. I walked back to my tent with my sleeping bag and the assumption that I’d had a good night. At one point I got back to camp late in the morning, everyone was already drinking and ready to go see Madness. So I downed a bottle of Jager and vodka to catch up. Fast forward literally 40 minutes and EVERYTHING is out of focus and I’m following my friend to the toilet to pee. Fast forward 3 hours, then I wake up, sitting next to the toilet in the portaloo cubicle. I’d fallen asleep for THREE hours in the stinkiest, most un-fucking-sanitary place in the world. I couldn’t bring myself to move without throwing up. A lot. So I stayed put and fell back asleep. By the time I woke up again to someone banging on the door, it was dark outside and I could hear the last band playing. I figured it was probably time to get my shit together and attempt to get back to camp. I don’t remember much of the walk back to camp at all, all I remember is waking up in my tent with half a burger stuck to my face and chips EVERYWHERE. I figure I was trying to make the tent warm by apparently chucking hot food around it like some kind of gorilla. What was weirdest was that at this point I felt AMAZING. So I went for a quick walk with everyone, went to bed and left the next morning!
I spent the next couple of days in Leeds visiting the sights, climbed some rocks, went to a cocktail bar and just enjoyed myself for a bit, and spent some time with my friend Lucinda, who I hadn’t seen since the Spring Break Tour.
Thats pretty much the story of 2011 up until autumn. I just took some time to enjoy myself and see friends, which really did me good.

BACK TO LIFE
Autumn and Winter were strange for me. I started working at Toys R Us. What’s weird is that in these Myspace blogs that I mentioned, in 2005. I posted that I was listening to Zebrahead on the way to work. That year me and Rob both worked at Toys R Us over Christmas.
Now, I was back at Toys R Us, but instead of listening to Zebrahead, I was about to take some time off work to go on tour with them. I was only on the tour for a little bit because I couldn’t get all of the time off work. But the time I spent on tour was incredible. Meeting the Zebrahead guys, and they knew who I was from seeing me a long time ago. Spending time with Army Of Freshmen always inspires me, they really are a great band, but behind the band they’re great people. I owe a lot to those guys!
I was tripping from being able to watch bands that I grew up listening to for free and actually be a part of the crew. 
I had a bit of a misfire on the girl side of things. I never go into any detail with those things because the way I see it, it’s not just me and I’m not going to disrespect anyones privacy. But I started seeing a girl blah blah etc and it came to an end. I was kind of bummed out at first, mainly because of the way it was handled. BUT, I spoke to Rob the next day. Me and Rob have had so many conversations about girls and life over the years I can’t even count them. Because of that the dude knows exactly what to say to set me straight, no matter what I’m going through. I was back on my feet and shouting at people in a scottish accent out of car windows again in no time. To be fair staying upset whilst working at Toys R Us of all places is impossible.
But what hit me is that since that first blog, I’ve mentioned a lot of different girls and problems and mountains to climb. But the thing thats been there the entire time is LOST?. No matter what shit I’ve been through, this band has kept me afloat whether I’ve vented what I’m feeling through songs or touring has cheered me up. The point is that I had taken the band a little bit for granted, and sometimes the people I’m in it with. Not in a bad way at all, but I’d just lost my ‘muchness’. 
So after me and Rob had this conversation, I listened to every LOST? song ever recorded all at once. Doing that, like reading the blogs took me back to that 17 year old guy that signed onto Myspace for the first time back then. I realised that if that kid could see me now he’d be disappointed in how little passion I was putting into music. So I decided it was time to harden the fuck up, pick myself up, and get back on track.
Next week we’re releasing our first single since Playboy. It’s a strange sounding song for us, it sounds a little like Lady Gaga and All Time Low wrote a song together, with Bring Me The Horizons guitar rig. The song is called Back To Life, and it couldn’t be a more perfect song to come back to.
The lyrics are so relevant to how I feel and when I heard the first rough edit of the song last week it was like a lightening bolt struck the end of my wiener.

As of now, it’s Monday January 2nd 2012, I’m Peter John Felicity Danger Bilton Esquire 3rd. It’s my birthday in 16 days. I am the singer and guitarist for my favourite band, we’re about to release the best song we’ve ever written with our first ever pro shot video. 2012 is going to be a ride whatever happens, and I’m going to do it all with a smile on my face and a boner in my pants. 
Here’s to LOST?, to my friends, my family, the past, the future, pandas, mexican food, Starbucks, bouncy castles, caprisun, beach parties, and as always, boobies.

Go Fuck Yourself

<3