Video footage of Bring Me The Horizon performing with Andrew WK on the last day of Warped Tour 2010 can be seen below.

I've worked a number of shitty jobs in my day. My first job out of high school was as a telemarketer for a basement waterproofing company making $7 an hour. They would make me cold call random people in the Butt Fuck Egypt of Columbus, OH, read a script that made as much grammatical sense as the lunch menu at China Town Buffet, and talk to customers with names like “Dawson Crick” that would pronounce "water" as "warter". Man, did that suck.

My first few jobs in L.A. were equally as shitty. One of my most memorable positions was when I was just getting Ryan's Rock Show going in 2007 -- it was exactly three years ago this month. And let me tell you, those people did NOT like to party hard.

The summer of 2007 was one of the craziest summers of my life. At the time I had been unemployed since November 2006, and was living in a 12 x 12 band rehearsal studio in North Hollywood for over a year. There was no bed, no internet, no microwave, there wasn't even a shower. Bathing consisted of brown paper towels and hand soap, and eating three meals a day was next to mission impossible. Thank god for Shelly’s Café.

Now, in the summer of ’07 Ryan’s Rock Show was a seed in desperate need of Miracle-Gro. I had done a few random local band interviews with a $20 hand recorder that I stole from Long’s Drugstore, and I made a shitty html/flash website so I could post the mp3s online. Record labels and bigger bands wouldn’t respond to me, but that wasn’t the point. The only goal was to meet new people. Earlier in the year I broke up with this girl that I really liked, and so I figured Ryan’s Rock Show could be used as an avenue to meet other local musicians and maybe a few hot chicks in the process.

So a typical day during that summer went like this: wake up at 2pm, get on the 183 bus to the North Hollywood library to look for jobs and find people to interview, take the Red Line to Hollywood because the Valley is hot as fuck in the summer, and chill at Shelly’s for the rest of the day to eat, shit, and meet new people. Then at night I’d party with JC’s crew, and hope that the next day someone would offer me a job.

One day as I was eating the mediocre Hawaiian burger at Shelly’s, I was checking my email on some dude’s phone and was offered a job in Burbank. It was at a computer software company called Diskeeper; they hired me for $10 an hour to call their clients and update their contacts database.

I thought the place was pretty cool initially. My first day on the job, this older receptionist chick told me how cute I looked with my dreadlocks, so it seemed like a great place to be. The only thing I thought was weird was the shrine of L. Ron Hubbard books that they had on display -- he’s the guy that created Scientology. Seriously, every time I think of Scientology I think of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes and how retarded their baby’s haircut looks.

Anyway, the job seemed cool. Aside from them trying to get me to read “Dianetics” and do some weird testing bullshit everyday, it was awesome. There was even a dude there that was obsessed with all these Rise Records bands, so I had someone to talk to about music. Life was sweet. I was making $10 an hour, I was interviewing local bands, I was doing the hibbidy dibbidy with this hot Latina girl that I met on Hollywood Blvd -- Andrew WK’s “Party Hard” became the soundtrack of that time period.

I was on cloud nine my third week into the job. After lunch one day I went upstairs to talk to the receptionist lady that was creaming her pants over my dreadlocks. We were laughing about work, and then some girl from my floor joined the conversation and started talking about her upcoming weekend plans. She said that she was going to get really drunk on Jack Daniels at this party she was going to. And me, attempting to be clever and flirtatious, decided to quote Andrew WK and said “when it's time to party we will party hard!” Both ladies smiled.

That evening I received an unexpected call from my supervisor. He said that the receptionist filed a complaint stating that I was talking about using drugs and abusing alcohol. Huh? What?!

My brain shat itself. My heart sank. My stomach started gurgling and I felt like I was going to puke. I knew what was coming. The Donald Trump cobra was ready penetrate its venom and put my head through its esophagus.

“Ryan,” he said. “You’re fired!”

“I was only quoting Andrew WK,” I replied. I even promise the dude that I’d believe in their Xenu god if they’d let me keep my job. Needless to say, that was the end of my stint at Diskeeper.

That evening I went to Shelly’s Café. The free Hawaiian burger was more mediocre than ever. As I was staring down at the stars on the Boulevard sidewalk, I thought to myself, dude, you have absolutely nothing in your life but $3 to your name, a digital voice recorder, and a cute Latina girl that you see twice a week -- it’s time to move forward with Ryan's Rock Show.  

Ryan’s Rock Show is now three years old. And if there’s anything I’ve learned from doing all of this, it’s that 1. Scientology is weird and fucking stupid; 2. sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to appreciate the smallest things in life; and 3. fuck Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes was way hotter when she was banging that Dawson Crick dude anyway.

 In pictures...

The stolen recorder 

 The studio. Summer 2007.

December 2009