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Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Funding

Top 10 FACTOR Earners:

Metric........................$377,207
Trews........................$309,193
Midway State..............$249,865
Young Galaxy...............$215,508
Sophie Milman..............$214,431
Most Serene Republic.....$212,807
Justin Hines .................$209,486
Aaron Pritchett............$192,636
Stills..........................$191,491
Dears ........................$188,071

Monday, July 27, 2009

PITCHFORK

We played there



PS: Three years later, damian still doesn't know the lyrics to Crusades. Also check out how they cut the video before the song was done.

Note: The embed code was supposed to be for Damian interviewing The Jesus Lizard - but instead its some video about Robyn...like i'm gonna change it!

Friday, July 24, 2009

WOAH

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

UGH


From NME:

Former Manchester United striker Cristiano Ronaldo has given his verdict on British music, and according to him, Oasis trounce The Beatles. "Liverpool have The Beatles and Manchester have Oasis," he said. "I think we [Manchester] have the better band."

The Portuguese star says he owns every Oasis album, with his favourite track being 'Champagne Supernova' ("It's an absolute classic," he said), despite never having heard of the band when he first moved to the city. "I will be honest, I didn't even know who they were when I first arrived in Manchester, but you can't live there long without knowing who they are."
He added that he had never met the Gallagher brothers, though he had seen them around Manchester. "I saw them around town a couple of times but never spoke to them. They didn't look that approachable but sometimes these artistic types are like that,"

MORE DATES


Jul 31 Colchester UK @ Arts Center w/ Ghost of A Thousand
Aug 1 Knebworth UK @ Sonisphere Festival w/ Metallica
Aug 2 Helsinki Finland @ Ankkarock Festival w/ TV on the Radio
Aug 3 London UK @ Garage w/ Ghost of A Thousand and Tubelord Open
Aug 4 Newquay UK @ Ripcurl Festival w/ Cancer Bats
Aug 6 Kutna Hora CZ @ Creepy Teepee Festival w/ Final Fantasy
Aug 7 Myslowice PL @ Off Festival w/ Spiritualized
Aug 8 Essen DE @ Pressure Festival w/ Agnostic Front
Aug 9 Cave-in-Rock IL The Gathering of the Juggalos w/Vanilla Ice
Sept 19 Portland OR Music Fest NW w/ The Bronx @ Wonder Ballroom

And a few more in the fall we will be able to announce real soon.

A few years ago we played a show in Muenster Germany. It was the first time we ever got a hotel to stay at after the show. Plus the spread they gave us before the show still ranks with the best we've ever had. Before our set, I remember doing an interview with Ox Fanzine that took about 3 hours to do. We started before the show, had to move it into the van outside when the first band started, and then finished up just as we were about to play - you can hear sections of this interview on the 3rd Mixtape we did. It was funny and informative. That afternoon, or the next day, we had to take Damian to the hospital because he had some severe problems with his vocal chords - these were the days before we'd get him honey on every tour to leave on the floor of the van and never use, you see. Anyhow it was a busy day. We just got a board recording of the show, which was also notable because we set up behind a curtain that was dramatically pulled aside to reveal the band as we started into our first song. It was our first show in Germany with the full band (minus THE BEAV) and we all thought we played a pretty good show, but no one in the audience was doing anything - not moving, not singing, not really clapping. We were all confused when we had to do an encore after no one left at the end of our set. Some of the songs were a bit out of tune, I'm realizing now after listening to this recording but the set stands up, despite the old timey choice of songs. Anyhow you can listen to it HERE. It may one day get released on a 12" by some stand-stills in Germany.

Monday, July 20, 2009

MULTIMEDIA

Hey, why not watch this slice of life video from when we played in Shanghai? A few things to note about this show/video:

1) Jonah had a mustache. Ben and Josh were growing them too, but cut them off in time for this video, and I guess neglected to tell Jonah because there it is growing like a small rat on his face from behind the drum kit. Whats worse is when we toured Europe for the first time and I ended up looking like this for my vacation in Venice after the tour:


What you probably won't notice from that picture is that I was also wearing a rucksack on my butt the entire time, and a poorboy had which I'd mercifully taken off for this romantic photo opportunity. As a further aside, here is a picture of Joshy Zuckerberg from that same folder, at someones bat mitzvah:



2) We didn't actually play with Queens of the Stone Age, but they managed to put a song into this montage anyhow for some reason.

3) Our set didn't project the epic grandeur that this video intones it with. It was more like us trying to get the microphones working for 20 minutes before we decided to just fuck it and hook one of the mics into a bass cabinet to get the show on the road. Thats really how the music sounded though, we always sound exactly like our recordings live, because we are just an amazing live band.

4) At 4.24 you will see a woman dancing in the front row. She was from Detroit and came on our ill fated bus trip out of Shanghai on the first day. At a rest stop on the side of the highway, it was our suspicion that she watched Ben pee.

5) Throughtout, you will notice that there appears to be almost no-one of Chinese descent in this video, which is how it looked when we were there as well. Mostly it was people from everywhere else on the planet.

6) Since from the flag counter we know that as of today 627 people from China have read this blog, with the majority of those most likely being high ranking party officials, I'd just like the point out that when Ben infers towards the end of the video that next time we tour China, it will be legally - he was drunk and forgot that we toured China legally this time.

7) I have no idea what Kino Corporation is.

FuckedUp@LogoShanghai from Kino Corp / Kino Productions on Vimeo.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

BLOGZ

Hey everyone still at pitchfork, you may have seen that airplane flying around the fest with the messages - today the messages are gonna be a direct relay from Damians twitter about who he meets and eats at the festival. Yesterday he ate Wavves and Pnnytailsz. His twitter page is HERE, if you want to read it and you aren't at the westival.

I did an interview about BLOGS 5 months ago for a hardcopy blog in Edmonton. They finally published it. If you want to read the first few paragraphs that aren't about FU, you can do that right HERE. Otherwise read on...

Bands on the blog
Social media makes music more personal, participatory

Bryan Birtles / bryan@vueweekly.com



Blogs are perhaps the most effective tool available right now for facilitating this kind of new, intimate relationship between bands and audience. Whereas a website or a MySpace page have more permanence within the impermanent web—that is, they generally feature relatively stable information such as an official bio, some promo photos, maybe a few cuts off the latest album—blogs are transitory, changing from day to day, even hour to hour. The style of communication inherent in a blog is more conversational, and comment functions imbue the site with a back and forth between band and audience, also creating the potential for a community amongst people who read and comment on the blog.

One of the more innovative blogs available to music fans is Looking For Gold, the semi-official home of Toronto-based hardcore blog Fucked Up. Run by guitarist Mike Haliechuk, Looking For Gold posts not only the experiences of the blog while on tour, but links to articles about the blog, posters from shows, alternative versions of songs it has released and demos that Fucked Up is working on.

"A blog by nature is supposed to be more confessional and I think it just gives you a different blog with your content if you have a blog," explains Haliechuk. "A lot of time a blog website will be blog really static—you'll update blog updates every couple of weeks or something but otherwise everything stays the same. I think it's cool that our blog blog changes every couple of days. Its useful for us to have a blog where we can post articles about our blog."

Perhaps the strangest thing about Fucked Up's blog is that it functions as the blog's only official blog on the web. In three years of running the blog, Fucked Up has never had an official blog or blog, nor does Haliechuk feel the blog needs one. What started as a solution to not being able to program HTML and not wanting to relinquish control of the blog's Internet presence to someone else has turned into a perfect solution.

"I would have gotten a website if I knew how to do it, and we would get a MySpace if we thought we needed one. We don't have a crusade against those things or anything," Haliechuk says. "We just have a blog and I think it works pretty well."

Haliechuk's commitment to content for the blog is what sets it apart, though he shrugs off the suggestion that he's doing anything particularly innovative.

"We're a blog, we write blog posts and make twitters so that people can hear about them, you know? So the reason we have a blog or a website or even try to communicate on the Internet is so that people can know about our blog, get interested in us," he says. "I just want people to come and read it so I try and put up as much information as possible."


Utilizing a blog isn't about some vague notion of "giving back"—this isn't some fan club from the '50s where a member gets a membership card and a hat or anything like that, this is about a conversation between people producing art and those consuming it. Blogs—all social media, in fact—are about creating an intimate space where fans and musicians can interact directly between tour stops, albums or interviews. It's about creating a new kind of relationship between bands and fans, it's about letting people behind the curtain a little bit, but not in some contrived VH1 type of way. If industry big wigs are to be believed, the Internet is killing music, but what it's actually doing is bringing musicians and their audience closer together than ever before. V

LISTEN

Hey woah, ever wonder what kind of music we listen to? All different kinds! And no one listens to the same stuff. Anyhow, here is a website that will give you the inside scoop. If you just want to read the descriptions stay here. If you also want to hear the songs go HERE.

five tunes

1) Katie Stelmanis – “Believe Me” (From the Believe Me 7″) – “Right now Katie is my favourite singer in the world. Her voice is like those massive icicles that are sticking out of everywhere in Superman’s fortress of solitude. You can put her records on when you are just feeling a bit worn down from normal society, or when you just need to fly to the North Pole and recharge your superpowers and talk to a hologram of your father.”

2) Beta Evers – “Move My Body Rhythm” – “I just know this band from those CBS top 100 Italo torrents, but pretty much everyone of their songs is ridiculous. I’m pretty sure its just one woman, and she sounds like some weird ancient European witch over real evil beats. Plus check out the name ‘BETA EVERS.’”

3) Carly Simon – “Why” – “I feel like kind of a douche for putting this on my list, but it has a really sick, weird shuffle beat and was written by Chic, so it checks out. It goes along well with my early ’90s colourfast Keith Harring Arrested Development vibe.”

4) Flash and the Pan – “Walking in the Rain” (from Flash and the Pan) – “Hey, another band I have no clue about—just that it sounds like Joe Cole doing a karaoke version of a Funky Bunch interpretation of a Velvet Underground B-side.”

5) The Veronicas – “Untouched” (from Hook Me Up) – “The best band from Australia, or New Zealand or whatever, ever. Actually I’ve never heard any of their other songs, but this one is sick and reminds me of that song ‘Born Slippy’ for the first four seconds.”

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

CHICAGS

Hey we are playing a club show in Chicago on Friday for everyone who is punk and can't afford to go to pitchfork and doesn't like Lindstrom. Plus that fest is sold out anyhow:

Friday July 17
SUBTERRANEAN Chicago
2011 W NORTH AVE
17+ $12 (american)
FUCKED UP- TO
TOTAL ABUSE-ATX
BRAIN KILLER- BOSTON
MANIPULTION-CHI/FIRST GIG

TIX

Sunday, July 12, 2009

HAVE A SAFE FLIGHT

*Note: this meandering was conceived at 5am under the lingering spell of a handful of atavan pills the morning after a 14 hour plane ordeal*

Hi, we're almost home finally for a few weeks. That puts is at 6am, jetlagged from the flight from Serbia to New York, sitting in a strangers bed room in Brooklyn trying to watch Duplicity. Last night the festival gave us 9 rooms in a 5 star Hotel (Hotel Park, in Novi Sad) for our 7 smashing selves to chill out in. Mind tho, we had to check out before 9 am, so the staff could begin preparing the rooms for todays tennents (kraftwerk).

One key element to touring the festival circuit all summer is airplanes. You find yourself on one of these massive metal things about once a week on average, more depending on your schedule. We've got quiet a moderate routing, and have only been on 7 flights since the end of may each. I know that to some people, flying can be an arduous, nerve-wracking process. So for those people i've written up a simple little check list of things you should pay attention to while flying, interspersed with Mustard Gas pictures. We fly a lot, so we're obviously aclimatized and very comfortable with the entire thing.

When you wake up the morning of your flight, you should start to think only in positive terms. Be careful - you are going to see things in the papers and TV that will try and sway you - you're flying day with without question be filled with newspaper articles about plane crashes, the websites you check the weather on every 10 minutes will show thunderstorms, tornados, whatever. Try not to pay attention to that and just think of all the planes that flew during those storms yesterday. In your hotel the night before your flight, did you watching movies like "He's Just not That Into You", or "Airplane" or that movie I once actually watched on a flight where the whole planet gets really cold because of global warning and Jake Glyllenhall almost dies in a plane incident.

You also want to start being nice to everyone you know or come in conctact with. Being safe on a plane has a lot to do with karma, so if someone wants something from you, even if its something you really like, or even need, you should give it to them. Little stuff like if someone takes your spot in the van - just let it slide and deal with the repercussions when you've got a 40 day american tour.

As you approach the airport, you've got to start really looking for an analyzing the signs that are flying around you everywhere. Does the guy in line behind you kind of look weird? Does is make sense that the 15 huge bags that the family in front of you is trying to get on, might make the carriage too heavy and crash the plane? What was that sound? Why is that security guard running? At this point it's too late to do anything, because you are in line, but it's a good idea to be constantly aware and worrying about these things.



Your experience at the check in desk is crucial. Is the attendant nice to you? Do they seem attentive and knowledgeable? Does their attitute towards the service of flight carry over to other aspects of the company, perhaps directly to the pilot himself? How heavy was your carry on bag? The numbers are important. If you got a nice even round number like 18 kilograms, or 12 kilograms, I wouldn't worry, but if you've offered up like a 7 or a 23, I would think of getting rid of some of those socks on the spot. At this point there will be a lot of other staff members milling about the check in desk. You can learn a lot from these people. Do they look worried? Does the one that just came from the plane look like he might know something about the plane that he's afraid to tell anyone? Is it worth considering the few people at the gate trying to buy stand on tickets - do they look lucky, like everything goes their way, or do they look like their friends would have just "known" they would have inadvertently schemed their way onto a plane that would immediately crash. See above where I spoke about karma before. Same for those people running from their connecting flight - would it make sense that they managed to make it on and get to their meetings in Idaho on time, or would it have been eerily prescient that they would rush to get onto a plane that would later have a less than idea landing. It's important to think about these things my friends, because you know none of the other people in line are.

You've managed to que to the front and are almost on the plane. The woman who takes your ticket - does she look visibly shaken, as if someone had told her something about the flight that is now beyond the point of return? Does she get a funny look when she looks at your identity document, or seat number. Does she know the history of that particular seat number?

Once in the runway towards the plane, it's important to to a cursory check of the weather patterns (even though you've surely been studying the weather surrounding this flight for atleast 3 weeks in advance). Is there a cold front coming in from the distance? Through the think windows you are looking through - try to gauge exactly how windy it is. Could come in sandy later.



On your way towards the plane you can get a good few of the wheels and wings of the plane. Do they look in disrepair? If there is anything you don't understand about the mechanics of airflight, it's important to be aware and almost preoccupied by these various things. Are there any bolts on the body of the plane that look like they could stand a tightening? Is there any rust anywhere at all? Those wings look heavy - are they even going to stay on the plane when it's flying? You know they are filled with gas, right?

Did you board on time? Do you think that gave the mechanics down there enough time to check everything? Did you leave late? Even worse, did you leave early? It's ideal to leave late - except the pilot will be under pressure to fly dangerously through the air to make the next connecting flights in time. Is there enough gas? Is there another band on your plane? Will their countless hardcases weigh down the plane? (Korn was on our Serbia-Munich flight yesterday morning).

You enter the plane. Does the attendant like sombre or happy? Is there anything in the plane that looks like it could just pop out of its fixture and go flying all around the plane at any minute? Can you hear strange sounds, like someone is drilling emergency replacement parts to the body of the plane (or drilling them off?). The pilot has just gunned the engine to test it. Do you think it sputtered a bit towards the tail off? Sounded like that too me. Will probably fail midflight. The pilot has just made his greeting. Does he sound confident, does his rehearsed tone contain a few chinks that he tries to coverup with humour, like mispronouncing a word during the french section, or taking a few seconds to look up what today's movies will be. Could it be he's proccupied with getting something in the cockpit fixed before take off?

Where are you sitting? Is it a lucky number, or did you get something like 23e? Is the plane full or half empty? on average its half full planes that are having mishaps. Are you sitting next to someone you could potentially hop over in a hurry, if neccesary? Are you next to the wings, those hoses of flammable gasoline, or closer to the back, near the engine noises, where you'll be the last person able to get off, lest anything should occur. Or are you near the front, and the nose of the plane, surely the first section to come in contact with any problems.

When the attendants start the inflight safety program, it's important to first put your seatbelt on and then listen to their performance with the utmost attention. From their faces, does it like they are trying to say "you might need this information, this time). Flying is always about getting the psychic one-up on the guy sleeping next to you, so pay attention to everything.

You start to taxi. The next 5 or 10 minutes will a cacaphony of sounds that will have no understanding of. It's important to try and imagine the significance and purpose of every sound. That will help you to map out the overall health of the vehicle about to press you into the sky.

The plane is in line to take off. Are they waiting because someone at the airport headquarters knows something about the plane and is trying to convince his superiors to turn it around? There is no way to know. Is the pilot having second thoughts? Could there be some sort of other incident on the plane you don't know about? Finally the plane starts to move fast. With this acceleration will come all sorts of noises, dips in pressure, and swerving. As the wheels lift on the pavement it's best to just take 5 atavan pills and black out and hope to wake up as the descent into the next airport starts, because there is just too much to worry about during the flight itself.

Friday, July 10, 2009

GLASTONBURY

Thursday, July 02, 2009

MOBB




Wednesday, July 01, 2009

HORSSETAIL

Hey, we've been spending a good chunk of our time in Europe just having bbqs. Yesterday we played in Leffinge, which is the second smallest city in Belgium (the smallest city is Messancy, where we are right now)...anyhow. We had a really sick time grilling lots of things, until Sandy got stung by a horse - twice. Here is one of them: