You bastard scions:
Two nights ago tragedy struck in the form of a misbehaving Vox AC30 guitar amplifier. Tracking, like a freight train grinding to a halt, ground to a halt. And while at least one unknown dude's Sunday was spent performing a tedious and delicate amp repair, at least two dudes hit the freakin beach! It was sunny hike weather, so Keith and Chris slathered on sun tan oil, pulled up their pants, and drove straight at the ocean. Once they arrived, the beauty was so overwhelming that Chris couldn't stop taking pictures and Keith couldn't stop texting friends his impressions.
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| Keith to one friend: "can't. in bay area recording for few weeks. drink a pitcher for me. i will drink one for me, too, here." |
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| And to another: "what say you to a 3 o'clock knocked up? i'm cougar hunting but will be back in hour or 2" |
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| "you know you want to see it again. i've actually seen it TWICE, but i feel 3 more viewings in me" |
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| "that has angelina jolie. i would rather actually be beheaded" |
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| "why risk another cusack failure when knocked up is a slam dunk" |
Ariel made the resumption of recording today feel tremendously special by hauling out some ceremonial garb.
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| Let's get a closer look at those shoes... |
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| Ariel calls these "huraches", but admits that's probably the wrong term. Please email us if you know the correct one so that again he might walk the righteous path. |
Coming up in the next couple of days: a comprehensive guide to the guitar pedals that will color and shade the new album (tentatively titled Mermaid Stewwwww (Yuck!)). A little closer to home, you will lose your job.
You long-suffering succotash:
It is on. The record (tentatively titled "Do Smoke Detectors Detect The Smell Of Smoke?") is beginning to look like an H-Bomb. Here's how it's gone down so far.
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| On Sunday we drove up to Sausalito (from Los Angeles) to start recording at The Plant. Along the way, somewhere near Fresno, we hit In-n-Out for some burgers-n-fries-n-370-degree-heat -- we found all three in abundance, as well as tons (literally!) of fat road warriors! |
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| Once we got to The Plant in our cars, the natural thing to do was to walk inside. |
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| The Plant's interior has some quirky details, such as this curvy hallway ... |
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| ... and this wobbly mirror, which makes things look all curvy! (Check out the camera's reflection: SOMETHING'S NOT QUITE RIGHT!!) |
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| Time to record! We assembled our instruments (pictured here: two violins) ... |
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| ... and we assembled our mics and amps (pictured here: a green amp and a silver-and-grey mic) ... |
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| ... and our various pedals (pictured: a wonderful distortion pedal) ... |
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| ... and we got down to fucking business! |
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| Plenty of time is spent working out the perfect parts for each song. (Get a load of Ariel working out the perfect part for that piano.) |
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| And a shit-ton of time is spent by Ariel editing stuff on his thinking machine. |
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| Everybody mostly stands around and watches while he does the editing. |
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| ... |
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| ... |
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| Sometimes we'll hit the hoop to kill time while he edits. This has been fruitful. All of us can now slam, stuff, do hook shots from up to a mile away, bounce the ball and then grab it and slam it, do a lay-up, shoot three pointers, and dribble. The basket features a breakaway rim and a regulation 4-ft. pole, and a leaf mat for tough landings. |
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| Sometimes you'll come back inside from a long, tough game of hoops and find Ariel tooling around in the hallways on his razor scooter, shooting the shit with an old friend over the phone. |
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| We're all very excited about the songs, though Ariel insists that it's not great musicianship but his razor scooter that's going to put this record over the top. Who knows, maybe he's right, at least about the fact that it won't be great musicianship that makes this album, because there won't be any (would maybe be Ariel's implication)! |
More along these lines very shortly! Too long to hold your breath, but too short to take a vacation and hope not to fall behind while you're away! Anyway, vacations are mainly for assholes, probably!
You soothsaying assassins:
It's true, what you probably didn't hear: We played three shows in New York last week under the nom de guerre "Beat Up Old Fellas". Why the (sort of) secrecy? There was a little deliberate leaking, we admit. But everyone from some guy who wrote a comment on Brooklyn Vegan, to some other dude who has a blog, to this guy who's a fictitious character in this one dude's unpublished fan fiction, accused us of Intent To Manufacture Hype By Means Of Non-Secret "Secret" Show. And that was definitely part of it, and we are enjoying the lavish lifestyle that the recently gained fame has afforded us, but mainly, we didn't want to play any of the stuff from With Love & Squalor because we had a bunch of new songs we wanted to try out before going into the studio to record them. So we didn't want any big With Love & Squalor fans showing up and being disappointed by an unrecognizable set. Thankfully, it worked. The kids didn't know what they were in for, didn't know who the hell we were, and they loved what they heard. Here's a picture from Friday night at Maxwell's of a dude whose expression can serve as a handy mean of all audience expressions taken as a group:
Hey, just kidding. Members of the audience were generally very receptive and outspoken with their praise. Here's just one of the friendly faces that kept the mood buoyant and fun throughout the three shows:
How bout a few more pics from Saturday night's gig at Mercury Lounge, featuring The Teeth, Spinto Band, and Bling Kong?
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| Michael made a t-shirt for us to sell, and sell it we did, at a premium: twenty bucks just to take part in bidding! Over a hundred people paid to bid! Some chick ended up paying over a grand! |
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| Nick Spinto weathers the Spinto-merch sales slump brought on by the presence of a single Beat Up Old Fellas tee. |
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| Joe Spinto may be tired of running from the cops, but Jon Spinto will never tire of mocking Joe's predicament (Joe stands accused of fucking rabbits). (Fucking them hard guys.*)
* The rabbits die. |
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| Master engineer Chris Coady, slated to man the mics on our upcoming album, breaks his one big rule by showing up and familiarizing himself with the music before deciding with absolute finality how it will sound on the record. |
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| Karen Ruttner and Matt Rubano perfectly showcase the two possible responses Chris can get to his line, "Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?" |
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| Our new drum tech can barely talk and he shits his pants every day, but he knows drums like a horse-whisperer knows horses and whispering to them, and how to convince the horse of things using whispers poured into the horse-ear, as well as, presumably, how to saddle and otherwise care for a horse, all while keeping his voice low; whispering, if you will. |
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| Chris accomplishes using just one foot-pedal what takes Keith nearly a dozen: having more than one sound come from his instrument. Greater than or equal to two sounds, let's say. |
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| Keith gets it done. |
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| Chris gets it done. |
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Michael gets it done while following the game on his headset.
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| Above show photos taken by Justin Rice, co-director of the Textbook and Lousy Reputation videos, member of the magnificent Bishop Allen band, cat owner, fiancé, man. Guy. Fella. |
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| Post performance, Shawn Lobb slaps it, snaps it, and wraps it, as we say in the live music business. Then he whaps it, baps it, and takes a crap on it, which is what separates him from even the best stage techs. |
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| The photographer corners a tiger. |
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| Four fans made it out to see W.A.S. after their laser vision penetrated the "Beat Up Old Fellas" disinformation campaign. Interestingly, the guy is from Stoke-on-Trent, but he was the only one of them who didn't seem to know who the hell we were. Suspicious, we thought, given how much time we've spent in that town! His authenticity was redeemed when, after we quizzed him on The Underground and The Sugarmill, Stoke's two finest venues, he shrugged and asked, "Yeah, but would you want to live there?" No sir! Death first! Death by fill-in-the-blank first! |
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| Then there were these guys, who so aggressively pimped their buddies' band New York Howl (you see the t-shirt, but can you see the business card slipped into a back pocket? the persistent conversational refrain?) that it would surely damage our karma not to include a link here. |
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| Jay Belin, booker for the Mercury Lounge, and Mike Mori, guy who books W.A.S. at the Mercury Lounge. |
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| Three-sixths of The Spinto Band play a jazzed-up cover of Happy Birthday to a crowd only too happy to finally hear something they vaguely recognize. |
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| Kendell walks away with the world's only Beat Up Old Fellas t-shirt, plus a $1200 hole in her pocket. |
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| An irrepressible lady's man and director of mainstays in the W.A.S. videography like The Great Escape (version 1) and the Gilbert & George studies, Mathieu Shrontz knows where the major girl-crossings are in most clubs. |
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| Michael seals the deal. Four hundred plastic combs to be delivered to the pier at midnight exactly. In exchange, the congressman dies, but in a way that makes it look like a gun and knife accident. |
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| Keith kisses a vicious little anthill of grape Pixie Stick sugar off of Joe Spinto's baseball-shaped bicep. |
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| Keith confronts Brian Teeth about having a mustache while playing in a band, calling it a "shameless, transparent stab at distractive marketing that can't begin to stand in for good music." Brian: not catching much of it; too drunk on free rounds for guy with mustache. |
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| Guy has got his dick out, is why everybody else is so upset. (Good eye! That is indeed Mark from The King Left with his dick out!) |
And that's about it guys... well, maybe there was one other teeny little thing. Okay, we're being coy! The fact is that yes, we did start a blog called Tits, Pits & Bits on Saturday night, and yes it did, virtually overnight, become the most important information thing ever. Please head on over for a look right now -- this thing is bigger than all of us, and is bound to outlast our grandchildren's very molecules!
You rumpled old octopi:
It's been some time since we checked in with you all in any formal capacity. Sure, we've paid visits to most of you at your homes, bringing with us either a nice fruit tray or a nice-enough bottle of wine or some unexpired warm milk, depending on the time of day. And we wiled away the evening hours in the cozy confines of your living rooms, dens, bedrooms, bathtubs. And it was pleasant -- much was discussed -- and you got to know us better as people, and we you, and 99% of the time it was a thing to remember fondly. And occasionally the street out front would end up swimming in the red and blue light of all manner of emergency vehicles, and we'd have to get our friend the Senator on the horn just to avoid jail time, and this was all of a piece.
But it's been a while, has it not, since we addressed you in bulk? Since we went on the record in a way that would make it impossible to deny having said what we said? Since the facts were spelled out in plain English??
Well it's time to do just that. Here, for the record, is most of what we've been doing lately:
(1) Working on songs for the new album (tentatively titled "YOU ASK YOU FIND OUT FUCKED UP SECRET").
(2) Chilling out in the manner popularized by the islands.
(3) Smoking various doobs.
(4) Kicking it irie with fellow members of our same gang.
(5) Urgently nailing down a marg recipe.
(6) Maxing.
(7) Just like thinking about stuff.
But it's been primarily (1), rest assured. Let us be the first of many revered critics to assert that the songs on our next album are top balls. They are fuggin, like, yep. Kay guys? Stop worrying about the new songs. Don't care what anybody told you, no matter how much of an insider he was, no matter even if it was one of us individually: these songs are tip top, mountain top balls, believe it.
Couple of additional facts:
(1) Michael is living in LA, killing it, murdering the scene. Why'd he go? He heard they had great pizza. The irony is that the person who told him that was actually thinking of New York -- it's New York that has great pizza, not LA. And get this, full circle: New York is exactly where Michael moved from, guys. New York, where the good pizza actually is, as opposed to LA. LA, where Michael moved looking for good pizza, ironically.
(2) The new album (tentatively titled "Collective Soul") is being produced by Ariel Rechtsaid ( DJ name: "Server Wars"; not "DJ Server Wars"; "Server Wars"). Ariel is the total same dude who recorded our last album, so don't worry, if you enjoyed our last album, this new one should be very much to your liking indeed! Of course, if you thought the last album was only okay, bear in mind that Ariel has made big changes to his producing approach. And if you hated the last album, realize that with this new album, both we and Ariel have aimed to do every last thing completely differently, right down to recording on cotton fabric instead of onto a computer. T-shirt material. It sounds real good, trust us, or we wouldn't do it. And if you didn't even know we released an album, or that we're a band, then you're going to love this next album.
(3) We'll be recording the new album, tentatively called "DJ Server Wars", in the San Francisco Bay Area. Complete with sailing and land, this area has all to offer.
(4) Chris's boy Dashiell continues to flourish and grow on a steady diet OF DOG BRAINS, believe it or not:
(5) We're playing the Siren Festival in New York later this summer, and then the [Carling Brand Of Canned Beer] Reading & Leeds Festival later on in August. If that isn't a full live schedule, we simply do not know what is.
