Monday, April 30, 2001

Due to our less-than-stellar organizational skills, we have had to cancel two shows in order to play a two other ones that we had already agreed to play. Visit our shows page for the corrected and upated shows listing. We're sorry to the people we had to cancel on. When you accidentally book two shows, you have to cancel one of them, and that sucks!

Sunday, April 29, 2001

We finished writing a song today and it turned out awesome. I am so excited about it; I think we all are. I am glad it worked out, because before today, it didn't seem that great. That just goes to show you that you shouldn't just give up on stuff too quickly.

But beating a dead horse is a pretty bad idea, too.

God, I'm bored as hell. Sorry for always posting pointless shit up here. I guess I should try to avoid doing that.

Friday, April 27, 2001

Hey, you look bored. I have an idea. Why don't you go over to Lumberjack and buy our split LP with Life Detecting Coffins? They just got it in. They have free UPS ground shipping on orders over $25 (through May 4th), and you don't have enough records. Insound has the LP, too, but it's a little cheaper from Lumberjack.

Did I ever tell you about the time I was driving the van right after we had slept in a motel parking lot, and a bee flew in the window and stung me in the neck? Yeah, that sucked. Good thing I'm not allergic to bees!

Thursday, April 26, 2001

We decided to do a different Jawbreaker song. Jim thought we could do cooler stuff with it, and I have to say he was right on with that one. Way to go Jim! Now we're doing Donatello - you know, like the ninja turtle.
Insound now has copies of our split 7" with the Assistant. Head on over there if you're interested in picking it up.

Also, I was trying to get Whitney to post this, since he could get a blogger account and add stuff here, but I guess that would be sort of pointless. Anyway, if you're in/near Milwaukee this Sunday, definitely head over to the Globe to see the Murder in the Red Barn CD release show. The Goodboy Suit is also playing, and Whitney tells me they're awesome, so you should check that out. It's at the Globe on a Sunday, so I'm assuming it starts at 5 pm. Gogogo!

What am I doing? It's past 4:30 and I'm still at work. I usually get here late, so I might as well leave a few minutes late.

Wednesday, April 25, 2001

Okay, we're really big liars. I don't know why I even bother saying that we're going to try to not play shows, because we always hate turning shows down, so we take them anyway. We're going to be playing probably 3-4 more shows in May than we had planned -- we won't post anything until we get exact details, but it should be really cool.

We got some good news. The manager at our practice space told us that if the cops come again, to just tell them to deal with him, and that's it's absurd that they told us not to practice. The building is owned by a lawyer, so I guess they probably know something about noise ordinances that we don't. I always thought that there wasn't even a problem until a certain time.

More bad news came first, though. Not horrible news, but apparently someone told the manager that it was us who threw the big party/rave thing this past weekend. If I find out who told him that, I'll... I'll... well, I won't do anything, but at least I will know who I am upset with. We talked to him, though, and set everything straight.

I've actually begun working on the new web site. I don't know when I'll mange to finish it, but at least it's been started.

We've worked out our tour plans for this fall, and let me just say that I officially think we're crazy. It's more than twice as long as anything we've ever done before, and we've gone on some pretty long tours. I think it will be amazing, though. The weather will certainly be nicer, so we have that to our advantage. Doing seven and a half weeks in the summer last year was a little rough, but it was 100+ degrees in a lot of places we went, so it makes sense that it was exhausting.

Monday, April 23, 2001

Okay, ready to hear some venting? Well, ready or not, I don't care! Haha. Anyway, this weekend was pretty bad. First off, we had to unload our stuff on Friday night, drive all the way to Indianapolis on Saturday, play a show to basically the Vida Blue and like 5 other people, and then drive all the way back just to load our stuff back in Sunday morning so we could practice again. Not a huge deal, but since we're already short on practice time, it was somewhat upsetting. I guess you can never tell when people aren't going to feel like coming out to a show, though. These things just happen and we deal with them and make the best of them.

We get to our practice space on Sunday morning, and someone had like a rave or some sort of party in pretty much the whole building. There were beer bottles everywhere, and lots of water bottles. Ravers like water bottles. The carpet up on the 4th floor smells like puke, and the worst part? Who the hell knows who was in the building and might decide to come back and break into some rooms. I mean, obviously if you can have a rave without anyone noticing, you could probably break into some rooms without anyone noticing.

So, that sucked, but then we were walking around the building, and we noticed that a fire door on the 3rd floor had been totally kicked in. It was the door right down the hallway from our old practice space, actually. Anyway, we walked through it, sort of to see if you could get into the building from outside now that this door had been kicked in. While we're over there looking around, this totally cracked out guy who is probably like 45 or 50 but lives in Sidney Hih comes in and starts yelling at us, telling us to "get out of this building". We try to explain that we rent there, and that we were concerned about the fact that a door had been totally smashed in, and that we're just as upset as him that there was a party there over the weekend, but he doesn't seem to care. So, we finally just tell him to shut the fuck up and we leave, only he starts following us, so we just slammed the door behind us. So, yeah, fuck cracked out old naked guys with long hair who live in some basically condemned building that is basically only used for practice spaces for bands.

So, anyway, we eventually get our stuff all set up and start working on a new song, and after about 30 minutes, we see this light flashing through our window a few times. We look down, and there are two police officers downstairs motioning us to come downstairs. So, Whitney heads down there, and of course, they're being total dicks to him right away, saying they got a noise complaint. We have been practicing there for over a month and a half now, and we have NEVER gottan a noise complaint before. And we weren't even playing loud last night, so it was just strange. Apparently the people in the condos that are across the river and like probably 4 blocks away at least can hear it when they're out on their patios. Boo hoo. They live right by Water Street, surrounded by tons of bars that have live music all the time. You'd think they'd be used to it. Anyway, now we have to try to soundproof our windows, and if that doesn't work, we're pretty much screwed because we're practicing 3 to 5 times a week in order to finish writing a CD by June, and we'll make it, but not if we have to deal with finding a new place to practice.Not to mention the fact that if we block off the windows, that 4th floor room is going to get pretty damn hot in the summer.

There is also a problem with people parking in the lot for our building whenever there is an event going on. Sometimes we'll get there and not really have a place to park. But, to make things worse, some kids whose parents must own this restaurant that is on the ground floor of the Sidney Hih building, had a sign that said "parking $7-10" or something like that. They were trying to rent out the parking lot and make money off of it! What a load of shit. I don't know what kind of restaurant they have, but I wouldn't ever eat in a restaurant in that building. The restaurant is called "Ja Stacy" or something like that. Whatever. No one was paying them anyway, because it was just some kids with a crappy sign. We just drove right past it and parked and they didn't even say anything. But if they actually do get it to work, I think they're going to regret it.

So, yeah, that's why this weekend sucked. At least we got to see the Vida Blue on Saturday and not only are they really fun guys to hang out with, but they're an awesome band and they put on a great show Saturday. We played a new song first at the show, and it went pretty well. It wasn't so obvious before how little the new stuff sounds like the old stuff until we played a new song first and then 5 old songs.

Now I'm back at work and, well, I think most people know how annoying and frustrating it can be to go back to work on Monday.

If you're in Milwaukee tonight, DEFINITELY go to the 8th note to see Sunday Flood and the November Commission. It's free and it starts at like 8 pm or so. For those unaware, the 8th note is in the UWM Union.

Thursday, April 19, 2001

Okay, so we're a bunch of bold-faced liars. We added another show before June. Whoops. It's in Sioux Falls on May 18th with Mastodon and City of Caterpillars. Why did we go back on our "no more shows" thing? Well, it's simple. We played with Mastodon in NYC a few weeks ago and they were simply incredible, so we couldn't pass up a chance to not only play with them, but play in Sioux Falls which is one of the coolest places we've ever played.

Tuesday, April 17, 2001

You know, I didn't actually expect anyone would e-mail us with suggestions for the Jawbreaker comp, but thanks to those of you who did. Unfortunately, every song that was suggested to us was already taken by other bands. We are pretty sure which song we want to do, but we want to work out some ideas first and make sure we can do something cool with it. Unless something doesn't work out, we're going to do I Love You So Much it's Killing Us Both. I don't expect anything to change, though.
Hey John. Get back to work.

Friday, April 13, 2001

We're going to be doing a song for a Jawbreaker tribute comp that Coptercrash Records (FL) is putting out. I don't remember the list of bands off-hand, but there were some awesome bands doing it. Bands that don't sound anything like Jawbreaker, so it should be pretty interesting. I remember that the Assistant was on the list. I'm sure we'll have more information on the comp soon , as things start to develop. We're recording for that in June, when we record our full length. As for the song we're doing, we are undecided. Any suggestions?

Wednesday, April 11, 2001

I was doing some searching and I noticed that No Idea has our split LP with Life Detecting Coffins, so add that to the list of places it is available. I'll keep updating as I find out more people are taking it. It should be in Insound and hopefully Lumberjack soon as well. As always, you can order it directly from Level Plane or Ebullition.

I can see that I'm going to go overboard with updating this site now that I can do it from work. Oh well...
I've finally added some tour photos. It's fortunate for those who might have been waiting that I really needed something to occupy my time last night. I needed to do something productive, because there are some extremely confusing and depressing things going on in my life right now. Any sort of distraction I can find from that is beneficial. I haven't added as many as I would had liked, but I spent a few hours on it last night before it started getting really late. However, because I have a feeling it may take me a while to get the rest of them up, I'm going to leave it how it is for now. I also want to add more writing, since some of the photos could use a better description than they currently have. For now, here they are.

Tuesday, April 10, 2001

We aren't going to be adding any more shows until after we record in June. There are only about 10 weekends left before we head to the studio (but we practice Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so that's technically a whole month), and we still have some writing and adjusting to do. We already have two shows that we're working on for May, but I think one of them is on a Sunday, and the other is on Tuesday, so it doesn't really matter.

Why do I think you care about all of this? I don't know. Maybe you don't. I guess I should have posted it on the shows page. Oh well.

Monday, April 09, 2001

Okay, I set up our web site so that I can edit it from any computer -- mainly because I want to be able to edit it from work. This is only a temporary solution, however. A much better one is being worked on, but it may be a while until that one comes together, so I figured I'd set up this one. That's where the "powered by Blogger" banner at the bottom came from. It's only going to be on this page, so it doesn't bother me. The word "blogger", however, does bother me. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

We used our 8 track for the first time this weekend, and taking into consideration that we have almost no idea what we're doing, we got it to sound pretty good. We recorded three of our new songs, and we'll probably re-record them after we have a chance to listen to the first recording and make a few adjustments, write lyrics, etc. Once we get a version with vocals and everything, I may just make some mp3s of it. Who knows, though. I'm awfully lazy, and that may end up getting the best of me. haha.

You can order a bunch of our stuff from No Karma. Michael has our new split LP, both of our CDs, the 404 7-inch and even a few copies of the limited-to-100 winter tour EP that we did. Head on over there and look at all of the other stuff he has, too. We do not sell merch through our site anymore, because we are simply not very punctual with mailing things. So, from now on, if you want to order stuff from us, just order it from No karma, because that's pretty much the same thing. He's even going to have shirts soon...

If you want stickers, however, just send a S.A.S.E to our po box.