Get the new Appleseed Cast CD! I highly recommend it.

hey suckers, its forstella ford's favorite acoustical advisor, potential sales person, guest vocalist ;) and little bitch that carries shit..... some of you might have heard i'm trapped in green bay wisconsin living in my parents basement until i pay off my credit card, fix my car and pay my fines. this sucks... so i got me a job from my little brother sheetrocking houses... i started last thursday and i thought it would kill me because i hurt all weekend... today i got up at 4:50, packed my lunch and went to work for 6. the cool thing about going in is that you gotta stand around and wait to find out where you are going. then we all get in a van and i watch my co workers smoke massive amounts of dope then passing the pipe to me and i have to remind them everytime that i don't smoke doobies. its pretty funny.. so we get to the site and mark all the electrical boxes and shit.. then we gotta do the ceiling which sucks the most but at least it first right? then we do the walls and shit. we get pretty long breaks at which time everyone except me gets in the van and goes to a gas station but before the breaks we have to (or i have to cause i'm the new guy) pick up all the dry wall scraps.. which could be easier with a wheelbarrow but i digress. i'm sure they all smoke more doobies during breaks.. in fact i'm sure thats why they go to gas stations because its easy to pack a lunch but you can't smoke doobies at the work site...

today i got a nickname... "buddy holly" cause of my glasses which i don't wanna wear but with all the dust i gotta. i should get cheap glasses to work in but i don't. the guys i work with talk about some funny shit too... like i hear the phrase "old lady" a lot.. i hear about a lot of pussy... good pussy, bad pussy ect... i hear a lot about dick sucking... today some guy told all the other guys that i had my dick pierced (i don't by the way)... kinda odd if you think about it.. why was this dude thinking about my dick while we were working? i got him back by telling everyone "yeah but he's the one that asked to see it"... i guess thats how manly things work.. you gotta take shit and give it back.. i know this.

i thought today was pretty easy until 4pm when we got done with our house... we were an hour early so we went to another house and started the whole thing over again.... remember when i said at least we do the ceiling first? well today we did it last too and 10x faster which REALLY sucked.. so i got bossed around times 10 too... "get your bucket" "hold that up" "there's a piece to put up over there" "get low" "put it up" "endo" "roll the board" "get another extention cord" bla bla bla bla.. not what i wanted to hear after working 10 hours already.... heres a quote i heard today..

"hot water music? what wrong with cold water music?!?!"

anyway.. i'm doing ok. today i took pride in the fact that other people screwed up a lot more then i did.. but i'm not that fast yet. anyway thats the life of a kid with no business doing labor.

oh yeah... if you like bloggin action and our new band then go to shooteachother.com. we really aren't doing anything yet but we promise to give you an mp3 this month.
one practice, one song, no clue.

Last night was supposed to be a lot more exciting than it was. I'm not talking about the show; that was pretty fun. I mean, I thought we sounded bad, but a lot of people said nice things to us after we played; maybe it was all in our heads.

As for the show, we didn't get to play until about 10 pm, and the show was technically supposed to be over by 10:15. Luckily, the neighbors who live next-door that would be the source of any complaints weren't even home, so we stretched it out until 10:30. We played four brand new songs, because we haven't had a chance to practice old ones in such a long time, due to the fact that we spent the last two months of practices in preparation for recording. The rest of the practices this summer will be in preparation for tour, however. We'll practice all the songs we want to play on tour, and practice with the mindset that we're going to be playing a show. I don't know what makes it so different, but it's two different worlds. The attendence was decent, but not as good as it would have been if there weren't two other shows going on (Hey Mercedes et al at the Rave, and the Etiquette and the Cactus Club).

Anyway, the night was supposed to be fun after that. Whitney and I were hanging out with Cody for the first time in a while. He had to move back to Green Bay due to some unfortunate circumstances, and we hadn't seen him in a while. Last night, however, was supposed to be just like the good old days. We put on Dirty Work (which Cody had never seen - I think that's a crime in some circles) and fell asleep about 25 or 30 minutes into it. That was the extent of our night, pretty much. We were all dead tired. I don't know why I was, because I went to sleep really early the previous night in anticipation of staying up late. Cody works 12 hour days putting up drywall in Green Bay now, though, so I know why he was probably tired. Whitney works until 10 pm on Thursday nights, then goes back to work at 7 am on Friday mornings, so that's probably why he was tired. Then we had to load our stuff into a show, play it, and load it all back into our 4th floor practice space last night. Why did we have to do that last night? Well, because Whitney has to move out this weekend, and we need the van for that. Remember, we had to cancel a show today and tomorrow because of that.

Oh well. We can always give the movie another shot tonight. We've been listening to the Judas Priest and Krokus CDs pretty much the whole time we've been here. They're both really damn good. These are Whitney's, but I ordered both of them the other day. I am also waiting for the new Journey and Aerosmith CDs to arrive, but I'm excited for those as well. I don't remember the last time I listened to a "hardcore" record... hmm... I think I'm getting old. I think the rest of the band is feeling the same way, and I think it will show when people hear our new music. haha.

You didn't come to our show like I told you to! Bastard!

COME TO OUR SHOW!

'Snatch'= My new favorite movie...

Good news! There's a damn good chance we will get our CDs on time for tour, despite the fact that we leave barely more than a week after it's being mastered. The artwork is already being printed, and Level Plane worked out a rush order deal with Furnace, so we should be good. Rush orders cost a little extra, but it's well worth it since we're leaving for tour, right?

We're looking at ordering new shirts and stickers and all of that crap soon, since we leave for tour in just over a month. You can still get our old shirts from No Karma. As I've said previously, we've given up on trying to sell stuff via mailorder ourselves. When we sit on orders for as long as we have in the past, it's not fair to let people send us their money! Trust me!

We're planning a CD release show in Milwaukee for October 7th. It'll actually be in the middle of our tour, but no one will know the difference. I highly doubt we're going to have time to get our record into stores around here before we leave, so that will probably be the first time it's available, without mailordering it. The few people that we showed the CD of rough mixes to were really impressed, so that's a good sign. I think it sounds better than anything we've ever recorded before, and it's not even mixed yet.

Actually, our show tomorrow starts PROMPTLY at 7, so be there then or, in the words of 2pac, "die slow mutha fucka". There is also another band playing -- A Day's Refrain. That name sounds pretty emo, but I don't think they are.

If you go to our shows page, you'll notice we have a lot less shows coming up. That's because we had to cancel five of them. It sucks, but that's life. If you're in or near Milwaukee this Friday, you should come to our show with The Now (3/4 of Neil Perry) and Ruhaeda (ex-Makara). It's at the Pierce Street House, which is located at 2427 N. Pierce Street. It's not hard to find. Get some Mapquest directions if you're unsure. It'll probably start at 7 or 8. I think this will be our last Milwaukee (or even Wisconsin) show for a long time, since we are leaving for tour at the end of August, throughout the end of the year and into next year.

We're going to start recording the vocals for our CD into Pro Tools next week. It sounds sort of sketchy to record the vocals into Pro Tools here in Milwaukee, then put it all onto 2" analog tape with the instruments, but Nick found this article about the new Tool CD, and that's how they did that one. Regardless of whether or not you think that band sucks, the CD sounds really good.

Oh yeah, and I thought the Big Lebowski was really good, Whitney.

Actually, Whitney, everything does suck. And because I am God and I knew before you were born that you would question this fact, I would like to make light of the fact that I gave you curly hair, just so you could pause and reflect right now.

And spelling Steve Buscemi's name wrong is more important than "thou shalt not kill".

the life of a drummer....

ok, actually nothing really sucks. we would have liked to have had the vocals and mixing done when we left the studio, but everything still went really well overall. the music turned out exceptionally well, and so far we are really happy with the record. the vocals that are completed went really well too. we just have some more work ahead of us, and we are going to have to make another 1200 mile round trip for one day of mixing... but that's the way it goes. i have to admit i enjoyed recording immensely. here is a little day-to-day breakdown of how the time was spent, and a general review of the studio and whatnot.

Day 1- we did some recording, and later that night i watched Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1). to me this movie is a classic. humorous most definitely. both silly and witty... as with the original Austin Powers (see 4) you can't go wrong.

Day 2- we did some more recording. my part being completed rather early in the day, i could afford to devote more time to reviewing films. next up was Gladiator (2). i was particularly impressed by this pic. a true epic. although it was in the vein of Braveheart (see 6) and The Last of the Mohicans (see 8) it was particularly refreshing. exceptionally historically accurate, a good story line,and never a dull moment. of all the films i watched over the 4 days, i believe i found gladiator to be the most enjoyable. that said and done it was onto Reservoir Dogs (3). it was funny that the studio / apartment video collection included this film, as mark, jim, and i had been discussing it on our way to meet nick to go to the studio. as always, it was fun to watch. some of my favorite actors sharing the screen. repeated rewinding at the end finally revealed to me who shot who, and that mr pink (steve buschemi) is arrested by the cops as he makes his way from the warehouse. as the night drew to a close, i popped in Austin Powers (4). This is a movie i've seen about 10,000 times, but it never stops being funny.The bit about the carnies... and the "he claimed to have invented the question mark and accused chestnuts of being lazy." priceless and timeless.

Day 3- my part being done, i didn't even bother going downstairs when i got up an hour after everybody else in the morning. it was time for The Big Lebowski (5), perhaps the biggest disappointment of the weekend. it definitely had it's moments, but i wouldn't recommend it. john goodman's best work to date. now it was time for something a little lighter. i had spent a while watching movies so i was looking for something quick and easy to watch. for some reason i went for the 2 tape set of Braveheart (6). i think we have all seen this. sure some of the dialogue is lame, but the have been few movies made that are of this caliber. the end always gets me... i'm a sucker for that shit. if anybody is still reading at this point, it was on to Grosse Point Blank (7). i can't believe how much funnier this movie was than i'd remembered. a comedy about a professional assassin who's in love with the girl he stood up ten years prior on prom night. i don't think you could come up with a much better plot. we wrapped up that night with The Last of the Mohicans (8), a movie that only gets worse with time. i remember i point when i thought it was one of the best movies i'd ever seen. now... well... jesus. it just straight up sucks. some good battle scenes... but the dialog is horrible. "well then general, you've got yourself a colonial militia." whatever you say john wayne. and the frequent usage of terms such as "ain't". oh and can we forget the stereotypical ottowa indian constantly referring to himself in the third person. all topped off by the same epic song (in various different arrangements) covering 4/5 of the film, even when there really isn't anything important going on. hands down the best thing to come out of the 80s.

Day 4- i had to leave the studio early on the fourth day, so i got started early with the classic, Caddyshack (9). how can you go wrong with bill murray, chevy chase, and rodney dangerfield... well, i suppose it wouldn't be that hard. the one thing that really hit me about this movie is the last time i watched it i didn't even notice everybody was dressed funny and carpeting was really really ugly.that is what things looked like when i was little, but i guess it didn't seem weird then. i finished the movie watching marathon with one of my all time favorites, The Princess Bride (10). this movie just gets better as you get older. the three kidnappers... andre the giant (rest his soul), the spaniard, and the little bald sicilian that constantly says everything is inconceivable. all topped off by nick pointing out that there is a girl at his work that looks just like the albino in the pit of despair.

so recording went well.

Everything sucks.

We didn't finish recording. We got everything done except the vocals. It is sounding amazing, but now there isn't much chance of it coming out by tour. Actually, there's no chance, but why not be unrealistically optimistic?

Honestly, though, in order to get it finished, we would have had to compromise quality in a lot of ways. We would have only had a few hours to mix, and the vocals would have been rushed. We're doing the vocals here in Milwaukee now, and then mixing August 17th back in Kansas. We all decided that as much as it really sucks to not have it finished, it's worth the extra 2 week wait to have it done right.

On top of this, Whitney and I found out as we were leaving for Kansas that we have to be out of our apartment by the end of THIS month, which means we have to cancel those shows w/ the Now and Ruhaeda that we had coming up. Whitney works and goes to school every day.... and the only time he has time to move is that weekend.

I'm at work on 2 hours of sleep, and there have been "changes" around here. Basically, there is a lot more work for me to do. That being said, I should get going.

Looks like I'm in charge of this website for the next week or so...... No fucking swearing...

Now a quote from an email I got from Whitney (even though he signed it mark).

"cody, i think i love men... especially you. come over as quickly
as possible. whitney REALLY doesn't want to, but i think we can
talk him into having a gay threesome."

Now I think there is something to that... Is it a joke or the truth disguised as a joke? I guess there is only one way to find out... I miss Whitney already....

We're leaving for recording any minute now. Wish us luck. I have no idea if there will be a computer there, but I'm sort of hoping there will be.

It's about a million degrees out right now and I'm sweating like a pig. Or like a Whitney... seeing as he came home from work all shiny.

If you're in Milwaukee, go to La Fuente (it's near 5th & National) and get their Super Burrito Vegetariano. It's awesome! That's all I have to say about that, but I was very very impressed today. haha. I'm such a nerd.

good luck with recording.. i know you suckers have been working hard on getting the concept theory down for this album... i know it will be good cause my new favorite fofo song is on it....

haha. I was just going to write something about the European tour dates, but Whitney handled it a lot better than I was going to.

We also put up some information about the Dismal State of the Art, including cover art.

Today is all about Europe, apparently.

I hate my job and I'm glad I don't have to work for a few days while we record our record.

hey martin! the tentative euro-dates are up. enjoy.

Enter our site and go to the records page for information on our new album Quietus. We put up the cover art and the lyrics. No sounds, obviously, since we don't even start recording it until Thursday, but we'll get those up as soon as we can, too. We're mastering it on the 26th, so we'll have something up shortly thereafter.

this morning i woke up to a drum check after only sleeping for a couple hours. there has been the shittiest music on earth playing non-stop ever since. it's days like this that make me wish the french were still slaves.

2 things that bother me about this festival (aside from how we can't park within 10 blocks of our house and or being unwillingly subjected to awful music):

-despite the fact it's a french independence holiday there hasn't been any french music. and don't get me wrong, the french make plenty of crappy music that would fit in just fine with the mamba band that is playing right now, or the country bands that were playing on thursday and friday, or the never-ending assault of pop rock cover bands.

- i don't remember the french citizens storming the bastille on the 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th of july. i was pretty sure they got the job done in one day, and that's why, even in france, it is referred to as bastille DAY not bastille DAYS and is celebrated on the 15th... ONLY. i wonder if there is some city in france where everybody comes out to celebrate the 4th of july days on from june 30th to july 4th.

I thought of yet another reason Bastille Days is stupid. They have bands playing. Country bands. I'm listening to a man talking right now, and he just said "we really are saving our best songs for the 2nd set, so stick around and we'll be back in about 20 minutes". I guarantee you if we set up our shit outside and just started playing, it wouldn't last for two whole sets. He just mentioned their web site, but I couldn't understand him through his fake southern accent. Darn. I'm sure y'all would have enjoyed that.

We recorded all 10 of the songs for our album on our 8 track last night, in barely more time than it would take to listen to them. We got through them all just fine, and they are all fully "realized", which is something we've never been able to say in the past when we were working on an album. I remember still working on writing songs the day before we were going to the studio when we did our last album.

The cover art will be finished before the week is over, and after that is finished, I'll probably start adding a lot more information about the CD. I bet it's sort of confusing to people when I am talking about two new records we have coming out. To make things clearer, one (Quietus) is being recorded in a week and contains 10 songs and is coming out in CD and LP format on Level Plane. The CD will definitely be out in September. The LP will be out as soon as possible. The other reocrd (Dismal State of the Art) is a compilation of our vinyl releases and is coming out in CD and LP format on Flower Violence, but is only being made available in Europe. I know that sounds lame, but we're heading over to do a tour there this winter. Ralf from Flower Violence is hooking that all up for us, and he wanted us to have a record out there so some people can check it out. The reason it's not coming out over here is that it's got the songs from our split LP, as well as our split 7" with the Assistant. Both of those records are available here. When they are out of print, and after we release a few more 7"s or splits, we'll probably release a similar record over here, if it feels like it's something people would even want us to do.

I thought the whole thing isn't right. They are setting up tents and stuff right in the middle of the sidewalk where people can trip on them. They are drilling holes in the street which when filled with frozen water will cause pot holes like a sum bitch. And they have no regaurd for all the people that have to live there while that shit is going on. They have summerfest grounds and they have lake park??? Both of these places have parking and are away from where people live... What the fuck? Stupid fake french shit...

Bastille Days is out to destroy me! Not really. I think I would mind a little bit more if I had a car, because it takes up the entire surrounding block by my apartment. The streets are blocked, and all of the parking meters are covered with "no parking" signs. I missed the bus this morning, since I wasn't sure where to catch it. It usually stops right out in front of my apartment, but that street is blocked off and has tents all over it for Bastille Days. Anyone who might possibly want to come over to my apartment is going to have to walk 6 blocks after parking their car.

So, basically, I'm saying you should go to Bastille Days and crash it and make sure they never want to have it again. Just kidding. I just don't get why they couldn't have put it in a park, instead of in the middle of downtown Milwaukee, right in the street. Well, actually, it is in a park, too... but a really small park.

There, I got that out.

Things have been crazy busy around here lately. We're burning ourselves out on practice, but in a good way, I think. It's very necessary, even though it takes up a lot of time and is sometimes not what we'd prefer to be doing. 4 or 5 practices a week will do that to you, though. Now it's only 8 days until we record, so we're putting the very last-minute touches on our songs, but we're also working out ideas for the design. This may actually be the first record we design ourselves. Whitney's a graphic design major, after all. The deadline on that is this weekend, so we're going to be pretty darn busy. Wish us luck! haha.

Level Plane is putting out both the CD and LP versions of our forthcoming full-length record. We have gone through several different ideas, and had actually settled on releasing it ourselves for quite a while, but we kept running over things with Level Plane and came out with a situation that would make more sense than anything else we had been running through our heads. We had only the greatest of experiences doing the split LP with them, so it just makes sense.

I made my first trip out to Summerfest ever Sunday night, and managed to see The Wallflowers, Blues Traveler, and BOBBY RUSH. hehe. I don't know who Bobby Rush is, but he played funk music, and for the 10 or so minutes that Cody, Whitney and I sat and watched him play, it was basically just a guy shouting "Bobby Rush! Bobby Rush! Bobby Rush!" over and over again. Then he'd say things like "y'all want Bobby to play one more now?"

Very humorous.

That band Vertical Horizon was also playing, and I think I may just be dumber for having heard it. Besides those wonderful bands, some highlights were a very young couple getting busted for making out during the Wallflowers, a very young kid who was really drunk in a Bon Jovi t-shirt (with his parents). a guy throwing up while we were hanging out at the Harley-Davidson stand (we knew people who were working there... we're not actually into big motorcycles), and the guy who was trying to dance to this mariachi band, but you could tell it was only because his female counterpart had pretty much forced him to.

blog!

i think this site needs a fresh update. today mark, whitney and i downloaded the new hey mercedes song "eleven to your seven". fuck yes!!!!!! i can't wait til this album comes out. i hope i can afford it.. haha. this album sounds so fucking sweet. you should see the studio they recorded it at! mansion and shit. its funny i never saw them live. they hang kinda low around here. i was gonna see them but the stupid globe always starts shows too early. fuck that noise.

mark, whitney and i started a band together last week. we are calling ourselves shoot each other! and will be located at www.shooteachother.com sometime later today. info about us will be slow until we know about us. we have a show in green bay on aug. 25th and we will get one in milwaukee around then as well. but after that forstella ford goes on tour for a long time and i will be their little bitch. so catch us if you can.

Yesterday, we mastered our CD/LP that's coming out on Flower Violence with Trevor Sadler at Mastermind Productions here in Milwaukee. It turned out amazing. Trevor's got such an awesome setup and did a really great job getting all of the songs to sound the same. Our good friend Marty at Guerrilla Digital is also putting the final touches on the artwork, and then it will be sent off and should be out soon. It will pretty much only be available in Europe, however, since it's basically a discography record of all of our vinyl releases (most of which are still in print in the US).

Only two weeks until we head down to Kansas to record our new full length, Quietus. We were told by Furnace that if we get everything in right away, they can guarantee that we'll have them by August 30th, which is just in time for tour. We'll probably even have to do the first few shows on tour without them. But, yeah, provided we don't end up with any delays, it should be back from the plant by the end of August, and available shortly thereafter.

It has recently come to my attention that all Mariokart references made on this web site over the course of the past few weeks have been gramatically incorrect. Read below to see our shortcomings pertaining to the spelling of the word Mariokart. Sorry Wario!

The weekend was indeed cool. Mark forgot his guitar in my trunk last night so before practice today they came over to get it. Forstella Ford likes Noodles and Co. WAY too much. The last time we were there Whitney got chicken in his bowl and got 2 free bowls for the mishap. Today Mark and Whitney used the 2 free bowls and since some guy broke the computer and it took a long time for the food to arrive they got 2 free bowls each... So thats 6 bowls for free all cause of some chicken... I'm never as lucky when I go there with them.

They are at practice right now. I sat in with them last night and as a third party I gotta say this album will be sooooo great. One song in particular has to be the best song yet (unless Mark writes some sissy ass lyrics or some shit). Plus they are recording at Red House and it will sound tough as nails.

"Are you playing Mariocart?"
"I'm awake, aren't I ?!?!?!?!"

Dave's peanut butter is going down!

i had a pretty fun weekend. the highlights would have to be getting stuck to my fire escape and then falling asleep with a pizza in the oven, consequently turning it into a large, flat, thoroughly blackened, disc of carbon that still somehow managed to retain the smell of pizza.