HELL NO

Hello readers - this post is about our friend Sean Carlson (and Phil), the enterprising teen and multiple earthquake surivor behind the "Fuck Yeah" label of tours and festivals. This week the New York Times caught up with him and the tour, you can read about it right HERE. Also there is a video about it here. Also the bus runs on vegetable oil.
I mention this now because the NY Times did, but also because Fucked Up will be touring on the very same bus up the west coast of the USA this September:

Sat-Aug-30 Los Angeles, CA Fuck Yeah Fest
Sun-Aug-31 Berkeley, CA 924 Gilman
Mon-Sep-01 San Francisco, CA Hemlock Tavern
Thu-Sep-04 Olympia, WA Eagles Hall
Fri-Sep-05 Seattle, WA Vera Project
Sat-Sep-06 Portland, OR Music Fest NW
Sun-Sep-07 Vancouver, BC Richards on Richards
All shows are with Crystal Antlers and The Strange Boys. Some shows with Sex Vid. No shows with Poison Idea.

Pre-Orders

ChemCom is being released by Matador on Oct 7, 2008. It will be available on CD (11 songs), and itunes/2xLP (12 songs). the LP will be on 180 gram vinyl. Here is the tracklisting:

1. SON THE FATHER
2. MAGIC WORD
3. GOLDEN SEAL
4. DAYS OF LAST
5. CROOKED HEAD
6. NO EPIPHANY
7. BLACK ALBINO BONES
8. ROYAL SWAN
9. TWICE BORN
10. LOOKING FOR GOD
11. THE CHEMISTRY OF COMMON LIFE

It is less than 74 minutes long. Matador is starting pre-orders TODAY, right HERE, but I'm not sure when because I am scooping them on the announcements.

We are also going on tour:

Sat Aug 30
Los Angeles CA
@ The Echo Fuck Yeah Fest
NO AGE
NEGATIVE APPROACH
MATT AND KIM
FUCKED UP
GLASS CANDY
SEX LAZERDISK
INSANE CLOWN POSSE
ECT

Sun Aug 31
Berkeley CA
@ 924 GILMAN
FUCKED UP
THE STRANGE BOYS
+more

Mon Sept 1
San Fransisco CA
@ The Hemlock
FUCKED UP
THE STRANGE BOYS
+more

Thur Sept 4
Olympia WA
@ Eagles Hall
FUCKED UP
SEX VID
THE STRANGE BOYS
+more

Fri Sept 5
Seattle WA
@TBA
FUCKED UP
THE STRANGE BOYS
+more

Sat Sept 6
Portland OR
MusicfestNW
VAMPIRE WEEKEND
FUCKED UP

Sun Sept 7
Vancouver BC
@ Richards on Richards
FUCKED UP
+ more tba



We will be doing the east coast US from Oct 11-Oct 25, and the UK/EU from Nov 6-Dec 6.

NEW INTERVIEWS

First off, we are planning our record release shows in Toronto for:
Oct 30 @ Sneaky Dees
Oct 31 @ Sneaky Dees
Nov 1 @ Sneaky Dees

There will also be after parties, and a larger all-ages show at some point during the weekend. Stay tuned for details.

We just did a string of interviews over here in the UK - here is one of them:


Hi so the new record has been announced for Oct 2008 and its called "The Chemistry of Common Life" - what does it mean?

The title comes from a book of the same name printed around the turn the last century, which was about the chemical properties of different types of edible and hallucinogenic mushrooms. Originally the title was going to refer to drugs and nature somehow, but now I'm having a hard time remembering how the title was connected to those ideas. It was also along the same lines as "Looking for Gold" was, using the alchemy-fascist metaphor to refer to the spiritual re-organization of society. It doesn't really have any practical value as an idea to me, but there is hierarchy and order at all levels or nature that I like to think about when I'm thinking about people and how we're all arranged socially and spiritually. And somehow at the base of that is this scientific order thats governing the smallest particles and molecules whose organization is what's governing everything at the top in the first place, and the idea was to try and stretch that elementary social cohesion all the way up to the top and try to make sense of how things run up here.

We sort of lost the trail on that idea and the song "ChemCom" is about the beginning of life on earth and how intense it is to think about the molecular division between living and non-living matter, and what it is. At the base of all life is this magical chemistry that is pure science that somehow turned the switch on at some point millions of years ago, but how did it happen? One idea is that these small pools of proteins got charged by lightning and turned into proto-living material, but how? It's hard to think of the start of life as a linear process, where these little particles joined together somehow into strings of proteins that somehow clicked on and joined together, all the way up to cells and then multi-cellular organisms, and then larger creatures and so on. Its just such an mind-bending thing to try and think about - everything in the universe is just these arrangements of particles, these relationships between the resulting molecules - of all the millions of combinations, somehow life happened, it could have been anything, but from somewhere life started. It just tells you that life isn't about properties really, or individuals. It's about the interaction between those single properties that makes things happen - it's not about like hydrogen, or oxygen alone - it's the interaction that makes water. It's heartening to carry it forward - it isn't about you, but about how you interact with the world and people around you.

We've always been interested in evolution, and Chemcom basically refers to the first evolution, from inorganic to organic. The insert art is crystals and rocks handing a baby over to trees and birds, its crazy.

What makes you want to write about those types of things?

I think life is the best idea anyone ever had - I want to pay tribute to it. A lot of people have wondered if Fucked Up became a religious band because we talk about god all the time, but thats not really the case - we are a bunch of people who don't believe in god but know that life would be a lot easier if we did. All the lyrics I write are about trying to find god in nature, like looking for these unexplainable and mystical processes that you can look at with a microscope, you know the memory stored in DNA, or the brightness of the sun - thats god I think and thats what's important for me to think about.

How was it recording the record this time?

It took forever. You never know your band is a cliche until after - it was the classic "take 6 months to record your album" scenario. We did bed tracks in January, went on tour in February, then I was globe trotting for a few months, then we started again in March or April, then we went to Texas for a week and I almost died there and was sick for two weeks when I got home and couldn't record...then we toured again and all the while were doing a day or two in the studio whenever we had free time...then we crammed as much recording in as we could between May and July because we had to...go on tour again. I started telling people that I would only go to my day job when I had free time. Meanwhile, I got a free Zune. Since we were recording sporadically and had no boundaries it was hard to us to decide that the record was finished. In June in Toronto there were two massive thunderstorms and we were mixing the last song on the record during one of them. We thought it sounded fine but then we heard this incredible thunderclap so we decided to set up a microphone outside on the train tracks so we could get a thunderclap on the record...these little snags that set you back.

We had a lot of new friends come in this time and that was great. There are a lot of great and strange bands from Toronto - LS Double D Cup, One Hundred Dollars, Final Fantasy, Jennifer Castle, Katie Stelmanis, Creeping Nobodies, we like working with different types of musicians.

You are on Matador now - how did that happen?

We signed to Jade Tree a bit in haste because we had studio time booked with no money and needed to find a label in like a week in order to get the studio paid for. Those guys were really nice and seemed interested in working with the band and doing their label. We did our part by recording a good album and doing a lot of touring, but as soon as the record came out they dropped off the face of the earth - the two main people behind the label got second jobs midway through our contract and we never at the office, and we started having trouble ever getting in touch from them, and also ever figuring out what exactly they were doing for our record. It became clear when we were on tour last summer that it was not a good fit for us to be on Jade Tree. The process of Fucked Up trying to leave Jade Tree took place between August 2007 and June 2008, when we finally signed a contract with Matador. Getting answers from them during that time was like pulling teeth, and we feel as a band that we lost 2 years on Jade Tree between putting out a record with no label support, and then wasting a year trying to get out of our contract.

We had to pay Jade Tree a lot of money to get out of our contract, and we feel like that money was essentially a reward to them for mismanaging their label and for being neglectful to their responsibilities to their roster. It is a shitty situation for us to be in, but we felt that putting out a 2nd album on Jade Tree would have been a worse option, so we left. We know that most other bands on Jade Tree have had to go through the same nightmare that we did, and that most of the roster from the time we signed has left and gone to other labels, and I know that there are a lot of bands that are angry with the label.

There is this great magazine article that has the guy who runs Jade Tree doing this trip over seas to see this football match - I read it and just thought, like, wow, all this time that I couldn't get a hold of this guy for 8 months, that's where he's at. All the money we had to give them to get out of our contract - that's where it's going. Life is frustrating sometimes.

It seems like a lot of your old fans aren't really into the way your newer music sounds.

Fair enough - I don't listen to the music I listened to 5 years ago either. It's nice when you have fans of your music who have been there the whole time, but I wouldn't expect anyone to love the same band for 5 or 6 years, because I know that I don't. People move forward, so do bands. Some people in the band were still teenagers when we started, and some of us are almost 30 years old now. I'm glad we have so many records that are so different. I know a lot of the friends we made when we first started lost interest in our band after the first few 7", and that's fine - those first few records are great, and they are still there if people want to listen to them. I think it would have been worse if we just tried to release 20 7"s that sounded like Police, because then we would have ruined those first few records as well. It's important for me to write music that I'm proud of, but also to take risks and challenge myself when I'm writing - sometimes with FU we just like to see how far we can go, not for the press or the hype, but just so we can know that we tried to make interesting music. Maybe it doesn't work, but I'm not the one buying Fucked Up records, so for me it's the process, not the outcome, so it's only important to me that I tried.

Since Hidden World you've added a third guitar player - why did you decide to do this?

Young Governor was our roadie the third time we went to the UK, and we'd already known him for many years. He learned all the songs during that tour and started to play live with us back in Canada. His first show was with Pere Ubu in Montreal last October. I had broken my hand and we taught him the set in case I wasn't going to end up playing, and he was also going to play the third guitar part when we did Year of the Pig for the first time. I ended up playing the Pere Ubu show with a cast because Gulag wasn't able to make that show so Governor played his part. The first show with three guitar players was the next day, and we did Year of the Pig, also with Simone from $100 on organ. He's played everything since then, it makes the stage look cooler and thickens the sound. We all have bruises on our arms now because we all bump into each other on small stages.

Matador just released the first single for the record, No Epiphany - it's a bit different. Are you guys a shoegaze band now?

I have demo versions of the entire record from when we were writing it - No Epiphany is called "Jonah Stooges", because that's what it sounded like before we did the LP version. People think we are these dipshit tricksters who have every move planned 2 years in advance in order to maximize how pissed off we can make everyone. We turned that song from "Jonah Stooges" to "No Epiphany" in like two steps in the studio as we were recording it - we had a fast take of it (that will be the bside of the 7" single version) and we decided to cut a slower version. Second, I found a phaser pedal in the closet and made up the guitar lead as I was recording it, and it became this weird. Oh also then we had the Vivian Girls sing on it, because we felt the way they use reverb on their vocals suited the music. The song is about the Sun, and I think the music sort of matches that - it's bright, gauzy. We aren't trying to "rip off shoegaze bands" - I have never even hear the JAMC, and I don't care.

What are you working on now?

We are working on Year of the Rat right now, trying to make it possible for it to come out before the end of 2008. I am in Spain right now, and we are going into the studio next week in London to record the first half. It will be similar to Year of the Pig, but a bit less cumbersome, some heavier parts. When "Chemcom" comes out, Year of the Rat will make sense. It's about greed. We're also going to record another benefit 7" to follow David Christmas, but this one will be called David Valentine and it will come out in February.
We are doing a lot of touring. I just rented out my apartment from July to January, and I don't know when I'm coming home. We all quit our jobs for the time being. We left and said goodbye but no one knows when we will be back. We are on the road now.
There will be a festival in Toronto in October, we are working on that. Halloween is on Friday this year, so that will be nice.

BROS

Creeps/Stelamantis last night - how was it?




$100 CD RELEASE TONIGHT FRIDAY @ HORSESHOE 9PM $8

Coincidence?

Hey so maybe you saw the new Watchmen Trailer:


The song at the end sounds familiar. Could it be? At midnight all the agents listen to college radio?
Fucked Up Vivian Girls live July 07 WKDU

There is also this startling evidence:

Bands that are famous in Japan:

FUCKED UP

Years of the Pig

Hey, the CD and 7" single versions of Year of the Pig are out today on Matador. Here is some vids of us playing the song for the first time last year in Montreal Canada from VBS:





In case you are confused:

There is a US version of the 7"

The aside is "Year of the Pig" edited by Eric Boucek, and a bside called "Mustaa Lunta" that G Beat wrote and recorded, and is very punk.

Additionally, there is a UK version of the 7":

The Aside features an edit of YOTP by the prodigious Carlos Hernandez, and the bside features our cover of "Anorak City" by the great Another Sunny Day.

Unbelievably, there is also a JAPANESE version of the 7":

Which features an edit of YOTP by Corona, and a bside called "For My Friends", which is a cover of the band Castlemusic, whose singer, you may recall, is the same Jennifer Castle, that does lead vocal on Year of the Pig.

Lastly, there is a COMPACT DISK version, that compiles not only all these 7" singles, but also the original 12" release, and its own bside ("The Black Hats"):

It is our belief that the bulk of each release will stay within its territory; it however, is also our belief that the effort must match the reward, in so much as the spoils are for the enterprising. It is unclear at the moment how many copies there are of each release. What is known is that 250 copies of the Japanese 7" currently reside in Barcelona, Spain.

Eurockennees

Hi a few weeks ago we played this big festival in the east of France near the Swiss border called Eurockennees. We drove from the south of England to get there and it took forever - there is hardly any edible food at rest stops in France, so we mostly ate plain loaves of bread and pined for Marks and Spencers. Anyhow, from the highway to get to the festival site it takes about 45 minutes of winding through a series of small rural French villages. Our set time was somehow 2am, so we set through these towns at around midnight, and it was DARK. Once inside, we parked our van on a BEACH (under the paving stones...) next to the tent where you could get a facial or a haircut. To get our passes, we had to walk the length of the entire festival (the beacon-light you see in the first video was atop the main stage where Grinderman was playing [and my previous run-in with Nick Cave can be saved for another time...]), which took about 5-10 minutes:


We waited around for a while behind ourstage (ie "Backstage") and watched the band that played before us, who were rappers from Atlanta, and I guess one of them was in the Goodie Mob (not the famous guy). He also had a prosthetic leg.

We started setting our stuff up at close to 2am and we were all very tired from travelling across France for about 10 hours, but it was cool because we had been eating free jelly beans and coke from the minute we got to the festival. Somehow the site filled up with drunken french ravers and the show really kicked off:


$10 to anyone who can tell what the first song is - it sounds distorted because we got our set remixed-live by Boys Noize. During the next song about 100 people came onstage to revel in the simple French rural way of life, and the bouncers almost had a shit, but it worked out in the end and no one got their head kicked in. And if you think I was joking about the "drunken french rural raver" thing just examine this evidence, which looks to have been secretly shot inside some festival prison or galley or secret society or something:


More:



also THIS
and also THIS

Anyhow, after our set we all piled into the van and drove over to where CSS were playing and boogied for a minute until they played their good song, and then we took off. There was also this tent called the "Silent Rave" where like 100 people had earphones on and were dancing to different music. This tent had the longest lineup of the festival.
In conclusion, festivals are crazy and french people are really wierd.

Speaking of wierd, ever wonder what its like to ride an elevator on crack in the Basque region?


Gulag and Governor wear Ben Sherman shirts exclusively.

Eurostyle pt 1

Aug

Here is some missing info for the Aug tour:

Mon Aug 18
Bedford Uk @ Esquires
FUCKED UP
plus more

Mon Aug 25
Bradford Uk @ 1 in 12
FUCKED UP
SHITTY LIMITS
COLD ONES

CMU

Here is a quick interview about the new stuff from the CMU website from last week:

Q1 How did you start out making music?
I used to make rap tapes in grade six with a friend during sleepovers. We had a tape player that we recorded into and an acoustic guitar, which was good because it was late at night after everyone in the house had gone to bed, and we were whispering so everything had to be really quiet. Later we started listening to The Sex Pistols and plugged the acoustic guitar into an amplifier and started practicing during the day time. Years later, I would get an El Degas electric guitar and a Marshall amp and the rest is history.

Q2 What inspired your latest album?
I tried to bring the natural elements of 'Hidden World' further into the record this time. The LP isn't about ideology, it's about reality - things that never change. The songs are about lightning, the sun, birth, death, these elemental fixtures that are the basis of everything else. Look into the sun and empty my mind.

Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
This time we were in a rush so we only gave ourselves enough time to write the most basic pieces of the song before we went into the studio. When we started recording we only knew about 25% of each song, and just wrote the rest in the studio. The entire process took about nine months - two months to write in the practice space, and six or seven months to record. We recorded the drums and bed tracks, went out tour with the rough mixes for a few months, and then went in every few days to add new things when we had ideas. It was like painting a picture over a really long time period. If we wanted in the middle of something, to have a French horn, or a guest vocalist, we would just call them and resume recording when that person would come in.

Q4 Which artists influence your work?
The sun, thunder, lightning, Mucha, Fernando Torres.

Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
To be patient.

Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest single/album, and for the future?
We just want people to like our records. We want to be able to use the band to visit a lot of places and people in the world, and that's it.

In other news, we are in the studio recording Year of the Rat RIGHT NOW. We're in the Miloco Pool Studio in London, which is where the drum tracks for Whats the Story Morning Glory were recorded, and the bass from And Justice For All was done. Also true story SLIPKNOT was in here last month and they spent 7 weeks just mixing - apparently they take three weeks to mix each track. WOAH.

SUPER ID

Hey we were in I-D again, a popular magazine in the UK about Second Life and other virtual communities:

ESKORBUTO

Not sure who this interview was from, but for what it's worth:


I'm a zine writer not a viagra agent‏
From: Vargyai Viktor (sofa.king@freemail.hu)
Medium riskYou may not know this sender.Mark as safe|Mark as unsafe
Sent: Sat 5/31/08 8:09 AM
To: ianend@hotmail.com

hi i'm Viktor from Hungary. it's a very exocit place and smart people says cause of the global warming bears will run away so it's gonna be safe as well. you should play here sometime. anyway music here is not really popular we do punk as burning things. but i'm fighting against this trend so i made a fanzine what
deals with music but sometimes i turn it to a tit parade just for make more readers. i have a girlfriend too who always wears your shirt and she said you're really great. but she seems to try to get rid of me so to win her heart back i figured out i'll make an interview with you.

So is Fucked Up really fucked up?

Great question, you are off to a fantastic start.

You have this name and it makes expectations from the crowd. I mean if saw a band named Fucked Up not doing fucked up things i would feel mugged and want my money back. is it exhausting to be always fucked up when other people see you?

It is really tough but we are quite famous in America so there are many people who help us to stay fucked up when we make public appearances. We have punk-prep people who gets us ready for photos shoots and concerts by giving us pills and charging our hairs. It is exhausting, but it is my job. I used to work in a lightbulb factory (do you have lightbulbs in Hungary?), and that was really tough, so I would much rather be doing this, plus it pays a lot more money to be drunk in public and playing the guitar.

For the fans could you give me a little bio about a band Ramones?

Well the Ramones were a great band formed in Detroit, America by Andy Warhol and one of the guys from The Dictators. For a while they were the most famous band in the world and had an airplane full of pizza. They once played a show in Rio infront of 500,000 and are all dead now.

What do you think why only the first 3 Ramones album are preatty rad?

End of the Century is also ok, but I guess not pretty rad like you said. Its hard to write more than 75 good songs I guess.

Do you think they really did sniffed glue? it's moldy even here in the third world.

I think they really did. Sniffing glue is very popular still in America, almost more popular than cocaine in some places (Olympia, train tracks) for hip people. The price of glue is very high now so only rich hipsters can afford to sniff it here.

One of you names is Concentration Camp. Do you know in europe these were bad places run by Germans? Lots of Jews and fucking gypses died there. Do you think the world would be a funnier place if those jew haven't died there? I mean Mel Brooks is funny. But what about dozen Mel Brooks? Man that would be so much funcing hilarious.

You raise some interesting points here. Did you see that movie "Life is Beautiful"? It was a documentary made about the life of an Italian clown who was put in a concentration camp in Italy during World War Two. He was able to maintain his comedy while in the camp by working in the Kapos doing standup routines for the guards. He died while inside after being eaten by a grizzly bear, but his small son survived and became the first Jewish comedian allowed to perform in Italy after the war. Very touching and hilarious documentary.
Concentration Camp recently change his name to Gulag, for those who haven't being paying attention. He is Jewish, but got the name from summer camps his serious parents made him to go where he studied math and cyphers and worked on his massive IQ - kids used to tease him in school because they would go to soccer camp and become strong, while he just went to math and thinking camps and was always really small as a child and now as a man, so his nicknick name became Concentration Camp.

Are you punks? Your music is is simple but you don't wear mohawks? What's the deal with that?

Well yes it is very complicated, but we are punks and do not wear mohawks. In the western world there are many types of punks and corresponding fashions as you go up the scale:
(in order of importance)
1) Gutter Punks: Can't afford to make mohakws so they have natty dreads and live on moving trains and also in "gutters".
2) Whacktivists: Are "punks" but don't listen to music - are more interested in making politics. Have punk style but listen to Indigo Girls and Ratatat.
3) Skinheads: The racist kind - are fat and wear Lonsdale clothes from outlet malls and have short girlfriends. Listen to obscure UK and Canadian racist OI music on CDRs
3) Posers: Listen to punk music like the Sex Pistols but also Rage Against the Machine. Are mostly in highschool. They wear punk/goth clothing like leather jackets (new only) but also black bell bottom jeans and wierd shaped sunglasses
4) Old Punks: Wear 20 year old tshirts because they spent all their money on records and have no jobs so they can't afford to look sharp. Have strange jobs and did zines a long time ago. Have grey hair and/or are balding and make everyone else feel depressed at shows and worried that they are looking at their own future.
5) Hardcore Punks: Wear only band tshirts and cut off shorts. Very short cropped hair. Super clean and carry deodorant in a bag with them.
6) Hipster Hardcore Punks: Like above, but also wear "limited" baseball caps, xxxlarge tshirts and "limited" shows. Only listen to Lil' Wayne and some modern Hardcore bands.
7) Indie Punks: Wear grunge clothes, but a little tighter. Move very slowly and smoke lots of weed and are super "Creative". Also ride bikes everywhere.
8) Punks: Who knows what they look like, or who they are.
9) Hipster punks: Like mostly dance music like Uffie and Daft Punk, but also some punk bands that are amazing (Fucked Up) and are able to transcend boundaries. Wear mostly clothes from American Apparel, and also only work at American Apparel, or Vice Magazine (interning only)
10) Fucked Up: Wear only free Fred Perry, Evisu, Burberry, Ben Sherman, and G9 Harrington Jackets, and other selected vintage styles.

I saw some movies about punks like mad max 2, death wih, robo cop. Things over there seems so fucked up (haha it funny i wrote this experssion but it was not in purpose just became funny) Is it the same in Canada? I mean do punks there hate cops and angry all the time?

Yes its the same as in those movies but different depending on what part of the country you are in. Also there are no robo-punks yet. But you have to remember those movies are about the 80s - back then "punks" was also just cretins and homeless people, like when Robocop is saying "get out of here punks" he isn't talking to Discharge fans, he is talking to homeless people that are breaking the laws of homelessness. I haven't seen Deathwish, but i'm sure its the same vibe. Also "They Live".

Are you afraid of spontaneous human combustion?

Sometimes - i just got a new pair of Clarks shoes (the most expensive shoes in America) and they have metal on them, but a thick rubber sole - while we were recording the new Fucked Up album i would go from the couch across the hardwood floor and have to open the metal/glass sliding door to get into the recording booth, and every time I did that i would get a shock. After I was recording guitar overdubs for about 5 hours and kept giving myself shocks I accidentally touched one of the hard drives and erased what we had done that day somehow. We had to cancel the session and the hard drive cost about $400 to repair. I have never exploded or combusted or caught on fire, but i think it is obvious that there is a lot of potential energy saved up inside my body for if I ever needed it to blow up a bridge or something.

I heard a dude from my hood when he gets a new motor bike he stuffs the tail-pipe with wet tissues and fucks the motor. Did you ever did things like that with something what were important to you? I think it's really a cool thing. In the modern world nothing really has an value. We buy we use we throw away. But this dude really gives respect for his stuffs. What do you think abaout that?

Again you bring up very important points, and also I've heard of someone doing that with a bag of mayonnaise. These questions make your life seem very different from mine - do you live in a Hungarian refugee camp or something?

Did you see my mother's uncel? my grandma said he lives in canada but i think he is just a polish.

Good question - is he lost?

Is feist a real person or it's just Chan Marshall singing in canadian?

She is real - we have met her. She used to crash at our roadies apartment before she was famous. She was also in a punk band (see above, number 7). We are on the same label as Chan Marshall but the boss said we are not allowed to ever meet her because she is crazy.

Did you see kinkg kong? It's fucking awesome man, but do they think we're mentally disadvantaged and we'll believe the a t-rex couldn't destroy a monkey?

I did see it. THe monkey won because he had more intelligence than the dinosaur and was able to control it. by using technology. You thought it was awesome?

So we listened to hidden world, its not short. Isn't the crowd pissed that you only play 3 songs? An old punker said if you play more than 20 minutes you'll transform into a prog rock or even worse a jazz band. Is that true? Have you ever tried to play more? Aren't you affriad that you'll have a neon halo/banda like dire straits? That looks dangerous. I think mark knoppfer wears a bandana still becasue that halo marked his forehead.

We did transform into a prog rock band. We can play usually for about an hour and a half to two hours, we extend the versions of our songs from the album.

Arent your trumpet player bored of live shows? I mean he or she doesn't have too much to do? What could he or she do on stage while he or she is not playing? I heard about a hungarian band that had a keyboard player who had dinner on his keyboards during the shows because he didn't have too much parts to play in songs. But they kicked him out cause it was a joy division-esque band and the other members didn't find eating a truly sad thing. What do you think abaout that?

Ha we don't have a trumpet player. We once played a show in Bratislava where they had hired an orchestra for us to play with because union scale is so cheap there for us because of the exchange rate, so for that show we did have a trumpet player, and when there were no trumpet parts I have no idea what that person did, I wasn't paying attention because I mostly have to play extremely difficult guitar solos throughout the entire set. We all have video games and laptops though that we can use when we aren't playing parts on stage.

David Choe (the yellow hitchiker) used your songs for his travelling. But he had an episode which told canada sucks and all canadians could eat his poop and he wished that all you're kids will be retarded enough to want to have sex with their moms even after age 21. so using your songs was just an ironical joke or what? Are you pissed? What do you think abaout that?

We are not pissed because David Choe works for a very rich company called VBS, which is the main television station in America (television is like radio except with pictures) and we got paid many thousands of dollars for the use of that song. It is fairly well known that we will do or say anything if the price is right.

I also heard you're christmas ep. I have some questions about that:

A/1 how does Nelly Furtado smell?

She did her vocal track for that session in an isolation booth and came too and from the studio in an airplane, and a limo dropped her right into the booth. So we could see her and give her instructions, but we could not smell her or really talk to her, only through a microphone.

A/2 does she snort cocain? She looks like she not but i have this idea that stars are taking all kind of drugs and drinks behind the cameras and papers just because itâ019s so evil to con their catholic fans. I mean i bet homer simpson is a drunk child beater when the cameras donâ019t roll.

Again, we don't know, but I could ask her next time I see her.

B, is that true that James Murphy listened to that much music that he gained some kind of spiritual aura which is a permanent soundtrack for his life? Like the situation with will ferrell and that british lesbian lady but for Murphy it could be heared by anyone else? And is that true as well that he used no effect for his voice on his records?

James Murphy apparently was very mad at us after he found out the song was going to be released on a record, because we had told people we were just recording messages for our friends in the hospital, from their favorite bands. I think he uses an affect on LCD Soundsystem records that make his lyrics sound 25 years younger.

C, for collaborating with the singer of AFI. Did you have to get permission from Tim Burton? Isn't Havoc jewish? Or was it a joke that he wished marry christmas?

I don't think he is Jewish, but in American most Jews celebrate christmas and also the other one.

You played some shows with hard skins. Did you talked with them? i always wondered do skinheads watch the tv series Friends? Who is their favorite? I bet not Ross or Monica because they are jews. And rachel and Chandler also out of the bill cause they married/fucked with ross and monica. I guess they like Joey cause he is italian like Mussolini. Do you have any concrete infos?

This is an answer from Fat Bob:
"wow ...what a question - tell him hard skin are too busy to answer questions because we are too busy playing darts, drinking beer and making sweet music with all women of the world - no matter of colour, class or creed..... "

Csongrád and Szentes are two cities here in hungary. But their hardcore scene's are not supporting each other. What would be your suggestion? John Joseph played here with FVK and after the show he got asked about this same problem. He adviced Unity but this message haven't worked out. So what is your suggestion? What do you think abaout that?

I mean I think that those two countries should go to war. DId you know that when John Josephs was growing up in a foster home that when he could get cheese sandwiches his older brothers and foster parents would steal the cheese out of his sandwiches and he would only have the bread to eat, and also the same with oreo cookies but with the middle taken out. I can imagine that this is what life must be like in Hungary so maybe his advice would be useful?

No Epiphany

Hey we are in Benidorm in the autonomous region of Valencia. The kids here are all drunks and they suck at football but there are pools everywhere and also German tourists. We passed a bar called the "The Gents Bollocks". The show was crazy. Speaking of crazy, we are releasing a new record in October called "The Chemistry of Common Life" - the first single is called "No Epiphany" and it is about not giving a fuck about anything. Check out the lyrics:

Son of Heaven, the sun of god
A blink from the eternal facade
The ever-spot orb'd polyphony
No epiphany

Tune the universe, be the spine
To stay in place as the planets align
Set to changes, affix to time
No epiphany

Nothing new and nothing old
The chilling warmth of the scorching cold
No way to change how the story is told
No epiphany

Wait for time for a blessed reply
No surprise under the tired eye
Wait to live as i wait to die
No epiphany

Shine as bright in a darkened sky
Won't wait for hope to be regrets disguise
Vibrate alone as i say my goodbye's
No epiphany

See no changes, show no age
Life's a book with a single page
The body spins but i stay the same
No Epiphany

As you an tell we are super lame now. Also you can download this song from the Matador site right here. The backup vocals are done by The Vivian Girls, who are also great. No Epiphany will be released as the 2nd 7" single for the LP, and will contain on the aside a remix of the song by No Age, and on the bside a 7" version of the song. Also the LP version has 18 guitar tracks.



Also just to clear up some stuff:
The "Royal Swan" mp3 that was posted here a few days ago is NOT the LP version. It is a mix of the LP version (like 10 seconds of it) and 3 demo versions. Also, that song WILL be coming out as a 7" single, we just have no details yet. Expect it over the winter.

We've been playing a new song live, it's called Crooked Head, and is the first single for the LP. It's also got the Viv Girls on backups, and it's on the long side.

As per this interview, if anyone was wondering C. Colohan WAS in fact sort of in Fucked Up at one point. He played drums for the first and maybe second practice, when it was just Marbles, Gulag and him. Also the Fucked Up song "Last Man Standing" was written as a Ruination song, the band Marbles was in prior to FU - there was a Ruination practice in 2000 where that song was in the line to be learned, but there was no time, and Marbles quit the band before there was another practice. That makes the song older than Fucked Up but about a year and a half.

Pink Eyes did NOT cut his head at Sled Island Fest in Calgary, as per this article, but instead FELL into a glass that some kid was holding.

HERE is a big article with some more pictures from the "infamous" SUNY show, which was chill for us because we are bad ass, but frightning for tons of kids and nerds because they don't have to deal with cops every day like we do. IT'S NOT CALLED GLOW IN THE DARK FOR NO REASON SQUID BRAINS!

We also heard that our friends Career Suicide broke up? Who knows if its true?

Year of the Pig is coming out soon on 3 different 7"'s:

US EDITION
Year of the Pig (Carlos Edit)/Mustaa Luntaa
UK EDITION
Year of the Pig (Eric Edit)/Anorak City
JAPAN EDITION
Year of the Pig (Corona Edit)/For my Friends

You will be able to order them all from the Matador Site (pre-ordered).

If you are from Toronto, make sure to check out the Jennifer Castle CD release:

Friday July 18th
St. George the Martyr Courtyard
7:30 PM
8$
Castle Music
Nifty
Ryan Driver

Speaking of Blue Fog records, they are also putting out the $100 Album soon, which rips.