CONTEST

Hi, one thing our record label loves is fine wines and other spirits. We went out to dinner last night and man can those guys put away an assortment . One other thing they love, is contests. We pretty much spent the rest of the day at the office just trying to think of what kind of contests we could layout in anticipation of our new singles comp, that is actually out NOW. So we shot down almost all their ideas for contests, and settled on this kind of cool, but pretty obviously derived from The Simpsons contest, where the winner will get his or her face on a Fucked Up 7".

All you have to do is have the best collection of Fucked Up records in the world (other than me, because I have the best one), take a picture of it Tall-Rob style, and send it into the ceo of the Matador Contest Debt. Matadors Contest Master General will pick the collection with the most heft, and the owner will have his/her likeness memorialized on a limited to ONE version of the already-limited Couple Tracks 7", which will then be sent to that winning person. Take a look at the link HERE for more details.

In other news. Remember that lawsuit we had running against Camel Cigarettes and Rolling Stone Magazine? The one where those companies made an ad and used a bunch of indie rock bands without permission? Well yesterday we LOST. It's a real bummer, but it was so long ago that we started the case that it's not really that much of a shock. But just for anyone who was still keeping track, the bad guys won. Bummer!

Here is something to cheer us all up:

Islamabad arrived from google.com on "Looking For Gold" by searching for which country sell the gold all over the world.

THE MATRIX

Hi! Here is a funny thing:

A few months ago we put a little sidebar on the right side of this blog because I was noticing that our blog readership was waning, which made me become a bit more interested in our readership demographics in general (I'm serious). Since the only variable I know how to quanitify with any sort of application is location, I put one of those neat little "Flag Counter" sidebars up to see where in the world we were the most popular, and what potential far-off places we could try convince the board of directors to let us tour to, now that we had hard data proving where in the world we were a popular and relevant band. For the first few months that the Flag Counter has been here, I was proud to imagine that our music and jocular-yet-earnest vibe was tracing a path throughout the globe. Currently, the denizens of 153 have visited our humble website (out of 203 total on earth), which warmed our hearts with visions of imperialism and manifest destiny. Until I started to closely examine another of those handy widgets in our sidebar, and got a clearer view of what was actually going on.

Could it really be that people in Myanmar (Formerly Burma, 1 view), Bhutan (1 view), Guam (Oceanic unincorporated territory of the United States, 2 view), and the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (6 view) were really hip enough to have heard of our little band? The answer I'd soon realize, would yield shocking and hilarious results.

If you will direct your attention just below the Flag Counter widget, you'll notice something called the Feedjit Live Traffic Feed. This is an interesting little device that shows in real time who is visiting your website. It lists what country the person is from, how they arrived at your website, and where they went afterwards. It soon became clear where these rogue visitors were coming from, how they wound up on Lookingforgold.

For instance, the most recent visitor is tracked as follows:

Zagreb, Grad Zagreb arrived from terapija.net on "Looking For Gold".

"Terapija.net" appears to be some kind of Croatian music review site, and their review of our last record (which they gave a 6 our out of 10 and called "acid punk" - I guess something gets lost in the translation, or does it?) was the jumpoff for this person to arrive on our blog, which was linked in the review. Fair enough, it's a music website link, from a place we've played a few times.

Similarly, a few entries below turns up:

United States arrived from google.com on "Looking For Gold" by searching for Fucked up.

We can safely assuming that some kid in the US was just looking for our website on google. But this basically explains the mystery. When we first started the band, we didn't have any sort of online representation. We've gone from nothing, to having several fake myspace pages, a few facebook fan sites, a bunch of documentation on all the labels we've been on, and this blog. We always used to joke that we chose or band name in a calculated attempt to change language - to claim the most basic and useful curse adjective as our own. Seeing how popular things like amazons Kindle are for reading, and how much language bends and changes on sites like Twitter and on texts, it's safe to say that almost all of the development of language in our culture is taking place online. Seven or eight years ago, if you typed "Fucked Up" into google, I don't even want to tell you what would pop up. Slowly as we got more press and solidified our online presence, you'd start to see articles relating to our band on like the 8th page. Now if you type "Fucked Up" into google, arguably the place online most representative of the collective definition of term and relevance, 8 out of 10 of the top things are about our band.

Now, this isn't the important or funny part. If you type in "fucked", you STILL get a bunch of hits about us, mixed in with what it would otherwise be safe to assume such a search would turn up. Which leads us back to our Feedjit log. Check out this entry:

Copiap, Atacama arrived from google.cl on "Looking For Gold" by searching for fucked.

I don't have any idea where Copiap Atacama is, or even what part of that name describes which country it is. All I know is that that person wasn't looking for our band when they typed "Fucked" into google.cl. They were looking for porn! So thats why we've had so many hits from these far off regions - they were looking for porn and wound up here. Someone from Lahore did the same thing, a few minutes later:

Lahore, Punjab arrived from google.com.pk on "Looking For Gold" by searching for fucked.

According to google, WE have a greater claim to "Fucked" than porn does. And the internet is like 80% porn or whatever the stat is? Pretty funny. It's hard to imagine now how people can still get uptight about our name. We're doing more to redefine and even clean up language by USING swear words than those types of people are by getting upset about it. Not that it's even an issue, but it's still funny. Here are some more funny tracker entries I found:

New York arrived from google.com on "Looking For Gold: April 2008" by searching for anderson hill bus no. 12.
Not sure what this one means, but I'm gonna try and take that bus to see how fucked up it is.

Newbury Park, California arrived from images.search.yahoo.com on "Looking For Gold: November 2006" by searching for united states.

Davis, California arrived from images.search.yahoo.com on "Looking For Gold: November 2006" by searching for united states.
This one I like because it gives us a new mandate. Not only are we gonna reclaim "Fucked", it looks like one day it might also be possible for us to pirate and take over "UNITED STATES". Insult to injury, cause we're from Canada.

Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg arrived from google.de on "Looking For Gold" by searching for gay klips blogspots.com.

Bremen arrived from google.de on "Looking For Gold" by searching for fucked as.
Funny pair of Germanic extreme porn mispellings.

Bakersfield, California arrived from google.com on "Looking For Gold: May 2009" by searching for looking for gold and found asbestos.
Would be a bummer.

Udaipur, Rajasthan arrived from google.co.in on "Looking For Gold" by searching for driver fuck his lady sleeping client free sute movies.

Toronto, Ontario arrived from google.ca on "Looking For Gold: XMAS TIMES" by searching for arts ubc ca uploads media adult mom fucking son.
Very specific searches yields dissapointing results.

WE ARE WATCHING YOU

SXSW

Hi everyone. As you know, we love playing South By Southwest. It's a week in Austin that usually takes us 15 hours of flying to get to. Last time we played, we got dropped off (somehow, I don't even remember how) in Buffalo, then waited overnight at the Buffalo airport to catch our 7am connecting flights to like Philadelphia or Bucharest, then spent 4 or 5 hours at that airport waiting for our flights to Austin. When we got there 3 days after we left and realized we could have taken a luxurious and civilized train for twice the price and about the same amount of time, it was only a minor psyhic setback, because we were so excited to be back in Austin for SXSW (we had played the year before).

When we picked up our 6 seater rental SUV at the aiport, we couldn't wait to cram our 6 bodies, guitars, drum sticks, luggage, snare drum, backpacks, 6 laptops (granted Ben's is pretty tiny, but Josh's is a Pro, so that makes up for it) purses (Sandy and Jonahs), MTV microphones, 16 flip cameras, ipods, pedal cases, bags of free guitar strings, leftover food from our 4 day long journey, merchandise, books, magazines, makeup, extra pairs of Nikes, other various costume changes, secondary duffel bags, empty bags for all the free swag we were about to get and bathroom kits into it for the next 5 days and drive around the small but vibrant paradise of Austin Texas.

SXSW is a great time, where the indie rockers are only outnumbered by the free energy drinks, where the free bbq is as abundant as the legions of free concerts comprised of Americas, and the worlds most exciting and upcoming musical outfits, each one vying to be that year's IT band. If we were bashful, we'd say that in 2007, the IT band was MGMT or something, but lets face it - we're not, and we were (the IT band). Our performance that year at 3am on the Lamar Pedestrian bridge was for many the highlight of the entire week, and outshone even our performance on that same bridge the night previous (ya, we did a SECRET secret show that even you didn't know about. Way less people came, and it was way more exclusive and therefor better than the one that 1500 people came to, who's combined weight swayed the bridge that night in such a way that from there on I would have rather performed on a flying airplane than on any bridge, quivering through the air like some floppy pappardelle), and especially was better than the show we did on that same bridge a few years ago during Chaos with Tejas, a way more punk fest, where bands playing on bridges in the middle of the night is so pedestrian it's almost insulting. Rest assured though, if twittering had been invented at that point in time, the amount of @s that would have resulted from such a monumental performance probably would have toppled that bridge right then and there.

Last year we skipped SXSW (we were in China, sorry boutcha) and now GIRLS is the reigning IT band (we actually like that band - some of those dudes hung out in our rented Palm Springs villa when we played Coachella last spring,where we were out-it-ed by like 70% of the entire festival but had a really great time anyhow - and were really chill, plus their song RAW POWER is great [actually I think those particular Girls Dudes got kicked out of the band]) so despite our aforementioned (if you missed it, the aforementioned aformentioning was inside the last parenthesis - not this one, the one right before it) tolerance towards GIRLS, and to make a story that's about to get really long short, we're coming back this year to reclaim our status.

We are coming back Austin, and we welcome all challengers; your Pheonix's, your xx's and jj's, bring us all the TuNeYaRdS and Passion Pits you have, we are ready. We are coming back for TWO (announceable) special shows, and maybe one 3rd Mexican el concierto especial, and without further adieu, here is some of the info:

on FRIDAY we'll be playing a benefit for SHIRTS FOR A CURE. While yr clicking that link, make sure to buy one of our tshirts from that site. It's all for charity, ok and is like an exclusive design. That show we'll have more info on real soon, but make sure you buy tickets because it's for a great cause and will be amazing.

Here is where this post starts to get a bit serious:
If you've ever been to SXSW, you know that it can be a bit like walking through the spam-section of your email inbox. There's a lot of great stuff in your inbox, but there's also a lot of spam. You can't throw a cat at SXSW without hitting a showcase or "party" being presented by some huge automobile or energy drink commercial. Bands from Brooklyn and Montreal trip over themselves all that way to Austin to try to make it, presented by Dewars, or Squid Energy Pockets, or Pampers Ultrasoft Slims. We've played some of these very showcases, and now that we are comfortably one of the worlds greatest and most profitable bands, we've seen the light and are here to pass judgement on all the bands that are in the same position we were in like 2 years ago. That's why we are throwing our OWN showcase this year. A music festival showcase thrown BY bands For bands. We're even thinking about curating a clothing company to go along with the show, called like BBFB, or something catchy and pronounceable like that. But seriously folks - enough with the indie-culture-presented-by-the-worlds-most-evil-companies-in-the-world. This isn't Nick and Noras Infinite Playlist. We're hoping our showcase can be an initiative to put some of the power invested in music festivals back into the hands of the people who actually provide the music, instead of the people who provide the SUVs and cigarettes (which we smoke when we are stressed out and drive to get to the show...). For a lot of bands, SXSW represents something very tangible on the way to becoming a legitimate band. And for a lot of bands, the experience is like Vietnam - it's hard to get shows, then the shows you do play there's only a few people there because everyone else is on the 7th floor of some parking garage on south Lamar thats being presented by Pepsi because they were the only ones that could afford to pay Death Cab, but your band is actually GOOD and you just came to sxsw so that people could hear your music, and you spent $2000 dollars just to get there (this was us for the first two years, mind you) and then you get captured by the Vietcong and imprisoned for three and a half months and the only coverage you get on Pitchfork is a mislabeled picture on "SXSW Coverage day one: Wednesday" which no one reads anyway, because all the cool people are on trains to Austin on Wednesday and have no internet. So yeah, we're doing our own showcase, because we like music and bands and hope that bands representing music and other bands becomes a THING at music festivals. Here is the INFO:

SATURDAY MARCH 20
@ RED SEVEN Outside (611 E. 7th Street - Austin, TX 78701)

FUCKED UP "BBFB" SHOWCASE starring:
FUCKED UP
J MASCIS
RIVAL SCHOOLS
TITUS ANDRONICUS
CRYSTAL ANTLERS
KATIE STELMANIS

At the same time at the same venue only inside, is the Woodsist records showcase, so it's more than likely gonna be an Aerosmith-Run DMC video type of situation.

PS - if you run a blog and/or are planning to spread this news, please don't quote the "BBFB" part, because that was retarded and just a joke. Call it like the "Fucked Up saves music" showcase or something, THX.

HEY CHECK OUT THIS DRAWING OF

Six people that don't really resemble us at all.

GAIN

We are putting out a singles comp like REALLY soon. Check out the amazing cover artwork:

LOSS

Hi, sometimes it's hard to do something about things that don't affect you, even though you care about them. The easiest way for people like us to help is by using our resources, our money. There is a huge catastrophe happening in Haiti, that most of us can't really do much about, not because we don't care, but because those problems always partially caused by the reasons that keep us from them - relative poverty, lack of infrastructure, lack of resources to deal with catastrophies when they occur, and the underdevelopment and marginalization of nations that keeps the places we live safe and warm, and everywhere else on the margins of survival.

We've said before that Fucked Up is not a political band - we're a band because we like travelling and making music - but just being a band gives us access to a lot of resources that don't just fall into the lap's of individuals, and makes it easier for people like us to make (small amounts of) change. We're putting another record out in a few weeks, and have some limited vinyl of it laying around, so we're gonna auction it off to benefit Doctors Without Borders efforts in Haiti right now. The auction is for a test press of the Couple Tracks 2xLP, and a copy of the already-limited Couple Tracks 7", which has a song about record collecting and a song about Damians baby. You can bid for it right HERE, which I would implore you to do vociferously and repeatedly. Don't forget that we've also got the David's Baby 7" coming out next month, another charity record, which we've already discussed here. We're pressing 2500 of them, they will cost $10 and 100% of the money is gonna be donated to the three organizations that we've gone over a few times. It will be available in the US first on our TOUR next month, and then on a few online distros.

Just wanted to say a few words about Jay. We were fortunate enough to play a bunch of shows with, and hang out with Jay Reatard, and we were all as shocked as you probably were when we heard the news, probably more so than we would have been able to guess. It hits a bit hard, because Jay and Fucked Up had somewhat of a parallel trajectory - same label, same punk-cum-indie sell-out career move. We played together all over the world, we saw his first show at sxsw 2006. Whereas Fucked Up has always played music, and punk culture in general for kind of a lark, Jay was that livewire that was too serious, too legitimate for this era. He was an archetypal musicial in the classic sense, moving fast, always playing and making music. He caught a lot of shit for the "antics" he'd get up to, the things you'd read about on the internet, but Jay represents that thing in music that everyone wants to deplore, precisely because he was that white hot thing you always wanted to be. It was people like Jay that first brought you to this world in the first place - those exciting and rarefied musicians who hurtled through their lives at a pace you could only keep up with vicariously, or in hindsight. It's easy to talk about our punk thing, like it's a museum piece, something that none of us could really be part of, because now we're too aware, or too well behaved, too beyond it all. Jay was that real piece, that too-bright fragment that was sometimes hard for us to consider, even though it was just as hard to look away.

Besides all that, he made a lot of great songs and we were lucky to have played with him. RIP.

HI. We are playing some shows soon, especially this one in Toronto:

FRIDAY FEB 26 2010
ALL AGES 8PM $17.50 Advance
THE OPERA HOUSE

FUCKED UP
KURT VILE
GIVE
+1 TBA

Tickets at Ticketweb, Rotate, Soundscapes, Hits And Misses this Thursday.

And then the rest of these boring shows we already went over:

Fri-Feb-12 Oberlin, OH The 'Sco (Dionysus Disco) / Oberlin College
Sat-Feb-13 Chicago, IL Empty Bottle
Sun-Feb-14 Bloomington, IN Video Saloon
Mon-Feb-15 Newport, KY Southgate House
Tue-Feb-16 Baltimore, MD Ottobar
Wed-Feb-17 Philadelphia, PA Barbary
Thu-Feb-18 Hoboken, NJ Maxwell's
Fri-Feb-19 Brooklyn, NY Europa
Sat-Feb-20 Boston, MA Middle East Downstairs
Sun-Feb 21 Montreal, QC La Sala Rossa
Tue-Feb-23 St. Catherines, ON L3 Nightclub

2/12-21 except 2/17 with KURT VILE
2/23 with LEATHERFACE

Here is a flier for the Toronto show with that weird AVATAR font