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OBS

Damian is in this so it counts. Go to it and get it.

Sept 13

Soccer

HI. Most of you are probably aware by now that it's soccer season. Soccer season occurs when actual soccer season is over, and the world cup happens. Another thing that happens is charity soccer games. We are involved in one next week, and it's like this:

Right To Play is an international organization aimed at empowering and building skills of children in the developing world through sport, focusing specifically on girls, people with disabilities, children affected with HIV/AIDS, refugees and street kids. The organization uses soccer in 23 countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America to promote things like education, health promotion and disease prevention, and community development.

When people say "sports are stupid", besides the fact that sports are in fact mostly great, this is one of the ways they are actually important as well. Sport is something that touches people everywhere on the planet, and is as culturally prevalent and important as music. The ridiculous global lead up to the world cup this year should help explain what I mean. Kids everywhere in the world want to lead happy and productive lives, and in most cases just want to play soccer.

Anyhow, we're taking part in a NXNE soccer (football) game next week to benefit Right To Play - a bunch of music people are playing against a bunch of industry people (you can see the lineup HERE) including Rick The Temp. Players are being sponsored individually to raise money, so if this sounds like the kind of thing that might be up your alley, you can go

HERE

to donate money, even if its like $5, or even if you are reading this blog in Djibouti on vacation.
And/Also if you are in Toronto, you can come watch the game. It's Sunday June 20th at BMO Field.

THANKS.

Interbiew

Become informed via these words:


1. Man! ChemCom was AWESOME! Genre defying! Experimental! Totally rough yet refined! For the next record, are you guys going even further out there? are you going "back to your roots?" Are you just waiting to see what happens?

We're doing a musical based on the tragic life of Davide, a Romanian child occultist. It's going to be very conceptual, and "out there".

2. The NY times are big fans of you guys. So is Greg of Red Eye. They often refer to you as "F-ed Up." Do you think that you are removing the stigma from usage of the work Fuck?

We fell that we have yeah. My parents say it all the time now, and they say change always starts with parents.

3. Why do you credit "T. Leo" on so many of your early records? Is that Ted Leo?

Most people don't know this, but Ted Leo actually wrote a lot of our early songs. Thats why they sound so punk rock...after he stopped writing we start expanding the sound a bit, to where it is now.

4. There are rumors that you have splits with Nofx, King Khan, and a Swedish artist coming out soon. Could you clarify what you have in the works?

These records are coming out within the next few years: Year of the Ox on Merge will be out Sept 13, Year of the Tiger will be out a bit after that, we have a split with Sarena Maneesh, who are from Norway, maybe a split with The Besnard Lakes, and a split LP with Mind Eraser. And a new LP. They King Khan thing you'll have to ask Damian about. The NOFX thing got cancelled because they thought our songs were too long.

5. What the hell is that on the cover of "Here Lies Are?"

The insides of a fruit.

6. You've done one live release exclusively on Reel to Reel tape, and many of your records are very limited runs. Why wouldn't you want to make your music as accessible as possible?

We do...75% of our music is and will always be in print. You can find our new CD "The Chemistry of Common Life" at most chain stores throughout American and Canada, but not Best Buy, because they returned like 500 CDs they had in stock in Canada because of our name. The limited things we do are usually live sets and songs that end up on compilations anyways. People assume most of what we put out is super limited, but I feel those assumptions are based on not really understanding our discography.

7. Man, the new james are fricking kick ass! I really loved the Couple Tracks 7". But, when talking with someone at your SF show, I was told "I wish they wrote more stuff like they did before their first Lp." Does it hurt that some of your fans aren't making the journey with you?

Who are The New James? That sounds like something right up my alley. Have you ever heard The New Deal? They are a live-techno band from Toronto, really great stuff. I actually liked "Kick Ass" as well, I thought the characters were original and great. We don't really mind that people haven't liked our entire output - it would be weird if they did. I certainly don't listen to the same music I did when we started the band, so I understand that tastes change. People who wish we wrote music like we used to are in luck - because all that music still exists and they can listen to it whenever they want. Also live we still play songs from our first few practices (Police, Circling the Drain, Nervous Breakdown, etc).


8. When Fucked Up releases a limited record, it can often be found on ebay for ten fold the selling price. What are your thoughts when you sell a record for 10 bucks and it sells on ebay for over 300?

It would be super annoying if that ever happened, but I don't think it ever has...generally someone sells a record for a lot, and then everyone else does, and the price kind of slides back towards reality. It was really annoying when that happened and we were broke, because we weren't into us being the only people in the world that didn't make money of FU, but now that we are rich, we invite those people to our parties and make fun together.

9. Whenever I try to argue that Stevie Wonder is one of the worlds greatest songwriters, all the punk rockers laugh at me! Can I get a witness?

No.

10. In an earlier interview you stated "This sense of failure of the Ramones project permeates like every interview they did. They were footnotes at their own last show, the bulk of the story about what famous guests they were able to conjure up, like Eddie Vedder or whatever. " Does this mean that Fucked Up is more of a project- a way of attacking what a band can be?

Nah, what I meant was that the Ramones seemed to be perpetually disappointed in their own success because they wanted to be huge rockstars. We don't want to be rockstars, we just want to make cool music and be kind of rich. Since we already do and are those things, I'd say we're closing in on the apex of Maslow's hierarchy. We're just a band now...we stopped being a band about a band a few years ago.

11. Does this mean the music is almost secondary to the band's mission?

That sounds impossible?

12. In your March 25 blog, you state that at SxSW, corporations are making money off all of the independent bands while those very bands may be loosing money. Are you criticizing that fact that corporations are making money off music, or are you criticizing the fact that corporations are making money off of a property right that belongs to the bands themselves?

I was saying that I had "weird feelings" about companies that generally haven't had much to do with music (like a car company or a soda pop company) becoming involved in the music industry. Copywrites are a seperate issue.

13. On your records, you guys have done A LOT of collaborations. Who is your dream collaborator?

I don't have one.

14. Any last comments?

Nice and keep the goodness.

Hi

Hi, a few things to report on. Thanks to everyone who came to the library show, it was fun and I feel like we all learned a lot.

There is a record store in Buffalo called Spiral Scratch - I've never been there because I hate records, but they had a fire the other day and are having a few benefit shows this week to try and raise money to repair the store. I mention this because they were on the cover of one of our Record Store Day 7"'s, and now they need some dough. You probably didn't think of that when you were flipping your copy on ebay. Even though the guy from the store emailed me and said "Hi Damian", I'm still gonna rep his cause:

6/3 @ Mohawk Place (47 E. Mohawk Street, Buffalo) - featuring Failures' Union, Everything Falls Apart, Roger Bryan and The Orphans, All Of Them Witches, and DJ Donny Shaft - $7 (all proceeds to go to the store)

and

6/13 @ Mohawk Place (47 E. Mohawk Street, Buffalo) - featuring Iceberg and Brick Savage & The Jons - $10 (all proceeds to go to the store)


Speaking of ebay - we're flipping one of our own records to raise more money for the three groups we put out "David's Plan" for. You can read all about them right HERE while you are trying to bid on the record. The record is a copy of David's Plan, except that it's on green wax - something we didn't tell you about until just now. There's like 40 of them on green, and not that cheap see-through green like the 3rd press of the first Fastbreak 7" - nice marble green that kind of looks like fancy shampoo. Anyways just buy it so I don't have to post about records here for a minute.

Speaking of more records, we just recorded a cover of a song called "Walking on Sunshine" by a band called "Katrina and the Waves", because they paid us $1000 to do it and also because we love sunshine (which you probably know if you were paying attention during the whole ChemCom 2007-2009 period). Then we found out that we had to give some of that money to our label. Then just now I found out that that band (minus the singer) makes a million dollars a year from royalties to that song (not even exaggerating) so really we recorded the song to make Katrina and the Waves richer I guess. Anways, you can click right HERE to hear the song if you want, it's kind of funny. It's like a mix between the original and our own song "Crooked Head", because we realized how similar they two songs were while we were recording it at our fancy $400 and hour recording studio in Las Vegas. I'm not entirely sure who gets any royalties when you download the mp3, so if that kind of thing makes you uncomfortable, you should probably just click HERE.

The other thing is that we're playing some actual concerts this summer, and I'd like to use this opportunity to list a few of them right now. In addition to these ones below, you can catch us in Russia, which we are really excited about, and also several other places on that continent that aren't in Shoreditch.


June 26 Brooklyn America: Northside Festival w/ Liars
June 27 Dinner at Per Se (tickets $275, 19 plus)

July 2 Calgary Alberta Sled Island w/ WHy?, Girl Talk, etc
July 3 Calgary Alberta Sled Island w/ GZA, No Age

July 9 Chicago @ Empty Bottle $10
July 10 Chicago @ intersection of Chicago and Damen ie a bit too close to home $5

July 15 Cardiff @ Barfly
July 16 Guildford @ Guildfest
July 24 Hoxton @ 1234 Festival
July 25 Oxford @ Truck Festival
Aug 6 Hertfordshire @ Standon Calling
Aug 7 Kent @ Hevy Festival
Aug 8 Blackpool @ Rebellion
Aug 9 Lower Hoxton @ Hoxton Bar and Kitchen

Just want to point out that between July 15th and Aug 9, as well as playing those cities listed above, we are playing in: Russia, Finland, Norway, Italy, Germany and Belgium and taking a week vacation in Moscow.