Looking For Gold

HI

2012-01-25T23:05:00.005-05:00

Hi, there isn't really anything new to report but things were getting a bit buggy so thought for all yr sakes I'd do an update so we could let bygones be bygones. So you should know already about all the shows we have coming up soon:
-January 29 in Kingston (Jamaica)
-Feb 10 in the Bahamas on the Bruise Cruise
-Feb 17 at Steam-whistle brewery in Toronto (Year of the Tiger)
-Feb 25 in Montreal for Nuit Blanche (we are doing Davide Allons-y a Vie)

I seriously have nothing else to really post here cause we've been on break for while. OK here are the lyrics to Year of the Tiger, which is about a tiger:

YEAR OF THE TIGER
Bristled by a peaceful air
Wound up by the soft wind that berates his hair
He'll sharpen his teeth on the sky
A fire passes through a tigers eye

As long as his days are old
As old as his tail is white
As white as his stripes are black
As black as the ghosts that sulk through the night

He'll take you before you can see
Him strike like thunder before light-
ning goes the tiger burning through the night

Tear into the empty world
Howl back at the sound of the void
As tame as the wildest dream
As soft as the loudest scream

Two eyes blink like stars in the dark
A shudder of light that you drink and are marked
The fear drips like blood from his teeth (repeat)

Beneath him just violent thoughts
Streaks of memories, prey he forgot
His castle of gristle and bone
The king sits on his throne afraid and alone

Between the earth and the sky
A struggle on both sides
The tiger lives afraid as the tiger dies

Chasing shadows across the sun
Streaks of light he can't outrun
Cut through the darkness like the shots from the hunters gun

Stalking a naked terrain
At the top of his barren chain
No one left to remember his name
So he kills again

Lash out at the unknown
Rank that is grown on the bone
A company of order and flesh
His foul caress

He rips the sun right out of the sky
Clawing tears in the haze as the dark fills his eyes
Blind to a merciless god
Smothered by the facade

He'll take you before you can see
Him strike like thunder before light-
ning goes the tiger burning through the night

The king of the shortest stick
The beast above with one last trick
Sovereign of his defeat
In the end it was bittersweet

Prostrate in a royal cower
The cat is a mouse to the eyes in the tower
His blood falls from the highest plateau
Above as it is below

It takes him before he can see
Pulls his shadow away right from under his feet
Now the darkness is part of the light
As the tiger goes, burning in the night

Between the earth and the sky
A struggle on both sides
The tiger lives afraid as the tiger dies

Chasing shadows across the sun
Streaks of light he can't outrun
Cut through the darkness like the shots from a hunters gun

Who is the beast,
And who are the spoils?
Who makes the trees
Grow up from the soil?

And charges the sky
With imperious fire
Brutes in the dark
Afraid of the sire (repeat)

Who is this beautiful beast
A tear of light on his teeth
A fearful smile on his face
Tokens of blood leave a trace

Whimper and bowed to the ground
A scornful sun bearing down
Grimace and howl through the pain
Get up, get shot down again

Light drips like paint from heaven
A shining pall on the horizon
Life weeps away from his frame
Stretched to the bone by the flame

Corrupt the stripes on his back
And burn the white into black
Iron imprisons his rage
Violent stains colour a cage

So filled with sorrow
So filled with hate
Otherwise empty
A relic of grace

Shot like an arrow
His fateful arc
He'll charge until
He's lost in the dark

Bring down the father
Who brought down the son
A blinding madness
He won't overcome

Strike out in anger
Eclipsed by fear
His last breath wasted
The end is near (repeat)

Remember life as a king,
The coil of life in the spring
The silver stare of the stars
Before the snare of the bars
That deathly coddle of light
Cut through the space of the night

So say goodbye Grandfather
The body spent to confer
As the flesh kisses the earth
His stripes dissolve to give birth
To the beasts in the sky
That ride the tiger tonight (repeat)

Between the earth and the sun
A struggle on both sides
The tiger lives afraid as the tiger dies

Chasing shadows across the sky
Streaks of light he can't outrun
Cut through the darkness like the shots from a hunters gun

2012

2012-01-05T22:58:00.005-05:00

Hi, hope everyone had a nice break.

So Matador announced Year of the Tiger today, it's pretty cool. Many of you might already know about this record and also may have already pre-ordered it. That's cool too. You can get it from insound and also Matador is doing a package deal where you can save money if you also buy DCTL.

Anyways, so you can read on there that the aside features Jim Jarmusch and Annie Claude from Dutchess Says on vocals, and Katie from Austra does some piano. The Bside is a weird rager. We're gonna play the Aside live in Toronto in Mid February.

Sorry to everyone who has ordered/tried to order the split 7" we did with Sloan. Josh who does our mail order and also plays the guitar just had a baby and she's not old enough to stuff envelopes yet. So please just be patient - you will get your record in 12 to 14 years, depending on the child labour laws in your country.

Lastly - and this will be the last time I mention this I swear - thanks to all the bands and everyone who came out to the benefit shows we threw last month. They raised more than $20,000 and showed everyone what a great and supportive city Toronto is. We spent the year touring every where in the world (except Pittsburgh) and played with and made friends with tons of great people and bands, but purposefully chose to program the benefit shows with only Toronto bands because there is so much cool stuff happening here. If we had more time to plan, we could have easily done 5 more equally amazing shows with all Toronto bands, so hats off to everyone here and nowhere else.

Also we are playing this show in Kingston at the end of the month:

Feist

2011-12-21T22:28:00.002-05:00

Yo Feist is doing a song with Sloan at our show tonight. Might want to bust over there - their set starts in 2 minutes.

Toronto Today

2011-12-20T02:00:00.002-05:00

Hey thanks to everyone that came out last night, the show was like, really good. Just wanted to remind everyone about the show TONIGHT that we're throwing, same place, same time, same whatever. Tickets still left at the door! Let's blow it out. Here are the approx set times:

10:30 - Sloan
9:30 - The Rural Alberta Advantage
8:45 - Ohbijou
8:00 - Bonjay

And after party at the Garrison - set times as follows:

11:15 - Army Girls
12:00 - Tropics
12"45 - US Girls
1:30 - Burning Love

Toronto! So many great bands.

Heya, this is tommorow. Hope to see you all there - there are a FEW tickets we're holding at the door so hope it all works out. Here are the set times:

8:00 - Quest For Fire
8:45 - PS I Love You
9:30 - The Sadies
10:30 - Fucked Up

DCTL LIVE

2011-12-18T01:06:00.004-05:00

Hey if you didn't get a chance to watch us play DCTL for the first time in NY and don't live in Toronto/don't have a ticket/not interested/lazy/busy/weird and therefor aren't going to see us do it in a few days, good news, you can watch it on youtube. Pitchfork filmed the whole thing with like 50 different cameras and have been gaffering and key-gripping it and have finally released the entire thing. We also got Shane Stoneback, who recorded the album, do record the sound at the show so look forward to that at some point too. We're also planning on releasing a sequel, "David Comes To Life 2; Electric Boogaloo", produced by Diplo, so that should be cool. Anywayz:

script type="text/javascript" src="http://player.ooyala.com/player.js?embedCode=V5bnk0MzrDCUPfWucQK99I1CvZhoK1X2&width=640&height=360">

Anyways, as you can see the embed code doesn't work. Feel free to just click THIS link and do it yourself thanks.

Oh also, if you still don't have a christmas present for your aunt or your teacher and you think they might want to hang out with like a thousand wild indie rockers on a boat, we have special 10% off coupons - check it:

ECT

2011-12-15T16:53:00.003-05:00

Hey, if you haven't got tickets to the 2 benefit shows we're presenting in Toronto yet, I feel sorry for you. They aren't sold out, but seriously, where are your priorities? Luckily, there are two ways you can WIN tickets from our friends at NOW and CUPE. Just click those links.

See you next in Brooklyn tommorrow night. If we fall asleep during our set it's because we are mega-jet lagged, not because we disrespect you.

Happy Holidays

2011-12-12T15:17:00.007-05:00

Hi, it's 9am in Auckland, we're up early watching Chelsea V Manchester City. Ben is talking to himself and yelling at the TV even tho City is winning. Maybe he's still asleep? Tonight we're playing our last show with Foo Fighters, at Western Springs Stadium. For us the tour felt like one giant spa-vacation with a bit of music involved. I watched the entire Foo Fighters set in Sydney and it was honestly jaw-dropping. After, we are having a big party, then spending the next 34 hours getting home. If you are in Vancouver and want to bring us presents at 7am, we have a really long stop-over.

Anyways a bunch of news today:

Here is our new video, for "Turn the Season" directed again by Scott Cudmore and featuring Richard Dreyfuss:

We are also on the cover of Spin this month. I had a subscription to Spin when I was 13 and basically read it cover to cover every month. Also they gave us record of the year for "Octavio made the Bomb". Just kidding, for DCTL.

TONIGHT we're also gonna be on an episode of No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain doing our rendition of "Jingle Bells". Should be fun. Depending on what time zone you are in, this may already have happened.

IT HAPPENED: Here is the video.

Also don't forget you can order YEAR OF THE TIGER here and here. It makes an excellent stocking stuffer (when it comes out on Feb 26).

Lastly, there are still some tickets left to our benefit jams in Toronto next week. Please read about the charities and buy tickets here!

Oh also we're playing in Brooklyn with Dom and Radical Dads, basically as soon as we get off the plane from Australia. Get ticekts to see our jet-lagged selves HERE.

Wow what a lot of hyperlinks. If you need a recap please click HERE.

BENEFIT UPDATE

2011-12-09T21:32:00.005-05:00

Hey here are some random things, well just one actually. On Dec 21st, the 2nd night of our xmas benefit shows, Sloan is going to be playing the full One Chord to Another. The thing about Sloan is that EVERYONE LOVES SLOAN and this will be amazing.

ALSO CHECK THE AFTER PARTY FLIER ABOVE. There are no advance tickets for the after party so just chill and come on by.

ALSO we're gonna be selling a split 7" we did with Sloan at this show as well. You can hear their side if you look for it on the internet. Our side is a cover of JINGLE BELLS. You can still get tickets for this thing at Soundscapes and Rotate and maybe some other places, and also at our webstore right HERE.

Plus don't forget YEAR OF THE TIGER is up for pre-order HERE.

Year of the Tiger

2011-12-06T05:00:00.002-05:00

Hey this is finally done and ready for sale. Sorry it took so long - we actually finished recording most of this thing before we even started writing DCTL. We thought that Chinese custom meant that Tiger was two years, like having to repeat grade 6...we were wrong. Anyways, it's honestly one of the best things we've ever done, both sides. Pre-order it HERE.

December

2011-12-02T17:56:00.003-05:00

Hey today we're doing our last of 3 shows in Melbourne, what a great place to spend 5 days. When we get back home there are a few things going on that you might want to be involved in. First thing, we're gonna be back in NY in a few weeks to play the Brooklyn Bazaar. Not really sure what that is but I'm sure there will be lots of muffins and xmas knick knacks you can grab. Plus it's all ages and only $10.

Then when we get back we're putting on these two amazing shows in Toronto that we've talked about already. The SADIES will now also be playing the Dec 20th show, and RURAL ALBERTA ADVANTAGE is gonna play the show on the 21st, should be great and all for a great cause:

Tickets for the FU show are HERE
and tickets for the Sloan show are HERE.

Also, for those of you in Toronto with cable, we're on the George Strombolopolous show "tonight", whatever that means, cause we're on like a 16 hour time difference. Also we have a new video for "Turn the Season" premiering on the 14th of Dec, so set your internet clocks for that.

CONGRATS JONAH

2011-12-01T03:37:00.002-05:00

Just wanted to drop a note to congratulate Jonah (from Fucked Up) for his grammy noms today - not many ppl know this but Jonah grew up playing in Jazz ensembles around Toronto, which is why he now shreds on the drums. He has been doing some side stuff lately and picked up a couple of nominations with some records he played on, namely BEST IMPROVISED JAZZ SOLO for "Sonnymoon for Two" with the Sonny Rollins Band, and also for BEST LARGE JAZZ ENSEMBLE ALBUM for his work with the Arturo O'Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. NICE ONE JONAH (this is true - look it up).

WHAT PLAYING IN A STADIUM IS LIKE

2011-11-29T18:33:00.000-05:00

BRISBANE

2011-11-28T06:00:00.001-05:00

HEY WE ARE DOING A SHOW IN BRISBANE IN A BIT BEFORE THE FOO FIGHTERS SHOW IN GOLD COAST.

Friday 9th December
Alhambra Lounge, Brisbane - (18+)
http://www.oztix.com.au 1300 762 545 FOR TICKETS DUDE

TORONTO SHOWS

2011-11-25T16:06:00.002-05:00

Hey we have tickets for sale now for our toronto show and the Sloan show the next day. Also something fun - it time is right for us and we get everything back from the pressing plant in time, we'll have a special split 7" available to buy at these shows between ourselves and Sloan. Really fun.

OK GO GET TICKETS RIGHT here THANKS.

Oh also we just added QUEST FOR FIRE to the Dec 20 show and a 4th band we are gonna announce on December 1st.

FEBRUARY 7

2011-11-22T21:38:00.002-05:00

TORONTO

2011-11-17T13:01:00.005-05:00

HI. The last year was really great for us, we were very busy, went all over the world a few times, met lots of cool people and worked really hard. We got so busy in fact that we basically ran out of time to do any charity stuff, which is something we've always liked to do, especially around the holidays. You may remember the benefit Davids Plan and Davids Christmas 7"'s that we've done in past years around this time. Lately we've been doing a lot of rehearsing for the two David Comes to Life shows we just did in New York. They were really fun and people seemed to dig it, so after we get back from Australia we're gonna do it in Toronto as part of a special few days of shows we're organizing with a bunch of our friends. It would be great if you could come if you haven't already left for you parents house yet for the week.

We will have more details forthcoming on this soon, including way more bands, after parties, ticket info and prices and shit like that, we just wanted to get a bit of info out there before you made plans or bought Headstones tickets:

TUESDAY DECEMBER 20
a benefit for Barrier Lake Solidarity
At the Great Hall 1087 Queen Street West
FUCKED UP (plays DAVID COMES TO LIFE)
PS I LOVE YOU
plus more tba

WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 21
a benefit for Counterfit
At the Great Hall 1087 Queen Street West
SLOAN
OHBIJOU
BONJAY
plus more tba

AUSTRALIA

2011-11-16T17:59:00.003-05:00

G'day mates. We are very excited to be coming back to Australia for the 2nd time this year. The last time was one of the coolest tours we've ever done. We peaced out for your winter and are coming back in time for the start of your summer. It is with The Foo Fighters which basically means we will play 7 or 8 stadiums and have almost as many days off at the beach. We are also doing a handful of our own side shows at smaller stadiums in Sydney and Melbourne - the info is right up there on the poster. You can check out ticket info HERE. They go on sale in a few days. If anyone wants to come to these shows and hang out with us, it would help you seem cool if you maybe bring us a few green things, and also some magnets. Also if anyone wants to bring me a box of frog cakes that would be ace also.

NY

2011-11-15T10:49:00.003-05:00

Last night was great, thanks to everyone that came, hope to see you tonight at WARSAW.

New York Next Week

2011-11-07T10:32:00.005-05:00

HI so we are coming soon. Here is all the info:

This show is sold out so sorry.

There are still tickets to this show and you can get them right HERE.
This is a poster for the after party, happening at Loreley right next to Warsaw on the 15th. It's free. You can get tickets right HERE.

Oh also dont' forget to check out my evolving art blog "Dressing Room Dicks" right HERE.

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCe

2011-11-04T15:03:00.001-04:00

Fucked Up "Running on Nothing" from Sandy Miranda on Vimeo.

BS (S)

2011-11-03T14:46:00.002-04:00

jk <3

MERRY CHRISTMAS

2011-11-02T22:10:00.002-04:00

STORY TIME

2011-11-01T14:28:00.001-04:00

Check it out:

Thanks London, Manchester, Leeds - very great 3 day halloween party.

TWO LESS ANNOYING POSTERS

2011-10-26T20:14:00.003-04:00

SALEM RAGES is our friend Russ's goth band. They are awesome and probably will be wearing scary close at this show, but not as a costume. I guess the UK doesn't really get halloween because every show we are playing in the country around the 31st is this huge halloween party.

As the poster says, we added this show because the 1st one sold out in a minute. Plus it's in Brooklyn, where you probably all live anyways. It will be fun! Bring lightbulbs to throw at our faces. Get your tickets right HERE.

HALLOWEEN

2011-10-24T11:09:00.003-04:00

Sorry the poster is blinking, it's haunted. COME IN A COSTUME OR IT WILL BLINK FOREVER.

HALIFAX

2011-10-21T17:27:00.004-04:00

Hey Halifax, we are flying to you tommorow morning at 8am. We are playing these two shows:

630PM at The Pavilion with Chixdiggit
1030PM at The New Palace with PS I Love You

Last time we came through (also for Halifax Pop) all the stores closed at like 9pm on Saturday night so we had to eat submarine sandwiches for dinner. We played two fun shows tho and I know both of these will be cool, I just hope we can get something good to eat after we're done. Oh also you might notice that we're on the cover of The Coast this week, which apparently is causing a bit of a "stir" out there because we have a swear in our name. I guess there is some "debate" happening out there now because mothers are having their young Haligonian children read the name on the cover of the paper by accident and Tim Hortons of something. Honestly I would like to write something funny about this but after 10 years it's just really lame and annoying and kind of played out. Halifax - NO ONE CARES ABOUT THE BAND NAME ANYMORE.

UPDATE: There is now a hilarious VIDEO about this controversy.

NYC DCTL

2011-10-18T19:26:00.002-04:00

TORONTO

2011-10-05T01:43:00.003-04:00

Hi
Here is the full infos for the Toronto show next week:

OCT 11
8pm Doors ALL AGES $17 advance
Tickets HERE also at Rotate This and Soundscapes

FUCKED UP (lots of new tunes)
CMON
BIBLICAL
ACTUAL WATER
WYRD VISIONS

CURRY A FAVOUR

2011-09-29T18:17:00.003-04:00

Fucked Up - Do You Feed from Lance Ludwig on Vimeo.

TORONTO

2011-09-21T13:08:00.002-04:00

OCT 11
MOD CLUB
more info TBA

A GUY REVIEWED OUR RECORD

2011-09-16T22:19:00.001-04:00

NICE MICKEY MOUSE BANNER, EBERT.

MIAMI

2011-09-15T10:41:00.003-04:00

HEY HERES A THING. Sorry for the lack of updates lately, we just aren't very smart or funny right now and are all a bit disillusioned about the constant barrage of youtube links that no one reads in the comments section. Hey, you like rap? We have a blog for that, it's called JONAH LIKES RAP. Please dump your links there so that the rest of us can continue commenting in the tried and true tradition of making fun of how nerdy I am, saying weird shit about Sandy (just kidding) and going on really long weird tangents. Nice, and keep the goodness.

SO anyways you should already be up to speed on our activities for the next few months:
-a few US shows along the east coast in late September
-Several shows in some of the most largest markets in mainland Europe in late October (Trondheim Norway, Lund Sweden)
-a basement-show tour of Australia and New Zealand in late November

BUT. Then we are taking a break for a few months because of the holidays but also because we are welcoming a new member into the FU extended family. One of the first things we're gonna do when we are back is play this cool thing "The Bruise Cruise". It's basically us playing with this whole group of garage rock bands that are probably all really close friends already. Plus we are headlining and people already make fun of the way we dress as "preppy". So I feel it's going to be like Titanic (the movie) where we show up in turn of the century cadillacs to our tenders while the rest of the bands have to sneak on board (along with all the people Sandy is planning to sneak on) and they will all be having fun sub-parties in steerage while we're in our staterooms trying to get the wireless internet to work. Just kidding, we are really excited to play, because cruises rule. One thing though, if anyone steps to me wearing one of those hipster sailor hats, there will be trouble. Let me just say this now - cruises have nothing to do with sailing.

AUS and NZ

2011-09-08T11:32:00.005-04:00

Hey so ya we're coming back to the AUS land with Foo Fighters and Tenacious D. Also we're gonna be doing our own headlining shows in Sydney and Melbourne that we can all hang out at.
Here are the dates:

Nov 28 - Perth NIB Stadium
Dec 2- Melbourne AAMI Park
Dec 3 - Melbourne AAMI Park
Dec 5- Adelaide Cricket Groud
Dec 8 - Sydney Football Stadium
Dec 10 - Gold Cost Metricon Stadium
Dec 13 - Auckland Western Springs

HI MORE TOUR DATES

2011-08-31T04:41:00.010-04:00

OCT 28 Pitchfork Festival Paris (see you there sasha)
OCT 29 Leeds
OCT 30 Manchester @ Soundcontrol TICKETS
OCT 31 LONDON HALLOWEEN PARTY @ Scala TICKETS
NOV 1 Hamburg @ Molotow TICKETS
NOV 2 Copenhagen @ Loppen w/ TERRIBLE FEELINGS TICKETS
NOV 3 Lund @ Mejeret w/ TERRIBLE FEELINGS TICKETS
NOV 4 Stockholm @ Debaser w/ TERRIBLE FEELINGS

AND A HANDFUL OF EURO DATES TO STILL BE ADDED
ALSO CHECK OUT THESE ORIGINAL US/CAN DATEZ

These dates are with WAVVES:
SEPT 21 Ottawa
SEPT 22 POP MONTREAL @ Some Loft (without WAVVES)
SEPT 23 Boston @ Royale
SEPT 24 New York @ Webster Hall
SEPT 25 Washington DC @ Black Cat
SEPT 26 Charlottesville VA @ Jefferson
SEPT 27 Chapel Hill @ Local 506
SEPT 28 Columbus @ Outland Live
SEPT 29 Chicago @ Logan Square
SEPT 30 Detroit @ Magic Stick
OCT 2 Buffalo @ Town Ballroom
OCT 3 Toronto @ ??? (NON WAVVES SHOW)

OCT 22 Halifax Pop Explosion:
Early show at the Pavilion with CHIXDIGGIT
Late show at The New Palace with PS I LOVE YOU

NOV 27-DEC 13 SPECIAL AUSTRALIAN TOUR ANNOUNCEMENT

EL JONAH INTERVIEW

2011-08-30T08:57:00.001-04:00

from GIBSON

La entrevista Gibson: Jonah Falco de Fucked Up

Raúl Barrantes

30.08.2011

A puntito de aterrizar en España para dos citas (en Barcelona y en el MTV Madrid Beach), conseguimos robar unos minutos de la ajetreada gira europea de Fucked Up (en la que están tocando durante este mes de agosto día sí y día también) para hablar con Jonah Falco, su batería en directo, y guitarrista y compositor también en estudio.

La banda acaba de sacar (7 de junio) un disco que sin duda les desmarca – aunque sea ligeramente- del punk hardcore más purista: David Comes To Life, una ópera rock ambientada en la Inglaterra de Margaret Thatcher, que viene acompañada, además, de una compilación de grupos ficticios de punk de los años setenta, David´s Town, grabada por los mismos Fucked Up.
Mucho de qué hablar y poco tiempo. Afortunadamente, Jonah es un tipo afable, con un gran sentido del humor y dispuesto a responder todas nuestras preguntas. Aquí están.

Hola, Jonah. Parece que en Fucked Up estáis realmente ocupados últimamente: Nuevo álbum, (David comes to life), nuevo “seudo-álbum” (David´s Town) y nueva gira europea… No hay vacaciones de verano, ¿no?
Bueno, para ser justos, no todo el mundo puede viajar por Europa con precisamente la misma intención que nosotros. Definitivamente no son vacaciones, pero es una manera muy especial de experimentar la amalgama de naciones que tenéis aquí. Es la maldición más afortunada del mundo.

Tenéis dos conciertos en España, uno el 29 de agosto en Barcelona y otro el 1 de septiembre en Madrid, en el MTV Beach… ¿alguna otra fecha de última hora?
No, nada que añadir aquí. ¡Éstas fueron nuestras inclusiones de última hora en plan “qué narices!”. Nos encanta tocar en España, y hemos tenido algunas de las noches más memorables aquí. Tenemos amigos en Barcelona desde hace muchos años. Si íbamos a hacer una excepción, España tenía todas las papeletas.

Si no me equivoco, vuestros dos únicos días libres los tenéis precisamente en España, entre esos dos conciertos. ¿Estaba planeado para disfrutar del verano por aquí?
Bueno, teniendo en cuenta que los días previos a las citas en España nos tendrán volando hacia y desde Rusia, corriendo desde la punta sur de UK hasta Leeds en menos de 24 horas, volando de nuevo hacia y desde Finlandia, dándonos caña para llegar al Reading Festival y luego volando finalmente a España… creo que todos tendremos muchas ganas de pasar un par de días sin movernos de la cama [risas. ¡Dónde mejor que en Barcelona y Madrid!

Volviendo a los nuevos discos… una ópera rock y un recopilatorio de bandas ficticios de punk setentera. Ahí es nada, ¿no?
La ópera rock es de alguna manera tan ambiciosa como el álbum de punk ficticio. Ambos requieren un enorme salto de fe por parte del público. Uno es un intento de imitar y parodiar una forma de arte legítima, y el otro es un test para ver si estamos a la altura de la música que sin duda más ha influido en Fucked Up. Vosotros podéis decidir cuál es opera y cuál es punk [risas]

¿Cómo fue el proceso que os llevó a David Comes to Life?
Fue más o menos como en los discos anteriores. Lo digo en el sentido en que nos juntamos y comenzamos tranquilamente a escribir música y desarrollar los temas… solo que esta vez fue algo diferente. Al mismo tiempo que teníamos que encajar los temas de cada letra (es decir, crear un argumento), teníamos que incorporar elementos comunes en toda la composición. Temas musicales recurrentes, líneas transpuestas, además de dar variedad con cambios de ritmo, nuevas melodías, etc. Es decir, por un lado todo fue sucediendo de forma natural, porque creo que la música en David Comes to Life representa más o menos dónde estamos actualmente como compositores, pero definitivamente requirió un poco más de cabeza y preparación de lo habitual [risas].

Y la idea de David´s Town fue algo que el propio Damian [Abraham, cantante de Fucked Up] pensó durante una entrevista. ¿Es correcto?
Creo que técnicamente fue así, sí. Pero creo que cada banda que tenga más de un disco en el mercado, en algún momento u otro ha decidido que podrían embaucar al público general con un “falso recopilatorio” de bandas que son todas, secretamente, el mismo grupo de personas. Pienso en cuando nos reíamos pensando en hacer un recopilatorio llamado Killed by Punk, que básicamente éramos nosotros haciendo música en plan remotamente similar a KBD. Podría equivocarme, vaya. Pero en cualquier caso, lo realizamos realmente rápido y a ritmo casi frenético. De todos modos creo que es fantástico. [risas] La humildad es una virtud, ya sabes. [risas]

¿Cómo reaccionasteis el resto de la banda ante la idea? ¿Como un proyecto divertido o queríais directamente matarle?
La verdad es que fue muy divertido. Congeniamos rápidamente con la idea. De algún modo se convirtió en “mi proyecto”, y Ben [Cook, guitarrista en Fucked Up] también hizo una parte equivalente de exasperante trabajo de campo para que saliera adelante. Pero al final estamos extasiados de que haya visto la luz.

¿Crees que en Fucked Up, con estos dos discos, habéis alcanzado un punto de no retorno? Quiero decir… ¿qué será lo siguiente?
[Risas] No estoy seguro de si esto es uno de esos momentos de “saltar el tiburón” – depende de a quién le preguntes, supongo -, pero no creo que quienes estén dando ese salto sean quienes tengan que decir si lo están haciendo o no. Puede que simplemente estemos sacando al tiburón en un par de citas antes de ir realmente a por él [risas] La pregunta Buena es “qué será lo siguiente”, y eso es algo que pregunto a mí mismo muy a menudo y aún no he podido responderme.

¿Cómo está reaccionando la gente a los discos, especialmente a la idea de álbum conceptual de David Comes to Life?
Bueno, parece que lo están disfrutando mucho. Creo que la clave está en que, por un lado, tenemos un álbum altamente conceptual, denso, con argumento, etc. Pero, por otro lado, intentamos hacer un disco que fuera todo lo cercano y disfrutable que una banda como nosotros pudiera conseguir. Así que, ya sea el concepto o la ejecución lo que te guste, creo que hay algo para todo el mundo. Si no quieres saber nada del argumento, puedes sencillamente sentarte, relajarte y disfrutar la música. Y si la música no es lo tuyo… bueno, no lo pasarás bien escuchándolo, ¡pero al menos podrás disfrutar del esfuerzo y las estructuras que hay tras él! [risas]

Jonah, eres también guitarrista en otra banda, Career Suicide. ¿Cómo manejas el ser batería en Fucked Up y también guitarra en otro grupo?
Bueno, dividir la facultad mental para hacer ambas cosas no es tan difícil. Toco también mucha guitarra en Fucked Up, en cualquier caso. No en directo, pero sí en el estudio, componiendo, etc. Career Suicide es tan diferente de Fucked Up que los estilos no suelen solaparse, pero es divertido tener un antídoto para toda la, digamos, legitimidad de Fucked Up [risas]. Career Suicide es un gran hobby, y un lugar donde disfrutar de placeres culpables.

En general estáis bastante liados con diferentes proyectos paralelos.
Es cierto. Ben hace Young Governor, su alter ego pop, además de grabar a otras bandas. Damian tiene su carrera en televisión. Yo estoy con Career Suicide, Mad Men, Lonely Wholesome… Sandy está muy interesada en la fotografía. Todo el mundo tiene sus formas y métodos para relajarse. Lo primero, en cualquier caso, es la bestia.

¿Y qué disfrutas más, guitarra o batería?
Cuando toco la batería, me encanta, y encuentro que he llegado a una buena comprensión de cómo quiero y puedo tocar. Pero cuando lo hago, a veces pienso “si pudiera estar tocando esta canción a la guitarra”. Y cuando toco la guitarra, a veces me digo “esto mola, pero si estuviera tocando la batería, sería otra historia”. Por eso se inventó la grabación multipistas. ¡Vanidad de músico pura y dura! Las bandas de un solo integrante son la única manera de satisfacer a los “multi-musicales” [risas].

Además, usáis abundantemente guitarras Gibson, ¿verdad? ¿Cuáles son tus favoritas?
Gibson siempre ha representado una especie de ideal para nosotros. Cuando empezamos, ninguno tenía una Gibson, pero sabíamos que podían tocar más algo, mantenerse afinadas, y sentirse mejor que cualquier cosa que hubiéramos tocado antes. Ahora que han pasado muchas por nuestras manos, estamos un poco consentidos, pero nos encantan los clásicos. La SG, Firebird, Les Paul Custom y Les Pauls en general son excelentes para lo que hacemos. Personalmente, siempre he tenido cierta tendencia hacia los modelos más aberrantemente divertidos: tengo una 1974 Marauder que amo con locura. Sandy, nuestra bajista, acaba de descubrir el Grabber, además.

Como guitarrista, ¿eres un adicto a los efectos o más bien de tipo directo, guitarra-ampli y punto?
Soy más bien de los de ampli-guitarra. Siempre he idealizado la inmediatez al tocar la guitarra: que cualquier cosa emocionante que está ocurriendo, en realidad viene de la habilidad de una persona para tocar y manipular los recursos más básicos. Está todo en los dedos y en la artesanía musical. Por supuesto, hay ciertas cosas que una persona no puede hacer sin efectos, y últimamente estoy ampliando mi horizonte para entender qué se puede crear con un poco de ayuda electrónica.

Para terminar: ¿es cierto que tenías que ocultar la existencia de Fucked Up a tu familia? ¿Aún tienes que hacerlo?
[Risas] ¡Es cierto! Lo hice al principio. Achácalo a la ansiedad por lo que pudieran pensar de una carrera en el punk. ¡Por no mencionar el nombre del grupo! Ahora lo saben todos, pero no es precisamente tema de conversación para la comida de Navidad….

Bueno, ha sido un placer, Jonah. Nos vemos por aquí.
¡Sí, nos vemos en España!

I have a blog

2011-08-30T08:44:00.001-04:00

Hey in my spare time from LFG I made a blog:

http://dressingroomdicks.blogspot.com/

SEPT TOUR

2011-08-26T07:06:00.003-04:00

Hey dudes sorry for the late notice, hope you guys haven't made plans already, we're gonna be doing some dates on the east coast in about a month. Pretty soon we'll have some more EU/UK dates announced, and also some special Australian dates. Sorry also for the lack of updates lately, we are all getting smashed full time and not sleeping for 3 weeks straight in Europe.

These dates are with WAVVES:
SEPT 22 POP MONTREAL @ Some Loft
SEPT 23 Boston @ Royale
SEPT 24 New York @ Webster Hall
SEPT 25 Washington DC @ Black Cat
SEPT 26 Charlottesville VA @ Jefferson
SEPT 27 Chapel Hill @ Local 506
SEPT 28 Columbus @ Outland Live
SEPT 29 Chicago @ Logan Square
SEPT 30 Detroit @ Magic Stick
OCT 2 Buffalo @ Town Ballroom

(and a few more to be added I think)

ALSO

OCT 22 Halifax Pop Explosion:
Early show at the Pavilion with CHIXDIGGIT
Late show at The New Palace with PS I LOVE YOU

THE OTHER SHOE

2011-08-16T05:05:00.000-04:00

AIRPORT LOUNGE MIX

2011-08-13T02:04:00.002-04:00

right HERE. Finished on the way from Toronto to Frankfurt last night cause there weren't any movies I wanted to watch on the plane.

1) Jennfer Castle - Voice of God
2) A Challenge of Honour - The Home Coming
3) Radio Slave - Incognito/Eyes Wide Shut
4) ?
5) Philip Glass - Mad Rush
6) ?
7) Don't Just Do Something
8) Koudlam - See You All
9) Wagner - Parsifal
10) Fucked Up - West of Zanzibar (scene 6)
11) Exhibit B - It's Hypothetical
12) Belong - Never Come Close
13) Destiny's Child - Is She The Reason
14) Empty Set - Gate 3
15) Shed - HDRTM
16) Roxy Music - Angel Eyes
17) Cocteau Twins - Bluebeard
18) ONNO
19) Gloria Dennis - How Can I Be Sure

FFFFFFFFFFFFFF

2011-08-11T16:52:00.005-04:00

Yo thanks to the Foo Fighters for having us for the last two nights in Toronto and Montreal, it was really fun and hope there is more in the future. For people in EUROPE and ENGLAND we are coming back there tommorow. A few of the shows are close to selling out so here are some ticket links just in case you want to grab them nows:

Sat 13 Aug - Sweden, Gothenburg - Way Out West Festival
Sun 14 Aug - Denmark, Aarhus - Voxhall TICKETS
Mon 15 Aug - Germany, Hamburg - Hafenklang TICKETS
Tue 16 Aug - Germany, Berlin - SO36 TICKETS
Wed 17 Aug - Germany, Munich - 59 to 1 TICKETS
Thu 18 Aug - Germany, Weisbaden - Schlachthof TICKETS
Fri 19 Aug - Germany, Cologne - Underground TICKETS
Sat 20 Aug - Belgium, Hasselt - Pukkelpop - Club Tent
Sun 21 Aug - Switzerland, Geneva - Usine TICKETS
Mon 22 Aug - Italy, Milan - Magnolia FREE SHOW BROS
Tue 23 Aug - Russia, Moscow - 16 Tons only 5 euros TICKETS
Wed 24 Aug - UK, Portsmouth - Wedgewood Rooms TICKETS
Thu 25 Aug - UK, London - XOYO TICKETS
Fri 26 Aug - UK, Leeds - Leeds Festival - NME Stage
Sat 27 Aug - Finland, Jyvaskyla - Luttakko Liekeissa
Sun 28 Aug - UK, Reading - Reading Festival - NME Stage
Mon 29 Aug - Barcelona
Tue 30 Aug DAY OFF PARTY
Wed 31 Aug DAY OFFS
Thur 1 Sept Madrid Explanada del Rey MTV BEACH

दीद यू क्नोव यू कैन टाइप इन हिंदी?

_ ___ PopCast

2011-08-05T16:38:00.002-04:00

Hey last week we hung out for a bit in New York before we did the Cro Mags show. A few of us got invited to record a podcast for a big news paper. Now, I can't print the name of the paper here, but their front-line news coverage over the last hundred-plus years, along with their concise and cutting cultural commentary has earned them a reputation as one of the more important papers in the world. Since we had just flown the red eye (kind of) from LA and I had immediately gone to the studio to mix Year of the Tiger over night (we snuck in on Sleigh Bells who are doing their full length there right now during the day) I managed to miss my alarm and sleep through the interview (just kidding, I missed my alarm because Smurfs Grabber push notifications fucked up my alarm setting overnight). Anyhow, Damian and Jonah made it to the offices of this hallowed paper in time to do this popcast that I haven't listened to because I'm at the cottage right now and the only way to check email or to make blogcasts is by coming in to town and hanging out at the library like a grifter). ENJOY.

See You There

2011-08-05T16:24:00.002-04:00

FULL RIPE DISCUSSION ZONE

2011-07-28T19:16:00.004-04:00

Ok let's move on. Next item up for discussion is the FULL RIPE 7" that appeared out of nowhere. Did someone from FU put this on ebay? From Matador UK? Maybe natalie or stuart? Or Paco? Very mysterious. I'm sure there is at least one person out there who knows exactly what this is, others who can speculate reasonably (including myself), and many others that can ruminate wildly and comment in an entertaining way. LETS FIGURE IT OUT

Also - next topic of discussion will be Year of the Tiger, so you don't need to comment about that yet.

THANKS WEST COAST. We had a really weird time with a lot of the boring particulars behind the scenes (didn't see our appearance at either secret shows we booked the other day in the bay - with the Zero BOys or with DYS? well we secretely had our van break down on the way, sorry) but all the shows were great and we love being on that bright side of your country. We're on a plane now heading east to play with CRO MAGs in New York in a few days - grab those RSVPs asap people.

BEGN COMPLAINT ZONE

2011-07-23T23:52:00.003-04:00

Hey I've got nothing really to say lately cause we're on tour and nothing interesting or stressful at all is happening that I can tell you about and I know a lot (2) of you are kind of upset about the whole BEGN fiasco that we designed specifically to fuck with you and you are crowding up all the cool comments that anonymous is leaving in the comments section, and since reading the comments section of LFG is legit one of the only things that gets us as a band through these long tours, talking about certain posters over dinner and in the van, I thought I might make this post and leave it up for a few days so you can all get all your BEGN posts out of your system, even thought it kind of makes no sense to have them here at all anyhow. Ok thanks.

BANCOUVER

2011-07-21T14:47:00.002-04:00

Hey thanks again Vancouver, that show was nuts. We hung downstairs for a bit while some of the other bands were playing - this is what the crowd sounded like from right below.

FREEdm

2011-07-18T13:53:00.003-04:00

Hey so we're about to leave for tour again. We're all spread out over the globe so who knows what everyone else has been up to in the time off. As for me, I've been laying low writing an article about how ChemCom is basically a Justin Bieber record. I think Jonah was out east issuing fatwas.

Anyways the point of all this is that if you live in either Vancouver or Victoria, you will have a chance to see us do our jobs for free because that's just the kind of place Canada is. Then the next day in Seattle you can see us for like $100 because we are playing a festival. For the Vancouver show you have to RSVP on FACEBOOK right HERE to GET IN. Or else there will be a riot.

WEST

2011-07-07T12:45:00.006-04:00

HI. Thanks for all your nice responses to the Lady Gaga article, it's nice to know that you guys all have retained a good sense of humour throughout the 6+ years of ultra-serious posting here on LFG ("ha").

Anyways I just wanted to let you all know we are continuing our exclusive live conquest of North America in a few weeks when we land on the gentle shores of Vancouver Canada and head south to the sweetspot of America, Los Angeles. We just got home from one of those, and it was really fun. Jeff the Bro were very cool, and thanks for everyone for coming out and jamming. Here is where we are going:

Wed 20 July - Vancouver, BC - Fortune Sound Club / FREE SHOW
Thu 21 July - Victoria, BC - Club 9one9
Fri 22 July - Seattle, WA - Capitol Hill Block Party
Sat 23 July - Portland, OR - Hawthorne Theater
Mon 25 July - San Francisco, CA - The Independent
Tue 26 July - Los Angeles, CA - El Rey
Wed 27 July - San Diego, CA - The Casbah
Fri 29 July - Brooklyn, NY - House of Vans with CRO MAGS
Sat 30 July - Montreal, QC - Osheaga Festival

If you want to come to the New York show, it's free and all ages - just make sure to rsvp right HERE.

The 24th I think we're gonna be in Sacto, but don't quote me.

ALSO the postal strike in Canada is over, so our merch store is back open, with some new goodies like the 4 DCTL collection 7"'s, the Other Shoe 7", Sunglasses, mixtape 4, Brian Walsby shirts, "Davids Town" 12", etc! Buy right HERE.

Born This Way To Life: The many headed journey of the Veroni-Gaga

2011-06-29T22:08:00.002-04:00

Hi, I know a lot of you have secretly been making comparisons to our new album and the latest Lady Gaga record, probably alone in your room, too embarrassed to tell your friends what you think, or even make anonymous blog posts about it, worried that someone might find out you dig Gaga. We understand. You aren't the only one - the evidence is overwhelming. The facts revealed in this post may shock and disturb you, but I feel at this point it must be said.

First, consider the facts: David Comes to Life was released June 7th. Born This Way was released on May 23rd, meaning the process of creating the two albums was aligned at least partially - it can be said with some accuracy that the world put into making each one was happening at the same time. The special edition (ie the definitive version) of Born This way clocks in at 74 minutes, far beyond the average running time for a mainstream pop album. David Comes to Life of course, is 78 minutes. BTW contains 17 tracks - David Comes to Life has 17 tracks, plus a wordless intro. The two records even took up the #1 and #2 spots on the Billboard vinyl chart for a week in early June 2011. Both albums are about journeys, physical and metaphysical, and use characters (characters who seem to jump between albums) to embody and represent their composers, are a departure in style for both artists, and both albums have been regarded as "conceptual" - it's these similarities that this article will outline, noting the startling similarities in the contrasting narratives, and will attempt to prove that both albums in fact the describe the same characters and the same journey, from different perspectives.

"Born This Way is all about my little monsters and me, mother monster" - Stefani Germanotta

"Let Her Rest"/"Queen of Hearts" vs "Marry the Night"

Germanotta starts her album as a statement of intent, outlining what we can expect in the first few lines - it becomes clear immediately that Born This Way (BTW) in fact relates a transformation - Germanotta uses the album to embody several characters along the journey, the first of those of course being Lady Gaga herself. However what is important here is that the intentions and changes Germanotta goes through over the course of these 17 tracks seems very similar to the journey taken by Veronica Boisson on David Comes to Life (DCTL) - so much so that it's clear that one is able to look at these two records as almost companions in narrative, with the motivations and personalities of the various guises used by Germanotta, and that of Veronica, almost merging over the course of each album.

"Marry the Night" starts off with the line "I'm going to marry the night, I won't give up on my life, I'm a warrior queen, (i'll) live passionately tonight/I'm going marry the dark, make love to the stars" which is close where Veronica is coming from. The first impressions of both characters is that of the born rebel - uncompromising, passionate, "good" (self appointed or otherwise) in the romantic/leftist sense, but with a healthy dose of darkness tossed in for good measure. BTW starts off with Gaga addressing her audience in character - DCTL begins with the introduction of David to Veronica, where she imparts to him the same message, as a protester in front of his factory. Both Gaga and Veronica begin their journeys as the classic risk-taker, there to enlist the heart of someone else to take the voyage with them, or on behalf of them. For Gaga it's her little monsters- for Veronica it's David. When Gaga sings that her journey will leave "nothing on these streets to explore", it can only conjure images of the fate we know will soon befall Veronica.

"Under my Nose" vs "Born This Way"

Central to the character of the classic activist is the justification of being and purpose - the heady, romantic and histrionic statement of intent. While Gaga/Veronica is putting her battle for acceptance on full display, David in "Under my Nose" is already starting to have this doubts, shrinking into what Gaga calls "the religion of the insecure" - almost rushing back into his insecurities after meeting Veronica. You can all but sense a dialogue between the two characters within these songs. While Gaga flaunts her "take if or leave it" attitude, David is only made more confused and wary by these pronouncements, with his "Sense of impending doom". Gaga/Veronica explains that "I'm beautiful because God makes no mistakes", a precious line indeed for a company of workers toiling in the grime of a lightbulb factory - David recounts that "he was born when God was looking away". Yet such is romance, this classic counterpoint of characters, star-crossed over the tracks in Byrdesdale. Despite his obvious anxiety, he buys into the "Born This Way" message - he "lets all his problems make their retreat", as he's implored to not "hide yourself in disgust, just love yourself and you're set".

"The Other Shoe" vs "Government Hooker"

Batting clean up on both records are the two songs where the narrative starts to take shape. Gaga/Veronica lays it out "We had our night/our real nature/no more time to decide/let it climb, let it ignite". Already we see the clock ticking. Gaga/Veronica starts to test David, telling him "I can be good if you just wanna be bad", "I could be sex if you just want to hold hands", I'm gonna drink my tears tonight and cry, cause I know you love me baby". Gaga/Veronica knows she has David right where she wants him - so in love that he's willing to go against his own good and careful judgement to appease her. David of course, can barely handle the pressure, knowing his happiness with Veronica is about to sustain serious strain, explaining "my friend dread is right on time".

Gaga/Veronica also outlines another important manifestation of her personalities here - the "hooker" character - the first of many different guises Gaga will use on BTW. It is important to start thinking of the various Gaga-avatars used on BTW and Veronica as one in the same. Classically, the "hooker" is a hardened woman dishing love on the streets for a price, but ultimately searching for a tender love of her own. This describes Veronica as well - the tough yet fragile activist, needing the love of David, away from all the madness. This is where the character starts to fragment - she wants tenderness with David, but can't give up on her rebelliousness.

"Turn the Season" vs "Judas"

These two songs act as the emotional touchstones and first climaxes of the first half of each record. In "Turn the Season" Veronica dies, the consequence of her wild side. In "Judas" Gaga goes through another transformation leading into the next track, aligning herself fully for the first time with her dark side. Judas is obviously the DCTL narrator Octavio (DCTL's own "Capital H-I-M"), the "king with no crown"/ "the king (who) sits on a crooked throne". "Judas" is her first downfall - "I wash his feet with my hair when he needs". She knows where this will lead her, but she can't help but love Judas, the embrace of danger, the marriage to violence that killed Veronica. This is the government hooker proselytized to evil. Gaga/Veronica explains to David that she "wants to love (him) but something's pulling me away from you/Jesus is my virtue and Judas is the demon I cling to". She has chosen death, and Germanotta uses "Judas" to explain the risks of such a life, killing off the government hooker persona in the process. You can almost see the Gaga character splitting in half here - battling between the two opposing forces of goodness and betrayal - "Turn the Season" deals with the same duality, explaining that light cannot be without dark, and within every life there is death. The nature of "BTW" also becomes clearer in "Judas" as Gaga explains that she is "just a holy fool baby, it's so cruel/but I'm still in love with Judas" - again Gaga is describing a sense of being trapped, just as the characters in DCTL start to realize. Is Gaga just another character, trapped inside the narrative of Germanotta?

"Running on Nothing" vs "Americano"

So begins the second act for both albums. In "Americano" the drama is dialed back, as if there has been a change of scene and perspective. It is clear that from this point, the "Gaga" character that inhabited the first act is gone. Veronica is dead, The Government Hooker has been taken by Judas. Gaga is now even using a different language (Spanish), as if to make it more obvious that the narrative has transposed into another character. Yet there are still messages for David - how she will "die for how I care", and the telling hint that she is "hiding in the mountains", the classic Latin American rebel setting. We know that Veronica comes back for David in the end, and she's leaving these little hints for him all over BTW. This love letter from beyond comes at the right time for David, who in "Running on Nothing" is starting to curse his fate and doubt his choices. He laments how he "towed the line so strong" - believing Veronica. Their lives have both been thrown into disarray - her hiding metaphysically in the "mountains", and him wondering if it was all worth it in the first place. Act two begins on this sad reflective note.

"Remember my Name" vs "Hair"

On "BTW", this track is a back story, a moment of reflection after the initial tumult. Germanotta reflects on how she became Gaga in the first place - troubles with her parents, her drive towards expression and freedom. She explains how she "want(s) to be myself and I want you to love me for who I am" - a direct message to David if there ever was one. Her hair obviously becomes a symbol for this expression to freedom - something we've all been able to get used to over the last few years - the wildly morphing hairstyles of Gaga in real life (and obviously the outfits that go with them) are a beacon of her tantalizing and romantic drive. While David just wants to "see sunlight in her hair", Gaga explains that she wants "her friends to think I'm Dynamite", which we saw her become on "Turn the Season". Meanwhile, on "Remember my Name" David is still in Byrdesdale, dealing with the aftermath of the dynamite. He wonders still if it was all worth it, and "Hair" can also be seen as another challenge from Veronica/Gaga - he knew what he was getting into with Veronica, and the contrast of these two songs shows that for Veronica, even her hair was a gambit worthy of her freedom-or-death (from "Generation", duh) ethos.

"A Slanted Tone" vs "Scheiße"

The perspective switches again for this track on both albums. On DCTL, we first hear from Vivian, the witness, on "A Slanted Tone", who joins the story to take a stab at Octavio, the narrator. In "Scheiße", the Veronica/Gaga character has taken another trip, this time ending up with some sort of dominant German-stereotype concoction. Again, this reckless wandering and drifting from character to character, and excuse for excuse tells us more about the motives of Veronica/Gaga - "When I'm on a mission, I rebuke my condition/if you are a strong female you don't need permission". Perhaps not, but the mission as we know, ended up deadly.

Both songs carry essentially the same message - Veronica just wants to be who she us, without the bullshit. Vivian is reiterating what we learned in Judas, that our king "sits on a crooked throne" - Octavio/Judas. It bears investigation as to whether or not Octavio St Laurent and Stefani Germanotta are in fact the same character in some sort of back-breaking uber-meta narrative that incorporates not only both albums, but the trajectory and real-lives of both artists, and all of reality itself.

"Serve me Right" vs "Bloody Mary"

David starts to grow a pair, lashing out at Octavio for his condition and how these events have left his heart. In "Bloody Mary" it seems that Gaga has shifted yet again, (speaking in french during parts of the song) almost into the guise of an Octavio-like character, the tormented royal. Perhaps in fact the Gaga character has backslide back into Germanotta, and "Bloody Mary" is from an entirely honest perspective. She sings "When punctures come to kill the king on the throne, I'm ready for their stones" - the narrator gearing up for the challenge of defending her/his crooked throne, prepared for martyrdom or infamy. Octavio and Germanotta start to realize their own roles within the narrative at this point as well - "We are not just art for Michealangelo to carve" - Octavio eventually owns up to his role in Veronica's death, but also explains that he was only reading his lines - his job as the narrator in a fiction. Gaga/Germanotta explains here that she feels the same way - her living persona has been clamped into the Gaga character, and she feels just as trapped as he does, yet she must go on, as Bloody Mary. Meanwhile David is still shouting into the air out of frustration - the tortured life of pain left in the wake of Veronica's own martyrdom after offering herself into the flames of freedom.

"Truth I Know" vs "Black Jesus-Amen Fashion"

The songs match up again here. We hear from Octavio on DCTL, and Germanotta on BTW. He explains to us the trials and tribulations of holding authority, she explains her motives and what led her to where she is. "There's no way I could stop" vs "I couldn't watch quietely" - they are singing the same song. She sings "Symbolism was left behind" - indeed ,they are both laying their characters bare here, beyond the plot twists and ego machinations.

"Life in Paper" vs "Bad Kids"

At this point, the characters of both narratives start to question the nature of "truth", that humble plaything of the gods. "Life in Paper" deals with the truth as written - David understands that as narrator, Octavio has a rarefied access to the truth, as to the listener, the truth of the story comes from him. David accuses Octavio of hiding behind twists of phrase and adjectives - effectively hiding behind the word. Gaga, in whatever guise she's adopted for this song, essentially says the same thing in "Bad Kids" - her Bad Kid persona exclaims that she "doesn't care what people say, (she) know(s) the truth" - "truth" in both narratives is a currency used to value the motivation of whatever character is trying to spend it. What denomination is Gaga using this time? She's still a bit back in time, taking us again back to the place where her character came from - this is another very Veronica song - "I am not a freak, I was born with my free gun/don't count me out less than my freedom", you can hear the sentiment reverberating between each album and each character. "I'm a twit, degenerate young rebel and I"m proud of it/pump your fist if you would rather mess up than put up with this" - obviously a foreshadow of exactly what would later happen. And just like Octavio will later do in "Inside a Frame", Germanotta hides her motivation on her place - "I'm a bad kid like my mom and dad made me" - both characters find their power and then salvation behind the script - "This is how I was cast".

"Ship of Fools" vs "Fashion of His Love"

Both records take a breather again and we get a bit of a musical and lyrical departure from both. "Ship of Fools" is meant to be almost a reference of paraphrase of the classic story-within-a-story device of the ship of fools. The central characters (David and Octavio) are represented on the ship two sparring heavy-weights conducting a boxing match in the bowels, lost at sea. As the mental battle heats up between David and Octavio, "Ship of Fools" is meant to act as a respite to the listener from the literal narrative of their struggle, and to put it in a different perspective. The song itself has a harder edge than the rest of the album, and is a more cogent annotation to the styles of music referenced on DCTL - The Who, Oasis, the popular arena rock bands of the last 30 or 40 years.

"Fashion of His Love" remarks on Gagas influences in the same way, taking a breather from the very modern sounding distorted bass rumble on songs like "Judas" and "Government Hooker", instead acting as a nod to the true inspirations for the record and indeed Gagas career - the flair of 80s pop demigods like Madonna and Prince. And like "Ship of Fools", this track represents the essential internal struggle on this album - the measured and bright eyed young woman that would become Gaga, and Gaga herself as portrayed on BTW - the violent and carefree rebel Veronica. She spells out her struggle: "I was never the kind of girl that's naturally sure when it comes to love, I was insecure/But when it comes to you and me/I can't deny this feeling I'm feeling inside/oh no, I've never been like this before" - a clearer message to David there has never been on this album. This is Gaga/Veronica in a nutshell - the girl who just wants to retreat back to Byrdesdale for love and peace and the woman who knows her true calling will force her departure - the essential thesis of BTW is this question, the ultimate choice between love and justice. The appeal of Gaga as an idol is indeed the exploitation of this essential clash - on one hand Gaga is the perfect embodiment of the American overworld - the shopping, the glamour and glitz that millions of young people all the world admire and fawn over, yet the Gaga character has always been a valuable incarnation of the underground as well - gay rights, being weird, her "monsters". As much as Gaga is the truest pop-star of the modern age, so much of her appeal has come from playing the underdog, the oldest trick in the book for a rising star, and effective as the Gaga character plays both sides of the culture.

"A Little Death" vs "Highway Unicorn (road to love)"

After a brief pit stop, both albums are back on the road. Gaga makes this more than obvious, as her character is now literally in a car on the run, "on the road to love...with the fury of a saint in her eyes". Gagas intent with BTW begins to solidify on this track - she's been on the run since the start of the record, but we get a sense of where she's going on this track, as visions of the American dream are used to evoke what everyone wants from America - "she's just an American riding a dream", "we can be strong, follow that unicorn, on the road to love" - these lyrics give Gagas struggle a sense of the characteristic American destiny - freedom, the open road, fast cars, and the manifest destiny that opens up the horizon. The liberty of the unique individual - Gaga is now the Highway Unicorn - that gilded individual sole constituent of her own layered American Avalon. "She don't care if your papers or your love is a law/she's a free soul burning roads with a flag in her bra" - the Gaga character is starting to embody this essential duality as the prime motivation for the American outlaw rebel character she lives in now - "get your hot rods ready to rumble/cause we're gonna fall in love tonight...we're gonna drink until we die"

Back in Byrdesdale, David retreats as much as Veronica expands, as he starts to embody his own particular destiny - the sad sacked lost romantic worse off than he was before he met Veronica. As she powders into the horizon on the hoofs of a hot-rod Unicorn, his own road leads him to shame and denial, their roads starting from the same point, backs turned as they run in opposite directions. Veronica starts to feel free, as the wind picks up her hair - David wishes for his life to "blow away in the wind". As Veronica is learning to embrace and not fear her uniqueness, David starts to question his own, that maybe their love was "not unique because it happened to me". He wants to have his "dreams carried far from him" - Veronica appears to be doing just that for him.

"I Was There" vs "Heavy Metal Lover"

The titles here are the first obvious clue that the narrative has again been transferred between albums - "I Was There" describes the bombing that killed Veronica in great detail by Vivian The Witness, who we learn was present at the time, using fire-and-brimstone imagery to paint a picture of heavy-metal carnage; "Copper from gold, the banding unfolds/The halo of hope goes from tender to cold", "A bomb in his hand, glass turning to sand/One union dissolves as another is made", "Mortals are mortar and life is the fuse/Burnt memories and shrapnel diffuse". While Vivians story describes violence in a real sense, Gaga describes a sexual violence, as "Heavy Metal" contains some of the most explicit (for a pop album) imagery in her story, setting the pace with "I want your whiskey mouth all over my blond south", letting us know that the more reckless and carefree Gaga has returned after a brief respite to figure out where she was going. In "Heavy Metal Lover", Gaga is unrepentant and committed to her wanton dream of freedom - "Let's raise hell in the streets, drink beer and get in to trouble" - which is exactly what is happening in "I Was There", as paper and fire fill the streets of Byrdesdale. "I could be your girl, but would you love me if I ruled the world?" - the same question again the David, who may have realized by now that he was a bit out of his depth with someone as passionately unhinged as Veroni-Gaga. You do get the sense however of a tinge of regret to "Heavy Metal Lover" - the focus is still on David. Veronica begs the question and repeats it as her refrain - "I could be your girl" - it's her rebel gamble, and we can tell she still wants both David and her wild life - and as "I Was There" explains, it ends up being the ultimate gamble. She is still at war with herself, as part of her whispers (interestingly enough, the vocal effect she uses for this verse is robotic) during this song "Help me I'm on display, baby we were born this way" - the Gaga character on the run is becoming as self aware as the characters in DCTL, and can still talk to us behind the various masks used on BTW.

"Inside a Frame" vs "Electric Chapel"

Electric Chapel is Veronicas final desperate plea to David, an attempt to appeal to his guarded sensibilities. Gaga attempts to strip back the layers of her personality that have come to frighten him, laying it on a simpler and less aggressive song than we've become used to on BTW. It almost feels like the conversation the two of them could have had right before the bombing, a glimpse into what exactly Veronica said to convince David to join her. She assures him that "My body is sanctuary, my blood is pure/It's not about sex or champagne, you holy fool", and then asks him, "if he wants her", to meet her at "The Electric Chapel", and obvious marriage reference, either between the two of them, or the final union of both sides of Veronica's dualistic personality. Sweet talk, with a price - "Follow me, don't be such a holy fool/I need someone more from you".

"Inside a Frame" deals with the figurative death of Octavio, as DCTL's "author of all things" recounts his own fall from narrative grace to the lowly depths of a mere character.

On closer inspection, the electric chapel seems almost like an allusion to death as well, especially based on what we've learned about the character so far, her recklessness, her passion for freedom, her messianic allusions and Manichaean dreams. Did Veronica know what she was getting into? The nature of the narrative in DCTL allows that the characters eventually realize that they live within the rigid structure of a play. In the song "Octavio Made the Bomb", released as a single after DCTL, we also learn that this is not the first time these individuals lived through the narrative, and that they've inhabited different characters in older incarnations of the story. Perhaps Veronica knows exactly what she is getting them into, because she has seen it all play out before, and knows that even in death her comfort lies in rebirth when the story is retold.

David becomes a victim to Veronicas duality as she makes him wrap his fragile straight personality around hers - "If you want to steal my heart away, I need something sacred from you" and how "together we'll find a way to make pure love work in a dirty way". This is where the tragedy comes in from David - not only that he lost his love to what he was so afraid of, but that he did try to change for her, to meet her challenge, and still it ended in violence in destruction. David learned the hard way what Veronica must already have known.

In effect, "Electric Chapel" is a retelling of the events of "Turn the Season" and "I Was There" from a different perspective - Veronica and David make their plan for destruction, execute it, and we live through Veronicas death yet again, at the end of "Electric Chapel", as the song closes with somber funeral bells ringing and Veronicas plea to David from behind the grave - "meet me, meet me, meet me".

"The Recursive Girl" vs "The Queen"

By track 16, both albums begin to take victory laps. The end of "The Queen" even lapses into a calm gauzy breakdown, suggesting that this is just the beginning of a suite of music that will conclude the album. Lyrically, there is a lot going on. The Queen is not a new character for Gaga, more of an amalgam of everyone she has been up to this point on BTW.

According to the recursive nature of the narrative, the character she becomes at the end of the story, the Queen, is the same that she started out as, the Queen of Hearts. The strength of BTW is that Gaga doesn't attempt to dial back or apologize for any of her characters - from the tentative rebels to the sacrificial deer in the headlights, to the reckless vigilantes to the powerful and violent lady-justices. By now her character has folded in everything from the pop royalty of The Queen, to the blind fury of the Queen of Hearts - she's everything now: "I can be the queen you need me to be" - the ultimate pop statement. This is how BTW concludes - Germanotta brings everyone she's been up to the point and molds them into one ultra-appealing character, which was the point all along - the popstar of universal appeal with as many faces as followers. We get the same symbolism used for Veronica, as Gaga explains that the Queen is "the wind and the hurricane/the stormy sky and rain/when you run dry I'll flood your pain" - a paraphrase of what Veronica (Boisson = drink) told David at the start of their adventure: "when storms conspire summers wane/She shines to burn away the rain/And when you felt only pain/She let you see the sun again".

"The Queen" and "The Recursive Girl" share the same essential message - on DCTL, Vivians character explains how each individual goes through each characters as the narrative is endlessly reset - the message being that there is always another chance for salvation. On BTW, salvation comes from Gagas ability to try out more than one characterization before landing on the one(s) that fit - in both cases, the recursive nature of the narrative is clear - things repeat, and you will always get another chance. Gaga knows that whatever is cast aside can always be revisted - "Don't forget me when I come crying to heavens door...like a pheonix so you can remind them of the dream I bore" - the same message that Veronica will give David in their final encounter.

"One More Night" vs "You and I"

"It's been a long time since I came around, but I'm back in town...this time I'm not leaving with out you" - this could be Gaga or Veronica. In fact it's written about Gagas real-life (ex) lover Luc Carl, a message in essense from beyond, as it's her attempt to retrieve their lost love - a final message as it where. "One More Night" concerns the same attempt from David to deliver a message to Veronica in death, which is reciprocated by her during the finale. The struggles are behind all these characters, and now it's time for them to reconnect and reflect on all that they've been able to put behind them. Both songs represent the final union for each couple. Gaga is back from her journey through BTW and is ready to re-take her place in the corner of the bar, and would give "anything again to be your baby doll" - David is saying the same thing - he's given up his own struggle through pain and is at peace, ready for Veronica to retake her place in his heart. Through all the challenges of BTW and DCTL, the message is that struggle and pain are only worthwhile pursuits if they leave you a place to come home to once the dust has settled.

"Lights Go Up" vs "The Edge of Glory"

The lyrics to both of these closing songs take on the events of each record from a new perspective. In Davids case, we see him as an older man, looking back on his life as if from above, himself becoming an audience to his own story. Veronica is dead but he hasn't lost her: "I'm still in love with you after all of this time/The best days of my life were when you were mine/They'll be the branches I always use to climb through my life" - his redemption is that Veronica will always be a part of his life as a memory. These are Davids final judgements on all that has transpired. Germanotta has explained that "The Edge of Glory" is about the final moments on earth - this same final judgement. Veronica has given her love to David and is at peace, ready to take her final voyage over the edge "I'm on the edge of something final we call life tonight/put on your shades because I'll be dancing in the flames tonight/heaven knows my name tonight". The journey has brought them all to the edge, "where we can both fall over in love" - Veronica takes Davids soul with her as they goes hurtling into the infinite - her last romantic gesture to him.

Both tracks fade into the distant carried by a tremolo of sound , gently leading us back to where each began. Listening to each, we feel like somehow we've been here before, together.

BEGN Singles

2011-06-28T18:35:00.004-04:00

Hey the comments section from last post was getting weird, so lets restart. Today (or thereabouts) if you don't live in Canada where there is still a postal strike, and if you ordered BEGN, and if you checked your mail, and if you have a record player, you will have received the 4 bonus 7"s that were part of the packaged. We're also selling them on tour right now. So there are still some options. Anyhow, the art on this set is pretty cool:

As I've written on here before, this collection of records is meant to act as a prologue to David Comes to Life. We wrote these songs at the same time as the 18th that are on DCTL (other than the ones we wrote five years ago) and when we realized the record would be too long if it had 26 songs (and no, it's not too long as is, in case you are gonna crack wise) so these became the prologue, meant to describe the characters and the setting in a bit more detail. Either way, your DCTL collection is incomplete without these records. The last one is "Octavio Made the Bomb" which effectively is the epilogue to DCTL. You can probably guess what it's about from the title, but the lyrics kind of help explain the motivation for us writing this whole thing in the first place. It's a one-sided 7" (the first one of those we've done) and looks really cool. The missing piece is the "The Other Shoe/The Truest Road" 7" that we are also selling on tour, which tells the story of Nick Fenstle, who owns the Lightbulb Factory

Random Facts About The Artwork:
-David Eliade is Ian from the band $100
-Vivian Benson is our friend Kate who is also on the cover of "The Beat and the Pulse" by Austra
-Octavio St Laurant is a Beggars Banquet employee
-The town on th Byrdesdale 7" is where Ben's real life mom was born
-It's the same lightbulb on each cover (and the back cover of DTCL, and the front)
-Nick Fenstle is Josh's Dad, and every member of Josh's family appears on the cover of DCTL
-The thing in the bottom right corner is the Fucked Up logo

PHILTH

2011-06-26T03:07:00.002-04:00

HEY NY thanks for everything even tho we all evaporated tonight at 285 Kent and are pretty much just clouds of hipster molecules at this point floating around. We are heading south to Philly, "The Other New Jersey" tommorow to see some friends and play some music, at the 1st Unitarian Church. Hope to see you there! Watch out tho, cause Jonah just discovered planking:

NEW YORK ON SAT

2011-06-24T09:45:00.004-04:00

Hey dudes we are playing New York again on Saturday - thanks to everyone for coming to Terminal 5 last night, it was really fun. So anyways, we're playing in Brooklyn this saturday at 285 Kent, with JEFF The Brotherhood and IceAge - the invite thing is right HERE. We all hope that Liam Gallagher will have another after party after this show that we can go to. Anyways, hope to see you there. I'm sure we will play very late! Also Damian shaved a bear.

TOMMOROW

2011-06-22T18:19:00.002-04:00

REMEMBER WHEN MUSIC WAS COOL

QUEEN OF HEARTS

2011-06-21T10:59:00.001-04:00

Hey look we finally made a real video (well Scott Cudmore did)

TO

2011-06-17T13:12:00.003-04:00

Thanks Toronto, both shows were very fun. Here is one:

Fucked Up @ NXNE from NOW Magazine on Vimeo.

THATS LIKE MORE THAN HALF THE SHOW RIGHT THERE

You can read a review of the show right HERE.

NXNE

2011-06-16T00:22:00.002-04:00

Hey, we are doing some shows in Toronto tommorow. Make sure you go cause we won't be back to play until the fall (ha, we live here).

8PM YOUNG AND DUNDAS SQUARE - it's free. It's at Yonge (and Dundas). You don't need a pass or to line up. You've been there right? Right across from Eatons Center. Then stick around for OFF who are playing right after us.

1AM WRONGBAR - This one costs $15 or something, unless you have a nxne pass. A few other cool bands are playing, including Jennifer Castle at 9pm.

We are gonna play different songs (somewhat) at each show. If you only come to the free one, we will know you are a crusty (and trust us we will see everyone and will be making notes).

If you don't come to these it will make us very sad, almost as sad as when the guy from Neon Blud talked shit on us on VIVA LA VINYL even though we took them on tour with us, or when I got kicked out of the "FUCKED UP" group on facebook.

Also guess what: June 2011 is our TENTH ANIVERSARY month. We all forget the exact date, but it's not like we're married so whatever. Will we do a secret show at whatever is where Planet Kensington was (our first ever show was there)? Who knows!

VISH Part 2

2011-06-12T01:49:00.005-04:00

Hey so remember last week when I wrote out this thing about VISH. Well the next morning we went to have breakfast with him. Not at his house or anything close like that, we went to a place on Bay street called Yo Gabberdine. Because he does another show on CBC(3) where he takes bands out to eat breakfast and for half the show you talk about what you eat, which is actually a nice respite from talking about why you decided to write a rock-opera, which isn't even really what you did in the first place. Another thing you seem to always have to talk about when you are in a band is why you don't get along with Vish? Like one thing I can always count on getting asked is "Did you guys set out to form the most disfunctional band with Vish in it"? The answer is no, we just wanted to be a cool band. "I've read a lot in other interviews about how you guys don't really get along with Vish on tour?" I mean, it just isn't true, we all get along fine. This interview, and the way I'm looking at him in the picture up there, should be a testament to that. When we do another album big enough to warrant the kind of press that gets your breakfasts paid for, I'm hoping we can do it again.

Also - I haven't listened to this interview yet, so I hope it's not that embarrassing. You can download the interview right HERE.

ANOTHER THING THAT IS HAPPENING:
Well, you can read about it on the matablog right HERE. It mostly applies to people who live in England, but whatever. Have you ever heard of the band Belle And Sebastian? Well, we have, and that's mostly how we came up with the idea for this contest. You may know by now that we just released a record about LOVE and ROMANCE. Well, this is your chance to show us some LOVE and ROMANCE (if you live in England, because our label in the UNITED STATES was not interested in this bullshit) by doing what it says on the link I just put up - basically you can get some of those nice postcards we made of the 5 characters from DCTL (yes there are five, did you not pay attention to all the lyrics?) from participating record stores, and write out love letters or how you feel about someone else secretly, or some missed connection style nonsense or tell us about the crush you had on Ben when you were 12 from watching Goosebumps, or whatever. I mean, I'm sure you have some ideas already. You people (Shakespeare) invented the love letter. And I'll be honest - we're gonna be judging these things. I'm into earnestness, realness - I don't like to play games. If you just write some nonsense about how much you love records or Sandy, or something about how you loved our old records - that's not gonna do it for me. This isn't the comments section. There is a prize people, so I want to see real tear stains on these postcards.

Don't live in the UK? Well that's cool. Lucky for you, we're SELLING those postcards stateside from our webstore. Not for an arm and a leg, mind you, it's maybe $5 for a set of 5, which is not bad. And those you can do whatever you want with (let me guess: you are a male record collector and althought like 90% of your being is telling you to buy these postcards for your "collection" there is this sliver of radiant hope that you will actually get these in the mail and you will in turn write something sweet on them and send them to an actual real person - your girlfriend, you mom, a penpal in Kenya, whatever. The postcards show up and they sit next to your Fucked Up records taunting you until 4 or 5 years later you move and the [near]mint postcard set goes in the trash at which point a racoon finds them in your trash and tries to eat them) - you can even write suggestions and send them to me (it's not hard to find my personal address - I am famous), which I would find highly enjoyable, seeing how that would mean we'd figured out a way to sell something to someone and actually have them pay (postage) to send it back to us. You can get those postcards FRESH on our merch store right HEREEEEEEEEEE. Anyways the VISH sendspace is done uploading so I'm gonna stop writing now.

CHECK THESE THINGS OUT THIS WEEK:
Monday - "THE OTHER SHOE" VIDEO SHOOT IN HAMILTON ONTARIO
(maybe) Wednesday - "QUEEN OF HEARTS" VIDEO PREMIER
Thursday: TWO SHOWS IN TORONTO, ONE OF THEM FREE
(maybe) Thursday: Big article on LFG about LADY GAGA
(maybe) Friday(?): FU on Q radio program

Imants

2011-06-09T18:27:00.004-04:00

When you are young and fresh you look at the world and expect everything to stay the same forever. When I first starting taking the train downtown for punk shows at the Opera House, or in the basement of Who's Emma, or nervously venturing into squats and apartments around the market, I felt like I would find a new exciting place to see music and make friends every weekend, for the rest of my life. As time passed, this new world enlarged, as did my place in it - more friends, more knowledge, more records, more bands. I was young and there was always things to look for, people to look up to. People that formed what I could tell was the foundation of what I was experiencing, started to pop up more regularly, we could start to interact with it all. You start to meet the people who put on the shows, the people who put out the records, and this world starts to take a different shape and get more colourful, as you engage. It was an exciting thing to grow into. As time goes on, things start to change again - years go by and you look back and wonder where your friends ended up, why the same things no longer excite you, maybe you wonder what was the point of it all in the first place. There are fights, you learn more about the bullshit, you stop caring, or pretend to stop caring, and things fade away. Ten years later and it's almost like a dream, it's hard to imagine you came from where you did, when you look back.

But there are these guideposts, these pillars, that don't change. These people that remind you about what you used to feel like when you were a kid, they remind you about why it was all so exciting, and why it will always be exciting for someone. Imants was one of those people. We met Imants maybe at age 17, 18. He was this old/ageless guy from Hamilton how had this record collection, tales of which preceded it. Before meeting him we knew these indelible facts - he had seen the Velvet Underground, he had bought a Negative Approach 7" out of the box at the record release show. He was this living time warp we had access to, which if you think about it, is what a community is all about - those links between generations that enable consistency and let things survive. He was this living link to the things we could only ever read about or see pictures of - but here was this guy who had done it all, and we could ask him. Not only that, he wasn't coveting it, he wasn't this relic, he was still there with us, still picking 7"'s out of the box and record release shows, 30 years later. I never discounted the importance of what he was doing - he bought our first record out of my hand. What did that mean? I was young, unsure of what I was doing, but Imants wasn't unsure, and he should know. He did know. It's rare to find people like this, anywhere. I know I'll never be like that - I'm more of a relic at 30 than he was at 60. What makes the world go around is participation - doing it, those hands across time making the links to what you revere and what you create yourself. He loved the music like no one else, and for us there was really no one like him.
RIP IMANTS.

Cool FADER thing

2011-06-09T10:33:00.002-04:00

GALLERY

2011-06-07T14:24:00.000-04:00

Fucked Up's Pop Up Record Shop from NOW Magazine on Vimeo.

WEBCAM

2011-06-06T22:32:00.005-04:00

Hey the webcam is LIVE. Please spread around the embed code and embed it in your facebooks and blogs, cool? Just click the "share button" on the player, and get the code from the EMBED area, and then copy and paste that code wherever, ok?

JUST COPY AND PASTE THAT SOMEWHERE.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/davidcomestolife
Live Video streaming by Ustream

TONIGHT

2011-06-06T16:08:00.002-04:00

Hey wow, it's all happening tonight. Did you know that Ben made a wicked facebook invite page for the thing tonight? Well it's right HERE and he'd appreciate it if you "RSVP"-ed.

Anyways, hope to see you all (264 of you [and counting {ben is}]) tonight. If you don't live in Toronto or are an extremem penny-pincher, there is another exciting and confusing way for you to take part in tonights festivities. Maybe you have noticed all the marketing stuff our record label Matador has been doing over the last few weeks/months? Well it all culminates tonight with their "virtual popup store" which is like such an insane confluence of hyper-modern current realities that I kind of don't even want to go into it. I got sent a few emails explaining what is going to happen tonight but I could barely understand any of it, and trust me, I'm pretty smart. The long and the short of it though, for you the fan (ie the "consumer") is for a few brief moments (literally) in (real) time tonight you will have a chance to get DCTL cheap, in the deal of the epoch sale. Maybe you should just read more about it right HERE. For the first 2 minutes of June 7th, you will be able to get DCTL for $3.99, which is a pretty good deal, providing that their powerful servers don't crumble under the weight of your desire for the record (although lets face it, I think that's what every one is not-so-secretly will happen; them, so that they have an excuse not to dole out so many records at such a bonus but also have an alibi to place the blame; us, so that you will have to buy a hard copy at our store instead and pay us full price (a price at which we make maybe $1.21 profit on each $18 record) (and also because the profit margin on a $4 album doesn't really do anything to help our recoupables ;)); and lastly you, so you will feel part of something greater than all this commerce, for that rare glimpse into the collective hysteria that can rip through and crumble the established bricks and morter (virtual or not) safe houses of reified value and art? Isn't that what this is all about in the first place? The horrible yet fascinating full frontal social nudity, the bodies trapped and trampled in Walmart vestibules, or fiber optic cables, dimished dollar signs floating around our dazed heads?

Anyways, so that's something to think about for those two minutes tonight. Rush in, giddy and bright, wait up for it, stay up. We'll all be there clinking our glasses together, laughing, playing. The price will start to soar after those minutes are up, as they always do! Good luck.

OH ALSO - here is some more info on NXNE:

The schedule for the Wrongbar show that night is (in reverse order):

Jennifer Castle 9PM
Tanika Charles & The Wonderfuls 10PM
Allie Hughes 11PM
Anagram 12AM
Fucked Up 1AM
Light Fires 2AM
Lucie Tic 3AM

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE.

WRATH OF VISH

2011-06-02T00:29:00.004-04:00

***UPDATE***

Hey you can download this now, right HERE. It's just the talking parts tho, without the album sequenced in, cause as if I'm going to give you a download link for an entire free album that isn't the new Cut Copy record. SO it might be a little confusing, but basically if you want to follow along at home, just play two songs in between every one of these clips and you will be fine.

Hey so our friend vish works for CBC3, which is the Canadian equivalent of like BBC19, if that existed, cause it's kind of buried somewhere on the internet. Actually maybe it's on the "airwaves" too, I have no idea. I only listen to CBC1 on my itunes. My stereo doesn't really pick it up even though I can pretty much see the radio towers on the CBC building from my house, beaming their signals who knows where. Not to my house.

Anyhow we met Vish a few years ago after he'd asked us to be on his CBC(internet)radio3 show "The Breakfast Club" where he asks bands to be interviewed at like 9am around the breakfast table at the diner of their choosing, and then often doesn't even ask them to pay for it. We all got along really well, except me and Vish, because he started bugging me about not having a license the minute I sat down. It was all hilarious, and you can hear clips from that interview on Mix Tape 4. Anyhow we sorted it all out and almost asked him to be our roadie for a tour in Canada that kind of never happened.

ANYWAYS sorry this post is ridiculous, I'm listening to another interview while I type this - he just did this funny thing with Josh and Ben and Damian where they listen to the whole album and share little anecdotes and funny stories throughout. You can listen to the whole thing right HERE. He seems to really dig the album. Funnily enough, we're doing Breakfast Club part TWO with Vish tommorow morning! That should be fun - see you in 10 hours VISH.

JUNE 7

2011-05-31T19:40:00.005-04:00

I know the timing on this is a bit tricky, but I'm gonna leave it up to you all to figure out and show up at the right time(s) thx.

The first 100 people at this will be able to buy something basically no one has figured out even exists yet - the The Other Shoe 7". We pressed a few of these for the tour we just went on and have a few left over:

Featuring an unreleased bside about Nick Fenstle! Also approximately the first 240 people in can get a free can of beer, provided that's something you are into, and provided everyone shares and don't try to keep the cans to sell on ebay. If you are lucky, we'll also have lightbulbs to sell.

Also check out this crazy shirt our friend Brian Walsby did - we're supposed to look like the Beatles:

If you like it you can try to order one right HERE.

"First" Listen

2011-05-31T11:59:00.006-04:00

**HEY JUST REAL QUICK: The Explore Music thing at Harbourfront is full up now, so don't RSVP anymore thanks! You can watch it on the internet I think.***

Hey you can stream DCTL on NPR right now. That's a cool radio station in the USA if you are not from there and don't know. You probably know. It's right HERE. We all know that if you are reading this blog you've already heard the entire record already and have made your judgements known and are already thinking about what hilarious boilerplate yr gonna leave about in the comment section (unless you are a spammer) or on vivalavinyl to make us all feel bad about our place in the world. Or something. What I'm saying is that it probably won't be your "first" listen to the record if you click thru to the NPR site. (Because you illegally downloaded it)

Anyhow, my point was the NPR article also has some insight about the conception of the record and the story that you can follow along with while you are listening to the record (on the website...for 80 minutes). If that isn't enough, remember you can actually hear us talk about these same songs live in person next Tuesday at Harbourfront in Toronto (facebook invite right HERE.). Honestly though if you are gonna come to that I might step on the rsvp-ing because space is limited and there will be free chips and beer I think, so no doubt half the people there are gonna come for just that anyways. Which kind of gives me a good idea - what if our shows for this summer were just the 6 of us sitting in chairs talking about the songs, rather than actually playing them? We'd be like the punk James Taylor, except with no music AT ALL, just stories about the songs (and there is no way we'd play a benefit for myspace, even if it was in a movie). That would be fun right? Everyone could still mosh and do whatever, which would kind of make all that cooler anyhow, because it would be really surreal and fun to just have this room full of sweaty punks moshing along to us reciting lyrics about love and discussion calmly how many bus trips we had to take to New York to get this thing done. Damian would wade into the crowd with a long mic as he does, but instead of singing, he would just be gently answering questions, in your face. Jonah would obviously have his shirt off and be wearing those gross shorts he wears to play the drums, but there would be no sweat and no drum set, just consideration of Thatcherite Britain and the decline of the Garden City movement. Anyhow, think about it.

And then of course there will be our other June 7th event that we don't have full details on yet.

Did I mention there are some new pre-order opportunities for DCTL up now?

Interpunk is doing this thing where the first 100 people to order the CD get an autographed booklet. Get that HERE.

Same deal for Newbury Comics, right HERE.

FUn THing

2011-05-30T13:51:00.002-04:00

Hey here is a fun thing you can come do with us if you live in Toronto - we're talking with Alan Cross about the new record live, should be fun/awkward. I think you can line up to ask questions too (not Joe Cornilisie). Plus look how cute we look on the poster.

RSVP asap because space is limited FML BRB

I HAVE A RECORD

2011-05-26T11:15:00.001-04:00

A GUY DREW US

2011-05-26T10:46:00.001-04:00

For spin.

SWEARING

2011-05-23T19:24:00.003-04:00

Is still a big deal. The Guardian printed our full name in the paper last week and got some complaints because in case you've forgotted (I had), our name contains one swear. Anyhow the comments section on the article is on fire, and if there is anything I know about this blogs readership, it's that you love online commenting. Go HERE to call my secret names or ramble about guitar tunings. Just don't mention Ryan Giggs. (Full disclosure - I have not read this article, nor do I plan to).

LAST NIGHT IN LONDON

2011-05-21T17:39:00.003-04:00

was fun. Say hello to our new mascot, "Naked Boy".

TOUR BROS

2011-05-19T17:51:00.002-04:00

Hey we're going on tour with this band in the summer, check it out:

TOUR DATES

2011-05-18T19:17:00.004-04:00

Hey someone just emailed me some dates and since the last posts comments are already getting super weird, let's just use this as a refresher and hopefully no one can get ill on this particular subject matter:

REST OF EU
Thu-May-19 Antwerp, BE Trix
Fri-May-20 London UK Village Underground
Sat-May-21 Liverpool UK Kazimir

SUNDRIES
Sat-Jun-04 Houston, TX Free Press Summer Fest
Sun-Jun-05 Austin, TX Chaos in Tejas
Tue-Jun-07 Toronto, ON Joe Cornelissie Fest
Thu-Jun-16 Toronto, ON NXNE / Yonge-Dundas Square 8pm
Thu-Jun-16 Toronto, ON NXNE / Wrongbar (late show)

US EAST COAST TOUR
Thu-Jun-23 New York, NY Terminal 5 w/ Dinosaur JR
Fri-Jun-24 Boston, MA Royale w/ Jeff the Brotherhood, Ice Age
Sun-Jun-26 Philadelphia, PA First Unitarian Church w/ Jeff the B
Mon-Jun-27 Washington, DC Rock and Roll Hotel w/ Jeff the bRo
Tue-Jun-28 Raleigh, NC Kings Barcade w/ Jeef the BEff
Wed-Jun-29 Atlanta, GA The Earl w/ Fred the Broterh
Thu-Jun-30 Nashville, TN Exit / In w/ Jack Daniels
Fri-Jul-01 St. Louis, MO Firebird w/ Jeffy from Family Circus
Sat-Jul-02 Chicago, IL Lincoln Hall w/ Jeff the Bros
Sun-Jul-03 London, ON Call the Office
Sun-Jul-31 Montreal, QC Osheaga Festival

US WEST COAST TOUR
tba

EUROPE IN AUGUST
If we promised you on stage that we were coming back in August because the show was "a fun ass show", we will be back. Everyone else, keep yr fingers crossed.

SECRET SHOW IN TORONTO WHEN WE GET BACK
Kind of

LAS VEGAS
no

TAKING A BUNCH OF THE SUMMER OFF
yes

SPAIN
hopefully

HOLLAND, GERMANY, BELGIUM
what do you think

LONDON
10 times

NEW YORK
20 times

AFRICA
Maybe next time bros

"Album Trailer"

2011-05-16T20:23:00.003-04:00

Hey so here is a video that maybe explains a bit more of our motivations in a clear and non-judgmental way. We really are mostly all being completely serious during this, it's kind of like a kayfabe moment (or whatever) seeing as how the musical thing is mostly legit, but it's the entire band identity up to this point has been the actual thing that's needed clarification. But that will be for another time.

If you have more questions about the album after watching this I don't know what to tell you.

Also as some of you guessed, we're doing some Toronto things upcoming:

June 7 12.01am a special release blockbuster sales event

June 16 @ Yonge and Dundas Square we are playing with The Descendants, OFF, Rusty and Metz. It's free and starts at 6. We play at 8. That night we're doing a club show also (not free)

HI HOLLAND

2011-05-14T05:27:00.002-04:00

BEGN

2011-05-10T13:55:00.002-04:00

Hey sorry everyone I know it's annoying - this WILL be the final BEGN post. If you got it, you will have received the first side of the LP today - these songs:
LET HER REST
QUEEN OF HEARTS
UNDER MY NOSE
THE OTHER SHOE
TURN THE SEASON

It's one of the strongest sides. Sides 2, 3 and 4 are gonna be delivered throughout this week and by the weekend you will have our entire new record, about a month before it gets released to the punters. If you haven't yet and still want to grab this DELUX package of the record, please swing by the MATABLOG right HERE and click through like 9 more links and then get the record. I think it's like your last chance or whatever.

Also the David Comes to Life website keeps getting updated, it's got a ton more lyrics up there too. We've been playing The Other Shoe and Turn The Season live, so if you are in Europe and have access to the internet and a printer, you'll be able to print those lyrics and sing along to them live at our shows, because that's where we are going in a few days.

Ok so I think wednesday you get side two - my favourite side.

MIXTAPE 4

2011-05-08T08:19:00.008-04:00

Hey everyone, mixtape 4 is now in our offices. You can order one for yourself on the webstore right HERE. We're on the road right now so if you order it now it won't get processed (we gave our interns 2 weeks off) or shipped until we get back. But rest assured when we're back it will get out there really fast because Josh quit school just to work on the webstore, and he was in the middle of a masters degree in advanced maths. Anyways, the new mix tape is chill. Here is what's on it:

SIDE A

1) “Son the Father” Intro
Performed live at the Opera House Toronto, Feb 26 2010

2) “The Other Shoe”
From the David Comes to Life album

3) Jennifer Castle “Powers”
From the album Castlemusic

4) Animal Man “Do You Feed?”
From the David’s Town album

5) Mad Men “Wax World”
From some random Mad Men demo

6) “B”
From various bits of the FU discography

7) “The Lurking Fear”
Live at CIUT radio, Toronto, sometime in 2001

8) “Heir Apparent”
From the Couple Tracks 7” single

9) “Maxwell’s Banter”
Performed live at Maxwell’s, Hoboken NY, Feb 18 2010

10) “Ballad Of Hammerhead”
From the forthcoming Best Show on WFMU DVD

11) Ben Rayner and the Pricks “Slovakian Pete”
From the Butlins Sessions

SIDE B

1) “Here Lies Are”
From the split 12” with Serena Maneesh

2) “Truth I Know” snippet
From the David Comes to Life album

3) Interview Banter
Taken from Vish Khanna’s hilarious CBC Radio 3 internet show

4) Young Governor “I Heart Summer”
From the Summer Girl 7”

5) “Year of the Tiger” snippet
From the Year of the Tiger 12” single

6) “What Would you Do (For Veronica)?”
From the Do All Words Can Do 7” single

7) “Son the Father”
Taken from the 2009 Polaris awards Gala

8) “Two Snakes”
Performed live at the Opera House, Toronto, Feb 26 2010

9) Gerry and the Pacemakers “You’ll Never Walk Alone”
From the You’ll Never Walk Alone 45rpm single

While you are there, why not buy some buttons? We've got like a million.

Speaking of - you are running out of time to order the advanced David Comes to Life package - I think BEGN ends on Monday or Tuesday. Might want to get on that right HERE. There's 5 or 6 different ways to pre-order now. For those of you that already got BEGN, you'll start getting the record delivered to you on Tuesday, hope you like it.

As an added bonus to all this buy-talk, here is some stuff for free (not the new cut copy LP)

MIXTAPE 3 SIDE A

MIXTAPE 3 SIDE B

MIXTAPE 2 SIDE A

MIXTAPE 2 SIDE B

QUEEN o HEARTS

2011-05-04T09:23:00.007-04:00

Hey dudes here is the last mp3 we're gonna throw out to try and entice you to get into the new record. This is the first song on the album (minus the intro) and features Maddy from the band Cults. She'll be playing the role of Veronica Boisson for tonight. You may notice from the lyrics posted a while ago on davidcomestolife.com that this song describes a happy place - David and Veronica meet and fall in love before things start to go pear shaped. What about the music, you ask? Well we wrote most of this song in 2004 or 2005 and made up the chorus and the bridge over the summer. That intro riff has been rattling around inside my head since we released Dance of Death. There's a few other tracks in this collection that are as old, kind of crazy. We were listening to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins at the time, so maybe you can hear a bit of a resemblance.

FUCKED UP - "Queen of Hearts"

Anyhow, there you go, hope you like it -that's all we have for you until you either buy the record in advance or wait like a shmuck until June 7th. Don't forget - I know we've been over this, but it's important - you can still "BUY EARLY GET NOW" until halfway into May I think - you get the 5 bonus tracks right away, you get to hear the full album starting on May 10th, and then in June you get sent the album in hardcopy as well as 4 7" singles, a poster, the Davids Town LP on mp3, whatever, all this stuff. It's like $35 - you don't have $35? To get that into your life go HERE or HERE or HERE, among other places.

We're also doing some shows coming up. In fact I leave later this evening. All the UK shows on this list are with ICE AGE from Denmark.

7th – Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff – UK (tickets) *MATINEE SHOW
7th – The Croft, Bristol – UK
8th – Institue, Birmingham – UK
9th – The Well, Leeds – UK
10th – Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh – UK (tickets)
11th – The Cluny, Newcastle – UK (tickets)
12th – Future Sonic – Sound Control, Manchester – UK
13th – Vera, Gronigen – Netherlands (tickets)
14th – 013 Small Hall, Tilburg – Netherlands
15th – Melkweg, Amsterdam – Netherlands (tickets)
16th – Festaal Kreuzberg, Berlin – Germany (tickets)
17th – Underground, Cologne – Germany (tickets)
18th – Batofar, Paris – France
19th – Trix, Antwerp – Belgium (tickets)
20th – Stag and Dagger @ Village Underground, London – UK (tickets)
21st – Liverpool Sound City @ Kazimir, Liverpool – UK (tickets)

And for America:

Sat-Jun-4 Houston, TX – Free Press Summer Fest
Sun-Jun-5 Austin, TX – Mohawk – Chaos in Tejas
Thu-Jun-23 New York, NY – Terminal 5 *
Fri-Jun-24 Boston, MA – Royale †
Sun-Jun-26 Philadelphia, PA – First Unitarian Church †
Mon-Jun-27 Washington, DC – Rock and Roll Hotel †
Tue-Jun-28 Raleigh, NC – Kings Barcade †
Wed-Jun-29 Atlanta, GA – The Earl †
Thu-Jun-30 Nashville, TN – Exit / In †
Fri-Jul-1 St. Louis, MO – Firebird †
Sat-Jul-2 Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall †
Sun-Jul-3 London, ON – Call the Office
Sun-Jul-31 Montreal, QC – Osheaga Festival

All the ones with crosses are with JEFF the BROTHERHOOD. We're also playing a special TORONTO show in June but more on that later. Also we're doing a funny album release event in Toronto the day of release.

Cool?

BEGN

2011-05-02T18:35:00.002-04:00

Hey here's a good idea - if the matador stuff was confusing, there's gonna be a lot of other places to pre-order the special version of the DCTL album. Here is one from insound - they have a deal too where the whole package also comes with a tshirt. You can also pre-order the regular versions of the LP and CD there too. Also if you live in a big city you can always just do this at yr local record store. Anyhow the link to grab this on insound is right HERE. The record is good - trust me, I'm a genius.

SHOP ASSISTANTS

2011-05-02T10:14:00.001-04:00

Still one of the best bands. I think we may have some cover 7"s left over that might end up on the webstore over the summer.

SHIP OF FOOLS

2011-04-26T14:54:00.003-04:00

Hey here is track THREE from the new album. Those of you that ordered BEGN (which you can do RIGHT NOW) should have got an additional 5 songs today.

Fucked Up - Ship of Fools by Consequence of Sound

SHIP OF FOOLS
In the guts of a ship in the middle of the sea
Stands a ring for the rivals for everyone to see
They spar around the center of their own duality

The audience is full and pressed against the ropes
Chanting for the blood of the loser of the bout
The fighters are their fears and symbolize their hope
They want to escape but there is no way out

The speaker and the spoke, the axle and the wheel
The teller and the tale, the flower and the bee
The sword and the steel the beast and the yoke
The fish and the sea, the prisoner and the jail

Like God asking Abraham to kill his only son
He cries out for help, he stares at the sun
He never gets an answer when the day finally comes

When David fought Goliath he wasn't bound to lines
Now he'll never hit his mark, his opponent makes the rules
He's a servant to the story and a galleries confines
Drifting on a sea of words, trapped on a ship of fools

The speaker and the spoke, the axle and the wheel
The teller and the tale, the flower and the bee
The sword and the steel the beast and the yoke
The fish and the sea, the prisoner and the jail

You clamor for an outcome, a candid denouement
The hunger for a resolution manifests the end
It concludes with an ovation, clap the blood off of your hands

He knows he couldn't help her when she needed him the most
What he gave her won't undo the one thing that he took
He was the vine around a flower, love in a fatal dose
So his story won't endure - the losers never write the books

The speaker and the spoke, the axle and the wheel
The teller and the tale, the flower and the bee
The sword and the steel the beast and the yoke
The fish and the sea, the prisoner and the jail
The fire and the smoke the starved and the meal
The head and the tail the nut from the tree
The wax and the seal the dagger and the cloak
The loss and the grief the hammer and the nail

BUYING OUR RECORDS

2011-04-22T17:07:00.005-04:00

Hey, here's a few notes about some swag that is out there and will be out there soon for you to swipe up. Firstly, this site called "HD Tracks" has Chemcom up for a sale until next week. You can go right HERE to buy it, until April 26. I haven't been to the page, so don't blame me if a sale on HD TRACKS means it still costs like $50 or something. I'm sure it doesn't though? Also you have to put in a code when you check out - the code is "HDTfuckedup", ok?

Hey, so speaking of April 26th, that's when something called "BUY EARLY GET (it) NOW" (BEGN [Trademark Matador Records {I am not kidding}]) begins, which is this really confusing (just kidding) way to order an elaborate version of our upcoming record, "DAVID COMES TO LIFE" (DCTL). With this post I'm going to try and break it all down for everyone nice and tidy.

So there are a few ways you can do this. The first and easiest way is to just go on piratebay.org and download the whole thing for free. But let's not really talk about that option again, ok?

The second easiest way is to just wait until June 7 and buy it on iTunes. You just open the thing up and click a few buttons and you get it or whatever. I don't know - I'm a working professional musician - you think I've ever paid for music on the internet before?

Next, you can go to store and buy it. Not like Walmart or Sears, but like kind of cool "record stores" that sell records. I personally would buy the LP, but if you are on your bike or something and don't want to carry a huge bag, maybe just grab the CD and put it in your clutch or pocket.

Now this is where it starts getting a bit serious-business. You can also mail order the thing on the internet, specifically from Matador, or other sites. You can just order the straight up CD or LP, no frills, no questions asked.

OK no let's all just digest that for a second. Lot's of options. Here is obviously the best one:

On April 26 go to this website HERE. This is where you can pre-order the deluxe version of DCTL. It costs like $35 or something, which is kind of a steal. Here is what you get:

-David Comes to Life 2xLP or CD
-5 non-album tracks on MP3 format (more about these in a minute)
-stream/download of the whole album over May 10-13 (one side per day), ie a month before it comes out
-A poster
-MP3s of the "Davids Town" LP
-4 exclusive 7" singles

pretty good right?
Here is the timeline:

April 26 is when you can pre-order the BEGN package. I don't know when pre-orders start for the regular version. I think as soon as you register for the package, you get sent 5 non-album songs. May 10 - you start getting the album digitally. On June 7 (or just around then) you get the actually physical copy of the record. Just after June 28th(ish) is when you get the 4 7" singles. Ok cool?

You can either register to pick up these packages at your closest participating record store, or Matador will just mail them to you directly.

Here is the deal with the 7"'s:

As you know, when we started this whole DCTL thing we wrote a bunch of songs. We'd earmarked maybe 23 or 24 songs for the album before we know how long it was gonna be. A few of these 7" tracks would have made it onto the album if they'd fit. But in terms of content, these songs exist also to flesh out the characters and the setting for the story. Each character in the thing has their own song, and a side of a 7" devoted to them. The lyrics tell a bit more about their motives and why they do what they do in the story. Here is an example of the first 7":

That's two 7"'s (four characters). A 3rd one explains a bit about the town it all takes place in ("Byrdesdale Garden City") and the bside is about the factory where some of the characters work at ("Into the Light"). You get a 4th 7" that acts as an epilogue of sorts and tries to explain a bit about what happens at the end, but I'm not gonna talk about that right now!

Just fill up the comment zone if you have awesome gripes or legit questions, THANKS.

POSTERS

2011-04-22T15:33:00.004-04:00

DAVIDS TOWN`

2011-04-16T23:50:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone, you may have tried to buy or bought our LP for Ebay Day, Davids Town. Since lots of creeps went out to buy this specifically to flip it on ebay as soon as they got home and make up random pressing amounts to put in the listing title, here are some facts:

-THERE ARE 2000 COPIES OF DAVIDS TOWN.
-IF YOU BUY IT ON EBAY NOW INSTEAD OF WAITING 2 WEEKS FOR THE PRICE TO GO DOWN YOU ARE DUMB
-THE PRICE WILL GO DOWN ON EBAY IN TWO WEEKS JUST LIKE LAST YEAR

If you just want to hear the music, just search on google for the torrent or download link, it's out there already.

A LITTLE DEATH

2011-04-15T22:35:00.003-04:00

Hey so we have a new song to release. I haven't been on the internet in a minute cause I had to catch a flight out here at 6am and then we drove around the desert looking for people to give us free stuff. So this is a little bit of catch up. The next single for DCTL is "A Little Death" and it goes like THIS. You can tell the subject matter is gonna be bummer vibes because of how the lightbulb is shot out and dark. (sorry, I'm really tired).

It was one of the first songs we wrote for the album, and the first one we started playing live.

We're gonna be playing this song and some other new ones at the ACE tonight in Palm Springs if thats where yr at. Otherwise we're at the ECHO in LA TOMMOROW (sat the 16th) - the show is all ages and $5.

A few of us will be at FINGERPRINTS vinyl during the day and AMOEBA later on, for Record Store Day festivities. There are a bunch of copies (2000) of Davids Town, so hopefully you kop that, it's a pretty cool record.

Ok I'm out, next time there will be more pictures and funny stuff, ect.

Mixape Four

2011-04-13T01:23:00.002-04:00

Hey we are back in action after a long while of resting on our laurels. Since the summer we've written and recorded about 300 minutes of new music. That means it's time for a new mixtape. Mixtape 4 will be ready for pre-order in a few weeks - you will be able to get it exclusively from us on tour and from the webstore. In the mean time here is a minimix, FU mixtape 3.9.

Download it right HERE.

St Catherines

2011-04-11T16:26:00.002-04:00

Hey thanks to everyone who came to the Images closing gala that we played on Sunday. It was pretty fun and we're all glad to have gotten through it because writing all that music in three weeks was pretty hard, esp cause we were mostly jetlagged for half of those three weeks. The good news however is that as a result of the Zanzibar score, we'll be scoring the classic film "Spaceballs" live at next years Toronto International Film Festival, so mark yr calenders and keep firing, assholes.

In a few weeks we're gonna be playing a show in St Catherines Ontario. I didn't even really know this until now, but it looks like it's part of a cool festival aimed at younger people called "In the Soil", which is good for us, because as you know, Fucked Up is for everyone (except nerds). All the opening bands are made up of young kids, most of whom are still in highschool, which is great, and we are really excited for the opportunity. Here are the details:

FRIDAY APRIL 29
Robertson Hall - 85 Church Street, St Catherines
7pm, $10, All Ages
FUCKED UP
THE AUTUMN CRUSH
CHECK LESTER
TYGANDA

A Video Of The Worst Thing Ever

2011-04-07T00:34:00.001-04:00

(that josh likes)

ACE

2011-04-04T14:57:00.003-04:00

Hey there is an RSVP thinger right HERE for our April 15 show at the Ace Hotel, if you are already going to coachella or are planning to drive to Las Vegas from LA Hunter Thompson style and need a stop over in palm springs. All I'm trying to say is, why on earth would you be in Palm Springs unless you already know about this link? It's a Schrodingers Cat type scenario. The show is free though, if that's something that might offset the cost of flying to Palm Springs from wherever you are? Plus it's open to the general public.

Also we're gonna play in New York with Dinosaur (Jr) in June (23rd) at Terminal 5 (five). This show is also open to the general public, but it's not free, so if you live in somewhere like say Palm Springs, you should maybe re-consider coming. DJR will be playing their album "BUG" in it's entirety. We will be playing our mp3 "The Other Shoe" in full. I believe Dino Jr will be playing in Brooklyn the next day, and they will be playing their record "BEDBUG" in full (HAHA).

Images April 9

2011-04-03T14:35:00.003-04:00

Hey don't forget next week we're playing the images closing gala event, doing a live score for the film "West of Zanzibar".

Dust to Dust - that's like us, right? Anyhow it should be cool. It's at a movie theater so if it gets boring you will be able to sit and relax and eat popcorn or whatever, but don't use yr cell phone, that's against the rules. NO INTERMISSION (it's only 65 minutes long tho).

Get your tickets HERE. They are $12 advance.

Thanks for everyone who came to the Horseshoe on friday, and thanks to Titus for letting us jump on, it was really fun, but a bit too hot.

Hey did you know that if you play these all at the same time it forms another song?

It only works if you start them at the exact same time, so I hope you have 3 cursors (or three friends).

Here are some random reminder links:

David Comes to Life Twitter
World of Damian Twitter
Jonah healthy lifestyle
Fucked Up Webstore
David Comes to Life

SHOW

2011-04-01T02:54:00.003-04:00

Hey, we are playing a show today, all new songs.
APRIL 1
Horseshoe Tavern Toronto
11pm
TITUS ANDRONICUS
FUCKED UP

That's the end of the post.

Webstore

2011-03-31T17:45:00.003-04:00

Hey as some of you (Joe Cornlisse) maybe have noticed, we just opened a webstore. We love doing merch at shows so much, that we spent all summer thinking of ways that we could do merch while we're at home resting from tour, so we decided to rent space in a strip mall, the location of which you will never find (unless you order something from us and read the return address) and cram the hundreds of boxes of rare 7"'s and 12"'s that were just collecting dust at our practice space, and sell them. We have a whole raft of singles and stuff, basically whatever is in print, as well as albums, lots of different kinds of shirts, and lots of stuff you can only get from us. We are also gonna be premiering a lot of stuff on the site too (ie mixtape 4 in a few weeks) so keep your typing fingers peeled (gross). Here is the address:

http://fuckedup.bigcartel.com/
http://fuckedup.bigcartel.com/
http://fuckedup.bigcartel.com/
http://fuckedup.bigcartel.com/
http://fuckedup.bigcartel.com/
http://fuckedup.bigcartel.com/
http://fuckedup.bigcartel.com/

Bookmark it people. Also the address will always be on the sidebar of this blog right over there.

Remember this?

2011-03-31T10:33:00.002-04:00

Maybe our best stunt ever - last year on the back of our wildly succesful post-sxsw essay, we invented a company for April Fools and said they were suing us for something that had transpired during the festival. We had actually just attempted to sue Rolling Stone and Camel (not kidding) so we had all these legit court documents lying around, so we doctored them up a bit to make it look like Thiller Energy was suing us, and ended up pranking thousands of people, got on the TV news, etc. You can see the fallout HERE. The website we made for Thriller is still right HERE. (we bought the domain for another 2 years so if anyone wants to start a company with us that sells energy powder you rub into your eyeballs, get in touch). The original post is HERE. The best part about it is that we set up a fake email account for the company (thrillpill@thrillerenergy.com) and actually got a few emails from people requesting cases of the drink for parties and events and stuff. Amazing. Anyways, happy March 31!

HI

2011-03-30T00:07:00.007-04:00

Hey everyone, I hope you have had a nice few days since we spoke. It was great to see everyone being cool on the comments section after a long while of total weirdness. Not that we don't like the weirdness, mostly we just aren't into the hate. Which I guess is cool too, I know everyone has to have places to let certain feelings out, and so if that's the service we can provide you guys all with after 10 years of playing genre-defying, award winning, "fan-alienating" (and also Arcade Fire tour with-ing) music, then so be it, who are we to judge? If thinking of blunt or creative ways to tell us we suck is what gets you through the day, then we support you - maybe we'll even start printing nofx-style "we suck" tshirts to sell at our shows? That way, you can still think that we suck, but at least we'll get paid (more) for sucking. Plus we will still know that we rule, because our parents tell us so (today, even). But yeah, I'm glad everyone is feeling chipper. In fact the only weird thing that happened lately is Joe Cornilesse calling me "M" all the time for some reason - I'm guessing it's either a) it's a weird tribute to some French-Noire "cinema" (that means movies) thing, or b) he's trying to protect the identity of the person who writes this blog (which is not necessary - I'm totally fine with everyone knowing that my name is Melvin Hawerchuk and that my real email address is vibrationandhum@hotmail.com).

ANYWAYS back to the point, lately this blog will be mostly about news because for the next few months we're gonna be a real-time band, which means there will be lots of things to share with the internet. The first thing to share is that in addition to the live concert you know about that's happening on April 9th (and also all the ones you don't know about), we're also going to be playing a concert on April 15th - in Palm Springs. Here is the poster:

As you know, we played Coachella two years ago, so it's a bit too soon for us to play the festival proper again, but we figured it would be fun to hang out in the desert and get to stay at the Ace Hotel for free because they give you huge bags of pistachios and also the rooms kind of look like indoor jungle gyms. Also it is a huge party zone. Just before you ask - this show is FREE and anyone can go (you have to be in Palm Springs to attend - not New York or Portland). It starts at midnight, so if you are going to the festival, you can come to this because that ends at 10pm (not all 50,000 people can come to this show, the hotel is too small). We're gonna release our next track from the LP at this show, called "A Little Death". Now let me be candid with you - it's just an mp3 release, so it's not like you will get to take anything home with you at the show. In fact unless you have a really good data-plan, it might even be better that you stay home on the 16th if you want to make sure you get the track - since who knows what the wireless situation will be like at the Ace - unless we figure out how to give away hard-copy mp3s between now and the 16th. Then the record industry would REALLY be fucked.

Anyhow, another exciting thing that's happening is we're doing another Record Store Day record. Last year if you remember, we co-ordinated it so we released a 7" with 10 different covers, all featuring a different record store on the cover. Probably entirely because of that, record stores managed to survive another year, so there's gonna be another Record Store Day this year. So we decided instead of recording any new music, why don't we just release this compilation album from 1977 we'd been sitting on since from before we were all born? We found like 750 copies of this great comp so we're gonna just use that. Here is one of the songs:

Animal Man - Do You Feed?

Oh I almost forgot, we made a video for our new single! Check it out below:

OK well that's some new info. We'll have more cool stuff to announce on THURSDAY. In the meantime, why not download our new record for free HERE?

David Comes To Life

2011-03-25T00:59:00.006-04:00

NEW SONG: The Other Shoe

Hey right, so we have a new record coming out June 7th and are really excited about it. It's really long and themed, so if you are really cool you might immediately hate the thought of it, but if you are kind of chill and patient you can probably hang and finish reading the rest of this post, and then wait 2 and a half months doing whatever else you do with your life, and then buy the record. Or you could just download the whole thing right now HERE.

Anyways, the new record. If you've been paying attention to our band for the last few years, you probably are aware that we've been joking/threatening the fact that we were working on a musical/rock opera/themed album/play/whatever. We came up with the idea right after Hidden World came out, which featured a song called, wait for it - "David Comes to Life" (C/O JADE TREE RECORDS). That song was written in about 10 minutes I think at a practice in between 2 recording session for Hidden World, and almost didn't make it onto the record because some of us thought it was too simple sounding. Little did they know that 5 years later, they'd have to be still playing it every show after it became such a "hit". These are the things that punk rock "legends" are made "of". Another true fact about that song was that originally it was going to be called "Ian Comes To Life" and was going to be about our old friend Ian Dickson, who was doing about 5 shows for us a month in New York at the time (the other song that almost didn't make it onto Hidden World was "Manqueller Man", which we haven't played in about two years).

So we decided while we were writing the song (right at the practice space we were renting for $10 an hour) that making it about Ian was kind of weird and awkward, so we invented this character named "David" because that's a pretty generic name but also has a lot of cool connotations (only from the Bible) but mostly because it was not the name "Ian". Also co-incidentally, we'd just met our friend David Eliade (who made us call the song David as a tribute to him). Anyhow, after Hidden World we realized we were out of ideas for full length albums, because we had gotten used to the easy-going pace of putting out 23435494 7" singles a year that we'd been doing for the previous 5 years. We decide the only thing more ridiculous than putting out a 73 minute punk record, was to just say fuck it and do a musical. We honestly came up with this idea in like 2006 and have been meaning to do it since then. Some of the riffs on this new record are from BEFORE that (I can remember practicing with Jonah in the basement of the house I lived in 3 houses ago, and right before we went to Japan for the first time with his other band Career Suicide and writing the riff from the new song "The Truest Road" [sorry, this part won't make a whole lot of sense because you won't be able to hear this song for a while yet] at the same time as we were writing the riff for the song that we eventually gave to the Revelation Records comp we were on back then). Also all the christmas time charity 7" single songs were intended for this record ("Davids Christmas" and "Davids Plan") but we decided to nix them because they aren't really that good (they are both amazing) and because we got on a real roll writing songs for this thing.

So I shit you not, this is the record we started thinking about for our 2nd album. We basically just wrote ChemCom by accident because we weren't ready to deal with David Comes to Life yet. I know that people are into ChemCom and stuff and it one like an award or whatever, but honestly it was like an accident that we even did that record, we just sort of started practicing for David and Chemcom happened instead, without us really meaning to make it. It was like if for your whole life (since 2006) you've been in love with this one girl and try to impress her at school or whatever, your job (what do you people do who read this, anyway?) and like put all your creative energies into this one girl, and then by accident somehow at a party you are making out with her lamer older sister who plays the flute and is REALLY into science (and then later you win an award for it, or whatever, no big deal) and your friends are all kind of like "wtf" and you secretly are too, but you just go with it and pretend like that's what you meant to do all along.

We started writing for it in the early summer of 2010, right after we got home from a short tour through the badlands and then the prairies of Canada ("The Other Badlands"). We would all wake up at 9.30am to watch the early World Cup game, have breakfast, watch the 11.00am World Cup game, go on the internet for 2 hours, watch the 2.30pm World Cup game (sometimes together) and then finally at 5.30pm, start practicing. We did that like 5 days a week for the entire summer when we weren't touring again and wrote about 40 songs. After we got back from Miami in September 2010, me and Jonah got dropped off in New York and recorded bed tracks for 27 of those songs in like 5 days (that's 2 seperate drum takes for most of the songs, done in 3 days) and then spent the next four months bouncing between studios in New York and Toronto, and going on tour until 3 days ago we finally had an approved master (the 4th attempt) and are here right now announcing the record.

There are a lot of different things that are going to be happening over the next few months - lot's of little 7"'s and special shows and things to pay attention to. I will talk about them all, but another place you can check out is this website davidcomestolife.com that will have some cool stuff on it.

Anyways, LATER.

IMAGES

2011-03-23T10:16:00.002-04:00

Hey frans, we're gonna be playing a special show for the Images Festival in a few weeks, which is weird for us a bit. It's scoring this movie from 1928 about a magician who goes to Zanzibar to rescue his gf from the natives or something. It's very confusing. It's going to be like when Arcade Fire scored The Box but less good. No, we won't be playing any songs from our new record (which features 4 NOFX covers by the way). Invite yourself on FB HERE.

(ps - big news on FRIDAYYYYYYYY)

EUROPA

2011-03-20T14:54:00.005-04:00

Hi guys, we are gearing up to be a touring band again after a long hiatus of two weeks since we got back from Australia. We have a new record coming out that you will all make fun of every tiny aspect of, so we're gonna take the show on the road so you can not make fun of us to our faces. Actually, the record is amazing and honestly is like if Hidden World was more fully formed and didn't have as much weird awkward stuff as it does, and all the songs were of normal length and the whole thing was about a love story, instead of who knows what Hidden World was even about. Snakes. Anyways I'm mostly making the comparison because the new one is also very long and contains 5 songs previously released on Hidden World, but whatever, you will hear it soon enough. We've even started playing some new songs live, I think I mentioned that a few weeks ago. We will have some US dates to announce in a bit, but let's get started with this warm-up UK/EU tour, almost our favourite place to go.

FRI MAY 6 Plymouth UK @ White Rabbit TICKETS
SAT MAY 7 Cardiff UK @ Clwb Ifor Bach TICKETS
SAT MAY 7 Bristol UK @ Croft
SUN MAY 8 Birmingham UK @ Institute
MON MAY 9 Leeds UK @ The Well TICKETS
TUE MAY 10 Edinburgh SCT @ Caberet Voltaire TICKETS
WED MAY 11 Newcastle UK @ The Cluny TICKETS
THUR MAY 12 Manchester @ Futuresonic Festival UK TICKETS
FRI MAY 13 Gronigen @ Vera NL TICKETS
SAT MAY 14 Tilburg NL @ 013 Small Hall TICKETS
SUN MAY 15 Amsterdam NL @ Melkweg TICKETS
MON MAY 16 Berlin DE @ Festaal Kreuzberg TICKETS
TUE MAY 17 Cologne DE @ Underground TICKETS
WED MAY 18 Paris FR @ Batofar TICKETS
THUR MAY 19 Belgium @ Trix
FRI MAY 20 London @ Stag and Dagger Festival UK TICKETS
SAT MAY 21 Liverpool UK @ Liverpool Sound City TICKETS

FUCK YOU

2011-03-18T00:20:00.002-04:00

DAVID

2011-03-12T21:58:00.002-05:00

Heyo

2011-03-05T02:55:00.001-05:00

Hey wally's, sorry for the lack of up dates lately, we're in Australia and the internet here costs $15 an hour (I am not kidding) - it's like it just got invented here or they are all holding on to bandwith for when it becomes as valuable as crude or something. Either that or they all fell for the rumours about peak-internet that were going around a few months ago. Either that or most of the countries internet supply was wiped away during the flodding. Please, take my wife.

Either way, these draconian pricing schemes have kept us off our laptops (except Jonah) and have forced us to eat heaping bowls full of spicy sichuan food, thai food, Australia pies, an entire bag of greengage plums for breakfast, alligator and kangaroo meat, cuttlefish, $2.50 cadbury bars, weird slurpees, and made us spend our afternoons lounging on their many ok beaches. We thought they were great, but then when you ask someone who is from here what the beaches are like, all the ones you've ever heard of are complete shit and you shouldn't waste your time, and the only ones they'd ever consider going to are miles away from anywhere and you can't get to them. Nice try though.

Anyhow we'll be back in a few days and will have a whole raft load of new information then. GDAY MATES.

AUSTIN

2011-02-22T13:17:00.001-05:00

See you there dudes.

NY

2011-02-10T18:15:00.004-05:00

Hey we are playing in NY tommorow - at NYU. We think it will be really fun. Lightning Bolt was originally going to play but they aren't anymore. Bummer. I think we play at 10pm - it's $5 if you are a student there, and $7 if you are just a regular person, which is still pretty cheap. We are going to be playing a few songs from our new record, so if you come to this you will be the first to hear them, other than the thousands of Germans and French people and Spanish people who had to sit through us while they waited for the Arcade Fire to come on.

Here is a video of the last time (I think) we played in NY - last summer at the North Side Festival. That was a fun show but was weird because it was set up inside a cement baseball diamond, and then it started raining. Plus we played Triumph of Life (jk). You should have seen the catering though.

Show Me.//Fucked Up from Show Me on Vimeo.

*The password should be gone soon* (no, that is not the password)

Anyhow, here are the infos:

FRIDAY FEB 11
8pm doors (?) $5/$7
NYU Kimmel Center (E&L Auditorium, 4th floor)
60 Washington Sq South
NY, NY 10012

FUCKED UP
some other bands

Looking For Gold

HI

2012

Feist

Toronto Today

DCTL LIVE

ECT

Happy Holidays

BENEFIT UPDATE

Year of the Tiger

December

CONGRATS JONAH

WHAT PLAYING IN A STADIUM IS LIKE

BRISBANE

TORONTO SHOWS

FEBRUARY 7

TORONTO

AUSTRALIA

NY

New York Next Week

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCe

BS (S)

MERRY CHRISTMAS

STORY TIME

TWO LESS ANNOYING POSTERS

HALLOWEEN

HALIFAX

NYC DCTL

TORONTO

CURRY A FAVOUR

TORONTO

A GUY REVIEWED OUR RECORD

MIAMI

AUS and NZ

HI MORE TOUR DATES

EL JONAH INTERVIEW

La entrevista Gibson: Jonah Falco de Fucked Up

I have a blog

SEPT TOUR

THE OTHER SHOE

AIRPORT LOUNGE MIX

FFFFFFFFFFFFFF

___ ____ _____ PopCast

See You There

FULL RIPE DISCUSSION ZONE

BEGN COMPLAINT ZONE

BANCOUVER

FREEdm

WEST

Born This Way To Life: The many headed journey of the Veroni-Gaga

BEGN Singles

PHILTH

NEW YORK ON SAT

TOMMOROW

QUEEN OF HEARTS

TO

NXNE

VISH Part 2

Imants

Cool FADER thing

GALLERY

WEBCAM

TONIGHT

WRATH OF VISH

JUNE 7

"First" Listen

FUn THing

I HAVE A RECORD

A GUY DREW US

SWEARING

LAST NIGHT IN LONDON

TOUR BROS

TOUR DATES

"Album Trailer"

HI HOLLAND

BEGN

MIXTAPE 4

QUEEN o HEARTS

BEGN

SHOP ASSISTANTS

_ ___ PopCast