bloggy foreigner

MOSHI MOSHI

2011-12-07T23:41:00.004Z

JAPAN! does this mean stuff to you?:::::

14th December, Osaka

鰻谷SUNSUI

大阪市中央区東心斎橋 1-12-20 心斎橋シキシマビル B1F, Osaka
Japan

15th December, Tokyo

高円寺HIGH

杉並区高円寺南4-30-1
166-0003 東京都
Japan

it says, awesome party time with Johnny Foreigner and Ringo Deathstarr yes?

We're not leaving tokyo till th 20th, so someone please feel free to come tourguide us. we are broke but easily led. also, christmas shopping.

xxxxxxxx

You vs You vs Everything

2011-11-21T18:04:00.004Z

hello everyones!

so, we're still pretty dazed from last week; those two shows were pretty amazing life highlights and an awesome launch for our record.

we have a plugger now, (hi oli!) so you may have heard our new single on The Radio like real bands, or on some tv football montage like The Enemy.

Lewes has recovered two faded sketches, of the views from the window and ship from our record cover. We've made a lush a3 double sided poster out of them, and that is this seasons format of choice. They're super limited cos frankly, posters are a bitch to post.

You'll also get a downloady of The Actual Music,

here is tracklist:

1) You Vs Everything (radio edit)

2) PS, Not Soon Enough

3) Johnny Foreigner Vs The Hipster Garden Party

4) If I'm the most famous (robot) boy you've fucked, then honey, yr in (robot) trouble

Cos we're clearly being criticised for not releasing enough songs, track 3 is an entire live set. Well, an 18 minute set. and we're drunk. and it really was a garden party. in france. but, y'know, it should silence the naysayers who think we espouse quality over quantity.

Anyway, you can only buy it from the Alcopop store from Friday onwards, and Banquet Records in Kingston. New Slang, it has been far too long since we played, so, as a little mini celebration, we're playing you on the 8th December. Think of it as a going away party, we can bore you with our tokyo sightseeing plans.

And, seeing as, according to MTV we're the planets no 5 most talked about band [EDIT - is now 3rd and im not looking anymore], we'd like to present some Music Videos like what mtv used to run. its probably best to click thru to youtube to watch them cos of our painfully thin text field.

You Vs Everything, by Moral Hangover, using footage from Johnny Foreigner Vs London

PS, Not Soon Enough, by Ben Rausch, using footage from our European Obliteration tour last summer.

OKcool, Off to france then. Here's our dates again, SI TU EST FRENCHAIS:

Lille, La Peniche, 24th November

Paris, L'International, 25th November (MAIS OUI , LA DRUM-CAGE!)

L'Orient, Cafe Culturel Mapl, 26th November

Brest, Caberet Vauban, 27th November

and lastly, i'd like to give the cape of Awesome Song Titles back to Andy Falkous. sorry, was just seeing how it looked..

xoxoxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

John Foreigner Mixtape Explosion is Number One!

2011-11-10T15:16:00.004Z

our launch shows are going to be so rad. But! have you bought your significant other a ticket, knowing that he/she doesn't necessarily keep up with those funny little bands you like?

fear not, just download these songs and you can be like, babes, i made you a mixtape. the buy set option just goes to the alcopop store (this isn't really an alcopop release, we just can't let you all rinse our dropbox) so you have to dl each song seperately. don't you dare complain cos this is how i had to buy lifter pullers entire back cat, and this whole saving your relationship act of ours is FREE.

or, yknow, you can just dl it yrself and be alone forever, but with an awesome set of songs courtesy of the bands we're playing with this weekend and strong jack pop...

hey, also, before you hear the exclusive brand new unheard song of ours thats tacked on the end and accuse us of playing nice chords on acoustic guitars, you should know it was made entirely by robots.

the official JFvsE launch shows mixtape by alcopop

the scheeming tactical plot to all of this was to act as a last drive for ticket sales. only london is all souled out now. which leaves BIRMINGHAM THIS SUNDAY AT THE FLAPPER WITH STAGECOACH, SCREAMING MALDINI, CALORIES, ACE BUSHY STRIPTEASE AND THE STARRIES REUNION FOR ONLY EIGHT POUNDS JESUS FUCKING CHRIST BIRMINGHAM HOW ARE THERE STILL TICKETS LEFT FOR THIS I THOUGHT YOU GUYS WERE PAST THE CANT BE BOTHERED TO GO TO GIGS STAGE.

k if that wasn't enough mixtape options for you, go here for a free dlable compilation from all of us thanks to Gold Flake Paint, and here to see what i said after WHA?, when Q asked me for a playlist of "bands that were "probably big in japan"

i am so late for practice now you guys.

i! refuse! to die in your arms!

2011-11-09T03:59:00.010Z

yo! It's compliment christmas round here, so thanks for all the lovely words everyone. I STILL havnt got a copy of the record or the book or the shirt, but i hear noones drowned yet so everythings just great.

i wrote a bunch of stuff about our record and like, WHAT IT ALL MEANS, for DrownedInSound here.

the shirts are all sold out now, but you can still get the record with the book here. When it's all gone then we're going to put it online, but IT WON'T BE THE SAME.

anyway:::::::::

there's been some changes to our party shows this coming weekend.

changes of the GOOD+ kind

London This Saturday 5 - 10pm: Instead of Echo Lake, we have My First Tooth, Pandas & People, and cakes made by internet celebrity Julia Christmas and her mum.

Birmingham This Sunday 5 -10.30pm: Richard Burke is bringing a band. Not just any band, tho, THEE birmingham indie rock band. They're called The Starries. i'm pretty sure this reunion won't mean as much to any of you as it does to me and kel, but they're one of our favourite bands ever. we wouldn't exist were it not for these guys.

obviously we're fated never to sell out in birmingham, even if we have Stagecoach, Screaming Maldini, Calories, Ace Bushy Striptease, and The Fucking Starries supporting us, so, TICKETSSS

- those are nice posters, you are thinking. - they should print them up big and sell them exclusively at the shows.

OH OK THEN. first come first served at shows. if we have any left then a) my hypothetical internal dialogue sensor is bust and b) we'll put them on the merch store. Or paper our studio, idk. look out for another launch show present later this week.

early doors cos there's so many bands, early curfews cos of trains and so on and THESE ARE GOING TO BE THE SICKEST SHOWS EVER so come roadtrip.

stay close xlex

Aunty Piracy, epilogue

2011-11-06T02:02:00.002Z

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Defeated The Leak Monster, 500 coin get.

totally proud of you guys. for a short while, we collectively Controlled The Internet. go team...

Aunty Piracy Measures picked up a whole bunch of press and publicity, and i think it half worked because of that. a terrible analogy, but, a burglar in a street and our house has the biggest beware the dog stickers.

We moved the goalposts a little; artrocker offered us a chance to stream the record the week before, and we learnt Japan releases stuff a week ahead, so we figured the best case scenario was too keep quiet about those things till they happened and expect it to be out there by tuesday night. and it took till thursday. WHAT KEPT YOU PIRATES?

anyway. amazing. all our social nodes are literally THRUMMING and people are taking notice and being all like OH WOW and this is a good thing. Couldn't have done it without all of you, and pretty much everyone that wrote to us hit a whole bunch of different internets. Defeated The Leak Monster, 500 coin get.

I did a Little Piece for Clash about it, and now it's become a standard question for interviews and is getting dead boring to explain. So regard that as the truth and anything about hacking into the uternet or using internal dialog sensors as pure whimsy.

Thomas Landis, Euan Lynn, Rob Robano, send us your adresses please, you have Won Stuff.

i thought he was the small one, etc..

2011-11-05T01:58:00.003Z

can you see us?

winner of stingle prize by sheer diversity and size of ant (or dec, idk), Mr Chris Youd, mail us yr address and we'll send you Good Things.

BUT.

there are so many more pictures on les internets. and it'd be unfair to consider them but im not sure whether they're meant as entries or not. you kids today. what does "o alexei you so dank" even mean?

so, the rest of you have another week to send stuff to our email, titled EXACTLY WHY HAVE YOU BEEN LOOKING AT MY PICTURES ANYWAY, and we'll check again in a week and maybe throw out some more THINGS. k? okkk.

searching for the switches

2011-11-03T05:15:00.000Z

vs fucking everything

2011-10-14T11:15:00.002Z

im so tired. ive spent the day on tubes and trains and buses, sittting in the rain outside the wichita offices with shit hair and a deep space 9 tshirt, and we've just finished filming a session for the cool people at moral hangover. by session, i mean, a rehearsal, only with dan dressed up in a skeletor mask throwing giant balloons around and exploding confetti in our faces whilst we played. i think more bands should do this when being filmed. have a dan, i mean.

anyway yeh so im too tired for proper grammar and wittisicmsmsms. here are some things you've been waiting for. but first, i have you all seen this stop motion video made by jacob tomlinson for 200x? cos you should. cos he made it for us for free and its The Greatest.

so yayer, here's the sales pitch:

Johnny Foreigner Vs Everything:

our awesome new record. this is it. the cover we leaked was a lie, the record comes in an inked up card case, and will look like this:

here is what i wrote earlier about it, now you can preorder it and hold it in yr hand and cherish it forever. and you should, cos the first run comes with this:

Vs Everything (the transcript):

20 page full colour transcript. comic book sized. i feel obliged to mention that creating this book has literally ruined lewes, i'm sure we'll find funnier jokes after he's had xrays done next week. um, yeh. vs everything. lyrics, the story of the ship explained, and the most gorgeous and lavish and comprehensive artwork project we've ever done. photos from patricia rentschler and jun and you guys. here's some shrunky pages::

it basically turned from a fancy lyric sheet to another huge time consuming project after we found an awesome comic printing company and noone told us to stop. obvs we can't afford to keep making these with the records, so the CD will come with a 1sheet, and as soon as this run is gone we'll do links to pdfs. Can everyone send good energy vibes to Lewes and his body parts plz.

Vs Everything gloshirt:

alcopop exclusive tshirt! them bits that are pink right, they're not pink, they're GLOW IN THE DARK. If you don't think that makes this our best shirt yet, you obviously Hate Fun.

Launch Shows!

Johnny Foreigner Vs London

Us, Stagecoach, Screaming Maldini, Echo Lake

upstairs at the garage, Saturday 12th November. 14+.

+ more fun tbc! finding all ages venues in london that aren't tiny or massive is stupidly hard. so we went for tiny. this is going to sell out hella fast, so all you underages should steal yr parents cards and book tickets now. tis being filmed, so overages plz dress sexy.

Johnny Foreigner Vs Birmingham

Us, Stagecoach, Screaming Maldini, Calories, Ace Bushy Striptease, Richard Burke

the flapper, Sunday 13th November. 14+

back home, with the best birmingham bands ever.

there's more stuff we're working on for these shows. including dans dad rigging up a sheet filled with more balloons in the ceiling, some exclusive posters and cake. will write more later in the week, but tickets for both are on sale now. book early to avoid bitching later.

obviously the best place to get All This Swag is Alcopop, go there for bundle discounts cos really, you should buy everything. but if you just want to guarantee tickets before they're gone, hit the links for each night. Antipirates, have yr discount and will mail them off today.

packing it, macking, bamboozling and smacking suckers with this track in.

2011-10-03T18:27:00.003Z

its not everyday i write a blog post purely to reply to a tweet about an old song, but it's not everyday an actual bonafide pop star asks us a question. favouritism sure. but that's cos you didn't write the first song i learnt to play on guitar and this lady did. well, not technically i guess, that was some band called crackhead, (thanks youtube) but anyway

dear spinderella..

i guess it starts with this

being played about 500 times a day when our house first got satellite tv and leading me to confuse everyone who asks what the first song i ever learnt to play on guitar was.

(my 14 year old self is hanging over my shoulder saying, tell her it had nothing to do with the Sexy Foam Shots, we both know he is lying)

the song earned its name thru a string of coincidences. we named it when we wrote it; just as a working reference title, with junior in the middle with his tech stuff and me and kelly stood either side him with microphones, we looked sort of like youse did. ( by sort of, i guess i mean more than normal, most of our songs = loud abrasive guitar pop)

its set inside / outside a late night chipshop (idk what that'd translate to. fast food. greasy post nightclub fried junk) that i realised was called salt and pepper, so the name kinda stuck for a bit longer.

we didn't even think it'd end up being on the record. we wanted to make the end all loud and guitary but we were already in preproduction with an albums worth of stuff, it wasn't priority. then we played it for our producer and he was like, hey, why don't you spend a bit of time making the end all loud and guitary...

it was the last song without an official title. we recorded in new jersey and we got to america a day early, so we were forced to spend the night on couches in the studio. We watched some cable documentary about saltnpepa, and you seemed, idk, a bit underappreciated. (blushes)

so the title stayed as a tribute to you (and because "spinderella" is fun to say) and confused a whole bunch of people. now including yrself, so i guess now the coincidence story has come full circle.

flattered you like it tho! idk when we're back next, our last american tour still exists as a black hole in our bank account. but im sure it'll happen and we'll invite you to a show

xalexei

aunty piracy measures

2011-09-14T22:53:00.006Z

yay you guys, it's interactive band time again.

im going to assume you've read this, which was kinda the impetus to try this little experiment yr all invited to.

tldr, this guy [captain leaky] had an advance review copy of our record, and has been sending it to his mates. and one of them wrote to us and i wrote him back explaining how it had nothing to do with the - O I WAS GOING TO BUY IT ANYWAY - and how reliant we are on everyone simultaneously buzzing about it come release week, because thats when the wider world is going to be looking at us.

honestly i feel a twinge of guilt here. we have become the empire. because its YOU, you who reads this blog and champion our cause and get all righteous with us, that wants to hear the record the most/is the most susceptible to leak temptage. and its also YOU that we're relying on to make a big internet hoohaa when it comes out.

i know two months is a massive wait. we've never had a release this ambitious, we've never released over 3 territories (uk, europe, japan) at the same time before, the deluxe album package we're putting together is FUCKING AMAZE and requires more time and effort. Basically, for once, we have our asses organised and have enough time to actually pull this off, and it could so easily be ruined by YOU if yr the kind of person always demands his/her christmas present early.

The nature of what we do means we have to compete with bands and labels with much bigger financial clout than us. and yknow, i'd like to think we do it because we have more committed (and better looking) fans. so, y'know, please dont let us down. this whole thing works as a community, so you can celebrate with all of us in november, or on yr own in a dank and morally grey corner of the internet.

anyway, i'm sure a few of you are as cynical as i am. it's going to happen anyway right? there's no way we can contain all the leaks. it's depressingly true. someone, somewhere, is going to be a bastard.

but! what if we were bastards first? what if we took the power and leaked the record ourselves?

Johnny Foreigner Vs Everything 2011 PROMO

mirror

mirror 2

bam. fuck you pirates.

hey, not really. but sort of. the link above is our album, + 4 distortion patches, 3 echo plug ins, 2 flangers, and a deep swell phaser. it's basically an hour of this: fssssssSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSsssssssssssssSSHHHHHHHHH

i'm sure you've seen a few bands try this before. its a rad idea. but it doesn't really work, cos most aggregator sites, filestube, rapidsearch, etc search through blogs and forums, not the filehosting pages themselves.

can you see where this is going? you are a weapon. we can aim you.

we'd like you to download that link, then reupload it somewhere and post a link in a forum or on yr blog. feel free to add in some kind of "this is totally messed up and i'm doing it cos i believe in the power of punk rock" disclaimer text.

if we can flood the search engines with a bunch of fake copies then it'll make it way harder to get the real thing when it eventually leaks.

this is maybe a minute of clicking and 5 minutes waiting, then another minute of clickage on your part. here's a list of sites that host stuff for free, where you dont have to sign up or register. thanks, piracy, for being such a big part of the internet that we have these minimum security fast websites.

feel free to change the filename to make it more confusingly realistic;

-add words like "ADVANCE" and "review copy" and "FULL RELEASE" etcy.

-a lot of pirate groups have a dumb selfserving tag or team name they attach too. feel free to invent yr own.

then, when yr done, get the link and put it in whatever forums you use, or on yr blog, or yr god damn tumblr, or on 4chan..

anyway, prize element: everyone who takes part, and sends us proof will get a code from jack for 50p off the preorder when we annouce it. I know it's not a whole lot, but we hope you'll take part cos you realise how much this means to us, as opposed to the financial reward. consider it yet another token of appreciation from our responsible adults.

whoever deals the most damage will recieve, from us, the original recovered-from-the-sea-bed 1920s playbill that forms the basis of the book that accompanies the special edition album release.

i know you dont know what i'm talking about but i've already said too much too soon. if it gets to a heated competition then we'll throw in some other original bits of artworks too. send linky or screencappy proof to johnnyforeigner@hotmail.co.uk

and title the message Me Vs Pirates

i don't think any bands ever tried this before. im not sure most bands have the kind of fans that would even care, but we're not most bandsso y'know, consider yrselves punk pioneers, and go do us proud.

thank you

xlex

anti piracy measures. (prologue)

2011-09-14T19:35:00.003Z

hiyar.

so later i'm going to give details of how We Need You in The Fight Against Pirates. but first; this guy sent us a mail. someone had sent him an illegal copy of our record and he'd realised how much it meant to us and deleted it. and it was genuinely touching. Like some morality tale of this kid who stole sweets then went to the sweet shop full of remorse to apologise and give the half chewed sweets back. I'll call him Speedball, cos i know my Marvel Universe History.

Thanks Speedball. I wrote you a reply. I'd rather post it here as part of our ongoing campaign to speak the truth in this business of lies. Everyone is tempted by leaks, and too often i see people succumb on the basis of - hey fuck off imma going to buy it anyway -

and whilst that might be true, it don't really make the difference they think it does.

so this is what i said:

Hi. thanks for writing. it means a lot.

i see yr point and i do exactly the same thing to my friends who work in press/play in bands cos im too impatient to wait. but [Captain Leaky] had no right to send you stuff whatever his motives, and we explicitly trusted him not to.

its kinda gutting. cos he obviously likes us and would probably write positive things. and y'know, i'd assume, cos he's a fan, he reads our blog, he knows how much we have riding on this, and how important the release impact - all our awesome fans being bedazzled and buzzing about it AT THE SAME TIME - is to our future prospects. i also understand the social kudos in being The Dude That Gets Stuff Early. at some point he had to weigh up what was more important to him; our future or his ego. and he chose his ego, and he used my work/art as a bartering tool. thats a seriously cunty thing to do, whatever the outcome.

that guy is (was) on a list of people who write music reviews and are trusted to have review copies of things prior to release. it's a weird position of power, you could very easily sink a whole campaign if you were evil/stupid enough. it's not about what his intentions or motives were, its more that he'd break the trust he has with people who send him promos. cos, we're relying on that trust to be able to afford being a band.

everyone thinks of release dates and leaks in terms of sales, and in the last few years especially it's become misdirection. a leak isn't the same as a lost sale, and noone seriously buys music any more anyway. it doesn't worry us too much. and y'know, it encourages lazy bands to give more of a shit about their end product, which is always A Good Thing.

what will seriously damage us tho, is, for want of a better term, dissipated hype.

Our absolute worst case scenario is the record leaking in the next few weeks, and then come november, promotors and agents and all the Industry Cunts we rely on checking our facebook and thinking, shit, there's not that many people excited about this record.

and it won't be because people aren't excited, but they'll have heard it a month ago, processed it, already discussed it in less public forums, and be waiting for the wider world to catch up.

specifically, thats you i'm talking about; not "people what like our band", but you (comparatively) tiny % of absolute babes who actually, genuinely care about us and what we do - all the fyjf kids spread over the world who say ridicolously nice things about us and fill our egos, the noise you'll hopefully make in that week when you all hear the legal stream of our record and are all simultaneously internetting about it is our best weapon in the war for more gigs and better gig fees, and more radio plays, tv syncs, more offers to go tour

so i hope you understand, we're not mad at you for wanting this record. fuck, i'd go as far as to say we're relying on it, in exactly the same way a major label shitty bland indie band relies on press adverts and fluff pieces, to make enough noise that the outside world listens to us and hopefully pays for kellys amp to be fixed, etc.

and i hope you also understand why we desperately need to control and channel the hype, and thus the content, as much as we can. We don't have the budget to run big adverts in the press, we're not about to tone our stance down for the mainstream, and we literally cannot afford to take the hit on this campaign. For us to have a decent shot at Making Money And Surviving, we need to focus everyone's first listen on the week of release, where it'll be streamed and annotated and presented in this right context.

i hope this doesn't jade yr perspective of us. as much as we're desperate for everyone to hear the record, we need everyone to get it at the same time so we can compete with all them major label bands who also play guitar pop songs and are arrogant enough to think they mean something.

take care
xlex

hands vs fangs

2011-08-29T00:04:00.018Z

O GOD ITS BEEN SO LONG, ARE YOU STILL THERE?

i dont know if hyperproud is a real word but thats what we are. we can now start telling you stuff about our new record. it was recorded and mixed over a luxurious 5 month period, by our old friend dominique james, and it sounds perfect. it sounds like a huge expansive sprawling ambitious and personal version of us. it sounds like we do in our heads. it's called, johnny foreigner vs everything, and will be available november 7th on alcopop.

here is a cover:

that's not thee cover btw. technically, the finished product will have 2 covers. you'll find out more, soon.

i hate these writeups. i can't sum up, in terms soundbytey or otherwise, how it feels to have made real something thats spent the last 2 and a half years hanging round our heads as rough ideas, plans, sketches and shadows. we've genuinely been obsessed with making this record. there's a hole in my life between 2 and 5 am, cos all the lyrics are finished, all the arrangements solidified and the mixes complete.

idk. it felt like we took a massive gamble leaving our old label. sure, we're free to be tru punx forever and we have so much moral high ground we can see right down yr top, but oh, all that other-peoples-money. we knew we'd have to come back with a better record on a worse budget to justify our stance, and when all yr armed with is confidence in a bunch of songs noone's actually heard yet, it makes for a pretty righteous victory to listen back after half a years stress and sweat and ruined sleeping patterns and realise we've fucking achieved it.

both our previous records were made in new york, by expensive and established producers, in purpose built studios full of boxes that did clever things to sound we can't pronounce. we made this in birmingham, in a warehouse under the arches and dom's parents spare room. we've never had this much control over recording, or been able to take so long, or had a producer that grew up with us buying the same records at the same time and whose mother constantly fed us square and balanced meals.

this record is us, made by us. it doesn't feel like a gamble anymore, is what i'm stumbling around to. there's this quote

also related, this is now a thing. a promotional youtube up onto which we shall upload various video larks pertaining to aforementioned AWESOME NEW RECORD. don't expect anything to make much cohesive sense. we'll be adding more and more up till release date

kkk. so would you like to hear some songs then? WOULD YOU EVER!

here is our next release: (don't) show us your fangs by johnny foreigner

the hand that slaps you back by johnny foreigner

because we're awesome, (and, y'know, have bandcamp) there's a limited number of free downloads of (don't) show us your fangs here.

but, because YOU are awesome, we'd much rather you did this.

see, all the things that are better than frisbees were too impractical/expensive to do. srsly, you have no idea the logistical problems involved in baking a cookie around a cd and posting it around the world.

so strong jack pop has come up with an alternative:

sticker + single = stingle. here's lewes's awesome skateboard sticker design:

you can't see here, but it's like, totally cut out around the ghost shape. this is what happens when we source stuff out to professionals instead of gluing our hands together in the back of splitter vans like special children. so, for £1.50 anywhere around the world, you'll get two of these stickers and a url to download both songs.

also, competitititition:

it would greatly enlarge our egos if these stickers got stuck in prominent public places, such as the hands of big ben or your mothers face. so we have some signed exclusive awesome art prints and a super deluxe album pack to give away (it's too early for details, but trust us, they're going to be amazing and sell out) to those who send photo evidence of stickers stuck in the best places. it's not mandatory, we just get a buzz out of making people perform possibly illegal tasks for swag.

send photos to - johnnyforeigner@hotmail.co.uk, and title the mail "mentioning my mother was a step too far". we'll send out prizes on album release day.

aannnnnndddddd if that wasn't sweet enough, if you'd like th songs before Mr The Postman delivers, include a URL to a picture of "any fantastic animal" when you order from alcopop, and jack'll send you the linkage as soon as he sees it.

This, ladies and gentlefolk, is why we're better than other bands you may like.

alsos, and running the limit of how much information about a band people can absorb in one sitting; the excellent kevin j das has made us A PROPER WEBSITE at last. we've still got some things to fix and add, but we'll get round to that later. go lookee. thanks kevin!

ok cools. stay close, the next few months are fucking ours.

xlex

now i don't know bjork right

2011-08-12T22:18:00.010Z

i was always raised to believe that charity is somewhat devalued if you cloak yourself in it. example, i give £5000 to birmingham dogs home and keep my mouth shut, that's charity. i give them £5000 then mention in an interview that i've saved five grands worth of cute lil puppy, what i've effectively done is paid £5000 for good pr.

and whilst the dogs themselves probably wont care either way, some of that charity s integrity is now invested in my public image; which may work in the short term, but i'm clearly the kind of cunt who boasts about how charitable he is in an effort to appear cool to joe public so they'll keep buying his shit.

ah. hello there, music industry. .

i just want to say, i think at least half the fuss and clamour being made over the Sony/PIAS fire is bullshit. there. i don't want to play down the actual loss; some labels have had their entire stock wiped out and it's potentially catastrophic for anyone who lives on a shoestring and is involved with with physical music stuffs.

tough times all round - is an overused and unhelpful phrase, but when our industry is dying and our cities are on fire, tis probably justified.

BUTTTTTTT

this is the same industry that brought you "return to live aid". nothing drives sales better than a palatable tragedy, the only exception here is this tragedy is somewhat exaggerated for dramatic purpose. You know the warehouse was insured right? I didn't, i had to use the google, and 5 pages later i found someone who wasn't alec empire referring to it.

so eventually, all them records will be paid for. losses compensated. I'm not saying that there won't be huge logistical problems and dashed dreams occurring as a result of product loss and the time insurance companies will take to settle, but all the claims of "disaster! label x looses £x000 of stock" are pretty disingenuous. The industry has a chance here to convert thousands of unsold cds into digital sales, and they're gunning for it, they're just leaving the "insured against fire" part out.

here's alec empire from atr (and twitter):

"did you know that labels destroy physical product all the time to save storage costs? every month. all over the planet."

"simple: it's an unlimited supply of mp3s vs 1 burnt insured warehouse. If people want the music, they can buy it ANY time. no supply problem"

"sony said it already yesterday. Labels will make more money this way than with sales"

i'm never going to be as (d) hardcore as alec empire, but he makes a valid point; that insurance payout + charity sales drive = more cash than was sitting in that warehouse pre fire.

for the major players in this, it makes good business sense to play up the tragic angle as much as possible. I'm not saying there's no tragedy here, but if there is then it's of the smaller labels and artists who don't have a media profile and can't afford to repress right now, and the long term damage done to shops that can't restock, from lost customers who can't buy.

There's also a bunch of charity sites sprung up overnight, grand social media profiles and awesome pr with paypal tabs encouraging you to donate. fucking don't. if you feel like giving, give your money direct to your favourite affected bands and their labels. they have paypal too. these charities have no plan as to how there going to redistribute donations; and how could anyone? every band is in a different position, every record has different and changing sale value, every label has different budgets and can suffer different losses.

you can't quantitatively gauge the damage and impact of something like this. the insurance will take an age to sort out, and in an industry where timing of product on shelf can count for so much, most of the actual losses are completely incalculable. there's another side too - knowing my band as i do, i can say our cds, like 1000s of others, were there cos to be brutally honest, no one wanted them anywhere else. overstock. one article told a touching story of a lady whose album was sitting in there for two years cos EMI weren't ready to release it. AND NOW THEY CAN'T! um right. there were records in there waiting to ship sure, but also piles of unwanted stock/overstock/unsold and unsellable stock. maybe it's my uncles talking here, but insurance fire sounds pretty good. yeh, £5 a unit please. kerching!

seriously tho, it'd be horrendous business sense for our old, or any, label to repress records that were unshiftable (whatever EMI told the nice lady) at the time of burning. when those insurance cheques come in, it'll be like a massive version of that time pete from calories accidentally set his room on fire and brought a whole new different cd collection with the payout.

the spate of pias fire buy-lists and features also stink of industry dinosaur breath. we don't need excuses and sob stories to buy music, and it doesn't make it taste better. real life is not a simon cowell backstory. i'm all for any excuse to write music lists, and despite a few awesome, well written out collections that quietly urge you to buy direct or physical copies of stuff that may otherwise been lost to you, the vast majority lean to, surprise surprise, household name acts who're currently in the middle of a promo campaign. now, i don't know bjork but i'm pretty sure she'd rather any charity in you went to #riotcleanup, rather than rushing out and buying her cds cos there's currently less of them then in the country there was a few days ago.

worse, some of these, they link you to itunes. for bands, that's like a tab saying (ps - all proceeds go to satan). Itunes are on it themselves, rolling out there own little fire campaign, and, why not? hysteria over lack of physical product? potential charity demographic? They must be pissing themselves all the way to satanbank.

(actual nme quote - "even apple is helping out!")

d'you know how much a band/label gets from an itunes purchase? well neither do i. because it's an amount so small, only bono can physically see it.

it's not helping out, you shower of soulless cunts, it's called profiteering. the same with your dickfeed self important pointless charities and the dickfeed awful shoreditch wank bands and mainstream guffallos that will probably play their dickfeed pompous benefit gigs where all proceeds go to blindly to "the crisis"

WE DON'T NEED CHARITY. this isn't a real crisis, where we watch aghast and powerless and rely on organisations who convert our spare money to earthquake repair robots, or find homes for dogs, or convince cancer not to work, or otherwise use some skill or resource we don't possess. you probably already know which bands you like have been affected cos you follow them on teh social networks. so, surely the fairest, most even and morally correct response is, if you want to "help out", pick some bands and labels and go clickclick help out. whether you buy or donate, it'll all get absorbed into our bank balances, make some actual direct instant difference, and we'll all sleep a little better knowing humans can be a little kinder. you could do the same if you have local stores with smashed windows too. same principle.

imagine tho, the outcry if the whole riot aftermath had worked like that; big moneyed corporations with direct ties to mainstream media just steam in and say, hey, give us all your money and we'll do, um, something good with it. there'd be an outrage from independent businesses in the shadow and justifiable suspicion from the people who live there. no such outcry here, cos no one wants to piss off a dinosaur.

anyway, it sickens me a bit. not the fire, that's just shit that happens. and not even the charities and itunes, people will always find ways to eke more cash out of each other. i'm sickened by the mainstream music media, in such a tense period of social unrest blah blah blah, deeming insurance fraud and sympathy purchases to be acceptable weapons of marketing and commerce, and subsequently manufacturing a sense of charity to drive sales.

and i'm sickened to think that out there, there's people filling up those charity accounts, buying the horrors off of itunes and booking tickets to fund-raising shows to see the monkey legs and arsebiscuit orchestra at the fucking old blue last that are going to think they did their bit for the great pias disaster, and there's noone to tell them any different apart from crazy old alec empire. and me.

aaaand i'm sickened cos our name is being bandied round some of these pages as yet another band affected by this crisis. we have our own crisiseseses, thank you very much, and at the moment, making sure we have enough cash not to be evicted from our studio and master our record is waaay more of a priority for us than our old label raising money to reprint some old cds that may or may not have been sold in the next few months.

ok thanks for your time. and, just because i know someone's gonna be all like " imagine if you had your new record in there tho", this shit has happened to us twice before; once with the biploar friends single, and once with the you thought you saw ep. warehouse fuckup, third party disaster, whole boxes gone. and we just carried on, yknow? the songs and the demand still existed, and when it comes to points where we're financially affected by shit out of our control, we're open and honest about it. and i think everyone else should be the same.

weekend of fun and stuff!

2011-07-22T00:09:00.003Z

well, i so should have posted this yesterday, but, we have a whole weekend worth of fun coming up, here are details lest you feel like, y'know, going out to awesome festivals

friday, off the cuff at the flapper, birmingham.

pandas and people, then shoes and socks off, then tubelord, then us. OMG is that ever the best thing ever. maybe if hot club replaced us. (l)over the weekend, pretty much everyones playing; saturday is dd/mm/yyyy and sunday is dana, with like, a million other awesome bands supporting. also, dominique james wots made our record is doing a solo set, go and niceheckle him. or on the saturday, you could go see algernon play in the afternoon somewhere, and calories and echo lake at the hare and hounds. i don't think our grey city has ever seen such an awesome selection of bands in such a short space of time. and its tonight! i need to change strings! and sleep!

saturday, westival, aldershot.

with support from freeze the atlantic and stagecoach and more and a floor made of astroturf. (l)over the weekend is also dana, the xcerts, our lost infantry, hold yr horse is. we kind of want to go to this too

sunday, tramlines, sheffield.

on the main stage under the futureheads and ash. ash's lighting guy is lighting us, THANKS TOM, and apparently the main stage is outside so yay. because sheffield is the second best city in the country, literally every band ever is playing at some point over the weekend, and its all totally free. jebus.

for one weekend only, let other countries be jealous of our scene. see you there!

space camp

2011-07-21T13:18:00.005Z

hey everyone

going to start breaking enigmatic silence soon. records pretty much done and ready for mastering and we have a superfun weekend planned too, i'll get to that later, but for now, unless you want to read a long nasa rant, sorry to have wasted your time, and can you go get me some cigarettes so i can spend all day in bed. thx.

right, i just wanted to say how disappointed and angry i am, at the human race in general, about this. in case everyone's unclear, thats a shitty phonephoto taken by a human being from his space ship window as he zooms home. i think i need to write that again with feeling. a shitty phonephoto taken by a HUMAN BEING from his SPACESHIP WINDOW. and it's going to be the last one for a long while, because NASA can't afford to fly people around in spaceships anymore.

god thats depressing.

My parents had the moon landings as their generation defining, where-were-you-when moment. I can't imagine how that must have felt, watching those shitty b+w live footage of the moonwalk, the feather test, the golf swing, seeing your fellow humans achieve something we'd been dreaming about since the day god or robot dinosaurs put us here. breaking free of the earth. and not just the sheer physical spectacle, but the imagination too - if we can do that, then... what next?

before the internet, before punk, any of those things that form cornerstones of our lives now, our parents all went round each others houses, got high and watched their species break into the heavens, lark about on the moon, and rollercoaster back. - what'll we do next?

what was our moment? probably watching a fucking mass grave being created in new york. thanks guys. thanks loads for that.

by the time my generation was popping out, we'd got pretty blasé about spacemen. the apollo capsule looked almost comical, the NASA equivalent of those early failed wood and canvas aeroplanes, 15 flimsy wings stacked around a bicycle. we had actual bonafide space-ships now. they flew up, did cool science stuff, flew back down and got cleaned and flown again. they looked good too, safe, streamlined and graceful. i mean, we even named one after star trek; all cool and cocky because that future that our parents had seen hinted at, those -what nexts, was actually happening.

i grew up in the shadow of the shuttle missions. the first thing i can remember, ever, is the video feed of the challenger disaster. bits of fiery metal and dead astronaut raining down over florida. if that brought home the sheer danger of what my fellow spacemen (because i knew, with the absolute certain conviction of a 5 year old boy, that that'd be my job someday, to sit strapped helpless to a rocket and pray nothing exploded this time) were attempting, then in my mind, it only added to the glamour. there was plenty of jaw dropping video and photography around to soak up exactly how fucking awesome being an astronaut would be. the last of the explorers, real life sci-fi pioneers.

As shown by computers and war, if there's money in the game then progress is exponential. and so our grandparents had spent horrible desperate years perfecting rockets and calculating trajectories, our parents had put it all together and made the first small steps, and here i was, a mere infant and we had already the ships down pat and had moved on to space stations. surely, by the time i graduated from rocket college, we should at least have some kind forward base on mars and be looking out of our own solar system.

because who wouldn't want to throw gregariously large sums of money at a genuine honest to god succesful and brilliant Space Program. especially cos now, the ones with the genuine power are the ones who all went round each others houses a few paragraphs ago, got high, and watched the moon landings and dreamt of what'd come after that. space colonies. alien searches. the future. outwards, further, more. and at some point in these meetings held by the ones ascended into power, someone absolutely must have said -some kind of forward base on mars..

then, y'know, stuff, commerce, miniwars, decline of civilisation, political spin. nasa have never been too good at pr: whilst each crash or falling space station made it to mainstream networks, repeated scheduled shuttle missions saw diminishing returns.

-nasa rep - here are some things from outer space, behold some space rock and some pictures of new stars and some proven science theory.

government rep - this is frankly quite boring. can we weaponise or sell this?

-.... no? i don't know. it's from space, don't you see? from as far out of the natural reach of mankinds hands as is possible to chart yet we managed to capture and return it for all to see...

-whilst i respectfully see your point, i would like to add, so what? i'm seeing $99millions worth of pretty stars and some maths i don't understand. i think you guys are cool, spacemen and all that, but your business acumen is appalling. hows the forward base on mars looking?

-we're not supposed to be a business! and if you're genuinely serious about mars this time we'll need another few $99million transfers please.

-really? look, since i've been around, all you've done is piss about in those shuttles launching visually identical satellites or finding out poncey facts about science. its so dull. the ratings peak whenever some of you explode but that doesn't exactly bring donations in. and, while you were out, we declared war on terror itself. have you any idea how many gunships it's going to cost to the army to kill terror? honestly, it's not going to happen unless you find some moon-insurgents to zap or something.

-the loss of life in any situation is awful if it was avoidable but all of our dead accepted the risks and judged them to be worth it for the sake of progress, not just to the science community, but for all of human kind. we do this for everyone, not like your wars. In the vast majority of cases, their families and loved ones respected their wishes and are intensely proud they died doing something so spectacular for the greater good. your army brings home corpses everyday, could their parents say the same? public opinion is a tool you manipulate and spin for your own ends, don't sully us with it. also, moon.....insurgents?

-whatever spaceman, you rode the wave and now it's gone. i've got like, 18 different warzones going on and each of them needs bomb money. honestly, i'm sorry. perhaps you guys could build us a giant war robot instead. mars is the god of war right? so call it mars, you guys love the injoke names!

-but.. but i..

-also, the shuttles you have left, could you paint them radar invisible and have them hover round warzones zapping insurgents?

- not unless you smelt them completely and use the raw materials. incidentally, the way you've suddenly started over using the term insurgent like it refers to a human avatar for Terror Itself ironically makes you appear more sinister evil side.

-right, i see. well, i'm going to have to ask you to take them to the smelting yard too then..

-what! you.. you're cancelling mankinds greatest technological achievement, a global poster icon of the wonders that can be achieved by mortal man, a thousand tiny miracles that turned scifi into the bleak realm of the actual, without any kind of viable replacement? what are impressionable pre-teens boys going to dream about?.

-build me a war robot that shits bombs and help us kill Terror, or go do some sketches for crazy ginger branson if you want to still play spacemen. as for young boys, well, those radar invisible gun planes won't fly themselves

-they will, actually.

-are you being insurgenty with me?

- (walking away broken and sobbing) - i literally brought him stardust....

ladies and gentlemen i've already hijacked too much of yr time. my point is, i want spacemen back. if i could write to Mr I-cancelled-the-shuttle, i'd tell him this:

I think that manned spaceflight is more important than territory, or oil, or politicking, or commerce, or any other reason you can use. Its important technological progress and it's important that young boys grow up wanting to be spacemen not soldiers, sure, and more importantly, it's answering some massive questions about our place in the universe, and, even more importanterer than than that, it's hope. it's the luxury of being able to say "that's amazing. if we can do that, then, what next?"

as a species, i'd say we need that now.

It's stark choice between exploring the other 99.99999999999999999999% of the environment we exist in OR accepting we're doomed to live on a shitty rock forever, butchering each other over depleting natural resources and ideological differences we could once have had the guts to prove. please reconsider your decision concerning spaceships, and the forward base on mars.

ask the audienzz

2011-06-27T22:52:00.005Z

we've literally just come back from a little french tour, it was ace + more later, BUT, we had to work out a house party set, all stripped down and casio'd, and it was dead fun. more people offer us house/garden parties please.

right then. slightly breaking form of enigmatic silence, buttttttttttt

we want to do some special gigs for the autumn when our AMAZING new record is released. like, get some massive room and have bunting and stuff, and pick 5 other bands to play and have cake and special tshirts and stuff.

so. you could probably guess what bands we'd ask to play, annnnnnd we're not saying we won't listen to you and go um,no, but, you guys should get involved. we're thinking a LDN show, a birmingham show, and a somewhere else show.

suggest us some places. venues/cities. suggest us some bands. suggest fire eaters and bouncy castles and gardens and other such gimmicks and we'll see what we can arrange (get the adults to arrange for us)

UK only soz, we'll doubtless follow this up with a proper touring later on, but for now, something epic and grandiose seems to be the way forward. write to us at the bottom here, or on facebook or whatever. we're so super proud of how the album is turning out and we want to give birth to it proper.

oks, thank you in advance, o kind and benevolent fanbase of ours, excited...

Mercy Buckets

2011-06-27T19:58:00.021Z

so last month we went and got a proper french record deal with these awesome guys. we've just spent a pretty idyllic week in their company, as part of a mini-promo tour with these awesome guys. here are some words and crappy camera phone pictures of of it:

the first show was a tenth birthday party for hip hip hip's parent company. Ankama is sort of like dreamworks (in french), it's awesome, but their universe is pretty impenetrable to our gcse french..seems to be centred round a bunch of kawai little cats and trolls and things who all hang out in a forest.(en francais). its an mmorpg and a cartoon and a comic and a toyline, and, judging by their beautiful converted ex mill of a headquarters (um, and the fact they have their own pet record label), they're doing pretty well. we get a tour and peer thru open plan layouts at everyone working, its got this awesome atmosphere of people having loads of fun being creative and getting paid for it. /sigh.

mr lea room, if yr reading, we found a french you, but this is the closest we could get to a snidey photo:

for their party they set up a stage and a free bar and bbq and a bouncy castle. We get presented with a massive bottle of french english gin within minutes of getting out of the van. between that, and the exhilaration of playing outdoors in the sun after no sleep and a 15 hour drive, we're pretty contentified. jun eats a raw sausage by mistake. kelly kicks everyones kids of the bouncy castle to take photos.

we have traditional tourbus luck early on when the back doors refuse to open. luckily, there's a man at ankama whom everyone calls mcguyver, and after a brief inspection, he reappears with a massive drill and proceeds to make a giant hole in the back of the van we dont own. pssssssh. nothing fazes us. tom maldini sticks the broken facia of the lock over the hole with chewing gum., and we finish our drinks and drive to the hostel where we'll be staying for the next few days.

i fucking love the feeling of staying in hostels for multiple nights, it's like getting a hotel room for free. we can smoke joints out the window and rehearse stuff and stick maps on walls. only this hostel isn't playing fair, and insists on closing in the day, so we spend the next morning wandering round lille, eating tiny baguettes in cafes and feeling continental. we learn the french for "get out of this museum, you havn't paid".

todays show promises to be a crowd peak, it's a free show for fnac (like hmv, in french) in a converted railway station. the stage manger explains french governments lean really heavily on companies to retain some sense of heritage and reuse buildings as much as possible. so out went the trains and the tracks, and in their place a cinema, an art gallery, a bar, a playground, and a giant venue. it's all super lovely, but we can't take the credit for the audience; we're supporting miles kane, who is as boring as his trousers are tight (these are the kind of metaphors you come up with when watching bands with three drunk girls).

we walk in as the kanesters stuff is being set up. there's families sitting around eating lunch, a coupe of curious girls in artic monkeys tshirts, and the fnac reps, who tell us where catering is, and explain our backstage area is a huge empty cinema behind the stage. The MKs tour manager come over to one of the reps; miles kane can't soundcheck in front of these kids, he surls. oh, ok, she says. she gestures to us; this is one of the support bands. he blanks us all. she goes round, embarrased, asking people to leave. Us and maldini soundcheck in front of about 100 people, we take the piss mercilessly.

there's a pair of knickers on stage during our soundcheck. "fuck alex, go team miles" scrawled in eyeliner on la derrière. both our bands slay, it's a totally sweet show. catering is coldcuts and cake and as much box wine as you can handle. i try and watch a bit of old miley k but it's horrendous, awful pubrock retro piss, recycled so many times that each chord change and pose seems like some dirge ballet of something that might have once meant something to someone. clones get weaker every time and this corpse is powered by corporate swag and swagger and i fucking hate it, its like anti-music.

we finish off the rider, gina maldini splits an apple in half with her bare hands, we're drunk and confident and the lady behind the hostel desk hisses at us to be quiet when we get in..

the next show is the polar opposite, a birthday party for our label bosses girlfriend. we spend an hour rehearsing an acoustic set at ankama hq in one of their video game rooms they have dotted about. srsly, just a room with some massive flatscreens and consoles and sofas, and us ignoring everything.

we made up for it with a massive lunch at the ankama restaurant next door to the ankama salad bar down the street. did more rehearsing in the hostel whilst maldinis went and did some promo, and then all went to fannys house. her cousin supplies a second gin bottle, we smoke lungs in the garden, get fed nibbles and end up so nervous that we're shaking the whole way thru the first song. to 20 people in a living room in robaix.

we elect to go on first for the house parties and it's just as well, maldini take to acoustic sets effortlessly, they sound layered and elegant and everyone's pretty much in awe and goosebumpy by the end of their set.

pack out of hostel and drive to rennes for "hipster garden party". eat predictably awful motorway sandwiches on a 6 hour drive, and once again get greeted at the door with gin and mounds of food. i think angelique is the queen of france, she puts bands on in her garden, puts a bar and some decks in her shed, and makes a bedroom for each band, and spends the night fetching us drinks and cigarettes.

it's like the philly scene all over again, only with a comedy language barrier. we're slightly more confident this time, and play correspondingly worse, but maldini are simply amazing. there's 50 people crammed into a tiny garden all dancing and losing their shit, whilst massive clouds of starlings float above in the sunset and cats watch from the bushes. one of the best shows i'm ever going to see. We get fairly slaughtered, kelly starts wrestling boys and we befriend pretty much everyone and pass out in a haze of forgotten names and french weed.

angelique sleeps in her boyfriends van and reappears in the morning with jeff and fanny and a massive breakfast that we eat outside whilst party stragglers rise and leave around us. we are SO up for playing in peoples gardens right now. today is special tho, we're going to l'orient, which is where jeff used to live; there's a beach and ice cream, he says, you'll like it.

and we more than like it. the beach is amazing, a little cove and then a massive expanse of sand and clear cool atlantic. the ice cream comes out of the machine with strawberry sauce already laced. there's two currents ebbing and flowing into the cove, with loads of little sandbanks and shallows, meaning me and kel can walk like, 10 minutes into the sea without getting our clothes (that) wet. everyone else dives straight in, chris maldini buys a beach ball, a dog comes and steals and bursts it in the cutest way ever, a stranger lends everyone his towl and we walk back along the shoreline to the van and the show. We're playing at an old fishermans pub called le galion. "pirates and prostitutes, now punk bands" says jeff, and it's pretty easy to imagine the debauchery thats taken place in these walls. the room is overlooked by a massive painting of a girl with a shotglass and a cigarette and the stage is loud and hot. we get cooked some amazing fish thing and some amazing pasta thing and drink our meal-wine like pros.

the show is awesome, JB, the owner, takes us aside and tells us we're the best band he's seen in 5 years while the barstaff agree and all queue up for merch. tis lovely. we're too tired from houseparty and beach hijinx to take full advantage of the free bar, we sit and bliss out in a corner while the staff close up the bar, and we drive to JB's flat to sleep ourselves out. He lives on the top floor in a beautiful apartment full off pre war antiques and punk rock posters. i pass out on the couch reading 100 bullets and listening to him and jeff and the soundman finish a bottle of vodka.

and wake up to the sight of jeff in his pants and an army helmet chasing a massive bee around the room. last show day, sad times.

paris is a complete slow heatwave bitch to drive around, but we manage to unload a block away from the venue and we're all on time for soundcheck. it's a bit of a comedown, there's limiters on the pa, we get some chicken bones and two drinks tokens each and its hotter than the sun. some of our friends have flown to see us, and vee comes down in her formal role as parisian ambassador to english indie rock. there's 11 people not counting our entourage. and 9 of them are on our guestlist, so it feels like a private party. the kind you have to go to the offlicence and sneak yr own drink in. maldini slay, and we play our trademark sloppy and overly emotional last gig. everyone comes onstage at the end and we drag it out to a teary eyed conclusion and pack away for the last time.

we have a ferry at 5.30am, calais to the real world, which gives us just enough time to scream crazy around the arc du triomphe and go for a wander underneath the eiffel tower. its 1am on monday morning and the cafes and bars are still humming. there's couples walking dogs, kids drinking and smoking on the grass, it's an amazing relaxed vibe unlike any other capital city monument we've ever seen before, totally tranquil and serene. france is totally rad.

"the next tour will be proper" says jeff, "this was just to introduce everyone and have some fun".. it was more than fun, it was a totally productive and awesome holiday, and the most consistently happy tour we've done for ages.

massive thanks to jeff and fanny and guilliames, we couldn't have lucked out with a better or more fun label. also, to everyone that fed us and put us up and came out to see us. we'll be back super soon with an actual record to promote..

also, screaming maldini yeh, fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk. absolutely incredible jaw dropping goosebumping jazzed up shimmery pop songs and lovely lovely people. they lent us equipment and gave us snacks and drove us around. you can't ask for than that.

ok, back to being enigmatically quiet about the record now. we've just got an almost finished mix of the most epic song we've ever done and it's blown my ears off. i hope it does yrs too.

2011-05-31T19:34:00.002Z

Hello.

Unlike Lex, I don't have the literary skill to start off a blog with a witty anecdote or cool cultural reference (he does do that, right? Geek). Instead, I'm going to get/ divert yr attention by posting a video of a game that looks awesome. Then I'm going to tell you why I'm posting a blog for a change.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrjvrHaOOpw

GOOSEBUMPS.

K, so... I'd like to believe that some day our band can exist without having to ask (beg) friends and people that like our band for help like, on a weekly basis. So yeah, if you haven't already figured, this is yet ANOTHER begging letter.

So, 6 months ago my poor bass head suffered 'explosion damage' (sounds exciting, but it's killed it, possibly for good).

Now, I've recorded my bass parts BUT I really need to re-amp them to make them sound, y'know, boss.

So... I ask you (specifically the people of Birmingham and thereabouts):

Does anyone happen to have a decent valve bass head, possibly an SVT, that I could borrow in order to make my bass parts/ our new album sound super super super awesome?

We'll like, dedicate the album to you or something. Probably 'or something'. But I'll be forever grateful.

Please email johnnyforeigner@hotmail.co.uk if you think you can help.

K, one more goosebump inducing game trailer

(parental guidance blah blah blah, unsuitable viewing for children, blah blah blah)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_KBtOVx-x0

K, don't tell yr parents I showed you that, ok.

bye, homies.

kellyx

tour shirts? OK THEN

2011-04-24T01:47:00.006Z

SUPER LIMITED SELLY TIME

people is all asking us about these new shirts and we're like, yeh they're for this tour we're on and then they're like, but i want one this tour goes nowhere near me, and we're all like psssssssssh well, shame.

UNTIL NOW

dun dun duhhhhhh

click here to go to our merchy store where we've put the new shirts and figured out how to do postage costs to everywhere. BUT! WAIT! there's only a few in each size cos the post office is kind of a drag, especially when we're on tour trying to be cool and that. So be quick. BUT WAIT AGAIN, we go to europe on the 2nd May, should any be left (always the kid sizes, idk why we bother) we're taking them to market in switzerland for outrageous prices (joke) so we'll delete them off the store. NOW GO. use someone elses card if you don't have the cash. they honestly won't mind.

muscle memorrrrreeeeeeeeeee-eeeeee

2011-04-22T23:15:00.005Z

posting backwards

muscle memorreeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

you guys should have been in aberdeen. THANKS ROBYN!

now you now the choooooooo-ooooooordds

muscle memorreeeeeeeeeeee-eeeeeeeeeeeeeee

TOUR FAX

- we have a super small amount of frisbeeps yet. considering rationing or some arcane password system for under counter transactions.

- we're waiting for the bad gig. it should have come by now and it's absence is like a phantom pregnacy.

- tonight we kind of decided onstage to start filming audiences shouting WIL WHEATON, SPEAK TO JOHNNY FOREIGNER. If we forget, please remind us.

- so far, we've had no rider issues. and half this tour is in europe. #winning.

- muscle memorreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

- milton keynes, we heard you had a competition to support us? really? please tell us more, cos we heard some rap crew won it then wussed out. this seems like a potential lolz goldmine.

- addidas court raiders are unsuitable for onstage use.

- we're none of us actually able to get the new danananaykroyd single out of our heads

- tonight, our rider was easter eggs. awesome, but, feel sick.

fyjf glasgow

2011-04-21T19:51:00.003Z

hey tumblrs.

we got home at 5, i couldn't sleep, i watched this. it's called "alone together"; clever lady explains how mobile internet connectivity is making humans socially retarded. even if most of the stuff she talks about you probably know, if you have 15 mins you should watch it because i think it will connect in a pretty harrowing manner.

did for me anyway. it's all depressingly true, and i was truly a-depressed about it until i remembered the flailing drunken singing dancing mess of limbs and mouths that was you guys yesterday; pretty much the exact opposite of "alone together".

proud. thanks for all coming to see us. last night felt like we all beat the internet. hope you all got home safe.

xlex

french for high hat/vapour trails.

2011-04-15T21:38:00.011Z

thanks maya!

small preface; phonogram is probably my favourite comic series ever. well, that or martha washington but that's not relevant here. i've been a total fan of kieron gillen since he called himself c-monster and did tips in the back of amiga power. ((infact, right, go read all of these. back? that, o eater uppers of modern media, is how to do consumer journalism)) AAANNYWAY, i was kinda annoyed at my own stoner memory; i forgot the rad little essay about curse songs at the back of one of the second series. a few people have pointed out the obvious thematic similarities, to which i guess i have to respond, we're both drawing influences from a pretty small niche, and it never crossed my mind that people would think i invented, or worse, claimed to invent, the concept of cursed songs. judging by the bulging sample folder we have for the record, it totally struck a chord with YOU GUYS, and i'm pretty sure kieron would agree and won't think that we're trading off of his ideas. At least, i was, until i mailed him a way wordier version of this paragraph and didn't hear back. ulp.

so he's going to fucking love this then:

TOUR EXCITEMENT 1)

cross your fingers please for this: assuming kelly says the right incantations to the print gods, then we should have some of our friend anja's amazing mini comic about the start of our band for sale on tour. here's the first and last page for appetite whetting:

how cool is that!

TOUR EXCETMENT 2)

here's a nice review of our frisbeep - BLAM that includes a free download of one of the songs wot is on it. Why not listen your ears out on it right now:

Johnny Foreigner - Twin Sisterzz by cerinusapodemus

i guess i guess the jackals have got yr back. all the smell of disinterest carving up shots for the soundtrack. and if the bar bets don't break yr bank, there'll be legends formed on rumours whored and forced. he wanted a night with twin sisters, now he's stranded at the barbican. i guess that's irony for some. she wanted the best of her exes but her sister got there first. and now certain songs are cursed. and maybe we're just jealous of what you've got. all those concrete shards to the sky make a neat backdrop for this weight. wake up sweating out. yr going to wake up sweating to yr phone; 15 messages and they've all read yr mind, like; what have you done? he wanted a night with twin sisters now he's stranded at the barbican. i guess that's irony for some. she wanted the best of her exes but her sister got there first, now she'd settle for the worst. yr not too young to settle down but maybe family is not the best example. but don't let that stop you....

TOUR EXCOTMUNT 3)

our camden crawl show (and maybeeeee the one before) will be our ONLY UK DATE as a four piece. Ben wot did live animated visual awesomeness for us in africa and america is coming over early for the euro-dates, come watch and be eye-amazed. the cat with lasers and it destroys cities and theres ghosts and also bon jovi. It really works better just being there, so don't let the fact that its camden and it's a crawl put you off.

other excitements

1) THESE YEAH. physical and digital distribution methods coexisting, it's like we've just gone and fixed the music industry for you all.

2) we're signed in france! MERCY BUCKETS! details soon!

3) seem to have inadvertently become twitter friends with the singer from mike fantastic. really? yes. the van that we were using last week, that they're using this week, we're using next week. hope they've left us some of those ubercool glasses. really? no.

4) can someone buy me a manbearpig shirt plz. you should buy one yrself cos they're like, the best band i've heard all year, but also get me one too.

aallssoo

thanks for all the messages re: That Guy and What He Said and What I Said and What Everyone Else Said and stuff. all the compliments on my words don't flatter me as much as knowing so many people feel the same way. Anyways, i'm pretty sure i just got in first in the stating the fucking obvious. for my money, ben patashnik is one of the best music writers we have and he phrases everything way better than i. did anyone hear me blathering about it on radio 6? i don't think i do soundbyte very well. whatevz, rsd is passing me by completely this year cos i'm spending the day checking in mass boxes of tshirts for the wrestling. so also please someone get me superchunk, deathcab, beck and suede plz thx.

FUCK WERE GOING ON TOUR AND WERE EXCITED SO YOU SHOULD BE TOO.

we can play loads of new songs without stopping and we remembered how to play lea room. click on the last blog post thing to see where we're playing and work out how many of the shows will be happening near you whilst you sit indoors moaning about your boring life on the internet. o wait, thats me. you'll be there, right?

OK ONE LAST THING. A COMPETITION, OF SORTS

if we don't at least get a "please leave wil wheaton alone" letter, then we're killing ourselves. straight up. You Meat Six (LOL) beat us to blink supportage (trivia, exactly 182 of my facebook friends "like" my band. even tho i only have like, 4 friends) and Mr Reading and Leeds has OBVIOUSLY LOST OUR NUMBER OR SOMETHING so this must be the summer we got wil wheaton on our record. Since mere tweets have failed, would it be too much to ask you guys to make signs and take pictures? yknow, like on "the four chans"

They must contain words like or similar to "JOHNNY FOREIGNER LOVES WIL WHEATON" and the prize for the best one will be something special and unique and handmade. by us. make sure to tag it @wilw so he sees it. and @lexkelandjun so we see it. which, with the picture link, should give you enough space to write "WIL PLZ READ", or "i'm only doing this to get my hands on whatever exquisite prize is on offer" ALSO, less nudity than other bands twitter competitions is encouraged (you two know who you are). wil is a family man and we don't want indieporn to ruin what small chance we may get to explain our request.

K awesome. see you all soon

TOUR PLUGMEDO

2011-04-12T00:18:00.009Z

hi.

may i take a moment to impress on you, that as well as taking part in public internet lolz, we also have this band thing going on?

here are some dates of shows that we are playing really soon. we go on tour like, NEXT WEEK OMGEXCITEZ. We've been rehearsing and everything!

johnny foreigner vs the music industry tour

18th april, the hop, wakefield (16+, free show)

19th april, the tunnels, aberdeen (14+)

20th april, nice and sleazy, glasgow (18+)

22nd april, bodega social, nottingham (14+)

23rd apil, mad ferret, preston (18+)

24th april, sno bar, milton keens (18+)

26th april, hare and hounds, birminghasm (18+)

27th april, shipping forecast, liverpool (18+)

28th april, night and day, manchester (18+)

29th april, the underground, stoke (14+)

30th april, grove tavern, wimbledon (stage destroying last ever show at the grove. + 10000 other bands)

1st may, black cap, london (camden crawl show)

3rd may, l'international, paris FRA

4th may, exit, rotterdamn HOL

5th may, schaubude, keil, GER

6th may, sub071, lieden, HOL (tbc)

7th may, le romandie, laussane (part of may days festival), SWI

8th may, HALL, heidleburg, GER

9th may, AZ, aachen, GER

10th may, club007, prauga, CZR,

11th may, asta kniepe, rosenheim, GER

12th may, drunkluft, oberhausen, GER

13th may, rosi's, berlin, GER

14th may, swamp, freiburg, GER

15th may, heimat, regensburg, GER

26th may, norwich arts centre, norwich

27th may, las festival, aberdare

and it'd be nice if you came to one of them. extra euro-incentive, from the 3rd to the 15th may we'll be a four piece; ben is flying from south africa to once again do amazing visual image wizardry and fall over on stage with us. also, from the 8th, we'll be supported by young legionaire. For the uk shows, we should have a really small amount of frisbeeps to sell, as well as a couple of classy new shirt designs:

anyone complaining we're not playing near where you live, SHUTUP SHUTUP SHUTUP. we're taking care in the UK to hit places we've missed for a while, there'll be more european and uk shows later in the year, and, most of, reading them kind of comments pure depresses us. we know you want us to play in yr city. we want to play in yr city. we want to play everywhere. we only turn down shows if they're financially unfeasible, and each one of those WHY NO MY TOWN comments is a moment of time you could have spent writing to yr local promotors who decide such things.

in this vein, i'd like to give a sad wave over the seas to toronto. The lovely folk at NXNE invited us to play this year, and, despite wanting it more than anything ever, we're not in a position to front the costs right now. Next year, we'll hopefully have american distro and less people we owe cashes too, but for now WE ARE SOBBING INSIDE. so thanks to NXNE for being so understanding and good luck with yr stoopid festival. pssssssssh.

going to blates spam all these dates to facebook tomorrow, apologies in advance.

my main objective is to be more effective

2011-04-07T20:15:00.004Z

have you guys seen this? BULLSHIT

The NME prides itself on being some kind of cultural barometer, and to survive it has to cater to the mainstream yadda yadda yadda, im sick of people whining about the NME. that's what it's there for.

and then i read this and it made me more angry than any half assed reviews of half assed bands more popular than my own. Which i guess is a some kind of old school NME achievement, if the sentiment didn't piss over all those guys graves.

anyway, i wanted to write a clear cut concise piece on why this guy is utterly wrong and a terrible human being, and i just ended up shouting at the screen. so, sentence by squalid sentence, here is why i disagree with dickface. apologies to rob from topless robot, but, if you squint, it kinda looks like FFF.

If physical singles are finally dying out for good, then don’t expect me to send any flowers to the funeral. I don’t care about Record Store Day. I don’t even care if I never own a physical CD or vinyl record ever again.

really? you write for the biggest music magazine in the country and in yr opening paragraph you write off actually physically owning music. Fair enough if you don't like record store day, it really is just a niche for people who are interested in ltd run 7"s and exclusive music stuff. Wait, what's yr job again? This is the first sign of subtext that runs all the way thru this piece that reads - hey bands, go fuck yourself -

I got rid of 90 per cent of my CD-based record collection last year, leaving behind only the records I’d paid for before becoming a music hack. I don't miss them.

Honestly, that's probably a shit tonne of shit records you dumped there. It's a shame you didn't find, in your music journalist career, any music you wanted to keep, but i guess that's why yr a critic, huh. It's interesting to note you kept the records you actually paid for tho. As if you had some emotional investment in them. HMMMMM.

And here’s why: if you’re seriously bothered about the way your tunes are delivered to you, you’re focusing on totally the wrong aspect of what makes music great

glitter vinyl and skateboard stickers? What makes music great is melody, harmony, dynamics and rhythm. what makes bands great is everything else: style, lyrics, artwork, packaging, delivery. Seriously, all these things have been contributing factors in the modern music scene since the 40s. Wait, whats yr job again?

Let’s get a few things out of the way first: the death of the physical single won’t kill B-sides. Aren’t digital EPs and free pre-album taster downloads their modern equivalent?

this is the first counter argument he brings up... Wait tho, has anyone, ever, ever in the history of this thunderous digital music revolution, complained about the potential loss of the B-side? No. Of course not. There were several other ways for bands to disseminate "bside" songs in the pre internet age; import albums with extra tracks, fanclub only stuff, exclusive session cds on magazines. Pretty much all of these have modern day equivalents such as digital EPs and free p.. wait, PHEW!

If artwork is worth seeing, you’ll see it, even if it’s not on the cover of a CD or vinyl record.

WHERE? WHY? HOW CAN YOU BE SURE? will there be websites set up? will bands have to link songs to art gallery pages? this is such bullshit. There are hundreds of artists out there, whose work you've seen and loved, but you don't know their names. Record art is such a massive part of the industry, it has whole books and websites and archives devoted to it. Are you proposing that bands will be content to operate on pure songs alone, or be allowed to at least make a .gif banner or two? Them hipster girls would look way less cool if, instead of wearing a shirt with those sinister wave patterns, it was a picture of 4 drunk 80s manc kids. What you propose isn't artwork, it's advertising.

Next: you don’t need to own music to enjoy it

Noone ever thought you did. BUT you need to pay for music so the people who make it can keep doing so. you kinda forgot about that bit. it's important. For your job too, if you think about it..

I don’t sniff records.

Is this really what you think of people who like physical product? Like, we're trainspotters lining up on record store day to note barcode numbers. Are you basing this on people who populate the country, or characters you remember from high fidelity?

Buying a CD or 7” doesn’t make me like a tune any more than if I’d hear it streamed on a blog –

No-one in the history of having a brain has ever said that it did. People didn't buy singles because they thought it would improve them, they brought them to play when they wanted to. Also, and despite lack of mass sales like The Shit Old Days this still happens (sometimes this was because of hype and bs pereptuated by your magazine, and sometime because of genuine punka spirit) people brought records because they feel an affinity with the band. Singles, specifically, still are a totems, brought for what they represent, not the music encoded inside, which everyone will have on their ipod anyway. You don't understand any of this do you?

great music is great music however you hear it.

no its fucking not. this is such a stupid layman phrase, its like your parents telling you morrisons classic cola is the exactly the same as coke. mp3s don't sound as good as wavs. some records sound way warmer on vinyl than cd. most laptop speakers are rubbish compared to a proper stereo. songs recorded in studios sound better than on your phone at gigs. The relative values and merits of these will always be open for debate, but the basic principles are simple facts.

If you’re going to release something physically, make it spectacular, an event, something worth owning – an idea Radiohead have clearly come round to with newspaper release of ‘The King Of Limbs’.

NO WAY WHAT RADIOHEAD RELEASED A NEWSPAPER! BUT THEY@RE A BAND NOT A PRINTING PRESS. MENTALOS! fuck, thats an incredible idea. as if nobody thought of that before, ever, in the history of music. We could start a whole culture around this shit, lets call them FANZINES. I don't mean to sully radiohead but bands have been doing this for fucking years. Weirdly enough, it started as a reaction against things like NME filling pages with guff.

I find this point weirdly divergent from the rest of your arguement tho. So, it's ok to release singles as long as they're, like, more than singles? Something worth owning? Trust a journalist to say everything must be spectacular. anyway, how about like, a nice 7" glittery vinyl? A frisbee? A watch? Pottery? fanzine subscription? sticker set? elaborate fancy card packaging? THIS IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW. sorry, what was your job again? You write a whole piece trying to destroy records, rubbishing any level of artistic respect, then say, PRAISE RADIOHEAD, the only way out is, O WAIT ITS ALREADY HAPPENED NEVERMIND.

Do I miss going to record shops? Nope. The faceless high street stores I could tolerate, but local independents? In my experience, the stereotype is usually true: they’re staffed by socially-inadequate, sniffy twerps. Just ask Day V Lately:

what exactly is your experience? cos it sure as fuck isn't banquet, or rough trade, or polar bear. again, i think you have mistaken "experience" with "i have read high fidelity". I'm going to take the liberty of assuming, because you are a mainstream media cretin, that you live in LDN, which has more awesome record stores than anywhere else in the country. For sure there are still remnants, the music exchange that nick hornby wrote about, but the last few years have seen whole communities built around thriving indie stores. also, hot girls work there too. sorry, what was your job again? more to the point, why?

this is followed by an embedded commercial for yell.com, in which an imaginary 90s dj (Day V Lately) goes into a thinly disguised record and tape exchange and asks if his records are stocked. The staff, whilst in no way resemble the caricatures previously described, are unable to find his records, and all is saved when his daughter shows him the Yell.com iphone app. I don't know what this proves other than he couldn't find the belle and sebastian high fidelity scene and caption it - LIKE THIS, LOL!

If I was teenager today with meagre wages to blow, I wouldn’t buy CDs (like I did with my minimum wage spoils ten years ago) or waste my weekends in record shops. I’d download Spotify, keep my ear to the blogosphere and spend my dough on tickets to gigs and festivals.

HELLO THE TEENS, LET ME IDENTIFY WITH YOU HERE. If I was a teenager today, i'd buy my way thru the alcopop/bsm/smalltownamerica/toughlove/moshimoshi/audioantihero ETC back cat. I'd subscribe to Heat Rash and instead of buying the NME i'd read blogs without feeling the need to use some pretentious terminology, listen to music streams to form my own opinion, and spend my dough on online merch stores and all the weird little trinkets and mementos my favourite bands release. and i'd hold onto to these cheap tacky material possessions as proof absolute that these bands mean more to me than yours do to you.

Also, once again with the record shops. if you wasted the weekend, either you went to the wrong record shop, or you are so devoid of empathy for the culture and awesome bands and records that fill such places that you didn't know what to look for. ALL THOSE DIFFERENT COLOUR SLEEVES, MAN THATS SO CONFUSING!!!

I might even have some spare cash for a better guitar, amp or synth. Is it a total coincidence that guitar sales have increased in recent years?

Wait! Yes! Guitar sales have increased have increased because of Guitar Hero. They've increased because the general guitars vs synths mood of the mainstream music press is currently more guitary. They've increased because of cheaper manufacture, of better marketing from fender and gibson, easy online tutorials and fairer secondhand trading. Mostly tho, guitar hero. If fish were banned tomorrow, would you quit your life and go become a fisherman or just eat something else? People are not saving money on singles and spending it on guitars. digital literal single sales are increasing. Have you heard of Itunes? You should check it out, it'll BLOW YOUR MIND.

Of course, there’s the eternal conundrum of how you make this modern music consumption model profitable – and Spotify’s disastrous margins suggest that no one’s even close to finding it yet.

Way to shit on your teenage self and his subscription there. Anyway, lets carry on and pretend there's no itunes, why not have a website that you can sell your music on directly! Or have little boutique labels that can put love and care into awesome physical releases! Or, um, just radiohead up a newspaper? Once again, THIS IS ALREADY HAPPENING. Whilst profit is (radiohead get benefit of doubt) in no way the principle motivation of those who run these methods, it's a definite factor in why they're still here, and they're taking up an increasing share of the collective music industries and music - buying kidzz concious, cos, frankly, most of "your" bands are really fucking dull.

But, ultimately, the reason physical singles are being phased out by Mercury – and others will follow soon, if they haven’t already started – is that few people are actually buying them.

O wait, when you say others, you mean majors right? Cos, honestly, thats all you guys care about. Ain't no-one from our label ever going to pay for you to come on tour with us, bro. I hate to break it to you, but it's not just singles, its physical media all over. desperate times. these labels, you want to ask what their contingency plans are for the next few years. D.O.O.M.E.D.

I can sit on my comfy high horse and say this, because we're pretty separate from your world. 1) we've always been broke 2) we don't do this for the money, we do it cos we're proud of to be a part of this tradition, of peoples lives, and we want to leave loads of little mementos, sonic or otherwise, so people will know we were a cool gang to hang out with. Bands, man, they're just... like that. wait, what was your job again?

Bands regularly turn in pathetic physical sales figures, numbers in the low hundreds that would've seemed unthinkable in the days of million-selling Number Ones

I could so easily go on here about how our band regularly turns in low hundreds. and we're fucking proud of it. and we've been around long enough to know that sales figures, once upon a time and effective way to gauge a bands success, have had their machinery wrecked and pillaged by the interwebs.

I could instead preach polemic about how awesome music and awesome sales are only vaguely related to each other. drunk cousins.

but it'd pointless. you have completely missed the point of why bands are bands. of why records are records. you write like everything should be neatly encoded and stored into yr research node. I bet it would be in a file labeled "work". Bands, any band worth their salts, will always want to break out of that, to mean more to people than some melody in a recently added playlist.

Physical singles are a dead horse

"Or a spectacular newspaper. And that concludes the information i have gleaned from the 2 press releases i have skimmed today."

The less time and effort is spent on flogging them, the more money labels might have to blow on signing new bands.

Yep, thas clearly how that's working out innit. Can't move in LDN these days for new bands signed to major labels. s'like britpop2.0! You know what the next logical step here is? to eliminate the bands! labels simply buy the songs, hum them into itunes, and everyone has more money. eurgh. i hate this idea. imagine being in a band, singing to a major label, and being told you'd literally only produce music. no physical records, no memento, just some watermarked files. You wanted artwork? Have a thumbnail. Is this just me? OR ME AND EVERY OTHER MUSICAL ARTIST WORTH ANYTHING EVER..

– the ones formed by kids buying guitars, clothes and drugs rather than records.

MESSAGE TO RECORD LABELS: stop signing up bands based on long late night wistful conversations about mutual favourite records. In fact, stop signing bands who go out and buy records cos they're all living in the past. instead, go for the guys who've brought guitars, clothes, and drugs. HUZZAH the industry is saved.

The article concludes with an embedded video of the view. I can't be arsed.

from all of us here, fuck you bro. We're always going to buy records. It's part of us. Here's a short awesome story:

for valentines day, my girlfriend brought me the pavements trigger cut 12".

you think that's shit right? how can you even call that a story? at the same time, there's people going to read this who'll be like, WOW RAD. Cos they understand the innate value of bands is worth more than a bunch of noises, and these records, however small the run, or low the sales, mean a whole lot more than what they contain. They're time capsules, love notes, postcards, polaroids, and, arranged together in shoeboxes in my room, in vague order of when i brought them, they're a way more fun and vivid box of memories. Even if you take the artwork and the gimmicks away, you can't replace that tactile sense of personal history with a series of files. Unless you have NO SOUL.

We must seem so pathetic to you, pointless even. our cottage industries. our cheap gimmicks. our low hundreds. wall of hugs. new slang. heat rash. yr. cats in paris making cartoons, stagecoachs' christmas cards, eva tomassis arts and crafts, alcopop/bsms samplers, everyone's hand made sleeves. All these people working themselves to the bone, mostly happily, for shit wages and condescending journalism, because they're doing what they believe to be right, and they can see the fire in the eyes of those low hundreds that lets them know it's truly appreciated

That's whats missing from your godawful shite journalism. There's no sense of artistic value, of bands being capable of producing anything more than playlist filler, of indie labels and stores being anything more than unnecessary outmoded middlemen between you and music you seem to think you deserve.

Whatever. Late night rant. seriously doubt you'll ever read this, much less take any of it in. I don't believe in karma but i do know that me and mine, the bands, the labels, the stores, all the little guys that help out that you'd never know about, have brought 100000000x more happiness into the world than you ever will.

a blog of many things good.

2011-03-29T21:11:00.006Z

first, in a deck clearing way, people asked us to do this so we did:EUROPEAN DISCO

a complete 21 song collection of b-sides and remixes and otherwise unavailable stuffs, with loads of arts by lewes and relevant lyrics and linernotes. if you buy it, we'll have money to make more shirts, thus keeping the product cycle going and inadvertently aiding the death of humanity by encouraging investment and emotional attachments to material possessions. but, you still should buy it cos there's some good songs, like.

anywayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

hello. good news then (for you)

might as well just show you the press release:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

johnny foreigner and alcopop are proud to present "certain songs are cursed", a four song frisbee-ep, available 18th April. these songs are the first fruits from 2 months of writing and recording in our home town for our third proper album. It's going pretty great thanks, we think we're nearly done.

One of the most cool and weirdly fulfilling things about being in a band is hearing stories from strangers about how your music has soundtracked various important moments in their lives; how your sounds are forever intimately tied into someone else's most awesome memories; their perfect summers, legendary roadtrips, first kisses with future lovers. We're flattered by both chance and choice. It's these happy stories of synchronicity that are sure to warm our hearts long after we lose whatever skillsets we have and the bayliffs kick the door in. Certain songs tho, are forever cursed. Think of your own; perhaps by chance it spoilt an otherwise perfect moment 10 years ago and still repeatedly pops up to remind you. Maybe you selected it yourself, to frame an event that never transpired. Maybe it just pure shits on your ears, and every radio play, or advert sync, or mentions by random girls about how the way he sings is like, so sexy tho, feels like god laughing as he punches you in the face. Whatever, calm down. you'd never select it again but it's out there, public property for ever, and permanently fused to that kiss that didn't, or that night you shouldn't have, or that awful time you...

of course, such hippy talk is entirely personal and subjective, which is why we can say with 100% confidence, that none of these four songs are in anyway cursed, hex'd, star-crossed or otherwise bedeviled, and any displeasure you encounter whilst listening is entirely your own problem. good luck!

for this release, us and alcopop have chosen to eschew standard packaging in favour of a more practical, if less catalogable design we firmly believe will revolutionise the upcoming summer, where, as everyone knows, there's never a frisbee around when you need one. our artwork, as always, is drawn by lewes herriot.

certain songs are cursed:

1. what drummers get
2. twin sisterzz

3. johnny foreigner vs you (cursed version)

4. certain songs

we would also like it to be known that, despite having no luck so far, our campaign to get wil wheaton to write and perform a minute long monologue will continue until we at least get a ghost written "no" in reply. The sampled voice on "certain songs" was sent anonymously to us, if it's you, then thank you.

----------------------------------

frisbee-ep. frisbeep: we'll have a superltd amount to sell on tour, so best pre-order your frisbeep from alcopop right here. frisbeep. + other rad deals from our label involving other rad bands. rad/rad/frisbeep. anyway, thats enough talky, listen up these:

What Drummers Get by johnny foreigner Johnny Foreigner Vs You (Cursed Version) by johnny foreigner

we hope you like them and go buy our frisbeep and are all like, shit i cannot wait for this album. back soon, with news of actual european discos. that we're playing. gigs. at.

frisbeep.

and you'll miss it.

2011-03-25T01:05:00.002Z

okaysies, i'll try and keep this brief.

Blink 182 are playing the NIA in birmingham on July 1st. There's no supports confirmed. You can totally see where this is going can't you. aim high or stop playing with that rifle.

three reasons.

1) its fucking blink! they pretty much invented what we do. well, okay, the pixies invented it but we're too young to call them our own and that generation never got the guitars to sound loud enough. It's weird, our band seems to tread a fine line between indie world and rock world. there's this big gulf between the two that belies the fact its both people with guitars playing songs to more or less the same demographic, and nothing shows this up more than when interviewers think i'm joking when i tell people that blink song structures, sense of dynamics, chord sequences, harmonies, guitar sounds, drum fills, are totally aspirational.

2) its fucking birmingham! a wise taxi driver once told me, you can't be a hero in yr own town. it totally doesn't bother us that we're more likely to be "recognised" in tokyo or toronto than birmingham, but, just for once, it would be nice to pull off something spectacular in our own back yard.

3) its the NIA! where i work irl, counting boxes of merch on and off trucks, selling overpriced tshirts and explaining the concept of "skinny fit" to tragically obese teenage girls. It's a pretty rad job if you ignore all that stuff and the long hours, complete disregard for health and safety procedures, and card machines that don't fucking work ever. Just so y'all know, this preplan is mostly kellys idea, not just a way to boost my ego over my friends at work so i can roll up backstage stoned at 1 in the afternoon and be say - hey, you load all these boxes off and count everything and sort it into sheet order and count it again then get the additions off another truck and count them and then merge them into the first lot and count them again and agree the figures and divide them amongst the stands and recount them and make a display and arrange the stand and sort out the fucking card machine, i'm going to go stand on that big stage and play guitar really loud.

but that'd be pretty sweet also.

SO GUYS, HOW THE FUCK DO WE ACHIEVE THIS? Blink are like, in another world to us. it's not like we know someone who knows them, there's like a full 7 degrees of separation and all of them degrees are full of other peoples motive to put some OBVIOUSLY LESS APPROPRIATE support band on the bill instead.

suggestions please? are you related? do you share a house with their agent? do you know a guy who knows a guy?

our (clueless) gut feeling is, if we can get their attention, we'd be in a better position than trying to worm our way thru agents and the necessary industry bullshit. Those guys were/are a properly working band, they put in countless hours diy punking themselves around before they broke, and as such it'd be nice to believe they had respect for bands who do the same thing; more at least, than for bands who use major label money to appear from nowhere into the mainstream, and would traditionally be shoehorned onto a major tour like this.

so do we just try a frantic twitter campaign? sky writing? DO THEY GOT FORMSPRING YET?it's not like we're asking for a ride home after; a 7.30 opening slot to a half full arena will be legendary to us.

so yeh. please write any ideas in the box below and we'll get back in a few days and form an actual plan.

chances are this will never happen, fucking lost alone will play, and you can come up to me on the merch stand and give me a commiseration high five.

but for now, let us discuss the intangible possibilities of what ifs and maybes.

okay goodnight

xlex

talk to me.

2011-03-24T23:27:00.006Z

hellos

sorry for being quiet, we're dead busy. our album is sounding truly fucking immense and thats pretty much all we care about. thanks for everyone who sent in photos for artworks, its shaping up well good. mostly everything is useable and some HI PATTY are fucking stunning. we still have a bit of time to play with (we're between 2 weeks to a month late in life) so if anyone else wants to get involved then mail us for the briefs. we'll be using some for the first single art too, eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

only, it won't be a single, it'll be an ep, called, certain songs are cursed. there's something else kinda awesome about it too but its all super secret for a couple more weeks. YOU WILL SEE.

anyways, favourtime again. We need some speech samples. I don't know how popular this is going to be because noone likes the sound of their own voice, but, what would be all kinds of good, would be if you guys sent us these samples. are you in? if not, s'probably best to wait for the next bus..

certain songs are cursed. they hang out uninvited in your head. it's nothing to do with concious, thinking you. there's who you want/try to be and then there's who you really are, and these are the songs that make the wedge that splits the two and shows you the difference. they'll remind, with pin sharp accuracy, of the smell of ex lovers, the laughter of old friends, of lost atmospheres and environments and scenery and pointless detail, and everytime you hear them by chance (and it's always by chance) it's akin to a needle, scratching at a part of your soul that scientists have yet to document. There's nothing you can do but relax; get old and build a tolerance, and in a few years time, when you're sitting in a bar or a club or around a friends kitchen, and some playlist expurges those hideously overfamiliar opening daggers, you'll be able to quell those emotions within the briefest of facial tics and noone around you need ever know that, out of all the postal service and notwist and owls you listened to that summer, double bright eyes albums, hole bside compliations, repeated plays of goodbye sky harbor, you had yr worst ever heartbreak to fucking run by fucking snow patrol.

have you been luckier? unluckier? have a song you believe to be cursed for a less embarrassingly emo reason? TALK ABOUT IT INTO THE MICROPHONE PLZ.

what would be ideal, would be between 20seconds to a minute of YOU just talking. if you can do it into yr computer or phone and send us the file or a link to the file, that'd be ideal. we can rip stuff off video files too, quality doesn't matter so much, but you gots to do it in as quiet a place as possible.

there's no real need to mention the song itself; it's probably best to be as un-namedroppy as possible. just like, talk normal. remember, this is a sample on a music record, not The Tumblr.

rad. YOU'RE GOING TO BE ON OUR ALBUM! you still gotta go buy it tho!

please send files or links to johnnyforeigner@hotmail.co.uk, include yr name for the credits, and mark it BEHOLD MY SPEECH TO YOU so we can easily find it amongst the offers for shitty shoreditch shows and cheap sporting goods mails.

THANK YOUUUUUUUUUUUU

ha, stoners

2011-03-01T23:56:00.003Z

y'know that compilation we just released? s'alright yeh? 2 things:

1) there when you need it was the working title for our alcopop ep. i thought i was being clever reusing the name but now i'm worried that in 100s of years, when internet historians are digging up our career, they'll see references to the working title and assume that this compilation is that ep. obviously this will keep me awake at night far more than it will you. A way better title appeared in my head too late, if i told you, you'd all be like, wow alexei you're so cool, but i think we should use it for something else so i daren't mention it in relation to this in case these interneteologists fall into a similar trap and give up on us.

2) we, um, forgot a song from our roundup. ooops! it's a cover of the most beautiful widow that we did for artrocker in summer. have it for free: (thanks dave from soundcloud for upgrading us!)

the most beautiful widow by johnny foreigner

compilation time!

2011-02-28T13:51:00.005Z

look at us being productive in uk daylight hours!

feels weird man.

anyway, by popular demand, here is a new epee on bandcamp for youwall

there when you need it

this is a scrapbook collection of everything we released last year that wasn't thru alcopop; here is an explanatory tracklisty:

1 with who, who and what i've got (springtime freebie)

2 a kings heath story (all new studio recording)

3 199x (old competition prize)

4 jfnv (old competition prize)

5 tru punx (whiskas remix)

6 santa fucking claus (christmas freebie)

7 yr loved, drummed (juniors remix)

its £4. what a bargain-potato.

remember our exorcism project? if this all wasn't good enough, everyone who buys this pack from in the next 2 weeks (up till 14/3) will be entered into a hypothetical prize hat to receive one of 15 all new plush neuroses as made by teh awesome sarah grayley.

okayssssss back to the world of making a new album, BYE!

you shoulda put a ring on it

2011-02-21T14:39:00.004Z

happy nick and louise getting married week =

unhappy cos that means stagecoach can't play any of the shows with us week.

i wish my friends would stop getting married. not only does it make me feel REALLY OLD but it messes up our scheduling too.

stupid love ruining things.

Press Release

2011-02-20T22:35:00.003Z

I fucking hate press releases. There's nothing more embarrassing than the language of jaded PR guys trying to hype stuff to jaded press guys. It's like hyperbole top trumps, with modifiers for how bitter each player is.

I'm almost 80% bitter, and for a long time i found the best/worst examples of press releases hilarious. Sometimes they'd come from experienced adults convinced that a few snazzy adjectives and a very liberal approach to what exactly constitutes "national radio airplay" would convince, and sometimes they'd come from the bands themselves, a sort of desperate grammatical nightmare parody full of unfulfillable promises to outshine their idols. (ps our singers left now but WE STILL ROCK!!!!!!) I don't read them anymore. I did one too many, i read one for a friends (awesome) band that made me burst out laughing and something broke in my head.

What made it worse is that this band were not new or trying especially to break new ground. They'd just had the misfortune to have someone who employed someone who employed someone who thought it'd be best to sell them in time honoured hyperbole manner, and, as a result, everyone on their industry mailing list had been sent 3 paragraphs that made these gentle unpretentious musicians look like some bastard cross between lads-on-tour and improv feedback nights, when, y'know, they sound like pavement like the rest of us.

i think this is irony: the point of press releases is to show how ass achingly relevant the act is, but the language has evolved to the point that whatever they're promoting almost become irrelevant. It's the wave of hype and presales that drives the industry, and it's pretty much unavoidable.

So yeh, they're fucked from the outset cos everyone writing them has to outbullshit each other, and they're fucked at the end because the people that have to read them generally have a lot more experience reading them and dismantling the bullshit. All press releases should be standardised into a multiple choice questionnaire and being dishonest on it should mean losing a finger. Here you are, music industry, i've done it for you:

for the artist:

please clearly print the name of your act.

what are you promoting (tour/new music/rerelease/pretentious gimmick)

do you feel it's a significant improvement over your previous attempts

(yes/no/pretty much more of the same)

are you photogenic (yes/no/specialist only)

Do you have any media exploitable ties eg famous father/celebrity partner (yes/no/no but open to negotiation)

How important is this release in relation to sustaining a career (make or break time/doing it for the love/just a little something for the fans)

Are you aware of the power the press has over your career? (yes, we try do our own pr/whatevs, it's just about the music man/just try it darling i'm going to be star)

How do you take to public criticism (I ignores all my press/I will be snidey on my blog/I will blackball you and everyone you work with)

For the management

Am I going to gain social kudos by dropping this information into conversation?

(yes totally, a lot of people more important and powerful than yourself already are/maybe if you use phrases such as "underrated" or "up and coming"/absolutely not, people will think you're weird)

Do you think this venture is going to be a success?

(guaranteed money maker/bit of a gamble/i honestly couldn't care less)

What is the chance of any exploitable and quotable negative occurrence during this venture eg police arrest/drug overdose?

(nothing, all danger is carefully stagemanaged/might push a suicide attempt out if things go mainstream/it's like a fucking timebomb thats going to shoot out shards of tabloid-orgasm)

If i choose not to publicise this act, how will it affect future relationships between us?

(that's perfectly fine, one must be true to self/well don't expect any favours if things go well/i will blackball you and everyone you work with)

Awesome. Solving the problems of the music business one joint at a time. Unfortuate that we can't go back in time and plant this so it comes into effect at the point before i start finding things that used to be funny sad, and get all depressed that i'm getting old and am still impatient at the world.

Anyway, the point of this whole post is this: Long times ago, we decided that there should be one over-riding factor that should dictate how all press releases are written: you shouldn't be ashamed to show it to your fans. Cos they're the ones who'll see the most holes; who'll know which bits are exaggeration and whats conspicuous by its absence. If they can read it and not cringe, then you can be sure that the message yr sending is in on the same frequency as those meant to recieve it.

In our experience, at least 60% of press cuttings about our band come directly from our press releases. So yeh. We havn't really done one for a while, we're in a pretty lucky position, the first time since ever, of having a pr guy and a label and management that we trust to speak on our behalf. Until last week when said management suggest that, with all the regional press we've done and with New Fun coming up, we could probably do with one, cos, apparently, not everyone in the world knows who we are yet.

So, as per old dictum, here preserved is our official press release thing. Please read and not cringe.

Hello. This is supposed to be one of those awkward 3rd person resumes that read like a CV whilst attempting to convince you how vital and relevant the band is. I've wasted many curious, then morbidly curious hours reading band press releases; I guess if yr reading this then you have too, and you've long since become immune to the hyperbole and wary of the language of omission. There's nothing here that isn't google-able for more detail or opinions, and we'd hope to be judged on our band and not our ability to write convincing prose. So with that in mind, here is me trying to write an unbiased and neutral summary of something that means more to me and my two friends than anything else, ever, ever. Fuck the 3rd person tho.

Our band is called Johnny Foreigner. We're from Birmingham. You can read what you want into that. We've been a band since 2006. We've released 5 eps, 2 albums and 10 singles. We've lost track of how many shows we've played. We've toured in 4 continents, done enough major festivals to impress girls and guitar techs alike, been wowed and appalled by The Music Biz and we're still here, bedazzled by what we've achieved and in love with the future.

We play what we'd mostly describe as college rock, with occasional bursts of electronica or alt-country or anything else that seems like a good idea at 5 in the morning. We're at that 3rd album stage where we're learning to relax, but we're also learning to be more abrasive. I quite don't know why I feel so obliged to point that out; but so many of the bands we've loved have got to this point and lost their spark, and from our completely subjective viewpoint at least, we still have demons to exorcise.

We write songs about our lives and the things that occur around us. It's the same dull everyday (or mostly night) things that pass through everyone's mind, only more overdramatic. girls, drink, distance, closeness, hope and defeat. We don't think too hard about how songs are going to sound.

Our artwork is always drawn by our friend lewes herriot. You may have realised we have a theme.

We seem to garner a lot of press from the way we treat our fans and how open we are about the machinations of the industry we exist in. We grew up on limited edition glittery 7"s, american imports, record store gossip and pre-broadband downloads. Being young and in love with our favourite bands was like being in a gang, the shows like joyous drunken family reunions. Being able to soundtrack peoples lives is an amazing privilege, and the bands were always at the least courteous and friendly as we'd shakily mumble thanks for a signed setlist. We've been on the other side of the barrier for a while now and it never gets any less flattering. The best bands feel personal, and it's no parlour trick or marketing campaign. We're using the same channels available to everyone else, and I think it's pretty sad that we stick out mostly thru lack of competition; To our minds, this is what a band should do.

We release our records with Alcopop. When our last label became a mess of corporate facepalm, we avoided the subject for a year. We put a record out ourselves, paid for by presales. Like bitter divorcees, we talked about how we didn't need anyone else. We were right but we were lonely. We've always had respect for Alcopop and BSM, we're in love with many of their bands. We share some good friends and everything we heard about Jack made us want to be on their roster. He understands what we're doing and why, and, less personally, sees the decline of The Music Industry and value of songs as an excuse to put more effort and imagination and FUN into the end physical product. Alcopop are everthing we'd want from a record label apart from A Giant Bag of Someone Else's Money; but we've all been broke since long before we started this.

In as much as we plan ahead, this year we'll be touring the UK, then mainland Europe, then releasing our 3rd album. For once, the name has come first but it would be jinxing everything to tell anyone just yet. It's going to be awesome tho.

Thanks for taking an interest, I hope you are convinced.

vs the arts

2011-02-20T19:42:00.006Z

shitbeard is gone.

Hello April, have a tourette;

> > 2nd Edinburgh - Haddowfest

> > 3rd Edinburgh - Haddowfest (matinee show)
> > 18th Wakefield - The Hop

> > 19th Aberdeen - Cafe Drummonds

> > 20th Glasgow - Nice n Sleazy (+Stagecoach)
> > 22nd Nottingham - Bodega Social
> > 23rd Preston - Mad Ferret (+Stagecoach)
> > 24th Milton Keynes - Sno Bar>

> > 26th Birmingham - Hare & Hounds St (+Stagecoach & Pandas and People)
> > 27th Liverpool - The Shipping Forecast (+Stagecoach)
> > 28th Manchester - Night & Day St (+Stagecoach)
> > 29th Stoke - Underground
> > 30th Wimbledon - Grove Tavern

won't you come out with us? We don't have much in the way of supports yet and we're old and out of touch. So if anyone has any suggestions or would like to promote themselves for opening bands then write to us at the bottom of this page with links and we'll see if they meet our insanely high expectations. let us know which gig too, our geography is shit.

also while i'm here: We're doing this album, see. and we need to start thinking about artwork. we've probably taken the interactive photo thing as far as we can go. at least, without transplanting extra arms onto our bodies that are solely devoted to cutting and drawing. but, y'know, it would also seem kinda rude to leave you guys out of the process after we welcomed yr nudie pics last time.

SO THE PLAN HERE IS COLLAGE.

I made a list of one line descriptions, of an image from each of the Fantastic New Songs that we're making.

What you lovely people have to do (please), is go take a photo that matches one or many or all of them. We haven't really planned this out too much, we havent even though of formatting or actual product yet. The idea is to build up a bank of images that we (lewes ((HI LEWES)) ) can draw over, so each song has it's own collage of photos that all tangentially relate to the subject matter as interpreted by the targeted product demographic. It's like some 4th wall breaking metatree. it doesn't have to make sense anyway, its art.

There's 15 songs/briefs in all. I'm not going to put the list here, to Preserve The Mystique of the record itself and also partly cos i quite like the idea of a secret artwork circle. We'll do some sort of prize for those that submit a full set, and maybe have a dinner party.

Are you interested? obviously,hi res is best, but don't let the quality dictate. usual disclaimers; no money but full credit, and we'll ask yr permission to use it in any other context. Please don't submit anything that could get us into legal trouble, unless its urbex stuff, which we totally encourage (and rarely ends in arrests or charges)

also, we'll handle everything digitally, so you don't have to part with money for our expense and even people who live on the moon can take part. does the internet go to the moon?

so, if you want to be involved, write to johnnyforeigner@hotmail.co.uk, and we'll send you the briefs. title yr message "I'M DOING THE PHOTOGRAPHY FOR YOU LADS" so it doesn't get lost amongst offers of free ipads and shit pr..

the worst thing about making the ep sleeves was building up this awesome room of record sleeves, like some kind of exhibit, then packing them into boxes where they'd all go live seperate lives. this is like the opposite of that; everythings going to be together forever, thus balance is restored. ok awesomes thanks for yr time. more gigs and release news soooon

I WEAR YOU LIKE RIBBONS

2011-02-08T21:50:00.008Z

pies!

well that was mildly interesting. apologies to the apparently quite freaked out topshop marketing folks. it was never our intention to initiate mass brand slagging; we often find ourselves facing mini moral dilemmas like this one and we thought it'd be a fun experiment to see what our particular demographic would do in our place. also, pie charts are rad.

kinda pleased that the positive side won out, even more pleased to be like

HEY BIRMINGHAM WE'RE PLAYING THIS FREE SHOW AT THE CUSTARD FACTORY.

the original birds devonshire custard factory encompassed the whole block, not just the two buildings we know it as today. Our studio is on the far side of that block, so there could Very Plausibly be a secret tunnel leading to the stage. OMG AS IF.

anyways here is the the whole event eerily predicted by annoyingly tiny poster.

tsdr: tuesday 8th march, custard factory. text CTRL5 to 83338, get a secret code or something, and watch us burst out of a tunnel and play new songs.

We have too many new songs now, we need a whiteboard. thanks for partaking in our slightly bitter survey. More than anything i think this proves how easy it is to be angry on the internet, but i'm proud we illicit such a wide spread of opinions, it was like watching all the thoughts in our brains manifest themselves on facebook. eurghhhh.

next interactive game is called "roadie" and we'll meet you by the side of the stage after our set to start; each of you is assigned a flightcase or amplifier, and has to walk with it to our lockup, whereupon you get to shout "I've Been Conned!" and are declared the winner.

As a distraction i get to walk next to you droning on about how i'm not really as swayed as everyone else about Brendan Caldwells writing, but A Game Journo Story is the most fun indie computer game i've played in fucking forever. I'll probably go on about this one bit where your companion falls out with you because you put the killers on in a pub jukebox.

amazing.

other new to you news:

we'll be posting some more shows up in the next few days more UK including revised scotland dates. and maybe EUROPE but that might be a secret for now. but all the other dates leaking onto the interwebs are probably true

WE TOTALLY NEED A GRAND PIANO FOR OUR NEW ALBUM! seriously, does anyone in the birminghams know how we can get a couple of hours alone with a grand piano? just me, jun, and the worlds smallest 8track. we're hoping someone at The Rep likes our band but we'll settle for anywhere mildly illegal as long as it sounds, um, grand. write us up here with ideas:

johnnyforeigner@hotmail.co.uk

you should give this to your ears if you like our band + gameboy sounds. thanks euan lynn!

and lastly, album creation is going well, thanks for asking. we've tracked drums for 5 songs, I've sent my guitar off to a wizard to get refretted, and we have a title and everything. after the jaw-droppingly exciting news that dana made their new album with ross robinson, we were going to dress dom up as a different ross every month, but it seemed like too much effort and dom didn't look too impressed. still; open in paint:

(ross noble)

bye!

cones as boathangers

2011-02-06T19:13:00.006Z

guys its fucking happened again. gig-raped. see this? guess who never agreed to the show? we were all like; "topshop? urrr we'll get back to you on that one..."

instead of throwing our toys out the pram again, thought it might as well be interactive band time. SO, you beautiful wise people to which we entrust so much, tell us right here, should we play the show? here are some points to aid you:

pros

1) the custard factory is literally the next block from our studio. we could walk our entire backline there in about 15 minutes.

2) frankie and his heartstrings are super lovely people and always fun to hang out with.

3) the tickets are the same price as a text message

4) it might be outside over the pool. do they still do that? that'd be a pretty sweet evening.

5) huw stephens made the mix cd they're playing inbetween bands.

5) the posters are already up!

cons

1) we're not being paid for it

2) its right in the middle of when juniors out of IRL work, so we'd planned bulk work our album. we'd lose a few days to rehearse a set. or maybe a day if we just play new songs.

3) its topshop. its student party written in wacky font.

4) it might be inside the med bar. do they still do that? that'd be a pretty horrendous sounding evening.

5) we never said yes, godsdammit.

so tell us lovers, if you were us, WHAT DO WE DO? people of birmingham, for once, you count for double.. topshop have been pretty kind to us in the past, which should count for something even if it is brand cross pollination at its most crass. i doubt anyone at topshop knows or cares that we all think people that try and buy into a culture via massmarket branded clothing are fucking idiots.

kinda pissed off we're expected to do it for free but practically we can do it cheap, and it's pretty much free to get in which counts for a lot (especially if we can sort out merch for then)

so having donned our haircuts and made a decision as to THE RIGHT THING TO DO, please click here to go back to where you came from and commentthing yr answer underneath our statusthing. we'll make a pie chart of the results and eat the biggest slice..

thank you in advance and i hope yr all having a fun sunday. i've just discovered this:

and will be spending the rest of the night finishing the first series and pretending not to refresh facebook.

xlex

Oh dear God.

2011-01-27T01:53:00.007Z

I cannae believe Lex posted that Daisy Dares You song on here.

K, I firmly believe that the song that 'Courtney' sings below is way better, hands down, no competition. Votes plz:

She dances a whole lot better, too. And looks better. I went too far didn't I.

Right, I totally think I came on here for a real reason other than to have a video-off with Lex...

YES! Our forum has been resurrected (thx Chris!) so please go on there>> http://johnnyforumer.freeforums.org/ and talk about us and say cool stuff like we're hot, and you really love our music. (Please note the words 'daisy' 'dares' and 'you' are all banned from the Other Bands section.)

AND AND AND

on our online merch store, we're now selling vinyls and ceedees of our EP (deep breath) You Thought You Saw A Shooting Star But Yr Eyes Were Blurred With Tears And That Lighthouse Can Be Pretty Deceiving With The Sky So Clear And The Sea So Calm.

Yeeeeeah. BIG CARTEL EVERYONE! http://johnnyforeigner.bigcartel.com/

Nothing else new I don't think. We start work on ALBUM NUMBER THREE in a few days. In other news, I have reached Chapter 10 on the fist of the north star game. When I grow up, I wanna be the saviour of the post-apocalyptic world.

kelly out.

xxxxxxx

Ps I was serious about the votes, I wanna know who wins between fake courtney and d**** d**** y**.

fsdhsghiodsgidhogv (kavs for lavs)

2011-01-21T21:15:00.005Z

hi. thanks to everyone for being our online pr for th harriet video, tis awesome to see it spread but thats not why i'm here. ssssssssssssplurge::

there's this other common interview question, it came up today, what's yr musical guilty pleasure. and i always answer, i don't have any guilty pleasures. if i can get the same buzz from daisy dares you as from death cab, why is that something to be ashamed about? it's like slagging off gingers, its kinda pointless and playground, it's not like i'm forcing you to like the same noises as me. anyway, my theory is this:

if certain sequences of sounds stick in yr head, thats because some deep part of yr brain likes it. sometimes its the chorus from company calls and sometimes its the chorus from rosie, and yr reaction towards it is based purely on enforced tastes: one is an awesome treasured band, and one is a failed industry pop darling, but none of them words or opinions have anything to do with whatever it is that makes the song stick

ergo, no guilty pleasures. if you like something, then you like it. deal with it, let it be someone elses problem. this argument allows me to deflect any and all of kellys complaints when i play the ke$ha album, and also applies to any references to how much she used to like silverchair.

but then this thing happened to make me question my beliefs. it probably happened to everyone in the UK who thought this way, at about the same time:

if you havnt heard that before, we'll you'll probably remember from now on. I think the people that wrote this jingle are evil geniuseses. I don't drive, i barely watch tv, my brain has no reason to embed this aside from its pure horrible catchyness. i hate it. not only cos it's like graffiti carved MY OWN FUCKING MIND, but because of the awesome potential wasted. imagine, you have the power, some kind of massive perverse anti-musical skill, to create a jingle/melody/song/whatever this is that will stick in everyone's brain from now until they die, and the four word message you choose is about secondhand fucking cars. It's the sonic equivilant of sending a first contact probe to outerspace with, well, WE BUY ANY CAR sprayed on the side.

I'm clearly a less financially successful lyricist than webuyanycar ltd (srs) and i wish i had that magic to wield for more righteous reasons. there's a new advert running on telly now, a different phrase and different jingle, but possibly even more evil and sticky than the last. i can feel it crawling around inside my head looking for somewhere prominent to hang out forever. i totally don't want to search for it in case any more of the words (there are more words this time) rape my ears. anyway i read popjustice for the first time this year, i usually agree with pretty much everything they write and this was one of their worst songs of 2010

right, apart from the completely stupid middle8 which sounds like someone just accidently leant against pitchwheel and didn't tell her, i really like this song. i would genuinely rather hear this over deerhoof and i think i should be totally worried about that.

blehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

ranty mcrant

2011-01-19T15:32:00.002Z

got asked by rock sound to do a little soapbox piece about the guardian article that informed its readers how rock, as a genre, was fading out. just a few sentences. got a bit high and went on a bit too long, i think in the end they used the last paragraph. preserved here for the small minority of people who like music-related ranty polemic;

-------------
in response to the gauridan claiming rock is dead, when what they meant to say was "DEATH RACE OFFICIALLY STARTED"

I think the article itself is an inherently flawed piece of sensationalist journalism, kind of typical of a newspaper where you wouldn't expect anyone to like rock music unless it was packaged by the florence machines or bon fucking jovi. The basis of the whole piece seems to be : the pop charts last year, they were full of pop acts! Even more so than last year! Therefore, rock, which is the other form music can take, is dead. O you silly adults, you have no idea...

Do you remember when you first sold us the concept of rock? It was like, edgy, dangerous. The people that made it, they were genuinely a bit unhinged, and you exploited that to it's fullest so you could make some money for journalistic endeavours. Don't look at elvis's crotch! the who might make you explode. the new york dolls might rape you. the sex pistols, they'll make you explode and rape you. Later on, nirvana will make you self harm and marylin manson will confuse yr sexuality. are you so naive that you think that these kinds of people, and the hundreds like them who weren't pretty enough to sell yr papers for you, have just vanished? It used to be a symbiotic relationship, we knew you were vultures but we needed to please you because the internet hadn't been invented and we needed to communicate to the rest of the world. We needed to find all the other freaks that loved and understood what we were doing, so they could give us some money to keep on doing it. if the overspill meant we got tagged as "cool" and we picked up some cash from the mainstream, than, that's well and good too because this insane pressure and surreal lifestyle has led us to some pretty major drug habits. That's all over now.

Excuse the genre diversion, but, when was the last time amanda palmer was in the mainstream press? When was the last time she sold a record? She has a button on her website where people give her money. Then she does some amanda palmer stuff with that money, writes about it all on her website, people go, yeh, that's awesome, thanks, here's more money. That's the entire record industry in a couple of clicks and paragraphs. Some of her fans write about it on their websites so she's always attracting more traffic. There's a few more paragraphs that replaced the everything corrupt about the chart industry. This natural, organic and, above all, fair system of publicity and commerce is going to get better and better as the internet develops, and what we're seeing now is, forgive the analogy, the rats fleeing the sinking ship. I put it to you dinosaurs, vanguards of an industry that thrived for 80 years as loan sharks disguised as legend-makers, preying on the naive and the vulnerable, that rock music doesn't need the charts anymore.

Right, i've been blabbing on for years about how, now the internet's destroyed the music industry, bands and artists are going to have to split into two camps: those who want to be in the charts, and those who just want to rock. i think this is a clear sign that this schism is fully underway: since before we were born, a bands success was measured by radio play and chart sales. In these heady web 2.0 days, a band can make a living without having to utilise either of those channels. This isn't a new thing, (ask yr parents about crass or gbh, ask their parents about led zeppelin) but the decline of greedy cunts in suits has led to a whole bunch of alternatives opening up; indie distributors, bedroom labels, online shops, fucking myspace! essentially, rock isn't dead, it just looked at it's options and thought, them pop charts are kind of beneath me; I don't want to be contextualized in-between some pop idol kid and some goons whoring out my culture, and neither does the demographic that loves me, so, fuck em.

Have you noticed the rise of this awful celebrity - baiting industry? Robbie Williams is nobodies hero here i'm sure, but he makes a valid point - "these people, they hide outside my house waiting for something to go wrong so they can make money out of it. if i die when they're around, they'll be rich. I think that's evil." Those magazines, that culture, hangs around at the top of the charts, waiting for another heroin crisis poster boy or punk suicide. Sure, you can ride it out if you have say, queens of noise managing to convince the country yr 23 and a genuine unhinged star in waiting, but, as i think we all agree, florence and the machine = not rock. Chances are if yr reading this, most of the bands you love don't want this kind of attention; they want to sell enough shirts so they can afford to keep touring and put some food on the table, they don't really care about the size of their audience as long as the front rows are dancing, and they're clever enough to see the idea of popular rock stardom as a hangover from a bygone era. For all the whimsical eccentric spin journalists over 40 like to put on the pop charts, they're still an just an advertising mechanism for a pretty shitty industry.

I think the rock sound response does a good job of highlighting specific examples of living rock, but i'd like to chip in a few others. I'll go from the start of the year when everyone was like NO WAI RATM stole christmas! and then i'll point everyone latter half of the year where PABH, for my money one of the most exciting and scuzzy and fun ROCK bands of our generation, got played like, every fucking day on radio 1, their singer got plastered on 50ft high billboards over the capital for some ad campaign and even my girlfriends MUM went to watch them. thats a 50 year old woman enjoying the totally regular spectacle of a sold out room of kids mosh themselves crazy to a guy screaming "AWESOME RADICAL TOTALLY BODACIOUS" over giant grin-inducing dirtyass guitar riffs. exhibiting all the symptoms of a dead genre. like jazz, AHAHAHAHA. also this year, pretty much all my favourite bands; pavement, cap'n jazz, the d plan, reformed and toured to bigger crowds than they'd ever drawn in their youth. sure, there was a proportion of all their crowds who were just there for a nostalgia trip or curiosity, but those rooms were rocking out waaay harder than any pop idol show i ever saw, and none of them give a crap about chart sales. one last point, and i'm not really proud of this but it works to serve a point, i dj at a pretty standard indie night and nothing makes people rtfo like limp sodding bizkit.

so yeh, there's an expanding nugget of awesome amongst the smoking debris of the industry, and that's very much a part of this split: there's hardly any money in being in a rock band anymore. there's no big label deals, no coke and hooker parties, songs are physically worth a whole lot less money than they used to be and yr never going to get on top of the pops. so the only people left to start bands are those who just have an urge to make rock music are the ones driven to do it out of pure love for the music, the buzz of playing live and watching people move to their songs and take them home and soundtrack their lives. all the idiots who just want to chase fame, put on some makeup and generic emo clothes and go on chart shows and try and convince people they're genuine edgy artistes, no longer have the motivation; so the rest of us can carry on using this awesome punka internet, the magazines that haven't sold out for the sake of becoming household names, the guys running record labels out of their bedrooms and shitty rented office space, safer in the knowledge that the quality of the end product, that 12 months of hard graft turned into an album that you just got off rapidshare in 2 minutes, is going to be a lot higher.

Make no mistake, it's death race time here in the music business. it's going to take a while before all our bands and their fans can get our amanda palmer shit together, and the dinosaurs are getting desperate to preserve the old order. We'll come out of it in a generation or so, and be stronger for it, more exciting, more personal, but now, more than ever before, the way YOU choose to find and fund the music you love makes more of a difference than ever before. Pick your bands, pick yr writers, all that stuff that goosebumps you thru otherwise colourless and drab times, and know that if they stop, have to get "real" jobs, it'll be your fault and your loss. and i hope we're both still here on the other side.

harriet, by j matthew

2011-01-19T14:08:00.005Z

or, lets play at being the music industry part 4628247

if you've just switched over, when we were in america, we had a few days to kill, and, for no good reason other than he's awesome, j matthew nix sent us a treatment for a video he wanted to shoot for harriet, by proxy. it was totally rad and fun and (for us) easy, we shot on our penultimate day, in chicago, which is kind of our spiritual motherland, and after a month spent using cgi to make my hair less grey, we have the finished package ready to show you guys.

it's fucking special.

last week saw us debating amongst ourselves, our label, our manager and our press dude on the best way to release it. as i think yr all sick of whining about by now, we r skintd, so th most obvious route seemed to be, find a way to monetize it; but that seemed kinda wrong considering the whole crew worked purely for the joy of it and never even mentioned anything as disgusting as money. and and and then we asked you guys, who pretty much gave us a list of every music website ever, and we were still undecided, till jack pop hit on the rad idea we're executing in the next few paragraphs. apologies to the 405, who, if one facebook post is anything to go by, are at least, 300% better than the nme and the dis, but th most punk thing to do seems to be this:

(actually the most punk thing to do would be to get you to make the video, but j matthew beat you to it, so consider this the second best option crossed with a bit of healthy experimentation)

You get the exclusive. yeh, YOU. welcome to the fun fun world of music journalism. here are two links to our manager's dropbox.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1121527/JxFx%20Harriet%20by%20Proxy%20Med.mov

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1121527/HARRIET_BY_PROXY%20-%20iPhone.m4v

the first is our awesome video for harriet, by proxy, the second is the same thing only ready for iStuff. The Music Press won't see this till the end of this week/start of next, and we'll put it on our youporn account and that soon if you just don't want to play our stupid game anyway.

If you do, then, here's the Product. remember, RIGHTCLICKCOPY!LOL. I've done at least 1000 interviews in the last few weeks where i've tried to articulate, in as least a pretentious manner as possible, how our band is way better for everyone if we replace as much of the industry as we practically can, with awesome human beings who just do stuff for the sheer love of being involved in something they believe in, and how that's pretty much our definition of punk and how we try to conduct ourselves. and it works; we meet a super skilled video guy on the other side of the planet and now we have a super skill video. So, in keeping with our lets-see-how-far-we-can-push-our-luck-with-no-money ethos, please feel free to post it all over the interwebs in ur utubes yadda yadda meme out.

here are some words of accrediting that need to be seen first, cos we know you internet people like to play fast and loose with copyrights. mention j matthew nix tho, cos this is all his fault. and us. and yourself, yr our internet dude, remember.

The big city is no place for a lost little ghost.

Directed by J Matthew Nix

-- CREW --
5D Operator: Mark R. Smith
7D Operator: T.J. Bachorz
Producers: Bruce Bohr and J Matthew Nix
B Camera Team: Nick Nylen
Transportation: Lance and his Dodge Caravan
Editing and Post Production: J Matthew Nix
Gear and Facilities provided by Absolute Vision: http://www.absolutevisionproductions.com

-- CAST --
Johnny Foreigner - Alexei Berrow, Kelly Southern, Junior Elvis Washington Laidley
Harassed Parkgoers - Dan Gardner, Ryan Allen
Terrified Passerby - Justinn McDaniel
Human Corkboard - Richard Scott
Disillusioned Twentysomething - Nick Nylen
True Patriot On Bicycle - We never got his name, did we?
Harriet - Herself

-- SPECIAL THX --
Freesound.org users Rhumphries, fonogeno, and stijn for recording their awesome city ambiance, Jack from Alcopop, Tim Kinsella, Emi Nakamura, Cat Briggs, Owen Cluer, Nyssa Preinitz, Christina Mulé, Pat O'Hara, Ashley Lusk, Jane Nix, Ken Nix, Lauren Nix, the kind man at Officemax who let me make 100 photocopies of a lost ghost poster at 6 AM, every goober who whined about The Big Show doc taking longer, every person who stared blankly at the camera in the background, Bank of America, Navy Pier, Subway, that tasty Italian place, coffee, wrist braces, Blood Red Shoes, Sky Larkin, Copy Haho, Los Campesinos!, the entire Jofo road crew for trusting a bunch of crazed Americans with their precious cargo, Final Cut, After Effects, Lady Luck, Father Fortune, and you for watching!

i feel everything vaguely polemic i've written on the internet in the last few months has had the spectre of matt from king adora hanging over me. specifically the myspace bulletin that read "come on guys, lets do an arctic monkeys". fuck those old ghosts.

wow what a depressing pair of songs to sing along to.

2010-12-18T00:19:00.003Z

hi. people been asking for words to some of our new songs, so here they are.

also, santa fucking claus has reached its dl limit. our hero and first american friend jay from clicky clicky paypal'd us a pound and suggested via les internets that it would be nice and christmasesque if everyone else did the same. it totally would have been. we got a tenner. from one person. the amount of debt this band is in right now scares the shit out of us so excuse us if we don't pump more cash into soundcloud to increase the download cap again. we can't even afford to fix our bass amp.

if you think thats depressing (and chances are, you don't) you should read this. actually maybe you shouldn't cos then you might end up writing depressing self absorbed whiny blog posts like this one, but for what its worth, this is the most concise and clearly worded essay i've ever read on why WE ARE FUCKING DOOMED.

anyway, have a singsong:

tru punx

i've been thinking about killing myself; stark sober and my heart wants out. all our dreams got sold. the champagne girls got old. how the rumours read right till "cardiac" and the punk boys are posing for photographs, now everyone looks confused. girls get excused and we get used. uh! we're all afraid. we're all afraid tonight. uh! we're all afraid, we're all afraid. so now yr talking about killing yourself. you got a target and it's greater than health. seems clear cut to me: you'd end so beautifully. how the camera guys stifle a cynical laugh, i guess the beauty won't show up in the photograph, so if you feel used, well, real punks don't get to choose. i've been thinking about killing myself. we raised the bar but the bar raised hell. i got the nightclub load-out blues; i bet the dancefloor parts for you. how we're always going to lose these gutter fights where whoever wins keeps digital rights. o stray spark light a fuse. champagne girls excused and we get used. uh! we're all afraid. we're all afraid tonight. uh! we're all afraid, we're all afraid and i drop the blade, walk away from the void. drop the blade you know we're all afraid, we're all afraid and i drop the blade, walk away from the void. drop the blade you know we're all afraid, we're all afraid tonight. uh! we're all afraid, we're all afraid tonight. last time! uh!

JFNV

cheer up shadow, you've got to keep the weight. pick ups you get for free. bail yr change but dont bail on me, i'll swap our skylines, rebuild the underground. mark places you'd never see, anywhere but where you need to be. come on darling what are you saying to me, there's a gap in the fringe, theres a hole in yr city where the lost sparks flicker in the gaijin bars. how they could never be theirs and they're no longer ours. and if the moves you make don't work in the morning

you should just. leave. jet over yr desperate crowd, yr passport photo tumblr proud and the bad endings will be like scars fading. i know the hours were pretty cruel. some nights you wished you'd jumped into the pool. come on darling what are you saying to me, theres a gap in the fringe, theres a hole in yr city where the lost sparks flicker in the gaijin bars. how they could never be theirs and they're no longer ours. and if the moves you make don't seem so smart in the morning, i can almost see you leaving. hands on yr hips and yr eyes to the ceiling. and if the moves you make don't seem so smart when you wake up, put on yr headphones and walk out the flat, go let the subway suck yr tired frame back, i hear every station has its own ring tone, theres like 300 stops and none of them sound like home.

o also, if yr that doubtful dude that i was talking to when i was djing the other day, look, i really am in johnny foreigner. woooooo go me xxx

CHRISTMAS NUMBER 1

2010-12-10T21:19:00.005Z

hello

can we get some kind of award for being the most productive band in the world please.

here is our christmas hit single, we made it literally just now today and you can download it for free. god, it's not like we need money or anything.

santa fucking claus by johnny foreigner

notice yr still shivering, still wearing his coat. but we were lost there.

how deritend was silent under white.

"seven cigarettes and only six matches light" i said "yr so deep, i've drowned"

all the world is static-paused tonight so just come over, we'll have a slow christmas.

shed our bitter autumn at the door, don't think it over, we'll have a slow christmas.

a slow christmas.

wait outside yr new house write my name in the snow and come tomorrow

you know that i'll be faded out

and all these little victories in letting you go, can we have one night off.

all the world is static-paused tonight so just come over, we'll have a slow christmas.

shed our bitter autumn at the door, don't think it over, we'll have a slow christmas.

a slow christmas.

we're tinsel tacked and winter drunk on house red

were falling down on towpath slush and then were falling in bed

we're tinsel tacked and ice picked and these cheap fairy lights always short out by spring

were falling down in summer parks and then were falling out.

are you thawing.

are you thawing tonight?

all the world is static-paused tonight so just come over.

shed our bitter autumn at the door, don't think it over.

grab his coat and go, i'll split the taxi, just come over, we'll have a slow christmas

a slow christmas.

also here is a (lazy) video. we had an awesome screenplay but then coldplay ripped us off pretty much shot for shot, so this'll have to do yis. fire and robots can be soothing.

thats two new snow songs in a row. normal summer sevice to be resumed next week.

HAPPY WINTERVAL EVERYONE

santa fucking claus

2010-12-09T18:53:00.004Z

we dont have the time to go to a proper studio

we dont have the money to use any adults

it's too cold to even get the drums out of the van

and

i've lost the sleigh bells we bought last year

but tonight we're going to start recording a christmas song.

long way around the sea.

2010-12-05T16:08:00.012Z

im starting to worry that i'll forget how to feel loved. fsdnosgnwoesvdiovsiovdyhnjm.

you know when you tumblr stalk people and you realise the whole site is basically one big repost that says "ohai i have liek, no confidence, plz tell me my boob-hinty self shot makes me just as attractive as the last girl to do a boob-hinty self shot and if not here's someone else's photograph of some brand i identify with only taken with the contrast up because i am quite artistic and appreciate colours"?

do you ever think, when we're all like, 50 years old with real jobs, that all our neuroses will have been vanquished as a result of such mass digital catharsis, and we'll be all the more balanced and responsible people for it and thus improve humanity?

i thought i should fill some space here cos it looks like we died on the way to america. we nearly did, but thats another story. like, a 12 page tour diary i've just finished and need wing-arm to proof read. so, here is a bullet point list of the kool things we have done since i last wrote here

- america (obviously)

- was huge and brilliant and one of the few places where epic is not hyperbole. THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who bought stuff off our internet shops; you paid for the first legs deposit on the van and some buffalo wings. Those who went above and beyonds, we have a file on you and you'll get some kind of non-monitary reward at some points. ridiculously text heavy tour diary also coming soon.

- our split 7" with stagecoach came out.

- lewes did an art-off with secretly swedish and it came out beautiful. we contributed a song called tru punx don't get 2 choose, the title got cut along the line somewhere, presumably by the Grammar Police, and a barbershopified version of good luck with your 45

, which took about a 90 years for me to mix properly because none of our babs were in time and cool edit went mental and destroyed the piano sounds (tho i think that made them better). Stagecoach do a song called not even giles, its probably their best song ever and has 63 different catchy bits, and a cover of salt pepa which glides and floats and is infinitely better than them internet acoustic covers. I guess im mostly preaching to the converted, but, if not: BUY IT. all the reviews have been rad too, not that such things should matter to those with their own ears.

- its AWESOME CAKE TIME:

- we played phizz fest in wimbledon, it was fun and games but being broke meant using the inhouse sound man, which is fine unless they're a complete mentalist like this guy. does anyone remember ozric tentacles? me neither, but this guy used to be one, an

d seems all the worse for it now. i don't want to write a para telling sad tales about the behaviour of some old hippie casualty but i'd recommend bands play at the grove and experience this broken storm of a man.

- our EP came out. well, slowly. the cds are all done and ready and come with a little photoghost, the 12" are sitting in the corner of wing-arm and frobots front room being turned from black canvases to handmade works of amazement.

We totally didn't think this project out. each record sleeve, from start to finish, takes about 20-25 mins to make. We have 500. urkz! luckily we have plenty of van time to production line ourselves. 150 have already gone to alcopop hq, so preorders there should be fulfilled soon, and we're trying for another 100 this week for our distributor, so if you've preordered from somewhere else then maybe yours is the next one i write.

It's kinda sad in a way, i wish we could gallery them for a while, cos they look so impressive lined up on the floor, but no-ones ever going to see more than a few in the same place.

Anyway, im picking up the last sets of photos from wichita next week, so then we'll do all the prize work for everyone. This also has awesome reviews for those of you who still buy music based on decimal scoring, so thank you all you journalisty types. for sure, we're #betterthanthebeatles. Seem to have done a million interviews too, and none of them have been shit, so im sure you'll be pleased to read some more rambly gubbins elsewhere. these are probably my favourites, interviews are getting fun: 1998 loaded magazine bloke test style and pictionary style (also, audience pictionary style)

- We did a Brand New Song for gold flake paint and played it in a freezing cold art gallery in bristol. Its called, a kings heath story and is about snow and stuff. you can see our dan branching out into the world of live percussion too. it should be up next week, meantimes here are words cos i know you like it like that.

i walked out when it ended on addison road where the cozy hearts were stowed. took yr parents whisky and yr bad advice and the bottle smashed on the ice. and we'll make the best with the heat thats left. we could shut ourselves in, i can't stay i can't stay awake. we should cover our tracks but the snows covered everything. blanketed, glistening, is this heaven for you. i walked out in the blizzard and i got soaked to the skin. from the outside looking in, the glow of the tv and the frosted glass and a shiver that won't last. and we'll stay under the blankets till we see the beams of searchlights silhouetting snowflakes against the roofs of old friends houses

- our youkay tour is almost over, just southampton tomorrow and then up to scotland in the heatwave. Thanks to everyone braving the weather for coming out, its been awesome and sweat-filled as ever. If you live in london then you clearly need to know about this SUPER RAD END OF TOUR/YEAR PARTY thats been added on, 13th december. o shit also, dom who does our recordings is doing our sound on this tour, and LOOK WHO HE MET ON HIS DAY OFF!

legendville. he wussed out about asking his opinions of joan of arcs album campaign which would have been interesting to hear. but still, jealous.

we gave ourselves transformer names. im flywheel, kelly is wing-arm (to be reborn mallet) and junior is frobot. dan has one too but it's so offensive that when i told everyone i'd mentioned it in an email interview they were kinda shocked. so if anyone can think up a new name for dan, that'd save us the time we really need to spend time drawing then cutting then scribbling then marking then glueing then pressing then taping then writing then labelling then packing then reboxing

k hope everyone is keeping warmer than i am. you can buy both our new records direct from our label right here

GOODBYE IDIOTS!

2010-10-05T19:54:00.005Z

that was a tv comedy reference, you're not really idiots. We're like 2 hours away from leaving for toronto and im totally hyper and not ready.

massive thankyous to everyone who brought stuff from our goodwill sale, and even massiver thankyous to the few of you who found the gift cash button on paypal, we're totally humbled. We're going to work out something very special for you folks in the neat future, you will be remembered.

The end result of cash-drive is enought monies to hire out a winnebago. well, we can only afford the first couple of weeks so far but it's an awesome start and means we can nix hotel costs and make dan cook us breakfast. so yeh. it totally wouldn't be possible if it weren't for you guys. karma says you all get swimming pools.

We're still totally on the scav for places to stay (winnebago sleeps 4 + 2 children and there's 7 of us..) and shower, so if anyone can accomodate us, plz hit us up here:

johnnyforeigner@hotmail.co.uk.

we'll totally guestlist you and tell your friends how rad you are.

if youve bought the digital film package and havnt had a link yet, curse dropbox and email us and we'll send you it.

Play Patterns was awesome fun. leeds = best city. sincere apologies to everyone who that had to leave cos things over-ran. we feel totally shitty about it but it was completely out of our control. if its any consolation, they only paid us half of what we were contracted for because they wanted to try and cut their losses a bit. THANKS FOR THAT GUYS, WE'RE REALLY RICH ATM SO JUST FORGET ABOUT IT K?

So we're another £350 behind what pathetic budget we had, but there's too much good stuff happening to start throwing knives, and Leeds is totally winning the most-extreme-audience-dancing league that we've just imagined.

SO QUICKLY BEFORE WE LEAVE YOU GUYS, here are the dates for our awesome UK tour to celebrate our EP release on alcopop. Support on all dates comes from Stagecoach, who you should be hella excited for.

Nov –

18– Reading Play

19 – Northampton Labour Club

20 – Brighton Jam

22 – Cardiff Buffalo Bar

23 – Cambridge The Portland Arms

24 – London Barfly

25 – Guildford Boileroom

26 – Nottingham Gatecrasher

28 – Leeds Brudenell Social Club

29 – York Stereo

30 – Sheffield Harley

Dec

1 – Birmingham The Fucking Flapper! SWEET!

3 – Bristol The Croft

6 – Southampton Joiners

7 – Leicester Sub91

8 – Glasgow Nice N’ Sleazies

9 – Aberdeen Cafe Drummonds

10 – Dundee Doghouse

11 – Edinburgh Sneaky Pete’s

There's still a couple of shows tbc, but if yr a promotor and see a geographically suitable gap then hit us up. Notice Scotland: We found another city thats not glasgow or edinburgh or the other one. Is it any good? Plz no OMG YOUR NOT PLAYING MY TOWN letters, we've tried to spread ourselves around as much as we can, its ALL your fault for living somewhere with no suitable available promoter. In keeping with US sensibilities, we'll offer guestlist to people if yr coming a stupid distance. So so psyched for this, there's some awesome places we havnt been to for ages and stagecoach are probably my favourite band to watch in the world right now.

So yeh. E.P. time. All the tracks have been approved for mastering tomorrow. So when we finally fall out of aeroplanes we'll have something to listen to.

GUESS WHAT THO! SOMETHING WENT WRONG AND WE NEED YOUR HELP! Here is the Official Page for the release, details (and more lush pictures) are there. don't look at us like that, for once this isn't a money thing, its another stupidly impractical art idea that YOU can be part of.

i'd love to talk shit more but i have to go pack. OMGAMERICAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

calm sea

2010-09-28T14:23:00.003Z

big wave coming tomorrow now. drama queens, us. BUY BADGES?

xxx

i got something MCs can kiss

2010-09-28T02:11:00.015Z

this is the post i wanted to write tonight, and it's probably going to get overshadowed by URGH STUFF tomorrow, but yeh: here is what we have been up to, because im sure YOU ALL REALLY WANT TO KNOW:

I went deejaying with jack alcopop at surf wax america, i think we played about 7 songs between us before we got told to stop cos they had to close. then we played 3 more songs, and got abused by the staff for not stopping and the dancefloor for stopping AT THE SAME TIME. london, you need to learn communication. anyway, attica state do a mean buddy holly and darwin deez came to pull girls on the dancefloor, which proves we're good for something i guess.

We went to mook in leeds, where whiskas does recording and ting. It's a lovely place, covered in late 90s promo posters and broken bits of drums. Slightly more hi-fi than the last bit of recording: (here is a picture of my girlfriend's parents toilet)

We did two songs. we had a converstaion with whiskas that went like this:

- so i was thinking, if you just do one song, we can have a pretty relaxing day and not leave here too late

- we want to do two songs

- it's just, i do have a kid now, and i havn't been home much lately

- yeh, definitely two songs.

i dont know what time we finished, i stopped looking at the clock after midnight. But yeh, whiskas is awesome at recording bands and we had loads of fun and ate hearty japanese dinner. More importantly he introduced me to Uffie. O M GDDS why have i been wasting eartime on ke$ha?

We sort of lied about doing two songs, one of thems actually two separate songs that merge together. Anyways, its the last song (2 songs) to be finished for our eepee. The second song is for SECRET: (but here is a clue you won't get)

Would you like an exclusive news bomb? Eepee is going to be called "You thought you saw a shooting star but yr eyes were blurred with tears and that lighthouse can be pretty deceiving with the sky so clear and sea so calm"

HMV are advertising an "exclusive" barfly show where we play the whole of our third album. Sorry guys, its part of the november tour with stagecoach, and we'll be playing a regular set. On account of not having written the 3rd album yet nor having even spoken about playing it. O HMV, you try to be cool with your "bands" and your "music" but really, yr still a dickhead.

We're still sorting out a few dates for this tour. IS GOING TO BE RAD. We'll tell you before we leave.

We booked our tickets for america. We land in toronto the day before the first show and leave 3 days after the last one. chicago, you are officially stuck with us for a bit. We used juniors account to book the tickets cos ours is just rubbish, and american airlines took the money out straight away. then, just to be sure, they took it out again a few minutes later. This totally happened to one of our friends who used AA too. Thanks American Airlines, you incompetent cunts.

We also got the badge set back that we meant to get done ages ago then forgot then ordered then forgot about then reordered again. Likee? Super Limited GATBP lyric badges and a sticker too.

We'll put them on the merch store tomorrow, £4 a set. Designed by us and lewes. Actually, i just told him what to write so it's pretty much all his goodness. The kind of quality you'd expect from the guy whose just been commissioned to design the new top shop logo AND climbs mountains in his spare time. Please note, we only did a run of 50 and we're keeping 10 as presents for various staff members. We won't have them on tour and there won't be another run, so get them while you can and smile smugly when people are confused as to why you have some seemingly unrelated - to - anything sentence pinned to yrself.

We've been rehearsing some old songs for america. Thank god for muscle memory, cos our memory memory is awful. weirdly, kellys remembers stuff me and jun don't and vice versa.

"my friends" fake twitter campaign has gotten actual IRL press from the Bham Post, Bham Mail, Guardian, Express and Star, and Telegraph, as well as being quoted on BRMB and being threatened for libel from 13 year old boys. He's most proud of making it onto BirminghamItsNotShit.com tho.

And lastly, we've been doing barbershop and its destroyed my sleeping patterns. seriously, we spent 3 hours recording ourselves going baa and baap and so forth, then i spent from 8pm to 6am mixing trying to get it not to sound like a bunch of out of time sheeps (I took a 2 mile walk in the middle to clear my head) The next day i played it to junior and he was all urghhh, so we rerecorded some more baaaps and buups and i stayed up till 5 mixing it more and now its done and we sent it to our manager and our label boss and havent heard back from either of them. bleghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Anyway. News tomorrow early evening our time. Not Exactly good news either. Well, actually, it works out pretty sweet for you guys and hopefully helps us out loads, but it's actually pretty terrible circumstances. Ugh. sorry to lead you all on, there's so much fun good stuff happening around us at the moment and i havnt really had the change to boast about it, so i thought it should get a 12 hour head start..

stay close xx

Empire Records

2010-09-27T22:19:00.011Z

is still one of my favourite films ever. The reason me and kelly went to work in a record shop. Its a pretty fairy story tale that never plays out in real life; indie record store threatened by The Man,and despite being woefully underfunded and staffed by slacker cliches, stages epic rock show, raises cash at last minute and stays TRU PUNX 4EVA.

this is our empire records moment.

. you know whats rubbish about being a small band? big companies. the kind of big companies that can swat you away and squish you without losing any sleep. sometimes they don't squish you tho. they just sign a publishing deal with you and offer you a couple of grand to buy flights and hotels and petrols should you get offered, say, an awesome US tour, then when you come to claim the money THEY DONT FUCKING EVEN BOTHER TO PICK UP THE FUCKING PHONE YOU RAT BASTARD CONNIEVING GREEDY CORPORATE FUCKHEADS.

um yeh. so we have no idea if they're avoiding us cos they know we're owed money, or they're on holiday spending our money, or they're planning on throwing a big party in toronto when we land and showering us with tourbuses and free guitar strings. even just showering us, would be a better situation than we've landed ourselves in now. IDK, maybe they're all round avril lavigne's house singing system of a down songs.

So we're coming to america alright. We guessed aforementioned Industry Cunts would find some excuse to delay paying us so we cleared our band account into juniors, put our personal savings, borrowed cash from our tour manager and our manager manager, and brought everyones tickets. American Airlines even charged us double by accident, meaning juniors bank account is a seething cauldron of debt and redness; but at least we have the tickets. What we don't have is hotel money, van hire money, driver hire money, petrol money, food money, merch-making money, don't even want to think about how we're going to afford the hitmen we want to hire now-money.

Anyways, so we've been panicing and pacing and comparing hitman quotes, realised we need to have some sort of garage sale. think of this as that tv show that goes into people's houses and sets up stalls outside selling their old crap to the rest of the street. We're a lot nicer than those people, our old crap isn't crap, and we have a waaaay more noble goal than trying to raise the cash to put auntie gladys in a home or get a kitchen extension with real wooden beams.

Here is some stuff for sale. virtual packages, if you will, from various points in our history.

Johnny Foreigner's Great Digital Goodwill Sale:

for £5 each:

We Left You Sleeping And Gone Now; Also....

(pre kelly home made country rock)

comprises:

"we left you sleeping and gone now" - 11 track album

"also..." 4 extra songs we made a week or so later

14 previously unseen hand made backdrops from when we used to have a projector

40 period photographs

copious self absorbed liner note waffle

Every Day Is A Constant Battle

(original recordings and demos)

comprises:

"every day is a constant battle" - 17 track pre-waited up demo compilation

21 previously unseen handmade backdrop things

27 period photographs and posters

all our pre - best before record art (including 3d polaroids and all 5 bullring covers)

more liner note waffles

For £4:

Johnny Foreigner Does Wichiten

High Quality Bootleg Audiovisual Setmenu:

8 songs recorded this summer as part of the Wichita Has A Week Long 10th Birthday Party celebrations at the Garage in LDN, featuring 3 totally new songs + cameos from the chaos horns and gareth and neil campesinos!

comprises:

full set shot with 2 Hi Res cameras from front of house and sound desk audio

mp3s of sound desk audio

danPOV package - see and hear but not smell the show, an interview and other fun larks thru the HD eyes of our tech dan

two extra bonus mp3s of acoustic live session songs

and for £2.50 each

Johnnyforeignerisaces (hearts edition)

ltd edition tour EP, 7 otherwise unavailable recordings, 24 period photos from juniors camera, and 2 awesome lush desktop wallpapers made in collaboration with World renown architect and Topshop founder Lewes Herriot.

Johnny Foreigner @ Wichiten

just the audio from our superfun LDN show (+ 2 acoustic songs)

so yeh. you can see full tracklistings for everything by clicking the respective links.

we're using bandcamp to distribute the music, everything else will be sent via the miracle of dropbox to yr email as soon as we see it. It'll be checked everyday from now until forever, so nothings going to get lost and delayed unless the government cuts off everyones internets.

Last of all, if you'd like to guarantee getting one of lewes's beautiful heart/america tour tshirts you can preorder by clicking here. They'll be sent off a week or so into the tour.

Tho we clearly can't stress enough the IF YOU DONT GIVE US YOUR MONEY THEN WE ARE COMPLETELY SCREWED, we're still old enough to remember spending £15.99 on joan of arc albums from tempest (rip), so asking a combined £16.50 for 49 songs and a bunch of video and home made arts stuff doesn't exactly feel like begging. still, look at our big eyes and silky fur. you know if you don't pay, we get put down right?

K cools. Whatever you give will go directly into the america fund, i was lying about the hitman. Thanks. back soon.

(TLDR : we're selling everything. go here and here and please please please all the gods in the world let us raise enough money to be able to actually do this tour.

stay close. xxxxxxx

OH MY GOD AMERICA (and Cananda), (Canada) AND AMERICA OH MY GOD

2010-09-16T12:53:00.009Z

america, this post is solely for you. it's what you've been waiting for. no time for witty commentary:

WE'RE GOING ON TOUR WITH FUCKING LOS CAMPESINOS!

arghyarghargh. Those of you who've been following our super-america (and canada) campaign (backstory 1 & 2, i guess we'll be adding some more songs to that..) will know how much this means to us. Check the general goodness of these dates:

HNNNNG:

10/08/10 – Toronto, ON @ Wrongbar (All Ages)
10/09/10 – Laval, PQ @ Maison des Arts de Laval (All Ages)
10/10/10 – South Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground (All Ages)
10/12/10 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s (21+)
10/13/10 – New Haven, CT @ Toad’s Place (All Ages)
10/15/10 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg (16+)
10/16/10 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg (16+)
10/17/10 – Baltimore, MD @ Ram’s Head Live (All Ages)
10/18/10 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle (All Ages)
10/20/10 – Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse (All Ages)
10/22/10 – Dallas, TX @ Granada Theatre (14+)
10/23/10 – Austin, TX @ La Zona Rosa (All Ages)
10/24/10 – Houston, TX @ Warehouse Live (All Ages)
10/26/10 – St. Louis, MO @ Firebird (All Ages)
10/27/10 – Iowa City, IA @ The Blue Moose (All Ages)

we're main support for all these days except the two brooklyn shows where we're on first so we have time to go hang outside the hold-steadys rehearsal room again.

some more facts:

1) UK be jealous, we're going to be joined on these dates by our 2nd tallest friend and animation genius Ben Rausch. Ben joined us for our South Africa tour earlier this year and ran around the stage triggering live visual loops of ghosts and laser cats and preddy padderns and things with his bastardised keytar. Read his words about all that here. He's brought a foldy outy screen thing and probably doesn't quite know what he's letting himself in for.

2) These dates are all LC! shows, we might try and squeeze some more in between. See a geographically viable space? Got a basement? Hit us up NOW!

3) I know theres a lot of places we're missing out. Here is our official stance on the inevitable SOB SOB WHERES MY SEABOARD complaints: We're coming like, 3000 miles for this, its going to financially drain us, it's an amazing party-zone line up and its NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN AGAIN. So, you can either roadtrip out to some of the shows, or wait for us to accrue the airfare again and see if some (less amazing) band wants to take us out. You could be waiting a long long time.

4) If you wrote in for our teamerica campaign and live in one of the places we're playing, expect some kind of begging letter in the next week or so. Our touring party is probably going to be like, 7 people (we're taking dan to make sure we don't leave anything behind each night) and what would be lovely is if we met a few tru punx who had spare couches and lived close to each venue. Also, college radio peeps, fanzineybloggy people, anyone with billy corgans cell number, get in touch, lets do STUFF.

5) We're getting some merchymerch made up. We're pretty much going to have to rely on merch sales for food, so, hope you guys like tshirts.

here is lewes's superawesome US exclusive shirt design:

ITS A HEART AND ITS YOUR COUNTRY GEDDIT?

We'll be doing some kind of pre-ordery combo bundley thing offer pretty soon, whereby you get stuff for cheap if you order it before hand. You get a guaranteed shirt for cheap and we get to eat sooner, everyone's happy. More about that soooooon.

okcools. busy busy busy. stay close

xlex

pellets

2010-09-13T23:29:00.006Z

1) We've been hanging with Famous Topshop Artist Lewes Herriot. The artwork for the ep, we've decided, will be excellent, and all the sleeves will be unique. I guess thats all you need to know for now.

2) Our Awesome New Record Label has found a place that can print us silver onto tshirts. Is this going too bling? we're thinking, no.

3) Theres a load of blogs that have a free song for you to download what we made, it's a cover of one of the sweetest songs in the world and yes that is a ukulele.

4) This is really Birmingham specific and in now way band related, but my friend has this fake twitter account: [at]travel[underscore]wm, and since the official national express west mids twitter only has 40 followers, it'd make his day if he could overtake them. so if you want to fill yr twitter feed with rude fake info broadcasts from our local bus and train overlords, then follow him/help him TAKE DOWN THE MAN. But plz don't mention us!

5) Yes we know. not yet. soon.

6) World-Renown Topshop Architect Lewes Herriot only has a few prints left from his dark inventory series; you should get in touch with him in the link above and buy them cos they're awesome. I got the god of rabbits and all they stand for. I think this is kinda neat, like, if I was a badger, I could still count on the rabbit god to help me out with burrowing.

7) We're going to leeds next week. partially because its the new centre of the universe, but mostly to record a couple of songs with whiskas from forward,russia! I'm hoping he'll teach me some of his loop-guitar dark arts. I think dans coming as well, so look out for even more unflattering HD footage of us recording.

that was it. stay close xxxxx

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

slight addendum

2010-09-10T17:04:00.001Z

exorcism project = all sold out. in less than half an hour.

note to self, never underestimated the selling power of cute.

THANKS GUISE I GUESS WE'LL GO MAKE SOME MORE THEN!

information broadcast transmission!

2010-09-09T21:40:00.016Z

i've been on a weird suede trip all night, there's this quote from brett anderson that totally stood out amongst all his "im pretty gay, honest" posturing. he's talking about the thought processes of being in band and keeping shit together thru the peaks and troughs: "it's like you're a bull in a china shop, you keep going and eventually you just become a better bull in a china shop." It made me laugh but im not quite sure why. anyway, i put it here cos such a long post probably deserves some quotation as a preface. this is one of the most epic text heavy info post we've ever done, and, whilst its all desperately important and relevant, thats no excuse for slouchy posture, so plz ensure yr orthopaedically comfortable.

We have a new press guy! he's actually our old press guy, which is why i know he's going to forgive us for doing this stuff on a friday evening when everyone in teh industry knows you wait till monday to do announcings. HELLO JAMES! SORRY!

Item #1

i fucking hate press releases. vast deluded interchangeable wastelands of superlative; deluded promises of relevance, clichés recycled as tradition, and exaggerations so oft repeated as to make writing them again a waste of ink and electricity and oxygen. written by dinosaurs for other dinosaurs.

here is our press release then. i've kept some of the obnoxious exaggeration in for old times sake.

we chose to walk away from doing a third record with best before. the reasons you don't really need to know about, except to say they're probably identical to the arguements had by every righteous indie band of the 00s with their labels funded with money from the 90s, only magnified our need to overdramatise everything, guitars that just don't stay fixed, and trying to work out who we know from 'kill your friends' IRL.

we're really proud to say, our next couple of records will be released with alcopop. it's pretty rare to get a label that's genuinely excited by the increased need for creative and fun ways to sell records, and we're flattered that the one that has the bands we like also likes us. I heard that Jack who runs it won't deal with bands who don't want control over their artwork, and that he doesn't want to do a standard cd release ever again. We've found a pretty suitable home...
the internet hasn't killed the industry, its just split it into the big money players that have to recoup thru dwindling cd sales, and the genuinely independant side that never planned for a pension in the first place. we've been broke since ever, so we know which side we stand on, and you lovely people are going to receive better products as a result.

so, our first record on alcopop (and our first 12"!) is a schizoid collection of 6 songs that have no common theme apart from us thinking they fit together, like a photo scrapbook of summer adventures or some weird dream where the scenery changed and you didn't notice. there's 3 songs in drop-d, recorded by our long time friend and producer dom james. one of them is probably the loudest we've ever been. the other songs were made by us in bedrooms on long weekends off. one of them we still need to finish, ooops!

it has the provisional title of "there when you need it", tho we reserve the right to change that on a whim or chance misunderstanding. out at start of november is the plan, on 12" and digitals, and a postcard for each song drawn by famous Topshop designer lewes herriot.

we'll be celebrating in the traditional manner of a UK tour in november. A few dates have already leaked onto the interwebs and we're confirming the rest and will tell you all soon enough. Support for all dates will be super radical reading/leeds headliners (and labelmates, woot!) stagecoach, and we'll have a pretty awesome surprise for around then too, which you'll be hearing more about soon. we don't want to flood peoples brains with our band, even tho that would be awesome and we could control you all like in syndicate, and fit you with bionic limbs and laser pistol upgrades.

so yeh, that's the first part of this epic broadcast done. as background information, we've moved into the nicest and most colourful practise space in the world ever. It's called floodgate street CIC, tho we're going to call it candyland, and its a whole world away from the resident evil set we used to rehearse in a mile walk out of town. also, no stairs! PERFECT. and! our bank account was (briefly) in the black for literally the first time ever last week, and! today we sent an order off to get a set of "grace.." badges lewes designed for us ages ago made.

So, is everyone still reading? totally not done yet. I'm so used to coming on here and moaning i kind of worry people'll switch off if i'm too positive.

Item #2

its with a heavy heart that we've had to remove some paragraphs here whilst some Stuff is Sorted. lets just say, america news, public knowledge next week, massive fucking smiles all round. shit yes.

Item #3

or, better commerce through exorcism.

its become apparent to us that trying to make a living selling melody is a pretty bad idea for a quick ride to the gold plated swimming pools we covet so much. Top Gear still refuses to license our songs and apparently some of you people are copying our music digitally off the internet, which is the same as stealing our cars and helps fund pirates who rape babies for satan. so, behold our brand expansion into the world of collectible super random box plush toys. dammit if this were japan we'd be so minted by now. or sued by namco, but tbh we'd quite like the publicity. anyway scott pilgrim, get off our zeitgeist.

exorcism project!

please buy from us 20 of our ghosts, unique handmade kawaii physical manifestations of things that have haunted us over the last few years and should really be passed over. they were brought to plush toy form using love and soft materials by sarah graley and each one is about as big as her hand.

they come with an authenticationarisation certificate containing individual handmade & signed backstory and storage instructions, as well as a download & lyric sheet for '199x', a sad new song we made for especially for this project that you can't hear anywhere else.

here is our merch store where you can buy one.
and here is the gallery of available spirits.

successful applicants are encouraged to (liberally) follow storage instructions and send pictorial proof to us, which we'll include in said gallery.

we have no control over which ghost appears in yr mail. you can't choose a particular fear or regret, LIFE DOESNT WORK OUT LIKE THAT.

kcools, we hope you like thems. if this all goes swimmingly and we sell out superfast, we'll maybe do some more, and soon our lives will be cleansed without having to resort to scientology. everyone wins. k awesomes good luck!

okay, here ends epic transmission. stay close and next week we'll announce dates of things and that amazing thing we're bursting to tell you but have been politely asked to refrain. fsdujnba fjagnwije!!!!!!!!!!!!!

be excellent to each other

xx

bullet porn

2010-09-01T15:09:00.006Z

hi!
we have like, a formal announcement to make on monday. fun stuffs. but, meanwhile, this:

>

omg leeds we love you and just cant stay away.

also, got sent a link to this today with a message "Hi Just to say, I've been making tees unknowingly with the same phrase as your band!? Hope they do you service.

Cheers
elliot"

sdlsgojjrgrioavnj wat do plz, o noble fanbase? is he for real does anyone know? i mean, i don't really think there's a market for people wanting johnny foreigner as a tshirt slogan. weird. pretty sure we hold no copyright over the phrase, but were kinda worried people'll think our shirts have gone really boring. maybe we should just start making coldplay shirts.
anways, just to be sure, there nothing to with us and if you give him money thinking yr somehow repping us then everybody loses and we all die horribly. at my tshirt selling job, we have a team of ex hells angels who go around intimidating bootleggers and taking their stock. srs, at one point i had about 10 different cheap dayglo sugababes shirts.

that bipolar friends clock on ebay, now that was a nice creative way to rip us off. i wish i'd bought it.

HOPE EVERYONE IS WELL. xxxxxxxxxxxx

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

2010-08-18T14:18:00.005Z

sarah graley > you

COMING SOON!

all i really wanted was a (term for someone i could lean on)

2010-07-22T19:44:00.004Z

ohai guise.
what you doing?

our new ep is 50% finished. well, more than that, but half the songs are like, ready to be heard by people who arent us and stuff. we're undecided if the lead off single should be a standard yay happyclap pop song (for The Radio to pick up on and make us famous) or a depressing slow song (cos The Radio pretty much ignores us whateverr, and we're all growd up and mature now)

we've also designed a new tshirt which could possibly destroy topshop. or get us sued, we're not quite sure.

and and, we've updated the merch store with some stuffs we found down the back of a broken dream. i mean sofa.
theres some old sofacore shirts, a tote bag, the eyes wide 7" and the every cloakroom 10". its all super limited, we're clearing out for NEW STUFF thats getting made in a month or so.

also, check this fucking awesome band out - fist city
i wrote them this morning all arghhhhh i love yo band, i read about you in the nme and that NEVER HAPPENS, and they wrote back straight away saying, thanks, whats the nme?
which made me crush even more.

also, in trying to find a song called american high school rock (i think) by san lorenzo, i had a total gringo day and realised that the songs on hirameka hifis myspazz are super good live recordings. also, goodbye to victories by eska is probably the greatest song ever.

k byyyyyy

cake face

2010-07-16T23:54:00.003Z

hi guise

last night was fucking awesome.

thanks be to:
gareth and neil and the chaos horns for playing with us
the awesome and patient garage stage crew (worst soundcheck ever)
wichita for letting us crash their party

seriously, wichita = awesome. the first wichita release i brought was a bright eyes / her space holiday spilt single, and i can't believe that was 10 years ago. it was a total privilege to be asked to be involved and i'm sure the next ten years will be just as rad. i worked out, on average i buy almost 5 of their records a year, i can't think of any other label thats been that consistent or warrents such loyalty.

and they're cool with us using their franking machine too. legends.

anyways, it was a super rad show, cheers everyone for coming early to see us!

all the preordered copies of our super10" record have been posted out now, so, if you still havnt got yrs, give it a week to allow for postal incompetence and then bug us about it. we'll probly put the rest on th merch store at some point this week..

luna park

2010-06-17T03:38:00.007Z

hello! i just heard of this band and i think you might like them too see?

this is philadelphia grand jury, they're from australia and, LONDONS, you can see them supporting us at 93fteast on the 26th of THIS MONTH. they're on an epic uk tour, go see them in other places too. we really need to stop booking gigs the day after one of us returns to the country, but never mind.

also, i went for a quick drink today with one of my total teenage musical idols, to talk about producing ALBUMNUMBER3. well, i guess its 4, technically speaking but anyway: EXCITING. can you guess who? heres a clue, its not anet mook. anyway, i dont think he remembers drunk me meeting him in the jug of ale 8 years ago, but he was just as cool as i remember. he gave me a beer and i kept it in my fridge for 3 years till pete from calories drank it.

and lastly, and it spins my head slightly i can even write this, if there's anybody with a johnny foreigner tattoo that hasnt already added a picture to our faceboke then, plz do it. you insane but ego-bolstering crazies. we want to cut off yr skin and make a blanket for our grandchildren JOKES.

nah, actually, we want to kind of organise our photos a bit betterer. what we're totally missing is pictures of our t-shirts, so if anyone has photos of themselves wearing any of our merch and looking SUPERCOOL and stuff, plz send it to johnnyforeigner@hotmail.co.uk so we can show them off to people. i don't quite know who, but they'll be well impressed. plz mark yr mail "COMMENT MAH PIX PLZ" so we don't lose it amongst the offers of discounted italian designer clothing and airmiles reminders.

k thx loves

google chrome, i like you.
kbyebyetraaaaaaa

mutton dressed as lamb dressed as peacocks for the ball

2010-06-13T01:30:00.008Z

i sometimes dj at a club night in a kinda posh kinda scummy lahhndaahhn town. last night this girl came up to the booth and says; "d'you know about indie rock then?"
i was like, "yeh, i guess i do" so she said, can you play that sex on fire song.

no, says i, i dont have it and its rubbish. she looks a bit peeved but goes away and carries on dancing, then comes back a few songs later; "do you have any scouting for girls?"

"jesus fucking christ no", i said.

"oh, well..", she says, turning to leave "you obviously dont know that much about indie rock then"

we just played the strangest show ever. exit calm and us and ou est le swimming pool and shy fx. i cant quite work out what we all have in common apart from, needing the fucking money. anyways, it was a graduation ball for an obscenely rich university. we played in a giant marquee on the grounds of the halls of residency. only, it wasnt halls, it was a converted castle, with a little stream and a tower and some beautiful brutalist 4 storey apartments, all on this fairy tale landscaped garden. there were salsa dancers and a string quartet and some babershop guys and stilt walkers and a jazz band and a 5 course dinner and a champagne bar and hanging laterns in the trees and uv underlights in the bushes, you get the idea. narnia.

i talked to some of the natives, mostly to avoid sitting in the world cup bar with 50 drunk and impossibly rich tuxedo'd boys screaming the name of our country at a giantsize plasma screen showing 22 other impossibly rich boys kicking a ball around the country i'm in love with. anyways, i tried to describe how mostly everyone i know who lives in halls has a scrotty bedroom and a shared kitchen in a block of dank grey flats and one of them snorted and pointed to the apartment block, to imply they were no better off. i swear to god, the only things that looked vaguely trampy were the way the bird seed for the peacocks had scattered on the lawns in front and the way a couple of rooms looked a little darker than the others. that cos when euan blair lived there, him and his bodyguard decided to pimp out their apartments with bullet proof glass.

we had a lighting guy for the day, our tour managers idea of a birthday treat for his housemate. he was dead good too, but his name is junior, which can be confusing in dark places. i tried to get everyone to call him two-nior, but it didnt catch on. thanks and happy birthday other junior!

really tho, a good time was had by all. about 30 of the 9000 people actually watched us play, which is probably the best student-ball kill ratio we've achieved. they all did this weird posh-kids-can't-dance shuffle and one of them, lets call him shinyfacedrentatux boy, walked on stage between songs to ask if we'd play "that one about moseley" but, honestly, we're probably the only real live indie band they've ever seen, and its not like yr born with a working knowledge of gig ettiquette.

also, this one girl said she'd seen us play with lc! a million years ago; and me and kel had lost our accents and it sucked we didnt play champagne girls. idk if the first is true and the second exploded my irony-meter in a manner illfitting for conversation with someone so academically superior.

this is francis, our tour manager and sound dude. he's from america. USA! YANK! HA WE KICKED A GOAL IN YOU IN THE 4TH MINUTE WERE GOING TO BEAT YOU EASY IINGERLANDDD IIIIINNNNGGGGEEEERRRRLLLLLAAAANNNNDDDDD FUCCKKKK YYYYEAHHHH O OO oh. ohnoes!

i'm pretty sure i had greater arcing point to this, social worlds colliding and that, but its 4am and i have songs to write. thank you graduating class of goldney university 2010, please remember us when yr running the country.

hey there overseas

2010-06-02T19:45:00.003Z

k, just quickly
1) are you american or canadian and not on our mailing list? no? you div, read this and see why you should be

2) are you in australia? then eat this!

massive thanks to matilda for setting this up for no reason apart from SHE CARES. we = super flattered.

and thankee for all the kind words about us and peaches song. busy busy yum yum
OK THATS IT, ilu interweb

HAVE A COLLABULLATION!

2010-05-30T16:01:00.007Z

DOT TO DOT, urghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.. so weve always wanted to play it, we were always whining about how we never got asked and then they asked us and someone along the line said yes without checking with us and if it was literally any other weekend we'd be there but this weekend is when kelly goes all mysterious and leaves the country. does any of you read comics? d'you know the boys? you know the female? yeh...

anyway, since we share a manager with sky larkin, some Shit went Down and now they've replaced us. you should go see / have been to see them. they have new songs and there fucking awesome-o.

so, seeing as the theme of this week seems to be weirded out versions of songs as apologies, this seems to be a gooderer time as any to introduce this bastard child (song) we gave birth to (recorded) after sexing (studio time) with this man called peach (yesterdays pupil) in south afri-car.

peach!

for those of you who are into this sort of technical studio knowhow, we recorded all our parts in the wrong order onto a computer machine using wires, coloured them in pretty hues, then peach put it next to a gameboy sound chip and did some suave magic transferrance till this came out.

thanks be to red bull studios in capetown for organising this up for us

JOHNNY FOREIGNER AND YESTERDAYS PUPILS ALL NEW JAZZ DIRECTION

k hope you like it. it's called with who, who and what i've got. i guess it should have a weird suffix like 8bit poesyou mix or something, but seeing as how we havnt recorded it normally yet, ettiquette dictates we call that one *standard rock version. normal service to be resumed on the 5th June for 2poor2pitch (tsch, grmmr) at the harely in shefshef.

goodluck kelly / bye

x

NEWS BO-OMB

2010-05-21T19:56:00.005Z

hello. if we were a club, then this would be the newsletter.

1) every cloakroom ever. OMG we are soooooooooooooo sorry about keeping everyone waiting for this. there was a flood! locusts! and a load of stuff that was out of our hands. BUT this weekend both the test pressing and cover turned up (can you find yrself?) and we've okayed them cos they're excellent and they'll be cloned this week. YAY BACTA TANKS

so, expect yr awesome 45rpm 10" (geek hi5 plz) within a couple of weeks. ALSO, to keep you all from thinking, why did i ever care about johnny foreigner anyway, everyone on the list will be sent a BRAND SORT OF NEW song called kelly watches the coast. its sort of a remix but not really. you'll see. check yr inboxes (inboxi) in a few days. sweet.

2)gigs! our summer schedule is pretty much in place now, you can see it here or most likely here or even perhaps here. our next show is headlining the saturday of 2poor2pitch at the harley in sheffield. yay sheffield!

3) americahhhhhhhhhhh/canadarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. thanks so much for yr informative emails, its totally helped us build a picture of where we want to be and who we need to speak to. i know we still havnt written back to everyone, we're still assimilating all the details. planning mode for autumn (FALL!) tour will be engaged soon. aces.

4) safricaaaaaaaaaaaa we want to come and make our next album in you. for reals. octynov time? can we have a million rand for flights plz?

kcool, more news soons!

traaaaaaaaaaaaaa

half past america

2010-04-13T12:32:00.006Z

prologue

hi all. if yr not from america or canada, then there's not much point reading this. srs, its just a big lunp of text that will do nothing for you. having said that, writing such a warning is probably going to make you read it more out of curiosity. so, read it, and then trust us next time k?

if yr from canada, then you should read this and substitute mentions of america for canada wherever possible. sorry, yr in this too but im just trying to save on text. i realise this might be a massive cultural faux-pas, but whenever we've thought of touring america, canadas always been part of that. yr like the cherry on our mental tourmap cake.

sweet?
essay tiem nao.

k right, easily thee most frustrating message we've received in the last few months, about 100 times, over every Digital Social Interaction Media we have, goes like this:

Hi! i love your band! you should come to [insert name of american city/town/state] and play a show!

we're fucking tearing our hairs out.

a good 80% of the music we listen to comes from america. half our mailing lists are american. most of our facebook interactions (SRS BZNZ) are with americansss. we made 2 albums there, played some of our most fun ever shows there (hi rob!) and even once waited in a courtyard in texas for tim kinsella cos he told us he'd be right back, and we've hung out outside the holdsteadys rehearsal room just long enough to look suspicious. also, slightly obscure canada reference, i used to have a job handing out pamphlets in a road called albert street. ANYWAYS, we want to go tour there so bad we've resorted to flippantly replying, sure, buy us plane tickets and we're there. srsly, we're asking kids we've never met to buy us airfare, in the vain hope that one'll be super rich and take us up.

PLEASE AMERICA, WE HATE THE BEATLES AND KASABIAN AND ELLIE GOULDING. WE WANT TO PLAY THE STAGES THAT THE PIXIES AND THE PLAN GREW UP ON AND WE'RE STUCK IN THE COUNTRY OF THE FUCKING COURTEENERS BEING DECLARED THE FUTURE. seriously, the day mark linkous died, the nme, our countries most famous music rag and funded by a hair gel company, gave an award to paul weller.

so, let this post be the end of the frustration period and the start of Actual Positive Action. we are like, TOTALLY coming to america. somehow.

we toured ireland this year, and, it was kinda awful. lovely people,like, but no promotion, no excitement, we've never felt so much like we were being processed thru the system. financially and morally, it was a major fail. and then we went to south africa and played thee most perfect fun tour ever, and it completely hammered home the value of punk ethics we'd kinda forgotten about, what with agents and cone-tracts and barfly tours.

sorry, im rambling, but there is a point. we want to build some kind of giant box of information
so we can plan a tour that will be perfect and amazing and not land us homeless in some lonely state, playing to a dozen random people who possibly have never heard of pavement, and make us wish we'd spent the airfare on water bills or rent or something.

and this is where you come in, mr/ms "hi come play my town plz". in a probably unprecedented level of demographic interaction, we'd like to hear from all of you lovely eager people. please write to us. tell us where you live, what venues you go to, what the shows are like, what local bands you think we'd fit a bill with, etc etcy... be as detailed or as vague as you like, we'll read everything and reply to everyone. if you know any local promotors/labels/distros, general Good People to know For This Sort of Thing, then send us their details too. plz nothing like YOU SHOULD TOUR WITH LC!!!! stuff, cos, although its true and just, we have as little say in that as you do and we want to concentrate on practical, achieveable stuff like persauding sam zurich to let us crash his house

when we have this big sack of mail then we can sit down with a big map and start pinning little flags in. although we'll more likely use Teh Internetzz, which worries me slightly cos i dont know how you do that neat split window thing on windows 7, and that'd probably be pretty handy.

but yeh, hopfully this right here is the start of something superawesome. involving like, promo tshirts and free stickers at last and superawesome guerilla ad campaigns where we get you to graffitti ghosts and the words "the english are coming" in public places in return for a goody bag and a toasting. too far?

anyways, it starts like this.

please write to:

johnnyforeigner@hotmail.co.uk

and put team america/SRS BZNZ as the subject header so we dont lose it amongst offers for cheap nikes or late notices from our studio.

tldr?

if you want us to come and play in yr town in america or canada, please write us stuff about yr scene or venues or whatever and send it to the above email. then we'll collate all this stuff into a big paper maiche house and dance about in it. awesomes.

thanks for yr time, and, with a bit of luck, see you soon..

by request....

2010-03-24T17:47:00.001Z

i don't know whats worse, my enunciation or my handwriting, but anyway, words for the two new songs on the every cloakroom ever e.p. click on them and they grow bigger, like rubbish tamagotchis.

for the chains:

things i would have swapped for heart shaped sunglasses, 2001 - 06:

feel free to sing along at home to yrself or make weird acoustic versions to put on the internet for our amusement.
also, i still actually would actually like some heart shaped sunglasses, actually.
kthxby!

no pants and other tales fom south africa

2010-03-22T23:18:00.004Z

THE GREATEST AIRLINE IN THE WORLD

we didnt mention it at the time, but, when we landed in cape town and all our clothes and instruments didn't, we declared war on KLM, our airline. losing our bags is kinda unfortunate but a risk you generally get used to, being treated so impersonally over an £1800 arrangement isnt. ANYWAY, the morning after our stellenbosch show the 5 of us drove to the airport to fly to joberg, and we had the best flight ever.

kulula are so laid back and friendly, it was the most alien ive felt in a foreign country for ages. our gear was loaded on the plane with no hint of excess charges or damage warnings, the inflight trolley sold real food at normal prices, and the pilot used the intercom to talk to the passengers like he was their dad taking them out for a joyride. i had a row of seats to myself so i was mostly asleep, but i did hear
"if you get bored you could read the safety instructions. thats serious buisness"
"i'm sorry we didnt pack enough meat sandwiches"
and
"now flying over joburg, i'm locking the doors"
amazing. I'm going to ask them for sponsorship.

anyway, we landed and had to wait for ben to fetch the spare keys to his car on accout of having left the actual keys in a cubbyhole as a result of smoking too much because of us smoking so much. It was fine tho, we did what all touring bands do when stuck and watched southpark, stopping only when our laptop and us nearly got run over by some dude stealing a mercedes and driving up the kerb leaving us and a load of police with guns drawn looking angry.

we excused ourselves and took a sleep deprived trip to the glam world of SHOWBIZ TELLY. MK is like MTV for south africa, srs bznz, we rehearsed each song 3 times, did mock interviews and walkons, did makeup, made small talk with underwear-deprived presenter lady, and then went on in a sleep deprived hustle like presidents being taken to the last helicopter out of the blast radius.

it was kinda awkward, like an instore only with super bright lights. my guitar broke for a bit, to make up for it, i did bunny ears behind the presenter. swings and roundabounts innit.

massive love for teh kidss what came down to watch us, especially him with the carpool plan and her with the awesome quality homemade tshirt

we did another thing called my mk celeb, in which we pick the top ten music videos, like, EVER. we were super excited till we read the list, so we just picked the bands we'd heard of. watch it, if you like hearing us talk about things we know very little..

and then we went back to bens amazing big house and ate nandos and collapsed asleep on sofas. actually i made a painstakingly perfect bed out of a pile of blankets and pillows and it was ace..

ceilings for giants and other tales from south africa

2010-02-21T14:11:00.008Z

you may notice a massive continuity gap here, i wont pretend. safrica burned us out so much, i needed a few weeks to sit rocking in a chair to recover. but yeh, heres some more stuff that happened:

we played a show at klein libertas in stellenbosch. klein libertas is an amaaaazing venue, it started off as a theatre and expanded for bands and its run by this awesome family who also invented ramfest. we choose the indoor stage cos we're goths, but between bands everyone went outside and drank on the grass, it was total festival atmosphere.

we found out, one of the worst things to do before soundcheck is go to a wine tasting. conversely, one of the best things to do after driving around in the sun and loading gear into a venue is go to a wine tasting. weird huh? anyway, we sat at that bar up there whilst a lovely old lady patiently explained the history and delicate flavour of each bottle whilst pouring us a glass. i dont really remember anything past the colours. and the last one tasted of stale battleships and was magnificent.

we'd ride like this all the time if we could..

anyways, we came back and did soundchecks and interviews and hung out talking to peeps outside, it was well lovely. THIS awesome band played, we sobered up, which is a lie, and did a show. here's some ominous pictures our friend thomas took for us:

it was one of those gigs where everything breaks but its still fun. we allow ourselves 1 per tour. thanks to rudi for playing guitar and lending guitar!

i wish i could find some photos from outside where everyone was sitting, cos it was lovely, but you'll just have to imagine. we had milk moustaches from these weird milk drinks whose name i got too drunk to remember.

we met dawid, who i guess is like the public face of ramfest, he's an awesome super energised guy and we taught him how to do the double devil sign with both hands. it seemed like a fair trade for a couple of shows, like. we ended up, like all good nights, with rounds of free jaigermeister and a drive thru mcdonalds.

after this it gets a bit hazy. the next 48 hours involve a plane flight, a live tv spot, a prerecorded tv spot, a fucking amazing gig in a garden, and not a lot of sleep. in reality im going for dinner and then i'll come back to it, but, yknow, story...

anyway, have a trailer for it:

just quickly?

2010-02-16T15:17:00.003Z

cos clearly were just 3 teenage girls wondering if the world finds us attractive--
Ask us anything?

http://formspring.me/johnnyforeigner

also, tell yr mom to get off our rocks

neverland and other tales from south africa

2010-02-16T00:32:00.015Z

so yesterday we did some stuff!

first tho, check this rad video/photo collection from this show:

WEAREAWESOME.COM

thanks weareawesome people. youareawesome.love

HEY EVERYONE, WHY NOT BUY SOME REDBULL TODAY?

we finished recording musics our POP HIT with peach. mr red bull came and filmed us and interviewed us a bit to be made into one of them artist special things that run for 2 mins as filler and annoy the fuck out of everyone. sorry! it was fun tho. if anyone sees it plz tell us cos we wont be around when it runs. look out for a few inapropriate laptop displays. Peach is kinda like an astronaut with a moustache, but the rest have no place on public television, ahaaaaaaa.

mmmmmmmm, recordy.

we ended a bit early to try and catch sunset somewhere romantic. anja and ben took us to the top of table mountain in a rad cable car that looked totally like a 2001 film set.

table mountain is like some weird oldschool rpg game made flesh (well, rock). you exit the cable car and yr delivered onto this small island like area, its just above the clouds, so you look over the edge and see just white nothing, its well erie. theres various paths and bridges crisscrossing around, and these weird creatures that suddenly appear in front of you. you can hack them up and use them too boost yr vitality, but they were too fast for us.

heres on of aforementioned creaturlings (left) , apparently, it's dna strand apart from an elephant. TRUE!

then we went and stared at the sea till the sun went down, then we had pizza round ben and anjas friends, then we came back here and stared at the mountain from our mansion balcony. srs, we have a mansion. LUSH.

is that enough making people jealous now? weve one more day of collabullating left before we drive to stellenbosch for a gig and some vineyard action. this pop hit making is hella fun, we cant wait for the world to hear it and red bull to give us free wings.

here is some south african we have learnt

jonni badlandurs = johnny foreigner
ass buggy = ashtray
is it = innit
robot = traffic light

little colour changing man = chameleon
swahzi = relaxed, very relaxed, thanks

we're not taking this seriously at all, tis awesome.

we just found out we get to play a live session for MK, thas like safricas massive music tv channel. we get to play the whole of coast, we're trying to get ben to plug his keytar image machine thing into the cameras too, tis going to be awesomesssssssss.

k yeh, what did YOU do today?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

valentines in the studio and other tales from south africa

2010-02-14T15:19:00.014Z

we played our first african show last night!

soundcheck was sounding amazing so we defd it off for the beach. this here, cold english folks, is clifton beach. will smiths house is behind us. it rotates 360degrees so he's permantly facing the sun. true!

this is anja, our tour manager, gutting a south african sea snake.

our gig was aces btw. dom our promotor printed out bazillions of lewes ghostees and plastered them everywhere. massive thank yous to assemblys lovely stage crew who broke all our gear downfor us cos we were busy with the gin and the redbull. ugh. THANKS GUISE! anyways, we went down ace, despite having to follow kidofdoom, whom you should very much listen to and are totally our new favourite postrock band (non violin category)

the very tall man with the keytar is our friend ben. instead of playing notes and noises like one would expect, he plays images. we have projector screens either side of the stage and he triggers loops and pictures like, IN REAL TIME! its so totally rad, theres so much stuff, loads of lewes floaty stuff, and monsters, and a robot that kills bon jovi, and a Cat That Shoots Lazers From Its Eyes. fembots are coming soon, apparently. Our Heads Assploded. we hadnt seen any of it till last night, its totally distracting but looks amaze, and its bare fun having someone else running around on stage. thanks to ryk and richard kidofdoom for doing the extra guitar bits for us!

we're at the redbull studios in cape town for 3 days with this splediferous fellow, his name is peach and us and him are making a POP HIT. its a "collabullation"! srsly. that name must have seemed a lot cleverer after 10 gallons of taurine, or whatever it is thats making our eyes blur. anyways, tis well fun. were colouring stuff sleazy and using midi, whoever she is.

redbull studios is such a rad scheme, its a free studio where anyone can come in and make a song, yknow, just because. they have amps and a fuckload of gear and in house engineers and an infinite redbull box, hence my typing this at 10000 mph. we had the same thing in birmingham in the olden days when the MAC first started but they stopped it cos people kept stealing the gear.

speaking of home, look!!!!!!!

can you see it? cape town has our old area code!

its clearly fate we're here.

byeesssssssssssss
happy valentines day!

tales from south africa #1

2010-02-12T17:46:00.005Z

yesterday we stole a dog.

srs.

we're just like, cruising thru belleville and anja sees a puppy and is OMG PUPPY so she grabs it and shoves it on my lap.

we named her cardog.

because she seemed destined to live in anjas car.

shes lovely. shes 2 months old and hasnt quite figured out how to use her giant paws yet. she doesnt even understand inertia. it's like a baby play asteroids. only really cute.

but unfortunatly her real owners came and took her back this morning. we're pretty sad.

i wonder if dogs remember holidays?

we'll miss you forever, cardog.

a nice refreshing glass of sprunt

2010-02-04T16:57:00.004Z

hello world

were three shows into our happy valentines tourette.
and this is the cost

- kellys bass cab literally shat two speakers out.
- broke 2 guitars in the first show.
- had to dissassemble and rebuild kaossilator
- cracked a cymbal
- had to use broken guitar leads as manual wiper controls on our van in the snow.

so like, its all going magnificently as usual. sheffield last night was proper lovely, we have a day off to lose our cold and then we're in BIRMINGHASMS tomorrow, with ace bushy striptease. Thats like, 2 amazing bands then us being drunk cos we know where the cheap offys are.

imagine, right, if you were in a band, and you did some kind of ZANY preorder scheme for yr next 7" single. and imagine it was waaaay more successful than you thought. would you feel obliged to upgrade to say, 10"?

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

bye xxx