transatlanticism

hello!

On the eve of our UK tour, we'd like to do some announcery. actually i guess, part one of a two part announcery. This is the one that sets the scene, and you can expect plot exposition in a weeks time.




first, some more tour dates:

Johnny Foreigner Vs The Atlantic

OCTOBER
30th Satellite | Wilmington, NC w/ Hammer No More The Fingers

31st Pinhook | Durham, NC w/ Hammer No More The Fingers

NOVEMBER
1st - Republic | Richmond, VA w/ Hammer No More The Fingers

2nd - Velvet Lounge | Washington, DC w/ Hammer No More The Fingers

3rd - Golden West | Baltimore, MD w/ Hammer No More The Fingers

4th - The Fire | Philadelphia, PA w/ & Hop Along, The Sidekicks


6th - Glasslands Gallery | NYC, NY

7th - Great Scott | Boston, MA - Clicky Clicky Music Blog Show Spectacular

8th - TBA | Northampton, MA
9th - Binghampton University | Buffalo, NY

10th - TBA | Pittsburgh w/ Nervous Passenger
11th - TBA | Athens w/ Nervous Passenger
12th - TBA | Toledo w/ Nervous Passenger
13th - TBA | Kalamazoo w/ Nervous Passenger
14th - Sound Cellar | Chesterton, IN w/ Nervous Passenger
15th - JOHNNY FOREIGNER VS CHICAGO - w/ Water House, Nervous Passenger, My Dad @ Subterranean
16th - The Sett | Madison, WI w/ Nervous Passenger  
17th - JOHNNY FOREIGNER VS SWERP - Johnny Foreigner, Noumenon, Nervous Passenger, Scoundrel

!HOLY SHIT THATS AMERICA!

Well, some of it. The west coast, we're sorry, we just can't afford you yet. S'not like any offers have been beneath us, but airfare/backline/van, it's just out of our reach at the moment. If the last couple of weeks have taught us anything, it's not to base geography or distance on perceptions honed playing Turbo Outrun. It will happen at some point, we promise, but that doesn't mean we're not going to nag you all to ROAD TRIP over to see us.

We're hanging out with some awesome bands too; we're supporting Hammer No More The Fingers for a few shows, and be supported by Nervous Passenger at a few more.

Canada, You are happening too. We're going to be homeless tho so be gentle. Come back next week when we'll be adding shows and confirming the TBAs.

ANYWAYS RIGHT, none of this would have been possible without Swerp. What a great segue:





Secondly, we'd like to tell you about our new American label! Our second American label. Seriously right, in 2008 we sat in a boardroom high above Manhattan and signed contracts for provisional 9 month tour commitments to the same stable as Avril and Fallout Boy. In some alternate universe, our definitions of punk were alligned and at least one of us is married to Nickelback.

What really happened next is we met this guy J Matthew Nix. He was into our band and became our friend when he brought us coffee. We made each other videos, it was kinda like romance. The kind of romance where 18 months in one of you starts a party fuelled record label to promote bands you love and the other one is in a band looking for a label (but you also live in a different country)

That's happened to you before, right?

This kind of magic only happens in Chicago. Please take this as a formal transfer request from one twin city to the other. Swerp is pretty much our punka saviours helping out with our American tour, (which we hereby christen, Johnny Foreigner Vs the Atlantic) but we hope it leads to more adventures and better metaphors. Our first new Swerp release will be in partnership with Alcopop. and it will be called [better segue]

sweet

NAMES

magic-infused Herio Braker, 2d realm variant

Hello the world.

we would like to tell you about our new record / EP / badge set / tshirt / pretentious transatlantic art fag project.
and it is called NAMES.


We made it in the small hours of last week in our super secret Digbeth studio, with our long time producer Dominique James. It's our first recordings as a 4 piece, so it's totally appropriate that, as the first release with our Swerp, we now sound even more like all them American bands people say we sound like. If certain songs ended up as our Kieron Gillen style parable, and vs everything a Grant Morrison sprawl, then please let this be our Warren Ellis run.

NAMES will be available from the 27th October, (which is our last Vs London show) and you can buy from either label. They're the same but different.

There are four songs. one is for Swerp, one is for Alcopop, one will be communal and one we're literally going to give away for free next week like the net-savvy musicians we are.


So, in the UK, Alcopop will be releasing a fancy set of 6 38mm badges (pre order now!!), and in the US Swerp will be releasing a NAMES Tshirt hand coloured by us.

Each will come with a download code for their 3 songs. We'll be selling them on tour too, OBVS, and if you've had enough of us playing silly buggers with formats, you'll be able to dl the country-specific songs separately for £99.

Ok. SO, meet you back here next week with Canadian shows, new songs, and more details about the NAMES releases. Going on tour now, BYE

xoxo

birmingham show details / we are whores

tour excitement! we have been rehearsing hard. we sort of have to cos our heater broke and its the only way to keep warm.

anyway. we are whores.

evidence 1)

we're never going to be one of those bands that cashes in on nostalgia like every other band i loved in the 90s, but we asked about shirt reprinting recently and this was such a winner that we're getting another batch done for tour. We'll put a few on the big cartel store when we get them tho.

evidence b)

The internet (you) asked us to play this song, right. we've never played it before, save for a few hours a few years ago separately recording all the bits. cos it's in the wrong key for our voices AND it has too many guitar parts and, yknow, we've written about 100000 songs since then. blergh.

as long as YOU'RE HAPPY THEN
rehearsal take,22/02/12 by johnny foreigner

hopefully by next week we'll have figured out harmonies properly instead of screaming over each other. I updated this post with ticket links and age restrictions of all the shows. how useful.

ANYWAY I DID COME ON HERE to waffle on about our next Birmingham show; in all the hubub we kinda forgot about promoting it up. OOOOPS.

so i made a poster out of lewe's cast offs and 10 mins with ms paint.

We Are The Physics:
Latest tracks by wearethephysics

Pandas and People

and Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam:

Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam #1 from Andrew Bullock on Vimeo.

+ more fun stuff we'll come to presently. um, when i say fun, i kinda mean "using you to make a video", but the upside is you get to be in our video. also, can everyone bring torches. please. anwaysssssss; TICKETS HERE.

*** error, just noticed it says 14+ on the tickets. and it isn't, it's 18+. blergh. Get in touch if by any chance you brought a ticket and are too young to see our adult porno theatre, we'll refund you and recompense you in some other style***

i! refuse! to die in your arms!

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

tour shirts? OK THEN

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.

xx

i got something MCs can kiss

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

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

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

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

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

feels like merchinger!

a-ha.

we've been making lewes do shedloads of stuff lately. you'll see a load more soon. if he was a machine we surely would have broken him. anyway, here's our new t-shirt designs. i hope the charm involved overides the fact that we're all awful with colour schemes.
you'll be able to buy these on our Official Johnnyforeignerfeelslikesummertour Tour. sorry jay/rest of world. rejuvenated merchy shop soon, promiseeeeeeeeeeeee...





yay! look at us, we're self-referencing our old shirts and we havnt even put out th second album. post-modernism ftw.

for more visual excellence from lewes "charlotte hatherley phones me at midnight" herriot click me do.