The difference between girls who wore leopard print then and wear leopard print now

Ayo, the yookay. I seriously taught Madness's manager how to spell saxophone tonight. Most of their fans think it's a trumpet anyway.

ANYWAY New Slang/Banquet is the greatest record store/ indie label/ show makers in the country and we're super stoked to announce our first show of 2013 with them.

I think it's our 7th New Slang? maybe 8th? 9 seems to high. unless you count shows at the Fighting Cocks and Banquets Big Day Out. We are so very, very old. Wevs, ignore the past, embrace the future:

lewes is hiding behind the red.

Support comes from Playlounge, who are sort of ok if you like that sort of thing i guess*, and Dragons That Make Love To Pandas,who we've never heard but feature Mark Rochman off of the internet.

TICKETS AND DETAILS HERE. They call us, cynical indie rock. I'm so stealing that.

*playlounge are fucking awesome.

SEE YOU THEN KINGSTON!



xoxo

WE RIDE WE RIDE SKELETAL LIGHTENING

first, for the whole world and moon:

NAMES

click to listen to our 4 awesome new songs!

you can buy some as a tshirt here, and some as badges here

second!

JOHNNY FOREIGNER CURSES AMERICA 2012

So far, America, you have missed:
Us playing in Wilmington. Us on a beach at night. Us staying in a mansion. Us on a beach in the day. Us failing to play a Halloween show in Durham in costume. Us being jealous of everyone's lovely houses. Us climbing onto a roof opposite the Lucky Strike factory and setting off fireworks. Us playing to 7 people in a sports bar in Richmond. Us projecting shapes onto the Lincoln Memorial  and us playing a rad show to lovely people in DC whilst SOME CUNT STOLE MY FUCKING IPOD TOUCH FROM OUR DRESSING ROOM.


We've been playing shows supporting the excellent Hammer No More The Fingers and it's almost over and it's been rad fun and THERE'S NO TIME TO BE SAD.

our last show with them is today/tonight/11/3/2012 at Golden West in Baltimore MD

the next leg of tour-lamb is going to be at least 1 whole sense better cos Mr Ben Rausch will be rejoining us to do his awesome visual projection magic:

4th - The Fire, Philadelphia PA tickets with Hop Along and The Sidekicks
6th - Glasslands Gallery, New York NY tickets with Motive and Rumours
7th - Great Scott, Alston MA, tickets with Guillermo Sexo and Speedy Ortiz and Infinity Girl
8th - Sierra Grill, Northampton MA, 10pm $3 with Pachangacha, Nervous Passenger and Speedy Ortiz
9th - Binghampton University, Vestal NY, free entry, with Steve Labreque's Wild Ride


and then, home stretch, we're joined by our labelmates, responsible designated drivers and rad punk rock band, Nervous Passenger.

10th - The Green House, Pittsburgh PA, with Nervous Passenger and Legs Like Treetrunks
11th - 40 Walker Street, Athens OH, with Nervous Passenger
12th - Rachaels Cafe, Bloomington IN, with Nervous Passenger
13th - Milhouse, Kalamazoo, MI, with Nervous Passenger and Forget the Times
14th - The Sound Cellar, Chesterton IN, with Nervous Passenger
15th - Johnny Foreigner Vs Chicago, Subterranean with Waterhouse, My Dad and Nervous Passenger
16th - The Sett at Union South, Madison WI, with Nervous Passenger
17th - Johnny Foreigner Vs Swerp, Swerp Mansion, Chicago IL. with Nervous Passenger, Noumenon, and Scoundrel (mail: info@swerprecords for address)

AND THEN FUCKING CANADA YEH?
thanks to the beyond helpful and super awesome music band Elos Arma,  who'll be our support and emotional crutches for the whole leg.

20th -
21st - Blackshire Pub, London ON with Elos Arma and More More
22nd - TBA, Guelph ON with Elos Arma and Bowjia, $5 all ages
23rd - TBA, Toronto with Elos Arma
24th - TBA
25th - Montreal TBA

tbas will be a'd in the next week, we'll shout about it loudly for sure.

two things we cannot stress enough yo:

1) this is thee most fun ever
2) fuck nose when we'll be able to afford to come over again so you should totally book that flight
3) if anyone has an Ipod touch they want to offload for cheapy price (real cheapy) then plz get in touch
SEE YOU SOON!
Xx

VS LONDON IV show details

WHY MUST EVERYTHING HAPPEN ALL AT ONCE

VS LONDON IV: THE LAST STAND

no time for introductions, all these bands are rad and you'll regret missing them. unless yr already coming, in which case everything is totally fine between us and it's you that's making a THING about it.

Stephen H Davidson - him from Tellison, all heartybreaky ahhhhh

The Spills - THE GREATEST BAND IN THE COUNTRY RIGHT NOW STOP ARGUING WITH US AND LISTEN TO THIS

Evans The Death - stunning fortuna - grrl - pop with melodies that make the 90s seem kinda embarrassing

"unspecified ironic london 2 piece" - oh, those guys.


ALSO: MASKS:

see here now, it's halloween and we want to dress (you) up. you be the ghost:

lewes has asked me to remind you all that IT IS MISSING A MOUTH and you have to DO THE MOUTH YOURSELF.

DO THE MOUTH, GUYS.

also, feel free to colour in. or add horns. ghosts don't have horns, shut up alexei.


go here for a large printy version

how rad it will be if you all print out and make them and the front row is all ghost faces. excited! You will need string to thread thru the holes. and scissors for cutting. and a responsible adult. hey i can cut a fucking ghost out on my own, mom.


there's a few tickets available here and there should be some at the venue too. probably.

sorry to wait so long to divulge all this. it wouldn't be us if it wasn't delivered last minute and sweaty right?

xoxox SEE YOU SATURDAY LONDONTOWN

post tour verbal emission

O GOD SO MANY THINGS

the end and everything after: it's just gone 1am and it's mostly over. The venue is empty, erie dark and silent. We've finished loading out and go back in for goodbyes. We're slightly drunk and slightly high and still damp and dazed from the show. The bar staff are sitting round a table downstairs, smoking and waiting for us to clear out. One of them has a big fur coat like richey manic. I wander over to borrow a light. - and then we'll be out of your lives forever, i say. She looks me in the eyes, and, in the most bored voice in Nottingham tonight, sighs - excellent.

and our tour is over.

The worst part about being a touring circus, easily my most heart busting problem of being in a band, over money, sales, money or whatever, is leaving places. and the better the show/scene, the nicer the people, and the more we do it, the harder it gets. It's like being trapped in some terrible indie quantum leap episode, where every day you wake up in a new town, make new friends and see new bands and then come midnight you drive to the omnipresent magic travelodge. and when you pull out of the carpark the next morning, you have to start all over again. 

THIS MONTH HAS BEEN THE WORST FOR THAT.

by which i mean, the last month has been the most positive and awesome time ever. I don't just mean the usual; many people came and everyone had fun speech, tho that happened mostly everywhere and everywhere respectively. 

October is bands on tour season. we peek at each other thru blacked out splitter van windows in service stations at 3am. After a few days on tour, you can start to feel kinda processed; no matter how awesome (you think) your little circus is, yr still just venue fodder, calender filler, a bubble easily burst by one bored barmaid with an excellent coat and the only lighter. 

bar staff of the toilet circuits of the world, this time you were too late. We have consistently had our minds bent out of bitterness on this tour. We didn't have to argue for a bottle of gin once. That's never happened before. We've met bands that we've never heard of that are A M A Z I N G. We've met promotors that promote! Promotors that love what they do and want to be proud of their local talent and fucking work and flyer and network and help and foster a scene and make it look like the easiest, most natural thing ever. In that way, this tour has felt like a succession of party crashes, where, up until we play, we're never quite sure if people are there because we are, or there because it's clearly the best place to be.

It's also been the total opposite of that. I told you our minds were messed up. It's not just being overwhelmed by so many familiar faces, it's that all you faces seem to know each other, or have come to visit each other, or are-dating-and-blatantly-in-love-with each other. It feels like some massive messed up beautiful family reunion and we got to play prodigal son each night. So many alternate universes we could settle down in..

I'd like to think that this is no fluke. That we have left behind the world of promotion being a 3 year old black and white photo of us in a window, and local support bands who want to be lost prophets or whatever.  I'd like to think of this tour as a statement of where/what "our" scene is, post crash, right now. And, best of all, it really has fuck all to do with us. Most of these shows would have been awesome shows even if we never turned up. A whole bunch of thriving communities starting to see the rewards of the last few years graft. People proud of -their- bands. For all the cynics in this industry that are my age or older, THE KIDS ARE GOING TO SHOWS AGAIN.

So this tour ends on a small piece of forgotten grass just outside Birmingham city centre by the abandoned old train station, us and playlounge lighting the last of our sky lanterns and watching as they sail out of view over the skyline. urgh hippies. 

this tour never ends. 

thanks for your time.

UK tour merch + you

Hello! Presenting to you, our October 2012 merch collection.

It's all limited runs and we're not going to get them till the weekend, so we've put a bunch on big cartel to avoid disappointing those who come and want to buy new merch (or the 45923987235 other places in the world we're not playing)

 Buy now and, and we'll send them out by the 8th October. Please don't shout when we get to yours in two weeks time and we're out of your size. Click on what you like, or go here to browse round our store. We have a couple of red shirts and one white left, and other fun stuff too. BUT IT'S NOT NEW AND EXCITING LIKE THIS IS:::

all funds, as ever, get pumped into the Americanadian Dream.

I (ghost) JF Tote Bag, Silver on Black

over-size crest print shirt, black on blue softstyle

Octobering the Edges, A3 UK tour poster

K cool. That concludes today's presentation. Thank you for your continued support, see you soon!

xoxo

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

always chances

Hello World, some brief things:

: Ebay people, thank you so very much. We have enough money to fake our americacanada tour on a secret backlot soundstage buy some plane tickets, this is totally looking like a Thing that can happen. If you haven't already, can you all please let us know if you'd like your winnings to be signed, and the mystery drums skin winners tell us how you'd like us to desecrate them. Stuff will be posted out on Monday

: -i worry- tshirt people, the shirts were hella delayed getting to us and most have been posted out, the rest are going out on Monday too.

- this guy here is called Herio Braker, and he's the magic guardian of our new recordings. He's been hanging out at our studio the last few days and we've been charging his sigil with the power of awesome loud guitar pop. You too can help us out here, look into his eyes, focus your happy thoughts on the sign he's holding, and he's spew those vibes over our new songs in the next week:

he can see you thru the screen because he is magic.

- also, we're going to make another shirt, for th UK tour. What colour should we use, we are awful at this. TELL US PLEASE.

- also also, recording makes for long hours late at night spent listening to each other play the same thing over and over again. so, one last favour, if you could all write your very bestest jokes in the comment box below, that would ease us thru the nights greatly.

thank youuuuuuu

xox

EXORCISM OF THE SELF

so, um americanada. hi there. as you may have seen leaked onto the interwebs, we have a few shows pencilled in for October. Truth be told, we have a decent run down the east coast and we're looking at practically at Canada and kinda more desperately optimistic at the west coast too. ITS LIKE ANOTHER COUNTRY COMPLETELY and finding shows that'll pay enough to justify flying over and paying for more backline hire is getting increasingly tricky. blerghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Anyway, (and this is where the rest of the world may start reading) all this dreaming is immaterial if we don't raise enough money to fly there in the first place, so here is todays super awesome news bomb.

presenting THE GREAT GET JOHNNY FOREIGNER TO AMERICANADA AUCTION 2012:

in which you guys get to buy awesome unique us - related artwork, and we then get to spend your money on plane tickets. this is definitely the best plan that ends with "we then spend your money on plane tickets" that you'll ever be involved in.

It's been kinda cool exorcising all this stuff to the internets. like old men who sell their war medals for cigarette money, only instead of cigarettes it's the holiday of their dreams, and they've already squeezed all the kudos and usefulness out of those medals anyway. and they also have perfect digital scans of them too. And noone is sad. This is a terrible metaphor.

What we're saying is we would rather live for the future (TOUR AMERICANADA) than accumulate scraps of memories designed for firing at other people in the first place. More news soon, but we've found an awesome US label that can sort us out with a van and someone to drive it and awesome bands to play with places to play and sleep and money to make more records, but only on the basis we can get out there in the first place.

So you guys, here is 2012's most Un-Kony crowd sourcing appeal. We've put up 16 different art packages from the last few years, all handmade unique original versions of things that ended up being record books, tshirts and things, as well as a couple of surprises. There's hopefully enough stuff to spread out so no-one has to pay OTT money, tho those with higher than average bank balances are encouraged to buy for other people as well as themselves.

1.) Grace and the Bigger Picture cover

2.) Grace and the Bigger Picture booklet pack (4 pieces) 1/5

3.) Grace and the Bigger Picture booklet pack (4 pieces) 2/5

4.) Grace and the Bigger Picture booklet pack (4 pieces) 3/5 (graces lyrics)

5.) Grace and the Bigger Picture booklet pack (4 pieces) 4/5

6.) Grace and the Bigger Picture booklet pack (4 pieces) 5/5

7.) Gin Dagger Cite her Bar Cut cover set (2 pieces)

8.) Feels Like Summer cover set (3 pieces)

9.) Criminals cover set (3 pieces)

10.) I Ghost JF Tshirt design

11.) Are You Hungry Now design (b&w)

12.) Ghost Vomit Eurotour design (b&w)

13.) South Africa tour poster

All the above are a4 photopaper sheets made by Lewes and are The Actual Ones Off Of The Record and whatnot.

13.) Arcs Across The City stage banner
a giant smelly heavy banner featuring (decayed) cover art

14.) Mystery snare skin (smaller than a floor tom skin)
15.) Mystery floor tom skin (bigger than a snare skin)

authentically toured and destroyed by junior, these found objects are waiting for YOU to tell us what to draw on them. if you win, that is. we specialise in fraudulent family crests. idk probably.

16.) look there are people like that out there and if we don't cater for them it's like we're dismissing their ability to function as part of the human race and since we're selling it anyway, we're not exactly high enough above them on the evolutionary scale to be proud about it anyway.

17.) kelly's pants. don't click that.

There spread across a couple of different accounts so treat this as a contents page, i guess.

So there you go, good luck and we hope that you all get what you want and the combined value of which puts america within practical distance. everything can be signed on request and if we're coming to your yard at any point on tour then you can pick it up. that may be quite a small chance, but we're announcing our UK dates in literally hours, so we'll throw in Guest list to any show for winning bids too.

Thanks for taking part anywayssss. This mass potential exchange of past for future is our friendly and less greedy homebrew version of kickstarter, and there's a fair chance it'll fail cos we weren't relentless or extortionate enough, but at the very least we'll be able to buy a big enough bowl to all cry in. forever.

xoxoxo

it is so a verb too.

TOURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

yo hello. this is one of those frantic weeks where we drop a lot of information. the most important is contained here - details of this little October road trip we've worked out, but first, here's a brief list of other things that are happening sooner but less relevant RIGHT THIS SECOND. I've been reading douglas copeland all week so am compelled to mess with the linear narrative. yes.

- we need to tell you how prospective americanada tour in november is shaping up

- we need to unveil the immense ebay auction that will hopefully fund said excursion. sidenote - this is what wil wheaton found in his garage. this is what we found in ours:

tempted?

- we need to tell you about our rad new american label and the awesome new songs coming to you via them and alcopop and we also need to record said songs.
-oh wow
- and you've heard this right?

ANYWAY, remember that time we used to not go on about america so much? ahh nostalgia. kidding; here is our comprehensively hyperlink'd UK tour for October. If there's anything we've missed then please send links and posters and we'll add to this. even you whose one bit of promotion seems to be a local press release reading "Birmingham trio return to      Birmingham".

awkward commiserations to those who live in places not near the below, i'm sure we'll be back round for you (apart from portsmouth). or you could always roadtrip?

All shows except Southampton, Birmingham and London are with this band we've been listening to so much our management are putting out their record (nb, it probably didn't happen like that BUT WE SO FOUND THEM FIRST) Playlounge are super fuzzy guitar pop and you can hear just enough of the words to make you think all the songs are about you, now, but they also have that early idlewild chordal sensibilty and them soaring william style chorus hooks and you start mouthing what you think are the words on the tube home after a 15 hour shift and then strangers start looking at you, and the giant paralympics access pass hanging off your belt, and tell their children not to point at you, and you know it's all kinds of wrong but at least they won't ask you to turn it down. uhhh i love this band right now. we can't wait for you to hear hem so we can remind you that we heard them first too.


DATA:

Thursday 27th September - Southampton - Avondale House - RPS Freshers Festival, free show! fb

Tuesday 2 October - Sheffield - The Harley - tickets - fb

Friday 5 October - Cardiff - Jealous Lovers Club - tickets - fb (with Greetings)

Saturday 6 October - Cheltenham - Walk The Line Festival  - tickets - fb

Monday 8th October - birminghasm - Glee Club  - (supporting Shonen Knife) - tickets 

                   

Wednesday 10 October - Leicester - Firebug - tickets

Thurs 11 October - Durham - Fishtank tickets - fb (with martha)

Friday 12 October - Hartlepool - The Studio - tickets - fb (with Antlez and GUNNING FOR MOTHERFUCKING TAMAR WOOO)

Saturday 13 October - Wakefield - The Hop - tickets (with PAWS and Wot Gorilla)

Wednesday 17th October - Edinburgh - The Electric Circus - tickets

Thursday 18th October - Aberdeen - The Tunnels 

Friday 19th October - Glasgow - Flat 0/1 - Oxjam event, cheap tickets

Saturday 20th October - Nottingham - Chameleon - tickets - fb (with Without Maps and Kappa Gamma) 

Saturday 27th October - VS LONDON 4 - tickets - (final Vs show, with awesome bands and masks and tbh halloween themed intrigue and fun. details sooner)

THANK YOU SEE YOU SOON! XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

VS London 3 full lineup!

a celebration of being alive and stuff! 

with us, Hawk Eyes, Playlounge, Her Parents and Stephen from Tellison

do we pick the best bands orwot.

+ DJ battles from us and our friends till 2am

+ Our set recorded and internetted to you the week after

+ Inflatables palm trees and other such stuffs

TICKET LINKY

**SUMMER SUMMER SUMMER SUMMER SUMMER SUMMER**

thankyou see you there xoxoxo

Poster of wow

tickets here

SEA TO SHINING SEA

AMERICA (and CANADA)


 and it starts like:
 

 If you book us, we will come, right? Well don't get yr hopes up just yet, there's a whole bunch of things to do before it happens. but happen it must, or we'll go batshit mental being stuck on this doomy grey rock.


We want to tour in late October/November. Is that good with you?

This is the for sure this seasons epic campaign. And obviously we're a punk band, which is a cooler way of saying SHIT WE NEED YOUR HELP:

If you're a gig promotor, college radio type, agent or basement show guy, someone who works in a cool indie store, person in a (good) band whose going to be playing around the same time, Mac or Laura from Merge, hipster blogger, anyone in the touring and banding business who could help us out in any way, or anyone interested in sponsorship, then CALL THIS NUMBER NOW:

 johnnyforeigner@hotmail.co.uk

 and put COMING TO AMERICA in the title so we don't send you off to the spamyards.

Also, if you know someone like any of the above, please point their eyes and ears to us, and exaggerate ridiculously about what a big draw we are.

All you other people who don't care so much for the details but just want to see us play, plz read this:

 :: we want to play everywhere, forever. please don't comment our facebook / twitter saying - HEY YOU SHOULD PLAY FANTASTICVILLE WHERE I'M FROM - because it just makes us sad that we're not U2. and noone should have to feel that, ever. A much more practical and positive thing would be to direct those feelings towards whoever puts on rad shows in your town. hook us up, maybe. then when we do play you can be all smug about it, and we'll think you're the king or queen of fantasticville. ::

So yeh, this is the start of our beautiful plan. In a few weeks we'll start sticking flags on a map and working out how much is possible. Then we'll work out all the awkward questions like money and money.

We don't usually ever say this, but, whatever social network brought you here, we'd be very much obliged if you shared/RT/reblogged/tumbler-steal the link so's we can cast our info net as wide as possible. and also in case you're friends of friends of Mac or Laura from Merge.

If this doesn't happen, we will kill ourselves. xoxoxo

preorder 12" gogogogoogooooooo

this is a very shrunk version of 1/4 of the rebuilt cover art for the 2x12 release of Vs Everything. We promised everyone we'd make this happen and cos jack is awesome it has. preorder linky is at the bottom if you want to skip the part of this where i moan about shit.

1) Brian Wood's new comic, The Massive, is just brilliant and everyone should go buy it

2) Bands reforming is kind of like exes coming on to you innit. Like, you were awesome and you probably are still but I've kinda moved on. and I feel guilty cos I was into those bands with all my heart and soul and wallet and they break up and I get all upset and then get over it and find another band to fall in love with and then they come back and they're all HEY GUYS WE NEVER REALLY BROKE UP WE WERE JUST DOING DIFFERENT THINGS! fuck no, you broke up. I remember where i was when I heard about it and I maybe cried.  I'm barely past teary eyed 4am youtube crushes and I just want to call bullshit: all you guys, you walked away from me, and now you have drunk nostalgia money eyes and you want me back.

I'd never be so rude tho, cos you guys are my actual heroes. You invented me.

 I loved you once. You were massive parts of my life. You lost it to whatever mundane reasons that eventually end bands; egos, boredom, bank balances. and nothing you did since caught fire like that again. You faded out, became replaced. Nostalgia is a sound business plan now. So you cash in. because fuck knows you deserve to be paid. You deserve infinite money for those goosebumps you raised on my arms; be they last night at 4am over my shitty laptop or a damp Thursday evening in 1998 at the Shite and Duck in Camden. Those feelings are literally priceless

I don't think there's any shame in that. Or that there's any shame for not wanting to play shows where the poster says  "[your new band] featuring [your name] ex-[your old band]" It's just a shame that this is what it comes down to; nostalgia fest & karaoke value. play your most famous album! play it in order! I've seen soooo mannnnnnnny taglines, fb statuses, press clippings: party like it's 1997/99/02/04. and I refuse. I refuse to be told to party like it's the past.

Don't get me wrong, this is My Problem. I'm stoked that 15 years  of word of mouth meant Cap'n Jazz could afford decent fees when they came over here. I'm happy and jealous that my friends got to dance onstage with the D-Plan, and I'm happy and smug that I got to be Pavement's merch guy. But there's so many amazing songs and records and tours being made by bands have something to say in the present tense. I don't want nostalgia. I don't want to remember the good old days, I want relevance and The Now. I want my artists to be making new shit, unfolding new real time adventures. Doing stuff that relates directly to other people alive on earth at this instant
I just don't want to see my heroes admitting they have nothing left to say to me. I don't want to see them as museum pieces when i last knew them as living breathing active creations.

Yeh this is cos of Cable. I don't want to go watch Cable. even tho, in their day, I would have crawled thru poo to have the chance. They'll be amazing. Their songs still sound punchy and clever and the lyrics are pure poetry and they have choruses as big as the atlantic. and they'll have a crowd as fervent as their heyday to play off. and I'll be at home bitter cos of this weird hangup.


3) I'm sorry for placing that rant in front of this all important link:

PREORDER JOHNNY FOREIGNER VS EVERYTHING 2x12" GATEFOLD SUPER - RECORD

Comprising of the complete "Vs Everything" album and all relevant b sides: Remember 2011, when we released that record? ahhhh It was ace weren't it. REMODEL REPACKAGE. Shut up, we've never had a proper record album before so we're clearly overcompensating with this. Excite!!::

Because we're (jack) is lovely, have a free downloadable song also.

Also note, the first 100 orders will come with this:

stickerbook! stickers! hells yes.

The street date, YO, is 16th July. but seriously, if we take an extra week finishing shit, you're not allowed to be mad at us.

Vs Everything 2x12" release

from this:

to this:




full details and pre-orders at midday our time next wednesday

EXCITE!

xx

ALSO, SCOTLAND!

right, every time we play scotland we always seem to meet someone whose like - o i can hook you up with a way better show than this.

and we go yeh, great, cos scotland is rad but a fucking mission to get to, so it means a lot that the gigs we do play are as awesome as possible.

so we take their emails and then loose them and spend the next 6,12,24 months going, yeh who was that guy, the one with the face and from scotland.

SO if that person is you, or not you but could be, or not you, then now would be a really good time to get in touch.
or if anyone has any opinions of rad venues we should be chasing or holes we should be avoiding, feel free to comment on one of the multiple social media nodes this text is going to port itself onto

thanks!

(not scotland)

anyone who provides information leading to capture of aforementioned awesome hypothetical scottish shows will be rewarded in guestlist, dressing room beer, and the merch noone wants to buy.

UPDATATRON

wow, remember the days when i used to write really long post here?

kinda stopped it cos it made more sense just to pile crap on facebook as it happened. Recently there's been a whole load of indignant fb protest and man tears, cos facebook changed the post ranking algorithm. I'm not going to moan (anymore) about it here, but the new system encourages interactivity a lot more and that doesn't really work so well for us; partially cos we hate everyone, but mostly cos we just kinda use it as a bulletin board; if we advertise a show then it doesn't matter how many "likes" the post gets, we just want as many people as possible to see the information. yougetsme?

so, we've set up this snidey system that'll publish links to this blog, meaning you now have to click thru to here to read it. and the facebook robot will add that click to our rating and thus think we're more popular than that annoying weird guy you're friends with whose pointless status updates clog up your feeds. HA WE SO CLEVER. actually we're not, anthony from our old label just sent us a massive pdf explaining how it all works. THANKS ANTHONY!

anyway, i'm going to assume YOU are one of the people who stopped seeing our updates and probably thought we'd called it a day. no such luck, suckers. here are things that have/are/will be happeneding:

1) LEWES HAS JOINED OUR BAND!

up until we made VS Everything, we totally had this mindset that we should only record what we could reproduce live. and then we made the record and overdubbed the shit out of everything, meaning we need extra guitar ballet to be able to play half of it to you idiots. The list of people who know our songs and can put up with us is tragically short and also, it's kind of a secret, but i'm actually an AWESOME guitarist. luckily so is lewes, and now he's in the band we can totally ride him for artwork. it's a success story all round, apart from 30 seconds of one song that i don't play on anymore and i'm suddenly really concious of having arms.

2) FESTIVAL SEASON, YO

K so no reading. but like, a really nicely worded no. and also, it's Jack Pops wedding so all alcopop bands are banned from playing. Jack and Kathryns wedding invite is a CD single. so, so kawaii. Me and Stagecoach are playing The Best Song Ever for it, if someone doesn't youtube us i will cry. anyway, FESTIVALS

We played 2 shows at Camden Crawl. It was, very camden crawl. Kelly made us all stand in a fridge.

We played Great Escape and it was carnage. We got showed so many post-mosh bruises we started to feel like abusive parents. Please note, stage invasions are always welcome as long as you don't kick the leads out of our pedals.

We played Long Division. a festival that's become as awesome as Wakefield is depressing. I puked in a bucket.

We played Banquets Big Day Out. I broke my crowdsurfing distance record.  So much love for Banquet, that in 2012 a community centred record store can hold an actual festival, with multiple stages in an actual field in the country.

NEXT::

we're at 2000 Trees, Tramlines and Truck and mayhaps some more. New songs, the future, etc.

3) B*TM*N shirts.

 The delivery company fucked up and we didn't get them till today. so you will get them shortly after we've s so sorry, it's totally out of our hands. ALSO we'll have 2 or 3 S, M and Ls extra, we'll put them up this week some point.

4) 12" VS EVERYTHING

This is going coming out next, it'll be the final release in the Vs Everything campaign. It collects the album and relevant Bsides on 2 x 12" vinyl record lp discs. Tom remastered the whole thing especially. this is going to look SO SO SO SO GOOD, Lewes went and gone done new artworks especially too.
also, the first 100 will come with a sticker album and some stickers to start you off. yes, that is a thing now. Will be shouting about pre-orders soon.

5) AMERICA.

o god. here we go again. stay close.


6) other little things: Hide and Seek gave us free clothes, THANK YOU. Anybody else want to sponsor us? we're aiming for full body nascar style coverage by the end of the year. We're going to do another Vs show in august in Birmingham and it'll be illegal and awesome. (secret) details soon. Our Youtube is now super smart with all the pop videos and things we've ever done neatly arranged.  I've started doing shit comics about my shit job and comics. also, capital-centric, this is the only Yr Friends show of the summer, it's come round way too fast and i'm totally unprepared so i'm probably just gonna read poetry over garageband or something.


 k, yay for social integration. see you soon xxx