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

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

aunty piracy measures

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.

filesonic

fileserve

mediafire

megaupload

wupload

rapidshare

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

ask the audienzz

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...

and you'll miss it.

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

vs the arts

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

xx

cones as boathangers

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