second city trauma zone

So it seems like some horrible tradition that every time we return to brummagem after an overseas adventure, there's another historic and awesome local venue shutting down/about to be shut down/scared of being shut down.

This time it's the Hare and Hounds in Kings Heath. I've been watching and playing shows in that building since 1995. jesus. It's now one of the best stages and rooms in the city, with gigs run by a lovely bunch of people who work hard for it AND understand not only how important smaller venues like this are to our bedraggled local musical community, but to the massive global scene of established touring bands that can't guarantee 500 people to every show.

And now they're scared cos someone's trying to build residential nearby, and our shitty council has a reputation of favouring noise complaints over culture/music/scene/happiness of population.

This sucks for sure, i'm signing the petition and if you live in Bham and care about your community then you probably should too.

BUT SERIOUSLY

Why should we have to? Why should we consistently have to be so scared and wary. Fuck, I'd like to build a flat next to the hare. I'd like to build flats next to all my favourite venues so i have less distance to my own bed and can have bitchin afterparties in my kitchen.


Our council sold us out years ago when we got bullring. We just wanted a clean shopping centre, with lights that worked. We got (for like, 6 months, thanks spain) Europes Largest Shopping Hub. (The lights still flicker tho)

That was a massive investment, and to keep that reputation, those high end chain stores in business and paying the rent, Birmingham went all snog marry avoid, stripped the grime from its face and tried to fool the rest of the country into thinking it was some kind of culturally aware rennaisance town. The words "trendy" and "upwardly mobile" were probably used at demographic appropriation meetings.

We (as in the city council, me personally was mostly taking pills and listening to Chicago bands) tried to lure people from the rest of the country in with a succession of reasonable priced (for them LOL) high rise flats within stumbling distance of bullring; like a less dramatic (more brummy) version of the hacinda, the eastside punk scene was systematically replaced over a couple of years by a bunch of apartments with a picture of a guitar on their corporate branding.

Even the Rotunda, an epic start to finish story of civic fail and the most iconic piece of skyline we can claim, had false walls and extra toilets installed so customers people could live inside it.

What had been a derelict dingy mess full of discount stores and boarded up failures literally became the new city centre. The old city centre, Corporation Street and surroundings, became a derelict dingy mess full of discount stores and boarded up failures, but if yr one of Birminghams trendy and upwardly mobile new recruits, you can live in your flat, spend your money in the shiny bullring, and never even see the weird  grey deathsprawl that lies north of New St station.

Urgh and really there's no point me whining about it anymore. This is what cities do now. cheap space gets filled by people with no money> people with no money make the best art> cheap space gains reputation from art and becomes expensive space>artists move out

all our council did was encourage the shortening of that cycle cos they realised people with multiple credit cards were more likely to buy expensive sushi and seasonal fashion than a bunch of hobos and punks with embarrassing accents. and, y'know, CHEAP LAND.

this is how cities work now.

so i find petitions like this, no matter how needed, desperately embarrassing. a petition against a proposal for a possible flat to be filled with person or persons unknown that might be selfish idiots. After all those guys and girls have worked for, all the promotion and the hours and sheer love over money mindset that's meant the Hare now has a reputation outside of 0121, they don't even know the name of the idiot thats going to fuck them.

The selling point of city centre living is, city centre living. Like, you live amidst the buzz and excitement and clamour and noise. The arrogance of someone who would move into a flat on Westside and complain about the Rainbow, or opposite the Hare and complain about loud music, frankly, astounds me darling. These are the people we should be specifically targeting and petitioning. - WHY DID YOU MOVE HERE? WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, THINK YOU ARE AN IDIOT AND SHOULD MOVE SOMEWHERE MORE SUITABLE. WE WERE HERE FIRST.

Because the council's always fucked us over, and the worse the economy gets, the larger the deathsprawl, the less incentive they have to invest in art and culture and anything that may or may not see a return in 5/10 years time. They'll always side with the noise complaint idiots. It's not that they don't want us, they just need that idiots money cos we spend all ours on guitars and vodka and gig tickets. This is what our cities are now.

I think the flat will get built. Cos they always get built in the end, and i am a negative person.

but i do think there's good and reason in every human being ever, and i can't help notice how anonymous the constant barrage of threats and closures and license removals are. Has any of us, ever tried talking to any of them?

Lets ignore the cops and the council and everyone in the middle and invite ourselves over with a bottle.

We can be like, thanks for choosing to be part of this community, because cliquefuck or no, that's what they've done. They found us attractive and wanted to be part of it. We can explain that if it wasn't for the Hare and Hounds, or the Flapper, or the Rainbow (or whatever venues next), then Birmingham would be off map for 100s of touring bands around the world, and it's taken years of constant non profit work to build the reputation of these places, so please don't call the council if you get some teenage puke on your doorstep or some police sirens in your dreams because it's a really small price to pay for living in an active and thriving and exciting and connected and FUN part of town.

Wah wah. i know this is hella gay and emo, urgh sharing feelings, is totally not the birmingham way, but honestly, we played like 20 american quasi-legal basements/houses/apartments/warehouses last month, and they all exist because somewhere along the line, some people had conversations something like that one above.

In Chicago, the council only shuts them down when they turn into full on 3 story 5 days a week drug fuelled punk squats. In Durham, our hosts Joe and Ashlee live in this beautiful converted apartment next to the town hall. It was out of their price range, so they wrote to the land lady explaining they were both part of the art community that Durham sells/prides itself on, and it seemed unfair to price them out of their own city centre. In a dozen towns notable for nothing, kids asked their neighbours to be cool and let them have a few hours of noise each month, then they asked their friends to be cool and not act un-neighbourly.

AND IT FUCKING WORKS YOU CUNTS SO WHY DOESN'T IT WORK HERE.

bah humbug / happy christmas

seriously tho, go sign this now.

my main objective is to be more effective

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.

talk to me.

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

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

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

and spit out yr bones for coathangers

not only did junior make a lil video of us doing bsides, but i discovered the annotations thingy on youtube.

YAY WORDS!



the tracklist to our album WENT PUBLIC today. noone told us and we thought everyone was going to be mad at us cos it had leaked. then someone told us and everything was fine, again.

also, we'd like to apologise to people that work in topshop having to hear our song all the time yr instore playlist thing. we've all worked jobs that involve 9 hour shifts with a 1 hour mix cd, and we find it pretty unsettling that a band as anti-fashion as ourselves is deemed suitable for shopping music, but, y'know, OVERDUE BILL: FINAL DEMAND and that. y'know that rilo kiley song that goes, and the bills keep changing colourrrrrrrrrr... thats my favourite rilo kiley moment. ANYWAY its going to get worse for you all cos they're running the video in a week or so too.

also, because our band is Teh Coolest, reebok and atticus said we can come to london and rape their shops up. which is aces, dont get our scavvy hearts wrongd; i dont really care for the dead bird guys but THIS = TEENAGE WIN.

unfortunatlery i'm still not famous enough to warrant peavey giving me a free amp. VIOLINS PLZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

also, we have some plans involving BEING ILLEGAL PUNXXXX, we'll tell you when we're allowed.

byeeeeeeee xlex