searching for the switches

vs fucking everything

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

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

so yayer, here's the sales pitch:

Johnny Foreigner Vs Everything:

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

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

Vs Everything (the transcript):

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

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

Vs Everything gloshirt:

.

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

Launch Shows!

Johnny Foreigner Vs London

Us, Stagecoach, Screaming Maldini, Echo Lake

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

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

Johnny Foreigner Vs Birmingham

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

the flapper, Sunday 13th November. 14+

back home, with the best birmingham bands ever.

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

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

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

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

dear spinderella..

i guess it starts with this

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

xalexei

aunty piracy measures

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

anti piracy measures. (prologue)

hiyar.

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

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

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

so this is what i said:

Hi. thanks for writing. it means a lot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

take care
xlex

hands vs fangs

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

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

here is a cover:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the hand that slaps you back by johnny foreigner

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

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

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

so strong jack pop has come up with an alternative:

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

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

also, competitititition:

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

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

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

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

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

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

xlex