You have to check this out — we’re in the new Jurassic Park movie!

psyche.

But seriously, check out this amazing ad for the Kalamazoo Block Party we’re playing this saturday . . .

click this link:

http://www.downtownblockparty.com/

Oh . . . oh my — it’s the festies again!  Yup, time to get out that tent and finally buy some new undies. 

Then take those crisp and clean nether garments and come celebrate the world with us this summer!  This is exactly where we will be:

May 22: Bella Madre (Geneva, MN)

May 24: Hookahville (Thornville, OH)

May 30: Beginning of Summer Block Party (Kalamazoo)

June 4: Wakarusa (Ozark, AR)

June 20: Kentucky Pride (Louisville, KY)

June 26: Top Of the Park (Ann Arbor, MI)

July 23: 10,000 Lakes Festival (Detroit Lakes, MN)

July 30: Party in the Park (Chicago, IL)

August 1: Northalsted Market Days (Chicago, IL)

August 7th: SummerSounds (Greensburg, PA) 

September 4th: YpsiTucky Jamboree (Ypsilanti, MI)

 

This is how excited we are about the festies.  Except our undies will be newer.

Well friends, the time has come!!  We’ve been across the country and back — we’ve seen a rubber band, we’ve seen a peanut stand, we’ve seen a needle wink it’s eye . . . but there is nothing we get more excited about than playing for our peoples in A2!!  It’s gonna be cRaZy — we got some new material and nutty surprises that are sure to delight even the most avid pitchfork fan.  

 

We have two nights — the first is an all-ages show at the Neutral Zone, Friday the 10th.  The next night we’re playing our 18+ show at the blind pig.  Just the lights we’ve got set up for these shows will send you to a land Richard Simmons never knew existed!  

 

Please, RSVP and invite your friends on facebook — it’s the easiest and fastest way to get the word out. 

 

N-Zone:

 

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=66761361380&ref=ts

- If you RSVP for the neutral zone show, we’ll give you $1 off at the door.  yup, just that easy.

 

B-Pig:

 

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=152972640149&ref=ts

Notice: you can buy advance tickets to the blind pig show!!  Please, save yourself some time and money, it only takes a couple minutes.

http://www.etix.com/ticket/servlet/onlineSale?action=selectPerformance&cobrand=blindpigmusic&performance_id=944792

 

Summary:

 

Neutral Zone, Friday 4/10 

7pm doors, 8pm show

$12 door, all-ages

 

Blind Pig, Saturday 4/11 

$10 adv/$12 door (GET THOSE ADVANCE TICKETS! CHEAPER! FASTER! STRONGER MATERIALS!)

9:30 doors, 10pm show

 

The first week of tour — including H’update #2!

Day 7: NYC

Arrive at 3am from our philly drive . . . who wants to split the couch?
Theo: “There’s a bed downstairs, a loveseat in that room up front, umm, i think someone might have to sleep on the floor. ”

(Convenient that i have a pattern of having my best sleep on 3 couch cushions placed on the floor)
–  “hey i’ll take the floor.”

How the hell did it get so warm all of a sudden?  I woke up yesterday looking out the window at falling snow and blustering cold, and today I’m waking up to gentle rainfall and 50 degree weather.  And I am DOWN.
And hell yeah, i love bagels.  I think we all love bagels — thank you THEO!!
Internet is down, office time unlikely, how am i gonna rock today’s blog?  Well, no time to dwell, bob and i gotta go downtown to meet our lovely publicists at fanatic promotion.
There’s an amazing quality that NYC has that i recently noticed: in one underground, dirty, and crowded subway, you can be surrounded by beggars, buskers, teenagers,  grandmothers, and business men on their way to sign a multi-million dollar business merge — all at once.  There’s an unusual sense of equality down there.
Out of the subway, into the rainy streets of manhattan we go.  Lets run, its is coming down pretty hard.
Book it to the fanatic office: contained by yet another obscure doorway merely displaying an address.  I have a tendency to romanticize success – surely the people who spend all day making artists like the Chemical Brothers, Sigur Ros, and Sufjan Stevens famous must do so in a stainless steel office aboard a NASA test mars capital building.  The office was beautiful, but the lack of brain-detecting 3D CGI machines  reminds me that it’s not about the gear, you just gotta have a group of extremely knowledgeable and passionate people coming together to share a common goal.  Hell yeah!

“Hi hey hello! hey whats that? whats that? what’s that mean? what’s he doing?”

Ok, gotta go soundcheck now — rain_run_subway_rain_run pt 2.
The venue is the mercury lounge — they gotta big rep and we’ve all been excited about this gig for a while.
Little confusing to set up, the backstage is in the basement on the opposite side of the building, there’s no real good place to set up our merch display, and damn it’s such a pain dealing with the bus in manhattan.  We also have to get everything off the stage and put away within 15 minutes of the last beat, which, for a 7-piece electronic rock entourage, is a serious serious undertaking. Despite it all, the show went great, the crowd was awesome, the staff super helpful, and we got to see a lot of friends.  AND, we were awarded a $120 parking ticket from the city, despite the bus being on and a driver in the drivers seat.  Yee haw!
Next up: scatter MDD’s members to the four corners of the city for a couple hours,  reconvene at a bar called the Library, have a couple drinks,  more catching up with close friends, and catch the 1:20am subway back to long island.  Which means you gotta RUN!  It’s incredible how in shape dave schall is for someone who smokes and doesn’t regularly exercise.  Someone’s gotta start rocking some science on that human, there’s something profitable there.
Get back to the pad, hit a little 3am office time (ie, get the last blog up with a very spotty internet connection), and hit that hay at 4:30am.

A good tour — thank you east coast!

Quote of the tour comes from Bob, during our last pre-show huddle:

“I just want to tell you guys, several times this tour i’ve literally gotten goosebumps from all the love being musically transmitted from everyone on stage.”

see in you in february My Dear East Coast.

Love, [record]

TXT MSG: from Christian
Meet at bus @ 9am

Bob’s b-day the night before — a celebration of 24 years of Bob life. Friends, cupcakes 2.0, wine, and hookah. A highlight of bob revealing his salvation army secret weapon: a white 3-piece bellbottom suit, complete with red Hi-C stains on the bottom right leg. Looks like we’ll have to have a red Hi-C squirt gun fight to match.

Day 1: Buffalo

Sleep 3.5 hours — wake-up up to a blizzard of packing, grocery shopping, bank deposits, missed alarms, printing contracts, and trying to ignore the annoying voice, saying”aren’t you forgetting something? aren’t you still forgetting something? maybe you’re forgetting something . . . ” Leave by 10:30, not bad for us.

Arrive at Nietsche’s, a club that has accurately recreated the feeling of being on a disney world Pirates of the Caribbean tour. Good news! The club has two jugs of grease for us — another 30 miles of deep-fat driving!

We meet an incredible traditional african drummer Alasaan Sarr, who sits in on “My Dear Disco” along with Marc Vitagliano, who both blow everyones mind.

Haven’t figured out where we’re gonna stay, who’s selling merch did you tip the bartender where’s the kick drum pedal case . . .

Joey: someone from a some co-op in town called nickel city said we could stay at their place
Everyone: hell yes

Try to park the bus in downtown buffalo for an hour, end up parking 15 feet away from where we started: across the street from the club. HA!

Day 2: Ithaca

little did we know that nickel city co-op would treat us to warm beds, pancake breakfast, fresh ground coffee, and home-made blueberry kombucha!! Time to pass on some serious love and keep this karma alive. Any one have a kombucha baby? I’m thinking a roasted-cherry-porter-soaked-peanut-filled-mango-lassi kombucha might be good.

A 2 hour drive to Ithaca feels like a 6 hour drive, wait was it only 2 hours? its getting dark, feels late, we’re supposed be there by 8 what time is it.

Playing at a club called Castaways with a local fav Jimkata. Pull up the club, another pirate-esque feel to the room (this time more mild). Jimkata boys are fun as hell, good time loading in and setting up, they brought a lighting guy (actually also their manager disguised as a lighting guy)!

To the our surprise, and even more to everyone else in the club’s surprise, a whole crew from Hobart College pulls up in TWO enormous stretch limos packed with the brim with peeps to see our set.

Pretty good reason to get on stage and hit it hard as we can. Super fun set, those kids can make a room shake. Jimkata pulled off a great set, and an equally fun after-party. They even put us up that night, put up another point on the karma score board (should we add curry to that kombucha?).

Christian falls asleep in mid-party on the living room couch . . . he is rudely awaked later that night by an individual sleep-walking and mistaking a coffee table for a toilet. Unfortunately, Christian’s shouting wasn’t enough to stop that force, lets hope the scotch guard is.

how do some people get so lucky?

Day 3: Travel Day to Boston

The band accumulates at the famed ithaca breakfast joint College Town Bagels. With the 8 person crew and our collective Ithaca friends we formed a formidable semi-circle taking over half the floor space. Thank fully breakfast for us started at 2pm. Christian is asleep face-down at his table. Poor guy. DAMN, i need a shower.

DAMN, it gets dark earlier out here. Awake for 3 hours and it’s already night time.

Arrive in boston 7 hrs later and rejoice with a late-night tray of veggie lasagna. I’ll take the futon, looks like 6 people are trying to sleep in the basement — thumb wars?
And there’s the shower . . .

More to come in the days to follow,

-The Record Button

Hello You!

Check out our live page to see the new shows we have posted!  All confirmed gigs between now and 2009 and up for you to see, including our East Coast Tour de Dancethink in Early December!

Lub,

Bub