A year ago today

A year ago today I took some ecstasy and went to a hardcore show. Morgan blacked out, Hellz took his shirt off, Ryan Garrett moshed his ass off, my flash got broken and I got a fat lip. Not a bad night.

bong hits for henry!

I was going to post a song and some random photos

But then I couldn't find the mp3 of the new Broken Bells song "The High Road". Broken Bells is a collaboration of James Mercer, the singer of the Shins, and Danger Mouse, who is the producer of Gnarles Barkley and an all around bad ass on his own. In my attempts to find the mp3 I stumbled over to the website of the band and it was so fuckin' cool that I had to share with you(internet). So do yourself a favor and stumble on over to the Broken Bells home page where you can trip out and listen to the new album.

anime is tight

well i love anime and kirsten dunst.

Sunday Night Photos

Matt was there reppin' the great Korean Olympic Speed Skater Wang Meng
The rare Turangela was there in deep thought
Holdin' it down in his own household
Marquis had the music covered for the night
It took Angela forever to drink her 40
Michael opted for some Coors, Banquet style

Matt and I recorded Michael without him knowing, maybe he knew, either way he didn't give a shit. All in all it was a good night, you should have been there.

this is going to be max one day

36 hours in Arizona

Hopefully we won't get hurt on the first day so we can stay longer.









I drank the whole way home. Made it Palm Springs and had to switch to shotgun because I was buzzin' a bit. Good times welth been had.

Terry Rules

Terry got bored one night while I was at work. I came home to see him editing what would turn out to be this awesome video to the song "When I'm With You" by Best Coast using clips from the movie "the Trip".

Best Coast - When I'm With You from awesomesnake.blogspot on Vimeo.

that type of day

I have work and then I'm going to eat a burger, drink a beer and drive to Arizona. See you on Monday.

RAAAAAAAANDY MIX TAPE DROPPIN SOOOOOOOON

Last Night Was Legit part 2

I dedicated this song to hellz. The following are some of the many things that happened last night.
- hellz blacked out
- cardboard kitty
- ate shrooms
- terry saying "holy shit, i just gave myself a headache"
- re-arranging hellz' room while he was passed out on the couch down stairs
- hellz saying "smoke meth" in his sleep
- 7 people trying pick hellz up off the floor and put him in his bed
- filming the entire re-arrange(it'll be posted soon)
- talking to the cops just after eating shrooms and drinking a beer in the street and some how managing to not get arrested and actually shake his hand
- hellz and i trying to figure out how to turn the volume up on his phone
- hellz somehow managing to sneak passed everyone who was downstairs only to be found sitting outside with a cigarette in his hand backwards
- photo shoot with a passed out hellz
- everyone who came over


So many things happened. Yesterday was simply perfect, if only I could have made out with someone...

some music

whatever you call him...

...spencer or spencen is way better than you at skating(except for matt's back three's and tom gap lipsliding your face off and andy's brazillian pop and aaron's kickflips and j-ro's wallie manuals and richard perry's jaccuzzi). View Ryan killing the girl park as well as claiming first place here
and this video is just too good to pass up

Ty Segall Can Do No Wrong

"driving...i don't like driving in the rain"

terry and i were on the news yesterday keeping with the theme of our world domination

video here

Too Good To Pass Up

Amazing song(the description had me at for fans of panda bear, memory tapes, fuck buttons and washed out) plus some random polaroids for good measure.

Golden Age - "Be Cool"

Some Pictures of Terry

We've been hanging out a lot lately, whether we're playing nazi zombies, tormenting andreau or michael, taking drugs, getting drunk, or riding bikes.

Plus a Ty Segall song that we really like, except when we're on mushrooms, then it's kind of scarry






Pondering what's next...

where have you gone?

just because you moved to LA doesn't mean you have to abandon us on the internet as well.

Some Photos From the Past Few Days

Plus a song by Wavves called "Cool Jumper" from their upcoming, untitled third album.




Best part about work
Drive-by was looking ferocious as ever



It was Marquis' birthday on Tuesday

New Broken Social Scene album plus tour dates

taken from pitchfork.com
It's been five years since the nebulous indie rock guitar maelstrom known as Broken Social Scene last graced us with a full album of their sprawl. But after a couple semi-solo albums and near-constant touring, the group is ready to let loose their official follow up to 2005's Broken Social Scene with a new, as-yet-untitled LP due out May 4 via Arts & Crafts.

Thanks to Broken Social Scene's revolving-door member policy, you never quite know who's going to be (or who's not going to be) involved in a new BSS record. This time, the album was written and arranged by a core six-piece (pictured), including singer-guitarist Kevin Drew, singer-bassist Brendan Canning, drummer Justin Peroff, guitarist Charles Spearin, and singer-guitarist Andrew Whiteman, along with relative newcomer Sam Goldberg on (what else?) guitar. Of course, that's not all.

The new album's extended cast features many names fans will recognize from their previous triumphs with the group: Leslie Feist, Stars' Amy Millan and Evan Cranley, Metric's Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw, Jason Collett, Do Make Say Think's Ohad Benchetrit, John Crossingham, Marty Kinack, Julie Penner, Leon Kingstone, and Lisa Lobsinger.

And there are a bunch of newbies, too, chief among them being the LP's producer, post-rock icon John McEntire, who plays in Tortoise and the Sea and Cake and has manned the boards for his own groups as well as others including Stereolab and Teenage Fanclub. Along with McEntire, Sea and Cake's Sam Prekop, Tortoise's Doug McCombs, Pavement's Spiral Stairs, former Death From Above 1979 singer-drummer Sebastien Grainger, Poi Dog Pondering's Susan Voelz, Helen Money's Alison Chesley, and the Weakerthans' Jason Tait can all be heard (somewhere) on the album.

Recorded at McEntire's Soma Studios in Chicago and Shaw and Grainger's Giant Studios in Toronto throughout last year, the new record does not, however, feature the talents of producer Dave Newfeld, who played a sizable role in shaping the band's self-titled release and their 2002 breakout, You Forgot It In People. But rejuvenation and reinvention are intrinsic to these anthem-prone Canadians; if you're looking for stability and constancy, it might be best to look elsewhere.

As if all of that info wasn't enough to get the BSS blood churning once again, band co-founder Kevin Drew recently took a brief break from mixing to speak with us about the gestation of the new album and hinted at what we can expect to hear. The interview-- along with a handful of new North America and European dates set to take place around the time of the album's release-- is below.

Pitchfork: Your last album came out five years ago but, considering the "Broken Social Scene Presents" albums from you and Brendan and the touring you guys did behind them, it's almost like you never left.

Kevin Drew: That's why the "Broken Social Scene Presents" records worked. After the tour for Broken Social Scene in 2006, it was a very confusing time. I know I say it a lot-- it almost sounds like I use it as some marketing tool-- but if there was any time when we were going to break up it was after that tour. Andrew [Whiteman] and Charles [Spearin] split. And Brendan [Canning] and Justin [Peroff] and I had to go out and find a new band and try to make this "Broken Social Scene Presents" thing work on the road. But we ended up with a great band and we found [guitarist] Sam Goldberg, who is now a full-time member. On this new record, Sam brings such a melodic sound-- we call him "Stadium Sam," he's our stadium rock guy. And then, in 2008, Andrew and Charlie returned, and we ended up touring the world that whole year. That's when this album's core six-piece formed.

I love the self-titled record to death but it was difficult to make. But that point is so over for us. I don't think we've ever really entered this territory of just feeling amazing about everything like it is right now.

Pitchfork: After working in Toronto with producer Dave Newfeld on You Forgot It In People and Broken Social Scene, you decided to go to Chicago with Tortoise's John McEntire for the new album. How did that come about?

KD: It goes back to when [Stars bassist] Evan Cranley was trying to figure out where to record their album In Our Bedroom After the War, and-- knowing that I was a massive fan-- he just casually said to me, "I spoke to your boy John and he seemed like he was into producing the new Stars album, but we're going to Vancouver." I just kind of spit my cigarette out and was like, "What do you mean? You can work with John McEntire?!"

Then, in October 2008, we fooled around and had a session in John's studio. It was so much fun, and that's when the wheels started turning. So we had to start figuring out what we were going to do in terms of Newf, because there were still issues that I hadn't worked out with him. A bunch of us didn't know how we were going to do this record without Newfeld because he played such a massive, massive role in all our success. He was very involved-- I mean, he used to come on the talkback and suggest lyric changes [laughs]. So we were quite scared to take a lot of it on ourselves. I called Newf up and told him what was going on and he gave his blessing, and that actually was a catalyst for him and I getting back on the same page, which I'm really grateful for because he is one of my favorite people in the world.

Then I suddenly I found myself in a whole different world. Johnny is very, very different. Very quiet. He lets you figure it out. Sometimes we would bust into tunes and be like, [takes deep breath] "OK, let's see what he thinks about this one." We didn't really know how he was feeling about everything for a little while. Then one night a couple of us went out for drinks with him and at about the fourth drink in he started opening up and telling us what he thought about the songs. It became a trend. And then it became sort of a joke-- a band member would come up to me and be like, "I'm really tired and I can't go out tonight but would you ask John how he felt about my part in this song?" [laughs] I consider John a good friend now and I'm happy to say he's joining the band. Obviously, he's still got Sea and Cake and Tortoise-- but when he's free, he's going to come out and play with us. I'm just trying to live my teenage dreams over here, and this was definitely one of them.

Pitchfork: Was it tough to get people like Feist, and members of Stars and Metric involved this time around?

KD: Well, there was a point where it looked like it was going to be a core-member record and we weren't going to get those people because they were so busy; Stars were making a record, Metric was on the road. We thought, "It's OK, we can do this without them. We can move on. It's not like that anymore." But when we brought Johnny to Toronto and set up it was immediately like old times. So, right at the end, everybody made it on.

We played a show in the summertime when all of us were together and I think it was our favorite show. After it, there were a few days when we just wished we could go into the studio and do a ground-up album and then take everyone out on the road, but it wasn't in the cards. It wasn't what the others wanted. It gets confusing about who brings what to the album but everyone just came in and put some visiting touches on some songs; a few vocals, horns, guitar lines. I really want to be cautious talking about this because the last few years of my life have been trying to figure out a mature way to not market your friends and overuse people's names and misguide listeners to thinking this person or that person's involved. So: Everyone visited the record, but it's not a ground-up album.

There is one tune where all the ladies sing together-- it was originally my favorite instrumental on the album [laughs]. But [Metric singer] Emily [Haines] came out of the woodwork and dropped a vocal on it and it broke our hearts. Then Charlie wrote a nice e-mail to Leslie [Feist] and [Stars singer] Amy [Millan] saying, "If you sang on this I think it would be really beautiful." And they did and I can't say how grateful I am for it. And in the Toronto sessions we got Les and Amy on a crazy jam with us all, too.

And now we have some new things on the table, too. Like Lisa Lobsinger, who we plucked from her life and dragged onstage during the Broken Social Scene tour and really put her in a serious situation to step up to the plate and suddenly become the female vocalist. She's all over this new record and she's going to come out on tour with us again.

Pitchfork: Would you say the making of this record was more like You Forgot It In People than Broken Social Scene or different entirely?

KD: It's different entirely. We really don't have anything to prove. So many bands have come out in the last five years and sometimes you question your relevancy. But when it locks into place you just keep going. Right now, everyone's in place-- I can't stress that enough. Between Chicago and Toronto we recorded about 42 tunes. Obviously some of them might be a kazoo and an 808 but we got a lot of ideas down.

Pitchfork: Are there any themes running through the album?

KD: The Canadian music scene boomed during the George Bush era but now we're in the "yes, we might be able to" world. We had lots of conversations about how we could sing about our views and opinions without trying to make a poor man's R.E.M. song. It was a challenge to personalize everything and embrace the state of the planet. I love a distraction as much as the next guy but we always feel some urgency to speak about what's going on. I remember when U2's single ["Get On Your Boots"] came out, I thought, "All right, what's it gonna be? What's the man gonna sing about?" And Bono's opening line was like, "I don't wanna talk about politics, I just wanna rock!" And I thought, "Uh oh-- we're in trouble." This is a crazy state of limbo right now and we tried to embrace it and bring those subjects up here and there. We've always been a band that sings about exactly what's inside of us and exactly what's happening outside as well. Like, if we're screaming, let's have something to scream about.

Pitchfork: It sounds like you guys are in a pretty great headspace at the moment.

KD: I can't tell you how happy we are. There are so many exciting albums coming out this year and that's great for us because when we do the festival circuit we get to bum rush the stage. I still have to redeem myself to the National, though. We played a show together in Mexico City and they dedicated a song to me-- and then they stood side stage during our set and saw me screaming at the monitor guy for ten minutes. It's a bit of a regret-- I'm glad they didn't Wayne Coyne me on that one.

Right now, we have two mottos: "kill 'em with kindness" and, um, "if it's yellow, let it mellow."

Pitchfork: That sounds like a potential album title to me...

KD: [laughs] I'm sure somebody copyrighted "if it's yellow, let it mellow"-- it must be patented.

Broken Social Scene:

05-01 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
05-03 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre
05-07 New York, NY - Webster Hall
05-13 London, England - Brixton Academy *
05-14 Minehead, England - All Tomorrow's Parties
05-17 London, England - Heaven
05-18 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Melkweg
05-19 Cologne, Germany - Burgerhaus Stollwerck
05-21 Paris, France - La Maroquinerie
06-19 Toronto, Ontario - Toronto Island *#

* with Pavement
# with Band of Horses

I Got A New Lens

Plus this song is amazing