...for the first time in I don't even know how long (years at this point!), we all four got together. The occasion? Well, I realize it's not big news in any sense except to us, but after 25 years as a band and for the first time in 20, we, as they say, have inked a deal. Pens were handed out presidentially. Morning beers were clinked together. The devil wrung his hands in delight & vanished in a smoke puff, laughing...[READ ON]
Last Thursday, July 31st, was a another unlikely milestone for us: the 25th anniversary of our very first show, at a club long-since gone on 42nd St., Manhattan, right next to the Port Authority. And even though there were a few hasty rehearsals first, it being the first time of many that we powered up amps & attempted to 'wow' the non-crowd (also first of many), we count it as the official starting gun.
And typically late to everything, including watch-bestowing self-ceremonies we hold every five years to congratulate ourselves on being even later to breaking up, we didn't get around to posting anything. Heck, I only noticed because I set a calendar alarm. Four years and 364 days ago. [READ ON]
It has been a while, non? Even as four years of work on the album finally wrap up, actually leaving the house to climb on a stage, in front of people and flail a guitar like a man drowning.
Kevin & I (that's charles) are playing a benefit show for P.S. 154, a public school here in Brooklyn at which (full disclosure) our oldest attends kindergarten. So yes, daddy is singing for text books & pencils...[READ ON]
It was half of 20 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper bought the band a copy of the Meadowlands. Probably for one of his more mature friends and hopefully w/ a discretely included gift receipt.
Meaning yeah, the Meadowlands came out exactly 10 years ago today, on Sept. 9th, 2003, which also means that our 'most recent' release pre-dates things like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Democrats in the White House, heck Bush's 2nd term, the show Lost, 6 albums and 3 EP's by Okkervil River, the Dinosaur Jr. reunion, some actual dinosaurs, the careers of Justin Bieber and Katy Perry COMBINED and the over 8400 separate and unique indie music micro-genres that gestated and died a quick bloggy death since...you get the idea. But putting it in any of those terms does feel like saying it came out in the '70s. (choose your own century)...[READ ON]
Tues.: drop kids at school, inexplicably overdub even more guitars in living room in effort to finish recording before more due children are born
Wed.: proselytize on keeping other cities weird
Thurs: use phrase ‘day party’ a lot; eat sensible dinner at our respective homes (NJ, Penna., B’klyn).
Fri.: enjoy commemorative breakfast taco, read up on Austin. Email other band geeks to discuss reforming
Sat.: reflect how everything’s bigger in Texas, especially buzzes
Sun.: feel the burn…of a week like any other. Reflect on what we’ve learned. Look ahead to 2014 when we actually go.
An itemized invoice I sent Kevin, billing him for work done on one of his songs (ok no, not seriously billing him. Althooooough if he cut me a check, I’d probably cash it. For his is a generous personhood, while I am a small grabby man). Greg’s reply to all this: you need to increase your rates....[READ ON]
Yeah, 2010…actually not a typo. For years we’ve posted a year-end wrap-up of what we’d been up to the previous twelve months (you can pour over a few of those here). They’ve tended to be drawn-out semi-comedic affairs that were long on “we bought a computer” sort of news and short of any announcement of real recording (not counting a band-ful of false starts, laughably optimistically documented here or here, both from four years ago now, for ex.)...
Anyway, the Schumann PLL, that great white whale among guitar pedal enthusiasts is sold. And to Jack Black, no less....
You play guitar for three-plus decades, you tend to accumulate a few pedals along the way, maybe enough to earn the dumb infantile nickname ‘pedalboy’.
I've been putting off cleaning musical-equipment house for maybe oh...two-and-a-half of those three decades now. But finally starting with this, for some tiny sub-strata of musicianly geeks, the jewel in the crown that is my collection - the Schumann PLL, now for sale. If you have to ask what it is, probably no reason to read on. And definitely no reason to ask how much, since that’ll make us both feel weird. Trust me...
Feeling the CMJ burn yet? Tired of indie rock pushing you around? I actually am and I haven’t left the house in years.
Well, if you’ve ever seen us (wrens) play and thought, “wow, I wish the one on the right would just put aside those cloying songs of heartbreak and loss so that I could really take in the guitar work” – ok, the odds you’ve said that without actually being me, are probably slim - then friend, I’ve got a show for you...
…party, here’s a link for one of the list pieces that Pitchfork ran a week or so back celebrating their 15-year anniversary...
Really nothing pressing here, just pointing, mockingly, to Kev & Charles in Spin, sharing their brief old-man reminiscences of the first time they heard Nirvana's Nevermind, which came out 20 years ago now. Which is pretty bonkers. Almost as bonkers as us in Spin...
Directly from our Betterlatethannever Dept., which is to say, directly from our Everythingwedo Dept., here’s a link to a piece we wrote that recently ran in MAGNET extolling the virtues of a song by Steve Koester (now Two Dark Birds) and a band you never heard of unless you grew up in the same 1980s south Jersey we did, the Magnets...
Charles will be playing a little differently solo (than the usual loop-happy set, hidden behind a veil of electronics and studio trickery), as part of the wonderful Jennifer O’Connor’s new monthly “Tower of Song” series at the Rock Shop in Brooklyn on Tues. Feb. 8th. Also on this one are the equally estimable Richard Baluyut (of Versus) and Kendall Meade (of Mascott).
It’s sort of a round-robin affair with all four onstage, each playing their songs in a row, maybe talking a bit about them etc…
With this, the coldest day in August that I can remember, another sign of the End of Days is made manifest in our webby store – Meadowlands, in vinyl, the record, the actual album…is back in stock! ..
The more personal backstory goes something like this, at least as well as I can remember it…a few years back, Oct. of ’06 to be exact, we got a super nice email from someone named Ben who wrote because his band, Green Arrows, and a friend’s band, Joseph Ferocious, had combined to cover our song Happy at a co-headlining show at the Stone Pony and he wanted to share along a link for us to - you can see it here...
Finding ourselves with a few spare hours, a bag of nails, and some lumber that was in the yard, we’ve hammered together a new web store. And to commemorate so auspicious an occasion, we’ve got a lovely new shirt to hang in the window as well, all very coincidentally in time for some ritual holiday consumer action...
May come as a surprise, may probably not, but I, charles, am not only not the coolest person in the band, I’m not even the coolest person in our house. In fact, the arrival of children has now cemented my ‘not even by a long shot’ status.
Don’t usually make too big a deal of it, but I love indie rock enough in general, and the band Palomar in particular, that I married into it. Hence the move to Brooklyn a few years back, starting me on my own personal cool-makeover...
