Another nugget from the recent-history vault! This was/is our lil in-store performance at Amoeba Records in Hollywood, back on October 2, capturing that very brief (and bleary) moment between the Dandy Warhols tour and our trip to London. If memory serves me right - and according to the video, it does - we got an early start that day. Many thanks to everybody at Amoeba for doing such a damned incredible job with this. I suspect they cut the "throngs of adoring shoppers" footage from the Paul McCartney in-store. So, yeah, thanks.
The performance:
and the interview:
and also a photo gallery.
So watch this for a few days, and come back for more while-we-were-out media.
happy holidays,
the dudes
26 December 2008
18 December 2008
the other two ways out video
Check out our recently-unearthed 1981 appearance on German television...
and then there's the interview too. It's a shame you can't see or hear off-camera rock journalism icon/former Creem editor Dave DiMartino, whose said some really amazing things in what was kinda the best interview we've had in recent memory (as you can see here, the fella knows what he's doing).
and then there's the interview too. It's a shame you can't see or hear off-camera rock journalism icon/former Creem editor Dave DiMartino, whose said some really amazing things in what was kinda the best interview we've had in recent memory (as you can see here, the fella knows what he's doing).
17 December 2008
L.A. by sunrise
We just passed the first highway sign for LA. So close we can smell it. Yet even though this is the prize we've had our eyes on for the last 5 weeks, cold feet's creepin' in. Not sitting in this van for hours for the first time tomorrow will be jarring, and the compulsion to go to a club around 5 and set shit up will surely be deafening. Tour withdrawal. Weird.
Also, the Strangelove stickers finally came in. Here's one we plastered on a backstage wall, which is the most surefire way to ensure your band will stand the test of time. Email us your checking account info and we'll probably put one aside for ya.
Also, the Strangelove stickers finally came in. Here's one we plastered on a backstage wall, which is the most surefire way to ensure your band will stand the test of time. Email us your checking account info and we'll probably put one aside for ya.
15 December 2008
You can't always get what you want
It's only fair that Priceline would eventually dump us in some post-apocalyptic tenement camp sooner or later, to appease the hotel gods and karmically account for the palatial accommodations we've been scoring on the cheap for the last month. And what better place to do that than Baton Rouge. In case you were thinking of staying there, here are some observations on the Extended Stay America hotel on beautiful Corporate Blvd.:
Your first impression is the hotel staff. Combative and unfeeling, it's your first encounter with a trend you'll experience fully in your stay in town: nobody cares. Living to fight another day is top priority here, and that doesn't involve making sure your stranger ass is comfortable. The second thing you notice is that your room key doesn't work. You notice this because you can't open the door. So you go back to the front desk. You think about taking the stairs, but you fear you'll run into a week-old corpse, so you don't. Then the third thing you notice is the tawdry, melodramatic porno-style "oh-my-god-yes-don't-stop" moaning coming from room 328. Sure, it's hot, more or less, but it'll give you second thoughts about sleeping in your bed later. The lady shows up to let you in the room, advising that if you need to leave the room at some point, to just prop the door open, it'll be fine, and that's when you're knocked on your back by the fourth thing you notice, which is that the room smells exactly like a Long John Silver's bathroom. Reeks, to the point of suffocation. It's too cold to open the windows, so you turn the wall-unit fan on, until you notice it's full of Chee-tos and cigarette butts, so you turn it off. Then you notice too late that there's no toilet paper, and when you move to call the front desk, you notice the phone doesn't work. Not that you would wanna put your face anywhere near that thing. You look under the bed to make sure it's plugged in, which it is, but you stop looking as soon as you notice one solitary Dorito resting on top of a bar of half-used soap. You're tempted to just wipe your ass on the wall like everyone else seems to have done, in noticing the sixth or seventh thing, which is that every square inch of surface is smeared with traces of past habitation - schmutz, gunk, greasy handprint here, bloody footprint there. You're glad you didn't bring your black light. You turn on the TV with your sleeve and try to tune all this out to what may or may not have been some Sharon Tate B-movie. The cable's kinda scratchy. You notice the smoke detector's been violently pried from the ceiling. You think about the couple in 328, and you think about sleeping on the floor, until you consider the state of the carpet, so you re-consider the bed, and for some reason get so consumed with the whole thing that you check the sheets for bedbugs, and whaddaya know, you find stems of snapped dry spaghetti and hair commingling, and this is why you brought your sleeping bag: to sleep on the bed, in your own sleeping bag. You don't have any choice but to use their pillow, so you suck it up and lie awake, face-up, unable to breathe, because you're sleeping in a Long John Silver's bathroom.
All hope that things will be different in the outside world will be dashed in the morning. At Starbucks, the counter lies beneath a half-inch of standing water, and no one cares. The guy in front of you pleads for them not to make his drink with milk, which elicits the response of "we don't make it with milk, we add it after." The clerk at the convenience store combatively insists that she is not charging you significantly more than the advertised price, doesn't care to check, and doesn't care what you think. You ask the cashier at McDonald's how she's doing, and she looks you dead in the eyes and asks "do you really wanna know?"
You don't need this blog to rehash how and why things reached this point and how to fix them. If you're looking for the short end of the stick, it's here. And really, you can't entirely blame these people for being focused on little more than their own day-to-day survival. Shit's bleak.
Your first impression is the hotel staff. Combative and unfeeling, it's your first encounter with a trend you'll experience fully in your stay in town: nobody cares. Living to fight another day is top priority here, and that doesn't involve making sure your stranger ass is comfortable. The second thing you notice is that your room key doesn't work. You notice this because you can't open the door. So you go back to the front desk. You think about taking the stairs, but you fear you'll run into a week-old corpse, so you don't. Then the third thing you notice is the tawdry, melodramatic porno-style "oh-my-god-yes-don't-stop" moaning coming from room 328. Sure, it's hot, more or less, but it'll give you second thoughts about sleeping in your bed later. The lady shows up to let you in the room, advising that if you need to leave the room at some point, to just prop the door open, it'll be fine, and that's when you're knocked on your back by the fourth thing you notice, which is that the room smells exactly like a Long John Silver's bathroom. Reeks, to the point of suffocation. It's too cold to open the windows, so you turn the wall-unit fan on, until you notice it's full of Chee-tos and cigarette butts, so you turn it off. Then you notice too late that there's no toilet paper, and when you move to call the front desk, you notice the phone doesn't work. Not that you would wanna put your face anywhere near that thing. You look under the bed to make sure it's plugged in, which it is, but you stop looking as soon as you notice one solitary Dorito resting on top of a bar of half-used soap. You're tempted to just wipe your ass on the wall like everyone else seems to have done, in noticing the sixth or seventh thing, which is that every square inch of surface is smeared with traces of past habitation - schmutz, gunk, greasy handprint here, bloody footprint there. You're glad you didn't bring your black light. You turn on the TV with your sleeve and try to tune all this out to what may or may not have been some Sharon Tate B-movie. The cable's kinda scratchy. You notice the smoke detector's been violently pried from the ceiling. You think about the couple in 328, and you think about sleeping on the floor, until you consider the state of the carpet, so you re-consider the bed, and for some reason get so consumed with the whole thing that you check the sheets for bedbugs, and whaddaya know, you find stems of snapped dry spaghetti and hair commingling, and this is why you brought your sleeping bag: to sleep on the bed, in your own sleeping bag. You don't have any choice but to use their pillow, so you suck it up and lie awake, face-up, unable to breathe, because you're sleeping in a Long John Silver's bathroom.
All hope that things will be different in the outside world will be dashed in the morning. At Starbucks, the counter lies beneath a half-inch of standing water, and no one cares. The guy in front of you pleads for them not to make his drink with milk, which elicits the response of "we don't make it with milk, we add it after." The clerk at the convenience store combatively insists that she is not charging you significantly more than the advertised price, doesn't care to check, and doesn't care what you think. You ask the cashier at McDonald's how she's doing, and she looks you dead in the eyes and asks "do you really wanna know?"
You don't need this blog to rehash how and why things reached this point and how to fix them. If you're looking for the short end of the stick, it's here. And really, you can't entirely blame these people for being focused on little more than their own day-to-day survival. Shit's bleak.
14 December 2008
12 December 2008
09 December 2008
other people on television
There are two things that keep us going, that rouse us each morning (or, when possible, midday). Number one is the promise of soothing hotel television at the end of the day. Number two is, well... there is no number two.
So in keeping with our series of portraits of us on closed-circuit television, here's a brief collection of other people on open-circuit hotelevision, snapped by our resident hotelevision photographer, Jared Everett.
The abominable snowman.
Indeterminately-accented Prophet Kim "Nevertheless" Clements, pictured above with weird shriveled baby hand.
Liberace - that "deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love" (to quote the incomparable Daily Mirror columnist Cassandra) - ca. 1980. Not pictured: the cage of 7 Asian youths under the stage actually making all that music.
And, of course, the aforementioned photographer, On Demand.
So in keeping with our series of portraits of us on closed-circuit television, here's a brief collection of other people on open-circuit hotelevision, snapped by our resident hotelevision photographer, Jared Everett.
The abominable snowman.
Indeterminately-accented Prophet Kim "Nevertheless" Clements, pictured above with weird shriveled baby hand.
Liberace - that "deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love" (to quote the incomparable Daily Mirror columnist Cassandra) - ca. 1980. Not pictured: the cage of 7 Asian youths under the stage actually making all that music.
And, of course, the aforementioned photographer, On Demand.
07 December 2008
05 December 2008
01 December 2008
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