best show ever.

Last night I was able to witness one what was easily one of the best shows I've seen in Denton in the past five years I've lived here. My friend Darci over at Kittenpants was able to get Corn Mo and his insanely tight new line up of the .375 Lover to fly in from New York and play an outstanding set, take a short break and then become the back up band for Mr. Andrew W.K. himself. After some recovery from mind-blow-itis I decided to sit down and make a list of the best shows I've seen in Denton. Here we go:

Little Grizzly final show-May 2004
A great band pulling out all the stops for their curtain call including and all star Denton line up covering 'The Weight' and topping it all off with a spot on encore of 'A Quick One While She's Away.'

The Microphones (now Mt. Eerie), Calvin Johnson, Get the Hell Out of the Way of the Volcano (now The Blow) -Fall 2001:
This was an extremely bizarre audience participation show in which each act attempted to awkwardly incorporate the tiny audience into their songs. Calvin drew pictures for people on a giant easel, Khaela sang a capella to an antique drum machine/metronome, Phil wore a wolf suite made of felt and everyone simulated a dying in a plane crash. After this the audience was finally treated to a solo set by The Microphones (Phil E.) Half way through the set he asked the audience to join hands and we all made our way out to back of Rubber Gloves where we listened to songs about the moon. The strangest part of the night was during a song a train passed by with carrying about fifty military tanks making the already surreal moment a little bit stranger. I'm still not sure this show actually happened

Rock Lottery 2004-This one only half way counts since this was the year I participated. Regardless, on this night everything thing seemed to line up with all the bands especially Wombstone Pizza. My adrenaline was so high after the show I think I stayed up all night.

Theres more to this list, and perhaps I will continue it another time. Until then, keep your hats on.

A very special message

This show is going to be great! I went to Secret Headquarters for the first time last weekend (I know I'm a little late getting on the train) and it was excellent. The Undoing of David Wright, a very interesting and entertaining glam industrial band played an excellent show where they sprayed down the audience with 'anti-hippy gas' from a rigged up supersoaker/smoke machine. Needless to say I was impressed.

Our debute at the fine establishment will be with St. Louis's own Bunnygrunt. Last summer on a solo tour they hooked myself and Ryan Anderson up with a house party/bbq after which we stayed up late into the night recording a song in their basement. I still haven't heard the song but something tells me it's either amazing or amazingly awful.

Mark this on your calendars now as it will also be a graduation celebration for John "Dodecapus Rex" Christakis-Clardy and I as we receive our diplomas the day before.

Oh, Also, the album is being mastered up in Omaha next week with Doug Van Sloun at Studio B. He's done some very excellent work (more on this later) and we're really excited to have him 'adding the sheen' to our baby.

see you later,
Fishboy

oh also also, I started moving all our photos to Flickr. FRIEND US!

We finished mixing Monday morning at 8am, the start of a very busy, sleep deprived school/work we for all of us so please accept my apologies for not updating sooner. With that said, you all knew I was just going to come on here and tell you how awesome it is. We're all extremely happy/proud of the end result. Matt definitely brought out the best in our little outfit and got us to create the finest Fishboy album to date. I hope you all love it as much as I do. All the loose ends need to be tied up but right now it looks like the earliest it will come out will be late summer/ early fall. Stay tuned for more updates. Here's a comic!

rookie of the year

Hey folks! theres only a few more of these left, so you better get your's fast!



The Happy Happy Birthday to Me 2007 Singles Club begins taking subscriptions tonight at midnight EST, and the final line-up for the singles club has been announced (below). To clarify, these are 13 7-inch vinyl singles to be distributed to club members in 3 shipments over the next year (the first and second shipments will have 4 singles each, while the third shipment will have 5). Contributing new material to this club is an all-star lineup:

Apples in Stereo / Poison Control Center
Of Montreal / James Husband
M Coast / the Minders
Tullycraft / the Smittens
Boyracer / the Faintest Ideas
Casper & the Cookies / the Marbles
Bunnygrunt / Phil Wilson (June Brides)
All Girl Summer Fun Band / Cars Can Be Blue
the Love Letter Band / Tender Forever
Circulatory System / New Sound of Numbers
Fishboy / Baby Calendar
Keith John Adams / Velcro Stars
Ideal Free Distribution / Red Pony Clock

This is an even more exciting lineup than their last singles club, which was seven years ago. Returning favorites are Of Montreal and Marshmallow (now "M") Coast. All of the new contributors seem to be either HHBTM labelmates or bands closely affiliated with the Elephant 6 collective, such as Circulatory System, The Minders, and James Husband (Jamey Huggins from Of Montreal).

Additional information on the club comes from Mike Turner, HHBTM founder: "Ordering the club will work in this way: There will be a button on the Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records order page. You will click this button and leave your ordering info (name, address, email, how you plan to pay, and how many clubs you want, yes I said how many. We are letting people order multiple clubs if they want.). HHBTM will then email you letting you know a paypal total, and you will have 72 hours to pay via paypal. If you don't send payment within 72 hours your club will go to the next person in line. If you plan to pay with check or money order, you will have 2 weeks to get your check or money order in. If after 2 weeks your payment has not been received, then your club will be given to the next person in line.

"The singles club will run $60.00 in the USA, $65.00 in Canada, and $80.00 the rest of the world. The first 150 subscribers will get a special version of the singles club with lots of extras and special packaging. Each single will be split between two bands with each single being on a different color vinyl and in a different color silkscreen sleeve."

also, Sam M has a great video of our performance of Taqueria Girl last week over at bigdlittled.com