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Who let the blogs out?
Written Friday June 5, 2009 by Graham Wright
Comment [5]
Hey everyone,
We’ve been maintaining radio silence for a while, for the most part, because we’ve been busy working on new songs for a new record. We started up at the beginning of May and its been pretty much nonstop since then. Dave came in with a ton of new songs, and everyone has been in a really good place musically, so its been a lot of fun.
We have eight songs pretty much finished, and we’ll be hitting the studio in NYC in two weeks time to start getting them all down. We played three of them (End of a Spark, Favourite Colour, and Breakneck Speed) on our last tour, but the rest are all new and really exciting. I’d say that this record is going to be pretty different from our last one, but if its as much fun to listen to as it is to play, then you’ll probably like it okay.
We’ll keep you posted here as we go about our business. And if you crave even more minute/irrelevant details, mosey on over to our Twitter and read all about it.
xo
Graham
Graham vs. Summer Blockbuster Season, Round One: WOLVERINE
Written Tuesday May 5, 2009 by Graham Wright
Comment [5]
I’m one of those people. Every time Independence Day is on TV, I suspend all other activities to watch it. I love dumb movies with explosions and witty one liners and people emptying entire clips at the heroes without hitting a thing. So its with a certain childish glee that I look forward to summer, the time of year when Hollywood invites you to turn off your brain and watch Will Smith do something awesome. This year, I will be watching every awesome summer movie I can, and then reviewing them here for your convenience. First up, the awkwardly titled X Men Origins: Wolverine.
When I saw Transformers, which sucked, I commented that the movie should have been impossible to screw up. The only prerequisite for a Transformers movie is that at some point a car has to turn into a robot. Beyond that, you have carte blanche. Wolverine had a similarly blank slate. Sure, there are Wolverine stories in the comic books. But his origins have been retold and retconned so many times that they effectively cancel each other out. Which means the only thing Wolverine needed to do was show Hugh Jackman cutting things up with claws, making quips, and not dying. You can’t miss! Yet somehow they did.
Wolverine features all of the usual action movie staples: talentless child actors, random diamond thieving warlords, a wise old couple, a helicopter somehow exploding twice, Hugh Jackman’s muscled but strangely non-threatening bare chest, and a wax statue of Patrick Stewart that was presumably rejected by Niagara Falls for being way too creepy. The ingredients were all there! How could you go wrong?
Its hard to pinpoint exactly what was so bad about Wolverine. Its a movie that wasn’t so much written as pasted together from a thousand interoffice memos. Its tonally inconsistent, jumping from serious action sequence to goofy fat man boxing and then back again without blinking an eye. It seems feasible that director Gavin Hood had some kind of bet going with X3 director Brett Ratner to see who could cram more unnecessary mutant cameos into the movie. Look, its Cyclops! Why? Who cares, its Cyclops! BAMMO, he blew something up with his eyes! Awesome, right?!
The thing is, you could fairly say similar things against a lot of movies that I like. The last X-Men movie certainly has its share of detractors, and I can understand why. But I enjoy watching that movie enough that I can ignore all of the glaring flaws. Every time I started to warm up to Wolverine, they had to throw in something so profoundly ridiculous that I couldn’t help but get angry all over again.
So, in conclusion, it was a stupid stupid movie and I don’t suggest that you see it. Next week – Star Trek!!!
xo
Graham
The Beatles are the greatest band in the whole world. Ever.
Written Sunday December 21, 2008 by Graham Wright
Comment [5]
When I was a little kid, my parents (like most people’s parents, probably) had a Beatles Greatest Hits record, and I loved to listen to it. Most of the second side was scratched beyond repair, so my first acquaintance with The Beatles was mostly based on their earlier output. Later, when I was in the eighth grade, I spend at a night at my friend Will’s house, listening to Revolver on repeat. I’d probably heard most of the songs before, but I can remember vividly the effect that the record had on me that night. I went out and bought it the next day, of course.
Its old news that The Beatles are amazing. Everyone knows it. Its almost a given in our society now, like Beethoven being a great composer or Picasso being a great artist. No one questions it, its just an accepted fact. But, for anyone who really loves music, it bears repeating ad nauseam.
RIght now, we’re in freezing cold Kamloops, British Columbia. For the past two hours (at least), we’ve been having an intense geek-out over The Beatles. Dave, Joe (guitar tech), Sal (merch dude), and myself have been sitting at the front of the bus, blasting Beatles songs, and losing our minds over how great they are. Seriously, put on any Beatles song right now. I guarantee that it will stand up to the best song you’ve heard this year. It absolutely boggles the mind that this is music that was made by people, forty years ago. Its so good. So, so good.
I sit down at the piano, and I write a song. Its a good feeling. But, in 1968 (or sometime close to then), Paul McCartney, also a person, sat down at a piano, just like I do. Except he wrote Hey Jude, arguably the greatest song ever written. How is that fair? And almost every Beatles song is the same. Its impossible to imagine that four guys from Liverpool sat down together, like so many bands before and since have sat down, and wrote Love Me Do. She Loves You. Help. I Want To Hold Your Hand. In My Life. Strawberry Fields Forever. Across The Universe. Yesterday. Hey Jude. Let It Be. I could go on for pages, listing song after song after song.
I’ve geeked out about this with friends a thousand times before. In high school, we’d do it once a month, like clockwork. Someone would bring up a Beatles song, and then we’d spend an hour talking about how great they were. Now that I’m a “professional” musician, I love them even more. I know what its like writing songs, and it gives me an even greater appreciation of just how insanely incredible the songs they were writing were. Its beyond imagining, and I really do believe that The Beatles are one of the best things that have ever happened to the human race, period.
I remember, when I was a little kid, that I thought Eight Days a Week was what falling in love would feel like. And when I was older, I thought that For No One was what having your heart broken would feel like. And I was absolutely right. Somehow, The Beatles had not only expressed both of those feelings perfectly, they’d managed to to convey them to someone who was still years away from ever experiencing them. And thats something very special.
Go listen to The Beatles. As soon as you read this. You won’t be sorry.
xo
Graham
Look out!!! Weezer Tour Blog on CBC Radio 3!!!
Written Monday October 6, 2008 by Graham Wright
Hey friends,
As you may have heard, we’re currently galavanting around the United States on a tour with the fine folks in Weezer. Its a pretty insane thing to be doing for us, and we’ve had a great time making new friends in gigantic arenas everywhere.
The good people over at CBC Radio 3 have asked me to write a weekly web log (I think I should call it a “blog”) about our adventures on the tour, and of course I said yes. So move your body on to their website and read all about it.
For your convenience, here are direct links to all of my writings…
Episode I – The Phantom Menace
Episode II – Attack of the Clones
Thats all for now…
See you soon,
Graham
Cereal to Metallica in 5 Easy Steps
Written Tuesday August 19, 2008 by David Monks
Comment [5]
We’re on the homestretch again – Dublin, Manchester, London and then
back home for a bit. Hurrah! First thing I’ll do when I get home – eat
some cereal. Its the kind of thing you never get on tour, I guess
because it’s pretty impractical to keep spoons, bowls, a selection of
cereals wide enough to suit any mood, and cold milk in a van (I just
don’t know how the milkman does it). Next, I’ll sit at the piano, bowl
and spoon in hand, and try to conjure up our next smash-hit
club-anthem genre-defying single. But I will, as usual, stop when I
realize I lack the necessary appendages to play and eat
simultaniously, and settle for singing between spoonfuls and cereal
that gets soggy by the end. Such are the creative beginnings of most
of our songs.
I’ve started taking pictures of our audiences from stage, which has
been really awesome. The first one was at Splendour in the Grass, an
Australian festival. One of the strangest feelings is being on stage
somewhere you’ve never ever been and seeing huge tent full of people
that know your songs. I’m no good at judging crowd sizes but there
were at least several people there. Possibly a bunch or even a
multitude. Anyway, so this first picture suffered from my photography
skills but the moment is there.
Our Australian tour turned out to be one of the most enjoyable tours
ever: sold out shows, great lattes, Yves Klein Blue, nice weather (you
call that winter?), got to see Sigur Ros and Koalas (both put on great
shows). Check.
Next was Summer Sonic and our return to Japan which was fantastic.
The organization level is always stellar in Japan. Shows are always
preceded by “The Production Meeting” which is a useful time allotted
to going over the plan. Things like set lists and whether or not there
will be towels on stage are all examined by a team of event
professionals. It was evident from the notes on the white board when
we entered the production office that the sheer scale and overwhelming
complexity of the event was intense:
And so, as always, Japan was a blast and the crowd was awesome. We
ended off with Kareoke one night, the pictures from which I feel
compelled not to include in this blog.
And then came the flight to London. The whole trip I knew this
beastly commute would rear its ugly head sooner or later. I had held
onto the hope that perhaps, moments before boarding, someone would
invent teleportation, or the world would shrink, or I would just
crumble to dust at the departure gate and reappear in Heathrow with a
stamp on my passport. Such was not the case, but we all made it. A day
to recover and Pukkelpop made it all worth while. We got to the
Flemish festival late and missed out a bit on what looked like one of
those really special events. When we arrived we found out we were
pitted in the same time slot as, dun dun duuuun… Metallica. Now,
Metallica and us – we aren’t that different really. We both were
massively popular acts with mainstream crossover appeal during the
1980’s, we both developed new guitar styles which influenced a
generation of bands to follow, and we both have SEVERE RAGE ISSUES!
Whatever the case, our tent was full and the show was as successful as
the catering was delicious.
A few more shows now and we’ll all be back home. For a
week. And then we’ll be back on tour in Canada and the US, for some
headlining shows and a tour with Weezer! So read next time to find out
who is better at hacky sack.
See you soon!
Dave