arizona livin'

i guess i haven't really written about phoenix since we've been here. let's see, where to start? well, we're getting a lot done out here. since we're living together and with tim as well, we really can't escape getting work done. writing the songs for this ep was really stressful, but we settled upon five really good ones in my opinion. we started recording with matt grabe two days ago, and after today's session all of the drums are complete. grabe's a really cool guy; he definitely does some stuff a little different, but he has a vision and everything has a purpose. i can't wait to hear these songs finished, i think they are head and shoulders better than any of our previous work, not to mention they are definitely way catchier. living at the office is kind of a pain; there is no tv, and we have to bring in and out our sleeping "gear" every day so as not to clutter working areas. but it's free, so i really can't complain. i'm definitely missing home. not just the idea of home, but all the little things about home, including my friends. tomorrow we hop back on the last two days of warped tour; i'm excited to see all of the new friends we made again. around the office we've been listening to a steady diet of a wide range of artists. miniature tigers and back ted-n-ted are two modern art artists that we've all really gotten into, they are awesome. taylor swift has been getting a good amount of spins, as have the new rocket to the moon and brighten cd's. new brighten really blows me away, it is freakin' awesome. that's all i got for now. hmmmm...

the dark knight

lovers in japan

finally in phoenix

warped tour is finally over for the goodnight anthem. we are now in phoenix, at our manager tim's office, which is actually a house, so this is where we will be living for a while. there is no tv here, i am absolutely devastated. i always have sportscenter on in the background, and its going to be weird not having that for a while. should be good times though, we're going to be getting a lot of work done. band camp, as tim is calling it. we're about to go grocery shopping, gonna be getting some pb and j and other tasty treats. we're also gonna try and pick up the newest issue of substream magazine. there is an article about us in it, so that will be exciting to see. there is lots of cool maine memorabilia hanging around the offices...it's going to be a good motivator/reminder of what can happen if we work hard. time to get to gettin, hopefully the taylor swift cd is done downloading by the time i'm done typing this. til' next time.

warped tour volume 2

boy, so much has happened since the last time i updated y'all ( i picked up that little number in the south). i'll try and remember everything since then. florida was, well, to be honest, miserable. it thunderstormed at least once a day, if not more. it was hot, sweaty, humid, and sticky. we did get to go to the bbq after st. petersburg though and that was a tooon of fun. met and hung out with lots of cool peeps. then we had a day off in atlanta and stayed with one of kurt's friends named morgan. very stereotypically southernly hospitable. yeah, i just made that up. deal with it. anyway, next day was warped in atlanta, which was hot, and it rained again at the end of the day. next day was cincinatti. can you guess what the weather was? YEAH, RAIN. AGAIN. THAT MADE IT EVERY DAY OF WARPED THAT IT RAINED. AWESOME! but yeah, i got to watch underoath with a clear view, and it was freakin' incredible. aaron gillespie absolutely killed it. like, jeezy beezy! next day was milwaukee. our tent was inside. which was great cuz it was nice and cool. it rained that day, too, btw. watched the maine close the day at 8:15, their crowd was nuts. much props to them, they are a very tight live band and the nicest dudes, too. today was detroit, at comerica park (where the tigers play), which was really awesome/beautiful. i tried to convince terry, the security guard sitting on the first base line, to let me run the bases and swing for the fences, but he wasn't having it. he must not have my rookie card yet...so now i'm in a hotel room watching wedding crashers. tired as hell. in other, unrelated news, i turn 21 in exactly two weeks. i'll be in arizona at the time, and will definitely be missing my friends at home, but i have a feeling it will be a fun time regardless. until next time, one love.

-max, aka m, aka doctor lobster, aka doc-lob

a picture of me dancing in the rain in atlanta. i don't remember wearing that suit, however...

warped tourrrrr

well, we're about a week into warped tour, and it's pretty much everything i thought it would be. so much to talk about. the official tour anthem is "do you know" by enrique iglesias (stop judging me). it's rained almost half the days. i hate rain. we've met a ton of really cool people. ryan from this century is really nice, super chill. we're primarily working with him for the majority of the tour. veto, the maine's merch guy, is the man; hanging with him all day has been entertaining for sure. the maine guys are all really down to earth, that's always cool to see. and the jac vanek tent has been next to us most of the days, they're real nice, hooked us up with tons of free stuff. so yeah, i haven't met too many uncool people. i haven't gotten to watch many bands though. i've seen the maine a few times, some of all time low, some of underoath, a bit of a day to remember haha. their crowds are probably the biggest of the tour, i had no idea they were so huge. i've watched innerpartysystem almost every day, they are INSANE. they should be playing arenas. i've also watched/heard gallows quite a few times. let's just say their singer has strong opinions on life and isn't afraid to share them. always entertaining. so yeah, we're about to head to florida and it should be totally hot and sweaty. we watched the temptations movie in our hotel last night. soooo long. interesting, but the unintentional comedy is off the charts. we decided that every character was played by wayne brady. amazing what you can do with cgi these days... so yeah, i'll try to write more whenever we get internet again.

some changes coming to the music scene. some good, some bad. i wish they could all be good, but i guess it can't work like that. if anything, though, history has shown this will work itself out for the better. hopefully this isn't the exception to that rule.

ps. many thanks to all of my well-wishers out there....

ice ice baby

last night was one of the strangest/coolest nights of my life. we played at the fillmore at irving plaza with vanilla ice, and it was pretty out there. first we got there, and a camera crew was filming everything...us loading in, us just standing around talking....kind of odd. then we waited around for a while and saw vanilla ice soundcheck. this guy is serious, he knows exactly what he wants, and he even was running sound for a while. i was pretty impressed. then we loaded onstage to soundcheck. after that, we were told to go outside, whereupon we were put inside a limo and driven around the block to make an appearance on the red carpet.....very strange, but very cool. so we played and it was strange but fun, and then waited and waited for v-ice to play. when he finally did, it was so worth it, he but on a hell of a show. he wasn't ashamed to play the old classics like ice ice baby and ninja rap, either. it's cool how he accpets that's a part of his past and embraces it and makes it part of his present. i'll say it again, one of the coolest yet strangest nights of my life without a doubt. ice ice baby.

mj

i've been watching michael jackson videos on mtv jams for the past few days non-stop. he wasn't the greatest singer of all time, he probably wasn't the greatest dancer of all time, but he was the best performer of all time, i would have to say. so much intensity. anyone who performs for people in any capacity can learn from him. it sucks his life became such a firestorm of controversary, and that to many younger people he's nothing more than a punchline or a caricature of himself. his true legacy as the king of pop will defnitely outlast the bad things though. in other news, we wrote a new song yesterday. it's the most rock song of our new demos so far for sure. we'll see how it turns out.

Twisted Sister

Jay Jay French from Twisted Sister once told me that when it comes to performing there are four ways your night can go.

1. The audience is lame, you play terribly, and you want to blow your brains out.

2. You play terribly, but the crowd is amazing, so you thank God for that.

3. The crowd sucks, but you play an awesome set, so who cares what they think.

4. The audience is amazing, you play the best show of your life, and that’s why you play music

so true.

computer is saved!

my computer is saved! runs like brand new! i had to pay a disgusting amount of money for that to happen, but it now works like a dream. time to upload all my music back onto it from my shiny new external hard drive, and then i'll be good to go. anyone who has any substantial music/picture/video collection - do yourself a favor now and buy an external hard drive and put it all on there. i've had to recollect all of my music two or three times in my life, and it really sucks. i finally wised up this time around, and i'm not putting myself through that torture. anyway, i'm gonna do that now, and there won't be one million and three pop-ups in the process.



p.s. after watching this movie again recently, brunette reese witherspoon may overtake rachel bilson on the hotness scale. i just don't know. i'll take either, actually.

touuuuuur

we leave for tour in two days, i can't wait!!!!! it's been waaaay tooooo looooong, and touring is a ton of fun. check out our myspace to see if you we're coming near you. i wish we going for longer, but we'll be doing more throughout the summer, so i guess i'll just treat this as a warmup. we also just found out who we're going to do our new ep with. and more importantly where we'll be doing it. i can't wait.

haha

putting my trust in someone i don't know...

i'm going to geek squad tomorrow and getting my laptop fixed. i'm shelling out the big bucks to get it totally eradicated of any and all viruses, trojan horses, malware, yadda yadda yadda. i will blog more once it is fixed. i promise. i promise myself. anyway, i'm watching seinfeld right now, and i love that show. you should too. i'm looking to meet a girl as funny as elaine benes. that would really impress me.

past weekend

well, this past weekend was suuuper busy, so let's recap it. friday, played in paramus, nj. for some reason, even though we've only played there once or twice, paramus holds many funny/random memories for tga. i couldn't tell you why, but we all just started remembering humerous things once we got there. oh, and the whole venue smelled like saurkraut. i do not like saurkraut. moving on....saturday was the much anticipated give it all you got fest in warrenton virginia. we are big fans of virginia, it seems to be a state who "gets it." we played on a basketball court. hopefully that is the last basketball court we ever have to play in (unless said basketball court is located in the confines of a professional arena). but it was cool to see pretty much every band we've ever toured with. so many vans and trailers in the parking lot, it felt like a mini warped tour. then sunday, we played in new jersey again, this time in vineland at hangar 84. this venue knows how to treat bands right. actually, the whole venue was just freakin awesome. green room fully stocked with food/drinks, ample room to set up/store equipment, immaculate sound (onstage and off). wow. maybe my favorite venue we've ever played. and now it is tuesday and we are really working hard on writing/demoing for the next ep we are going to record in early august. i cannot wait to record again. oh, and yesterday i watched the trailer for the beatles rock band. i have to have this when it comes out. i'm not even a big rock band/guitar hero guy, but this is just too awesome. so yeah, lots of info, hopefully you enjoyed that, i'll try and write more often to avoid mega-updates.

"if not for you, the winter would hold no spring."

-my man, george harrison. what a guy.

lean on me

how do you write such a timeless, universal song???

i miss playing shows. good thing we have a bunch coming up. in the meantime, i think i need to buy a new nhl 08 disc for xbox 360. i'm becoming very addicted to it again. i realize i don't write in this thing as much, but life's just kinda boring right now. i went to the beach, that was a ton of fun, no internet/computers/tv for three days. it was nice to drop out for a while. but now i'm back, writing about whatever flows into my mind. yyyyyep. livin'...

whoa...

i finally got around to watching the season finale of house today, and i am really blown away. after last season's epic ending, i thought it would be impossible to top. i'm not going to say this topped it, but it definitely came close. as lame as it sounds, i literally had chills up my spine when house realized what had happened. i won't go into more detail in case anyone still is waiting to see it, but i mean wow. just wow. anyway, back to the real world....our show with the audition was really great. lots of friends and familiar faces there. bq's frog appearance was hilarious, too; i'm stoked we got to do something fun/different at a hometown show. time to keep on working on new demos for a new ep that we are tentatively recording in the beginning of august. i can't believe nights to know you has been out about a year already. time flies.

the dust of retreat

on a freezing chicago street