Has anyone ever told you look like Columbus, Ohio?

Today we played Columbus, OH and we were treated to spending our day with some of the coolest kids I have ever met. The show was so fun thanks to all of our new friends and here is the crazy part......everyone at this show was like ridiculously good looking. I was so blown away by ridiculously well dressed 18 year olds that I had to sit in a corner talking on the phone to my mom about my sad threads.

She's on the line being all like "Dude, I told you your style was hella weak and now 18 year olds are making you look like a straight Skank!!"
And I'm all "Whatever mom's"

So here is one of these little style mavens in action...he is like a cherub of ruby cheeks and great hair.

Luckily John was able to hold his own in the face of such stylish men and showed them how we do it...


Speaking of good looking how the fuck did we make our way in to the RADDEST group photo of all time. Can anyone say THE FUTURE OF MUSIC!! Two bands, sunglasses inside, and Blender Banners! This might have to be my new desktop background...
oh wait I am using someone else's computer.....OK, now she just got a sweet new desktop background..


So I don't know what the deal is with this movie 300, but if one more band guy tells me that I look like someone named Leonitus I am gonna rage on a mother. No matter how much I might look like a man named Leonitus there is no way I am going to go and see the molten swill that is 300. On a side note, how random is the resemblance between this random drawing in the bar we played tonight....

and yours truly...

That drawing is way Fugs! I kid you not, some guy told me today that I look like "Joaquin Phoenix with Hair." I was like "doesn't Joaquin have hair?" I don't want to get all technical here but I think he meant "You look like Joaquin Phoenix but like with crazy hair." Fuck that.
-brian

Austin "The City Of Dreams".........A South By Southwest Re-Cap

Hey y'all
Greetings from Texas. We just finished a two day marathon of South By Southwest in Austin that I am going to try and put into words here for you. Of course, the most important part of any SXSW experience is the actual show that you are there to play. Our show was Friday night and it was a real ripper of a show. It's not that we played particularly great or anything but it was more that we were so in awe of our great friends who came out and represented and made our show so much fun for us. South By really does feel like a form of "This is Your Life" for bands.



This is what the show felt like from stage from my perspective;
Start playing first song.....
guitar feedback and then into "We're Not Having Any Fun"......
stage sound sucks......whatevs, it sounds like we are playing alright.....
where am I?.....
try and not look like a douchebag.....
look out into the crowd......
Hey look it's James from Brazil!! His beard is way better than mine, dammit, that dude totally just showed me up......
turnaround and play guitar into my amp so I don't have to stare at another man's beard.......
sing chorus......look into crowd.....
Hey it Micah from Hawthorne Heights! He is the best guy in the world and totally rich now! I am jealous!......
Damn!!I wish some really rich guy was here to sign us and take us out to some ridiculous dinner (more on that later).....
Hey The Oohlas are here!!! Everything is right with the world!.....
David Wallace, BFF from New York in the House!!! He looks kind of drunk, he is my favorite drunk EVER!!....play more songs.....
Josh from New York is here, he is really a handsome man and deliciously well dressed........
Finish playing......load out and onto the packed streets of Austin! All i can say is thank god that all our friends came out to the show because it really was like playing for all of your favorite people in the world, what a treat!

On Friday night, after our show, I was treated to the first incredible show I have seen in a long DAMN TIME! Mr David Wallace politely escorted me at two in the morning to the Blender Space to see the Albert Hammond Jr (of The Strokes) show and it honestly blew my mind....We stood right up front and it was a full on face melt of triple guitar attack!! The best part is that his band is made up of four of the most curly haired men I have ever seen, honestly they made it look REAL good. For the first time I embraced my curls and felt proud in a new way. I felt like the Bee Girl in the Blind Melon video when she finds her friends in the field of other bee people. Then Kirsten Dunst swarmed the front of the stage and I scowled at her for bringing her ridiculous good looks into our curly haired man party. She ruined everything.

Saturday was a day off and we looked forward to spending the day soaking in the South By experience without the pressure of actually playing a show. We pretty much just spent the whole day soaking up the magic that is The Oohlas and hanging out with them on their beautiful hotel rooftop. Another highlight came when we had the extreme pleasure of joining the Oohlas and the magic queen of cool that is Sarah Ultragrrrl in a delicious Sushi Dinner that included many Sapporos and the most delicious sushi roll I have ever eaten! Thanks to Sarah and The oohlas for such a great evening and such great company as always!

That night we saw another great show when we got to watch one of my favorite bands Cursive. Here we are standing outside of a party and watching them through the chain link as the ultra cool stood inside and watched them from the safety of their coolness radiations.


We also saw the cops swarm up on some bloody woman who had been beating asses in the ally all night. It took eighty cops to sedate this lady and I like this picture cause the cops armbands are glowing in the night like the transformer GI Joe Ho Bags that they are.


So to sum up the whole experience it was just so nice to see all the great people that we are so lucky to be friends with in one tiny city. We left Austin under an overcast sky and headed to Dallas to officially start our next tour. We can't wait to see y'all out at our shows coming up and please have a great day and night and afternoon and morning....
-brian

A week off from tour......I have watched Walk The Line on repeat for four days now!!!

Hey All-
So it is always a little disorienting when you have a week off from the road. This is the bizarre situation we find ourselves in now. We just finished the west coast tour and are getting ready to go tackle our more burly friends to the the south and east. This is how the vicious cycle goes, you are on tour and all you wanna do is get home, oblivious to the fact that you are having the time of your life on tour. The closer you get to finishing tour, van talk turns to friends you are gonna hang out with, food from home you are gonna eat, family you are gonna finally see again, etc. You get home and sit in bed and you can't fall asleep, you question if a week off was really what you wanted. On the one hand it is great, like a vacation, on the other hand it sucks because your job is already a vacation so it is like a vacation from a vacation which nullifies itself and just makes nothing, except for unparalleled levels of boredom. You get to see your friends again, but they just keep asking you when you are leaving again in hopes that they can return to doing nothing without you. You long to be in the van so bad that friends and family are forced to treat you like a dog or toddler and place you in their cars with the engine on, running you around the block so that you can finally get some sleep.

I usually spend my time off keeping myself busy with the more mundane elements of being in a band. I pay parking tickets, order new merch, and most importantly watch music related films over and over. It is like how they show Rambo on loop to young child warriors in far off countries to get them stoked on war and killing. I stay away from Almost Famous because that shit is just to obvious. I stay away from Spinal Tap because it just hits to close to home. Recently I have really honed in on Walk the Line and I am fucking hooked. I can't stop watching this shit. I skip the beginning when Cash's brother dies cause that part sucks but the rest of this movie is just the god dam best. The thing about Joaquin Phoenix as Cash is that he portrays exactly what every guy in every band wants to be. In particular, the scene where Cash plays in San Quentin to a bunch of rowdy convicts who just wanna rock and kick a whole bunch of ass.

This scene is fucking ridiculous, first Cash sticks it to the Warden and takes him down in front of his own prisoners (who will probably riot and kill him later), then he sings jams all about doing blow and shooting shit and getting arrested. The whole time his super fly chica is just watching him with a look that says, "god dam that might be the baddest mother that ever lived!" The prisoners are all in to it and they are creaming themselves like Jesus himself is pardoning them and Cash just sneers and in the back of his head is thinking "God dam I am going to make a shit ton of money of this live album." Seriously, this scene is my dream and if I ever die I just want heaven to be this scene on loop with me replacing Joaquin in the title role of "Official Bad Ass Mother Fucker."

I am Out!!!! I gotta go watch Dr. Phil, I think I am starting to lose it!
-brian

The Devil And Lola Ray

The last time I spoke with Brian, the hellfire within his nostril had matasticized and taken control of his mind, soul and body. It’s an unfortunate loss, but as far as I can tell, he can still rip the shit out of a B.C Rich. So until he lets me perform some backseat plastic utencil surgery, I’ll continue to champion the blog so YOU are always in the know.



Yes, the Oohlas are nice…and yes, the Oohlas are fun, but what he didn’t tell you was of their obsessive and perverse association with satan. While roaming the back alley of some venue in some city, I happened to notice Oohla songbird Ollie Hopnoodle snipping off a lock of a sleeping John Balicantas jet black hair with a pair of rusted (possibly bloody) scissors. I hid behind a dumpster and watched as she placed the snippet of his essence into a small plastic bag, a pentagonal star drawn in sharpie ominously detailed her devilish intent. I shuddered, how could such a pleasant young woman have duped me into thinking her a model songstress when really the ink of Diablo himself coarsed through her black veins. She stank of sulfur and the rot of a thousand mangled kittens. Could it be that the Oohlas were actually the musical mercenaries of the dark lord? I decided to further investigate, hoping beyond hope that I had stumbled upon a misinterpretation of a wicken ritual, those cats are down with trees and shit. I tiptoed out from behind my hiding spot with an unlit cigarette dangling from a pair of trembling lips, sure that she had not seen me. “Need a light love?” she said delightfully, her face bright with honey and hearth embers. I nodded, trying desperately to conceal my horror. With the flick of her pretty wrist, my Marlboro red began to smolder. Panicked, I sipped deftly as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, but the taste of black magic was strong in the smoke. “I know you were watching me. I saw you, I see everything,” she said in a voice not her own. “Join us and you will posses the power that you so obviously covet, dear boy.” All of a sudden a fist grew tight around my rapidly beating heart, bringing me to my knees. “Ollie please no!” I stammered, but she did not relinquish her poltergeist grip. “I WANT YOUR SOUL!!!” she bellowed in a sub-bass moan, a THX worthy howl smothered in hot boar musk and sex-crime perspiration. Just then, as I could feel the good within me drying to sand, John leapt out from the shadows and struck her across the face with the backside of his hand, emblazoned with a tattooed black crucifix. She screamed and collapsed to the ground, her head buried in her hands. Writhing in agony, the pitiful Oohla cried out one final feral scream before her body burst into a cloud of black dust. I had known from the first show with the Oohlas that something was not quite right, their music was impossibly good and their demeanor far too fetching. They had sold their souls for rock and roll.

- beck.

Lola Ray Catch A Case Of The Oohlas!!! Tour Update #1.....I have a fucking pimple in my nose and it IS KILLING ME!!!

So up until two weeks ago I had a favorite band.....Frozen Embryos. They are super indie, they are so indie that they only wrote one song EVER and only rehearsed a couple of times. They had a chronic nail-biting songwriting genius named Jordan Catalano (played by Jared Leto) who penned an anthem named "Big Red" that cut right to the impressionable young heart of a beautifully flanneled young tart named Angela (Claire Danes). The band only appeared on one episode of My So Called Life, but ever since their incendiary performance on episode #14 of the short lived show I have championed them as possible the greatest musical project of all time.


That all ended for me about two weeks ago on the first night of our tour with The Oohlas. We had already watched and loved the bands video and songs and were really excited to hear them live, but secretly hoped that they would not be TOO good, making it difficult for us to bring the noise every night in the way that we were accustomed. So you can imagine my seething anger when The Oohlas first took to the stage and proceeded to dominate the stage with not only a incredible live energy but also the best songs I have heard in fucking forever. It sucked...it quickly became apparent that we were going to have to get up on that stage every night for two weeks and play after our absolute new favorite band!!



And as if it wasn't enough that these bastards had great songs, a great live presence and the balls to tour in a Mini Van, we quickly learned the harsh reality that...ugghh..they are awesome people as well. Goddamit!! They have everything, but we are not jealous..no...instead we have spent the last two weeks revelling in the pure delight of being on tour with, honestly, our favorite band and some of our favorite new friends. All bullshit aside I am thankfull for nothing more in my life than the fact that our band has gotten to a point where we get the absolute pleasure and treat to share the stage with bands that we love and respect. So Yay For The Oohlas!!! Yay for Lola Ray!! And Yay to All our friends who came out to these shows!! And Yay to Jordan Catalano!!



So if you live anywhere with an airport you should totally fly out to our last show with The Oohlas at Chain Reaction on March 6th. If you miss it you are lame and will be sad....OUCH!! But have no fear if you can't make the last minute flight plans to see the two greatest bands on the planet right now. The Oohlas will be everywhere soon and they will be blowing up in about ten minutes flat so you will definitely be seeing more of them real soon.



And as for Lola Ray...we have just posted the first dates of our Southern, East Coast, Midwest and West Tour!! That's right we will be out for the whole month of March and April and we can't wait to see all our favorite friends slowly emerge from the snow and chill into the spring sun as we travel to some of our favorite cities to play our tunes for you fine friends. Dates are literally coming in on a daily basis so please check www.myspace.com/lolaray constantly cause I will be updating it constantly.



If you look at this picture really hard you can see that look of utter agony that is reflected in my eyes thanks to the total pain of a horrendous pimple in my right nostril!! This shit is ridiculous, is it dangerous to put proactive up your nose? I want my nostrils to be smooth like the angel faces of Jessica Simpson and Mandy Moore... I bet they don't struggle like this. Fuck Them......I'm out
-brian