Stizzy Gizzle Pony Boy!

No video this time. Pretty sure that means no comments.
It's been a little while since we checked in. FUN things are happening.

Fun thing #1 looks like Ingrid Michaelson and I (Andrew) will be doing a little baby online only EP. Kids seem to like that breakable remix I did so we are gonna work on some of her newer songs and some old ones and see if we can't make so magic happen. If not we will try again but with booze.

Fun thing #2 is that if we cannot find label representation in a reasonable amount of time we are going to make an Avada Kedavra EP which will also have "Fearsome, Though We Are" on it as well as some other little jems like new versions of old songs and maybe remixes maybe this maybe that. Hopefully I will know more about that once we are in 2007.
creepy. a new year.

Fun thing #3 is that we got some instruments squared away and what we know as of now is that the album will be 13 songs long (for good luck) we will hopefully have the dangerous part of the album (8 songs) done by feb. with the other part soon to follow. then it's just a matter of getting a home for our little band.

Fun thing #4 I am pregnant. and it's yours.

Fun thing #5 we are changing our live configuration a little. more info once we work out the details but we are really excited.
Also it means we will be practicing in Williamsburg which means I need to buy lots of belts.

revolution revelations

Goodbye writers block! I managed to get a song written and recorded this week. The response for it has been pretty great. Next month we are going to be going up to the old stomping ground to record some timpani and other random tidbits. Good chunks of album are starting to come together. I have a very good understanding of the beginning and end of it. The middle is so far only about 1/3rd done. It's becoming very energetic which is a welcome surprise. makes the cute quiet songs all the more effective.

I am thinking that come december the better half of the album will be all finished. exciting!
It is very much the sequel to the drive home. The drive home was all about the end of college, the end of the world and trying to make sense of the two. This is going to pick up right where that left off. I am going to be doing some electric guitar recording for it this week hopefully.

I am so all about reading comics again lately. I wonder if i could get any money on ebay for some of my old comics?
I wonder where they even are? I bet my parents attic. Attics are weird places. They are like the rich mans basements! that didn't make any sense at all ... god.

here is another little ditty from tour.
jenny and saul (drunk) dancing. while this one isn't as laugh out loud fun or awesome as past ones it has made me laugh every time i have seen it. Also it is the only thing that has ace of base.



I saaaaw the siiiiign and it opened up my eyeeees

does anyone want to buy lots of old x-men off me!? i also still got all 5 x-force #1's sealed!

ehhh?

ehhh!?

no?

nothing.

sigh

park park park

Cello and Viola recording is going to happen in october or possibly november.
I think simultaneously we are going to begin work on wave 2 of album stuff which is to work on the 4 tiny baby lullaby songs.
wave 1 is the epic orchestra stuff. the remainder. wave 3. is going to be the last batch and probably it will begin around january.
The album is taking shape and it is an exciting shape to be in. Very epic. It will be hard to top. The electronic aspects are going to be a lot more focused this time around. trying to do more with less. The Drive Home was mostly an experiment in non stop wall of synth and hooks. I am going to try and be more delicate with the synth this time around. mostly because the orchestra parts are so crazy and over the top that synth needs to be the anchor. does any of this make sense? I am going to be doing a lot of guitar work on this album too. I would like people who have not heard us before this album to think of us as a crazy rock band with lots of weird stuff. rather than a crazy electronic band with lots of weird stuff.

I have been listening to a lot of orchestral pop music to get in the zone lately. Sigur Ros and Sufjan Stevens are so fucking good at having lots of big textured instruments and not having it come across as overwhelming or over the top.

I can't wait for people to hear this shit! I'm thinking 2/3rds will be done by Christmas. the big 2/3rds though.
The whole album is starting to come into focus in my head and I couldn't be more thrilled. The way I / We record is I have a lap top and I travel to other people and record them in random places and then bring it all back to my studio to fix it up. It's really interesting and effecting the album in many great ways because no one is trapped in a studio for too long. it's like a puzzle we are working to depuzzle. that can't be a word. nope totally isn't.

ok so here is another video. This one is not very focused. it's a clip from us in a park in London. We had just had an amazing nights sleep in a big house and we were all feeling pretty good and laughing a whole lot. The other girl in this is jenny o. if you don't know her you should. she is in our top 8 and working on an album that is going to melt your face with goodness.

The here and now

Well my fine feathered flapjack (you). We are now in album record mode. About 40% of the strings are recorded and within about 2-3 weeks that number will shoot up to near 100%. You never know how many more parts will come up later. My fear right now is that the whole album is going to be a giant orchestra and no rock. I am looking forward to doing some electric guitar and piano tracks. my style of electric guitar playing it to plug a thousand delay pedals together and then just goof around in the key of the song but that is silly and embarrassing. SO by me publicly admitting to that short cut I now have no way to fall back on it on this next album. People seem to like the song Avada Kedavra more than the rest of our songs which is a great feeling because it means people will like the direction we are going in.

I can't wait for people to hear more tracks. One song in particular has gotten a lot of "wow"s from everyone who i tested it out on. When the strings are recorded maybe I will put up a wee demo of it. I am almost too excited not too. YAY.

so last update I put a video of Saul and I having fun and Bess was left out in the cold. So here is a video of her (when we were drunk) explaining why drinking a whole lot is OK. This is also from our England tour and always makes me smile when I see this. I love the little smirk at the end. Bess is all things to all people.

**I had to take the video down because of a glitch in the hyper digital matrix. So I replaced it with a video of a baby crying. which is what I imagine every time bess opens her mouth anyways.



I don't really know why the first 3 seconds look weird but I don't care enough to re upload it.

Also I was interviewed by Uncensored Interview dot com (not up and running yet) That was fun. I think I may have cussed too much and not really answered the questions but I was pretty funny and I can't wait for everyone to see that. FEED MY HUGE EGO!!!

SPEAKING OF ME ..
also I have officially let all the black dye come out of my hair and I am back to being a red-head and It is scary. I feel so exposed. I mean It's reddish brown ... who am I kidding.

Karaoke vs The Age of Rockets

So while we were on tour in (J.O.) England we all went to this Karaoke bar in a small town called Ely. After god knows how many beers Saul and I (Andrew) decided it would be really funny to do a song but not sing. Just to go up there and stand and see what happens. jenny o was videotaping the whole thing so this little nugget of amazing joy was luckily captured.



The original idea was to make a mini documentary slash live in england EP but only about 2-3 songs came out sounding ok and while there is about 2 hours of amazing funny material I don't know how well of a package that will make. Till I can figure out a non-sickly-self-indulgent way of packaging it I will just have to stick little bits of it up here.

I hope you like this clip because it's real fear in our eyes. REAL FEAR FOR YOU!!

baby steps

This is my attempt to start and maintain a blog for The Age of Rockets. I have started and failed at this many times. Mostly I don't understand how to mix personal things with band news things. It always comes across a bit clunky. Also as you may well know I am something of an deranged egomaniac (I base my own self worth 50% what I eat and 50% myspace hits) so when this little bloggy doesn't end up getting comments I will probably not be all that interested in it. So I guess I will just launch right into it:

Band News: Things are going fairly well for us here at camp rocket. We are hard at work (read: have not done much lately) with the new album. I am getting very excited about it. Recording real instruments like cello and drums has made it such an enjoyable recording experience. I am a bit tired of the way synths sound. Which I guess is my fault for not trying to make more interesting sounds. However there is no sense in making another album that sounds like "The Drive Home".

It's hard to really fully commit to the new album when I am so worried about label representation and I guess general management issues. I do this thing where I have so many things to think about that i just end up doing a whole lot of worrying and not a lot of working. Hopefully this is going to turn around. Saul is headed up to New Hampshire for a month and so Bess and I are going to hunker down and get the string parts written and recorded. We are also going to work on getting drums recorded for a bunch of the songs. Adam Christgau (Gregory and The Hawk, Jenny Owen Youngs, Paper and Sand) is going to be handling drum duties. He is without a doubt thee sickest drummer I have ever had the pleasure of working with and his mere presence on the future album makes me tingle in my girl parts (I don't have girl parts).

I am going to go make some tacos.

wish me luck