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I suspect you'll have to be in the states and near a pretty good record shop and/or chained to eBay to get hold of next week's split 7" single featuring the Black Lips and Pierced Arrows. The people at Scion AV are underwriting the enterprise as part of a running series of free shows in New York, coupled with a quick recording session. Worth keeping eyes peeled for.
Another part of my Saturday catch-up - thanks to Carrie Brownstein's NPR blog - brings me up to date with the battle fought between Black Lips and Wavves last Friday night in Brooklyn. Or rather, with Wavves' manager.
The details of the fight are as you'd expect - the tiny slights which drive people who you'd prefer to admire to slap each other in a bar.
The queasy part, though, is Jared Swilley's response:
“First of all, I just wanna say that Wavves was NOT involved in that fight. That faggot didn’t even touch me.
I’ve never “come after” that kid, it wasn’t four a.m., that wasn’t my girlfriend, no one was spitting, and I didn’t attack him. I don’t give a shit about that kid and his music.
What happened was, after we finished our set I went to Daddy’s with some friends and saw that faggot from Wavves talking to a photographer friend of mine. The only thing I did was walk up to him and say “You’re that faggot from Wavves and I don’t like you”. He smiled a bit but didn’t say anything.
After that, I went outside and saw their tour manager hanging around with some guys. They started getting all chuckles with me and so I told them I wasn’t gonna have it. After that, Wavves tour manager hit me square in the face with a bottle. Blood started pouring out and six dudes fucking started kicking me until I blacked out.
All I remember is getting hit with the bottle and my friends dragging me to another bar. They wrapped my head up until I looked like a Confederate soldier.
So yeah, I lost the fight.
I also missed three flights. I’ve been in the airport all day having stewardesses cleaning my head because it kept cracking open. You can’t go on board if you’re bleeding.
Bottom line is that faggot from Wavves didn’t even hit me. Never touched me. And he should’ve, cuz he had a free shot.
He’s coming to Atlanta October 3rd and we’re gonna get ugly on him. We’re gonna destroy their van, we’re gonna destroy their faces, we’re gonna get crazy on em’. Nasty style.
You might think, if you swallow the music industry's standpoint whole, that giving away a free download is a counter-intuitive way of promoting a day designed to show much love for record shops.
Luckily, the organisers of this year's Record Store Day (April 18th this year) have no such over-simplistic qualms, and are promoting themselves, and the new Black Lips record, with a free download.
That exciting, fleeing-India story about the Black Lips from last week? Luckily - mainly luckily for VBS.TV - there were TV cameras with them to capture the real story.
They're milking it a little - they've released this slightly-overwritten trailer (an "unprecedented" tour?):
And, because all this publicity is pointless if it doesn't pick up a few new fans for the band, there's a free download, too: Short Fuse.
They don't, it turns out, like it in India if you remove your clothes and dive into the crowd. Or certainly not when Cole Alexander did it. As a result, The Black Lips nearly had their passports confiscated and have fled the country, leaving a canceled tour in their wake. Someone, though, should turn their MySpace explanation into a movie:
When we got to the next hotel a mysterious man and someone who worked for our Indian booking agency tried to run off with our passports they got to the car when we caught them. That's when our VBS.tv documentarian Rob went postal on them. We surrounded them until they gave back our passports. After that we booked the first flight to Berlin to instead work with another Indian, King Khan, on an upcoming EP. We are flying out as soon as sunrise hits this far away land and we have to have the US embassy's phone number on hand in case any more troubleshit starts popping at the airport or something.
The Subpop singles club - of course, you never got to see any of their records, but it always brightened up a corner of the Peel show when he got to announce "this, then is the latest from the SubPop Singles Club..."
Obviously, we won't be hearing those words again, but the SubPop singles club is back. And it's signed up Black Lips, Black Mountain, the Notwist, Mika Miko and... you know the deal. Bands who you suspect will still be cool by the time the 40th anniversary of SubPop comes round.
Oh, Black Lips, if you really were about to provide a soundtrack for a Tescos advert but got kicked off because of references to Jesus and Mohammed, you've had a narrow escape.
Of course Tesco won't let you mention Jesus in their adverts. You'd be breaking their commandment: Thou shalt have no other god but cash...
Founded by the coming together of Deerhunter's Bradford Cox and Cole Alexander from Black Lips, Ghetto Cross are like some sort of supergroup. If you're not that fussy about requiring supergroup members to have their own country mansions. What do they sound like?
This, actually. The song's called Dog Years and features the line "I love you like a fat man loves a doughnut..."
Black Lips album Good Bad, Not Evil (the title, the press release informs us, is from a Shangri-Las song) is going out into the world early next month; there's to be a related tour in support, too:
AUG 30 MANCHESTER, THE ROADHOUSE
31 NOTTINGHAM, THE SOCIAL
SEP 01 LEEDS, THE FAVERSHAM
02 GLASGOW, OPTIMO
03 YORK, FIBBERS
04 LONDON, WHITE HEAT
05 ROUGH TRADE LAUNCH PARTY, LONDON
06 OXFORD, THE CELLARS
07 BRIGHTON, THE ENGINE ROOM
They've been compared (alright, by themselves) to The Seeds and the
13th Floor Elevators; they set up the label which brought you The
Dirtbombs and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs... and now Black Lips are coming to
Britain.
Their first proper UK single release is due March 5th - Not A Problem
and Dirty Hands; dates in support are:
3rd March London Scala
4th London Coronet Underage Club
7th London Old Blue Last
They're in Paris the night before (2nd March), if any of our readers
are in France.
