We got totally wastoid on some kitten juice, woke up the next day and it turned out we booked flights to Japan, so we’ve decided that we should play music while we are there.
So yeah, come October 2010, the ramps will eating horse sashimi/wasabi doritos/squishy sweet things in Japan and drinking terrible coffee from vending machines. Fuck yeeeaaah. One of the ramps will also be playing in ii too. Do Come!
or so i’m told.
on a non ramps related note, i made a music video for pikelet. it was filmed in the pacific somewhere, and we gave the camera acid. here ’tis.
we’re playing with crayon fields at their ‘welcome back from the US!!’ show at the Northcote Social Slub on April 24. we haven’t played in ages, so it’ll be rusty.
oh, and celebricheese
BAM!
Our song ‘antique limb’ is in the running for the jjj hottest 100. i’m not sure what happens if it makes it in, maybe we win a fancy car or something.
So you can go vote for it here, if you’re one of those people who votes for things.
Also, we made an EP that you can get on iTunes right here. Kinda forgot to tell anyone about this, y’know how it is.
It features our song ‘destroy the universe with jazz hands’ from the midnight believer album, plus a remix by our pal slo-mo speedboat, an 8-bit re-imagining of ‘antique limb’ by neutro & lone zero and a cover we did of leonard cohen’s ‘don’t go home with your hard on’.
As of now, the banjo isn’t part of the ramps set up anymore. It’s been replaced by a homemade gaffa-tape-beast of an instrument that is unruly and unpredictable.
Just occurred to me that the only Patrick Swazye films I’ve seen are Donnie Darko and The Outsiders. Yep that’s right, never seen Dirty Dancing, Point Break or Ghost.
The cast for The Outsiders is fucken nuts, Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Rob Low and Emilio Estevez all pre-stardom and pimply and awkward. Oh and Ralph Macchio too.
Plus Tom Waits. And Sofia Coppola.
Yikes.
Donnie Darko was, in my opinion, a big stinking pile of wank with a petite little turd perched on top.
Speaking of movies, finally got around to seeing The Conformist the other night. Fucken aaaaaace.
there is a music video being made for antique limb. in it we ride many things, giant brains for instance. plus we get zapped by giant cats, just like in real life!
it’s taking a really really long time, so here’s some tasty screen grabs for you to eat with your eyes.
so we’re taking a break from driving casey “over the fucken edge!!!” to go to NZ where they speak all funny to play camp a low hum and some other places. the names of which are christchurch, wellington and auckland. maybe other places if stars align to allow such things.
the mixing is about 56.45635456% mixed, mister casey rice has been a real trooper considering the ridiculous amount of instruments we’ve put in our album and the fact that he’s using software that he’s unfamiliar with.
oh and then there was the string of 45 degree days. what a stink fest.
one more sleeps til NZ.
that is, if I can sleep. which is hard with this all excitement. and the all the burning unicorn skulls telling me to stab everyone in their sleep.
OK cheerio then!
here i am in the bunker. it’s roughly how i imagined hilter’s to be….. juno 106… korg ploysix… mdf roof… alien brain in phemaldehyde…. couple of guitars….
the album is being made and here’s a preview for anyone interested in hearing it: http://aleksandtheramps.com/Media/Preview.mp3
do people read this?
easter bloc was fun times, though i wouldn’t wholeheartedly recommend going there to record your band, or for that matter i wouldn’t recommend it halfheartedly either. you didn’t hear it from though. you heard it from…
the wind!!
so this is isn’t really tour related seeing as the tour is officially done with or whatever, but a guy can dream can’t he?
(yes he can)
due to an air china ticketing fuckup i’m heading back to the anus of the earth (geographically speaking) later than the others, so i’ve been in montreal doing pretty much nothing, which has been super great. i’m having serious thoughts about relocating…. me and mike got the overnight bus done to new york, which was a particularly uncomfortable experience, but y’know, more bearable than water torture or other things that people have to deal with so i shouldn’t complain.
we got off all dazed and got coffee and bagels and fell asleep in central park for a few hours (as you do) then we went walking aimlessly around williamsburg and tried to meet up with a new yorker dude i met ages ago, though we underestimated the hugeness of the city and were an hour late and thus no meeting was done.
we went and saw jeffrey lewis play a free show to a crowded bar of hipster-looking people, and i was convinced i was in the inner sanctum of coolness. boy was i incorrect in this assumption! i sort thought he sucked mega naffness and was blown away by how people lapped it up (should i be using this to publicly slag people off?) but hey, my finger’s not on the pulse. the girl that played before his (laura stevenson maybe?) was awesome but people talked all the way through it. when will people learn?!
(i’m putting my bet on 2018)
today we had ambitions of getting up at 8am and doing some bikram yoga (not just because i feel like poo, but the receptionist gave us directions to jeffery lewis and even printed out a map, what a gal!) but we slept in and discovered a awesome cafe for brunch where i had a pear and brie panini (fuck. yes.)
we went to that heathen institution the museum natural history where they poison children’s mind with theories of “evolution” (phhh!) and the “big bang” (scoff!) and other godless scams like “dinosaurs” (don’t make me laugh!) it was good, but i think it’d be better visiting it alone at 4am whilset under the influence of illicit substances. someone remind me to write to lonely planet.
and we went to a free concert where dan deacon was supposed to play, but his luggage ended up elsewhere so he didn’t. which was bad, because the other bands were bad. i can’t remember who they are, but if you’re reading this, whoever you are, lift your game!
then we wandered through brooklyn looking for cool people, we found some, didn’t hit it off, and now we are in a backpackers which smells. end of blog!
we gots one more show. it’s tonight at a place called bar st laurent, which we have been told is an unpopular bar in a popular neighbourhood. mike and janita have got all dolled up and gone to schmooze and hand out flyers at the fringe festival and left us here. me in my tiny shorts, with the other alex. who will crack first? how shall i prepare his flesh when i finally eat him? with gravy and curds?
montreal poutine was pretty much as expected, better than elsewhere poutine but nothing to write home about. yet here i am, writing home about it. sort of.
the we made a pile of things and piled it on the cat whilst he slept. some sportsman have been playing sports on the television and subsequently people are honking horns all over the shop. “shut ze hell up” says my brain.
as soon as we crossed the state border into quebec, the roads got heaps more merde, as is the european style.
we played one last show in toronto in a tiny tiny place, the few people in attendance joined in with percussion instruments and much merriment was had. then we smashed the place up and stole their cash register.
good times
Lazy touring. We’ve been in Toronto for a few days now and it’s leaning more towards ‘holiday’ that ‘tour’. Which is nice. We played shows with Montrealians called ‘Mixylodian’ and they rocked us with their complicated songs. I think Mike got offended when I said that I sensed some Supertramp Vibes in his tunes. Geez guy, chillax.
The plan was that we were gonna travel in their RV to elsewhere in the country to play, but our brief trip to Oshawa riding in this lumbering beast made us go “nah-uhh” to extensive travel in that plywood deathtrap. Plus I got motion sickness from all the motion and almost vommed before our nxne showcase show.
Which, I might add, was pretty sucky-suck. (Most Of) The other bands sucked, and Joe almost got violenced in the head after some pretty tactless (yet hilarious) heckling of the shirtless, tattooed, spew-rock fuckfaces that headlined the thing.
(We have merch in our store. Buy it!)
OK that’s it, bye bye for now.
