The UK / Life Advice For

So here's the deal: Every time we go to mainland Europe we get in some shit. It always ends with someone threatening me, either with violence or with the vague menace of being labeled "uncool" forever. So we decided to take a break from the part of Euroland where people are hard to understand and revisit the part where they (sort of) speak English. We're headed to England for the first time in a minute and will be joined by our friends in Tigers Jaw. Should be fun.

December 28-January 11, we'll be in jolly ol' and doing our best to sidestep being stabbed by hooligans. I'm most looking forward to Ireland. Never played there, but I like anyplace where I feel like the most handsome man in the room and that's how I've always felt in Ireland.

28 Dec. Canterbury, UK @ The Chantry Social Club
29 Dec. Kingston, UK @ The Fighting Cocks
30 Dec. Bury St Edmunds, UK @ Old Maltings
31 Dec. Secret Show
01 Jan. London, UK @ Purple Turtle
01 Jan. Southampton, UK @ Joiners
03 Jan. Stoke, UK @ Harry’s Bar
04 Jan. Leeds, UK @ The Well
05 Jan. Edinburgh, UK @ Studio 24
06 Jan. Glasgow, UK @ 13th Note
07 Jan. Dublin, Ireland @ Mercantile
08 Jan. Huddersfield, UK @ Sleepers Bar
09 Jan. Manchester, UK @ Kro Bar
10 Jan. Norwich, UK @ The Marquee

Shifting gears, since getting a Twitter account we've noticed that most of you don't understand that the internet is a social situation. Instead, many of you treat it like a bathroom with a closed door. So here's a quick tutorial on how to use the Internet in a less embarrassing way.

Sportswear

"Branding is a t-shirt." Several times this past week I've visited the home of the branding expert I mentioned in an earlier blog post. I assisted in crafting a licensing strategy for a children's brand my company had entered into business with. The branding guy repeated "branding is a t-shirt" several times during our meetings. I laughed a little each time.

Shirts are bullshit. They are the sad efforts of a baby to stand out from other babies. And, for that reason, they are perfect branding tools. T-shirts proudly display what you lack in life. They announce your personal brand to the world by co-opting the logo of a like brand. If you're wearing a Behemoth shirt, we can safely assume that you resent attractive people. If you're wearing a Marilyn Manson/Slipknot/ICP shirt, it's clear you don't have a father, or you don't have a father that doesn't molest you when drunk. If you're wearing a Lady Gaga shirt we understand you lack the filter that distills good taste from mass appeal. T-shirts are how you cut to the chase. Why have a conversation with someone who doesn't share your interests when you can fly a flag to attract only those in your tribe?

As a band, we've resisted t-shirts as a marketing tool. We don't put much effort into our "look" as people and it seemed corny to put effort into what would ultimately be other people's looks. We make them to put gas in the tank for tours, but anyone who owns one can tell you- they are functional and nothing more. They typically feature a photo of the band. Always seemed reasonable to me because that's what bands do- be bands. Putting an image of other shit on a band shirt enforces the persona the band is trying to generate. I had always sort of hoped we didn't need a persona. A branding expert would say that's foolish as hell, and I would have to concede that point to him now that I know better. But I still can't see fit to craft an image using a product I only use to wipe cum off my belly. So our shirts have gone up in quality, but they will likely always retain the following message "you are buying this because you like the band. No one will think you are cooler or more interesting for purchasing this item. You could wear a blank shirt and just give us $12 if you want to cut to the core of this whole thing."

Mike at Hellfish asked us if we'd be interested in doing a webstore. I tried to convince him that we don't sell many shirts and it may not be worth his time. But he likes what we do and we appreciate that. So here we go. I like this shit. I may like it more without our name on it, but this is how it works. "Branding is a t-shirt."

You're Doing It Wrong.

First, for those of you complaining that the Caroline Corrigan download didn't work, check these.

Marissa W.
Eric Hall

Jeni Leigh

Philip Jose Farmer

Photo of Caroline for iTunes

Read the previous post for some background on those.

Ok, now onto something else. Here's some advice from the heart. We're trying to make the world a better place. I understand sometimes we can be a little snarky or seem mean-spirited, but try taking a broad view and realize we're looking out for everyone here. Shitty bands with poor etiquette don't just make my touring life harder, they make all our lives suck balls. This year Attack Attack will have better attendance at their shows than almost any legit band you can name. This is your fault. Bands and audience have failed utterly. The genres you hold so dear are dying because you did it wrong. You who thought it was appropriate to put 6 bands on a bill. You who don't care about your bass tone because "this is punk." You who are more interested in being ON a stage instead of what you're DOING there. You failed and you suck.

But there's still time to change, if not for the sake of dead genres, than at least for your own sense of responsibility. To that end, here's some advice.

The Value of Teamwork.

Something we talk about a lot within this band is how the expectations of people outside bands somehow transmute the inner-workings of a band. It's funny that it works that way, because if you extrapolate the concept from the specifics and apply it elsewhere you can see how detrimental it is. A 5 year-old has an expectation of a rocket. Now imagine the rocket scientist father of that 5 year-old started to bend his designs to fit the expectations of his son. That's how bands operate. They bend their design to fit the listenership. It doesn't always have to be a sound either. Sometimes they keep the same haircut their entire careers because their persona is tied to it and that persona is now expected of them. Sometimes they pursue a musical direction for several albums before they realize that they were only doing it because the music press seemed to want them to.

That shit is beneath us. We're musicians, of a sort, and music isn't for fraud-ass cowards afraid to break the expectations of others. It's for big-dick swinging assholes who are confident they know what's best and only pursue ideas that excite them. To that end, we're throwing away the idea of a band as a concrete form. Please don't look for a classic line-up from us. We don't care about that shit. Take that Gainesville "friends forever" nonsense and pound it up your ass. I couldn't get in a van with some scumbag I didn't like; it's a given I'm friends with my bandmates. But if the ONLY purpose of the band is to be tight bros til death- please start a bowling team instead. Tight bros will be there when you get home. You can smoke weed by the powerlines or whatever the shit you do together when you get off tour. Being in a band is about making music. So to that end, we're expanding our definition of ourselves. End of a Year Self Defense Family is a group of collaborators who use the EOAY banner to express ideas they think are appropriate for it. Some of us work entirely independently from the others with no simultaneous collaboration. For example, we have a well-regarded house musician remixing some of our tracks now. He's a member. Some of us aren't even musicians in the traditional sense of the word. Gee Vaucher was an artist for Crass. She is a member of Crass. Likewise, not everyone in EOAY needs to be playing the triangle on stage to be important.

If you need to look at it any sort of way, think of it like The Avengers. There are close to 100 members of that organization, active, inactive, and MIA. It gets a little confusing until someone yells "Avengers Assemble!" at which point it becomes very clear.

Caroline Corrigan is a member. She has her own band and her own projects that need her attention full-time, but she's an EOAY reservist. We recorded some of our songs with her vocals in place of mine as a fun exercise and a trial run for our upcoming duets record. The results have gotten mixed reviews. Most people love it and suggest it clarifies the intent of the original recordings by showing where melody SHOULD have gone. Other people think it properly shits on my voice and undermines my value as a "vocalist." Here's how I feel: We're not a well-established band, even in the scene we play in. I know that. But EOAY has been playing music for longer than most people realize and my contributions to that, past, present, and future are not something I question. If someone who hates my voice hears Caroline's or Tom Sheehan's (look for that soon) in place of it and loves it- it doesn't wound me. I've always wanted this band to sound good above all else and if there was a means for me to project my passion for the project into a person with talent, I would do that.

The above probably read like someone describing a dream. That is to say, boring and lacking application to your life. Enough already. Let's cut to some new music. Caroline singing my words and doing a very lovely job:

http://www.mediafire.com/?ojh7f5i9ha5q155

Pass it around.

Look forward to future collaborations, both with Caroline and with the dozen other members of EOAY SDF who each offer some weird shit to our increasingly weird idea of a band.

"Hi"

The Steinbrenner / Jasta Connection.

As we spiral further into the world of indie rock and leave our friends with fudgey, unwashed, asses in hardcoreland behind, I know it's my responsibility to maintain a party line. I'm supposed to casually insert references to powerpop records I've never listened to and only reveal my punk origins when needed to maintain credibility. I have to employ euphemisms for aggressive music, things like "noisepunk" and "smartcore" and a dozen others. And never, ever, am I to mention actual hardcore or punk music that came after 1986.

I'm going to break from convention for a moment and hope that I'm let back in the indie rock club after this transgression (that club allows for nicer hospitality requests on our rider). This blog post is about men of vision. It's about men of singular purpose and unmatched efficiency. This post is about George Steinbrenner and Jamey Jasta.

The connection may not be immediately obvious, but any inspection reveals these men were cut from the same cloth. Their goals and the resources they used to achieve those goals may have been different, but that doesn’t matter. In fact, the goal is the least important detail. If Steinbrenner didn’t own the Yankees (current estimated worth: 1.6bn), he would have owned the Redskins, or the Heat, or Manchester United. If Jasta didn’t establish Hatebreed as one of the longer-running American hardcore/metal acts, he would have steered another group of Connecticut heshers to the same end.

What links these two is their drive and invulnerability to discouragement.

Think about how many times during your life you are told you “can’t.” There are things, you are taught from a young age, that are outside your grasp. “Those things are for someone else,” you’re told. “Have something else. Something smaller.” Now consider how that permeates your thinking. Even the rebels among us who are willing to defy that constant “can’t” still relegate their challenge to smaller goals. They’ll step on the lawn when told to keep off, but they never think to buy the property and own the lawn.

My band recently released a record. So far, it’s received mostly positive reviews. I’m sure it will receive a few negative ones. As an adult and as a confident person, I respond to criticism in what I consider a constructive way. I analyze it for truth and based on my findings, I take it into consideration or I disregard it. Ultimately, what the band does is idiosyncratic enough that, if I choose, I can wrap myself in the blanket of elitism. I can deflect a sharp word with “they just don’t get it!” This is why you have so many bands praised by new music media (read: blogs) simply for adding things like vocal distortion. To offer criticism of something considered even slightly different opens you up to accusations of “not getting it.” For spineless sycophants trying to forge an identity out of music culture (read: most people involved in music) there is no worse crime. They’d sooner admit to child molestation than admit the new INSERT INDIE BAND WITH ANIMAL NAME OR NOISE BAND WITH CLEVER NAME is just trying too hard. Jamey and George have both received more criticism than any man not running a nation is likely to get in this life. Both of them did things that are straightforward and easily grasped. They didn’t have the luxury of cloaking themselves in snobbery. Instead, they smashed criticism and hammered through the ranks of doubters. They said, “I know better, because I know better.” I can’t help but respect that. Most people are hamstrung by fear. They’ll sabotage any opportunity for advancement to avoid new responsibilities or criticisms.

Success hinges on your willingness to do more than the 7 billion other people who want the same thing. People looking to excuse their own failings will search out opportunities successful people had and cite the differences between their lives. They’ll say, “so-and-so was born rich” or “he just happened to be in the right place at the right time.” This won’t advance the person saying it and it won’t hurt the person they level the accusation against. It’s just air.

The reality is that men and women who want things tend to get things and those who don’t either died too soon or didn’t want them enough. Some of our goals will take us more than a lifetime and we enter into them knowing we’ll have to continue that struggle on the next plane of existence. That’s fine. A person who truly wants things doesn’t expect them immediately. George Steinbrenner probably wanted enough World Series rings for each of his grandchildren’s digits. Jamey Jasta probably wants to own Viacom for the purpose of playing Biohazard videos on primetime television. George didn’t get what he wanted and Jamey may not. But both men are/were in the hunt.

My father called me the other day to discuss the passing of the longtime Yankees owner. He said it hit him harder than he anticipated, almost like the loss of a family member. “I have two heroes,” he told me. “George Steinbrenner and Nelson Mandela.”

Below is some video taken from our live-in-the-studio recording for The Waiting Room, a production of Panda Studios and 12 Gauge Records. On their site, you can find mp3's of the recording. Expect some announcements and a special gift or two early next month.

US TOUR COMPLETE / NEW RECORD

Buy this if you want to:


It's our new record. It's pretty awesome; someone on a messageboard said so. Huge thanks to Deathwish Inc. We appreciate that shit.

Just got back from a tour of the US. Holy shit, America, you really let yourself go to shit since we've seen you last. Time to get back on your exercise routine and live right, because this motherfucker was looking ROUGH. Here's some real "America the Beautiful" items to reflect on, just in time for the Fourth of July. Next time your drunk uncle is talking about his kid in the Marines doing our country proud and defending our way of life, show him the following slideshow and ask him to mull it over.









Instead of keeping a tour journal, we instead decided to be snarky assholes on youtube. This way you don't need to be literate to enjoy us.

For those of you who really want to live the EOAYSDF tour experience, we've compiled a soundtrack. Here's the songs we listened to most on tour, ranging from beautiful to utterly tasteless. It's like you're right there in the passenger's seat passing gas and talking about vagina with us!

EUROPE RECAP!

Butted heads with the German version of the PRMC and things got a little scary when Red Skull got ahold of the Cosmic Cube, but all-in-all, it was a great trip. I was going to write a long summary and tour journal, but I think we'll probably do a song about it instead. So, no spoilers here. Look for our "Luke Died for My Sins" 2 Live Crew-inspired shirts. All proceeds go to organizations defending First Amendment rights.

On Being Inexcusably Clown-Ass or TL;DR

For those who spend a lot of time reading on the internet but pretend reading is painful, there are youtube videos at the end of this for you to skip to.

I'd like everyone to take a listen to the following: http://www.43folders.com/2010/01/26/godin-linchpin

It's the author Seth Godin talking with some internet goblin about the role of your reptile brain in your daily life. Essentially, your lizard brain has you poised for fight or flight at all times, including in social situations and even self-expression. As a band, we always wonder about grown men/women we see playing the same shit as other grown men/women. We generally call them coward-ass and move on to the free meal. But we always sort of suspected there was a deeper psychological reason for the lack of originality. As it turns out, it's physiological. Your reptile brain, seemingly superfluous at this point in civilized man's evolution, actually still has a very active role in your decision making. Your fear of criticism is so fundamentally tied to your sense of self-preservation, that your sympathetic nervous system, the part of the brain responsible for what we call fight or flight, supersedes your thinking brain. For that time, you are not what we'd call a "man."

Loss of acceptance among your peers is what motivates you to play the same boring horseshit. It's what keeps you from putting yourself out there as an actual artist. This is responsible for the myopic version of zeitgeist we see every year as we tour. One year, everyone sounds like Isis, the next year we come through and those same people have now made a band that sounds like Modern Life is War. Or vice versa. I can't remember the order. But before you start feeling defensive and lash out at me (that's your lizard brain at work again, fyi) it needs to be understood that, yes, no band is original, and yes, my band is nothing more than the sum of its influences. That said, there is a difference between reflecting what you love and plainly dickriding what is popular at the moment. Which one are you doing?

Please spare me the look-how-in-the-know-I-am comments, by skipping this next portion if you think you know everything about everything and taking 2min out of your life is something you're going to pretend is important. Before we start, yes, we all know the music industry is sleazy. I never really understood how repulsive it was until I got closer to it.

I'm currently in LA and for those (like me) who are unfamiliar with how this music thing works outside of VFW halls and $200 room rentals at local bars, this shit is a head trip. Some of my friends came out here and made a nice life for themselves in music. Some work in booking, others in A&R, and a few in management. They've introduced me to other people I now call friends and now I have a network of friends who do something I find appalling. All day they are buying and selling bands as a commodity. It becomes second nature to gauge things only by their earnings potential. If you offer, "Man, that's cool that they pay your bills, but that band is unlistenable" you don't get back an honest "Yeah, they're cool dudes though" or a heartfelt "I know people aren't into it, but I love it." What you get, uniformly, is "Whaaat?! Kids go crazy for it!" or "Do you know how many records they sell?!" That is the defense. Never does the quality of the product come up. Ever.

One of these friends is a supernaturally honest person. He will unflinchingly tell me he doesn't give a fuck what a band sounds like, provided they are handsome and can create a story around themselves. A band recently came into his office and was very enthusiastically talking about the music they'd be writing. He stopped them, said "Cool. I don't have an opinion on that. I need you to make a Twitter account." He said they withered in front of him, but he didn't have the heart to lie to them.

Now, whenever I see a band crybabying about how they aren't being recognized and only the "phony" bands "make it" I have to cringe. It reeks so badly of jealousy from people who are unwilling to do what they have to do to achieve their goals. The other kind of coward. It's like listening to a girl who has nothing to do with another girl, call her names like "slut." Clearly, she is jealous of the other girl's fearlessness and everyone can see it. So please, understand, I'm not sitting here looking for sympathy or extolling my band as the sole arbiters of what's "genuine." I'm just narrowing this conversation so we can discuss the real matter:

You are either an artist or you are a success. Your efforts to be both are puzzling and make me wonder if you eat food while sitting on the toilet. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with either ambition, provided you take ownership of it and make no excuses. If you believe yourself an artist, it's time you started acting like one and stopped aping bands that are already successful. This doesn't make you clever, it makes you capable of the same type of rudimentary pattern recognition we see displayed by crows. If you want to be successful, it's time you stopped apologizing for it and shed the pretense of artistry. Life as we know it will be coming to a skidding halt shortly, so get what you want while you can.

"EUROPE IS LIKE WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS"

So here we go. Back to Europe. Last year we did some Oregon Trail shit and explored all the places that cost a ton of money in tolls and gas. Our choice. It was fun, but this year we're going with a smaller scope and keeping it to pretty much that well-worn circuit of Germany and the surrounding area. We'll be seeing Scandinavia for the first time though. Neat. Another place we'll be the ugliest humans in during that time. When we go to the Netherlands we become immediately cognizant of the fact we're ugly. It's like Adam biting the apple and knowing shame at his nakedness. Our last two tours of Europe were handled mightily by Flo at Trapdoor Tourz. This year we're doing the tour through George at No Decline Booking. The shows will be with our friends in Red Tape Parade. If you haven't picked up our split with them, do so. http://www.myspace.com/cobraxrecords