Now! thats what i call new videos 53..

OUR TIME DOWN HERE - SOUTHAMPTON RECORD RELEASE SHOW AT THE JOINERS


THE BRIGGS AT JOINERS

American Steel Exclusive Interview Part 2

WWR: In terms of record labels, do you think they are necessary any more?

Rory: I don't think they are necessary but it all depends on what your trying to do, we've discussed not dealing with labels any more, but we haven't had that time where we want to deal with all the stuff, for us its sort of laziness or convenience you know

John: its sort of just a nice home base for us now, record sales are going down every year, your on a label to make records and to make them available your not always on there to sell records any more some people still do, but it can serve as a nice home base where if someone wants to interview your band they can contact your label, and the label can then contact you its just a nice hub of communications, otherwise we'd have to take many many hours out of our personal lives but some bands do it, like the do-nots from Germany run their own label and do everything themselves, and the band is kind of all they do but we have always valued our sort of other stuff going on.

WWR: sure, also 'normal' people think that a band on fat wreck chords could stand to make a lot of money but don't realise you need to have normal jobs also..

John: Yes, but the only people who understand that are people in other bands or people who do shows, you know we don't just go home and go on vacation in Mexico, we go home and go back to work

Rory: Even the bands who do make a living doing it, the perception is so inflated because the bands who do make a living from it make such a modest living they might as well be school teachers

John: unless your like green day
Rory: yea unless you have a top 40 song your lucky to make a living off of it, so yea we have always worked.

WWR: Some of your lyrics seem very personal, is this the way you feel you can send your message out to other bands and so forth by listening to the records as opposed to bitching on the internet on some forum or blog?

Rory: definitely
John: sure I can see what your getting at, we are one of the more private bands that I can think of. A lot of bands are every other day blog update or video update and all over the internet and reveal every detail of their personal lives and we have a layer of...it sounds hard to say but I think we let our music speak for ourselves and let the music be what we are saying. We reluctantly do the self promotion thing, a lot of bands love it they cant wait to update their Myspace page and that's fine that's great and maybe it would be to our benefit to do that more but none us really enjoy that. We don't set out to be private but we just are a lot more private people than people generally are.

WWR: Are there any songs from the last two albums which have a favourite subject?

Rory: not a favourite subject necessarily but for me its sort of it comes out whether its political or personal I don't really sit and think I am going to write a song about this or this album should be like this I just let it come out, for me my favourite songs on our record are the ones we are playing at the moment because its fun to perform those songs, once they're written they get passed to the venting process before I bring them in to show the band, you know I feel on the newest record that the lyrics are simplistic and sometimes a little too tongue in cheek but im not afraid of being almost silly since I feel we have such a large catalogue that its neither here or there so its never representative of our work in one way we can get away with a little low brow.

WWR: anything in terms of future releases?

Rory: I think FAT are releasing some demo's aren't they?
John: who?
Rory: FAT

John : ow cool, laughs* ha I usually find out what we are doing from the internet, nothing major we haven't done much U.S touring on this record. There might be a few digital releases of old 7 inches that weren't available and maybe an under the influence split with the gaslight anthem where we both cover songs we like.

Huge thanks to American Steel, Ed the Duck & Wiebke at FAT for the interview
American Steel – 'Dear friends and gentle hearts' is Available now on fatwreckchords

Hostage life - Free Album! but yet just broke up.. :(

So the Canadian punk rockers Hostage Life have called it a day but they left a nice free album for download behind you can get that here
and read about why its free below...


CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE
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You can download our new album, Centre of the Universe, for FREE on September 30th at 12am. You can get it right here on our MySpace page.* Why are we giving the album away for free? Several reasons:
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1. I steal music. You steal music. We all steal music. That’s how things work these days. Providing you with a free digital download prevents this from happening.
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2. Pressing CDs hasn’t really helped us financially. We sold quite a few CD copies of Walking Papers but are still in debt to our old record label. The current structure of the music industry is not artist friendly, and we have all but abandoned the notion that we could subsist as a band on album sales alone. Some artists and groups are able to do it, but Hostage Life is not one of them. As a result, it makes more sense to just give the shit away and hope that people will like it enough to come see us live and help us out that way.
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3. Let’s not bullshit ourselves…any CD we press is eventually going to end up in a landfill where it will take decades, if not centuries to biodegrade (if it ever does). The last thing this planet needs is more disposable Hostage Life merchandise that nobody wants.
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Considering the above statements, however, it does seem kind of fucked that we will also be offering Centre of the Universe as a 12 inch record. The vinyl version will NOT be available on September 30th, but on that day you will be able to pre-order it from juiceboxdotcom.com. It can be purchased in November. To sweeten the deal, the vinyl version of the album will contain a bonus 7inch which will include 2 previously unreleased tracks – a song called Armageddon Jane, and our cover of Tappa Zukie’s M.P.L.A.
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Our first scheduled show after the digital release will be in Gainesville, Florida as part of The Fest 8 (Oct.30th – Nov.1st). Stay tuned for our set date, time and venue. Very exciting.
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I’ll be launching a blog when the album is made available which will contain essays pertaining to each song. Those of you that have a distaste for pseudo-intellectual wanking may wish to avoid it. But while we’re on the topic of pretentious lyricists, I’ll explain the concept behind the album. A couple years ago I was reading the 16th issue of Chris Ware’s brilliant comic, The Acme Novelty Library. In it, the semi-autobiographical character of Mr. Ware explains to the story’s protagonist W.K. Brown (loosely based on the sci-fi writer of the same name) that his depression and sense of disconnection is a result of the westerner’s predilection towards viewing himself as the protagonist. In short, we feel so dissatisfied with our lives because we feel that we are the entire reason that everything around is occurring. If life is one big story, we’re supposed to be the heroes. It’s a pretty arrogant worldview, but one that is indicative of our species as a whole. From Ptolemy’s 2000 year-old geocentric model of the universe** to the three most popular and successful religions of our day, we tend to see ourselves as the centre of everything. We think that we are made in the image of gods, and are thus part of some kind of divine lineage; somehow more than just hominids that learned to spell, drive, and write shitty poetry; somehow separate and superior to the rest of the natural world. We believe, or rather, a great deal of us believe that we are immortal and will be whisked off to paradise when our last synapse fires and our bowels empty into our pants. It is the oldest con we know. We have bought into it for as long as we have been asking questions about ourselves and our world and accepting easy answers. But enough about that. I have rambled for too long.
Sept. 30th.
Have our album.
It is our pleasure.
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xo
Colin