Those are pretty good odds. Especially considering we're non chart eligible.
The Glam Chops double A side "Countdown To Christmas/Jesus Was The First Glam Rocker" is still available free from HERE
HO HO HO Merry Christmas.
Friday, 12 December 2008
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Blog.
As of yesterday we are ten songs in to "Art Brut Versus Satan". We had a pretty full on day yesterday. We spent all of it working on an eight minute song called "Mysterious Bruises". I haven't quite finished the words for it yet so I got to spend the day in the same room as the rest of Art Brut working the lyrics out. Normally they keep me in a cupboard.
Im not being kept in a cupboard against my will. It is because for the first time ever we are all recording our parts at the same time and my voice isn't allowed to bleed into the recording of the other instruments. Although I think they are also keeping me in a cupboard to stop me eating all the M&M's that are in their part of the studio.
I don't mind being kept in a cupboard though. I am safe from prying eyes in there. Which is very useful. I am ever so slightly more "sing-y" on this album and I've realised my voice sounds a bit better if I dance like Mick Jagger whilst I sing and I couldn't possibly do that with the rest of the band watching.
So to recap I am living in a hotel in Salem on a diet of sausage gravy and spending my days locked in a cupboard dancing like Mick Jagger.
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Blog.
Whilst we are in Salem recording "Art Brut Versus Satan" we are all living in a Comfort Inn. Its very nice. Although I am beginning to feel a bit like Alan Partridge.
Every morning I get up and eat at the continental breakfast bar downstairs. I have sausage-gravy and muffins,waffles and syrup and then a small cake. This is definitely a lot more calories than my usual breakfast. My usual breakfast is three hours more sleep. I think having a swim everyday might even things out though and I'll remain exactly the same size I am now.
I am eating so much for breakast it is actually like I'm intentionally putting on weight for a film. Like Robert Deniro in Raging Bull. The truth is though I need to retain my slightly over weight stature for the album as I've written a song that is partially about it called "Just Desserts" that would make little sense if I was thin.
I've already lost one song that I'd written called "Get On With It" that was about artistic inertia. We cant play that one anymore because at the end of the song I mention how Chinese Democracy will never be coming out and it since has. I also mention how they're will never be a Ghostbusters 3 with Bill Murray in it which has also since changed. JD Salinger hasn't released the last book in The Glass family trilogy yet but it does seem I have some magic power to make things happen.
If anybody is awaiting an author to finish a book,for a film to come out or an album to be released let me know. I'll put it in a song and whatever artistic endeavour your awaiting should be out before I have had a chance to record it.
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
Blog.
Art Brut are in Oregon. We are recording our album in a punk as fuck two weeks with Black Francis. It is going really well we're already about 7 songs in. We've written two new ones too "Twist and Shout" and "The Passenger".
We're staying in a hotel on the freeway and went to a local bar on Friday. Very local. It was a bit like this pub scene from American Werewolf in London when we entered. Everybody went silent and looked at us. The fact that everybody in the pub was watching a teenage boy being mauled by a Lion on the television made the pub even scarier.The staff and customers were all actually really nice though and who can fault a pub that has Proud Mary by Creedence Clearwater Revival on the Jukebox.
Thinking about it now though I should have put Bad Moon On The Rise on to fully get that American Werewolf vibe.
A little later in to proceedings a scary coke/crystal meth guy came over to sit with us. He was nice enough and warned us about people like himself who were addicted to substances and consequently might want to steal our money. He was very polite though and gave me his number on a little piece of paper just in case I wanted to try crystal meth in the future. He also wrote "follow the trail of blood back to the hotel" on the piece of paper. I dont think that was his name though.
If your ever driving along the freeway in Salem and fancy a drink. I recommend the random cocktail bar attached to a chinese restaurant near some hotels. The staff are friendly and polite and it is a bit of an adventure.
Barnaby Fudge has started a blog about the album too it is HERE.
I know people think I am him. I promise you Im not though. I just claim the credit for some of the funnier things he has said.
Saturday, 6 December 2008
Apologies To Barnaby Fudge
Who I seem to have upset. Barnaby Fudge runs the Art Brut website and updates the news section
you can read him HERE
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
TOP OF THE POPS
I wrote this for the NME. It is in this weeks issue. Their version is a little bit different.It mentions a weird Email I got asking me if I was behind The Ting Tings. Like Art Brut the Ting Tings asked fans at a gig to hand paint 7'' singles for them and they have "We Formed A Band" in huge letters on the inner sleeve of their album which is very similar to a lyric of ours. I am not the svengali behind the Ting Tings unfortunately. Although that is quite a good conspiracy theory.
WHY I LOVE TOTP.
I can't remember when it was that I first started watching Top Of The Pops. Until now, I have always thought that one of my earliest memories was watching Adam Ant perform "Goody Two Shoes" on the show. Although I've just looked up when that was so I could write about it and have realised that it has to be a false memory, because I was only two when it happened in 1981. I can, however, definitely remember when I realised Top Of The Pops was the programme for me. It was at school in the early nineties
I hate sport. Especially football. I always have. As a boy growing up though, especially at school, you're expected to like it. People insist you have to have a favourite team and ask you how your team is doing, what hopes you have for your team, whether you are disappointed in your team's performance etc. I never actually managed to choose a team or was even polite enough to pretend that I had, but I always envied the way people supported their teams. I think a little of that envy transferred itself into my obsession with Top Of The Pops.
While my school friends were all supporting Manchester United, reading the football results and watching Match Of The Day, I was studying the charts in quite an unhealthy, almost autistic way and watching Top Of The Pops. I couldn't have chosen a better time to develop a full blown obsession with the program than in the early nineties. There were loads of classic moments: Nirvana refusing to mime and choosing to "sing like Morrissey" instead, The Eels playing children's instruments and smashing them up at the end of Novocaine For The Soul, Jarvis wearing an "I Hate Wet Wet Wet" t-shirt because they had been at number one for so long. It wasnt just bands mucking about with the zeitgeist I enjoyed either - it felt like a real victory for me at the time to see bands like Suede, Pulp, Belle and Sebastian, Black Box Recorder and even Bis getting on the programme. In football terms, I had followed these bands from the bottom of division three and was now watching them win all their matches and enter the premiership. It didn't last very long, but it was a brilliant time.
I don't just love Top Of The Pops for the indie bands that got on it, though. I love pop music. Top of The Pops really was important to me growing up, definitely as important as sport is to some people. So it's brilliant to see that it may be brought back as a public service. It certainly deserves to be. I just hope that it will stick to its previous rules: the number one record is always featured as well as the highest climbing single and the highest new entry, and that no record besides the number one can be featured on consecutive episodes. Otherwise, it will change the rules of the game, making it a different programme. I'm also a purist, so I hope they still put it on at 7 on thursday evenings.
My love of Top Of The Pops and my inclusion of it in a lot of Art Brut's lyrics has led it to be a sort of catchphrase for my band. People have chanted Top Of The Pops at us all over the world. We even got to appear on it in Germany (I was so happy to be on it, in contrast with popstars that are usually forced to go on it, that the German staff mistook my enthusiasm as sarcasm. I had to explain to them that I really meant it, I still don't think they believed me though). When Top Of The Pops was cancelled in the UK, nearly 5000 people signed a petition to get us on the last show.
That association of Top Of The Pops with the band means that whenever there is a news story about it I get a lot of emails. I've had a lot emails recently about the Ting Tings bringing it back, asking me if I'm angry at them for stealing my thunder. Of course I'm not, it's not my personal programme and I want to see it brought back as much as them. The only thing I do regret is making my Glam Chops Christmas single a free download because of the credit crunch. If I had known there was going to be a Christmas TOTP I would have fought for the number one spot, credit crunch or not.
One of my most prized possesions is a printout of an email from the Top Of The Pops staff telling Art Brut that we are the best band in the world. I have it framed on my wall. If the charts were premiership football though, Art Brut would still be struggling to get into the first division. Perhaps one day, the world will decide to get into shouty spoken pop music and we'll make it. Until then, I wish the Ting Tings the best of luck bringing it back. It will be nice to have that long-held but probably impossible ambition to aim for again.
by Eddie Argos (29 1/4)
WHY I LOVE TOTP.
I can't remember when it was that I first started watching Top Of The Pops. Until now, I have always thought that one of my earliest memories was watching Adam Ant perform "Goody Two Shoes" on the show. Although I've just looked up when that was so I could write about it and have realised that it has to be a false memory, because I was only two when it happened in 1981. I can, however, definitely remember when I realised Top Of The Pops was the programme for me. It was at school in the early nineties
I hate sport. Especially football. I always have. As a boy growing up though, especially at school, you're expected to like it. People insist you have to have a favourite team and ask you how your team is doing, what hopes you have for your team, whether you are disappointed in your team's performance etc. I never actually managed to choose a team or was even polite enough to pretend that I had, but I always envied the way people supported their teams. I think a little of that envy transferred itself into my obsession with Top Of The Pops.
While my school friends were all supporting Manchester United, reading the football results and watching Match Of The Day, I was studying the charts in quite an unhealthy, almost autistic way and watching Top Of The Pops. I couldn't have chosen a better time to develop a full blown obsession with the program than in the early nineties. There were loads of classic moments: Nirvana refusing to mime and choosing to "sing like Morrissey" instead, The Eels playing children's instruments and smashing them up at the end of Novocaine For The Soul, Jarvis wearing an "I Hate Wet Wet Wet" t-shirt because they had been at number one for so long. It wasnt just bands mucking about with the zeitgeist I enjoyed either - it felt like a real victory for me at the time to see bands like Suede, Pulp, Belle and Sebastian, Black Box Recorder and even Bis getting on the programme. In football terms, I had followed these bands from the bottom of division three and was now watching them win all their matches and enter the premiership. It didn't last very long, but it was a brilliant time.
I don't just love Top Of The Pops for the indie bands that got on it, though. I love pop music. Top of The Pops really was important to me growing up, definitely as important as sport is to some people. So it's brilliant to see that it may be brought back as a public service. It certainly deserves to be. I just hope that it will stick to its previous rules: the number one record is always featured as well as the highest climbing single and the highest new entry, and that no record besides the number one can be featured on consecutive episodes. Otherwise, it will change the rules of the game, making it a different programme. I'm also a purist, so I hope they still put it on at 7 on thursday evenings.
My love of Top Of The Pops and my inclusion of it in a lot of Art Brut's lyrics has led it to be a sort of catchphrase for my band. People have chanted Top Of The Pops at us all over the world. We even got to appear on it in Germany (I was so happy to be on it, in contrast with popstars that are usually forced to go on it, that the German staff mistook my enthusiasm as sarcasm. I had to explain to them that I really meant it, I still don't think they believed me though). When Top Of The Pops was cancelled in the UK, nearly 5000 people signed a petition to get us on the last show.
That association of Top Of The Pops with the band means that whenever there is a news story about it I get a lot of emails. I've had a lot emails recently about the Ting Tings bringing it back, asking me if I'm angry at them for stealing my thunder. Of course I'm not, it's not my personal programme and I want to see it brought back as much as them. The only thing I do regret is making my Glam Chops Christmas single a free download because of the credit crunch. If I had known there was going to be a Christmas TOTP I would have fought for the number one spot, credit crunch or not.
One of my most prized possesions is a printout of an email from the Top Of The Pops staff telling Art Brut that we are the best band in the world. I have it framed on my wall. If the charts were premiership football though, Art Brut would still be struggling to get into the first division. Perhaps one day, the world will decide to get into shouty spoken pop music and we'll make it. Until then, I wish the Ting Tings the best of luck bringing it back. It will be nice to have that long-held but probably impossible ambition to aim for again.
by Eddie Argos (29 1/4)
Monday, 1 December 2008
ADVERT
Art Brut played a show for JD recently in Glasgow.We performed "Duchess" with Hugh Cornwall from The Stranglers. you can hear it HERE. There is also the new longer version of Modern Art, Nag Nag Nag Nag and the "Falling On a Bruise" version of Post Soothing Out.
Just go to Art Brut and then click on tracks.
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