Booyah!

More fun at the Hard Times!

Hard Times in Rockford

We just played... Now we are rocking out to 3 Piston Ass Hammer!

Rockford tonight plus a lil mixing

Doing a little more mixing with Eric from raw-tracks.com this morning.
We'll see you in Rockford tonight!

The Terrace Tonight!

(edit on Aug. 1- Firecracker Studios made a cool poster for the show tonight, but the Flick blog it was on went down so I had to take out the picture.) If you're gonna be in or even near Madison definitely come on down. We're up at 9pm sharp.

Envy is up at 9:45. The Skintones are up at 10:45. The show's over by midnight, so get there early, get up front, and come party with us!

Pleasure Model

The bukkake-bot is here!

End of Day 2 at Smart

Here I am with Smart engineer Beau (who ROCKS) and the famous Trident board. The songs are turning out great- can't wait to share them with you!

Sunspot Road Mania - Episode 10

This week's episode of Road Mania includes a LOT of whining about riding to Cincinnati in the sweatbox (van), plus the following music:

"Whoa" by The Blast (Clarksville, IN)
"Elastic World" by Tangerine (Pittsburgh, PA)

Here it is... Stay tuned for next week's episode, and for the ever elusive "lost episodes" 2, 4, and 5!

Sunspot Road Mania Episode 10

Time is money

Wow, dude. Smart Studios kicks ass. I can totally tell why musicians from all over the world would choose to record here every chance they can. The studio time is expensive, but totally worth it. Yesterday, I think I spent at least $30 worth of studio time just using the bathroom. I'm typing this from the upstairs lounge overlooking JT's Friendly Tavern while Wendy and Mike are eating pizza, surfing, and watching TV. Downstairs, Beau is whoopin Pro Tools' ass and making us sound like rock gods. Most of the work on our end is done. Lots of toys in this place. 3 songs will have used 2 guitars, 4 amps, 4 pedals, and lots of studio effects too. Save your pennies. I would highly recommend this place to any musician who wants their music to sound awesome.

Time for some vocals

Let's see what you got, Mike!

Hard at work

Having a great time recording at Smart today... Here's Ben working on guitar leads.

RBC

Here's the place we're playing at tonight!

Party time!

Great time @ the show tonight... Thanks everybody! Now it's party time!

Holy new songs, Loserman!

Thanks to the crazy party goers at Capitol tonight for showing us some serious hospitality. I can't wait to play (count them) 1, 2, 3 new songs for everybody that comes down to the Slipper Club tomorrow night! As for the title of this post, what's with all the remakes this summer?

Scotty Beams No More

James "Scotty" Doohan from the original Star Trek passed away today at 85.

People love to make fun of actors that get typecast in one role. But who cares? They created a characterization that people loved so much that they only want to see them in that role. Ninety-nine percent of creative people never get that far. It's like One-Hit Wonders and that embarassing NBC show, Hit Me Baby One More Time, (who derives its title from trash by a disposable whore in the first place.) These artists created something that fans hold dear to their hearts, whether it's a character or a song. That's an awesome thing. They should be respected, not ridiculed. I guess it makes people that never had the guts to try feel better about themselves.

I'm getting away from the crux of this post, sorry.

James Doohan is responsible for more people going to Engineering school than probably anyone else in history. My friends met him at Gen Con in the late 90's (how lame that it's not in Milwaukee anymore) and they said he acted 'drunk', but since he had Alzheimer's, I'd probably guess that had something more to do with it than Scotty getting blitzed at MECCA.

Godspeed, Scotty. Let us know what happens when you get to Sha Ka Ree.

Slipper Club This Friday!

Slipper Club This Friday!
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

Here's the poster for Friday night's show, I can't wait.

Writing a lot...

Things have been quiet on here lately because we've been deep in the process of polishing some songs for the recording we're working on next week. The new stuff we've been working in is a lot of fun. It's really passionate, but it's a little less obvious than some of the stuff we've done before. We took this last weekend off so that we could get the songs ready and we'll probably play them at The Slipper Club show here in Madison on Friday and at our gig in Cincinnati on Saturday.

Something For Jess will be performing with us both nights. This'll be there first time in Madison, haha, wait'll they get a load of us.

I Know This Shouldn't Be Funny

But doesn't a blind dude getting it on with his guide dog amuse you just a little bit?

Return of the miner's hat!

We cleaned up the practice space last might and rediscovered some memories of past tours. Ah, Flipside, how we miss you!

Sunspot Road Mania - Ep. 9

Tales From The Backstage of Milwaukee's Summerfest 2005. The sound quality isn't awesome in some parts (I think the iTalk clips a little in the beginning), but you can tell we're having a great time!

The Big Enchilida

Milwaukee's reputation as a thriving haven of obesity just got a nice little boost yesterday. A gargantuan baby weighing in at damn near 14 pounds was born in Mequon.

They nicknamed her 'The Big Enchilida'. Their two other children were nicknamed 'The Whopper' and 'Whopper, Jr.' because of their ginormous sizes at birth.

Summerfest '05

Wow... All I can say is an enormous THANK YOU to each and every person who made the show incredible yesterday!

What?

Did you know that the lovely Miss Elizabeth died of a drug overdose in 2003? Yeah, for real. I thought she was totally hot when I was 12.

The Big Boss Man died too. He had a heart attack, though.

Bummer.

Poster for Tomorrow's Show

Summerfest was fricking sweet. We'll have plenty more on that later.

But tomorrow the rocking continues at Jansen Park in West Bend with our brothers in Living Dred.


Dudes, it's BYOB, plus we're gonna have a birthday party. Yeah, someone's gonna die.

Typo in the Milwaukee Journal

The MJS has us listed as playing at 2:30 PM at Summerfest today.... this is a typo! We are still scheduled to go, as planned:

Harley-Davidson Roadhouse stage
7:30 PM

HOPE TO SEE YOU TONIGHT!!!!

Sunspot Road Mania Episode 8

Hanging out at Wendy's, getting ready for Summerfest.

Trying out the Castblaster, but the background music didn't work. These are the songs that you were supposed to hear in the background:
"We Are All on Drugs" - Weezer
"The New Year" - Death Cab for Cutie
"Allison" - The Pixies
"Freak Me Out" - Weezer

We will link to the picture we are talking about as soon we can figure out how I messed up the Lower Hell site.

Don't forget to stop by the show tomorrow night if you're in Milwaukee- 7:30 at the Harley Stage.

Rock Pose!

Yeah!

Here's some more pics from The Red Sea show on Saturday.

Summerfest Time Changed

Hope everybody had a great 4th of July. I know we didn't do a podcast in Minneapolis, that's my bad. I'll try to get something up though, I want to try the CastBlaster software that Adam Curry's always talking about. So, maybe I'll do that tonight.

Hope everyone had a good Fourth of July.

This is important. Our Summerfest slot has moved to 7:30 PM on Thursday. We'll be playing before Maritime, which is made up of guys from The Promise Ring and The Dismemberment Plan and Death Cab For Cutie. So, we might have to miss The Pixies/Weezer show, but our friends who are going shouldn't have to.

The Red Sea

Thanks to everyone for coming out to the party!

Minneapolis Tonight!

We're getting to The Red Sea at about six o'clock tonight and we're going on stage around 9pm for the show. It's only $5 at the door if you get there before 9pm and if you get a Will Call ticket from us. Or just print this: