This weekend is your last chance to see Agora:

Ever wondered what it looked like inside the McCarren Park pool in Williamsburg? Now's your chance to find out. Check out Agora while the weather is still nice:

In celebration of the historic McCarren Park pool site, a 50,000 square foot empty pool in Williamsburg, Noémie Lafrance is creating a site-specific dance performance that invites the community to re-experience a moment in movement of this monumental public space. Agora is a site-specific dance performance inspired by the McCarren pool site and performed by 30 dancers to a multi-channel score with theatrical lighting transforming the 50, 000 square foot pool into a vast staging area. Performed inside the large pool, the overlapping narratives of Agora will produce the illusion of travel through the different layers of visceral urban experiences and explore the phenomenon of agoraphobia as a social and physical reaction to urban architecture.

Click here for more info about Agora.

Belle and Sebastian at Keyspan

And on Saturday Oct 1 and Sunday Oct 2
Across the Narrows:

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1 -
Keyspan Park, Coney Island show featuring: Pixies, Gang of Four, Built to Spill, Rilo Kiley, Death From Above 1979, Mando Diao, Nine Black Alps
Richmond Park, Staten Island show featuring: The Killers, New York Dolls, Interpol, British Sea Power, Tegan and Sara, The Ordinary Boys, Lake Trout

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 2
Keyspan Park, Coney Island show featuring: Beck, Belle & Sebastian, The Polyphonic Spree, The Raveonettes, Gang Gang Dance, Whirlwind Heat, Dragonette, McCrorie
Richmond Park, Staten Island show featuring: Oasis, Jet, Doves, The Lemonheads, Kasabian, Jesse Malin, The Redwalls

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We owe a huge debt to Angry Girl for compiling this list. We can understand why she is pissed:

1. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
2. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.
6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.
7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.
8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.
9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.
10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
11. Diebold is based in Ohio.
12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of Global Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States.
14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.
15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.
16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad.
17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.
18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.
19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.
20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.

Click here to see her sources.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 09:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

[From Think Progress]

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, led by anti-environment champion James Inhofe (R-OK), will hold a hearing to "discuss the role of science in environmental policy making."....

It's an important topic, given the tendency in Washington to choose ideology over facts. Unfortunately, Inhof's witness list wasn't available on the committee's website, so we called today to find out who would be speaking...

The featured witness isn't a noted environmental scientist, or an expert in regulatory policy. It's Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton.

And why would Inhofe invite a fiction author to testify on the role of science in environmental policy making? We think you’ll understand after reading a synopsis of Crichton's latest book, State of Fear, about a scientist named Nicholas Drake:

Drake is frustrated by the public's lack of fear about global warming and, hence, lack of enthusiasm for funding NERF [the environmental group Drake runs]. To remedy the situation, he plans a high-profile conference on "abrupt climate change," a phenomenon that is essentially fabricated. To make sure folks are good and scared about the imaginary threat, he contracts with the Environmental Liberation Front (ELF) — ... a sophisticated, highly coordinated, techno-savvy worldwide terrorist network of dreadlocked hippies — to create a series of floods, hurricanes, and tsunamis that will devastate the world on the eve of the conference.

Maybe next, we can have Stephen King lecture the Senate about the war in Iraq. He is a horror writer after all. Or how about J.K. Rowling speaking on the magical disappearance of Bush during the early days of Katrina? Dr. Seuss on our extradition policy? Nora Roberts on Homeland Security threats? I suppose we shouldn't be surprised by this. The Republicans on Capital Hill love creating fiction themselves.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 09:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Metro Area

There's a great audio stream scheduled tonight on All Songs Considered:

Hear the rock duo The White Stripes in a live, audio webcast from the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD tonight (September 27). The full concert will stream on NPR.org along with opening acts M. Ward and The Shins. It's the latest in NPR Music's live concert series from All Songs Considered.

Click here for more info.

And don't miss the Katrina benefit at APT tonight featuring FREEwilliamsburg favorite Metro Area. If you're not familiar with the infectious Metro Area, check out an MP3 at OneLouder.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Scott Gottlieb practicing the mandatory
Bush crony expression: The Dubya smirk

"George H.W. Bush deposited so many friends at the Commerce Department that the agency was known internally as 'Bush Gardens.'" And according to Time Magazine, Dubya's favoritism and cronyism has even trumped the excesses of his father. Here's an excerpt from Time's essential article published this week; "How Many More Mike Browns Are Out There?"

Nowhere in the federal bureaucracy is it more important to insulate government experts from the influences of politics and special interests than at the Food and Drug Administration, the agency charged with assuring the safety of everything from new vaccines and dietary supplements to animal feed and hair dye. That is why many within the department, as well as in the broader scientific community, were startled when, in July, Scott Gottlieb was named deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs...

[Gottlieb's] most recent job was as editor of a popular Wall Street newsletter, the Forbes/Gottlieb Medical Technology Investor, in which he offered such tips as "Three Biotech Stocks to Buy Now." In declaring Gottlieb a "noted authority" who had written more than 300 policy and medical articles, [his official] biography neglects the fact that many of those articles criticized the FDA for being too slow to approve new drugs and too quick to issue warning letters when it suspects ones already on the market might be unsafe...

Jimmy Carter-era FDA Commissioner Donald Kennedy, a former Stanford University president and now executive editor-in-chief of the journal Science, say Gottlieb breaks the mold of appointees at that level who are generally career FDA scientists or experts well known in their field. "The appointment comes out of nowhere. I've never seen anything like that," says Kennedy.

Gottlieb's financial ties to the drug industry were at one time quite extensive. Upon taking his new job, he recused himself for up to a year from any deliberations involving nine companies that are regulated by the FDA and "where a reasonable person would question my impartiality in the matter." Among them are Eli Lilly, Roche and Proctor & Gamble

Read the whole article here.

And just in: evidently Heckuva Job Brownie is still receiving the full FEMA salary.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 09:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Cindy Sheehan is a clown. There is no real anti-war movement."
Karl Rove

Yet an estimated 150,000 to 300,000 antiwar protestors stormed the streets of D.C. on Saturday. We were happy to be in attendence. As Steve Earle noted during a performance at the mall on Saturday, not only is there an antiwar movement, the desire to pull out of Iraq is slowly becoming mainstream.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (34)

Ever wondered what it looked like inside the McCarren Park pool in Williamsburg? Now's your chance to find out. Check out Agora while the weather is still nice. Click here for more info about Agora.

Also, as mentioned before (and apparently we are the only New York blog covering this) the antiwar rally and concert takes place in DC on Saturday. The free concert will feature:

3:50 PM - Wayne Kramer and the Bellrays
4:41 PM - Steve Earle
5:31 PM - The Coup
6:23 PM - Sweet Honey in the Rock
7:09 PM - The Evens (Ian from The Make-Up)
7:54 PM - Ted Leo+Pharmacists
8:50 PM - Head Roc
9:37 PM - Thievery Corporation
10:59 PM - Pure Belly Dance
11:27 PM - Bouncing Souls
12:12 AM - Le Tigre

Head on down if you can. The bus is 25 bucks.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

We don't know what's more bizarre, the fact that Hoff wants to rap or that Ice-T and Hoff are close friends. God help us if P.Diddy decides to join forces with Tony Danza. The last thing we need is another East Coast/West Coast rivalry.

[From Annanova]

Ice-T is to produce David Hasselhoff's first hip-hop album.

The pair are neighbours in Los Angeles and are said to have struck up a close friendship.

Hasselhoff has had some success as a singer, releasing seven albums. He's also said to be very popular in Germany.

Ice-T, who was one of the first real hip-hop stars in the late 1980s, said: "The man is a legend. And we are going to show a whole new side of him."

The rapper is said to be convinced that the 51-year-old for Knight Rider and Baywatch actor can take on the biggest names in rap, reports The Sun.

Ice-T added: "He's gonna come out as Hassle The Hoff - I promise you. The Hoff will surprise people with his rap skills and humour."

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

[image via Gawker click to enlarge]

This is from the National Enquirer, so of course it's probably not true, but we couldn't resist running it nonetheless:

Faced with the biggest crisis of his political life, President Bush has hit the bottle again, The National Enquirer can reveal.

Bush, who said he quit drinking the morning after his 40th birthday, has started boozing amid the Katrina catastrophe.

Family sources have told how the 59-year-old president was caught by First Lady Laura downing a shot of booze at their family ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he learned of the hurricane disaster.

His worried wife yelled at him: "Stop, George."

Following the shocking incident, disclosed here for the first time, Laura privately warned her husband against "falling off the wagon" and vowed to travel with him more often so that she can keep an eye on Dubya, the sources add.

"When the levees broke in New Orleans, it apparently made him reach for a shot," said one insider. "He poured himself a Texas-sized shot of straight whiskey and tossed it back. The First Lady was shocked and shouted: "Stop George!"

"Laura gave him an ultimatum before, 'It's Jim Beam or me.' She doesn't want to replay that nightmare — especially now when it's such tough going for her husband."

Bush is under the worst pressure of his two terms in office and his popularity is near an all-time low. The handling of the Katrina crisis and troop losses in Iraq have fueled public discontent and pushed Bush back to drink.

A Washington source said: "The sad fact is that he has been sneaking drinks for weeks now. Laura may have only just caught him — but the word is his drinking has been going on for a while in the capital. He's been in a pressure cooker for months.

"The war in Iraq, the loss of American lives, has deeply affected him. He takes every soldier's life personally. It has left him emotionally drained.

The result is he's taking drinks here and there, likely in private, to cope. "And now with the worst domestic crisis in his administration over Katrina, you pray his drinking doesn't go out of control."

Another source said: "I'm only surprised to hear that he hadn't taken a shot sooner. Before Katrina, he was at his wit's end. I've known him for years. He's been a good ol' Texas boy forever. George had a drinking problem for years that most professionals would say needed therapy. He doesn't believe in it [therapy], he never got it. He drank his way through his youth, through college and well into his thirties. Everyone's drinking around him."

Another source said: "A family member told me they fear George is 'falling apart.' The First Lady has been assigned the job of gatekeeper." Bush's history of drinking dates back to his youth. Speaking of his time as a young man in the National Guard, he has said: "One thing I remember, and I'm most proud of, is my drinking and partying. Those were the days my friends. Those were the good old days!"

Age 26 in 1972, he reportedly rounded off a night's boozing with his 16-year-old brother Marvin by challenging his father to a fight.

On November 1, 2000, on the eve of his first presidential election, Bush acknowledged that in 1976 he was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol near his parents' home in Maine. Age 30 at the time, Bush pleaded guilty and paid a $150 fine. His driving privileges were temporarily suspended in Maine.

"I'm not proud of that," he said. "I made some mistakes. I occasionally drank too much, and I did that night. I learned my lesson." In another interview around that time, he said: "Well, I don't think I had an addiction. You know it's hard for me to say. I've had friends who were, you know, very addicted... and they required hitting bottom (to start) going to AA. I don't think that was my case."

During his 2000 presidential campaign, there were also persistent questions about past cocaine use. Eventually Bush denied using cocaine after 1992, then quickly extended the cocaine-free period back to 1974, when he was 28.

Dr. Justin Frank, a Washington D.C. psychiatrist and author of Bush On The Couch: Inside The Mind Of The President, told The National Enquirer: "I do think that Bush is drinking again. Alcoholics who are not in any program, like the President, have a hard time when stress gets to be great.

"I think it's a concern that Bush disappears during times of stress. He spends so much time on his ranch. It's very frightening."

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A reminder that this Saturday there will be a huge march for peace in DC. It will be followed by a free concert featuring:

Ted Leo and The Pharmacists, Le Tigre, Bouncing Souls, Steve Earle, The Coup, The Bellrays, and many others on the Washington Monument grounds.

Strangely, none of the New York bloggers are covering this event thus far. Here's our two cents on political marches... they are generally not very effective since the media and right wingers portray participants as dirty, Lefty, nutjobs. Nevertheless, showing other nations that not everyone in this country approves of the Iraq war and George Bush is extremely important. The Bush administration wants to ignore and censor protest. What's more important than exercising free speech in these creepy times? Don't be a cynic, head on down if you can. Click here for more.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)

The First Amendment Project is hoping to raise some scratch for free speech via an Ebay auction. Winners get to have their names included in upcoming literary works by Stephen King, Rick Moody, Dorothy Allison, and many more. This sounded like a great idea until we read what the staggeringly pretentious Dave Eggers was offering.

[Via Gawker] The winner will be featured in a strange illustrated story I'm working on called The Journey of the Fishes Overland. The winner, or someone of her/his choosing, will be encountered by the traveling fish in question, as they travel over land. It could also be a family, a house, an address, whatever. I get to decide why the fishes see this person/place, and what’s said by/to or done by/to the person/place. This story will be finished and published in the fall. That name/s have to be tasteful and undisruptive to the narrative. I reserve the right to refuse using a name I find offensive.

Would it be an affront to free speech to bar The Journey of the Fishes Overland from being written? Check out the auction here. Sounds like a cool and creative way to raise money for a great cause.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 09:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll:
58% Disapprove Of Bush's Overall Performance
59% Call Iraq Invasion A Mistake
67% Dissaprove Of Bush's Handling Of Iraq War
41% Chance Christopher Hitchens admits he was wrong about the war and/or overdoses on pills

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 09:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sure, the incredibly talented — and, incidentally, incredibly nice — Anton Newcombe has a notoriously short fuse (see Dig!), but getting your van and equipment stolen is enough to piss anyone off. Give the band their shit back. We were hoping to see Brian Jonestown Massacre play an all acoustic show tonight at Pianos. Hopefully, the show will go on. More on the theft via Brooklyn Vegan. (We tried to catch BJM at Northsix for CMJ on Saturday, but when we arrived at the club at 1am some Wiccan, Black Sabbath obssessed band named Witch who was slotted before them was still setting up. We were too drunk to hang around and were afraid of Witch's drummer who looked like a cross between Garth Algar and a professionally certified chaotic evil D&D dungeon master with infinite hit points.)

Drunk fans love to heckle Anton, knowing he'll lash out. Warning: he may kill you if you heckle him Tuesday night if the show goes on as scheduled. In the mean time, be on the look out for these things on Ebay and in pawn shops.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Interview by Monte Holman

Giant Drag is slacker noise-pop duo with a propensity for shrugging satire. Annie Hardy plays the guitar, spread thick with effects pedals. She drawls the vocals with a permanent half-smile and half-shut eyes. Micah Calabrese plays drums, saving his left hand to ring out the synth bass lines. The final product is fuzzy pop in slow motion that doesn't take itself too seriously.

The duo just released their first LP, Hearts and Unicorns (Kickball Records). The songs on the record have a nice mix of low-fi warmth and polished production, which is evidenced in a huge wall of sound.

We chatted with Annie and Micah while they were here for CMJ. Things started off poorly when, a couple questions into the interview, the bouncers at Northsix kicked everyone out of the club to check for wristbands. Annie was starving, and the band had nearly rumbled with a sound guy the night before, so prospects for conversation looked shaky. Luckily, Annie and Micah have a sense of humor and are as friendly and upbeat as you'd imagine after hearing their record.

Stream Hearts and Unicorns here. Despite the band's ironic, self effacing name, it's a great debut. Check them out October 6 at Irving Plaza with Stellastar.

*****

FREEwilliamsburg: Some songs on Hearts and Unicorns, particularly "Cordial Invitation" have a certain My Bloody Valentineness to them, which is surprising coming from a band made up of two people. How do you translate that lush fullness live?

Micah: We turn up the delay pedal a little more. (laughs)

Annie: We don't really try to match the album. It's like the album and the live show are two different entities. Live, you get to establish a relationship with the people in the room.

FREEwilliamsburg: How do you try to establish that relationship?

Micah: Usually Annie's on the mic telling jokes.

FREEwilliamsburg: You've been playing together since 2002 - why'd it take so long to record your first full-length?

Micah: We were just sort of hanging out. We just became friends and were like let's just mess around and record some stuff, never intending to start a band or anything. Annie was like "I booked a show-let's go play it."

Annie: The time between our first show and when our record came out wasn't that long. A lot of bands take a lot longer….

FREEwilliamsburg: How did things with Kickball Records get started?

Annie: We had an EP out on Witchita in the UK and on a small indie in the US, and Wendy Hicks, whose label it is, her friends told her that she would really like us, and she heard our song on Indie 103, the radio station in LA. She said that she was driving and pulled over and listened to it and then tracked us down and signed us.

FREEwilliamsburg: Where did you record Hearts and Unicorns?

Annie: We did the drums at Paramount Studios, and we did the rest of it at this horrible makeshift studio in Downtown Rehearsal, which is like a big building full of rehearsal rooms where all the metal bands and mariachi bands and all the other horrible bands in Los Angeles practice. It was pretty rough every day. Our friends Louis and James from Dirty Little Secret, an L.A. band, helped us out, and we had some guest musicians come and tinker around.

FREEwilliamsburg: You have a video for "Kevin is Gay" - Is that something you initiated?

Annie: Our friend GJ did our first video for "This Isn't It." He always has a reason for us to make a video. The first one, it was like "Hey we want to make a video, kind of." And he was like "Well I'm trying to build up my reel," and he did our video for free. We said we'd pay him back if we ever got in the position where we'd have money to pay him. We are not in that position.

So he, again, paid for like three-quarters of the ["Kevin Is Gay"] video. This time, somebody was talking shit to him about his videos, so he was on a mission to make nice looking videos. He paid a lot of money and got some 16 mm cameras going on.

FREEwilliamsburg: What do you think about music videos in general?

Annie: I think they're cool. I've always liked music videos, growing up with MTV back before it was what it is today. It's always cool to have a visual. Not everybody can see you live. At the same time, most of our videos don't have that much live performance. The videos are kind of the only area where we can handle handing control over to somebody else. GJ comes up with the main idea and we riff off of each other.

FREEwilliamsburg: There's a definite cock-rock feel to a lot of your songs, particularly the song, forgive the pun, "My Dick Sux." As a guy-girl duo, do you consciously go into writing songs that play with gender perceptions?

Annie: Yeah, I've always been that way. I've always hung out with dudes. I've always had a mouth like a dude, sometimes a dirtier mouth than a dude. It's like I'm not setting out to do anything on purpose - it's just a part of who I am, my sense of humor and everything else.

FREEwilliamsburg: A lot of people have compared you to Nirvana, and you have a lot of sarcastic, politically-incorrect lyrics. Maybe that's where the comparison stems from?

Annie: I've gotten myself in trouble a lot with that, but I'm only kidding. I'm not too serious that often unless I'm angry, usually. But even then I'll still keep a little sarcasm.

FREEwilliamsburg: SXSW went over really well for you guys, and you've played CMJ before and are here this week again for it. Is there any added pressure playing at these industry festivals, or is it just fun like any other show?

Annie: It's not fun. (laughs) These shows are going horribly, and I want to go home. Last night, I threw confetti…

Micah: Which we were asked to do…

Annie: Yeah, Frankie, the guy running the show, said, "Hey, you wanna throw this confetti from the stage?" And I was like "Whatever, I like confetti," so at one point, it was like "Confetti party!" and I threw it. It went on the monitors, which couldn't have done any harm. The sound guys came during our second song and took ALL the monitors off the stage and we couldn't hear anything. It sounded bad before that, but…they started fucking with our sound. Afterwards, at the end of the show, I was like "Fuck this, I'm out!" And I threw the mic, and it went off the stage and landed on the cement. And then the sound guy yelled at Micah, who did absolutely nothing at all.

Micah: He lost his shit at me! He was too afraid to yell at a girl.

Annie: Kick him in the nuts - don't step to me, sound-guy-bitch.

Micah: We'd kick his ass.

FREEwilliamsburg: Hopefully it'll be better tonight. The sound guy here at North Six is nice, and he does a great job with the house sound. I haven't heard the stage mix.

Micah: This show hopefully will turn our luck.

Annie: We've been having bad luck, in general, since we got here. Our hotel - it's an art-deco hotel in Times Square, that's the first bad part (laughter). The second bad part is that there's a shower right in the middle of the room. THE shower.

Micah: No curtain, no sliding door - just the shower!

Annie: No nothing! It's like "we're just friends, we don't need to see that." C'mon. That's something they should tell people. It's like $200 a night or something.

FREEwilliamsburg: As a fairly new band to most people, you're going to be bombarded with comparisons. Have any that you've heard struck you as being particularly interesting?

Micah: Oh, there was that David Lee Roth one. (laughs).

Annie: Not about the music.

Micah: Yeah, it was more about her stage presence.

Annie: They said I have David Lee Roth stage power. And somebody else said I was the…what's that guy's name? That comedian?

Micah: Don Rickles?

Annie: The Don Rickles of indie rock. And the Beach Boys comparison…

Micah: Probably just because we did a cover once before we were even a band.

Annie: I don't believe in these comparisons. I just saw that someone compared us to Veruca Salt a couple times and was just like, they're pouring Veruca Salt in my wounds!! (laughs) Get outa here with that! It's insulting.

FREEwilliamsburg: Have you been able to meet any of your heroes in this experience of being in a band together?

Annie: I didn't get to meet her, but when we were recording our EP, I walked back to go to the bathroom, and Stevie Nix was standing in the hallway talking about how she has menopause. And when I walked further down the hall, Mick Fleetwood was standing underneath a picture of himself from the 70s, talking on his cell phone. That was pretty cool.

FREEwilliamsburg: What was the first concert you ever went to, Micah?

Micah: The first thing I ever went to was a Steppenwolf concert.

FREEwilliamsburg: That's a good one!

Micah: Yeah, it was awesome. I was ten, I think, and it was a free concert in the park for KLOS or something.

FREEwilliamsburg: What was the crowd like?

Micah: It was a bunch of old hippies, or people that used to be hippies. Including my dad, who brought me out there. It was fun-it was great. That was back when they actually used real organs, real B3s, rather than digital keyboards.

FREEwilliamsburg: Annie?

Annie: Unfortunately, the Steve Miller Band. (Micah laughs)

FREEwilliamsburg: What's unfortunate about that, come on?

Annie: I was probably at an age where it was unforgivable to go to see the Steve Miller Band.

FREEwilliamsburg: How old were you?

Annie: I think I was like 15. I went with my friend. I was in boarding school, though, and I missed that time where my parents would've let me start going to shows. Then my first SHOW ever was the Angry Samoans at the Troubadour.

FREEwilliamsburg: Well I'm glad you admitted the Steve Miller thing to us.

Annie: Well I'm not gonna lie. "Keep On Rocking Me, Baby." I liked that song. I was a hippie for a little while. Well, my parents raised me like a stupid, fucking…hippie.

Micah: Yeah, Annie-Summer.

Annie: My real name is Annie-Summer. A hyphenated first name.

FREEwilliamsburg: When did you drop it?

Annie: I never kept it. (laughs) My dad's the only one who calls me that.

FREEwilliamsburg: So what's next after these CMJ shows?

Annie: We're going on a small East Coast tour with Stellastar, and then…

Micah: From there onto the UK.

FREEwilliamsburg: You're on a label over there as well?

Micah: Not quite yet…

Annie: I don't know what's really going on, but we're gonna have a single that's getting put out with some unreleased tracks, kind of unrecorded. They're live tracks from this session we did. They're new songs. I'm already sick of the ones on the albums.

FREEwilliamsburg: You've played over there before, right?

Annie: He didn't. He had quit the band for a while.

FREEwilliamsburg: I heard about that- you quit, but now you're back because you signed your soul away to Annie or something?

Micah: Yeah, I'm a slave.

Annie: Now he gets to quit his job.

Micah: Yeah, I get to quit my job. She purchased my soul from my employer. (laughs)

******

Giant Drag Website: Click Here
Myspace fan page: Click Here
Live Dates:
10.04.05 Philadelphia, PA (The T.L.A)
10.05.05 Washington, DC (9:30 Club)
10.06.05 New York, NY (Irving Plaza)
10.07.05 Boston, MA (The Paradise)

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 06:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

This rules.

[via Catch.com]

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 01:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

There are a ton of them coming soon. Here are some highlights:

This Sunday, September 18, Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, Ted Leo & Pharmacists, Jesse Malin, Debbie Harry, Joseph Arthur, Butch Walker and Marah headline Mojo Aid benefit at Irving Plaza.

Tuesday September 20 -The Vision Festival featuring Matthew Shipp, Yo La Tengo, Jazz Passengers with Deborah Harry and Elvis Costello, William Parker and dozens of jazz greats

Brooklyn Responds, Sep 21 and 25 at Southpaw. Two nights of music featuring The Wrens, Radio 4, The Cloud Room, Pela,Au Revoir Simone, Domino and many more.

And tonight at Club Exit, Todd P presents Japanther, Bad Wizard, Love as Laughter, Two Gallants and many more. Click here for info.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

LA band Goldspot is in town for CMJ tonight

Our friends at OneLouder introduced us to Goldspot. They rule. You can listen to them on their myspace page here. And while everyone else is at the overated, melodramatic Arcade Fire show tonight, check Goldspot out at Pianos at 8:30. We plan on swinging by right after the New Pornographers show at the Bowery. The NPs new record isn't that exciting (despite what the typically braindead Pitchfork has to say about it), but they usually play lots of shit from their masterpiece, Mass Romantic. Plus Neko Case is hot.

As a nightcap, we highly recommend seeing Of Montreal at The Knitting Factory. The don't come on until 1am, but are one of the best live acts we've seen. Ever. And their new record is one of the best this year.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

U.S. President George W. Bush writes a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York [From Reuters]

This pretty much sums up his presidency.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 09:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

CMJ begins tonight and one of our favorites, the publicity-challenged Ox, is playing The Knitting Factory at 7:30. He's huge in Canada. His originally self-released alt country ode to America, Dust Bowl Revival, debuted at #1 on the Canadian college radio charts. We're usually suspicious of everything Canadian, but Ox (aka Mark Browning and his band) is the real deal. His hauntingly beautiful debut is one of our favorites this year. Check out these MP3's L.A. City , Carolina then be sure to catch him live if you can.

1. Why Ox?

KISS was taken. Honestly, it was a magic type of thing- the name just came to me one day and it resonated right... at the time I was very much a solo singer/songwriter type and I recognized that I wasn't ready for the name so, over time I grew into it. With the Dust Bowl Revival album I knew it was Ox.

2. As a Canadian, why'd you decide to record an album about the American heartland?

The record isn't really about the American heartland... it's about America- but a twisted reflected variation of it- as in, the image of America through glass- a windshield even... the glass is the border and I'm Canadian. It's about the 70's- skateboards and banana seat bikes, summertime romance that doesnt go anywhere... the hot highway and fast cars that guzzle fuel.

3. You're a rock star in Canada. Any thoughts on why you're yet to find a major American audience?

I'm patient and I don't really care. I just do what I do and sometimes people like it- sometimes they really hate it. Hopefully, nothing in between.

4. We're always curious to know people's first concerts. What was yours?

I did a festival gig at the Northern Lights Festival in Sudbury, Ontario- my hometown. I was 16. I can't remember the show at all and later that night I threw up in bed from the stress. I was way freaked out. Since then, I've never really been nervous again.

5. What's your most cherished record? Most embarassing?

cherished: JULIAN COPE, peggy suicide
embarassing: REO SPEEDWAGON, hi-infidelity

6. Have you ever driven a Trans Am?

My mom used to drive one. She sold it when I was 13 and bought a fucking Honda Civic.

7. Anyone you strongly admire? Anyone you hate?

I don't really like 'people'. It's more about the things that people 'do'. I like Julian Cope a whole lot cause he's manic and driven and crazy- and that's reflected in everything he does. I like P.T. Anderson (the director). I admire my bandmates cause we're a family. I guess I hate Madonna.

8. Has your music ever gotten you any action?

Of course.

9. Canada or America?

If it's for cigarettes and movies- America. if it's for donuts and moosemeat- Canada.

10. What's next? Any plans on an American tour?

I'm touring the USA in November. Next month we're finishing the new Ox album which will be a double- and released possibly next summer.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 04:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An interview with the dreamy one, Taylor Hanson
by Monte Holman

The eyebrows are back! Former boy sensations, Hanson, are storming the music industry with the passion of proselytizers for the cause of independent music. A struggle to survive in the pick-of-the-day major label system in which bands are discarded like non-recyclable take-out boxes drove Hanson to drop Geffen and start their own label. They now fervently preach the Good News of independence.

But their Starbuckian jargon sounds awfully suspicious. Discussing the band using terms like entrepreneurship, brands, markets and models seems to transplant the evil concerns of the big labels into a new setting. An increasing familiar setting in which indie bands capitalize off the OC and Target.

Thing is, Hanson are likable kids, er, young adults, who obviously love music but grew up under the thumbs of soul-sucking record execs. It's impossible to stoop to the usual cynicism directed toward commercial bands when these three brothers are trying so earnestly to do something about it. Like really earnestly, man. So their upcoming album, The Best of Hanson, Live and Electric (3CG), may not be your cup of tea. But I'll be damned if you could talk shit about these guys after hearing them out for a few minutes.

We were recently offered the opportunity to speak with Taylor. The dreamy one. How could we refuse? Via phone, Taylor explained the band's philosophy, which when his awkward industry lingo was boiled away, amounted to keeping two things sacred: the music and the fans.

Hanson is Isaac, Taylor and Zac Hanson.

FREEwilliamsburg: The title of the new record is The Best of Hanson, Live and Electric. Why go with a "best of" at this point? What spurred the desire to put out a live album?

Taylor: It's become really trendy to put out a "greatest hits" or "best of" too early. It's spawned by a major label idea to try to put out hits. But for us, it's more about the "live and electric" part. And it's a "best of" because when you play shows and you've been a band for like 13 years and have released multiple albums, you've got a certain amount of songs that are the best of songs, the ones people know and react to live. It's not as much a greatest hits package as a reinterpretation of what we've done for the last decade or so. It's about framing who we've always been.

FREEwilliamsburg: You include a Radiohead cover and a U2 cover. Why those particular bands and why do covers at all on this sort of album?

Taylor: It's a representation of some of our influences. U2 probably more than Radiohead. U2 is such an icon right now. There are so few great bands. They're one of the greats right now-they are dishing it out. They're a real inspiration to us just as a band who's had such an arc in their career. I love that song ["In A Little While," from All That You Can't Leave Behind]. With Radiohead, that song ["Optimistic", from Kid A] is a seismic song. We started off almost every show the last two years on tour for Underneath with it. We wanted to start things off with a sort of brace-yourself, larger-than-life, electric feeling. That song is really dynamic, and it does that for people. It's really unexpected for someone listening to a Hanson album, and also it's really a lot more of an example of who this band is in a sense of its versatility, pushing yourself and always throwing something in there that's in the realm of what seems like what you'd expect to get.

FREEwilliamsburg: As evidenced by the songs on the live album, there seems to be a progression from an R&B influence when you guys first started out to straight up rock and roll in more recent songs. Is that something you've consciously moved toward, or did it come naturally?

Taylor: You have a natural meeting of the minds as you make each record. You're right - with that first record, where we came from, the biggest inspiration was old R&B. Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding, stuff like the Eisley Brothers-great classic R&B. And old rock and roll, you know, Elvis and the Beatles. You see that a lot more on the first record, and on the second record there were more rootsy songs like "This Time Around." And then Underneath becomes more straight-up rock influenced by more alt-country and mellower bands like Travis, like Jayhawks. Those are some of the things that leaked into the writing process on the last album. A natural evolution happened.

But what Live and Electric does is ties all that together and says, "bands change as they should, and they're all one."

I love going to shows, and I don't want to hear the same song like 30 times. I want to go through an experience, I want to go up and down, I want to rock a little bit, I want to pull my lighter up a little bit, and jump around a little bit. That's what we tried to do with this record, to create what you feel at a show.

FREEwilliamsburg: A lot of talk around you guys is the move toward independence. For a band who's had a lot of success and sold a lot of records within the major-label system, why decide to go indie?

Taylor: What you've got to remember is that the old label system, or the major-label system, used to be a lot closer to what the indie-label system is now. When we came out, it was sort of the last breath of the real major record companies. When the record companies still operated much closer to an indie in a sense that you had people that were running labels that had been there a long time, more artist-relations people, more thinking, real investment in brands.

What's happened over the last five to eight years is this dramatic shift of consolidation, corporate turnovers and a lot of labels hiring a lot more accountants than people that know music. It's actually a lot like us saying we want to stay on the same path we started with, which is to work with people that believe in their fans and in long-term and a career and not alter that because we're afraid of leaving a major label and go on a system which has become more about stock prices. The attention span is so short. People don't realize who this band is always been because we're so young, and it's hard to get over that stigma of "wow, they're so young." But we've always been really hands-on, almost too hands-on where people are like "dude, you don't have to be involved in everything.

That level of passion is the way we operated from the beginning. As we began to clash with this system that was changing and becoming more and more corporate and more removed from music and from the music we make, we were like "look, this isn't the way records should be made, and this isn't the way careers should be made."

FREEwilliamsburg: What has the response been from peers, other musicians, to your move toward being independent?

Taylor: It's been really awesome, actually. For me, those relationships are really important. In the pop-rock genre, especially all the whiteys have really missed the idea of communities, have really overlooked the idea of sharing and creating a movement, a wave, and working with one another. In rap and R&B, there's a real connection from one artist to another. Especially since we started the label, the band has become more passionate about the importance of building those relationships with other artists. For instance, on Underneath, Michelle Branch-she's a friend-sings on the record. Sam Farrar, who's the bass player in Phantom Planet, plays on the record. Matthew Sweet, we wrote with Matthew on the record. Greg Alexander from the New Radicals, who used to be in the New Radicals, is on the record.

Those are different artists doing different things, and an extension of that is something I think is really important. It's like if you don't have artists who are looking at one another and realizing they're part of a greater whole, and nitpicking over this insular vibe, then you can't exhibit the sense of a movement or the sense of excitement with your fans. They feed off of that energy, of a passion between other artists.

FREEwilliamsburg: You guys are about to go to a lot of campuses as a part of your upcoming tour to not only play shows, but also to discuss the current state of the music industry with college students and to show a documentary about the band.

Taylor: The documentary-we produced it, but a guy named Ashley Grayson, who's a first-time director but somebody we've known for a long time, directed it, and he really had a passion for trying to capture the story of making the last album [Underneath]. It became a story of the political struggle and eventually of us leaving the label and starting out on our own. It was interesting because it unfolded. We felt rather than taking it to film festivals and doing with it what you'd normally do with a documentary, we wanted to use it as a tool. So in conjunction with playing these shows, we said to ourselves, "look, universities are the places where this is applicable. These are the places where we can bring this to people."

The story is we're one band of many bands who've been in this situation of being caught in this kind of swirling corporate problem. We chose to do one thing. Not every band has chosen to do that. Wilco chose to go to another label within their same chain. People like Taking Back Sunday, Death Cab for Cutie have gone from majors to indies, and some have gone from indies back to majors. To use that as a discussion point, to say to people that are our peers, "hey, we're entrepreneurs, we're musicians, and we're your peers."

We're touring with the Pat McGee Band, and we're setting up contests where local bands in each market submit their music and get voted on through the college radio station and through our website to be the opening act on all these shows. That local band that gets elected, in addition to the Pat McGee band and ourselves, we are all going to be visiting the universities ahead of the screenings and going to the radio stations and to the newspapers and sitting down and talking about music and about the importance of creating a better community between artists and fans and why it's a really crucial time now, where college students and music fans can have a real impact in shaping whether independent music takes hold of a bigger piece of the pie or whether it dies.

FREEwilliamsburg: You've started your own label, 3CG. Are you looking to grow the label and include more bands?

Taylor: We would love to be able to release other artists. I'd be lying if I said that wasn't one of our goals. But we don't want to take on other bands just because it's cool that we suddenly have a label. We don't want to just take people on without being able to do what we'd want to be able to do for other bands. Coming from the artist's perspective, you don't want to take on things you can't really promote like you should. We're taking it slow. We're wondering, "how can we figure out whatever the new model is?" or things that we can do better as a label, or look at the way technology is becoming a part of music, things that we've learned in the first couple years of having the record company, figuring out how we can supply a service that's gonna help promote all the things that we care about, not just get overzealous about signing a bunch of people. That sucks for artists and for labels.

FREEwilliamsburg: How do you find the time for all this? Are you in school? What's your scheduling like?

Taylor: (laughs) I'm 22, I could be in school. In a perfect world, things like studying other aspects would be totally awesome, but yeah, there is no time. (laughs) We're pretty crazed, trying to do these things-these are very real things, trying to set up this contest to enable opening bands, the documentary getting made, and a tour that is not just a tour, but something that involves a lot of legwork. It's valuable to us. We don't really care that there's work. We'd much rather work hard and crazy for something we thought was a great idea.

FREEwilliamsburg: So it's the School of Hard Knocks?

Taylor: School of Hard Knox? Yeah, sure. (laughs) I guess that's just the way we like it. That's why we've gone out there and have done the things we've done.

FREEwilliamsburg: Do you record at home?

We've used a ton of studios, but we have our own studio. I remember talking with Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas-on our last album we got to know him a little bit out at his studio-he was joking that he doesn't buy cars and bling. He buys studio gear. (laughs) We're kind of like that because from the very beginning we were like "wow, we've had success, let's go get a console, let's go get some old keyboards." You can just use those things forever.

FREEwilliamsburg: You're veterans of the music scene now. You've played a billion shows. What was the first concert you ever went to?

Taylor: It was probably live gospel music or some local music from where we grew up, friends in bands at that time, people that were dramatically older than we were at that time, people that we had developed friendships because we were starting to play music. Couple different local bands from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

FREEwilliamsburg: Do you guys still get a lot of flack for being a kid band?

Taylor: It's always hard when you make a strong impression, any kind of impression, a good one you're proud of or one that has been misconstrued, only because whatever that impression is, good or bad, it's clear. We've never focused on trying to dispel or make anything known on the defense. We've always played offense. We've always said "sure, ok, you think we're this, or you think we're this-well THIS is what we are." I'm really proud of what we've done, and I feel like you should never be satisfied that you've done it, that you've achieved the goal of making sure everybody knows what you are. I think you're always, quote-unquote, re-imaging yourself because you're never the same. If we're a kid band or teen band or twenties band or thirties band, there'll always be the question of "what are you now?" We're continuing to say "this is what we are now."

FREEwilliamsburg: After this tour, what's next?

Taylor: We're excited about going to schools and showing the documentary, so there's talk of doing another leg of touring this spring, but our focus is completely on writing and recording for the next studio record. The next full-length studio record is going to come out early to mid next year.

We wrote a ton of songs that weren't even on Underneath. So much writing has gone on over the last five years. But we're really pumped about what we're going to do on the next studio record. In a way, I guess Live and Electric is setting the stage for it. It's taking everything we've done touring for Underneath and the music we've done before that and bringing it to a head, showcasing what the band's been up to. It's going to be a matter of "will we have time to get back to finishing another record?" It won't be long. We won't be strangers.

The Best of Hanson: Live and Electric hits the shelves October 11. Check out the tour dates at www.hanson.net.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (66)

First Bush says no one knew the levees could break, despite countless documented warnings. Then he claims that his underqualified appointee Brownie did a heckuva job. Next, his wife refers to Katrina as Corrina. Now, it becomes clear that no one told him that Brownie resigned:

Q. Can you tell us, have you accepted the resignation of Michael Brown, or have you heard about it?

THE PRESIDENT: I haven't -- no, I have not talked to Michael Brown -- or Mike Chertoff; that's who I'd talk to. As you know, I've been working. And when I get on Air Force One, I will call back to Washington. But I've been on the move.

Q. Our understanding is he has resigned, he's made a statement. Would that be appropriate --

THE PRESIDENT: I haven't talked to Mike Chertoff yet, and that's what I intend to do when I get on the plane. You know, I -- you probably -- maybe you know something I don't know, but as you know, we've been working, and I haven't had a chance to get on the phone. [Via Wonkette]

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Interview by Monte Holman

Of Montreal has been putting out smart records since 1997, beginning with Cherry Peel (Bar/None) and prolifically progressing to their latest effort, The Sunlandic Twins (Polyvinyl). Spinning out of the Athens-based Elephant 6 collective, Kevin Barnes has consistently, and constantly, produced sprightly and imaginative recordings.

The Sunlandic Twins is no exception. It takes liberties with traditional song structure and retains a home-recording aesthetic, but this album reels in many of the experimental tangents older songs floated away on. It's tight and danceable, more accessible to the ass-shakers. After bird shit on my shoulder while I was waiting outside the club for the interview with Kevin (he said it was good luck), we sat down and talked about the band.

Go see Of Montreal on this tour if you have the chance. Hands-down the best show we've seen this year. Check out the remaining tour dates at www.ofmontreal.net. Their new record is one of the best of the year.

Check out some of their MP3's here:
from The Sunlandic Twins
Requiem For O.M.M.2
Wraith Pinned To The Mist (and other games)

FREEwilliamsburg: The first time I heard the record, I wanted to turn on the Wizard of Oz without the sound and use The Sunlandic Twins as the soundtrack. Did you go into this album thinking, "this one's going to be cinematic"?

Kevin: I think so. To some degree, that's a goal in all our records, for it to be very visual. I think it'd be great if we found someone who understood what we were doing musically and had a really distinct style, visually, to take the record and make a movie out of it, whether it be animated or live-action stuff. I think it would be a great experience if you could have it on and just listen to the music or turn on the TV and watch the visuals.

FREEwilliamsburg: I love the video the Kangaroo Alliance did for "Wraith Pinned to the Mist."

Yeah, I love it too.

FREEwilliamsburg: It's playful but sort of darkly so, which is another thing I noticed on the record-there's a sort of Shel Silverstein underbelly to an apparent theme of youth.

Kevin: With this one, our influences are a little older-the early records were very gleeful and very childlike and naïve and innocent and sweet. But as I'm growing older, it's becoming impossible not to be influenced by the world. That's sort of filtering through as I'm maturing or whatever.

FREEwilliamsburg: Like you feel like you're becoming a cynic?

Kevin: I'm actually coming through it, I think. I went through a phase of pretty heavy cynicism, but it never really found its way into my music because I feel like the music should be an elevation. It shouldn't become muddled by social diseases you pick up. So I always approach it like escapism. Like this is the personality I wish I had.

FREEwilliamsburg: That comes through, especially in Sunlandic Twins. Lots of make believe. With sharp teeth.

Kevin: (laughs) Right.

FREEwilliamsburg: I read that children like Of Montreal. Do you hear that a lot?

Kevin: It's pretty friendly music. It's not the kind of music where kids are going to be like, "Ew, adults are scary." (laughs) Musically, it's very buoyant, very colorful, and I think kids can identify with that.

FREEwilliamsburg: Your brother, David, who does all the artwork for the band, has a great website (www.thebeewithwheels.com) that you can link to off the Of Montreal site (www.ofmontreal.net)-are you all involved with his site, and is he also involved with the band?

Kevin: The site's totally his thing. And with the band, he's kind of an objective ear. We'll play him something and he'll say, "oh that's cool" or "you should change this or that." He's always there in the creative process, but he doesn't actually play an instrument. He doesn't add any actual music, but he adds these sort of abstract things like, "well, that doesn't really sound right-maybe add a little more, like, lava!" (laughs) And we're like, ok, lava-what would that be?

FREEwilliamsburg: Was creativity encouraged as you and your brother grew up?

Kevin: It's funny because neither of my parents were very artistic, and neither really are my sisters. I have two older sisters. So my brother and I just sort of stumbled upon it and really got excited about art and made it our lives' focus. You can't really trace it back to any specific person. It just happened. We were definitely nurtured in that way, like my dad bought me musical instruments and encouraged me and let me practice my drums in the house.

FREEwilliamsburg: At one point the whole band was living together in the country-how was that?

Kevin: For a brief period, it was wonderful. (laughs) After a while it was just like...too much time together. We were touring together and living together and hanging out together. Living out in the country like that, it's a pain in the ass just to leave the house. You end up spending way more time at home than you would normally. Also, lines were blurred-like people's rolls became confused. Everything was sort of muddled up a bit.

FREEwilliamsburg: Sunlandic Twins was mostly written by you-was it more of a group project back then, when you were all under the same roof?

Kevin: Back then, it was very collaborative. Coquelicot and Aldhil's Arboretum were the two band records that we did where everyone actually contributed a fairly equal amount.

FREEwilliamsburg: Do you see things coming back around, or do you like the way it works now with you as the primary writer?

Kevin: We did the last few records pretty much the same way, just sort of layering parts on top of each other, filling it out. But we did a couple recordings together, a 7-inch where every member of the band threw in their own part, and it was fun. It was the first time we'd done that in years. I could see us doing that again, to some extent, probably not a whole record.

FREEwilliamsburg: Do you record in Athens?

Kevin: We've always recorded at home. We've always recorded, engineered, mixed, produced, all that stuff, by ourselves. That explains the super lo-fi sound of our records. (laughs) Because we don't know, really, what we're doing. But it's fun to do it that way because you have total creative control-no timeline, really.

FREEwilliamsburg: Do you have a preference between recording to tape or doing it digitally?

Kevin: I always used tape until Sunlandic Twins. I only used tape on one song. Everything was on my computer. That was the first time, sort of an experiment. I used to be an analog enthusiast who thought anything digital would just be gross, but then I realized the potential of working in the digital world. You can do so many creative things.

FREEwilliamsburg: You guys are into media and on-tour extras like skits, videos, etc. Are those additives as important as the songs themselves? Like when you're writing the songs, are you also thinking of the possibilities the songs will have with other forms of media?

Kevin: Almost always, I write the song for the song. When we go on tour, we think "what can we do to make this tour special? What can we do to make it visually stimulating as well?"

FREEwilliamsburg: You tour extensively-how do you keep it fresh?

Kevin: The music we're making right now doesn't require too much brain power. (laughs) It's less intellectual. Kind of funkier music, dance music. It's more visceral. It's more fun. It's like being at a dance party every night. Plus, it's really exciting because the response from the audience has been so great. It's so encouraging. It's been amazing-doing such great numbers in places we've never touched upon. We used to be very lucky to have 80 people, and now it's like 480 people.

FREEwilliamsburg: Tonight, for instance, is sold-out (at North 6).

Kevin: Yeah, it's a new development for us. We were laboring away for years and years, (laughs) and no one seemed to give a shit. It's building up in this really cool way, and it's exciting because we feel like we're connecting with the audience more, and they're connecting with the music more.

FREEwilliamsburg: Have the label folks (Polyvinyl) played a part in that?

Kevin: I think the record label has playe