65 news

Two shows in and it’s the day of the first 65daysofstatic headline show, in Hoboken. Whenever we tell people in America that, they say, ‘Yeah! The home of Frank Sinatra!’ and in my head I reply ‘But surely it’s more popular for being mentioned in the title of an incredible Yo La Tengo song?’ but don’t say it out loud because I don’t want to be proved wrong. It’s a really good song.

Frank Sinatra is excellent in The Manchurian Candidate, especially when he does some martial arts. On the other hand, he is also indirectly responsible for Ocean’s 12. Not to be trusted then.

Simon has broken an already impressive 65 record by breaking his brand new, fresh-out-the-box, $1600 Ampeg Bass Head after one show. ONE SHOW. We are driving round various Guitar Centers right now looking for a replacement. In the last one, Rob and Paul found some synths and became an admirable approximation of Daft Punk, Joe talked to a girl about delay pedals and tried out some kinda geeky guitar/fx combo and made a sound like all the dinosaurs that ever existed coming back to life at the same time. Simon, meanwhile, failed to get a new bass head of any description as the one they had in the store was ‘already’ broken. But none of us saw the amp prior to Si trying it out. Our plan in the next guitar shop (or store as they’re known over here) is to walk in and say ‘Hi, can you direct us to your broken amps section’.

The Guitar Center was next to a Chuck E Cheese. What’s a Chuck E Cheese? Chuck E Cheese is a giant mouse from space. Thumbs up.

Tonight we are playing with God Fires Man who are some members of Gay For Johnny Depp who we just finished touring with, so we’re hoping that they’ll help us out of this tightest of spots. (Last night, incidentally, the glorious Simon Gallup of The Cure came to our rescue with his spare amp. When Joe explained this to the crowd, the amp got a much bigger cheer than any of our songs did).

Everyone in American arenas has to sit down. This is an awful thing and I am suprised that there hasn’t been a revolution. It is because the venues/promoters can make more money selling seated space than standing space, apparently. Real shame…

So far, our soundchecks have been taken up mostly with fixing things and we’re playing on different gear to the stuff we normally use so if anyone saw us at any of these shows and thought we were shocking, that’s the story we’re sticking to.

Yesterday in Philidelphia there was a giant, rusting ship that looked like that bit in Ghostbusters 2 where the Ghost Ship Titanic pulls into port. And also a great little independent music store somewhere in Chinatown that sold me a power supply for a midi interface and the guy who helped me had heard of 65daysofstatic. Which was exciting. Joe’s looking tired.

Me: ‘Joe, why are you looking so tired?’
Joe: ‘I don’t know. Why?’
Me: ‘Is it cos you’re drinking too much?’
Rob: ‘It’s cos you’re drinking too much’.
Joe: ‘Fucking right’.

Arty from God Fires Man just called. They have an amp.
We’re winning.
Onwards…
65.x

Take a deep breath.
And carry on.

The Dance Parties tour (fueled by gin and hot sauce) was exhausting and spectacular in all the right ways. Thanks to you all for braving the confused spring time and stumbling show-wards. Thanks to Errors, Gay For Johnny Depp, Pilgrim Fathers & Dark Captain Light Captain for keeping us on our toes and finding adventures for us.

After the UK shows we did a quick-stop tour of the continent. In Paris we had to push our backline down a street that was too narrow to drive down and Holy Fuck opened for us, which makes little sense because they’re a lot more famous than us. And they were fucking great as well. Then there was Atlantis, Oceansize, Transit, Shutter providing the decibels… Our clumsy electronica made on broken computers held its own, our battered amps continued to make noise… We freaked out only once in Nottingham when everything stopped but made up for it by staying out late and drinking heavily…We danced to The Cure in a Leeds nightclub which breaks pretty much every rule in the 65 book…Done and done. We have a couple of festivals once we get home but the truth is summer dates are pretty thin on the ground. Nobody wants hard-to-catagorise-instrumental-almost-dance-music on their bills, it would seem.

Now we’re in America on our bus - home for the next seven weeks - which is nicer than any house we have ever lived in. There are mirrors on the roof and two televisions the size of the holes in the ozone layer we’re probably making every couple of minutes. What an extraordinary peril that paralyses our lifetimes, huh? Our driver is called Patrick and the stereo works and is playing American/New York-themed songs in honour of our arrival in the city that is too-cool-for-us. The 65daysofstatic Have Been Up For Hours & Need to Find Food & Alcohol Playlist is as follows:

1. Tom Petty - American Girl
2. LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum
3. RFTC - Born in ‘69
4. Lou Reed - NYC Man
5. Interpol - NYC
6. Jimi Hendrix - Crosstown Traffic
7. Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American
8. Johnny Cash - I Won’t Back Down
9. Billy Joel - New York State of Mind
10. Blood Brothers - USA Nails
11. Atombombpocketknife - America the Great
12. The Doors - Light My Fire
13. Elliot Smith - Sweet Adeline
14. Gay For Johnny Depp - Lights Out!
15. Leonard Cohen - Take This Waltz

Then we ran out of energy so now Patti Smith is playing.

This bus is supposed to have Wifi, because in this country you’re nobody if you can’t update your facebook status to ‘Is Spotting Sopranos Landmarks’ when you’re headed down the New Jersey Turnpike. Except right now it’s broken. So we’ll post this from the dressing room of the Patriot Center tomorrow, while we pick up our gear and see if it works and get freaked out about the size of the stages all over again.

Oh right - we’re in America because we are supporting The Cure on the American leg of their tour. The first show is tomorrow in Fairfax. We have also weaved our first ever headline tour into the fabric of this one on the days off (and sometimes the same day) which is equally exciting and should lead to all sorts of confusions. Below they are separated, for ease of understanding. If you colour (or color, seen as how we’re Americans now) the 65 headline shows in green and the Cure shows in red and then look at them through a pair of 3D glasses, then you will be disappointed when nothing cool happens.

See you on the road, Ameri-kids!
65.x

HEADLINE SHOWS:

May 2008
11th: Hoboken NJ, Maxwells
17th: Chicago IL, Subterranean
18th: St Louis MO, 2 Cents Plain
22nd: Englewood CO, The Falcon
23rd: E Center, Salt Lake City24th: Boise ID, The Venue

June 2008
2nd: Anaheim CA, Chain Reaction
4th: Phoenix AZ, Modified Arts
7th: San Antonio TX, Rock Bottom
8th: Austin TX, Emos
12th: Orlando FL, The Social
14th: Gainsville FL, The Atlantic
15th: Duluth GA, Gwinnett Civic & Cultural Center
19th: New York City NY, Mercury Lounge

CURE SUPPORT SHOWS:

May 2008
9th: Patriot Center, Washington DC
10th: Wachovia Spectrum, Philidelphia
12th: Agganis Arena, Boston
14th: Bell Centre, Montreal
15th: Air Canada Centre, Toronto
17th: Allstate Arena, Chicago
19th: Starlight Theatre, Kansas City
21st: Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Denver
25th: George WA, The Gorge Amphitheater (The Sasquatch Festival)
26th: General Motors Place, Vancouver
28th: San Jose CA, HP Pavillion
29th Santa Barbara Bowl, Santa Barbara
31st: Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles

June 2008
1st: Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles
3rd: Cox Arena, San Diego
4th: Dodge Theatre, Phoenix
6th: American Airlines Center, Dallas
8th: Austin Music Hall, Austin
9th: Toyota Center, Houston
11th: St Pete Times Forum, Tampa
13th: Bank Atlantic Center, Fort Lauderdale
15th: Gwinnett Center, Atlanta
16th: Charlotte Bobcats Arena, Charlotte
18th: Wolstein Center at Cleveland State University, Cleveland
20th: Madison Square Gardens, New York City
21st: Radio City Hall, New York City

Now.
Nostalgia is a dangerous thing. So let’s just say that touring with The Cure was an INCREDIBLE experience and thanks to them for making it happen, to the 65 fans who braved the arenas to come and shout their support in our direction and to the many, many Cure fans who had never heard of us but put up with our confused noises echoing around them. We’re looking forward to doing it all over again in America & Canada in a couple of months time.

Right now though, we are all about the brand new 65daysofstatic single. It’s coming out on the indefatigable Monotreme Records on the 7th April. You can stream it RIGHT NOW on that player above and remix it with your mouse right here: 65daysofstatic.com/danceparties. Make sure you check that out, it’s pretty cool. You can find the new single streaming on our myspace too if this website isn’t homogenised enough for ya. There are two A-Sides and both are based on ‘The Distant & Mechanised Glow of Eastern European Dance Parties’ but are major reworkings, as you can hear. Full tracklisting is as follows:

1. Dance Parties [Distant]
2. Dance Parties [Mechanised]
3. Goodbye, 2007
4. Antique Hyper Mall

You’ll be able to download ‘Goodbye, 2007′ from Monotreme’s website any day now to see what you’d be getting yourself into.
We are of course going out on our own tour in support of this release. We’ve confirmed some unfeasibly good support acts too - Gay For Johnny Depp, Errors & Pilgrim Fathers, plus Dark Captain Light Captain and another band to be confirmed for the London show. Once again we’re working hard on stepping up the live show, incorporating all kinds of newness into proceedings. The techno we’ve been dropping in the rehearsals makes us weep. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. Bring your dancing shoes in any case. Finally, we recently announced some Italian dates for this tour which we now have to reschedule. Apologies for this (it’s all about visas). We definitely want to do those shows so expect them later in the year. Dates:

APRIL
9th: Bristol Thekla – Gay for Johnny Depp & Pilgrim Fathers
10th: Nottingham Rescue Rooms – Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
11th: London Indigo – Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
12th: Leeds, Cockpit – Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
13th: Brighton, Concorde 2 – Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
14th: Wolverhampton, Wulfrun Hall - Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
15th: Manchester, Academy 2 - Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
16th: Portsmouth, Wedgewood Rooms – Gay For Johnny Depp & Pilgrim Fathers
17th: Paris, La Maroquinerie
18th: Harlam, Patronaat – with Oceansize support
20th: W2, Den Bosch
21st: Brussels, Botanique
27th: Inverness, Ironworks – Pilgrim Fathers
28th: Glasgow, King Tuts – Pilgrim Fathers

We can’t promise when you’ll see us next after these dates because we’re gonna have to go and write another album at some point. Just so ya know… Hope to see you on the road, 65 kids. xx

Howdy.

Right now we’re in Barcelona. We just soundchecked with massively out-of-tune guitars in a 17,000 capacity arena. Onstage in a little while, just got time to announce the support bands for our upcoming UK headline shows! Yeah!

Basically, it’s gonna be a mixture of Errors, Gay for Johnny Depp & Pilgrim Fathers. See below for who is where.  The London show is also include Dark Captain Light Captain and another band TBC. There’s also a few more European dates been confirmed and are below. Apologies if we’re not coming near you. Hopefully we’ll make it up to you with festivals in the summer time.

April 2008:

9^th: Bristol Thekla – Gay for Johnny Depp & Pilgrim Fathers
10^th: Nottingham Rescue Rooms – Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
11^th: London Indigo – Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
12^th: Leeds, Cockpit – Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
13^th: Brighton, Concorde 2 – Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
14^th: Wolverhampton, Wulfrun Hall - Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
15^th: Manchester, Academy 2 - Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
16^th: Portsmouth, Wedgewood Rooms – Gay For Johnny Depp & Pilgrim Fathers

17^th: Paris, La Maroquinerie
18^th: Harlam, Patronaat – with Oceansize support
20^th: W2, Den Bosch
21^st: Brussels, Botanique
23^rd: Rome, Circola delgi Artisti
24th: Modena, Mirandola
25^th: Bologna, Cova

27^th: Inverness, Ironworks – Pilgrim Fathers
28^th: Glasgow, King Tuts – Pilgrim Fathers

See you on the road.
65daysofstatic.x

We’re right now in a dressing room in Milan. The sound of The Cure’s soundcheck is echoing down the corridors toward us. How would you go about designing a building where if a band was soundchecking onstage at X bpm, then you could be sat in a dressing room where four corridors converge and it would be like the entire band was playing through a tape delay with four separate heads?

I guess at the very least you would need a degree in architecture, something which Simon doesn’t have because he DROPPED OUT to be in 65daysofstatic instead.

Simon is depicted on the Sistine Chapel with the word ‘booze’ underneath him. This is absolutely true. We know because we saw it yesterday. We also didn’t see the Pope because he has MAD CASH and didn’t grant us an audience with him even though Rob was wearing Bono sunglasses and Joe was tearing up condoms and speaking in tongues. That’s the problem with organised religion. Busy schedule.

We also saw the ruins of the Roman Empire that expanded too far too fast and collapsed into itself. There are probably several emo bands called ‘While Rome Burns’ in the world and maybe a couple of black metal albums called that too. Which is a shame, because it would be quite a nice metaphor for a lot of things. It’s where we’re all headed anyways…

Do you want to hear about our travels? Do you want to hear about our shows? Should we, as a band, be working harder to make a direct connection with you guys who are so kind as to listen to our music and visit this website? Or should we be trying harder to maintain an air of mystery about everything we do? Cling to the smoke & mirrors which make everything involved with being a band touring arenas across Europe seem cool? Even though it actually involves a lot of sitting around with laptops and washing in the mornings by pouring a bottle of water over your head?

You’ll have to tell us.

We are also, incidentally, getting more and more excited about our headline shows. We are THIS close (as in, the size of the word ‘THIS’) to finalising the supports and it’s gonna be sweet. Check the shows page for full details. You’ll be hearing our new single soon too cos the press will have got hold of it by now and you know how they like to leak things.
Speaking of leaking things, seen as you can get all of our stuff on the torrents for free, why on earth would you be willing to spend a hundred pounds or more on some of our old cds that someone’s selling on ebay? Please don’t. If you really, really want to waste that money, then give it to Amnesty International, tell us about it, and then we’ll let you be the singer in our band. Cos we don’t have a front man and if we wanna make it in this business we should probably get one.

Anyway. See you at the 65 shows in April, yeah?

65.x

And this is the Cure Tour, which we’ve been anticipating for what feels like years.
So far we’ve played some really big stages in Stockholm and Norway. Tonight it’s Copenhagen. The shows are slowly getting less scary. And louder.
As these are the two axis labels for the graph upon which we’ve plotted our lives, we’re feeling reassured. And did we sense one or two 65 kids in the audience? Thanks 65 kids.
And thanks Cure kids as well, for making us feel welcome. You can be in our gang if we can be in yours?
Probably the most amusing thing is the juxtaposition of our small heap of battered road worn equipment next to literally thousands of flightcases of Cure based stuff.
What else can i tell you? We’re having fun, in our own curious way.
We went out last night for dinner in Cristiania, which is one of the last remaining self-governed states in Europe, and exists alongside Copenhagen. Both intimidating and impressive at the same time, it’s remarkable to see what people come up with when truly left to their own devices. Wikipedia “Freetown Cristiania”. Seriously. It’s more interesting than rock music.

It’s an hour until we go on stage. Bar’s open, gotta go.

Until the future,

65xxx

hi, 65 here.

Dates for a UK headline tour have been added to the shows page, and hopefully lots of dates in mainland Europe will be added to it. It’s in April, the cruellest month.

This will be in support of our new EP, released on the 7th April via Monotreme Records. “The Distant and Mechanised Glow of Eastern European Dance Parties EP” or “Dance Parties” as we’ve been fondly referring to it, contains four completely new tracks we’ve been stumbling away at since last summer. Two of these tracks are very very very alternate versions of the song of the same name from our last record. They’re pretty weird. We think they’re kinda cool.  

We’re off to Sweden to start the Cure tour on Tuesday, so see you on the road. We are, as usual, massively excited about going on tour. 

65xxx 

There goes another one.
In the early days of this new year, 65daysofstatic are almost exclusively “with flu”. This is presumably because we sat down for long enough over the christmas holiday for our collective immune systems to awake fully from a year being dragged through airport lounges, ferry ports, sub-degree van’s and burning deserts to finally succumb to more conventional forms of illness than just being dog tired and drinking too much.
Having had our first week off since June 2006 without doing something 65 related, we’ve fast realised that real life is boring and we’re back at 65HQ adding heartbeat kick drum samples to old never-polished screaming samples and trawling through endless budgets to work out a way to drive across Europe in the slipstream of the mighty Cure in about four weeks. Things have been less than busy on this website of late, but we can guarantee that’s all going to change real soon as we embark on this five month touring extravaganza. The plan is to add more dates (just to keep us busy) between the two six week Cure tours of Europe and the USA. An enormous tour sandwich, if you will.

So, to sum up 2007: 65’s most strange and confusing year to date, I think we’d all agree, where we finally proved just how uncool we really are, and most of the music press agreed, and somehow we’ve still managed to play some of our favourite shows of all time this year, to some of the most remarkable audiences we’ve ever come across. We salute you for being there. 100 shows last year EXACTLY is a new 65 record, but secretly we wish it could have been more.

Our highlight’s of 2007:

- Watching the music industry collectively fondle itself at the groundlessly self-serving promotional theme-park-for-the-soul-less that is SXSW, but still managing to catch Saul Williams and Russian Circles create something wonderful amidst the terror.

- Japan, forever and ever and ever.

- Riding the Moscow underground, playing a show, watching the snow stick to the towerblocks.

- Touring with Rolo-Tomassi, The Mirimar Disaster and Josh Pearson, Fear Before the March of Flames, YouInSeries and This Will Destroy You, Cats and Cats and Cats, The Butterfly Explosion, Tired Irie, Bong-Ra, Cougar, and those old comrades of ours Youthmovies, (whose new album we’ve had the pleasure of hearing and we can only say is our album of the DECADE) as well as playing some great shows and festivals with Lethal Bizzle, Explosions in the Sky, Gravenhurst, Sunn O))), The Cure, AFI, Liars, Creature with the Atom Brain and Asobi Seksu. Between us, our gigs of the year would probably be …Trail of Dead at Sheffield Leadmill with Smokers Die Younger, Earth, Sunn O))) and Boris on one bill, Arcade Fire at Eurockeenes, Qui, and The Meat Puppets in Texas.

- Driving across America in a little van for three weeks with nowt but a legendary sound man from Derbyshire and a legendary driver from Iowa.

- Radiohead’s Ecological Footprint and Carbon Audit, the single most inspiring thing a band has done in living memory? Certainly years ahead of the government, the global business nexus and the popular mass media combined. Real action where so many (including us) have failed.
We can’t tell you what we’re cooking for the first half of this year, but we hope it you’ll find it as exciting as we do. After that please please please can we make a another album? We hope so…

Boring administrative facts: New t-shirts in the shop section of the site, and some nice bags.  They are cheaper than they were and all prices should be the same regardless of currency. (There were problems with this. Sorry. If it hasn’t changed and you’re looking to buy new shirts, just hold on a couple of days and all will be well). Full tour dates on the shows page as usual (expect these to be added to).
We’ll leave you with proof of the 65influx into South America, specifically in this instance, Peru:

Absolute Tour, basically.
Newcastle, 6:30pm, dressing room concensus rules we have been on tour for ’some’ days. None of 65daysofstatic have been on tour anywhere near as long as Youthmovies, which makes our decline all the more pathetic. They have been on tour for 7 weeks, and they smell like it.

For anyone who’s read any kind of 65 update from the road before, anything we could tell you would only involve repeating information you’ve heard before. i.e. everything is broken, everyone needs some sleep, everything is either painfully funny or gravely serious.

We have so far: behaved whimsically in South West University Stationary Stores, broken two people’s feet (foots), destroyed a bar in Antwerp, got introduced to a game called Dichball (translates as Dickball), shared a dressing room with a Burlesque troupe, played in a room made of stars in Brussels, vacated dressing rooms hurriedly in Dublin, been thrown out of Stena Sealine breakfast bars, performed coincidentally-choregraphed dances to drum’n'bass, waited for Graeme YMSS to come back from visiting (absolute) Maxine’s flat, soundchecked topless, poured water in each other’s bunks, reheated unbelievably high-quality salmon dishes in roadside microwaves, done justice to the phrase ‘Buffalo’, given each other directions in our sleep, made emergency phone calls offering sage advice to various BBC uber-talent, named new guitar-tech Feg ‘Moomin Papa’ (amongst other things), drank a lot of tea, watched ‘Days of Thunder’, ‘Salem’s Lot’, ‘Some Kind of Monster’ and ‘Big’. We have also destroyed our tour manager’s liver.

That’s about everything we can remember. It’s really appreciated that you’re all coming out to the shows, considering we don’t have a new record out or anything. But we have put a lot of time into putting together a new set which seems to be working out SPECTACULARLY. The Destruction of Small Ideas vinyl has arrived too and it looks beautiful. We have it on the merch stall right now, along with a bunch of new tshirts which are fucking cool.
Hope to see you before we call time on 2007.

Laters. 65x