SOLO MENSCH

Years ago Breakup Breakdown played a house party in Brooklyn on the coldest night of the year. It was an absolute blizzard. The car service that brought us and our gear to the place had to go 5 miles an hour. We were lucky to get the few people that showed up in the audience. Anyway, as we were loading out, I took some pictures and got such a good one of Jeff that I told him I thought it should be the cover for his first solo album:



At the BUBD reunion rehearsal I took another picture of Jeff that should be his follow-up album:

LAST NIGHT AT BLACK BETTY EVER!!

The Break-Up has reunited (and it feels so good) to play the very LAST Hot Rocks party at Black Betty. The restaurant/bar is closing it's doors after a long, successful run due to greedy landlords. We are happy to be a part of it, even though the occasion is sad. It gives us all an excuse to drink tall boys of Bud in the same room together again.















And, yet another picture of Jeff flipping off the camera:



Good times.

The LAST Hot Rocks Party EVER:
The Break-Up and The Vitamen
Black Betty
Havemeyer and Metropolitan, Williamsburg
Tuesday, June 9th, 8pm

SIDE PROJECTS

Bel Air started as a side project. We were all in Breakup Breakdown when we started it. It later became our main project, obviously, but back then it was one of many (mostly fictional) side projects. In fact, Bel Air was the only real one. Here are some that didn’t quite make it to fruition:

Band Name: Meat and Potatoes
Members: Me and Jay
Concept: I’m not sure what we were supposed to sound like but I’m pretty sure I was the potatoes.

Band Name: Smokin’ and Bonin’
Members: Me and Jeff
Concept: I play trombone while Jeff smokes and does spoken word.

Band Name: Bonestar
Members: Jay, Jeff and James
Concept: The name harkens back to when we drank a lot of Lonestar beer in Texas. Apparently the word “bone” was pretty funny to us back then. I think this was riff rock that had breaks were everyone would stop and shout out the lyrics.

Band Name: Glock n’ Spiel
Members: Me and James
Concept: This was our Bone Thugs n’ Harmony style band.

Band Name: Science Bear
Members: James and Wyatt
Concept: This one came the closest to actually happening. It involved, among other things, pink shirts, white short shorts, hairy legs, a bear suit and one of those keyboards you operate with your feet. I don’t know about you but I would pay good money to see that live.

There were other ones but I can’t think of them! Last week the first fictional side project to come out of Bel Air was born. All I know is that it’s Jeff’s brainchild and it’s called Cetera and the Wagon.

MYSPACE DEMOS #6

This is a little thing that Drew, Wyatt and I came up with to play in between songs at Breakup Breakdown shows. We needed something to play so that Jeff could tune and, I think, James could put on the acoustic guitar? Anyway - we didn't want dead air so we played this...once. At the last BUBD show. So, it's in keeping with my original mission to put up things that will never see the light of day otherwise. It was recorded on my iRiver so it's a little blown out but you can get the idea.

BROOKE WHITE GO AWAY

Long version:
I haven't posted about AI (I'm cool) lately because I didn't see it at all last week (I know!). Last Tuesday Bel Air and friends went out to dinner at a new restaurant that we all highly recommend. It's called Roberta's and it's a pizza place with a geniune pizza oven straight from Italy. The food is amazing and it's BYO so our check came to such a ridiculous amount that I think we tipped 50% or something because anything less would have been obscenely cheap. The other cool thing about Roberta's is that it's co-owned by our friend Brandon Hoy. Brandon was in a band called Alabama Black Snake that BUBD played with a lot and eventually shared a practice space with. He's a super nice guy and it's great to see his new venture doing so well. The NY Times gave Roberta's a great review as you can see in the link above.

Short version:
I didn't see idol last week because I was eating lots of pizza and drinking lots of wine.

I'm really hoping that Brooke White gets the boot this week. I can't take her anymore. As usual, the girls at Go Fug Yourself hit the nail on the head: She needs to stop talking so much.

BEST WORKOUT SONG

At the gym today I came to the conclusion that Wrong by Archers of Loaf is the best workout song. It has the right combination of fast, mean and rock. I love this band in spite of the fact that they have one of the worst band names ever. I got into them around 1998 when I was in the middle of my master's program and I remember feeling slightly badass compared to my opera-listening classmates. Maybe I should have considered that an early clue that I was not going to end up an opera singer.

Speaking of AOL, years later while on tour with Breakup Breakdown we were hanging out at some bar in New Orleans after playing Checkpoint Charlies and I had a conversation with a guy about them. He was VERY into them, very drunk and also very strange. And, he was kind of following us around. We finally lost him and got back to the Dude (our van) only to find a crayon picture that looked like it had been drawn by a 5 year old under our windshield wiper. On the back of the drawing was scribbled "Archers of Loaf - Incredible!". It was... weird.