NOV 07 - TOURING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
Current mood: chipper
Category: Music

Three of Australian music's brightest hopes join forces to poll some of their own electorates around the country. Hailing from three different states, the trio of bands - THE EXPLODERS, RED JEZEBEL and THE MARES - will hit the road for a national tour in November.

Representing Victoria, the rock'n roll machine that is THE EXPLODERS recently released their second album on Rubber Records & have played Falls, Splendour, & The Great Escape, over the last 2 years & have recently recruited Sleepy Jackson members Malcolm Clarke and J. Cortez.

RED JEZEBEL (WA), will be launching their second album on this tour produced by band member of multi WAMi-award-winning producer Dave Parkin (Snowman,The Panda Band, The Silents). Currently receiving significant Triple J and other national airplay, the Perth band has just come off the road from a month-long touring stint with Little Birdy.

Opening will be THE MARES (SYD) whom like their music loud and damaged, treading a line between collapse and beauty.

4:50 AM - 14 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

easyandthesun.com

We've got a new website set up with additional features for the new album, lyrics, photos, videos yada yada yada, its great. Go to www.easyandthesun.com to check it out!

Also a reminder that our new album comes out Saturday - only 3 more sleeps, and we're hitting the road next week for the album launch tour. You can grab a ticket to the show and a copy of the new album for only $25, tickets available through our website www.theexploders.com

7:25 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Album Preview

Just a quick note to let you all know that for the next 2 weeks you can preview every track from our new album 'Easy and the Sun' on our myspace page.

Also a reminder that you can purchase a ticket to any of our album launch shows and a copy of the new album for $25, just go to www.theexploders.com and follow the links.

Enjoy!

11:53 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Special one off-show at the Evelyn this Thursday!!!
Current mood: excited

Greetings fellow earth-dwellers....
As the title things suggests, we are indeed playing a one-off show this Thursday the 21st of June at the Evelyn on Brunswick St in Fitzroy. There are 3 other bands performing on the night so get in early as it will be a whale of a time.
Why are we referring to it as a one-off show??? Well we haven't played in Melbourne in over two months...... and it will be definately over a month before we play again..... and we have some new personel joining us for this special occasion.... so it will all be very exciting for us!!! Come and join the fun.... we're on about 9:30pm before Souls on Board.
Cheers, the Exploders.

8:56 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

We have a forum..... again
Current mood: blah
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

Hey. Like to gossip about us? Well, we have a forum again..... all the old stuff is lost, so we'll have to start it fresh. It's at http://www.theexploders.com/phpbb2/. Go there or go.... square.....?

Cheers, the Exploders.

7:37 AM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Look!!! We have sooo many shows on.... there's no excuse to miss us really
Current mood: weird
Category: Music

Yeah.... you read the subject (I assume). You can surely make it to at least one show. We have some serious stalkers who are travelling almost ridiculous lengths just to see us (and to freak us out). If I hear anyone (except for WA people and NT people) asking us about when we're playing next I am going to try my hardest to not post them a polite reply. Take that! Hopefully catch you at a show. Hope you enjoy our new songs..... which will be out soon!!!! We'll tell you as soon as we know the exact date.

7:35 AM - 11 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

BRAND NEW TRACK FOR YOUR LISTENING PLEASURE - PERFUMED GUN
Current mood: recumbent

Curious as to what the hell the Exploders got up to over in the States? Need to hear something fresh out of the studio from the lads? Can't wait til next year to hear a brand new recorded Exploders song? Well just your luck.... neither could we.
We recorded so many tracks that we thought were great in Dallas, that we had this one left over from what's going to be on our upcoming album. So now we are giving you the chance to hear it on our myspace page, as well as on the airwaves. We couldn't just waste it now could we? Click on the following link to get a sneaky peaky little taste of what may or may not be in store with our next album THE EXPLODERS' SPACE. We hope you enjoy it.

11:21 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Leaving NY, (Laying) down and (passed) out in Madrid, being just another bloody Aussie drinkin’

Leaving NY, (Laying) down and (passed) out in Madrid, being just another bloody Aussie drinkin.. Fosters in London and homeward bound (sort of): Wednesday 20th .. Tuesday 26th

Wednesday we didn..t fly out of New York til late afternoon, so we spent the morning and early arvo checkin.. out the sights and delights of New York. We went to the famous Manny..s guitar store, walked through Greenwich Village where Bob Dylan used to spend his time in the early 60s and hung out in Central Park and saw the Alice in Wonderland statue from the Electric Ladyland record insert. The flight from New York to Madrid was relatively painless considering it was a 7-hour flight. At the Madrid airport we met Tarquin, the dude who was in charge of us for our couple of days in Spain. Tarquin was way cool. He told us that the hotel we were staying at was right in the district that full of bars and good times and recommended we turn left and bar hop. When we first arrived at our hotel we thought we..d find a bar.. it was about 4pm after all. After a few quick pints we were ready for our siesta. And good thing we did have that siesta. The thing with the Spanish is that they have their siesta in to arvo, but then they don..t eat dinner till about 9 and they don..t start drinking at pubs until 11. We thought we..d stick by this rule and Tarquin..s advice that night and turned left and went to a few different bars. It was pretty cool. The first thing I noticed in Madrid was that every second young lady we saw was very good looking.. and they also seemed to be very happy also.. fair enough. I may have even been quoted as saying that it must be a magical world .. after all, it was full of beautiful women (senoritas) and lots of beer (cervaza) and afternoon naps (siestas)!!!! We went home at about 12 or 1.. but Britto and I weren..t quite ready to settle to bed again yet. We snuck out and hit a few bars (which I now admit was very silly and irresponsible and I am sorry) and made some friends (despite our absolute inability to talk Spanish .. although Britto was exclaiming ..si.. and ..no Espanole, Anglais.. and ..permissio.. to everyone he ran into). We played pool for a while and drank beer with these dudes and found out a cool pool rule that they have in Spain. When you hit your final coloured ball in before the black, you have to hit the black ball in the pocket opposite to which you hit your final coloured ball into. So you..re your last coloured ball goes into left middle, the black has to land into right middle.. if the last coloured goes into left bottom, then the black has to go into right top pocket. You get the picture, right? Do I have to draw a diagram? Coz I can..t be bothered. I reckon it is a good rule .. it makes things a lot more exciting. Anyways, at 3am after drinking a fair bit at this bar and the other bar and the next and the previous, the bars starting to close. Luckily (???) we befriended some nice English-speaking locals, who informed us that they knew of a place nearby where they stay open (illegally) a little later. It sounded good to us, so we followed. Well.. we had a few (quite a few), made some more friends, got photos taken, I pulled out the air-microphone (a little dance floor move I use when I have consumed way too much) and then left, heading up the hill to where we thought our hotel was. Then we remembered that we weren..t in the pub we were playing pool at, but the joint those dudes took us. Whoops!!! Anyways, somewhere along us walking around frantically at about 5 in the morning trying to find where our hotel was, Britto stopped to ask for directions and I didn..t realise and kept walking. About 5 minutes later I turned round and realised he was gone. I thought I..d stay put at the nearby bus shelter in case he came walking my way and to wait for someone to walk past to ask for directions. Next thing I know I..m waking up lying on this bus shelter with two dudes looking over me and talking Spanish. I tried to get directions off them by telling them of the bars near the hotel (how stupid, I couldn..t remember the name of the hotel) but they didn..t know where I was talking about. After roaming the streets for about another 4 hours, I recognised somewhere we had eaten and made my way to bed. It was about 10 or 11 in the morning by then. Later Britto told me that he managed to make it back at about 6 after getting directions. We got woken at about 5 (although I had written a very nice note asking not to be woken til 7PM or else I may accidentally hurt someone) to head out for some food, as Tarquin was picking us up at 7:30 to take us to the venue of our gig later that evening. We walked for about 15 minutes to the dead centre of Madrid.. strangely, everything looked familiar to me. Hey I remembered walking these very streets a few hours ago!!! Anyways, later we got to the venue. It was this cool little rehearsal space that had a bar in the front room. What a great idea! Why has nobody thought of this before? We met the dude who organised the gig for us, Barnaby, who was one cool cat. He had a dapper purple suit and black and white two-toned shoes. By the time we got to playing there was a fair and cheery crowd to watch. TJ had been feeling fairly ill, and had only just realised that he forgot all his pedals and leads. Not a good start.. but everyone in the crowd was loving it (and loving our attempts to speak Spanish between songs) and we ended up having a whale of a time. We even got asked for not one, but two encores. It took us about 5 minutes just to work out what songs to do because we hadn..t rehearsed (and couldn..t remember) any other songs. We did the two extra songs and everyone lapped it up, drank some more, danced around and generally enjoyed themselves. It was a great way to finish the whole recording/performing experience, as things hadn..t gone exactly to plan the whole trip, but despite that happening, even that night, we really enjoyed ourselves and helped others enjoy themselves. Tarquin took us out to some cool little bars to celebrate our last night in Madrid. It seemed that every rock and roll bar we went into during the two night were playing Australian music, like Fun Things, Scientists and Radio Birdman 7-inches. They were really into Aussie stuff, to the point where I had this Spanish dude telling me about all the Aussie bands he loves and embarrassingly, me not knowing a few of them. I think we all ended up getting about 2 hours sleep before we left for London, which hurt but our gigs for London ended up falling through, so the rest of the trip was strictly r and r, which we all desperately needed. When we got to London we found the hotel, had a few pints and went to bed for a much needed sleep, although for some reason I didn..t sleep that much. Sunday we did a little some minor looking around London, we did see the Tower Bridge, but mainly we just saw the shopping spots (Paul Weller was right, Carnaby Street ain..t what it used to be). We rode the London Underground around generally just shrugging our shoulders about what we should go and see (I think my suggestions that we should play Monopoly in real life were running thin by the end of the day). We thought we..d wind down with a few more pints, but as we were all pretty short of cash we were forced to drink the cheapest beer available .. Fosters. I felt so dirty. I only had about two Fosters stubbies in my whole life, and that was not really by choice, just due to the fact that there was no other beer left. Fosters actually wasn..t that bad I must admit, once you drank enough. Unfortunately, all the pubs shut in London at 11PM (some bullshit outdated law), so we found ourselves signing up for some dodgy underground casino, just so we could squeeze a couple more pints in. None of us had any money to bet with, which sucked. Yesterday we actually organised ourselves and did some actual sightseeing. We went and saw Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, and then we took a little trip to Abbey Road. The lookers on much have thought we were weirdos, coz we took numerous photos of ourselves crossing the famous Abbey Road crossing and ended up crossing quite a few times. What made it more amusing was that Abbey Road is really bloody busy, so a lot of the time cars had to stop for us. After all this sightseeing we had a few more pints at some pubs and then packed and went to bed to prepare for our flight. I woke up at 3am this morning and couldn..t get back to sleep. I thought I was going to die (which, granted, I have said every day since we landed in Spain)! Oh and Britto didn..t get back to the hotel til about 8 this morning, so we were worried we..d have to leave London without him. And to make matters worse we had issues with the hotel and we nearly missed the plane. But alas, somehow, we made it and that is where our story ends. I am currently finishing this blog on the plane bound for Sydney (we have already had a layover in Singapore), I think it may actually be Wednesday now.. I dunno. It took us about 12 hours to get to Singapore and we are about 3 hours on our way towards Sydney, where we get to sleep it off and then embark on another adventure .. The Dallas Crane tour. Funny that, all the way from Dallas to Dallas Crane. There is indeed no rest for the wicked.. We must be some evil mothers.

8:04 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Ta ta Texas, see ya Stuart! The cherry on top and onto the big apple: Wednesday 13th – Tuesday

Ta ta Texas, see ya Stuart! The cherry on top and onto the big apple: Wednesday 13th .. Tuesday 19th

Wednesday and Thursday we spent putting on the finishing touches to the remaining songs, i.e. Vocals and shit. One of Stuart..s mates called Jason came in and put some additional piano and keys on a few songs. Beforehand Stuart informed us that Jason was a guitarist, who can sort of pretend that he knows how to play the piano and organ, and may or may not be able to come up with some good stuff. Lucky for us and to his credit, Jason was on his game that night. Watching him was like watching a kid with A.D.D. when they are actually interested and focussed on getting something done. He was frantically trying to play as many keys as humanly possible and getting a little overexcited and hitting some wrong ones every now and then, but it was great to watch him at work and the end result sounded really cool. He put some great piano on a currently untitled song, which gave it a whole new dimension. On Friday morning TJ busted out the vocals for this song, and then we rejoiced and celebrated with some champagne. The tracking for the album was done.. there was a couple of hiccups along the way, but we got there. Later that evening we went for a few drinks with Stuart and then ended up going to watch Ben Kweller. I bought a ticket from a scalper dude for 5 bucks cheaper than everyone else... Ha!!!! This cool Canadian band called the Sam Roberts band, which Stuart knew and we met and turned out to be very nice lads, supported Ben Kweller. Saturday, I am buggered if I can even remember what we did during the day, but later that evening we went to see an art exhibition featuring some of Stuart..s wife Dianne..s work. There was free beer there!!! No one informed me that art exhibition openings generally have free beer.. I love free beer, uh, supporting the arts!!! Afterwards Stuart had scammed us some free passes to see the Cat Power show, including the full band from her latest album. It was a brilliant show.. the band were absolutely awesome and really brought out another dimension to Cat Power as a performer. Damn, Stuart has got some friends, acquaintances and connections, luckily for us. He even got a call out during a song by Cat Power herself, proving that we were not the only ones who thought Stuart was a fine fellow and all-round top bloke. He even managed to take us backstage to meet her, which had me giggling like a schoolgirl. She was nice, although she hung shit on our Australian accents. Oh and she asked us whether we were devastated by the whole Steve Irwin thing. I haven..t even mentioned yet, but pretty much every American we met was very sincere and apologetic about the whole thing. They were much more shattered about the thing than us. It was like David Boon had died or something!!!! It is sad though. What was also sad was that we had about 2 hours sleep, got up at 5AM and had to catch a plane to New York Sunday morning. It was a relief to get somewhere other than Dallas though, as we were all getting a little cabin-feverish with the whole barely leaving the studio and/or apartment routine. New York is a bloody massive place. Walking in Manhattan there are skyscrapers in rows as far as you can see. That night we decided we..d take in some genuine New York culture and go watch a Yankees game .. Yankees vs. Boston Red Socks. We took the subway.. how New York are we? It was so ridiculously hot and crammed on the subway. Once the game got under way I New Yorked it up some more by getting a giant pretzel with mustard (which was grouse, but salty and fun), There was this weird kid a couple of rows ahead of us who really annoyed me with his clapping and yelling and that, but a couple of innings in and the game was good .. some runs and some catches and excitement. The weird annoying kid was the least of our problems then, as some wanker drunk young brain-dead moron fans sitting behind us decided to pipe up with some very repetitive and unimaginative cheering and jeering. Their repertoire consisted of ..Boston Sucks!!!.. ..Boston..s gay!!!.. ..(Insert Boston player..s name here) is gay!!!.. ..(Insert Boston player..s name here) sucks!!!.. and so on and so forth. There was one dude who would yell these cheers (which must have really got to the players???) real loud and then his tough mate would repeat exactly the same thing but not as loud and then they..d laugh. What was worse was that this egged on that weird kid to act like even more of a fool and stand up waving his arms and yelling stupid shit every time these wankers piped up. The only half original or funny comment that these dicks managed was towards a Boston player called Coco Crisp (yep his real name), which was something around the lines of that they rathered Captain Crunch. This went on for about 2 hours until at the top of the 8th innings we couldn..t handle anymore and left. The Yankees were up by 2 and looking pretty good, so we assumed that they had it won. The next day we found out that Boston ended up winning by about two, largely because of a great catch with one glove over the fence saving a home run and one other runner by one Captain Crunch, uh I mean Coco Crisp. I wish I coulda seen the look on those dicks faces. Yesterday we spent most of the day on the subway or walking around Manhattan, meeting some people and that. I have never walked so much in my life. Being in Cuban heeled boots (the only footwear I packed apart from thongs), did not help the situation. I still have seething pains in my shins. That night we played at a little joint called Pianos. We were all pretty knackered, their gear wasn..t great, and TJ..s guitars weren..t behaving themselves after another trip on American Airlines, but it went down all right. Today we did much the same again, except that we played at a joint called the Knitting Factory.

8:01 PM - 3 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Hitting shit, singing songs, one of the worst hangovers ever and possible the raddest dude on t

Hitting shit, singing songs, one of the worst hangovers ever and possible the raddest dude on the planet! Wednesday the 6th Tuesday the 12th of September.

Wednesday the guitars were still being jack-asses. But as the saying goes, the show must go on, and it did. We pushed on and got it done eventually. TJ must have tuned up about 27, 432 times by the end of that debacle. No shit!!! That day and the next few we also mixed it up a little and had a little fun, thank Christ (no thanks to you guitars), and got to hit shit and play instruments other than our usual ones i.e. Tambourines, maracas, theremins, glockenspiels, organs, music stands, ukuleles, random stuff that could be hit with drumsticks, etc. Thursday marked the beginning of the vocals It was great to begin to hear the songs actually sound like songs and not just instrumental music. Friday and Saturday were also hard spent cleaning out the old pipes. After what we considered another tough week in the studio, a couple of us decided wed end the working week with a few drinks at a dive bar with Stuart. Of course once we were there and a few drinks in I pestered Stuart with random American lingo questions (after all, curiosity killed the cat), and asked what exactly distinguished a dive bar from any other run-of-the-mill bar. He simply said its a place where the carpet and wallpaper is old, it smells a little funny, but most importantly the beer is cheap. So to me it sounds a lot like all those trendy joints in Fitzroy and that, except that those places grossly overcharge for beer coz its a cool place to be where as here they realise that if it is a run-down lookin joint then the drink price should reflect that. Makes perfectly good sense to me, being a tight wad and all. Anyways, while we were in this dive bar we reacquainted ourselves with one of Stuarts friends Marcus who played in the band we went to see at Lee Harveys a couple of weeks before. Marcus is cool, but also very drunk and insisted we come to the restaurant he worked at for dinner the next night so he could slip us a few free drinks. We agreed, which proved to be a big mistake. After shopping on Sunday for some stuff (TJ got a custom T-shirt made up, Genuine Moustache Rides 5c, which is hilarious. Ill have to post a photo), we had worked up quite the appetite. The food was great, and we sampled a few different types of beer, but then Marcus led us into and locked us in the adjoining bar that where the real trouble began. He loaded us, himself and a couple of his work colleagues with beer, wine, some weird green shit and shots. I dont really remember the rest but I do know that Brittos and my attempts at American accents came out again. Marcus said they were good he was drunk again. So after filling us with all sorts of dangerous booze Marcus goes home and sends us to a pool hall with one of his workmates. I dont really remember this part, but all I know is that I am so much better at pool when I am para-drunk. I dont know how, and I dont know when, but we somehow ended up in the pool and the hot tub at our apartment block until 5AM. I think the only reason we left was because security eventually kicked us out. Apparently someone had phoned in a noise complaint. I vaguely remember (and the bruises the next day reminded me) that I may or may not have been doing belly-whackers and bombs in the pool while everyone else was chilling out in the hot tub, but surely that could not be the cause of such a racket? Something very wrong occurred that night, coz yesterday I suffered one of my top 5 hangovers ever. When we got to the studio I found a nice dark room upstairs and a pillow (Britto shotgunned the couch in the other room upstairs) and tried to restore myself to the state where I might be able to deliver some back up vocals. After a little power nap I didnt feel all that much better, but I managed to push through and get something done at least. Today we did more vocals and that, but the most exciting part of the day was when we went to this genuine Texas steakhouse. Boy oh boy was that a weird experience. We walked in and all the staff were head to toe in typical Texan cowboy apparel (I swear our waiter was chewing tobacco) and to top it off there was this dude on a stage playing country songs to a bunch of 9 year old kids dancing up a storm on the line-dancing floor. We were seriously expecting there to be sawdust on the floor and a mechanical bull in the corner!!! I will give the joint some credit though, the steaks were bloody massive. Oh yeah, and not that this experience needed to get any weirder, but half way through our dinner we were confronted by a giant mascot like coyote type character staring at us eating. We all just sat there staring at him for about 30 seconds until he ran off. Very strange indeed. Stuarts jaw even dropped at the absolute idiocy of this typical Texas steakhouse. If that day had not already been enough, we ran into one of the coolest guys on the planet on our way home whilst filling up at the servo, sorry gas-station. This guy was named Ace, a middle aged African-American dude, who initially just offered to clean our windows but then saw the guitars and started talking. He was a pleasant fellow, who recited us some philosophical poetry or song lyrics or something that he had made up (his band is called Buster Brown). This shit was sooo cool. The man had a way with words, making Samuel L. Jacksons little spiel on Pulp Fiction sound like a dislexic kid with a stutter and a lispe trying to recite the alphabet! And he went on for at least five minutes without even struggling to remember a line. The shit he was saying wasnt just brilliant, but it was the ease with which he delivered it and the emphasis and tone in his phrasing which made him way, way cool. We really should have video-taped it but I was too enthralled to unzip the bag and get him on camera.

10:13 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment