This tour has been awesome so far. We did it big in upper New England and southeastern Canada with the big dogs Dinowalrus, and made fast friends with a great band from Portland, ME called Brenda. Damn, that was sick.
We continued to get down with the sickness in Toronto, when we were blessed with a surprise appearance by the reigning Greatest Punk Band on Earth, the young gods of Fucked Up, who melted everyone's faces with a set full of songs from their new record, David Comes to Life. This instant classic has since sustained Titus Andronicus on many a long and soul-crushing death drive. The blessings kept rolling when Damien, or "Pink Eyes" as he is sometimes known, joined us on stage for the uplifting punk classic, "If the Kids are United" by Sham 69 - a touching moment of Canadian-American punk solidarity. Behold:
At this point, we thought our lives couldn't get any better. Little did we know we were about to be taken under the warm wing of the chillest band of all time, muthafluffin' Bright Eyes. Jesus Christ, was there ever a group of people (band, crew, the whole scene) who were kinder, more gregarious, more generous of spirit? Though we were strangers, from the get-go, they made us feel like family, that we mattered, that we were deserving of the decency and respect and consideration that is the lifeblood of any productive human relationship. I can't tell you how affirming it is to see an indie rock band doing it big, pretty much as big as it gets, without getting a giant stick up their ass - yeah, you know what I'm talking about. It was all so validating, that I couldn't say no to getting up in Big C's grill on our last night together in Portland, OR - dig it.
This shit was heavy for me, and here's why: this jam, "Old Soul Song," is about that famous protest that popped off right around the start of the war in Iraq - learn about that immortal day here. I attended this event as a young teen who didn't really know shit about shit (I still don't, but I'm not a young teen anymore), but I did know that my brother, a pilot for the US Navy who, in those days, specialized in the deactivation of anti-aircraft missile launchers, was very possibly not coming back. You can imagine how fortunate I felt watching this show with him at my side - he now lives in Anacortes, WA with a wonderful wife and two beautiful babies, but man, all those dreams could have been erased in a fucking second! Life is crazy. Check out dear Brendan (who also taught me to play the guitar, BTW) with his sleepy son Jack (born 25 years to the day after myself, FTW) before Bright Eye's guitar stash.
Speaking of that historic day, it was that night that I was first properly introduced to the spirit of Punk Righteousness at a concert by the dearly remembered Sleater-Kinney, which remains, to this day, the most inspiring and exciting concert experience of my life - read a little about that here. Guess what? They're from Portland! (Olympia?) Serendipity doo dah.
All right, well, enough babbling. Let's get real for a second. Remember when we told you about making that music video for our song "No Future Part Three: Escape from No Future?" Well, we did it. Big shouts to everybody who came out to contribute. Were you one of them? No? Wow, you must be pretty upset. Don't fret though - you can still be a part of this epic adventure.
These days, when bands put out a video, it goes up on some blog or some music website or some such shit - BORING!! Titus Andronicus can't be doing no dull-ass thing like that, and you can help save us. As you may know, the music video celebrates the New Jersey heritage of our band/brand. In keeping with this theme, we are inviting any citizen of that great state to premiere the video on April 29th. If you have got a NJ-positive website, if you've got a basement rec room with a big flatscreen, an awesome independently owned and operated record store, whatever you've got, we want to enable you to host yr own premiere and join in the fun of bigging up our home state. If you e-mail TitusAndronicusVideo@Gmail.com, the good people at Extra Large Recordings will hook you up with a DVD or a Quicktime file or an embed code or whatever you might need. We will cap off this day of Nu Jeruz love with a performance at our favorite NJ venue, Maxwell's in Hoboken. Sounds fun, yeah? We think so too - so get involved please!!
Okay, one last thing just! You know that Titus Andronicus down 'til death with Shea Stadium. You also know that TALLC is always looking for new ways to expand the brand. Thusly, we put two and two together, found four, and now we are ecstatic to announce the first installment of "Titus Andronicus LLC Presents" or whatever we will call it. It will hopefully be a semi-regular series of shows at Shea where we can swag out some bands that we know you are going to love, and we are kicking it off on May 23rd. The bands are Diarrhea Planet (Nashville posi-party punk on their first trip to NYC), Liquor Store (NJ stoner punk featuring original TA drummer Sarim Al-Rawi), and Battle Ave (post-pop-punk epics str8 out the Catskills), and maybe one more to be announced soon. I am not going to let you forget about this sure-2-b-magical evening, so stay tuned for more updates. Watch a video of Diarrhea Planet slamming their hit single "Where Are You?" and get ready to party the shit out of yrself.
All right, we gotta get back out to the Polo Field (uhh... what?). Be safe.
Yr friend,
Patrick
