spun rivals blog

oh yeah we have a blog.

2010-01-17T23:52:00.000+11:00

don't you hate reading a blog that clearly nobody actually reads... and therefor the writer of said blog finds it hard to post new and exciting blog posts because it all seems like such a waste of time? maybe if you wrote new and exciting blog posts then you would have people reading your blog and then you wouldn't have trouble setting aside the ten minutes to write something you think someone might appreciate reading. lets face it, i'm in a band. thats because i'm too lazy to get a real job. wait i had a real job. why am i rambling when i actually have something new and exciting to write about? beats me.

we did some demos for our recording in a couple of weeks. just happened to record it on my camera as well. the result above. such a cool warehouse. exact location we'll be playing at the 'death of a scenester' launch party early feb.

i could share some more amazing news but then i might not have anything left for the next post which may or may not eventuate. i need to mix the demos anyway. if you made to this point... thanks for reading. :)

clay-sr

2010: go!

2009-12-31T11:01:00.001+11:00

goodbye decade! what fun you have been.

we launched our 7" vinyl this month. thanks to everyone for coming and especially for buying the records. we sold more than expected which is great because they're so damn expensive! But they do sound great, and they are great value - click 33 on your turntable and you get to hear the 'doom metal' version. flip the belt on your turntable and you can listen to all the satanic messages we cleverly hid backwards in the lyrics. get sick of it? use it as a plate.

It turns out that our launch was our last show for the year! thankfully we're not messing around when it comes to 2010 (that number looks so futuristic doesn't it! can i have my flying car now please?) and we are only waiting 30 minutes before we kick off our first for the year. that's right, while all you beautiful people are waving drinks around and proving to everyone around you that you CAN count backward from 10, we will be frantically trying to locate richs capo and wondering why my keyboard doesn't light up anymore. 12:30am at the espy to be precise. dear 'the drones'. we love you. sorry we are playing at the same time. actually i wonder if i can record my bass onto tape so i can go watch them. if only i had time in between holding signs.

here is a couple of pics from the launch.

ok, while we plan to work out how you can buy a record off us via paypal on our website very soon, you can download the 2 tracks for free! just go to our unearthed site below.

http://www.triplejunearthed.com/spunrivals

oh we've booked ourselves in for recording at the end of january *eeeek* so everything is happening in the rivals camp. hopefully 'shcram the smooth operator man' can keep us cool and calm throughout.

happy new year!

clay-sr

7" Vinyl Launch - date and venue confirmed!!

2009-11-01T22:45:00.000+11:00

It's official - mark this date in your calendars if you will.

SAT 19th December
Cherry bar - ACDC lane.

The records are being pressed, we have the promo cds made and ready to send out. and most importantly we have a date and venue for the launch. The lineup is TBA ATM, but we can confirm that spun rivals will indeed be performing.

that would be the weekend right between Meredith music festival (i love you jarvis) and christmas. perfect timing i say!

clay-sr

NEW studio on the way. moving to greener pastures.

2009-11-01T22:36:00.000+11:00

a few wonderful things have happened since we were declared 'too awesome' for the jd set competition. a friend lent me a record player while i hunt down some sort of bargain on ebay to fill the void. I'm listening to a story record of 'the wizard of oz'... it's become aparant that i've never actually heard/seen the full story. glad to fill in the blanks of my childhood.

all that work at the beginning of this blog about the studio we got together for writing... well we've met an amazing dude who is happy to rent us a room 3 times as big for half the price! it wasnt' hard to convince the others this was the way forward. I'm hope to be doing some recording for other bands in their soon so stay tuned!

It seems matt has been busy practicing with his new kit to make sure it's sounding hot for the record. we have a leaked photograph of him getting it ready for the next rehearsal on monday. matthew looks bigger than when i last saw him.

clay-sr

vote for us at THEJDSET.COM.AU please?

2009-10-12T14:35:00.000+11:00

hello.

by the power of the intewebs, we might have a chance of winning a competition to do some free gigs with gyroscope! feel free to help us out.

visit http://www.thejdset.com.au and log in or create an account. takes no time at all... and then click on our name to vote for us. that simple!

you're awesome, thanks :)

clay-sr

writing going well...

2009-09-28T11:14:00.000+10:00

hey there,

it's been a month since we "weren't" evicted, and we did a pretty good job of messing up the house again with a party.sigh. we're supposed to trash hotel rooms, not my kitchen!

writing is going really well. pretty much got enough tunes for an album now, but while we're on fire I reckon we keep writing so we have a few to choose from.

some other news, we've decided we want to release a double-a side vinyl in the lead up to the album. we've got a date in mind for the release but I won't write that here as will undoubtably get pushed back.

exciting times!

NEWS FLASH: spuns not evicted.

2009-08-26T10:44:00.002+10:00

after a couple of weeks of worry, scrubbing marks from walls, and hiding instruments and things in all kinds of places... 2/3rds of your favorite band are NOT homeless and are back on good terms with their landlord.

I think we are so proficient at house cleaning that we really should have a big party soon and mess it all up. oh it's my birthday soon. good times.

qantas breaks guitars - spuns sunday in sydney

2009-08-25T12:08:00.002+10:00

hello :)

hold tight, this is going to be a bit of a long winded photo documentary of the weekend - get up at 5am, get on plane, play annandale, drink a few frosty brews in the sun, get back on plane, go to bed... sounds simple right? ..... well we had fun anyway.

ok so we knew things were looking our way when we checked in our luggage... 18kg over and $150 later we were on the plane! for a show we were doing for free this wasn't the best start.

anyhow, flight was delayed due to the pilot breaking down on the freeway (aparently... it was sunday morning i bet he had a blinder!) after that pretty smooth until during landing at sydney airport the pilot suddenly pulls up and boosts up the engines... first aborted landing any of us had experienced. the captain gave himself a little bit of time to come up with a suitable excuse and let us know that there was a plastic bag on the runway.

here is the early morning spuns at sydney air port while we waited for cath to come pick us up. we're spoilt!
don't get between rich and his coffe in the morning :)
matt staring at some freaky doods a bit further up.
the dananananannandale hotel! didn't find any bits of elbow laying around.
kid confucius sound checking. sounded huge!
we decided that the annandale is our fav venue in syd (that we've been to). you can't buy carpet like that man... you have to make it.
Static Silhouettessetting up before our set. krang 2.0 in all it's glory.
post gig injury. according to matt this means he was really enjoying himself.
interesting photo of richs glasses. outside soaking up a bit of 24deg weather. not a cloud in the sky.

if i space these two photos right they might look like a vertical panorama? anyway only damage for rich was to his pants. he also said that this means he was enjoying himself. thankfully rich always carries a second set of trousers for just such emergencies.

monkeyface.
rob hanging out with some of the junior members of the audience during his show. they loved it! probably not the best photo of rob but the kids are cute. he kind of reminds me of riddick and i was looking out for a steel pipe or something in case he tried to kill me... but no he's actually really nice.
kid confucius horns and guitar
rob turning a microphone into diamonds with his bare hands.

after the show upstairs in the annandales lodge - amazing place. totally doing another show and staying there. here's a pic of nathan of kid confucius doing his best rolf harris impersonation with richs pedal/wobble board.

so after all the fun/food/beer etc we had to go home... time to spend another half hour squished between my pedal bag and rich... eating my bass case.

we left it a little late to work out how we were going to avoid paying $150 for extra weight on the way home... but rich pulled all his pedals off his board and stuck them in a bag to carry on. I run through the airport and stole some giant clear bags from this big roll while the special baggage guy wasn't looking... stuck my pedal board in one (way too big for carry on) and bass station keyboard in another. got some pretty wierd looks and a couple of questions while going through the security check.

the staff aboard the plane seemed to be really nice to us based on somehow getting 2 $6 beers for $5... later on an air hostess came up to ask us a 'silly question' - they wanted to know if we were in a band called 'the script'. um no. sorry ladies. i don't think the script would be carrying their pedals in a clear plastic bag on the plane on their world tour.

this is me in the toilet. was getting a bit bored so i hung out in the can for a bit. bit wierd i guess.

unfortnately when we arrived and grabbed our gear it was my stuff that took all the damage. keyboard case was broken inside, and my rickenbacker case had the handle ripped clean off! i can only imagine what they were actually doing behind closed doors.
we gave the baggage desk a serving though and aparently i can get both my cases fixed and they will pay for it. should I send my ricky case to USA and see how much i can make it cost?
overall we had a totally awesome day and met some really nice doods. the kid confucius crew, static silhouettes were all totally cool. there was this totally familiar looking guy hanging around too... turned out to be andy bull! also a very nice dood. aw everybody is nice! well except for qantas baggage handlers. grrr.

clay-sr

2009-08-25T00:05:00.004+10:00

Hey, Rich here.
Just thought I might drop in here to say hi.
I promise I'll start blogging more. Good on Clay for being the blog guy so far.

mmmm.... what to say?
We did a really fun show at the Annandale in Syd at the weekend it was a blast. Thanks heaps to those of you that may have been there and made it such a great day. I'm sure Clay will elaborate in his blog post.

Currently as I sit at my computer..... errr... I am totally tired.
Clay and I have been trying not to get evicted by our landlord so we have been cleaning heaps this last week. Today we put in a mammoth session. That combined with an unhealthy dose of dodgy cleaning product chemicals has me rather delirious. We have worked awfully hard. The question is : Landlord, cunt or cool dood. I'll let you know next week.

Other stuff... but FUN stuff. Has been our progress on writing the album. Last week we were sinking our teeth in to our latest new song, "her name is heartache & they call me procrastination". We are very excited about it! It has RIFFS! yay!

oooo! also if you haven't already done this. Do your self a favor and get your hands on the new Arctic Monkeys album. It is the muts nuts.

I better get back to mopping the floor.

Ciao peeps
Rich x

oops damn ebay

2009-08-07T15:46:00.003+10:00

8 channels of 'pretend' analog goodness... with all the effects i need inside. should simplify 'krang' a little. the postman dropped it off the other day and left it at the front door. eeeek! thankfully nobody helped themselves to it before we noticed the package.

look at all those pretty knobs!

ironically i'm testing it out with the real analog synth it succeeded.

ok synthnerd out.

clay-sr

Rich is back!

2009-08-06T09:58:00.004+10:00

Ok enough fluffing around, time to get down to some serious writing. studio? check. band all in the one city? check. band all in the same room with a bunch of noisy things? sort of check... we need to practice for a few shows coming up.

so we finally managed to get some 'value' out of this rehearsal room... except we spent half the night working out why 1/3 of the carpet was soaking wet starting from that corner of the room with the roof drain pipe. hmm

still needs more sound absorbent things in there... but seemed to work well.

GIGS:

So rich is back from scotland, and we've lined up a couple of shows...

13th AUGUST @ LAUNDRY
playing a free show this thursday with the 'LAST DINOSAURS' from brissy. they sound alright so looking forward to it. - 'last dinosaurs myspace' - aparently they have cheap jugs and other stuff. it's just down the road from the old bar on johnston st if you're not sure where it is.

3rd SEPTEMBER @ STREET PARTY (161)
don't think i've ever been here but street party looks like one of those things where good looking kids get trashy so we should fit right in :P

clay-sr

Just happened to be looking at the roof of the tote...

2009-07-20T13:40:00.004+10:00

and saw a chunk of my old keyboard that didn't make it though our residency earlier in the year.

clay-sr

Studio Work Continues...

2009-07-20T13:03:00.004+10:00

hey there,

So one month ago I was hoping to have the room sound proof ready for the weekend - after finishing the windows it became very obvious that the roof and doors were about as good as rice paper for keeping sound in/out.

A friend of ours donated 4 rolls of brand new carpet, and a heap of sound proofing foam stuff. Couldn't have come at a better time!

Windows Done

Mixer, Interface, compressor, mbox and headphone amp ready for recording duties. nice view of the new carpet.

Some of the lovely spearmint (spew green) carpet we got for free.

2nd door installed on main entrance (solid wood). door handle of other door ran into this one so we got a chisel onto it.

The room with it's new blue carpet, and the second door boarded over.

While the computer is up and running ready to record and the 99% of the sound proofing is done, we'll be waiting for rich to get back from the UK before we can really try it out.

2009-06-17T13:43:00.004+10:00

Photos from last post as promised. I'm really hoping we can have this sound proofing done by the weekend, need to make some noise again!

"courage" taking a load.

Jim's #1 so why try harder?

one of the offending windows - from the outside

some really big bits of wood

err - Jim and I just missed out on $10 parmas at the East Brunswick Club, but did catch a quick (45 mins?) game of pool.

I have a vague memory of Jim winning this game.

clay-sr

2009-06-16T14:41:00.002+10:00

Last night we loaded up 'courage' with a couple of huge sheets of mdf, and delivered them to what will hopefully soon be our new rehearsal studio! Sound proofing the windows is our first priority... hope to have them all boarded up by this weekend so we can concentrate on making the place sound/look and feel a bit better. we're also hoping to have some sort of permanent recording setup there - should make for lots of fun demos and heaps of writing! yay.

photos to follow.

clay-sr

2009-06-05T09:52:00.005+10:00

hey there,
In an attempt to keep this blog thing interesting and active, lets throw up some pics from the gig at the tote on Wednesday!

Huge thanks to the lovely Serena who took these shots and others on the night. I kind of borrowed these from her flickr account, but some great work of hers on there so I suggest you check it out! http://www.flickr.com/photos/serena-ho/

2009-06-04T21:42:00.003+10:00

Well hello!
Welcome to the Spun Rivals blog.

Since this is blog # 1 here is just a brief run down of whats been happening lately and what to expect from us in the near future.

Spuns have just finished the recording and mixing of our forthcoming E.P. with the mighty Steven Schram (Little Birdy, Little Red, Silverchair). We've started sketching the artwork and throwing around a few titles for it, nothing set in stone just yet.

We have also been writing a fair bit and we intend to keep you updated with that. Also, we are organising a photo shoot for sometime in the next few weeks, the results of which we'll throw on here too.

Lastly, here are some pictures that were taken by the our buddy Kate (http://www.griffinrocks.com.au ) of us recording the E.P. in the studio with Mr Schram.

Cheers
Spunners x

p.s. still working out how to use the blogger, mind the picture placement.