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Thursday, April 30, 2009

We Will Be Rocking Tomorrow Night (5/1) Without the Band.

BrokeMC hooked up the show with Astronautilus and Bleubird at Europa tomorrow night.



It's going to be dope.

We will be rocking the show old school style with a DJ. Just wanted to let heads know.

We look like this with the band:



We look like this with a DJ in Los Angeles:



We look like this with a DJ and Camp Lo:



Tomorrow night we will be with a DJ, but in NYC, and without Camp Lo. Those are the facts.

Hope to see you there!

Love, Metermaids.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Songs That Always Make You Feel Better.

Here is my new one. We got to play a couple of shows with these guys earlier in the year when they came to NYC, and I thought they kicked a whole bunch of ass.

And then I found this video on YouTube, and I have watched it religiously since then.



It always makes me feel better. And it should be mandatory viewing for all struggling musicians, methinks.

But we are hoping this blog can be a place for us and our friends to discuss these things openly. So, to anyone who is reading this -- what songs make you feel better?

Love, Metermaids.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Some New Photos!

So here are just a couple of the photos we took with Ben yesterday (www.benritter.com). These are my personal favorites. We decided to keep some of the other ones under wraps for now, just so we can feel like we aren't giving away everything all at once. Not that the other shots are anything extremely interesting, like Sentence and I dancing naked or anything -- but they are nice and I like the idea of revealing them over time.

So, here are the first two:



And --



So, I dig these a lot because this is what Sentence and I are actually like in real life. We are weirdos. And we have fun together. And we like to make fun music. Not that our music is silly party music. But I think it is fun nonetheless.

Our old press shots, including the shots that were in the booklet for NIGHTLIFE looked like this:



Now, a shot like this is very clean, and very well done. But this does not reflect Sentence and I's personalities at all. And these pictures, as well as the art direction on NIGHTLIFE in general, is something that I've wanted to talk about for a while.

Hear me out.

We named our album NIGHTLIFE, because we had a song called "Nightlife." The song title is meant to be ironic. In my mind, it's about the time you spend by yourself up late at night when you are an insomniac. So, to call it "Nightlife" is deliciously ironic, right? What a hilarious joke! Ha. I think it's pretty clever, myself.

Listen to it!


Nightlife



So we took a bunch of pictures of us looking "cool" in aviators, etc., thinking that once people listened to the album they would understand the irony a little bit. NIGHTLIFE is not a party-jam-type album. And I think almost every review we got mentions that right off the bat. Like, "Despite the album's title, NIGHTLIFE is not packed with party-type-jams."

But I still think that people took the cover and tray art at face value. And I think that these shots turned a lot of people off to us, thinking that we take ourselves very seriously, and that we are actively trying to be cool, etc. Let me tell you something right now. Sentence is actually pretty fucking cool. I am not, though. And Sentence doesn't act like a cool guy, which is why I love him so much.

So that's why I'm so excited about these new shots. We are weirdos. These shots show us being weirdos. It's weird to write this much about photo's, but it's something that has bugged me since we released NIGHTLIFE.

I feel like we are on the right track.

Hope you dig them too.

Love, Metermaids.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

We Took New Photos Today.

I don't have any to show right now, maybe tomorrow. But Sentence and I hung out with Ben Ritter, who is one of my bestest friends, and also a phenomenal photographer, and snapped a whole bunch of great pictures. We did some cool-lighting-inside stuff, and also went up to his amazing roof and took pictures in the fading sunlight. It was a great afternoon.

Old school Metermaids heads would remember the "pinwheel" field shots that he did for us back in the day:



People should check out his website www.benritter.com to see his work. He has photographed a lot of cool people, including one of the coolest shots of Slug from Atmosphere I've seen.

I will post our new photo's as soon as we get them.

Thanks to Benny, and a sunny Sunday.

Love, Metermaids.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Hip Hop That Doesn't Sound Like Any Hip Hop I've Ever Heard.

Sentence and I talked about this subject on our way up to Providence a couple of weeks ago: what is the last hip hop song, or album, that you felt was a step in a brand new direction? Like, something that you had never heard before.

We feel like the material we are about to release over the summer is on some brandy new shit. We're excited about it. Maybe other people won't feel the same way. That's the beauty of music.

Regardless, after Sentence and I had our conversation I thought about some people that had done some things that I thought were steps in brand new and exciting directions.

Here are three songs that I came up with:

Optimist by P.O.S.



Smithereens by El P



Waterline by Sage Francis



I know there's more, but these are what I could think of.

Does anyone else have any?

Love, Metermaids.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

A recap of our show at Arlene's Grocery 4/16

So, the show at Arlene's on Thursday was rad. In keeping with the "Free Ice Cream" mentality, we offered free PBR to everyone who came out to see us. And man, did people drink a bunch of free beer. It was great.

Since it was our first time playing with the band in a while, we had a short rehearsal before we were heading to the venue. Here is us rehearsing "Bad Girl," one of the new songs that we will be releasing soon. Note how much calmer we look in rehearsal. Ha.



Unfortunately, we left the rehearsal studio at 7:00 to find that my car had been towed. Totally awesome. I had misread the sign out front of the rehearsal studio because I'm the smartest man alive. How perfect is it to be in a group called Metermaids and have your whip towed right before a show? Hahahahaha yeah it wasn't funny at all. Sentence and Miller came with me to the tow pound while the band went to load in. Our set time was at 9:00. We got to the tow pound at 7:30, and the woman behind the glass told me it would be at least an hour before I would be able to get my shit back. The place was packed out with the most miserable assortment of people. This wasn't my first time getting towed, but I swear it will be the last. What an awful, awful experience it is. Anyway, here is me and Sentence at the spot:



Miller and Sentence went back to the venue to make sure everything was running smoothly, and I promised that if my name wasn't called by 8:30 I would dip to Arlene's and worry about it later. On some real shit, though, I wasn't leaving that spot until I got my car back. For whatever reason, my car's well-being means a whole lot to me. Even when I'm parked just a couple of blocks away from my apartment, I regularly walk the dog to it just to make sure it's ok. I'm becoming more and more OCD as I age. And I wouldn't be able to sleep that night, let alone rock a show, knowing that my car was in the impound. Plus, as I mention in the video, I had a peanut butter sandwich in the car that I really wanted. I was hungry son!

They called my name at 8:23, which was tight -- I paid the ridiculous amount to get it back, and then had to wait for a van to take me to my car on the lot, even though it was like fifty yards away from where I was standing. Awesome. And then, as everyone who has ever been towed knows, the real beauty of the whole operation is that after paying the $185 to get your car out of the lot, there is a $115 ticket on your hood once you get there. When I was driving off the lot to hustle to the show, the dude who opens the mechanical arm to let me out told me to have a good night. He must get a kick out of saying that shit to people. Like, I might have an OK night at that point, but no matter what happens it's definitely not going to be good. I love cops though! Keep up the good work!

I made it back to Arlene's and pretty much just went right on stage. The show was dope though. Good crowd, the band was feeling it, and Sentence and I were able to get some energy out. We also got to play a bunch of new stuff for the first time and it went really well. We are super excited to get these songs out to the world.

Here is a new song tentatively titled "Planes Down":



We rocked "Risk You Run" as the encore:



Thank you to everyone who came out. More soon. We keep it moving.

Love, Metermaids.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Metermaids Feature on NYCMUSICSHOW.COM

NYCMUSICSHOW.COM, which is a brand new web-show based site, just put up a little feature on us that we filmed around a month ago.

The idea of the site is to show the process of a band creating and recording a particular song to said band performing the song live. In our case, they watched us record a new song called "Turn the Lights Out" and then perform it at a sold out show at Arlene's Grocery.

It's perfect timing, because we will be releasing similar videos in the coming weeks showing what our recording process is like. They won't look this good, but we're ok with that.

Anyway, here it is -- hope that you dig!

Monday, April 13, 2009

What We Are Up To.

It has been almost a year since we released NIGHTLIFE, and around four months since we released NIGHTLIFE IN ILLINOISE, our Sufjan Stevens mash-up album.

We have appeared on countless blogs, had our music downloaded over 50,000 times, sold a bunch of albums and t-shirts, and been celebrated, trashed, etc. All the great things that come along with releasing music in this wonderful and weird internet-heavy world we all live in.

We have had our music written up on Spin.Com and Wired.Com, and have graced the pages of The Village Voice and Playboy -- accomplishments that we are very proud of.

We opened up for Fabolous at the Blender Theater here in NYC, which did not go particularly well for us, and toured briefly with THE LOX, which actually went pretty well. We headlined the Knitting Factory, and had a packed-out residency at Arlene's Grocery.

We have met a number of important entertainment-industry professionals, and had our hearts broken by almost all of them.

In brief, it's been a very busy, difficult, magical year.

Like the song says, though, we keep it moving.

We are currently working on a whole bunch of new material to be released for free over the course of the summer. We are still figuring it out as to what we will release, and how exactly we will release it, but we will be offering a whole lot of new music the world very soon. I will say that the music we are working on currently is the most focused, consistent, exciting stuff we have done. We will be documenting everything along the way, as well, so anyone who is interested can see how we make our music. Maybe you will be fascinated by how our creative process works. Maybe you will think it's boring. Either way, we will be putting it all out there for anyone who wants to check it out. Updates on that end will be coming very soon.

There are some summer tour possibilities that we are still ironing out. In the meantime, we play NYC at least once a month like clockwork. If you haven't, you should come see us live. It's where we do our best work.

We will be updating this blog very frequently, so you should check back often. This will be a place for me and Sentence to share the more personal stuff that comes along with being a rapper in a bubbling rap group.

Holler.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Just in case anyone missed them...

Here are some videos we put together for our free Sufan Stevens mash-up EP, NIGHTLIFE IN ILLINOISE, which is available for free at www.metermaidsnyc.com/illinoise.



No Matter What You Will Feel the Illinoise or We Will Punch You in the Mouth!



John Wayne Gacy, Jr. is Never Far From John Wayne in a Clown Suit



The Midnight Zombies Will Eat Your Brains But Leave Your Ears and Fingertips.

Holler.

We got a blog, son.

Ka Kaw.