Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The first ever BATTLE-REMIX

HELLO! Look At This! A new post in under 2 weeks. We're Setting records.

Thus is the nature of BATTLEBLOG 3.0!


There's a town called Aptos in California. Here, I'll Prove it to you. Aptos is about a 2 hour drive from SF AND it is where I (Archaeology Johnson) grew up.

Sleepy beach town. Lots of Trees and Fog. Approximately something like 8-9 Pizza joints. An old rotting WWII battleship sitting at the end of a wharf. Utterly mellow. Deliciously wonderful.
(MEMORIES, YO.)

Moving on....

I went to Aptos High School.

Here's a picture of me on a typical day hanging out with my friends during lunch.


One of my friends at AHS was Tyler MacCauley. When I was first getting into "indie rock" (most of high school was spent listening to Jam Bands... I know I know I know...) or whatever you'd call it, I used to get together with Tyler (and our good buddies Dan Merrill and "Chuck" Fenster) and do our best to stumble through playing all of "Is This It" by The Strokes. (LOVE that album, don't give a fuck what anyone says).

After AHS, Tyler and I have continued to be friends. It's the kind of bond that only two total music dorks who love talking about music can forge.

Tyler went to UC Berkeley and I went to UC Santa Cruz (and met my brothers).

Tyler formed Tempo No Tempo.

My brothers and I formed The Sex (which begat The New Rectangle, which begat Sex with Jon, which begat Platypus Rex, which begat BATTLEHOOCH and If you don't know who BATTLEHOOCH is, and you are reading this blog, you are an anomaly.)

Tyler and I stayed in touch throughout college and whenever possible our bands played together.
At this point (January 2010) we've done tons of shows together... we're serious bros. (MY CHEMICAL BROMANCE: The Battlehooch/Tempo No Tempo Incident - coming to paperback in March 2090)
Together, we've played in barns, fat clubs, coffee shops, co-ops, more barns... there have been multiple shows where we merged both our bands together into a super behemoth of FUNK (Think Power Rangers or Captain Planet). Once, we even did a show with Tempo No Tempo where we covered each others songs.

They covered our song, DEEP KNEE BENDS....

....we took 5 of their songs, chopped them up and put them back together.

YOU GET THE PICTURE? MAD MAD MAD MAD MAD MAD LOVE.

The latest development in this bromance is truly exciting!

I present the first ever BATTLEHOOCH remix, done by Tempo No Tempo. The song being remixed is "When We're Trying To Be Quiet" (from the OOF OWF EP, 2007)
When We're Trying To Be Quiet (Tempo No Tempo Remix) by Battlehooch

Cool, yes? I sure think so. This remix was actually done a couple years ago, but we never had a good opportunity to show it off. It seemed that with the new attention being paid to the blog and the fact that the new DISKO version of "Quiet" has been standard in our recent sets, it seemed like the perfect time to bust out this little nugget of wonder.

ENJOY.


Thanx again Tyler/Tempo No Tempo!!!!

Saturday, January 16, 2010

THE RETURNER....

... hath returned.

January 16th, 2010. (Twenty-X!)

Hello.

Just purchased some fine fine music (legally, thank you very much).....
Some Lee "Scratch" Perry, some Kraftwerk, "Tell me something good" by Rufus/Chaka Khan....

HELL! (close your ears, children...),

I even picked up some Lady Gaga and some Aaliyah (no joke, the Synth in the song "Try Again" is pretty much totally Divine, a la FUNK) and ..........

(can't forget fever ray either... words that make me think about the knife/fever ray: icy, remote, glaciers, haunted, ghosts, empty, cavernous, fleeting, SCARY AS $#!%)

Starting sifting through it all while cooking breaky this morning (eggs, bacon and potatoes "mckinley" style.)

THAT SOUNDS LAID BACK!!!!!! (right?)

I know what you're thinking...

"so if YOU (Archaeology Johnson/BATTLEHOOCH) have enough time to listen to music and eat eggs, surely you have enough time to maintain the flippin' blog (LIKE YOU PROMISED!!!!!)"


you're correct, invisible personage! the past couple of weeks/months whatevs have not been spent in constant state of such luxury. NO MA'AM/SIR!

we're gonna start rolling the goodies out again (STARTING NOW) and the plan is to keep this updated on an every 2-3 weeks basis.

(Hold me to this yo. I got a bunch of content lined up so I SHOULD be able to do this. if it doesn't happen, it's just cause I'm being lazy. or am engaged in some kinda of brouhaha. dig? you know how brouhaha's can be...)

First thing I'm gonna unleash is some tidbits from our New Years Eve 2009/2010 show with Maus Haus. For those who weren't there, it was a pretty ridiculous event... confetti, balloons, champagne, neck beards, smoochin' and of course a gaggle of hooch/haus collaborations:



Here's a video (shot by the infamous SOUL DONUT) of one of said collaborations, "Looks You Can't See" (from our album PIECECHOW, buy it here). We added some extra horns (thanks pope and aaron), some extra vocal firepower (thanks kick and rampage), and joe genden held it down how only joe genden can, and that's HARD.

(if you wanna see more video from our new years set, including our new DISKO revamp of "When We're Trying To Be Quiet" clicke here.)

We returned the favor later on in the night by joining MAUS HAUS for their song, "Reaction" .

Reaction (MAUS HAUS and BATTLEHOOCH Live Collaboration NYE 2009/2010) by Battlehooch

To wrap up the night we also did a gaggle of covers. While surely fun and jubilant in the moment, our collaborative "California Love" (2pac and Dr. Dre) and "The National Anthem" (Radiohead) covers didn't quite translate over to recorded formats.... a little too much of the "guess you had to be there" factor, ya feel me?

However, our cover of the B-52s "Rock Lobster", while still raw (and brother I mean RAW) is such a document of epic rock absurdity (I mean come on.... an 11 person band on the stage at Hemlock... singing about some kind of kinky mushroom trip of a beach party.... with Narwhal and Bikini Whale sound effects...) that it's worth sharing as well. Featuring Ben Juodvalkis, Pat Smith and Josh Rampage on main vocals and yours truly and the pope on the "girl vocals" Rock Lobster (B-52s Cover - BATTLEHOOCH/MAUS HAUS LIVE COLLABORATION NYE 2009/2010) by Battlehooch

Chew on that for a minute. LOVE YOU.

see... you.. in........................................... 2-3..... we.... eks.......


BABY.