jussijames' Journals on Buzznet

Mixing update from RAY!

jussijames — 2009-11-10T12:55:00Z

Mixing with our good buddy Rich Costey is going great. So far, he's mixed 9 songs, and they all sound fucking stellar. He had an interesting process where he started out mixing some of the looser songs first, and then ramped up to the denser stuff. Our goal in mixing is to make it loud, and then make it louder then that. "Still Alive" was an early one, and he brought a real heaviness and aggressiveness to that song. Song is very drum and bass oriented, very different for us, but still rocks at the same time. A bit of Queen influenced guitar harmonies helps on that song.

"Save Yourself" was another early one, a mix of Judas Priest metal and 80's arena rock. That song went through a lot of different permutations, and finally we settled on this vibe that took us to new territory. We then got into a song called "The Only Hope For Me Is You," and that's where things really starting clicking with Rich. What was great was each song would just sound better and bigger than the last. As some of you had guessed from a twitter thing of mine (I refuse to call it a tweet), David Campbell did a bit of work on the record, and that's one of the songs he arranged for. Costey did this crazy effect with the strings going into the last chorus that blew me away. One of my favorite tracks. (click "read more" for more!)

"Trans Am" and "Death Before Disco" came next. "Disco" you may have heard at the Roxy shows or from Youtube videos of Summersonic. So happy with the way that mix turned out. I have to drive REALLY FAST when I listen to it. I think that's a hallmark of a great rock song. "Trans Am" is an epic take on "Born To Run" in 4 minutes. When we wrote this song, it was HUGE for us. Really opened our hearts and ears during the writing process. Frank, thanks for noodling and G, good ear to make a song out of it. You guys will love this song. Another favorite. Looking forward to more mixes, we got coming up "Kiss The Ring," which we also played at Roxy. I really can't wait for "Black Dragon Fighting Society," our ode to Misfits punk. Song kinda shreds!

Mixing is a great thing. The ideas continue to flow, and like they say, writing is never done. FYI any of the song titles mentioned are still tentative, you know how we like to change things up!!!

Ray

Bumbershoot 2009 Festival: Katy Perry, Natalie Portman's Shaved Head, Yeah Yeah Yeah's

jussijames — 2009-07-20T18:10:00Z

This year I will be heading to the Bumbershoot Festival 2009 over Labor Day Weekend. The lineup is so impressive and the the activities are endless. Check out the festival's complete lineup. [cut=See here ...]

COMPLETE LINEUP ANNOUNCED!

YEAH YEAH YEAHS, OLD 97'S, COLD WAR KIDS,

THE HELIO SEQUENCE, PORTLAND CELLO PROJECT

ADDED TO 2009 LINEUP

AFTER-PARTY AT THE TEATRO ZINZANNI SPIEGELTENT:

BUMBERSHOOT-A-GO-GO!

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6

Three comedy stages including Eugene Mirman, Todd Barry, Nick Swardson, Maria Bamford, Matt Braunger, Wyatt Cenac, Tommy Johnagin, Doug Benson, a special Mystery Guest,

the People's Republic of Komedy, and many more!

YOUNGERSHOOT: FESTIVAL FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY!

Complete Interactive Schedule Available at Bumbershoot.org/lineup

Saturday September 5 (click to link)

Kristen Ward

Dyno Jamz

Olympic Sound Collective

Everest

Kim Field & The Mighty Titans of Tone

The Not-Its!

Katy Perry

Hotels

Adrian Xavier Fisher

Rockstar Winners

Natalie Portman's Shaved Head

Massy Ferguson

The All-American Rejects

We Are Golden

Past Lives

Sick Puppies

Mayer Hawthorne & the County

Low vs Diamond

Akimbo

Carrie Rodriguez

Cordero

Iglu & Hartly

Wale w/UCB

Matt & Kim

The Whore Moans Present: The Black Atom!

Eleni Mandell

Eric Hutchinson

Gang Gang Dance

Os Mutantes

Old 97's

UH HUH HER

Telekines

Elvis Perkins in Dearland

OTEP

World Party

Sheryl Crow

De La Soul

Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground

The Long Winters

Sunday September 6 (click to link)

Handful of Luvin

Kore Ionz

The Kindness Kind

Hey Marseilles

Central Services' Board of Education

Cold War Kids

The Dusty 45s

Black Whales

Rockstar Winners

Dyme Def

Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band

Steve Griggs Quintet

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Maximo Park

The Honey Brothers

Parenthetical Girls

Extra Golden

Mark Taylor Quartet

U.S.E

Romance

Sera Cahoone

Swollen Members

Michael Shrieve's Spellbinder

Common Market

Vivian Girls

Sleepy Eyes of Death

Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women

No Age

Michael Franti & Spearhead

Paul Oscher 'Alone with the Blues'

Roy Ayers

Holy F**k

D.Black

Spaceman

MSTRKRFT

Brett Dennen

Jason Mraz

Todd Snider

DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid

Raphael Saadiq

The Helio Sequence

Monday September 7 (click to link)

Anomie Belle

Tyler Bryant

Dept. of Energy

Macklemore

Visqueen

Recess Monkey

The Knux

The Minus 5

Point Juncture, WA

Delhi 2 Dublin

Say Hi

Rockstar Winners

The Black Eyed Peas

Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears

Grand Hallway

The Lonely Forest

The New Mastersounds

Forgive Durden

Razia's Shadow

Mirah

Champagne Champagne

Oren Lavie

The Devil Makes Three

Janelle Monáe

Akron/Family

Dead Confederate

Wallpaper

Portland Cello Project

The Cave Singers

Vieux Farka Touré

Audrye Sessions

Franz Ferdinand

Soulsavers Featuring Mark Lanegan

Truckasauras

Keller Williams

Lenka

Head Like A Kite

Sly & Robbie & the Taxi Gang

3 Inches of Blood

Metric

Modest Mouse

(whew...WOW!) [/cut]

Green Day Kicks off 21st Century Tour in Seattle July 3, 2009

jussijames — 2009-07-06T20:23:00Z

Green Day Kick Off U.S. Tour

The Bay Area punks celebrate an early Independence Day in Seattle, with pyrotechnics, man-on-man kissing, and much more! By Jonathan Zwickel 07.06.09 9:32 AM

Green Day setlist:
"21st Century Breakdown"
"Know Your Enemy"
"East Jesus Nowhere"
"Holiday"
"Static Age"
"Before the Lobotomy"
"Are We Waiting"
"Geek Stink Breath"
"Hitchin' a Ride"
"Brain Stew"
"Jaded"
"Longview"
"Basket Case"
"She"
"King For A Day/Shout"
"Stand By Me"
"21 Guns"
"American Eulogy"

Encore:
"American Idiot"
"Jesus of Suburbia"
"Boulevard of Broken Dreams"
"Minority"
"Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)"

Attention aspiring rock stars: Get good seats for the Green Day tour and you might end up ripping a solo on Billie Joe Armstrong's guitar. If you're really lucky, you'll even plant a slobbery smooch on the punked-out frontman's face.

(see video here http://jussijames.buzznet.com/user/video/)

During Friday night's two-hour, tour-launching set at Seattle's Key Arena, Armstrong pulled onstage no less than six ecstatic fans from the front row and gave each the spotlight, for better or worse. A sold-out crowd of 16,000 looked on as one dude laid a long, lingering kiss on Armstrong's mouth, then took hold of the mic and asked, "Who wants to fuck this guy???" before belting all of "Longview" like the song was his.

Later, Armstrong handed off his axe to a tall, gawky teenager he pulled from the pit -- "You know 'Jesus of Suburbia,' swear to God?" -- and let the kid run, note-perfect, through all of the American Idiot epic.

(see photo here http://www.flickr.com/photos/jussijames/3688595537/)

These are moments lifelong fans are made of.

Say what you want about Green Day's methods or motivation. The band's relationship with its audience is disarmingly real, a cross-generational give-and-take that's as punk as any Gilman Street scroungers today. The scale is different, sure, but at this point Green Day traffics only in massive gestures and universal emotions -- exaggerated and operatic and goofy, so that every last, proud American idiot knows exactly where the band is coming from.

Green Day unleashed all the high points of their recently released album, 21st Century Breakdown, the best bits of Grammy-winning American Idiot, plus the old classics -- like 1995's "Brain Stew." Backed for the new songs by an extra pair of rhythm guitarists and an organ player, Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tre Cool rocked around a 50-foot-tall digital cityscape backdrop with enough pyrotechnics to ignite an early Independence Day.

They even swerved into R&B territory with a cover of the Isley Brothers' "Shout!" and Ben E. King's classic "Stand By Me."

Armstrong played ringleader to the adoring audience, condensing 30 years of arena rock grandstanding into the set with big hard-hitting rockers like "Know Your Enemy" and "East Jesus Nowhere." After that, it was just a matter of crowd control, and at that Armstrong was Picasso.

"Put the cell phones away," he said at one point. "If they're not here right now, fuck 'em. This is our moment right now."

Michael Jackson song 'HIT LIST'

jussijames — 2009-06-27T15:20:00Z

Here is a list of Michael's Number One hits:
* 1972: "Ben" (1 week)
* 1979: "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" (1 week)
* 1980: "Rock with You" (4 weeks)
* 1983: "Billie Jean" (7 weeks)
* 1983: "Beat It" (3 weeks)
* 1983: "Say Say Say" (6 weeks)
* 1987: "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" (with Siedah Garrett) (1 week)
* 1987: "Bad" (2 weeks)
* 1987: "The Way You Make Me Feel" (1 week)
* 1988: "Man in the Mirror" (2 weeks)
* 1988: "Dirty Diana" (1 week)
* 1991: "Black or White" (7 weeks)
* 1995: "You Are Not Alone" (1 week)

Has also part of the 1985 number one hit "We Are The World" (4 weeks).

WayBy is HERE...It's a GIRL!

jussijames — 2009-05-27T22:12:00Z

Congrats to Lindsey and Gerard!!!

from twitter...

RT @levarburton Congrats to my friends Gerard and Lindsey who are first time parents as of 2:57pm PST. Welcome Bandit Lee Way...! You are such a Blessing!!about 5 hours ago from twidroid

mikeyway Mikey Fuckin' Way

Jack White Debuts New Band, The Dead Weather

jussijames — 2009-03-15T08:33:00Z

Mar 12 2009 11:51 AM EDT

http://thedeadweather.com/

White Stripes offshoot features members of the Kills, the Raconteurs, Queens of the Stone Age.

By Gil Kaufman

Apparently no one informed White Stripes/ Raconteurs frontman Jack White that the country is facing dire jobless rates, because White just added a third band to his résumé. Not content to front just two bands at once, White has just unveiled his latest creation, the Dead Weather, a death-rattle blues quartet featuring White on drums and vocals, the Kills' Alison Mosshart on vocals, the Raconteurs' Jack Lawrence on bass and Queens of the Stone Age's Dean Fertita on guitar.

White debuted the band Wednesday night at a private party in Nashville, Tennessee, in front of 150 invited guests, according to a recap of the event on the Web site of White's Third Man Records, using the show to unveil the label's new offices/ record store/ photo studio/ performance stage in Music City.

The first public performance by the band included songs from its upcoming debut, Horehound, which was produced by White and is due out in June. The album was recorded over the course of three weeks earlier this year at the new Third Man Studio, which was, of course, designed "from the ground up" by White as well.

Attendees at Wednesday's shindig — which, according to The Associated Press, included Sheryl Crow, Martina McBride and the White Stripes' Meg White — exchanged their letter-pressed invitations for a limited-edition seven-inch vinyl pressing of the Dead Weather's debut single, "Hang You From the Heavens," which also features a cover of the new-wave classic "Are 'Friends' Electric?" originally by Gary Numan's 1970s band Tubeway Army.

In keeping with White's love of home-crafted musical curios, the bandmates hand-painted each of the 150 singles, which also included photo-booth pictures of the bandmembers. Both songs are currently available exclusively through iTunes.

"The idea was to do a seven-inch single and be done with it, but we started writing songs and something happened," White said, according to the AP, which also reported that the band plans to tour this year.

"Hang You From the Heavens" mixes the Stripes' signature fuzzed-out garage sound with some dinosaur-rock drumming from White and Mosshart's punchy blues singing. Over skuzzy, blown-speaker rock, Mosshart yelps, "I wanna grab you from the hair/ And hang you up from the heavens." The noisy Numan cover adds a 1960s psychedelic sheen to the robotic original, with watery vocals and woozy keyboards that have a vintage vibe but render the song almost unrecognizable.

The White Stripes have not toured since late 2007, when they canceled a string of dates following Meg White's bout of acute anxiety. It's unclear how the formation of this new band will impact the Grammy-winning duo's future. The normally prolific group, which has reportedly been working on new material, has not released a new album since 2007's Icky Thump, though they did give a wobbly performance on the February finale of "Late Night With Conan O'Brien." A spokesperson for White could not be reached for comment at press time. http://thedeadweather.com/

My Chemical Romance Album Won't Be A 'Kitchen Sink' Affair

jussijames — 2009-02-18T10:29:00Z

Feb 18 2009 7:57 AM EST

'I think it's going to get by on its musicianship and its own merits in the songs,' frontman Gerard Way says of less dramatic album.

By James Montgomery, with reporting by Matt Elias

There was a time, long before the multiplatinum records and the pancake makeup, before the Eisner Award-winning comics or the Dylan cover in the "Watchmen" film, when My Chemical Romance were just another band from New Jersey. They would like very much to get back to that time.

So that's goal number one with their new album — the follow-up to the massively successful, massively ambitious Welcome to the Black Parade — which they're currently writing in Los Angeles. They hope to get back to their roots — to make manic, fast-and-furious, spur-of-the-moment punk. And, above all, to keep it simple.

http://www.mtv.com/videos/news/342687/were-not-hiding-behind-makeup-anymore.jhtml

"When we had just finished Black Parade, I think doing that record made us feel like we could do everything. And so I think the way to top a record that already kind of does everything is to not do everything," MCR frontman Gerard Way smiled. "I don't think this is gonna be a 'kitchen sink' record. I think it's going to get by on its musicianship and its own merits in the songs.

"And every record ... I like to think they're snapshots of what your band is at that moment, and this is really going to be that. I think there's going to be lack of concept, I think it's simply a snapshot, I think it's going to be direct and very honest," he continued. "It's not going to be hiding behind a veil of fiction or uniforms and makeup anymore. ... From the stuff we've been playing so far, just feels very pure. That's the best way to describe it. People who were really big fans of our first record, they'll find things they're really going to love about the new material — and not because we sound like that first record at all, it's because there's a purity to it. There's less happening."

It's a tactic they first learned while recording their version of Dylan's "Desolation Row" for Zack Snyder's upcoming "Watchmen" film: Stop thinking and just get busy rocking.

"From working on 'Desolation Row' ... I think it was very natural. We just kind of did stuff and the song was there. There was no over-thinking," Way explained. "[But, having said that] we're not going to make a retro record at all. It will sound like a modern rock record, but I think we would like to try to redefine that, what that actually means. By saying it sounds like a modern rock record, it'll sound new — I don't think it'll sound like what's on the radio right now."

And to that point, though it may sound like MCR are trying hard to strip away the rather, uh, grandiose leanings of The Black Parade, they've still got the swagger of a band that's moved units and toured the globe. They've been surveying the musical landscape that's appeared in their absence, and they're not very pleased by what they see. Take, for example, the (working) title of one of their new songs: "New Hair, Same Sh--."

"It's about having new hair, but it's the same sh--. That's the concept," Way laughed. "I think the new album is going to be a response to the two years of touring on Parade. A reaction to what's happening right now — everything that we're not a part of — and a response to it."

“21st Century Breakdown” by Green Day

jussijames — 2009-02-11T07:33:00Z

“21st Century Breakdown” by Green Day

There it is.

That’s the cover for Green Day’s new album, the follow-up to 2004’s immensely popular “American Idiot.” As you can see, it’s called “21st Century Breakdown.” No official release date has been set, but word is it’ll be out in May. It’s gonna be huge.

Blink-182 reunites!

jussijames — 2009-02-09T09:05:00Z

Press release:

"Hi. We're blink-182. This past week there've been a lot of questions about the current status of the band, and we wanted you to hear it straight from us. To put it simply, We're back. We mean, really back. Picking up where we left off and then some. In the studio writing and recording a new album. Preparing to tour the world yet again. Friendships reformed. 17 years deep in our legacy.

Summer 2009.

Thanks and get ready..."

My Chemical Romance begin 'raw' new album

jussijames — 2009-02-04T08:27:00Z

My Chemical Romance 'have to change'

By Greg Cochrane
Newsbeat music reporter

Gerard Way speaks about his regrets, MCR's brand new 'raw' direction and growing up with their fans.

My Chemical Romance plan to release their fourth album in 2009

My Chemical Romance will return to the studio this week to begin work on their as yet untitled fourth album.
In 2006, following the success of Green Day's majestically produced concept record American Idiot, MCR's similarly ambitious project The Black Parade became one of the year's most highly rated.
After a gruelling schedule, 2008 saw the band take a break. In the most part Gerard Way used the opportunity to complete the second series of his comic [The Umbrella Academy] while guitarist Frank Lero recorded with side-project Leathermouth.
"I ended up for some crazy reason getting off the road and within that first week of being off I didn't sit around on the couch I started writing more music," says MCR's lynchpin Gerard Way enthusiastically.
"I was pretty inspired so I do have a collection of stuff that I've written since being off the road," he says.
"This is our second time getting together and we're going to start banging material together and see what happens."

My Chemical Romance performing live in London

New direction
The Black Parade saw the New Jersey fivesome decked out in military garb and experiment with a widescreen punk sound.
"We haven't chosen a path yet," concedes Way of the new material already penned. "It's all over the map in terms of what's there."
"It's going to be less layered than Black Parade - I do expect it to be a little more raw.
"It's really nice to get a fresh perspective, we really needed to have that time off to live life and do some things and simply not have to tour or worry about making music."
Unlike its predecessor the band's next record - expected in late 2009 - will be put together in deliberately urgent fashion.

MCR cover Bob Dylan for Watchmen soundtrack

Gerard Way: "I'm hoping for something to happen in a very fast way, that feels very natural and that doesn't have a lot of noodling all over it.
"That's the goal, to get in there and have this rapid and visceral recording experience.
"To tour on it almost right away on it would be fun and not kind of drag it out like last time."
Looking back
This time there won't be any procrastinating.
The Black Parade - largely down to its own success - eventually took in three years of globe-straddling pyrotechnic-fuelled live shows, a period Way looks upon wearily.
"I'm finally getting to the point now where I can really look at that whole two years of my life," he says.
"I look back on it and there are a lot of things I'm really proud of and there are things I would have done differently.
"A lot of things I would have changed were maybe some aesthetic ones but you can't change that stuff.

If we keep making a copy of the same record it's going to be no good for anybody. We have to change

Gerard Way, My Chemical Romance

"I'm finally getting to the point now where I can listen to the record again and enjoy it - it took a while to be able to do that."
Indeed, with that experience onboard its follow up will be a markedly different, more grown-up affair.
"I'm not the same person to when I made the first record, second or Black Parade," he emphasises.
"Black Parade was three years ago. You change a lot in three years.
"If I try to write more music like that I'd be doing people a disservice. There may be some people that's just what they want but I don't think our fans do.
"We have to make a record that reflects how we've matured."
As far as the group is concerned change isn't an option then, but a necessity.
"If we keep making a copy of the same record it's going to be no good for anybody. We have to change.
"You hope that they [the fans] come along with you but they may not and you have to take the chance."