I've got Ace Freely, I've got Peter Chris

We just finished practicing for our performance tomorrow evening as "In The Garage: A Tribute to Weezer". Playing these songs is so intensely satisfying, it's hard to really explain; it's like we've unlocked the secrets to our favorite songs of all time. We're stoked.

Last night we played at the University of Illinois in Champaign, IL. It was what we expected, playing outdoors on a makeshift stage in the early evening to passers-by. Slightly uncomfortable but not terrible.

As we were loading out, this guy came up to us on his bike and said "Were you guys playing Search Party over here? I love that song" and started talking to us. I think he thought that we had covered it, he didn't realize it was our song until we told him that we were So Many Dynamos. I felt strangely rewarding, for somebody to know a song of ours but not attach it to us.

Today on Pitchfork Media, our buddies in Pattern Is Movement mentioned our song "New Bones" as one of the best songs of the last year in their "Guest List" feature. Thanks guys! They also mentioned the excellent "You and Me and the Mountain" by Maps and Atlases and said they were "afraid of those dudes." We second that.

Shirt related antecdote: The Scion Guy

Remember a few months ago when we were wetting ourselves over the fact that we were playing a show with Ra Ra Riot? Well, the gigantic shirt order we just placed reminded me of this story:

The tour Ra Ra Riot did with The Little Ones (great pop band who made this awesome video) was sponsored by Scion. As in the car. So there was this dude that followed the tour around in a Scion and set up an information booth with promotional keychains and shit on the merch table. Well, we were a little bummed because the merch table wasn't big enough for RRR, Little Ones, Scion, and us, so we got tucked away in a dank corner of the club to sell our shirts and cds and records.

WELL, the Scion guy came up to the merch table and asked for a small T-shirt. At this time, the shirts we had ordered ran a little bit large. He unfolded the shirt and kind of gave me this suspicious, raised-eyebrow look, then checked out the label and indignantly said "THESE AREN'T AMERICAN APPAREL!" and threw the shirt down on the merch table. The dude bought a CD so I could tell he wasn't totally pissed, but it was pretty weird for a second.

So anyway, we ordered American Apparel shirts this time around, so if Scion guy is out there, we've got you covered!

I'm gonna give you every 2.54 centimeters of my love

Almost halfway though the last week of confinement at Gateway Medical Research, and it's getting easier to do. Today the 8 hours of laying down in a bed and having hourly blood draws zoomed by, although I was trying to listen to The Glow Pt. 2 by The Microphones and the TV 8 feet away from me was blaring a mini marathon of Charmed. It's insane how much louder commercials are than TV shows. Every once in a while a Direct TV ad would come blasting on, which made it a little difficult to concentrate during Phil Elvrum's "sensitive moments", of which there are many.

Still getting ready for our tour. Just placed a massive shirt order, which involved spending more money than we've ever dropped at one time. We had our first practice yesterday with intent on working out more song transitions and making old songs a bit cooler so we don't feel like we're digressing by playing them. We'll be playing some songs that we haven't done in at least a year at our set Saturday at The Lot party @ Schlafly Tap Room. By the way, that show is free and all ages. We play at midnight, so technically we play on Sunday...

Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" just came on my iTunes shuffle and it reminds me of Chuck Klosterman asking Robert Plant why he said "i'm gonna give you every inch of my love" when they use the metric system in the UK. This has to be the most successful song to feature 2 minutes of drum solo, guitar noise, and sporatically-panned male orgasm sounds. Ever.

It also reminds me of Alex Newport talking about Plant while he was mixing our record. I believe the quote was something like "I fucking hate Robert Plant. If Kurt Cobain sang for Led Zeppelin, they'd be the best band of all time." I can't disagree.

thank you internet

I was shamelessly reading our wikipedia page earlier and came across this:
"In July 2007, So Many Dynamos began recording the follow-up to Flashlights with Christopher Walla. Sessions took place at Tiny Telephone Studio in San Francisco, Alberta Court in Portland, and the band's house in Edwardsville, Illinois. The record was mixed by Alex Newport at Metropolitan Sound, Brooklyn, NY in December 2007. The band recorded another track for the album in February 2008 at Great Western Records Recording in Champaign, IL. This track was mixed by Alex Newport in May 2008. The album is set to be called, "Chinese Democracy."

I had a dream there was a ghost here, and the ghost knew my name

They guy in the bed next to me at Gateway Medical research wouldn't stop snoring last night, and there are few things more annoying than being kept awake by somebody else's snoring. It's like somebody is enjoying their sleep so much that they decide it's more important for you to be aware of their awesome slumber than participate in your own. Griffin is the snorer in our band, and although I'm getting anxious and restless about this tour we're about to do, last night was a reminded of one aspect of sharing a room with all of the other dudes that I don't miss.

Not that I could have slept well anyway; my mind was racing with ideas we're working out for our live set on this next tour, transitions and whatnot. Trying to channel a little bit of that DC no-setlist thing. We only get 30 minutes every night on this next tour, and all the time we wasted on stage banter/heckling last time we went out with HORSE and Heavy Heavy Low Low could have probably been better spent, you know, playing songs.

But for now, Norm and I are confined to the research facility until tomorrow evening while we test a medicine for the treatment of Parkinsons Disease and Restless Leg Syndrome. We're currently confined to an 8 hour stint laying down in hospital beds while the phlebotomists come around and draw our blood hourly. The strange thing is that this isn't the "boring part", but after this when we're free to move around and there's nothing to do and we've napped too much to be able to sleep and TV is boring and the internet is boring and there's nothing in the inbox and nothing new on Craigslist or Pitchfork or The Onion or the Tape Op messageboard. This time I brought a few more things with me, like a guitar and an ipod and some books, so hopefully I won't be as bored to tears as last time. That might just be wishful thinking...

Oh, and the "You and Me and the Mountain" EP by Maps and Atlases is so, so, so very good. Obtain it.

Labels, contracts, light refractions

So our lawyer sent in the first official draft of a contract to the label we've been talking to (not naming names here), and then the real negotiations are about to begin. It's the closest we've been to having this record out so far and we're all pretty nervous/excited/terrified/ecstatic and with any luck, we'll be able to make some announcements soon. In the meantime, check this out:

Thanks to Yenie, our wonderful manager who also works at Youtube, for putting a link to this video on her Gmail chat away message.

Woah...

It's been a pretty hectic 2 days, really. There was all the Nashville drama and then we finally announced the dates for our tour next month with HORSE the Band and Heavy Heavy Low Low.

Meanwhile, Norm and I have been at Gateway Medical Research again. Yesterday I was forced to watch 3 hours of Monk while I had "Mexican hat dance" in my head. Of course, this was before the 5 hour marathon of So You Think You Can Dance. No comment.

Oh, yeah, we finally have a title for the record. It is:

The Loud Wars

It has three meanings:

1. It's an uber-nerdy reference to the phenomenon of albums getting louder and louder but losing actual quality in the process. In the digital realm that CDs exist in, there's an actual physical threshold for how loud things can be, so in the mastering stage of album making, people have been overcompressing music in order to make it APPEAR louder. The result is a lack of dynamic range and records that are fatiguing to your ear after a while.

2. When you hear a sound and turn your head towards the sound, the reasoning behind it is that hearing something out of just one ear is disorienting so the physical reaction is to turn your head so that the sound is balanced between your left and right.

3. The almost nightly battle we experience on tour between the sound guys that want us to turn our amps down so they can have more control over our mix. 99.9999 percent of the time, this means we are going to sound terrible.

The worst night ever/the best night ever

Just returned from two shows, here's how they went:

NASHVILLE, TN

NOTE: At the request of the venue, promoter, and our friend Molly who set up our show in Nashville, we've removed our post about the troubles we had at the Exit/In last Wednesday. The same miscommunication that caused us to not get paid extended into us not knowing the entire story behind the show before our post. We try to be open and honest on this blog to give an insight in the highs and lows of being in a functioning band and are sorry that our post rubbed some folks wrong. - management

ATHENS, GA
Athens always seems like the land of Oz, especially after a horrendous experience such as Nashville. Our show was part of the "Summer Camp" series of shows put on by promo company Team Clermont. We headlined again, this time to an attentive, filled out crowd, AND we got our guarantee. God bless.

The worst part: I had been joking around with Bill, the head honcho of the radio department at Team Clermont, because he's a Cubs fan (boo) and I'm a Cardinals fan (hurray). After the show, we were standing by the bar talking to the bartender (Bryant from Cinemechanica). Bill pulled out his Cubs credit card to show me, and I grabbed it and very lazily threw it behind the bar. And it completely disappeared.

I went around the bar and started looking for the card on the ground. While searching under the giant ice freezer, I cut my finger on an overturned bottle cap and it started bleeding WAY more than it should given the size of the wound. It's right on the knuckle, so it keeps getting ripped open, ESPECIALLY when i play guitar. This is kind of a problem.

Back to positivity: hung out after show w/ Bryant, slept for 45 minutes (which was 30 minutes less than Griffin slept and 45 more than Norm or Aaron), had breakfast at the Grit w/ Luke Shark, former Shark Sam, former Cinemechancic Erica, and former St. Louisan Christine, and drove back. Rolled into St. Louis just a few minutes late to catch Boyz II Men play for free under the arch. The sacrifices we make sometimes....