Don't miss Hoarsebox at the Button Factory this Thurs 1st April!!! - Tickets available on www.tickets.ie Doors 8pm Support from Zealots. Not to be missed!!
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Monday, March 29, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Untitled
It's nearly Paddy's Day and it's nearly time for us to rock Cork City:-) We hope to see you there!! http://short.ie/vhdi2o
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Sunday, March 14, 2010
Untitled
Looking forward to starting our mini-Irish Tour next week!! Tickets for the Dublin show are available on www.tickets.ie.
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Thursday, March 11, 2010
Mr. Sippy - Chronicles of Hoarsebox Week 5
| Week 5 (A.K.A. Last Week) – Overview/Summary/Stream of consciousness/Guestimate/Probably-ish/Blah!
Max, Kieran and Johnny spent the week in The Lip Studios doing vocals with Tom, the on the ball, good fun, laid back and patient engineer. We sang and sang and sang and said lots of things and laughed at those things and ate celery and hummus and had subs from Lenny's Sub Shop and wore pants and socks and smiles and our hearts on our sleeves and on our cuffs and in our underpants and waited patiently to go home.
Also ate Indian food...paneer, lentils, chicken done in all manner of ways, garlic naan and mango lassis. Chris Brown popped into the studio to punch us all in the face because we were doing really bad Barbadian accents saying things like “me's soooo haarny raaaight now...ya get me!” He felt apologetic so he did a little dance for us which featured the box splits, which he realised he couldn't do half way through. His groin fell off and his balls rolled across the floor. It took a little while to warm to him but that went some way towards us feeling better about him and then he did this amazing thing where he forced himself to get a nosebleed by swallowing his tongue....This is complete nonsense and stupid and we wouldn't like it if someone wrote this kind of thing about us so we'll move on...Max finally got his hair cut in Goolsby's. He asked for a mohawk and instead received what looks like a 1930's mental hospital do. Fair enough. Can't walk into an old barbers asking for rubbish like mohawks and expect to look like anything other than an extra from “Oh brother where art thou.”
Parrish asked us to do an acoustic gig in his bar on Thursday night in exchange for some form of bar tab. He knows how to make us weak and how to make us say yes, yeah, sure, GREAT, ABSOLUTELY and WHEN, FOR HOW LONG, SHOULD I WEAR MY HAIR LIKE THIS, DOES OUR BUM LOOK BIG IN THIS and TRY AND STOP US!!! We decided to do a Lady Gaga thing on it but with our limited wardrobe it came across a bit 40 coats/Worzel Gummidge /5 and dime/Sex At The City and Beverly Hills Cop 3. Kieran had two tube socks hanging from his ears with a large chunk of wasabi on the tip of his nose and all he had to cover his modesty was a yellow rubber glove...he did wear shoes of course. You can't walk around in this weather without shoes. You get a cold or something that way. It was kind of a Sex Mog look, like John Candy in Spaceballs, except with more flesh and spicy green Japanese paste. As it turned out, the glove caused a bit of a rash and he had to be rushed to Walmart to buy a new one.....and actually a bit later than that was taken to hospital. Rubber gloves seem like they keep you clean but it depends where you put them really. Johnny put the glass slipper he had found at the ball the night before on his private part. A move he adopted from a famous pal who said it was all the rage in L.A.in the 80's, while Schwarzenegger was still a snot-nosed, big-titted, mongo-impersonating thespian and not the Guvnor...Johnny also featured a beautiful hat made out of wet paper towels. A kind of malleable papier mache number that went from being shaped like a delicate swan to a thing that looked kind of like old wet paper towels smushed onto his head by the end of the night...who cares it was cool. He also wore a wife beater with BBQ sauce stains and the nipples cut out and cucumbers on his eyes, although I think he just forgot to take them off before leaving the house and we all spent a good few hours licking M&M's and sticking them all over his legs. It looked amazing, like sweet sweet chicken pox, but a hungry crowd meant Johnny ended up cold and bare-legged by the time he got off stage. So bloody rude, nibbling on his legs while he was singing...it tickled and he giggled during so many songs I thought he was going to wee himself.
Max went all plastic bags on it. We had collected somewhere near 470 plastic bags from the shopping we had done in Walmart and Kroger's. They don't recycle, they don't charge for bags, they want to pollute and kill everything but they did provide Max with a sweet dress so.....whatever.com! A ball gown, a ball gown...A BALL GOWN!!! Sooooooo exciting. Max, you WILL go to the ball. He looked like a bride at a traveller's wedding, all meringue poofs, and shoulder poofs and plastic elbow length gloves with poofs and his nails were all like 2 inches long with little diamonds on them and his tiara was made of broken glass, crushed Doritos and glue and he even went so far as to build a bonfire and stand beside it for an hour so he could get that smokey cream cracker scent that's so popular with “the Community” and his skin was bright orange but only cos he'd been eating, snorting and rubbing Cheetos into, at and on to himself for the last four weeks and he cut the toes off his Nikes Air Max's so he could go all sexy open-toe and whatever and ....anyway, he looked like a million Columbian Pesos, which is about 530 dollars.
Lady Gag-Reflex would have been proud of the boys. Anyway, we were so popular that Parrish asked us to do a second set until closing time.....we sang the same three songs fourteen times and as far as we were concerned we were incredible. Who knows, maybe it wasn't even us playing and we were watching another better band performing and our boozy bar tab heads thought differently...anyways, drinks were had, discos were went to, Old Dirty Bastard impersonators were met, a giant Polynesian chap ate all our Oreos and then fell asleep on the couch...he really was the size of a bear, a whale, a hairy bear whale that can breathe under water but also roars like a mountain beast and eats cookies and had played for Ole Miss's football team back in the day. Lets see, what else happened? Drenga...a drinking game made out of Jenga. Each wooden piece had a simple instruction handwritten on it. RULE MAKER – the person with that piece had to make a rule. Break the rule and you drink. One popular rule was speak with your teeth clenched. THUMB MASTER – when the thumb master puts his/her thumb on the table everyone else has to. Last one to do so drinks. DICKS – all the guys drink. WHORES – all the girls drink. SOCIALIZE – everyone drinks and other drinky things and ting. We were introduced to the “Cheese Wall.” Not enough time to explain but it's so beautiful. Like staring at the sun kind of. We did our 90's medley for 4 hours straight. Some guy wanted to sing a song so when we said, “yeah, man brilliant, we'd love for you to sing a song,” he went out to his car and brought in two expensive guitars with state of the art tuning equipment and capos and even had a harmonica helmet/neck brace and proceeded to sing and blow his face off for a long long time. Can't remember if it was any good but the equipment looked expensive so it's safe to presume he sounded expensive too...probably.
We thought seeing as our flight was really really early the next day we'd stay up through the night and pack while maybe having a beer or two or some shots of bull hormones or sniff cheese or snort lines of William Faulkner like “All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. ” and maybe “A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.” As it turns out early was really 7pm so we read a lot of Faulkner and sniffed a lot of cheese and managed to pack all our big clothes into our little bags and, feeling a little worse for wear, decided to go to Burger King where the chef seemingly boiled all our burgers in hot water, such was the awful steamy dampness of the beef we were served. Kieran coined the term “Wet Death” to describe just how slimy, humid and insulting the whoppers were. We were made sad by that but the airport beckoned and we were closer to home. A blurry visit to Walmart for hot sauce and wife beaters and Ole Miss Rebels memorabilia and lady's hunting shorts and lacrosse sticks and fried chicken flavoured heartburn tablets and see-through plastic assless chaps and maybe some second hand Tostitos with cheese dip and we were on the road to Memphis International Airport.
Blah blah blah yakedy shmakedy... we were on the plane. Two flights, 4 films and two weird meals later and we were back in Dublin. The End. This blog will resume when we return to Oxford for more writing, recording, laughing, sitting a lot, speaking with bad southern accents, making more friends and keeping the ones we made, playing gigs, eating hot sauce, making up stories and writing them in blogs, writing the truth in blogs but making it sound so ridiculous it couldn't possibly be true and generally trying to forge a path to pop success via the eternal beauty of music or some other cac. See you then...Yaw'll!
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Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Mr. Sippy - Chronicles of Hoarsebox Week 4 (Sunday)
| Sunday was sunny and bright and airy and there was a baseball game on in Ole Miss U so Brock Hudson, who looks more like “Sweep the leg Johnny” Johnny from Karate Kid everyday, drove us there in the back of his pick-up truck. The Kieran, Max and Johnny express, we were like fun-loving dogs, furry ears flapping in the warm wind, waving at people in traffic and soaking up as much sunshine as our pores could handle. Found seats overlooking 3rd base. Closest to 3rd base some of the lads had been in quite a while. Ole Miss were winning 8-3 and it was the bottom of the 8th...closest thing to a bottom some of the lads...etc, etc...WHAT? Anyway, drank ice-cold coca-colas and cheered anything and everything and saw a sign on the other side of the field which read “K K K K K.” Max though it might be “Knights of the Klu Klux Klan Klub” or something and Kieran suddenly felt conscious of the fact that he was shouting KKK and laughing about it in public...no shame in that. Arranged to meet some of our new Oxford friends to go on a nice forest walk. Kerry, Lizzy and Hannah are all actors studying at the University. We've changed their names to protect them because they're really called Olivia Newton John, Mark Wahlberg and Max Von Sydow and if people ever found out that they were living in Oxford they'd harass them for worn pairs of Calvin Klein undies and The Seventh Seal commemorative chess sets and Grease-proof paper and other junk and they hate that.
They led us through a leafless forest, yellow and ocher everywhere. Soft ground, fresh air and good company and we were happy, although the place had a bit of a smelly mountain raper vibe to it. The kind of place where Burt Reynolds' friends are massaged against their will and get compliments about their mouths. That film really makes the idea of pulled pork even funnier than it normally sounds. Anyway, went to High Point Cafe for rehydration and caffeine and chats and planning for our evening out. Mexican food in El Milagro Taqueria and a movie. Delicious soft corn tortilla tacos with pork, hard shell tacos with minced beef and steak fajitas, all with guacamole and sour cream and lettuce and salsa valentina, no me digas wey! The waitress was about 14 months pregnant...probably a Mexican theme restaurant thing or something...it definitely made the experience seem more genuine...is that racist?...probably or maybe just a very very very very very ignorant thing to say. Strike it from the record. The food was great and the artwork on the tables was even more impressive. Disco conquistadors and camp Aztec warriors who clearly figured out the 8 minute abs workout hundreds of years before it was cool....sexy Mexican maids and other deadly stuff. They also have Karaoke. Must be my favourite combination of things in general.
Went to the cinema. Split up. Max went to “Cop Out” with Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan while Kieran and Johnny took in “The Wolfman” with Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins. Upon meeting up after the showings the lads shared their marks out of ten. “The Wolfman” received a glittering 2 out of 10...because, according to Kieran it had a bit where the wolf went, “raaaaaaarrrr.....RAAAAAARRRRR?????” “Cop Out” got 1 out of 10 and Max still felt that was generous. If he had known it was made by Kevin Smith then he would have gone to see “Valentine's Day” with Jessica Alba and Jamie Foxx and Jessica Biel and Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Garner and Ashton Kutcher and all his other favourite acting people who weren't in “Cop Out” and probably haven't worked on anything with Kevin Smith and he would have given it a 10 out of 10 for not being “Cop Out” and for being about love and normal people who love each other and Valentine's day and stuff like that....and that.
The only cure for shit films like those was going to bed and falling asleep so that we didn't have to think about anything anymore. Sleep is genius! |
Monday, March 8, 2010
Mr. Sippy - Chronicles of Hoarsebox Week 4 (Saturday)
| Wowee, Saturday was hella painful. Brock took Phil to Memphis in the morning. Phil slept the whole way there. Johnny went swimming again...dangerous, sexy and cool swimming with his heart pounding and his body sweating Rioja into the chlorine. Kieran woke Max up at 12 so he could fall down in the shower again. No real harm done, just good clean fun. Brock ferried the lads to the studio where Kieran was due to complete a leaden-headed and shaky-fingered bass part for “You lie, you get more.” He got stuck in without complaining as Max fell asleep on the comfy couch in the TV room dreaming of being asleep in his own bed and waking up in his dream to cups of tea and chocolate digestives and chocmallows and maybe a sneaky Kimberly Mikado...and while we're now in dreamland why not throw in four midgets dressed as the Beatles circa 1967 with bowler hairdos and all and maybe a golden condor who speaks of the devastation caused by the conquistadors before transforming into a pair of daisy duke shorts being worn by Peter Falk in Columbo and when I click my fingers you'll wake up...1,2,3...aaaaannnnddddd you're awake!
Thank goodness. The rest of the day was a bit of a blur to be honest. Kieran did some playing, Kyle did some comping, which is where he takes the bits we didn't fuck up and glues them all together so that we sound like accomplished musicians. God bless his cotton socks and celiac face. Max relaxed by reading the Hoarsebox blog. It's such fun...AHHHHD SAAAAYYY!!!. Maybe the truth should be told now and again he thinks so that people know just how hard they're all working and how little down time there is and how the music industry is so cruel but they're all banding together to make this experience a success and four become one without kissin' and all Max wants is to get a mohawk in the funny African American barbers and to eat a salad in Mississippi that doesn't comprise of meat, or fried catfish or blue cheese or nuts with gloop on it...lettuce is illegal...and one day we'll tell our children's children that we tasted life as not many people have, deep fried and smothered in Louisiana hot sauce with music on the side and plenty of unbridled fun to wash it all down. It has been quite an experience so far.
Maybe we ate Japanese food again...who knows, we were exhausted and running on sweetened fumes and who really cares? We were ready to rest on Sunday. |
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Untitled
Looking forward to our Irish Tour! Check out our dates http://ping.fm/Mm9BF and we hope to see you at one of our shows!!
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Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Mr. Sippy - Chronicles of Hoarsebox Week 4 (Friday)
| Friday: It was Phil’s last day before going home to his lady with a baby. Went to the studio. We probably made more music...This is being written on the following Tuesday so we can’t remember. It’s in the past so let’s leave it there and make up a more remarkable story about Friday. Maybe some of it will be true by accident. Max had been climbing Mount Juliet Binoche in his dreams and had fallen out of the top bunk onto a carpet covered in corn tortillas and salsa. Ouch. He then woke up to find that the tortillas were all a dream and Mount Juliet Binoche was only something he had written that he thought was funny at the time. He got down to brass tax and recorded his drum part. No problems. Kieran started slappin’ da bass mon...ugh...and Phil guitared his way to glory before John-Joe finished off with some keys keys. Difficult to know what it sounds like as all music now sounds the same. I'm sure Westlife have experienced the same thing, actually not sure if they’ve ever been in a recording studio, but if they have I'm sure they’d have this type of feeling, if they in fact have any feelings at all after their extensive all-over body botox, lobotomies and ...what’s the opposite of exorcisms? Anyway, a volcano erupted up the road and the devil gave us an opportunity to grab one thing of value from the studio before the whole place was covered in a gloopy bed of flaming hot magma. Phil was first and he went straight for Dennis’s guitar. Only a week earlier he tried to do a deal with Dennis that if we won a Grammy for him from this album Phil could keep the guitar. Dennis made the point that if we won a Grammy we may actually owe him something and not the other way around. Fair point. Kieran was tempted to save the hummus from the fridge cos it’s tasty an all but he opted for putting Will the intern on his shoulder and doing a legger. I’d like to say Johnny wanted to save Michael the Tech but Michael is a celiac and wouldn’t survive very long in a post-apocalyptic Mississippi, so he decided to nab a pack of the studio’s delicious herbal teas. Drinking camomile tea while watching a town burn and its inhabitants melt seems so southern and relaxing. Max just grabbed his crotch with both hands and let out a big Michael Jackson “HEE HEEEEE!!!” before again waking up on the couch in the control room to the sounds of “My grey pilot” flowing through the air. Sounds good. The kind of thing that could also make it onto Grey’s Anatomy or Brookside or Hollyoaks Nights or Ros Na Run or some other jive. No way, dinner in Two Stick? Yes, Japanese food is really the only way. Although we went for the vault and ate so much tempura we might as well have had three snack boxes and a half dozen batter sausages. Forgot to mention that Two Stick is on a hill so the lava was slow to catch us there. Seeing as it was Phil’s last night and he had to get up early to fly home we thought we’d supplement our volcano escape experience with a few cheeky beers, gin and tonics, Riojas and Rumblemints (The local name for the 100 proof murder juice toothpaste that is peppermint schnapps). We met with our lawyer, The right honourable Lady Lawboobs who told us of her magical condo on top of the highest hill in Oxford. A perfect excape from the deceptively slow Volcanic hot sauce that was creeping up behind us everywhere we went. Lady Lawboobs’ little dog, Lilly the Pliny the Elder, panicked and ate attention deficit disorder medication and sleeping pills and tried to land before she had taken off. Her heart exploded and she was grand. The devil told us it wasn’t any fun for us to be hiding away like that so he summoned us home to drink Miller High Life’s and pour tequila into laptops and disco dance on high stools while playing guitar and do saxophone solos to people on Skype before one by one throwing ourselves into the oncoming lava. That was the best bit. Would there be a Saturday? Would there be more blogging? Did you hear about the man with a wooden willy? .......Wooden pee!!! Anyway, seeing as we’ve already said this is being written the following Tuesday it’s safe to say we somehow survived and had to go to the studio the next day. Let’s hope it wasn’t too painful. |
Mr. Sippy - Chronicles of Hoarsebox Week 4 (Thursday)
Thursday began like almost every other here in Oxford. Johnny got up early and went swimming. Philip practiced “Sarah” by Phil Lynott on his alto saxamaphone so he’ll be able to loudly but kind-heartedly serenade his lovely lady (coincidentally also named Sarah) while she gives birth to their baby in a few days time. Phil is leaving on Saturday to perform at the big event. Kieran went for another run up the hill but stopped after ten minutes, cross-eyed and breathless. Heavy-lunged he made his way home to do something far more fulfilling and cozy, talk to his wife on skype in the comfort of their own free space IN the internet. Max woke up and turned on ESPN’s sportscenter where he could get all the same “news” he had watched the night before but presented by two new hosts. He loves sports so much he doesn’t mind getting caught in a déjà-vu of replays and top ten plays and cheesy commentary. “Yo, he must be butter...cos he’s on a roll!” Kieran, Phil and Max met in the kitchen to make each other eggs and things before Brock came to pick them up and take them to the studio. Kyle was making sure we sounded good on the Apple Mac (Product placement) nudging parts this way and that and doing some basic mixing. So there’s time for Phil and Max to shoot some hoops and try to break the most pathetic record of all time. 5 shots made in a row. We just can’t get 6. Who really care, eh? We’re not hoopsters, we’re unhip hipsters. Get in and start playing “UP” together in the room. A few takes, a few changes of drum sound...more sheets of paper on the snare, some chewing gum and Max’s wallet, believe it or not. Play through the song a few times. Some deli sandwiches, yum yum Italian meaty things that are so big they need to be liquidized to consume and then back for a few more goes. We take a dinner break to head to Marie’s Lebanese Restaurant for the Veggie plates and hummus and Falafel wraps...and a few cheeky French fries. Back to Sweet Tea and we get it done in three takes. Genius!...or at least the computer and Kyle will make it sound like genius. Home to the range for some touchdown dip...won’t bother explaining that...a glass of ice cold Coca Cola and bed. Phil is now “two sleeps from home.” COME ON FRIDAY!!! |
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Untitled
Check out our new blog http://ping.fm/KA6Rf and follow us on Twitter http://ping.fm/ckJFk Enjoy the reading:-)
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Mr. Sippy - Chronicles of Hoarsebox Week 4 (Wednesday)
| Wednesday: Started tracking “I won’t worry.” This tune will get us on whatever new show takes over the Grey’s Anatomy market. There will be a scene that features a young guy with floppy hair, who does a job that people who look like him could never do, like doctor or lawyer or some other crap, and he’ll be standing outside some young wan’s flat in the pissing rain, as she’s curled up in her dimly lit and tastefully decorated bedroom crying without running her perfect make-up. We will then be cashing our royalty checks for this housey/handbag ballad and going to Funderland for a week straight ridin’ all the rides and winning all the toys. WEEEEE!!! Anyways, got the instrumentation done and Kyle hurled himself at the computer to put everything where it was supposed to be in the first place. He likes doing that like we like playing Pro Evo. He could do that stuff all day like we could Pro Evo, except we can drink and eat crisps and all that while we play our game, but he has to concentrate or people don’t get famous. We will thank him when we’re famous by bringing him to Funderland or maybe ice-skating in Smithfield. Went to Proud Larry’s for their 2 for 1 special night on burgers and domestics and wine. It’s funny, when you ask for the burger as part of the special, they think you want two burgers and two beers...for yourself! We had to be clear that we were going to essentially have a burger each cos having two is psychotic. We eat a lot but that’s filthy. Having said that, Kyle got two. But he is a celiac (Ahern) so he didn’t have no buns. He ingeniously put together a makeshift burger using the beef patties as buns and a slice of tomato and lettuce as the filling. He’s a hero. Watching him eat that was like watching the old people in “Cocoon” swimming in that pool full of alien fetuses, disgusting but also life-affirming. So, back to the studio to do some overdubs, keyboards, vocally things, Chinese burns, waterboarding, underarm farts, etc. Got what we needed to get done. Everyone was tired and cranky and in need of a rest so we went home to lay ourselves down in front of the fire and make sweet sweet love to ourselves.....or just watch sports and punch each other in the face. You choose. Bon nuit. |
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