David Rosen

recently we had to do an interview with a guy who was going to be writing our new bio.  mark and i spoke to him for about 45 minutes each, and he then went and wrote up a nice piece about our new record, our favorite songs off the record, and our intentions and mission as a band.  it was perfectly acceptable and well written.  it was also a complete masking of everything that has driven us to the point we’re at, everything that has made us who we are, and everything that motivated the making of DOGS.  it’s nothing against the author; he did the best he could with what we gave him.  it’s next to impossible to have never seen a band live or spent any time with them, and be asked to summarize their entire lives based off an hour of small talk.  we just came to the conclusion after reading his piece that if we wanted to accomplish what we wanted out of a bio, we had to write it ourselves.  so we did.

CLICK HERE TO READ OUR UNEDITED AUTOBIOGRAPHY

you will see a bio out in the world that is slightly different from this one.  we were asked to remove some of the more “negative” statements to avoid sounding too bitter or angry.  a legitimate criticism, sure.  but i wanted to post this, the unedited original version we wrote, because even though it may come off a bit too bitter and angry, the fact is that this business has indeed made us bitter and angry.  more has happened this week alone than i could even begin to explain.  it’s a crazy thing to have all of your life’s eggs in one basket that someone else can just tip over or misdirect at any time without your control.  this is the machine we’re in.  we’re trying every single day to direct this negative energy towards positive pragmatism.  some days its easy and productive, some days its most definitely not.  but the struggle of it has bound the five of us together for life, and it most definitely drives us even harder to succeed against the odds.  we have proponents who support us from within, for sure, and their help is invaluable.  time will tell how the cards fall, but we’ll keep working always.

if you’d like to ask anything, click here.

this is a black jesuses song called “losing my name” that we recorded a little while ago.  if you don’t know, the black jesuses is myself playing guitar and singing, and sam bey playing drums.  matt radosevich, who produced our new parlor mob album, was in town demoing some new songs with us, and we recorded this on a day off in about an hour.  he took it home with him and mixed it, and here we have it.  i’ve now made it downloadable, so grab it.  i’ll post more black jesuses songs soon.  enjoy…

From NPR:

To capture the perfect wildlife image, you usually have to be in exactly the right place at precisely the right time.

But in this instance, David Slater wasn’t there at all and he still got a result.

Visiting a national park in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, award-winning photographer Mr Slater left his camera unattended for a while.

It soon attracted the attention of an inquisitive female from a local group of crested black macaque monkeys, known for their intelligence and dexterity.

Fascinated by her reflection in the lens, she then somehow managed to start the camera. The upshot: A splendid self-portrait.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2011051/Black-macaque-takes-self-portrait-Monkey-borrows-photographers-camera.html#ixzz1S5cwVhF7

this rules.

some of you may or may not know that david lynch is one of my all time favorite directors.  if not number 1, he’s absolutely in my top 3.  my friend jon d used to own an eraserhead t-shirt, when i was about 18 years old, and i thought that was the coolest image i’d ever seen.  of course i had to know what it was.  jon d was super into horror flicks, like, weird crazy foreign ones and everything, as well as cult films of all genres, and he gave me a copy of eraserhead.  i thought it was the most interesting, emotional and powerful movie i had ever seen.  and much like i do with every piece of art i find and fall in love with, i had to know everything about it.  and about its director, david lynch.  i saw all of his films, loved each one more than the next, read about his background and philosophy, and was hooked.  my passion for and understanding of his work multiplied as time went on. 

completely separately, around 2003 i was super into interpol’s first record, turn on the bright lights.  now apparently david lynch’s new short film, entitled i touched a red button, is sort of like a music video for this new(ish) interpol song called “lights”.  so that’s cool.  i always dug his short films.  this one is no exception.  like his last film, inland empire, it’s a little tougher to digest than his classics, and it makes me feel unnerved, uncomfortable and kind of scared.  but it makes me feel something, and powerfully at that.  

so when the parlor mob first started out as a band, we used to play shows all the time with this band called “low flying jets”.  this was like, 2005 or so.  they were fucking phenomenal.  like nothing i’d seen at that time, or since.  here’s some tunes:

low flying jets

so we got pretty close.  we traveled a few times together, played shows in nj and nyc frequently.  one time, we went to virginia beach together to play at a club called the jewish mother.  this was before we had actually cracked brad york, one of their two singers.  up to that point, he was still just quiet, mumbly and dismissive to us.  we all liked him, but had never really gotten to know him, per se.  but for some reason, this trip, he broke.  we all got hammered and ended up throwing chairs off our hotel balcony and being of questionable character towards some random folks who found their way from the show into our party (who were, in our defense, already naturally of questionable character).  after that it was a different story, we all got really really close.

low flying jets sadly dissolved after a while, but brad had these songs that he had released an EP of on the side under the name sikamor rooney.  they were equally as phenomenal as the jets tunes, but completely different.  when it came time to make a full length record, he asked me to be a part of it.  we tracked the self titled sikamor rooney full length in a week.  the band was brad york singing and playing guitar, anthony chick on bass, myself playing guitar and jef plate playing drums and keys.

here’s some tunes from that album:

now we perform with brad york singing and playing guitar, me playing guitar, anthony chick playing bass, jef plate playing keys, and sam bey and chris donofrio both playing one drum kit.  it’s a sight to see.

here’s a video of the first time we ever performed with this line up, without rehearsal, impromptu and spontaneously, at a bar in asbury park called trinity and the pope:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1823324986392

and here’s us playing on the 4th of july at porta national park in asbury park:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=2245170933830&oid=120474660300&comments 

we’re playing at donovans in sea bright nj this thursday july 14th.  it should be really fun.  it always is.

it’s over.  for now.  tomorrow will mark the 166th manned NASA space flight, possibly the last for a long long time, and for sure the last of the American Space Shuttle program.

here’s atlantis taking off on its first flight in 1985:

and here it is being prepared to launch tomorrow for the last time.

atlantis was the first space shuttle to launch interplanetary probes.  in 1989 it sent one probe to venus, and one to jupiter.  both have provided us with tons of invaluable, otherwise unattainable information about our solar system.  atlantis helped build the international space station mir.  atlantis flew out and repaired the hubble space telescope when it broke, and the hubble has given us, in my opinion, the most remarkable photographs ever taken.

i know the space shuttle program is bizarrely too expensive, but what we gain as a species has no cost.  i certainly hope those geniuses figure out another way to continue on.  cause i’m pretty sure we haven’t seen everything there is to see up there. 

“All civilizations become either space-faring, or extinct.”

Carl Sagan