RED RIDERS - ONLINE JUNK PILE

Another day, another soap box.

R.R.I.P

This is kinda hard to say, but anyway here goes: after eight immensely fun years of playing together as Red Riders it seems like now’s the right time to bow out. We’re all still the closest of friends, but just feel like the entity that is Red Riders has run its course, and rather than grind something that’s special to us into the ground, we’d like to call it quits while we can still stand proudly behind everything that we’ve made together. We wanna thank everyone who’s ever bought a record of ours, come to one our shows, shared our music with someone, written about us, put our music on the airwaves… Basically, to anyone who’s ever given a damn, thank you! It’s been mad sharing a part of our lives with way more people than we had any right to expect to. We’re gonna keep making music in other guises so keep a ear out, and if you see us at the pub, or lurking up the back of a show someplace, come say hi. We can grab a beer. 

Big love,


RR.
P.S We’re gonna play a couple of special farewell shows in Sydney and Melbourne that we’ll announce real soon, but otherwise the upcoming shows supporting Children Collide will be our last. Hope to see you there!

                                                                                                   

STRAIGHT ARROWS - MAGIC SCEPTRE

A little taste of what I’ve been up to while waiting for the new RR album to get sorted. Hi!

The Arts.

Woah. Five months since my last post? Geez. LAYYYYY-ZEEEE!

Oh well just thought I’d put up these pictures that my friend Will took of me hanging out in the retro-future (they’re not so warped in reality):

Will’s a bit of a genius. So in good news, he’s having his first solo exhibition, Stealing The Setlist at Mart Gallery in Surry Hills. It opens on July 22 and there’s gonna be a bunch of excellent live photos of excellent bands like Dappled Cities, Cut Copy, Tame Impala… The list rolls on. Oh yeah, and it’s an FBi fundraiser too, so shit just keeps getting better and better. I think maybe Will’s gonna use one of the photos of me in there too, but I dunno for sure. Guess I’ll have to go check it out. See you there.

Albums That Took Me By Surprise in 2009.

Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

Not so surprising musically. In that regard it’s right up my alley: fuzzy, speaker bleeding guitars chugging through power-pop songs, while some dude in a cardigan sings about doing it in a library. That’s pretty much all of my boxes ticked right there. The thing that surprised me though is that I couldn’t stop listening to it all year long. Usually an album so complete, so full of immediately unforgettable melodies, so absolutely crammed up the wahzoo with memorable hooks gets tired just as quickly as it endears itself, like someone trying way too hard to be your friend. The fact that this record has endured all the way into 2010 surprises the hell out of me.

King Khan and BBQ Show - Invisible Girl

I dunno if you know this, but I also play in this garage band called Straight Arrows with, among others, my pal Owen. Technically it’s his band, he writes the songs, he bosses everyone around and he makes recording an album hell (I just play solos and sing back ups and drink beers). Now Owen’s the kind of guy who would rather die than be made to listen to Pains Of Being Pure At Heart or any other hipster blog endorsed ‘indie’ music. Seriously, die. So he’s made it his personal mission to drag me away from the dark side and into the light. Some successful endevours: Red Kross - Born Innocent, GG Allin - Always Was, Is and Always Shall Be. Some unsuccessful endeavours: A whole bunch of stuff I only listened to for a second and have no real recollection of. However, Invisible Girl is one hell of a record. If you haven’t heard it yet, you really should. SURPRISE!!

Kurt Vile - Childish Prodigy

This one came recommended from the good people at Repressed Records in Newtown. I know! A record store! In 2009! SURPRISE!! But those guys know everything. I had no idea who Kurt Vile was or what his thing was, and I still don’t really know much about him, except that his album was a very welcome, though late addition to my 2009. It’s vaguely psychedelic, vaguely folkey, kinda lo-fi, kinda not. At times it’s gentle, at times it’s all worked up. I can’t really explain, but it creates a mood, one that my head likes to swim around in for hours. And one of the songs that my iTunes only recognises as Unknown sounds like a distorted acoustic cover of some Go-Betweens song that doesn’t exist. What a gem.

A.

Popularity Contests.

I have always tried to avoid them in life, but there’s something about this one that just sucks me in every time. Stupid ego. So if you feel like giving a brother a hand and voting for our song ‘Ordinary’ in The Hottest 100, that’d be downright dandy of you and my gratitude would be never ending, like a snake eating its own tail or some junk. Seriously.

More Things I’ve Learnt On The Drown In Colour Tour.

14 more things I’ve learnt on the Drown In Colour tour…

1. Sometimes people dressed up as cats end up looking more like rabbits.

2. A guy checking into a hotel at 4am with a leggy brunette isn’t always as suspect as it seems.

3. “I wish I had a suntan! I wish I had a pizza and a bottle of wine!…”

4. NVRLND FRVR.

5. Everyone on the Gold Coast is either buff, tanned and/or both.

6. Brad knows how to save a DJ set.

7. I really wanna hear Boat People’s new album.

8. I’m meant to check out some band called Pam! Pam! Pam!

9. Nobody does a “Stop Me…” sing-a-long like Kirin.

10. Happy Birthday Dan Last Dinosaurs!

11. Maybe don’t go to the Elephant and Wheelbarrow next time.

12. Matt and Em’s BBQs are the best.

13. Their cat’s named after Tom: Ginger.

and

14. SCHOOLIES!!

Some Snaps Will Took... 

…of us doing a semi-acoustic show for FBi.

Things I’ve Learnt On The Drown In Colour Tour

Ten things I’ve learnt on the Drown In Colour tour…

1. The Manly Fisho’s meat raffle is rigged. Heaps.

2. Tim Rogers is THE Australian music icon of the last 20 years.

3. Everyone in Cronulla is either really tanned, buff and/or (mostly) both.

4. Don’t give Brad the car keys.

5. The Last Dinosaurs have a Phoenix-ey thing going on at the moment that’s pretty ace.

6. Tom Wallace is the most un-fat person I know.

7. Robin Boat People is a keyboard hero.

8. Red Rooster should change their slogan to: “Red Rooster. Hey, why not?”

9. It’s better to not step on Matt’s tuner mid-song.

and

10. Keep Tom off the radio.

Befriend Our Friend.

Our friend Angele just moved here from The Big Apple and is looking for some new friends. She’s into McSweeney’s, Wolphin, the internet in general and the band Girls. You should add her on Facebook. A friend of ours is a friend of yours. Here’s a picture of her:

We Have A Wiener!!

So, I dunno if you were aware, but we were running a competition through Faster Louder to design us a new t-shirt for our upcoming Drown In Colour tour. And now there’s a winner! So if you wanna see who it is and check out some of the runners up as well, go here.

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