On Friday, Sept. 1, howie and Scott will reunite for APE’s S.ummer’s E.nd X.travaganza at Doane College in Crete, NE – Cassell Outdoor Theatre, along with Robot, Creep Closer!
Help us write our setlist – leave a comment below!
After years of drug abuse, on-stage meltdowns, terrible comeback albums, sleeping with our band managers, disturbing-the-peace arrests and trashing hotel rooms worldwide, howie and Scott are back together and will be in fine rocking shape. Don’t miss us. We’ve missed you!
Nate asked me to post this for you guys. I’m heartbroken, but it sounds like there is hope for more Nate-music. -h
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This message is to thank all the people who have listened to and supported Bike during the past several years since Bike’s inception. The happiest moments I’ve had writing music as Bike came during collaborations with friends, and being able to share my music with whomever wanted to listen. There is however, a time and a place, and this time and place tells me it is time to close out Bike.
Admittedly, my audience is small. I have garnered no accolades. There is no six record contract in the works. My music has never been about viability or commercial success. I simply wanted to create music for music’s sake. In that light, I believe I’ve been successful.
What do we talk about, when we talk about success? I hope that you listeners have been able to form some connection to my songs. This can be challenging when 80% of my music is instrumental; so I praise your patience. When I talk about success (brace yourself for clichés), I talk about creating a bond with the listener. Do you remember your low points in life when music seemed to save you? I hope you, the reader, have experienced this at least once in your life. Music is innate in us. The earliest people sang melodies to celebrate spirituality, love, and to re-tell their lives. In my own way, Bike has been about telling a story, albeit through clicks and pops and strums. The above is how I define success. I hope you understand.
I digress. I feel this farewell is narrowly avoiding becoming a long-winded diatribe on the ethics of music. I just want to once again thank the loyal listeners out there, and the people who have supported bike and the cause. YOU are a special breed.
I do plan to keep the bike myspace page up occasionally posting songs here and there, but nothing comprehensive. So I wave my hand in the air as I wheel Bike into the sunset. Envision F-16s leaving red, white, and blue sky trails as the music is queued and all fades to black. Thank you again and be golden my friends!
-Nathan Driver / Bike
NEW MUSIC – Check out Church Photo Directory starring: Benjamin Axeface’s first EP ever, We Have Uh-Oh. Cory Alan, James, and Annie (and howie) are super-proud of their debut work. ALSO PEEP – “Disagree” from Iris Avenue on Furious Instance (to your left & pink). This track was played live at the KDNE “Core FM” radio studios, transmitted across the “inter-net,” captured and mastered by howie and is now available.
With our April/May blitz of Axeface, Robot Creep Closer!, and echoes’ …Lone Wolf complete, we are back in creating-mode. R,CC! is talking studio time with various Lincoln engineers/producers and at least one local record label. echoes and Cory are putting finishing touches on the Ventura songs, and will begin recording drums and percussion very very soon at an undisclosed location (and you can preview tiny album artwork in the top-right corner of this page!). It is rumored that howie is planning 12 Ventura shows in the 12 months following the album’s release. Bike is mysterious, but probably recording 10,000 new songs for you to hear.
There you have it. Enjoy the new music and SUMMER’S COMING; SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS AND STRANGERS! LOVE! -Mr. Furious
Robot, Creep Closer!’s new EP Why Aren’t People’s Heads Exploding? was released yesterday – download four songs of slurred, riffy bar-metal from Lincoln’s leading purveyors of anthropomorphized computers today!
mrfuriousrecords.com has been through a slight technical/aesthetic upgrade this morning relating to the navigation links to your right in the sidebar, and the background “album covers” image. The changes are aimed at make the site a bit cleaner – enjoy.
After four attempts at sending a message through the email list yesterday and today, FuriousMail seems mysteriously down. Hopefully no one misses R,CC!’s EP or their show Saturday night at Duffy’s for Scenefest because of the problem. Our analysts will continue working on it.
One last bit, Cory Alan and I have been listening to a nearly-finished disc of Ventura demos, and the tracklist is below. I am itching to start tracking percussion, as soon as I decide what location I can use. We’re about 99.4% sure this is what the album will be:
1. Large’s Garden State
2. Coast & Plains
3. While I Was Moving About Flyover Country
4. You Do What You Want
5. Car Chase
6. Lee’s Summit
7. Were In Love
8. Market Stress
9. I Want To Know
10. Make Our Sound
11. E. Harbor Blvd.
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Speed Lab (Furious Instance exclusive)
I’ll be playing “Make Our Sound” for the first time at St. Peter’s on Sunday with Stillsinging, if you’re in the neighborhood. -h
Hello. It’s been awhile!
We have released echoes’ Tonight the Lone Wolf Rides Alone, 10 solo acoustic tracks of howie’s covering his 2 EPs, new songs, and covers from the JV All*stars, Blacklight Sunshine (aka More Than Yesterday), Shacker, and the Foo Fighters (“A320” is limited to 50 copies because of licensing, so download yours asap!).
An out-take from the Lone Wolf sessions is new on Furious Instance; # 9 “Coast & Plains” from the upcoming Ventura album with Cory. Also pick up # 8, which never made the front page – Cory telling a crazy story, accidentally caught on tape during the November 05 Benjamin Axeface sessions.
As if that weren’t enough… we’ll be back in two weeks with the debut from Robot, Creep Closer! And two weeks after that, the long-awaited Church Photo Directory Starring: Benjamin Axeface EP!!!111 Check the [blog] every week for continued cobwebs & musical musings! We had a great time in California! See you-
-Mr. Furious
(h)
A host of updates on different fronts this morning;
mrfuriousrecords.com continues to evolve with the new WordPress system. Major changes last night include adding the “Last Five Posts” section and making the “MUSIC Category Archive” the front page (instead of the last five posts… you see the logic here). Moved the album art to the right side for clarity. I will still be messing with smaller formatting things this weekend, but step-by-step we are massaging the site into doing what we want. Thanks to all who have been using the new commenting system! Slick, eh?!
New music is ready, including echoes’ Tonight The Lone Wolf Rides Alone, Benjamin Axeface’s EP, and Robot, Creep Closer!’s demo EP. We are awaiting artwork, and will release one of these shortly.
New buttons are in the mail from NOBS – see me for one. Three new designs, including the Be A Ska Rat cover, and the “MR” logo in mint green and light pink (i.e. the website colors).
The Farewell has our first show as a newly re-memembered five-piece on St. Patrick’s Day in Wichita, KS. I’ll be rocking Melisabeth Wright’s own personal CASIO onstage! We sound like… The French Kicks + U2 + Tom Petty. Is that possible??? The show is with a national band and a popular Wichita band, so I’ve heard it will sell out; if anyone dreams of going, get in touch with me soon: mr@mrfuriousrecords.com (we’ll be playing in KC very soon).
-h
Tonight we are thrilled to release Bike’s second full album with Mr. Furious Records, A Wind I Can Lean Into. Nate is turbo-pumped about it, and you could be too; it is a fantastic work. Download it directly below this post, or from its own album page.
With the breeze at our backs we’ve also launched a new website, completely re-designed from the bones up. So take a look around. Everything is here… we’ve brought the [blog] onboard, archived everything and made it searchable, grown more responsive with souped-up commenting, and cleaned up the look. Many thanks to the open-source community that created WordPress, which is the skeleton of our new site.
Some notes;
Comments may ask for your email, but I swear it is not being recorded anywhere I can find. I’m looking for how to delete that field from the “comments” form entirely, but in the meantime please don’t be scared.
MR|signal continues to be a little iffy if you’re trying to hear a specific song… but if you launch it, click on “Tracks,” select “shuffle” and PLAY! you will get a nice mix of MFR music. We are working on a total re-design of MR|signal too, but didn’t want that to delay Bike’s new album!
Extra-special thanks to Tim Gillespie for help with CSS, .php, and hunting down WordPress demons. Tim is a fierce demon-hunter, though you’d never know to see him.
So please, enjoy A Wind I Can Lean Into, our expanding catalog of indie music, and the new site. We’ll be back soon with Robot, Creep Closer!’s first EP, echoes’ Lone Wolf, and weekly [blog] posts.
echoes’ long-awaited follow-up to the nickel EP, Be A Ska Rat has been released and is available on its post page. Go and download that sucker – it’s our snappiest release to date! And you can read a bit about it in the MFR [blog]!
We also have a new Instance courtesy of Sally M/S Ride; from a rare live show, a special two-guitar two-voice cut of “Tweaky,” from Don’t Let Them Take Us ALIVE!. You can hear it right now, by clicking the big PLAY! button over to your left (triangle in a circle, yeah!)
Last, but certainly not least, we’ve launched MR|signal!!!111. MR|signal is a streaming audio player; launch it by clicking one of the links on the right side of the page. You’ll see a menu, iPod-style, through which you can stream our music by album, artist, or individual song – you can even set it to shuffle ALL the releases together! MR|signal is an awesome way to stream our music, so give it a shot – and if you have your own website, you can add a MR|signal-launch button using the code available at the bottom of the pop-up.
A word about MR|signal; its technological guts rely on two organizations beyond our MFR servers at spookymedia.com ; the audio servers at archive.org, and laszlo.com (which provides SoundBlox, the player itself). If either of these orgs are having trouble, it can slow down or stop MR|signal. Service has been consistent about 90% of the time through our testing phase, but if you have trouble, try back later! Also; we are working through a minor technical issue that is currently preventing Be A Ska Rat and Matt Wisecarver’s Secret Fantasy from appearing on MR|signal.
Other changes at mrfuriousrecords.com include moving our outside.influence link-feature to a page of its own, and adding the CDs page with instructions on how to receive copies of h&s’ signs.comets and near and far, and Shacker’s Pardon My Pretension, But Isn’t It Blackbeard’s Birthday? in the mail.
Thanks to all (Bear, Lara, Keith, Jay Q, and strangers!) who came to see Cory and howie at the Zoo Bar last week!
This Saturday night the Artists Formerly Known As Jesus Makes The Shotgun Sound will take the stage in Lincoln, NE at Knickerbockers. The Artists recently discovered that another (not as good) band has prior claim to the name “Jesus Makes The Shotgun Sound” (which is a quote from a counselee in a standard grad-level psychology text… who knew?). OUR “JESUS…” WILL ANNOUNCE THEIR NEW BAND NAME AT THE SHOW ON SATURDAY NIGHT!!!111
TAFB (Totally Awesome Fun Band) & Artists Formerly Known As JMTSS
Saturday, 17 December
Knickerbocker’s (9th & “O”), Lincoln, Nebraska
*early show* ALL AGES: 6-9 pm, $5
That’s the plan. Rumors about the band’s new name have leaked from the talks, and reportedly include such words as: bear, fight, robot(s), riot, party, shotgun, and rampage. Note the prevalance of the letter “R”, the juxtaposition of “fun” and “violent” imagery, and the use of non-human but oft-anthropomorphized creatures (“bear,” “robot”).
Inspired by the simple look of hooliganshooligans.com, I gave h&s’ site a makeover this morning. It mostly has to do with the outside edges of the page, leaving the content as it was. But the look is cleaner now, and I like it. -h
What is the holiday season, if not the particular time of year when people spend weeks trying not to stick forks in their own eyes because of the incessant sound of the same twenty Christmas “favorites” being played over and over?
With today’s release of Mr. Furious Records’ XMAS compilation, you can put down the silverware and listen to four original works of holiday music. From bright to blue, sweet to sad, Beach-Puppy, echoes, and howie&scott will lead you through the Christmas season in a fresh way. Fresh, like Doug E, you know! Get. Your. Download. On. at the XMAS post page.
XMAS marks the return of founding Furious band howie&scott, who contribute ScoMo’s composition/improvisation “At its Rising” and howie’s uber-poppy “Merry Christmas” to the effort. You can read all about the pieces on the MFR [blog] this week. www.howieandscott.com has also been updated with the news. And if that weren’t enough, a preview of h&s’ track for next year, “O Come Thou Dayspring,” is playing via Furious Instance (over to your left – click the big, round PLAY! button!).
We’ll be back in January with echoes’ brand-new Be A Ska Rat, the launch of MR|signal (our new streaming radio broadcast transmission jukebox), and more music. Keep up with our greater-than-weekly MFR [blog] posts, too. Merry Christmas,
-Mr. Furious
A live video of Benjamin Axeface playing “Placing Blame” is up on StarCityScene.com’s new Video page. Also available are videos from Ideal Cleaners, Producers of the World, and the Static Octopus. Thanks Terry and StarCityScene.com!