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My top ten list for 2011 is over at Punknews. Mostly music, but I tossed in a TV show. I probably should have included more TV shows (Louie season 2, at least) because there were certain shows I liked more than the albums on my list. Too late now!
-Nate
I forgot (I think?) to link to this earlier, but here’s something I wrote recently about a comic book. I don’t read comic books, but that was sort of the point of this particular exercise—DC Comics did a ‘reboot’ of all their comics recently with the hope of luring new readers who would never start on issue 500-whatever, but might give something a shot if they could start at the beginning.
Basically, then, a person like me is in the target audience. Gosh, I feel so special! A target! So The Sense of Right Alliance blog asked me, and a bunch of other people who don’t regularly read comics, to pick one of the re-booted series, read the first issue, and report back on whether or not it sucked us in enough to want to continue on to #2.
I asked for whichever one was the worst comic in its old form. That way, I’d get to check out the comic that had the greatest challenge in front of it. I was given Hawk and Dove #1, which was…. well, go read the review!
-Nate
I need to update this more often, huh? I just never seem to be able to get into the groove of writing website content on a regular basis. I could lie and say I’ll try harder moving forward, but nah.
Anyway: here are some things that I’ve been up to. Banner Pilot just released our third full length album Heart Beats Pacific, on Fat Wreck Chords. Go learn more, or check out a couple sample songs. We also just completed a tour out east and down south with our buddies Dead to Me, and will be heading out to the west coast in January. Dates and info are over at Bannerpilot.net.
Gateway District demoed some songs last month and we’re hoping to write a new full length over this winter. That seems like an attainable goal. It’s sounding pretty good so far. Don’t forget that we released an album earlier this year that you can still check out. Here’s an iTunes link, or get the CD/vinyl from Interpunk, among other places.
I’m about halfway done with a new book but I’m not really sure if I want to do it fanzine-style (ie, just a bunch of stories collected together) or if I should try to meld it into a single story/narrative/whatever. I’ve also been working on new Banner Pilot songs… it’s been really back burner since we wrapped up in the studio, but I’m hoping to devote more time to it soon. Hell, it snowed today for the first time of the season: soon enough there won’t be anything to do but sit around and write music while the outdoors is cold and dark and sorta crushingly terrible. So, I guess I have that to look forward to.
OK, I think that’s all for now! I found some old stories while I was moving stuff to a new laptop so I’ll try to remember to post them here soon. But again, my track record on keeping this (or, any) website updated regularly is just atrocious.
-Nate
Hello. A few quick updates on things:
Banner Pilot finished our new album! That was the main thing I did this summer (which is either cool or sad; I’m going with cool) and I’m stoked for it to come out. It’s called Heart Beats Pacific and you can purchase it this October 25th when it comes out on Fat Wreck Chords. Read more here.
We’ll be doing a tour of the east coast with our pals Dead to Me this October in support of it. For exact dates, check here. Earlier in the month we’ll be heading to Chi-town for Riot Fest, where we’ll be opening for All. Come for us, stay for Danzig.
Finally, for those of you in Minneapolis, you can come check out the CD release (or, Mediafire Link Two Week Anniversary, most likely) this November 5th at the Turf Club in St. Paul
Gateway District also has a couple of shows coming up. One is a Minot ND flood benefit (note: the benefit is not for the flood itself. It’s for the people affected by it. We’re not weirdos) at the Turf Club on Saturday September 24th. There’s another show in September but as far as I can tell it’s not announced yet so I guess i’ll zip it for now
Ok, that’s all for now!
-Nate
This evening I looked — like, REALLY looked — at the Super America logo for the first time, despite the fact that I worked there many years ago for a few months.
It has a Dated Futuristic look, if that makes sense. As if some executive back in 1986 told his graphic design team, “Look to the future. That’s where we want to position our brand. Imagine a gas station 25 years from now; make a logo for that 2011 gas station.”
Well, despite many things about the current era being less-than-awesome, at least we don’t live in a world where that stuff is the norm, where every bank logo looks like this:
and people who look like this walk into those banks:
Hey, here’s a quick interview with City Pages that mostly talks about the upcoming Gateway District record. Check it out right here.
Speaking of Gateway District, we’ll be doing a couple of record release shows in Minneapolis at the end of the month. Friday March 25th is at a house in NE minneapolis. Write me for the address. The next day is at the Turf Club with Off With Their Heads and The Arrivals. Should be fun!
-Nate
Ugh, I’m so bad at keeping this updated on a regular basis. Every time I have a website or a blog or whatever, this happens. I’ll try to be better!
Just a quick update for now: The new Gateway District record is done and ready to go and will be released this spring by It’s Alive records. Go to our Bandcamp page to see the artwork, tracklisting, and hear a couple songs from it. And then go here, to the label page, to hear a third song and get some additional info about the record. Super excited to get it out.
Likewise my new book Hit the Ground Stumbling is finished and will hopefully be out in March. There will even be a Kindle version this time around, hopefully decreasing the number of times I have to trek to the Post Office and blow my lunch break standing in line!
Banner Pilot has a few shows/tours coming up: SXSW in March, a few shows with Screeching Weasel and Dead to Me, and then a tour with The Queers in May that includes a stop in Canada, a show on a boat in NYC, and concludes with Weasel Weekend in Chicago. Good times. Check out the specific dates and venues here. After all of that, we’re going to hunker down and finishing writing + recording the next album. We already have 11 songs demo’d, and I think it’s sounding pretty great.
So yeah, once this terribly brutal and stupid winter wheezes its last cold, bitter breath and melts into bad memories, there will be some fun and cool stuff going on. Looking forward to it!
-Nate
I’m not entirely sure what, if anything, I’ll use this blog for; the main purpose of this website is to put all the music and writing stuff I’m working on, or have worked on, in one spot. The blog is an afterthought…. I’m more of an edit-it-to-death-first kind of writer so the more spontaneous nature of blog writing doesn’t come naturally to me. Nevertheless, I’ll give it a shot, and you can expect to see posts on here sporadically, maybe a handful a month.
I had to put up “categories” on the top there so the site didn’t look empty; they represent the rough ideas I have for subject matter. Random observations, reviews of terrible books I’ve found at thrift stores, Minneapolis-specific stuff, wine reviews by someone who knows very little about wine… stuff like that. I’m sure I’ll fine tune all of that and have a better idea of which subjects make more sense in the weeks and months to come.
The only category that has more than one test post at this point is “Interviews.” That was by far the easiest part of setting this website up: linking to interviews that already exist on the web. Rad.
I leave for tour tomorrow so maybe I’ll be bored enough on the road to update this a few times. If not, check back in a couple weeks.
Fun fact: the image here was on the first page of a Google Image Search for the word “introduction”!
This is a test post; you can safely ignore it. If I write about something that is “local”, or local-y, in nature, it’ll go in this Local category. Makes sense, right?
Quick test post of a local nature: the Minneapolis logo is terrible. It looks like some guy in the mid 80s was messing around in Mac Draw or whatever, his supervisor walked in and asked him what he was doing, he said, “Oh, just makin’ shapes”, the supervisor angrily said he was being paid to make a logo, and the guy quickly thwacked “Minneapolis City of Lakes” beneath his doodle. “I was just kidding! This is the logo.”
The city flag is pretty rough, too. Dingbats in a circle = our city. Maybe it looks better in person, when it’s not a pixellated mess, but I wouldn’t count on it.
At any rate, which is worse? That’s the question. And….. test post done.