OH Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree
Where are your neo citran?
Oh Jesus tree, oh Jesus tree
Come and get your kittens
They bomb
Santa Claus, skips Isreal
Oh Christian Tree, I stand and pee
Tylenol cold and Flu
Ideas for your face
Don’t look, don’t speak, don’t smile. Imagine the Metro if social politeness were enforced. “Maam, you are required by law to flirt with that man who is staring lustfully at your exposed ankles.” Or “Sir, please engage the passenger to your left, stating your stance on the Israeli Palestine conflict.” Wouldn’t the Metro be an adventure, instead of a silent slide through the tunnels of a cold city?
They’re everywhere, though some say they aren’t
Fuck them
Saucers, spheres, globes, orbs, cylinders, triangles, ovals
Every shape and size
All colours
They float
Some fear, others worship
Sacrifice?
I hope not
Bill Clinton wonders
But he never found out
In
Over a period of days, they floated
Shining their lights, in big triangular ways
And humans, with their little triangular prayers
The government sent two f-16 jets to kill it
But the triangles--they darted around
Teasing the stupid humans
Mock speed
And the glorious Belgian’s, they told everyone
That was nice of them
Probings…we fear the probe
Anus, aliens
Sightings from thousands of years ago
On cave walls
Tom Cruise knows they exist, why doesn’t Katie?
Do it for the baby Katie…the baby!
And still we wait, procrastinate
Infrared is the way, the geeks say
Switch it on, on your camera
The button is right there, no right there fuck
The button won’t do your homework
It might however, let you make a better sex tape than
Or see the aliens
At night, they might land behind your barn
If you have a barn, who does?
Not since industrialization
If they leave a pattern in your crops
Don’t worry
They will grow back next season
With the help of modern chemicals
You can still make mortgage if Henry gets another job
Just for a little while
The cows were mutilated
That’s ok; Burger King is just down the street
Right beside Future Shop
There is much to be said on aliens
They probably make nature shows, about us
We’re silly
And they float
What have you done?
Becky Ninkovic - voice
Krista Loewen - keys
Derek Adam - guitar
Stephen O'shea - bass
Devon Clifford - drums
You Say Party We Say Die, what can I say that their name doesn’t? How about….anything I want--cause it’s my blog! Enough about me; YSPWSD’s newest album “Lose all Time,” released on Paper Bag Records, is a fantastic dance-rock romp through a messy bedroom. I got a chance to talk to keyboardist Krista as the band made their way through
TD: So how is the tour going?
K: Pretty good, a lot of the shows that we’ve been kind of weird, but still good.
TD: What would you say is weird about them?
K: Well we’ve been touring with K-os and playing a lot of the universities for frosh week kind of stuff so it’s just, they’re….university shows are always kind of, you never know what it’s going to be like. Sometimes they are pretty awesome and sometimes they are really not.
TD: What would be not?
K: Oh well sometimes it’s hard for the people organizing because they’ve just got on student counsel and they’ve never organized an event of any kind before, and then all of the sudden they are organizing this huge concert with you know, K-os, and you know whatever other bands are playing and it’s just this big event for all the frosh students or whatever. And there are some organizational struggles at some of the shows.
TD: What about the crowds. Do people know YSPWSD at these shows?
K: Ahh most of them. There has been a couple where they’ve been like “what’s going on?” Hopefully we manage to win a few of them over.
TD: How is living in a van?
K: Haha. Umm, it’s uhh, living in a van. It’s cramped and dirty and messy.
TD: Are you getting hotel rooms, is your label coughing up or what?
K: Well we are sometimes getting hotel rooms. A lot of times if we know someone in town we will just crash with friends, save the money. Some of the University shows have provided us with hotel rooms which is kinda nice.
TD: What is it like hangin with K-os? Is K-os a rockstar?
K: Umm, a little bit. He’s not an asshole rockstar by any means; he’s a really nice guy. He’s really fun.
TD: How did you get hooked up with K-os?
K: Becky and Steve met him at the virgin festival in
TD: Was that kind of a shock to you?
K: It was pretty surprising we didn’t really expect it to actually pan out at first. We were like “right, like we’re going to go on tour with K-os.” But then we told our booking agent and he was like, “Oh yeah, the Kos booking agent works in the same office as , and two days later he was like, “yeah it’s totally gonna happen if you guys want to do it.
TD: So is he like super hip hop star, does he have booty girls hanging around him and like lots of blinged out followers and stuff?
K: No, no, he’s not really like that. There are some nights where there are a lot of girls following him around but I think that is more of the girls’ prerogative, not so much his.
TD: So you guys are getting like really popular according to what I’ve read. I saw YSPWSD on that ridiculous split cover of Exclaim, for the Exclaim tour. Do you think that was the turning point for you as far as being recognized as being a real band? I mean, do you feel popular yet?
K: Uhh. We feel kind of, on a very small scale popular, we don’t really feel, we feel like we’re an opener band for much bigger bands, hahaha. Like we’re a good opening band. I feel like we are getting more popular and it’s pretty fun and exciting.
TD: How was your headlining tour before this?
K: Yeah we did that after the Exclaim tour we did a headlining tour of
TD: Who are you opening for?
K: Los Campesinos. They’re from
TD: Right on. You can’t cross the border to
K: You know how it is with bands crossing the border. You always try to pull your way across and we had applied for visas this time around and we were denied because we weren’t making enough money. So they grant them on how much you are making per night, and we were making two or three hundred a night and you have to make a minimum of $500 a night. We tried re-applying with a bunch of fake numbers but there wasn’t enough time and uhh, yeah, they caught us, basically.
TD: If you came home one day and you opened the door to your apartment and you saw Sean Connery making love to your lover, and then he looked at you and said, “How would you like to star in my next movie?” Then what would you do?
K: Well I would probably just have a couple of options. I could join in to the fun, or my first reaction might be to immediately turn around and go stand on the hallway for a moment and try to figure out if what I saw was actually happening. I’m trying to imagine right now Sean Connery in my apartment, it’s pretty hilarious.
TD: Buck naked, giving it.
K: Yeah, yeah, just givin it.
TD: And then what about the movie role?
K: I’d probably do the movie. Why not?
TD: No hard feelings?
K: Well, I don’t know, it depends on how attached I was to that lover.
TD: So anyway, your new album is awesome, it was recorded by Shawn Cole. Did you have a different direction going in to making the album? Did you expect it to get the attention that it has?
K: Well when we were making it the main thing we were thinking was that just to improve upon what we had done before and to push ourselves to make a better album to make an album that was more of a whole piece, not just a collection of songs but an album. And you know something that was a bit more diverse. Just basically we were just trying to push ourselves to do something that was better than before.
TD: Was there a point during YSPWSD’s career that you realized oh my god, people care?
K: Yes. I think it might have been on our first tour. Our first tour was when we started getting press for the first time like outside of
TD: The Exclaim cover must have done a lot for you.
K: Yeah totally. Of course we only were on the cover in western
TD: But you are big in
K: Yeah, I guess.
TD: Do you think you are bigger in Europe than in
K: I feel like it's starting to even out. Before that was definitely the case. I think thought that like we have been touring
TD: Do you think that Becky gets more attention being a front woman, or do find it is spread throughout the band? I haven’t read many interviews with Becky, where is she?
K: I think that is a pretty normal thing for any band where the front person, the lead singer becomes the focus of attention and yeah, she was like the only person in the band that was in the monster video. But I think that we try to keep the focus on us as a band and to like you know, Becky and the You Say Partiers. Becky is a really great front person for the band but uhh, she’s definitely not the kind of person who hogs the spotlight either. We try to spread out the interviews among the band members and umm, sort of keep the image of the band as being a whole band. There are a lot of bands where it just becomes like the front person in the band becomes the only person anyone cares about and umm that’s something we’ve sort of consciously tried not to do.
TD: What’s coming up?
K: We’re finishing our
Td: Groovy
Iraq is not a happy party, Iraq is not a sad birthday
Iraq loves all ice cream
People in Iraq are very horny
Iraq has a good soccer team, don’t blow them up
Iraq has kittens, just like Europe
Say this out loud
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Clap your hands like you're listening to the Velvet Underground on smack
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