Love

The girl I love is a mysterious creature

Like an elf, floating on a cloud of lust

One night she told me that she loved me, and I loved her

Actually…that is a lie, there is no woman, I am hideous

You Say Party! We Say Die!: Still alive

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 Montreal while opening for K-os on their Canadian University tour.

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 Vancouver. He was just there. I guess he was in town, so he just came and uhh, they just started chatting and he just invited us to come on tour with him. He just really likes our band which is hilarious.

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 Canada, and in Europe, and we’re going to be doing that again later. We’re going back to Europe after this and uhh, part of it we’re opening for another band and part of it we’re doing on our own. Then we’re going to tour across Canada by ourselves and then we’re coming back home.

TD: Who are you opening for?

K: Los Campesinos. They’re from Cardiff in the UK. And uh, we’ve played with them a few times over there and they actually just got signed on arts and crafts in Canada.

TD: Right on. You can’t cross the border to America. Tell me briefly why.

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 Vancouver. I think there were some things that happened on that first tour where we were just like “wow, I can’t believe people are paying attention to this.”

TD: The Exclaim cover must have done a lot for you.

K: Yeah totally. Of course we only were on the cover in western Canada. In a way that was kind of a bummer because it felt like we had already established ourselves in Western Canada fairly well with touring and it could have been in the east where we could have used the exposure a bit more.

TD: But you are big in Europe?

K: Yeah, I guess.

TD: Do you think you are bigger in Europe than in Canada?

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 Canada relentlessly this year and we feel like its starting to even out the amount of well knowness? Is that a word?

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 Canada tour. We’re going out to the Maritimes for the first time which is pretty exciting. Then we’re going over to Europe. When we get back from Europe we’re going to be doing more recording, more writing, umm just keeping the beast going.

Td: Groovy

Scientists create new life form

It’s alive! Alive! Our proud scientists have finally created life, in the form of bacteria, freeing us from the chains of biology. Long strides we’ve made since our predecessor, the mighty dinosaur, lumbered the planet, hunting and foraging, leaving giant dino shits to fertilize the land. Now we humans create our own shit, in laboratories! The possibilities are endless. In fact, I have some ideas for our esteemed heroes’, laboriously toiling in dungeons across the land. Here are the new life forms of my imagination.

Giant clawless, toothless, winged kittens: Yes, kitties with wings; amply colossal to bear entire fourth grade classes on their furry-wurry backs. This could solve transportation based pollution issues, as we could breed entire fleets of giant winged, toothless, clawless kitty buses, greatly reducing greenhouse gas emissions--excluding methane (giant kitty farts). Proper diet would help with these small issues.

The economy would benefit as well. The kitty litter industry would flourish, along with waste management for all the giant winged, toothless, clawless kitten shit. Kitty harnesses for riding the kittens in flight would employ thousands--and of course there would be need for proper safety measures, with proper crash testing facilities, run by proper people. Many kitties would be sacrificed during air bag tests, to insure a satisfactory safety rating. One could simply genetically remove all pain receptors from the kitties, so that their end is a peaceful one.

In terms of new species, giant, winged, clawless, toothless kitties are only an example of one such possibility. Utilizing our magnificent understanding of genetic coding, we could alter any existing animal into some giant, winged, clawless, toothless transportation device. There was a time when humans believed we existed on the back of a giant turtle. Now this is a very real possibility. We could, in theory, create a living turtle like creature large enough to carry the entire human race throughout the cosmos. We must free our minds from limiting belief systems, like that we need “spaceships” to travel the universe. We can create life! Rejoice o glorious humans, reach for the sky and grasp the ether, bend it to your will.

Should these scientists speak truthfully, then our options truly are limitless. I will now demonstrate the reach of human imagination past solid concepts like kitties and turtles and space ships. Let us generate an entirely new being, like say for example, a “Lorgadamaniadistrophap,” or “Lorg” for short. This being would not exist in the physical plane; this being would be phantasmal. It has a good sense of humour, conversation skills, is well read, plays drums, and is composed purely of regenerative milk chocolate that never melts. My Lorg could apply its limitless reasoning abilities to the U.N. council, delegating brilliantly feasible solutions to ease suffering in crisis zones such as the Darfur and Sudan conflict regions. Once the Lorg had solved global humanitarian issues the council could rejoice, have a jam session and gorge on glorious chocolate.

These scientists suggest that their newly created bacteria could absorb carbon monoxide, a possible solution to global warming. Why stop there? Why not create bacteria that could absorb humans? Let us breed an entirely new galaxy, and be absorbed into a new reality, where Unicorns play Frisbee with Hitler and bending spoons with your mind is soooo 1969. Yes, we are in a new age…are you ready to create life? I think the dinosaurs had more to do with their own extinction than we realize.