summer or some are.

July 6th, 2008

Take my word for it, if you live in most corners of the world you will see me dragging myself across your country. I thumbed through potential tour dates and it seems we are covering plenty of ground.

I am typing this in the backdrop of summerfest in Milwauke, they bill this as the biggest rock festival on the planet. Which I can’t confirm or deny. Watching people eat chili dogs and drink budwieser till they stagger and sway in the sun is a pretty good exqmple of the independence and freedom they are currently celebrating. Freedom to have a mullet, freedom to over eat, freedom to high five over binge drinking, god bless bbq ribs and this corndog stand and all that shit.

The show proved to be stellar, chilled air combined with dance contests, drinking contests, and the wave. I still think playing an hour and a half is abit extreme for a band like ours but no one left or threw there half eaten corn dogs at us, so we must have been doing something right.

posted by v.

updates or up to date

July 4th, 2008

Brothers and sisters can i get a fucking amen? there’s a time when not to over analyze yourself, a time to let yourself stand on two feet and believe the voice in the back of your head, free fall then hit the wall but figure out how to climb over that wall after you dust yourself off. i feel bulletproof. i feel like a flamethrower. 

Happy birthday to me.

Two weeks ago i cruised into my birthday watching my best friends play a show at looney tunes on long island, that same day our record GNV/FLA came out, even though it leaked 12 days before. it was the day that our independently released record  was for sale in the independent record store in a small corner of the world. quite the accomplishment considering our last record was pretty much botched from the get go. i love the underdog, believers start not to believe, and then in a swift motion there’s a revival of sorts, whether that revival is real or ficticious. who the fuck knows right?  my main point is on that day the revival happened. no major label, hell no label really at all. just a group of like minded. its was a 360 degree from where we started, doing most of the work ourselves, a true DIY ethic but with a modern twist and a healthy dose of technology. god bless the internet.

Hi ho, hi ho, its off to tour i go.

Starting in Florida we have been twisting and turning up interstates, north then west. it took a minute to get my sea legs back so to speak, when you don’t tour for awhile then all of of a sudden your are sleeping in a coffin sized space and sweating like your in a sauna. it takes a minute to get your head right. sure you dive off the deep end but the water still is cold and takes a second to get used to. we have been playing new songs and old sing a longs. seeing old friends, selling our new record.  

the instores we’ve been doing have been eye opening, watching chris and roger play acoustic is cool, but really wandering up and down aisles of records really just gives me that kid in a candy store or crackhead in a crack house feeling. the interesting ways people set up the record stores, the smell of old cardboard and incense, the grumpy jazz guys, the 13 year old death metal kids. its the culture that surrounds a good local record store, big chains can never touch that inherit coolness of the independent record store. all the local music snobs mixed with kids finding new music just feels like the right thing. i am that guy, yknow the one buying the new vital remains record but also bitching about how lame metro station is while trying to argue with the clerk that the new hold steady record is in fact better than the first.

Old habits die hard, new ideas and new starts.

Every band that i know, i have been saying the same thing to on repeat-  don’t sign to a label. i had that talk with Punchline and thankfully they are releasing there new record via there own label. listen to me: you don’t need to give 30% to a group of people who don’t give a fuck about the passion you have for music. you don’t need pete hyping you, you don’t need a marketing team who doesn’t like your music to start with, you don’t need to feel empowered by a logo that has a history of stealing your money and holding you hostage. its a brand new game out there kids, fuck the old model. don’t believe the hype.

bodies in motion and they always wind up broken.

i threw my back out of whack, somewhere between the train to Rhode Island or the van ride to providence, ever since then i walk like frankenstein, and feel like roadkill. all in all i’ve been doing my best to hold off using prescription drugs to take away the pain. i generally like the high and pills are a quick fix. it could be worse though our tech Nolan fell off the stage and broke his nose and fractured his elbow. 

Does the lion city video still roar?

We shot a video for Lion city in brooklyn and besides talking to the body guard of the NYC police commissioner as they scout this years fireworks display location, we hung out a stones throw from the bridge and generally sweated our collective asses off two floors up in some sketchy warehouse/fuel depot.

posted by v.

does the lion city still roar? or download the song

June 2nd, 2008

here

posted by v.

sleep for those who dont sleep well, the birth of lamp black. freedom is freedom and im never giving it back

June 1st, 2008

Friends of mine are taking pictures of ghettos in France which to me is laughable since they are from Miami and I can show them a lot of american ghettos that are about 10 hours and a gigantic ocean closer. People always want what is unreachable for most, people spend there lives reaching for a phantom bar that they think they can grab, its the shiny penny syndrome i think, we want it shiny, we want it now, live for the future because today isn’t as special.

i had a few minute epiphany laying on the floor of my place as i read poetry from Mao from a used i book i got for a dollar in Burbank, all of the chasing for the american dream keeps your freedom inches away from your fingers always. seems like an obvious conclusion but dreams used to be fuel not chains.

a friend of mine said ” i have my freedom and i’ll never give it back, it cost too much”  which reminded me of that part in Goonies.

i am writing Lamp Black, its a 180 from what i usually do. you”ll know about it months from now.

who really goes to MTV to find out about bands? the cutting edge has dulled down. why do people get excited when MTV plays videos or the thought of MTV playing more videos? i mean is it that bad that such a scrap means that much? last time i checked they own plenty of stations that play a plethora of genres from plenty of time periods, right? no more hype, no more it’s special, turn the channel there’s plenty on.

posted by v.

number 2 review or chews and choose

May 29th, 2008

On my way back home to Florida to most likely fry in the summer heat considering its been in the high 60’s in L.A. - But with that said I’m looking forward to the slow pace of the gainesville summer,the transformation from frantic college town to the ghost town with spanish moss hanging on the trees is in full swing already. Summer usually leaves everyone piled into houses until the sun goes down, air conditioning becomes your best friend and you can almost smell the boredom in the air.

The new lessthanjake.com launched as well as the first song anyone has heard off our new record, if you haven’t heard “does the lion city still roar?” head on over to lessthanjake.com

The second review I could find comes in from Ben who also writes for punknews.org but also exclaim mag up in Canada. I agree with most of his observations on the record except that everyone needs a good dose of metal every now and then even on less than jake records, plus I don’t think “handshake” is over produced. But high fives to Ben for being a vinyl nerd that is a great writer.

Check it out the review right here

I’ve been listening to the new Landmines record, test presses for vinyl are the ultimate in nerding out, for instance this Landmines record only has 2 test presses. That’s just like a large pile of coke for a silverlake hipster. I like how this record balances between the “richmond” sound ala Avail and upstate New York melodic hardcore. The band has dropcards for sale on tour and the street date is July 22.

posted by v.

the first review of the new record or waiting for the leak to come from the pressure

May 20th, 2008

here’s the first review i could find on GNV/FLA. its from the kind folks over at PUNKTASTIC. read on.

" Welcome home, Less Than Jake.

After flirting with the mainstream over the last couple of albums and picking up derisory comments for the lack of horns/too much emphasis on the pop, ‘GNV FLA’ is a real return to the sound that blew them up big in the first place. I couldn’t say this record, the band’s ninth full length studio album, is as qood as ‘Hello Rockview’ and I wouldn’t even say it’s quite the same as ‘Pezcore’ or ‘Losing Streak’, but it is more ‘Borders and Boundaries’ than ‘Anthem’. And I know that will please a lot of people.

Not that you’d guess from the start of ‘GNV FLA’ (so named after their hometown of Gainesville, Florida). LTJ are at their best when they have horns parping and guitars flexing their rifftacular muscles, yet ‘City Of Gainesville’ is possibly the slowest track on the album. It’s not bad per se, it’s just…unexpected. For a band who promised a more ‘traditional’ new album, this wasn’t the way I expected it to go. So I was delighted when the album picked up from ‘The State Of Florida’ and carried on through to last track (although the UK release has 15 songs) ‘Devil In My DNA’. The rumours that this record would be a back-to-basics return to form are true. There’s horns a plenty and the style and structure of the songs sound more like ‘Borders…’ influence than any other album. The production is less polished too, which I am sure will delight the hardcore fans who disliked ‘In With The Out Crowd’.

So after listening to this record for pretty much two days solid I’m glad to report back there are many classic LTJ tunes in the making here. Don’t expect ‘Pezcore’ sillyness, but at the same time it’s Back to the Future time with tracks like ‘Malachi Richter’s Liquor’s Quicker’ and ‘Conviction Notice’ buzzing from the speakers. There are many highlights, it has to be said and it’s difficult to guess which tracks will be the singles. There are some strong songs, although none stand out in the same way as ‘All My Best Friends…’ or ‘She’s Gonna Break Soon’ in terms of obvious hits. There are still singles in the making here though, just in a different way. I’d be lying if I said every song is a winner, but when the brass section is going at it full pelt and Roger and Chris are trading vocal blows, it’s like a trip back to 2000.

2008 - the summer of ska? Don’t bet against it…"

posted by v.

like lighting comes or struck down and stuck dumb

May 15th, 2008

I’m heading out to Los Angeles right now, there’s a sense of balance when I fly, everyone around you is in motion, it makes me feel at home and at ease, while the guy next to me is white knuckling the seat in front of me from anxiety about flying, I happily sit next to him feverishly pecking away at the keyboard, half smiling and half squinting from the glare. The plane coasts along blue sky and occasional bumpy air, while I contemplate my next few weeks which will be a mix of work and recharging my head.

We had gone on a week tour through the south in places we haven’t or usually don’t play but with Bamboozle thrown right in the middle to break up all the “y’all” and  ”git er done” commentary from truckstop locals. I had been growing my moustache in anticipation for cinco de moustache (may 5th for those who don’t celebrate) I had grown myself a fine stalker stache, occasionally I’d forget I was channeling Ron Jeremy on face and I’d catch my relection in a window or a car mirror and literally I’d stop and laugh at how sketchy I looked. Mind you…buddy looked like a gay cop, jr looked like a gay biker, roger looked shady, and chris had a junior high school kid moutache. So in the level of moustache zen I probally was in the dead middle of who’s looks like a douche. Bamboozle came and we dressed like cops, throwing donuts out and generally not dressed in enough neon clothes to fit in with the throngs of day glow hats, head bands, shorts, nylon jackets, sweatbands and shoe laces stretching across the parking lot. My brain tells me I feel cooler than I look, with the dunkin donuts guy as my moustache twin and dressed like NYPD.

I say that instead of the dude from the band before us throwing his drums to the crowd as some sort of “event” he should have donated them to the local school or boys club or state corrections. But who the fuck am I to say, right? Right.

So I had been spinning the new record a bunch since I just got the test presses for the vinyl, without going into a complete off shoot, the vinyl sound is amazing. But I’ve been listening to GNV/FLA, spinning 180 mil vinyl and the record sound good. The bonus 7 inch of demos sounds good too as does the acoustic 7 inch. Don’t know about those you are saying to yourself…you will soon.

I played the record for a few friends like jack and joe and the dudes from the swellers plus by now ben from punknews and jason tate from absolutepunk should have them in there hands as does kerrang over in the UK. I’m antsy to hear feedback.

I did an email interview with KVAK from Czech, It is only in the Czech language but in the section “download” people can download the original english version too.

Check it out here:
http://kvakpunkrock.cz/rozhovory/?ktera=51

Paper and plastick news coming soon, new signings, release dates, and some interesting turn of events.

By the way, now that I am able to send pics from my iphone directly to flick expect more frequent pictures…

posted by v.

new interview or skip steps one and two

May 4th, 2008

http://www.pastepunk.com/features.php?v=265

posted by v.

interview from the friendly skies or pez, ltj, on u.s. airways airline.

April 24th, 2008

opening a magazine on a flight and seeing your face in it is the most amazing thing.

look here

posted by v.

for your viewing pleasure or 2 words 6 letters.

April 23rd, 2008

i figured its better to hear about our new record from someone in the band, right? right. ps we just locked in reading and leeds festivals later this summer. get stoked.
LTJ_GNV_Splash_Page

posted by v.

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