John Calarco

John Calarco
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

Is performing a tribute to vets right now. It's got a real Elton John vibe going on.



They just did the memorial to WI musicians who did this year. I can't believe that the guy from Lightning and Thunder died this year. They guested at the Pearljam show in 95 at Summerfest (he was the Neil Diamond impersonator.) Tom Green (Wisconsin Elvis impersonator, not the goateed turn-of-the-century comedian) died too. That guy used to draw huge here.



There's some dude dressed like a cowboy now introducing country group of the year. I always think it's weird to see country bands in Wisconsin, because we're not the South and all the guys I knew who were "cowboys" in Mukwonago mainly just had sex with cows. But just because you're not from Tennessee doesn't mean anything. Christ, we've played "Anarchy in the U.K." a thousand times and I've never been unemployed in Great Britain, so what the fuck do I know. So, good on the country guys.

Alex Wilson Band

Alex Wilson Band
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

Blues at the WAMIs...



Our man Fish just presented too. B and I are having a killer time.

Hindsight

Hindsight
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

Just played at the WAMI awards and sound great in the theater here.



Our category was just announced and we were bridesmaids this year, but congrats to The MAHP on their win for Pop/AC Artist of the Year.

Sunspot Road Mania - Ep. 49

Partying and playing at The Mad Planet in Milwaukee with The Buskers and The Lounge lizards From Hell!

Direct download link: http://www.sunspotmusic.com/roadmania/sunspot_rm_49.m4v

Brewers tickets

I'm currently 6 BP gas punches away from my three free Brewers tickets that I require for Father's Day. I had my first experience at Miller Park last year and had an awesome time! We're going to make it a tradition. Miller Park is a fabulous place to watch ball. Madison Mallards games are a blast too, mostly because the Duck Blind rules. All you can eat and drink and a ballgame for twenty some bucks. That rules.

In other news, Donnis finally sold the Guitar Bar in Milwaukee. For those of you that haven't had the pleasure, picture Sunspot playing in your bathroom or closet. I think the capacity of that place was 15 or so and that was before they built a stage and put in the pool table. We met a lot of our good friends in Milwaukee at that joint and we're always sorry to see live music places go under.

Battle of the Bands

Just got back from the Memorial H.S. battle of the bands on the west side of madison. I went to see Kickback, some young rockers that invited me to hear them play. It was a cool setup. They used the theater lights in the auditorium to chase and they had a cool blue light ring around the bass drum. They had a sweet laptop to do the recording and a nice hall to play in. Sounds system was decent too, if you like Peavey.
I recently visited Park View M.S. in Mukwonago where Mike and I went to school and they put a concrete wall in the gym where the stage used to be that we played on for the 8th grade talent show. Make-a-me-so-sad. For those of you that haven't known us for 15+ years now, we got third place in that talent show, losing to two chick vocalists who didn't have to deal with the pains of puberty that middle school boys go through. The memory that sticks out in my mind from that event is the video that our friends took of it and one of the girls saying, "look, he's wearing a muscle shirt, but he doesn't have any muscles." Yeah, I bulked up later that summer and grew a sweet mullet!
Technology has come so far since then. We used to rent a 4 track for recording and we sure didn't have cool lights.
Fun. Thanks for the show, guys!

Cool new Neanderthal Review

Check out what Michael from High Bias in Austin Texas has to say about our new album!

Backwards compatibility issues

So, Spaceballs was one of my favorite movies when I was a lad and I loved Men in Tights
which I saw on a date in high school where I locked my keys in the car with the car running and had to have mom bring me the spare (what a stud, huh?)
But I tried watching Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein for the first time recently and couldn't get into them too much. Maybe it's because of the recycled material (like "walk this way") or maybe Mel just got better over time.

Johnny Rocker and The High Rollers

Johnny Rocker and The High Rollers
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

Getting drunk at Keva Sports!

Phil Spector Trial Begins

I'm a sucker for televised court cases starting with the OJ ordeal in 1995 (and click the link if you want to see the most comprehensive re-tellings of the trial I've seen) and continuing through Mark Chmura's trial (remember when everyone used to call him Superman because of his tattoo?) but now we've got a real music legend on trial for murder.

Phil Spector produced everyone from the Beatles and Harrison and Lennon's solo stuff to The Ramones and The Ronnettes. He's the real deal when it comes to producing the music that shaped the Boomer generation. But he's also fucking crazy (think Alfred Molina in Boogie Nights) and if you're looking for a summary of articles so you can follow the trial on Court TV, click on this link. He claims that this poor girl's death was an "Accidental Suicide" (which coincidentally was also the name of a death metal band from North Prairie, WI which is the town where all the burnouts came from that went to my high school. In fact, I think it was a town of all burnouts. It was literally the wrong side of the tracks.)

And if you don't believe me that he's all fucked up, check out his hair when he appeared in court.

Yeah, that's right.

Sunspot Road Mania - Ep. 48

After band practice and I forgot my camera so we're using the iSight to talk about this weekend's show in Milwaukee at Mad Planet.

EDIT: Sorry, I messed up some of the editing in the first version, here's the new and improved one without the dead air in the first minute!

Direct download link: http://www.sunspotmusic.com/roadmania/sunspot_rm_48.m4v

New Surreal Life Sounds Awesome

It's like a dream team from my 7th grade on the new Surreal Life. Steven Adler from Guns n' Fuckin' Roses, Charles in Charge (and don't forget that late night cable classic Blown Away where she shtups both of the Coreys)Nicole Eggert, and WWF village idiot Hacksaw Jim Duggan??

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!





I WANT YOU
TO DO HEROIN WITH ME!



HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

ZMM

I started reading through this book again lately because I don't think that I ever really got it before and this time I'm trying to understand it a little better. Melding Eastern ideas of subjective reality with the Western scientific method is a cool thing and what inspired me to pick it up again is actually a couple of films that I watched in the past week. The first is Edmond (a pretty good Stuart Gordon adaptation of a Mamet play from the early 80's) and the second is the ridiculous (and not recommended by me, even though the previews were kickass and I dig Veronica Mars) horror flick, Pulse (Full Screen). Both deal with alienation, one through modern society and the other through technology, and ZMM deals with both of those kinds of alienation directly.

Anyway, think Plato's Cave from Philosophy 101 and you'll get a good idea of the foundation of the Metaphysics of Quality that Pirsig talks about in the book (and it's not a dry, intellectual treatise, it's an autobiography and road story with some philosophical essays thrown in at appropriate times.) I might be 35 years too late on this one, but the idea that what you perceive subjectively is just as true as what you know empirically and that there's room for both of those things in reality is as fun to read about as the road trip from Minnesota to California that he describes in the book. And it's also good song fodder.

The van is out to get me.

As if the problems of the weekend weren't frustrating enough....

When we got back to Madison last night, I dropped off Ben and Mike and was almost home when a SPIDER went crawling across the windshield, directly in my line of view.

After a fair amount of spazzing out, I managed to pull over and put the hazards on (all while keeping a careful eye on the spider). I slayed the beast by using one of the numerous empty water bottles rolling around the van - quite possibly the first time all of the miscellaneous garbage loose in the van actually came in useful!

Anyway, I am convinced now. The van just doesn't like me.

:(

7-minute Sopranos recap

6 seasons in 7 minutes,. Enlightening if you missed anything, brilliant even if you've seen it all.

Another Tragedy

Another Tragedy
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

Byah!

After Elvis

After Elvis
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

Kickass hard rock from Memphis!

Made it to Cincy alive

Made it to Cincy alive
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

I'm feeling dirty already!

Sunspot Road Mania - Ep. 47

Hanging out in Chicago traffic on our way to Dirty Jack's in Cincinnati.



Direct download link: http://www.sunspotmusic.com/roadmania/sunspot_rm_47.m4v

Rolling again

Rolling again
Originally uploaded by Wendy Lynn.

slowly and cautiously...

Uh oh

Uh oh
Originally uploaded by Wendy Lynn.

Van problems in Chicago... stay tuned for update....

More Blog Weirdness

The transition from old Blogger to new hasn't been easy on the Loser Blog, so all the posts from the past two months since we switched have now disappeared.

I assure you, we have top men working on it right now. Top men.

Testing Dashboard Widget

Just checking out the dashboard on the Mac. It looks like a cool application, but I don't really know if it works yet, and if it does, I'd like to start using it more.

Squid!

See the colossal squid here!
A follow up on mike's blog post about the giant squid, here is the even larger colossal squid. That's right, when giant isn't big enough, go colossal! I don't know about you, but pictures like this make me not want to stick with the Princeton club pool. Thank god they finally put in more elliptical machines. I thought we might have to rough up one of those fast talkers.

Who's that sexy man?

Bertha plays to the Crowd
Originally uploaded by JasonBechtel.

Thanks to ace photog, Jase, for taking pics at Chicks Rockfest!

Check out more of his work here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasephotos/sets/72157600067639247/

Sunspot Road Mania - Ep. 46

Relaxing at rehearsal during the worst April snowstorm in Wisconsin for a long, long time.

Direct link: http://www.sunspotmusic.com/roadmania/sunspot_rm_46.m4v

If you don't live in Wisconsin

If you don't live in Wisconsin
Originally uploaded by Wendy Lynn.

.. Be thankful today.

It's Beer:30 for Sunspot

We posted this to our MySpace page a couple of weeks ago, but I thought I'd blog it for those who haven't seen it yet...

Awesome

The clone wars are on!

Questionnaire

Hello friends,
Just wondering if everyone can help us out a little bit as we try to find out more about you and ways that we can reach you better.

If you could just take five minutes and paste this in an email to mikeATsunspotmusicDOTcom we'd appreciate it.

1. What's your name? Gender? Age?

2. If you could select any time of day to see a rock show, what time would it be?

3. Where's the last place you bought a music CD?

4. If you could pick anywhere to shop for new music, where would you?

5. What's your favorite store to buy your "going-out" clothes?

6. (If you own any rock t-shirts) Where is the last place you bought a rock t-shirt?

7. What's your favorite part about a Sunspot show?

We won't use any of this information against you, ha. But we will use it to make our shows more fun and to get our music in front of more people for all of us to party with.

Thanks for your time!

Farewell to cool venue

Nobody told me and I just stumbled across this when I was starting to look into our schedule for spring. We played here back in 2004 and it was a fun, cool place.

Frickin' Sweet

New Sopranos, new The Shield, and new Doctor Who (via BitTorrent, until Sci-Fi starts showing them)- this might be the greatest year for television ever. I feel bad that I missed out on the Lost ship, but you can't win em all.

I wanna go

Wendy's Drummercam 4.7.07 Chicks Rockfest

Wendy's Drummercam 4.7.07 Chicks Rockfest
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

Did we ever mention that Cincinnati rules?

Sunspot Road Mania - Ep. 45

A little bit of us talking in the van on the way back from Cincinnati and also Wendy mowing down at White Castle in the middle of the night last night

Chicks Rockfest
Patient Zero

http://www.sunspotmusic.com/roadmania/sunspot_rm_45.m4v

The Outside

The Outside
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

New York hardcore at Chicks Rockfest

Motorpsychos

Motorpsychos
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

All-female metal from steeely Pittsburgh!

Sunspot Road Mania - Ep. 44

Hanging out in the van on the way to Cincinnati for Chicks Rockfest!

http://www.sunspotmusic.com/roadmania/sunspot_rm_44.m4v

Alanis Morissette - My Humps

I can't believe I just found out about this one today.

Wendy's DrummerCam: Saturday 3/31/07 @ King Club, Madison, WI

I thought I uploaded this on Saturday night, but apparently the file didn't transfer. Sorry for the delay... and thanks again to everybody who partied with us at the KC!

500

Last night was awesome. You guys even put up with our goofy costumes. Thanks for making the first 500 something special. Let's do another.