follow me on twitter now or 2 new toys are coming out

November 30th, 2008

I haven’t been updating much just by the sheer fact i’ve been sleeping until the sun goes down then i roll out of bed, eat breakfast, soundcheck, then play a show in a smokey club to people who bought tickets to the show (thanks by the way!) but i have been updating locations and random thoughts on twitter.com/pickyourpoisons  sign up and get my quips and blurbs straight tour phone or desktop…

Here comes 2 new figures I’ve been promising forever: the “Urine Trouble” variation of the 8 hands for every bad habit i have, this time around yellow for your pleasure. limited to 192.
AND the “look deep into my eyes” Cult leader. hypnotizing eyes and a big glass of “kool aid” limited to 192. This comes with your very own Glow in the dark plastic cup for your own brand of “poison” that you choose. These will be up for sale Monday, December 1st !

there will be a deal on a 2 pack of the new figures, including some discounts on international shipping, also check out the BOX OF WWAR for those who haven’t been keeping up….

check wunderlandwar.com for the full low down.

by the way, hello to everyone from my hotel in FRANCE, 2 more weeks in Europe then home for the holidays

- Vinnie

posted by v.

PAPER AND PLASTICK PRESENTS THE FEST ART SHOW OR COME SEE ME BEFORE I GO INTO THE EUROPEAN COLD

October 28th, 2008

FRIDAY OCT 31  and SATURDAY NOV 1st  .. PAPER AND PLASTICK and STORE 101 will host some of the best underground artists to celebrate everything that is the FEST 8 some artists to be included are : HORSEBITES, ROBBIE HUDDLESTON from ANN BARETTA/FOUNDATION, GARY VITERI from DIRTY TACTICS, LAURA PREDNY, DANNY LORE from AGAINST ALL AUTHORITY, ROB DOBI, SHAWN HARRIS from THE MATCHES, SKULL WITH HAIR, DAVE QUIGGLE, MIKE SKI from AKA’s, LAUREN DENITZIO from THE MEASURE,ADAM WENTWORTH and more

Store 101
101 N. Main
Gainesville Fl 32601
store101.net
352-377-7044

FRIDAY OPENS 6pm - 2 am
SATURDAY OPENS noon - midnight

posted by v.

friends hard at work or badger love as you lurk

October 20th, 2008

The Shook Ones are hard at work recording their new LP, set to be released early next year on Paper and Plastick. Once recorded the album will be mixed by Matt Alison at Atlas Studio in Chicago. Don’t take our word for it, though. The band has been documenting it all, saying

It’s Sunday. I (jimmy) flew back home to Philadelphia on Thursday after finishing up tracking the drums. Bo did his bass tracks on Thursday and Friday. One song was so raging, the bass amp literally caught on fire. So all this left Scott with a lot of time on his hands. Scott used this time to work on his stand up comedy routine and also discover a new found interest in Badgers. So we’re about half way through tracking all the songs for the new record. I’m really happy with how things are going. I’m even more excited to play the new songs live. Check back for more videos of us in the studio.

For more, head on over to the band’s blog

posted by v.

polishing the trophy before it’s in your hands or quicksand is your land, quicksand is my land.

October 17th, 2008

Tell me something in a hushed tone, something serious for once. Hold off on telling me the dreams and to do lists, I don’t need small talk right now. i need an atomic bomb, i need a flame thrower, bring the sniper rifle out and hit me right where I’m thinking too much because tonight i don’t need one liners, i don’t need the same old same old. there’s a war on wants i keep saying, charge up the hill, charge on the card, TV face and TV eyes, what you need is what you don’t need to survive.

posted by v.

White Tiger Gang Crazy 88 for FREE October 15th

October 12th, 2008

This summer saw the interstates of  these United States, festivals over in europe,then back up to the northwest US for shows with one of my inspirations then through canada and back down the east coast. I roamed the halls of lots of great independent record stores, flipped through stacks of records piled neatly or stacked in some disorganized mess, and yeah I got that cough that I always get from inhaling a decade of dust and vaporized moldy cardboard. I did my fair share of art crawls through galleries and vacant alleyways to look at graffiti on the walls from famous names to nameless pieces 3 stories high like the one in slovenia. Its been a pleasure for the eyes and ears and that my friends is a fact. The amount of talent both musical and visual is overwhelming sometimes, I take hundreds of pictures of street art just to document what is out there.

Right after of what can be said was a dark financial week, I sat across from a friend of mine and he told me that his finances were a wreck so much that he has to put on a freeze on buying anything. The climate of fear easily gets out of control, it makes people do and say things out of character then add in that this is a huge election year just amplifies all the doomsday scenarios. That conversation has resonated with me, that’s a simple way to say what I’m feeling. I thought is there people out there that have collected my toys, bought a shirt, supported what I do out there that are strapped, that can’t afford what makes them happy. There’s a Banksy piece that simply states “the joy of not being sold anything” and today I decided that I will release my new figure WHITE TIGER GANG CRAZY 88 for free, you pay the shipping and ill send you a toy for free. This is limited to 192 and will go active on wunderlandwar.com October 15th.

On one last note, stay informed on the election coming up, change starts with all of us.

Need to ask a question or just say hello wunderlandwar@gmail.com
Thanks - Vinnie.

posted by v.

back in the saddle or up shitter’s creek without a paddle

September 9th, 2008

There’s a comfort in laughing with a group of people, hell there’s even comfort in a collective sadness occasionally. Amongst mountains and turnpikes I live minutes of my life attatched to my brothers in music.
Europe takes alittle life out of me while I’m here from never being able to shake the jet lag. Europe makes me want take up smoking cigarettes. Different languages, different time zones, historical places, history in the making, europe gets a high five.

34,000 thousand feet above the atlantic and by a wierd twist of fate I’m sitting next to the drummer from We Are Scientists, we exchange festival stories and future touring plans, it doesn’t matter what style of music it is, the ups and downs of touring life is still the same ups and downs.

While I was gone The Swellers pulled off quite a coup, taking Max from Say Anything’s idea about people sending in personal stories and situations then making a song, difference was The Swellers didn’t ask for money. Score one for the mitten state. They wrote me a song out of the group that got put up, funny because a casual conversation about mexcian food being horrible in gainesville turned into a song. I never really knew that Motley Crue put there dicks in burrito’s but hey whatever Nick says I believe.thanks guys for the song.

Climbing through the window to get to the stage was just one of some the unique things happening in Lubjliana, Slovenia. We hadn’t been back to this city in forever and in our abscence an art collective took over a few blocks of old prisons and army base, mind you my facts are loose but close enough that when I walked around there’s a thriving community operating on it own terms, putting on shows and art openings. The show had kids diving from the stage, singing along, drinking in the parking lot, and just hanging out in a positive environment, I wonder if that would ever work in the states? I walked to the center of the city with Buddy to find a coffee shop called the Coffee Project, now for those aren’t in the know that is the same name of buddy’s side project. I broke my streak of not having coffee to have some there with him in celebration of how cool the coincidence was. Also in a complete sidebar, I will be releasing a Coffee Project 10 inch sometime this fall called “easy does it” on paper and plastick.

The castles in prague are walking distance over this bridge from where the club was, my first time in Prague,and it was a thriving city, known by drunks for having “real” absinthe. The city for me seemed over run with spider webs, in corners, on lamposts, in doorways. Spider webs. Friendly people from all over europe seem to flood the streets, I take some pictures for the first time in longer than I can remember and it feels great to look through a lense and snap some shots off of bridges and people and a great horizon line dotted with castles and green over grown trees.

Reading and Leeds festivals have always and will always hold a place in my heart, the first eurpean show we ever did where it actually felt like home was at Reading, huge memories of massive circle pits and 30,000 person sing alongs. This year we went into the lock up tent, defaulting that same place where that first amazing show happened, was it a 360 degrees moment? Did it end a chapter so a new one can begin? Was it like I remembered it? Those are all the questions I would have to write a small novel to answer.

Die artze is one of those bands that are massive in Germany but not in the US, we played a show with them and 19,000 people showed up, I mean that is massive by anyones standards. They are entertaining, they are loud, they laugh, they command the attention of all 19,000 people. I kinda get a band crush watching them play. Speaking of first european tours a few paragraphs up, we run into our first busdriver and he always made be laugh saying things like “.fucking hell…” and ” it’s can’t believable..” Its funny sometimes you don’t see people for years and when you do the conversation seems to pick up where it left off. That’s a great fucking feeling, and doesn’t happen often.

There’s hurricanes that blow in from the gulf while we are gone skipping Florida but headed to unknown places up the coast, but winds still howl and trees fall and doomsday scenarios get talked about in every circle. We drive through mountains to Switzerland and Austria as friends and family pace, we are detatched from all the drama back home only to embrace our own drama.

I’ve been getting the art together for the GNV/FLA deluxe box, I even took the front and back box cover pictures. Lots of surprises in there, out in November, but more details to come.

Oh mr svengali life can’t always be a parade held in your honor…Snap! Snap! Flash! Flash! Look at me I’m made of glass. Your 3 chords and clothing company won’t replace the fact that you have no integrity left.

posted by v.

give me passion like this or one wish

August 11th, 2008

posted by v.

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.