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Order the new CD, Desperate Living by HORSE the band and get a limited* autographed CD insert with purchase!
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About HORSE the band:
HORSE the band teeter on the brink of brilliance, total ruin and extinction. All day. Every day. This mere fact of their existence is masterfully executed by and evidenced on their latest slab of artful noise, Desperate Living, (Oct. 6th from Vagrant Records) an album which is inspired by John Waters' film of the same name and the experiences the band has endured over the past several years in the eats-its-young music business. HORSE the band decided to write their own rules regarding their career. It wasn't easy, but they learned a whole lot.
"We had been touring the same places for so long that what used to be a new adventure everyday was starting to blur into a continuous stream of boredom and self-destruction," said keyboardist Erik Engstrom. "Here is this great dream of your life and five years later, you've played to a lot of people and been everywhere in your country 28 times and are thinking, 'What have I done with my life?' We felt like the disillusioned, bad-attitude pariahs of the music industry. We ended up with a well-known reputation, partially deserved, for 'being crazy and wasted,' 'not giving a shit,' and 'treating the wrong people with disrespect.' It seemed like all normal avenues were played out or closed to us. Any ideas we had that were outside of the box - to bring something new to the table - were disregarded as not part of the traditional business plan."
Don't call the "wah"-mbulance just yet. Things got worse - a whole lot worse - for HORSE the band. Since the Southern California band's last album, A Natural Death, they tore through three drummers, three booking agents, two bassists, two domestic labels, a handful of international labels and were nearly sued by one of the major companies the band does business with. "We were threatened to the very brink," Engstrom says soberly. "We didn't have any money. We went on the craziest world tour ever and came back with zero. We couldn't ever be creative as a band because of all the member changes. We were always training new drummers and bass players instead of channeling our experiences into new music."
This 45-country tour of Earth - yes, Earth, where they visited far and away places like Wuhan, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, and Moscow, places you normally only hear about on CNN or the Discovery Channel - was a self-financed and self-booked sojourn across the globe. No agent. No label. No tour publicist. No support. Ignoring the naysayers - so certain that HORSE the band had no 'value' on foreign soil because of these factors - the band struggled ahead on their own.
But, this tour factored into the music you'll enjoy on Desperate Living. "That tour was ultimately desperate living," Engstrom said. "Not sleeping for a week straight. Shitting in holes. Playing for 15 people one day and 5,000 the next. You're not sure of your role in the world, not knowing what your life is about when you are shitting in a river and playing to 40 Chinese dudes in suits one night and then eating a stingray and drinking Red Bull and vodka in Singapore the next night."
After a treacherous series of business relationships, they looked to another left-of-center artisan, the pencil-mustachioed auteur John Waters, for some deeper inspiration. While the band is known for sampling films in its music, they didn't use any bytes from the film, a lesser-known, yet colorful, cult title in the director's repertoire about a woman who kills her husband then runs off with an obese maid. "We didn't make references to the film, other than the title of the movie, so it's our own view on it," the keyboardist said. "Whether it's getting the right job, finding a mate, buying a house, making money, looking cool, losing weight, being famous...It's all so desperate and so primitive. Everyone seeks the things that they believe they should value. The concept applies to our lives too, but in an even more dirty and disgusting way: go on tour to pay for the shitty apartment and get some sort of positive reinforcement from our audience. We're just as desperate as the guy in China bathing in the same river that someone is shitting in upstream."
Desperate Living has the blood of the musicians who created it coursing through its tainted veins. "Every song has its own character," Engstrom says. "Nathan could submit the lyrics to The New Yorker as poems or something. I think we seriously pushed him to the brink of insanity or suicide in the process of making this record, but the intensified pressure and nearly debilitating self-criticism paid off in the end.
So, that's where HORSE the band are at in 2009. A little worse for wear, a whole lot worldlier and most importantly, letting life and art influence the noise they commit to tape. Without all the shit that went down in the past few years, Desperate Living wouldn't be quite so compelling. However they juggle it, one thing is sure. They'll channel it into some effed up, but totally mind-blowing music. After all, isn't that the entire purpose of art? To make life a little less desperate? |
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On Tour With
I Wrestled A Bear Once:
- 10/07 Hi Tone Cafe Memphis, TN
- 10/08 Bricktown Live Oklahoma City, OK
- 10/10 The Clubhouse Phoenix, AZ
- 10/11 The Epicentre San Diego, CA
- 10/12 The Farm Las Vegas, NV
- 10/13 The Crossing Palmdale, CA
- 10/14 Jerry's Pizza Bakersfield, CA
- 10/16 PBSJ San Jose, CA
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w/Norma Jean, The Chariot &
Arsonists Get All The Girls:
- 11/25 The Glass House Pomona, CA
- 11/27 Slim's San Francisco, CA
- 11/28 Hawthorne Theater Portland, OR
- 11/29 El Corazon Seattle, WA
- 11/30 The Venue Boise, ID
- 12/01 Club Sound Salt Lake City, UT
- 12/02 Marquis Theater Denver, CO
- 12/04 Station Four St. Paul, MN
- 12/05 Reggie's Chicago, IL
- 12/06 Peabody's Cleveland, OH
- 12/07 Alter Bar Pittsburgh, PA
- 12/11 Gramercy New York, NY
- 12/12 Chameleon Club Lancaster, PA
- 12/13 Recher Theatre Towson, MD
- 12/14 Canal Club Richmond, VA
- 12/15 New Brookland Tavern Colombia, SC
- 12/16 The Pit Jacksonville, FL
- 12/17 Culture Room Ft. Lauderdale, FL
- 12/18 State Theater St. Petersburg, FL
- 12/19 Masquerade Atlanta, GA
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*Offer valid only with purchase of Desperate Living. This special offer is valid for both domestic and international orders. CDs shipping with promotional material are limited to (5) per customer. Booklets will be available while supplies last, newburycomics.com will post information when autographed booklets are sold out. |
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