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The Motion Sick are Coldplay opening act contest finalists!

The dance remix of "30 Lives" will be featured in an upcoming release of the Konami game Dance Dance Revolution!

The Motion Sick Web Log
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07/22/2008 01:52 AM
The Motion Sick - Ash Wednesdays Residency!!!!
by Michael Epstein



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07/21/2008 12:32 PM
Bands on Tour, Need A Place to Stay?
by Michael Epstein

"What's the story behind the site?

Touring isn't cheap or easy. We know, we've done it for years. We thought of this as a way for bands and music lovers to offer up their floor and couches. We've stayed in some great and not so great places while on tour, so we know it can be hit or miss. We figure people are fans of bands and bands become fans of other bands. If we give them all a place to meet under a common need, good things will come of it."

http://www.betterthanthevan.com/

Thanks to The Tripwire for pointing out this one...


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07/21/2008 12:26 AM
Metal Mondays Volume 1
by Michael Epstein

I just made up that I might be doing a weekly thing called "Metal Monday." This simply means that I'll post something metally on every Monday that I remember to. Here's the first one. It's some later-era Judas Priest. Ridiculous riffing? check. Screechy vocals? Check. "Dark" or "Evil" topic? Check! Enjoy some "Painkiller." It's on the house.


As a freebie, here's ANJ's tribute to the former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev (thanks to Ryan from Ryan's Smashing Life for pointing this one out to us):


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07/20/2008 02:35 AM
Digital Bear Party Photos
by Michael Epstein

Here are a few photos from the Digital Bear Studio party. As usual, no flash was used...


The New Collisions:






The Patrick Dunn Band:






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07/19/2008 04:13 PM
The Motion Sick vs. The New Collisions
by Michael Epstein

We've been searching for a while for a band to have a feud with.  Music feuds are awesome and hilarious.  Oasis vs. Blur.  Neil Young vs. Lynyrd Skynyrd.  It's all good stuff.  Anyway, yesterday at The Digital Bear Studio Party, The New Collisions (playing their first ever show) , "accidentally" knocked our commemorative framed album off the wall of the studio onto the ground shattering all of the glass encasement.  They were so sneaky about doing this that it APPEARED that they didn't even touch it.  Somehow though, none of the other displays fell off the wall.  They are in big trouble!!!!!!!!!  

Here it is in slow motion:









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07/19/2008 01:07 PM
Review of TT's Show on Melophobe
by Michael Epstein

Check out Melophobe's review of our show at TT's here. It seems that they had a fun time. They also posted some awesome stylized pics. I'll repost a couple here (hope they don't mind), but head on over to them to see the rest...




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07/17/2008 03:52 PM
The records of my birth
by Matthew Girard

After almost a week, I too have my list of my favorite albums from each year that I have been alive. I kept to the spirit of this exercise by only choosing albums that I know and not repeating an artist (with one notable exception, 2008... since the year isn't over, I think I'm in the clear). Also, each of my choices fluxuates between stuff I used to listen to a lot (that is you, Mr. 1978 Van Halen) and stuff that I listen to now (1981, Signals, Calls, and Marches).

This was a far more exhausting process than I would've initially imagined hence, the week-long delay with the post. Like Mike and Travis there were definitely some years that had far too many viable choices, but my biggest surprise was that I never listened to many albums in the 80's (and the Mid-80's to be specific) and to this day, haven't really made a decent effort to revisit some of the music from those days, so that's my next task, right next to finishing all those books I've been meaning to read....

Without further ado, here's the list:

1978 - Van Halen - Van Halen
1979 - Rust Never Sleeps - Neil Young
1980 - Zenyatta Mondatta - The Police
1981 - Signals Calls And Marches - Mission Of Burma
1982 - Tie: Signals - Rush, Thriller - Michael Jackson
1983 - Genesis - Genesis
1984 - Double Nickels On The Dime - The Minutemen
1985 - No Jacket Required - Phil Collins
1986 - Graceland - Paul Simon
1987 - The Joshua Tree - U2
1988 - Day Dream Nation - Sonic Youth
1989 - Full Moon Fever - Tom Petty
1990 - Ah Via Musicom - Eric Johnson
1991 - Fear - Toad The Wet Sprocket
1992 - Gordon - Barenaked Ladies
1993 - August And Everything After - Counting Crows
1994 - Superunknown - Soundgarden
1995 - The Bends, Radiohead
1996 - Tiny Music From A Vatican Gift Shop - Stp
1997 - The Colour And The Shape - Foo Fighters
1998 - Moon Safari - Air
1999 - The Unauthorized Biography Of Reinhold Messner - Ben Folds Five
2000 - Parachutes - Coldplay
2001 - Take Offs And Landings - Rilo Kiley
2002 - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots - The Flaming Lips
2003 - Such Great Heights Ep - The Postal Service
2004 - A Ghost Is Born - Wilco
2005 - Be - Common
2006 - Everything All The Time - Band Of Horses
2007 - Ga Ga Ga Ga - Spoon
2008 - In Rainbows (Cheating A Bit, But The Year Isn't Over)


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07/16/2008 05:05 PM
TT's 7-14-08 Photos and Video
by Michael Epstein

Here are some awesome, awesome photos by Kelly Davidson. Lots more great ones here. One of the photos of Matt will be appearing in the next issue of The Noise!





Sophia also took some awesome video of us rocking the place.

Here's "Jean-Paul" to celebrate Bastille Day!


The rest are here.


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07/16/2008 05:09 PM
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin at TT's 7-14-08
by Michael Epstein

We had a really fun time opening the show at TT's and I got a bunch of video of the headliners, so here is all the video I could get before my camera died of Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin at TT's 7-14-08.



I also took some photographs for the 10 seconds when I wasn't videotaping:








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07/20/2008 01:43 AM
Whirlwind of Rock: DC, CT, and Cambridge, MA
by Michael Epstein

I am just beginning the healing process after a series of 3 shows in 3 days.

As always, a variety of nonsensical videos are available here.

On Saturday, we played in Washington, DC at The Grog and Tankard. It was an interesting room with a shallow setup, but kind of a cool vibe. It's in the nice part of town and we had a fun time. We were on super early, so the place wasn't exactly full, but our friend Pia did an awesome job recruiting friends. She made the whole thing fun for us and then took us on over to a nearby bar called Breadsoda.


We got a little lost on the way to Breadsoda, but met some friendly people on the street who helped guide us. Samantha, our new GPS - who Sony should be paying us for using and plugging (you reading this Lisa?), didn't have the place in her directory because it's too new.

We sat outside at Breadsoda and had a relaxing chat about books, movies, and other fine topics. I got to know some of Pia's friends including the one she affectionately refers to as "The Tall Guy." They were all totally awesome people and it was an all-around fine time. As the night progressed, PJ, as in Pamela Jean, decided to rib a fellow walking by in a striped polo shirt. She yelled, "nice shirt!" and laughed a bit. He walked away without responding. About ten minutes later, he returned and started yelling at Matt and Travis for making fun of his shirt (they, of course, hadn't said a thing to him) and called us all "fucking hipsters." We sort of sat there puzzled by the whole thing, but also sort of amused. His friends shook their heads, giggled, and dragged him back inside. It put kind of an amusing cap on the night.

We woke up the next day and hung out with Pia, Aaron, PJ, and Annie for a while before heading off to the fine town of Danbury, CT.

We arrived in Danbury at Cousin Larry's. We rocked the Sunday night with our buddy H (video of his set on our video page) and our formerly of-Boston pals Sarianna and the Swell. It was awesome fun except for the moment where we were playing "Grace Kelly" and I looked up and saw 6 TVs, each with a different show on. I started wondering, "what are all these shows?" Then, I realized I had already failed to sing one line and had no clue where we were in the song. Whoops!

Our visit to Danbury:


A couple of related photos.



We returned to Boston for some excitement. We had an interview with Ryan's Smashing Life, which was a fun time. Ryan was an awesome guy and asked a lot of great, insightful questions, particularly about some of the content and sources of the lyrics. Just as we were getting up to leave the 1369 Coffee House at the end of the interview, our song "The Most Beautiful Dead Girl" came on. It was kind of surreal.

We hopped on over to TT's. We were lucky to have Joel Simches doing sound for us. He definitely made the place sound good! We played really well and rocked our short set. Patrick mangled himself on the guitar. I got only a pretty poor photo of the injury, but here it is:


Our pal Kelly Davidson, who we met in Austin, took some of the best live photos of us ever yet taken. I will post those in another post shortly along with some fab video by Sophia. I will also post all of the video I got of Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. They were awesome and nice, as were Ha Ha Tonka. All around, a fun and successful show!

Also, this weekend, Travis learned his lesson...



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07/14/2008 02:38 PM
Corn Starch + Water + Subwoofer = Freaky Awesome
by Michael Epstein



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07/17/2008 08:38 PM
Most Listened to Records
by Travrad

Hey Yall,

So I saw Mike's last post about picking his fave records from each year he's been alive, and I thought it was a great idea. Unfortunately, I got through 3 years and realized there was no way I was going to be able to pick my favorite records, mostly because there are just too many. Instead, I made a list of the records that came out in each year (according to the wikipedia list ONLY) and picked one record for each year that I felt I wore out. These are by no means my favorites... I'm also sure that I'm missing some great records I listened to, but I only used the list posted on wikipedia, so I apologize to all of the records I listened to a lot and got the shaft. Here goes.

1977 - Fleetwood Mac: Rumours
1978 - The Police: Outlandos d'Amour
1979 - Fleetwood Mac: Tusk
1980 - Christopher Cross: Christopher Cross
1981 - Def Leppard: High N Dry
1982 - Fleetwood Mac: Mirage
1983 - The Police: Synchronicity
1984 - Prince: Purple Rain
1985 - Phil Collins: No Jacket Required
1986 - Bon Jovi: Slippery When Wet
1987 - Def Leppard: Hysteria
1988 - N.W.A: Straight Outta Compton
1989 - Billy Joel: Storm Front
1990 - Poison: Flesh And Blood
1991 - Guns N Roses: Use Your Illusion 1 & 2
1992 - Soul Asylum: Grave Dancers Union
1993 - Paul McCartney: Off the Ground
1994 - The Cranberries: No Need to Argue
1995 - The Smashing Pumpkins: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
1996 - The Refreshments: Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy
1997 - The Refreshments: The Bottle and Fresh Horses
1998 - The Smashing Pumpkins: Adore
1999 - Matthew Good Band: Beautiful Midnight
2000 - Our Lady Peace: Spiritual Machines
2001 - Ben Folds: Rockin the Suburbs
2002 - Roger Clyne and The Peacemakers: Sonoran Hope and Madness
2003 - Dashboard Confessional: A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar
2004 - Roger Clyne and The Peacemakers: Americano!
2005 - American Hi-Fi: Hearts on Parade
2006 - Butch Walker: The Rise and Fall of Butch Walker and the Lets Go Out Tonights
2007 - Modest Mouse: We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank
2008 - Dead Confederate: S/T EP (so far)


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07/09/2008 11:33 PM
Favorite Album From Each Year of Life
by Michael Epstein

This is something I picked up over on Three Imaginary Girls. It's a list of your favorite albums that came out each year of your life. No repeats on artists. I cheated a little with a couple of greatest hits records...

Some years, it was a struggle to find anything much I liked (I'm talking to you 1977) and some years were tough to narrow down from 10 viable choices (late 80s/early 90s).

Anyway, here's what I've got. I reserve the right to change my mind...

1976 - Ramones: Ramones
1977 - The Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols
1978 - Tom Waits: Blue Valentine
1979 - Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures
1980 - Devo: Freedom of Choice
1981 - Go-Go's: Beauty and the Beat
1982 - Michael Jackson: Thriller
1983 - Def Leppard: Pyromania
1984 - Bruce Springsteen: Born in the U.S.A.
1985 - The Cure: The Head on the Door
1986 - The Smiths: The Queen is Dead
1987 - New Order: Substance
1988 - Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
1989 - Pixies: Doolittle (close call with Nine Inch Nails: Pretty Hate Machine)
1990 - Depeche Mode: Violator
1991 - Nirvana: Nevermind
1992 - Lemonheads: It's a Shame About Ray
1993 - Violent Femmes: Add It Up (1981-­1993)
1994 - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Let Love In
1995 - Radiohead: The Bends
1996 - Belle and Sebastian: If You're Feeling Sinister
1997 - Spiritualized: Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
1998 - Neutral Milk Hotel: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
1999 - The Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs
2000 - Bright Eyes: Fevers and Mirrors
2001 - Clem Snide: The Ghost of Fashion
2002 - Rilo Kiley: The Execution of All Things
2003 - The Postal Service: Give Up
2004 - Modest Mouse: Good News for People Who Love Bad News
2005 - The Decemberists: Picaresque
2006 - Rock Plaza Central: Are We Not Horses
2007 - Arcade Fire: Neon Bible
2008 - Dead Confederate: S/T EP (so far)


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07/07/2008 04:19 PM
The Motion Sick are Coldplay opening act contest finalists!
by Michael Epstein

Friends! We have been selected as a finalist in the WFNX contest to find an opening act for Coldplay in Boston! Our video for "30 Lives" is now featured on Coldplay's special web site for this purpose:

http://www.coldplayontour.com/wfnx/

Please go to this page and rate our video (preferably a 10, but it's your call) by looking for this:


Feel free to rate other videos if you see fit to do so, but it's not required.

This is a huge and wonderful opportunity for us and we greatly appreciate your support. Thanks!


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06/27/2008 01:27 PM
Wanted
by Michael Epstein

I saw the midnight viewing of the movie Wanted last night and I found it to be pretty awesome. I won't spoil too much, but it includes all of director Timur Bekmambetov's favorite themes: father/son relationships, superhuman abilities, fate, and ancient races charged with maintaining the balance of good and evil in humanity. I love the overwhelmingly Russian fatalism and mysticism. I think Wanted is at least as good as his massive overseas hit Night Watch, if not better. (Day Watch was a disappointing follow-up.)

It's certainly a stylized, suspension-of-disbelief affair, but I found the characters to be compelling and the action, with the exception of a few overblown sequences, to favor suspense over explosion (there were plenty of explosions for sure).

I really hope directors from around the world follow Bekmambetov's lead and incorporate their cultural fables and literary themes into American-style, action-fantasy-sci-fi films.


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07/07/2008 04:55 PM
Do you know this girl?
by Michael Epstein

I get a massive quantity of spam with subjects like: "this girl is looking for you," "someone loves you," "bad girls," "let's chat," etc. For the past six months or so, these messages, of which I've received thousands, have almost always contained a photograph of the "girl" who is interested in me. Here she is:


I wonder who this poor girl is. She is now forever associated with some spammer's endless barrage of silly messages. I'd like to interview her and find out her reaction. I suspect that her picture was just grabbed off myspace or something. Anyone know her?

Maybe it's not spam after all and she really is interested in me. She is trying very hard to chat with me and I have denied her all this time. Maybe she will stop at nothing to "show me her pictures." After all, she is "willing to meet with me." How much longer can I resist!?!?!?!

Here is an example of the e-mails:
"Hello! I am bored this afternoon. I am nice girl that would like to chat with you. Email me at (ADDRESS REMOVED) only, because I am using my friend's email to write this. I want to show you some pictures."

UPDATE (7/7/08):
I've just started receiving messages from a new "girl" who looks like this:


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06/26/2008 06:34 PM
Dead Confederate Live on KEXP
by Michael Epstein

This isn't exactly new, but it's pretty awesome for both its innate greatness and its 80s-style fade video montaging mixed with Blair-Witch-spooked shaky cameras. I love it. I also love the observers mixed in with the band. Oh yeah, awesome song too. That's all.



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06/20/2008 01:09 PM
Girl Talk and collage music...
by Michael Epstein

The new Girl Talk album is available for whatever price you choose (including $0.00) at: http://74.124.198.47/illegal-art.net/. I really enjoyed the last record and, although I've not been active lately, I was involved in doing a lot of music along the same lines a while back...

M-sli©k da ninjA may or may not be me, depending on who you ask. Just don't ask Shinobi Tom. I may or may not have been involved in The Droplift Project and Dictionaraoke (and my Britney Spears dictionaraoke may or may not have been featured on TechTV). I also may or may not have just eventually given up on working on things and thrown together a "best of" collection of songs made for my alleged radio show: http://iloveninjas.com/ninja/mp3/

I also may or may not be still perpetually working on one final grand secret ninjA project...


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06/16/2008 05:32 PM
Stage Fright
by Michael Epstein

Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright is one of my favorite films ever.  I am in the process of seeing every Hitchcock film (75% through them) and I think it may even be my favorite of his films so far...but that is a hard choice to make. He is most certainly my favorite director of all time and his worst movies are better than most directors' best.

Anyway, I just found out that they have the movie available for free download on Archive.org at: 

http://www.archive.org/details/Hitchcock_Stage_Fright

I don't want to talk about it at all and ruin anything, but I really enjoyed the way the plot unfolded in this one.  It features Marlene Dietrich at age 49. She was a fascinating woman and an excellent actress. She portrays a complex and unusual role perfectly in this movie.  

If you've got 2 gigs free and a couple of hours, I definitely recommend it!



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06/16/2008 04:02 PM
Graph Jam Strikes Again!
by Matthew Girard

song chart memes
more graph humor and song chart memes


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06/16/2008 04:03 PM
The Music Industry Today...
by Matthew Girard

While Mike reads the newspaper to find random industry-placed adverts, upon my morning flip of the paper found this interesting article about the new head of EMI... A music producer, like Rick Rubin? No, a financier named Guy Hands. Known primarily for rescuing Pubs and Petrol Stations from bankruptcy, he found the Music Industry was quite different than the corporate boardrooms he was accustomed to patrolling. I'd be curious to see what people think about his approach (hint... leave comments!), but I just don't think that applying the same cost-cutting measures that may be effective for restaurants and traditional businesses is going to work.


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06/16/2008 05:08 PM
Funny Newspapers
by Michael Epstein

You may remember a while back, I had posted that thing about the burrito being mistaken for a baby in the trash. Well, I found the source of that tidbit of joy.

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/jbistlin/headlines1.htm

These got me into a painful giggle cycle.







(The above says - in response to "Do you have any advice for older people?" - if you have blood sugar, take a knife and make a cut and then let it bleed so the sugar runs out.  I read this in a pirate book.)


UPDATE: BAH! THE PAGE IS OFTEN GIVING A "Bandwidth Limit Exceeded" ERROR.  TRY AGAIN LATER.


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06/20/2008 02:25 PM
Jean-Paul: My Saturday project
by Michael Epstein

So, I am trying to learn more about video editing. I hope to make a short film for the 48 Hour Film Project next year. As an exercise in editing, I spent all day making a music video for Jean-Paul out of public domain footage from the Prelinger Archives. It was particularly interesting to try to cover as much of the story of Jean-Paul as I could using the limited footage available. It turned out okay. I could work on fixing some of the timing and making things a bit better, but I only wanted to spend a fixed amount of time on the project, so once I reached that limit, I figured, I should just be done.

It contains a lot of strange stuff including prominent use of an old stag film, spiders, educational films, war films, commercial propaganda, etc. I don't want to ruin things too much by giving away specific sources. I tried hard to build the tension and dramatic elements. I think it was reasonably successful given the time and material limits.

If you don't like spiders or are bothered by a brief period of flashing lights, I'd suggest passing on this...

Here it is:


Better quality stream on Revver (with ads you can turn off):



Download in MPEG1 or MPEG2


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06/16/2008 01:37 PM
Tullycraft
by Michael Epstein

Saw legendary Twee-poppers Tullycraft on Thursday at PA's Lounge. They got the kids dancing...

Video of the show:


Setlist:


Someone else's photos from the show: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bsearles/2575631452/







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06/14/2008 11:31 AM
My Reviews at Three Imaginary Girls
by Michael Epstein

Here's an updated list of what I've reviewed over at Three Imaginary Girls

Record Reviews


Live Show Reviews