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THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2007
FOUNTAIN POP
OR
THE 3ND OF AND IN NO SENSE

Just crossing the Utah/Idaho border. One week into tour and already all the old familiar van demons and highway haunters are surfacing. It's been about a year and a half since we did a solid, long-term tour, and I'd forgotten about some of the constants that come along with living in transit. The swaying feeling that's always there of being between coming-down-with-a-cold and just-getting-over-a-cold, the also ever-present jaywalking between drunk as hell and hung-over as fuck. Jokes that aren't funny that become your new language and mutate into sentence-long slogans of scatology, absurdity or simply the unthinkably inappropriate. I thought that if you had an acoustic guitar it meant that you were a protest singer. Oh, I can smile about it now, but at the time it was terrible.

We started this tour with a semi-secret show at the Neutral Zone in Ann Arbor, a teen-center and extremely expansive space for the youth to be and grow in productive ways. A pretty sweet venue as well. They've just moved into a huge space in a more central location, and have been putting on more all ages shows with touring acts. On two days notice, our friend Shelley, annoyed she couldn't get into our only Ann Arbor show due to age restrictions, set up a totally sweet 18 and UNDER jam, and it was a literal
teenage dance party. Matt Jones and our bassist/tour mate Chris Bathgate both did phenomenal solo sets. The next night for all the grown-ups at the Blind Pig was a more mature teenage dance party, this time with booze for sale and flowing mercilessly instead of dumped hastily into a would-be cup of fountain pop. Starling Electric played a great set of somehow botanical psychedelic pop, starting their show with a Paul McCartney cover and gaining steam as they lost AM gold vibes from then on out. Betty came via train from Chicago to sing a few songs, and it was so fantastic to have her on stage again.

I'll admit something to you all right now that in the past I've been really proud of, but I've recently started to rethink. Saturday Looks Good To Me hates band practice. I love recording music, and I've spent no less than 300 hours on every record we've ever done, sometimes-incalculable amounts of time. I love playing shows, too. It's the best. It's a moment where everything that hasn't been worth existing for is redeemed and all the upset stomachs, late bills and broken feelings of life feel laughable. In spite of this (or maybe due to this), it totally sucks to run through the songs and prepare them as you would if an amount of people were watching you. It feels phony or something. So if in the past you came to see us play and it was, oh I don't know.. "sloppy" or "unprofessional", it was maybe as a result of either our drive to keep our performances pure and spontaneous or our extreme laziness. For this tour, however, we've practiced more in a short time on these songs than the cumulative sum of any other incarnation of the band has practiced. I guess I'm stoked cause our sets sounding really together, more so than ever before, and it's exciting to have that new togetherness grow. We've been playing songs from all over our catalog on this tour, focusing on jams off our new album and also a lot of "Summer Songs". If you're super curious, a few set lists are up here.

The next night Betty accompanied us to Chicago, where the ice storm couldn't stop a couple hundred of the cities' brightest and most beautiful people from coming out to the Hideout to party. Huge thanks to everyone who braved the shitty weather, the amazing folks at the Hideout and the Life During Wartime DJs for bringing the beats. Betty jumped off in the snowy streets just off Lakeshore, and we crashed out on the floor of Chris' uncle Tim. The next day, a Sunday in Des Moines, Iowa was looking pretty grim. The weather had been rough all weekend, leaving the city under buckets of snow. Both opening acts had cancelled, and the club seemed pretty eager to cancel the show. It would have been a full-fledged fucking bummer if not for our homies from Poison Control Center showing up and turning a raw-deal show into a
glorious and fun time. We had a blast, and the show was done so early we had time to scope out the bar down the street before eventually crashing out on Ryan's floor. I have this habit of watching movies on fast-forward and narrating the soundless, sped-up footage in a very abbreviated, curt fashion. This treatment for modern classic romantic comedy "The Notebook" was the last thing I remember from this night. "So what are you into, I mean, besides primary colors?" MONDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2007
MURDER WAS THE CASE THAT THEY GAVE ME

Kansas City on Monday night, our first time ever in Missouri. Our friend Justin Ripley played a sweet solo set, Chris broke the hearts of both the walls and the chandeliers, and we had a pretty good show, too. While the last band, the Popsicles were playing, Kyle sent me a text message stating that Snoop Dogg had been gunned down and the world had lost a great rapper. My immediate reaction, of course, was to run back into the bar and frantically relay this to everyone, make calls for verification and get everyone checking news websites on their phones to get the real deal. Minutes later, I got another message explaining it was a hoax, if an inexplicably random one. What could I do but feel like a fool and wait for the gin & juice to kick in. Denver at the Hi-Dive was fun, if a shorter set. I was singing pretty poorly, and the high altitude had us all kinda spaced and weird. It was definitely one of those nights you hear musicians talk about when you play what feels like the worst show of your life, and you get offstage to a dozen people screaming, "That was the best show I've ever seen!" It was really great to meet all the sweet dears of Denver, as well as hang with Jackson and some other old friendlies. Last night in Salt Lake City represented the third day of hideously long drives and encroaching snowstorms. We got to town early and spent a lot of time drinking in the van, having had the forethought and touring experience to know that the beer in SLC is only 2.3% alcohol by volume (some Mormon thing?) and we should procure our own stock before we even got into town. It was another super awful snowy night, but the good people made their way out and it was a fantastic show. Will and the Automatic Body guys played some choppy spectral punk and even the lack of indoor heat couldn't bring us down. Now we're driving back to the Northwest, with hundreds of miles ahead of us and a bag of sugar in each pocket, drifting through the best nights of someone else's ghost town tooth.
THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 2005
MILES OF CRIMES

From the depths of the sea, back into the arms of the Ypsilanti Public Library, we have emerged from our touring times. South by Southwest was a drunken rock and roll summercamp and the near-final coffin nail of the "Every Night" tour parade that began in September. The shows were intense and weird, in that order. A special "fuck off" to the soundman who complicated and tried to foil our jam at Friend's Bar at the Polyvinyl showcase, but a much more special "We love you" to everyone who persevered and checked out our attempts none-the-less. A grandiose joy and joyal truft to the cities and sweethearts of Lawrence, KS, Columbia, MO, and Denton, TX who made our trip back up from SXSW a cooler thing and not just a selection of Taco Bellses and Pizza Huts. Much love. If you're near Bowling Green, Ohio, please come to Howard's on Saturday night for the last show we do before a much-needed break in live shows. On to the next record.... Back to the lab for Sound on Sound... Thank you for your continued support and trial sizery.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2005
CASTLE TO CASTLE

Glasgow, Scotland.

We've been staying in a castle on the west end of the city for a few days, following our gigs in Leeds and Edinburgh. Leeds was a weird vibe and bad sound, but an overall good experience. Walking around to get food before the show, it felt like the more run-down parts of Newark or Hamtramk. We walked through a movie shoot and the crowd of bystanders, camera people and police just kind of stood there, unmoved. Edinburgh was the last show of the tour to come together. It was in the bar of a hostel called Caledonia Backpackers, and it was nothing but weird. The promoter insisted on introducing the band in a grandiose way, but still got our name wrong. "Please welcome, all the way from the states... Saturday Sounds Good For... Looks Like... Something, I don't know.... !!!!!" Officially misrepresented worldwide. At least Glasgow has been showing us much love. Our show here on Wednesday night was held in a smoky old downstairs pub, with a huddle of old men playing snooker and leering at the young pop children. There's a big tsunami benefit going on today with a bunch of bigger bands, and then a cool afterparty at the castle, maybe we'll set up and jam. Five more UK shows to come, and then we'll be back home scoffing at the low quality of domestic cheese and bread. Hope you are all keeping warm and one hundred percent in love.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2005
THIEVES OPERATE IN THESE AREAS

Nottingham Central Library.

About halfway done with the first SLGTM European tour. It's been kind of like a dream where you become a witch, but you're uncertain if you're a kind witch or an evil one. So instead of casting clumsy spells, you make candy bars into perfume scents, and everyone is full on digital flower memories, teeth rotten but painless for the time being.

(Do you have any idea what he's talking about? I don't have a fucking clue. Is it supposed to be poetic or metaphorical or something? No idea..)

Happy Valentine's Day (everyday the 14th) to all our loves back home. We spent it playing our first ever London gig, which was amazing. The Track & Field Organiztion came through on a monday night and we had a lonelyhearts danceparty kind of vibe with The Speedmarkets, Milky Wimpshake and a bunch of lovely brits. The night before we stayed in Amsterdam at the Hilton hotel where John & Yoko had their bed-in. There was still hair and cinders all over the place, which was pretty sick if you ask me. I mean, that happened like 35 years ago. They should have cleaned the place sometime in between. Big tour-cred ups to Eleise & Elliot's uncle Bart for hooking that one up, though. Munster, Germany was intense and cool as well. I had been awake for so long I had a miniature melt-down, but it was nothing a shower, a sweet gig and 28 hours of sleep couldn't remedy. All in all, the gigs have been way better than expected. We kind of got the word from a lot of people that the first few times you go overseas, you kind of play to the die-hard devotees and people who are around, but we've had such a sweet reception, it's really been inspiring. We're on to Scotland tomorrow, and then a few more London-area shows, then back on the plane to Detroit metro. See you in a minute.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2005
OCEAN JAMS

Aarhaus, Denmark.

There's a lot to be thankful for. Right now I'm thankful for the loud vomiting of some strange drunk human being in the hostel bathroom kittycorner to our room which has awoken me at 6:00 am this time, midnight in Michigan. I'm thankful that said drunk (probably one of our entourage) somehow locked him/herself in and someone had to come and bust the door down, and also that I've been overseas for two weeks and still have no hope of adjusting to the time change, so I been up one day, sleep half the next. Totally rules.

So, sleepless yet eyes full of stars, let me take this chance to run down our ocean jams so far. We got in last monday and slept in London for a night before getting up super early to take a sketchy ass flight to Stockholm, Sweden. The airline was called "Ryan Air" and I imagined some dude named Ryan was just kinda like "Man, everybody has a fucking airline. Why doesn't Ryan have an airline? Hasn't Ryan worked hard all his life selling magazines in this fucking airPORT? Yes, Ryan, Ryan has..." Our tour manager/golden god Torkel picked us up and the next thing I knew we were playing for a ton of Stockholm sweeties at a cool little jam called Debaser. Our travelling companions are the perfect pop group Speedmarket Avenue. Their songs are upbeat gems in a true sense, not just how everyone always say something is a gem. The tunes gleam and glower, and become stuck in our heads in a way not experienced since our 2003 week out with Outrageous Cherry where everyday we just sat in the van singing "Song for Someone Sometimes".

Erik is along playing drums for a school-trodden Steve, and we didn't actually get a chance to practice together as a band before we left. Regardless, we played ok. The crowds in Sweden were amazingly receptive and cool, giving hope to bedroom pop dorks worldwide. We met so many ridiculously kind and excited folks in the last week or so, it would be like some boring christmas wishlist to go into all the adventures here, but I will say it has all ruled, even the parts that totally sucked. Totally Ruled.

Last night we were in Aalborg at an amazing collective whose name translated into "1,000 joys". Tomorrow is our only show in Germany, and then we have a few weeks of UK gigs. There have been castles on the side of the road, windmills with invisible electricity, a house in Gothenburg with the fattest kitty cat I've ever seen in my life and lovesick dancefloors all over, writing a brand new history.

Love is a feeling, and your feelings all count, you know?

We're Twins World Headquarters e-mailed me today and let me know that they have in hand finally our new 7" with two new jams "I DON'T WANNA GO" and "DISASTER". It is available through their website www.weretwins.com so do check it out. The label is known to operate on a kind of hobo-based mentality, so maybe some drifter will have copies, or maybe there will be some in the bottom of an oil drum after a winter hand-warming fire has been extinguished. But probably just check the website and that'll do.

Everyone who has written about ordering stuff from the merch page, please be patient. We are working the bugs out now.

Aidan, we love you. Everyone else, you seem nice.
Just playing. We love you all so much. Keep sending wishes.

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