The Randies

Best Moment of Past 24 Hours

2006-12-18T00:18:00.000-08:00

Setting INT. THE VAN 2:48 AM

Laura: Mc Fucking Donald's noooooooo. noooooooo. whhhhy?!?!

Laurita: I neeeed food, I gotta eat.

Laura: Mc Fucking Donalds AGAIN!

Sienna: (feigns sleep)

Laura: My brother has a contract with the Japanese to bottle all the cherries they can eat. Sometimes men from the contract, Japanese men, I mean the men who are with the Japanese who eat the cherries in the bottles...those men, you know, SIENNA! SIENNA! what are those men?! they're like all whatjamacalliting on the trees. SIENNA! They come and try new stuff out on the trees. They come, ALL THE WAY FROM JAPAN, to like, do experiments on the trees. They wrap them in tinfoil and sometimes they spray them with stuff. It's soooooooooooooooooooooooo crazy. It's a really good thing to have a contract, though, it's like, really really a goood thing. Mc Fucking Donalds! SIENNA!! Are you asleep?

Sienna: (feigns sleep)

Laura: I used to pack the cherries in the bottles in the cherry shed. I would like put them in this big vat of like formaldehyde. In they go like that, like all normal and stuff and then they come out like a WEEK later and you have a maraschino cherry! yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! I looooooooooove those things. And we would have, like, jars and jars of them just lying around everywhere in the house. They were just EVERYWHERE we had soooo many jars of cherries.....I would just eat them, like all the time. I would just eat and eat and eat those cherries. I was like rrrrrraaaaauuuuummmmm rrruuuum rrrrraaaaauuuuum. I loved them SOOOOO much. I'll have a number nine with a diet coke. LAURITA??!?!? what do you want?

Laurita: Fries and a yogurt parfait.

Laura: So, ANYWAY, sometimes the jars of cherries would jsut be everywhere, cause we had like this CRAZY contract with JAPAN. I mean ALL of Japan! That's, like, A LOT of cherries right? so we had to wrap the trees in tinfoil and try new stuff to make them grow faster.....and we'd....(lulled to sleep by the sound of her own voice, Laura eventually passes out with a half eaten burger in hand)

INT. VAN 3:15 AM

Laura: WHERE is my Hector on Stilts CD? why is it gone? where is it? SIENNA!?!?! SIENNA!?!?!? Are you asleep?

Sienna: (feigns sleep)

Laura: Oh well, that's a lot of cherries though....(discovers rest of burger in hand and eats it)

Drinkin' Smokin' and Swearin'

2006-11-22T05:31:00.000-08:00

If you REALLY want to know what happens on the road, check out this video on Blender's website. Beware! We're Potty Mouths!!! Also, click on "More" for photos.

http://www.blender.com/video/862/TheRandiesOnTheRoad.video

p.s. it starts after truck commercial

p.p.s. whenever i play i think about all the people i fucking hate

WHY?!?!?

2006-11-22T05:29:00.000-08:00

does sleep elude me? Sice I got back from tour I've been homeless, despite the very best efforts of friends and family. I'm sleeping at my Dad's temporary place in Venice and I woke up at 4 AM.

Been up since four
Cat's at the door
Meowing it's head off
And begging for more
Food.

blah

..

We Are SOOOOOOO METAL!!!

2006-11-08T08:29:00.000-08:00

Check out the January 2007 issue of Metal Edge Magazine!!! Who is that sparkly little band just two down from Iron Maiden????? Why, It's THE RANDIES of Course. Read the article when it comes out we F'n ROCK!

Behind The Orange Curtain

2006-11-08T08:24:00.000-08:00

We Wanna See You There!!!

Revelry in Indiana

2006-10-21T00:26:00.000-07:00

I'm sure all of you have seen the pics of us with our trophy for Sexiest Band since we've just about beaten you over the head with them in every avenue of communication available....but HERE are a few highlights from the celebratory hijinks that you may not have seen yet......

Aaron and Master of Ceremonies Greg Brenner who also (kindly put us up in his house....ya it's true.... I lost my voice, aquired a fever, and spent the next 24 hours asleep on Gregs couch)

Laura lounging sexily with our trophy on, what else, the pool table!

Some lovely lady who was inspired by Laura's grace and thought the pool table looked darn comfy.

Soul Mates

2006-10-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

I know I've been a little lazy about posting blogs on this tour.....So I thought I'd hit you with a very special photo story about the night in Boston where Laura and Aaron met their soul-mates:

Here's Laura with Jeb from Hector on Stilts....Maybe it's the helmet, or maybe it's the pabst, but these two are definitely kindred spirits.....The body language experts in US magazine would tell you the same thing. And here's me and Jeb's brother contemplating the union:

Sienna: "I wonder if their babies will be born with helmets?"

Clayton: "Hmmmmm....helmet babies.....cute!"

That brings me to the real love connection that happened that night in Boston:

Aaron and the BIGGEST beer EVER!!

Unfortuneately the stars did not align that night for Laurita......She didn't meet her great admirer until we got to punk rock night in Indiannapolis:

um

2006-10-12T23:33:00.000-07:00

yes

Globe Link

2006-10-12T22:21:00.000-07:00

Globe Link

girls on SKATES!

2006-09-22T18:10:00.000-07:00

Shit. I can't wait!!!! hot chicks on skates bashing into eachother, what could be better!

Of course you've probably seen this already:

but just to really get you really pumped for saturday I've assembled a little photo-collage of Derby Girls kicking ass and taking names. Here we go:

I mean, Puh-LEEEEEZ. this lady is what is commonly reffered to as "da bomb"

so there ya go, folks...that's what you have to look forward to on saturday....oh, and also we're going to melt your MINDS!!!!

2006-09-08T18:10:00.000-07:00

I know what you're thinking! Aren't these those Nine Black Alps boys? Aren't they FAAAAAAAR from innocent being British and in a big ol' fancy major label band and all.....I mean, don't they tour on actual buses with lots of drugs and hookers and such? well............ yes and no. Suffice it to say they just don't make boobs in the UK like they do over here. There's nothing like a pair of good old American Knockers. I know this is supposed to be a blog about our tour and all the amazing rock n roll things we have going on, but I really think this picture fits the bill. After all it was taken back stage at a Social Distortion show....and there are boobs in it. And if rock isn't about puppies or bar fights, it must be about boobs.

ANYWAY.....I hope this doesn't spark some rash of mad retaliatory myspace picture blogging among the Randies.

Metal Skoooooooool!

2006-09-08T08:33:00.000-07:00

We blew doors off of metal skool tonight! i'm so glad we finally had a truely kick ass show at the Key Club. at least that's how it felt to me. The sound there can be so weird. We dedicated our set to the late great crocodile hunter. that guy was amazing....even if he did almost feed his baby to a croc. I had the parking lot attendant take this picture of me to immortilize all of the glamour of being in a band and having a record come out nationally.

that is my new beloved backpack that i bought i a gas station in arizona for 6 bucks i take it everywhere with me now. so if you think you see me on the street, but you're not 100ure that it's me, look for the backpack.

oh yeah, and buy our damn record. it's called "saw the light" and it's pretty much the best record ever made. ever.

Yiiiiiip Doooooo!

2006-09-03T23:31:00.000-07:00

We played this party at the amazing elfin cottages where Charlie Chaplin used to live (or have his studio, or run a meth lab or something) tonight to benefit this amazing charity called Docotors Without Walls. The people who set it up and the party-goers were all so lovely and supportive (and also mostly high). On the stage it sounded like we were playing through an old phonograph somehow....I sort of got into it. I imagined we were really tiny standing inside a phonograph horn playing our guts out....Isn't there a Cars video where that happens?

We play tomorrow night at The Key Club with Metal Skool for our SECOND record release show. This is the one where we get to party with all our Kiss or Kill friends. Yay Kiss or Kill!!!

Yay jokey 80's metal cover band! Yay in general!!!

Them's Fightin' Words

2006-09-02T01:11:00.000-07:00

Okay, remember how I told you before that Rock n Roll is really about puppies? Well, I was totally lying. Rock n Roll is actually about getting drunk and fighting! You know, with whatever happens to be around......food, barstools, merch tubs, skateboards....pretty much anything you can pick up and throw at someone else is fair game. Seems like the further inland we went the more fights we saw. Now, I grew up in Hollywood. There was a kid shot and killed at my highschool every year I attended. Fights were a regular and enthusiastically encouraged occurance in some of the circles I travelled in. But I haven't seen this many bouts of fisticuffs in a two week span in a looooooooong time.

I'm not gonna tell you the names of the people, or the towns we were in, because some of the folks involved we're really really nice guys and gals that just happened to get on the wrong end of an asshole and his/her alcohol.....BUT! I will tell you this:

I saw a pregnant girl get in between two dudes who were set to joust with skateboards.... AND I sat and had a beer with 7 guys and 3 girls at a BBQ, 6 of whom had black eyes.

On the flipside, we met THE nicest kids in the world in Quincy, Illinois. They took us to the Steak n Shake parking lot to hang out and we ended up having THE BEST TIME EVER!!!!

Doesn't this look like the theme from Friends is blaring in the background? It actually was.

Although Laurita was sporting a rather nasty attitude on her legs that night:

She has such cute little legs though......it's hard to take offense at anything they say.

AND just for good measure (in case any of The Suite are reading this, and wondering why there aren't more pictures of THEM in the tour blog) here's a dorky snap shot of Ryan and Josh taken through the disgusting windshield of the van which hasn't been washed in over 17,000 miles.

I think this is in Minneapolis right after I yelled at everyone and kicked them all out of the van. You can clearly see how they're trying to punish me by wearing their bandanas that way.

THE KING!

2006-09-01T00:14:00.000-07:00

This was Portland, Oregon....I know, I know, The Randies are really exciting on stage....Sometimes we fall down, sometime laurita spits beer at me, sometimes we have pathetically insincere knife-fights and dribble fake blood out of our mouths...you never can tell what's gonna happen. BUT! All my definitions of showmanship were pushed to the outer limit by a fellow in white pants. I'd like to introduce you to the man, nay, the SHINING STAR we shared the stage with that night:

I believe he is referred to as "The Croatian Sensation" by folks in the know.

Look closely at his pants....go on, don't be afraid. He's the real deal. He really really believes in his music and he just wants to share every pelvic jiggling moment of it with YOU. Which is cool. Now take a look at this oil painting of Elvis that hangs in the Trophy Room at Graceland:

notice the similarity?

Who do you think rocked harder? The Croatian Sensation or Elvis. I think it was Elvis. pre-cape Elvis. But it was close.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH, Memories!

2006-08-30T23:06:00.000-07:00

Well, it's over.....it all happened so fast. it seems like only yesterday we we're all fighting over the sink at the Super 8......

I'm going to take you on a visual tour of the Randies and Rainman Suite's RnR Take 2 tour of America.....

First things first: This is the first tiny dog I met on the road. I can't remember his name, but the owner let me squeeze him. I think this was a gas station on the way to Nevada....My head was still spinning from warped tour and I forgot to start taking photos till this little guy reminded me that some things (like the fleeting perfection of puppy-hood) are short lived and absolutely must be recorded in digital format to be squealed over on long boring drives.

We all know Rock and Roll is really about puppies.

Which brings me to picture #3:

Note my shoe in the upper left hand corner. I've included it for scale so you will all register with complete certainty the tiny-ness of these puppies. I know what you're thinking: "wiener dogs just don't come this small with cow spots and multi-colored eye balls" but there is a place in St. Joe, Missouri where they run free in packs. It's true, I've seen it with my own eyes. When I first chanced upon them they we're rolling merrily in the mud at the bottom of a drinking fountain attended only by a boy in swim trunks and cowboy boots. He let me harrass them til they got tired and I had to go off to play the Seventeen Fest.

Later that day when the Rainman Suite took the stage, I was nearly killed by a huge section of tree that they rocked right off the trunk. I don't know if this was some kind of cosmic retribution for puppy harrassment, but it scared the bejeezus out of me. I think they were playing "I Hate Music" as I lounged (high on puppies) on a blanket under a seemingly serene oak tree. Way out in my peripheral hearing I registered a strange cracking sound coming from above...I thought to myself "a tree branch is falling" and as I looked up this huge leafy death arm came swinging down out of the sky. It landed right next to me and I swear I saw it all in slow motion, like a building exploding in a movie.

I didn't squeeze anymore puppies after that.

This being our second time around the country with the Suite, things got a little bit hairy from time to time. I think the boys got tired of us doing our makeup, talking about outfits, peeing every 20 minutes, and generally always taking a really long time to do anything. So we kept having to devise ways to flatter them back into thinking we are swell charming creatures that have lots to contribute to the tour experience (like snacks, advice on and in depth analysis of any type of emotional conflict real or imagined, and hair products.)

In Spokane we decided to each claim a Suite boy and write him on our arm for the night. I don't know if this flattered them or creeped them out, but it's all we could think of that night.

El Hef looks happy about it!

I have ever so much more to show you, but I am still recovering from our record release on Monday and I have to go to bed now. Let me close this entry with this most holy image:

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! (that's the angels singing)

Norwegian Hell’s Angels

2006-08-26T21:51:00.000-07:00

I’ve given up on any kind of order or logic to these posts….This happened around Aug. 2nd………We had to drive all night to get to Denver from Salt Lake City. Laura scrambled to get us a show there when our first one fell through and we ended up booked at a divey little punk bar called the Lion’s Lair. We scoped out the bar around eleven AM, and then headed off to find another cheap motel. Blinded by exhaustion and with Mc Donald’s addled brains we choose poorly. The carpet of our room was slightly damp and the walls were dotted randomly with dried liquid of a brownish hue. Too tired to care, most of us passed out immediately. Laura thought it might be nice to take a dip in the pool before her nap and headed down to the swampy water.
Laura was attempting some bizarre form of water aerobics when two men sporting grisly facial hair walked into the pool area. The shorter mustachioed man was wearing swimming trunks, a black t-shirt and a leather vest. The taller man wore tight jeans, water shoes, and nothing else but his thick salt and pepper beard. They pulled up some lounge chairs and started talking to each other in a language that sounded almost exactly like the crazy chef on the Muppet Show. When the shorter man turned around to spread out his towel, Laura saw the Hell’s Angel’s logo on the back of his leather vest. The ice was finally broken when the bearded man asked Laura where to buy beer.

Their names were Morton and Per. They were the Norwegian contingent of the Hell’s Angels’ World Ride 2006.

So Laura invited them to our show.

And thank god they were there!! Some jerk got drunk at the bar and had to be escorted out by our fair-haired biker friends when he flipped off the very sweet bartender.

Later we gave the guys a ride back to our mutual hotel. Per insisted on taking off his pants in the van to show us where he’d gotten a sunburn THROUGH his jeans on one of long legs of the ride.

Hopefully we’ll get to play for them in their clubhouse in Norway.

Randies record release!!

2006-08-26T21:40:00.000-07:00

Warped Tour End Notes

2006-08-19T09:18:00.000-07:00

Okay here’s the deal. Warped tour was so insane that I barely had time to sleep let alone write about it all in the blog…. I started out all organized, keeping track of everything by date and going into the finer details of porta-potties, but then the drive all night-play all day-drive all night schedule kicked in and I was forced to conserve all my energy and resources for the battle zone conditions of the tour.

Here is the entry I made before I was reduced to a red eyed, perma-sweaty, driving/rockin’ automaton:

7/3/06

Fire ants. There are fire ants in Texas (just ask my ankles…….I don’t even want t o go into what happened when I sat cross legged on the grass for a sec.). The first three days of Warped tour have been one steaming hot sweaty tangled pile of rock n roll madness. We rolled up the first morning in Houston at 7:45 AM. The air was already thick with moisture and the porta-potties were ripening quickly. The best thing about outdoor festivals is the porta-potties. First you have to search every one to insure that you don’t get caught without TP and for general freshness. Then you have to hover over the seat hoping the door is ACTUALLY locked. Once you’re trapped inside you can’t help feeling you’re participating in some bizarre Hollywood beauty treatment that involves lots of pooping in a poop smelling sauna while holding torturous isometric poses guaranteed to tone your booty like nothing else.

But I digress.

So, we got there the first morning and made a mad dash to set up our merch tent. Picture a thousand crazed and mostly hung over rockers subtly (and not so subtly) jostling each other for the “best” spot to hock their wares. Then it’s time to figure out where our stage is and what our set time is. Then…..GUESS WHAT!!! It’s time load in our gear!! YAAAAY! Now folks, I’ve already told you that I’m the sweatiest Randie, right? Well you may also have noticed that I am a little bit pale. Pasty, is a better word for it really. So you can imagine how miserable I am lugging all this crap through the Houston air which feels like someone’s constantly hurling sopping wet, red hot towels at your body.......this is as far as I got........

……..So now it’s halfway through our own tour with the Rainman Suite and I still haven’t finished telling you about the Warped tour….I’ve decided to take a very zen approach to the rest of this entry. I’m going to write about each memory as it occurs to me. I’m going to let those crazy warped days fill up my brain like soap bubbles. Hopefully some will rise to the surface and pop out some good stuff…

I’ve already told you about the things I didn’t like on the tour (how every town brought it’s own brand of summer discomfort, the lack of sleep, the overarching stinkiness) but I haven’t really gotten into the the good stuff at all. First of all, for a band that’s just starting out on the Kevin Says stage, warped tour is rock n roll boot camp. You’re tossed into this mad traveling freak show and at first it’s completely overwhelming. You don’t know who anyone is or how anything works. There’s a competitive edge to every interaction as bands jockey for slots on the stages and the best spots to set up merch tents. But then you realize that everyone is in the same boat. In fact you’ve found YOUR PEOPLE!!!! These are the other kids just like you! These are the crazies who have put jobs, relationships, family and all the other trappings of “normal” life aside to sleep in vans and brush their teeth in the parking lots of America.

For me, every day I spend in The Randies is one filled with the satisfaction of knowing that I’m doing what I love tempered by the discomfort of this one question: “Am I fucking CRAZY?!” I can’t tell you how great it was to wake up sweating, the pattern of the van’s upholstery etched into the side of my puffy face, and stumble out into the muggy dawn with all the other tour rats. Every morning as we groggily made our way to the row of virginal porta-potties I’d look around with an overwhelming sense of relief. If these are MY PEOPLE and this is how they live, then I’m not crazy, I’m HOME!

whoo hoooooo

2006-08-10T17:04:00.000-07:00

my first time. how exciting!
xo

Welcome to randieland!!!

2006-08-10T15:07:00.000-07:00

Hello all, While our website is under construction, please feel free to express yourselfs in anyway shape or form on our blog site. tootles! xo-The Randies

Website Update

2006-08-09T14:51:00.000-07:00

The site will launch on or before August 28, 2006 to coincide with the release of the new record.