ElectRICK Enlightenment: November 2007

Hello readers of the "blog"!

It's funny, I was watching "Best Week Ever" and they went on a rant of "Quarter life", that new show on myspace tv and it's excessive use of the word "blog" and it made me laugh. It's cool to see the generation I'm apart of begin to be the archetype for entertainment and social standard legitimacy. I definitely feel the lyrics on our album touches on the whole "Quarterlife" peoples, especially "For A Lifetime". Give it another listen when you get a chance. . .

This all leads seemlesly into what we (Melee) have been up to. So recently we were asked to be involved in the Rock the Vote program, which is very exciting for us, and we got the chance to record a PSA (which will be up on our myspace in a week or so) today in LA ! And honestly, we've been so deeply immersed in Melee world, that it was refreshing to talk and reflect on something other than that. With that being said it was a little rough getting the brain going on what we wanted to convey haha, but it was great to get the opportunity to talk about an issue important to us.

This election is so vibrant and so exciting, that if you are not already registered to vote, hopefully it encourages you to do so. Theres so much diversity in the candidates running, from cultural to gender to religious affiliations. I really feel like there's someone for everyone. And at least at this point, its such an equal level, its hard to tell who will win.

In this election we all have a voice more than ever in history!! I feel that THIS, this, is our election! Look all around, these candidates want to hear what we have to say, they're practically begging for it. All over the internet....myspace..... youtube...so many more...they've teamed up with websites and means that we've defined! You dont need to be a lobbyist, or a wealthy supporter or a politican or have connections to be heard. We have the means to do so at our fingertips! We need to take advantage of all this, and become involved, and research, and figure out whats important to each of us, because there are issues that are important to all of us, from health care, to global warming to education costs, to war and foreign policy, that are all going to be things WE have to deal with. It's not about political affiliation, it's about who represents our human needs and rights, it's about getting involved, its about being heard. Our generation already controls advertising and marketing, video games, movies, the music industry, so why can't we control politics! We definitely can, and this time it's different.

For more info and to register to vote visit www.RockTheVote.com

We will soon be having a widget up on our website and myspace page that can register you to vote directly, so keep an eye out for that.

So back in Melee world!!! We just announced a little headlining tour, so check out our tour dates for more info on that. Everyone here in our camp has just been relaxing. We've been working on a Melee Movie Monday, featuring Chris' cover song idea, and I know he's been working on editing that, so keep an eye out for it! We also finished recording an original Christmas song called "Christmas This Year" which is actually going to be used exclusively for Japan's top radio station, J-Wave. So thats pretty exciting, and there is a strong possibility of it making an appearance on our myspace before the years over. And other than all that, we're just getting ready to enjoy some time off at home for the holiday and eat some shtuffing.

AND since I've shamelessly plugged Melee at times, I'm going to even the karma out by plugging another band. Check out this band called "Until June" www.myspace.com/untiljune. So so good. I'm currently loving the song "Sleepless". AND check out the band, Venus Infers www.myspace.com/venusinfers. They're cool, we went to go see them this past Thursday at the Distrcit Lounge. Good stuff. So ya, there you go, all is right in the world.

Peace
Love
Ricky

Back Home!

Well, I always find myself updating the journal too late, having to summarize what we've been doing in big chunks. I'm definitely going to get better at this and update more frequently, avoiding the big long blog updates haha. Until that happens, enjoy the following:

We're finally back home after a long year of touring! I slept about 16 hours straight yesterday catching up on missing sleep haha. Anyways, I'm chilling at our friend, Elliot's studio right now, where we are currently recording the first ever original Melee X-mas song! Chris is doing his vocals (we did background vocals with headphones through a tin bucket, a trick Chris learned from a Queen DVD), and Ryan's playing with a vocoder making everyone laugh doing Imogen Heap impressions and writing hit songs like "Cooler Than A Robot"...More details on that later.

The Matt Nathanson tour was so much fun! A great tour to end 2007 on. Everyone in his posse and band were amazing and Ingrid Michaelson and Allie Moss were so great and nice! Too bad it wasn't longer!

We also had some new additions to our crew, Anthony, doing our sound; Quinn, doing our merch (who we realized, and many others did as well, looks exactly like the singer from Cute Is What We Aim For, or the singer from The Almost, or the bassist from Maroon 5 AND many others....haha),. And I'm sure most of you already know Gabe our tour manager...hopefully you had a chance to say "hi!" to all of them at a show, if not, definitely find them at the next Melee show. They'll definitely add to your Melee experience.

So on this tour we tried to actually enjoy what our amazing country has to offer, by stopping at as many roadside attractions as possible. Unfortunately, we only ended up checking out a couple. One day, Quinn and I were motivated on getting some Chinese food, so we entered in a random Chinese restaurant into our GPS only to be misguided to a Civil War era plantation. This ended up being pretty rad, cuz they were setting up for a Civil War reenactment. So we took some time to explore the plantation, even though they closed the tour on us. We then found some chinese food, which we should have probably just avoided ( My stomach is still trying to digest it haha). Then there was the day we stopped by Casey Jones' Train Museum and Home. Sadly, mother nature decided to drop some rain and most of it was closed haha. But it was fun to just see something so historical and where Casey Jones lived. Anyways, I say we get an A for effort, for at least trying to be good tourists.

The Fort Collins show was a memorable one. It was practically a college show, so everyone was very much in the spirit of halloween and very much under the influence haha. It was definitely one of those shows where you couldn't take yourself seriously while having a bunch of American Gladiators and The Ultimate Warrior rockin out in the crowd.

Then there was the memorable Halloween show. The past couple years we've missed halloween and decided we were going to embrace to the best of our capabilities. Chris and Mike found their costumes in Denver. I found a rad Shamu costume that one of the workers at the store in Denver was wearing, and she said I could buy it off of her and drop it off at the show. But sadly there was no follow up... I was stood up by Shamu. Needless to say everything turned out great anways. Chris dressed up as a Spartan, Mike was a Starbucks worker (earlier that day, we went into a starbucks with Mike in his "uniform" and tried to get some free drinks. It worked for the most part until she asked him for his discount employee number haha.), Ryan was Lady Liberty and I was Leonardo the Ninja Turtle (which I found in the big sized little kids section. So it fit...kinda haha...Hopefully there were no sad big sized little boys in Seattle on halloween wishing that they were Leonardo for halloween!) (p.s., I think I definitely blurred the line that nite between "being laughed at" and "being laughed with" haha) So the Halloween show turned out to be one of the most fun we've played in a long time! How could it be anything else, nothing like playing a show in silly costumes with your best friends.

We then drove over nite to San Francisco. We were supposed to go on a tour of Lucasfilm, which we were all very excited about (yes, we're dorks) but it got cancelled due to an emergency meeting (which we hoped had to do with indiana jones)

Our day in SF was jampacked, starting with an acoustic performance for Alice 97.3 FM radio listeners who called in and won. Then rushing over to Virgin Megastore for an in-store performance and signing, and finally ending the nite with an awesome show at The Filmore. Seriously The Filmore is so amazing, full of spirit and vibe. If you ever get a chance to see a show there, please do. Or make it a goal in life, its such a great experience to be in that room.

Finally the tour ended back home in LA at The Troubadour. It's always so hard to say goodbye, especially because we were starting to really vibe with everybody, but it definitely wont be the last time we see everyone. I know we have a show in december with Ingrid, so it's all good! The show was awesome, and during Matt's set Mike went out and played tambourine on "Car Crash"

Before we went on stage to play, Ryan was telling me about how he saw the producer guy from Borat at the restaurant he was eating at. Thought that was pretty cool. What made it even funnier, was the next morning Ryan emailed me a TMZ link to check out. Low and behold it was a video from that nite before with the dude from Borat and then all of a sudden George Clooney walks out of the restaurant creating a bit of a frenzy. Best part was seeing Melee's van and trailer in the background haha. Ryan later told me he he saw George Clooney but thought it didn't really look like him. If you search tmz under "Watch Clooney vs. Davitian: No Contest " you'll be able to find it.

Well, that pretty much brings us up to date. Enjoy some pictures...

talk soon!

love
ricky