yay photobucket!

Ok, photobucket is now functional....pictures as promised -



Tony (our sound guy, in Fuji

the last day of our UK tour

the crowd during our set at Fuji Rock

Gabe setting up at Fuji Rock

Ryan and Gabe in London

Ryan in Fuji

Ryan and Chris in East London at the Shortage House

Rolling Stone Photo Shoot

and again

at the Shortage House

There was a dragon fly on my microphone the whole time during sound check at fuji Rock

Me and Tony, during the rain at Fuji Rock


On stage at Fuji Rock



radio interview

Interview in Japan

Gabe on stage at Fuji Rock

uhhh

Japan



Chris and Gabe backstage at Fuji Rock

acoustic show


crowd during acoustic show

Ryan flexing

Japan

Jet Lagged

Ok, so I'm just going to highlight the rest of our UK trip...and then throw up some photos...keep it simple, right?

-Hung out at Amika in Kensington
-hung out at the Shortage House in East London
-watched Toms (our driver) band play at Mcbeths on Hoxton street
-Got my ear pierced
-Chris, Ryan and Gabe saw the Dark Knight
-Chris, Ryan, Mike hung out with Michael Buble
-New favorite restaurant in Shephards Bush - Armandos - Five pound pasta!

Japan -
- we played an amazing acoustic set at the Rolling Stone cafe
-Interview and photoshoot with Rolling Stone
-Me and Chris have spent the past two days song writing with Japanese artists. (4 songs in two days!)
-Gabe and Anthony got beautiful tattoos!

uuhhh ok...so photobucket decided not to work....pics coming very soon

peace
ricky

Japan!

Ok, so Im missing a big chunk of a week, where we stayed in London the whole time, but I will definitely go back and recap that with photos as well.

But since im up at 530 am in Japan, I figured I might as well get straight into our Japananese experience.

So we left London early Friday morning, and enjoyed a long 12 hour flight to Tokyo, which went by surprisingly quick. It was surreal to see Melee on the inflight radio program and the airflight crew were all Melee fans. They even took Ryan and Chris up to check out the cockpit at one point. Pretty exciting flight. So we land, already feeling the jet lag, and we wait for our luggage to come. We wait...and wait...and wait. Turns out our baggage was left behind in Amsterdam and it wouldnt be delivered until the next day AFTER our set at Fuji Rock. This posed a couple problems, we were missing ALOT of musical gear, and we were missing stage clothes, leaving us in shorts and sandals and smelly shirts haha. So gabe quickly brainstormed and we went running around Shibuya, restocking in the gear we needed to play, and picking up an outfit wed each be able to swing by on for the day.

Finally, after a three our drive up to Fuji, we made it to our hotel, beyond exhausted and all passed out. We woke up prety early yesterday, to set up and soundcheck and see what we could make the best of with our gear situation. Luckily everything turned out well and we were set to play. It was so so so beautiful up here in the mountains, simply breathaking. We played on the main stage which looks out onto the forrests in the mountains. The show was defniitely a Melee highlight, with a amazing fans singing along and dancing. Ive never felt so much energy in my life. One great moment was when Chris asked the whole crowd to turn around and on the count of three to scream as loud as they could, and then listen for the echo, he did that twice and it sounded completely magical, and to their surprise, when they turned back to face us, we immediately began playing Built To Last and every freaked out! Sooooo much fun!

Afterwards we did some interviews, and got to meet Ben Folds and his band and get excited about our upcoming tour with them in December. We then had a live on air interview with J-wave, which we had to trek two miles back and forth in the pouring rain to go do. But again it was great....we played Rhythm of Rain in the rain, making for quite the euphoric moment. Our day was done and we went back for dinner and hung out for awhile, which including arguments between all of us over the Dark Knight, and trying to prevent Gabe from ruining the movie for me. haha

Ok so lots of pics coming soon!!

love
ricky

Best Beds on the Tour go to....GLASGOW!

Hello!!

So we just heard pretty exciting news, Built To Last hit the Top 20 UK radio charts at #20!! This is a couple weeks before our album even comes out...which is JULY 28th!!!

Thanks to everyone who has been supporting Melee in the UK, and please, keep requesting Built To Last to your radio stations and help us reach # 1!!!

So the past couple days have been pretty relaxed for the most part. We had a nite off in Manchester, where once again, I chose to stay behind and mentally cleanse, while everyone went out to dinner and bars in the city. It was funny though, that movie, Red Eye was on, and a poster for our first album, Everyday Behavior was in the background, in Rachel Mcadams room. Pretty good movie, kinda ridiculous towards the end though.

The next day we had a show in York, which was fun because we were headlining, giving us a longer set than we have been playing. It was great to be able to bust out some songs we haven't played for awhile. After the show we all enjoyed a nice nite cap in our hotel courtyard, that had a nice, quaint, Italian vibe to it.

We woke up a bit early the next day, which was another day off, to indulge in some much needed sightseeing in York. Being from America, we were definitely all blown away by our surroundings. I know this sounds naive, but wow, everything was so old...you just cant help but have your breath taken away by everything and imagine what went down hundreds of years ago.

Anyways, we traveled to Glasgow, which is where we are now, getting ready for our show tonite! Last two shows with the Rocket Summer!

Enjoy some pics! Big thanks to Tony for taking so many great pics

and for some reason, while I'm typing this..Gabe wants me to tell the world, that he is in his underwear and is single...emphasis on single. Oh Gabe.

Ricky



Birth place of the inspiration for V for Vendetta


Thats a REALLY big church

Crowd during our set in Manchester

only part of the line for the London show



Chris getting some rest before the show

conductor Chris


City wall in York

priceless

Gabe (tour manager) and Toney (sound guy) in Manchester

bored..pumping gas

see if you can spot what Melee and the lady boys have in common

laundry day!

Manchester

City wall in York

Me and Ryan

me and mike having a moment




uhhh thanks gabe

Me and Chris in the castle!





Ryan stoked about laundry!

in manchester


on the phone

yeaaa.. i have no clue either

York

This country is REALLY olde!!!

Ok... So as the days pass since my last entry, I've been trying to update it before my memory gets too hazy. Hopefully it hasn't reached that point yet, so here I go!

Last week we started our UK tour with The Rocket Summer and The Outline! First show was in Portsmouth, and it was so great being reunited with everyone from TRS. We did a two month tour with them last year, so it was definitely like a family reunion.

The first couple shows were fantastic as we got back into the swing of playing full out as a band, not just acoustic performances.

Next nite was Newport, We all decided to grab some kabobs before the show and as we were ordering heard screaming and shouting from outside. Turned out two girls were fighting eachother over the others on going heroin addiction, quite sad to have witnessed, seemed right out of Reqiuem For a Dream.. But honestly it wasn't our place to get involved.

On a much brighter note, the next show was in Brighton, which is an amazingly beautiful beach side city that looks like an oil painting from the 1920's come to life. Chris and I went for a run in the morning along the beach and did some sight seeing by foot. Definitely a good way to absorb a new city. We had a radio interview later that day, where I made my "Rumble in Brighton - Stray Cats" joke but to my dismay no one understood it, but I didn't give up! I definitely repeated the joke but no locals knew of the song, leaving me look utterly lame... Nice. Haha. After the show we went out with some new friends we made and hit up the clubs total euro style haha. I'm sure we looked greatly out of place, but damn, do we know how to dance haha

The next show was London which was just unbelievably sold out and so full of energy and fun! We had a bit of an issue getting to the venue due to blocked off streets. Took us about an hour to finally find a street that was open that led us to the venue. Definitely a spinal tap moment. Afterwards we enjoyed a great dinner at an indian restaurant with the lovely reps from WB.

The next day was the Wireless festival! Another fun show, and it was great to be back in the outdoor festival setting. Sadly though, Chris had woken up in the morning super sick , only to discover he had Tonsilitis. He made it through the show the and went back to the hotel to get some rest. We enjoyed a fun day though running around with bowling for soup (who also played at wireless) and watching counting crows (who performed Anna Begins, one of my all time favorite songs!)

Later in the day we did a fun secret surprise acoustic show for Mtv and about 50 fans.

The next couple days we sadly had to cancel the shows while Chris rested and got better. Which brings us to yesterday, when we did some more radio promo and Chris was finally back to full strength. We even did a cool cover of the Ting Tings "Shut up and let me go"

The other nite after being bad tourists and eating at T.G.I.F's for dinner, we went to go check out Nottingham castle which was an amazing sight to see and which I swear, Robin Hood was real, but no one believes me! Then, next door was the oldest pub in england, at a thousand years old. We enjoyed a nice nite cap in awe, and made it back to our hotel.

The show in Leeds was great,and it felt so good to get back into the swing of playing shows again, plus Chris is a million times healthier now, so its all good!

Finally last nite, such another great show in Manchester, definitely one of my top 5 Melee shows of all time! So much energy! We also met up with Lauren who is red riding hood in our new music video for Imitation, grabbed some good Chinese food with her and her friends and made it a fairly early nite. Which brings us to today! A much deserved day off! Everyone slept in, and then we made it a group laundry day, which was definitely a sight to see...it was like watching chickens with their heads cut off. Melee needs their moms. haha.

Also, for those family members of mine... You know who you are, I definitely used spell check this time!! Haha. Oh the stress of having a family full of teachers.

peace and love
ricky


Hanging out in Brighton



Big Ben







Chris at the train station

Ryan, Tony, Tom (our driver) and Chris in Brighton

doing an interview

Me and gabe working

this picture just might sum me up completely

Me and Ryan in da club

Trippy

Trying to get sleep whenever I can get it

Ryan and Chris in Brighton

Ryan and Gabe


No Caption needed

Ryan during soundcheck at the Astoria




Tony hard at work

Radio Promo and pictures!

So this has definitely been a long/busy week! Last monday we met up with our uk radio rep in the morning and headed over to the hotel which we would be performing an acoustic set for various uk radio stations. It went really well, even though it was quite an intimidating setting, we def made the best of it! Afterwards was a dinner and drinks with everyone. Light was also shed that ryan looks like Ant from a famous UK comedy pair, ant and deck! So now ryan looks like a famous UK comedian and a famous japanese comedian!

Tuesday was a similar day! Another acoustic performance for radio and dinner/drinks.. Afterwards we went back to our hotel for mor drinks and enjoyed a nice nitecap till 4 am chattin about international politics with our new friends.

On wednesday, we left Manchester and flew to Glasgow, scotland! We checked into our hotel and marveled that I was still light outside at 10 pm! For dinner we stumbled upon a great bar called moskito! After making some new friends there we found ourselves beiing referd to a cool club called bamboo and spent awhile just chattin with random people, who all seem to be way too excited by people from "the oc" haha. Anyways, it was def good times and finally made it back to the hotel in the wee hours of the morning as the sun was coming up.

The next day was more radio promo in edinburg. We got to do a bit of sightseeing! Checked out an old castle which was a pretty spectacular sight to see. We also heard great news that Built to Last entered the top 40 UK radio charts at number 28! so exciting!

In melee we have an obsession with puppies and were slightly tricked by our warner rep who managed to not tell us that "puppies" in scotland is slang for "breasts" so pretty much we went around all day sounding way too obssessed with breasts... And I might have accidentally mentioned it on radio haha.

Later that nite we did another acoustic showcase and dinner for radio reps. After that we went out to a club called 29 in glasgow. Another goodnight and I know the other guys enjoyed the karoake room very much!

Ok so trying to recap all this, I somehow lost track and don't remember what day we went to holland, but we did and played an amazing festival called "rockin park"! It was a bit rainy but it was definitely a fun set and the audience was a lot fun! The best part was watching the counting crows play after us on the same stage we had just been on. They're def a big influence on melee and sharing a stage with them and being able to watch them from the side of the stage was surreal! A definite highlight was talking with adam durwitz who was an amazingly nice guy! Other highlights were Live, Anouk and Ben folds!

The next day we flew to the UK and got to enjoy a nice relaxing day off. I stayed in and excercised while the other guys went to a pub that was 500 years odld! Yesterday we did some promotion for radio and some interviews early in the morning and then were spoiled by a stylist with a fitting and some clothes. Waaay too good to be true! After a long day of shopping, we went to dinner at a cool italian place and made it back to our hotel for sleep.

Which brings me to right now! At our hotel in portsmouth getting ready for the first show of our tour with rocket summer tonite!

Hopefully ill see you at one of the shows and enjoy some photos from this past week!

OH and the New alkaline trio album is AMAZING. AS is the new john legend song with andre 3000!

Peaaace

Ricky








Gabe, our tour manager



anthony, our sound guy!






Melee on stage at Rockin Park



RYan during sound check