regarding Science Club's status

Two things:

1. My band Science Club played a terrifically sloppy show in the woods on Saturday. This guy Frank hosted it, and the dude lives in front of a haunted hayride. No joke. Tons of bugs, but it was a good time. We opted to play mostly new material, because we never do, and it's really time we started showing off our ever so dense catalog. We hardly ever play most of our songs, which is why they were so sloppy but ya'll fuckers should feel honored anyway.

2. When I wrote "new material" above, I meant "songs not on our upcoming EP Failure Ballads. The art is nearly done. The liner notes are on the tips of our writing utensils. We took a power lunch last week to hammer out the deets. Nate and I wore suits. Nick, ever the rank amateur, showed up late in a business casual outfit. UNBELIEVABLE. We argued loudly in front of children. We drank deep. We wrote checks and we tasted the bolder life.

Anyhoozle, the EP is coming out this fall.

regarding Science Club's new show.

	Frank's Garage 5160 Butler Pike Plymouth Meeting, PA
-BYO(cans). -Starts at 8, ends whenever it ends. -$5 a head to compensate Frank for letting us use his space. The Next Big Thing Science Club Knight Kaptain

Vinyl Vednesday 6/8/2011

[Vinyl Vednesday is a weekly feature about three favorite vinyl finds. It’s not meant to be a dick measuring contest, but it usually turns out that way. This week's installment comes from the illustrious Nate Adams, editor for Patch.com and lead singer of Science Club. E-mail pelonej1@gmail.com with your own big finds!]

Records: Mexicans With Guns’s Highway to Hell (Stones Throw, 2011) on red, Bon Iver’s Blood Bank (Jagjaguwar, 2009) on Black and Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Roc-a-Fella, 2010) on black.

Places of Purchase: Both Kanye West and Mexicans With Guns were purchased through the Internet (from Amazon.com and the Stones Throw store, respectively), while Bon Iver was purchased in person at Main Street Music in Manayunk. True story: the clerk I bought the record from had accused me a few weeks prior of making a list of records to go home and download when I was just making a list so I would know what I wanted to come back for when I had the money. The record was somewhat of a revenge purchase, my way of saying to the clerk “I am of your cloth, but I am not like you, for I expect the best from my fellow man while you only anticipate the worst. Shame on you and the life of darkness you’ve created for yourself.”

Thoughts: Mexicans with Guns is an emerging dub-step / techno dude who I do not know that much about. While the record’s b-side, “La Guitarra,” is a pleasant-enough song that suggests that the group has the potential to be a more accessible Matmos or Secret Mommy, I bought the record for “Highway to Hell,” which is my favorite rap song of the year. Bun B and Freddy Gibbs trade verses on this thugged-out funeral durge and the world-weary gangster delivery the rapper use rival their best work. Goddamn, I love “Highway to Hell.”

I heard “Blood Bank” on the internet joke program Breakfast at Sulimay’s and loved it immediately. I don’t think much of “For Emma, Forever Ago” and “Blood Bank” is still my favorite song the dude has done, but Blood Bank suggests there might be more to Bon Iver than I originally estimated. The best example of this is “Woods,” which sounds kind of like that gal from Imogen Heap, but way, WAY better. So good, in fact that Kanye West used it as a sample for the last proper track on his instant classic…

… My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Hearing “Woods” in its original setting gives me a newfound respect for Bon Iver, but it also cements my love of West, who has time and again proven himself to have an impeccable ear for samples and beats. Fantasy is both not nearly as crazy and exactly as crazy as people say: it finds West exploring the idea of celebrity and how it impacts relationships, the concept of what being a “rapper” really means and seems to expel the demons he began addressing with the death of his mother and the release of 808s and Heartbreaks. More than that, however, it finds West getting the most from his collaborators, be they Bon Iver or Rick Ross, who almost redeemed an entire career of mediocrity with his verse on “Devil in a Red Dress.”

[Ed: Nate also included this video for your viewing pleasure.]

Science Club = PR MASTERS

Science Club's alma mater, La Salle University, is in the news again, for failure. But what else is new? Side note: Did you know that La Salle University's rape scandals have their own Wikipedia page? It ain't pretty, so Science Club is here to clean up. Come check us out with a host of other La Salle grads (including Sam Fran Scavuzzo, ex-Cats Playing Jazz/Initech) at the Grape Room in Manayunk! We'll be raising money for La Salle's service trips.

Click here to check out the many projects La Salle supports to help people around the world. Then come get shitty with us at the Grape Room.

TONIGHT!

Location: The Grape Room, 105 Grape Street, Manayunk

Time: 8:00 p.m. - 2:00 a.m.

Come join us to explore the musical talent of your fellow La Salle grads! Proceeds from the night will benefit the La Sallian Service Trips.

Emcees:
Matt Lally and Dave Terruso of Animosity Pierre

Solo/Duo Acts:
Bill Drust
Jim Feighan
Sam Fran Scavuzzo and Vince Sceno

Bands:
Science Club
The Matt Gauss Band
Jason Ager and the COPO
Bathtub Doggies

regarding Brooklyn.

My band Science Club is playing a benefit show... in Brooklyn! And we're opening for... All Time Low? For those you looking for sloppy, dorky, faux-punk, this is the place to be. Our debut EP, which is not entitled Totally Bellies, just might be available for purchase.

Click here for tickets.

regarding Science Club.

This weekend, in secret, the three men who constitute The Science Clubbers gathered in the Pennsylvania mountains to record Failure Ballads, a six-song collection of songs about ruining everything. These songs are played at such fast speeds that they sound like happy songs. The EP may be called Totally Bellies if I get my way. We recorded a seventh song during this session. It's a cover that should be familiar to people who are cool and will be available for free if you ask politely. The others you'll have to pay for, motherfucker. Mixing 'n' mastering is being handled by Will and Dale from A Golden Era, whose greatest feat may very well have been defeating Nate Adams' The Percentages in band battle. But from now on they shall be known for teaching S-Club how to play together, in time. Mixes are forthcoming. BE ALARMED.

regarding the return of the revenge of Science Club.

I'm two-thirds of the way through my goals for my failure brigade that I lovingly call Science Club. That's right, I ate more ice cream. No wait, we're opening for The Next Big Thing! I just buried the lede! Our boys in NBT are dropping Tough as Nails, Sweet as Pie this week, the thrilling follow-up to last year's seminal punk rock dance-a-thon Condense the Nonsense, and they were kind/stupid enough to ask us to open the record release show.

Muahahahaha.

Here's the deets:

12/4/2010
6-10:30

The Next Big Thing
Run For It
A Bridge Too Far

Science Club

4638 Umbria Street
Manayunk, Pa.

In true punk fashion, this will be a basement show, so don't be a dick. Also, there's parking available Hermitage Street, so enjoy that.

regarding Science Club's love of Star Trek.

Science Club (my band!) has written its greatest song, and I had next to nothing to do with it. Nick and Nate had a play date yesterday, during which time they wrote "Go, Boldly." It's about Star Trek: The Next Generation. The lyrics are really, really good and in depth. The hooks are massive. And it will be a rocker, oh yes. My lone contribution: Teaching Nate how to pronounce "Locutus." I met up with them afterwards to work on a percussion part. Hopefully we can flesh out a new band arrangement next week, but until then, click the link above for a demo.

NOTE: The version they played me last night is even better than this, with even more TNG-related lyrics.

NOTE: I'm about halfway through season two of the Original Series. Just thought I'd put that out there.

regarding the first two Science Club shows.

The mid-20s fail brigade that is Science Club made its live debut last night at Temple University - for charity! We played five songs, three of which were covers. We made mistakes, but the 50+ kids in attendance didn't seem to care much. They laughed at our jokes, except when Nate talked about Star Trek and the devil. We wore Power Ranger shirts and played enthusiastically. This set was 20 minutes long. Afterward we crammed ourselves into Nick's car and listened to Fang Island to celebrate our not-failure (is that... victory?).

Then we played an acoustic basement show for a victory lap. We (or at least I) drank cheap beer and played for about an hour. Drunk and/or stoned kids stopped by, but for the most part we were just playing for Liz (Nate's girlfriend), Angelina (Nick's girlfriend), and Erin (who had homework to do but stayed anyway because she is twee and twee people are polite). I stood with a snare drum and cymbal - Violent Femmes style! - and danced, although it made me lose the beat a few times. It was a silly, stupid night. We decided that for acoustic shows we will be known as Study Hall.

Also we ate delicious pastries. Here are the things that define Science Club:
1. Unprofessionalism.
2. Desserts.
3. Star Trek.

My goals for Science Club:
1. Open for The Next Big Thing. Steal at least half of their songs.
2. Charm the pants off of hipster teens, then take their money.
3. Eat more ice cream.

I like this band a lot.

regarding Science Club.

I am in a band called Science Club. We recorded a demo last week, and you can download it here.

The group is the mightiest of power trios, consisting of myself on drums, Left of the Dial scribe Nate Adams on guitar/vox, and Nick Elmer of Nickmongo fame on bass/vox. Sometimes I scream stuff like "Hail Satan!" in the background. Our influences include ice cream, Midwestern punk bands, Star Trek, MxPx, The Mountain Goats, Ted Leo, and the stupid shit our friends do. Half of our current song catalog consists of Mountain Goats covers, one of which, "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton," is included the download above.

Of the originals, "Song in the Sea" is my favorite to play. It's peppy and it's about Ecco the Dolphin for the Sega Genesis. That game features the second most disturbing drowning music, next to Sonic the Hedgehog 2, also for the Genesis. "1897" is fun to play too, even though it's about Jack the Ripper. I feel slightly hypocritical playing that one, since I used to rip on The Misfits and Saves the Day for writing songs about the degradation of women, but my girlfriend is a member of RAINN and she says it's OK.

A few notes of apology: 1) The demo is pretty sloppy. We've slowly but surely been turning "Funky C," our punkiest tune, into a song that does not fall apart in the middle. It's almost there. 2) Some of the lyrics for the songs aren't finished yet. For example, Nate didn't mean it when he sang "Tell me something that you wanna believe / And I can you show all the biggest butts that you've ever seen" on "Doowop Breakdown." That's just a joke between friends. 3) What you're getting here are six first takes recorded on a single microphone without any editing, which is why "Funky C" is 90 seconds of song and 99 seconds of us discussing Star Trek: The Next Generation. That said, I think the levels are good enough to function as reference tracks for us and sneak peaks for all of you hypothetical people out there. Anyway, shit's free.

QUESTION: Should we change the title of "1897" to "1888?"