1. Write it Down
2. Gravitate
3. The Sin
4. My Favorite New Disaster
5. Bad to Good
6. What If…
7. Whisper
8. Uncelebrated
9. We Were Young
10. Making Sense
11. The Horse You Rode In On
12. The Last One

Some of the titles should be very familiar to you while some will be brand new. We debuted “The Sin” at The Social last weekend so if you missed that show, that will be a brand new one for you. We haven’t even played “What If…” live yet so there’s another. You can check out “Write it Down” and “Gravitate” on our Myspace page right now and if you sign up on our email list, you’ll get an mp3 of “Write it Down” (and “Not Your Enemy” from our first album).

Anyways, we’re all extremely excited to get this album into your cars, iPods, brains, etc. Look for an official announcement about the album release party very very soon!

They’re even offering free tickets on their Myspace. Without one of those tickets, it’s $5 at the door so I’d recommend you get some free ones. Also on the bill is Transmit Now, Fall of Envy and Afterglow Radio. In short, get your asses to Downtown Disney and support some of the best rock bands in town!

The cool part about this to me is that these guys obviously still believe in their old material enough to embrace it…unlike some bands I know who act like it’s a chore to have to play the songs that made them big. No names…but if you know me then you probably know who I’m talking about.

Anyways, I highly recommend getting this album. It’s only $8.99 at jimmyeatworld.com. You get 15 tracks, a digital booklet, digital poster, photos, and you can choose from high-quality mp3, Apple Lossless, FLAC, or two different WAVs (I got the mp3’s). Go buy it!

I’m about to rant a little.  Please consider yourself warned that this blog is about to get a little negative, and I’m sorry for that.  The thing is, this really needs to be said, and i think by saying it before April 9th (the date of our next battle of the bands), I may be able to avoid looking either like a pretentious prick, or a sore loser, so here we go.

What is with all of the unsigned band competitions?  I feel like every other day, we’re receiving another invitation to take part in some competition to prove that our collective wiener is bigger than all the other local bands wieners.  I guess it’s not the worst thing in the world.  Some of these events provide much needed and appreciated exposure for the bands participating, and at the very least they motivate these bands to get off the couch and promote their cause with more passion than maybe they would otherwise.  My problem is not so much the competition aspect (although I am not very comfortable with the idea of my “art” being judged against someone else’s) but rather with the way that the “winner” is selected in the vast majority of these contests.  These things amount to nothing more than a competition in people wrangling.  Here’s the rules: get as many people as you can to vote for you.  That’s it. Sounds easy right?  WHAT THE FUCK?!?!  Here’s the problem.  What does your ability to get the most people to vote for you have to do with writing a good song, or playing in a good band?  Let me tell you about a few of these contests and some insider info that you’re not supposed to know about.  The names of those involved have been omitted, because this is about the principle of the matter, not calling out the questionable behavior that these contests end up promoting. 

In one contest, you had to have the largest number of online votes.  You could vote once a day, per email address, for several weeks.  One of the bands that we were competing against made it a “band rule” that everyone in the band (5 piece) had to log into hot mail and create 100 email addresses each, and then vote from each email address every day.

In another contest that we were involved in, there was a band of very young kids competing.  Clearly these guys have a ton of friends at school, and probably had parents with large networks of people willing to get online and cast a vote for their friend’s kid’s band.  The scary part was that these guys hardly knew how to play their instruments.  They were TERRIBLE!!!!  Yet somehow they managed to do very well in the competition.  Imagine that!

I could go on and on with examples of digital ballot box stuffing, or other unfair practices  but I think the point is quite clear.  I don’t understand the point of a battle of the bands, or a best band competition where the winner is decided by how many friends they have.  IT”S A FUCKING POPULARITY CONTEST!!!  IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GOOD MUSIC!!!  For Christ’s sake, why don’t we go ahead and add a swimsuit segment.  At least then we could all get a good laugh out of seeing James in a speedo!  

Here’s why I’m bringing this up now.  megaphone is competing in WJRR’s Last Band Standing battle this Thursday night April 9th at the AKA Lounge.  Everyone through the door will be handed a ballot, and which ever band has the most ballots in the box at the end of the night wins a slot on the Earthday Birthday Local Band Stage.  This is a great opportunity for whoever wins, and we certainly plan on winning.  The thing that kills me is that we will be judged by how many people we could get to come out on a Thursday night and write our name on a piece of paper.  The quality of song, musicianship, showmanship, or show in general has NOTHING to do with it, and that kills me.  We could just as easily get up on stage and ride around on unicycles playing accordians (maybe two of us will play accordians, and the other two will play tubas!) and as long as we have more friends show up, WE WIN!!!  There is something wrong with that, and i really don’t think i speak for myself when I say that.  

All of that said, we will show up on Thursday night ready to KILL it!  We will bring the rock just like we always do.  We will promote the show just like we always do, and we will intend on winning the contest, just like we always do.  I hope you’ll come out and support the local musicians that bring their craft to the stage.  I hope you’ll cast your vote for the best band.  I hope you’ll be moved by a band that you hear, and I hope that that band will be megaphone.

The mixing is scheduled to begin on April 6th with Pete Thornton (no, not the guy from MacGyver). He’s worked with the likes of Paramore, Between the Trees, Shinedown, etc. so we’re extremely excited to be working with him. He’s already mixed “Gravitate” which can be found on the Rock Pink Myspace and it sounds badass. So anyways, that’s where we’re at right now. Hopefully we’ll have more updates soon! (In case you were wondering, no, that picture is not related to the album artwork. I just made it and thought it was cute…)

Click through to see the Twitter in Plain English video.

If you’ve ever seen megaphone live, then you’ve definitely seen the wicked gigantic kick drum with the lights inside it that was originally put together by Matt Brown. The original consisted of a big cardboard box suspended by string that housed a 60w light bulb in it. While it looked badass, it meant that there was a whole lot of stuff hanging inside the drum which altered its sound, not to mention carrying it was nerve-racking because i didn’t want to jiggle it too hard and break the bulb.

Lucky for us, Paul also happens to be a lighting designer. He had heard about this little LED ColorSplash that uses very little power and has the ability to change colors. It’s also capable of being programmed…which creates some pretty awesome possibilities. It’ll make its debut at the AKA Lounge tomorrow night, but hopefully by the CD release show, we’ll have it programmed to blow your mind.

To make an already long story a little shorter, since Voyage stopped having Rockstar Karaoke, a ton of people have asked “when is it coming back?”  Well, the answer is Feburuary 28th.  That’s right, the folks at Voyage (located at the corner of Pine and Orange in Downtown Orlando) are starting it back up again with a new band on a new night.  So why is Paul from megaphone blogging about this?  Because I’m in the new band!  I’m pretty stoked about this.  Every Saturday night starting Feb. 28th, you can catch me, along with Matt Brown (megaphone’s original drummer), Eric Lugo (Social Ghost), and Jaime Barnes (human encyclopedia of rock guitar) at rockstar karaoke, and if the mood strikes you, you can even get up on stage and rock out with us.  I don’t think there’s a better way to spend your Saturday night, so I hope I’ll see a bunch of you out there!

So megaphone fans have their work cut out for them the last weekend in Feb.  We’ll see you on Friday the 27th at AKA Lounge (corner of Pine and Magnolia), and then if you’ve got any face left, come on out to the new Rockstar Karaoke on the 28th and sing some freakin’ Bon Jovi.

We debuted a brand new song at that show “my favorite new disaster” to an overwhelmingly positive response. People were stopping me as I walked through the club just to tell me how much they dug it. I mean a lot of people. It just blew me away. I think we all left that show that night inspired and really excited about finishing the new CD. I think that was really what we needed to give us that little push at the end of a very long process of getting this new CD done. 

So what did you think about the show? I would love to get some feedback from your experience that night, what songs you really dug or something that happened that night or something that might have stood out. leave us a comment. Again thanx and I hope that you’ll make it out to AKA on Feb. 27th.

Eventually I made the switch to 5B sticks. They’re quite a bit heavier and thicker than 5A’s so they won’t break as often. Of course, it suddenly felt like I was swinging around a couple of tree branches and I couldn’t pull off some quick fills like I used to. What to do?

Matt Brown introduced me to Vic Firth’s 55A sticks. They’re right in between the 5A’s and 5B’s. They’re sturdy like a 5B but light like a 5A. Our local Guitar Center didn’t even have them in stock so we both constantly had to order them. After a little while, they finally started stocking them.

Just a little insight into how I do what I do. If you’re an aspiring drummer and are just starting to learn, I’d recommend starting with 5A. If you’re looking to start a workout routine and want forearms of steel, 5B is the way to go. Otherwise, if you haven’t found your happy medium, check out the 55A’s. Just don’t buy them all up because I need some.