Little Timmy's Wish List and Other Exciting Shit!

If you haven't bought your tickets for this show yet, you are a goddamn moron.

In other news, I'm currently working on 2 massive albums at the same time. One of these albums ("The Miss Factory") will be in my usual home-recording style, but with a little help from my lifeguard friends, various special guests AND real (fake) drums. The evolution continues! I've already got 14 rough tracks sketched out and ready to go, and I love them all deeply. The second album ("The Way of the Hen") is going to be a bit of a departure, in that I'm working with a very talented and mentally disturbed producer (I like to call him Dong Johnson) who is going to take my songs and add his own (ric) flair to them. We're close to completion on one track already and the results are beautifully unique. It's going to be a Lifeguard Nights album unlike any you've heard before. I'm psyched.

Onwards and upwards! Happy holidays, swimmers,

Vincent

Mercury Lounge 12/12 and End-of-the-Year Roundup!

Hi everybody,

Hope you're all enjoying yourselves doing whatever it is that you do exactly! 2008 is quickly coming to a close, and I'm glad because I'm pretty sure 2008 has been trying to kill me. If you could charge a year with attempted murder, I'd have filed a police report months ago. It's been a heck of a roller-coaster ride these past 11 months and I'm willing to blow God himself if he lets up in 2009. Blasphemy probably isn't helping my cause, I realize, but between the Giants winning the Superbowl, getting deathly ill for a few weeks, getting engaged, having an old friend try to steal 1200 bucks from me, getting married, wacky private detective adventures, work drama, band drama, baby mama drama (just kidding, mom), I need a freakin break. Granted, getting married and having the Giants win the Superbowl in the same year is pretty freakin' awesome, so I figure the universe decided to pay me back by having other other aspect of my life suck balls.

However, ball-sucking usually leads to better song-writing, so that's good. I only recorded two solo albums this year, "Following the Hollowing" and "Ate" but I think they're my best and I'm pretty proud of them. Plus there was "Punch Sky", our second full band album which I also think is our finest collaborative effort to date. So while we might still be completely obscure, at least we're getting better in our obscurity. Onwards and upwards to nowhere! To round out the year, we've got the 2nd Annual X-Mas Spectacular coming up on December 12th at the Mercury Lounge. Check out the poster below!



I'm pretty psyched about this show for a number of reasons. It's always fun to play with our friends Wormburner and Knockout Drops, and especially at our favorite club in the city, the Mercury Lounge. Plus, there's the Yule Dogs all-star christmas-classics jam session which will blow your mind There's no better way to get in the holiday spirit than that, I guarantee you. In addition to all that awesomeness, I've assembled a great team for the show, featuring a couple of fresh faces (Jeff on drums, Sarah on viola) and a great set-list, featuring a wide variety of new and old songs, and a very special christmas cover song by my favorite band of all time, which I'll be performing solo. Barring any natural disasters/technical difficulties, I'm confident this will be our finest show to date. We do have a couple gigs after that before the New Year is up, (including a Bogmen after-party show at Bar 9), so check the myspace page for details on those!

Alrighty, I'm down to suck off a turkey! I mean, off to suck down a turkey. Same difference. Peace.

Vincent and Lifeguard Nights

"Punch Sky" and other brilliance!

Ladies and gentlemen, I am back! Not that I really went anywhere, I just haven't posted anything in, oh, about 8 months. And it's not like anyone visits this page anyway, but has society's complete indifference to my artistic endeavors ever stopped me in the past? I THINK NOT.

Firstly, we are thrilled to announce that Headshop Records will be releasing our 2nd full-band studio album, "PUNCH SKY" on September 16th! Even though that's a week away, the album is up on iTunes NOW so stop reading this, go buy it, and then head back here to read the rest of this wonderful blog.

Recording this album was an incredible experience from start to finish. First we went into Retromedia Studios and laid down bass and drums on 11 tracks in 3 hours with our good buddy engineer Adam Vaccarelli. A couple of the songs ("Whore" and "Oh No") we pretty much learned on the spot, and they came out great.











After that we recorded most of the overdubs at my apartment, with everyone coming in on different days and laying their parts down. It was a truly collaborative experience and watching the songs grow and take shape was amazing. It was easily the best experience I've ever had making an album, personally, creatively, and financially. Here are some of the highlights of the recording sessions.



After the tracking was done we went back to Retromedia Studios for an intense mixing session with John Noll and came out with a gem of an album. Next we needed an album cover, so everyone decided to shoot me out of a cannon.



The landing kinda hurt, but I'm glad we got the shot! Special thanks to Dave Biskup for his fine photography skills. I owe you a handy, Dave.

Anyhow, overall I think this is our finest work to date, and possibly the first album I've ever produced that I'm 100% proud of! I honestly believe you will love it, no matter what type of music you like, so if you have a chance, give it a listen and let us know what you think!

In other news, I finished up my 7th Lifeguard Nights "solo" album, "Following the Hollowing", and much like "Punch Sky", I think it's hands-down, start-to-finish the best album I've ever created. Recording-wise, songwriting-wise, everything. It's a big album, with 13 fully-realized tracks in the tradition of "After the Disasters" and I can't wait to get it out there.

In even more recent news, I'm almost finished with my 8th Lifeguard Nights solo album, titled "Ate", featuring a plethora of indie-pop songs hovering around the 2 minute mark, with a couple of interesting and unusual detours thrown in for good measure.

Finally, within a couple months the ENTIRE Lifeguard Nights (including the two new albums just mentioned) and South Jersey Seashore Lifeguard Convention Band catalogs should be up on iTunes! I'm pretty excited about this, and the possibilities it opens up for the future. No longer will I have to wait to be able to afford duplication for every album, I can simply release albums digitally once they're completed! From my apartment to your ears in mere weeks! Everybody wins!

I'm off to celebrate. Peace.

NEWS 1/25/08

Happy New Year, swimmers! "Lucky '07" lived up to the hype, as Lifeguard Nights had the best (and only) year we've ever had! We recorded 7 albums, got signed to Headshop Records, toured the West Coast, grew to an impressive 11 members (if everybody shows up), and finished off the year opening for our friends Wormburner and The Knockout Drops at the Bowery Ballroom! It was awesome...

...but now "Great '08" is here and it's already shaping up to be even better! We kicked off the year with what I thought was our best show ever, at Maxwell's in Hoboken. I was actually a little intimidated beforehand, much more so than at Bowery Ballroom, because of all the great shows I've seen there. But once we got up there it was the most fun I've ever had playing a show. The sound (at least from where I was) was awesome, the crowd was pretty lubed up and there was plenty of energy on stage. Unfortunately, Sean's car was vandalized by some punks who destroyed his ignition, and the Hoboken cops don't seem to have any promising leads. They even took the tape deck AND the Creedence. Fuckers.

In happier news, you can now download ALL SIX home-recorded Lifeguard Nights albums at www.thelifeguardband.com (thanks Dave Biskup). That's So Low, Doing Harm on Easy Street, After The Disasters, M, Calm Down, Chief! and So Lower, all available for FREE! So head on over there and download em, each one's better than the last!

PLUS, we're heading into the studio next week to lay down basic tracks on our 2ND STUDIO ALBUM! Yes, it deserves all caps. It's that exciting. We're thrilled to be recording at Retromedia in Red Bank again, and working with our favorite little buddy Adam Vaccarelli! We'll be approaching this album a little differently than the last one, which was mostly recorded live in the studio in one day. We're gonna take a little more time on this one, to really produce it and give it a much bigger sound. If all goes well, it'll have the charm of our home recordings mixed with the professional sound of the studio, and I can't wait to hear the results. I'll keep updating this site with pictures and videos and reports from the recording sessions as they happen, so check back often.

Finally, we've got a bunch of gigs in the Tri-State area booked in the coming months, and are hoping to make a journey through some southern states this spring, and head over to Europe in the late Summer/Fall. To keep up to date on all Lifeguard-related activity, head over to www.myspace.com/lifeguardnights and drop us a line so we know you're out there, all two of you. Thanks, safe swimming for now,

Vincent

Lifeguard Nights on Lifeguard Nights: Lifeguards

Vincent Brue's "Medal of Valor" Acceptance Speech at the 2006 Lifeguard Awards.

West Coast Tour Blog, Day 10

Yes, the tour may have come to an end as far as rocking was concerned, but the party was still going strong. We Team A-holes had to return our Mercury Mariner (www.mercurymariner.com) to the airport at noon, but our flight wasn't until 9:15 PM. Team D-bag were all on earlier flights so we said farewell to them and headed straight for the bar.



That face pretty much says it all. It's hard to tell if Steve looks afraid of what is to come, if he's annoyed about what is to come, or if he's warning me to not do what is to come. Steve should have known better. After a couple hours, it was highway to the danger zone. I made some friends while watching football, one of whom, Herbert G. Farber, was a lawyer and offered to help me out if I ever got arrested in Seattle. If he had stuck around a little longer, and had I drank any more, his services might have been required in Las Vegas. Steve shot this video on his phone, while I was on a break from the bar.



Soon the Giants/Eagles game came on, and by that point I was sucking down scotch like the apocalypse was nigh. The Giants were dominating and I was pretty fired up, prompting three female Eagles fans to tell me to shut up. That didn't help the situation, and for the rest of the game I was screaming in their faces, as we sacked Donovan McNabb 13 times. I tried to get everyone to give Strahan a standing ovation when he broke L.T.'s sack record, but nobody seemed to care that much. I started smoking cigarettes in the bathroom after Super Dave (our bartender) told me it was cool. I'm pretty sure it wasn't cool. The next thing I know, I'm puking on the airplane at 6 in the morning as we're landing in New York. I can't quite recall boarding the flight in Vegas, or transferring flights in Denver, or many other things. Apparently I was slapping Steve around in the airport bar, and he didn't like that too much. But Team A stuck together and remained triumphant through it all.








That was that. Somehow we managed to go on tour for 10 days, and nobody got arrested or killed or laid, which was pretty shocking. Okay, it wasn't all that shocking that nobody got laid.

Next tour destination: Europe. Stay tuned.

West Coast Tour Blog, Day 9

Viva Las Vegas. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Vegas, baby, Vegas. And so forth. It wasn't easy mustering up the energy needed to do Vegas right on the last night of our tour. Steve resorted to smoking Red Bull right out of the can.



Along the way we stopped off to visit the Calico ghost town.



We made a bunch of new friends, but you can't see them.



Eventually we made it to Vegas, the Disneyland for delinquents.



We set up at Zia Records and played our final show of the tour. I couldn't bear the thought of donning the Elvis suit again, as it was most likely toxic and a public safety hazard at that point. It was all very anti-climactic. At first, Steve's red-bull-induced sugar rush gave the band lots of energy and had us all rocking pretty hard.



At one point, Steven even stood up and busted out a ten minute drum solo...



...but he crashed soon after.



A 14 year old girl bought our cd, and that made me happy.



Then the show was over, and our tour had come to an end, rock-wise. We all punched the sky and took a bow.



But the tour hadn't come to an end party-wise. We hit the strip and decided to put all the money we had made on tour (roughly $35,000) on black.



Naturally, we lost. I was pretty upset. Beams of light shot out of my head.



I gambled some more, and lost. At everything. Slots. Blackjack. Roulette. Craps. You name it, I lost at it. I lost so much, I didn't even have enough money left to chip in for the hookers and blow, so I went back to our hotel room and fell asleep.

West Coast Tour Blog, Day 8

I Love San Diego, now that's a song I could get behind. We bid farewell to LA and headed on down the 5, but not before a crackhead accused me of trying to steal his (her?) rusty old bike outside a bodega in Santa Monica. Silly crackhead. Who wants a rusty old bike when you've got a MERCURY FUCKING MARINER? (www.mercurymariner.com)

I led the charge from the heart of darkness right into my old summer of 2000 stomping grounds, the whale's vagina.



First order of business, as usual, was downloading porn.



Then it was off to my favorite place in the entire world, the cliffs of La Jolla.



It was pretty awesome.





Some crazy people were hang-gliding over the cliffs, which looks like tons of fun if you have enormous testicles.







We pushed John off the cliff, and he was kind enough to take a photo of Steve and Drew as he went down.



Drew gazed off into the distance, wondering if there might be a glory hole nearby.



Steve and I embraced, happy to have survived the long journey.



Boris and I sat in silence for a while, drinking it all in. There was a lot to drink, and it was delicious, like beer-flavored beer.



I took one last look around and said goodbye to the cliffs, in my inside voice.



We headed downtown and walked along the beach for a while.



Apparently John had landed safely, and managed to find a glory hole.



Naturally, Drew was quite jealous.



We paid a brief visit to our La Jolla branch...



...then stole their Jeep and did a few donuts in the sand. Safely, of course.



Dusk arrived, and it was time for us to go to work.



The gig was at a place called Scolari's Office in downtown San Diego. When we arrived we met another myspace fan/friend, whose name escapes me. He bought us some shots and was definitely looking to party. Also looking to party: a few Navy guys who heckled us a bit at first, but warmed up to us (possibly thanks to "In The Navy Now") and ended up buying us shots as well. It was a pretty fun show and the crowd seemed to be into it. Afterwards, John, Drew (who was channeling Nikki Sixx at this point) and Mike all went out with our myspace buddy to party like the '86 Mets, while Boris, Steve and I went for a nighttime stroll along the beach. It was pleasant and gave us a chance to reflect. The tour was coming to a close and I didn't quite know how to feel about it. It had been awesome, exhausting, inspiring, disappointing, invigorating, depressing, wild, confusing and fun, all at the same time. I was fried. I think we all were.

West Coast Tour Blog, Day 7

Dawn. A new day. A new lease on life. A chance to do some good for society. A chance to make our dreams come true. A chance to do laundry. Thankfully we did all of those, starting with the laundry. After that, we walked to the beach to do a little volunteer lifeguarding.



Sure enough, we soon heard the cries of a small boy drowning in the ocean, and we rushed to save him. Mike was first to the scene.



I followed right behind him in hot pursuit.



Unfortunately, he was too quick for me, and I lost him.



The boy drowned. Frustrated, I took a seat in the sand and decided I could use a little color, and a long nap.



Before we left, we realized we had been lying next to a giant shit tank that was unloading waste onto the beach, which, as the big sign said, was extremely toxic and dangerous. I Love LA!

We returned to Steve and Kate's and were adopted by Phil (of The Grommits and Stop, Revolt fame) and Abby (of Phil's girlfriend, and Third Watch guest-star fame), and went out for lunch and some drinks. We all had a good time talking about "gear" and that time I crapped in my pants in my Elvis suit. They invited us to a birthday party at a bookstore nearby, and the birthday boy was an 80 year-old doctor who once sewed a man's penis back together. We certainly couldn't say no to that, so we got all dolled up and headed on out. Mike was thrilled to be hanging out with a B-list movie actress.



Phil posed next to his favorite album, Woody Woodbury's, "First Annual Message From The President Of The BOOZE IS THE ONLY ANSWER CLUB"



Unfortunately we had to leave the party to go to our gig at The Gig in West Hollywood.



The Gig was a lot like the old Continental in NYC, a big black rectangle, however, the Continental never made us buy tickets beforehand, never made us sign a ten page contract, and instead of 5 shots of anything for 10 bucks, it was 5 shots of anything for 50 bucks. I Love LA! However, the stage did have a curtain, so I guess it all evens out. We planned on playing "The Church of Song" start to finish, but had to skip a couple songs towards the end due to time constraints (as per Article XI of our contract). I was also hoping to perform Officer Bill with honorary lifeguard and SJSLCB co-founder Steve, but we didn't have time for that either. John borrowed Phil's keytar though (thanks Phil), which provided some entertainment. The entire show was videotaped and can be seen by cutting and pasting the link below into your browser.

http://www.liveatthegig.com/gig/asx/video_browser_frame.php?video_id=1545

My guitar is way too loud, and crappy, and you can't hear the drums and bass really, so that sucks. It was fun though, and once again a bunch of friends showed up and we had a good time. Then I went back to Steve's place and puked. The usual.

"you pretty little town, you sad flower in the sand"--deconstruction