SPIN Magazine featured our video!

Check our our new man trophy. When you get in SPIN, pretty much everybody gets one.

http://www.spin.com/articles/exclusive-rosebuds-go-huntin-humans

Reading Update

I've been taking several mini-breaks from Infinite Jest. Some because of travel and some because of exhaustion. Reading other material, even scholarly stuff, is a breeze compared to it. Let's see... Here's a recent list of books:
The Good Earth (my favorite this time of year)
Great Gatsby
Fathers and Sons
Lolita
Kafka on the Shore
a collection of Nabokov's papers/lectures
and this Georges Bataille work called Erotism: Death and Sensuality.

Erotism--about the history of eroticism. It's a translation of the 1957 edition and it's out on City Lights. I picked it up in San Francisco when we were there for Noise Pop last year because I've been toying with the idea of a scholarly paper on erotic literature. And maybe teaching it as a class, at some point.
I have lots of weird ideas.
Anyway, on the back cover, Foucault calls Bataille "one of the most important writers of the century." So, you know.
If you're gonna get into it, be warned. It's an all-star cast including old Sade.

Some brainstorming on Erotic Literature--the basic syllabus:
Anais Nin (diary + some fiction)
Henry Miller (slight eye roll)
Nabokov
Lawrence

What else? hmmmm. Any suggestions? These are for sure. I'm flexible after these I guess. But no romance novels or anything like that. Bleck.
No schmaltz.
I've cruised the collections on Amazon and what-not, which are mostly garbage.
We need real literature.

And out of this darkness we'll rush...

To the following songs: Cemetery Lawns, Get Up Get Out, Silence by the Lakeside, When the Lights Went Dim, Bow to the Middle...
You can be dance songs now. Just dance songs with a dark past instead of scary songs in an awful nightmare.

Love,
Kelly and Ivan

This happened.

Bon Iver

Here you see my special guys on the Dave Letterman:

North Carolina

Here's something I was trying to explain in Laundromatinee about NC:

There's such an excitement in NC right now. We've been so proud of our music family there--everybody's so supportive--not competitive--ultimate bohemian dream come true type shit. It's really magical there. Friends who've moved away say they can't figure out why other towns aren't like ours. Why nothing is as easy as it is in NC. I can tell you stories. Super romantic fall-in-love stories just fecundated with nostalgia for something we still have--you know what I mean? It's so special and we all know it that we're already nostalgic for it.

Full article here

January Shows

These go on sale just in time for Christmas...

1.14 Baltimore Ottobar
1.15 Philadelphia Johnny Brenda's
1.16 NYC Bowery Ballroom
1.17 Boston Middle East
1.24 Chapel Hill Cat's Cradle

GET TICKETS

Thanksgiving

Logan was on the phone to his family when he said, "Well, I gotta go, we're getting ready to stop here for Thanksgiving dinner at Cracker Barrel" and Ivan just dropped his head into his hands.
We may have all gotten wrapped up in some impulse shopping, as you can see, but it was Ivan who dropped around $100 on CDs from their gift shop.
Yeah, I know.
I was worried too.

Jonah + Randy

they filmed this gem on the way back from our San Francisco show.

Merge's 20 Greatest Albums

Paste Magazine picked Birds Make Good Neighbors to be one of the top 20 Merge Records albums of all time.
Go HERE to read about that.
It's a big deal over here in our camp. Really special.

Jonah Ray (Part II)

Jonah Ray is performing with us in San Fran and LA. You have to see his stand up. Here's something really beautiful:


Guess Who (HD Final Cut) from Peter Atencio on Vimeo.

St. Paul

In this photo you see Rosebuds' Logan Matheney and Megafaun's Phil Cook.


Here: Megafaun's Brad Cook, Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, and Mr. Ivan Howard.

Troika Music Festival -- Durham

Mashey Mash

Dudes. This is BLOWING my mind. It's really good.
T Pain + Rosebuds + Lil Wayne.

LISTEN HERE
DOWNLOAD HERE
Courtesy The Hood Internet

New Parents

This is Zeno Gill assembling the crib:



Zeno recorded the Unwind EP for us and being in the studio with him is, well, it's kind of a therapeutic experience. He's so nurturing and excited about experimentation--he generates creativity. He lets us come in and bang on his piano, sing and yell, lay in the yard, try drum parts that seem like they're going nowhere (and years later they end up being "Hello Darlin") and just basically whatever doesn't make sense, he's okay with trying. And that's what we need. A lot. So, I knew when he and Christine decided to adopt a child they would be amazing parents and I started day dreaming right away about being a little kid in this musical and creative household. Christine is a bad-ass designer and the smartest woman you know who has already done everything so anything you want to talk about happens to be her area of special expertise. She lived a hundred fast and exciting lives in New York as a designer, she saw every band, she walked around the park in sharp black boots with hot chocolate, she found a house in Durham and decided to get all involved in the town's renaissance, she sat in two inches of dirty water--hand-chipping the nasty 50s flooring off her home's future-beautiful hard woods, she took old Rosebuds by the hand and showed us how design is a part of everything the band is, she has parties where she puts creative types in the same room with other creative types and watches them strike it up, she has had 7 backbones, she usually goes in all black, she has great jewelry, secret rooms of clothing racks from when "oh, yeah, I used to have a store" --no big deal just a kick-ass boutique which was one of many lives, she's started magazines and movements, always teaching us about good design and good living and now, NOW!, she's a mommy too.



They're parents y'all. Wow. We've been waiting so long for this and now it's finally happening!


Here is their adoption story:
www.gilladoption.blogspot.com

Words

Much is said of what is spiritual, and of spirituality, in this, that, or the other--in objects, expressions.--For me, I see no object, no expression, no animal, no tree, no art, no book, but I see, from morning to night, and from night to morning, the spiritual.--Bodies are all spiritual.--All words are spiritual--nothing is more spiritual than words.--Whence are they? along how many thousands and tens of thousands of years have they come? those eluding, fluid, beautiful, fleshless, realities, Mother, Father, Water, Earth, Me, This, Soul, Tongue, House, Fire.

--Walt Whitman
from The Neglected Walt Whitman: Vital Texts
Ed. Sam Abrams

I'll walk out there with you.

Filmmaker Tim Kiernan made this great one-shot video of a family/friend pig pickin' we played in Raleigh.

The Rosebuds - Get Up Get Out (live) from tk on Vimeo.

Hold Hands and Fight

This chick is brave. And she has stolen my heart. Not because of how I'm self-involved and how these are my lyrics and they're like, pretty much all over her body and wow it's crazy to have a fan like that. That's not it at all. Not even it.

She wrote that she and her partner got these together. And THAT... I totally understood. If anybody knows the feeling of what it's like to live the lyrics of this song, it's me. So, I understand everything. These lyrics do mean a lot to me--more than other songs--and I relate to this choice. The tattoo is the badge, which is only a signifier, but the need... THIS is what it's like to be a human in an absurd world.
One which makes outrageous claims on us. And yet we still have our ability to create partnerships. NEED them.

Jasmine

Push It from Kelly Rosebud on Vimeo.

I found this today and it made me so happy to see. Jasmine the Amazing Dog records a cover of "Push It."
There are mp3s of this cover floating around if you want it on yer tape thing radio, but I'm too lazy to find it right now. Soon though.

SPIN

Listen up y'all. Just because we are Spin.com's Artist of the Day doesn't mean we have changed. We still put our Raleigh Denim Jeans on one leg at a time, only now I bedazzle them with real gems. No, not mostly diamonds--I'm not an asshole. Some rubies but yeah, okay, mostly diamonds. But everything else is the same. Except we get written about in Spin (most people don't, just saying). That, and I'm half way to Rio as I write this. But, everything else...

SPIN ARTICLE HERE

p.s. Rio still the place fancy people go?

Dodge, My Old Kentucky

My Old Kentucky Blog... You rule the hardest. You love the band, and for that I'm thankful, but you are a good man too and smart and fun to hang out with. I loved the sirius radio session we did and the Hot Freaks party and the Indy show, and hanging out with you and the little lady downstairs, and just can't wait to go again! But really, with all the new Life Like news happening, you might be surprised that it was THIS article that made me smile. You're funny.

Life Like

Go HERE to listen to or buy Life Like from Merge Records in any format you like including mp3, FLAC, 180-gram vinyl, and CD.

Independent

We are on the cover of the Independent! That really feels like such a big honor. I mean, it IS a big honor but it feels, I don't know... validating? It's our home paper! That's a big deal to us.
Check out the article HERE

Rocky Baby

So, I'm almost all the way into living in New York--manicuring myself to astonish the comedy world, in a good way this time--and I like Greenpoint. As a neighborhood to live in. There's a little records and coffe shop (2 in 1) and there's a couple friends from Raleigh just down the way, and now there's this guy. He is Rocky. His owner is a leathery old man who has three gold chains, all three with different kinds of chunky little eagle pendants. He said, "That's Rocky. But call him Rocky Baby. He's the neighborhood mascot."
So I have composed the following poem for him:
Rocky Baby you live in Greenpoint and have for two years but I didn't know you then until I needed to get coffee and a cup of tomato soup and found you and said I know why I bought this one kind of phone with the camera now because I love you to pieces you are the cutest baby and I've SEEN boxers I have an old boxer Jasmine in NC and she's got long-suffering eyes and a white face because she's 14 and i did have two others and one time that skinny little one we stole/liberated from a dog fight guy in Charleston who went to live with zealots who called him Ezekial but its none of my business and then still another boxer at my grandma's neighbor's who belonged to Nelson's granddaughter and he lives in a tiny fence cage situation which is, I assure you, no good and but you, YOU, are the prettiest, handsomest guy of all and you remind me of Jasmine whom I didn't name since she was a rescue kinda too but who really is a Jasmine now that I know how delicate she is and I miss her believe me but you... You have a square face and didn't you know you are a bull dog and its in your nature to fight bulls I guess but I can't imagine you would though you never know a person all the way since everybody has their compulsions like what if you saw a bull right now on this street you might want to fight him or like get to know him and pretend to be best friends with him the way young girls do their boyfriend's other female friends maybe but you're not a tricky guy that way I can tell you are just a cute guy who likes girls or anybody probably but you seem to really like me which is working out since I am all crush now, like deep deep crush.

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace dead at 46.

If the smartest man alive hangs himself, what chance do the rest of us have?

I am heartbroken.

Letter to Frank Black #4

Dear Frank Black,

How are things with you? Don't tell me. I am interested mainly in what I imagine is up with you. Someone told me where you live and I was all, "I don't want to know! Don't tell me anything else!" He said Portland, not, like, your actual address or anything. But now I have to know you live in Portland. Just don't tell me anything else. It's messing everything up for my letters to you I think. What would be the word for when you've made someone a figment of your own imagined self. Figmentized?

I am leaving North Carolina for a month to live in New York and be a different kind of person you know like actaully start something else again. Like all the comedy I've been doing but I don't want to tell you about all that. Not that I think you'll show up at one of my shows (but just so you know, that can't happen okay?) but because I have so many plans and some of them are quite naive. But I can't think about how I'll remember the plans if I fast forward to writing you in 15 years because who knows how they'll shake out. But I think I know how I want them to. So they are plans.

What are you a Pisces? I bet you are. I'm Gemini. Ruler of the Earth. Not of dirt, but, of the planet Earth. Can you believe that? You are ruler of the ocean. So, technically, you're of my world but we're different. See? You rule something that is a part of me, right, the primordial part, but not the rest of it. So, there's probably a lot you couldn't know about me. And I can't understand how you swim all the time, or float, your feet not ever on anything. You can surely touch the ground, and live within the earth, but only as a part of your own insulation. And you are all muse, according to the books. I don't even know what that means.

Love,
Kelly

Good Guy

At a rest stop, Matt held the door for a man coming out and the man said, "Thanks man, you're a... good guy."

Ideas for other good Yo La Tengo T-shirts:

"Laid Back Fucking Dude"
"Gemini, I Knew It"
"Movement Artist, More Than a Dancer"

Little Kitten

Yesterday we heard a little kitten crying and just yelling--like he was hurt or scared. So we found him in a shed all alone. He saw Ivan and jumped and ran to the woods. Then he came back and started hanging out in a flower pot under the back steps. And he cried and cried all night. He's so wild though. He looks like Rusty from Squidbillies.
We called friends to try to figure out what the right thing to do would be and but nobody wanted to get involved because as soon as you have a plan, you're the one in charge and next thing you know, you own a kitten.
And we definitely do not want a cat. We tour and there's just...
Then early this morning he started crying and crying under my window and so we went out and he jumped and ran under the house. Then he started crying from under there. So I meowed back to him and he stuck his head out like, "What was that!?" and then...

Low five. We have a cat.

Reading Update: Infinite Jest

I just started reading this 10-year anniversary copy of Infinite Jest (with a foreword by Dave Eggers) and instead of doing a post-read entry, let's try an experiment... If you have read this or if you want to read this with me this summer then go HERE and let's make bets on who will finish this insane monster. Have you seen this thing?!
I recommend it if you liked Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius or Confederacy of Dunces... Shit like that.

Tim Lytvinenko

This is Tim Lytvinenko.

Tim is an amazing photographer but I'll get into that in a bit. To describe him is an exercise in deep thinking. To know him is so easy because he's a fun and lovable guy, but to understand him is wonderfully just out of reach. He's complex as shit! And smarter than everyone else too, which is why I like having him around. Not to figure things out for us (which he does a lot) but mostly because it's fun for me trying to keep up with him. He's way ahead. But in the direction you weren't even looking. And there are a ton of weird little surprises like, for example, he can solve a Rubic's cube in less than 3 minutes. Every time.
But his photography...
I don't know. It teaches you things about yourself. Usually when I look at photos of myself, I think, "Oh, that's good, I look pretty in that one. Oh, that's no good, I don't look pretty in that one." Last year he travelled with us and shot the tour and then, later, he presented me with a book he'd handmade of photos he thought I should have. And I was casually flipping through and came upon one in particular that totally arrested me. I stopped moving and breathing for a second. I needed all my energy to understand it.
I won't say what the content was because it's so personal, but when I saw it, I understood so many many things. So many things about myself but also about how things work. And it wasn't conceptual. It was just real. And then I was a different person.
And so Tim's photos mean so much to me. And there's more to understand than I can see so I go back to them all the time and get new stories. And I think, it's so easy to know Tim but the understanding... Here it is on paper--proof of complex thought and a reality normal people like me can't see. He has to show you.

This is his blog:
TimLyt.blogspot.com

You'll see that he's got other eyes.