LEGENDARY!

Happy Halloween, readers! Luke and I are watching a program on BBC4 right now about horror films like The Omen and The Shining. Spooky!
Sorry it's taken us so long to update again, but we've been stocking up on good things to tell you. I think pictures may be doing a lot of talking, though, as some of this weekend's amazing-ness is beyond description.

Friday, we drove about 5 hours down to London to see New Order at Wembley Arena.. you know, because we were on the guestlist. And it was fantastic.

Sunday night was the best night of this trip so far, though. It was the night of our official In The City showcase. Luke and I wandered about the city for a bit beforehand, looking for chocolate bars, actually, but Luke ended up in some sort of bizarre space-pod thing. There were speakers and video-screens inside, projecting video clips of the solar system and Manchester. Here's a picture of Luke outside and then inside it. Maybe you can figure out what this thing was supposed to be. It said "Alternative Energy" all over, if that helps.


Next, we played our set, and, not to toot our own horns or anything, but it went really well. The place was packed! The show was at One Central, a really great club right in the center of Manchester. Underground. Apparently we were one of the buzz bands for the night, and it was honestly rammed with people, right to the very back of the club, not just the room we were in. A good feeling!

And the toilets were unisex, which was a bit odd.

After the gig (I say gig even though I feel silly), we hung out with Donald (A Certain Ratio) again. He's great! He asked if he could be the "noir" in Pop Noir. Here's a picture of him and Luke.


Then, guess who showed up? MANI! Can you believe it? The bassist for the legendary Stone Roses and Primal Scream. Look at these pictures!!!!!



Yesterday we stopped by the house we lived in as babies,


the world-famous Hacienda (Pop Noir mecca), which is now an apartment building,


and Marks & Spencer's supermarket, where we found a cake which looked like a hedgehog


Okay, Thursday we're off to Paris, so if we don't update before then, I'm sure we'll have more amazing things to tell you about after that.

See you soon,
Lots of Love,
Joe.

Thursday.

Again, haven't got too much time, but I'll stick up a few pictures!


Joe reading the comics at LAX.


Joe and Steve at Yianni's Fish and Chips.


The two of us outside Night & Day.


Luke, looking thrilled to be taking novelty holiday snaps!

That's about it for now. We're on the guestlist to see New Order at Wembley Stadium tomorrow night.
I will be sure to let you know how that goes!

Love,
Luke.

Manchester Day 3

Can't do much of an update right now, as I'm in a house in Gatley, but our first two days in Manchester have been excellent. Monday night I accidentally blew up our step-up/step-down transformer and filled the house with smoke. I maintain, however, that it was not my fault!
Last night was our English debut show at Night & Day. It was advertised on XFM, one of Manchester's main radio-station, which was rather exciting. Thanks to everyone who came out to welcome us to the UK. We'll be putting up some pictures from our trip soon.. we didn;t manage to take many pictures last night, as i bought batteries for our camera for a quid from a plastic bag next to the counter in some crap shop. Ha! Needless to say they didn't last 2 minutes.
Donald Johnson, drummer for our heroes A Certain Ratio, came to the show last night. Excellent!!! More on that later, I'm sure we'll be meeting up with him again.
Anyway, must go now, we'll have further updates soon!
Love,
Joe

This Is It!

We're leaving for the UK in a few minutes.. just thought I'd post a blog to let you know our plan.
We're going to be putting up accounts of our little adventures and loads of pictures from our trip as often as possible.. so check back often!
To give you a little taste, here's a picture of Luke and I in the car leaving the Orange County Museum of Art the other night:



How exciting!
So keep checking in, and we'll keep you abreast of our first European tour!
See you soon,
Love,
Joe

Catch up!

So we're leaving for the UK in a couple of hours, I'm just going to update you on recent events. Firstly, Thursday morning we opened up our LA Times and found this, front page of the Huntington Beach Independent!
So far, our neighbor is the only one who's recognized us.
Friday Night was our Bon Voyage Party at the Knitting Factory, with Cute Phase, The Bubonic Plague, and Death of A Dancer, who all played marvelous sets. Pictures coming soon.
We were hanging around outside the Knit, and browsing through the free "alternative" LA reading materials, when we found The Rocket. They have an column called Myspace Music Review, and guess who was featured???
You can read both articles here, respectively:
http://hbindependent.com/articles/2006/10/20/features/hbi-popnoir19.txt

http://www.therockitnews.com/story-myspace.php
Stay tuned for a new entry every day, regarding our invasion of Europe!
Talk to you soon,
Luke.

We need some FRESH AIR!!!

Excuse the terrible title of this post, but due to our involvement with Pepe Jeans' new campaign, Fresh Air, we've appeared in Streetwear Today magazine.
Its distributed in the UK, Japan, Germany Switzerland, USA, Czech Republic, and France.




See you all on Friday???

9 DAYS TILL THE PARTY!

First of all, here's the flyer for the Bon Voyage party. Each and every one of the bands on the bill is amazing!



So I better see you all there.

Second: We have our new song "In Like A Lion" up on the old "m-space". Click here to give it a listen!

THREE: Steamy pictures from our LAST EVER Sol Art show, October 6th, thanks to Betty's camera-phone:

Fantastic Heat Wave

Birthdays are coming up.. Mine is October 10th (this Tuesday) and Luke's is the 11th. To celebrate, we're playing this Wednesday at the Knitting Factory, Hollywood, with The Protomen and Makeup and Vanity Set (of Tennessee!). To make it extra-special, though, we're not playing as Pop Noir, we're Fantastic Heat Brothers. It'll be different, it'll be wild!

This show, however, is not to be confused with our going away party (also at the Knitting Factory) on October 20th. That one is going to be mind-blowing. Do you hear me? Mind-Blowing!!! Check out this line-up, right? Peep this: Pop Noir, Bubonic Plague, Cute Phase, Death of a Dancer. Wow!

So the October 11th show (Luke's birthday, remember?) is going to be a completely different set, and tons of fun. What I'm trying to say is... come to both of them. If you have to pick just one, though, come on the 20th, because you want to see us off, right? Wish us good luck in Europe and all that. Imagine we're doing it for you, guys. We're ambassadors for LA/OC!

Enough promotion for now.. actually, one more thing: come see us at Sol Art tomorrow. This is our last OC show of 2006!

Tune in again soon! I'm going to tell you a story. I would tell it to you now, but I've got to build up my typing stamina first! Im going to give myself carpal tunnel syndrome!

Oh, here's a story, a short one. Luke and I had a teacher when we were in 10th or 11th grade at the Orange County High School of the Arts who had carpal tunnel syndome... oh wait. I don't think she did. Oh! You know what it was? She did most of her work on computers (she was an art teacher, it was an arts school) and she'd always warn us about the dangers of CTS (I'm going to call is CTS from now on), saying not to type for too long, to take breaks fairly frequently and to hold the mouse properly, otherwise we'd develop carpal tunnel. Maybe she did have it once? Anyway, that's not what this story's about.

She slipped one day on the stairs at her other job, and broke her arm, but in a really terrible way! She ended up having to have a metal rod inserted into the bone because it was so wrecked. The cool thing was, though, that she got this big sponge block to put around her arm while it healed (I guess she couldn't have a cast) and she had all the students draw on it. Then she put it in the art show at the end of the year. Yuck! I think, if I remember correctly, one day she took the sponge thing off to show the braver students her temporarily-bionic forearm. I didn't see, but I imagine it was horrible. Maybe I just made that up, though. I hope not!

Okay, see you soon, my hand's starting to hurt.. oh no!!

Love,
Joe

Chain Reaction etc!

Friday night we played Chain Reaction with Mickey Avalon.. it sold out! Our condolences to the huge number of people turned away. All we can say is that you should have got your tickets early.. and that you should come see us this upcoming Friday at SolArt in Santa Ana with Cute Phase and Machines Make Noise!
Actually, everyone should come to that one, it's a cheap, fun evening in the heart of Orange County. What more could you ask for? Besides, it's our last Orange County show this year, maybe even our second to last California show! Who knows? As I'm sure we've mentioned several times already, we're off to Manchester, London and now PARIS(!!!) at the end of October.
But I digress! The Chain Reaction show, which is what I intended to tell you about, readers, went really well. It actually saw what I believe was our first mosh-pit. I didn't realize anyone could slam-dance to Pop Noir, but it turns out it's very possible. Isn't that nice?
Well, I'll get back to mixing our new song so that we can put it up on our myspace profile. I know you'll like it!