News

So, recording goes on, andNovember 20th, 2001View

So, recording goes on, and it goes on quite well. Damn, this record will be hot. Why do we say that? If you have to ask, you have clearly arrived at this website accidentally, for you know absolutely nothing of we are scientists.
Some of you may remember the last update (see below), in which we mentioned that Michael went into the studio and did many things with great precision (among them: playing the drums) and that Chris had laid down his bass parts as well. Well, last night, bass tracks were redone. Some of you may be wondering why so fine and infallible a bass player as Chris would ever need to have more than one pass at recording his bass lines, and the answer is: he wouldn’t need more than one, you simpering idiot! The problem was not with Chris, but with the machinery, proving once again that WAS is still two steps ahead of all human technology. We decided to try mic-ing the bass a little differently, and the result was so fine that we concluded that all bass tracks should be re-recorded to include this tremendous new bass sound. Sure, this means that the album may come out as many as two days later than we’d previously anticipated, but believe us: when you hear this ridiculously smooth bass tone, you will agree that those 48 WAS-less hours that you spent moaning and wailing and annoying the family will have been well worth it.
After banging out several stellar tracks in quick succession, Chris was so excited about the great leaps in bass engineering that he promptly declared that, upon the completion of these fine bass parts, the album was now complete, and would feature only bass and drums. He was very adamant about this, and when Keith pointed out that such an arrangement would render his role in the band essentially obsolete, Chris commenced to shrieking, “Do you hear that bass tone? I mean do you HEAR that bass tone? I’ll not have your misguided guitar wanking and half-baked vocals marring this recording, which, as it stands, is clearly this century’s finest sonic achievement.” Michael could not disagree, and so, with a vote of 2 to 1, Keith was unceremoniously ousted from the band.
Later, as Keith sat weeping on the curb, it occurred to him that both Michael and Chris will be away over the Thanksgiving weekend, giving him plenty of time to steal into the studio and surreptitiously add those most necessary guitars and vocals. Let us all pray that he is not too late . . .

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Drum recording wrapped up lastNovember 15th, 2001View

Drum recording wrapped up last night, ladies; drum recording wrapped up last night, gentlemen. In just under four hours, the WAS team knocked off some nine songs in quick succession, Michael laying down flawless track after flawless track. So puzzlingly proficient was Michael last night that the rest of us found ourselves making quips along the following lines:

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A news update on wearescientists.comNovember 14th, 2001View

A news update on wearescientists.com is for many of you the one remaining reason to go on. It’s a fact. Let’s stop playing house. Now that your gruesome dependency has been brought out into the open for all to see, perhaps the healing can begin. On the other hand, if we continue to whip out the kind of hyper-entertaining, ridiculously informative crap that has long characterized this notable corner of the world wide web, well then I guess you don’t really stand much of a chance of overcoming the addiction.
A little throat clearing and we shall commence. Bleh-he-hem. And so we had a show last Saturday at a little club in Brooklyn called L’Amour, a bunghole catering to hair metal and others who haven’t yet discovered linear thought. We broke all kinds of prestigious records by not selling a single ticket. Fear not, that was our intention; how could we subject you, the delicate fan-base, to the aesthetic bludgeoning of a club like L’Amour? As showtime approached, the club manager, possibly experiencing a fit of suicidal dementia, made what must have been the most difficult decision of his young life: to fuck with WAS. Fortunately for all concerned, we were in the most receptive and forgiving of moods, and so when he told us “you got fifteen fuckin’ minutes”, we silently applauded his bravura and cache whilst bowing and slowly backing into a nearby shadow. We began our fifteen minute assault with The Method, which reduced the crowd from around fifteen to two. According to our sources, one young metal-loving fan, seated on a couch, sneered “this is soft” twenty seconds into our powerhouse opener, grabbed his girl’s hand, and strode out into the night, his testicles aflame with the wrath of artistic conviction. Having unburdened ourselves of the crowd’s closed-minded elements, we proceeded to rock the clothing off the two youngsters who had the horse-sense to know as soon as Chris had yowled the first few bars that they were in the presence of rare genius, uncommon greatness. Call it vanity: it gives us quite a bit of pleasure to forever change the lives and expectations of the young.

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Welcome once again to this,November 5th, 2001View

Welcome once again to this, the most potent News update on the web. There is, as the olde timey newsguys used to say, “News A’plenty, homes.” First topic: WAS’s upcoming show at L’Amour, slated to occur on ten November. This will of course be an explosive, butt-rockin’ show. Appearing on the same bill as us are two of our favorite bands: Mudrust and Ripped from the Cross. We’ve never heard their music, but, as no less than Beethoven put it, “It is false to believe that none can outshine melody, nor eclipse song, cracka’.” Did you know that Beethoven’s close friends and loved ones and children called him “Beat-down”?
To give you some idea of what kind of club L’Amour is, I offer the following factoids that I just moments ago gleaned via a visit to the website:
- Some bands that are playing there in upcoming weeks are (in reverse order of how much I fear them) Candria, Kataklysm, Type O Negative, Clutch Overkill, and Killbox.
- The web page features little animations of exploding balls of flame.
- L’Amour proclaims itself “the rock capital of Brooklyn”, and its website is lamourrocks.com, which suggests not only that it may in fact *be* the rock capital of Brooklyn, but also that the club may actually be called L’Amour Rocks, which would certainly be a nice touch.
- L’Amour is hiring. Folks with experience in bartending, ticket sales, booking, chicken-throat cutting, and covert ops are encouraged to apply.
- Competing in the third round of the semi-finals of the L’Amour Band Search 2001 will be Evil Adam, Gravesend, and Pipebomb. We highly recommend this show. Each of these bands gives a highly nuanced, *super* subtle performance, especially Pipebomb.
But there is far, far more to life than WAS performances; some of you I know struggle to see that, but it’s true. We can’t think of any examples right now, but they are out there, lingering in the dark fringes of our world.
Now, in terms of recording our CD, the official start-date has become Nov. 10. Seem kind of dubious, the way we keep pushing back that date? When do you start recording your CD, again? Sucka. The fact is, people, these things take time, and it’s all a very inexact process. Each time a CD gets made, it’s a small miracle. The audio sciences are still very mysterious, still very poorly understood. Heck, we barely understand them. I mean we do, we understand them fine, but that was like a figure of speech, ya know? Ahem.
You may have noticed that WAS songs quite often deal with the subject of love. If you know us personally, this may surprise you, because we are all incredibly cynical about love and in fact have vowed never again to drink from its cruel teat, all of our experiences in this area having started out delightfully then ended up but horribly. So this is kind of yet another case of a band just pumping out exactly what the fans need to hear. For we recognize that you are too weak to be weighed down by the truth, and so we protect you from it. Like a giant shield positioned in outer orbit to guard against rogue asteroids and their brethren the Global Killers (TM), WAS takes the truth square in the jaw so you don’t have to. We take it and then we go sit down with our broken jaws and we pump out a song that assures you, the innocents, that true love is just sitting right there across the laboratory in a labcoat with the same corporate seal as your own stitched onto the breast, that she is looking for you with as much timid vehemence as you are looking for her, and that when you do find her behind all the colored smoke and laser flashes, she’ll be ready for you, and you for her, all bets will be off, all jewelry mere decoration.
We keep you ignorant of timing, is what it boils down to. And for that you should thank us by coming to a show.

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Lots of news is sortOctober 11th, 2001View

Lots of news is sort of stirring itself up over here, although it may be slightly too early to divulge anything in a definite tone. Until such a tone is deemed appropriate by all the concerned parties, we will continue to report everything in the usual half-assed tones. Shall we get on with it, then?
We have been solidifying the whole recording situation, and it looks like we will be heading into the studio come early November. While inside, we will make many untoward noises and the accompanying untoward movements. When we step out, it will be with the well-founded bravado of men who are fully assured of their own brilliance. You will see. This album will be the best thing since “Free To Be (You and Me)” (ask Michael about this one). Prepare yourselves to be rocked.
The actual finished album itself will most likely not be available until around January, but you can be sure that we will be hooking you all up with the appropriate doses of mp3s and outtakes and B-sides long before then. We take care of you, because you are babies, and cannot care for yourselves. You have no idea what’s good for you. Some of you have bought albums by such bands as Limp Bizkit or certain harmonizing all-male bands from Florida. This is the equivalent of placing the palm of your hand on the burner of a hot stove. It is called a burner because it will burn you. They are called Limp Bizkit because they suck. The sooner we have taught you these lessons, the better off we will all be.

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Several crucial points: Friday nightOctober 1st, 2001View

Several crucial points:
Friday night set the temporal stage for another W.A.S. grand-scale victory over at club Devious Semantics. Devious Semantics, for those of you who have shut themselves into a vault deep underground where neither news-bearing radio waves nor cable, er, cables can penetrate, is the name of the label that pays us. Not really, but they are the high-tech hotshots that have been chosen from a pool of many thousands to produce and record W.A.S.’s first full-length album.
Yes, W.A.S. will be recording a full-length album this month that will, with luck, be available in November. Please do not flood us with checks and money-orders in an effort to beat the Christmas rush; availability will be high: none who thirst shall go without drink, is our feeling around here on what would be fair.
Now: does anyone, anyone, anyone read this W.A.S. news page? We realize that failure to update may be getting you(s) down. Tangentially: is it not odd and unfortunate that, unlike the lucky european languages and possibly other languages of which we have no knowledge, english doesn’t differentiate between the singular and plural second person pronouns? Like if I say, “You’ve got to see this,” I may mean either that you, the person reading this right now, should check this thing out, or that you and the many thousands of other young hipsters reading this right now should check out this cool thing I’ve got right here in my palm-fist. So but isn’t that unfortunate, that failure to differentiate? We here at W.A.S. are deeply concerned about this issue during the current paragraph, and so we are toying with the idea of writing “you(s)” to notify you(s) and even you that we mean you(s) when we do in fact mean that. However, like underwear carefully chosen earlier that evening, this idea is being cast aside so that we can get on to more pressing things. Please take a moment to re-read the last sentence and fully explore its double-meaning.
And now allow us to recapture an earlier strand of thought: we know the never-updating that goes on in this, the news section of the W.A.S. site must really anger some of you and have an even stronger effect on the rest, but we hereby vow to update this section with much greater frequency, never less than once per week, for at least a while, until we grow weary of doing so. And do you see? Do you see how careful we are that efforts be taken to please you? We are referring of course to our use of the predicate “grow weary of doing so” three sentences ago in place of the far more common and easy to pull off “get tired of doing it” or even the autopilot-y “get shit in the brain.” Your enjoyment = in many ways, our goal. Look to see that we live up to that.
That’s an odd turn of phrase, is it not ( =iznit! )? “Look to see ___.” What the f%*$ does that mean? Did we just make that up, actually? Is that even something people say? As larger degrees of our intellectual gaze fall upon it, the idea of people using it seems less and less plausible. We obviously just made that up. If it were technologically possible to go back and delete that, and it is, then we would certainly do it; you can trust us there.
A final note: when we use the pronoun “we” to denote the author of chunks of text on this site and in emails you receive from us, a feeling of self-consciousness/loathing descends on us like a blanket of January snow, like the feeling one gets from typing out similes that involve snow. The s-c/l is a direct result of the fact that this usage reminds us of what Dave Barry sometimes does; that is, he types ‘we’s at the beginnings of sentences. The difference — and we insist that you make an attempt to understand this subtle but nevertheless absolute barrier — is that Dave Barry is one man sitting at a computer, while we are three. We don’t mean this metaphysically, like that the single one of us writing represents three people. We mean that the three of us sit here and type together. “You mean, guys, that one person types whilst the other two read over his shoulder and shout lewd action verbs?” No. We mean that I, Chris, take the keys from R/F/C left; that I, Keith, take the keys from T/G/V to I/K/M; and that I, Michael, take the keys from O/L/< right and the numerics. I, Michael, am also in charge of the 'Home', 'Insert', 'Page up/down' keys and so forth, but they are rarely used. We should note that the function keys, that is keys F1 through F12, remain to this day unassigned. God forbid we should ever need to use them, as pandemonium would be the result.
Great, and so: send us mail at wearescientists@hotmail.com. Tell us things, about you, your job, your life. We would like to put exerpts from emails on this page for all to see, but only if they're interesting and lyrical and not the usual offers of free sex that we receive from you people and your online porn affiliates. We feel like that can stop, although some of the links are pretty sexy, yes.

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First of all, we've gotAugust 4th, 2001View

First of all, we’ve got to thank the guys in Smite for having us out to their fine whiz-bang show last week – anybody who doesn’t hate themselves needs to check their band out. Those who do hate themselves should stick with us. Speaking of which, thanks to all the new folks who’ve signed up onto this mailing list, guaranteeing themselves a lifetime of sweet rock music and even sweeter rock-like abs (check out Michael, everyone). Finally, thanks to Charles McIntosh for going above and beyond the call of duty, although some might say we’ve already thanked him enough (his booty to date: a 30-minute W.A.S. set and one (1) iced coffee beverage. We take care of our fans).
Enough chit chat. Down to business:
We will be unleashing the terror that is We Are Scientists this very Wednesday at the Lion’s Den in NYC. For those of you whose reading comprehension skills are sorely lacking, here’s the info in easy-to-read list form:
We Are Scientists
Wednesday, August 8th
at The Lion’s Den
214 Sullivan Street(Between Bleecker and West 3rd Street)
New York City
212/477-2782
10:00pm (doors open at 8:00)
Cost: $7
We’re playing with a few other bands, who you will of course want to check out so that you can compare them unfavorably to us.
One note: in an advertisement in this week’s Village Voice, the Lion’s Den spelled our name “WeRScientists,” which spelling, although it was clearly not meant as an insult but was instead a rather pathetic space-(and, thus, money-)saving tactic, we find incredibly insulting. The Lion’s Den must be punished, preferably by having their establishment filled to capacity by fans and friends of W.A.S., which fans and friends will cheer very loudly and disturb the peace of the employees of the club. That will teach them.
Another note: this show will feature the unveiling of a brand new W.A.S. tune, which tune features the already classic lyric, “Wooo – ooo – ooohh!”. So, you see, you simply cannot afford to miss this!
That is all for now. We hope that we’ll see you on Wednesday, so that we might lavish you with affection.

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First, let us thank everyoneJuly 26th, 2001View

First, let us thank everyone who signed onto our new “Rock New York Till It Crumbles Pathetically Into The Atlantic” email list. Keith actually wept at the sheer number as well as the witty witticisms of the people who responded. Thank you for letting us see Keith cry. It truly was a sight to behold.
Second, we have some shows in New York that you will all want to attend. The rock delivered at these shows will be of a unique nature. New York hasn’t seen this type of demolition before. The crowds will shed tears of relief, joy, heartbreak, and any number of other emotions. You will want to witness thousands of people weeping at once, but obviously more than that, you’ll want to witness We Are Scientists rock the ass off New York. Check out the shows page to find out how you can be a part of what is new and hip and everything like that.

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Okay, people. Your brief momentJuly 12th, 2001View

Okay, people. Your brief moment of respite from the relentless rock attack of we are scientists is now at an end. We’ve successfully transplanted ourselves from Los Angeles to New York City, where we have promptly begun taking the initial steps in our plan for a city-wide takeover (mainly, for now, that means sauntering over to the local pizza parlour, ordering up their finest slice, and, in a very threatening manner, eating it). Yes, so, we are now beginning the process of attempting to book the band in NYC’s clubs, which may take awhile, since it will mean sorting through literally thousands of letters verbalizing the desperate pleas of club owners all throughout the Tri-State area. Be patient, young ones. Our time will come. Big thanks to Charles McIntosh for his brilliant insights into the club scene out here.
Which reminds us, if you want to sign onto our mailing list, send us an email. This includes everyone who’s already on our list. In celebrating our little renaissance, we’re starting from scratch, which means dumping our entire mailing list. So, if you want to keep getting our illuminating and entertaining and (dare we say it?) life-saving emails, please drop us a line at wearescientists@hotmail.com.
And if you know anybody in the New York area who you think would dig us, tell them to sign up, too. They will owe you their very souls.

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For those who didn't knowMay 29th, 2001View

For those who didn’t know (and for those who did), We Are Scientists is moving to New York. Brooklyn, to be more specific. That is, except Michael Tapper, who will be staying in Los Angeles indefinitely. Or at least until September. That’s not entirely true. It’s actually not true at all! In fact, it is Chris Cain who is not relocating immediately. Please send him email encouraging him to move ASAFP. You can send it to wearescientists@hotmail.com, but be sure to berate Chris specifically.

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