I am going to talk about my band here for a little bit

Probably for close to a couple weeks. Hope that's okay.

So yeah, I play music and write songs and record albums. It is a lot of fun. The band is called The Mathletes, and we have an album that just came out on Asaurus Records called #$@% You And Your Cool. It is good. If you would care to hear it, you can listen to some of the songs on the internet, or for six dollars you can get a hard copy at the Asaurus website (but you should do that before the end of the month because they sort of decided to go out of business). There were 100 copies of said album manufactured, and it is shaped like a bologna sandwich.

I apologize for marketing at you, but it seems more or less appropriate to get this out of the way up front. Anyway, Asaurus wanted to make up a press release, so the guy who runs it asked me to email him some information about the album. The press release ended up mostly being the entire contents of that email. If you like PDFs, you can read it here, but otherwise, get ready for some copypaste:

FROM THE DESK OF JOE MATHLETE: Well, I started off making songs all alone, just recording in my bedroom, not really thinking about what I'd do with them. Eventually I showed them to people, and eventually people said I should play my songs live because that's what people who write songs do. Looking back on it a lot of people who were telling me this ended up playing in the band so maybe they just wanted someone to play music with, but regardless I'm glad people said something because playing music in front of people is fun. But I kept recording songs on my own 'cuz it's just what I'm used to.

Mathletes would come and go for one reason or another, and eventually the lineup became more or less completely fluid. Some shows there'd be three of us and some shows there'd be around twenty. But old habits die hard, and I kept recording music all alone in my bedroom or whatever like I was still in high school, writing songs to avoid homework and then keeping them to myself. This album I guess represents both the breakthrough of finally showcasing what we sound like as a live band to the world beyond Houston , Texas , and some of the bedroomiest bedroom pop I've recorded lately.

We're a mess of a band so it's a mess of a record; looking at it now we've got ten tracks (of wildly varying fidelity) recorded at eight different places, lyrical matter veering from jackassery to as sincere as I get, the most confrontational album title we've ever had but I chickened out of actually writing the cuss. The title refers to when I went and saw a very fashionable Indie Rawk band (who shall remain nameless) and felt underdressed wearing a t-shirt and jeans among all the fashion kids, and I looked onto the stage and saw an army of dorks trying to look like they didn't care about anything while playing what basically amounted to super-expensive and ornate Built to Spill or Yo La Tengo songs, and I never saw Yo La Tengo or people who dug them wear leather jackets with tons of buckles and scarfs and eyeliner and gigantic shiny belts and act like they don't care, and at that point in my life I was so sick of people acting like they didn't care I said wait a minute I'm not underdressed, these people are missing the boat and they wouldn't care if they even knew there was a boat, and I walked by some coke guy in a leather jacket with tons of buckles and a scarf and eyeliner and a gigantic shiny belt and said "#$@% you and your cool."

Except, y'know, really quietly where he couldn't hear me, 'cuz otherwise I would just have been acting like a dick. But it's the thought that counts.

#$@% YOU AND YOUR COOL is Asaurus Records' (more or less) 64th release and quite possibly our last. We are closing our doors indefinitely starting this June and are thrilled to make one last go at breaking into the recording industry with the latest Mathletes record. #$@% YOU AND YOUR COOL is being released in a limited edition of 100 copies and yes, it is a bologna sandwich.

I put this here mostly to give you an idea of what sort of "band" we are. Tune in tomorrow(-ish) for what I hope to be a somewhat entertaining week and a half of "variations upon a theme" featuring a cast of dozens, and one of the most irritating songs I have ever written.

Eat My Beats,

Joe Mathlete