RED SEPTEMBER - (First reviews in!)

[DirkBelig]

We played last Friday at TC's Speakeasy in Ypsilanti, MI (home of Eastern Michigan University) and had a GREAT show! Good crowd response , though the po' college kids were saving their $$$ for brewskis and not buying CDs.

In my last post, I mentioned how f*cking cheap the club was, even trying to charge for water, so imagine my surprise when one of the barmaids came up and informed us that we had a $40 draft beer tab to burn. Whoa! FREE BEER?!?!? Bottles and well-drinks weren't included, but we had our choice of Newcastle, Sierra Nevada, Molson, Guinness or Bud Light to chug. But, get this...the guys barely took advantage of the offer! Cliff is a 9 years sober recovering alcoholic, Mark likes bottled Bud and Paul decided he would rather pay for Labatt's that drink free anything else. I ended up drinking over a pitcher of Newcastle myself, which is a LOT for me.

There was this SMOKIN' HOT barmaid there that makes all the rhetoric about wanting to change the world thru music all seem so trite and meaningless. She was 5'10", Asian, built, tattooed on the small of her back (as her low-slung jeans revealed)....SCHWING!!! The only reason why I didn't go home with her that night was the annoying fact that she didn't seem to have the slightest interest in me! Got her name and have informed the g/f that I may be disappearing without much notice.*&

If you're in the Detroit area this Friday, we'll be at Jacoby's again with the Bomb Pops (for real this time) and The Outsiders. We're trying to set it up to play first, around 10:30 p.m., so stop on by and say hello if you're in the neighborhood. Thanks!

[Corn]

Mmmmmmm Sierra Nevada......good stuff Maynard......

I'll check 'ya out at Jakes this weekend. Should I bring a stogie for vous?

[Bimmer318i]

awesome song [url]http://www.,[/url] i loved it, gonna order a cd now, not sure where I brought this thread up from but it should be up there..
so how are things coming these days?..

[DirkBelig]

Hiya guys, been really busy lately and unable to check in as much as I'd like, but I thought y'all would like a bit of an update.

The CD got a 3-star rating (out of five) from the All Music Guide and the following ran in Real Detroit, the #2 alternative weekly paper:

Red September - "Wake Up Call" - Static Records.
3 out of 5 stars

Opening with the crunch of guitars and teen apathy, Wake Up Call comes across like a blast from a past of sunny day punk. Though the CD bears it's own unmistakable homegrown character, it's nearly impossible to separate Red September from their musical forefathers, ranging from the classic politi-punk of The Clash to the California skater punk of Rancid, etc. The bonding point between the bands is the hopeful, near-nostalgic tone that overlays the music's requisite hard edge, and it's this quality that makes Wake Up Call so much more appealing than the bulk of today's gritty, DJ-backed "punk" acts. As much as it might suit an extreme sports video, "Killjoy" is pure school-skipping fun. Likewise, the aptly named "Living In Oblivion", which hops between poppy hooks and amplified angst. The only time the album falters is when it attempts to transcend it's nature and either slows things down ("Taken In") or gets too serious ("Stupid Questions"). It may be perpetually caught in the early '80s, but it's all for fun.

Reason to buy: You miss your skateboarding days.
Best Listening Experience: "#1 With A Bullet".

-Natalie Haddad, Real Detroit

I've got a couple of slight disagreements with minor points of the review and I think that the text sounds like a 4-star instead of 3-star review, but I'll take it.

One A&R guy who bought it liked the music, but didn't care for the lyrics cuz he thought the humor undercut the serious messages. (That was the whole idea! Yeesh!) He's got another disc of stuff that was on our first tape heading his way. Maybe he'll dig that. (There's more than one label out there.)

I also got interviewed for an article in the Detroit Free Press about why Creed was so popular. The important part was...

If Creed inspires waves of high-charged emotion, it may be primarily among the band's detractors. Reviewers have consistently slammed the group as unoriginal, uninspiring and unexciting. They call Stapp a counterfeit Eddie Vedder.

Royal Oak guitarist Peter Schorn, who helms the band Red September, recently polled his colleagues at work: Who among you likes Creed?

"A good chunk of them -- a frightening chunk of them -- spoke up," recalls Schorn. "But they couldn't give a central quality, like 'I like the songs' or 'I like the guitars.' So you've got people plunking down money to buy a record where they can't really point to anything but, 'Well, it's good.' "

Schorn lodges a complaint that echoes back through rock history: "What's most frustrating about the popularity of Creed is that people have become so undemanding, they're willing to settle for this."

Gee...I guess we're not gonna get that opener for Creed on their tour. Drat.

Canadian sales: Since I don't think Bimmer318i and some of the other Canadians here have followed thru and actually ordered the CD, I'm afraid that the S&H that CDStreet is tacking on to the orders is what's killing some orders. At the current exchange rates, it's coming to ~$28CA which is brutal. If you would like to get a copy for about ~$20CA/shipped (same price as US), please e-mail the label thru the site or e-mail me (addy in profile) and we'll get you hooked up.

Thanks to everyone for their support!