Dance Naked...

Well, we're not naked, but we were dancing. And I've recently become infatuated with the idea of fooling around with my name.

James Cougar Dallas

What do you think? I tried Leopard & Gazelle in place of the Cougar, but it just doesn't have that same ring.

Anyway, all this fooling about has come because the band just had a great week. Last Friday, we played a really fun show at the Kee to Bala (that's where the picture was taken - the stage is HUGE!!!). We get to head back up there for Labour Day which we're all excited about. In addition to that, we played one of the strangest and craziest shows of our career at Healey's on Wednesday. If you can picture a television show that's equal parts Oz, Arrested Devlopment & Sesame Street, you have an inkling of what happened at Healey's. Disturbing, probably a little more graphic than necessary, bizzarely funny, strangely entertaining and always educational. The result of this crazy show was that we also get to play another big show at Healey's on September 28th. It's one of those battle of the band things, which none of us are crazy about - it's just a bad enviornment for music, usually. And generally we don't put any stock in them, because how the hell do you judge a punk band, a screamo band, a metal band and a pop rock band with the same criteria? You don't. Not fairly, at least. Anyway, the folks at Healey's (Tim in particular - he's the long haired manager that all the girls are in love with) have been really cool to us. And so we brought a few truckloads of people and they won us the first round of the competition with their clapping and drinking and whooping. I didn't think that was a big deal until Tim told us the winner of the last competition (it's three rounds all told) is opening for the White Stripes at the Molson Amphitheatre!!! Needless to say, it's a bigger incentive to bring a few BUS loads of people to the next show and have another great show.

I also watched the band on tv last night. We were on Metropia. National television. Now, this is nothing new for me, but watching this episode (even though I've seen it twice before) was different. It's like listening to a song on the radio even though you may have the cd in your car or home. Irrelevant. This was different because it was dialogue writers wrote for me, but everything else was ours. All our hardwork, rehearsal and rocking was on national television for all Canadians to see. And we played two of our songs. It was peculiar to see my real life mixed with my television life.

Actually, it's all getting a bit crazy. Alex and I were talking about how it's just starting to get weird. That's not a bad thing. I mean, we've been working our asses off for two years and we're just now starting to see some results. But winning a few competitions in a week, being on national television, signing a bunch of autographs (seriously, attractive women wanted us to sign their cd's!!!) and having 4 shows in an 8 day window coming up is giving us a taste of the surreal reality of success. Certainly we're not making any money yet and very few people greater than three degrees of separation from the band know who the hell we are. But they're starting to. And it's really fucking exciting. So, as I'm rolling all these ideas about in my head and toying with the insertion of an animal into the middle of my name (I'm not really, unless you all think it's a good idea, in which case I'll do it for fun and because Mitch likes it when I sell out) I try to keep it all together. But really...it's Too Much To Think About.