I'M A BELIEVER

The other day I bummed a cigarette to a guy on the street. He thanked me politely. As I walked away, he turned to his friend. "Usually I hate Anglo-Saxons, but he was actually nice". WHAT??!! First off, I don't think I'm even Anglo Saxon. My family is originally Irish and Russian. I'm not quite sure what denotes an Anglo Saxon. I'd look it up, but I really couldn't be bothered. Really, that's not the point. As for this wonderful fellow's ethnicity, it was wonderfully vague. Greek? Armenian? I don't know and I don't care. But I thought the whole thing was bizarre and funny at the same time. I don't know why I felt the need to share that with you. Moving on...

So here we are in New York. We filmed a video on the subway last night for "Don't Wait Up". The G line to be exact. We spent quite a bit of time rehearsing with 25 or so extras. Thanks to all those who helped out. Hopefully it'll turn out great.

As for now, I'm in the back of Monster Island, the same place we made our album. We're finishing up a song, "Hellbound and Heavensent". We started it a few weeks back while we were on tour. This song is actually the very first song we wrote together as a band. Which reminds me...

The summer of 2004: The Takeover UK has just formed. We decide to spend 4 or 5 days together in Ocean City Maryland at a friends apartment. We drive down in a Jeep Cherokee. Instead of sunny days at the beach, it rains the entire time. Rather than basking under the warm mid-Atlantic sun, we sit on our friend's porch and play guitars and sing, the rain sloshing down.
One night we head out to the honky-tonk boardwalk to busk. Within the first ten minutes a drunk runs to the ATM and hands us $80. We're ecstatic. "We're gonna make a G this week", we boast to one another. The next night we make $3.47. Busking doesn't seem to be the road paved in gold we thought it would be. But we do write a song. And we learn how to harmonize together to boot. Oh and I contracted scabies from sleeping on the friends couch. How I'm the only one that managed to contract such a dastardly thing, God only knows. That was 5 years ago. I'm much better now, thank you very much. Took care of that in one fell swoop to the doctor's office. Why am I sharing this? You don't need to know this.

Anyways, we're happy to let you know there will be loads of new songs by the end of the summer. Just get ready to enjoy yourselves.
Later,
Mark