We Are Retiring The Sunspot Blog
Hey readers,Back in 2004 when we started the blog, it was a fun way to communicate with everyone. We could put in pictures, road updates, random thoughts, and ideas. However, now we've all moved onto social networks and we end up posting pics to Twitter, Facebook, etc... We don't really keep a proper blog now (but we still update the podcast regularly with new videos!) it's just more of a place that we update once in awhile. We still have a very active presence on Facebook and Twitter and that's where you'll be able to find our latest updates.To all the people that have been faithfully reading the blog for the past seven years, no worries. We'll still be writing, observing, and saying moronic things to keep you entertained. Blogging is fun, but as we enter the next stage of the web's existence, we're finding that we're getting more feedback on social networks and by creating videos, pictures, and quick audio updates rather than just writing. A blog is not the ideal format for those things. And that's why we're moving on. So, make sure that you like is on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to us on YouTube, because we're still extremely active in creating music, videos, and communicating with you. The world is changing and we're changing with it!
Madison, WIAs a trio that has staked its very existence on making obscure references and turning them into something universally palatable, Madison rock band Sunspot has once again pushed its musical boundaries with a forthcoming album, The Slingshot Effect (November 22 release). Sunspot will celebrate with a release party in Madison at The Frequency on Friday, November 18. As the theme this time around, singer/bassist Mike Huberty says that The Slingshot Effect is the rock n roll equivalent of the Sci-Fi Channel.
This is Sunspots electro-space rock record, Huberty adds. Whenever we would watch a movie about the future when we were growing up, the music they listened to was always very industrial-sounding. Since we are living in the future now, we wanted to bring those influences into our new album.
The full-length, which is an extension of the EP the band released in March, Deus Ex Machina (and those three songs are also featured on The Slingshot Effect) pushes the envelope thematically. That means turning monsters into the heroes of We Are The Darkness, reframing humanity as celestial beings in Stardust, and showing how protectors arent always saving the right people in Guardian Angel.Cannibal" has a little bit of all history's favorite man-eaters in it.And The Slingshot Effect itself is inspired by the method of time travel inStar Trek(whipping a spaceship around the sun at faster-than-light speed),wherein a person cant alter the past no matter how badly he or she might want to.
Also true to form, Sunspot put much of the focus on the music and on the studio aspect itself. The recording process for this album was unique for us in that we worked a lot more with different percussion sounds, on top of our usual live drum sound, says drummer Wendy Lynn Staats. The Major Arcana (rock opera) tour made us comfortable with incorporating electronic sounds and samples into our standard live rock format. I think it impacted our whole approach to writing and performing this album, and took our songs in a new and fun direction.
The band also took advantage of some new gear, including guitars that Huberty and guitarist Ben Jaeger received as part of an endorsement with German company Hoyer. We generated some great sounds and our engineer, Eric Katte (Doug Stone, Ricky Skaggs, and Kenny Rogers), continues to show his mastery of the mixing board and his passion for our music, said Jaeger.
But along with that passion comes a love for what Sunspot does bestwhich is to surprise its fan base and entertain them thoroughly at the same time. The fun part is taking something conventional and twisting its meaning completely around, said Huberty. We love finding the fantastic in the ordinary.
About Sunspot: Rock band Sunspot has racked up a few awards and a lot of recognition during the past decade, including winning Rock Album of the Year in the Madison Area Music Association Awards for Singularity (2010) and Loser of the Year (2004). Sunspot is a symphony of guitars and voices, soaring melodies wrapped around hyper literate poetry and wicked rhythms.Male and female harmonies collide with expert guitar work and pop sensibility. Sunspot is rockmusic that's smart, fun, and powerful. Think the Fountains of Wayne or Barenaked Ladies with Lars Ulrich on drums and Eddie Van Halen on guitar. The band has recorded six albums, a DVD and an EP, as well as over 150 biweekly video podcasts (Sunspot Road Mania), and have shared the stage with Death Cab for Cutie, The Flaming Lips, Sponge, SevenMaryThree, Hot Hot Heat, Crash Test Dummies and Sick Puppies. In 2010, Sunspot released the DVD version of their multimedia spectacle, Major Arcana. That was followed by the EP, Deus Ex Machina in March 2011. Also in early 2011, Sunspot licensed their song, Go, Pack! to FOX Sports for their Super Bowl coverage, with some residual coverage for the song on NPR as well as numerous Wisconsin radio stations. For more information and tour dates, please visit http://www.sunspotmusic.com
We give Philly the cheese steak and run away from Hurricane Irene!
Sunspot Road Mania - Ep. 164
We penetrate deep into the heart of Pittsburgh and bring the rock to The Smiling Moose, find maybe the coolest toy store on the planet, and then head back home!
I started thinking about this a few months ago when I read a great New York Times article about how psychiatry is becoming more about pharmaceutical adjustments than it is about therapy. The gist of the article is that the "talking cure" has now become bad psychology because insurance companies can make more money by sending patients on 15-minute consultations with psychiatrists (who can prescribe "medications") and then send them to less-trained counselors for actual therapy. So the doctors who got into the business to actually help people are limited to chemical therapies because it's better for the bottom line. Over the past twenty years, psychotherapy declined while the amount of Americans taking antidepressants jumped.
I know that drugs can help. Whether it's self-medication through booze and pot or it's prescribed Xanax by your trusty doctor, chemicals can make us feel better, they can help us forget. But they're the just attacking the symptoms and not the causes. The cause isn't the chemical imbalance in your head, that's the symptom. The chemical imbalance is a result of the neural pathways being forged by feeling bad and as a result of those pathways being used again and again, it becomes easier for electrical impulses to flow through them, it's just becomes easier to feel bad or depressed. Chemicals can alleviate that and they can help create the new healthier pathways, but you have to get at the cause. You have to discover the root of the problem and deal with it.
When we sing about our Prozac Girl it's not about her being a loser, it's a criticism of the system that's not designed to make her better, but designed to make money off of her insurance company. She's given a panacea miracle drug that's supposed to make her feel good, but she's a teenage girl. When's the last time you met a teenage girl who's not prone to mood swings?
Depression is a f**king real and intense thing and it can ruin your life. And we need to help our friends that are affected by the Black Dog (as Churchill used to call his melancholy.) But shouldn't we be helping them by discovering the root causes and then working to fix them? Is depression just a bunch of chemicals floating around in our heads or is it a result of shit actually going wrong? We can use chemicals to help (I've seen people have complete changes of hearts under the influence of LSD - by the way, that's not a f**king recommendation to use LSD to change your life, that's f**king stupid.) I've seen prescribed medications really work to help people that can't make that step to being healthy through cognition and talking therapy alone. But shouldn't f**king with the chemistry of your mind be the last resort?
Don't our friends deserve better? Don't we all deserve the absolute goddamn best? The best means all of us helping you work through your problems in a real way, not just pushing them under the surface. And now we're only going deeper under the surface by poisoning our water with MAO Inhibitors. And we have no idea what kind of effect that's going to have.
There's no easy solution and we all hate E. Coli but this has to stop. We have to find a better way because right now we're a bunch of Frankensteins who are f**king with our environment in ways that we have no idea how it will turn out. I was shocked by this article because I didn't expect to see that the level of medication has become so prevalent that it's turning up in our water.
Oh well, shift the blame and everything will be just fine.
Ben couldn't make our show in La Crosse on May 13th, 2011 because he was called on a mission to the International Space Station. But the show must go on, so we called some friends at NASA to set up a satellite link. Here's some of our favorite bits!
Adventures in Madison, Racine, Merrill, Elcho, and Marshfield. Hoyer Guitars, motorcycles, special videotaping to make sure that Ben can still make it to our La Crosse show, recumbent bicycles, tornado damage, all our love to Sean Kingston, and a special appearance by Leo Laporte from This Week in Tech!
Sunspot Request Page
So, with a bunch of all-nighter shows coming up, we often get questions about the set list and if we take requests and the answer is YOU BET... but we only take requests for Sunspot original tunes. Yeah, we're dicks like that.
Sure, we love a good cover tune and we always play our favorites. We adore bands like Radiohead, Metallica, Social D, Ramones, Pixies, Andrew WK, Queen, and Green Day and those songs are fun to play. We've learned a million songs over the years and we'll happily play the ones that we really dig. And for our friends' special events (like weddings or birthday parties) we'll even learn some because they gave us the honor of rocking one of their most important days on Earth. That being said...
#1 - We don't take requests for Creed or Nickelback. We've never actually heard of either of those bands, sorry.
#2 - Country? Sure, we'll play some country, but it's not going to be what you expect.
#3 - Lady Gaga or any disco song. Are you kidding me? Yeah, I've got a soft spot for ABBA in my dark heart, but c'mon now, we're a rock band. Would you go to an Elton John concert and ask for a Slayer song? (Come to think about it, a piano version of "Dead Skin Mask" might be badass.)
But, I can hear you say, I know some of your songs, but I don't know the name of my favorite. Well, we'll make it easy for you. We made a special Sunspot Request Page of all the original tunes we've ever played live. If you wanna hear any of our tracks live, just fill out the form and hit "send". We'll get the email and we'll do our damnedest to put it into the set. And if you get it to us at least 10 days before a show, we'll guarantee it's going to be in the set.
We love you guys and we wanna play your favorites at shows, so please use the form by clicking HERE and we'll get you those tunes live!
