Some talking points for today:

We have a show this Thursday in Milwaukee at Cactus Club with Wizard Rifle, Sivini and Bicentennial Rub.
We have show this Friday in Chicago at Township with Wizard Rifle, Sivini and Harpoon.
Sunday we enter Wall2Wall Recording to begin work on our second full length, Failure Tactics.
Failure Tactics will be out this fall on Seventh Rule.

To tide you over, we've put together a little video for one of the new songs.... Enjoy.



http://www.youtube.com/embed/LtPlzoTelU8

https://vimeo.com/40421490

In Soviet Russia, Album Buys You!

Seventh Rule Recordings,the label that makes us rich, has started a bandcamp webpage. What does that mean for you? It means that our first LP, Gather Scatter, is available there for your downloading pleasure.

The album is free to download and to stream. There are all sorts of format choices and most of them are of much higher quality than the other internet choices. You probably knew that you could download it for free anyway via all sorts of nefarious sources. We're just cutting out the middle man and offering you better quality.

You can also pay for the release via Bandcamp by naming your price when you download. You have always had the option to get the album for free, and you still do. We're just giving you another option and letting you decide it's value.

If it was up to us, you'd just buy the vinyl anyway...

Millions - Gather Scatter

In other news, we're writing another album and getting ready to demo it. Yes, that album will likely be getting the bandcamp treatment too.

No, Panic Program is not on bandcamp and is not available digitally yet. You should really just buy the vinyl.

Here's a link to the Seventh Rule bandcamp page. Other releases are there too. Tear at it like hyenas....

http://seventhrule.bandcamp.com/

Playing a Show...Other Stuff

It's winter, which means that Chicago is cold. It also means that we have nothing better to do than to stay inside and write songs. At some point that gets boring though, so we've decided to brave the elements and play a show. Here are the details:

December 16

@ Pancho's in Chicago IL

w/ Hunters and Wizardcastle

We're playing a lot of new stuff at this show because it's Pancho's, and Pancho's is Logan Square's answer to Outback Steakhouse....No Rules, just right. Also, Pancho has been known to break out the sax from behind the bar and do his best Lost Boys impression. You've been warned.

The first 25 through the door will get a holiday grab bag of epic proportions. Millions vinyl, Hunters CDs, and Wizardcastle Dungeons and Dragons Dice. Why? Cause your ears need a saving throw, and we're the DM.

Saxual Healing

Scott Flaster : Age 13

Before Scott Flaster became "the muscle"/Millions skullcracker/Seventh Rule Overlord, he was a boy with a dream. That dream was to become the world's greatest saxophone player. Had he stuck with it, his dream gigs would have been as follows:

- Doobie

- Guy who played on "Careless Whisper"

- Guy who played on "You Belong to the City"

- Guy who played on "Heart of Rock n Roll"

- Guy who played the solo on "Never Tear Us Apart"

- Rocket From the Crypt sax tech

- Sonny Rollins understudy

Instead he switched to guitar and just whistles Yakety Sax to himself whenever tragedy strikes. Who knows what could have happened had he stuck with it....

East Coast Shows this Weekend + Scott's Birthday

In honor of Scott's birthday, and to play some great shows and see some of our favorite people, we'll be playing a series of shows on the east coast this weekend. Check the dates on the side for full details. Brooklyn on Friday will be first and it can't come soon enough. We always have a great time there. Saturday will be Baltimore. Sunday will be Philadelphia.

Please make sure Scott has a good time on his birthday. If everyone would gather around him at some point and give him a Bennigan's/Chili's style birthday song, that would probably be his ultimate birthday wish. Make it happen.

More Contests! Show Dates Too!

We're throwing out so many contest posts lately, that you're gonna think this has turned into a spam blog. Next up will be Viagra offers, and emails from a Nigerian Prince.

Anyway, there is another contest. This one is pretty special. Basically, it's a drawing that you can enter to win a test pressing of our vinyl.

Enter here:

http://www.pluginmusic.com/contest.php?page=millions

There are only 5 of these in existence so owning one immediately puts you in an exclusive class of people. It's a class of people that still thinks farts and Weird Al are hilarious, but still....

Also, we put a few show dates up that we're doing with our fellow downstroke warlords, Fight Amp. Brooklyn, Philadelphia....More coming.

Next contest: Guess your weight!

Not Quite a Lotto Ticket...

Yo internet! It's been awhile since we talked to you. Let's get down to business....

Yes, the EP is still on schedule. You should go ahead and preorder it from Brutal Panda. It's only being released on vinyl for right now. Why you might ask? Well... CDs are clunky, dumb, and make for excellent backup/data transfer devices, but as a listening medium, they are antiques. In 1995, a CD made sense. In 2010, they're AOL....And even AOL quit sending out CDs! See...It's all coming together.

Yes, we have shows coming up. Details on those later.

The big news... Decibel Magazine is hosting a contest to win our new EP. If you know your useless Scott Flaster facts, you might just win the contest. And even if you don't know Scott Flaster from John Amos, you can probably just look on our last LP and get the answer.

Read the Decibel article on the release and enter the contest here.

Cologne (Day Off)

Cologne (Day Off) – Not too much to say about this. We ate some tasty Lebanese food and walked down the Rhine River by the Cathedral. We got some rest. Corey was feeling much better. We watched some Curb Your Enthusiasm. Nice relaxing day off.

Le Havre

Le Havre - We made it back to the mainland, and drove across France for a little while, excited for the amazing sandwiches that you can get at gas stations here. Honestly, they are better than any sub shop in America. Now I know what you're saying, "Can it really be better than the handiwork of the fine sandwich artists at Subway?" Yes folks, it is. Jared has been lying to you for all these years. Don't trust him.

Also, fancy cheeses at the rest areas...

After load in we walked over to a brasserie next to the town hall and had escargot, foie gras, and mussels. It was great.

They had this cooler in the restaurant.

The show went way better than expected. There was no guarantee, and it was a Monday so we didn't know if there would be 3 people there or 300 people. Turnout was decent for a Monday and we sold some stuff, actually quite a bit of stuff.

Our host, Roulio then took us back to his apartment and we were introduced to Picon which made the night more enjoyable. Some of the other guys from the show were also staying at the apartment.

The next morning we woke up and went to a market to pick up supplies for the road. Supplies in this case = baby wipes, dryer sheets to make dirty clothes smell better, canned foie gras, water and kid sized apple juice boxes.

Crossing the English Channel

More on this later....Annoying.



But once we made it....

La Louvière

This was one of the weirdest shows we've ever played. La Louvière is a small Belgian village. Unemployment is over 25%. We got to the venue and nobody spoke English. Our rudimentary knowledge of French didn't seem to go very far either. There was a table of people sitting around playing cards, and they phoned a friend who spoke very crude English and basically told us to leave for a couple of hours and come back.....Somebody would eventually show up who would know what was going on. So we did...


There were lots of shops, cafes and restaurants around the venue. Bars too. Basically the shell of a once bustling downtown. Definitely a weird vibe going on in the town we couldn't quite put our finger on, but that 25% unemployment rate certainly played a part. Not necessarily sketchy, just... not quite right. There were people chanting things in unison on the streets....We got lots of stares. We got back to the venue and still nobody was there. They ordered some pizza for us and we drank some good Belgian beer. From there the story goes downhill....

This was really our first challenge of a show. I think most of it was a language barrier on our part, part of it was economic, and part was just circumstance. We could not load in until the first band played, minus the gear that they borrowed.

Once we got loaded in we realized that some of our gear (Mark's pedal) wouldn't work in the Belgian power outlets because of some strange grounding issue.

Then we play...

First song, Scott falls down a staircase on the side of the stage. He tries to come back up to the mic and he biffs his eye. Cut wide open....Big shiner.

This looks worse now

The last song, we play "We Make Poor Decisions". The bass sounds like the Seinfeld bass tone. This older woman at the end of the bar gets really excited because she thinks some Parliament/Funkadelic epic space jam is coming up....she is disappointed.

Despite all of this, the turnout is decent. People outside tell us they like it. However, we sell zero merchandise. Zip. Nada. That hasn't happened yet. We all were kind of frustrated.

On top of that the sound guy tells us he won't give us our full guarantee because we only played for "15 minutes". We explain that we played a full 30 minutes actually, 8 songs, longer than our album, and we didn't tune or talk.....We just played. Additionally, Scott cut his eye open and there was some uncertainty whether he needed to go to the hospital for stitches. He says he told us we needed to play 40 minutes to get paid in full. We ask who he told that to, he points in a random direction and says "a guy in your band".

Long story short, we got the cash out of him. On the way back to the hotel, we got pulled over by Belgian police. They checked our papers and let us go. We weren't doing anything wrong, I think it was just weird for them to see a van full of dudes in their town.

The guy who put on the show, Ben, was a great guy. The other band was also very nice. Just a rough night. We were due for one of those.

On the plus side, Corey found some charcuterie. Prosciutto di Parma=happiness

Then we went to bed back at a small Belgian hotel....

Copenhagen

We have fallen in love with Copenhagen. The city has it all. Good food, interesting stuff to do, everyone who lives here is beautiful....seriously. It looks like a city full of only really, really, really good looking people. It's like the anti-Chicago. And they're all incredibly nice and hospitable on top of that. The only downside....it's a little cold here. They're wearing winter jackets already.

Before the show, we went out to a middle eastern buffet that was a few blocks from the venue. It hit the spot. All vegetarian, but even Corey thought it was awesome. Then we all kind of did our own things for a bit. The Olympic festival was just down the street from the venue. You could overhear the word "Obama" all over town. You heard it so much we were convinced it was a Danish word for "stinky American band".



We played the show. It was fun. Pretty well attended. We sold some stuff and got paid in Kroners. Then after the show our host Andreas and his roommate Jeppe took us out on the town. That was a blast! We just wandered around Copenhagen and went into whatever places looked like they might be fun. Tuborg was consumed along with some sort of liquor that tasted like cough medicine and Andreas told us was made with rotten fish. He also told us Americans always fall for it when he tells him this. Haha.

Then Scott got his hands on a bike....




After some 4 AM falafel and hot dogs we walked back home and slept for the night. Then we woke up a few short hours later and drove back to Germany to play a show in Essen....

You Rope

Our European tour starts next week! We're pumped up to play all the shows, eat all the food, see all the countries, ride in all the vans, lift all the equipment, and to play all the songs. There are some new songs, some old songs.....Maybe even a cover or two.

Also, we will be having a raffle every night and you can win fabulous prizes like used guitar picks, or having a smelly band stay at your house, or a burned CD-R of one band members favorite Bob Seger songs from 69-76....Come see what it feels like to be a winner!

MILLIONS EUROPEAN TOUR 2009
SEPTEMBER 30 GER - Berlin @ Lokal W/ Scul Hazzards
OCTOBER 1 DK - Copenhagen @ Lades Kælder w/ Fossils
OCTOBER 2 GER - Essen @ Cafe Nova w/ Dominic + Coming Up For Air
OCTOBER 3 BEL - La Louvriere @ La Taverne Du Theatre w/ .Maudlin
OCTOBER 4 UK - High Wycombe @ The Roundabout w/ Action And Action
OCTOBER 5 UK - Exeter @ Cavern w/ Ono Palindromes
OCTOBER 6 UK - Southampton @ King Alfs (Upstairs) w/ Attack!Vipers!
OCTOBER 7 UK - Nottingham @ Chameleon Arts Cafe
OCTOBER 8 UK - Edinburgh @ Bannermans Bar w/ Shields Up
OCTOBER 9 UK - Leeds @ The Packhorse w/ Varsity Drag + The Magnificent + Manatees + Hammers
OCTOBER 10 UK - London @ The Windmill w/ Varsity Drag + North Lincoln + Attack!Vipers! + Down & Outs + Lights Out!
OCTOBER 11 UK - Brighton @ The Prince Albert w/ Attack!Vipers! + Crazy Arm + Three Summers Strong + The North Pole
OCTOBER 12 FRA - Le Havre @ McDaid's w/ Eamon McGrath
OCTOBER 13 BEL - Gent @ The Frontline w/ Last Minute To Jaffna
OCTOBER 14 FRA - Lille @ La Chimère w/ Standing The Test
OCTOBER 15 GER - Trier @ Ex Haus w/ His Statue Falls + City Light Thief
OCTOBER 16 NL - Utrecht @ ACU w/ This Routine Is Hell + Vogue
OCTOBER 17 FRA - Paris @ Espace Icare w/ Alpinist + Hang The Bastard
OCTOBER 18 GER - TBA
OCTOBER 19 GER - Leipzig @ ZORO w/ Teenage Cool Kids, Algernon Cadwallader
OCTOBER 20 GER - Muenchen @ 59 : 1
OCTOBER 21 SWI - Schaffausen @ Tap Tab
OCTOBER 22 ITA - Lucca @ Birrificio Bruton
OCTOBER 23 ITA - Vicenza @ Bar Sartea
OCTOBER 24 CZE - Prague @ 007 w/ Transwaggon
OCTOBER 25 GER - Dresden @ Az Conni w/ Framestar

Hello and the Introduction of Crystal Vinyl

Howdy. Millions has started a blog. Reading this should be a great way for you to kill some time on a regular basis.

So we have pressed some vinyl of Gather Scatter. More info on pressing runs, pricing, ordering info, etc. to follow.

One of the pressings is clear vinyl. This clear idea didn't take off so well for Pepsi in the early 90s. We are hoping to have a little bit better luck.

Maybe the commercial we made will help.

Millions - Gather Scatter Crystal Vinyl Commercial from Millions on Vimeo.