I can't wait for the Energy show later this month with Creeper...
We have a very interesting set planned that involves a lot of songs from "Invasions Of The Mind", songs that we've only ever played live once or twice before, a song we haven't played in over 5 years, and last but not least - a highlight of the set for me personally: not one single song from our first record "Punch The Clock".
We have never done this before. I'm not saying that we'll never play a song like "Keep The Change" ever again, because we almost certainly will. I just feel that I was ready to move on from that record artistically almost immediately after I first heard the final master back in 2006. It was never the sound that I envisioned the band to have, and it still just sounds like a bunch of kids trying to figure out how to write songs to me...because that's essentially what it was.
"Invasions Of The Mind" is where the band really started to find its artistic voice, and it's where I started to truly be proud of the music and lyrics that I was creating. When I listen back to the original demo recordings of "Hail The Size Of Grapes" and "Hunter Red" from 2007, I genuinely still consider them to be two of our best songs.
I'm well aware of the fact that there are people who only liked our "Punch The Clock" record, and that's fine. That's actually more than fine - that's amazing. I'm thankful for the fact that those people enjoyed something that I created, but I have little to no interest in playing those songs anymore. For the last 6 years or so, only about 2 minutes of our set have been occupied by songs from that E.P. I've always wanted to slowly phase them out of the set.
Again I don't mean that we'll never play any of those songs again, I'd just rather it be a surprise / special occasion when we do feel like pulling one of them out of the vault as opposed to it being something that's expected of us. We have released so much material since the 10 minutes of music that is "Punch The Clock" that it just feels ridiculous to me to be performing songs that I don't really want to play just to please a handful of people in the room who haven't been following the band whatsoever for the past 8 or 9 years and only remember / cared about us because of one E.P. from 10 years ago that I'm not even 100% proud of.
This is getting long so I'll just end it here. Feel free to comment with your opinion(s) and I'll gladly engage you though.