Rotten Fruit At Last

Heh, Semi-snub from the Daddy-o

2009-11-11T16:26:00.000-08:00

As we all know, Andrew's dad works for the Memphis Flyer. I'm sure I've linked the website on a few of my posts. Well, he sorta-kinda mentioned this blog in his recent "Letter From the Editor" post. Good? Bad?

The RFAL blog is categorized under, "a bunch of websites on the Internet that at some point in the past five years I thought were important enough to bookmark." LOL. Well.

SOURCE
(via Michelle, thanks)

Video Cram part2

2009-10-09T11:53:00.000-07:00

The Voice Interview

Must be old because Andrew still has his hair. I love their self-deprecating humor.

Orange Warsaw '09

"(on album) It sounds like a band that's starting to get on their feet, but they're still unsure of itself."
"We just got pubic hair... But we only have like 3 or 4."
They also talk about the first time they met (Bendrew). P.s. I love Andrew's shoes.

Best Andrew Moments

2009-10-09T11:46:00.001-07:00

A ten-minute long, fan-made video dedicated to the best Andrew moments.

Ah, a trip down memory lane :)

Thanks jklitten.

Wesleyan Feature

2009-10-09T11:42:00.000-07:00

(A few months old. Wesleyan is the college both Ben and Andrew graduated from, fyi.)

-------------------------------

So, top two reasons why you should be excited about the Flaming Lips’ forthcoming new album, Embryonic (and yes, that is the cover art at right):

1. It’s easily the Lips’ freakiest, boldest piece of work in a decade.

2. Ben Goldwasser ‘05 and Andrew VanWyngarden ‘05—known to the world, of course, as MGMT—are featured on a particularly sludgy slab of Lightning Bolt-inspired noise rock entitled “Worm Mountain.” And it rules.

The album in full is streaming on the Colbert Report’s official site. Check it out!

----------------------------

And then, of course, the person with a bad case of sour grapes:

Source Link here

Video Cram

2009-10-07T22:31:00.001-07:00

I'm aware that these videos have probably been watched by you long ago, so forgive me. I'll post them anyways, for future references. Or maybe you haven't seen them (?).

MGMT Live All Points West Sunday ("The Youth")

It's been a while since I watched them perform. There's a lot more screaming girls than usual, hm? Just an observation.

New Beck feat. MGMT, Leonard Cohen Cover

Andrew... raps. Hahaha.

Interview with Andrew

Decent interview. Clip of Destrokk (live!), and well gosh, he's just so cute. "I have extreme dreams."

Spendor In The Grass interview

Andrew and Ben. They talk about weird bird experiences. Funny stuff. It always seems like the interviewer, in any of the interviews, is trying to connect/delve/make jokes and the boys are like: ...
Me loves it.

Bonnaroo interview

Ben & Andrew. A little talk about meeting Radiohead, Kids music video, but not much.

More Bonnaroo

Andrew & Ben. Talk of the album. Stuff we already know ;)

I Almost Said Miss Piggy

2009-10-07T22:25:00.001-07:00

(P.s. I'm sorry I've been severely lacking. I'm going to pull the lame excuse: life)

Fallon Tweet

2009-06-07T23:18:00.000-07:00

Maybe we'll be seeing MGMT on the Late Night show some time soon?

(By the way, I'm not fully 'back' from my hiatus. I'm sorry. I still don't have very much time to dedicate to this blog, which is hard work, folks. I'm so, so, so behind on MGMTnews I wouldn't even know where to start. I will try to post when I have time. I love this blog too much. Thanks guys <3)

Info

2008-12-17T19:19:00.000-08:00

Hello! I had a little time to check this and to see your comments. I'm hoping that the post-ponage will be temporary. But that could be months. I'll leave up the site for you all. Thanks for reading :')

:(

2008-12-05T19:21:00.000-08:00

Bad news, guys. As much as I liked posting for this blog- it will have to end. Right now I am swamped with things to do. By the time I can catch up with things that need to be done, I will be going abroad. Therefore, I am going to delete this blog. Well actually I want to know if you'd like me to leave it up so that you may come back here for reference or whatever you want to look at. I had a good time. I appreciate you for reading. Keep loving MGMT ;)

-Rotten Fruit At Last

Posting

2008-11-25T20:55:00.000-08:00

I won't be able to post that much or at all for the next week or so. Due to Thanksgiving. Have a good holiday everyone :)

Videohits MGMT

2008-11-23T22:13:00.000-08:00

Watch here

"Australia we're coming to your country, in December. Watch out - and watch us."

Radio interviews

2008-11-23T21:57:00.000-08:00

With Andrew
With Ben
Andrew again

MGMT & M.I.A "GQ Men of The Year"

2008-11-23T21:45:00.000-08:00

First off, I thought M.I.A was female? Ha ha... Andrew looks a bit different for some reason. I guess it's just a sucky photoshop job.

CREDIT
(They are #14)

TheVine interview

2008-11-22T15:12:00.000-08:00

CREDIT

"Though MGMT will be making their maiden voyage to Australia in just a few weeks time, the band are already well versed with the rest of the world. Their trip down here comes at the end of a gruelling 14 month tour across the globe. Riding on the back of their debut record Oracular Spectacular - containing the three hit singles 'Time to Pretend', 'Electric Feel' and 'Kids', all of which have managed to cross over to mainstream radio - the core duo of Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser have gone from little known indie kids releasing EPs independently to be seen as perhaps the world's most in-demand band right now; influencing the mainstream and independent community alike.

After a few flubbed attempts to connect, we switched to mobile phones and made contact with MGMT frontman Andrew VanWyngarden (above, left). He was waking on the other side of the globe and after warming up, we got talking about the current tour, their approach to recording Oracular Spectacular and seeing a grown man sing naked on a horse.

Hey Andrew how are you?

*Cough* Good.

I'm recording you into Garageband right now. It's pretty advanced.

You should put pitch correction on it.

There's no pitch correction what are you talking about?

Yeah there is. There's a pitch correction, down the bottom. We do it all the time to make fake rap songs. Like Aktion.

I've tried that before but it chews up my computer hard drive. I can do it to one track and then to nothing else.

That sucks. (laughs)

I need a better computer. Where are you right now?

I'm good. I just woke up. In France.

We had an interview lined up with you back in August but it got cancelled. You were going to come out for the Splendour in the Grass festival but you got asked to play Lollapalooza or something instead and were sick or something. Things have been going fairly mad for you this year I guess.

Yeah it's been pretty crazy.

Are you getting a bit fatigued about it all at the moment?

A little bit. I mean it's kinda like the home stretch [now] in a way. We've been out for like, 14 months and we get home at the end of December. So it doesn't feel that bad but it's getting a little tiring. At times.

Is it that you don't really know how it affects you until you get home?

Yeah that's definitely the case. I don't think we can really register how insane it's been until we have a break.

It must be strange to have all these new working relationships - with a crew of people to travel around with; mixers, guitar techs and the like - when essentially you're a duo?

Yeah. We started I guess by deciding to make a 5-piece band. We didn't want to play to backing tracks live. And then we got a tour manager. Then a sound guy, then a merch guy, a guitar tech, and now a monitor guy and a lighting person. So yeah it's pretty crazy. But it's really great for us because they work so hard and set everything up for us y'know.

Does that make you want to be more professional about it now?

I think we've definitely gotten a lot more professional about our soundchecks and instead of like, fucking around and jamming we're getting ready while they set up. So that's nice. We all appreciate it.

And does that sort've thing ultimately affect your relationship with Ben?

I dunno. I guess our relationship for this whole kinda crazy two years has been...I think we've been acting the same way but there's a little bit of a closer bond. Because we know that we've been through it together you know. We weren't expecting any of it and we've been a little bit floating along. And it's good to have a partner in crime there, to go through it all with.

I've been a fan of the stuff that Dave Friddman's done before over the years, and I was wondering if he came into the album with his set way of doing things? Or is the sound of the record as much you guys as it is his? Because it's a very particular sounding record.

There's definitely a co-production kinda thing. We ended up using a lot of the tracks that we recorded as demos for the songs. And all the songs were arranged and written before we went in with Dave. So he didn't really do much production in terms of arranging or coming up with parts. But he was of course great at getting really good sounds on everything and the processing and the mixing especially - he's an amazing mixer. So it was a really good way to work I think. He just kind've wanted us to do whatever we wanted.

It's a weird mix of hi-fi and lo-fi at the same time.

There's some tracks that like, we recorded in my living room that are on the final recording. Which is pretty cool. (laughs).

On Garageband?

(Laughs). Um no on Logic actually.

Damn. So do you think maybe you would work with him again or is that in the past now?

No I think we would definitely work with him again. I think for the next album we kind of want to do it the same way. Spend a lot of time recording it ourselves but with little bit better equipment this time. Last time we only had like three pretty shitty microphones. So we'll pretty much produce ourselves and hopefully we can work with Dave in the mixing stage. We really don't want to go with some big producer and have them change our style or something. Try and do what works I guess.

One thing I dig about the record is that alongside that sonic mix of old stuff and new stuff is that it seems the lyrics reflect that as well. There's this Grandaddy-esque "man versus machine" and everythings falling apart element to it. Mixed with some fantasy, magic realism kind've stuff. Is there something that inspires that in you?

I dunno...I think the main reason the lyrics came out like that is kind've where we were. Being that we'd just graduated from college at this...this school that was kind've a fantasy world. This tiny school in Connecticut. We were in lots of bands and doing all kinds've crazy stuff, running round in the woods and then...I moved to New York. And it was almost like a shock how different it was. And I think the lyrics were coming from that period of not really knowing what the hell was going on. Also because all of a sudden we were on a major label and a little bit paranoid you know?

There's fun in there as well, joking about that whole thing.

Yeah well we never want to take ourselves too seriously. I think that can happen.

Well apart from that it is just completely ridiculous what's happened to your band. You may as well embrace it.

Yeah it's VERY ridiculous. (Laughs).

Has there been any chance to write any new stuff over the last 14 months?

Well I mean - it's been like a year now - but we wrote that B-Side 'Metanoia' that's 14 minutes long and recorded it with Dave Friddman too. And then we have lots of ideas but we haven't had time to like sit down and record them. So we're just waiting til we have a break.

And you've got something in the works with Kevin Barnes [from Of Montreal]?

Um. Yeah. I mean we started this kind've side project type thing...actually before MGMT signed. So that was the Spring of 2006.

Was that when you toured with them?

No that was after. It was just in that period where nothing was going on and no-one knew what was happening. We wrote like a few songs and it was pretty cool and we got really excited. And then things got crazy for both of our bands. So now hopefully we'll both be on a break in the New Year and we can play those songs again.

You played that show in New York when Kevin sang a song on a horse didn't you?

I came out during the encore and played a Nirvana song (laughs).

Were you there when they were getting the horse on stage?

We had just played at United Palace [with Beck] that same night and so I rushed over there. I was right outside the backstage door when there was a horse on stage. And then I saw the horse walk outside and all the craziness.

How do you get a horse on stage in the middle of New York city?

They kind've got this trailer up on the backstage door. And then put a ramp up to the top of the stage and he just rode up on to the stage (laughs).

Was there a sense of terror about the fact that it could just jump off into the crowd at any minute?

Yeah I think he was pretty nervous. He was also pretty much completely naked. (laughs).

It's a good mix. I think being nervous and naked...

On a horse.

...probably endears you to the crowd.

(laughs).

So have you ever been to Australia before?

No I haven't.

Do you know any bands over here? Or what you're getting yourself into?

(Laughs). I don't know too many Australian bands. I know the Sleepy Jackson. And um, Silverchair. I listened to them a long time ago. But in terms of knowing what we're getting into...it's kind've crazy like I can tell. I can kind've tell from the press we're doing. Like we're doing interviews with some super mainstream like, 'Top 30' radio stations. And so it feels like our record is definitely part of the mainstream there. But from the interviews it kind've feels like they don't really know what we're about. Like they maybe think we're an 'electro-glam' duo or something.

Well you know, someone hands them a CD and they press play and then ask you where you got your name from and they go on to the next ad.

Yeah (laughs).

Despite all that, the festival that you're playing, Meredith, should suit you really well. It's out in the bush and they have you know, lanterns hanging in the trees and everyone camps and...it's like having a party at your friends house if they lived on a massive farm.

That sounds great. I couldn't think of a better way to end the tour."

Ben & Andrew on MOD

2008-11-22T13:21:00.000-08:00

Click here.

So weird seeing our boys in a place like this.

MGMT After their show

2008-11-22T12:56:00.000-08:00

Clips and videos of Andrew & Ben aftershow with fans.

^at 0:35
Andrew: "Uh I don't think I need to right now, I'm sorry"
Guy: "Why are you being so mean?"
Andrew: "I'm not being mean. Look at me - I'm being very nice."
:)

Old(ish) MGMT performance

2008-11-22T12:49:00.000-08:00

Weekend Wars!

"Rock stars? Not us."

2008-11-21T13:15:00.000-08:00

CREDIT

"MGMT's anthem 'Kids' was the festival hit of the summer – which surprised the Brooklyn duo, whose psych-synth-pop-indie-rock rather defies classification. Still, their wacky dress sense and oddball stage shows surely mean that stardom beckons. They talk to Elisa Bray

Friday, 21 November 2008

At the festivals this summer, there was a stand-out song that the crowds were singing. It was "Kids", the anthemic single from the Brooklyn duo MGMT.

At Glastonbury, the New Yorkers played two sets, and to hear the crowds singing the catchy riff in the tent long after the band had finished was an unexpected experience, not least for the duo themselves.

"That was really crazy," says keyboardist Ben Goldwasser. "That was the first time it happened. Then it happened at T in the Park and Oxygen. It's pretty crazy. We didn't even feel like we played a very good show that first day at Glastonbury. A lot of things were breaking, we were using different amplifiers, the guitar cut out for the song. All this stuff was going wrong, and we were really nervous. But we were really happy with the crowd."

MGMT was one of several bands from Brooklyn to burst on to the music scene last year. While their peers Yeasayer, Vampire Weekend, Dirty Projectors and Celebration favoured Afro-beat-inflected indie rock, MGMT dealt in what they call their "future Seventies" music, incorporating psychedelic-hued synth-pop indie rock matched with an equally colourful dress sense and their trademark headbands.

With Vampire Weekend, MGMT would become the most popular of the Brooklyn exports, being named by Rolling Stone last year as among the top 10 artists to watch in 2008. The BBC's Sound of 2008 poll placed them ninth, and early this year their hugely anticipated debut album Oracular Spectacular went in at No 12 in the UK pop chart and won rave reviews.

What's the secret to the catchy electro-pop hooks that drive their songs? "For me," says the guitarist and singer Andrew VanWyngarden, "it's, like, something pops into your head and you don't try to record it or anything, and if it pops into your head again a month later it's probably good. It takes a lot for the ideas to make it through the first round."

The pair, both now 25, met while studying at the Wesleyan University in Connecticut, a private liberal arts institution whose alumni include Santogold and The Dresden Dolls. They put their hippie look down to their university, where they were surrounded by hippies and their parents. "I don't think we call ourselves hippies but we've got hippie blood in us, hippie heritage," Goldwasser says.

Both their families are musical. VanWyngarden's father, who played guitar and drums in a small-town band, introduced him to the electric guitar; Goldwasser's parents are both pianists, and he was taught to play by his grandmother. "My parents played a lot of Bob Dylan and Neil Young, classic rock stuff, Bowie. It definitely shaped my music," he says. "I found their record collection in our attic in Memphis and went through it one summer and took a bunch of records to college. That was pretty amazing, having those old records. I found a lot of things I'd never heard of."

Goldwasser was never sure that he would play music for a living. "My grandfather was a music professor at university, and he used to say, 'If you really love music don't do it for your job.' But I don't regret it." There was no commitment or ambition in their college days; at the time, they were playing in a number of bands.

"We just started hanging out," Goldwasser says. "We didn't really have any ambition for the band at all. We got to the point where we were making songs and we really liked the pop songs we had written by the end of the year. When we graduated, we weren't thinking about taking the band anywhere. We take it more seriously now, but really it was us making music on a laptop computer. We'd record it sometimes, but we never played outside the campus. It was fun, almost like a joke.

"This band," he adds, "we don't know why we're doing it, it feels like everything we do in this band serves this weird purpose, but the purpose of it definitely is not success or becoming famous or anything like that."

Clearly satirising the rock-star aspiration in their first single "Time To Pretend" ("Let's make some music, make some money, find some models for wives") would point towards a reality they had never envisaged when they started out. "'Time To Pretend' was referring to this fantasy, this joke of us being sell-out rock stars. It's not like we ever set out to have that lifestyle – we didn't really want that, but it's definitely different now we're playing big festival shows and touring all the time. Some of it is true. It's pretty weird. I don't think the fame is really the ultimate part of the fantasy. We wanted to get to the point where we could do really ridiculous things. We want to have some really crazy stage production," says Goldwasser.

MGMT gained a reputation for wild shows early on, and the weird ideas they come up with for their dream stage production would seem to be an extension of that, only now they have more money to play with. Goldwasser is still disappointed that they could not have farm animals in their show: "We were thinking of riding a horse off the front of the stage."

From the laughter that accompanies these somewhat wild suggestions, you'd suspect they might be having a joke at the expense of anyone silly enough to believe them, but it's all genuine. At college, they were in a band called Beauty Enchantment and Horror, producing freaky droning music and having an interest in all things "spooky". "We love spooky places, and spooky castles," says Goldwasser.

This could be a conversation with a couple of wide-eyed schoolboys; they seem firmly planted in their youth, as the song titles "Kids" and "The Youth" show. "'Kids' was a result of us being 19 years old, in this fantasy college world, which is a little bit like childhood because you don't have much responsibility." Nothing has changed, it seems.

The extensive touring – they have travelled all over Europe and Japan, and after their London shows they go to Australia next month for the first time – is taking its toll. VanWyngarden, who has been known to fall asleep in interviews, does not conceal his sleepiness, yawning. "It's been crazy, but we're getting better at getting into the rhythm of it now," he says. "Early on it really hit us hard. I don't know, we were partying too much or something. Now we're learning how to deal with it. It's really fun to go all over the world. Australia is a place we've always wanted to go to. It's weird for us because the album's doing really well there and the shows have sold out, but we'd never been there so there's a lot of expectation."

After graduating, the music was on hold for a while. VanWyngarden moved to Brooklyn, while Goldwasser went to upstate New York with a friend to work on a farm with no electricity.

It wasn't until a year later, when they met up in Brooklyn, that things began to take off. While the other Brooklyn bands were snapped up by independent labels (Vampire Weekend to XL, Dirty Projectors to Domino), MGMT bucked the trend when they signed to the major label Columbia.

But, as ever, nothing was planned. Goldwasser rejoined his comrade for a couple of months to play music together for the first time in a year, and an email arrived out of the blue in late 2006. "It was pretty crazy, because it came after a period of us not talking for a long time," says VanWyngarden. "Ben came down to New York to stay for a month or two and we were working on some songs. We had an email from this A&R on Columbia records on this band email account that we didn't ever check. We thought it was fake, so we didn't respond. We were convinced that our band really sucked and there was no reason why anybody should sign us.

"Then they set up a meeting. At first we were closed to it, just because we were scared of record labels in general and didn't really know if we wanted to do that."

"I think it was a good choice. We're anti-indie," Goldwasser says, with a smile. "We don't have any indie cred, so we have nothing to lose."

VanWyngarden is single, while Goldwasser is in a relationship which, he says, reminds him of the unreal existence he leads in the band. "It's hard to call someone and tell them how your day was when you're, like, 'Oh, we flew in from Hungary and played this rock festival and went skinnydipping, did some interviews, played this show and got drunk. How was your day, honey? Oh, cool.' I don't know, it's weird.

"Sometimes we feel like we don't try to do things so things will get better for the band. We make pretty arbitrary decisions. A lot of times we try to destroy the band, but somehow it keeps coming back." With a Chemical Brothers collaboration in store and a new album in the pipeline that, they say, "will see them being more ambitious," it looks like MGMT may well be indestructible."

Just some ancient MGMT stuffs

2008-11-20T20:46:00.000-08:00

These are old MGMT shirts that were being sold around '05

Someone crowd surfing at a MGMT show. I thought it was Ben at first but I can see him in the back.

On the Cantora Records website, there was some stuff about MGMT:

"Can MGMT play real instruments? Do they write and produce their own music? Are they joking? These are all questions you may be asking yourself after witnessing an MGMT show. However, although these questions may have easily accessible solutions, we like to pretend that we don't know the answers. You figure it out for yourself. Only old man future knows the answers. Go Ask him. Or even better, call him on his cell phone at 901-355-6371. Will you join us in our quest for whatever it is we are questing for? Will you join the MGMT malevolution? Equal parts creativity and destruction, sincerity and insincerity, justice and injustice? Why not? If you are young and haven't lost all hope, then you kind of have to. Sorry. What will MGMT be when you see them next? Indie Karaoke Agitators? Hippie innovators? Medieval folk revivalists? Who knows. Old man future knows. So call him again.
mgmtkittens@yahoo.com"

First off I wonder whose phone number that is o.o I also want to know if the band still uses that e-mail.

Time To Pretend EP Review from 2005!

2008-11-20T20:38:00.000-08:00

CREDIT

"MGMT - Time to Pretend

You know it’s hard lately to find some type of music that is sentimental and honest but isn’t emotionally overbearing with anger and doesn’t make you feel like you’re listening to the audio version of the Hallmark channel. It’s even harder to find a band that also fits that criteria and can also know when its time to just make a song to dance too. Then you have a duo like the management who make music that comes from somewhere out of left field, equal parts synth whores, indie rokkers and romanticists. They’re either capable of making a record that will make you lose faith in music or could make an album that could make you completely change the way you look at music. My money is on the latter.

The album opener is the title track and get has more synth lines than you can shake a stick at. The song goes on about things like drugs, traveling long distances and other vices that have become associated with touring. But toward the end of the song the mood of it starts to change. I miss my sister/miss my father/miss my dog and my mom is the line that best shows that change and with other lines like “Life can always start up anew!” It’s hard not to smile a little bit when thinking of a line sung with such fervor.

The next track "Boogie Down" is my favorite on the album because it gives a good all around view of what the group is like and what you should expect from the rest of the album, plus the chorus makes me want to break out my favorite James Brown dance moves. But the song is set at a midtempo during the verses and the song centers on a player type or something along those lines you know the guy who walks around like he’s got the biggest dick in the place. But not in the creepy way like you might think but more like the guy who ruled the disco and didn’t do it to show off but instead did it for the love of dancing.

Another highlight of the album is the song “Indie Rokkers”, probably the darkest song musically speaking on the album, with lines like “I found blood/I saw stars/on the backseat of your car/and I told you it was love” and ironically enough the most retro 80’s sounding one. Kind of like something you might have heard from the score of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, had Ferris Bueller been a depressing movie with happy characters or something like that. The lyrics filled with nostalgia and talk of sex and some weird guy in the background saying “Rollin’ along, rolling along” a lot. The song is slower paced at first but by the end it picks up and I’m left feeling rather odd, never sure to feel happy, sad or weird. And personally, I love that feeling.

This album, like the “Indie Rokkers” track, has that overall effect on me. I’m sure I like it, I just don’t know whether I like it when I’m feeling silly or whether I want to sit there and contemplate the words and what they really mean to me and how profound they could be. But whatever I choose, I’ll still be able to dance to it, and that my friends is something that we all can appreciate.

- Anthony

posted 10/06/05 "

Andrew "In My Own Write"

2008-11-20T16:04:00.001-08:00

In three words I am... helping my self
If I'm frightened of anything, it's... other people
If I could travel back in time, I'd set the controls for... June 10th, 1997
My favourite person in the universe is... also the coolest person in town
My least favourite person in the universe is... making me upset
The last time I looked in the mirror, I thought... I got some sun today!
If I had to leave a body part to science, it would be... my eyes
My definition of love is... screwed up
The last time I vomited, it was because... I couldn't help it
The greatest lesson life has taught me so far is... take it easy
If I knew the world was ending tomorrow, then today I'd... check myspace
The song I want played at my funeral is... not a happy song
I want my tombstone to read... why does this feel so dramatic?
In purely monetary terms, I am worth roughly... diamond puppies

As for the "draw us a picture" part, your guess is as good as mine.

Wonderland Magazine interview (semi-old?)

2008-11-20T15:58:00.000-08:00

CREDIT

"Singer and guitarist Andrew VanWyngarden is an excitable puppy in human form. Bearded keyboard-player Ben Goldwasser is reserved. Sardonic, even. Together they are MGMT, pronounced ‘management’. The 25-year-olds met in 2002 on the campus of Wesleyan University in Connecticut. United by a love of mysticism, psyche-rock and Technicolor, they plugged in some computers, threw on some fluorescent tunics and started making “strange music to confuse people” at college shows – one of which involved a 45-minute instrumental reworking of the Ghostbusters theme. Now signed to Columbia and headlining tours, MGMT’s anthemic power-pop is beginning to hit the big time. Happily the Brooklyn-based duo are showing no obvious signs of taking themselves seriously.

What do you listen to in the morning?

Andrew VanWyngarden: Bob Dylan is good as anti-groggy music. I don’t like to listen to anything too energetic first thing.

Ben Goldwasser: I listen to Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain album. The first song’s not good for getting fired up to, but the rest of it is.

What music was playing in the house when you were kids?

AVW: I listened to the stuff my sister was into. Pearl Jam, The Grateful Dead, Spiritualized, Smashing Pumpkins. I heard a lot of classic rock through my parents – Neil Young and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young… all that big stuff.

BG: Progressive rock like King Crimson and a little bit of Yes. Some jazz, like Charles Mingus.

AVW: You make it sound like you were six years old and listening to Charles Mingus!

BG: When I was really young I was listening to Talking Heads…

AVW: Talking Heads is great for kids.

BG: So is The Incredible String Band.

If you could teach the world to sing, what would you teach them?

AVW: I think about this a lot. I have this weird dictator fetish. I’d like to take a group of a hundred 50 to 75 year olds and trap them in a gymnasium until they learn every lyric to a Jay-Z album. I’d have to be really mean – like starve them. I like Jay-Z but it wouldn’t be pleasant for septuagenarians.

BG: Remember we saw that show on MTV where they were teaching a choir of old people to sing Welcome To The Jungle?

AVW: That was kind of similar… but it wasn’t a torture thing. They were taking it pretty well.

Where would you be without music?

BG: I’d be living in the woods somewhere. Going feral.

AVW: I’d be a Marine Biologist. That’s what I wanted to be when I was a kid. It’s still the coolest job. I’d live by the ocean just researching squid or something. With a decent-looking wife and dog.

BG: You’d be like that guy we saw on TV who was teaching seals how to paint at Colchester Zoo.

AVW: It’d be awesome to teach some seals to play in the band.

BG: Dogs would be cool.

AVW: There was a Swedish prog-rock group from the late 60s who had a dog in the band. I don’t know what instrument he played."

MGMT demos!

2008-11-18T17:28:00.001-08:00

Special thanks to oliviaeltonjohn from the MGMT forum!

Consists of:
-Electric feel (a part a 2:50 that was apparently cut out from the final! So weird but awesome.)
-Of Moons Birds and Monsters (Nothing that different, just less drummy.)
-The Handshake (Echo-ey effect after Andrew singing o.o)
-The Youth (sweet vocals)
-Weekend Wars (Just slightly different vocals; as you would expect from a demo)
-Future Reflections (Ooh sexy seduction voice!)
-4th Dimensional Transition (Different lyrics at certain parts)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THEM !

(Still listening to the rest for cut-out parts)

New Youtubes

2008-11-17T12:04:00.000-08:00

Mexican food^

MGMT Independent.co.uk Review

2008-11-16T01:27:00.000-08:00

CREDIT

"By Simon Price
Sunday, 16 November 2008

At a time when New York is getting too cool for its boots, to the extent that the New Musical Express is running fawning articles on exactly which private university is the hippest place for forming a band, there's a strong temptation to bring it down a peg or two. MGMT, alumni of the fee-paying Wesleyan Uni and probably the biggest name of the NYC crop, would appear an obvious place to start the backlash. But they're not.

There is no cutting-edge movement that can contain MGMT. Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser, with their mystical melange of soulful psych-pop – imagine Hawkwind meets the Chi-Lites – have created music that exists outside the timeline. Far from the war-painted weirdos of their record sleeve, the on-stage incarnation consists of five regular indie blokes in black T-shirts. Disappointing, but perhaps they're fans of Flaubert. ("Be regular and ordinary in your life, like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.")

"Violently original" isn't strictly accurate. MGMT's wide-eyed, hymnal rock has precursors in the likes of Grandaddy, Super Furry Animals, Polyphonic Spree, Mercury Rev (with whom they share a producer in Dave Fridmann), and Flaming Lips (also Fridmann-produced), whose Wayne Coyne could teach MGMT a thing or three about putting on a show. MGMT, notorious for their technical hitches, are sometimes so sloppy it verges on insulting, turning their backs on the audience and twiddling machine heads for minutes on end. Surely they have roadies and techies for that sort of thing?

It's especially frustrating, because when MGMT are on song, they can lift you out of yourself. In between, it might as well be downtime in a rehearsal room. VanWyngarden tries to make a knowing joke of it: "How do you like this tuning up between songs vibe? I'm just doing it to take the edge off." Telling a band as blissed-out as MGMT to "tighten up" almost feels blasphemous. But c'mon, MGMT. Tighten up.

It's worth the wait, though, for "Time to Pretend". Stupendously candid about the cocaine-hoovering, model-shagging life of a band on the rise, it's clear-sighted, even visionary about their likely future: "The models will have children, we'll get a divorce/we'll find some more models, everything must run its course..." Even better, for me, is "Electric Feel", in which the ghost of Curtis Mayfield waltzes with Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" (whose rhythm it unashamedly borrows). Channelling the existential thoughtfulness of, say, the Brothers Johnson version of "Strawberry Letter 23", it's a masterpiece of passive soul, imploring its object "Ooh girl, shock me like an electric eel...". I listen to it at least three times daily, in disbelief and awe.

There can be few bands who have reinvented themselves as comprehensively as MGMT's forebears, Mercury Rev. Following the departure of singer David Baker, they underwent a revolution, abandoning frazzled, wayward wig-outs such as "Chasing a Bee" for a symphonic classicism which peaked with the classic Deserter's Songs album. This year's Snowflake Midnight sees another rethink, although this time, to paraphrase Partridge, they haven't revolved, they've evolved."

_______________________________

Yeah I just listened to that Kate Bush song as well. Does not sound like it at all. Except maybe the beginning has the drum beat a tiny bit but not enough to say MGMT "borrowed" that song.

60 minute show

2008-11-15T14:03:00.000-08:00

Screen shots.

Click here to watch "MGTM's" whole set.
Total time: 61:32

Personally, I enjoyed it.

Amazing Baby and MGMT

2008-11-14T21:54:00.000-08:00

CREDIT

"You guys are friendly with the dudes from MGMT. Have they influenced you guys at all?
Simon: Let me put it this way, at the Middlesex & New Haven County 4-H Fair we all got stoned, ate deep fried Oreos and saw Eddie Money play for 15 people. He was drunk and his sax sounded like shit. We learned a valuable lesson that day."

MGMT & Franz Ferdinand

2008-11-14T17:09:00.000-08:00

Journal du festival jour 2
by lesinrocks

Andrew @ 3:00
Again around 9:00

Apparently they just jammed after the show, with Andrew on Piano!

Interview from Mexico

2008-11-13T21:30:00.001-08:00

Picture above has nothing to do with this post.

I don't understand Spanish and I don't know how to put an embed code in here. So click here.

MGMT, Violens, and Amazing Baby all at once.

2008-11-13T17:37:00.000-08:00

Doing a cover of Sweet Emotion by Aerosmith. Quality isn't the best but it's the only one I've seen so far.

"EF Consumer Reports Holiday Gift Guide (For deserving bands)"

2008-11-12T10:47:00.000-08:00

CREDIT

Product: Samsung SPF-83V Wireless Digital Frame
Retail: $208 – 216

Perfect for: Andrew VanWyngarden (the headband dude in MGMT). Why? Isn’t he dating Kirsten Dunst? Wouldn’t it make sense to have a rotating picture gallery of her on display at all times? Isn’t this obvious?

Watch: “Electric Feel”

____________________________

Haha. You can click on "CREDIT" and see the other gifts this person thinks certain bands deserve.

I love how

2008-11-11T18:10:00.000-08:00

MGMT gets their own Craiglist section.

Okay, so it's not the MGMT we all know and love. But I can imagine?!

By popular demand

2008-11-11T17:20:00.000-08:00

Look out.

Random Picture

2008-11-11T12:03:00.000-08:00

This picture doesn't need a caption.

"What Happens When Educated East Coast Hipsters Make Music"

2008-11-11T11:47:00.000-08:00

CREDIT

"Vampire Weekend’s debut self-titled album dropped in January of this year, but it had been blogged up for a long while before that. They met at Columbia, and formed under influences of Paul Simon and African drums. Ezra Koenig’s Jewish charm and catchy hooks propel the band to critical acclaim. They were soon forgotten about, however, as MGMT released Oracular Spectacular later that month. They had received a large recording contract from Sony and just finished a tour with of Montreal. Their notable style of “Psych-pop” earns them a large following. The following’s main contributors, however, are teenage girls, fawning over Andrew’s looks and style. The Coachella performances of both bands were decidedly lackluster, but MGMT somehow came out of the festival with superstar nature."

______________________________

Umm... I don't even know where to start with this one. Not only is this another "Andrew is hot and the other one isn't," type of crap, but also ,"they're only famous because of their looks." They get the attention they get because they actually make good music. The kind we've been missing for a couple decades. And why are Vampire Weekend and MGMT in the same paragraph? I don't know. They can't really be compared. No offense VW but no one will remember you in like a freakin' year. Okay. Rant over.

...MGMT on home page of MySpace

2008-11-08T00:27:00.000-08:00

That was a horrible yet pleasant surprise:

Well at least I know where to go now If I want to read the full article. Click here to read the virtual magazine, if you haven't already.

I uploaded the Glitter Penis albums

2008-11-07T21:59:00.000-08:00

so you don't have to DL them all individually. Click here to be directed to the download link. They're nicely organized if I say so myself ;O

Zoe & Andrew

2008-11-07T21:35:00.000-08:00

Ahem.
I bet those rumors were started by the same people who started the whole Kirsten Dunst rumor. I personally think it's BS. Especially because there were plenty of reviews from that Prince concert where they were supposedly "making out all night", and none of them mention him "mingling" with her. I don't think she was even there. 'Nuff said :)

I was trying to avoid posting anything about this - but I just don't want people to start believing it. Especially when the Dunst thing was proved false.

Two Glitter Penis albums

2008-11-07T15:41:00.000-08:00

(thanks to It's The Money Shot for bringing this to my attention.)

When going to glitterpenis.com , click on "Glitter Penis" and type in your e-mail. Moments later you will receive an e-mail with a link to download "River Offices" (the full thing!) and "Greatest Hits 1998-2001"

Well worth the process.

If you click on "Noopy Stivits" it directs you to his blog, and apparently who used to play keyboards for GP. Interesting.

River offices:

01 - Intro

02 - The Microphone Five

03 - Narration One

04 - Revolution

05 - Narration Two

06 - Crumz In My Lap

07 - Narration Three

08 - So Many Days

09 - Narration Four

10 - Angel Food

11 - Outro

Greatest Hits:

01 - Live Intro

02 - Sparkle John

03 - Walking Formality Never Ceasing

04 - Uncle Jesse

05 - Ma Rainey

06 - Dancin Monkeys

07 - Lil Tisha

08 - One Note

09 - Sausage Pants

10 - Gonna Hitchy Train

11 - Easy Bake

12 - Tony Danza

13 - Milk & Rice

14 - Hippycrit

15 - Las Vegas

16 - Dust in my Ears

17 - Dancin Monkeys (remix)

18 - The miracle of birth

"MGMT Get Excited on the Interface"

2008-11-07T15:00:00.000-08:00

Subscribe to their podcast and download the MGMT performances and short interview.

Sorry I haven't posted lately, there is plenty to post I just don't have time today! Later on tonight though, I'll catch up :)

NME Cool List link

2008-11-07T01:51:00.000-08:00

Clicky here.

I can't believe I forgot to link in the first post. Whoops. Sorry guys :) Thanks for the nice compliments on the blog!

Andrew on NME's "Cool List 08"

2008-11-05T19:36:00.000-08:00

Number three. Ben looks a bit chubby standing next to Andrew, while Andrew looks extra skinny next to Ben. Lmao.

MGMT "borrowed" Time to Pretend from Her Space Holiday

2008-11-03T12:09:00.000-08:00

People seem to think so.

I don't agree. Sure they sound a teeny bit similar but come on. That's like saying bands that use a "monotone" singing voice are all copying each other. "Sleepy California" and "Time to Pretend" have completely different lyrics and meanings. Accusing MGMT of plagiarism is just silly.

MGMT play "Just Becuz"!

2008-11-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

DUUUUUDE. That's so awesome.

"How to become an allergic hippie in 30 seconds"

2008-11-03T11:48:00.000-08:00

Poor Andrew :(

"Andrew VanWijngarden"

2008-11-03T11:43:00.000-08:00

From August but I haven't seen it yet. It was posted two days ago.

"Girls Just Wanna Have fun" 10/30 show

2008-11-03T11:34:00.001-08:00

Covering Cindy Lauper and wearing Mariachi outfits. Could it get any better?

From 10/27/08

Popwreckoning interview

2008-11-03T11:31:00.000-08:00

CREDIT

"Last month, Joshua and Jessica got the chance to chat with Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser of the fab dance rock outfit MGMT. The guys turned out to be really awesome despite some hate they get in the press, so hanging with them was more of a long and disjointed conversation rather than an interview. It was a great time nonetheless, have a read:

Joshua Hammond, PopWreckoning: You guys recently appeared on “Live From Austin City Limits” what was it like for you guys to be in the studio…
Ben Goldwasser, MGMT: No, actually we didn’t.
Jessica McGinley, PopWreckoning: Abbey Road.
JH: That’s what I meant — what did I say?
BG: Austin City Limits.
JM: [laughs] We are here.
JH: My bad.
BG: It was cool.

JH: “Live From Abbey Road.” [What was it like] to be in a place where Pink Floyd and The Beatles recorded?
BG: It was really cool. The whole environment of the TV production thing was a little weird, like having cameras in our face while we’re recording. They’d touch up our make-up and stuff.
Andrew VanWyngarden, MGMT: After they left, we all got to hang out in the room where the Beatles did a lot of stuff. We saw the 4 tracks they used. It was really cool.
JH: That is cool.
BG: The whole crew that worked there was real old school studio guys who were just very professional and were real low stress.
JH: I heard that it was really relaxed for you guys, which is out of the norm.

JH: Due to a 30 second sound clip placed on iTunes, there’s been a lot of controversy surrounding your single “Time To Pretend.” How have you guys adjusted to that? Have you guys changed the way that you’ve done it.
BG: It is funny because when it first released it was a ‘Single of the Week’ and they had to take it down. They got all these complaints. We were like, “Come on!” You know? It’s obviously ironic or whatever.
We listened to the clip and it is pretty funny because it’s the only part of the song that’s all about shooting heroin. It’s Apple’s fault for picking it. They should’ve picked a different section.
JH: Yeah, that picked one of the worst 30 second clips they could’ve picked.
BG: They didn’t even bleep out the word “fuck” did they?
AVW: Who knows. It was funny. I dunno, I think a lot of the negative response from that was real overblown. Some sort of website for conservative mothers who, like, got up in arms about it. “If you want your children to stop being exposed to this crap, go post something on iTunes’ bulletin board.” It just didn’t seem very authentic.
JM: Somebody’s always crusading.
BG: Yeah, we just happened to be the target of one of those crusades.
JM: Publicity, though, right?

JH: I was just going to say, do you think the negative publicity helped you in a way?
BG: I think in a way…I dunno. I think we have this kind of weird image of being, like, drugged out freaks. That might be true, but that’s not the image we’re trying to promote.
All: [laugh]
BG: It’s about the music, man. We’re not trying to promote this image of being a party band.
AVW: It’s a little known fact that Tipper Gore signed a 7 page agreement to take that album to trial. She got paid like $60,000.
All: [silent]
AVW: I’m just kidding.
All: [laugh]

JH: Something that happens in music a lot is comparing bands to other bands. You guys get compared to The Flaming Lips quite a bit, but if you could put it in your words, not using other bands, how would you describe your sound?
BG: Um… It’s, uh, it’s changing a lot. I think there’s rock. There’s rock. [laughs]
I think there’s elements of the past, present and future. We get down with a lot of shitty sounds.
AVW: If I worked in a record store, I’d put it in the ‘Rock/Pop’ section.

JH: I read recently that your next album is going to be dual disc and is genre-splitting. Is there truth to this?
BG: It’s something we’re talking about. I think, mainly, we wanna…
AVW: We should say something else now so nobody knows what to expect.
BG: I think mainly now we just want to explore going further in the direction of both pop and in the direction of being more far out.
AVW: One third reggae, one third rock, one third
JM: Opera.
BG: One third opera!
AVW: Our next album is only going to be available on DVD and it’s going to be a rock operetta starring Jack Black.
BG: Produced by The Prodigy.
JH: Gothic overtones with a little polka.

JH: Your song “Electric Feel” was recently covered by The Kooks. Have you heard the recording and are you fans of it?
BG: Haven’t heard the recording.

JM: I know that you have heard the remix that Jorge Elbrecht from Violens did and then you took those guys on tour.
BG: Well we were sort of friends before. We met him a couple times orf something and when we were trying to think of people to do remixes, we approached him. We were fans of Lansing-Dreiden, we didn’t really know him. We just started talking to him about a remix and then he got really into it. He said he almost vomited when he was making it and we said, “This is perfect!”
AVW: It really is the weirdest remix in the world.
JM: I’ve heard it, I think it’s pretty rad.
BG: That’s good! You’re one of the first people who’s said that.
JM: He almost vomited [laughs]. He did not tell me that.
BG: Oh, you talked to him about it?
JM: Yeah, I interviewed him a while back. I’ve hung out with Jorge a couple times.
BG: He’s great! He’s the best.
JM: He’s one of the smartest guys I think I’ve ever met.
BG: He really is! He’s an actual genius. The things that he’s working and producing right now are really cool. Have you heard Violens’ stuff at all?
JM: Yeah, I’ve been to a couple of their shows. They’re pretty good.
BG: We’re touring with them in England, too.
JM: Yeah, that’ll be cool. But enough about that other band.
AVW: They’re better than us! Listen to Violens!

JH: If you guys could tell people one thing about your band that they don’t know, something that’s miscontrued quite a bit, what would it be?
BG: I don’t think that we’re… We’re not hipsters.
AVW: Yeah, we’re not.
JH: I find that people assume that you’re pretentious quite a bit. Just from sitting here, it’s not like that at all.
BG: We’re like the target. There’s all this message board and blog debate about how we’re the most pretentious, hipster band. We’re just…
JM: You’re just cool dudes.
BG: …an example of everything that’s wrong with bands right now.
AVW: We’re just normal, dorky guys.
JM: I think a lot of that comes with the Brooklyn associations.
BG: But we’re not from Brooklyn! We never said we were. People are getting pissed off at us for claiming to represent Brooklyn, but we don’t.

JH: Where are you guys actually from?
AVW: I don’t have a place right now. Ben lives in New Jersey.
BG: Yeah, I live in New Jersey. I’m thinking about moving to [town]. But I don’t wanna print that. I don’t wanna blow it up.
JM: Scratch that.
BG: That’s totally gonna be the cool spot. Do you know [town]?
JM: Yeah, I went to school in New York City.
AVW: Not many people have been there.
JM: Isn’t it…
BG: In [borough]? On [body of water]?
JM: Yeah. There was a restaurant there called [restaurant] — it’s got a different name now.
BG: [restaurant]?!! [laugh]
JM: Yeah, I’ve dined there, [laughs], so I’ve been to [town].
BG: That’s cool.
JM: But I went to school in [borough], so that’s the only reason I know it.

JH: Fordham. You’re a Fordham kid.
JM: [laughs] Yeah, just about every interview I seem to mention Fordham, I don’t know why. Mostly with bands from New York.
BG: You represent the Bronx.
JM: We’ll represent the Bronx, but we won’t tell anyone you wanna move to [town].
JH: We should print everything but the place, and just put a big bleep over it. “I’m gonna move to bleep” just to fuck with people’s heads.
BG: It’s the coolest place in the world. Brooklyn is over. Bleep is now!
JH: Or we should change it to Delaware.
BG: Atlantic City. Or Asbury Park. Somewhere on the Jersey shore. People tend to really blow it up now.

BG: I know the real cool spot: Arkansas, man. No, seriously. Arkansas is cool. I grew up in Nashville and the Ozarks… we could live in the Ozarks.
JH: Right there on that Missouri-Arkansas border.
AVW: It’s so pretty!
BG: We could turn into cartoon bears and rabbits and only wear overalls. We could have three shows a day.
AVW: We could disappear for 6 months and we come back and we’re cartoon animals.
BG: That would be cool. You know that The Bugs had their own store in New York and it was just like Bugs central? We could have the MGMT headquarters.
AVW: We’ve got an office.

JM: So you guys are on tour with Beck!
BG: We were really nervous. We heard all sorts of things about being on tour with Beck. We were under the impression that he was fragile or that he could get mad at us at any moment. He’s like the nicest guy, like he comes and says hi.
In El Paso he had an after show, a secret show in this coffee shop. He played four songs and then we played a few songs. He’s just the coolest. The band’s really cool.
JH: I’m actually really surprised that he is a nice guy. Again with the pretentious thing, he would scare me.
AVW: No, he’s such a nice guy.
BG: With Beck and like, Radiohead, they’re the kind of guys that keep to themselves, so you assume, but he’s really a nice guy.
JH: It would suck to be on a tour with somebody that made you miserable for fucking weeks at a time. If you move his gear six inches to the right, he punches you in the face.
BG: This is actually like the most laid back tour we’ve ever been on.

JH: Good to hear. We’ve definitely taken up enough of your time, so thanks and enjoy the rest of ACL.
JM: Yeah, thanks for hangin’ for so long.
BG: Cool, thanks.
AVW: Thank you! Later."

MGMT on Gay Beach just ended a few minutes ago.

2008-11-01T13:05:00.001-07:00

I listened :) It was good. I was a little disappointed at first because they weren't sure if MGMT were coming :O But they did. So you can listen to the podcast here.
Andrew and Will talk about their 10million people audience in Brazil. Lol. Ben was a sexy tiger/cougar/cheetah (?) for Halloween, and Andrew was a Native American Apparel model haha! The rest were some sort of trio.. I forgot what he said. Andrew plays a few songs from his Ipod, including the "weirdest song you will ever hear." That's all I really remember.

MGMT Halloween show(s)

2008-11-01T08:38:00.000-07:00

The guys are a Mariachi band? I'm guessing?

Happy Halloween everyone

2008-10-31T20:40:00.001-07:00

^Credit: I'm not sure who edited this but it wasn't me. Whoever did though, nice job!

Enjoy these MGMT related Halloween pictures.

Info for Andrew radio appearance

2008-10-31T17:01:00.000-07:00

The radio station happens to be EST. So if you are living in a Pacific time zone, 11am is the time you need to tune in.

Andrew on the radio November 1st

2008-10-30T21:15:00.000-07:00

CREDIT, posted by East Village Radio. If you can tune in- then do it! I know I'll be listening. I'm going to figure out how to record it so I can post it here... Unless they have it uploaded themselves? I hope it's in Pacific time :\

"EVR DJ Alert: MGMT Frontman Stops by Gay Beach Nov.1 2pm
MGMT Tune into Gay Beach Saturday, November 1 from 2 to 4 p.m., when Tedward welcomes MGMT mastermind Andrew VanWyngarden to the show. When VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser formed MGMT as Wesleyan undergrads in 2002, the duo was as much a performance art project as it was a band, and their 2005 debut EP Time To Pretend was a skeletal synth-rock record that barely hinted at what was to come. But since the release of last year's outstanding Dave Fridmann-produced Oracular Spectacular (Columbia), a much more expansive and musically varied album, the duo has scored three hit singles in the UK, toured with Of Montreal and Beck, appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, and made the cover of SPIN. So, yeah, things are going well. Most people even know by now that the band name is pronounced "management."

Anonymous:

2008-10-29T00:40:00.000-07:00

Why yes, it probably was here that you saw that video. I'll post it again for you :)

New videos

2008-10-29T00:06:00.000-07:00

These are MTV clips. Ben and Andrew talk about the videos that are being played.

MGMT |MTV Music

^"November Rain" Gun N' Roses (Aka G n' R)

MGMT |MTV Music

^"Pepper" Butthole Surfers

MGMT |MTV Music

^"Paranoid Android" Radiohead (I guess this is before they played a show with Radiohead, and before Andrew stopped wearing headbands.)

MGMT |MTV Music

^"Closer" Nine Inch Nails - I totally lost them when he started asking Ben how he wrote the song haha.

MGMT |MTV Music

^"Been Caught Stealing" Jane's addiction

MGMT |MTV Music

^"Black Hole Sun" Soundgarden

MGMT |MTV Music

^"Would?" Alice In Chains (Hahaha @ Andrew sounding like that part in Reading Rainbow where the kids recommend books to read.)

MGMT |MTV Music

^"Under The Bridge" Red Hot Chili Peppers

____________________________________

MGMT |MTV Music

^On their writing process. "Just do what feels good." :)

MGMT |MTV Music

^On pop music.

And uh... Pete Wentz on "Time To Pretend"

Fall Out Boy |MTV Music

Seems like he doesn't really "get" the song. It's not all about moving to France... and "Management"?? It's M-G-M-T Ok thanks.

______________________________________

Anywho, that's about it. Enjoy :)

"My electric eel is a happy meal"

2008-10-28T02:44:00.000-07:00

Old, and posted before. But I just noticed the variation at 2:32

That could so be in a McDonald's commercial but then people might start asking what an "electric eel" actually is.

andrew shows off his arms

2008-10-28T01:31:00.000-07:00

Kind of pointless, but...

and another from Brazil

2008-10-28T01:25:00.000-07:00

Interview in Brazil;

2008-10-28T01:24:00.001-07:00

and it's in video :)

"MGMT BOYS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN"

2008-10-26T10:21:00.001-07:00

CREDIT

_________________________________
"Andrew VanWyngarden is a softie. That is, when it comes to tacos.

"I'm taco-obsessive," says VanWyngarden, half of the electric-pop-indie-rock buzz band MGMT, calling during a five-hour layover at the Mexico City airport. "I would never venture into hard-shell taco territory."

He may be a loyalist when it comes to Mexican food, but upon listening to the synthesized musical circus that is "Oracular Spectacular," the group's debut album, it's obvious he and band member Ben Goldwasser ain't afraid to try new things. In fact, they formed the band by accident during their freshman year at Wesleyan University.

"We just bonded over making synthesizer noises and laughing at the crazy sounds we'd make," says the 25-year-old. "It really wasn't us trying to start a band."

Regardless of whether they knew what they were doing, he and Goldwasser are now riding the wave toward superstardom - almost literally.

"I actually dream about surfing all the time," says VanWyngarden, who with Goldwasser has supported groups like Radiohead, gotten praise from legends like Debbie Harry and been featured on hit TV shows like "Gossip Girl." "But I really don't even now how to surf."

Enjoying the ride, on the other hand, is another thing.

While in town opening for Beck a few weeks ago, VanWyngarden hit up the super- secret Prince show and had a little too much fun.

"There was free tequila. The last thing I remember was 'Purple Rain,' " he says. "Then I woke up the next morning."

Well there may not be free alcohol at MGMT's "Halloween Spectacular" Thursday at Webster Hall and Friday at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, but there will be costumes.

"We have some good ideas," he says. "We hope it'll be a freaky scene."

In fact, the group originally thought of asking fans to dress the same. "We thought it'd be funny to have an audience full of nuns or ghosts," he jokes, "but that kind of limits your individual expression."

And considering the eccentricity this act brought to the ring, it certainly wouldn't want that."

Spin puts a handful of MGMT remixes available for download:

2008-10-25T22:12:00.000-07:00

Click here to be directed to the page.

I'm not a huge fan of remixes, but I downloaded them anyways.

Spin Magazine

2008-10-22T14:40:00.001-07:00

MGMT: Head Games

In two strange years, MGMT have gone from campus lark to psych-pop superstars and ragtag fashion icons. Now these merry pranksters have to figure out how to keep the career they didn't even know they wanted, without losing their minds.

Andrew Vanwyngarden and Ben Goldwasser are talking in hushed, hurried tones to a stuffed border collie. Crouching low, noses to snout, they take turns mumbling into a BlackBerry and then holding it up to the puppy's left ear. Their furrowed brows and tender pats suggest concern. The puppy's state of mind, however, is inscrutable -- sunglasses conceal his eyes, and his furry tongue dangles jauntily. A leafy sprig hangs from the scarf tied around his noggin. Perhaps he be tripping.

Ten yards away, barricaded in front of Toronto's tony department store Holt Renfrew for the Toronto International Film Festival kickoff bash, paparazzi and camera crews grow visibly anxious. They've been told that MGMT, the party's main attraction (and stars of sponsor Converse's new ad campaign), are on their way. "There they are!" yells a woman, pointing her microphone. The 25-year-olds stroll toward the black carpet, possibly addled stuffed pooch in hand. They stop in front of the logo-laden backdrop, and an onslaught of flashbulbs and questions begins -- "How do you like Toronto?" "Are you going to see any films?" "Are you excited to be here?"—none of which they answer. Then, finally, a howling voice gets through: "Who are you with?"

"Chauncey," VanWyngarden replies, walking away.

The reporters are not amused. "What, no interview?" one man cries. "This is ridiculous!" Chauncey and his handlers leave without another word to take refuge in the store's makeshift greenroom. VanWyngarden removes the dog's shades to reveal two amber plastic globes. "He's thinking about decorating his loft with Lebanese furniture," he says to no one in particular, giggling.

VanWyngarden -- the shaggy, Marc Bolan–esque dandy -- is in good spirits, despite being exhausted from the previous evening. MGMT performed at a New York Fashion Week party, complete with attendant Olsen twin, but he doesn't remember actually playing. He does remember drinking a lot of Maker's Mark and "trying really hard to stay in control," but not throwing pillows at security or fleeing into the streets or stumbling into a homeless shelter. "I guess I was pissed off at the party," he says. He recalls getting thrown out of the shelter, whiskey bottle in hand, and being picked up on a sidewalk by two ladies who gave him water; he woke up at 5:30 in the morning on their futon. Goldwasser -- intense, dark-eyed, and mercurial -- looks at his partner in disbelief and sheepishly offers, "This is not typical for us."

What's considered typical for MGMT is changing by the minute. The group began as a joke designed to annoy their college classmates, then scored a major-label deal without even trying and played Letterman before their debut album, Oracular Spectacular -- a spacey cycle of catchy psych pop steeped, sonically and aesthetically, in a world they call "future '70s" -- was released. Since then, they've played every big festival around the world, toured with Radiohead, sold nearly 200,000 albums in the U.S., and become unlikely fashion-world icons. At a time when a band's cultural cachet is often exhausted before their album even comes out, MGMT's steady rise, a full ten months after Oracular's release, feels suitably anachronistic.

Picking at the vegetables and hummus in the greenroom are the duo's longtime friends enlisted for their live band: guitarist James Richardson, bassist Matt Asti, and drummer Will Berman. In the corner are three of Chauncey's pals -- or, as specified in the standard MGMT rider, an "assortment of puppies." Aside from playing a live set, they've all agreed, their two managers included, to moonlight as DJs at the party, taking turns in pairs. "I want to DJ with Ben," VanWyngarden says. He beams goofily toward Goldwasser, who smiles shyly back. Goldwasser slides headphones on and scours his laptop for a playlist. Pizza is ordered, drinks are made, and Kirsten Dunst, who's been linked to VanWyngarden, flickers on a nearby TV.

Down an escalator, past mahogany shelves full of cashmere sweaters, cakes and cookies have been strewn across a long table beside hills of shrimp on ice. L.A.-style cougars meander in new dresses. Jeremy Piven is lurking. The black- and-white-checked dance floor, where no one dared tread all night, quickly fills as the band takes the stage, puppies in tow. Even Phoenix Suns point guard and real-life Canadian Steve Nash, who had been holding up the wall, sways in his designer suit. Halfway through MGMT's last song, the euphoric, synth-driven anthem "Kids," VanWyngarden unbuttons his shirt, tears the fluffy innards out of a white poodle, and sticks the hollowed body on his head, the jet-set crowd cheering his flair for accessorizing.

An hour later, the guys congregate in VanWyngarden's Four Seasons suite, a step up from their usual less-than-five-star, two-to-a-room digs. VanWyngarden orders crème brûlée and chocolate ice cream from room service and then draws two heads (one human, one elephant) on a sketch pad to start an exquisite corpse, passing it on to Asti for the body. Joints are rolled and verses are invented; an ode to their pizza dinner is born. "Gorgonzola? / Are you out of controlla? / All I want is mozzarella and tomatoes with ma soda," sings VanWyngarden. "Hey," he calls out, "is it too late to get a massage?"

anWyngarden and Goldwasser met in 2001 as freshman music majors at Wesleyan, an out-there liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut, that encourages absurdist self-expression the way MIT encourages studying. They lived in the clothing-optional, artist-populated dorms known as WestCo, where minutes of student meetings are chronicled in a journal called "The Book of Love." As president of his building, VanWyngarden organized parties and concerts, including ones for Zonker Harris Day, the annual bacchanal at which, as Goldwasser puts it, "People who wouldn't normally eat mushrooms eat mushrooms."

If the hoary rock-star-as-rebel myth isn't dead yet, MGMT should kill it off once and for all, as they're well-adjusted kids who dote on Mom and Dad, internalizing their parents' values rather than reacting against them. "I didn't find out until I was older that they were hippies," says Goldwasser, whose mom is a gardener and father a veterinarian. "When I realized how big a deal it was to be a part of something like that, I became really fascinated with the '60s." VanWyngarden's mom is a former photographer who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her painter boyfriend, and his dad is editor of the alternative newspaper Memphis Flyer. "I didn't smoke pot with them until I was in college," VanWyngarden says. "And they were just like anyone else, giggling and getting the munchies."

Though their parents were progressive, the pair's formative years were spent in conservative towns -- Goldwasser grew up in Westport, New York (population 1,287), and VanWyngarden in Memphis -- so Wesleyan was a place they could unfurl their freak flags. "We bonded over it suddenly being cool to be weird," Goldwasser says. Christening themselves the Management (they later changed the name to avoid confusion with another band), they started writing ridiculous-by-design songs in different genres and singing karaoke-style to an iPod at unhinged campus shows, the first of which saw them play a 45-minute instrumental of the Ghostbusters theme.

"We were less about quality, more about absurdity," VanWyngarden recalls. "We were trying to be obnoxious, but somehow people got into it," adds Goldwasser. They had other outlets: Goldwasser played various instruments in classic-rock and blues, prog, and indie bands; VanWyngarden dabbled in an '80s monster ballads band, a Patsy Cline cover band, and a hip-hop group. But it was their infectious, sharp-witted songs like "Kids" and "Time to Pretend," a potentially prophetic ode to the hedonistic, rock-star trajectory ("Let's make some music / Make some money / Find some models for wives"), that made others take them seriously, even if they themselves didn't.

Wesleyan students began circulating CD-Rs to friends at other schools along the Eastern seaboard, so MGMT took their show on the road. At Princeton, guys in pink polos and seersucker shorts sang along from the front row. An a cappella group at the University of Virginia added "Kids" to their repertoire. Two NYU students, Will Griggs and Jesse Israel, became hooked and wanted to manage them. "The first time I saw Andrew, he was frolicking on a field around a giant inflatable bear," Griggs recalls. He and Israel joined forces with a high school student from L.A., Nick Panama, who felt similarly compelled, scrounging up $800 each to form Cantora Records and, they hoped, record the first MGMT EP. But it took some convincing.

"We were shocked," Goldwasser says. "They were the first people who thought of us as a real band -- we definitely didn't." After releasing the Time to Pretend EP in January 2005, they celebrated their graduation that summer by touring with fellow glam oddballs Of Montreal. But rather than capitalize on this momentum, MGMT simply ceased to be -- Goldwasser stayed in Middletown for six months before spending a summer building eco-friendly straw-bale houses near the Catskills, while VanWyngarden landed in Brooklyn, living with a girlfriend and only sporadically looking for jobs on Craigslist. By fall 2006, Goldwasser moved to Brooklyn as well, but pursuing the band further wasn't a priority.

Meanwhile, Maureen Kenny, an A&R rep at Columbia Records, was trying to track them down. An intern had slipped her the EP, which Kenny couldn't stop listening to. When she finally found them and brought them to Manhattan's Peninsula Hotel for some old-fashioned wining and dining, Kenny recalls, "They ordered the most expensive drinks -- $24 Bellinis -- and Andrew asked if they'd get fur coats. And then they e-mailed me a dream list of producers that included Barack Obama and 'not Sheryl Crow.' "

Their sincere choice was Dave Fridmann, who sprinkled similar stardust on the Flaming Lips. VanWyngarden and Goldwasser spent the winter of 2007 writing new tunes and recording demos, which Fridmann passed on to the Lips' Wayne Coyne. ("We listened thinking, 'What do they need a producer for?' " Coyne recalls. "They already knew what they wanted.") When it came time to record at Fridmann's Tarbox Road Studios in bucolic Cassadaga, New York, the duo played every instrument, as they later did on the recently released 14-minute single "Metanoia." "They have this twin-style communication between them," Fridmann says. "Their musical discovery is happening really quickly; they're just plowing through."

The process wasn't without bumps, however. Lines like "We're gonna keep you on the run / We got the handshake under our tongue" on "The Handshake," one of Oracular Spectacular's darker songs, betray reservations about even signing with Columbia. "The handshake is the deal," VanWyngarden says. "I was thinking about a mental asylum, when a patient tricks the nurse by keeping the pills under his tongue, then spits them out when she walks away."

Read the entire MGMT feature in the Nov. 2008 issue of SPIN, on newsstands now.

____________________________________

If I get out to the store soon, I'm going to buy this and scan for you guys. But that's if I get a ride! Enjoy guys

CREDIT

Memphis Flyer mentions MGMT again

2008-10-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

Credit-
In two strange years, MGMT have gone from campus lark to psych-pop superstars and ragtag fashion icons. Now these merry pranksters have to figure out how to keep the career they didn't even know they wanted, without losing their minds ...

Former Memphian Andrew VanWyngarden (right) and MGMT bandmate Ben Goldwasser made the cover of this month's Spin. Read the story here.

Andrew's "Festival Guide"

2008-10-21T20:26:00.000-07:00

This is from May 08 though.
CREDIT

Where is my mind?

If you end up remembering anything from 2008's festival season, you clearly weren't there. Psychedelic indie crusaders MGMT tell Sam Richards how to take your brain to another dimension ..

A music festival is a place you go to lose your mind, only to find it again when you're taking your tent down, coated in mud, warm lager and chilli noodles. Psychedelic pop pups MGMT, experts in the field of temporary mind misplacement, are due to unveil their Oracular Spectacular at all the major summer festivals. Here are frontman Andrew VanWyngarden's tips for joining them in the fourth dimension.

Dress for excess

"I have a pair of polar fleece pants that I really want to wear at Glastonbury, along with maybe some African-inspired patterns. At Reading I might go for some brightly coloured spandex tights. I would love it if everyone there was wearing brightly coloured spandex tights along with me. It would make me feel a bit better about my outfit, for a start."

Meditate to accumulate

"Recently I've been reading a Daniel Pinchbeck book called 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl and something called Undoing Yourself with Energized Meditation and Other Devices. They're loosely based on Crowley's theories of Satanism although they scare me a little bit because people always say that if you start down that path, bad things will begin happening to your family and friends. When I'm at Glastonbury I'd like to talk to a psychic or get a tarot card reading, but obviously I'm a little bit apprehensive about the chain of events I might set in motion."

Unleash the beast

"At one festival I ended up on stage in what I believe was a dog costume, during a Flaming Lips set. They have crew members whose whole job is to go into the crowd and find the people who wear the costumes. Everybody who works for the Flaming Lips talks as if they're on acid: 'Children, you're going to have a really good time with us!' It's freaky!"

Stay positive

"Remember that horrible time at Woodstock 1999 when Limp Bizkit played and everything was on fire and girls were getting raped? It could have probably been avoided if people maintained a positive outlook and were getting better vibes from the stage."

Don't eat the yellow snow

"But you could try the mushroom chocolates. Someone gave me a mushroom chocolate at a festival once and I liked the taste of it so much I ate the whole thing. I spent the rest of the night pretending to drive a car while listening to Walk On the Wild Side over and over."

Proceed with caution

"Wear sun block and make sure you stay hydrated. People can get brain haemorrhages and die at festivals so BE CAREFUL! Festivals are serious, dangerous places ..." (Dude, you're seriously freaking us out now - Good Vibes Ed.)

___________________________________
Mmm, chocolate shrooms.

Here's an old phone interview

2008-10-17T22:28:00.000-07:00

with Andrew, from back in January. But like the other interviews lately- I HAVEN'T READ IT >:l
So I'll post it, in case you haven't either ^_^

"White-hot buzz act MGMT thumbed its nose at indie snobs by signing with a major label.

For reasons that are entirely understandable, surreal is a word that Andrew VanWyngarden uses repeatedly when he talks about where he finds himself at the moment with MGMT. A couple of years back, he was happily working odd jobs around New York City, his days of playing college keggers with his musical partner, Ben Goldwasser, nothing more than a Pabst Blue Ribbon–blurred memory. Today, thanks to a handful of demos they originally made for their own amusement, the men of MGMT find themselves a white-hot buzz act. If you happened to tune into the Late Show With David Letterman earlier this January, you might have seen VanWyngarden and Goldwasser making their network-television debut, clad in Count Dracula–issue black capes and singing about banging heroin in Paris, choking on their own vomit, and fucking supermodels in the dreamy rocker “Time to Pretend”. You just knew that somewhere in red-state America, Ma and Pa Kettle were sitting there staring at the boob tube muttering “Goddamn surreal.”

“The songs that we’ve written have taken on a new life,” says an awed-sounding VanWyngarden on his cellphone from MGMT’s tour van, winding its way through the Arizona desert. “We wrote them as a complete joke, and now we’re on David Letterman singing them. That’s really, really strange.”

Andrew VanWyngarden sounds off on the things that enquiring minds want to know.

On the early days of MGMT: “We never played shows outside of school, and back then it was mostly electronic. But we would joke around what life was going to be like when we sell out and become huge rock stars. That’s kind of what ‘Time to Pretend’ is about.”

On being labelled: “I think people hear us and think ‘ ’80s’. We listen to a ton of music from the ’80s, but we’re not synth-pop fans… We like bands like Suicide and Chrome.”

On playing Vancouver: “We’re going to be there on my birthday…I’m going to celebrate and take in all that Vancouver has to offer. I’ve heard that the sushi and the weed are both topnotch.”

On getting the brushoff from David Letterman: “We didn’t even shake his hand, which was kind of weird because supposedly he always shakes the band’s hands.…I didn’t take it personally, because it’s possible the show was running long. But maybe he thought we were dirty or something.”

The just-released debut album Oracular Spectacular has been MGMT’s official ticket to the twilight zone. VanWyngarden and Goldwasser make their goals for world conquest clear right off the top on the aforementioned “Time to Pretend”, which gives ’70s glam a microchip-jacked robo-rock make-over. The irony-obsessed turds of Chromeo would give up their vintage Rolands for “4th Dimensional Transition”, which sounds like Major Tom crashing into a planet Earth ruled by circa-’82 Duran Duran. And, proving that MGMT knows its rock history, based on the convincingly sleazy “Pieces of What” you can easily imagine VanWyngarden and Goldwasser hitting the Jack and the blow with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards backstage at Altamont.

The genre-jumping Oracular Spectacular finds VanWyngarden and Goldwasser recording for Sony, which, if you think about it, is at this point about 20 times as punk rock as toiling for Sub Pop, Merge, or Matador. At a time when everyone left of Nickelback has fled the majors, MGMT decided that signing to a floundering mega-corp seemed like rebel cool. If nothing else, they figured they’d be pissing off the kind of hipsters who abandon their favourite bands the second they get too big for house parties.

“We decided we’d try and go through the heart of the beast,” VanWyngarden notes. “It seemed like a good way to mess with people’s expectations.”

If signing with a multinational corporation didn’t do it, landing on a late-2007 Rolling Stone list of 10 bands to watch practically guaranteed a backlash.

“Things have been a bit awkward for us,” VanWyngarden admits. “There’s been this big hype thing because of Rolling Stone and the major-label thing. Some people maybe come to us with a bit of a bias, especially if they are indie-rock snobs. What’s weird is that we never really asked for all the attention that we’ve been getting.”

He’s not being falsely modest. MGMT surfaced on the Sony radar the way bands used to before MySpace created overnight success stories. A & R got ahold of a demo that had been passed along by a friend of the band, at which point VanWyngarden and Goldwasser found themselves fielding phone calls. It was evidently no big deal that they’d never played live outside of college parties or that they weren’t even sure they knew how to write a song. Once they got busy in the practice space, figuring out what was working and what wasn’t proved to be a challenge. Where most beginning acts fine-tune material by grinding it out on the club circuit for a couple of years, MGMT took a different route.

“We had months of super-intense self-doubting,” VanWyngarden says. “Everything that we did, we kept really close to our chests. We didn’t play things for anybody because we were convinced that it was terrible. Once we built up some confidence, we’d play stuff for our family and friends. Even though they told us it was good, it took a long time for us to be confident about the music we were making.”

Still, VanWyngarden obviously knew he was on to something with Oracular Spectacular. A year or so ago, he was all set to enlist with Of Montreal as a touring guitarist but he opted instead to take the road less-assured with MGMT.

Today, with the band’s shows selling out across North America, his only worry is that what he and Goldwasser are doing will somehow end up being taken the wrong way. Rolling Stone compared the band—which plays live as a five-piece—to a mixture of Satanic-era Rolling Stones and Ween, but synth-rockers like the Prince-tastic “Electric Feel” also suggest that the duo has more than a passing fondness for the 15-minute late-’90s electroclash phenomenon. Such tracks have led to charges that the two members of MGMT are more eager to play musical smart-asses than be taken seriously. If life wasn’t so surreal these days, that accusation might shock VanWyngarden more.

“We really like and respect Ween, but we don’t ever want to be grouped into this thing where people think we are making joke music,” he says. “We think our music is really sincere, even though some of it is tongue-in-cheek. We did this EP called We Care/We Don’t Care, which sort of sums us up. What we’ve always been about is contradictions.”

MGMT plays the Bourbon on Friday (February 1)."

__________________________________________

CREDIT

Poeple who like Red Bull shouldn't be trusted.

2008-10-17T22:06:00.000-07:00

If you can't read then:

"i hope andrew doesnt die in a car accident cos that would be terrible cuz hes hot and has a lot of talent, so yeah i hope he never gets in a car with that fabiola ever again and if he does then i hope hes driving cos girls like her are always on drugs and probably drunk cuz of the music scene and she seems irresponsible and i read she likes red bull and people who like red bull shouldnt be trusted. so yeah she’ll probably crash the car and kill him. like it happened to that other guy."

Hahahahahahahahahahhahaha

genius

Pictures

2008-10-17T17:14:00.000-07:00

Credit: Cory Kennedy's uber blog thing.

Hank & Kuroma

2008-10-17T16:21:00.000-07:00

CREDIT

"When you consider how much our culture idolizes rock musicians -- let alone members of a high-profile successful band -- it takes a brave person to walk away from one of the world’s biggest “it” groups to follow your own musical destiny.

Hank Sullivant has done it twice.

The founding bass player for Athens Georgia’s The Whigs, Sullivant left the band after four years and a “demoralizing RCA development deal” in 2006 to pursue his ever-evolving solo project Kuroma. Sticking it out just long enough to see the release of Give 'Em All a Big Fat Lip on Dave Matthews’ ATO Records, the label to which the band is now home on and achieving phenomenal success.

“It was my senior year of college and we recorded all the songs that we had, which was really great because it kind of cataloged everything I had done with them.” Sullivant tells me over beers at a bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side prior to a show. “Even before we released the album I wrote about 5 or 6 of the songs that landed on the Kuroma album. I just started writing songs that didn’t really have much to do with The Whigs sound. So even by the time we signed to ATO I was thinking of doing my own thing.”

Hank Sullivant
[Hank Sullivant]

His “own thing,” Kuroma has taken shape in the two formative years since leaving The Whigs. But as he was finishing up the recording of his solo debut, an old high school friend gave him a ring.

“I had already recorded the Kuroma album when Andrew [VanWyngarden] called me and asked to come to NY and practice all summer and then do a tour. I thought I was going to do one tour, but I stayed committed until March.”

While some publications have begun to unfairly classify any band that has come in contact with MGMT as a bastardized version of the privileged band, the reality is that Kuroma is more about a musician who's spent the last few years of his life in the immense shadow of two very successful groups rather than being influenced by either. In person, Sullivant is confident yet humble, wanting to tell his story in his words -- through his music -- but finding it hard to define what that story is.

“I kind of figure that out for myself everyday,” Hank summarizes when posed with the question of how he would like to be presented to the world. “I think [my music] will develop into something very cohesive and very well structured, hopefully remaining in it’s own little universe unto itself.”

Remaining in his own little world is the one place Sullivant seems comfortable. While Kuroma's debut Paris has been somewhat of an Internet phenom, there is no MySpace page to speak of and his website consists only of his record. As unassuming in nature as his persona, the songs on Paris give the impression that there is a genius at work, but one who doesn’t want the world to get too close.

“ I can’t help but be extremely careful about the way it’s put out there. The idea is to create your own world of art. It isn’t supposed to be reclusive. ”
Hank Sullivant

“I like it best when I’m in the studio alone with an engineer,” Sullivant admits. “I didn’t really set a blueprint before I decided to give a CD to someone. I mean, I think it’s less some minded exclusiveness, it’s not even about some deliberate hit making. I can’t help but be extremely careful about the way it’s put out there. The idea is to create your own world of art. It isn’t supposed to be reclusive.”

Hank Sullivant

The irony behind his demeanor is that his songs are rife with self-assurance and swagger, especially on stage. During Kuroma’s performance on this night, the only words he spoke were, “Hi, we’re Kuroma from Athens Georgia.” This is no exaggeration. But musically, his performance was gushing with confidence. With an almost cocky, classic rock vibe mixed with Sullivant’s airy vocals, Kuroma could lazily be summarized as a comfortable medium between his two previous bands; a place where southern garage rock meets light psychedelic electro-pop. Not far removed from the song “Sister Golden Hair” by America, which was the last song he listened to prior to sound check. “Or maybe it was ‘That’s The Spirit’ by Judie Sill” he interjects. As the conversation turns to his music, it’s easy to see that he feels most comfortable in this world.

MP3 Download - "I Was The Rat"

Kuroma
[Kuroma live]

“It’s like, if I want to have a part that sounds like George Harrison, I have to know exactly how to be George Harrison,” he explains, taking pride in his ability to reference without sampling -- a word he refuses to use on record. “I guess part of the overarching theme is taking noticeable extractions from old music, like in terms of these small parts themselves and the tones themselves and re-contextualizing it. It’s almost like, I’m not going to use that word...”

Another theme that stands out on Paris is the harkening back to his southern rock roots, something else Sullivant is happy to talk about. “I’d say growing up in Memphis [influenced the sound on the record]. There was definitely a period of time when I was trying to figure out every Steve Cropper lick and all I was listening to was Stax albums. Mainly because it reminded me of Memphis.”

Talking about Memphis brings out a smile from Sullivant and soon he’s talking about his first band with VanWyngarden back in high school. “We were going for funk. I don’t know what came out,” he laughs, refusing to give me the name of the band citing Andrew’s paranoia about the being outed. “Spin Magazine knows it, you can ask them.”

Hank Sullivant

The fact that he gets a kick out of talking about a musical project the MGMT front man is ashamed of is no coincidence. Hank Sullivant's greatest -- and possibly most detrimental -- attribute is his humility. By the end of our conversation, I wasn’t entirely sure if he started Kuroma as way to better express himself musically, or because he was afraid of the success he might have attained. Despite having a hand in some of this generation’s most important music, like a sane Brian Wilson, Sullivant might only be comfortable reaching a certain level of notoriety. So as we finished our beers, I pointedly asked him what his highest musical aspirations are.

“To make the most commercially accessible pop music possible. I’m not talking about being a pop star or being in commercials, just the most cosmic degree of commercialism.”

Is that sarcasm I ask?

“No.”
_____________________________________________

As you can tell, I italicised the parts where he mentions MGMT or Andrew. I'm not exactly sure what high school band he was talking about (first band with Andrew)... Glitter Penis? I think that was Andrew and someone else. Or... Accidental Mersh? If you know- please, do tell :)

Mgmt backstage?

2008-10-16T23:39:00.000-07:00

Well not really, it looks like they're outside. I can't tell

"Andrew speaks with my friend ludzu on the telephone haha i compliment"

__________________________________

Well it's short but kind of amusing.

MGMT Blast Brooklyn Music Scene

2008-10-16T16:17:00.000-07:00

Brooklyn's MGMT have a bone to pick about their homebase's music scene. (We'd argue that few would, well, argue with these young lads.) When asked by Spinner to name the band's favorite and least favorite part of the Brooklyn music scene, MGMT's Ben Goldwasser responded, "My least favorite part is that crowd's don't really know how to get excited about something unless they know that they're supposed to be excited."

We believe that's what many on the WWW refer to as the Pitchfork effect. However, Goldwasser did say that his favorite part about the Brooklyn scene is "that there are a lot of bands that are trying new things, and it's not all trying to find this one sound that everybody sounds like."

Goldwasser's co-pilot, Andrew Van Wyngarden had a different take: "My least favorite part is that it doesn't really exist. My favorite part of it is the myth of it." Checkmate.

_________________________________________________

Sounds like Ben is just trying to be nice, and Andrew doesn't give a shit. Oh and Spinner: It's 'VanWyngarden' not 'Van Wyngarden' :)

CREDIT

Wow- so on BrightCove I found-

2008-10-14T23:28:00.001-07:00

quite a few performances/interviews (oldish ones) that I have never seen. Crazy. I'm just going to post them all here. I've seen tons of their interviews, but not these. So I figured that maybe you guys haven't either. Enjoy :)

For some reason I can't get the embed code for this one. Fans getting in on the MGMT goodness :)

^MGMT MUSTARD EATING CONTEST.

This is a video with Ben, but it's not working for me. Maybe you'll be more successful.

They were sick of their songs back in April, they must hate them by now :\

(This one's code isn't working either.) So here's the link. It's an interview with Andrew.

^Interview with the whole band

(Okay so that looks like it for now. Enjoy!)

Andrew, Ben, and Kevin Barnes at a Prince show

2008-10-14T15:16:00.000-07:00

As reported in the Rolling Stone.

"Prince ramped up the energy with a version of “Purple Rain” that dripped with soul and party-starting versions of “1999″ and “3121.” The crowd was far more exclusive this time: Anderson Cooper, MGMT’s Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser and Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes mingled about while reclusive comedian Dave Chapelle hopped up during Prince’s costume change to deliver some improvised jokes."

Mgmt appears in Converse "My Drive Thru" making

2008-10-14T14:58:00.000-07:00

Thank you "Iris_Katsiki" from LJ!

Andrew @ :28
Ben @ 2:57
Andrew again @ 3:00

"that embarrassing Nirvana cover."

2008-10-13T19:49:00.001-07:00

From the official MTV website. I wish I could say,"IT WAS NOT EMBARRASSING, IT WAS SOOO GOOD!" But I wasn't there. I've been getting mixed reviews from the people who went.

Interview with BenWasser 10/13

2008-10-13T19:38:00.000-07:00

"Catching up with MGMT"
CREDIT

"On the strength of their full-length debut, Oracular Spectacular, the fellows of MGMT made a name for themselves as one of the buzziest acts to emerge from Brooklyn's indie rock hive this year. But that reputation may only be partly deserved: While co-founder and keys player Ben Goldwasser (above, left) won't deny his band's successes (they just wrapped up a tour opening for the one and only Beck, after all) he's quick to point out that their relationship to New York's hippest borough is tenuous, at best.

Goldwasser recently took a break from preparing for a night of psychedelic, candy-coated dance-rock goodness in Des Moines, Iowa, to chat with Paste:Local NYC via telephone about not actually being from Brooklyn, crazed European fans, Halloween costumes and more.

Paste: Your record has been doing great and receiving positive press. How do you feel about it becoming so popular?
Goldwasser: It feels good to be able to do something you love for a living. I think there are a lot of things we were unprepared to deal with, like getting all of this attention. We didn’t expect to be on the road this much. We’re kind of wearing ourselves out. But all in all, it’s been amazing experience.

Paste: How’s the tour with Beck going?
Goldwasser: It’s been really great. He’s really nice. His whole crew is really nice. They are treating us well. We’re playing in the biggest clubs we’ve played, every night. We go on really early, like at 7:30 or 8, so we’re not playing to totally packed houses. It’s good practice for us to try to play for a crowd that isn’t necessarily there to see us. We have to try to win them over.

Paste: Tell me a little bit about playing Brooklyn’s McCarren Park Pool this summer, when thousands of people were turned away because it was so packed.
Goldwasser: McCarren’s cool. I hadn’t been to other shows there, but it kind of felt like a homecoming. We don’t really consider ourselves a Brooklyn band, like some who grew up there or lived there for a long time, but we have a ton of friends there, more than anywhere else. When we played McCarren it felt like we hadn’t played New York in a while. It was a good crowd. It’s also really cool to see people get dressed up for our shows.

Paste: What did they wear?
Goldwasser: People associate us with headbands for some reason, so a lot of people were wearing headbands. And brightly-colored outfits.

Paste: Are you okay with being claimed by Brooklyn?
Goldwasser: We’re okay with it, but I get pissed off when people say we are the ones claiming to be from Brooklyn. I live in New Jersey and Andrew doesn’t have a place in Brooklyn right now. But we’re still based there, I guess. We feel at home there.

Paste: Then where would you say you are from?
Goldwasser: I’d say Connecticut, because that’s where we started the band. But the people in the band are from all over.

Paste: You start your headlining tour in Europe next month. What are you looking forward to about going abroad?
Goldwasser: We’ve been there a bunch of times, but it’s our first really big headlining tour there. That’ll be fun. Every time we go back to Europe, the crowds get crazier.

Paste: How so?
Goldwasser: There are more people, and they are more into it. They know the words to all of our songs. We have some pretty intense fans in Europe.

Paste: Do they throw headbands on stage?
Goldwasser: No, but our fans do throw stuff onstage.

Paste: Like what?
Goldwasser: Weird articles of clothing. I think someone once threw a joint.

Paste: Can you tell us anything about the new record? Are you feeling pressure to get something new out there?
Goldwasser: We’ve been having a hard time writing, but we stop touring in December and are taking a few months to write and record at the beginning of next year. Most of the pressure is coming from us. We are sick of playing the same songs over and over. We love playing live, but recording is a big part of what we do and we really love working in studio.

Paste: What will it be like?
Goldwasser: It’s too early to tell. We’ve been inspired by playing songs off the album live, figuring out what works and what doesn’t. We’re going to be less inhibited creatively on the next album, not quite as nervous. We’re just going to have fun with it. We might do a double album. It’ll come out maybe next summer.

Paste: What are you going to be for Halloween?
Goldwasser: We’ve had some ideas for costumes but I always seem to procrastinate and then, all of a sudden, it’s Halloween and I have nothing to wear. But Halloween is one my favorite holidays. Everyone goes a little crazy. Last year we played in Athens, GA. It was amazing. Everyone in the crowd was dressed up.

Paste: Did you dress up?
Goldwasser: I was a matador. James [Richardson], the drummer at the time, who’s now the guitarist, was a king in silk panties. The bassist, Matthew [Asti], was Clifford the Big Red Dog. Hank [Sullivant, former guitarist] was Audrey Hepburn, and Andrew [VanWyngarden, MGMT co-founder, vocalist and guitarist] was a Viking.

Paste: Well based on that, I can’t wait to see what you come up with this year.
Goldwasser: We’re trying to coordinate. But knowing us, who knows if that will happen.

(For you NYC folks, MGMT will return to town for their 2008 Halloween Spectacular, playing Webster Hall on Oct. 30 and the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Oct. 31.)"

_________________________________________

I wish people threw joints at me.

Will...

2008-10-13T15:38:00.000-07:00

Oh, Will.

'The Youth' unofficial music video

2008-10-11T23:51:00.001-07:00

Tons of you already saw it, so I'm not going to post it. If you haven't seen it then type in 'the youth music video' on youtube- I'm sure it'll pop up. To be quite honest, I don't really like it. It does not enhance or give justice to the song itself. :\

Andrew joins Of Montreal on stage

2008-10-11T23:39:00.000-07:00

@ Roseland Ballroom

and plays guitar for 'Smells Like Teen Spirits' (Nirvana cover)Watch the video here:

Reported here, here, and various other concert go-ers.

MRTC.TV with MGMT!

2008-10-11T15:37:00.000-07:00

Skip to 4:30
"People do a lot of stuff that hurts, you know, in order to get off"
LOL

& Part two:

I advise to skip this one. It's all music vids and commercials

Part 3

Oracular Spectacular is the soundtrack to you stuffing your balls in someone's butthole (I can't really tell if he said bucket or butthole or anus @_@)

Part 4

and I don't even know if this one includes MGMT at all because I just skimmed through it- and didn't see them.

I love how serious Andrew is throughout the interview

For those of you who:

2008-10-09T22:40:00.001-07:00

1. Think MGMT's live show is pre-recorded (someone in a forum accused them of this) Click on the picture above. I woudln't doubt the 'exception of Kids' because... well this.

and

2. Were too late on downloading the Roger cover (by Laid Back) that MGMT did awhile back. Well I decided to upload it for those of you who are wanting it. Click here to be redirected to the download link.

Andrew drops his guitar during a show

2008-10-09T22:29:00.000-07:00

It's not a huge deal but it's still kind of funny :) Also, it's in the beginning around :04 seconds. So you don't have to watch the whole thing.

"Beck/MGMT – The Sound Academy, Toronto October 5th 2008"

2008-10-09T16:44:00.000-07:00

CREDIT

"Beck was nearly good enough to make me forget about a stellar opening set by MGMT. As MGMT’s opening set began with a jaw-dropping run through of “The Handshake” I naively contemplated that MGMT might be poised to blow Beck right off the stage. A tripped out and extended “4th Dimensional Transition” showcased the band’s growing confidence, and spot on versions of “Electric Feel” and “Kids” sparked a crowd that seemed equally excited to see MGMT as they would be to see Beck.

Oracular Spectacular is an exquisite first album from MGMT, and VanWynGarden and Goldwasser have worked hard to craft a flowing and impressive live set. MGMT has some ground to make up before they take that headlining slot away from Beck but they certainly aren’t sitting in his shadow. I have rarely experienced a complete night of music such as this and this show will sit in my top five for the year.
Myles LaCavera

You can catch an interview with Mr. Goldwasser of MGMT from a short while ago archived HERE. A few State-side dates are left for Beck’s current tour in New York and L.A. Modern Guilt and MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular are available for purchase online and at traditional retailers."

'ACL Interviews: MGMT'

2008-10-08T22:02:00.000-07:00

(Lol ^)

CREDIT

"During ACL weekend, we met up with Ben and Andrew of MGMT to ask them a few questions about life and music. Full interview can be read after the jump.

ATH: You guys seem like you’ve been doing a lot of festivals. Do you have a preference for festivals or shows in clubs?

MGMT: I prefer club shows personally. Especially when we’re doing our own show and it feels great getting in front of a crowd that you know is mainly there to see your band. At festivals, people are just sort of wandering by, which can be cool too because they’ll stop and check you out but it’s not like a club. Also, sound wise, festivals work better for bands that have simpler sounds and simpler set ups. We have a lot going on so we benefit from a full sound check. We’ve been having a lot of fun at festivals though. We started out this year playing at Coachella and that was one of the first big shows we’d ever played and a lot of people were already hyping us up to be the thing to check out at festivals. We got on stage there and we were so nervous and it was really crazy.

ATH: You seem like you’ve gotten big and gained a lot of fans rather quickly. Why do you think that is and what’s it like blowing up so fast?

MGMT: I don’t think we feel entitled to it or we put in the effort to begin with. I think there are a lot of people that deserve it more than we do and we’re lucky to be getting this attention. Hopefully it’s for the right reason and people actually like our music and not just the hype around it. We just want to be appreciated for the music we make and hopefully that’s the case.

ATH: Your sound seems to mix a lot of different things from a lot of different places. Try giving me a few adjectives that describe your sound.

MGMT: Swirling, cerebrial, funky, detached, electro and whimsical. I think we get whimsical a lot even though I personally don’t think that describes us.

ATH: What are some new bands you’re currently into or some old bands that are heavy on the playlist right now?

MGMT: The new RTX album that isn’t out yet. We played a show with them in LA and got an advance copy of their album and it’s so ahead of everything else right now that no one’s gonna understand it. I also still listen to Television Personalities a lot. They are probably one of the best bands in history and no one knows it. We played a couple of shows with them in England and their guitar player actually used to be a street musician in Austin.

ATH: How about some bands at ACL that you want to check out?

MGMT: We’re playing at the same time as Spiritualized which happens at every festival pretty much. David Byrne is also one of those performers that makes you feel good about yourself and it’s not all about him. I know they’re are a ton of bands playing but I haven’t really looked at a list recently other than those two.

ATH: You guys opened for Radiohead in England. What was that like?

MGMT: Very memorable, I was so happy. Cricket Stadium holds like 45,000 people so it was crazy. We thought it was some sort of big prank before we met them. We were picturing this episode of South Park with this kid who is the big bully and his favorite band is Radiohead and they all just tell him he’s a wuss. It was a really great experience though. They are all just really nice guys and I think we did a pretty good job. It is a pretty crazy crowd that they have though cause they can do all sorts of crazy experimental stuff and still sell millions of records. They have a very loyal fan base and hopefully someday we will too.

ATH: You have an album in the works. What’s it going to sound like?

MGMT: It’s going to be one of the best albums ever recorded. It will be criminally underrated and under appreciated. It’s just going to be more of the same though going in all directions at once. I think we are maybe looking for a next summer release on that.

ATH: Do you have any pressure to follow up the popularity of Oracular Spectacular?

MGMT: Probably so, but we don’t pay no mind. I think we have a good idea of the direction we want to go in but I don’t think that writing another single is something that we are really concerned with right now. I think, if anything, people will criticize it for not having as catchy of songs on it but who knows. We are talking about something that doesn’t exist so who knows really. I don’t think we’ll try to be super experimental or anything but maybe just take more of a natural approach with it. On this album, we were trying to see how far we could stretch ourselves and pack as many things into 40 minutes as possible. I think this time around, we’ll be more confident in the music that we make so it will be a lot more natural. Not too crazy.

ATH: We’re asking all of our ACL bands, but are you voting in ‘08? If so, who for?

MGMT: I think it’s very important that people vote this year. It’s more important that people think about who they’re voting for than listen to what a band thinks because most bands don’t really know what they’re talking about.

Thanks again to the boys in MGMT for meeting up with us. Hope the new album turns out like you want it."

"Beck & MGMT Play Covers & Originals in Chicago"

2008-10-08T21:54:00.000-07:00

CREDIT

"Friday night, before their official show at the Aragon, tourmates Beck and MGMT teamed up for an early evening set of covers/originals. (We know this because Nick B. tipped us.) The evening was organized by the Chicago radio station WXRT and took place at Martyrs. It has a start time of around 5PM, and went to about 6:15PM. Take it away, Nick:

All members of both bands, I think about 11 in total played. Everything was stripped down, all acoustic guitars, stand-up basses, banjo's, melodicas, obviously a few keyboards for different songs and kazoos. I have attached a copy of the set list but it should be noted the final song, which beck referred to as "the big payoff", was "All the young dudes" into "across the universe" into a little of "dear prudence" into "the wind" and then finally into "time to pretend" acoustic with banjo's and a melodica doing the keyboard riff. I believe the theme of the night was wind due to the windy city. The cover of blowin in the wind was also played very slow, and almost Johnny cash/tom waits/delta funeral march style, very amazing. After the final song, they didn't know what else to play so there was a little bit of free form which included another one bites the dust and others. Finally Beck and MGMT said they had to go because they had to play the actual show at the Aragon at 7:30.

We have the set list as well as video of the opener:

That's how the set began. To see where it went, check out that aforementioned set list with Nick's caveat re: the final track in mind, i.e. "the final song, which beck referred to as 'the big payoff', was 'All the young dudes' into 'across the universe' into a little of 'dear prudence' into 'the wind' and then finally into 'time to pretend' acoustic with banjo's and a melodica doing the keyboard riff." It's unclear if any of this set made it into the later Aragon event."

____________________________________________

They also have a youtube video of the first song of the set, Electric Feel.

Show review

2008-10-08T02:01:00.000-07:00

There hasn't been too much news lately. But here's a show review

CREDIT

"Beck and MGMT releases 3 months of built up tension at the Aragon
by Antonette Brotman

I stood over the sink, cupping water into my mouth from the faucet and taking stares all around. Water dribbling down my chin, I circled the bathroom a few times before finding the exit. The Aragon’s bathroom is a giant, luxurious rat maze.

Returning back to the music made me forget that my three water bottles were confiscated at the doors.

“They want you to buy stuff here,” said the bag searcher and body groper. “They have water you can buy.”

Next time, I’m hiding the contraband in my knee-high socks. She didn’t touch my feet or legs. But there was no way I was about to drop more cash on water after I took the time to stash it. Plus, the tickets weren’t cheap. Worth it, but I’m a broke kid.

The night of Thursday, October 2nd, unified a diverse audience through a conscious choice to take part in one of the best concerts ever, combining musical ingenuity and innovation. MGMT, whose popularity is growing, opened for Beck, world renowned musical mastermind.

Concerts are like sexual intimacy; not that you feel sexually bound to everyone around you, but in the sense that build up, position and lighting are all factors that can either make or break the experience.

MGMT kicked off their set with “Weekend Wars”, which got everyone excited for what was to come. It’s a good song with a nice beat, different instruments and sound effects and a flowing melody to keep listeners’ attention. All of the hits were played. “Kids” and “Time to Pretend” had everyone jumping and going nuts. By the time lead singer Andrew VanWyngarden announced the last song, we all knew what was coming. “Electric Feel” was the one song that wasn’t played, and they satisfied our craving before disembarking.

If the beginning of a show set is comparable to foreplay, I would suggest that Beck and I remain just friends. He started with “Loser” and I couldn’t have been more upset. “Loser” is best compared to Radiohead’s “Creep.” Both songs are the well-known number one hits of talented musicians who have a wide array of albums that experiment with different sounds. Radiohead, however, has vowed to never play “Creep” again for a live audience. And I wouldn’t be disappointed if Beck took up the same conviction; “Loser” gets enough airplay as it is.

A distinct difference between Beck and MGMT is career. Beck has been on the music scene since the early ’90s and has released over ten albums. His albums are so diverse that it’d be hard to please the majority at a concert; his listeners are too divided. There are the radio listeners and then there are the fans. MGMT started making music in 2004 under the name the Management. At this point, the good songs are fairly universal among those familiar with their music. This makes for a more satisfied and connected audience.

It is vital that concert-goers do not underestimate the effects of their position. This is especially crucial if a show is held at a seatless venue, which is the case with the Aragon. MGMT opened for Beck, so I remained near the front for the duration of the first set. No one was in my space, perfect for dancing, complete with a nice view of the stage.

I made a bad move before Beck came out, though. I’m talking, underneath the balcony and blocked off by support posts. Beck came out, and everyone was psyched. But I couldn’t hear anything but noise. I was no longer in the pit, but by the bar and the less interesting people. These two yuppie chicks, done up in makeup and sipping on their overpriced mixed drinks, were feeling me on the trashy sound quality. But they were too stuffy to think that maybe it was linked to location. So I left them behind in the dust. It isn’t exactly appealing to walk into a sea of people. With a deep breath, into the mess I went. I found a little spot behind the techie stall. There, I could hear the music and witness the true light show that was going on. I saw computer images before they were transferred to the stage and distorted on a giant Lite-Brite screen of color-changing bulbs. Sometimes the bulbs would completely black out, and the audience’s focus would immediately revert to the band. There are people on stage, I know I’m not the only one that almost forgot.

Lighting was more intense and coordinated for Beck. I wasn’t drawn into the lighting of MGMT, which made me feel that nothing too spectacular was going on. Somewhere midway through Beck’s set, “Devil’s Haircut” played, in which the entire ballroom was lit up with red and black lights. Welcome to Hell, I thought. It was such a contrast because while the lighting was portrayed in a creepy way to enhance the devilish part of the song, it is a pretty upbeat and groovable tune.

The people are always fun at concerts. The crowd moves and feels as one, but there is still just me. A girl dressed up like a wrapped gift, in a short dress with a red mesh bow off to the side on her head. She towered over everyone in black pumps. I enjoyed looking at her; she was part of the interesting folk. I don’t understand high heels at concerts, but that’s because I’m a different concert-goer than those who dress up. I imagine a couple of different things are going on for them—they want to feel as good as they can and they choose expression through their external components, like clothes and accessories; not only to represent how they feel inside, but also to connect with others on an image basis, it’s very sociable. When I go to concerts, however, it’s all about practicality. Glasses will fly off when I’m going crazy with my ill moves. Inside the venue, I’ll get hot, but outside I’ll be cold, so layers are key, attire-wise.

MGMT presented a very relaxed and chill atmosphere. They were simply dressed in jeans and t-shirts. They frequently switched out instruments, but never strayed from two guitars, bass, drums and keyboard. Beck showed up dressed for success: in black with long blond locks streaming from underneath his hat, which he later ditched. Keeping up with Beck’s instruments is nearly impossible for me. I know he had drums, guitars and unrecognizable machines producing computerized sounds.

Beck gave a good show, though I enjoyed MGMT much more. I bought the tickets in late July and had been waiting impatiently for the one night. Now that it is over, I can finally return to my life. But I wish the concert had never ended. The musical ecstasy was heightened through everyone’s energy. Even though everyone in the audience was doing and feeling something different and unique, all the experiences were feeding off of one another.

Everyone appreciates music differently. Some stand and watch, the stiffies. Some dance, unconcerned with the opinions of others. And then there’s the applause deal. Personally, I clap when I’m bored. Otherwise, I flash a peace sign in the air and keep on grooving.

Walking down Lawrence, I was startled by a car of five kids cranking “Electric Feel” after the show. We all were jamming out, on the street, hanging out the windows, as one."

Will @ the NY Film Festival

2008-10-07T01:34:00.000-07:00

Supporting Leah Cary who was in a film that was going to be displayed at the festival.

I don't really know the relation between him and this chick, but to be honest- I don't really care. She's gorgeous though, so I'll give her that! Here's the article mentioning him:

"The night began with a high-energy red carpet, as the premiere doubled as a reunion for the cast. Super sexy Jason Behr smiled and greeted fans... socialite and actress Lydia Hearst was radiant in a silver flapper-esque dress... hilarious Mike Landry looked dapper as ever... the unofficial "first couple" of this year's Fest, bombshell Leah Cary and MGMT bandmember Will Berman were in attendance as the film marked Leah's acting debut... the adorable Alex Poe, star of Kill the Day, grinned alongside director Gavin Wiesen... rising stars India Ennenga and Paulie Lit reminded us that we have a lot to look forward to on the cinematic scene."

Credit

EDIT-
Oh it was from April! I wasn't paying attention. Sorry guys :P Enjoy anyways, if you haven't seen it already ;)

Awkward interview with 'fans' yet Andrew still manages to capture our hearts.

2008-10-06T07:40:00.000-07:00

This is by far the most awkward and unprofessional interview yet. But hey, whatever. Still a good video to watch.

Girl:"What do you think sets you apart by other artists musically?"
Andrew:"Um...I think it's like how good-looking we are as a band."

Edit-
Oh and to Sydney (sorry if I spelled your name wrong), don't get me wrong. I see what you mean by the fact that you uploaded the funny parts so we can enjoy it. I'm not going to call you a 'stupid fan girl' because, well you probably aren't. Thanks for uploading, and I'd love to see the finished result. :)

Real life footage of Andrew using this 'huge crystal thingy'

2008-10-04T18:52:00.000-07:00

Lol.

"MGMT Shy From Stardom"

2008-10-03T23:45:00.000-07:00

Credit

Here's a new article for you all :)

"A year ago, MGMT were just a couple of Wesleyan grads with a solid pop-meets-psychedelia EP and a little blog buzz. Today, the names Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser are big enough to show up in Page Six gossip items about naughty starlets. They have bubblegum pop stars like Katy Perry covering their songs and their debut album, Oracular Spectacular, is being used to soundtrack everything from Gossip Girl to your kid sister's college road trip.

There are benefits to experiencing that sort of steroidal career growth spurt -- benefits like the chance to play with your idols. MGMT is currently finishing up a fall tour with Beck that will lead them to Toronto Oct. 5 and Montreal Oct. 6. Earlier this year, they opened for Radiohead in Manchester, which leads us to major perk No. 2: playing for crowds the size of an average suburb.

"Radiohead in Manchester, that was like 40,000 something people," recalls lead singer Andrew VanWyngarden over the phone from a tour stop in Kansas City. "When we were playing at Lollapalooza, the crowd was something like 30,000 -- just for us. It's a little crazy."

Crazy, yes - but it's also afforded the band some advanced courses in showmanship. Just this past February, in the early days of MGMT's first major tour, Ben Goldwasser told Dose.ca that "we still don't really know how to be up on stage; we feel a bit awkward."

Flash forward to the present and the band has a summer's worth of festival shows spanning the globe under their belt. Says VanWyngarden "It's definitely a pretty intense learning curve, but I think we've done pretty well. ...I think just racking up festival experience helped us become more confident."

Shooting to fame so quickly has its weird moments, too - like getting concerned emails from your dad asking what the deal is between you and that girl from Bring It On.

"I was staying in London and I woke up and checked my email and my dad said there was a London tabloid talking about me and Kirsten Dunst," VanWyngarden recalls.

So, uh, is he dating Dunst? "No," says VanWyngarden, somewhat bashfully - thereby shooting down countless tabloid items to the contrary. And, he says, that particular bit of dirt is also the strangest thing he's ever read about himself (which may or may not count for much considering he says he never follows his own press).

"That's the kind of stuff that's ridiculous to Ben and I - that we've somehow gotten to a level where that type of thing happens. Because really, we just focus on the music. I don't know, it's really weird. I wasn't expecting any of that," he says with a laugh.

Apart from "a few more free pairs of jeans," there's been no upside to suddenly being a gossip-worthy name, says VanWyngarden. Their breakthrough hit, "Time to Pretend," satirized the clichés of the rock and roll dream (before they were in a place to be living it) with lines like: "Let's make some music, make some money, find some models for wives/ I'll move to Paris, shoot some heroin, and f*ck with the stars/ You man the island and the cocaine and the elegant cars." VanWyngarden says he wants to "consciously avoid addressing" his newfound celebrity, though, when it comes time to make their next album.

"That's another reason why I'm not reading any press because I wouldn't ever want that bullshit to somehow make it into our music because that would just be lame," he says. "I've seen it happen to other bands. No one wants to hear a musician complaining about privacy or celebrity bullshit. That's not what music is to me."

The band's already decided to get to work on their next album in January, which VanWyngarden says they intend to self-produce.

"The whole band is going to hole up in a farmhouse kind of thing in upstate New York, which is kind of funny because so many bands have taken that approach," says VanWyngarden with a chuckle. "But I think it's going to be really good for us. We're really excited to record again."

Nothing's been written, yet, he says, but from his various hints, fans shouldn't expect a radical shift from Oracular Spectacular. Says VanWyngarden: "I think it'll be more of the same - kind of pop music with some weirdness happening."

Recent reports have suggested that MGMT was planning on going the double-album route for their sophomore outing, with one disc featuring pop songs, and the other being straight-up psychedelia. "Yeah, it's an idea Ben and I both came up with on our own, which is kind of cool," says VanWyngarden. "We both one day were like 'I have a cool idea for the album' and it was the same thing. So that's kind of interesting. Who knows if we'll actually do that, but it's definitely a possibility.

"You know, we've always been about making pop music and making catchy songs. We also like really 'out there' music. We were combining those things on the first album and we thought it might be cool to just make a definite division.

"I don't think we have any plans to make our music more accessible."

___________________________________________________

Lol @

"Shooting to fame so quickly has its weird moments, too - like getting concerned emails from your dad asking what the deal is between you and that girl from Bring It On."

Andrew's puppeteer skills are exceptional

2008-10-03T16:21:00.000-07:00

I know like 80% of you have already seen this, but if you haven't then ENJOY

Not facing an audience during a song FTW

2008-10-03T16:05:00.000-07:00

Is it just me or does he always sing towards the band instead of the audience (like with the Cindy Lauper cover) when he plays covers? Well I'm not complaining. It's quite amusing :)

'Moody, pretentious pricks'

2008-10-03T10:56:00.000-07:00

"Following an extended stay in the Dell Dome, checking out some rad art by Mike Ming and making new friends (sup Andrea!), we headed back to the media area for a couple interviews. I must admit, I went into my interview with MGMT with a bit of apprehension. It has been stated pretty heavily and bluntly that these boys were moody, pretentious pricks who would have little to no issue with tearing you down if you rubbed them the wrong way. Turns out, however, those rumors could not have been more false. Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser, simply sat and hung out with us, more or less, even opting to remain in conversation with us for nearly 20 minutes after the interview had ended. Sadly, the party had to be broken up in order for Jessica and I to hang with a different sent of boys, Electric Touch."

Psh, damn right. Credit

Follow up

2008-10-03T02:00:00.000-07:00

These are from his friendster:

Cute!

Laugh my ass off.

You must be just under 6ft to ride this rollercoaster, Will... ;)

OH MY... my favorite Will Berman picture ever

Will's friendster account and he 'wanna know where the gold at'?

2008-10-03T01:39:00.001-07:00

It says he joined in June of 2003! Who would make a fake of him before anyone even knew who the fuck he was?!
The self-acclaimed 'supershredder' likes to kiss kittens, smell babies(pedo comfirmation?!), and pet flowers. Assuming he's trying to be humorous with the word play... kissing/smelling/petting a baby could be the motive for asking this:
More following up this subject~

Accidental Mersh

2008-10-02T20:47:00.000-07:00

Did you know that Andrew was in a local (Memphis) band with Hank Sullivant? It was called Accidental Mersh, and I've barely stumbled upon this information. Well there's a little fun fact for you all. Here's some credit/proof whatever you want to call it.

'MGMT hang with Beck, get hip to Gossip Girl'

2008-10-02T19:36:00.000-07:00

Credit

"Weeks after spending most of their summer on the festival circuit, New York City's MGMT jumped on tour supporting Beck earlier this fall. The trek has taken the duo of Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser across the country, including to the Hollywood Bowl, where they played the famous venue for the first time, last month.

"That venue is unbelievable," VanWyngarden raved to Spinner. "It's probably the coolest venue I've ever been to."

The gents said they took it all in when they played the historic Hollywood Hills-nestled arena, getting history from longtime staff members and checking out the backstage photos -- including ones of Jimi Hendrix opening for the Monkees -- but they also got a little closer to the family of their headliner.

"I met [Beck's] son at the Hollywood Bowl," VanWyngarden said when Spinner asked about gig attendance from the family of the 'Odelay' singer. "He's really shy."

And as the tour has traveled across the U.S., it's given MGMT a chance to get to know the artist they spent their own early days compared to. "When we first started getting press attention, a lot of people lumped us in and were like, 'Oh! These guys sound like Beck,'" Goldwasser noted. "I don't really think we sound like Beck, but I think we have a lot of common influences. And honestly, if we sat down and had a conversation with Beck about music, we would probably get excited about a lot of the same things. It's cool that we actually get to spend this time on tour with him."

One thing the band isn't spending time on while on tour is watching TV and films. While the group have landed cuts from their 'Oracular Spectacular' album on the '21' soundtrack and various teen shows, the boys only recently realized what one of their sonic placements meant.

"Ben and I are kind of out of touch with popular culture so we kind of agree to all these things not really realizing 'Gossip Girl' was, like, a huge show," VanWyngarden laughed. "Slowly we're realizing what it meant and it's funny."

MGMT will spend the rest of the year on the road, but have big promises for the follow up to 'Oracular.' "We are about to write probably one of the best albums of all time," VanWyngarden said with a hint of a smile. "It's going to be so much better than our first album."

"Something ground breaking is going to come from the MGMT camp in a few months," Goldwasser added."

Pretty old MGMT performance

2008-10-02T08:55:00.001-07:00

From the tour with Of Montreal. It's from '06

Credit to the youtuber: vacant moon

Interview (video!!)

2008-10-02T01:07:00.000-07:00

The date for the video says 10/4/2008 (??) Is it the future reflecting? Well I would assume it's new, future or not. Enjoy~

Edit- This video is fucking up my page big time. SO click here

Who we want to fuck list

2008-10-01T21:47:00.000-07:00

"Mar 31, 2005 12:18 PM

o management, how you make wesleyan weekends so wonderful. thank you boys. ps...in the girls bathroom at the campus center, on the "who we want to fuck list" THE MANAGEMENT is written in big, capital letters. kudos"

Credit: Mgmt's myspace!

Some pictures from At&T Blue Room

2008-09-30T22:48:00.001-07:00

Isn't that Andrew's shirt?

It kind of looks like he's trying to do a 'smoochie' face.

My personal fave, I don't know why.

WILL♥ Nice to see him performing even though he has a bad foot :(