Where to start?...
I just called Jason of On Vinyl - He's taking a walk. He's very wise, generally, so I'm sure he's thinking up awesome things. I called Scott of Northern Aggression and Hungry Lips - He's in Massachusetts screwing up peoples personal lives. I just called Chris - He was drinking champagne and watching Gossip Girl.

Let me take a second to throw some things out there;

On Vinyl is tinkering with the idea of getting back together. It will rock if it happens.

Flaming Shit will have an album up for download soon. As soon as I mix and master it, that is.

Theres a band that isn't with The Family that I like. Their called The Big Hurry. Give them a try. They're doing a new EP and a video right now so Go Team Go! If On Vinyl gets back together They plan on playing with The Big Hurry at The Brillobox while playing faux snuff films behind them. Keep your fingers crossed. Check them out http://www.myspace.com/bighurry .

There was a 28 WHORES album in the works.....it has been abandoned. Hopefully the recording of their 3rd? album will begin soon. Think "live sound."

The Code Orange Kids (who are not on our label but are super awesome people) have a demo out. This band has continued to progress. Give it a try. http://www.myspace.com/thecodeorangekids .

The Family is back but only "within our comfort zone."

Be Well.
-Erik

Dear Zhu Zhu Pets,

I was thinking today that Erik needs to stop obeying normal language conventions and start spelling his name E R I K G R I E C O. All capital letters, spaces and all. Shortly after having this revelation, he hit me up on the internet and told me to upload his new record. New record? I didn't think it was going to be ready until tomorrow. I guess I was wrong. Not convinced? Here's evidence:

This is good for you, because you can get this record for free. Nice, yes? It's available over at the free music section just like all of the other free music we have. Or you can just hit this link here and download it automatically: Erik Grieco - A Banner Year.

Love,
C H R I S T O P H E R!

Dear Peppermint Mochas,

I broke myself and cannot move much or sit up in a chair, leaving me writing this from the warm yet boring embrace of my bed.

However, since Doug got over leukemia so that he could finish the new Frantic Heart Of It record, I would feel like a real whiny bitch if I were to let a pulled muscle keep me from getting that record up on the internet. Knowing this, I pathetically hobbled out of bed long enough to find a laptop to upload it and here we are now. It's available up in the Free Music section of the site.

WAIT THERE'S MORE!

New Bowhunter record ALSO available FREE in the very same Free Music section of the site I was just talking about! Bowhunter! Free! You think it can't be true BUT IT IS. Wow, this must be the best day ever! (Unless you are stuck in bed because you cannot walk.)

That's all I got for now, I'm going to go eat painkillers and stare at the ceiling.

Love,
Christopher

Greetings Space Cakes!

Remember when everybody and their mother had a MySpace account? And then one day somebody realized that a website full of animated pot leaves and trashy girls that post things like the following graphic is nothing anybody wants to be associated with?

Don't worry, I understand if you pretend you have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm ashamed to have ever used MySpace, and if The Atomic Family was a a person, it would be ashamed as well. Luckily, TAF is a record label and record labels don't have feelings.

After thinking about it and realizing I have not seen one animated pot leaf on Facebook, I realized it might not be a bad idea to set up TAF with a Facebook account. Okay, maybe it's not a great idea but I figure that you and I can use it to keep in touch with each other. You know, we can interface and synergize and all of that big business crap that people are always doing. Buy low. Sell high. You can find our Facebook junk somewhere around this address: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Atomic-Family-Records/61970616813

Oh, did I note that Northern Aggression is reuniting for a show? I'm trying to find details right now, but this is what Scott posted up on the innertubes a couple of days ago:

Northern Aggression reunion w/ The Menzingers + more
5/14 @ Frank's House (3449 Melwood Ave in Polish Hill)
ALL AGES motherfuckers
More details to come!

My heavens! He's so crude with his language sometimes! That's all I got to rap at you all right now, so I'll leave you with that.

FREE JEFF RAILSBACK,
-Christopher!

Hello my darling pudding pops,

It should be noted that the new On Vinyl record, FANTASY WORLD is available for download over in the Free Music section of this website. I don't know if Erik and the gang really want it to be spelled in all caps or anything, but until they say otherwise it will be spelled FANTASY WORLD.

Here is the picture I was going to put in my last post but did not because I didn't want to let the cat out of the bag before it was released:

That's about it for now! I have basketball tickets for tonight and I am not dressed yet, so I am going to cut this post short.

If you are into that whole "twitter" thing that the kids are all talking about these days, be sure to check out my very own twitter feed at twitter.com/cmact.

Catch you all later!

Peace, love and go Wizards,
CHRISTOPHER!

p.s. I will update the discography section of the website later when I'm not running late for something.

Disciples of TAF:

Hello my peaches. It is me, Christopher, once again here to whisper sweet nothings into your collective ears. Today's subject? Pictures of cats.

Unless you've managed to steer clear of everything irritating about the internet, you have no doubt seen countless pictures of cats paired with captions written in poorly spelled or constructed sentences.

In case you're fortunate enough to have no idea what I'm talking about, allow me to demonstrate:

more animals

Do you have any idea how much time people devote to creating these things? Hours, perhaps even days. It is simply mind-boggling how many hours of productivity our country has lost due to pictures of cats on the internet. I tear up with despair just thinking about it.

TAF heroes On Vinyl on the other hand, have decided to pick up the slack and help cancel out some of this lost productivity by recording an entire album in twelve hours. We should be thankful. We should show our appreciation for their selflessness by going to their release show this Friday (02/06/2009) at the Bloomfield Bridge Tavern. They will be playing with our dear friends The Frantic Heart Of It and 28 Whores.

I was going to post the cover art here, but since you're all going to be at the show, you can see it there when you get a copy of the record.

That's all I have for now. Just remember next time you are looking at pictures of cats on the internet (or god forbid, adding more pictures of cats to the internet) that On Vinyl's hard work is what allows you to be such a lazy bastard without any guilt.

PEACE, LOVE AND TOFUTTI CUTIES
-Christopher

My precious TAFketeers:

You should note that Ukiah has put up their latest effort over in the Free Music section of our website here. It's a pretty rad disc and worth a spin. But don't take my word for it!

Also, we've finally updated the Family discography. Actually, "we" didn't do crap. "I" finally updated the Family discography. Erik's always like "I'm working on five records simultaneously, you have to update the website blah blah blah I don't have time blah blah blah" but he never considers my feelings, you know?

Anyway, new releases by 28 Whores and Wormrigg and the Ukiah disc noted above are all properly represented up on the discography page. There's a rumor that the new 28 Whores disc will be available at their show this Friday (tomorrow, 1/23/09, if you're reading this on the day I'm writing it) so you should stop by the BBT, rock out, and pick up a copy for yourself and all of your friends. I might actually be there if I'm back in Pittsburgh in time.

I think that's about all worth mentioning right now. I know that Erik's not ever going to toot his own horn, but he and the rest of our friends in On Vinyl have a new record on the way and it sounds great. But don't take my word for it!

Actually, on second thought, you're going to have to take my word for it until it comes out.

LOVE AND HUGS,
-Christopher!

Look up at the top navigation menu of this website and you will see something new: Whiteboard.

The idea is that anybody can advertise their shows there. It's a wiki page so anybody can edit it, and you don't have to be logged in or anything. Just go there, click the "edit this page" button and you're off.

There's no rules or guidelines or a defined "right way" to add shows yet. The only rule is that you can only put shows on the Whiteboard. We have a dedicated trailer full of laptop monkeys who will be patrolling the Whiteboard to make sure that non-shows and expired items are removed. We pay them in bananas.

Have fun and get to using the Whiteboard.

PEACE,
Christopher

P.S. Yes, there is an entire MediaWiki installation on the site. Who knows what you might find if you go poking around?

Hi everybody.
Things are a changin'. My partner, Chris, is back in charge of doing everything that I can't do such as create our new site. I'm busy chasing musicians around trying to get their music for my own secret stash. No, seriously, I'm compiling 7 years of The Smut Projects music, artwork and videos for an archiving project.

When it comes to informing people of things I only seem to be able to do lists with bullet points and so that's what I'm sticking with/

* Ukiah's EP is in the mastering stages after months of people moving, recording machine issues and trips out of town to enjoy inebriation. Look for it in the coming week.

* Unarmed and Hipster Death Machine are getting ready to do that split they've been planning together for a while. We're not sure if this will be A Family release or not but we sure as hell are excited for it!

* The Frantic Heart of It are planning on having their full length available for New Years. It's sure to be one of our most impressive releases; be ready.

* 28 Whores will be putting out a cassette soon. This is straight up hard rocking music. Their relationship with The Atomic Family is always uncertain but we all love each other. We're working right along side them to get their new split, featuring 3 sings from 28 Whores, Wormrigg and The Fitt, ready for the college radio airwaves.

* On Vinyl is still giving away CDR's wrapped in tin foil at their live shows. If you live outside of the Pittsburgh area just email theatomicfamily@gmail.com and we'll send you the free download. Subject: "this is what a demo should sound like"

* Everybody's favorite "way out there/drug rock" band, Wormrigg, will be releasing their new record. There are new members involved and new musical boundaries broken down.

* BOWHUNTER is writing songs with their new bass player Scott (formerly of Sirens & Songbirds). Be on the lookout for them to be playing and yelling, loudly at a venue near you.

We're always looking for new blood. If you need fans and friends get in touch!

Rock.
-Erik

Since the last post, the site is coming together rather well. The horizontal menu bar under the logo up there (the logo properly being referred to as the "Atomic A" for you trivia buffs) has some things that you've probably seen before and I'm going to try to get the site back up to being as useful as it was before we decided to change everything.

Why are we changing everything? Well, it seems right now like I'm just doing it for the sake of doing it. I swear that is only somewhat true, but not entirely true.

The real motivation behind it is that we're going to try to actually make our website more useful, both for us Family members and also for you friends of the Family. The issue became that it would be a lot easier to make the website more useful if we just completely scrapped the old one and replaced it with something a bit more modular and user friendly. As long as we had to replace the entire platform, we figured that we might as well update the look a bit and keep things fresh.

So what does this mean for you? This means that I am going to beg for your patience over the next couple weeks while I try to get everything back on track around here. I just gave Erik his login to the site earlier today, so I imagine it's just a matter of time before he starts logging in and posting his own half-baked ramblings about why he loves Billy Joel. That should keep things interesting around here while we try to get all the nerdy crap working.

That's about it!

PEACE OUT GIRL SCOUT,
-Christopher