I have new tour diaries up at Punknews.org and the Willamette Weekly, you should check those out! 

Short and sweet:

I just released the new Attica! Attica! album, Napalm & Nitrogen, at atticaattica.org.  It's free/pay-what-you-like.  Go get it.

Today, I leave on bike tour.  Dates and updates are available at ditchthevan.blogspot.com.  We are biking for WorldBicycleRelief.org.  Check it out.

Time to hit the road!
- Aaron

Bike Tour is now officially renamed "Ditch the Van" Tour, and all necessary preparations are fully underway!  This includes the exciting news that I'm putting the finishing touches on a new Attica! Attica! album.  I haven't been talking too much about it because I wasn't sure if I could pull it off before bike tour (ahem, I mean Ditch The Van Tour), but it looks like it will, in fact, be done in time.  It will be available soon for donation as a digital download.  There will be no CD.  Get down with that.  The greatest thing about self-releasing something digitally is that I can release it in a week and I still have no idea what the album title is.  Yes, the internet continues to be wonderful to me.

I also neglected to post an interview that I did for Sound Scene Revolution.  Rich and Nariman are two great dudes, and they took the time to interview me before my San Francisco show in July.  I would say it's awesome, but it's mostly just me talking a lot, so it's weird for me to say it's awesome.  But if you think reading this is worth your time, then listening to that is probably worth your time.  You can stream or download the interview here: http://soundscenerevolution.com/2009/07/28/interview-with-attica-attica-podcast-104/   I think you can still win a ton of sweet A!A! swag from their contest, too.

Blake has crafted a Ditch the Van blog to chronicle bike tour, which you can peep here: ditchthevan.blogspot.com   Additionally, I'm going to be doing a couple online tour diaries during bike tour.  I'll post the links once I start writing. 

- Aaron

BIG NEWS.  Here we go:

In the fall, I am riding my bike from Boston to Key West.  Attica! Attica! will be playing benefit shows along the way for World Bicycle Relief (www.worldbicyclerelief.org).  Yes, it will take over two months, but I am embarking on a full East Coast Tour with just my bike, my guitar, and my friends Blake and Jon (and whomever else wants to join us!).  Many of the details are still getting worked out, so for now, check out the atticaattica.org shows page for our itinerary. 

I will also be playing part of Nakatomi Plaza's final tour.  No one has influenced the direction of my life more than Oscar, and I can truthfully say that I have seen Nakatomi play more than any other band (I think I have seen them about 75 times over the past ten years).  For those reasons, I made sure to be a part of their last hurrah.  Keep checking in for updates. 

I'm very excited to be playing shows back east soon.  I hope to see you then!
- Aaron

My old band, De La Hoya, is releasing a discography. It's a way for us to officially close out the De La Hoya legacy so that all the songs will be indefinitely available online. It's also a way for us to shine up some stuff that wasn't wearing so well with age, and for us to release some new music!

This summer, we wrote and recorded four new songs to add to the discography. We had a great time in the process, and we're proud to share the first of these four songs with you for free. It is part of Pastepunk's free downloadable 10th Anniversary Compilation. Click on the link to download the compilation, which includes our new song, "Union Square".

More details on the discography will be coming soon.
Enjoy!
- Aaron

August 8th
Syracuse, NY @ 560 Allen St., 6 PM, 5 Bucks
w/ Attica! Attica!, Rejouissance, Nancy

Attica! Attica! is on tour! Chris Antal (myspace.com/chrisantal) is playing with me on the Bridge & Tunnel dates and I'm excited about how the songs sound with him. Should be even better than the average A!A! show. Which is to say it will be pretty good.
- Aaron


SHOWS

Thursday 5.June.2008
New York, NY @ Fontana's, 105 Eldridge St., 8 PM, $7
w/ Bridge & Tunnel, Slingshot Dakota

Friday 6.June.2008
New Brunswick, NJ @ The Junkyard Palace, 331 Somerset St, 6:30 PM, Donation
w/ Bridge & Tunnel, North Lincoln, The Measure, You Me and the Atom Bomb

Saturday 7.June.2008
Buffalo, NY @ The Last Stand, 99 Custer St., 6 PM, $6 donation
w/ Bridge & Tunnel, Vietnam Werewolf

Sunday 8.June.2008
Syracuse, NY @ The Westcott Community Center, 826 Eulid Ave., 5 PM, $7
w/ Bridge & Tunnel, No Connection, Misteltoe, Carnindyle

Monday 9.June.2008
Ithaca, NY @ No Radio Records, 312 E. Seneca St, $6, 8 PM, All Ages
w/ Bridge & Tunnel

Tuesday 10.June.2008
Albany, NY @ The Fuze Box, 12 Central Ave.
w/ Bridge and Tunnel, Might, Chlorine

Wednesday 11.June.2008
Allston, MA @ The Brocery Store, 6 Imrie Rd.
w/ Bridge and Tunnel, Kill Conrad, Female Trouble

Saturday 14.June.2008
Brooklyn, NY @ Lost & Found, 113 Franklin St., 8 PM, FREE!
DEAR TONIGHT'S LAST SHOW
w/ Dear Tonight, The New Dress, Scream! Hello, In First Person

Sunday 15.June.2008
Bethpage, NY @ Deuces Wild, 4222 Hicksville Road, $5, ALL AGES
w/ Scream! Hello, Capital, Stay Alive

I think everyone can agree that, on some level, Myspace sucks. Whether it's the spam, the long loading times, or the ads, everyone has some beef with Myspace. And yet we all use it.

Myspace is a necessary tool for bands that have no other web capabilities, and it's a good way to send out announcements to a lot of people at the same time. But I find those benefits are far outweighed by the negative aspects. I do not like having all of my content on a site owned by NewsCorp., the world's largest media conglomerate and the owner of FoxNews, The New York Post, and a bunch of other fake news outlets. I don't think all information about Attica! Attica! (or any band) should be mediated by a barrage of advertisements, many of them reinforcing conventional beauty norms. Least importantly, I think Myspace is an ugly website.

At one point, I changed my personal profile information from "straight" to "gay" to see if anything would change about the Myspace ads. Amazingly, nearly all the ads from that point on suddenly became geared towards what marketers consider more gay-friendly products and services. Myspace may be bad at making its servers operate reliably, but it is excellent at mining the data we all voluntarily provide and instantly creating ads that cater to (and craft) our specific needs and desires.

I'm saying all this to make the point that we deserve better than Myspace. For my part, my webmaster Jared and I have put together atticaattica.org. I know that this is a small step towards divorcing myself from Myspace, but I think it's important to provide a way to access information on Attica! Attica! that doesn't require the viewer to endure a bunch of ads. I am not entirely leaving Myspace, since some people don't know about the A!A! website. I will maintain the basic information about A!A! on Myspace, and I will send out occasional announcements, but all exciting news will be announced first and in much more depth at atticaattica.org. It's a much better way to get info on Attica! Attica!. And it's a lot more attractive.

This Wednesday!

April 30
Olympia, WA @ 1206 State Ave. NE, 7 PM, $3 donation
w/ Nancy