Copies of "Jollyship the Whiz-Bang: It's Not the Moon's Fault" will be available after our show at the Public Theater in NYC on January 11th.  We'll have it available on Itunes and through cdbaby shortly thereafter...

This is our biggest longest, most expensive and (we think) most amazing album yet!!

We are overwhelmed by the positive response to our new theater show at Ars Nova. Some press has been posted on the myspace page. The entire run is almost completely sold out!

We are currently working with Ars Nova and director Sam Gold to create a bigger and more rehearsed and well funded than usual stage show. The goal is create a DEFINITIVE Jollyship puppet rock epic, one unmarried to the format and knowledge of past episodes. It's a task analogous to turning Police Squad episodes into "The Naked Gun" I reckon, and easily the biggest most exciting Jollyship project yet!

We are slated to open in May!! Details to be announced!!

Huzzah!

Awarded some $$$ to develop our puppet show "The Colonists" which we began working on in Thailand. Sometime in 2007, details TBA.

pictures:
http://flickr.com/photos/20262983@N00/sets/72057594100827768/

We weren't planning to do sea-themed puppet shows in Bangkok. Raj and I were attending the 1st annual Hoontown Puppet Festival and hoped to take it as an opportunity to "branch out." But once we got there, and we saw some underwater puppets already built, that old nautical thought process kicked in. Like, "oh there's this giant shrimp puppet, and we have a couple songs about shrimp, and look - a skeleton marionette, it could come out of a treasure chest like in an aquarium. . . "
So next thing we know we're building set pieces for yet another ridiculous sea show, this one entitled "Aquarium Team in the Aquarium Zone." The central premise was that we would build a giant clam shell, which would rest on a hollow base shaped like a coral reef. I would sit inside the reef base with my head sticking out through a hole on the bottom of the clam shell, so when it opened my head (covered in silver makeup) would appear as "the pearl." And then the pearl would sing a song about crabs, and necrophelia.
We were motivated to accomplish the work building the cumbersome papermache set in 2 days so we could appear on a popular tv show, but for various reasons, ended up being bumped to a less popular tv show. It turned out to be filmed in a hotel room. Even though we shared the same 400 sq ft room, the host of the show didn't speak to us until filming began, but sat with her face averted staring out the window like the emperor in Star Wars, while makeup artists worked feverishly over her for what seemed like hours. When we finally met face to face, the effect was no less ghastly. The makeup on this overweight Australian woman was layered so thick it cracked like dried clay. We had just performed our piece for the cameras, and I was being interviewed with my head still sticking out of the clam shell. She asked us if our piece was about the tsunami. "No!" we replied. "Absolutely not. Absolutely no connection whatsoever!" Although that might have gotten us some attention, we decided to pass on that opportunity to "make waves."
The flimsy coral reef piece was more or less destroyed in transport, after being taken up and down the hotel elevator and crammed in a truck. It was finished off the next night by dogs. At least we think it was dogs. It was being stored near the Buddhist Wat across the street from our workshop and found with big rips and gashes in it the next day up, so it was either the dogs or the monks.
By the time of the festival, we had the set rebuilt and I was climbing into the clam shell on the daily basis. The second day, which was New Year's Day, and after quite a fucking bangkok bender, I detected a distinct dog smell as I manuevered inside the 2 x 2 ft cardboard enclosure. Once inside, I discovered another smell: urine.
Then the clam shell opened, and the show began. What better way to kick off 2006, I thought to myself, then with your head sticking out of a piss-soaked cardboard clam shell, doing the one thing you love the most?
-nick

Dubliners spoke disparagingly of Limerick. They called it Stab City. They told us it's where people went when they wanted to get stabbed, which didn't bode well with us on our way to do a show there, because, well we didn't want to get stabbed. Not much anyway.


But once there, we were welcomed as if we were a real band by the manager of the club, given complimentary drinks, cheese plates, and 3 hotel rooms (I had one all to myself because I was the singer). And the actual show was amazing - a true UK punk experience: sweaty, loud, enthusiastic and drunk. The crowd demanded more and more songs out of us until we literally had emptied the barrel, and then, not totally seriously, I suggested a sea shanty.


"Repeat after me," I said. "Row . . ."


"Row," they intoned, surprising me with total compliance.


"ROW!" I called again, empowered.


"ROW! . . . ROW! . . . ROW!" There was no melody. It was long drawling and monotonous - a flawless sea shanty. If only there were oars to put them to.


"Hey you guys are pretty great," I said. "And to think they told us not to come here. They said we would get stabbed."


The crowd booed. That hit a sore spot. Okay. But these Stab City fans were all right.


Or so we thought. For the true underbelly of Stab City had yet to show itself. There was still plenty of time, it seemed, to get in a knife fight and die in a crumpled heap in a lonely corner.


Later that night, after we had our fill of jumping on the beds and marveling at the fact that we were staying in a real hotel, each with our own beds, did we start to think about food.


There was a Burger King about 2 blocks from the hotel, and from the looks of it, it was the only thing open. Von Heiselstein and I headed out on this assumption, while our vegetarian soundman and Mr. Skeevy the Keyboard Player resolved to find something better.


Something about Ireland and alcohol: it really all works different out there. Drinking till you blackout seems more a goal than an undesirable side effect. When the bars close, and the drunks pour out into the street, the whole country starts to resemble a zombie movie. Except instead of staggering violent and bloody looking for brains, they head for the nearest chip shop. Or Burger King.


There was no line, or "queue," at the counter. It was more like the front of the stage at a U2 concert, just a heavy pushy sweaty wall of flesh. It took forever to get our food due to this total lack of order, and on the way out of the throng someone grabbed my wrist and tried to pull me back in. Like other damned souls try to pull you back down into hell, I thought.


We got our food to go.


On the way out, Mr. Skeevy and Kris Anton were on their way in, having surrendered hope of anywhere else to eat.


This is what happened to them:


They ate in, and met a girl dressed like the devil, in that way certain trashy girls are apt to dress, with glittery plastic horns. I dont think there was any flirting going on, just some chitchat over a whopper (we were clearly from out of town).


But course the devil party girl was part of the zombie community, and one of the zombies, maybe one of the oldest and drunkest of his clan, took offense at seeing her talking to a couple of outsiders.


He staggered over.


"You talking shit!!? he demanded immediately of Mr. Skeevy, not because Skeevy had said anything in anyway directed towards him, but because that's what you say when you want to start a fight (this is universal).


"You talking shit?! Huh?! Yeah?!! He's talking shit about me." He was sort of falling forward into Skeevy, who was seated and not really sure how to react. Fortunately, the Devil must have seen this before, because she knew what to do.


She stood up, and screaming for him to fuck off, knocked back the uninvited guest with a volley of punches to the chest. At this time Burger King Security (yes, they have security) had noticed a disturbance, and so the old zombie king was shown the door.


Unfortunately, he wasnt shown the way home. He stood wavering outside the big glass windows, glaring inside at Mr. Skeevy, Kris Anton, and the Devil, his new sworn enemies. Other zombies soon gathered around him and they joined him in glaring. They glared at the pirate band guys with their whoppers, and their french fries, and their party girl devil lady friend. All those things which at one time could have been theirs.


Poor Mr. Skeevy! He's always the one who gets attacked by drunk guys, because he's so good looking. They didn't know anything about Kris, but knew precisely three things about Skeevy, and two of these they could mock him for 1) that he played piano and 2) that he was an American. Whether the initial confrontation was initiated with these information, I do not know, but it was revealed in the council that formed outside Burger King. Being an American certainly can be a source of embarrassment these days, and playing piano, while hardly unusual, could be made shameful, if couched properly within the right homosexual references.


The council decided to try and hurt Mr. Skeevys feelings, and maybe other parts of him as well. The third piece of information they had on him, that he was good looking, was deemed inappropriate to discuss or make fun of, this being another universal agreed upon between men. But all else was fair game.


As Mr. Skeevy and Kris hurried out the door, the zombies unloaded their supersize cups full of Coca-Cola on them.


"Piano man, piano man, play us a song piano man - he's a fucking yank! Ha ha, piano man. You fucking gay piano player yank. Come ere you. The zombies charged.


A high speed pursuit ensued. Because it did not end in bloodshed we can imagine it for the comedic romp it was, sped up like on Hee Haw. The devil party girl managed to get our boys in a cab, which they eagerly accepted, even though it way only about a half block left to the hotel. They drove around the block to imply they were staying in some other part of town, then back to the hotel to tell all about their brush with drunken brawl.


All except for me. I didnt find out till the next morning, since I was staying in not only my own bed, but my own room. I had finished my whopper in bed by this time, and was learning via the evening news that apes were finally captured on film using tools (a stick!). I got my own room because, while I possess the least amount of musical talent in the group, I am the lead singer and am thus entitled to privileges above all others. This went unspoken. Another universal.


-captain