Johnny Foreigner vs a new EP! (and Hipster Garden Parties)

So the new JoFo single is You Vs Everything, out today, all resplendent on some tasty posters, double sided of course and penned by Lewes. You know Lewes. He’s ace! Limited to just 200 copies, each A3 poster comes with a download code for the 4 track EP and sold out almost immediately (obvs) – but is still available from poster form from Banquet, or mp3 from –like- everywhere. God how we love Banquet!

The tracklisting goes a little something like this, and should you be a JoFo fan, you’ll def want to check out track 3 – it’s the best value 79p you’ll ever spend – although it seems iTunes have only allowed you to buy it as part of the EP. Not our doing, honest, but hell – it’s a great EP! The poster look can be found on our flickr page, or take a look below for side B… 

1) You Vs Everything (radio edit)
2) PS, Not Soon Enough [taken from the vs everything sessions]
3) Johnny Foreigner Vs The Hipster Garden Party [an 18 minute drunken show in a garden in Rennes]
4) if i’m the most famous (robot) boy you’ve fucked, then honey, yr in (robot) trouble [sorry]

Also – JoFo are playing at New Slang on Thursday, Kev and I will be down so come and have a booze with us should you fancy hanging out x oh and Japanese folk – the band are off on tour for two electric shows in Osaka and Tokyo next week. I’m reliably informed Tokyo has already virtually sold out (bang!) with more words that Shonen Knife are likely to be in attendence in Osaka. And if that’s not cool ah hell, I a’m not cool! [ps I'm not cool]

<3

New Johnny Foreigner poster EP up for pre-order

Fresh from the biggest first week album sales in their history (yah! Take that big budgets) Johnny Foreigner may be jetting off to France and Japan on tour, but that’s not stopping them giving you, the handsome kids, a brand new single. You may have heard it on the radio or Soccer AM, but next up – and from the album – comes Johnny Foreigner vs Everything, an A3 poster single with 4 tracks, one of which is a full 18 minute set from a drunk Garden Party in France. Only available from us or our great pals at Banquet. Limited to 200 and out on November 5th. Don’t be slack!

Look see – here’s the full video for the song (made by the ace moral hangover kids), which includes a lot of the hip kids at The London show and some strong stage diving cameos from Stagecoach, Lex and *ahem* yours truly. Don’t be put off by my graceful leap though – I came crashing face first to the ground… Immediately. Luckily the camera didn’t catch it. Don’t tell em no… You can see the poster pics over on our flickr feed. I’ve just checked and it seems we have 6 left. Do hurry.

Johnny Foreigner vs Everything – up for pre order with 20 page comic + PoP only glow in the dark tee!

SO it’s finally here (well to pre-order at least)! Johnny Foreigner’s third (and best we’d say) album yet – out on Alcopop! It’s been a long time coming and real emotional to boot. And now here it is, to unleash to a handsome world… AKA You!

It’s out on November 7^th and called johnny foreigner vs Everything. It’s 17 (count em) tracks and I properly know you’re going to love it! Available from all your very favourite record shops and from the PoP Shop, each of the first 400 CDs we sell comes with a massively limited edition 20 page JoFo comic book designed by Lewes which just looks beautiful (we’ll let you know on the shop when those are still available) – or you can pay several more sheets and get a very VERY limited edition (to 100) JoFo glow in the dark tee shirt as well…

The tee is exclusive to PoP! You literally will not find it anywhere else, and it looks like this!

What’s more, if you’re coming to the shows too, you can bung in the Brum or London ticket too – and save yourself a pound or something. The super, smashing very PoP infused shows are as follows. Head to th PoP Shop to buy innit:

November 

12th – London – Upstairs at the Garage, w/ Stagecoach, Screaming Maldini, My First Tooth + special guests

13th – Birmingham – the Flapper w/ Stagecoach, Screaming Maldini, Calories, Ace Bushy Striptease + Richard Burke

I also ought to point out to our readers from oversears, this is available worldwide, and we do have very reasonable shipping. However, if you’re in Japan or France, two wonderful labels Vinyl Junkie and Hip!Hip!Hip! respectively are working on the record. Love them. They’re epic! You’ll also notice they’re touring both these countries. Oh yeah…

Here’s a track for you to listen, or a link to check out all the options and buy if you like. Hurrah!

Ps = dear lovely vinyl junkies amongst you. Real sorry this one isn’t available for your slipmat yet. It’s not that we don’t appreciate records. We truly, TRULY do – but so much has gone into Alcopop’s end of 2011 (it’s been and being an explosively awesome time for us) that we can’t just outlay any more right now on another expensive record pressing (Alcokitten needs to eat!). That said, that’s not to say this won’t happen in the future if all goes well and we can afford it…. We lead with our hearts, but we can’t pay for records with ventricles (believe me, we’ve tried). Love you!

New Johnny Foreigner STingle released

You Poppers like Johnny Foreigner right? Yeah why not – they’re good champs and handsome to boot (have you noticed how bloody good looking the whole Alcopop roster is, it’s not an accident you know)…

So – not only can we announce that their new record is a-coming, but there’s a rad little concept thing going on with the first single (and why wouldn’t their be)… As ever, we could have gone off and printed jewel sleeve thin singles and sold them to you for £4 but meh – that’s no fun is it. So here’ssssss details:

So basically – we wanted to put out two brand new JoFo tracks, but do it in a fun old way, whilst keeping it super cheap for y’all. So for just 100 of your shiny pennies (and 50 for postage – worldwide innit) we’re releasing a dual skateboard sticker pack (The STingle – geddit), basically offering two red hot tracks via a nice shiny URL detailed on said stickers. They look like this, and while one is to keep precious and safe from prying eyes, the other is to smash wherever you can in your fine town that’s ace – and take a photo of it.

Send the photo of the sticker in an awesome place to johnnyforeigner@hotmail.co.uk, Lex will look at them all – and then pick the best one – which will win like 2 copies of the album signed, exclusive artwork and a picture of a unicorn drawn by Lex (he doesn’t know this yet). You can buy the single ‘give us your fangs/the hand that slaps you back’ from the PoP Shop – and as we’re limited to just 500 copies you probably should fairly soon…

You can listen to (don’t) show me ur fangs, and download it, here!

The album meanwhile, oh the album! It’s an absolute banger and well, here’s what JoFo have to say about it… “hello world. we are bursting with excitement to be able to start talking about our wonderful record. it was made this spring and summer in our hometown by our old friend dominique james, and will be released november 7th on alcopop. it’s going to be called Johnny Foreigner vs Everything” – and it’s gonna fill your hearts with joy. We’re looking at a full 18 track winner, we’re looking at super artwork and we’re looking at a PoP Shop exclusive extra that’s going to make you cry with delight.

Lets go shall we?

A reminder why Banquet Records are the best indie label EVER!

How sweet is this.. On delivery of the JoFo frisbee CDs, they really went to town and created this magnificent video displaying just how well the blighter flies! What you don’t see in this vid however is the unfortunate 1st take where a young and wide-eyed Tom Pennington (Banquet worker extroadinaire for those of you who don’t know him) takes a flying JoFo disc to the mouth, smashing at least 17 of his teeth in the process.

Yes weep for him sweet poppers, but not for too long – ‘cos it was all done in a good cause right?

Johnny Foreigner release their video exclusively to … You!

So we talked and pondered over email and wondered who we should release the new video too. You see, the lovely J Matthew Nix in the U.SofA has created this awesome feast of moving images to go with Harriet, By Proxy – and while it seemed right to give it out as an exclusive, we weren’t really sure who we should give it too.

So we said… Why not release it as an exclusive to you… Yeah you. It’s a little ‘punk’ experiment we wanted to try, and rather than saying ‘go visit NME/Drowned in Sound/ The 405/Rocksound’ (all fine names under debate) – we thought – well help yourself to the vid, and make it exclusive on your facebook page, get the first play on YouTube – or you know – just download it and tell your mum that she’s the first person in Drotwich who’s gonna see it…

Whatever – it’s up to you. JoFo have promised not to show it off to the media for at least 24 hours… So in that time it’s yours.. Lex says…

“You get the exclusive. yeh, YOU. welcome to the fun fun world of music journalism. here are two links to our manager’s dropbox. (click right mouse button on the link and ‘save as’ to download)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1121527/JxFx%20Harriet%20by%20Proxy%20Med.mov

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1121527/HARRIET_BY_PROXY%20-%20iPhone.m4v

the first is our awesome video for harriet, by proxy, the second is the same thing only ready for iStuff. The Music Press won’t see this till the end of this week/start of next, and we’ll put it on our youporn account and that soon if you just don’t want to play our stupid game anyway.”

So yeah – if you want to get involved – it’s all yours. An exclusive for the bestest people out there ☺

Alcopop sign Johnny Foreigner

Been a real strong year thus far, but would you believe – it’s about to get stronger… As I can proudly announce that Alcopop Records have signed the magnificent Johnny Foreigner! ‘Ave it….  Welcome sweet Alexei Berrow, Kelly Southern and Junior Elvis Washington Laidley to Team PoP – where they will be releasing a brand spangly new EP come November entitled ‘There When you Need It’. It will be on 12” (so much vinyl – yum) and digital, and look like a groove-riders wet dream I promise you.

What’s more *deep breath* is that they’ll be teaming with our very own Stagecoach to hit the road in November in a mammoth tour of the UK – accompanied with a <this news is being announced in a week or so… Sorry> which is so awesome it will have to be heard to be believed. I’ll say no more at this stage, other than to say that I never realised Little Matty Coach sounded quite so much like Kelly.

A band that need no introduction I’m sure, we’ve long been big fans of JoFo (in fact we were chatting way back when before that TV/ massively funded record label thing got in the way) – so it’s an absolute delight to start working with them now. They have lots of fans with tattoos and stuff who make JoFo cakes and things… This is ace, and I hope they’ll all be happy wondering through the world of Alcopop too on their never-ending JoFo adventure. Yo! Hello… Do treat em’ good lovely poppers J

Customary to the way we like to do things here at Alcopop, look out for a nice free track for you over the next week or so, but in the mean time – why not watch Salt, Pepper and Spinderella…. And know that the new stuff a-coming is perhaps even better. So excited!

4 or 5 Magicians to preorder – and a party (what fun!)

Yup! It’s all good news in the Alcopop! camp with 2 nice pieces of news up, up and on the blog.

1stly) Oh yes – 4 or 5 Magicians CD is up for preorder! It’s a cracking 4 track single and the last in the current singles club series. Only £3!! The boys are on tour in October too, so take a look – and buy, buy, buy (via the button on this very MySpace page). As ever, ltd to just 500 copies and 3″ with hand-made, numbered, ltd edt. CDs

2ndly) We’re one! Yes indeed, after 6 handsome releases, lots of gigs and much bevvying – Alcopop! are proud to reach our first birthday – and we’re having a party… Would be lovely to see you there- there are 3 excellent bands all with Alcopop! conncetions (DSP, Dave House and Johnny Foreigner), cake and goody bags for the first 20 through the door. Monday October 22nd at The Social, W1 – Just £5 in advance or £4 for singles club holders.

New gig announced

It’s about bloody time but we’ve finally announced details of our next gig, and it’s a good un, in fact, it’s out 1st birthday party! Come down to The Social in London on 22nd Oct to party the night away with us, with musical fun supplied by Data.Select.Party, Johnny Foreigner and Dave House. There’ll be cake and everything. Details of a new compilation release will be online soon, and you can pre-order 4 or 5 Magicians single right now, so go and do that, yeah?

Alcopopping

This majestic post was taken from Blog Scary Monsters, a worthy read. Thought it should be repurposed here too -

As well as BSM I also co-run Alcopop! Records with my former housemate and good friend, Jack. After leaving our shared house in June, Jack moved west to Bristol with his girlfriend. This put an end to our nights of cutting and folding CD sleeves infront of the TV and ridiculous midweek drinking binges dreaming up hairbrained schemes for the label… Or that’s what we thought! Last night Jack came down and our “meeting” panned out as such:

Arriving at 7pm we downed a couple of large vodka’s and came up with possibly the best gimmick the record industry has ever heard of (tbc). We caught the bus to Cowley Road where we met a couple of the guys from a local band (whose name, for now, will remain a secret. Note: they have a digital release coming out soon and you might have heard of them, but that’s all I’m saying) for a curry and to discuss a future release or three, arriving late as we stopped off, sorry, went out of our way to get to, the dodgy off licence where everything is 50p and 2 years+ out of date. The curry and drink went down, ideas were discussed, plans were made and we set off on our way back home with a couple of cans of Pimms for the road. 50p each, of course, years out of date, obviously. A cocktail of leftover alcohol was created and we hit the office around midnight, stumbling up the stairs and spilling drink everywhere just in time to tune into Huw Stephens. In the following few hours we, drunkenly, designed a flyer for our next London Alcopop! show (see below), listed the tickets online, wrote a press release, started a Facebook event and updated the website with the info. Turning our attentions to 4 or 5 Magicians and their upcoming single we sorted the artwork and sent the master off to be pressed and updated the website and Myspace with pre-order details. Moving onto the next release, a compilation tape due out in November, we listened through the 15 tracks, decided on an order, plotted a couple of promotional and marketing plans, worked out the artwork and then mastered the tracks to make sure they were all at the same volume and the gaps were correct. With all of this complete we allowed ourselves some time for more stumbling around, to send texts into Huw’s show, hoping they would be read out on air and embarrass our friends, we checked out and laughed at some terrible, terrible bands on Myspace, poured another large cocktail and talked proudly about our earlier plan. You know, the best one to ever hit the music industry (tbc).

I rolled into bed at 4.30am, tired yet satisfied after another successful Alcopop! “meeting”. Raise your glasses, ladies and gentlemen, this is rock n roll.