love

well, okay. i guess it’s been long enough that we can’t churlishly hold our little tour experiences to our bosoms as “current” anymore and have to admit that it’s now several weeks in the past. what kristofer said, basically. plus here are some more pictures.

yuri trying to figure out how to use his camera on the actual balcony of the actual place where roman grew up. or. where he spent his early years, it will be a sad day for all of us if he ever grows up. by the way, yuri never did figure out how to use that camera, as none of the pictures came out.

our first night we stopped in gmunden, austria. look how fresh we look. the next morning, adamant about going swimming and unconvinced by the locals who warned us not to, we jumped in the frigid traunsee…and then just as quickly jumped out, shivering and cursing. roman shook his head and laughed.

our first show, in the half indoor-half-outdoor space at the kunsthaus passage in vienna, with a beautiful viennese night scene in the background. as the roman games began their first song, a drunken mook (don’t know the austrian equivalent) started a barfight so we had to stop and make sure everyone was okay. shaken, we played the rest of the set and had to calm our nerves with plenty of beer.

yuri and heather “networking” after the show.

yuri’s nerve.com photo

next night in vienna at the socialist youth headquarters, vekks. our austrian tour manager extraordinaire, hilde, gave orders like a general and had them rearrange the stage so quickly. notice the lazy chick in the foreground, avoiding hard work as usual.

hilde, post roman games show where she literally let her hair down. Hilde is an extraordinary artist working in sculpture, installations, costume-design, and performance, often merging all these elements in various ways.

morex optimo playing on the properly aligned stage. NB: i played my best show ever here.

the palm tree is especially humorous touch since it was probably the dankest, darkest, mustiest basement ever.

the socialist youth of vienna.

then, later that night, we bolted to our next gig at the anarchist youth squat, EKH. here are the anarchist punks of vienna, watching the roman games. I played my best show here.

roman’s nerve.com photo

barango, our host in budapest. he is true, old-school punk and a geninuely kind and generous human being. and i have never seen punk rock played on a *5-string bass*!

aggi, our other host and barango’s bandmate and ladymate. playing keyboards in shades, with beer in one hand. it cannot get much cooler than that.

kristofer’s nerve.com photo (men seeking men). roman had a word with him about keeping his shirt during shows on so this won’t happen again. i say if you got it, flaunt it. guess it depends on what you think ‘it’ is.

budapst by night…and about 10 seconds before we got pulled over by cops! who made kristofer breathe into a little machine and then tried to get us to cough up 100,000 forints to let us go home! fortunately barango talked them out of it.

another view of budapest by night. and then roman– haha, nothing, forget it.

i thought this statue extremely hilarious: it was right over a garden of little impatients and the statue was a soldier with a sword and a whip. it looked like he was commanding the little flowers, under pain of death, to GROW! GROW! no one seemed to think it was as funny as i did, but they humored me anyway.

our charming hosts barango and aggi.

we drove straight from budapest to vienna, to pick up the lovely hilde again, and she took us to a beautiful house on the attersee. we sat on the porch drinking hungarian palinka and watched shooting stars. BOO-RIIING!!

the next morning, my running route. a few cows played defense but i was wily and pulled some fancy moves to manoeuver around them. kristofer was grumpy about anyone taking boring landscape pictures so we had to sneak his camera when he was asleep to get shots like this. soo boring. hey, what’s YOUR desktop photo these days kristofer? uh huh. boring landscape, right?

i don’t know if kristofer mentioned it, but we went swimming quite a bit.

kristofer writing a thank you note.

roman, ever the teacher, correcting it.

in zürich, at club helsinki. our trusty “psychedelic fur”. i came down with the flu in the middle of this set. i didn’t play my best show ever on this one.

well, we’d planned out what we’d do if kristofer broke one string (a given) and two strings (woops) but not THREE strings. here is the backup backup plan where kristofer recites rilke in german. despite our strong misgivings, yuri and i had to admit that it was kind of charming. then again i was sick that night.

kristofer with silvana, our lovely and generous zürich host.

me, flugrippy and sheepishly explaining to kristofer why it wasn’t my best show ever. he looks more admonishing than he was.

st. gallen at the very cool grabenhalle club. i played my best show ever here.

in basel, at an abandoned german railyard. very spooky environment but a bunch of very hip outdoor clubs had cropped up.

roman rockin it in basel.

hotel alpenhof, aka hotel “fa”. our friend fa (with the big hair) was up in the mountains in an empty hotel and invited us up to stay and play. by the way, fa is the man responsible for the most beautiful cross that led to my most beautiful goal ever, by the way. and a brilliant drummer and musician, a veteran of the mashup.

yuri, freaking out.

lokalmatador roman heating up his hometown rorschach. this, after 6 hours of soccer, after 1 hour of sleep the night before. and oh, it didn’t even stop here!

the elsener bruvvas, in proper nyc attire.

later, at hotel fa, with frank. this picture should be WAAY more blurry than it is.

another delicious meal, courtesy of chef yuri. kristofer and yuri are having one of their romantic “soul stares”. it was kind of charming at first, but got uncomfortable after a while.

roman games at hotel fa, the early bird set.

morex optimo’s last show. consummate tubthumber, and not expecting to play a “mellow” show, i quickly had to forage for twigs to play gently for this one.

I’m so bad at telling stories. I can only give facts and then roll around seductively among the tools on the flatbed of a pickup truck. Here’s what I wrote to Marta, from Emma La Reina:

Photo by Tami Berkowits

















Photo by Frank Heer

What can I say? My tour is too small! It’s that simple!

Heather’s trusty Jeep (La Jeffa) laden to the gills, snacks from the Park Slope Food Co-op neatly ensconced in Yuri’s back pack, and I with my ultra-marine cynicism painted on the top of my eyes. Yuri resurrects tapes from the seventies and eighties while the landscape between New York City and Boston stretches and gasps, and yawns and aches it’s joints truck by truck by truck. Credit cards make good cheese slicers.

We finally arrive at PA’s Lounge, where we are greeted by the owner and told to set up our stuff in the corner by the video games. We are hungry and perplexed. Then suddenly he, and all the other grizzled veterans of his establishment burst out in a long guffaw. We are then ushered into the actual performance space, where we are greeted by a Christian jazz-fusion band doing sound check.

I find out, much to my delight, that one of my Boston friends is pregnant. (Hurrah to Brad and Jackie!)

We play a fantastic set to an attentive, but intermittently puzzled crowd, among which we are very much pleased to see our old friends from Ad Frank (we played with them at Galapagos), BJ Snowden and her entourage, local music scenesters, some friends of ours, and a woman who is clearly there for only one thing, and one thing only: BJ Snowden!

You all know BJ Snowden, right? That of which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence.

How’d it get to be so late? Why is it darkness in the sky between the clouds, and between my temples? Why are we getting lost? Why are we driving to Rhode Island? Because we are looking for our beds. And beds they are, lovingly placed there for our late arrival by Ruth Allderige Olsen, her husband Jim, and their three sons Lorin, Noah, and Daniel. Cocoa Puffs on the kitchen counter greet us in the stillness. Individual towels, and mugs are placed on our ingeniously crafted make shift beds on two couches and a floor. Heather, the iron-willed, though somewhat direction-challenged driver of La Jeffa (her Jeep), plummets to sleep.

In the morning we are treated to a lovely breakfast, again, hand-crafted by the family, some great conversation, great home-made Macromedia Director animated videos by Lorin, and then a gorgeous springtime walk in a park. Big thanks! to the Olsens. We can’t wait to drop by again.

Then, it’s off for more knife-edge navigation of the tri-state traffic armpit of the Eastern seaboard. Somehow, once again, our projected travel times are way off and we don’t arrive in Philadelphia until we’ve been scrunched together for eight hours. But we are in good spirits, though wrinkled and hungry. The Manhattan Room opts to treat us to a nice dinner rather than the joke we received from the establishment we played at in Boston, and we’re happy to see a good rock ‘n roll crowd gathered here. We are very impressed with opening band Algebra of Need. Really hard, dirty, but precise and utterly convincing. I’m sure they can go far if only they can keep their fans from messing with their equipment on stage. Again, we surprised ourself with how much energy and love and fun we could burn through on stage in forty minutes, considering how worn out we were at this point. Something about the stage that just erases the bumps and bruises and makes you want to put the arrow to the bow and fire without thinking.

We enjoyed playing, though there were lonely moments by the swag box,

especially when we were waiting in an almost empty bar for the last band to finish their set (they had borrowed Heather’s drums). At two am we finally were able to pack our brave little truck up again and make a beeline for New York City. We dropped Yuri off at his house, and then Heather and Kristofer raced to unload our stuff at the studio in Williamsburg, but we got there far too late to make the 4am Larry Lawrence curfew.

Our 40 hours of mini-tour included: 18 hours of driving, 6.5 hours of watching other bands, 6 hours of sleeping, 4 hours of eating, 3 hours of load-in/load-out, one-hour of walking in the park, and 1.5 hours of performing. Can’t wait to do it again, but MORE next time!

Thank you to all our fans who came out to support us.

Much Love,
Morex Optimo

Well, it had to happen eventually…someone thinks Heather is “not funny”. She is pacing, sputtering in utter disbelief that someone called one of her puns “not even a good one” and “sophomoric”. Read the full review here. She is currently challenging anyone to take shots on her in goal now as “soccer goalkeeper” is her last stronghold.

Our song Stalling is now in second place as the “Most Original” song of all-time in the entire pop-punk catalog at garageband.com. Now buy our album so we can pay for our upcoming tours! Thanks.

After tickling our ears for a week with mastering wizard Fred Kevorkian at Absolute Audio, twelve delicious Morex Optimo tracks cannot wait to be unleashed on the world. We are planning a CD listening party for November, 2003, followed by a CD release party. In the meantime we are busily looking for publicists, DJs, and label people who might want to take our weird little project and help take it to the wider audience we believe it should have.

If you have any contacts you think might be interested in our music, please use the contact form to drop us a line, or call us at 718.599.4893. Thanks!

Love,
Morex Optimo

Morex Optimo has stepped down into the storied abyss of B.C. Studio, Brooklyn, to begin work on their first album. It is being recorded by Martin Bisi, who has had a long career working with the likes of Sonic Youth, White Zombie, John Zorn, Bill Laswell, Material, Swans, Angels of Light, Herbie Hancock, Cop Shoot Cop, Ex-Models, Ginger Baker, the Boredoms, Boss Hog, and U.S. Maple.

Most of the tracks are being recorded live to tape–leaving pretty much just the vocals for overdubs. Martin knows his rooms and his equipment really well, and spent only three hours getting a drum sound that is beautifully transparent, with a perfectly unambiguous strike.
Q: Are you guys using any “tricks” in your recording?
A: Yes. The trick is to somehow care about every detail while not caring at all.

Songs, once stuck on tape, reveal different problems and different strengths than you expected. Martin assures us it’s not his 3M 24-track tape recorder that’s to blame.

A lot of rock ‘n roll history on the walls.

There’s a very distinct moment when you’re standing in the basement, headphones on, the faintest hum in your head where you seem to forget how the song goes. You even forget how to hold your guitar pick. Outside is void, and there’s a sense of loss of symbol systems. Nothing holds together quite. And then the count starts on the drum sticks and, ex-nihilo, a strange, tonal solar system is born.

We can’t wait to see what comes out of this pretty intense period of working, thinking about the work, dreaming, and working at not thinking (thanks Yuri).

I am pleased. It pleases me. Pleasing to be announced that Morex Optimo has finally completed work on its first ever sound track for a film. We worked with writer, producer, and director James Jackson to put together a charming short-film vignette of that thing called Williamsburg, Brooklyn which is getting so much press lately. Several crazy new compositions varying in subtlety from that of Bilharzia to Australia were recorded, and some of our trusty material folded in to what ultimately became a solid first feature for Mr. Jackson. The Exactly Commensurate Abattoir makes a smashing kick at the end of the film and gives it a nice snap o’ the ol’ neck. The film is titled “Ich Bin Ein Brookliner” (ahem), and you can catch it at Mr. Jackson’s Halloween/Film Premier party this November 2, 2002 (e-mail us for details), after which Mr. Jackson will be flying to the other coast to talk to suits. We wish him the best of luck!