April 4, 2008
Hey all. The band has been on a bit of a hiatus lately since the guys are busy with some political endeavors that have been eating up the weekends and other spare time. Hopefully things will turn out well in the primary on the 22nd and there will be time for plenty of makeshift rock festival fundraisers before November. More info to come when that's all sorted out.
October 31, 2007
Happy Halloween, Fooled Mommy news-checkers! It's been quite some time since I got in here and posted an update for you. Sorry about that. So yeah, Ryan's graduated from college. It happened a while ago too. And, being that I am Ryan, it's a very different world that I'm posting from now than back in April. Not necessarily better, but not necessarily worse. Musical output has slowed down a bit since those (somewhat) carefree college days though, as I'm working full-time and Rich is still in school and working as well. Also, we both have girlfriends to occupy our time. Not that there's anything bad about that. Girls are pretty cool. There is undeniably less time for songwriting and band practice these days though. On the plus side, we're playing a show this Friday at the Sterling Hotel and a large crowd should be on hand to check out the headlining group, who just happen to be a (presumably?) prominent christian rock outfit. Fooled Mommy remains strictly secular, of course... but given a chance to play for a lot of people, it was pretty much a no-brainer to accept, regardless of what other bands will be playing. With any luck maybe we'll pick up a fan or two or three hundred. Hopefully I'll report back here soon with more good news for y'all. I just said "y'all" since I went on vacation with the GF to Richmond and Atlanta for a week. In actuality, relatively few people that we were exposed to had a southern accent. But that's all pretty beside the point. 'Til next time...
April 27, 2007
Howdy, Fooled Mommy-watchers. The March 31st show was great fun and a rousing musical success. The crowd was a bit sparse due to circumstances beyond our control, but oh well. Them's the breaks sometimes. We'll likely repeat a lot of the songs from March 31st at our next show, since we mostly played new stuff and only a select few were actually around to hear it. Speaking of our next show, it will be on May 5th, as part of the ridiculously packed school year-ending SUPER ROCK AND ROLL SATURDAY which will be a semi-all-day affair lasting from about 2:00 to 8:00. We'll be somewhere in the middle there. If I had to take a guess I'd take a stab about somewhere around 6:00, but it all depends. Attendees may (if we can get it together in time) be able to hear by far our longest composition ever, which stretches past the ten minute mark. I promise it's not boring though. I hate those songs where great length is achieved through an endless guitar solo (well ok, Free Bird is indeed awesome, but excessive use of this technique will get grating) or endless repetion of the same sections (well ok, American Pie is indeed awesome, but that's a special case) or a long boring section where not much really happens (I can't think of any exceptions for this one), so I can assure you the Fooled Mommy take on epic songwriting contains none of those things. In addition, Rich has some lovely new tunes that we might decide to unleash on the general public for the first time. It's truly an exciting time to be alive. So come on May 5th. I'll be your friend.
March 3, 2007
After a pretty extremely long period of inaction on our website here,
version 2.0 of Fooled-Mommy.tk has arrived! It's pretty funny looking at how
ridiculously outdated the last news update is now. Wuzzle? Exploits?
Marguerite? Crazy stuff. I definitely think we're a lot
better as a band now than we were when this thing got updated last, so it
seemed like a good time to revamp the site and make things look a little
more like a "real" website. Also, perhaps a more important
development toward the website
update, I just got FrontPage last night. It's a lot easier to make a website
when you don't have to code everything in HTML without the benefit of any software.
So while the website update is cool (and would be cooler if I wasn't so
restricted by bandwidth and all that technical mumbo jumbo jazz), I think
the real important thing is the improvement of the music, which you can
witness for yourself by clicking the little "Listen" button over there on
the left. That will take you to our newly created profile at mtvu.com (once
again, to save bandwidth here) where you can listen to FIVE(!) of our
amazing new tunes. Reading all the old updates makes me wonder how I was
ever so excited about some of those old songs. Maybe someday I'll say that
about these songs. But in a sense I guess that's good. But in another sense,
bad. But seriously, I think these are pretty good. In addition to the new
songs, we'll also be adding an updated Bio section, some info and pictures
from recent shows (we just played one on Feb. 23rd, in fact), and plenty of other exciting goodies.
Enjoy!
P.S. Some of the links in the older news updates don't work anymore but I'll leave them there for historical accuracy.
February 21, 2005
It's been a while since I stopped in to give y'all the what's what of FM
lately, but I'm here now and that's what matters. Rich has a nice song
(perhaps temporarily?) called Wuzzle and I wrote a ditty called (also
perhaps temporarily?) Exploits. I'm not really sure if Rich wants it to be
called that forever or if it's just a name until he thinks of a better name
that's actually in the song somewhere. The same goes for mine. I'm sure you
really don't care what they're called, but I can assure you they sound good.
Please be advised we haven't really quite gotten the hang of those tunes yet
and they aren't exactly performed flawlessly. But they'll get better. Rich
and I have discussed splitting the cost and getting some decent audio
editing software and making a little home demo or something. I'll provide
some more info on that whenever we feel like we've made a decision. In other
news, hopefully (I'll cross my fingers a few times here) some guy from NCC
that Rich knows might be coming by to play guitar or bass. And hopefully
Marguerite will be available someday. She's managed to be busy every Friday
and Saturday for like a month and a half. So basically, there's good
potential for new folks to come play with me and Rich and expand the sound a
bit. As long as they show up sometime. We could really use some bass...
January 25, 2005
Hello. This is your good buddy Ryan and I'm here to tell you what's new in the Fooledmommiverse. Rich has an unstoppable wrecking crew of songs barreling their way into our setlist without pause. Well, maybe they won't all actually end up among our favorites, but Don't Let It Go is pretty cool and Failure is nice too. I'm personally whipping up some ideas of my own, including some standalone lyrics that I hope to put music to whenever I get some free time and/or feel like it. I haven't reported on this yet, but for the last two weeks we've been trying to get our friend Marguerite to come over and play the keyboard with us. So far she's been busy but hopefully this week we'll have a trio. I'll probably update after Friday's session with more info.
January 15, 2005
Happy New Year, everyone. Last year saw Fooled Mommy's first two real shows (defined as "for people not forced to watch us") and I'm sure 2005 will bring an increase in both our number of gigs (a.k.a. "shows"... not gigabytes (although more gigabytes are always welcome as well)) and the size of our rabid fanbase. With regard to the NCC show, things went pretty well. The two other bands playing ended up not being an especially good thing, although I'm sure some people thought otherwise. A whole batch of new songs is now being worked on and I'll give some titles once the best couple start to rise to the top of the pile. Until next time, drive carefully and eat your vegetables.
December 9, 2004
We're playing a show at Northampton Community College on Friday at 7:00 in room CC220 to benefit Peaceable Kingdom, a Lehigh Valley animal shelter. It'll cost you $4.00 to enter, but there's plenty of free food and two other bands are playing (which may or may not be a good thing)
November 24, 2004
Here's some pictures from the Muhlenberg show. More to come.
November 17, 2004
Yeah, so that whole voting thing really turned out well. But in other less crappy news, Fooled Mommy will be playing a show at Muhlenberg College in the Red Door on November 20th from midnight to 1:30. By November 20th, I mean that night, not that morning. We actually won't start playing until it's after midnight and technically November 21st, but it's Saturday night as far as I'm concerned. I'll be back after that with a bunch of updates, including (hopefully) some pictures, maybe a little live mp3 action, and a personal retelling of our musical journey right here on the news page. Until then... stay safe, America.
October 27, 2004
Hey, it's Ryan here with more delicious news for you Fooled Mommyites. We've been rocking pretty hard lately. A new weird song with a few parts and no particular chorus has been written by myself and we've attempted to play it. And of course Rich is laying golden eggs at every turn (metaphorically). My laptop got all virusified, so I won't really be able to write any tunes or even record practices until the IT Department at my school takes a look at it and gets it working again. Apparently that won't be til November 11. I miss it and its various software applications already. Not to mention all the lovely files. But with any luck I should get it back good as new in about 2.5 weeks. Until then, we'll just have to rock unrecorded. Happy Halloween and please vote.
October 11, 2004
Howdy,children. This here's Uncle Ryan with a fresh new update for ya. We've been rocking a lot lately, working on new songs and solidifying some relatively new favorites. The old school and SUYM songs are pretty much all gone at this point, although if we're ever in desperate need of filler, we might unearth them. I'm Glad, Nothing Left, Alone on Sunday, and Little Town(s) are all sounding really good, and some other stuff like Beat Bush, Deceit, American Values, and other new ideas that are just being turned into songs are coming along nicely as well. Practice this last Friday was cut short so that Rich and I could go to his college and watch the second presidential debate, but we will return with a full-length basement-rattling rockfest on the 15th. That's about it for now. From all of us here at Fooled Mommy Enterprises, please vote for John Kerry. Thank you.
September 3, 2004
Hey. It's been a while since I bothered to give all you FM lovers a news treat, but today is your lucky day. It's currently Friday morning, so Rich and I will be practicing tonight. We've unveiled a startling array of new tunes, including Alone on Sunday, Nothing Left, Little Town(s), and... well, there's more but I forget what they're called. Please bear in mind that my inability to remember their titles does not necessarily mean that they aren't ultracatchy bursts of musical genious. Because that's all Fooled Mommy does. Our new songs sound like they were a joint collaboration between Paul McCartney and John Lennon and Brian Wilson and Bach and Beethoven and Mozart and Jimmy Page and Paul Simon, with each artist contributing only their very best. As you can see, the band's current attitude is "extremely boastful with egotism far exceeding musical quality." Maybe I'll put out an FM newsletter soon to keep you people entertained. I'll post again when something happens worth typing about.
February 23, 2004
Hey there you crazy Fooled Mommy fanatics. My apologies for the chronic lack of news updates recently, but I've been semi-busy with stuff and junk and all that jazz and so on and so on, blah blah blah. Anyway, we've had a few practices since the last update. One a week to be precise, including just hours ago when it was actually the 22nd. By "we," I mean me and Rich. Bonnie has been absent from the last few rehearsals due to sickness and/or prior engagements, but she'll be back soon, rocking the low frequencies like she's never rocked them before. Well, maybe not like she's never rocked them before, but like she's only rocked them a couple of times and is still learning how to play everything. That's how she'll rock it. Hardcore. We've come up with a few truly brilliant songs lately, including I'm Glad (The Happy Song) and Live From the Basement, and we're currently working on turning a few nice new ideas into actual honest-to-goodness songs, with structure and sections and such. These include a new song of Rich's called "Friends" and a few as-of-yet untitled Ryan tunes. That's the news for now, FM freaks.
January 26, 2004
Greetings Fooled Mommy fans. Just here to let everyone know about the last FM practice which, in a quasi-surprising development, took place on Saturday night instead of Friday night. Practice was cut short by an unfortunately early curfew for a particular bass player, but in the time we had we played a promising new tune of Rich's about 4 times in a row, trying to buck our tradition of playing a new song once and promptly forgetting about it. So anyway, that's about it for now. Sorry, but no pictures were taken besides photos of two of Rich's ID cards from school. I suppose I'll post those here once I get them on my computer.
January 22, 2004
Hey everyone. Been a while since the last update, so I'll make sure this one is extra good. It's Thursday at the moment, which means FM will have it's next practice tomorrow night, but i have yet to cover last week's practice. So I'll do that now. Here's the "setlist," in trusty ol' chronological order: Car Go Fast, Sodamad (i messed up the lyrics to this one a little), Some Little Musical Idea of Ryan's That We Played Over and Over, The Hardest Button to Button (we played this twice, once with the cd playing along, once without), Asphalt Buffet, The Big Three Killed My Baby (we sure do love White Stripes covers), and then Huh? finished off the night. I'll have the pics from the 16th up in a little bit. Until then, just imagine the pictures I will post, and then, when I do post them, compare your mental images to the actual pictures. Try it, it's fun.
January 9, 2004
Another wonderful practice tonight. We actually played a lot of real songs. Um... it's not late enough yet for me to do too much rambling, so maybe i'll come back and add another update later. But, basically, practice was good and we're all feeling good and writing new songs and rocking the old ones and a big thumbs up to everything right now. Check out tonight's pictures here.
January 7, 2004
It was Improv Night tonight for Fooled Mommy, as today's impromptu practice consisted entirely of stuff we made up on the fly. Bonnie didn't have a bass guitar to play, so she had to play my guitar (which has a dysfunctional low E string) while Rich played his (fully functional) Telecaster. Not much else to mention besides that. Next practice is scheduled for the 9th, so look for another update soon after that. And, in what will now be a standard feature of the news page, you can check out some pictures of tonight's practice here.
January 3, 2004
Last night, Fooled Mommy had its first practice with the apparent heir to the bass throne, Bonnie. We played Car Go Fast, then decided to play all new stuff, including a screamy mock metal song we made on the spot that we actually ended up liking a lot. We are definitely not a metal band, but it sure is easy and fun to play drums real loud and scream equally loud. All in all, a good practice. The Year of the Fooled Mommy has begun. And now, for your visual pleasure, some pictures of us practicing with Bonnie for the first time and generally goofing off and doing nothing.
December 30, 2003
Hey all you crazy FM fans out there. It's almost 2004. The glorious year of Fooled Mommy's founding (2002) is inching farther and farther away, and will eventually seem impressive when our official tour t-shirts have an "Est. 2002" on them. For the big world tour that we'll do. Eventually. So anyway, there's a lot of general turmoil right now, and Tina's current status as a Fooled Mommy member is questionable for the time being. It's a big long story not well-suited to get written out here, but chances are Tina's either gonna quit or Rich will force her out. I'm finding it best to stand on the sidelines and let them figure it out, but I'll report what went down when the facts have emerged. There's definitely a good chance Fooled Mommy will be reverting to it's default two-piece lineup yet again. There are various advantages and disadvantages to this of course, but that's another thing best suited to be described fully in another place at another time. I personally hope we find another bass player soon. A bass player who'll finally fit into the group relatively seamlessly. It seems like none of our bassists thus far have really "fit" into the group as well as had been hoped. I guess we'll have to just keep tryin'. Onto bass player number four. Unless Tina stays. But at the moment it seems doubtful. Yeah, so anyway, as with all my news entries, I'm going to recognize that I'm rambling and stop. Happy New Year. Be forewarned, 2004 shall be the Year of the Fooled Mommy.
December 21, 2003
Sorry about the serious lack of updates recently. First of all, I apologize for Rich's little bit of news below this one. I assume no responsibility for any news reports between November 14th and today. So anyway... We had practice on the 12th and 19th. I'd say they both went pretty well. Didn't technically get a lot done, but there's really not much to do. Some practice we'll have to put off playing old stuff for a while and concentrate on writing some new pop gems for the kids to sing along with. I keep wanting to work on making full songs out of some little bursts of music I created, but I never wanna say so when we're having practice. I like having influence in the band, but I feel bad when I think I'm being selfish and working on my stuff instead of the songs we already have. I know it wouldn't be selfish at all to do it though, so it shall be done sometime soon. Yeah, well this is turning into Ryan's Diary even more than my usual "news" updates, so I'll cut it off here before I start ranting about some other thing that has nothing at all to do with that scrumdiddlyuptious bunch known as Fooled Mommy. Bye bye. Y'all come back now. Gonna be plenty more news to report, and a whole new year to dive into.
December 5, 2003
NEWSLINE: FOOLED MOMMY BASSIST, JOHN DESENTIS QUITS AFOREMENTIONED ROCK BAND. Read the full article here.
November 14, 2003
Practice tonight went pretty good. For the first time ever we actually had enough microphones to pick up everyone, so you'll finally get some mp3s of me (Ryan) singing. I'm unsure as to the goodness or badness of this. I'll leave it up to you to figure that out. Anyway, on to our "setlist". We revisited the jam from last week as the level check opener, moved on to My Wife, and then did two takes of Car Go Fast, because those were the first songs I sung and the first time my miv level wasn't high enough. Then, we played the infamous In Bloom, only Rich yielded singing duties to me. I really couldn't hear myself during the song and I thought I did awful and I still do, but Rich seemed to think it was good, or at least better than him. Whatever. We did two takes of Santa, with Rich singing, as is customary. We wrapped up the rehearsal with Sodamad and Terminal. Terminal was somewhat uneventful, but Sodamad was very... interesting. The chorus was played a little bit off and made it kinda suck, but the Timber Break was quite cool. Then we went on a band trip to the theater for some Elf. Good movie. Oh, yeah, Tina was really hyper tonight. Just thought I'd mention it. Talk to ya next time I've got something to say.
November 7, 2003
Another Friday night FM rehearsal today. All songs played were old ones we haven't touched in a while and old ones we have. Also included in tonight's "setlist" were the mandatory cover of In Bloom as well as FM's first Who cover, My Wife. Mp3s coming soon. Sorry about the delay on all these practice tracks, but putting them all online takes a while and we're lazy.
November 2, 2003
There was an impromptu FM practice tonight because we had an hour and a half to kill between dinner and The Simpsons. We played Bonnie a few times; Halcyon and Terminal both got a play too. We did a generally good cover of In Bloom with a few slight blemishes mostly involving the vocals, but at least it's entertaining to listen to. And we played Rich's song that I mentioned in the Halloween news entry. I think that's about it. The downloads from the last 2 practices should be up sometime relatively soonish.
November 1, 2003
There was no FM practice tonight, but we did attend a Battle of the Bands at DeSales University. We didn't play or anything, but we scoped out the other bands. They made us feel generally untalented, but they also made us realize how unique we are. Every band that played was instantly comparable to another band and every song they played sounded almost exactly the same. Maybe I'm a tad biased, but I don't think either of those apply to us. So, some good things and bad things from that. I think the feeling leaving was generally positive amongst the FM members because we realized that even if we're not technically perfect and we don't have 2 guitarists, at least no one can say we're generic and monotonous. More info arriving soon.
October 31, 2003
Fooled Mommy congregated in my basement tonight for a good round of practicing. We played a new song of Rich's, some old stuff we haven't played for quite a while, and attempted an old school White Stripes cover that never quite worked, but it was fun. All in all a pretty good rehearsal. We'll have the mp3s up on the download page as soon as we're done fiddlin' with em. I guess that's all for tonight. Happy Halloween!
October 28, 2003
Hey, it's the very first installment of Fooled Mommy news. This here's Ryan, giving you an update on the latest exploits of our merry band. Let's see... I should've thought of something to write before I started to write this. Oh yeah. The downloads page just got updated with clips from an astonishing TWO rehearsals after over a year of totally ignoring that particular part of this site. I'll let ya know when it gets updated again, so you don't have to actually bother checking for yourself. Well, I guess since this is the first entry I'll just go over everything. Tina's our wonderful bass player now. She's still learning, but with time she's sure to become the most rockingest bassist in the history of rocking bassists. Rich is writing some cool new stuff, and I, being the overambitious fellow I am, am attempting write some songs as well. Yes, I know, drummers have an awful songwriting record, but like every fool who thinks they can defy history, I believe that I can do better than all those silly shmucks of the past (Ringo, I'm looking at you). Tina has yet to try her hand at writing Fooled Mommy's latest smash, because, like I said, she's still working on figuring out that bass thing. Still no gigs on the horizon, but my blind optimism says we'll soon be selling out a stadium near you sometime soon, after this "Period of Change" passes and we have a bunch of thoroughly rocking new tunes to send off to the record labels. After the bidding war, we will sign the highest-paying contract in the history of music and make the highest-selling album ever. How hard can it be to beat the Eagles Greatest Hits? That cd sucks. It doesn't even have Hotel California or Life in the Fast Lane on it. Those are their two best songs. People are idiots for not buying more of every single Zeppelin album than that thing. But, pulling myself back from that fun little tangent, I suppose that's about all there is to say right now. You can look forward to more updates whenever anything remotely interesting happens or the site gets updated or I get bored. Now go check out the site!