Our experience with The Subjects is one of a subdued nature. We’ve never seen them completely “on,” you might say. We’ve never seen them be the MEN that they obviously can be when they feel the dark cravings. They have the capability of bringing a town or a bar to its knees, whichever gets in the way first. They usually bother with the cities lastly. It’s the bars that they’re most concerned with. They are teachers and students, but there’s only so much learning and teaching that anyone really wants to do before they just rip their shirts into confetti and rage throughout the night like deranged werewolves, slaughtering glasses, getting into fistfights, stirring up commotion and rubbing the belly of the beast just to get it warm and angry. We’ve seen them drink coffee on a hot summer morning, a year ago. That’s about it. They’ve been cordial and polite. They didn’t rip our sink out of the wall, trash our windows into spidered bits or punch us in the sack. Matty Pickles plays recreational basketball with The Walkmen, but he and the rest of his band — they will rage. They are drunk on that very idea and bother themselves with the foresight to maximize all that they can possibly do in that direction. Oh, but the music they make is this other thing entirely. The Brooklyn group’s debut album, With The Ease Grace Precision And Cleverness of Human Beings, is delightfully jangly and smart as a whip. On record, they are the boys that girls can take home to meet mothers and fathers. Off record, they are seekers of all the gratuitous horseplay and grab ass that a body can take. We love them for it. Here they wax on their current events.

Here is Matty Pickles’ contribution:
One — Bar hopping with Eliot
Eliot from the band Flying and I went out to many Park Slope bars on Monday. We only drank in one bar but probably went to ten all together. It was around 1 a.m. and we decided to wear baseball caps and sunglasses. Although this idea isn’t really that funny at all it kept us amused for at least an hour. I fell asleep at our last stop.

Two — Dave and Matt’s subway ride
Dave and I were riding home that same night on the Q train. It is my favorite train, it goes over the bridge. A tall man had headphones on, turned all the way up and was rapping into his tape player. He would sing very low and then sing very high, almost like a call and response. The best part was the kissing sounds he would occasionally make and the crotch thrusts he would do towards the door. The whole train was laughing.

Three — Junior Year
My junior year of college is done. I feel good about it and got good grades. My friends Stefan, Aaron, Nick, Pony and I had decided to name this summer our “Summer of Love”. We don’t really know why, but we are feeling pretty good about it.

Four — Huntington West Virginia = Best Show Ever!
We played a show last weekend with our good friends Black Tie Revue. The guy who set it up was one of the nicest guys I have ever met. It took us ten hours to get there and ten to get back. When it was time to play we did. We played for Black Tie Revue, the guy that set it up, the bartenders and two people in the back. When Black Tie Revue played we ended up going on stage as well. In the end, there were more people on stage then in the crowd the whole night. But Black Tie Revue is great and we had a fun time.

Five — Jona Lewie
I have had the song “You’ll Always Find Me In the Kitchen At Parties” by Jona Lewie stuck in my head all week. It is very catchy. I find myself singing it really loud in public places. I get kind of embarrassed at first, but then I realize it’s an awesome song and then I don’t care. I am actually listening to it now!

Joe is next
One — Matt’s satellite radio DJ set in the car
Equal parts informative, humorous and non-stop. He introduced us to a bunch of bands I’ve heard of but never heard the music, as well as some I’ve never heard of. We also heard the same Nickelback song about 30 times in two days. Each song was on for about one minute. This lasted around 10 hours.

Two — Brett talking about Snugglebear, the new band
When encountering someone who feels the need to drop all the names of cool bands they’re “friends” with, just one-up them by making a band up. My roommate Brett went with “Snugglebear” and this guy believed it without hesitation. Maybe Snugglebear really exists. If not, it should because there are good “bear” bands around. It’s harder to convince people my name is Joe Smith than it is to make them believe in my imaginary favorite band.

Three — Watching the Sabres in the hockey playoffs
Growing up in Buffalo and living through the Super Bowls XXV-XXVIII fiasco was rough. A Buffalo team having a chance at a sports championship is the talk of the town. Although it will most likely end in disappointment, the idea of being champs is good for now.

Four — Riding around town
It has been warmer around here lately. I have been riding my bike around. Not as much as I’d like or enough to get into shape or anything, but enough to write about it here. My total hours riding over my lifetime so far are a lot, so I have some cred to back me up on this one. We’re trying to figure out if we can bring bikes on tour. Actually, we already figured it out and we can’t, there’s not room.

Five — Hearing Flying on the radio
Our friends in the band Flying did a studio session on Soundcheck, a show on NPR. They played a couple songs and chatted with the show’s host. Those guys are the cat’s pajamas.

Dave is third to weigh in
One — The Golden Record
Just dug up this book called Murmurs of Earth that I have about the golden record that was sent into space by Carl Sagan and a bunch of other scientists in 1977. On the record is encoded pictures, messages, and music that is supposed to sum up all human experience. Though they realized that because of the distance between our planet and the next galaxy we are more likely to capture the record in mid-flight (due to our expected future super-technology) than any space civilization, they still put a great deal of love into this project, and it tells a pretty compelling story. They planned to include photos of the naked human body, you know— classy stuff, like
real tasteful shit, but the government would not allow it, calling it something like “space smut.”

Two — John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman at Taro
There’s this sushi restaurant in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn that has two records on shuffle every time I go in there. One is John Coltrane: Ballads and the other is John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. The latter is probably my favorite record. It was the first time I took a singer seriously. It makes you cry all over your white tuna avocado maki rolls (which are TDF, BTW).

Three — Chocolate Bark
Chocolate is poisonous to dogs. My idea is that there should be a chocolate that is safe for dogs to eat. There are a lot of people who love to share their favorite things with their dog (i.e. dinner, Ice cream, Julia Roberts movies, etc.) and it kills them that they have to end the night by eating a sweet piece of chocolate with their dog looking at them covetously. I would call it “Chocolate Bark — The chocolatey treat that won’t make your dog roll over.”

Four — Fuckin’ AC/DC
Gotta admit I thought these guys were a joke until Joe blasted “High Voltage” one morning when we were coming back into the city after an out-of-town show. Bon Scott and Angus Young have the kind of musical relationship where Bon sings like he’s got about five feet in the grave, and then Angus comes in with the chorus and the sound of his voice is somewhere between Tom Carvel and Lucifer Himself.

Five — Evolution question at the GOP debate
I am pretty sure that the president of the United States really doesn’t believe in evolution. I like to picture Galileo standing at the top of the tower of Pisa and dropping two rocks of different mass to show that the acceleration of gravity is uniform, and being put under house arrest for heresy. That was in the 1600s. Now we have mapped the human genome and the president doesn’t buy evolution. I feel like there’s some huge inside joke of which we are all being left
out.

Cobra Wraps It All Up
One — drunk?
It was my brother’s birthday and he has a bar in the famous meat packing district in Manhattan and I drank a bit to much. Then I left the Brass Monkey to meet up with our college friend Pony for his birthday as well, but on the way to the bar, he and I threw up all over a bathroom in some bar in Brooklyn, then got back on my board and finally got to the bar Pony was at and drank some more (puke and rally). Me, Joe and Pickles got rowdy and I threw some glasses. Joe broke a chair, Pickles started a few fights, then got home somehow. It was fun!

Two — Whip
I just bought a new whip. She’s so fast and can handle a lot. I took her out and pushed it as far as I could. I almost died a couple times. Dave has a sweet whip too, but I showed him who was boss when I cracked it in his face and rode to glory. I love my new bike

Three — guitar shop
The axe shop I work at is 30th Street Guitars and it’s pretty amazing and really fun, I met Ace Frehley from KISS. I’ve been starting to do repairs there and learning a lot. Like the other day, I fixed a broken head stock and that was cool. This week, I have been ageing a guitar
for some guy and it’s looking really good.

Four — the V club
Now, to dovetail off Pickles’ yes best show ever, West Virginia with Black Tie Review, we each had a $10 tab and somehow I got so drunk by the end with my homes Matt (of BTR) that we left the venue and walked around town looking for a club. It was a great idea at the time, then two big guys offered us a girl for the night, but it was already 4 a.m. so we didn’t think we would get our money’s worth. We ran back to our Orange County choppers and got outta there.

Five — i hate cabs
I was riding my new whip down the street and everything was fine until all of a sudden I’m on the floor, some girl opened the door, getting out of a cab and I nailed it and flipped over my handle bars. It sucked, but didn’t hurt to bad.

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