December's Insurgency » Ramblings

Superbowl!!!

doerksen — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:24:04 +0000

This isn’t really related to the band — I mean, other than the fact that the four of us will, in fact, be together in front of a TV come kickoff time — but the Superbowl is coming up and it’s got me thinking football!! Like many of you know, I’m a HUGE football fan, both CFL and NFL, and to be honest the NFL playoffs this year has kind of sucked in terms of good games. I think we’ve had maybe two good games out of ten? Anyway, I’ve been thinking about the best games I’ve ever seen in my life, from start to finish. Considering I’ve watched maybe 250 full games in my time, I’ve seen some great games (see below) and some horrifically bad games (see: Cleveland 6, Buffalo 3) so without further ado, my top three in each league:

NFL: 3. New England 32, Carolina 29, Superbowl XXXVIII (the wrong team won but it was spectacular)

2. St. Louis 32, New York Jets 29, 2004 (the right team won (for me) and sneaked into the playoffs thanks to this game)

1. Arizona 51, Green Bay 45, 2010 playoffs (this was the greatest game I have ever seen from start to finish. ever. so good.)

CFL: 3. Winnipeg 32, Calgary 28, 2008 (Ryan Dinwiddie’s one win as a starter, and it was a comeback with under a minute to go)

2. Edmonton 38, Montreal 35, 93rd Grey Cup (just a solid all-around game that went into double overtime)

1. Winnipeg 51, Montreal 46, 2005 (probably the one highlight in what was an awful year. we went up 37-13, Montreal came back, then so did we)

Keep in mind I’m only counting games that I watched from start to finish, and these have to be games that were good games all throughout. I would have included the most recent Grey Cup, but the fact of the matter is it was not a good game until it was, like, 10 minutes to go. Anyway, enjoy the Superbowl! Go Saints!

- daniel j. doerksen

We Are Alive!!

bergman — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:44:00 +0000

It has been nearly a month since our previous post – this is too long of a time methinks!!

After a somewhat full Christmas break for the members of this band, we are back together and the wheels are turning. All I can say for now – expect some recorded material. SOON.

…And better posts.

Yours truly!

- Bergman

ps. In other news, the previously mentioned video game tournament has come to a close, with 8 teams participating! Bergman’s team achieved 3rd place, Kieran’s team pulled off a solid 5th, while Yuri’s… well, didn’t do so well. Actually I won’t sugar coat it, he got 8th. But put in a solid effort! Yay for us! (Mario Kart 64 is the most intense game!)

New Look! (To Stay)

kieran — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:21:39 +0000

So you’re all probably confused, or in awe of this awesome new layout and look we have going on here.

It’s pretty simple. The last site didn’t feel like our band. It was close, but it was too bright and as silly as our band is, the music we play is a little more serious and we wanted to reflect that, while holding on to a little bit of a cartoon feeling. So with the help of Obox Design and a little elbow grease, this site is taking the shape we want it to.

There are some minor tweaks that will be going on. But enjoy how easy it is to search by category, custom fonts, easy reading, cute exploding planes and aliens, how nicely videos show up, and coming hopefully very soon, our videos will be in a nice slider pane at the top right that you can just scroll through and then watch in HD. It’ll be sweet. A couple of fixes still need to happen as well (enjoy the glitched Lightbox effect in our photo gallery, it’s hilarious!), but hey, we’re doing a great deal of this ourselves with design help from a wonderful team. They work hard for us little guys, even though their clientele usually have much larger pocketbooks

So enjoy the new site!

And for a slightly shameless plug: check out my Tumblr blog (it’s going live in the next couple of days) @ kieranmoolchan.com to get little insights into the world of a track athlete. It’s not a full blog, but a micro blog. Little snippets of things on the net and pictures/audio/video I put up. There will be something for everyone (actually, that’s not true, but if you like hearing about track, some charities and world issues or alt/rock/pop/hardcore/post-hardcore music, then there will be something for you.)
Peace,

Kieran

How We Find Our Sound

kieran — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:21:59 +0000

Our band is constantly evolving our song writing process. At the moment, a lot of the music we have written has been written by pairs of us and not quite as a cohesive unit. Two people will come up with the meat of a song, and then the others just kind of fill things in. I have to say that it can be easier this way, but it’s definitely less diplomatic. It kind of works for us though, and we love the sharing that goes on, because there will be two of us coming to the group saying: “Check out what we made! How can you guys make it not suck…” That’s usually how things are prefaced. We have a very high standard that we think that our work should measure up to, and we never think that we have attained it. It’s probably good that we think that way though, because it pushes us to constantly improve our songs (although at a certain point I guess we’ll have to leave things alone or we’ll never finish a song). Now that we finally have a regular practice space again, we know that our joint song writing will evolve into something wonderful!

On a more personal note, a lot of what I write (which I then take to the boys so they can make it not suck), comes from long improvisational sessions at the piano. I mess around for a great deal of time, then I try to remember the cooler parts of what I played and start forming them into songs, adding lyrics, and splicing things together. I don’t know quite enough theory to pound out a song on paper (actually, there is no possible way for me to write our songs out in musical notation, I leave things like that up to Bergman and Doerksen, and Yuri, he’s learning too.), so I just rely on memory. But lately I have been recording pieces of my little improv times at the ivories, so that I don’t forget things.

Here are a couple of those sessions. (I apologize for their length, they are eight and ten minutes long). I recorded them without any breaks or cuts. Enjoy!

Download audio file (A%20Lack%20Of%20Direction.mp3)
Download audio file (My%20Mind%20Is%20An%20Earthquake.mp3)

Don’t forget to come to our November 21 show with Living With Lions, Brighter Brightest, Common Lives and Take Me to the Pilot!

- Kieran

Exclusive Access #1

kieran — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:57:52 +0000

Hello everyone!

We’ve decided that we should give you exclusive and preferential access to the inner workings of December’s Insurgency, and so we are filming little snippets of our lives as a band. We’ll take you backstage, into backyards and backrooms, and even bedrooms to deliver the best and worst of ourselves to you. So enjoy. And have fun deciding whether we are serious or not.

Peace,

Kieran

Welcome To Our New Home!

kieran — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:30:56 +0000

It’s been a long time coming, but we finally have a site for you.

This is where you will be able to see photos and videos of us, learn about upcoming shows, and most importantly, listen to our music. We will be posting blogs and news about the band, about things that we think are cool, insights into our souls, and stuff about you guys as well! Because no one is more important than our fans (psst, that’s you right?).

So enjoy this place, and if you have any comments, feel free to leave them in the comments section on a blog post or hit the contact page and send us an email. There will be updates all the time, so stay tuned!