Move On

THIS BLOG HAS GONE TO HEAVEN

2009-10-21T20:40:00.001-07:00

And by heaven we mean it has been relocated to its new home at...

www.getyourswagup.com

THIS BLOG HAS GONE TO HEAVEN

2009-10-21T20:39:00.001-07:00

And by heaven we mean it has been relocated to its new home at...

www.getyourswagup.com

THIS BLOG HAS GONE TO HEAVEN

2009-10-21T20:38:00.000-07:00

And by heaven we mean it has been relocated to its new home at...

www.getyourswagup.com

FRIDAY IN TUCSON- LMFAO and Silver Medallion

2009-10-18T17:22:00.001-07:00

LMFAO and Silver Medallion live on Friday at Tucson Electric Park.

17 Again

2009-10-17T18:19:00.000-07:00

DJed the Oakley store in Fashion Square today, Amen Ra was djing LOVECulture, Sugabear was at Metropark, and Senbad was at Macy's (I stopped through and mixed a lil deep house down there in a strange twist of fate). There were djs in about 10 stores, Forever 21's dj was shockingly corny i was scared to enter (I have no reason to enter anyway).

Got some pics back from the fashion show I djed a few weeks back for the Grand Avenue Festival... It was a cool show, I spun Portishead's "Machine Gun" for one of the runway segments and got to play Passion Pit and Glass Candy all night, and it was packed as the pics show. Got a shot of my friend Roxy in there as well, she was walking with one of the lines.

Night off tonight, performing live for Kevin Dow's birthday party tomorrow.

UCLA

2009-10-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

UCLA was crackin.

The kids tried to kill us though, not too happy about that... They took us in small rooms and fed us uncomfortable amounts of plastic bottled vodka and Milwaukee's Best and then our performance stage was a raised edge of a mount overlooking concrete. Bad combinations. Luckily there was a protective layer of drunken sorority girls dancing in front of us in case we fell...

All our people from LA came through which was nice, cops shut down the frat mid show (which is understandable, you could hear us for about a mile radius). A troop of security called the "Extreme Greeks" escorted everybody out and we made fun of them and cracked "buy muscle milk" jokes until they turned our mics off (gotta keep the sponsors happy).

After that we went to Nicky's in Venice Beach, our driver got pulled over and proceeded to pass about 20 minutes of rigorous DUI testing ("are they making him stand on one foot and translate english to spanish?") then we ate at Bossanova and its all some kind of blur but luckily Senbad seems to know LA like the back of his hand.

On to the next one, got a show Sunday then Tucson with LMFAO next week!

Who is telling these labels whats cool?

2009-10-13T12:52:00.001-07:00

Theres so much wrong here

Cudi Zone

2009-10-06T01:41:00.000-07:00

Even after much new music, went back to the Cudi album this evening.

Designed all day, t-shirts, flyers, logos, invites, websites, today was a money maker.

For all my artists out there, one of our radio promoters J. Troupe has branched off his company Access Branded into Access HD Radio, connecting artists with more than a dozen markets through radio promo for worthy singles. I tossed a one page up on getyourswagup.com for that, and spent some time working on DJ Slippe's website for Platinum Nightlife Group.

Had a meeting with our soon-to-be publicist this evening at the W, my meeting after sadly got cancelled so I ate a red velvet cupcake and hit the gym, and the meeting went well, I've been anxious to find the right publicist for a long time and I think this is a good fit.

Publicists to me are like marketing companies, unless they can tell you what they're really going to do they're just fronting. I honestly don't really care too much about music magazines, at the end of the day we could just pay 2500 or whatever the retainer is to an established indie music publicist and get our Fader/Spin articles but I don't want to be just another band on the pages of bands. We look to good and have too good a story to be confined to that, and I want to make the bridge with fashion press as much as possible, Interview excites me more than XXL.

Which brings me to a current topic of much discussion between me and myself... Are we going to go full bore marketing as an indie group as well as a pop group? Hard question. On one hand we're enjoying immense mainstream success... Dedicated radio play, high school and college tours, high profile press and label attention, but on the other hand we're extremely indie marketable... Slave is an indie SMASH, we're produced by DEATH TO THE THRONE (lol), our sponsors are hella indie, we have a skate dvd, wear skinny jeans, have a dubstep mixtape, were born out of the Glam (old Phoenix nightclub) scene etc. And we throw a hell of a dance party...

So I've been torn as to whether we are CMJ (College Music Journal) applicable, as CMJ is the standard by which all things indie are judged. If we are, I'm going to drop money on college radio promo, keep making this mixtapes and see what we can rustle up... Decisions decisions.

Anyway. Ate a steak, egg and cheese bagel today, homemade, and it was fantastic. Cleaned my room and found immense amounts of foriegn objects (drum keys, corsets, the Bhagavad Gita etc).

Flying to Hawaii in about 6 hours.

Uffie- Pop the Glock

2009-10-06T01:36:00.000-07:00

This video can't have come out when this song did, I heard this years and years ago...

But it's fantastic and hot hot

Uffie 'Pop the glock' from Laundry! on Vimeo.

Same Old Song

2009-10-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

Got a bunch of new music, Vitalic's Flashmob, Bloody Beetroot's Romborama, Big Pink's Brief History of Love, David Guetta's One Love... Getting me through a day of website design.

I catch a flight to Hawaii tomorrow where I get to contemplate the next year's plan for a bit. Working on Electro is the Lonelist Number 2 (temporary title), our new website launches soon as well.

Lot of random things falling into place, gonna be a good rest of the year.

New logo design.

Jerkin Documentary By LA Weekly

2009-10-03T22:53:00.001-07:00

Now We Jerk - A Jerkin Documentary presented by the LA Weekly from Brilliant Comrades on Vimeo.

2009-10-03T19:57:00.001-07:00

Live in Berkeley.

Oakland

2009-10-03T10:00:00.000-07:00

Woke up yesterday and performed at a high school assembly for Hamilton at 7am... us on a gym floor in front of 1400 kids, whose football team can running onto the floor out a giant helmet etc etc. That was easy times, soon after we hit the airport and flew into Oakland, where our friendly Muscle Milk rep picked us up and delivered us to our chosen frathouse.

Despite some sound difficulties everything got set up and then djing ensued, then we got hella worried when the party emptied then it got completely full for our performance. It was pretty amazing, these kids knew us and were bumping our songs all in the frat rooms, and it went very very well.

My first time in Oakland (we stayed there, performed in Berkeley), lots of rims out here... Ate some fantastic zesty macaroni the first night, and now its back to the airport again...

Muscle Milk

2009-10-01T17:57:00.001-07:00

Soooooo... Our latest concert series is sponsored by Muscle Milk. And by virtue of the gods and the internet and all that good stuff we got abnormally large boxes of plasticized udder blood delivered to the house this morning.

Everything has changed since then. I'm listening to Bon Jovi electro remixes at full volume, my senses have become acute, and I walk with purpose. They sent us Monster Milk rather than just regular muscle milk, and it's like injecting creatine right into my veins with every meal...

Can't wait to talk to the rep tomorrow about my Muscle Milk & Vodka club concept for Scottsdale.

You give loooooveeeeee a bad name name name name...

Light Camera Action

2009-10-01T17:41:00.000-07:00

Long day tomorrow, 7am we're live at high school assemblies... fly to Berkeley in the afternoon, perform at night then god knows.

Today? Phoenix Fashion Week.

New design I did for the homies Far East Movement show tomorrow.

Who Writes the Treatments for These Things?

2009-09-30T01:39:00.001-07:00

Warning, this may seem very off-brand if you don't have any Ed Banger background.

MAKING LAMBS ANGER (ok quality) from oizo mr on Vimeo.

Phoenix Fashion Week

2009-09-29T22:12:00.000-07:00

Phoenix fashion week is this weekend, put together by some people we're a fan of here at Silver Medallion, especially Melissa Rein.

I redid some designs for them last minute, and I encourage everyone to come out. We'll be in the VIP threatening bodily harm so djs to play our record, fondling models, getting in the way of production etc. Feel free to join us (well be in the skinny jeans). Then Friday we're off to perform live in Berkeley!

Excitement abound.

TMZ

2009-09-29T22:11:00.001-07:00

Classic Eldridge press... No it's not a fancy restaurant lol.

Wow

2009-09-29T21:48:00.001-07:00

This vid is spectacular.

Brief Memories of Vegas

2009-09-28T09:55:00.001-07:00

Staying in the Trap House (aka the Excalibur)...

Arriving at 3am and promptly NOT partying (we're so proud of ourselves, it's like we're growing up)...

My long winded thought process as to why Slippe's Hummer is so large on the outside but so small on the inside...

Mexican guy named Monster becoming my best friend (we argued about gypsies and catholicism) at Rehab in the VIP and then promptly showing back up two hours later with a disconnected land line phone in the midst of the party acting like he was making calls (at that point, maybe he was)...

45 djs at the pool...

Do you know it cost $100 to get into Rehab? (unless you're cool like us). There was easily 5000 people there, which equals out to, I don't know FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS BEFORE BAR MONEY FOR A DAMN POOL PARTY... And with drinks starting at $22 thats easily another few hundred k... So happy we don't pay for things

DJ shift playing Gangstarr/Dead Prez/Camp Lo at Tabu at ridiculously early hours...

Skam artists (dj crew not pyramid schemers) liberally using the air horn effect...

Miami Girls. Vegas Girls. Arizona Girls. California Girls. Etc.

No one getting sick from the copious amounts of alcohol, but rather shady Pizza Hut...

The Party Pit...

This has been brief memories of Vegas.

Vegas Baby

2009-09-28T04:51:00.001-07:00

Djed the Grand Avenue Fest Saturday, fresh gig, great fashion show and I got to spin Ratatat, Passion Pit etc.

Drove to Vegas right after for the last Rehab of the season, Slippe and I got it in and networked it up, we'll head back down tomorrow.

This is the life.

ARGHHHHHHH

2009-09-23T13:07:00.000-07:00

god dammit they do it so right

Fame Kills from kwest on Vimeo.

Live and Direct

2009-09-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

We've been very blessed as a band to have the opportunity to play live very frequently. We perform pretty much non-stop now, and while it gets tiring (more the waiting around and stress of all the logistics than actual performing) its constant amazing promotion.

We performed at Cherry last night on Mill, it was an aight crowd, apparently the night really fluctuates. We spent the day flyering campus for it, everyone blasted it out etc and when it came down to the show we just did Gravity. Epidemic has an amazing Baltimore edit of the track that we use as an intro now which is a fantastic mix element for djs so the night doesn't get interrupted, and we know no matter how rough a crowd is we can do that intro and Gravity and be good to go. We had hoped to do our new song This is The Life, but the crowd fizzled out before the end.

Thursday we're at Martini Ranch, we've been djing there recently but we love to perform, so us, Andre Legacy and The New FO's will be on stage. I like The New FO's, they have one song I LOVE called Feel Good I believe, their singer Poncho has amazing unique melodies and a very unique voice that just really does it for me... I think they could have something as a group in the future, and their live show is hot too.

Today I'm designing a bit, finishing some web stuff for Hostile, finally doing Joels mixtape drops and getting dj stuff ready for the Grand Avenue festival this weekend (blog about that forthcoming).

Thursday at Martini Ranch

2009-09-22T10:31:00.001-07:00

We are live Thursday with Andre Legacy... This is our last show of this kind until Mickey Avalon in November, so come check it out...

Hawaii

2009-09-22T04:07:00.000-07:00

We're returning to Hawaii for another set of shows, including our Pacific album release (sounds impressive don't it), and we couldn't be more excited.

Our first set of shows there were awesome, rivalled possibly by the last show we did at Dirty Pretty only because we had slightly more screaming females, but in Hawaii we got the encore and it was general hedonism, I believe at one point my dad was wielding a bottle of Kilo Kai in the VIP booth and we had Zippy's etc etc.

And so we're returning. We're most excited about the King's Feast. In our Hawaii culinary endeavors we stopped by Kiawe Grill but it looked kinda suspect that day so we went next door to Unnamed Chinese Restaurant because Carnegie has some off-brand obsession with duck and ended up having a very good meal. More importantly, on the wall admidst the specials sheets was a full size poster advertising the 199.99 Kings Feast (serving 18). We plan to order this with roughly four to six people, as it includes things like 3 types of duck, several pounds of shrimp, a whole octupus etc etc. We're also wondering if we can do some ritual pig slaying and bathe in blood prior, but that might be too much to ask... This is our mission, and dreams of said feast will keep us going until November.

A picture from our last trip when Bianca took us to Hula's (yes Hulas) with Joel badly photoshopped and my hair radiant and Bianca looking super hot is below. Memories we plan to relive, this time soundtracked by Kid Cudi instead of m83 and Santogold.

Twilight

2009-09-22T02:12:00.000-07:00

Spent the day in the Saltmine recording, have to say I love it there and wish I could never leave. Apparently for 30k you can live there in the bungalow for a month with unlimited recording... Dreaming on right now.

We're working on a new track "This is the Life" with a beat the PD of Shade 45 got over to us from one of his producers, hoping to wrap a single deal with it. It's a new direction for us and a very complicated song but we're piecing it together.

18+ we're at Cherry Lounge tomorrow!

The Stars Have Been Waiting

2009-09-18T23:07:00.000-07:00

The first leg of our fall tour is as follows...

Life Continues On

2009-09-16T13:09:00.000-07:00

Met with Tiffany from Family Tree yesterday, got our new press kit setup, getting ready to DJ Sky tonight and Martini Ranch tomorrow...

New designs below.

Ah Yes... Kanye

2009-09-14T10:12:00.001-07:00

Didn't write the last few days, I had "chronic dehydration" (which sounds like what they say Lindsey has every time she goes to rehab) but I actually did, I was bedwridden and it was generally awful and now I'm doing things like drinking smartwater and ordering taco bell "fresco style".

Missed the VMA's last night personally, we we're finishing the Camera video shoot late late late at Giulio's studio and the Clarendon, but heard about everything that went down...

Don't let anyone fool you for a second, it's all PR stunts.

The Takeover is Beginning...

2009-09-10T16:41:00.000-07:00

Met with 101.5 JAMZ yesterday, and Gravity goes on the air starting this weekend... Power set the stage, and we're on therw constantly now, and it's trickling down, 101.5 is an extremely strong station. Shout outs to Chilly, SugaBear and Mikee Mike for making it happen!

Checked out Pinky Ring last night and it was cracking, the PCL move was a good thing. In related news, Cutswell's mustache now has its own twitter.

Today we heard our first high school event, we performed during lunch with Chilly and 101.5 at St. Mary's, gave away hella New Era's, stickers and cds and made a ton of new fans, these shows are a SUPER good look for us. Did give us insight that Gravity is more of a college+ age song, we're working on young person music as we speak, being that Camera isn't exactly high school material (it's censored but we still say "shes a beast, shes a dog, shes a qnikcufrehtom problem" in the hook and that won't fly). Cue Jerk singles (whhhaaaaatttt).

Tonight we film the Camera video, 18+ meet and greet at Myst, and a big show at Dirty Pretty that's gonna be the talk of the town, especially since Dirtnasty cancelled at Martini Ranch.

Things are hectic but amazing, got our tickets in the email for Cal Berkeley show!

Back on the Grizzly

2009-09-08T19:13:00.001-07:00

And today... We return to work.

Spent the morning with one of the owner of Beamz, a multi-channel music creation machine that uses oscillations to create songs in perfect key. Radio meeting got pushed back until tomorrow, did a ton of promo for Thursday, finished some designs etc.

Went out at night and flyered the town for Thursday, trying to set this night off. Stopped by DP and saw JR, Cutswell, Pinky Ring DJs etc, saw Steel at Upper Deck, Matt Metzer at Acme, everything that goes down on a Tuesday we hit up.

We're shooting the video for Camera too, so we sorted through the hilarious responses to our craigslist posts and had a good laugh.

Back to black.

Havasu Aftermath

2009-09-08T02:30:00.000-07:00

I don't know how much longer I can keep going... Especially if this is just the beginning of the insanity.

Jokes, this is the life.

We drove on down to Havasu Saturday with no room or plan, and got caught up in the madness, Lil Jon's DJ set, ludicrous amounts of booze, and probably one of the most cracking parties I'd ever seen, they broke the bridge on the pool, thousands of people, it was ridiculous...

London Bridge Resort is amazing because they let us check in to our room for the next day at 4am... We gave them the "we just got off a flight from London and we need to sleep before we play your club" talk and BAM, suite was ready.

Joel arrived Sunday with a bottle of Sauza, and all I really remember is everyone sitting in the room dead silent listening to the whole Kid Cudi album in dead seriousness. The Man on the Moon-End of Days is AMAZING... I highly recommend buying (yes buying) when it drops, it's one of the best, if not THE best album I've heard for urban/rhythm music, as expected.

We did our show and deejayed and had the usual mess of fans/haters/stalkers. Ocean and I ended up on a boat with the asian Richard Gere and a lot of older beautiful people at 4am, I ended up swimming with strippers in pitch black and we had a generally religious time, and then I was on the damn phone with the east coast at 6am as the sun rose... We hit a (super) shady buffet and drove back a few hours later, and now it's Scottsdale.

We are going into full rotation on Power (we've been in mix show at 25 spins a week for the last 6) which is AMAZING, and tomorrow we meet with the program director of 101.5 to see if we can start getting some spins there too.

Thursday is Dirty Pretty, we'll be taking it back to the essence to promo for this one, dropping flyers at club letout etc etc. I think we're also filming a large chunk of the Camera video there with Giulio as well...

This Kid Cudi album.... It's really fantastic. I've never felt an artist speak to me so well, all I want to do is listen to this music... Common narrates the album, it's a dream sequence where Cudi falls asleep, goes through nightmares, comes out and then wakes up... So unreal, so amazing, string sections, orchestra hits, Ratatat and Kanye West production. This dude should win a Grammy off jump, this is the future of music.

MIA

2009-09-03T16:01:00.000-07:00

Whew.

Been a mess of a few days. We KILLED Cream Monday on the turntables, I played Bamboo Banga, Joel played Smooth Operator, Carnegie played World Hold On, general chaos. One of girl fans had her boyfriend cop some bottles so she could chill in front of the booth they ended up getting it too popping he couldn't pay and got hemmed up... Classic times.

Been on the run ever since, getting our show ready for Havasu, ton of design work, dropping off new songs to mix at Saltmine. Holding on.

DJ AM

2009-08-29T02:08:00.000-07:00

AM died today... been a rough year for celebrities.

I remember one of the first times I went to Vegas... Joey Hollywood, DK and I went down to whatever club it was that the Pussycat Dolls perform at (Pure? the clubs all run together at this point) and AM was djin and killing it, Paris Hilton was there, all kinds of celebs, women whatever... This was before Silver Medallion, before all of this, I was just chilling, trying to figure out how he was going through so many songs and so many genres so easily. Just glad I got to catch him while he was alive.

Back from LA

2009-08-29T00:42:00.000-07:00

Back in town...

Last night in LA was the best for sure. Skipped out on going to the 91311 shoot during the day (some things I wish to remain a mystery forever) with the rest of the crew, instead found parties I would want to go to instead of what we've been going to and ended up drinking $5 colt 45 downtown at La Cita while Fashen made me dance like I haven't danced in recent memory... This mans a SAVAGE on the 1's and 2's.

Strange trip to LA all in all, hunting down the studio (the number had a half like 346 1/2) and was in an alleyway by the beverly center... Licensing meeting in a live cam softcore warehouse... The best sushi I've had possibly ever... 4 types of caviar (only seen 2 prior)... The LA gym and it's 29th century machines (they had like built in fans and took control of my body to make me run faster than I'd wished)... Venice Beach bars watching women savagely attempt to take home Leon... Drinking Arrogant Bastard ale... Blasting the video out everywhere... Inglorious Basterds Rd. 2... Traffic... Ex-girlfriends and their attempt at acting careers... Publicist and marketing company meetings about nothing... Listening to Power 106 wondering how radio could get this good... Socal trash rap groups at Kress... Immense projectors playing awkward 80's xxx films at Le Deux... More traffic... Getting beats from Heatroc...

I won't be moving there anytime soon, but it is a maze of insanity I could enjoy every once in a while. And with UCLA and Cal Tech shows coming up I'll be back sooner rather than later.

Whew Boy

2009-08-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

Still in LA, thinking of checkin out DJ Fashen at Dance Right tonight...

Been pushing the video all day, sent to four hundred plus blogs, Giulio got it on the front of dripbook.com, its being pumped on myspace through our Spyder, they put it on the New Times blog, twitter going hard...

Not easy pumping it, but we have our first 1000 views on Vimeo!

GRAVITY MUSIC VIDEO!

2009-08-26T13:11:00.001-07:00

Silver Medallion - Gravity from Giulio Sciorio on Vimeo.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Giulio Sciorio

1301 NW Grand Ave Ste 8

Phoenix, AZ 85007

Phone: 602-703-2754

www.giuliosciorio.com

giulio@giuliosciorio.com
www.vimeo.com/giuliosciorio

www.myspace.com/silvermedallion

Giulio Sciorio releases premier music video, Silver Medallion’s “Gravity”

Photographer Giulio Sciorio has released his first music video featuring Silver Medallion and the first release, “Gravity”, from their debut album THE LAST OF THE POP STARS.

The video was shot in HD with a Canon 5D MKII in and around downtown Phoenix, using available light and features the memorable spaces that dot the Phoenician landscape, including the months’ old light rail system, Civic Space Park, Phoenix Art Museum and the Clarendon Hotel.

The project is the second collaboration for the band and photographer after shooting their album cover. For this project, the lyrics and visuals work in chorus, using the metaphor of gravity to illustrate the isolation, anonymity and stresses of modern city living.

Silver Medallion breaks new ground both in musical style and their message. They describe their genre as “Hero Pop”, but deliver more than typical electronic pop group, speaking to the reality today’s youth culture faces - broken dreams, economic collapse and the role of technology on human relationships.

The video is hosted on Vimeo and can be viewed there:

http://vimeo.com/6279901

Live Painting By Carson Greer

2009-08-25T14:48:00.000-07:00

The canvas Carson painted of us at the W for our album release.

myspace.com/carsonpopart

Life in LA...

2009-08-24T19:04:00.000-07:00

Shot up to LA Saturday... Spent today in San Diego, swam in Mission beach, ate some pizza the size of my torso. Heading back down to Hollywood tonight...

They remixed Camera at the Saltmine.... We got SMASH records when they're done right, I'm all about it. They're mixing Stop/Go right now, and that song is PRIMED for radio.

Got about 35-40 texts since I've been in Cali, our advertisements for Labor Day Weekend at Lake Havasu are mobbing up the radio... If you haven't heard the lineup Friday is FM Saturday is LIL JON and Sunday is Silver Medallion, somehow we got the biggest night of the three day weekend, no complaints here, I love Power 98 events, and this time we have enough security we won't get in trouble again. They play the add every radio break, great support for "Gravity". So excited to get the video back, apparently its rendering right now.

Power 106 in LA is probably my radio station ever you'll hear like David Guetta, Benny Benasi and Daft Punk next to Kid Cudi and LMFAO next to Pitbull and Jeremiah... Hot stuff, and they STAY in the mix, its djs all the time, and by djs I mean Reflex, Felli Fel etc etc. Melonte (management) trying to hook me up with Felli Fel while i'm hear, that'd be awesome. They played some ridiculous electro remix of that track he had with Sean Paul a while back that was a beast yesterday driving up to SD. The remix game is getting out of control. DJS- if you don't have a full two hour set of bangers in this day and age, straight bangers... ur in the wrong profession.

Last Minute Hustle

2009-08-22T03:07:00.001-07:00

Getting last minute stuff done before LA, making sure all my email accounts go to my BlackBerry (critical), charging electric toothbrush (less critical) etc etc. Best thing I ever did was switch to all black wardrobe so everything matches and packing is easy as cakes...

Got our Kyte TV back up running, 13,000 views whew... Finished writing a new album press release (our official release date is Tuesday, but we're on itunes and amazon already, and selling!)... Finished proposals for some work clients... Still have a grip of design to do for my down time.

Got a dope remix of Gravity back from Mastamonk this morning, a very useful dancefloor remix. We're exploring mastering opportunities right now. Flipped around they getyourswagup.com intro, promoed some of our new shows, been a busy day.

Saw Inglorious Basterds earlier, thought it was fresh but not as good as I'd hoped (I had super high expectations) but entertaining nonetheless. Carnegie says District 9 is better, I'ma have to check that out if I get a chance.

Wish I'd had the time to get some new business cards, I might just email them to a kinkos in LA and pick them up. Got some insider info on who we're performing with at Lake Havasu for Labor Day and I'm PSYCHED! Gonna be a huge look.

This is my life, listening to Mr. Hudson and Kanye West...

Our New Reality Show

2009-08-20T16:48:00.000-07:00

Whoever designed this KILLED IT. That's actually Kevin Dow in the picture...

We are launching Fear and Loathing in Scottsdale, the reality video series August 31st at Cream, if you come and get it popping we'll toss you in the show...

Yes that's a Monday night, this is for the real nightlife scene only...

The first video concept night in Arizona!

Aubrey Oday Clothing Line New Launch

2009-08-20T13:58:00.000-07:00

Still designing.

What's Next For Us

2009-08-19T16:46:00.000-07:00

Everyone's asking what's next for us...

DVD release for Dubskate...

Aftermath

2009-08-18T23:29:00.001-07:00

Looking over a Memphis retrospective online, not gonna lie I’m still a design nerd 100% Rather talk typography than parties thanks…

W went super well on every level, right people, right crowd, right music, right sponsors, everything was beautiful. We wilded out pretty hard but survived. It was a strange experience for me, they were actually painting a picture of us during our party, makes you feel kind of out of your skin. Aftermath is strange, I still have a set of Kia car keys with a leopard print key attached if any girls are missing their car keys... Pics below

Our album is now for sale on amazon.com, itunes coming very very soon.

So excited for the Gravity video, but even more excited that Camera will begin to receive national radio exposure as soon as next week (fingers crossed)…

W Scottsdale Silver Medallion Album Release!

Shout out to Carson Grier for painting us (in progress) and J. Pierce for painting our shirts...

yes, he wore a Silver Medallion Changed My Life sticker on his chest the whole time....

Gravity Stills

2009-08-16T00:15:00.000-07:00

Click and view full size...

This video is going to be CRAZY... This imagery is absolutely amazing. Giulio Sciorio!

2009-08-15T13:02:00.000-07:00

jacksonpollock.org

Hype Machine is closed, and recommended this to me to kill some of my time, and I did. Click it changes colors... Amazing stuff, I'm saving some screenshots...

So today is the last day before the release, thought I'd elaborate on what it took to put an event of this magnitude together.

Everything starts off with a connection We didn't want to have our album release at one of the same old spots, we wanted to work with the stigma of what we're trying to become, not where we've been, and that's the high fashion and industry elite that only the W represents in Scottsdale. So I connected with my man William Bastian II to help us get a proposal over to the people at the W. We put together a good packet for it, at the time we we're still working with a big media group and that helped, but mostly it was about us and our achievements, and how we planned to solidly brand the event to help Scottsdale set a standard for elite entertainment industry events.

William went straight to the owner and got approval to take it downstairs to the team for their approval. William and I met through the owner of the now defunct Lyte Lounge, and we connected when he wanted to use our song Heartbeat for his AMAZING one man play that he was shopping at the time. He has since pursued his love of acting to a solid degree of success, he plays an Irish killer for hire named "El Torro" (the Bull) in an upcoming Fox Searchlight film and is still getting everything together for his play to hit the road.

We had a battery of meetings with the W. They wanted to push the event for their Thursday's, which they we're trying to build. Our whole goal with the event was to attract club industry radio and media to the event as a kind of "networking to support Silver Medallion whilst consuming prodigious amounts of booze surrounded by aspiring models" event so we we're adamant about needing a Sunday afternoon, where most of these people wouldn't be working, as opposed to a work night.

What got us the deal was when we told them we weren't looking for any kind of percentage of bar, or promotions money. We wanted to be able to keep sponsorship dollars to cover our costs (paying for cds, pressing promo items, emails blasts, print invites, comping rooms for important people, paying subpromoters etc).

Once we got the event locked we made our timeline. We we're six weeks out, and had a lot to accomplish. We wanted sponsor materials ready to go a month out, sponsors locked by two weeks out, print approved two weeks out, and promotions to begin two weeks out. We met every goal. Our sponsorship deck was comprehensive and Skyy Vodka came in to cover our costs to promote their Infusions line. Nooka sent us watches for giveaways, and New Era sent us hats. We pressed up our dubstep mixtape, got Silver Medallion shirts from Bobby Fresh, and bags from King and Duck and we're ready to go for giftbagging.

The hardest part of the event was getting the evite designs approved, wording and imagery was so complicated with the W, but we're happy with the final product, it's classy and effective.

For promotions we sent 3,000 emails to the comprehensive lists we've built, borrowed and stole, used Spyder to send 5,000 myspace comments, and ate up facebook and twitter.

By this time we'd linked up with our good friend Brian Kelly and his new photography website Encore by Brian Kelly (EBYBK.com). His website is new and building steam and he's helped us a ton when he was with 944 so we thought it would be a solid collaboration to get him noticed by industry and use his promotions base to help us.

Our only requirement with the W was to sell ten rooms, which was scary until the last few days, now we're far above twenty and more adding every hour, all radio, djs and our friends ready to make the event a success.

We went through media approval and got photographers and reporters for New Times and AZ Republic approved, as well as articles for the events with both publications before and after, and featured event on AZCentral.com. We printed up business card invitations and dropped them to radio and media staff, then went bar to bar getting them to GMs and bartenders.

The last link for us was getting a birthday party for one of our favorite radio people to go down at the event, guaranteeing the presence of his coworkers and turning a lot of possible attendees into definites.

Today we're solidifying guest lists, making sure gift bags are right and prepping for what we're going to do with the photo and video content.

DubSkate Promo

2009-08-14T14:42:00.000-07:00

Bear with the picture intro. This gets dope.

DVD Drops September 8th...

Comin Up Next

2009-08-14T01:59:00.001-07:00

After the album release, we drop the Gravity video, then comes DubSkate... Can't wait till we can get the hi-res promo online for this. My to do list is like 8 million things long. Licensing uploads, New Times show video edits, GrindHaus page, updated press kit, Gravity video promo plan, new dj cd, blazzy blazzy blah.

Serato

2009-08-13T23:34:00.000-07:00

So people understand why the last post means so much...

Serato is the DJ software that every deejay uses, from Fashen to Jazzy Jeff to us to EVERYONE. They have a service that anyone who registers their Serato gets signed up for, called WhiteLabel (based on the old concept of vinyl pressing with no label on the record for demo and promos), and the HUGE Serato community interacts with on the daily. Custom edits, remixes, new singles etc. its a major tool for labels to get their music to the deejays.

We debuted this week at number 2 on their charts. We're the only independent artist in the top 10. It's Jay-Z then SILVER MEDALLION. This is INSANITY for us to try and comprehend the impact. This is a community made up entirely of deejays, and they're making our record one of the most in demand dj record IN THE WORLD. Much love to Serato!

Everyone talks about how our image and style have gotten us this far, and that's bullshit. Icing on the cake, these songs are HIT RECORDS and we have a great team of hard working indie family who put our music to the masses.

We wrapped our video shoot for Gravity last night, Giulio says its the best things he's done in a long time, we're creating a blueprint here that artists would do well to follow, this is no longer about breaking ground in Arizona, but about breaking ground in the INTERNATIONAL music business. Our songs and imagery are on par with the top artists in the music game, from sound to style to hit potential to our videos. And now we're posed to change the way EVERYONE in the music industry thinks about how to break an act. This is Drake shit right here... The kind of work put in that gets labels fighting over how much up front money they can put up to get you to sign.

Watch me do me out here, I got too much momentum moving in my direction to lose...

Serato Charts This Week- BOOYAH!

2009-08-13T15:43:00.001-07:00

Jay-Z - Run This Town feat. Rihanna & Kanye West

ROC NATION / Atlantic Records

Silver Medallion - Gravity

Silver Medallion / Melonte Music

Three 6 Mafia - Shake My featuring Kalenna

Columbia Records

Sean Kingston - Fire Burning

Epic Records

Ryan Leslie - You're Not My Girl

Casablanca Records / Universal Motown

Clipse - Kinda Like A Big Deal feat. Kanye West

Columbia Records

Lady Saw - Extra Raw... The Best Of Lady Saw

VP Records

Sean Paul - Press It Up

VP Records

Three 6 Mafia - Lil Freak (Ugh Ugh Ugh) featuring Webbie

Columbia Records

10.

Keri Hilson - Knock You Down feat. Rye Rye (Electrolightz Remix)

Mosley Music Group / Interscope Records

Watch By Nooka, Marcialag...

2009-08-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

http://nooka.com/blog.aspx

From Nooka blog...

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

silver medallion is an arizona based soul/electro unit and the silver nooka zub zoo fits their style kinda perfectly – soulful moody dance music for the night. and you can enjoy the desert night with them at the W hotel in scottsdale arizona. see the attached invite image [try not to notice how they squashed my logo!]. there will be 20 free silver nookas given away at the party, so that certainly makes the who thing a great value! i wish i could be there, let me know if any of my readers here make it.

Once in Blue Moon

2009-08-12T01:10:00.001-07:00

Every once in a while I pull the D20 out and get it poppin.

For old times sake.

On the Block Radio

2009-08-11T11:25:00.000-07:00

We did an interview Sunday night for On The Block Radio that went like two hours long and got so awkward and everyone got mad and drunk and Lauren ended up rescuing two starving puppies.

Sigh. Nothing changes.

W this Sunday!

The Life and Times of The Liars and the Ignorant

2009-08-09T11:51:00.000-07:00

Had our New Times show last night, went great for us, I thought we were gonna break the stage but it ended up holding and the sound guy was an OG so things went well. We had to duck out quick because of two many random elements but thats life.

The New Times show made me pretty sad about the state of AZ hip hop, but I'm not gonna worry myself with that, with my luck I'd talk shit and then end up losing the contest, but it was great to see a publication get that many people to a local showcase, that thing was crackin!

DJed Axis on Friday and that went well, opening for a Daft Punk cover band. They we're really nice guys, their set was kinda dull (hour and a half of Daft Punk...) but I think if they'd been in Myst or in a raised DJ booth they would have killed it. Carnegie and I djed well and the night went off relatively uneventfully.

Bout to do some designs and have some drinks poolside... Sundays in Arizona!

Press Release

2009-08-05T15:45:00.000-07:00

Alright, back on the scene with a gangster lean…

Of sorts.

Getting some of our songs mixed and mastered down to analog tape at Saltmine Productions in Mesa. We’re experimenting with whether or not a warmer more analog sound would complement the futuristic elements of our music, maybe provide some warmth. Can’t recommend Don and the guys at the Saltmine enough, it’s a great working environment.

The album release press release is below… Getting ready to go.

August 5th 2009
For Immediate Release

For the past 6 months, Arizona's SILVER MEDALLION has been performing numerous dates to set up their debut CD The Last Of The Popstars set to be released in August. After winning the MyStudio.net - Battle of the Bands, they rocked the stage at the "Project Ethos: Culture Shock" red carpet event at the Vanguard in Los Angeles. That set up a series of shows and DJ performances in Hawaii over the course of 2 weeks. The band's Oren J & MC Carnegie looked to focus on their home town for the launch of the CD. With a loyal fan base behind them, their single "Gravity" has build enough momentum to make Phoenix commercial radio station KKFR/POWER 98, add the song into their rotation. Supported by a solid club foundation and mixshow airplay at an increasing number of Southwest radio stations, "Gravity" has started to show up on the radar far outside of Arizona.

The Last of the Popstars will be available on August 16th, celebrated with a poolside friends, family, fans and industry extravaganza at the W Scottsdale. A Silver Medallion celebration always includes their signature brand of music, performance, fashion and style.

Silver Medallion (www.myspace.com/silvermedallion) has been described as "The next big thing!" by 944 Magazine. While their unique branding of hero-pop (hip hop, electro and rock) has defined their sound, more people are taking notice now that "Gravity" has hit the Arizona airwaves. Oren and Carnegie, backed by DJ Epidemic, have been carefully developing unique events to support their upcoming release. The band has recently performed with national recording artists Asher Roth, Hollywood Undead & LMFAO.

For 8 months the guys were creating The Last Of The Popstars” in Arizona’s WM Studios, interspersed with local and national shows. The sound, some have described as “future pop” speaks on Silver Medallion’s experiences in love and life. MC Carnegie says "The Last of the Popstars is a musical representation of the growing displacement of today’s youth from the ideals of popular culture, this is music for right now”. In addition to the radio single “Gravity”, “Stop/Go” and “Slave” have been become part of the Phoenix club and street scene. The CDs 12 tracks are produced by Atlantic Records' M. Rell, Arizona’s blog darling (and recent Rolling Stone feature) Death to the Throne, along with local producers and Silver Medallion themselves.

The release will be available on itunes, Amazon, Rhapsody and most every online music retailer. This is a milestone for the independent group, as well as the Arizona music scene. Singer Oren J was recently quoted by the press, “The Last Of The Popstars will set the new standard for independent music coming out of the Southwest”. The CDs graphics feature stunning futuristic photographic work by Arizona’s own Giulio Sciorio (www.guiliosciorio).

The W Scottsdale release party is sponsored by Skyy Vodka’s Infusions line, and will feature Silver Medallion and DJ Epidemic spinning their trademark dj sets and cuts off of The Last Of The Popstars. Silver Medallion’s sponsors, including Nooka Watches (www.nooka.com) and new era hats (www.neweracaps.com) will be providing gift bag giveaways, and the event is expected to be a who's who of the entertainment industry in Arizona. Newly launched photography website Encore By Brian Kelly (www.ebybk.com) will be helping with production and providing photo documentation at the event. Live painting by pop artists J. Pierce (www.jpiercecollection.com) and Carson Grier (www.myspace.com/carsonpopart) will round out the 1pm to 5pm affair. All guests receive a free CD of the bands new release, before it hits itunes and online destinations the following week (August 25th), as well as a copy of their new dubstep mixtape “Paris Is Burning” with DJ J Paul of HavocNDeed (www.myspace.com/havocndeedsound).

All those supporting the group at the event will be welcomed to Silver Medallion’s $99 W Scottsdale room rate for the night of the event. You can reserve via the band's website at www.getyourswagup.com.

Silver Medallion
Press Inquiries: 480.329.6193
myspace.com/silvermedallion
silvermedallionenterprises@gmail.com

Album Release

2009-08-04T23:08:00.001-07:00

Getting to work. Super focused right now.

Grindhaus

2009-08-02T03:47:00.000-07:00

The master plan gets more and more intricate every day.

GrindHausxDubSkate=X

....

Getting Right

2009-07-31T22:29:00.000-07:00

So hungry right now.

Gravity banging on the radio, we're about to slay the game with this dubstep mixtape, found a new studio home at The Saltmine, album release party is coming up sponsored by Skyy, Mercedes Benz and Nooka, we're djing all over town, got bangers in the stash and we're about to back heavy in the press.

So many building blocks, so little sleep, it's kind of amazing to watch all this hard work and ridiculous stories come into some kind of success.

Please help us out!

2009-07-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

Please go vote for DJ Epidemic (Line #70) and Silver Medallion (Line #83) in the New Times: Best Of Phoenix, 2009 -

http://tinyurl.com/mxbww4

Thank you!

If you work hard kids you too can get your song on the radio...

2009-07-29T17:21:00.001-07:00

Power 98 Playlist for this week.

1) EVERY GIRL YOUNG MONEY
2) BEST I EVER HAD DRAKE
3) KNOCK YOU DOWN KERI HILSON F/ KANYE WEST
4) HOTEL ROOM SERVICE PITBULL
5) LOVE GAME LADY GAGA
6) FIRE BURNING SEAN KINGSTON
7) I’VE GOTTA FEELING BLACK EYED PEAS
8) BIRTHDAY SEX JEREMIH
9) BOOM BOOM POW BLACK EYED PEAS
10) GIRLS ON THE DANCE FLOOR FAR*EAST MOOVEMENT
11) BE ON YOU FLO RIDA F/ NE-YO
12) OUTTA CONTROL BABY BASH F/ PITBULL
13) SO FINE SEAN PAUL
14) DOWN JAY SEAN F/ LIL WAYNE
15) THAT’S HOW I GO BABY BASH F/ MARIO & LIL JON
16) KISS ME THRU THE PHONE SOULJA BOY F/ SAMMIE
17) BLAME IT JAMIE FOXX F/ T-PAIN
18) RIGHT ROUND FLO RIDA
19) OBSESSED MARIAH CAREY
20) I KNOW YOU WANT ME PITBULL
21) WETTER TWISTA
22) MAKE HER SAY KID CUDI F/ KANYE & COMMON
23) EGO BEYONCE
24) DAY ‘N’ NIGHT KID CUDI
25) LA LA LA LMFAO
26) TURNIN ME ON KERI HILSON
27) POKER FACE LADY GAGA
28) GRAVITY SILVER MEDALLION
29) SUGAR FLO RIDA
30) WHAT CHA SAY JASON DERULO

2009-07-29T01:31:00.000-07:00

Ran errands today, getting lamps etc etc.

My life is so much more productive with a desk and a bed, lamps are about to add a whole new dimension to my workflow.

Finishing up a custom side page on our web page where radio people can download the tracks/version/drops etc. After that finishing a packet up for our watch sponsor to show them we've been rocking.

Got my new Blackberry in the mail, having trouble getting my numbers over from the broken one which has me in a complete state of despair, that phone is like the west coast industry bible, I got EVERYONE in there, and a lot of those numbers I might not be able to get back. The phone doesn't turn on right so I don't have a lot of faith.

Listening to DJ Fashen's mixes on beezo.net, which is going well to say the least, I'm a super fan of his sets. DJin tomorrow night, friday and saturday, this is my life.

Grum & Figure

2009-07-28T00:34:00.001-07:00

Maybe the dingo ate your cherub.

12 spins on BDS for this week, we're 35 on the KKFR charts and moving on up.

Cut drops in the studio today, basically little audio snippets for the radio shouting out station names and deejays. About to cut a million of these for all shows and deejays and then for the Scottsdale deejays.

Got a bangin new beat from Mastamonk, which I plan to write to after I finish this "Be That Way"(Complicated) remix. Kinda wanna do a verse on that Mariah "Obsessed" as well, we'll see what time allows.

Filmed a spot for the Bum Squad Deejays last night in Scottsdale, they got a tv thing and we talked a little about our record and running Arizona etc late night with them. Deejayed all day and night Friday and Saturday spinning happy hour and nights, got exhausting. We deejay Wed/Fri/Sat this week as well and then back to shows the week after.

These are our lives.

2009-07-26T20:12:00.000-07:00

Strange Days

2009-07-23T08:14:00.000-07:00

The days do get stranger and stranger.

Accidental cult meeting attendance in Carefree (at least they played the record) to Dos Gringos reverse happy hour to 7am back to work.

At least we're on the radio.

Start Buzzin

2009-07-22T01:57:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't been writing, it's because things are poppin...

YESSSSS

2009-07-21T15:26:00.000-07:00

Power 98.3 put us in rotation today.

Like J. Troupe said...

Buckle up. Let's ride.

New Logo

2009-07-16T11:10:00.001-07:00

Lickashot

2009-07-12T05:07:00.001-07:00

new logo for a dj in dc

REDO

2009-07-10T07:06:00.000-07:00

redid it more to my liking

Tonight!

2009-07-10T06:28:00.001-07:00

Tonight SOHO, tomorrow Loft.

Birthday

2009-07-09T22:24:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be 21 soon, my wishlist as developed with a team of elves/experts is below.

1. Unicorn

Mom, I promise i'll take good care of it, pleaaaaseeeeee

2. Moses Task Chair and Mikael Computer Work Station
The cheapest of the ikea to help my furnitureless apartment, available ikea.com.

3. Admission to Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Magic

I'd like to return to school, I feel my education is unfinished. I'd so be a Ravenclaw. 4. Any cable modem that will work with a Mac.

5. Uprinting.com shopping spree

New business cards and posters for my band and brochures for our business oh my.

6. Clone

Two of me would be great, thanks, I promise one will stay in the house to not disturb the natural order of things. OMG so much I could get done.

7. Infinite Gas Card/Gas Station

I'm tired of not going places because its 2.88 a gallon, it's time I just got my own gas station.

8. Kim Jong Il Lego Set

If I can't run the world I at least want to play dictator

Useful Sites I Found Today

2009-07-09T12:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.squarespace.com/
stereofame.com
musicthinktank.com

Ways to raise money for your band
SellaBand
http://www.sellaband.com/

Slicethepie
http://www.slicethepie.com/

ArtistShare
http://www.artistshare.com/

CASH Music
http://www.cashmusic.org/

Bandstocks
http://www.bandstocks.com/

Ten Sites Artists Must have a Presence On

myspace
twitter
facebook
youtube
flickr
ning (network)
imeem
blogger (so you can comment on other blogs)
vimeo
qik

Just some stuff I grabbed while researching this morning

Via Trent Reznor

2009-07-09T12:34:00.001-07:00

Thanks to JPaul for posting this on twitter

I posted a message on Twitter yesterday stating I thought The Beastie Boys and TopSpin Media "got it right" regarding how to sell music in this day and age. Here's a link to their store:

[illcommunication.beastieboys.com]

Shortly thereafter, I got some responses from people stating the usual "yeah, if you're an established artist - what if you're just trying to get heard?" argument. In an interview I did recently this topic came up and I'll reiterate what I said here.

If you are an unknown / lesser-known artist trying to get noticed / established:

* Establish your goals. What are you trying to do / accomplish? If you are looking for mainstream super-success (think Lady GaGa, Coldplay, U2, Justin Timberlake) - your best bet in my opinion is to look at major labels and prepare to share all revenue streams / creative control / music ownership. To reach that kind of critical mass these days your need old-school marketing muscle and that only comes from major labels. Good luck with that one.

If you're forging your own path, read on.

* Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters.
To clarify:
Parter with a TopSpin or similar or build your own website, but what you NEED to do is this - give your music away as high-quality DRM-free MP3s. Collect people's email info in exchange (which means having the infrastructure to do so) and start building your database of potential customers. Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods. Base the price and amount available on what you think you can sell. Make the packages special - make them by hand, sign them, make them unique, make them something YOU would want to have as a fan. Make a premium download available that includes high-resolution versions (for sale at a reasonable price) and include the download as something immediately available with any physical purchase. Sell T-shirts. Sell buttons, posters... whatever.

Don't have a TopSpin as a partner? Use Amazon for your transactions and fulfillment. [www.amazon.com]

Use TuneCore to get your music everywhere. [www.tunecore.com]

Have a realistic idea of what you can expect to make from these and budget your recording appropriately.
The point is this: music IS free whether you want to believe that or not. Every piece of music you can think of is available free right now a click away. This is a fact - it sucks as the musician BUT THAT'S THE WAY IT IS (for now). So... have the public get what they want FROM YOU instead of a torrent site and garner good will in the process (plus build your database).

The Beastie Boys' site offers everything you could possibly want in the formats you would want it in - available right from them, right now. The prices they are charging are more than you should be charging - they are established and you are not. Think this through.

The database you are amassing should not be abused, but used to inform people that are interested in what you do when you have something going on - like a few shows, or a tour, or a new record, or a webcast, etc.
Have your MySpace page, but get a site outside MySpace - it's dying and reads as cheap / generic. Remove all Flash from your website. Remove all stupid intros and load-times. MAKE IT SIMPLE TO NAVIGATE AND EASY TO FIND AND HEAR MUSIC (but don't autoplay). Constantly update your site with content - pictures, blogs, whatever. Give people a reason to return to your site all the time. Put up a bulletin board and start a community. Engage your fans (with caution!) Make cheap videos. Film yourself talking. Play shows. Make interesting things. Get a Twitter account. Be interesting. Be real. Submit your music to blogs that may be interested. NEVER CHASE TRENDS. Utilize the multitude of tools available to you for very little cost of any - Flickr / YouTube / Vimeo / SoundCloud / Twitter etc.

If you don't know anything about new media or how people communicate these days, none of this will work. The role of an independent musician these days requires a mastery of first hand use of these tools. If you don't get it - find someone who does to do this for you. If you are waiting around for the phone to ring or that A & R guy to show up at your gig - good luck, you're going to be waiting a while.

Hope this helps, and I'll scour responses for intelligent comments I can respond to.

TR

TopSpin Media info:
[topspinmedia.com]

Paris is Burning Mixtape Free Download!

2009-07-08T17:57:00.000-07:00

I’m always really desperately critical when it comes to Silver Medallion music.

Which thankfully helped us to create the caliber of album that we did, but whenever we experiment I get this weird feeling in my chest and don’t know if we should let it see the light, no matter the time or money we put into it.

This all leads me up to the excitement surrounding our new mixtape Paris is Burning with J.Paul of HavocNDeed . In my mind, J. Paul might be just the most driven and talented person I’ve met in Arizona. His remixes are awesome, his group is the shit, he’s even a good deejay. He helped us put together this mixtape and introduced us to the dubstep genre in his Scottsdale studio, and we took a break from the hedonism to create the tape Paris is Burning.

I remember when electro was the new hot shit and the blogs were new and exciting and everyone said it would die. Rumour has dubstep as that next thing, but its death is already predicted by its main fans online (which any trend should be as Steve Aoki starts playin it). I’m not going to say its going to be some huge new genre that will overtake electro, but I would put it in comparison to Baltimore breaks and the like in that it will always be a useful tool for both deejays and producers to give tracks and sets that extra oomph, and have serious potential to be a great dj subgenre for a long time. As a sound I love it, I’m addicted to when the beat drops, it makes my head nod like underground hip hop did when I was 16.

One thing that consistently frustrates Carnegie and myself in the Silver Medallion quest for musical success is the lack of innovation opportunities we find in our location. Finding deejays and producers doing something new and hot who are willing to work is hard as shit, and we were frustrated for a long tiem (we’ve wanted to do an electro mixtape so bad). We want to make blog-relevant, interesting indie music to complement our pop tunes, because we feel artists in 2009 have to be that diverse to see success, but we couldn’t find the beats and supporting cast, until now…

That’s why we’re releasing this project, because we found the background we needed and it’s time to start taking steps as artists and not just as a music business machine. I think J. Paul did an awesome job providing the music, and I think we killed it on the lyrics, but is it an unspeakable work of incredible genius? Nah…but nothing has been living up to the standard I have set for Silver Medallion recently and you know what its time for new shit to surface and this is new and exciting and goddamit it we’re artists lol we’re making art out here don’t laugh at us, please don’t laugh at us, god please… I digress.

Paris is Burning by Silver Medallion is now free to download at getyourswagup.com … Download, share, hate, love etc.

Silver Medallion Myspace …

thoughts

2009-07-07T19:06:00.000-07:00

Alright, the rant below was not meant to turn into me big upping my group and howling at haters, rather a denouncement of gossip mongering and sadness at the scene that has nothing for music editors to write about but this.

I don't fault the publications, these artists don't have fans and there's nothing you can do but write about them negatively.

In other news, I dj in Hawaii again this Saturday.

Rant Rant Rant: New Times etc.

2009-07-07T16:52:00.000-07:00

Just got a call from Ben over at the New Times, who I’m a super fan of, he’s a great guy and wrote the article we had in the Guide to Scottsdale, which was a great piece of press for us as an up and coming band.

He was calling regarding our upcoming show with LMFAO on Saturday the 18th of July, but we ended up talking a little longer regarding our album release (August 18th 2008) and some other topics.

What inspired me to sit down and write this, taking a break form the 8 million things on the Silver Medallion to do list was what he said regarding he heard over the grapevine that we disliked the New Times Article on Sonny Long, which is hilarious, because I don’t know what grape vine we were in to get that heard but that’s pretty ludicrous that people are saying stuff about us and that its that. I wrote some comments on arizonabeats.com, but they have little reflection on my opinion as portrayed the intense discussion of this article that we went through with dozens of people in the music scene in Arizona in the weeks following.

I was in a state of shock after reading the article “A Star in His Own Mind” not because I disliked it, but because that this was the state of the Arizona music scene: the press decided to write a story about someone whose only story was they we’re no one at all, with nothing cracking.

This means that there are no Arizona artists doing something interesting who could be written about on hand, instead they had to find a liar and make fun of him/expose him. I couldn’t agree more with the concept behind this because man am I tired of people acting like they’re getting it crackin and in reality having nothing while bands like us keep our mouths tight about what we’re doing because we don’t want to act big headed and have shit talked about us (even though everyone apparently thinks we’re assholes anyway). But it’s a sad fact that our scene is so terrible (and I’m gonna stop being nice, and say it really really is this bad) that this was the best thing they could put a cover together about. This isn’t on the New Times, this is on Arizona music, which I’m beginning to start to want to lose my discretion in talking about on a daily basis.

My favorite music New Times stories are, in order: Hollywood Heartthrob, Sonny Long, and the Willy Northpole Groove Candy story.

My favorite part of this is the fact that the only thing worth writing about out of all of these is Groove Candy, because Groove candy is a. the shit and b. a cultural pillar in Arizona for music and urban life. Willy Northpole hasn’t done squat for Arizona more than any other rapper but diss people and break up the Roundtable, I damn near rather read about Trap (on the flip side, I would love to read a story on Willy’s manager, Tiffany J. whose a beast of fairly epic proportions). Hollywood Heartthrob is only relevant because Teddy won the Health and Wealth Raffle (as their eventual album release review said, they might be relevant now that they're on tour), and I didn’t even know Sonny Long still was alive/making music until that story came out. That’s not what made these stories dope to me, the subjects might have kinda sucked, but they went IN on everyone involved here. They talked shit, they exposed the fact these people are fakers and/or liars and/or real human beings. Both Hollywood Heartthrob and Sonny Long we're shown to be "fake" stars and thats a mighty powerful trend to be proliferating through the press.

If someone does our story I’d want it to be the same way though, because we’re humans, and we’re seriously flawed, and that’s why I think our music is so good. And all these other stories are so convoluted, because these peoples lives are wack! Wheres the sex? The fights? The lies? The shady industry people? Back of the club promoter beatdowns? Sex and music and drugs and violence and lies and money! Are the rest of these bands not in the midst of this? They can’t even pull off a weeklong bender so the press thinks they are? This is the MUSIC INDUSTRY. Get it crackin!

At the end of the day I’m comfortable with any press story from any avenue, even if it’s biased negatively, because you can talk all to hell about Carnegie and I as human beings and what we’ve done to get here (sell outs, assholes, posers, gimmicks, gay, cocky, stuck up, pretentious, strung out, talentless, whatever) but at the end of the day our music is GREAT and we’re POPULAR and we’ve done 85 shows in the last year and our national buzz is bigger than signed acts and that makes us, in my opinion, the most relevant musical act in Arizona (gasp).

In the past three weeks, people have told us a lot about what the grapevine has said, and I quote.

“Silver Medallion didn’t like the Sonny Long piece”
“they’re saying you guys sold out”
“I heard people say you guys aren’t together enough to ever drop a project”

LOL. My album is barcoded and shrinkwrapped and in my hands, our release is at the goddamn W, I read that Sonny Long piece four or five times, loved it, agreed with it, an pushed it on other people to read it, and if we sold out where’s the damn money?

What a life, I've been trying to so hard to just keep on the low until we we're ready for the blitzkrieg offense we we're planning, but its always the little things that get under my skin and ruin my Hawaii vacation.

I keep saying I’m going to write some kind of blog on our experiences in the industry and I super half ass it and never really write anything interesting cause my fam reads everything I write, and we have a lot of other things to get done, and I’ve been afraid of people learning too much about us, we keep mysterious and I like that.

But at the end of the day, if people knew what was really good with us, I feel we wouldn’t have a lot of these problems with people talking so much.

In the last month we:
1. Found out the record label we we’re dealing with was full of it and never going to cut the check.
2. Secured an album release at the most prestigious event location we could find in the valley
3. Flew to Hawaii and djed
4. Got sponsored by Nooka watches
5. Got with a new booking agent who immediately flew to Miami to work us there
6. Began developing a weekly Las Vegas event with one of the oldest, most respected deejays we know
7. Launched or djing with a neo-soul and old school weekly event we deejay at a club in the Biltmore
8. Released and promoted a DJ CD “Electro is the Loneliest Number”
9. Opened for Wale and 2 Live Crew, and did four other shows
10. Got booked for NYC
11. Launched our street promotions with a new sticker line
12. Collaborated with two of the best local street wear names on clothing line shirts for fall release
13. Worked on two mixtapes with J. Paul and Fresh 85
14. Began a project with a producer in Canada
15. Wrote new records and placement tracks with the writer of Madonna’s “Open Your Heart”
16. Developed an intensive local radio promotions plan with the help of some of our favorite radio peeps (Ramses and Chilly shout outs)
17. Launched a project with one of our favorite local deejays to mash up our tracks with Scottsdale classics

That’s last month. This music industry involves real work, and no one I read these damn articles about does it. Yes my gas gauge is empty and I live in an apartment with not one piece of furniture, but my bands popping. So you know what fuck it, I’m writing about and promoting everything we do and taggin all sorts of people in it, and maybe our New Times feature if it comes to fruition will be about a band that’s trying to run its state and create a national buzz with nothing but their own grit, and not about a liar an poser who makes our entire state music scene look like a bunch of featherweights.

If any has any questions about whether I like something they can read it right at GetYourSwagUp.

White Trash Breakfast

2009-07-06T11:46:00.000-07:00

Been in Hawaii, and not posting. Because I've been doing better things, like listening to more Kid Cudi, and djin.

Hopefully there's metromix pics of asians dancing to LMFAO somewhere on the internet I can eventually hunt down.

Until then, slaving away on the album release.

Man on the Moon

2009-07-01T12:37:00.000-07:00

Finalized the date for our album release parties this week. August 9th we have the Scottsdale release at Martini Ranch, right after we open up for a Daft Punk cover band (whaaaat) at Axis on that Friday.

The main release party is the 16th (Sunday afternoon) at the W Pool. We’re making it industry only on our guestlist, all radio, club, nightlife, investors, artists, media etc. plus the lovely ladies of Scottsdale. I’m excited we got the venue we wanted to (thanks go to Bill at Rev77), I think it’s a great start on our rebrand as the new face of Scottsdale (less hedonism more pop).

We’ve been very lucky in that we’ve been able to watch the release parties from earlier this month. I wish we had the money to afford Soundscan registry etc. because I think we could clock just enough units (1000 or so) to land the bottom spot on the Billboard top 100 for new artists… This would be truly truly truly insane. That’s how far the charts have fallen, for new artists you just gotta sell 1000 in a week to chart. Sadly we don’t quite have the abilities to have everything recorded (registering costs more than pressing the album!!! WTF).

We want our party to set a standard for future album releases. Our fans come to our shows all the time, we’ll throw some cool concerts for them, but we want to really treat the industry to a cool party, no cost, lots of free stuff, great networking, beautiful people for them to impress with their industry lives etc etc. I want it to be like a royal court lol, people just coming through and chopping it about how we can work together to bring this Silver Medallion thing to the next level.

So now we’re on a mad quest to secure sponsors (I’ll be damned if I’m not getting catering, booze sponsors, free gear giveaways and someone to cover the cost of us giving away 100+ albums). And also on a more concentrated dash to get the guest list for this event amazing. I want 100 people there, that’s all, but I want them to be the right people, all bosses. We’ll see what we can do.

New Designs

2009-06-26T09:58:00.000-07:00

New design for a club in DC.

Memorial Night

2009-06-25T10:31:00.001-07:00

Djed the memorial for my man tonight with Carnegie. Funeral during the day was rough, rough seeing him laid out in the casket (although his Tom Ford suit was fresher than a lil bit), women crying, rough testimonials etc. I’d never been to a funeral, I dodged out when my best friend died in college and all the other random incidents. I just remember the NOSE song where he was like “pops just died, I wasn’t at the funeral home, cause I don’t do funerals yo” and how much that spoke to me, I don’t know why.

This one was right out of a movie, it was at a church on the south side in the barrio, and the lot was filled with escalades, bmw, chargers, rims etc, I was afraid to park the Benz until I saw a trail of Range Rovers right by our space, but it all worked out. The church was packed, people out in the halls, spilling to outside, and it was a crazy cast of beautiful women, family members, drug lords, goons, business men, the illuminati of AZ nightlife, and quite a cast of characters. We sat outside and chainsmoked cigarettes most of the time and bounced out after.

The part at night was chill, hella drama because there we’re two parties, and no one knew where the money was really going, we said we’d DJ for free and I didn’t really care. It shouldn’t have been a problem because the party we did (with his family) was done by midnight so didn’t really hinder business at the main Wednesday nights, but there was tension in the air regardless. People were wasted, girls getting kicked out of limos, women bawling when we played Diddy covering Sting etc. The owner of PHX gave us a ride home so we didn’t have to endure a night of more drama, and now it’s back on the grind.

Crazy for someone so young to be dead and gone. Crazier still the aftermath, I just hope I don’t get any stories tomorrow morning that I don’t’ want to hear.

Willy Northpole and AZ Hip Hop

2009-06-23T21:05:00.000-07:00

Man. So Willy Northpole dropped today. Willy is the first Arizona rapper to really drop on a major label, so his success is going to play a large role in determining the industries opinion of Arizona as a viable market to launch urban acts from. I have many thoughts on this, that I plan to elaborate below, but first, a bit about our lives.

I’m typing this in such a shithole of a place to live I don't even want to talk about it, no furniture, no beds, no real internet, two people in a space the size of your average kitchen. I spent the day at the office of a record label whose president can’t even look me in the eye. I’ve been hiding most the weekend in the corner wondering why G had to die so randomly and dealing with the plethora of questions involving his, dare I say shady, demise. I guess listening to Pinocchio Story and Cudi’s Rollin on repeat doesn’t do much for my mood, but it’s been a wack week or two and if I didn’t have things to look forward to (moving this week, getting paid Friday, leaving this godforsaken desert next week) I’d really be tripping right now…

I guess mostly I’m just exhausted by the state of AZ music. Our G-Unit artist hasn’t even put a song out anyone in AZ knows about. Our Black Wall Street aka Amare Stoudamire’s artist has blatantly fabricated MySpace statistics (cmon yall) and has never to anyone’s knowledge performed a show in Arizona other than during All Star Weekend. Willy Northpole is the most commercially viable, well backed and probably dopest of these artists, but they (or he) did him real dirty out here in AZ. I haven’t seen one (1) poster for his cd release, one flyer, met one street team member, nothing. Lots of twitter posts, some love from 101.5 having his song in rotation etc. but man you can’t even promo in your home state for your release? Someone’s tripping… And what’s sad is the industry is all about promoing him, but only to the rest of the industry, so it’s hard for them to understand the average person in AZ might not know he’s even dropping today.

I’m super anxious to see Soundscan next week. I’m hoping he sells 5,000 but that’s so depressing that that’s what I have to hope for. My man at Universal said he’d put money down he doesn’t sell 2000, which is more depressing. If he sells 10k that’d be spectacular.

And that’s SUPER depressing. This man owes his label a few hundred k at least. He’s got Neyo on his album, BOB on his album, Bobby Valentino, Don Cannon beats… That doesn’t come cheap. Say it cost 50k to get Neyo, they sell 10,000 records they haven’t even paid back Neyo, nonetheless producers, recording, samples, promo. And to believe the XPOZ article that came out during Superbowl he owes Capri jewelers 50k+ for stolen chains….

Why would they drop an album? The streets aren’t banging for Willy, they were 6 months ago when he had a single out (Body Marked Up isn’t even on the album) but its not like he’s doing a ton of shows or has a ton or press, or blowing up the airwaves etc. Someone’s doing AZ dirty, whether it’s his team misleading the label that they have AZ on lock to sell 100k on some Jeezy talk… Or whether it’s the label saying “this promo is good enough” when in this climate it really isn’t.

I’m hoping so badly he sells and I’m just missing the bigger picture, even if Def Jam’s buying up the records because AZ’s about to look idiotic if he sells 2-5000 records. The first AZ rapper out and no real support in his hometown. This man should have been all over everything anyone could have put him on. And artists like Silver Medallion really need his success. Because we don’t have the luxury of a major we can’t plan a release date and drop and build up to sell 10k first week. We gotta drop on the low and grind it out and try to sell 10k in a year to get noticed. But how the hell are we as Phoenix artists going to be national press worthy if our major label artists can’t sell records? In one sense I’m happy at least he dropped so someone from AZ is out there, but I’m so nervous about if he even makes the new records charts next week…

Man, what can we do as a community to push these projects? We need every AZ artist (there’s only four, let’s be honest here, Juice, Willy, Hot Rod and Silver Medallion, no one else matters yet, no offense intended, but no one else is even buzzin at all on local or national to make a go at it) to sell 25k out the gate off AZ love alone. That’s not even a lot of records… For the 5th largest metropolis in the US! How can this happen. I’ll put aside what I think of these artists music and what I think of their work ethic and support just because that’s what should happen to build a framework that will allow my group to be successful, but some people have got to take it upon themselves to build that framework.

Someone just tell us what to do. If the labels aren’t going to push them we have to. The fact that Silver Medallion has done more shows locally than Willy, Hot Rod and Juice combined is scary to me (85 as of this weekend), I’m not saying they should be doing some of the wack ass shows we do (lol) but people gotta get support to kill their hometown. Even press! Where the New Times articles (Willy had two), AZ Republic (anybody?), 944 (anyone?), the ASU paper (anyone?). This is SOOOOOOOOO bad. I mean, me and Carnegie just harassed people until we got articles, ya’ll labels don’t have people to do that? If you don’t have a hit record then national exposure doesn’t really mean much, and none of these people do (Willy been on the verge, he got Street singles), so why isn’t anyone building a local base to sell records? Where are these mixtapes? Where are the posters? The club appearances even? I’ve never seen any AZ rapper pull up whipping hard to pop bottles, or even heard about it, the exception being All Star Weekend when these rappers had their sugar daddies paying for their events and everyone was talking about Arizona being “their state” (“your state” could get real ugly real quick in this club scene lol, for anyone). I’m terrified for AZ music, and just out of survival, this is detrimental to the rest of us trying to come up to get the deals that ya’ll have!

Someone just tell us what to do. We been grinding out here too long to move to LA, but today might be a step backward and not a step forward… The industry out here needs to connect to the people, let’s do it.

And they’re bootlegging my fucking cd on 16th and Roser.

Heartless/Pinocchio Story

2009-06-23T14:06:00.000-07:00

The first few minutes are blah but that Pinocchio story is amazing...

I know most everyones seen it etc but whatevs.

Kanye West - Heartless/Pinocchio Story Live from theicebLoc.com on Vimeo.

RIP Francois

2009-06-20T20:31:00.000-07:00

RIP to my boy Francois Garrett Robinson who passed away last night in a tragic car accident

I feel super creepy going back and looking at his twitter, his last tweet was the following about 19 hours ago and pretty much sums up all of our nights last night...

"I'm on bottle 5 where are you at? Hennessy Black is the drink where are you at???"

If you knew G, they're having some fundraisers for his family at Groove Candy and probably PHX, and they're going to do an AZ ceremony as well as DC, so get at me for more info.

G was probably the most interesting person I ever met in Arizona, his life was always completely inexplicable, he was doing it as big as one could and cementing himself in marketing and the entertainment industry with a swagger and ambitious nature that was magnetic and powerful. His blog was ridiculous in the best way, and he was the life of the party consistently. I never hung out with him once and didn't enjoy it, he was always funny and positive and I'm still in consistent shock that he's gone.

I'm about to be 24 soon. I've had a decent amount of friends die, more are in jail, rehab etc etc it's crazy, this industry is crazy. It's not only the strong survive, its only the strong, lucky, stupid and ruthless survive. We're finally doing good, but if things aren't yakkin by 25 I'm out, and I say that but I know its not true you kind of get sucked into this forever once you've been here long enough, and I say I never want to go to another club again but there's nothing in the world that makes me happier than deejaying, performing, writin etc. and the life that comes with that becomes an addiction.

I've had my fill I guess, because it's work now, going out is work. It was for G as well, he was a Hennessy Black tastemaker, they paid for him to go out and pop bottles, and eventually that becomes as much of a task as some kids would consider it fun. I did shows the last three nights, drank more than a fair share of Hennessy myself (damn you and your extremely relevant branding you devil liquid), and am going to have to do all this for so much longer it gets painful to think about.

Something about this time I'm growing up in just makes it all so attractive, like the Black Eyed Peas album where they say "If I could party all night, and sleep all day, and throw all my problems away, then life would be easy..." I think we, as in my social group, all have this strange looming sense of world despair, and world despair that we're so detached from we can't imagine being able to change, and so when confronted with the party vs. not party conundrum we inevitably choose to get it in... We just don't care about nearly anything, and have this sinking feeling we should be having as much of a good time as possible in our rather gnarly lives because we're not going to be able to have that option much longer. This whole recession/fear in media/end of days zeitgeist is growing increasingly scary to me because that's what we all feel.

Recently I've had to increasingly think about the future, because I've been thinking intensely about starting a family, and it's just a pretty depressing landscape out there, and using relationships as a crutch to bear with that isn't something I feel is fair to others. Interesting times this way come.

We've been working very hard on our new album, entitled Silver Medallion Changed My Life, which is one of the few things that keeps me going. We've abandoned all previous work completely and are making what I can only describe as inspirational pop music, lilting piano ballads and such. We have the great blessing now of working with the writer of Madonna's "Open Your Heart" amongst a few dozen other platinum records, and our new team is showing us our potential to make true hit records with the feelings that we've always wanted to get out and it's both inspiring and karmically equalizing to be involved in creating music like this.

As times change superstars change with it. We're so different than the previous generations of those being primed for pop success its shocking. First off we're covered in tattoos and wear all black, and we're not controlled by any entity, and we can say whatever we want in press etc, and we're not very beautiful. We have long term girlfriends and got over the party life before we hit success. We are no John Mayer lol, but we're literally about to be making this music that's quite the opposite of how we look. I think the mainstream is ready for flaws, ready for people who talk shit and have addictions and shady pasts and tattooed hands etc. Going to be an interesting time coming up as we get deeper and deeper in the industry.

RIP to G, you inspired me forreal homie, and changed a lot of how we did Silver Medallion to match your foresight in marketing trends. I loved kicking it with you, there was never a night that wasn't better when you were there. I know you're somewhere trying to get the center table with the good view of the dancefloor in heaven...

A pic of us bossing up at the Phatfarm suite is below

On the Set of Stop/Go

2009-06-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

Stop Go video shots... Carnegie and me and hot indie girls...

A rant on people not paying independent artisans.

2009-06-20T09:23:00.001-07:00

I was inspired by Giulio on this, he was always an advocate for the independent photographer/designer/performer getting rights etc. I took it to heart, and am a super fan of people buying local etc etc. I even thought about that printing our cd, merch everything, we gotta get a community.

I did some designs for a promoter at Jackrabbit, a bartender. Jackrabbit is an affluent, successful club, and I designed for one of their very good nights. The bartender lives in my old condo complex (which is baller) and makes plenty of money. He hollered at me for design and references two great guys I know I’ve designed for, an old Mondrian bartender and a Vintage promoter, who have been exceptional about always paying me and making sure business was handled.

I designed $100 worth of stuff for this guy, which he used, I got the facebook invites etc. That’s nothing, I’ve written off lots of $100 invoices that we’re just too hard to chase down, which sucks in the long run but is a sad by product of my business.

But this one I’m not going to let die. I texted, called and emailed this guy every day for weeks, and I see him doing more events etc etc, but he never hits me back and I can never catch up in person. At what point can you not pay a designer $100, and shit on not only your name but he name of two genuinely good people you referenced to even have me design for you in the first place. And shit on the name of your club, which is one of if not the most respected in Old Town?

Could I do more to hunt down the money? Yes. I could go to the club, holler at his references etc etc but that does nothing for me, I don’t really care about the $100, it’s more about just the general issue. I’m a service provider in nightlife, what I do is essential for the nights people have to continue going, and you’re ruining things for them and my ability to trust people to do business…

Anyway, that was my rant, I’m about to bug the hell out of this dude for WEEKS based on principal. I am Jack’s Instrument of Karmic Justice.

Wale and Silver Medallion Show

2009-06-19T13:47:00.001-07:00

Rocked a show with Wale the other night. Wale’s old as sin, I’ve heard his name since I was about 14 as a rapper. He got big off his song “Nike Boots” and his remix of Justice’s “Dance”. Interscope went on a ludicrous signing binge last year and picked up a bunch of mediocre acts, of which he was one, so we’ve all been hearing his single “Chillin” with Lady Gaga make its rounds. I think that single’s just gaining steam, and might break through late this year, we’ll see. Lady Gaga is rumoured to be a replacement for MIA (who recorded it, then said they can’t use it rumour says, or asked for 1 million of some ludicrous number). Listening to the hook, and to Wale’s verse, it makes a lot of sense that that could be the case. The video is lackluster which is too bad, it’s a hot track.

So Wale ended up at Pinky Ring in Phoenix at Bar Smith, a place we’d never performed at, but a very interesting night. Basically about 10 deejays in AZ banded together to create a night they could play what they want (electro and random things) and to get the best deejay locally (JR) out of Scottsdale, where his residencies are. It’s a cool but pretty unsuccessful night, they bring in awesome acts (Z-Trip, Afrika Bambaataa etc) and pack it out, but aren’t really cracking weekly. I’m a super fan of what they’re trying to do and hope it works out. They got a deal to bring out Wale and put us on this gig and packed it out with about 250 people (it’s a rooftop bar, so that’s crackin). I felt our show went good, as usual people just kind of stare at us in complete shock, but sound was good and we did our thing. Afrocollective was after us and killed it, they’ve obviously been doing shows for years and they do kinda completely irrelevant underground rap but they we’re tight and really did their thing.

Wale sucked, his hype man couldn’t sing and tried to, and he was at like 60%, and they cut off most the songs like they we’re bored and it was very unexciting, but it was a good act for Phoenix to get and we’re happy to have spots on those shows. On the plus side Amen Ra did a Go-Go/Baltimore set that was OUTRAGEOUS and made me respect him as a DJ, whereas I thought he was drastically overrated prior.

2009-06-17T14:38:00.000-07:00

Tonight, we're at Bar Smith with Wale.

Tuesdays

2009-06-16T21:19:00.001-07:00

The days go by, some days I can’t/don’t write about them.

DJed a Playboy pool party Sunday filled with drug addled reality show “stars”. Went out to Phoenix on Saturday, peeped Solstice and some of the Dub Show afterparties. Myspace messaged 90% of the djs in Arizona yesterday with links to our music. Met with a grip of people about our new DJ cds. Finished client work. This is my life.

Life in LA is So Insane...

2009-06-11T01:34:00.001-07:00

Been designing tees non-stop for Bobby Fresh, we'll see which ones make it... Got a few other clothes collabos in the works I can't talk on but super excited to break into that world. This "Arab Money" tee is going to be amazing.

Carnegie and I have been pretty much locked in the house djing all week to get ready for our next set of gigs, good things coming of it, lots of mixes etc. lots of reminders why we love djing...

Back to shows finally, next week we open for Wale at Pinky Ring in Phoenix, then ACME for Third Thursdays the next night, then 2 Live Crew for the Party Foul 2 year anniversary the next week. Excited to debut some new hotness.

Got an amazing new beat from Wonka we've been writing too, looking forward to doing an EP for Canadian release with him. And things move forward.

Tees

2009-06-11T01:32:00.001-07:00

Silver Medallion chicano tee.

New Terminator Movie Brings JD Salinger Out of Hiding

2009-06-10T01:46:00.000-07:00

By far the best days of my days in New York were when the subway stops had The Onion.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/new_terminator_movie_brings_j_d?utm_source=a-section

Sigh. Been a rough few days, record deal we've been working on for months is just more lies and shadiness. At some point I may just have to turn into an instrument of karmic justice... Back on the phone with Konvict though, got a new team together, step in the right direction.

This has become the story of my life.

Ridiculousness

2009-06-09T00:41:00.001-07:00

This is ludicrous on a number of levels.

I just do what I'm told to design...

Download the New Silver Medallion DJ Mix: Electro is the Loneliest Number

2009-06-06T05:57:00.001-07:00

Djing was always the best thing in my life. My mom used to volunteer at the thrift store associated with my high school and at one point she brought home turntables to feed my gradually increasing hip hop addiction and I never looked back (thankfully the hip hop element died). I used to go out with my friends till 12 or 1 or whatever and come home and literally dj until I saw the sun, loving it. Which explains my poor high school GPA but made me happy in rather unhappy times.

I worked at a full service gas station and I would have enough tips everyday to buy a new record and believe me I would. I scoured the whole island for thrift stores/vinyl and man did I get a serious collection… My grandfather took me to a Goodwill in Mililani/Pearl City one day and picked out an old speaker set for like $25 a pair of four foot technics, and I ended up supplementing that with smaller speakers, subs, receivers etc from years of thrifting and I wired my own surround sound in my room. At night I’d dj in headphones in day with the best, most satisfying sound system ever. I LOVED djing. When I looked out at the lights of Tantalus as the sun rose, spinning Charles Webster or whatever I was rocking at the time, life was complete.

I was never particularily amazing at it. I kept going through college, and then finally got good when I first moved to New York and because I couldn’t get solid design work I spent literally 8 hours a day plus djing at the apartment before gigging at night. That’s when I first heard electro, the summer after college, and I was literally at Studio B for the first time like WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS. Followed quickly by WHO MAKES THIS, and even more quicker by I MUST MAKE THIS. That’s when I got deep deep into djing again and we started Silver Medallion. It’s been slim pickings on me spinning ever since just because of time commitments and then Carnegie grabbed the dj reigns, but since I live alone now, I’ve foregone sleeping pretty much completely (its 5:42am ugh), work is kinda slow and I have no AZ girlfriend I have the time to spin a few hours a day, and the sickness has returned.

So in the name of my recently several times ravaged and rebuilt heart, I made an emo electro dance mix full of juicy mainstreamish electro remixes, something ok for the non-heads who don't listen to this kind of stuff. This justified me as a person, I’ve been bumping it constantly since the week I made it. DJ mixes for me have always been so much more than dope mixes, but gone into content, material and how the songs really sound together not just mix together and this is me taking that to heart and making something dope (with the exception of Kick Out the Jams, but it mixes so good into Little Boots…) Without further ado- “Electro is The Loneliest Number” mixed by Silver Medallion. This is the story of my bleeding heart, as heard through hipster bullshit and DTTT remixes.

1. Gives You Hell- All American Rejects (Bloody Beetroots Remix)
2. Sex on Fire- Kings of Leon (Richard Sarkey and Peter Sar Remix)
3. Little Bit- Lykke Li (Death to the Throne Remix)
4. Kick Out the Jams- Dave Nada (Dave Nada Remix)
5. Stuck on Repeat- Little Boots (Fake Blood Remix)
6. Whatchadoin- NASA ft. MIA, Santogold and Spankrock (Villains Remix)
7. That’s Not My Name- The Tings Tings (LA Riots Remix)
8. Hardcore Girls- Rye Rye (Sinden Remix)
9. Somebody Somewhere- Cazals (Blamma! Blamma! Remix)
10. Fancy Footwork- Chromeo (Death to the Throne Remix)
11. My Heart is Set on You- Heads We Dance (Geek Chic Remix)

Download Here

Thanks for listening.

MGMT Kids Official Video

2009-06-05T12:47:00.000-07:00

this is crazy

Live From Whootyville

2009-06-04T20:10:00.000-07:00

I'm currently designing a flyer for a Tupac Birthday party (he would be 38). $4 Alize and $5 Thug passions. Pardon me while I gouge my eyes out with rusty nails.

On a better note, we rediscovered Silver Medallion's inner child while listening to the new Black Eyed Peas album.

I'ma post the dj cd Saturday I believe.

Electro Is The Loneliest Number

2009-06-04T05:24:00.000-07:00

So much has gone on in the past two months in my personal life it’s really set me up to be an inefficient human being who hides under afghans most of the day. Luckily most of that doesn’t make it on the blog, but god are they good stories. Girlfriends, pornstars, screaming fights, goons in the middle of the night, re-falling in love, covert trips, general emoness, strange tattoos (I know have a tattoo of a unicorn jumping over the Brooklyn Bridge) etc. Rather than discuss all this as a series of personal vignettes as originally planned I just made a really dope emo dj mix.

The art for “Electro is the Loneliest Number” is below, I’ll be posting a little later in the week.

Old Unreleased Kanye

2009-06-03T13:59:00.001-07:00

i feel this

Spaceship from kwest on Vimeo.

William Shatner

2009-06-01T01:15:00.000-07:00

Too bad Iglu and Hartley were dicks, because In This City should still be on the radio out in AZ. And their rapping is terrible too... actually I just want to take that hook and do our own song.

We worked (well Carnegie worked) on the SM dj cd for 7 hours last night. And 5 hours today. That much time without my laptop was very strange for me, but I did read every magazine in my house (5 or 6 New Yorkers etc) front to back, and now I’m better versed on the current state of American credit, foreclosures in California, the effect of solitary confinement on the human psyche etc.

We’re getting ready to record a bunch of remixes to help our radio marketability, Felli Fel’s “Can You Feel It”, Chester French’s “Life in LA”, Far East Movements “Girls on the Dance Floor”, Ya Boi’s “We Run LA” etc etc. Should all go down this week, as well as finishing this dubstep mixtape.

Statements on Statements

2009-05-29T23:51:00.000-07:00

Busy day at the office today... Redid the press kit for a clean version and for updated press. We responded to Tempe Marketplace and The Borgata to book mall shows, corresponded with The Blaze to start coordinating college airplay for fall, sent emails to all U of A radio, contacted AZ Weekly, contacted A2Z magazine, put together our radio timeline and got the intern researching program directors and event coordinators for here, California and Vegas for the radio push. I'm excited to do some collabs with Bobby Anthony and a few other artists coming up, we're looking to redo My World with a Spanish chorus and to do some new songs with latin marketability. We're carefully picking our pop remixes for the radio push as well. The record label contracts are done from the lawyer, apparently the staff is reviewing them for the first time and then we move forward in a few days, it can't come soon enough.

After the office I met with Giulio and talked Java and Desert Living, event production, pushing the Stop/Go video, integrating with J. Pierce clothing, and making the best of this next push. Love going over there, it's always inspiring to see the media they both create and know about in their studio. Their currently working on a motion pinnup calendar (digital photos where the girls move) that is pretty much awesome. One of my friends is their July girl and she's straddling a phallic rocket on fire and the whole thing is just off the wall and amazing, like everything I see from that studio.

Carnegie comes through later tonight so we can mash out on the new DJ cd, tomorrow I design pretty much all day and night, new mixtape cover for Lickashot, logo redesign for Surge Nights, myspace for a club in DC, UNICEF invites, Form and Matter logo variations, Eldridge invites etc. It's the homie from King and Duck's birthday on Saturday, so might join him at Axis, haven't been there in forever. Sunday, designing clothing designs for the new collabs and getting ready to launch our new marketing.

After reading an article in Billboard today (the one with Black Eyed Peas on the cover), finally got inspired to get some solid Twitter marketing going, we were just unsure how to use it besides being funny prior. All our video from the past few months is edited into a few more Fear and Loathing episodes (Hollywood, Havasu, Hawaii etc.) but without the Fear and Loathing sadly (we've become to calm and friendly methinks). So our video presence, and our twitter is about to get back up strong, pushing new material downloads, art, collabs, remixes writings etc.

Today was a good day. Positive affirmation.

Interactive Music Video

2009-05-29T21:37:00.000-07:00

I was at Giulio's house downtown talking shop, and he showed me this, which is cool cool cool cool.

http://www.mtvmusic.com/artist/coldwarkids.jhtml

In other news we're getting a lot done nowadays.