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Thanks for the update, Sir Kerb. Been a long damn time since I've gotten to chit-chat with Mark - glad to hear he's keeping busy. Hopefully Magic Lanterns will make their way out here in the '07.

i find stuck to be my favourite us maple thing. the video i funny as fuck too. i like that cover they did of sin city as well.

kerble wrote:...he sat on the armrest of a van for ten hours to film the band.

It was more like 8 to 10 hours a day for 10 days during their 2001 East Coast tour. Literally a pain in the ass, nonetheless, a great deal of fun.

Sorry for a lack of updates, but things have continued to move slow and not a whole lot to report in terms of the status of the documentary. We are still moving forward and I have collected at least 10 complete live shows from over the years (greatly varying in quality). Unfortunately everything is still pre-Adam Vida and I’m still in dire need of more current performance stuff. If anyone knows of anything please let me know.

I have found one of their last shows in Birmingham on Google. I have been in contact with the guy that shot this stuff and the footage is supposedly on its way to me. The audio isn’t great, but I have spoken with the Supersonic promoters and they do have a board recording that they would be willing to share, if they can find it.

There was also a guy who shot some really great footage of them at The Abbey Pub, in Chicago, a few years back, but no one in USM remembers who he was. Anyone out there know about this guy\footage? I still would really like to find this stuff.

I have caved to the evils of MySpace and set up a page in hopes of finding additional footage. My intention is to post updates there as well, but we’ll see if that actually happens. Regardless, I will continue to post updates here. As things have continued to change over the last 5 or 6 months with this project, I hesitate giving updates about any anticipated plans, in fear of only starting rumors. ie: USM planning shows in January for the purpose of the doc. At this point we're just taking what we can get, when we can get it and continue to push forward.

Thanks to all here at EA for your help and continued support.

Tony

This sounds awesome. Unfortunately I have nothing to contribute, except for praise and encouragement. Keep us posted!

HardeyeFilms wrote:Here's the first thing of a couple things... This is a little 34min doc about USM recording Acre Thrills. Sorry for the compression, but I had to crush the shit out it to get in on YouTube. A couple smaller things to follow, maybe this weekend.

Acre Thrills

I'd be very interested to know what you think...

Thanks

Tony

Just saw this US Maple studio footage. I used to work there as an intern and 2nd engineer, sometimes with BP no less. I had left just the studio the year prior, and my memory is foggy about where in the timeline I saw US Maple play, but I'm guessing it was during the recording? I spoke with Al beforehand at the bar, and then he left and re-entered wearing either a jumpsuit or straightjacket for the performance. He had some creative looking stains caked under his nose and fucked up hair to boot. After they began playing, anyone sitting near the stage in booths with empty glasses was fair game to have a Al ever so awkwardly tip them over via strategic stumbling. It wasn't a well promoted show, so the crowd was pretty random and ripe to be more befuddled than entertained by US Maple. It was a blast.

AAAAAAAARGH wrote:Does anyone know where I can get Long Hair in Three Stages on LP?

rayj wrote:If indeed you do find it anywhere, please keep it a secret from me. I might do some seriously criminal things to get my hands on one...

rayj: Don't look HERE.

HardeyeFilms wrote:

AAAAAAAARGH wrote:Does anyone know where I can get Long Hair in Three Stages on LP?

rayj wrote:If indeed you do find it anywhere, please keep it a secret from me. I might do some seriously criminal things to get my hands on one...

rayj: Don't look HERE.

Goddamnit. I just ordered this Maurizio Bianchi LP box set for a buck-twenty-five, and you throw this out.

I have a copy or two of the poster I did for them on that Melt Banana tour in 94. And a lot of sweet memories.

I have posted my "nothing to really report" update at MySpace and it goes like this:

I just got back from my trip to Chicago and have begun looking through and logging the footage I have collected. This next phase will be time consuming and lengthy, so I won’t have anything substantial to update for a while. Though I still need to get a couple more supporting interviews with a few people, I do have everything I need to begin putting the story together.

My two weeks in Chicago were very productive and I was able to gather about 23 hours of interview footage. I also came back with a box of photos, another 14 hours of USM live footage (including 3 hours of USM on tour with Melt Banana shot by Todd Rittmann… absolutely genius stuff) and some practice tape audio of rare unrecorded USM tunes post-“Purple On Time” that I’m just dieing to check out. All in all I think I have a lot of really great material and I’m anxious to start putting it together.

Regardless of everything I have, I am always up for anything else that is out there, so please continue to contact me if you know of anything. The two specific things I am still looking for are:

• Photos of USM at VZDs in Oklahoma City
• The name of or contact info for the guy who shot USM live at the Abbey Pub in Chicago

Your help in finding these things is appreciated and thanks again to everyone who has already supplied so much great stuff. I’ll apologize now for the delay in the next update which probably won’t happen for another month or two, but hopefully I will have something more substantial to report then.

Tony


And as a side note to the EA community, everyone is doing good, Al's kid is a trip, Dubuque is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there and I terribly miss Chicago. That's all for now....

I have posted my latest update at MySpace and it goes like this:

So, we’ve just been plugging away here, knee deep in US Maple footage. Everything is captured and logged and Amy is beginning to assemble the story. I lost track of exactly how many hours we have but we have exceeded our Terabyte drive and have added another 250GB. I think this will get us through the project, though we do still need to collect a few more supporting interviews.

For fun I really wanted to put a trailer of sorts together and began playing around, but quickly got carried away as it reached fifteen minutes in length and I was still adding things. There’s just so much great footage I can’t wait to get to and I wasn’t cutting anything out. It was no longer a trailer, but the beginning of the story and I had to stop. I asked Amy to see if she could get it under 5 minutes and she did, but at the cost of losing a couple days of edit time on the real story… So, I won’t do another of these until we are finished and can make an “official” trailer. After all, spending a great deal of time doing a trailer intended for upload on YouTube, knowing it will look so crappy anyway, feels like a waist of time.

So, not really a trailer, I don’t know what to call it, a work in progress? A preview? I don’t know, but here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX4Dm7c-8aU

As for the plan as it continues to unfold: Amy is cutting away. I have a couple more interviews to line up and do. I interviewed Melt-Banana when they were in town a couple weeks back and we did the whole thing in Japanese.. That was wild and very good to see them again. My friend Tomomi is currently translating it for me, so I still don’t know what I have there in that footage. I hope we will have a real good rough cut and close to finishing with something to show US Maple by mid-August. Unless there is some other development before then, that will also be the next update…

Thanks and I hope you enjoy the “trailer.”

Tony