Good Callis here! This mixtape is the third installment in our game-changing, telephone-pun-naming, and altogether great-listening series of explorations through cover music. Be prepared for everything you’ve come to love about Telephoned tapes, but some new tricks thrown in as well! Again, props to the amazing Ariana Lindenfelser for the amazing cover artwork! (read more about that here).
We’ve been hard at work on lots of our own, non-cover, original Telephoned songs (a la “Hold Me”), but couldn’t deny the fans with their requests for another mix. Hey, maybe even some of our original song ideas will make an appearance…
On Good Call, we chose a decidedly late summer/early fall feel, to ensure it suitable for heavy rotation over the next months. But stop reading and listen already. Full tracklisting below the jump.
TELEPHONED - Good Call
1. Ring Ring 2. Dynamite 3. Last Time 4. Somebody To Love Me / It’s Not Over 5. Crave You 6. Super Bass / Zoidac 7. No One Around 8. Swim Good / Coming Down 9. Castles In The Snow 10. Our Deal / Before I Let You Go 11. Never Tell Me No 12. What’s Love Got To Do With It 13. Heartbroken 14. Say Ahh… 15. Hope / Energy 16. All Of The Lights / The Vow 17. The Vow / Ring Ring
We had an amazing summer getting lots of traveling in, highlighted by spending the last month on a North American tour with Chromeo & Holy Ghost!
There’s a lot to cover, so get ready for a hefty whirlwind recap of our experience on the almost totally sold out tour!
We began in Maggie’s home city, Washington DC. Growing up going to the 9:30 Club as a feisty teenager, this was an exciting venue to start our travels. The show was fun and energetic and we got our first taste of the amazing performances from Holy Ghost! and Chromeo that we were lucky enough to see so many times in the near future. The show was a success, sold out and a blast.
Check out more pictures and a review from DC right here.
After another show in Philly, we had a brief but jam packed stop at home in New York. Wednesday saw us celebrating our new mixtape, “Keep Their Heads Ringin” at Ella with Nicky Digital and our NY fam.
Following up that terrific Wednesday, we performed at another sold out show at the Bowery Ballroom, complete with our new merch! Our shirts just came in that day along with hundreds of CD copies of “Keep Their Heads Rignin’”, just in time to hit the road for real.
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Next stop was Sammy’s hometown, Boston. A third sold out show, the touring was chugging off to a great start! The crowd was excellent, and even Ma and Pa Bananas, as well as some of the other extended Banana family got to attend!
The next morning we picked up our trusty rental car, Che-Vy Co-Balt Mu-Sic, headed north and soon smoothly crossed over the border into Chromeo’s home town of Montreal. It was an extra special show because it also was P-Thug’s birthday (and Maggie’s the following day!) Neon Indian was in the house for this one and played a psychedelic and terrific set with frontman Alan Palomo flexing his Thermin skillz. The night ended with a entire birthday cake shaped like the infamous lady legs and keyboard Chromeo stand behind on stage.
After other great shows in Ottowa and Toronto (shout to our hosts Drastik and Ghramzilla!) We came back down to the states for a fun show on our own in Cleveland.
The next day in Detroit we got a special tour of infamous studios where Eminem recorded his first smash hit albums. Then it was on to Chicago for general Lollapalooza festivity related madness. Sammy played an all House DJ set in the Hard Rock Hotel and we went to the Chi-Town stop on the Stones Throw x Fools Gold Discotheque party.
After a few days off we headed out for the West Coast leg of the tour!
After we hit Calgary (and cameo’d in the upcoming Smalltown Romeo video), beautiful Vancouver was next up for yet another sold out show.
Holy Ghost! rocking another great set and finishing it as they did every night with their amazing new “Song for Jerry.”
After an eventful trip back down to the US which involved a car chase at the border and a hot tattooed woman in a bikini serving coffee out of a shack at a truck stop (the place called Foxy Lady cafe), we arrived in Seattle. The Pacific Northwest was so very good to us.
Our first show in Seattle was quiet eventful. I hate to harp on “sold out” but it really was exciting and inspiring to be performing for such big excited crowds.
for more pictures and an excellent review by the prestigious KEXP, look over here.
The crowd was so crazy for Chromeo at this point, the crew had to hold the lighting to make sure it didn’t fall from their quaking jumping!
In Portland, we had what would prove to be our second best show thanks to another full house with loads of energy to spare! They showed lots of love for us at the end of our set.
San Diego proved to be an awesome sold out venue just before a few days off in Los Angeles. We managed to find a very Cali way to spend the time…LVLZ!
After fun times at the beach, in many pools, hot tubs, rollercoasters at Magic Mountain and stuffing our faces constantly, we headed back home to some weather that was not quite as forgiving.
The Pool’s Gold Jelly Pool Party turned out to be wild with a wonderful lineup. The day suffered from some showers and wind, but the fans of Fool’s Gold and Jelly NYC waited quite some time happily through the rain to see the great performances. Ours in particular was a bit hairy. At one point Maggie was chasing down records and slipmats on a wet stage that had blown off Sammy’s tables in a gust of wind. Punk rock! The show must go on, until it couldn’t anymore because you can’t use a computer while its getting rained on.
Finally, it was off to the south for our last leg of the tour! The first night was a hot and sweaty sold out crowd at Stubb’s in Austin. In Dallas we had the best BBQ of the tour (best ribs of our entire lives???). On the trip from Dallas to Nashville we got to ride in the Tour Bus and got to see what really goes on behind the scenes…
After that it was off to Honky Tonk land, the one and only Nash Vegas! Nashville’s Cannery was a house full of southern charm and friendliness. We ended the night honky tonkin’ and catching a terrific Rockabilly band on Broadway.
We next got to ATL, the final stop on the tour, and spent a little rooftop pool time with the man Jackie Chain!
The final sold out show in Atlanta was hands down the best show we’ve done. A little emotional to leave the tour, all the bands pulled out all the stops. The crowd was positively bubbling with excitement and very welcoming.
It was a perfect ending to frankly, a nearly perfect tour. Every member of the bands and crew were a pleasure to work with and be around and the music inspiring to watch every night. We’re gonna miss these guys.
Early the next morning we pulled up to the airport in tour bus reeking of Tennesee moonshine and bacon maple bourbon. Maggie had no time to change (or was this the plan all along?) and here shows off what Chromeo refers to as “Airport style”. (#airportstyle) (#ghostface)
Thanks most of all to all our new fans, the hundreds and hundreds of people who came up to personally shake our hands to tell us the love what we are doing. Thanks also to everyone else who supported us buy buying T-shirts and CDs!
We’re off to the studio for the next month or so, with some shows peppered here and there, but we’ll be back for you again America (and beyond!)
Telephoned was born one night in Brooklyn when DJ/producer Sammy Bananas and singer/party starter Maggie Horn decided to record their own version of T-Pain's "Can't Believe It." Their track was neither remix nor cover - instead, the duo fashioned a postmodern take on both, warping the original beat into a hypnotic club track and bringing out the dreamy qualities only hinted at in Pain's auto-tuned melodies. Sammy and Maggie's fresh "Can't Believe It" quickly became a DJ favorite - even making it into mix rotation on LA hip-hop station Power 106! - so they decided to keep recording as a team, cleverly named after the kids game of Telephone: no faithful copies, just a party line of unexpected twists.
Over the past two years, the duo have expanded the concept as they continue to churn out instantly addictive and massively charming covers, create genre-bashing mixtapes and perform their non-stop whirlwind live show on stages across the world. To promote the release of their self titled EP on Fool's Gold in Winter '10, Telephoned compiled a mix modeled in the tradition of rap street tapes. On "Off The Hook" Bananas selects recognizable instrumentals from dance and hip-hop while Horn sings other songs on top of them, a combination the group christen the "cover-up".
Telephoned's energetic, mixtape-dance-party of a live show got the attention of prestigious website Pitchfork, who called their performance in Austin,TX "the most fun thing at SXSW." Electro-revivalists Chromeo caught wind of the act, inviting the duo to join them on their "Business Casual" tour this August, making stops in over 20 cities while performing to packed venues across the US and Canada. Bananas and Horn released their second mixtape "Keep Their Heads Ringin" just before hitting the road, and reveled in handing CDs out for free to fans after performing each night.
The pair are poised to further expand the scope of Telephoned with their forthcoming 7" and digital release on Scion A/V in late November. "Hold Me" is the first entirely original song born out of the collaboration, but their mission statement hasn't changed considering the fact they chose to cover themselves for the b-side of the record, "Telephoning" the original uptempo funky track into a smoothed out alt-country tune. Telephoned survives off of transforming and mutating songs through their own lens, and thats the only rule to play the game.
After a few days off we headed out for the West Coast leg of the tour!
(#ghostface)
