It is crucial this early in the game to get sponsors for the 2008 Brainwaves Festival.  We need money to pay for air fare, accommodations, theater rental, insurance, and various other things.  Once again we're offering three levels of sponsorship packages:

Bronze Level: your name in our sponsorship list on future ads and print materials, a link to your Web site from the Brainwaves site, eternal gratitude. ($200)

Silver Level: all the above + a merchandise table for one block (Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, or Sunday afternoon) and two free tickets. ($500)

Gold level: all the above but the merchandise table for the entire festival duration and free ads on Brainwashed.com for a year. ($1500)

Nobody will ever be able to accuse Pan Sonic of holding back from their fans. The duo has always been quite generous: issuing albums which are double the length of the average full-length, with the exception of Kesto, a -four- disc set of all new material priced reasonably; releasing numerous albums in various configurations, either solo or with others; and even opening the floor out to their fans for offers of places to perform. This, their first official DVD release is quite a present for the fans, however, it's not a monumental accomplishment in their catalog for the more pedestrian consumer.

We're sorry for the downtime but there was a disk failure, which ended up corrupting a ton of the database data. Unfortunately, the most recent backup that was salvagable goes back to August, so a ton of us have been feverishly trying to get old content in. While we worked hard and are continue to input old file, there are some things which are gone.  If you are aware of missing files and would like to contact us, please do!  Thanks.

There are now some images to share for the Peace compilation, featuring new, exclusive, rare, and old music from 34 friends of Jon Whitney and Brainwashed. Images can be seen at flickr.com/photos/interrobang918.

Coming in under the wire at the end of the year is this flawless EP from Rjyan Kidwell. While Sketchi on Temporary Residence was the most recently released full-length album by Cex, Exotical Privates is linked to his last release on Automation, last year's fantastic and underrated Actual Fucking with Nice Nice. Billed as remixes from that LP this EP stands on its own perfectly well.

All that you see here at brainwashed.com I owe to my mom.

She brought me into a record store when I was four and I pointed to some 45s (Rod Stewart and the Bee Gees!) and she bought them for me; on my 11th birthday she brought me to my first concert (Eddy Grant!); from the time I was 13 until I could drive she would drive me to WMUA in Amherst where I began DJ'ing; and she was in the balcony at Brainwaves exactly one year ago to the weekend (the weekend before Thanksgiving).

She fought a vicious fight with brain cancer which sprung up out of nowhere in June of 2007. She withstood needles, IVs, surgery, chemo, radiation, and plenty of other medication which all had their effects and side effects.

She passed on Saturday, November 17th at 6:30pm EST in comfort, away from the hospitals, away from the needles, away from the people who would draw blood from her every four hours. She wanted out from the hospital. She wanted to be done with all the treatments and efforts.

I might be a bit biased but in all honesty, she was the most virtuous person I have ever known. Nobody, not even the people she didn't like, could ever say anything bad about her. She treated everyone with respect and decency and had a strong heart. It's no wonder that her heart was her last functioning organ which kept her alive through her final days.

Brainwashed will return in December.

Thanks for all your support and love
Jon

 

There's a type of tranquility which is like a running stream—perpetually in motion and slowly (try thousands of years) changing the landscape—but then there's a still type like a vast lake where a drop that disturbs the surface ripples and resonates. 

 

Darla

After a long delay the new disc from everybody's favorite Finnish duo has finally arrived, but without much fanfare and only in a notably limited amount of shops. It's a shame as this could easily be their best full-length (single) album to date.

On the morning of Friday, April 20th, 47 videotapes of the Brainwaves fest arrived at Brainwashed Central. These, along with five videotapes of offstage captures, are being reviewed and edited right now. There's a lofty goal of producing 10 DVDs containing all performances but this will take some time. In the meanwhile, clips have begun to trickle in to the Brainwashed Video Podcast, however, only iTunes users can view the videos.

April 16th marks Brainwashed's 11th birthday!  Thanks to everybody who has read, contributed to, worked for, played for, cared for, supported, hated on, publicized, deified, and demonized us for 11 years now. It's been a fantastic ride. (Don't worry, we're not closing down, this isn't a goodbye letter!)

There are times when it gets hard to do: people have fulltime jobs; fulltime lives; fulltime committments; so while brainwashed.com isn't the #1 priority in a lot of people's lives, we promise to continue on and hold true to our mission to the best of our collective abilities.

Last year the love and support and attendance and performers who came to Brainwaves was astounding. It was for me, Jon Whitney, undoubtedly the most amazing event I have ever been a part of and one of the most incredible experiences of my entire life. Friendships were made, friendships grew stronger, the support was unbelievable, the staff was flawless, the musicians were magnificent, the love was immeasurable.  There will be no Brainwaves for 2007 but talks are beginning for Brainwaves for 2008. Yes, talks are beginning.

I'm not a big nostalgia nut but I do somewhat feel that various artist collections (especially a ton of those cassette-only compilations) of the late 1970s and early 1980s were far more relevant than the bulk of the collections from the mid 1990s through now. From Brussels With Love is the latest LTM re-release to exemplify this.

This week the RIAA sent out hundreds of letters to colleges and universities across the USA saying their students can "settle" with the RIAA or face a lawsuit (Reuters).  Brainwashed, in turn, urges colleges and universities and their students to ignore such absurd scare tactics.