07.06.2012

Last week's trip through the beautiful 100 degree Midwest was our best yet. Thanks to everyone who: bought our trinkets, set up a show for us, let us sleep on their floor, did our sound then drank with us on the beach of lake Michigan until dawn, bought us drinks that were coincidentally named after us, let us sleep on the college quad until 8am when they "really had to mow the lawn," came out to see our band while on the road with another band, made us pasta salad and squeeky cheese, invited us to contaminate their rooftop pool, let us shower at their place after their significant other left for work, exposed their nineteen-year-old hash-soaked garage jams to us, changed the radio station, sold the four dollar cigarettes, sold the four dollar fireworks (two for one), let us take shitty camera phone pictures of their pet skunks, wrote the song "call me maybe," had a name like Iceberg and sneekily hustled us for $17 "cuz [we] fucked up," destroyed the AC in our van the week before we left, and all of your cats.

Buy our new (really awesome) tape at drugparty.org

Welcome us back into town at the Funeral Home this Monday, where we'll be playing with Male Bondage and Beardage.

We're setting things up all over the place for autumn time. Invite us back.

Peter Ryan JT Mikey and Frankie

06.20.2012

Hello Guitar Fan:

Le Hotlights are climbing in the van again next week and embarking on a long-overdue string of shows throughout the Mid-West. Along the way, we'll find ourselves in Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago, Toledo and Cleveland. And if you find yourself in Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago, Toledo and/or Cleveland, we'd love to see you and then sleep on your floor. Check out the shows page for all the particulars.

If you generally find yourself in the Buffalo area, you can contribute financially to this glorified U-HAUL convention by packing up the wife and the whole kids and coming down to Soundlab this Saturday! We're playing with Buffalo's best rapper, Jack Topht (Doin Rap, Doin Beers, Doin Art, et. al) and our best bud Frank NPLSK, who I believe will be debuting his brand new mix of late-twentieth century high-octane saxophone solos. So bring requests.

Also: NEW TAPE! Hot off the dubber. Come to the show on Saturday and be the first to get your mitts on our latest experiment in outdated media; six brand-new pearls of sound on magnetic cellophane. Suddenly the fact that you still drive your mom's old 1998 Toyota Corrolla isn't so bad after all!

Until then, here's another new single to whet your appetite


See you then,
TFHL

05.07.2012

Heyo here's some new music from Thee Old Hotlights Band - sure to put the hair back on your chest that dad burned off in your formative years. Two tunes that we schlorped out in the past few months titled "Speed Breeders" and "Rat Trap." Listen to them on our bandcamp and download them for free - you don't even need Napster! These jams were recorded live in our practice space with the handsome AND talented Joe Orlando behind the controls. You can get in touch with him by clicking here. The cover art for this single was glued together by Joshua Almendinger, check out some more of his work by clicking here and get in touch with his beard by clicking here. We gun release all our new songs as singles in the coming weeks. Sounded like fun.



Bunch of updates to the shows page, including an awesome rager next week with some buddies from down south, as well as some out of town gigs for a trip in late June. More to come.

02.28.2012

Everyone here at Hotlites, Inc. ™ has been hard at work on a new recording that should be ready for public consumption in just two shakes of a kitten's whisker. In the meantime, if you still haven't picked up our Big Expensive Full-Length LP, you can buy it from us through our Big Cartel site and pay for it with your paypal account by clicking here. More updates on that now nearly complete recording coming soon so stay tuned.

Tomorrow night, 2/29, we will be cashing in four years of the planet's spare change at The Mohawk Place as we grease up the stage for our good buddies Everything Falls Apart's final hoorah. Which will be bittersweet but mostly sweet. And it will only cost the good citizens of Western New York zero dollars to get in. Although, you may have to pay to get out...

02.01.2012

Greetings, fans of crudband:
First off, got us a pretty big shoe coming up next week at the Funeral Home with Girlfight, who are from Pittsburghtown, and Bestower, who are our close friends from Buffland Heights. It'll be our seventy-sixth show! And I know what you're thinking:

"My God your seventy-sixth show! Isn't it about time to try something else? I mean what is there to prove? Didn't the Beatles play like ten times? Ed Sullivan, Shea Stadium, that wacky crap with the bubbles, and the roof at the end."

Or alternately:

"Why do I feel like someone is pap smearing my eardrums every time my girlfriend brings me to one of your shows?"

Well gentle reader, the quick answer is "I'm not sure" and "because somebody told us this was how loud we were supposed to be."

Also, this weekend we're recording new stuff. More about that another time.

T shirts and our hot new record high society torture party are on sale. Buy one get the other free. We're definitely almost sold out of records. You can buy them by clicking here.

See you soon,
Peter

12.03.2011

Hotlights Do Halloween:
Here's a video documenting a decent chunk of our set from this year's Prom of the Dead with a little help from Vic Lazar on the cover tunes:


Thanks to Dan Green for the video. Dan's better known as a knob twister for the incredible harsh noise band River of Ichthyosis

The next Hotlights live engagement is coming up soon and will be the first show back on the small stage at The Mohawk Place in a great many years, which should be nice and nostalgic for us old guys.

New recordings and out-of-town shows are in the works so check back soon for more info. A few new reviews are up on the Reviews page as well.

10.20.2011

Bittersweet: We're very sorry to announce that our drummer Doug has contracted a potentially lethal virus from tossing too many salads and can no longer perform his duties as band sushi chef and lead drum player. We are all rooting for that giant man genius and we really hope he pulls through. Let's all say a prayer to Thomas Pynchon for lil Dougie. We would like to thank Doug for always being a champion at all things and for putting up with us for as long as he did.


Doug's abdication of the throne led to a couple of quiet months in Hotlights town but, put away your revolver, we've actually been busier than ever and are now poised and ready to resume ruining your evenings and your hearing. That's right folks, we've gone and got ourselves a shiny brand new drummer. And now that we're nearly complete with our program of ritual hazing and systematic sexual abuse, he's fully groomed and ready to show off in the public eye. So the remaining Hotlights would like to officially introduce Mikey Ozimek as the newest full fledged member of this shitty band. You may have seen him deep in the pocket with the now-defunct stoner riff-rockers Chylde or more recently tickling the skins with the Mordaunt Sisters, but now he's tickling our skins and we're really excited about it. Doug left some big shoes to fill and although Mikey looks retarded in Doug's size 14 slippers, we still like him anyway and so will you.

Our first show back with the new lineup is this Saturday, October 22nd at the Dnipro Ukranian Center for Torn Space Theatre's 2nd annual Prom of the Dead. The Hotlights are going to be the house band from hell for this bloody formal event benefiting Torn Space and it's gonna be a wild night. A few weeks later on Saturday November 12th, we are going to be part of the 2nd annual Buffalo Decency Rally, again at Dnipro along with about 20 of Buffalo's finest bands. We're very excited to be part of both of these great events. And if anyone knows of any other "2nd Annual" events being thrown at the Dnipro on a Saturday night, we'd like to play those too.

See you freaks there.
-R

06.07.2011

Hotlights go International: We would like to sincerely thank all the guys in Every Time I Die for taking us under their mighty wing and bringing us on a few awesome dates in Canada. We had the greatest time and met the greatest people. Much love to Andy, Josh, Keith, Jordan, Legs, and all the guys from The Chariot. Also, a million thanks to Leila Armesto, Jay Baur, Mary Wingfelder, and Sam Wandtke for your hospitality. If you met us at a show in Canada and dug what we were doing, drop us a line and say hi.



Our debut LP, High Society Torture Party, is now available at local records stores in Buffalo and Toronto so if you haven't picked one up yet, head over to Record Theatre, Spiral Scratch, or Sonic Boom. We also have our new shirt, designed by Florida-based artist Allen Hampton, available at Record Theatre in the University Plaza.

If you're out of town, you can also order records and shirts now through this brand new site: www.thefuckinghotlights.bigcartel.com

If you're not down with wax, you can also stream the entire record and download it from our bandcamp page, located here: www.thefuckinghotlights.bandcamp.com

And now that our record is FINALLY out, we decided to put up a photo album on our Facebook page with exclusive behind the scenes photos that we had been saving for the special features section of the Hotlights biographical DVD that we assume someone will start producing in the near future... Check out the making of High Society Torture Party HERE.

That's all for now.

Keep your dicks out,
TFHL

05.25.2011

Greetings from Canada! It's day 3 of our Canadian adventure with ETID and The Chariot and so far it's been amazing. Last night John found out he had a long lost Canadian Cousin and he lured us back to his rat castle to watch Rocky 3. More importantly, as of last night... OUR RECORD IS OUT! After nearly 6 months, 2 sets of fucked up test presses, 1 print shop robbery, several negligent businessmen, and one Canadian holiday, we finally have complete LPs in our hands to sell. The missing pieces met us in Ottawa yesterday just in the nick of time so we will be selling High Society Torture Party at all of our remaining Canadian shows, along with our mega evil new tshirts. In the meantime, for those in the States who can't get your hands on a physical disc just yet, you can stream and download the whole record from our bandcamp.

Cheers,
Saul G

04.04.2011

Tour Wrap Up: Thanks so much to all the bands we played with, the people who put us up, helped with shows, or alleviated our lonliness. Especially: Jake Drum, Nicky Gordon, Sid Selleck, Sistered, Hawks, Chrissakes, Turf War, Fangs Out, Outer Minds, Enoch, Free Lunch, Patton Oswalt, Roy Jerry & Bill from Pittsburgh, Caroline & Jane from Columbus, Colleen W, Mike & Shane from Atlanta, Jake from Athens, Michelle Mellissa & Joe from Chapel Hill, Eric Scheider, Jinx & everyone at Phil Mechanic Art Center, the city of Asheville, and Steve Jobs. Sorry to the women we ogled while they were trying to tend bar or order coffee. No thanks to Bad Idea, BP, Exxon, or OPEC. Homeward Bound! See you at the Pink.

xoxoxo,
TMFHL

03.24.2011

Tour Kickoff Show Tomorrow Night

We have been hard at working setting up a brand new space for this show at 399 Rhode Island Street and we're unveiling it tomorrow night with our friends White Whale.

It's on the ground floor of a big old abandoned apartment building that we've spruced up a bit on the corner of Rhode Island and 15th. The door is on 15th. Due to one way streets, the easiest way to get there is to take West Utica to 15th.



Starts at 8 / Bands will be done by 11
$8 at the door
$2 PBRs

This is no longer a record release show since our LPs are tied up at the pressing plant, but we will have digital downloads of our record available for those interested.

03.11.2011

So, due to some complications with the pressing of our record, we are sad to say it will not be out in LP format by the time we leave for our jaunt down to the south in a few weeks. However, we will have digital downloads available at all our shows. The real deal LP should be out within a month.

In the meantime, we've got some big news to reveal on our shows page. We are very excited to say that we've got dates with Jucifer, Hawks, and Every Time I Die coming up in the near future.

If that statement found you moist in the loins for live Hotlights, here's a video from our last show to check out.



xxxo

03.01.2011

oh hi. Thursday night we're playing with London vs. New York and Beardage, which is/are members of the group "people I like to be with" and are going to play some music for all of you human timestamps. That's going to be really awesome as usual.

It takes place at DBGB's, which is a bar that used to be Staples at the tail end of Allen near Sugar City. It's on 3/3 and it's $3 and there are 3 bands and if you have 3 vagina cheeks you get in free. Not available with any other offer.

Also, we're putting out a party record so start picking out an outfit for:

THE VERY SKETCHY AND REAL WEIRD FRIEND LOSING RECORD BUYING DRAMA INDUCING MONEY BLOWING META PARTY!

********************* FRIDAY MARCH 25, 2011 *********************

You will find out more about this later in the week so you'll have to go on facebook every single day.

You should come! Save the date.

Got lotsa new songs, hope to see you Thursday!
- P

01.31.2011

There are a couple of awesome new shows posted on the ^ shows page as well as a couple of dates we still need some help with in order to make the "Winter Never Ends in Buffalo 2011 Tour" a success. If you can help, drop a line to Booking [At] The Fucking Hotlights [Dot] Com.

01.07.2011

January is seasonal depression month, sponsored by how cold it is in my fucking apartment even when the thermostat says 70 and i'm wearing jammies. To offset this I like to watch myself try and play the guitar.





And less self-involved hotlights write new jams in preparation for two cool awesome great shows next week!

Next Friday (Jan. 14) we're playing with White Bison (from Chylde) and our out of town buds Velvet Elvis and The Wooly Bullies, who are from over here and over there, respectively. And then Saturday (Jan. 15) it's Cleveland USA at Now That's Class! A rabbit food factory specializing in giving me lots of delicious beer. With about nine other bands and the Wooly Bullies. I hope they like jokes.

Come
- Peter

12.30.2010

Thanks to everyone who came out to see us last week at The Pink and last night at Mohawk Place, both shows were a blast. Unfortunately, Haiti had to drop off the show on January 14th BUT they've been replaced by our buds from Cleveland, The Wooly Bullies so the bill is still jam packed with awesomeness. 2010 was a banner year for Ye Olde Hotlights with nearly 40 shows in and out of town but it already looks as though 2011 will be bigger and better with the release of our record and spring tour both in the works. Check back soon for more details on those fronts. The local music connoisseurs at Buffablog, put us in their "Top Ten Buffalo Bands" list this year and, although they compared us to Primus, we're still mostly honored I think.. Check it out, here. They also put up a review of our performance at the Imfamous Pink, here. Thanks for all your support and all your not stabbing us this year. See you fuckers next decade.

xo,
Ryan

12.03.2010

New Shows | New Songs

Two extra-special show announcements: First off, WE'RE PLAYING AT THE PINK! Yeah, that's right. We are honored to say that we will be the first band in at least a decade to have the pleasure of playing in the world's greatest worst bar of all time. You hate it, you love it, either way that place is an undeniable Buffalo icon and on Monday December 20th, we'll be bringing live "music" back to The Old Pink Flamingo for the first time this millenium at their 2010 Holiday Party. And don't worry, we'll be getting started late enough to allow you to live out your early-90's white-boy fantasies at the Town Ballroom and still make it down in time. You were going to go to the Pink after anyway.

Secondly, we've been invited to share the stage with Buffalo's own EVERY TIME I DIE for round three of their 6th Annual Mohawk Place Christmas Show Series on Wednesday, December 29th (which will also double as the 999th Kid Gorgeous Reunion show).. The first two dates have already sold out so get your tickets with ASAP-ness if you want to see a bunch of metalheads try to kick our asses in front of a few hundred mall-core kiddies. All the particulars relating to this event can be found on the shows page.

With all of this excitement in the air, we have decided to give you good little boys and girls a Hanukkah / Early Christmas present and put up a BRAND NEW SONG from our brand new and yet unreleased record. A spirited little ditty entitled "A Lamb A Lion An Ape A Pig" can now be heard on our bandcamp and myspace pages. Details on the record's actual release should be coming in the next few weeks. Feliz Navidad!

Tongue Kisses,
TMFHL

11.18.2010

Thanks so much to everyone who came out to Mohawk on Tuesday. Check out this review of the show on BuffaBlog.

Cheers,
Ryan

11.16.2010

We made it back from our latest weekend warrior trip with the majority of us in mostly one piece. Thanks so much to our new (and old) friends in Rochester and Toledo for showing us a great time.

Tonight we're playing on our home turf at the Mohawk Place with our dear friends from Cleveland, HotChaCha. They're also going to be interviewed on WBNY this afternoon around 3PM if you want a preview of what you're in for tonight. Should be a great show so don't do something dumb like not show up, ya turkeys! Get there by 9 or you'll make Jake Drum cry.

xo,
Ryan

11.10.2010

Brand New Site!

Please bear with us as we add content / fix bugs because, as punk rock as DIY web development is, it makes me crazy and I'm not good at it. Also, if you're using IE, I don't care about you. Enjoy!

There are two new Hotlights interviews up on the web currently. You can hear John and roadie-extrordinare Jake spinning a few yarns on WBNY's Local show HERE. And you can also hear an interview with Peter and myself on the new Buffalo Rising Podcast HERE.

We very recently finished mixing and mastering our record, so stay tuned for updates in the near future. In the meantime, you can hear some sneak previews in the aforementioned interview segments.

xo,
Ryan