Nov 1, 2003

The video clip for November is from a 1995 show at the Roxy in West Hollywood. Joe Nolte (guitar, vocals), Mike Nolte (keyboards, vocals), Luke Lohnes (guitar), Ed Urlik (bass) and Dave Nazworthy (drums) perform "It's Not That Way" and "Jungle Book."

Joe still has copies of the new "Joe and Mike" CD available for purchase! It's a really good acoustic offering, which I talked about in the July 16th email. Joe also has other selected Last merchandise available, but you'll need to email him directly to find out what he has.

A new page on the site features archived concert recordings of the Last. Starting off with a recording of the band playing the Starwood in 1979. It's the same performance that was partially videotaped by Danny Winter and friends, and which you can occasionally see on the Video Page. This recording was made on an old compact cassette recorder (with a condenser mic). The quality is pretty dismal, but it's still enjoyable. The recording was invaluable when I restored the Danny Winter video, as the sound from our copies of that videotape had deteriorated badly.

This new page will be linked on the Gigs & Discography pages.

Don't worry - the Last are still together, even though they've stopped recording "Shank," and even though Joe, Mike, Missy & Robbie have all started new side projects:

Joe is in a band called Misfortune Cookie, which he started with some former members of 5 Star Crush. Mike has been working on material for a solo album he plans to record, while Missy & Robbie have started a band called Queef - labeling themselves as "unapologetically vulgar purveyors of F*ckcore Music."

Last January, the Last re-released their 1979 debut album "L.A. Explosion" for the first time on CD, via Bomp Records. It's been over 20 years, but this "new" CD is getting a lot of good reviews in the press! You can check out some of those reviews in the Reviews Section.

In 2002, the band started recording a new album, tentatively titled "Shank." Although recording has stopped, and the original recordings reportedly wiped, the project still has not been cancelled. It, and the band, are in a sort of hiatus at the moment...

You can see a 13 minute video filmed during one of those early sessions (November 2002) in the Video section.

If you haven't been to the Forum, feel free to drop by! Joe is posting lots of interesting things from his journal he kept in 1979 - it's all in the new Forum! Lots of other interesting stuff in there as well!

Aug 31, 2003

The video clip for September is from a 1995 show at the Alligator Lounge. Joe Nolte (guitar, vocals), Mike Nolte (keyboards, vocals), Luke Lohnes (guitar, vocals), Ed Urlik (bass), and Dave Nazworthy (drums) perform "You Won't Win" and "Anybody Else."

Current drummer Robbie Rist was recently featured on E Television's "Star Dates" on August 29th. If you missed it, don't worry - E tends to rerun its shows to death...

July 13, 2003

The band have just finished their journey to this year's Stockage festival in Colorado. Early reports say it went well. Reports on the trip should be appearing in the Forum later in the week.

Joe & Mike will play an acoustic show on Sunday, July 20th, at 7:30pm. Check out the Gigs page for details.

The video clip for July is up. It's from last year's Stockage, featuring the songs I Saw Your Eyes, Go Away Girl & Anarchy in UK. Yes, that's the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the UK," though it wasn't really a part of the Last's set, but featured Joe and Mike pretending to be Johnny Rotten and ... ummm... Mike. The lineup for this gig was Joe Nolte (voice, guitar), Mike Nolte (voice, keyboard), Missy Buettner (bass), and Josh Pickering (drums). (Robbie and Luke couldn't make it.)

A new page on the site will feature archived concert recordings of the Last. Starting off will be a recording of the band playing the Starwood in 1979. It's the same performance that was partially videotaped by Danny Winter and friends, and which you can occasionally see on the Video Page. This recording was made on an old compact cassette recorder (with a condenser mic). The quality is pretty dismal, but it's still enjoyable. The recording was invaluable when I restored the Danny Winter video, as the sound from our copies of that videotape had deteriorated badly.

This new page will be linked on the Gigs & Discography pages.

While the Last are still together, Joe, Missy and Robbie have all started new bands. Joe is in a band called Misfortune Cookie, which he started with some former members of 5 Star Crush; and Missy & Robbie have started a band called Queef - labeling themselves as "unapologetically vulgar purveyors of F*ckcore Music." Both bands will be playing Stockage this month, with Queef lining up some other gigs along the way. Check 'em out!

Last January, the Last re-released their 1979 debut album "L.A. Explosion" for the first time on CD, via Bomp Records. It's been over 20 years, but this "new" CD is getting a lot of good reviews in the press! You can check out some of those reviews in the Reviews Section.

And recording continues on their next release, entitled "Shank" - hopefully due out sometime this year. A 13-minute video showing the band recording some tracks for Shank can be seen in the Video section.

If you haven't been to the Forum, feel free to drop by! Joe is posting lots of interesting things from his journal he kept in 1979 - it's all in the new Forum! Lots of other interesting stuff in there as well!

May 31, 2003

The band will be playing Stockage this month - Friday, June 27th through Sunday, June 29th in Colorado. The exact date and time is still unknown to me. It was set at one point, then had to be changed. Check back here, or keep an eye on their website for further details.

The new Last video clip for June is up. It's from a 1982 gig at the Whisky in Hollywood on May 26th. The songs featured are "Make Believe" and "December Song." The lineup for this gig was Joe Nolte (guitar, vocals), Vitus Mataré (keyboards, guitar, vocals), John Rosewall (bass, vocals), and John Frank (drums).

A new page on the site will feature archived concert recordings of the Last. Starting off will be a recording of the band playing the Starwood in 1979. It's the same performance that was partially videotaped by Danny Winter and friends, and which you can occasionally see on the Video Page. This recording was made on an old compact cassette recorder (with a condenser mic). The quality is pretty dismal, but it's still enjoyable. The recording was invaluable when I restored the Danny Winter video, as the sound from our copies of that videotape had deteriorated badly.

This new page will be linked on the Gigs & Discography pages.

While the Last are still together, Joe, Missy and Robbie have all started new bands. Joe is in a band called Misfortune Cookie, which he started with some former members of 5 Star Crush; and Missy & Robbie have started a band called Queef - labeling themselves as "unapologetically vulgar purveyors of F*ckcore Music." Both bands will be playing Stockage this month, with Queef lining up some other gigs along the way. Check 'em out!

Last January, the Last re-released their 1979 debut album "L.A. Explosion" for the first time on CD, via Bomp Records. It's been over 20 years, but this "new" CD is getting a lot of good reviews in the press! You can check out some of those reviews in the Reviews Section.

And recording continues on their next release, entitled "Shank" - hopefully due out sometime this year. A 13-minute video showing the band recording some tracks for Shank can be seen in the Video section.

If you haven't been to the Forum, feel free to drop by! Joe is posting lots of interesting things from his journal he kept in 1979 - it's all in the new Forum! Lots of other interesting stuff in there as well!

May 1, 2003

The new video clip for May is from a gig the Last did at the Alligator Lounge on September 7th, 1996. The songs featured are "Go Away Girl" and "Don't Make No Sound." The lineup back then is the same as today: Joe Nolte (guitar, vocals), Mike Nolte (keyboards, vocals), Luke Lohnes (guitar, vocals), Missy Buettner (bass), and Robbie Rist (drums).

The video clips are now presented solely in Real Video format. The Quicktime clips were too large, and the quality wasn't as good as I was getting with Real systems.

Joe did a solo acoustic appearance at a local record store last month, while visiting Brooklyn, New York. You can view pictures of it in the History section.

The Last will be playing Stockage again in June - always a fun experience! Exact date and time will be posted on the Gigs page when things are finalized.

The Last have just re-released their 1979 debut album "L.A. Explosion" for the first time on CD, via Bomp Records. It's been over 20 years, but this "new" CD is getting a lot of good reviews in the press! You can check out some of those reviews in the Reviews Section.

The band are considering a possible trip to Japan this year. Hopefully they can get the logistics and financial considerations worked out for that.

And recording continues on their next release, entitled "Shank" - hopefully due out sometime this year. A 13-minute video showing the band recording some tracks for Shank can be seen in the Video section.

If you haven't been to the Forum, feel free to drop by! Joe is posting lots of interesting things from his journal he kept in 1979 - it's all in the new Forum! Lots of other interesting stuff in there as well!

April 1, 2003

The new video clip from April is from a gig the Last did at the Alligator Lounge on September 13th, 1995. The songs featured are "Red Hair" and "It's Not That Way." The lineup back then was Joe Nolte (guitar, vocals), Mike Nolte (keyboards, vocals), Luke Lohnes (guitar, vocals), Ed Urlik (bass), Dave Nazworthy (drums).

The Last will be playing Stockage again in June - always a fun experience! Exact date and time will be posted on the Gigs page when things are finalized.

Joe will be travelling to New York during the second or third week in April. If he lines up any acoustic shows while there, I'll send out an email announcement to the mailing list (as it might be a last minute thing). Directions for signing up to the Last Mailing List are on the left of this column.

The Last have just released their 1979 debut album "L.A. Explosion" on CD, via Bomp Records. It's been over 20 years, but this "new" CD is getting a lot of good reviews in the press! You can check out some of those reviews in the Reviews Section.

The band are considering a possible trip to Japan this year. Hopefully they can get the logistics and financial considerations worked out for that.

And recording continues on their next release, entitled "Shank" - hopefully due out sometime this year. A 13-minute video showing the band recording some tracks for Shank can be seen in the Video section.

If you haven't been to the Forum, feel free to drop by! Joe is posting lots of interesting things from his journal he kept in 1979 - it's all in the new Forum! Lots of other interesting stuff in there as well!

As a footnote, I'm so far very happy with our new web host provider. There has only been one down time that I have documented, and it was only down for about 10 minutes. I know it's only been a month, but it's such a relief from the nightmare we had with our old host.

March 6, 2003

There's a nice blurb on the reissue of L.A. Explosion in the L.A. Times today. You can check it out here.

Most of you know of the problems we've had with the site for the past couple of months. Well, I've finally had enough, and switched hosting providers. The situation with Feature Price was getting ridiculous. The last downtime should have been only 5 minutes long, but they gave me the major runaround. 30 hours later, I finally got a tech person who flipped a switch and brought the site back up. It took him a minute. Very frustrating.

I did some research, and it seems like life should be wonderful with this new company. Some changes on the site include a new forum/message board, and a bunch of new reviews that Joe sent me. The new video clip for March comes from a 1982 show at the world-famous Whisky-a-go-go. The band plays "Up in the Air" and "Fade to Black." Two Vitus songs. Perhaps I should have saved this clip for the month of his birthday.

Speaking of video clips, the Quicktime version of last month's video is not currently available. I'll put it back up March 9th or so.

Joe has a new email address, if anyone cares to write him and congratulate him for quitting his job, which he just did - giving him more free time to work on Shank, among other things.

For those of you new to the site, "Shank" is the current album the Last are recording.

March 4, 2003

We have just moved this site to a new hosting service. On March 6th I'll put up a new column here and send out the next mailing. Just wanna make sure everything is set before I send everyone here for the new video clip, etc...

If you're reading this, you're viewing the site on its new host. However, other people around the globe might still be viewing the site on its old servers as the DNS change slowly goes into effect.

Please let me know if you spot any errors, as I had to re-upload the site again.

Thanks.

-Dan

February 1, 2003

Damn, the web site's been going down a lot lately! Twice this week alone (and for the whole day)! Hopefully this won't be a regular thing, or I'll have to start shopping for a new hosting service.

I added a search feature so you can now look up specific information more easily. It's located on the left.

So I assume you all have your copy of LA Explosion on CD. Sounds good, doesn't it? The Daily Breeze - a local newspaper in Southern California - ran a nice review on it (Jan 31st). As the CD just came out last week, this will most likely be the last time I mention it here in the news column. Too bad, too, as it made nice filler...

I'd like to congratulate Andreas Dörfler of Germany for winning the Mystery Song Contest! The song turned out to be "Nothing Left" by Modern Warfare - a band hailing from Long Beach, California - a mere 15 minutes drive from my apartment in Fullerton.

Not much going on with The Last at the moment. Recording has been on hiatus for Shank, their latest recording, as drummer/producer Robbie Rist has been in Europe. He returns around Feb 10th, and Joe has a lot of free time coming up soon, so things should really start progressing on that.

This month's video clip comes from a 1987 "reunion" show at Club Lingerie. The Last had pretty much disbanded at the end of 1985, but was brought back together again for this benefit for D.D. Faye. In this clip, the band does a great rendition of the Blues Magoos classic "We Ain't Got Nothing Yet" and then are joined by Phast Phreddie who sings lead on the Seeds' "Pushin' Too Hard."

January 2, 2003

Hooray! You found our new web address!

This new site gives us more space so we can finally host all the music clips on our own, without having to impose on the kindness of our friends. Also, with more space, we can make higher quality video clips available each month. Starting today, the video page will offer a new clip each month as well as the chance to see the previous month's video clip.

The video clip for this month is from a 1979 show at the Starwood. The Last play Century City Rag and Looking at You. The lineup for this show is Joe Nolte (lead guitar, vocals), Mike Nolte (backing vocals), David Nolte (bass), Vitus Mataré (keyboards), Jack Reynolds (drums). In between songs, Joe plugs the new "L.A. Explosion" album, which had just come out on Bomp Records.

Speaking of which, L.A. Explosion comes out on CD January 21st from Bomp Records! Previously, a German label released this on CD, but not only were they apparently not licensed to do so, they ended up making a horrible copy - at one point it sounds like somebody bumped the turntable during the copy.

This new Bomp release has been remastered and sounds great! There's also lots of bonus tracks - check out the News Archive for more info.

Recording on Shank, the band's latest project, continues. You can see this for yourself on the Video page, where we put up a 13-minute video I shot last November during one of the recording sessions.