FBO: 'A Demand for Virginia State'

CHANGE YOUR QUARTER!

North Carolina's insistence that Pasadena (not Green Bay) won Super Bowl I -- as proven by their license-plate and quarter claims of 'First in Flight' by Ohioans in Kitty Hawk -- now means that Virginia must change its commemorative quarter.

History likes to forget that the Wright Brothers, who took their Ohio-made aircraft to North Carolina for the world's first flight in 1903, kept going after their history making flight. Five years later, Orville -- who lost a coin toss at Kitty Hawk, so watched his brother Wilbur take the reins -- marked his own history: the first flight fatality (not including failed attempts at flight before 1903).



A New York Times article Sunday noted that the 100th anniversary of flying fatalities is coming this September 17. Orville flew a 26-year-old army officer for a show with 2000 spectators, promptly crashed the plane, killing the officer. Orville walked away.

--> It took place in Ft Myer, VIRGINIA.

Thus the FBO asks Virginia, whose quarter currently credits the death of Jamestown in 2007, to change its quarter to 'FIRST IN FLIGHT FATALITIES.'

FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY

FBO: 'FBO Warning to OKC NBA Team'

Oklahoma has landed, aka stolen, its first major-league team of a major sport by buying and removing a once-champion Seattle Sonics. Most sports fans lament such moves when it happens -- Quebec City, Cleveland, Baltimore, Winnipeg -- but happily look the other way when their town benefits from it.

The FBO has reserved a neutral stance on whether the OKC NBA team should be supported or not, but cannot stand silent at some -- if not all -- of the names the franchise is considering.

As of this week, the team has registered six potential names:

OKLAHOMA CITY BARONS
OKLAHOMA CITY BISON
OKLAHOMA CITY ENERGY
OKLAHOMA CITY MARSHALLS (sic)
OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER
OKLAHOMA CITY WIND

FBO Verdict: If Oklahoma City names itself for a noun that can't be counted -- ie Energy, Thunder or Wind -- the FBO will ban the team and actively campaign for sports fans to boycott games.

Preferred Name: Not a lot to work with on this list. Most feel a little like minor-league baseball team names. Probably Bison is best.


FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY

FBO: 'Applauds Paul Westerberg/Amazon'

ALORS! FBO FRIENDS FOR FREE, ALBUMS FOR $0.49
The FBO -- stranded from its .Mac email account due to a change by the Mac during the FBO symposial trip to Russia -- has long started to doubt the worth of the iTunes download costs and has supported Amazon's recent emergence as a cheaper alternate. The FBO doesn't support unchecked free downloads, but feel the industry hasn't found the suitable middle ground of pricing now that we, the consumers, are just buying air and not CD cover prints outs and the like.

Presently the FBO partner Silver Jews has released its new single 'Strange Victory, Strange Defeat' for free at Amazon. See here for the FBO/Silver Jews collaboration a few months ago.

That's nothing compared by the latest tactic by Paul Westerberg, a once embittered leader of the Replacements who used his solo career to lash out at critics and record buyers who moved on to the Goo Goo Dolls and Nirvana instead of his catalog.

His latest album is the 43-minute 49:00, available as a single track for $0.49 at Amazon. The album is guilty over being overly cute at times as a proxy of a found cassette tape with songs cutting in/out, but we respect it as a statement towards the destruction of the album, where people pick and choose the songs they want by lumping all the songs on a single track. It's the equivalent of responding to the overblown bass-less rock group scene by adding a second bass player, or sharing the bill with your bass player, as Lou Reed did with his long-time bass player Fernando Saunders during a 2003 tour.



FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY

FBO: 'Best Monument of All Time'

Leave it to London, little tiny London, to outdo everyone in terms of heroism in granite or stone. A new monument 'Animals in War' at Hyde Park tributes the animals who died alongside troops during 20th-century wars*.

FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY

* The FBO looks forward to subsequent monuments for animals who perished during 19th-century, 18th-century, 17th-century, and so on, wars.

FBO: 'News to Observers'

THE FBO IS TALKING...
With fellow FBO members regarding the 'Reach the Panhandle' show, and it's looking as if the FBO will take a solid step towards that key date by staging a two-town 'Reach the Panhandle: Rehearsal: Tour' in a non-interstate Oklahoma town and Norman this November.

Apparently the Cinder Biscuits/The Cant have signed up to play, Tall Tales will play, and possibly there will be an appearance by failed magician Danny Fallis in between sets.

FBO Admin
Mobile HQ -- Blagoveshchensk, Russia

FBO: 'Favorite New Yakutsk Band: Infinity'

FBO ADOPTS TO-FAIL YAKUTSK METAL BAND
Whilst on a cultural symposiatic tour across Russia's least-developed and least-seen places in the Far East, FBO representative Robert Reid met with Yakutsk's most popular 16- and 17-year-old heavy metal band INFINITY.

All the buildings in Yakutsk, the world's coldest town over 200,000, stand on stilts due to the road-crunching, fence-crashing permafrost, but in June and July temperatures reach the 90s. What does a metal band sing about in such a place? 'This song is Chyorni Lubov,' the lead singer Shipik, said as his girlfriend hugged him. 'Black love -- it's about the pain of love, not having love, bad love.'

This July the Asia Children's Games - a mini Olympics of sorts - came to Yakutsk, and Infinity was invited to play a set near the statue of Vlad Lenin in Lenin Square. It will be their last. Just months old, the band is likely to break up soon, as its members are heading to different colleges and universities this fall.

Important things to take from INFINITY:

* the five-piece band plays all originals; they've made 10 so far, and three days before their likely last show they were working up a new one.
* the band practices in a second-floor room overlooking warehouses and a lake at Kosmos movie theater near the Yakutsk airport, a 20 to 30-minute ride from the center.
* the band wore Kiss-like face paint at a Halloween show. 'The first and last time ever,' said bass player Dima, the most vocal of the band during practice, and with a passing resemblance to Dylan if you look closely.
* Yes, in deepest Russia, when practice is 20 minutes from being done, and you don't know what to do, blues jams and (rather inventive) takes on 'Smoke on the Water' get rolled out.
* The band signed my notebook like a yearbook; singer Shipik signed a 10-ruble note as a souvenir.

The FBO will be compiling 'INFINITY IN YAKUTSK: A Documentary' in coming months.

Good luck to Infinity, even when it breaks apart.


FBO Admin
Mobile HQ -- Komsomolsk, Russia

FBO: 'The FBO Tour: In October'

CALLING ALL FAILED BANDS

Tall Tales has already firmed up plan to for a three-date tour of Oklahoma in support of the Failed Bands of Oklahoma this October. The FBO hopes that the other members -- The Cant/Cinder Biscuits, Soul Shaker and Asylum -- will agree to join soon. And other failed bands, including failed bands from outside Oklahoma, are now invited to apply to either support the tour (ie carry equipment, help with sound checks, film the FBO bands playing) or play in the tour.

A few notes:

1. Tall Tales has officially changed its name for the three-date tour to TALL TALES FEATURING MARK HARDIN. The non-FBO observer, who narrowly missed toppling FBO Top Fan Rich Trott, from his lofty role a couple months ago, will be the newly featured player in Tall Tales.

2. The FBO needs to secure at least one non-interstate date in Oklahoma to the tour. If you have suggestions of non-insterstate livehouses, such as in Pryor, please let us know.

3. We still hope to hear from For the Bands Who Tried to Rock, as we've invited them to coffee -- ie Vietnamese-style invite, WE pay -- and discuss potential collaborations.

FBO Admin
Mobile HQ -- Khabarovsk, Russia