Dear friends, the show at Milk was a great time. Thank you all for braving the rain and the upper Haight to be with us.

So we got there at 3pm like the promoter told us to, and nobody was there. We stood in the rain with our cars double-parked until about 3:15 when the bar owner finally showed up and let us in. We loaded in and hung out for a bit. Remember, this was supposed to start at 4. The bartender told us the promoter seldom shows up before 4, and I said we show up on time because we’re professional like that. Then, the bartender gets a call from the promoter saying one of the bands flaked at the last minute (Tree House City), and it would be just us and The Thralls, he wouldn’t be there until 4:45 or so, and the show wouldn’t start until 5. Nice, considering all our friends showed up at 4 when the show was supposed to start. So the show started at 5:15 or so, sans promoter (he showed up at about 5:30).

The upshot of this is twofold: first, we got to go on first, and because the Thralls told all their friends to show up at 7, we played almost everything we know, and were on stage for an hour and a half. Second, because the promoter didn’t show up until midway through our set, none of our fans paid the cover charge (I wouldn’t have if I was them either). The nice thing about that is that we still split the door, which was pretty much exclusively from Thralls fans.

We played Brake Lights, Get Up, Crane Wife III (reggae version), Hurt Me Out, Fences (reimagined version), Dance Hall, Walk on Me (frist time with an audience), Sand (reimagined version, even though I sang the verse instead of the chorus for a line), Crack on the Wall, Dear Mark, Lucky, ATL and Brandon, Decay, and Metro. It’s really the longest I’ve played without a break. People seemed into it though.

In other news, we’re still working on the album. We finished tracking earlier this week, and should have it ready for prime time within another few weeks. We’ll probably have it ready in time for our upcoming show at Kimo’s in late march. Stay tuned for more info on that!

So as most of you know, we have a show this weekend, on Sunday, February 15th at 4pm at Milk in the Upper Haight. Being the good promoter I am, I listed it with a number of sites (interestingly, it’s not listed on Milk’s calendar). We’re all over the internet now, and I think it’s because some of the sites share a back end. If you do a search for Two Star Spark on the google, you’ll find that we’re hit at sanfrancisco.com, oakland.com, carmel.com, and sanjose.com, and a host of other local events sites that I didn’t submit to. Pretty cool if you ask me.

So, to get the hit counts up on these listings and get more people out to the show, here are the ones I put up:

• funcheapSF.com
• SF Station
• San Francisco Chronicle 

I also submitted to the SF Bay Guardian and SF Weekly, but they haven’t gotten around to listing me. I guess they’re too busy. But, the cool thing is the proliferation of the posting to less known sites.

In other news, we’re competing (so to speak) with NOFX, Don Caballero, and The Murder City Devils, so all you skate punk/math rock/garage rock kids will have a nice time getting warmed up with a little Two Star Spark before you go to your professional show. See you there!

Hello friends. It’s been some days since a post – I know, I’m sorry. As you probably read in our latest email broadcast, I blame a number of things, including vacations, holidays, a couple of fantastic Sierra storms, general laziness, and studio time. Did I say studio time? Yeah, I did.

As both of you know, we’ve done a little recording in the past with eriq from parae. We were so pleased with the results that we asked him to do six more songs for us, and because he’s cool and we weren’t terrible to work with (i.e. Elliot is solid enough to hit most drum tracks on the first take), he agreed. The album will have Get Up, Hurt Me Out, Brake Lights, Fences, Decay, Sand, Crack on the Wall, ATL and Brandon, Dance Hall, and Dear Mark. We’ll make it available at fine bay area record stores, our online store, and our shows as soon as it’s done. We’ll even make it available for download on iTunes and amazon, and try to get it loaded up to Pandora.

At any rate, the process is going quite well. Elliot remains solid. Phil is adding quite a low-end punch. My guitars are passable. The vocals really tie the room together. When all’s said and done, I think I wouldn’t be ashamed to have this play at a party. But in all seriousness, it’s really solid, and I’m pretty proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish in such a short time.

The other piece of news is that we have a show coming up on February 15th. You need to go to it. It’s just $3, and it’s in the Upper Haight, so you can get a great burrito or a slice beforehand, then walk over and have a few drinks while you enjoy the musical stylings of The Thralls, Tree House City, and Two Star Spark.

The thing tying these two items together is that you can expect us to play all ten songs from the upcoming album at the show, as if you were listening to it in your incredibly loud living room, and as if your living room had a full bar and burritos and pizza within spitting distance (mine does). The bonus? We’ll probably add a few choice covers for good measure… and if you’re lucky, we might actually add something nobody’s ever heard us play.

See you Sunday!