Glorious Noise is throwing a party, and you’re invited. What’s the occasion, you ask? We’re celebrating five years in publication and the third release on Glorious Noise Records with a big blowout. In fact, we’re having a ball! A Black and Orange Ball, in honor of the colors of our logo and our favorite holiday (as well as a nod to Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball in 1966). This will be the social event of the season.

Just wait to see what we’ve got in store for you. Three great bands, and loads of other entertainment, prizes, and excitement for you. Space is limited so get there early to be guaranteed a spot. Previous Glorious Noise events have sold out and had poor saps lined up outside in the rain! Don’t let that be you.

In addition to Glorious Noise recording artists Quasar Wut-Wut and Riviera (who will be selling their new CD a few weeks early), this year we hired headliners Healthy White Baby! For the uninitiated, HWB is Danny Black, front man and main songwriter for the Bloodshot artists The Blacks, Laurie Stirratt, bassist and singer for Blue Mountain, and Ryan Juravic on drums. To get an idea of what they sound like, check out “It’s Over”, and they’ve got more mp3s on their site.

Details!

Who: You and your closest friends along with with Healthy White Baby, Riviera, and Quasar Wut-Wut

What: The Black and Orange Ball, presented by Glorious Noise, $12

Where: Martyrs’ in Chicago, 3855 N. Lincoln Avenue

When: Saturday, October 21, 2006 at 10pm (but get there earlier)

Why: To celebrate five years of Glorious Noise and the new release by Riviera

Dress up! We’ll even provide you with an elegant black mask if you don’t have one. But if you want to dress crazy, like a gorilla or a zombie, go for it. If you’re more comfortable in a suit or a dress, live it up. Jeans and a t-shirt? No problem. The point is to have a ball. So dress for a party, whatever that means to you.

It’s a rock and roll but it’s also a masquerade ball, so go nuts!

Five Years

So yeah, technically our birthday was in February, but this type of show takes a little while to organize. So we’re a bit late (or maybe a bit early for our sixth). Therefore, don’t feel obligated to get us any presents; if we can’t manage to throw our birthday party within six months of our actual birthday, Miss Manners says you don’t have bring a gift. You do, however, still have to come to the party.

But five years is a long time, and we’re very proud of ourselves for sticking around this long. It’s been an interesting ride. Check out what we said on our fourth, third, second, and first birthday. Kinda funny to read back over those. We were younger then. So were you. So was the internet. There wasn’t even YouTube back on our fourth birthday. It’s hard to imagine the internet without YouTube.

Which brings us around to one of the coolest developments recently for Glorious Noise. The Glorious Noise Video features have been a great experience. Teaming up with John Boston and Whiskey Bender to bring you exlusive, original short documentaries has been really cool. The most recent one, featuring Dirty Pretty Things, is just great. Stay tuned for more great shorts, and we’re hoping to some day release expanded versions on DVD.

Also in the GLONO universe this year we launched a couple new subsidiary sites: Politics Junky, the national affairs desk of Glorious Noise; and the Out Route, the sports desk of Glorious Noise. Big props to Derek Phillips and Tom Mantzouranis for heading up those efforts and kicking much ass. Neither site is your typical politics or sports blog. There’s a definite GLONO twist. Please add your comments to their articles. Your interaction is what makes this fun.

Capital

So Riviera has a new album called Capital. The official release date isn’t until November 21, but you can get your copy a few weeks early if you come out to the Black and Orange Ball. It’s a fantastic album. All three songwriters in the band are just getting better and better. Stretching more creatively, and flexing different muscles. There will definitely be a few surprises on the album if you think you know what Riviera’s all about already.

Redesign

If you’ve been to this site once or twice before in the past five years you might notice we’ve launched our first significant redesign in quite a while. The main idea behind this design is acknowledging the fact that we’re not posting quite as many reviews and big feature articles quite as frequently as we used to. We wanted to establish a format where we can write a few sentences about something that caught our ear without getting overwhelmed by the idea that we’d ahve to turn it into a big, long article. We’ll still continue to publish big, long articles of course, but we’re hoping to facilitate much more frequent posts of shorter, quicker little stories.

As for the design itself, it might look familiar if you’ve spent any time on at the New York Times site. What did Oscar Wilde say? “Talent borrows, while genius steals.” Or was that Morrissey? No matter. We took the Times’ nice, clean design and brought it into the GLONO world, wherein we beat the shit out of it, simplified it, and added our own twists. But we’d be lying if we didn’t come out and admit we started off with their template. As with everything on the Web, it’s still a work in progress, and there’s still a ton of things we’re still in the middle of fixing. But that’s the great thing about publishing on the Web, we can fix it as we go.

Of course, if you see anything terribly wrong, like if it breaks your computer or something, please let us know, and we’ll try to squash those bugs immediately…

Or, if it can wait until October 21, come on out to the Black and Orange Ball and tell me in person. I’ll be the guy in the black mask with the orange tie. Find me.

Love,

Jake and the GLONO Posse