fifteendozentimes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fifteendozentimes) wrote2011-07-28 09:54 pm
fifteendozentimes) wrote2011-07-28 09:54 pm
Entry tags:
Stuff I Love I Want You To Love, Too: Empires
It occurred to me recently that telling people awesome things about the slightly obscure-r people & bands I am into is probably a better way of making them less obscure than just babbling about them ad nauseum about them as if the people I talk to already know what there is to know. And so here begins a very short series of posts that are a little primer-y and a lot pimp-y.
Before We Begin:
I am not much of an authority on Empires; I'm a recent convert and am still fuzzy on a lot of the history. I'm aiming more to get you interested in these handsome hobos and their music than to give you a detailed look - basically I want you to be able to listen to the music and read what fic there is and also hopefully want to learn more. (When LJ works for me again I will add links to a more detailed, if out-of-date, primer here).
(Sean, Ryan, Tom, Max)
Shortly after Tom Conrad got booted from TAI (and I assume after Panic's NRWC tour, which Tom tagged along on), he and his bro Sean Van Vleet decided it was high time to make some music together. They found Ryan Luciani somehow, and added Tom's girlfriend's guitar genius little brother Max Steger after some undetermined period of time where he was mostly playing with them anyway. For a little while they had a permanent bassist, model-hot masseuse Al Smith, but idk stuff happened and he's gone and now they have a rotating cast of hot bassist bros.
They put their first album, Howl, up for free download, and it got downloaded 70,000+ times. That is a sign that all is right and good with the world because it's an amazing album. Their follow-up EP, Bang, is also amazing and only $8! Their third album is, apparently, pretty much finished and they need to give it to me immediately.
Empires recently participated in a Rolling Stone contest to put an unsigned band on the cover; they came in third which was total bullshit but they don't care so I will keep my raging sense of injustice to a minimum.
(Max, Tom, Ryan, Sean)
Sean Van Vleet
[SVV, Sean Van Creep, SVC]
SVV is an intense dude with a ton of Feelings. Like, for real, all the Feelings. Bro has had Feelings about a rat that lived in one of his shithole apartments (the rat's name was Steve, and his death was apparently a tragedy). Sean wanted, at one point, to be an English teacher, but has more recently said he can't see doing anything but music. Possibly this is because he will never graduate college due to having 800 different majors. That is hyperbole, but not as much as you might think. At one point he moved to Florida to become an actor because apparently he never saw that one Muppet Movie that covers how the two options for acting are NYC and Hollywood.
Sean is the main writer in Empires; he does all the lyrics and gets the backbone of a song ready before he brings it to the guys. He plays piano, and used to have a keyboard onstage before he dumped it to focus his full attention on loving down his mic stand. IIRC he also tambourines sometimes.
Bro is also a book dude. Think fanon Ryan Ross but with more canon to back it up than just having read Palahniuk in high school. He's used the band twitter to rec books, and floated the idea of an Empires book club at least once.
Occasionally - with increasing frequency, lately - he thinks he's Bruce Springsteen. If you see someone calling him Bruce Van Vleet, that's what they mean (I prefer Sean Van Steen, tbh). He's in Ryan's (I believe, it might be one of the others') phone as Sean Van Creep. SVV & SVC are pretty self-explanatory, nickname-wise.
[Tom & Sean]
Tom Conrad
[Tomrad]
Tom Conrad is everybody's favorite joke. Despite being really well-spoken in interviews he's earned himself a reputation as being terminally awkward and faily. Bro has locked himself out of his apartment in a Chicago winter in flip-flops, has a habit of going through his friends' things and taking pictures of them while they sleep, and has both commented on fic and shared it with his bros (IIRC there isn't concrete proof that was Tom [he commented anon and shared a quote from the band myspace] but that's the common assumption).
Tom was in TAI between Almost Here and Santi, and for all appearances him getting kicked out was a messy, unpleasant affair. Sadface. However, Tom being in TAI was how Panic found Jon Walker (which I guess might also be a sadface, depending on how you look at it). Tom took his bro on tour when he was in TAI and Jon didn't have anything going on, and Jon returned the favor by bringing Tom on NRWC after Tom got booted from TAI.
Let's talk a minute about Tom & Jon! Theirs is a bromance for the ages. Aside from bringing each other on tour, Tom gets really adorable when he talks about Jon - they were "separated at birth, believe it", and when Jon made a video urging people to vote for Empires in the RS cover contest, Tom said he was lucky to have Jon in his life. When Empires did a livestream recently, Tom sat in the background bored-ly texting until he realized someone had asked about Jon, at which point he shouted JON WALKER and got all :D :D :D :D :D
Tom plays guitar, has been dating Max's sister on and off since high school, and is a werewolf. He is also an A++ photographer and you should consider buying one or more of his prints.
[Ryan & Tom]
Ryan Luciani
[Ryan J, Looch]
Ryan describes himself as a "couch guy", which is a nice way of saying he's homeless and sleeps on his friends' couches. Surprisingly, he usually looks less homeless than Tom and Sean. Ryan is a gigantic klutz who frequently injures himself during shows (and at least once fell off his drum riser) and has beautiful arms. Ryan is responsible for the brutal slaughter of Tom & Sean's rat bro Steve.
Fanon Ryan is kind of a douchebro and crazy into sex; I have seen nothing of canon Ryan that contradicts this. Looch is the kind of dude who posts his scanned driver's license on his public myspace. He is the awesome kind of douchebro, though, the kind with beautiful arms.
Ryan plays drums, is afaik the only member of Empires with a car, and has beautiful arms.
(bonus original bassist Al)&(Max & Ryan)
Max Steger
[yeah he's pretty much just Max]
Max is the sort of bb musical genius bandom is full of, except instead of being an everything-genius he's just extra super good at guitars and producing. I don't have a ton to say about Max? He is badass and awesome and brilliant. Empires record in a studio he built in his parents' basement and he's produced all their stuff except for a couple songs they did for the Rolling Stone contest. Sean said in a recent radio interview there was a hole in the band without Max (awwwwwwww ♥).
Max plays guitar and has awesome hair and a pretty smile and is a super genius and everyone loves him so you should too.
(Sean & Max)
The Bassists
Guys I am not even going to pretend I can keep track of their bassists. I mentioned Alfred Smith, he was their first bassist (I believe) and the only one to be an official member of the band. Since him they've had a pool of bassists who've been varying levels of temporary. The names I know off the top of my head are Connor (Ryan wishes Connor was his science teacher!), Harrison (who looks vaguely like Spencer Smith sometimes) and Julio (from As Tall As Lions). I'm pretty sure there are more, though. Basically, if you hear a name you don't recognize in connection with Empires, it's a bassist.
(Tom, Ryan, Sean, Max)
It's the best music in the whole world.
You can listen to Howl & Bang in their entirety on Empires' website.
Then, their media page has three music videos (plus other goodies!). If you do nothing else after this pimp post, watch "Bang", it's an awesome song and where else are you going to see Pete Wentz's formerly-jailbait ex-girlfriend take off her clothes.
Empires' page from the Rolling Stone cover contest also has goodies! You shoud watch the "Hello Lover" video (it's the very bottom vid, titled "Empires: Music Video"), the performances of "Night Is Young", "Hard Times", and "Hell's Heroes" at the very least. (You can also listen to the studio versions of the songs slightly further down the page. They are gr8).
Non-musically, the Judges' Tables ("Round of 4" has surprise!PStump [I guess it's not a surprise anymore]) and Q&As with Touré have some good stories (including the firsthand account of Steve the rat) and are pretty excellent ways to get a feel for the guys. Also, the videos of them from the Garnier Fructis Green Room during the contest are fucking hilarious, not least because of how badly the stylist wants to bang SVV.
(Tom, Max, Sean, Ryan)
Unfortunately, thanks to Tom Conrad, a lot of Empires fic is locked down or has been deleted.
![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
Katarin has some excellent Empires fic (I started to rec specifics but tbh I would have recced them all), as does ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stephanometra (who has no Empires tag, so here's her masterlist).
imogenedisease's please is not a word that I ever said quietly is excellent, as is pretty much everything in mayqueen517's Empires tag. And if you haven't read la_dissonance's Master(s) of Art yet wtf is wrong with you?
Stuff I Love I Want You To Love, Too: Empires
Before We Begin:
I am not much of an authority on Empires; I'm a recent convert and am still fuzzy on a lot of the history. I'm aiming more to get you interested in these handsome hobos and their music than to give you a detailed look - basically I want you to be able to listen to the music and read what fic there is and also hopefully want to learn more. (When LJ works for me again I will add links to a more detailed, if out-of-date, primer here).
(Sean, Ryan, Tom, Max)
The Band
Shortly after Tom Conrad got booted from TAI (and I assume after Panic's NRWC tour, which Tom tagged along on), he and his bro Sean Van Vleet decided it was high time to make some music together. They found Ryan Luciani somehow, and added Tom's girlfriend's guitar genius little brother Max Steger after some undetermined period of time where he was mostly playing with them anyway. For a little while they had a permanent bassist, model-hot masseuse Al Smith, but idk stuff happened and he's gone and now they have a rotating cast of hot bassist bros.
They put their first album, Howl, up for free download, and it got downloaded 70,000+ times. That is a sign that all is right and good with the world because it's an amazing album. Their follow-up EP, Bang, is also amazing and only $8! Their third album is, apparently, pretty much finished and they need to give it to me immediately.
Empires recently participated in a Rolling Stone contest to put an unsigned band on the cover; they came in third which was total bullshit but they don't care so I will keep my raging sense of injustice to a minimum.
(Max, Tom, Ryan, Sean)
The Dudes
Sean Van Vleet
[SVV, Sean Van Creep, SVC]
SVV is an intense dude with a ton of Feelings. Like, for real, all the Feelings. Bro has had Feelings about a rat that lived in one of his shithole apartments (the rat's name was Steve, and his death was apparently a tragedy). Sean wanted, at one point, to be an English teacher, but has more recently said he can't see doing anything but music. Possibly this is because he will never graduate college due to having 800 different majors. That is hyperbole, but not as much as you might think. At one point he moved to Florida to become an actor because apparently he never saw that one Muppet Movie that covers how the two options for acting are NYC and Hollywood.
Sean is the main writer in Empires; he does all the lyrics and gets the backbone of a song ready before he brings it to the guys. He plays piano, and used to have a keyboard onstage before he dumped it to focus his full attention on loving down his mic stand. IIRC he also tambourines sometimes.
Bro is also a book dude. Think fanon Ryan Ross but with more canon to back it up than just having read Palahniuk in high school. He's used the band twitter to rec books, and floated the idea of an Empires book club at least once.
Occasionally - with increasing frequency, lately - he thinks he's Bruce Springsteen. If you see someone calling him Bruce Van Vleet, that's what they mean (I prefer Sean Van Steen, tbh). He's in Ryan's (I believe, it might be one of the others') phone as Sean Van Creep. SVV & SVC are pretty self-explanatory, nickname-wise.
[Tom & Sean]
Tom Conrad
[Tomrad]
Tom Conrad is everybody's favorite joke. Despite being really well-spoken in interviews he's earned himself a reputation as being terminally awkward and faily. Bro has locked himself out of his apartment in a Chicago winter in flip-flops, has a habit of going through his friends' things and taking pictures of them while they sleep, and has both commented on fic and shared it with his bros (IIRC there isn't concrete proof that was Tom [he commented anon and shared a quote from the band myspace] but that's the common assumption).
Tom was in TAI between Almost Here and Santi, and for all appearances him getting kicked out was a messy, unpleasant affair. Sadface. However, Tom being in TAI was how Panic found Jon Walker (which I guess might also be a sadface, depending on how you look at it). Tom took his bro on tour when he was in TAI and Jon didn't have anything going on, and Jon returned the favor by bringing Tom on NRWC after Tom got booted from TAI.
Let's talk a minute about Tom & Jon! Theirs is a bromance for the ages. Aside from bringing each other on tour, Tom gets really adorable when he talks about Jon - they were "separated at birth, believe it", and when Jon made a video urging people to vote for Empires in the RS cover contest, Tom said he was lucky to have Jon in his life. When Empires did a livestream recently, Tom sat in the background bored-ly texting until he realized someone had asked about Jon, at which point he shouted JON WALKER and got all :D :D :D :D :D
Tom plays guitar, has been dating Max's sister on and off since high school, and is a werewolf. He is also an A++ photographer and you should consider buying one or more of his prints.
[Ryan & Tom]
Ryan Luciani
[Ryan J, Looch]
Ryan describes himself as a "couch guy", which is a nice way of saying he's homeless and sleeps on his friends' couches. Surprisingly, he usually looks less homeless than Tom and Sean. Ryan is a gigantic klutz who frequently injures himself during shows (and at least once fell off his drum riser) and has beautiful arms. Ryan is responsible for the brutal slaughter of Tom & Sean's rat bro Steve.
Fanon Ryan is kind of a douchebro and crazy into sex; I have seen nothing of canon Ryan that contradicts this. Looch is the kind of dude who posts his scanned driver's license on his public myspace. He is the awesome kind of douchebro, though, the kind with beautiful arms.
Ryan plays drums, is afaik the only member of Empires with a car, and has beautiful arms.
(bonus original bassist Al)&(Max & Ryan)
Max Steger
[yeah he's pretty much just Max]
Max is the sort of bb musical genius bandom is full of, except instead of being an everything-genius he's just extra super good at guitars and producing. I don't have a ton to say about Max? He is badass and awesome and brilliant. Empires record in a studio he built in his parents' basement and he's produced all their stuff except for a couple songs they did for the Rolling Stone contest. Sean said in a recent radio interview there was a hole in the band without Max (awwwwwwww ♥).
Max plays guitar and has awesome hair and a pretty smile and is a super genius and everyone loves him so you should too.
(Sean & Max)
The Bassists
Guys I am not even going to pretend I can keep track of their bassists. I mentioned Alfred Smith, he was their first bassist (I believe) and the only one to be an official member of the band. Since him they've had a pool of bassists who've been varying levels of temporary. The names I know off the top of my head are Connor (Ryan wishes Connor was his science teacher!), Harrison (who looks vaguely like Spencer Smith sometimes) and Julio (from As Tall As Lions). I'm pretty sure there are more, though. Basically, if you hear a name you don't recognize in connection with Empires, it's a bassist.
(Tom, Ryan, Sean, Max)
The Music/Media
It's the best music in the whole world.
You can listen to Howl & Bang in their entirety on Empires' website.
Then, their media page has three music videos (plus other goodies!). If you do nothing else after this pimp post, watch "Bang", it's an awesome song and where else are you going to see Pete Wentz's formerly-jailbait ex-girlfriend take off her clothes.
Empires' page from the Rolling Stone cover contest also has goodies! You shoud watch the "Hello Lover" video (it's the very bottom vid, titled "Empires: Music Video"), the performances of "Night Is Young", "Hard Times", and "Hell's Heroes" at the very least. (You can also listen to the studio versions of the songs slightly further down the page. They are gr8).
Non-musically, the Judges' Tables ("Round of 4" has surprise!PStump [I guess it's not a surprise anymore]) and Q&As with Touré have some good stories (including the firsthand account of Steve the rat) and are pretty excellent ways to get a feel for the guys. Also, the videos of them from the Garnier Fructis Green Room during the contest are fucking hilarious, not least because of how badly the stylist wants to bang SVV.
(Tom, Max, Sean, Ryan)
The Fic
Unfortunately, thanks to Tom Conrad, a lot of Empires fic is locked down or has been deleted.
stephanometra (who has no Empires tag, so here's her masterlist).mayqueen517's Empires tag. And if you haven't read la_dissonance's Master(s) of Art yet wtf is wrong with you?
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and ugh it was a long hard grueling mission but i made it out alive. barely.
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But first of all HOSHIT THIS WAS MY FIRST EMPIRES SHOW. RIGHT HERE.
At first I was all "lol Ryan's old haircut, so glad he changed it" and then I was like "that junk in the background looks familiar" and then I was like ";SLDKGH THEY ARE AT THE SPACE, IT IS THAT NIGHT, RYAN HAS THE SAME UNFORTUNATE ZIT ON HIS FOREHEAD AND HE'S FILMING ACOUSTIC!TOMRAD AND THIS MUST HAVE BEEN FROM ONE OF THOSE GIRLS WITH THE GIANT CAMERAS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STAGE FROM ME" So um, yes, A+ picture choice right there.
...also I forgot what else I had to say about this primer except that it is damn fantastic and I'll be linking it to everyone I meet from now on.
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(Also you linked to my ridiculous porn ;saldkf <333)
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and of course i did it is BADASS ridiculous porn
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Ummm. Anyway.
Yay!
I've heard from People In the Know that Empires actually tries intentionally to stay a small band and that getting as far as they did into the contest was them failing at staying under the radar, because they are just that faily. /o\
But yeah, *wow* do I love them.
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But yesssss they are the best forever
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Didn't stop me from being legitimately devastated when they lost, though. :(
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And yeah it's a weird set of feelings. I love them and I want all the success in the world for them and I was crushed that apparently the world thought some other band deserved this over them, but I would also rather they be happy and doing their own thing.
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Nicely done, gentlemen. Nicely done.
(We call it the failosphere. because it infects everybody that goes near them.)
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I saw that werewolf reference in there, by the way! Were you checking that we were paying attention, or is it a comment about that beard?
Random other facts:
At one point, they all lived in the same unheated apartment. It was there that Steve met his end.
Sean is a barista.
IIRC, Ryan does social media stuff, and Max produces other people as well, for that whole "money to survive on" thing. Don't quote me on those, though.
There was a time during the "Howl" days when it was basically impossible to make them take your money, with not much merchandise available and the whole "not charging for the album" thing. I worried a lot about them starving to death.
They have an infallible ability to convert people instantly into fans. Even my brother, who hates rock, liked them after he went to a show with me.
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I assumed Steve was in the tiny freezing apartment, although Ryan just tweeted this past November about killing a rat so apparently he is their Official Rat Slaughterer.
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although i like yours better, it allows for my theory that sean secretly loved every second of that
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and tom's all you didn't win, bro
and sean's all so?
and tom's all seems legit and then fucking \o/
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But Tom gives in. Because tom can't dny Sean anything.
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I love fic-recs, thank you so much
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Ryan's arms! *___*
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Anyway, great mini-primer, such a fun read!
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