Happy Holidays from Pinto and the Bean

Hi everyone!  We just want to say Happy holidays!  We made a little holiday video for you to check out.  Enjoy!  By the way, we have our first show of of 2011 on Saturday, January 8th at Gallery Cabaret!  The flyer is below the video and here's the facebook invite!  We hope to see you there!  Happy holidays again!

"Name Our Song" contest

Hey there Pinto and the Bean friends!

Thanks again to all of you who helped our  Midnight Monsters video reach an unbelievable amount of YouTube plays in just a few weeks (the mp3 for the song is now available on the secret page of our website)!  We never expected our little iPhone creation to cause so many people to smile (or be creeped out), but we are glad it did.

So, as we finish up recording our final songs, we realized that we still don't have a title for one of them.  Then we thought it would be fun to have a contest (sort of like our band name contest back in June).  This song is a 2 minute ditty, there's a trumpet in it, and we yell a bunch of our friends' names out, so go ahead and download it from our facebook event page and post ANY song ideas that you have on the page.  Are you simply too lazy to take a listen to our new tune?  Well, you could accuse us for being lazy ourselves since we haven't come up with a name for it yet.  But hey, that's okay!  Just send us ANY ideas you have even if you absolutely refuse to listen to the song!  Maybe you need lyrics to inspire you.  You can find those at the bottom of this blog entry.

Lastly, we would actually greatly appreciate it if you follow us on facebook (if you aren't already).  We just figure so many of you are already professional facebookers that it would be a much easier platform to communicate on.  We'll also be posting the song name ideas you come up with on the same event page.

That's about it for now!  We've got new live footage we'll be uploading to the secret page of our website soon, and we'll keep you posted on that.  Thanks for reading everyone!


Pinto and the Bean
The Secret Page
Facebook
Twitter


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lyrics to our title-less song

You've got some kind of disorder.

The doctor said that to me.

My mom said I'm a loser

But I think she's a freak.

I've got a hole in my pocket.

I've got nothing to give

And my heart is so broken.

Can somebody fix it?

Joe!  Amy!  Jim!  Jose!

I was never too popular

And I don't really care.

All the prom kings and prom queens

Never went anywhere.

And now that I'm older

It's all in my head

That we can't move the mountains

That we blew up as kids.

Mike!  Ashley!  Nick!  Jose!

Matt! Sara! Beth! Jose!

Making the Midnight Monsters music video

Howdy Pinto and the Bean friends!  Since so many of you have enjoyed and shared our Midnight Monsters video with each other, we decided to post pictures with captions behind the making of the video.  

As you already know, the video was shot on Paul's iPhone; the concept for the video only came to us the night before we shot it.  We were really just thinking about Halloween and what would be something we could give away to our fans before that ghoulish day arrived.  So, Paul and Ivan went out to the dollar store and searched for some props for the video.  That was pretty much it!  Below are pics and their explanations for the Midnight Monsters video...and if you still haven't seen it, click here or just watch it below! For those of you who have already seen it, scroll down to the pictures!

Some of you thought these outfits in the video
were quite creepy.

Ever break open glow sticks and spray a room
with their liquids?  Well, that's what you're seeing
in the second verse with all the glowing liquid dots
Some of you mentioned this part of the video was
your favorite.

Backdrop for the video.  We needed as much
of a black background as possible

Okay, this was from Walgreens because the

Dollar Store was out of this stuff.  

As you can probably tell, this was 

our makeup for the video.

We actually had to use the fingers of the gloves in order to
make the arms for those dolls.  We never ended up using
that pink guitar and microphone, but maybe one day when
we're feeling pretty, we will.

Do you remember this guy from the video?

This is Paul's kitchen where the video was shot.  Those plastic
back drops are actually Halloween table covers, but they worked
great to provide a black background

We had to eat!!!  This sammich was split up amongst the three
of us (Paul, Ivan, and Nick).  If you ever want one of these,
head over to Dominick's!  They're really cheap and good!

Paul trying to act serious (not really hard to do)

in front of the backdrop, prior to putting on makeup. 

Ivan, thinking to himself, 'Paul's pose is cool

and I want to do the same thing', so he took a

similar picture prior to putting on makeup.

Paul and Ivan all ready to make the video as the white faced
raccoon eyed duo.

We thought this idea was actually really cool and it never made
its way into the video because it was a failed experiment.
Pretty much, the liquid from the glow sticks was supposed
to be sprayed at us by Nick while we  had these eyes on our hands, but
unfortunately, the glow stick liquid didn't show up well on camera,
so this part was replaced with the scene of Paul surrounded by those
 glow dots singing the second verse.




Glow stick juice on Paul's kitchen floor!

More glow stick juice!

Another shot of the dang glow stick juice

Yet another glow stick juice pic

You can still see that glow stick juice with the lights on.  Neato!

Thanks for reading and checking out the pics!  Talk to you soon.

Pinto and the Bean

Our Creepy Halloween Video

Midnight Monsters   :-)

The Sudden Rush to Record EVERYTHING

IN THIS BLOG


- The Sudden Rush to Record All Our Songs
- Stars and burgers in Michigan
- Indie Radio
- The new 'secret page' on our web site




When our 3^rd bandmate, friend, and co producer told us he may be moving away, we were in tremendous shock.  So, we decided to rush all our projects.  Since then, Nick has moved his studio into Paul's house, which happened about a full moon ago.  We've been trying to combine our ideas and capture our raw emotions into these recordings.  We think so far, these tunes are sounding really good!  But in the end, you'll be the judge of that.

Nick setting up microphones around Ivan's drum set

In between all this recording, we've taken some breaks; most recently, we took off to Michigan so that we could speak with the lake and the stars.  Well, that might make more sense to you if you actually go to the place in Michigan we're talking about; Chicago shines in a way that allows you to see some kinds of stars but not the ones we're discussing here; the stars we speak of are ones that makes you feel like a little piece of dust in the vast universe.

Paul's pedal board

Anyway, we found a lot of inspiration over in Michigan, and after feeding our souls with everything the amazing midnight sky has to offer, we went to feed our bodies with the most amazing burger on earth.  We were fully immersed in a sea of cheese, pickles, onions and of course...ground beef...you MUST try it someday, just go to New Buffalo, Michigan, and ask for a “legendary burger”, and someone will surely guide you to the flavor at Redamak's!  

Legendary Redamak's burger 

On a side note, we want to thank the independent radio stations that are currently playing our music - even in Europe!!!  We feel that we're part of the world in some kind of modest way while at the same time we're proud to be Chicagoland musicians, always inspired by this amazing city and all our friends that hand us flavors and textures which help inspire our songs.

So, that's about it for now. We'll continue to record the rest of our music and we can't wait to share it all with you very soon.  In the meantime, we've been recording some home videos and mp3s that we'd like to give you access to now.  We keep them on the new 'secret page' on our web site at www.pintoandthebean.com.   If you'd like to listen/see some  exclusive footage, head on over there now.  Anyway, see you around Pinto and the Bean pals! 

Pinto and the Bean

Miss America

Howdy Pinto and the Bean friends!    


So, in the past few weeks, there have been a few updates in our Pinto and the Bean world.  First of all, Paul has learned how to do a headstand in his Yoga classes, and he is proud of that, while Ivan has mastered the art of preparing excellent mole in his kitchen!  We've also been heading out to some really great open mic's in the city and meeting new people.


We're excited to play our first show, but we don't know where that will be yet.  We've gotten some good suggestions from people, and if you have any places you think would be a good fit for us, please let us know!


Aside from these happenings, we recently wrote this song, which we've titled Miss America.  Below is a video of us rehearsing the song in our practice space (which is at Paul's house).  If you like the music, please let us know!  It's new and we haven't recorded it yet but we plan to soon.

MISS AMERICA

Where We've Been

Hey there Pinto and the Bean friends!  So, we recently discovered the ease of using Blogger and we'll be posting our future blogs right from here.  So, summer is almost over and we haven't said too much since the band name contest.  We don't mean to be distant, cold, and emotionally detached by not keeping in touch with you and we apologize in case you were wondering where we were.  So below we'll sum it up for you.  

Things we've been up to this summer:

-improving our practice space (which is at Paul's house) so that it's not so cluttered and impossible to move through.  It also used to be insanely difficult to clearly hear each other sing & play our instruments, so we fixed that problem by getting rid of all our amps and purchasing just two speakers (which you can see on the floor in the picture).  It really helped clear the room of clutter and noise!


- working on a music video for our song Robot Wars.  Our good friend Nick Palazzo had an idea for the video and another friend Tim Jacobs had the camera talent for the video, and it all came together from there.  The whole video was somewhat accidental and we aren't even sure it's finished yet.  But the first day we spent on it, we dressed up as robots with aluminum pans, car sun blockers, and silver make up in  95 degree weather in Michigan on the fourth of July.  Innocent passersby simply cheered in confusion as they witnessed us flying by in a black jeep singing to them.  The best part was being able to rip all the robot gear off and dive into the lake.  We'll get some pics up of this soon.

- building a house out of dry wall for part 2 of the same video just a week ago. 

We performed the song inside this house while flashing lights shined in through the windows.  If you don't like flashing lights, you may not enjoy the video.  

 







Also, if you don't like the color red, you may not like the video. The video seems like it may turn out to be VERY RED!  

 
 What we think is cool though is that this section of the video was shot with the same camera they used to shoot the movie Cloverfield.               

Aside from this, we've been working on new songs, and we hope to play our first show very soon!  Thanks for reading and we'll be in touch!