Dan Crane

Throngs of Swedes eager to escape the land of the midnight sun are traveling to the land of eternal sunshine. Blame the obvious (weather), the logistical (Norwegian Air Shuttle’s new direct flight from Stockholm) or the sartorial (Acne Studios’ opening of a West Coast outpost); whatever the reason, Los Angeles has become a new home away from ‘Holm for many Swedish creatives. “Without fail, every single day there’s a bunch of Swedes in the lobby,” says Fredrik Carlstrom, who ensconced himself at the newish Ace Hotel while overseeing the recent launch of Austere, a nearby Scandi-centric retail showroom and event space. Come late next year, downtown L.A. will also house AYD (short for “All Your Dreams”), a Nordic-influenced members club designed by Andreas Fornell (formerly Acne’s in-house architect). AYD will boast Swedish chefs (Adam & Albin of Matstudio in Stockholm) and club “ambassadors” like the pop icon Robyn. “A lot of people are skipping New York and going straight to L.A.,” says Patrik Berger, who co-produced the Swedish duo Icona Pop’s massive 2012 hit “I Love It.” “It’s all in L.A. when it comes to pop music.”

My band Ray & Remora’s new video for “Gold Soundz” premiered today on EW.com. A big thanks to everyone who participated and helped out!

Directed by Snäckan B.
Edited by Ted Malmros
Shot by Snäckan B & Ruben Broman

Featuring (in order of appearance):
Kim Gordon
Mike Viola
Money Mark
Scott Shriner
Inara George
The Gold Soundz 1994 Dancers: Erica Carpenter, Stephen Patterson, Yvonne Lacombe, Erin O’Brien (with choreography by Caitlin Adams)
Jeff Goldblum (& Woody the poodle)
Stephen Malkmus

Special Thanks:
Miwa Okumura, Katrina Dickson, Lisa Milberg

The new video for Ray & Remora’s cover of Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So” from our 1994 EP (available now!) premiered today on USA Today’s Pop Candy blog. Enjoy!

My latest piece for the New York Times, in which I suggest that any man under 40 (and even men a few years over 40) who are considering having kids eventually should freeze their sperm now.

Here’s a link to stream a track off my new EP, Ray & Remora / 1994. The album comes out May 6th, and I’m pretty darn proud of it. It’s six songs—all covers of songs that originally came out in 1994.

Some great videos are being crafted in our video factory right this very minute. I’ll post those as soon as they are ready.

In the meantime, enjoy Pavement’s “Gold Soundz,” as recorded by Ray & Remora!

Pre-order the CD via Aeronaut Records.

Here’s a track listing:

1) “Like a Fool” (Superchunk)
2) “Gold Soundz” (Pavement)
3) “Say It Ain’t So” (Weezer)
4) “Skull” (Sebadoh)
5) “Feel The Pain” (Dinosaur Jr.)
6) “The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory” (Guided by Voices)

NY Post /  Alexa for Men Magazine / Cover Story

Chief of  Smarm Reid Scott Suits Up for Another Season of Capitol Scheming on VEEP. 

Reid Scott and I met up for coffee (news flash: he drank tea) at LAMill in Silver Lake. Here’s how it all went down.

A profile of actress Gillian Jacobs I wrote for NYLON.

She was not wearing this bikini for our interview.

The High-End Matchmaking Service for Tycoons (my recent piece in New York Times)

A couple of weeks ago, prior to the US Air Guitar National Championships at the House of Blues in Los Angeles, I was bemoaning the hangovers I knew awaited me since we foolishly decided this year to schedule the air guitar national finals a mere weekend before the World Air Guitar Championships in Oulu, Finland.

As host and “Master of Airemonies” for these events, my job is to set an example of inebriation for the competitors and crowd, as I often say from the stage: “One important rule here, please don’t be sober for this. It will just look stupid.”

So there I was, bemoaning my chronic hangovers, with their accompanying headaches—headaches so bad I cannot lay my head on my pillow and usually am forced to down 4 Advils and take 45-minute scalding showers in order to relieve the pain—when my friend and air guitar compatriot Mr. Hot Lixx Hulahan (aka Craig Billmeier) said, “A friend of mine claims to have a great hangover cure. I’ll email him.”

And, let me tell you — it changed my life! I’ve now road tested this thing in three countries with countless alcoholic beverages—from beer to Jägermeister‎ to whisky to wine, and plain and simple: it works. On the worst days, I woke up with a very mild headache and general feeling that I had not gotten enough sleep (I was averaging 3 hours/night in Finland). But in general, I felt great.

The guy, to whom I owe an immense amount of gratitude, just wrote a blog posting detailing his prescription.  I didn’t really follow this to the letter, mostly I just took the vitamins he suggested. Though I generally avoided eating red meat, the one night I did gorge a plate of Swedish meatballs, I noticed the hangover was stronger than the other days. Still, I no longer had the splitting, debilitating headaches of hangovers past.

So, THANK YOU AARON PROBE! And may this help the rest of you!

In short, go buy two bottles of vitamins:

•Vitamin B complex (with no added vitamin C in it)

•Milk Thistle

I took 1 of each pill each evening, about an hour or two before I started drinking, and then another 2 pills when I got home at anywhere from 2 to 5 in the morning. I woke up feeling great!