It’s better to burn out than to fade away: Clap!Clap! final show this Saturday!

Local act Clap!Clap! has furnished enough dance parties around town with their brand of energetic electro-pop to command endearment and respect alike. However, last month they surprised a good amount of us with news of their demise. Needless to say we were fairly intrigued about the reasons for this culmination and also their plans for the future. The band was kind enough to answer some of our questions leading up to this grand finale at Emo’s on Saturday evening. You might have already seen band leader Josh Mills spin the beats as DJ:/Rubix at various shows, but Josh is also hard at work on a new project, Purple Magick with fellow Clap!Clap! alumnus Scott Ota. Mills added that he has some ambitious plans for the new band, “I'd like to do all the things that Clap!Clap! never got to do, i.e. tour, make a video, distribute masters for remixes, sign to a label, release more than one record, be on an Apple commercial, incorporate a keytar, etc...all in 2008.” Louis Lemuz and Nick Whitfield, too, have their hopes and dreams. Lemuz plans to spend more time with his family in the short term, perhaps travel a bit, but has a loftier goal of becoming “Foosball World Champion” long term. Whitfield is using the crossroads to reinvent his personal style -- “My short term goal is to watch every episode of Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style on Bravo!"

In all seriousness, why the reason to end an exciting project that seemed to be picking up speed? It's all very clear to Mills -- “The reasoning is simple, really. We're eight different people with eight different lives and schedules to work around. It's a roller-coaster of difficulty booking shows around everyone's schedule and very discouraging. We practiced maybe once or twice a month if we were lucky. Most importantly, we can't tour and a band that can't tour is pretty useless. Some people are in it for the long haul, others aren't, so instead of replacing members for the umpteenth time, we just decided to move on to other, smaller in numbers, musical projects. It turned out that one of Clap!Clap!'s strongest points, having 8 people, is also the weakest aspect. After a while, it just became stressful and I became less and less inspired to write new Clap!Clap! songs. We gave it nearly 4 years, and we all kind of feel that it is time to throw in the towel, leave on a good terms with each other and go out with a bang so that, hopefully, our friends and fans will be encouraged to check out our future endeavors, which we are all very excited about.”

Give the gang the last hurrah they deserve! Check out the full line-up for Saturday and enter to win tickets, after the jump!