In hindsight 2009 was a very long year.
Last New Year's Eve seems like ages ago. I played in the First Night parade for the first show of the Minor Mishap Marching Band. I really wanted to play Fela Kuti songs though and they didn't want to stray from the Klezbah stuff, so we parted ways. After that parade we rung in the New Year at the 360 overlook then made my way to the Space Cave (RIP) for a freakish dance party.
The X-Rays were really picking up steam early in the year, culminating in 6 or 7 SXSW shows. Found this video posted on the youtubes by some guy named SpikedPunchEddy.
Can't forget about the Toughen Up 2k9 Tour with Spiked Punch. Look, I had a beard!
And oh yeah, I produced a hip-hop record. The follow-up is on the way shortly, but I wouldn't expect a show anytime soon. I was initially trying to sell the physical copies of this but I've give up so if you want one let me know, they're free as a bird.
Diamond Minds - Cavalier
There were some epic DJ nights here and there. Halloween on the Lamar Bridge and the afterparty and the super-secret Dobie Theatre blow-out are the two highlights to me. Airport Bar was also up there, so much fun while it lasted. There was one great night at Back Alley Social. The Shapes/Valentine/Schwausch b-day bash was also sweet. Shout-outs to Birds Barbershop for letting me hang out and drink lonestars every week, as well as Ranch 616 for feeding me so well and letting me wear out my disco-edits.
Live at Birds Mix
Oh, and let's not forget that this meager blog is now almost at 600 posts, even if the last 10 or so have been UT sport-related. Here's to another great year of Casavista blogosphere domination.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
2009 Wrap-up
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Moonset
Had a quintessentially perfect night on the beach the other night. The kids have been having trouble getting out on the beach, but the night before we had teased it out of them and now they were ready. Likewise, the regular locals who cruise Kaanapali had been a bit standoffish the night before, but that too would come to an end. It was Christmas night and we had all the essentials: 2 guitars, 4 guitarists, some girls, plenty of beer and weed, the narc cart assigned to patrol the beach off for the holiday, and to top it off, it was the 3 zany Cooper bros last night in town. The guitars went around and around, the classics were played (beach standards = Hendrix, some Zepp, an ironic rendering of "Cat Scratch Fever" which on this night was tastefully only hinted at, etc). The night wore on, the locals mood was gradually elevated until they too were jamming along, and then Adam drew our attention to the moon, lined up square and low on the horizon flanked by the twin islands of Lanai and Molikai (i think). There it was, big, orange and steadily lowering towards the water, which it was reflecting orange off of. The sing-a-long turned to jamming which intensified to a fever pitch, as if we were concluding some sort of special Phish show. And then the moon crept underneath and about five minutes later everyone was in bed.
Oh also, that day I went to JAWS the famous big wave surf spot and saw dudes carve up 20 footers, it was fuckin' bad - ACE.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
The Reemerging Adventures of EMHU
Well, with Spiked Punch in full gear, I was pretty sure EMHU* (ethan master of the hawaiian ukulele) was dead forever. well guess what kids, the South will rise again, and by the south, I mean WAAAAAAY South, like, nearly Equatorial, bitches.
This year I have a few goals.
1. I am attempting Infinite Jest for the 3rd time. After day one (not counting night time reading) I am at page 41. I think I am going to lay off the Maui Wowee for the first week until some of my Hawaii buddies get into town in an attempt to keep my mind sharp and make headway on this goal.
2. I have a much improved recording setup, and a hankerin to get started on a ukulele based record. The big improvement this year is I rented this awesome mic from Rock and Roll Rentals that I would like to tell you about. It is a condenser mic, but in lieu of phantom power it can be powered by a 9V battery! The output signal I am getting vs whatever I used last year is so much better, I am actually centering the faders on 7.5 like you are supposed to and controlling the volume by taking the trim down, as opposed to last year when everything basically had to be at 10 and sounded like shit.
The vacay so far:
Lonngggg flight out of Dallas, close to 9 hours. Opted out of "Elf" in favor of trying to sleep, and then watched "Legally Blonde" which was actually really funny and a convincing fantasy as far as I'm concerned. Reese Witherspoon was great. Last night I was able to catch up on my trash TV (VH1 end of the year countdown, an surprisingly endearing episode of "Cougertown", an hour of "Robot Chicken" and an episode of "Real Sex" on HBO. Im counting it as a sign of maturity that it didn't give me a boner.) Today I woke up at 830ish with some hazy weird thoughts that were gone midway through my shower. I think i am going to keep a pen and paper at my bedside so I can record some of these weird thoughts and hopefully use them as lyrics. Then I ate some french toast my grandma bought at some place that was probably the best french toast Ive ever had, along with 2 pieces of regular toast and a bowl of fruit. Delicious!!! Then I went out by the beach. There is no one hear!!! Its fuckin awesome, the recession is my gain, because I love the empty beach. Oh yeah, but I recorded some stuff this morning, it sounds good. I'll post some demo highlights at somepoint after i get back perhaps
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Adventures in Autotune episode 1
REPLACE THESE STARS WITH HOMEPAGE SUMMARY<-->
REPLACE THESE STARS WITH FULL POST<-->
Earlier this spring I stumbled upon a deal at a pawn shop in Denton, TX - a (mostlye) working Antares ATR-1a for dirt dirt cheap; that's a real live hardware auto-tune folks.
Hooked it up to the turntables via a mixer send one night and just shuffled some algorithms around. Dig it feeding back on itself as we route the output back through the same effect send that goes to the unit.
Friday, December 11, 2009
More shit from the internet: Whats wrong with your VCR?
Below is a table which lists most VCR problems.
We have two columns, one for the problem
and the other for percentages.
Problem Percentage of failures
_
dirty heads..................24% |
idlers........................7% |
belts........................11% | These VCR problems can be
cassette carriage problems....8% |-------fixed without any soldering or
CPU lockups-pull the AC plug..3% | any knowledge of electronics.
capstan bearings..............6% | That's 66% of all problems!
roller guides.................6% |
foreign objects inside........3% _|
mode switch problems..........7%
antenna connector.............3%
tape end sensers..............3%
reel sensers..................2%
other simple problems........10%
other complex problems........7%
and we'll kick it back to sports, after these messages...
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Five Years Later: Giorgio Moroder Edition
Here's hoping this will become a recurring blog topic.
1974 - Philly before Moroder
1979 - Moroder
1984 - America learns from Moroder
1988/89 - Detroit forgets about Moroder
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
we make it good volume 11: salem
salem mixes for fader
some trippy slowed down shit
the series
do y'all know about this band? some crazy crack-smoking motherfuckers out of nyc. i don't really care too much for their music but this mix is pretty cool.
Posts
