RanchO RelaxO

spiked punch tour update

2011-05-18T18:45:00.000-05:00

we are like this now! big tour....7 weeks coming up. you wanna help us book it? get in touch ethansnew@gmail.com, we are coming to YOUR town

Hot Tip

2011-05-17T21:04:00.002-05:00

So .... youve maxed out the # of articles you can read on nytimes.com again this month??? and you want that pop-up to quit preventing you from max reading enjoyment? after it pops up, click another article on the right (the top 10 list, or the "recommended for you" list) and then click back on your browser. Voila, its gone!

Poor Man's Salad

2011-05-11T04:30:00.004-05:00

New Recepie, I call it "poor man's salad". Its basically a recepie made out of common groceries....good shit!!! Let me see if I can remember exactly....its kinda like a turkey sandwitch, only with more lettuce and a basic salad dressing.

Dressing:
Olive Oil
Balsamic Vinegar (just a little)
Black Pepper
Anna's Herbs
Lemon Juice

Salad:
Lettuce
Roma Tomato, cut up
Pepperjack Cheese, sliced, and then torn into pieces
White Cheddar Cheese Chunks
Central market Turkey, torn into pieces

Hendrix live in Maui, 1970

2011-05-11T04:29:00.001-05:00

I had never seen this footage before, awesome!!! 2 months before his death :(

INTERVIEW:

7 minutes of Scottie Pippen Defensive Highlights

2011-05-05T17:47:00.002-05:00

i love my city

2011-04-08T18:33:00.001-05:00

Came Up with Another Recipe

2011-03-25T16:06:00.004-05:00

OK

So we had some leftover Rudy's from my dad that he bought for sxsw. Talking Turkey and Brisket. Here's a nice alternate use I came up with for it

1. Make a baked potato in the microwave (7 min)
2. Grill up some white and red onion together
3. Reheat Turkey (option: and Brisket) on a pan
4. Take potato out of microwave....put on butter and a little light brown sugar
5. Put on onions, turkey and brisket
6. Sprinkle green herbs (italian mix) on top
7. optional: BBQ sauce

I made this twice, once with the brisket + bbq sauce and the first time without. I would actually say it was better sans brisket and bbq sauce, but I would not tell anyone not to try it. It was just shockingly light w/o it. The brown sugar gives the onion a slight caramalization....you can even stick the brown sugar on the onions to do that in the pan, I think I did that the first time.

The best thing since sliced bread? Maybe not, but I'd say at least the best thing since 4 square toast. One day I'll get one a them smart phones and take pictures and auto-upload them on this blog....

remember when?

2011-03-24T21:29:00.000-05:00

this era of rap reminds me of Matt Schwaush.

Do The Zydeco Bounce

2011-03-11T00:22:00.001-06:00

keepin in real....thanks KAZI!

Resurrecting an Ensoniq EPS classic sampler

2011-02-17T17:40:00.002-06:00

Join me, for a journey into the world of vintage music electronics repair and modification...

Our subject, the Ensoniq EPS.
Don't know it? Sure you do!!! Ever heard Wu-Tang's 36 Chambers? You've heard this keyboard. It was the precursor to the uber-popular ASR-10.
It's a very characteristic 13-bit sampler beamed to us from 1988. Low RAM in this one (480k) means you gots to get real creative.
Anyway, I was given this keyboard, and immediately dug it. I already had a soft-spot for the ESQ-1, and this is basically like it's sampling brother.
The only problem with these old machines though, is that floppy disks are not much fun, the particular ones for the EPS are very hard to find (DD, not HD!), and they will eventually fail. The HxC Floppy Emulator steps in to replace your thousands of floppies with one, easy to find SD card.

The process:
I backed up all my EPS disks via OmniFlop. This creates a RAW img file, which, as far as I know, is just a byte-for-byte (or close to that) copy of the diskette. The beauty of this format is that the host machines don't need to be able to read it, they just copy the raw data off it. The problem is, you don't know if it's working til you've tried it. I did not anticipate this, and thought the software would read my *.img files easily...not so.
So in the HxCFloppyEmulator software, I can't do 'batch convert' (that expects *.efe files...i've got *.img raw files), I had to do "Load Raw image":
- Load Raw image
- You have to change the settings in this menu.
For 819200 byte images, use these parameters:
Sector per track = 10
Sector ID start = 0
GAP3 lenght = 40
Anyway, that converted all my floppies to images, and at that point, I just hoped it would work.
Finally found the EPS service manual, which helped me remove only the screws I needed to remove the disk drive.
Here are the instructions from the service manual:

Replacing the EPS Disk Drive
1. Remove all cables connected to the EPS, including the power cable.
2. Remove the four (4) screws that fasten the control panel with a 2.5mm hex wrench.
NOTE: These are machine screws.
3. Turn the unit over, top down, and remove the four (4) screws that attach the wheel assembly to the case. See Figure 12 for location of screws. Return the unit to an upright position and raise the control panel. Carefully lift the wheel assembly out of the case.
4. Disconnect the two cables from the Disk Drive, paying particular attention to the polarity. (See Important things to know - the disk drive, page 2).
5. Remove the four (4) screws and star washers that attach the disk drive to the wheel assembly.
6. Carefully slide the Disk Drive out of the wheel assembly. Remove the two (2) screws and star washers that attach the metal plate to the bottom of the disk drive.
etc, etc...

Got that out, got the floppy emulator in, powered up, and CRAP! it WORKED. Couldn't believe it. Scrolled over to the disk image for the OS, and the sumb*tch loaded up like nothing was wrong.
I made the above video while I was doing the upgrade, and then I created the soundtrack from the demo disks that came with the EPS.
So if you've got an old sampler, and floppy disks are holding you back, get over it.
DIY4LIFE.

Woolfy Interview, Cosmic Trigger Tonight!

2011-02-11T09:52:00.005-06:00

....Special report from certified-homie Hayden Bagot....

Hayden from Flying Turns here. We caught a DJ performance from Woolfy last year during SXSW that left us throttled. He completely stole the show and then got off the decks to drink and dance with us while his label-mates on DFA records pushed on further into disco-house territory. We woke up the next day in pieces but knew we had to bring back the man who has killed parties, released on popular labels (DFA, Rong, and Permanent Vacation), and performed his records with a touring live band to do the business to Austin again. In anticipation of the party this weekend (and because I could) we had a quick Q and A session.

H: Let's pretend you are boxing for the title against George Foreman, What song do you pick to play while you walk out to the ring?

W: This is a very good question Hayden, for me I would choose "tomorrow" from the Annie soundtrack; there's nothing like a good show-tune before an ass whooping. For George I'd choose "Lean On Me" cause that's all he ever did in the ring.

H This is not your first time in Texas, do werewolves prefer Austin's tacos or barbeque?

W: Bar-b-que for sure. I want my baby back baby back baby back ribs. That works for the first question but it would of gone, I want my ribs back baby . . .

H What's your favorite piece of musical equipment and why?

W: My classical guitar, it releases a lot of demons for me; it also cooks me dinner, sends heart warming texts and is a big fan of Dexter.

H: The hard-drive with all your recordings on it crashed last year, have you been busy writing new material?

W: That was definitely a hard time for me, but I took it in stride. I thought I'd be writing make-up to break-up love songs due to my divorce, but it started a new genre of music; post angst computerism. The name of the album;s called KILL KRAFTWERK.

H Do you have any plans in the works to tour the Woolfy Band soon?

W: A lot of offers have come my way recently, but my main man (keyboardist) Dan's band ORGONE is blowing up right now and to start from scratch is a tall order. Chemistry's a fine art in the music biz, Match.com anyone?

H: Your release on Whatchawannado is under the name Sir Woolfy. How did it feel being knighted by the queen?

W: It was humiliating. They made me wear a Tudor wig and used a plastic sword. Sean Connery and McCartney were laughing during the whole ceremony, bastards.

H: What is the strangest thing you've ever been asked in an interview? and how did you respond?

W: See question 1.

Zen and the art of tape deck repair

2011-02-10T18:29:00.003-06:00

Taken while replacing a broken belt in my Sony TC-K1A Cassette Tape Deck.
Amazing machine! My crappy pictures do this thing no justice.

Not to mention, built-in RCA cords!

Biggest Tool on the Internet

2011-01-24T22:30:00.002-06:00

From bleacherreport.com.
I love to hate this guy.

OK, so I don't know exactly how, but I keep finding these links that are like "the 50 worst NFL coaches" or, this weeks edition "the 50 worst Championship teams in all of sports." The list is exactly what it sound like...some guy going "sure he won the superbowl, but his all time won loss percentage was a paltry .569 . Or something like that (one of the coaches even had a winning record, srsly). It is really absurd. He puts the 93-94 Rockets as the 32nd worst championship team out of principal because MJ didn't play that year. Oh and the Seattle Supersonics lost in the 1st round, thats somehow a black mark against Dr34m.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/530269-worst-of-the-best-50-worst-championship-teams-ever?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=outbrain#page/20

Oh yeah, how about you go out and win an NBA championship, then we can talk.

The Dream

2011-01-24T15:37:00.004-06:00

Update: The Hakeem interview went well.

Aside from some audio fidelity issues (this was a phone interview) and a polite decline of my request for a voicemail drop ("Wassup this is Dream, shake out a message for my all-star friend Dan Gentile") the interview went pretty well. We spoke for 40 minutes (he talks fairly slow).

I learned:

Despite his website's statement that he has a "private palace" in Jordan it is just a small house. He was upset about this, seems like somebody's gonna get fired. He would also love to have Michael Jordan visit him in Jordan.

Hakeem's dream shake would be vanilla with strawberries and bananas ("you've gotta keep it creative, mix it up, use different combinations").

When asking him about the controversy behind his height (some say 6'11, some say 7 foot) I got him to admit that he is in actuality 6 foot 5 inches. This took some convincing and included me using the phrase "Don't lie to me, Dream!"

He's not familiar enough with the ninja turtles to pick one that he most resembles, despite Dwight Howard (who he called the best big man in the game today) constantly referring to him as Master Splinter in an adorable YouTube video of the two working out together.

He has never played NBA Jam, thus making my question about whether he used the unstoppable combo of Shaq and Scott Skiles irrelevant.

We had some taco talk regarding the double decker, which he starred in a commercial for with Shaq. He said he's trying to watch his weight so he could probably only eat two of them, and that he would not want to compete with Shaq in an eating contest.

The fashion equivalent of a dream shake would be wearing a cashmere sweater with jeans. This was without a doubt the best part of the interview, Hakeem spoke very passionately about his personal style at length and how the key to fashion is to make it look like you're not trying.

He still plays 3v3 pickup games with Clyde Drexler. God help the other 4 guys that randomly end up in that game.

Those are the highlights. I might chop up some of the audio and post it soon. Watch for the Thrillist piece sometime next week.

Vintage Sampler Floppy Disk Salvation

2011-01-22T16:55:00.004-06:00

We interrupt these awesome basketball Dream posts to bring you your quarterly nerd report:

Having trouble backing up your Ensoniq EPS Classic (wiki) sound disks?

I was.

I've been using software called Omniflop which basically reads your non-pc formatted disks as raw as possible, then saves that as an 'image' onto a computer...which it can later use to recreate the floppy.

I ran into some problems with some EPS disks not wanting to read...hey, the most recent date on any of these 1989, so we can cut mother nature some slack in this case. Specifically, these disks WOULD load in the sampler, but would not load in my computer disk drive.

The solution:
Find a floppy that DOES load fine on your computer. This is going to be your 'transfer disk'.
Format your 'transfer disk' with your sampler. Make it fresh.
Take a 'problem disk', and load it into the sampler. Load the sounds as normal.
Now simply save the files onto your freshly formatted 'transfer disk'. If you could read the disk before, you can likely read it again, albeit this time with new data on it.

So it's a lot of insert disk, load, eject disk, insert xfer disk, save, eject disk, insert into pc, backup disk...over and over (more depending on your sampler, maybe)...but it is a way to salvage your material!

I will be posting soon about my experience into installing an HxC SD Floppy Emulator into this same EPS, so I don't have to go through this failing disk / drive nonsense again.

You may now return to higher caliber journalism.

-j

BONUS POINTS: Save an image file of the formatted disk, and instead of formatting in the sampler later, simply load the formatted image via the PC.

Smooth Jazz

2011-01-21T22:09:00.004-06:00

hey there Blogermanics! or should i say "Legomanics"!!

I thought there was no point to smooth jazz music....no environment where it was like "oh yeah, thats the stuff". I am happy to report I am wrong. When looking for video evidence of this: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?id=6037737&sportCat=ncf on youtube (amazing) I came across this:

ps howd that hakeem thing go? Everything you dr34med about?

Hakeem Update 2

2011-01-19T18:03:00.002-06:00

The Dream has agreed to let me interview him. Bloggermaniacs keep your eyes peeled for the full story next week.

Hakeem Update

2011-01-18T19:46:00.002-06:00

So I'm trying to interview Hakeem Olajuwon for my other blog. The reason for this post is to let you know that Hakeem's PR representation casually calls him Dream, as in, "I will speak to Dream today about this matter."

Keep your fingers crossed bloggermaniacs.

Hakeem

2011-01-10T10:43:00.001-06:00

Also, Hakeem is as serious about fashion as he is basketball.

horrible acting ("fuck you mom and dad")

2011-01-07T18:19:00.000-06:00

2011-01-06T21:05:00.001-06:00

Space/Time 001

2011-01-05T11:58:00.004-06:00

Hey there bloggermaniacs, I've missed you. I've got a few epic posts I've been sleeping on, mainly a review of the Kanye record, but in the meantime here's a mix my DJ homies and I put together.

Flying Turns - Space Time 001 Mix

J's 2010 - Non-2010-released-but-thoroughly-jammed-in-2010 best of

2011-01-02T12:12:00.006-06:00

01. Chemical Brothers - Further
Originally released 2010. BLEW MY MIND. Over and over. Again and again. Absolute best thing that's been released in years. The DVD is also worth it, and in a pricing mishap, I got the deluxe double disc version for less than the cost of the standard cd. This album is the most banging, psychedelic, dadgum beautiful thing I have heard since...damn maybe when I first heard those Bran Van remixes (more on that later). A MUST-JAM.

02. Toro Y Moi - Causers of this
Originally released 2010. This one sneaks in on a technicality, because even though it was actually released in 2010, I already had used it on my 2009 list. It's that good, let the thing rule the top of lists for both years. A MUST-JAM.

03. Soul Mann and the Brothers - Shaft
Originally released 1971. I just listened to this record so much this year. This is the origin of the very popular guitar sample found in Erykah Badu - Bag Lady and Dr. Dre - Xxplosive. Also this gets props for the massive GIGs of bounty it pulled filling a request on what. Works very great as bed music too when doing announcements on air.

04. The Rip-Off Artist - Copper Blue EP
Originally released in 2002. This is record I found this year that not only completely satisfied my expectations, but blew the doors off them. Some of the best, no bullshit, minimal/micro house you can find. Every track is killer and I mixed this with everything I could find, from Roy Acuff to Venetian Snares.

05. Roy Acuff and his Smoky Mountain Boys - Great Speckled Bird
Originally released 1958. The godfather of country music had a huge share of my needle wear this year. A voice that resonates straight from the throne, and melodies that remind you why home-grown american music is the defining force it is. Also, props to to the title track for inspiring my search to find all the songs that actually share that same melody (save that for a later post).

06. Tom T. Hall - Homecoming
Originally released 1969. Man, this dude can write a damn song. Sometimes slim-pickins to find his albums, but having a hits comp and the album 'Homecoming', which travels the distance between silly-country-story songs to full string section psychedelic-awareness-country-story songs, I'd say I played Homecoming straight through more than the other.

07. The XX - XX
Originally released 2009. Just a little late to the game with this one, this record has one of the most unique and bold sounds I've heard from a pretty popular band in a while. It's refreshing to hear this stuff coming out that sounds totally un-copycat from anything else out right now. If you don't know, it's super mellow.

08. Bran Van 3000 - Drinking in L.A.
Originally released in 1997. FLASHBACK. Found this record still sealed in Seattle and it stayed in my active crates for the rest of the year. You forget how good 90's jungle was then you hear these epic remixes and it hits you. SHIT WAS GOOD. (loosely related...)

09. John Tejada - The Matrix of Us
Originally released 2000. Whenever I need something smooth - but banging, distinctive - but familiar, analog - but digital, fast - but slow...you get the idea...I turn to this wonderfully edited vinyl EP. Tejada has range.

10. Joy Orbison - The shrew would have cushioned the blow
Originally released 2010. Another one I can't throw enough positive adjectives at. Songs usually 8-12 minutes, a big slap to the face to the trendiness of new genres...as this takes those elements and creates something completely it's own. Something for everybody in these tracks...bass, vox, beats, atmospheres, melodies, LFOs, shuffles...for technical refinement this guy takes the cake.

Whats on the Toob?

2010-12-29T16:00:00.004-06:00

So, today I fly back from my hawaiian vacation from hell. wtf is that supposed to mean? well, its a little thing called an out of season typhoon. Follow my logic here....out of season typhoon --> disruption of trade winds ---> volcanic ash descends on Maui (aka "VOG") ---> air outside is now poison to me ----> breathing problems ---> multiple doctors visits ---> over prescribed medication (plus no drinking or smoking, so much for the maui wowee)---> allergic reaction to said medication ---> feel like dying ---> havent been outside in a week. But hey, gotta take the good with the bad in life, and I am just so happy not to have met a ridiculous untimely end, I can not even tell yall. Live to see another day.

What all of this partially means is I have also gotten to catch up with what is on the TV these days. Im sure yall are all familiar with True Blood, but that show is badass. Also caught an amazing Glenn Gould documentary on PBS at about 3 AM last night. But where it gets heavy, we gotta give it up for "The Millionaire Matchmaker" on Bravo. That show is exactly what it sounds like. Millionaires generally in their 30s or 40s going on TV to get set up by a "3rd generation matchmaker with an EXTREMELY high success rate" as it says in the intro. Here is the catch. They are almost all retards, and every show follows this basic formula.

1. Video of subject explaining their problem. The matchmaker and her team disect the problems of subject ("oh great, this guy is a real asshole, this is gonna be a pain in the ass.")
2. Subject goes into office to meet with the Matchmaker, who says "you are having trouble finding love because you have these problems with your personality. When you show up at the mixer don't do x y and z. Subject says "but i dont have any personality problems!!" matchmaker says "but seriously, dont just stare at her tits" or something like that
3. Set up with 5-10 babes at a mixer gets to pick one they like, subject 50% of the time is unable to follow extremely basic advice from earlier, usually does something creepy
4. Subject picks one of babes from mixer for a "master date" around the town, or periodically they fly to Atlantic City or Barbados or something.
5. Subject makes an ass out of themselves at the date, generally by exposing the multiple basic personality flaws that were obvious from earlier.
6. Return to base post-date. Subject mouths off that it wasn't their fault, the Millionaire Matchmaker goes "get the fuck out of my office you piece of shit asshole! you are going to die a shrivled up crone in a nursing home because you dont deserve love!"
7. Last shot of the people on the date, with some text letting you know what happened... "Billy and Tara never spoke again" that kind of thing.

Its gold Jerry, you guys gotta get on board with this shit. I'll get the popcorn.

Cheap Christmas Post

2010-12-21T09:46:00.003-06:00

Paul McCartney - Wonderful Christmastime - Dig that Prophet-5 squeaking away

Robert Earl Keen - Merry Christmas From the Family - the song that spawned the book, the sequel song, and a bunch of kids in fake moustaches?!

2010-12-01T22:55:00.000-06:00

2010-11-21T18:48:00.001-06:00

saw some great bands at FFF fest

2010-11-11T15:37:00.006-06:00

Specifically 3 great bands. I missed my chance to see Dirty Projectors, so it could have been 4, but I think they are still playing the same set that they have been playing, which I have seen a few times, so its not as huge a loss as it could have been.

GENERAL THOUGHTS on FFF:
It was my first FFF fest. I think I was biased against it for some reason, mainly because I am emotional*. (*cheap). But this year, it came to my attention that it was possible to volunteer, so I went ahead and did that. My volunteer position was assistant stage manager to the orange stage (indie stage). It turned out there was already a paid professional who was the assistant manager, so Friday night ("Weird Al") I sort of got lumped in with the other volunteers, to my dismay. Friday was sort of the dry run night for the volunteers, and there were about 12 at the stage, and since none of us were really doing anything I had de facto free radical status. Due to some coordination emails, and my desire to meet the regular stage manager, I had gotten there extra early and been informed by the stage manager to stick around, so I missed the volunteer orientation, and ended up never being on the particular schedule for anything, which would come in handy later. One of the volunteers on Friday said she was only on the schedule to work Sunday, so I sort of just tried to make myself useful around the areas where there were bands I wanted to see, and didn't worry too hardcore about getting there right at noon "ready to volunteer!"

The first great band (of 3) that I would see was on Saturday, ARIEL PINK.

ARIEL PINK:
Fortunately I was on the side of the stage, because I heard that the sound in the crowd left something to be desired for, or that people were exhausted by the end of the (short) set, or something. The sound from the stage was great, except one keyboard was jacked way too loud, but since the guy playing it was switching between 2 keyboards and a guitar, it only ended up marring a small percentage of the set, and really marring is too strong a word. That was the first day, and at the time I was volunteering at the side of the orange stage. We volunteers had gotten a few mixed signal speeches as far as how much watching of bands we could actually do vs. work ("this is Fun Fun Fun fest! You do a little work and there's still 2 Fun's left over" as well as "this isn't Fun Fun Fun for you, you are here to work"). The guy who was the boss was the one who said to have fun, so I tried my best to ignore the other guy. It was cool tho, by Sunday we had smoothed it over.

So yeah, Ariel is in some next level shit territory with his combo of elite musicians, but truth be told, I'm not sure he will equal the brilliance of his early singles, "Helen", "Every Night I Die at Myagis" "Life In LA" etc, etc. The band did play "Getting High in the Morning" and a new one towards the end, but it was pretty heavy off this summers "Before Today", as to be expected. I think 2 guys in his band are veterans from old Subpop bands, probably all of the have some sort of pedigree. They still have room to grow as a band, but I think the influences of the other members is gonna be a bit proggy, especially the bassist, although he is a genius. The driving force is still gonna have to be Ariel, and it will be interesting to see how heavily he leans on his musical geniuses band moving forward, now that he has the musicianship to do whatever he wants. I think the band was feeling it pretty good, he was prancing around for the set and all that. The new one sounded like it could have landed on "Before Today" and I'd bet there next record is going to be something slightly to the left of more-of-the-same from that record, and while I'm sure its going to be great, its going to be a process that is hard to get back from.

I got kicked off the stage for not being "important enough" by a dude working this set, despite the fact that 3-4 of his co-workers were telling me to keep sneaking on stage. I was arguing, refusing to leave the place where I was positioned to work, and eventually a bro a little higher up in the command chain was sent over to separate us. This is how I got bounced down to do what I was "hired" to do, only at the black stage.

A WORD ON THE BLACK STAGE.
The black stage is the reason this festival exists. The orange stage is to make it financially feasible, but really the black stage is where its at. The folks backstage plus the Soundmen were probably the A team, although a couple of the folks really running the Orange stage could just as easily been on the A team as well. Other evidence...check the layout of the festival, as seen from backstage.

BLACK STAGE ---- ORANGE STAGE ---- SCHMOOZE TENT/FOOD - BLUE STAGE (and then in the corner of the park the wrestling / stupid and yet entertaining shit area).

Notice that the Black stage is the farthest from the Schmooze tent. The crowd was way more into the bands there, and from what I saw, with a few exceptions the mid-tier bands on the Black stage were much better. I'd like to think the crowd was more discerning, but there is actually no way (more on that later). From the schmooze tent area you could walk right up to the back of the Blue/rap stage, and also cross to the backstage area of the Orange stage. There was pretty general access (for example Mother Falcon got 19 wristbands for their friends, since there were 19 band members....all 38 could be back in that area), however to get backstage at the Black stage, there was another level of security / a solid choke point, and the backstage area was unconnected to all the previously mentioned area.

I spent the rest of Saturday actually helping out on the Black Stage. It was fun. There was a backline company and they had all these amps and cabs in a truck and we were loading them back and forth. I got a nice save in there pretty much off the bat....all those folks had been working since like 9 in the morning, and my fresh eyes kept some shit that was still plugged in from falling over, which after 12 hours of moving shit over and over gets to be something that can happen. The Dwarfs and The Vandals were good, and then it was time for GWAR. It was hilarious being backstage for that. They have a costume changing tent all set up, and one guy goes back there over and over during the set to get changed out from character to character. Show business folks. And then Bad Religion, who has some hits in my mind as defined by "tracks I liked used in the Tony Hawk Pro Skater" franchise, but really other than that, they are not exactly some mind blowing band. Still it was an interesting end to the night. Went home and boozed it up a little with my roommates and my bro Poncho who was in from Mexico for the festival.

SUNDAY
Sunday I wanted to get there in time to see Deerhunter. I wasn't on the volunteers schedule and again had free radical status as far as when to show up, but of course there is a volunteer check in station at the front, so I met the coordinator there and she sent me to work the Hospitality lounge. I negotiated that I would first check in with the guys from the black stage, and those guys said come back during Snapcase cause shit is gonna hit the fan with backlining Mastadon's gear and they could use all hands on deck. I told them I was theirs for the rest of the night, with the exception of 7-8 for Deerhunter. So I went to hospitality and sliced avocados for a few hours. The guy in charge of hospitality had been to HEB like 8 times in the last couple days. A funny worker bee existence, I feel like I've had similar days in there somewhere. He was a cool guy. I did run into the Deerhunter bassist outside the hospitality tent and traded him a book for getting to see their show from the stage. I got the idea from this chick* (*major dancer babe, with armpit hair) who was traveling with Ariel Pink. We were rocking out together. It was nice to have someone to do that with, I think she probably felt the same way, but in any case she had one of these little books like the type I'd bring to substitute teach with her, and it made me think "fuck I wish I had one of those books to trade her". So I brought a book, but I think they had already scooted on down the road, cause I didn't see her that next day. I think I would recognize her if she was with the band next time they come thru, but I am worried it wont be for a bit...maybe not until next album. I would travel to see that band tho, if the circumstance was right. Anyways, I have an intention of stockpiling similar books and starting a rock and roll book club called the "say hi" book club. Saying Hi is optional, but encouraged.

Saw DEERHUNTER:
I had a friend tell me that Black Lips and Deerhunter just got big because there was one booker in ATL who those bands were in with and they just kept booking them until finally someone was like "holy shit, these guys played with Stereolab, etc etc etc" and the list went on and then it was time to stick them on the world tour circuit. But at the end of the day (leaving the Black Lips out of the conversation) Deerhunter is a fucking great band. Real heavyweights. They have cultivated their tone until it is the best possible, and they play it loud. Somehow, the real power of rock and roll is best expressed thru $x000 amps cranked to 11, run thru pedal boards, and they go there. Their best moment was the extended jam during "Desire Lines" off their new LP. It got to this repeated riff section that just eventually folded over on itself in a way where the beat got lost. Totally psychadelic. Like "if we just play this long enough". I feel like its the type of moment the band has always been building towards. It doesn't show up on the record, which is really a shame but go see them live. But that track just really shows a maturity that is not on Microcastle, and "Nothing Ever Happened", the single off that record which they played, really paled in comparison to it. I have to say, as much as I like Cryptograms, and as much as that record has some standout tracks, "Desire Lines" is probably their best track thusfar.

After Deerhunter it was back to the black stage, where instead of moving more gear, I found myself running security during Suicidal Tendencies and Mastadon. It was a shame to miss High On Fire...again really I think Deerhunter vs High On Fire would have been avoided if it had been a scenerio where the festival wasn't trying to appeal to 2 distinct groups just to get the attendance/financials working out, cause fuck I wanted to see both bands.

But yeah, Suicidal Tendencies, I was like "hey these guys are pretty fun" to a guy working backstage, and he was like "yeah, I guess they are....but theyre not really my thing" and I was like "what....you don't like rap rock?" And we sort of had a laugh because they are fucking proto-Limp Bizkit rap-rock. It was a fun show, but the crowd ate it up the same way they ate up Mastadon, who are actually a real band and totally fucking mind-blowingly awesome. Working security was really fun....there are 2 people who work for the security company that are the first line of defense, and people legitly or non-legitly trying to talk their way past them, and then you have to sort of be the guy that knows the difference. And then as your reward, you get the best view in the house for MASTADON.

MASTADON looks like they _________ (insert metal cliches here involving snowy mountains and swords and shit). They are fucking incredible. I read up on their backstory on wikipedia after the fact, and you will not be wasting your time if you do the same. They are probably the best metal band alive right now, I would be surprised if someone is better. They will go down in the historical retelling of metal. They look like evil cavemen, and they play like evil cavemen. I can't imagine a scenario where I would want to listen to their records because I would be too exhausted at the end, but these guys are fucking redonk.

And then that was it. A couple days in rock and roll land. I met some nice rockers, it was cool.

I'm a man, I'm 40

2010-11-02T15:45:00.001-05:00

in the throws of a horrible, horrible, horrible football season, relive this little piece of magic, courtesy Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy:

I figured out why I hate facebook messaging

2010-11-01T20:29:00.004-05:00

...its because it takes an extra click. First you gotta be on the internet, then you gotta be in facebook, then you have to click on your email to get to your email, and then you have to click again to open it. I would rather be in my "portal" or whatever and just already be on my email. Plus facebook pretty much single handedly reintroduced spam back into the internet, because you get all this stuff from Events that you didn't sign up to go. I also think its really stupid that you can not erase things that people put on your wall now. That's not really annoying, it just could get very tacky, quickly. And call me paranoid, but I think its somehow tangently related to the reintroduction of spam. Its already annoying it pulls up so and so likes "thing, with news story and picture" and its usually a product with a bot or an intern who is adding other people. Stealth advertizing yall. I'm talkin a slow normalization of social media marketing techniques. Total corporate takeover. Don't forget, these are the same guys that killed JFK that we are talking about, not to be taken lightly. And to think...all people really like about it is that you can share pictures with all your friends, and it takes less clicks than on myspace.

(and don't even get me started on blogging)

what they do

2010-10-27T15:44:00.001-05:00

Bonus, this is ridiculous:

New Reverse X Rays

2010-10-24T01:52:00.000-05:00

is being mixed right now

Back in the 1808 saddle // Holy Wave

2010-10-19T11:17:00.004-05:00

bros and broettes,

I'm doing shows at Club 1808 again, if you are interested, I may solicit you. Being a substitute teacher is rewarding on a day-to-day-making-money-doing-something-useful-to-society level, but not to be throwing shows its like...the itch isn't not there, so I'm back in the game. Plus the calls have dried up ever since I lost those Pre-K kids...

Saw a great band last night from Austin called Holy Wave. I don't know how long they have been around but the sound was overall pleasant. Heavy without being grating, plesantly melodic. The singer has long blond hair and is relaxed around the mic like the the way his arms move suggests a hidden inertia, like the power could be released at any moment, and yet, never is (in physical form). Its probably obvious right now that i have forgotten everything i learned in high school science, because I really should be able to do a better job explaining what I am trying to say. I liked the vibe of true rockers of yore. Nothing girly about the singing. Anyways yall should check these guys out, it felt great to see a new Austin band I hadn't heard yet that was really great

x0xb0x Etudes - pt 7

2010-10-10T13:08:00.007-05:00

+1,500 solder points later....aaaccciiiddd

First run through is totally unaffected, then it gets run through an effect I wrote dubbed the Bitsmacker (it's a free download if you like distortion).

The decay knob just started working on me...must have been a bridged connection.

For the sake of the blog, I'm calling this one complete. Thank yall for taking this journey with me, and giving me an outlet to document the workflow.

For the sake of honesty, I doubt it will ever be done...I want to add some of the Devilfish mods and also things like audio in to the filter because that ho really whistles.

x0xb0x Etudes - pt 6

2010-10-09T19:30:00.002-05:00

Ups and downs strikes and gutters...

Thursday night - lots of progress... digital section mostly complete, all leds in place, nothing to test so assumed was ok.

Friday night - lots of buttons soldered in, chips socketed, jumpers connected (still managed to get one backwards!!!), but finally, LIFE. Things sounded great, though a little off...the low notes were INCREDIBLY low .. I'm talking 15hz type ish...just sounded like clicking. Also, had something loose and a slight touch would reboot the thing.

Saturday - Determined the loose connection was the voltage regulator, which had gotten bent back and forth repeatedly over the course of moving this thing around and always using it as ground reference. I just broke it off and resoldered it onto the bottom of the board.

Much more stable now, but tuning is not going well. Turns out the octaves are just way off...it should not have been that low. One of the thermistors at R100B was blown, which was basically setting the base pitch way too low. Quick visit to the x0x forums and this is illuminated, along with the fact that I could replace thermistor for plain old resistor.
Power back on and BING the thing sounds great now. Much more like the tb-303 notes I was used to.

Of course though, I somehow managed to break the decay knob...so I've got to get another one of those.

Basically though, it's finished, it squawks, and I'm happy. Hoping to replace Decay knob soon.

-J

2010-10-07T17:37:00.001-05:00

x0xb0x Etudes - pt 5

2010-10-07T14:04:00.002-05:00

Holy crap, I'm getting close.

Last night I finished the Headphone / Mixer section, as well as the I/O board which has all the plugs and jacks on it. They are still sitting separately now, which means testing at this phase is not really possible.

One quirk I noticed was that, for the VCA test, I could not get a tone to come out of my headphones. I checked it on the scope though, and it looked ok, like there was a sound being made and then tapered off. I'm going to go on faith now, because everything looks to be in order.

Also, I still hate desoldering...I didn't make a mistake this time, but as I was soldering a cap in on the IO board, it kind of shifted out of it's socket and was just barely hanging in there. I fought this for an hour trying to remove the solder and re-seat the cap.

Anyway, I'm on the second to last section of the fab manual, which means a lot of redundant, tedious soldering as I get the digital controller + leds + buttons working.

I've given up on doing mods this round, as I just want to make sure the sumbitch works first, then I'll try to open it up and mod it...cause damn those Devilfish mods sound so good.

BONUS:
My favorite x0xb0x vid out right now:

x0xb0x Etudes - pt 4

2010-10-06T16:37:00.003-05:00

Envelope + VCA done.

Desoldering sucks.

First that damn wrong transistor, then the wrong pot. Got to watch those differences between D and B pots! I do have a solder sucker now so it's helping some.

The only other issue, after the envelope / gate section my tests weren't passing. It was either reversed or loose transistors around Q36 - I'm socketing all the 733 transistors so I can swap them out for higher beta ones if I ever feel like it. Anyway, they were loose, but once I touched up a couple solder points and stuck them in more firmly, the gate tests passed just fine.

On to the headphone and mixer/amp section.

x0xb0x Etudes - pt 3

2010-09-27T17:42:00.004-05:00

VCO (that's Voltage Controlled Oscillator, if you missed it) is now complete.
VCF (filter) is also complete.

Ruminations:
Either a) My scope is weird or b) I don't know how to use my scope.

When I check the waveforms, first square looked a little off...not entirely symmetrical along the y-axis, nor on the x-axis (ie pulsewidth looked off). Changing the tuning seems to make the wave look better though, as if the PW changes with the tuning somewhat.

Also, if you follow the fabrication manual exactly, then they forgot to mention you need to have R46 soldered in before you test the square wave.

Then I built the filter, and while it didn't look ENTIRELY correct on my scope, I'm chalking it up to either a or b above. Turning the cutoff definitely produced a much more sine-y waveform, and all the way open showed a square/saw with lots of high freq harmonics going on.

Now the biggest bummer I had though, is I'm feeling all high now, and so I decide to move on to the Envelope section. Much to my dismay, it makes a note that out of two transistors, which had previously been referred to as the same piece, they are not the same and you need one particular one in this instance. Sure enough, I had already soldered that one into the VCO earlier, thinking they were the same piece. Literally HOURS spent trying to desolder that sumbitch and in the end I totally broke / hosed the damn component. Of course, this is one of the 'rare' vintage parts that you can't just order from mouser. Luckily, I find this pedalhacker shop on ebay and I've got two replacement 2SK30A-Y K30A in the mail to me now, at a reasonable price (read, $1, $4.20 w shipping).

So production is somewhat on hold as I wait for the missing link. I will consider doing mods now, even though I initially forgot to do them on the VCF, and then qualified it by saying it's too much a pain in the ass right now, and I'll do it later.

In other news, I feel like I can solder ANYTHING now.

x0xb0x Etudes - pt. 2

2010-09-25T19:30:00.003-05:00

Power Supply completed last round.
VCO section is what I am working on now, and glory be, I got a sawtooth.

It didn't come without a bit of pain though.

First problem, in my attempts to be overly organised to make the process smoother, I made a mistake and put all the schematic part numbers for a couple of similar looking transistors under the wrong batch. This was not a huge problem once I realised that a set of 10 transistors probably didn't go in 24 different places. Anyway, thought I'd mention it as it could have completely derailed the project.

The second problem was a total new one to me: CONTROL VOLTAGE. How did I miss the part of the prep guide that said I would need a variable power supply to test the thing?!
Anyway, I got my sawtooth generator all put together, and when I went to test, I was getting very strange results. Weird waveforms, a lot of incorrect DC offset, on and on. I figured, incorrectly, that you could test this stage WITHOUT the variable power supply (supplying control voltage) applied. Boy was I wrong.
So, a quick trip to 'The Shack', as they are very obviously trying to rebrand to now, picked up a voltage regulator, and using parts I had lying around I managed to build a working variable power supply running off a 9 volt. It supplies between 1.25 and 7 volts.
Once I got that in place per the fabrication manual, things started to look exactly right. That saw wave is beautiful, and the tuning pot and the PS adjustment all change the frequency of what I see on the scope.
So I learned that you really shouldn't try to skip steps. I thought, CV, who cares? I won't be messing with it anyway. What I failed to realise is that the CV circuit seems to be integral to the proper functioning of the saw tooth generator.
I was hoping to have the entire VCO finished last night, but a lack of adjustable power supply and a wicked case of allergies has left me OVERLY pleased with my little, buzzy waveform.

Next time, the square wave + VCO completion.

2010-09-24T00:12:00.001-05:00

x0xb0x Etudes - pt 1

2010-09-22T21:39:00.005-05:00

Howdy everyone
Do you know the 303?
It's a bassline synth made in the early 80s, vaulted to cult status via acid house, and now firmly seated in the uber-expensive realm of high profile gear lust.

Well if you can't afford one, why not build one from scratch?

Having finally exhausted my excuses to procrastinate (no oscilloscope, no iron, no sockets), I have recently begun doing just this using a kit I bought years ago from Ladyada's site above.

Tonight I did the power supply.
The fabrication guide was immensely helpful, if you are going to do this yourself, READ THE MANUAL AS YOU GO!!! It provides all sorts of insight into which resistor is what, what color codes you are looking for, and common mistakes.

So these posts pertaining to my progress will be more about my personal mistakes.

First, I think sockets are a must. You don't want to fry the ICs with your shitty soldering hand, so just spend the 50cents and get sockets (you need 1 6pin, 3 8pin, 2 14pin, and 9 16pin).
Second, test as often as the manual suggests; no fun flipping the switch and no boomboom.
Third, the only mistake I made on the power supply, check your connection names! I soldered some jumper wires to the wrong set of three jumper holes (j6 vs j4 I believe) and really had a hell of a time desoldering and removing those hos. In hindsight, I probably should have chilled and just left them because I will probably end up needing to put them back anyway.

ON MODS:
I only did one modification to the power supply and that is adding a power switch. It is a real PITA to 'cut the trace' between the bottom most pin on the power jack and where it connects to, but anyway thats where you put the two wires which will eventually go to a spst switch. For now, I just twisted them back together. If you know a good way to 'cut the trace' on a pcb, please comment and let me know. I just used a dull knife tip and scraped the shit out of it repeatedly (not recommended, but doable).

I will return, hopefully sooner rather than later, with pt 2 on building the VCO (I will need to set up my huge scope for this, so that's a reason to procrastinate).

-J

edit:
let's hope it goes something like this -

2010-09-19T17:02:00.000-05:00

Daft Punk - raw tracks

2010-09-17T10:00:00.006-05:00

I'll just leave these here...

http://www.divshare.com/download/12580805-6d5
(41 tracks, 30mb of recordings used to create 'technologic', 'emotion', amongst others)

Incredible to hear their process at a bit different stage. These seem incredibly untouched, probably the original raw recordings. Somebody's having fun with formant filters...

Speaking of awesome sandwiches....

2010-09-16T10:55:00.001-05:00

...check out my burger expose on Thrillist.

La Grange!

2010-09-14T11:35:00.002-05:00

Hey, did yall ever see this? This was us playing in Barcelona. There is a full screen button on the vimeo player if you are feeling gangster

La Grange at Inusual Music, Barcelona from EYEPLUG / tall reed on Vimeo.

The Crush Is On: Awesome Sandwitch

2010-09-13T17:45:00.003-05:00

I made an awesome sandwitch yall, and just had to share.

It was a double decker...3 pieces of toast. Key ingredient was leftover steak and roast slices from my grandma.

I heated them up in a pan with butter, seasoning each side up with lemon pepper. When it was warm, I put them between the bread and covered at both layers with stubbs BBQ sauce. Then after a first bite I realized I wanted to try throwing some honey on there. First I mixed a little honey with the Stubbs BBQ sauce on my plate to find a consistancy that I liked. Once I knew what I was working with I just put a thin layer of honey right in the middle of the sandwich. It was great, I wish I had a picture.

I washed it all down with a glass and a half of milk.

The Crush is On

New Year, New Wave

2010-09-12T13:38:00.003-05:00

September is in the air. The most exciting of all months on the Austin social calendar, IMO. New spaces and people, and yet, next verse same as the first. Had a chance this weekend to hit up 3 events...the first New Guild Coop party of the year "around the world" where you go from room to room and try a different drink, the first Rancho Dance party of the new tenants career, and the party the Totally Wreck crew was having at their new warehouse space over on Bolm road. The Coop party sort of had an ironic time-traveler feel to it for me. How i did not get any booty when I was living at one is a mystery to me (due to selective memory) because it is just a bunch of folks getting drunk and then lusty. I guess I didn't have what it takes, but fortunately the result is that I got spit out the other end of the Coop Lifecycle Workshop STD free, so we can call it a wash.

It was also a miraculous night because I got to ride my bike for the first time in 2 months. Next stop would be to truck it down to Rancho and see what those folks were doin with the place. Well, they painted the garage to do movie shoots in it, that was a bit of a disappointment. We were pretty sure the property management company had done it at first, but hey, its their place now. And the backyard was still "yup, its rancho alright." Same hodgepodge of folks drinking and throwing their beer cans on the ground. Only now, thankfully I don't have to pick them up.

The real winner of an event this weekend was last night at the Totally Wreck place. I love the parking lot, and just chilled there for the first hour, hour and a half. It has this very yellow, very Austin lighting for the parking lot. My friend Kate said one time she always knew she was in Austin by the yellow light, and it really could not have been more true than at this parking lot outside their new warehouse space. It was great, basking in the yellow light. It was pretty hot in the room from reports, but I didn't think it was that hot. It was a little loud so that unless you were dancing it made more sense to hang out in the parking lot with the cool kids. really i was just waiting for the night to be almost over to go in there and dance. Hanging out in a parking lot drinking is just where it is at. "Outside the show" (there was a show, but I think I didn't notice. Someone told me it was the best show they had seen in a long time....some sort of sound problems turned into a meltdown / breakdown that somehow involved the crowd and was awesome, or something). Par for the course (in a good way). I'm just glad there seems to be a dedicated space for the New Wavers to have a party once a month or whatever. It is just outside enough that it keeps the riff raff gone, and yet is actually pretty damn close, although I dont know that I want to be biking down Airport, I am probably always going to drive when i go there, or get a ride (plenty of people biked it). Projections by Lori and also Vidkids. I really liked the party because I knew I could just wait around at this one party and all my friends would basically cycle in and around. It was great to catch up with so many folks.

Then at the end of the night the dance party scene was great. There was one girl playing it cool and one guy going nuts, and I could kinda swing how i felt like dancing from one polarity to the other.

CraigScrape

2010-08-29T23:49:00.005-05:00

Howdy yall
So, maybe I should have posted this earlier, but I decided to program a craigslist 'scraper', if you will, last spring.
Craigscrape - the Craigslist multi-term, multi-city search @ TurntableArchives.com

Why?
To aid a certain style of craigslisting.

WTF does it do?
It runs multiple craigslist searches from one page. Choose a category, then type in MULTIPLE terms with commas (like this, and this, and this one), and then do the same for cities (must match craigslist convention).
It will then search all those terms, and group them by city, and display on one page.

Example?
I often search for the terms, 'synth', 'synthesizer', 'sampler', and 'drum machine', and i want to see what is available in many cities, Houston, Austin, College Station.
I can set the category to musical instruments, and then type all those terms, and all those cities ('collegestation' is what craigslist recognises), and get all the results one one page.
NO MORE MULTIPLE SEARCHES!!!! One click and I am DONE!

Try it out for yourself!

Real Madrid // Malcolm Brown

2010-08-23T12:05:00.002-05:00

Hey Yall

In Madrid. Wanted to hit you with some knowledge. I broke a nice little code of human existance. I like to call it "how to read a map". 2.0 yall. In Spain they tell you over and over again "watch out for pickpockets!" but what they really should tell you is "you will be robbed by every other restraunteur in the central part of the city. And the food will be dogshit." If you are thinking about paella consider the following: to make decent paella you need fresh seafood. Any place worth a shit selling paella will only do it on certain days of the week when they get a fresh shipment Ergo, any place advertizing paella every day probably has a whole menu of dogshit and they make their living fleecing tourists. BTW, when i say theiving restraunteurs, i mean it literally: not just that the food is bad and overpriced, but in addition to those 2 things I would say 5 out of 10 meals things have mysteriously ended up on the bill that were not ordered / the cost of things would be different on the bill than on the menu / the waiter would straight up make up a final total for the bill (in our case yesterday 23 euros instead of 16).

Well today I tasted victory in the form of delicious gespacho and I want to tell you how i did it.

Step one: look at subway map. Look for all places where 4 subway lines meet. Now make sure none of those subway lines go anywhere near hotels/museums/bars/tourists. Congradulations, you have sucessfully located where local folks who do things like work for a living constantly travel thru, and where tourists never go. Ok, now go there. Look for the place on the corner that is obviously a local institution. In the case of my afternoon today in Madrid, that place was Hontanares on Av America.

Literally everything in the restraunt looked delicious.

so thats that.

//////////////////
2: while you were out of the office....the university of Texas signed the biggest Running Back recruit since Adrian Peterson. His name is Malcolm Brown. We are now going to kick ass at football, and probably will win a national championship in the next couple years, probably next year. Aww yea dog.

I would post highlights and a Madrid metro map, but I gotta go actually. I really shouldnt be writing this right now at all, but I thought these 2 notes were very important.

Peace.

Beam me up Scottie

2010-08-13T09:36:00.000-05:00

On the eve of Scottie Pippen’s induction into basketball’s highest society, Phil Jackson recalled him as “the ultimate team player.”

Romance Tip #3

2010-08-02T15:09:00.001-05:00

Dress like Mayer Hawthorne.

Romance Tips #2: Goddess Worship

2010-07-31T13:44:00.004-05:00

Everyone take a chill pill, and read what this guy has to say:

but remember kids...
"Keep you communication appropriate to the gate number that you find yourself at. Appreciation the curve of a woman's breast, for example, if she happens to be the cashier at the supermarket, would equate more to harassment than worship."

BONUS 1995 NFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME FOOTAGE:

Romance Tips #1

2010-07-28T14:11:00.005-05:00

REPLACE THESE STARS WITH HOMEPAGE SUMMARY<-->"I smell a new column coming on." E. Saucepot's words, not mine, ladies and gentlemen. I must oblige.

So what is it I've been learning out here in this crazy world? Romance tips that's what, and I've come to share em with you.REPLACE THESE STARS WITH FULL POST<-->

One I really like, a Lil' Wayne quote, "you can never erase the stain of confidence." Are you comfortable being you? Yeah, that's what I like to hear, don't let anyone take that away from you! Even when she's treating you like a dog. Who know's, with the stain of confidence, you may be able to turn that into "cute lost puppy" and that could be your in. Never give up!!

Oh yeah, and another thing...the question no ones been asking, but maybe they should:

What's the ideal date scenario?

I know those in "The Game" "community" would say you are never supposed to go on dates. That may be true if you are trying to get laid with some tramp off 6th street, maybe dating is not right for you, but let me tell ya, there are some classy ladies out there, and they are not gonna just bang you because you "neg"ed them in front of their sorority sisters...they don't even have em!!! Now That's Class.

**
your mind just exploded
**

So yeah, when faced with a situation like this, a dating scenario, I know the drill...in addition to being of average looks, I'm not a cool guy. But I have a little thought experiment I like to run, it goes like this..."If i WAS a cool guy, what would I do in this situation?" This can be a very valuable thought experiment, because many times the answer is as simple as "don't call her right now, even though you really want to." Duhh!! why were you going to do that anyways?

But what about a date? A cool guy wants to go on a date, because a cool guy wants to spend time with the girl. That's the whole point right? But no pressure, no other people is best IMH-romance-tip-giving-O, and for god's sake don't let it drag. A first date is not a prog record. "Double Live" is about record 5 or 6 if I'm not mistaken, and usually only to get through the end of a bad contract. I think we've all been there.

First date, it can be a standardized affair. Why not? How do you think that got invented in the first place? For a major babe, you have to "wow", but you are gonna have to do that anyways, trust me, we are gonna need to set up a separate plan for that. You're not gonna wow her by going bowling instead of getting coffee. Cut out all the bullshit and just get the coffee. You are sitting down, she is sitting down, there is a mild stimulant involved making you both naturally feel good. If things are going real well, test the waters and invite the lady to the park for a smoking of a J, but if she's the motivated type, she's probably too busy, and also a bit wary of smoking J's late at night with a stranger.

But say you don't get there and it goes well, what about the second date? Now for a good tip, an unbeatable combo really: morning time, park, and J. You wanna play it sassy, throw a picnic on there, but sassy is not really cool. "What would a cool guy do?" I donno, I think he might just stick to the basics. What can go wrong? You throw the picnic maybe you are making it too much pressure for her. Really, you just got coffee one time, and now you are making a goddamn picnic???

But you don't want to just sit there...unless...

Unless you have a J handy, and now its time to flip it on her "if she was a cool girl what would she do?" I think she smokes it. Last time I checked, there was a heavy correlation, if not causation, between weed and coolness, and second date is a little early for her to be blowing her "I'm not cool" non-smoke rings in the air, because she is not even smoking.

The upside to this plan, you both end up spacing out a little bit, and then you are comfortable being around each other just spacing out. Congraduations, you have just successfully played the "I'm comfortable being me" card, and you found out if she's comfortable being her as well. And even if she's not, maybe the weed just took over. What could be better?

You get that baseline down, and who knows, maybe she will want to see what you are doing that night, the ball is in her court, but you have done your best.

Spiked Punch Live Phonecast

2010-07-27T14:16:00.007-05:00

Tit for tat, you usurp my posts, I usurp yours. Totally kidding by the way but this is a better way to say 'Im sorry' I think.

How did I miss the Spiked Punch web/phone/pod/beachcast?!

It's really awesome and anyone reading this blog would be losing out by missing this one!
http://phoningitin.net/shows/532-Spiked-Punch <-that there's the link

<-that there's the music

Sowy!!

2010-07-27T12:47:00.004-05:00

hey guys,

im sorry for that downer of a last post. I got all in freakout mode from bein by myself, but I want everyone out there to know I am staying positive, despite the Iraq war. Good vibe radio waves. I really just wanted to post to say I'm sorry, especially for Spaming a bunch of shit after J's awesome post about some sort of technical jargon related to 30 year old synthesizers, which I thought was really cool, and completely didn't understand (you really should go back and put some tags on that post so when people search it in the future it will show up on google), but I suppose I should post something funny as a way to make up for it, so here's the trailer to "The Ladies Man" starring Tim Meadows:

BONUS VIDEOS:
"yeah we did some pretty messed up junk, heh heh heh"

"I am a master of greco-roman wrestling" and "10-4 apricot"

"whoops, butterfingers"

"And I am lookin at a half empty bottle of Courvoisier which means we are just about out of time"

2010 controversies

2010-07-25T21:01:00.004-05:00

we are over halfway there guys! what shook us to the core in 2010?

lets ask wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:2010_controversies

OK, we've got 5 big ones...

* Arrest of Bradley Manning

* Boobquake

* Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

* Newsweek gay actor controversy

* 2010 Tonight Show conflict

Hmm, that first one, never heard of that guy, lets come back to it. Boobquake, apparently 200,000 women shook the earth with their boobs. Some people liked it and some didn't. Controversy ensued. Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, yeah I think I remember hearing about that, the South Park guys did that right? Also some guy in Newsweek said gay guys can't convincingly portray straight guys. Good thing America still has bros around like Bruce Willis to get the job done for us, otherwise, I think we might have some sort of national identity crisis, especially now that I hear mr. Braveheart Mel Gibson is leaving the country. Maybe he's just looking for some "freeedddooooom" (isn't that from that movie?) And I don't think anyone is forgetting Free Coco any time soon.

But wait, what was that first one tho?
22 year old Army bro thinks he's upholding the constitution by exposing murder by the US Army to wikileaks, even tho his CO clearly told him to stfu? I think I saw something about that on the cover of cnn.com for a day, about 30 seconds before our country went back to forgetting we are in endless war in two different countries right now (with towelheads, its ok). Fight them over there so we dont have to fight them over here, i think. So they threw Bradley in the pen without charge for a month and now they do charge him and he's looking at 55 years and being denied lawyers? Sounds like you done fucked up, bro. First rule about hackerclub: dont talk about hackerclub. That's actually the second rule as well. Oh well, good luck man. I'll be sure and cry some Lindsay Lohan sized crocodile tears for you and your mama if they come down with a guilty verdict, but I guess there are worse things than going to jail indefinitely for a good cause, like say, being one of the 5500 dead soldiers, or 1000x? dead Iraqis or Afgans (that x? means I have no idea how many 0s there are supposed to be), or watching the American economy go down the drain because we are too busy spending money on this shit (although maybe they'll let you do that too...do you get TV in military jails?)

slash on rockline

2010-07-24T06:57:00.001-05:00

trying to break the 2010 casavista double digits in one month record. this shit is hillarious

vintage gayle gold

2010-07-23T17:26:00.005-05:00

IMO, the best Austin band of the last couple years that just broke up waaay before their time. Not that these folks arent still all around making music, but this was gonna be a great band. This is February 09 at the Salvage Vanguard. Never forget.

awethumfest 4, last show, Sxsw 09 I guess? I think RXR played this one, it was the only show we played together:

UNRELATED REGGAE SOUL COVER:

vintage norm

2010-07-23T09:02:00.002-05:00

not the first time ive been led down a youtube rabbit hole originating from a Bill Simmons column on espn, but here is some vintage norm macdonald, the (and i know this is going to be hard for some people to believe) favorite comic of my preteen years.

Escape from MPC2KXL Hell

2010-07-22T16:04:00.003-05:00

Come on a journey with me as we take the Akai MPC to a level of nerdom you might not have thought possible...but it just might bail some poor sap out.

Here's the scenario:
I've got a late 90's model Akai, the MPC 2000XL.
The problem all began when I decided to take some stereo samples I had and convert them to mono.
I do this because I like to use my 8 output card, and when I'm playing live, I don't always care about stereo. By converting my stereo sample to mono I not only save space, but I can keep my 8-output routing scheme intact (BD on channel 1, SNR on channel 2, etc).
By default, 'converting' a stereo sample to mono internally on the MPC results in two files:'SAMPLE________-L' and 'SAMPLE________-R' (assuming the stereo sample is named 'SAMPLE').

The thing to notice here is that the length of the filename is set to the maximum the MPC can handle - 16 characters.
Seems straightforward enough...until you save your samples to a compact flash or SD card, and then back them up on your PC; you are about to kiss your nicely formed sample programs goodbye.

What happens when you start manipulating these files on the PC, is that the filesystem truncates all the filenames to FAT16 standards...which happens to be 8 characters + a 3 character extension (in this case, WAV or SND). Suddenly, the samples you just made with 16 character names are just lopped off at 8 chars. The PC freaks out, and to make matters worse, 2 of these files now appear to have the same name (both 'SAMPLE________-L' and 'SAMPLE________-R' get truncated to 'SAMPLE__', or something similar).
The next time you go to load your PGM or APS file, the MPC complains saying it cannot find the file 'SAMPLE________-L', or 'SAMPLE________-R'.

This can be a pretty devastating occurence depending on the program you are trying to load. In one particular case, I 'lost' about 40 samples (drums and chops), and there would be no way I could remember where each sample went if I wanted to recreate the program from scratch. I almost just gave up, and figured I would just send that track to the grave (something I really hated to do).

Then I started to get an idea. I knew the samples WERE there, just with the wrong names, all I had to do was recreate the files that the MPC claimed were missing.
I originally tried to do this on the PC, pretty much knowing it wouldn't work, and of course it didn't. For posterity though, what I originally did was make a copy of one of the 'corrupt', misnamed files, and rename it to what the MPC was expecting. Of course this failed because the FAT16 filesystem pretty much just went ahead truncated that file name as well.
The key here is to do all of this from within the MPC, before you connect to a computer and screw it all up again. Also, please read all directions BEFORE you start trying it, it's very important to do things in order and to NOT overwrite the files that might potentially bail your ass out! I had the tendency to want to save, but if you save your 'broken' program, it basically loses all memory of the lost samples. So be patient and work through this dilligently.

Here's the procedure:
1) Try to load your PGM or APS file as normal, it should complain about missing files.
2) Make a list of EVERY file that the MPC is missing. You need to just hit the 'SKIP' button instead of 'ALLSKP' so you can be sure to note each file that the MPC needs.

Once the butchered program is loaded (with the files missing), you get to work recreating the original sample names.
3) Go into the LOAD screen and, following the list you just made, load the sample that you think matches the first missing sample. For example, if the missing sample is 'SAMP1_________-L', you will probably want to load 'SAMP1___'. Do this for every sample in the list.
4) Time to start the renaming process. From the TRIM screen, find the first sample you are going to fix, ie. 'SAMP1___'. Hit the OPEN WINDOW key on the sample name, and rename this sample to the correct name, 'SAMP1_________-L'. Repeat this for each sample you loaded and want to fix.
5) Go into the SAVE screen. Starting with 'SAMP1_________-L', save this sample into the same folder as your busted programs. Do this for each sample.
6) Now, go back into the LOAD screen. Try again to load your busted program. If you did everything correctly, the program will find the samples you just saved, and will load them into the proper slots of your program. SWEET RELIEF! but it aint over yet.
7) At this point you have the option to save. However, the samples you just saved will still be corrupted once you load them to PC, so save if you want, but bear in mind that you are only covering your ass as long as you keep it in the MPC.
8) So let's fix these damn file names. Go into your PROGRAM screen, and from the ASSIGN window, just start hitting pads looking for any long sample names.
*Protip - any sample name that extends to under the letter 'P' in 'Program Assign' is too long.
9) When you find a sample name that is too long, hit the OPEN WINDOW key with the sample name selected and rename it something that is no more than 8 characters long. BE CAREFUL and name your samples uniquely...if any two samples ever share the same name, prepare to enter a world of pain that I don't dare touch on right now. Using a song identifier (ie. a shortened version of the track title) + an incrementing 2 digit number is pretty good, and hopefully less likely to cause conflict than something like 'BASSDRUM'. Do this for every sample you can find, in any program you are trying to fix.
10) Finally, you can start to save legit PGM or APS files. I'd recommend saving both a PGM file for each program, and also an APS file. I'd also recommend naming them something different so you know which file is good.

The MPC2KXL is an incredible machine. Yes it's old technology, and yes, sometimes you have to fight it, but it's good to work at what you love and to get down and dirty sometimes. My situation might be a little specific to my own way of working, but it's such a horrible feeling to lose work you love; I just share my experience in hopes of helping out somebody struggling with some of these same types of issues.

Lebron's greatest

2010-07-21T07:23:00.003-05:00

A little disappointing my fellow bloggers would allow anything about pitchfork, even haterade, to stay at the top of the blog for longer than a few days. anyways, its the first thing i see when I open the internet and I'm tired of looking at it.

so lets relive some LeBron's greatest moments:
the first part...its actually kinda boring, but it happened!

and Jordan (scores 28 straight no misses):
skip to 1:45

bonus video: people is crazy

M.I.A. Pitchfork review

2010-07-12T06:04:00.005-05:00

In other news....man, I just saw this review.

"Right or wrong, the social contract is simple: If you bring the hits, we'll put up with your shit.

With /\/\/\Y/\, M.I.A. has broken that contract. And she could not have chosen a worse time to do it. The album comes not long after a New York Times Magazine cover story that portrayed her as a pretentious, truffle fries-eating phony spouting radical politics at odds with her extremely comfortable lifestyle. The piece was devastating to her credibility, and her childish response-- putting the author's cell number on Twitter-- only made matters worse."

What a hatchet job! I'm not even talking about the album, I have no idea what it sounds like, but this "cleverly worded" bit about the NYTs article, that is just straight up character assassination. Really brutal, you can't like to see that. A total lack of regard for presenting the facts of the story, and trying to continue the spread of this rumor about some goddamn elitist French Fries ("have you seen the price of arugula lately?" what if we had had 4 more years of a Republican president because of those words, like that could have been the Swift Boat moment of 2008).

Not that journalism and music journalism should ever be confused, but for those of you unaware, the NYT journalist ordered these French Fries and then in her article painted M.I.A. as this "truffle oil french fry eating" elitist hypocrite blah blah blah. I'm tired of this shit. For the follow up, Maya had the whole interview on tape and released it to defend herself and now pitchfork is probably taking somebodies $$$ under the table to write this shit.

Fuck off Pfork, you guys just were downgraded from being controversy creating opportunists to being on the wrong side of the war in my book.

Spain can Suck It

2010-07-12T05:19:00.003-05:00

Wow, you know, I didn't know who I was going to be rooting for ("well I'm torn: my lady is half Dutch, but I'm about to go to Spain so it would be cool if they won and everyone was on a post World Cup euphoria wave when I got there") but as the match wore on, I ended up the drunkest most vocal supporter of the Dutch in a big fancy party full of Germans rooting for the Spanish (besides the fact that the Dutch had just knocked them out, Germans dont like the Dutch. Why, I donno, they are just on the list of "oh we dont like them." Why we don't root for the Germans in the World Cup, now that I understand.)

So anyways, my Uncle got me in this "Telecom" world cup party (I think Telecom is the same as T-Mobile). Unlike America, over here it is acceptable to have a big party for rich people and still have all the waitresses be smokin hot girls, straight up. There must be companies that advertise "need your fancy party to have waitresses that are only hot girls? Hot Girls Catering, 555-1212..." I am one of maybe 2 guys in a T-Shirt at this whole thing, but the other guy is wearing a pair of $300 ripped jeans and on his arm a smokin babe that looks to be from Barbados or something. Still, at these parties, if you are in, you must belong (they check your name twice on the list...once to get in the door, and then they send you immediately to get your wristband where your name gets checked again).

These Telecom folk have the biggest HD screen I have seen in my life. There was a moment where I stopped to think about it and was like "holy shit, the only time I have ever seen a TV that big, it was a bunch of littler TVs squeezed together." Not this thing, it was the real deal, and just fucking huge.

So we are looking at free food (thank god, I should have eaten more) and an open bar, and it is the World Cup finals, so since Gary has to make the rounds and be social at this party for his job, I am doing the only reasonable thing for me to be doing and making good friends with the bartender.

Ok about the game....I wanted to like Spain, I really did. I saw a couple of their games and thought "wow, these guys are modern day matadors, that is awesome" but guess what? When push came to shove, they are a bunch of pretty boy floppers playing ball control. The Dutch I thought had much better strikes, gorgeous things. Spain (oh I should probably just say right now, I know jack shit about soccer) does some nice things that are easy to appreciate...they defend the corner well, and of course the passing, but I think in this game the better team lost.

For me it was like I had entered a parallel universe where the 2005 USC football team had won or something. All the hype, a bunch of fucking pretty boys who cant handle it when the other guys want to play some soccer (I will say, when that guy got kicked in the heart, that was brutal).

Tell me if I'm wrong here, but for me 2 images stick out: 1, the Dutch have broken free and are about to score and there is a Spanish guy behind him yelling "Noooooooooooo!!!" and he just straight up grabs him with his arms. "We cant lose, its not supposed to happen like this!!" Where was the foul goddamnit??

The other image is of this Spaniard obviously flopping towards the end (the Dutch were awarded a yellow card). They showed the replay like 4 times and it was an obvious flop. I am making loud noises like a retarded kid while this is going on, and no one around me seems to be saying to the contrary. Just fucking bullshit.

Post game, Gary has left (he was there for the food, then back to work) and he has instructed me to go to an U-bahn down the way a little bit. It is a ploy to get me to see the city, which I am down for. There is this one really weird place where you can stare at this Old Ornate church and then 90 degrees to your right there is the Soviet radio tower space needle thing at Alexander Platz. Its totally a crazy disconnect. There is a big space there, and being as though the weather is perfect, I lay down for a bit, my sight phasing from the booze, but actually quite comfortably. Horns are honking from these Spaniard fans, and I think about trying to hop in a convertible that drives by with babes and Spain flags. I think a night like this you are supposed to let it take you where it goes, at least that's how I was thinking at the time. When the convertible drives by, I switch into backup plan mode, the time honored tradition of slurring "hey do yall smoke weed?" at whoever looks like a reasonable candidate. I get a laugh the first time and then the next guy I try it on has this long wavy hair like the drummer in Graffiti Monsters / Fiasco (he looks just like him) and is wearing a shirt that says "reggae jam" on it. Success. He leads me to a park in front of that church where there are 4 babes and two other bros. It is one of the girls' 19th birthday (this guy Albi turns out to be 25, I ask him later). We played some game that was very much like Sorry...it might have been the same exact game, actually now that I think of it, but there were a couple extra rules. If you could knock someone off but you dont see the move, someone else can say it, and you get kicked back into your base. We played this for a long time and no one was getting even close to winning so eventually we stopped. Everyone is drinking (not me, I'm doing A-OK) and this guy pulls out a giant J. I say something like "that is a giant J" to which he laughs and it starts going around. At some point we are partying, but also waiting for the first morning train. Then we do some walking to Hackesher Market and get the 4 AM to take me home. We have exchanged numbers earlier, so I think there will be a further report from this Bros flat later on...maybe it will be the location of the first "La Grange" show.

But yea, fuck the Spanish soccer team.

Happy Birfday America

2010-07-04T19:08:00.003-05:00

Ricci Rucker - Signing Off

From the album "Scetchbook: An Introduction to Scratch Music"

An incredible album wherein every sound you hear is scratched from a turntable.
This track is played with a single tone and the turntable motor off. Trying to recreate this is intense. I have gotten close, but those high notes require you to spin the platter much faster than I've ever experienced.

Blackcoffee

2010-07-01T23:35:00.004-05:00

Another sweet jam from Blackcoffee and accompanying high production value music video. Warning this video will make you want to buy a new wardrobe.

UNRELATED REGGAE BEATLES COVER BONUS:

Diddy

2010-06-28T23:14:00.002-05:00

Sorry Ervin, I don't listen to rock music. I listen to Puff Daddy. Uhhhhh!

Saw this video on the TTLab blog today, it's absolutely bonkers. Just wait for the acrobats with jumping boots while Busta is breaking off a piece.

BONUS:

Although it isn't exactly rare to see Diddy acting like an idiot, this clip is pretty great. If you haven't heard the actual track Get Off it's worth a listen, Diddy essentially does a James Brown impersonation over 45 King's 900 Number beat. This video is just him acting like a goofball in the studio. Diddy you crazy for this one.

2010-06-28T09:36:00.000-05:00

also Nogs, the events on the right look fucking fun as hell

Saucepot, I have an assignment for you...

2010-06-28T09:25:00.004-05:00

Nestled safely away in Burgundy. I wrote a song for the first time in a good while today, maybe since last October you could say, so thats cool. Went to an amazing party in Champagne, but no kissing and telling on that, c'est ne vrai pas ("it wouldnt be right/correct") however I will throw in one pertaining detail I feel at liberty to disclose: sometime around 4 o clock, I got to play hero to the party, as i was whisked back to my hotel to retrieve my computer with "Real American Rock and Roll" on it. I made sure to throw in some reggae too (Desmond Dekker), but ultimately, what made these Frenchies go crazy was "Louie Louie" and like "I Feel Good". I tried throwing in some Stereolab and to my surprise they were like "what is this shit, we have never heard of these guys, turn it off," so I obliged.

So do your buddy a big favor....take a break from the Twitch Disco and make me a mix of "Real American Rock and Roll" so I've got some high quality ammo for les mademoiselles.

Busy Disco Mix

2010-06-17T23:35:00.002-05:00

Busy Disco Mix - 32minutes52seconds
Recorded live in one take on vinyl, son.

Kings Go Forth - Don't Take My Shadow Extended (A Tom Moulton Mix)
The Third Degree - Mercy (Greg Wilson Version)
Eli Escobar - Rebound
James Brown - I'm Satisfied (Scott K. & Cole Medina's Shorter Edit)
Jason Lev - Hi Hi H
Devo - Disco Dancer (12" Mix)
Twitch - Contort Yourself (Optimo Mix)

Divshare download link.

Kobe, let's just do what our bodies tell us to do... but not in a gay way

2010-06-15T00:01:00.000-05:00

First Annual Club 1808 Double Elimination Battle of the Bands Recap!

2010-06-14T23:16:00.011-05:00

hell yeah!

An interesting weekend. I guess some folks out there are only going to want to hear about the "controversial ending". I guess I could start backwards. I may write about the ending first and then write about the show chronologically.

I will say first the absurdity level of a "double elimination battle of the bands" (think about it...) was supposed to be a signifier that the purpose of the show was not about whos gonna win the $$$ ... the purpose was to have fun and to try and do something ridiculous. When is the last time you saw 16 bands fully electric in FOUR HOURS?? If you came to the Battle of the Bands, the answer to that question is "this weekend," if not the answer is probably "never." Sprinkle in projections, video art, oil painting, and DJs and its starting to sound like a special environment being created for the enjoyment of whoever chose to participate. Which it was . Sunday was a bit weak, more on that later I suppose, but I can't say I've seen a crowd in such an honest revelry as Friday night since, well, I can't remember the last time. It didn't feel like going to a show, it felt like being at a party, only way more awesome, and it was great to see so many of my friends having such a great time. If the small tired crowd of band members held hostage until Sunday at 2 AM when they probably had work the next morning is the opposite image, well, I've been there too, and if I had to take a night of one to get a night of the other, I'd do it every time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So about the show:

Friday was day one, and the best day. I got there at 7 I think and was feverishly setting up PAs, TVs, VCRs, DJs, soundboards, and drinking water out of sinks. 7:45 on turned into a band meet and greet and there was a 2 High Lifes for $3 drink special. We drew slots out of a sombrero at 8:15 which was super fun. I had no idea if the show was going to run as fast as planned for, and there was at least a moderate chance we would get fucked and the show would not end by Sunday night, something I'm glad didn't happen since I had absolutely no backup plan if it did. We made it through 9 matches Friday---all the first rounds plus Me vs. Dann to kick off the losers bracket in the second round, and a second round forfeit from Traffique. Diamond Minds made an appearance for the first time in a long time, it was good but they lost to Fearless Freaks in game one. I got pitted against some very good sounding youngsters Princess Ho, who have been around just a couple months but sounded very good already. They beat be despite the fact that I pulled out the 2 bathing suits gag as well as got the crowd engaged in a sing-a-long ("the world is one big house we are all just living in it / its my life, Im just living in it / its your house / you are just living in it / we are in different rooms of the house / we are in different rooms of the house"). Game 3 was won by Eets Feats, and lost by Traffique "one of Austin's innovators" as Eddy announced. Eddy was the MC and he was keeping the crowd pumped to the max in his Rowdy Roddy Piper Halloween costume. Hillarious. Traffique was feverishly talking into an echo box about some blonde with a spatula (...i say feverishly because Red came out despite the fact that he had been throwing up all day....what a trooper!!) We were all like wtf, this makes no sense, and then Alexandra came and started spanking him with a spatula and I just about died laughing. It was great. Next up Bird Call (Chris Wiggington and Ben's surprise project) brought a bass line to die for and ca-caws, taking Al Tiburon down, who to his credit had the crowd dancing to the Euro pulse of his jams. In the big upset of the first round, The Plutonium Farmers were felled by one man with 3 guitar chords and a willingless to rasp his heart out into the mic, Hayden Allen (felled into the consolation bracket...they would still go on to make the quarter finals). That one man showed up on day 2 complete with full band Twinklehoof, and they would eventually capture the Divisional Bye, and a spot in the Semi-s where they finally lost to Eets Feats. Machetti Mike, the last addition took down Casio Egypt, who took the E Squared award for most cables to hook up to play award. Their noise was quite excellent and enjoyable. Shittin Kittens had their first show, losing to v^v aka The Shane Wood Drone Extraveganza. The Shitten Kittens were aided in their first round by Nathan, aka The Shat Cat, who was hilariously dressed in some sort of sheep skin vest or something, banging on glass bottles, one of which broke (oops!) spraying broken glass across the floor. The droners did their thing, and the final match up was Waco Girls vs Young and Angry. The Waco Girls first round performance might have been their best, it was late at that point and most of the crowd had left, but it was excellent. I liked whenever they played War Pigs too, that was later. Ben Zinc was the DJ, and I later found out it was his first solo gig! So happy to have been a part of that, the dude held it down big time all night long.

Day 2 was pretty much the same shit, but different matchups and more of a known quantity factor. The crowd was less good, and we didn't have Zak Lloyd and Melanie aka vid kids running projections, or the face painting going on, so it felt a bit emptier. There was a time around 11:30 where the crowd thinned down to about 35 and I thought "oh boy, here it goes, this place is gonna be dead in 30 minutes" but the remaining crowd held until the end of the night and everyone seemed to have a good time. We went swimming afterward. It was nice that people hung around Saturday.

Sunday, the vid kids were back, and Mott the psychedelic face painter too, but it just wasn't as good a time. I felt bad for Faith Gay who came to DJ and did an admirable job, I really wanted it to be a better event for her. We were running on low staff...Shane came by and helped out for about an hour, but it was basically me and Eddy running the whole show. There was a bad oversight that I realized later....we never turned the TVs on when setting up! A shame, I think it had a subliminal dampening effect not to have them running. It was less bands, and less people, and folks sticking around not because they wanted to, but out of some obligation to be there for the end, at 2 AM on a Sunday night. That was my fuckup. I would like to run another 3 day event in the future, even if its too much for some people, I think there is a value in it, and a psychedelic tenement enforced whenever you fuck with time (one way being to have it be an extremely long show), but next time we would definitely do it a Thursday, Friday, and a Saturday. Sunday night is just too rough. I really expected because it was the finals that that would be as big as Friday, but it ended up being the smallest day of all. Still I am proud of what turned out. Because so long was spent working out the logistics, and because I was nervous booking a show I didn't know was possible, the booking didnt really start until 6 weeks out. To do it in the future, I think honestly, the next one we run will be in a format that can be completed in 2 days, not 3 for starters, and if booking is done more in advance it will be easier to get better bands, and thus bands that draw, and thus a better crowd, and that was the major difference between Friday and Saturday and Sunday, was the crowd. The less folks there, the gloomier it got, although that really makes it sound worse than it was, it was basically revelrous all of Friday, a lot of fun for whoever was there all Saturday, and Sunday kept moving, with the exception of 10:45-11:15 as we waited for the Eets Feats drummer to get into town.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well that was the show in a nutshell. I wrote what follows first cause I know folks are interested, but didn't want to lead with "the controversial ending", because to do that makes it seem like 95% of the show wasn't a hell of a good time, and it would be a misrepresentation to do that.

lets talk how it all ended. Some background for those of you not there...

For the 3 days of the tournament Eddy was MCing (in full on tribute to Rowdy Roddy Piper, hilarious and spot-on). He was making the calls of who would advance to the next round based on crowd noise. When things got hairy as far as it basically being even on both sides over the course of the 3 days he would defer to me, and I came up with the system that when its about even and you can't tell, look with your eyes and visually count how many people are for each group. This felt fair because there was an element to the event that you were supposed to be able to win by bringing a crowd, AKA an incentive for bands to get people to the show. This proved to be a not very strong incentive when pitted up against "hey come see our band again at 2 AM on Sunday night" but we can safely file that under "mistakes we are not going to make again" so who the fuck cares at this point.

Well, it comes down to the ending. We've got 2 bands, Eets Feats and Fearless Freaks. They each play 2 songs, in a 1-1-1-1 format, with Eets Feats playing first. This ends and it is time to figure out who won. I announce that Gene will choose the winner and we are each holding up a fake giant check to be made out to the winner. Eddy says "cheer for Fearless Freaks." The people cheer (the girl from that band goes and hits the drums). Then Eddy says "or is it gonna be Eets Feats?" The people cheer, and multiple people hit the drums in their corner. Gene points to Eets Feats and tells me to declare them a winner. I go to Eddy and say "we have to do this again, its not fair for the people to be banging on the drums like that," which would have been consistent with how we were running the show up until this point. I will say, in my opinion as someone who was equidistant from both crowds, even without the additional volume from the drums, the crowd for Eets Feats was both louder, and wilder. If I had been smart I would have just told Eddy that Eets Feats won, and honestly for a while after the show I thought I did and that Eddy had overruled me (we were working as a team, and there were plenty of times in the 3 nights where I had told him something, and he said no, did something else and I ended up telling him "hey you were right, it was better to do it that way.") Eddy told me I did not say that, that actually I had told him that we needed to do it again. But if I had said that, perhaps there was a look on Eddy's face that said "any time its been this close we've always made each side cheer again, so let's do that while we figure it out." Anyways, I couldn't care less who won, and am confident that whatever happened in this confusion I was acting to the best of my ability. Furthermore, none of this has anything to do with Gene, who was only doing what he was asked to do, which was to come up at the end and make the call (which at that point he already had). He was not privy to all the little make-up-as-you-go tricks we had come up with to smoothly run the show over the past 3 days, because he had been busy running the bar, so from his perspective if we had asked both sides to cheer, one was louder, and he called it for that side, that ended it, and if me and Eddy had done a better job, it would have.

Anyways, we made people cheer again and reverted to the backup method of counting people. The final count was 12-10 in favor of Fearless Freaks. I got on the mic and announced that they were the winners, 12-10.

There was a moment, this moment where the crowd gave one final cheer and it seemed to be over with everyone happy, but Gene was not happy, because he was the owner of the club, he had just been trucked up there to call it, he called it, and then 30 seconds later I was up there declaring the other band the winner.

He had previously explained to me that this event was somewhat promotional in nature (it was his idea, which explains the large purse, which is in my opinion awesome, and is not something that could have come from me, meaning that the event would not have existed if not for it) and for this reason my initial tack was just to say "hey this is a promotional event, at this moment everyone is happy with the result, why not leave it at that?" but Gene was not about to go along with that, and at this point it seems obvious to me, why should he. He's the owner, he was asked to call it for the group that was louder, he called it for the group that was louder (because in this instance 10 screaming crazy ~21 year old girls managed to be louder and crazier than the 12 cheering for the Fearless Freaks) and he's the owner, so the fact that I went on the mic and announced it for the other band shouldn't change any of that.

Anyways, at this point The Fearless Freaks caught whiff that they would be receiving something less than the $500 they thought they had just won. Words were said, exacerbating the situation, and it is my opinion that it was only Gene's graciousness towards the concept of the Battle of the Bands that allowed them to walk with a check for $350, which Eets Feats also received (who btw had a member drive in after work and back from San Antonio 3 days straight...what that probably costed close to $150 right there. Nice dedication bros!)

And I do have a slight sympathy for The Fearless Freaks for one reason, which is that they were the one band on the bill I did not directly book, and they had no real onus to respect my position as the person who had been working for a couple months to create a good time for folks basically as a hobby (if you are wondering, had the event made money or broken even I would have been paid $200, which would have amounted to something well less than $5 an hour, but since the club lost a significant amount of money, as well as endured PA damage, I was happily compensated $30 for gas, as well as paid back for money I spent on hiring the facepainter, and $20 for Sam Sanford who had some art damaged during the proceedings.) But that said, I had to roll my eyes, when they finally left after receiving such a large check for bringing their 10 friends to a show for 3 days with a parting shot of "just wanted to let you know that was very unprofessional." Like where have you been for 3 days, all the bands were either improv, doing covers (*cough* you *cough*), made up specifically for the event, or house show bands with an average age of 20. If you had entered a professional event, chances are you would not have sniffed anything close to $350, so why not just recognize that the problem isnt that you just got wronged by the dude writing you the big fat check, its that you are not being a chilled-out-cool-dude at the obviously-geared-for-fun show. But I take this in stride, because I consider it related to a distinct personality type that in a necessary part of rock and roll, and a personality type I generally love to be around (Extroverted with something to prove for whatever reason.) If it weren't for these personality traits which I also consider myself to possess, humans wouldn't be driven to do such a thing like want to have a whole room full of people looking at them while they do something (play guitar I guess, generally, or ukulele in my case). People like this are people I enjoy being around to the point where I seek them out, but sometimes the taking-yourself-too-seriously aspect of this personality gets misplaced at the wrong time, and I understand the money aspect can serve as a red herring that makes it seem like its ok to act in a certain way in a certain situation, but without going into further detail, I thought before I jet out of here on 3 months of European adventure it was worth defending the good name of the man and space that made this all possible.

And further, I hope other people will continue to do shows at 1808 and recognize that its not something to be taken for granted that for whatever economic circumstances or reasons or whatever, there is currently a place where rock and roll / art / culture can exist in this town in what I would consider to be a comfortable environment, and for fucks sake, there's even a $2 beer there now.

Shows comin up !! I Love You !!

2010-05-27T15:55:00.005-05:00

Theyre not listed on the right, but were playing with a band called I Love You from Missouri this weekend.

On Friday they play at midnight at Cheer Up Charlies and Spiked Punch plays after them. We are inside, there are other good bands that play outside before.

The flier for Saturday looks like this:

Also, lets here it for The Club 1808 Double-Elimination Battle Of The Bands goin down in a couple weeks. The drawing for slots and festivities start at 8 PM on Friday June 11th, with bands starting at 9 PM. I think there is gonna be an ultra-happy hour at that time. Then Saturday night we take a hot and heavy break for DJ Battles, and Sunday would of course be The Finals. $5 wristband good for all 3 days.

Flying Turns at Cheer Up Charlies

2010-05-25T00:51:00.002-05:00

The post office just called to let us know that your Netflix won't be in this Thursday. So we're throwing an underground-disco party at Cheer-up Charlie's so that you suckers will have something to do before the weekend begins. And we know what you're thinking when we say 'disco'--if we play any Village People then you're free to come throw your drinks at us (as long as you tip your bartender).

We're bringing our crew to keep you dancing and drinking until your legs and lips fall off. DJsG&B, J Edgar Groover, Phillip Bluntly, and DJ Mike ZZ TopofthePops will turn you out, so come early and stay late for an evening of genre-smashing electronic music that totally beats Netflix-Instanting Starship Troopers just for that Felicity co-ed shower scene.

And, I made a little mix for the occasion, hope you enjoy it.

Flying Turns Mix by Flying DJG
22minutes17seconds

Tracklist:
Daniel Wang - Shadows
Earth People – Dance
Reflection – Cube Loop (Morgan Geist Remix)
Sugarcubes – Leash Called Love (“12 Dub)
DJ Platurn - Midas Touch (Inst)
The Strikers - Inch by Inch
Jacques Renault – Can't Nobody Love Me
Modern Romance – Can You Move

(divshare)

Even more Ceremony

2010-05-16T23:01:00.001-05:00

Federico Rocketjockey filled me on this also awesome version by Xiu Xiu.

A sucker for Ceremony

2010-05-16T18:31:00.004-05:00

Hey there 80's Britain. I forgot about you.

BONUS:

Sup Radiohead.

Mothafucka i'm ill

2010-05-12T18:19:00.003-05:00

I usually hate on Traktor, mainly because it's the DJ software that doesn't require peripheral hardware and therefore can easily be pirated by anybody whose peers deem cool enough to get tapped as a DJ, but don't want to put in the effort/money to actually learn how it's done. That said, Craze totally kills it on their controller.

BONUS:

Dude juggles with his elbows better than 99% of DJs do on their best behavior.

Still wrecking the Nintendo

2010-05-08T21:12:00.002-05:00

Muchas gracias to DJ Dagnabbit for the charitable donation to science.

For the technical:
It's a vintage NES console modified to have (pseudo)stereo output, in which the square channels (2 of them) come out one output and the rest (3 of em) come out the other output. It allows you to mix the sounds a bit...helps with multitracking.

The video is the Midines in NESFX mode, outputting graphic routines for any sequence being sent to it, in this case the music you are hearing.

Superman does Barkley

2010-04-29T17:36:00.000-05:00

Bonus Playoffs Nostalgia:

Superman

2010-04-28T22:26:00.003-05:00

Fun video, but you gotta play the club version out...

2010-04-26T14:43:00.002-05:00

The Missing Escapes VI (downtown burgers) Spiked Punch vid:

Stephy B Theme

2010-04-22T18:28:00.004-05:00

Hey there faithful Ranchers. Here's a short track I made for my friend Stephy B's radio show on KAOS. It's meant as an intro to be talked over for a minute or so before her regularly scheduled programming. Not sure she's using it every week, but I think it's a dope beat so I thought I'd share it.

Stephy B Theme

2010-04-07T19:18:00.001-05:00

Bill Simmons:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/100407&sportCat=nba

2010-03-30T17:06:00.002-05:00

Spiked Punch @ Escapes V:

video taken by khrysteen samreth

ESCAPES SCHEDULE (pretty final)

2010-03-14T21:39:00.003-05:00

EEEE sSSSs cCCC AA PPPp EEEE sSSSssss
EEE sssss c aaaa Pppp EEE sssssssssssss
EEEE SSSss cCCC a a P EEEE sSSSsssssss

Also...there is an RSVP list...email Escapesbooking@gmail.com if you want to be on it. It doesnt help or prevent you get in the shows, its just for if we need to send out an email last minute. Everything is first come first serve until we are full....Thursday and Saturday are the only ones where you should maybe worry about this...Thursday is capacity 450 and Saturday capacity 125, but you can probably see and hear from the street in both cases

Free coffee and grilled c h e e s e
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Tuesday, March 16th @ CLUB 1808, 12th and Chicon
ESCAPES III
5 PM - 2 AM
free

(5 PM) Traffique (mems. Peter and the Wolf)
Spiked Punch
Jennifer Ellen Cook
(6 PM) Archibald Adams and his shimmering war choir
Sunset
Florene
(7 PM) Sleep Good
Zorch
Soft Healer
(8 PM) Spells (formerly known as Moth Fight)
Wizzard Sleeve
Female Demand
(9 PM) Pataphysics
Geoff Reacher
A Faulty Chromosome
(10 PM) Follow that Bird
Grandchildren
No Mas Bodas
(11 PM) Bodytronix
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth
Magic Jewels
(12 AM) Lord Scrummage
Reverse X Rays
DD/MM/YYYYY
(1 AM)Quiet hooves
Daniel Francis Doyle
Computer Jesus Refrigerator

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday, March 17th @ Club 1808, 12th and Chicon
ESCAPES IV
noon - 10 PM
free

noon - Boys Who Say No
1230 - Geoff Reacher
1 - hermit thrushes
130 - Wild Yaks
2 - spiked punch
230 - Many Mansions
3 - Reading Rainbow
330 - The Beets
4 - How I Quit Crack / Caves Caverns (sftp presents)
430 Metal Bunnies
500 Nice Nice
530 Terror Pigeon
6 Male Bonding
630 Peter and the Wolf
7 Reverse X Rays
730 Popo
8 Prince Rama
830 Quiet Hooves
9 Light Pollution
930 Still Flyin'

plus Phantom Bands playing Acoustic until ????
look fer / Bubbly Mommy Gun, You and Me....many many more

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thursday, March 18th @ Big Parking Lot, 306 E 3rd Street (3rd and Trinity)
ESCAPES V
11 AM - 8 PM
free

11am ---- YAHOWHA13
(look this stuff up extensively on youtube, here are some hilites--- health food funded psych music cult decades in the making, hang-gliding death, annie hall, half-baked psychedelic groove, genuine weirdness before death)
okay i'm vaguely pumped about this but ooo the mythology of it
12 Videohippos
1230 Zs
1 When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth
130 So Cow
2 Rainbow Arabia
230 Lord Jeff
3 Lord Scrummage
330 Spiked Punch
4 Soft Healer
430 Prince Rama of Ayodhya
5 Reverse X Rays
530 Quiet Hooves
6 Tobacco (main guy from Black Moth Super Rainbow)
630 These Are Powers
7 Acid Mothers Temple (until 8)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friday, March 19th @ Downtown Burgers, 310 E 3rd Street (3rd and Trinity)
ESCAPES VI
11 AM - 8 PM
free

11 Boys Who Say No
1130 John Bellows
12 The Splinters
1230 Spiked Punch
1 Computer Jesus Refrigerator
130 Truman Peyote
2 Grandchildren
230 Attic Ted
3 Turbo Fruits / PC Worship
330 Hermit Thrushes
4 Brazos
430 Liturgy
5 Videohippos
530 Reverse X Rays
6 ** Very secret guests email us and we'll tell you all of them*
630 Lord Scrummage
7 Quiet Hooves
730 Beach Fossils

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Saturday, March 20th @ Sneak Attack, 2nd and Guadaloupe in the back of city hall
ESCAPES VII
noon - 8 PM
free

noon DD/MM/YYYY
1 Lord Scrummage
2 Total Slacker
3 Sonny and the Sunsets
4 The Weird Weeds
5 Follow That Bird!
6 Reverse X Rays / Spiked Punch
7 Quiet Hooves
8 Beach Fossils

w/ special guests LITURGY, Bubbly Mommy Gun

2010-03-08T17:08:00.001-06:00

Scowering Showlist, non Escapes PIXXX

2010-03-08T11:43:00.004-06:00

So Im going to be basically unable to go to this shit but

Thursday
Robert Wyatt (4:30pm) at Mellow Mushroom
whoa!!!!

Thursday night this will be fun, although you are gonna have to find it
Real Estate, Woods, Eternal Tapestry, Pocahaunted, Beach Fossils, Silent Land Time Machine at a house off of 30th and Red River (near Austin vet hospital) [7:30pm]

also good shows at beerland and trailor space, and the pitchfork show looks good this year to me

Josh Duke // Martin Crane // T-Minus???

2010-03-08T11:24:00.003-06:00

Hey yall. Had a great night at a bar last week. The bar was Club Deville, the day of the week was Wednesday, the cover was $3, and the occasion was a double solo show featuring Josh Duke and Martin Crane. Josh aka Al Tiburon (i believe thats how you spell it) has been working up some mad euro-revival tracks down the block at Baby Blue for the past x number of months. Most of it is done in MIDI and then he lays some unaffected vocals down on top. This was his first show since a technical fiasco of a debut a few months ago at Baby Blue. It was a first show where things went right (aka a second show). The friends showed up, the PA sounded great and the songs keep developing. Lots of nice things to say, but I'm sure there will be future shows and refinements in the future.

Martin has freaking been beamed to another planet. I dont know if this world is ready for him, but somehow he is writing shit better than his old shit. Once the material is with the full band it is going to be undeniable, I can't wait. Breakthru artist 20.

In other news, you may have noticed a little thing called SXSW is coming up. We are booking something like 100 bands. I am going to blog about it here at nightly (hopefully), because that will be the only way to have a record of most the things that happened, and I will have a better festival if i am processing information as we go and not all at once. This shit is gonna be nuts. Still so much work to do, but there are so many good bands coming in and playing Escapes III, IV, V, VI, and VII, that is is really going to be a moment in time and space to remember. Pray to the sunshine gods for me... (Oh, and its T minus 8 days now)

Switched On // No Mas Bodas Gets Married // Special Shit

2010-02-28T12:48:00.004-06:00

hey yall

Its warming up out there, nightly temperatures now dipping down only as far as "bearable" and daytime conditions more along the lines of "perfect". And with that, we find our beloved fellow Austin scenesters out in full force this weekend for some very special events. The one last night was the opening party for Switched On, the new synth specialty store of Texas, located precariously near my house at 11th and Waller. I say precariously because I'm not sure the owners are ready for the level of annoyance they may experience when I go in there and play on every. single. one. of. their. synthesizers.

But the place looks incredible. There is a giant custom built video screen with their awesome logo in the front, a TV grid hooked up to a video synthesizer and oscilloscope (open for the public to dick around with last night), all your band needs such as drum heads and drum sticks, a ton of vintage keyboards, a specialty repair shop, and a well curated set of all types of synths. Its nothing short of fabulous. The opening was so well done too....bands first at the store and then later across the street at Victory Grill. It was my first time to get to see SURVIVE since their very first show, the dreadfully fated Pyramid in the back of Matt Schwaush's House Show, which we don't have to talk about here. They sounded great. Pataphysics played really well too, a ton of punk energy on Policeman especially sticks out in my mind.

Also earlier this weekend it was a great honor for Reverse X-Rays to get to be a part of the No Mas Bodas CD Release show at Cheer Up Charlie's (the old ms beas). Our set was perhaps not our best, but No Mas Bodas sounded good to me, and the wedding was fantastic. The 4 way knot was tied, shoes were thrown, gongs rang, aye-yay-yays enunciated like a room full of mad Poncho Villa's, and there was an overall quality dance party as well, not to mention What's Tappenin? a tap group that did a rather basketball halftime show performance at the end. 2 great evenings

Also, in the last couple months worth noting is the passing of The Pillow Queens, one of Austin's finest bands. They rocked extremely hard and their last show at Trailer Space was an emotional affair which I could have told you about in greater detail had I blogged about it at the time. No more misses like that, faithful readers, I pledge to thee!

Haddaway - What Is Love (Music Box remix)

2010-02-26T00:11:00.001-06:00

REPLACE THESE STARS WITH HOMEPAGE SUMMARY<-->

I can't say thanks enough to my sister, The Abster, for the best christmas present ever, a DIY music box.

Strafe - Set It Off (remix)

2010-02-15T12:08:00.003-06:00

REPLACE THESE STARS WITH HOMEPAGE SUMMARY<-->
As heard in Aphex Twin's Coachella set from 2008, and Autechre's recent mix for Fact Magzine.

Pretty legit electro right here like they just don't make anymore. For what it's worth, Autechre are some of the sickest DJs around right now... if you haven't heard their 12 hour mix from a couple years ago, well, drive across coast or put the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy on mute and turn your speakers up and get schooled. Mixing amplitudes and frequencies is all good and well, but you haven't heard modern creative DJing until you've heard Minnie Ripperton vocoded with a rasta rise up and rebel speech for the entirety of the track.

Props to you Mr. Spratt for turning me on to this.

I want to thank u 4 steppin' into my life...

2010-02-10T22:42:00.002-06:00

Sup Ranchos and Ranchettes, it's been awhile. I've been posting a reggae video a day on the facebook event for Spiked Punch, and I'll probably post them here at some point for reference. But as for now, enjoy this silky smooth video of Dam-Funk unplugged at the piano.

If you dont know....

2010-01-25T00:41:00.003-06:00

me by now. Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes on Soul Train, 1972.

also...check out these Afro-Americans, The Sylvers, from the same year on the same program

X-Ray Saturday

2010-01-21T14:28:00.001-06:00

....bummer there is a cool Bearclaw show the same night...

But come check out yer Reverse X-Rays @ Club 1808 , doors at 9

w / no mas bodas, the weird weeds, E*2, DJ Trailmix, DJ Dan the Man

should be good

Oink verdict....

2010-01-17T11:57:00.001-06:00

Not guilty!

2009 Wrap-up II

2010-01-13T13:51:00.002-06:00

Hey yall! A years worth of love!

What was my 2009 like?

Jan-March - I believe I was unemployed, but at this point I still had savings I could just eat up while I found a job. RXR was going strong thru SXSW. In Feb I got a job that wouldnt start for another 6 weeks (it was supposed to start like 3 weeks earlier than it did) working at Texas Legislative Services. We would cover what was going on in the Texas Leg. Lots of drawing time and reading time which was cool, and also it was fun being in the capitol building feeling like basically an imposter. But hey, those people work for US. We the PEOPLE. This was the legislature when the "tea-party" shit lead by Gen. of the Texas Army, King Seceed his-own-damn-self Rick Perry. That man loves being the Governor of the State of Texas. Seriously, he is following his passion, which happens to be $1000 boots with the state seal of Texas on it. Walk Hard, Rick. It was an interesting session, I learned how sausage (aka "legislation") gets made, got a free Obama T-shirt from the labor unions, alot of free BBQ lunches, a fair amount of sanctioned drinking margaritas on the job, had an awesome boss who was a bigtime baseball guy, started reading political blogs, and what else, oh yeah, started working real weird hours. I also made some new friends, and really enjoyed working the night shift with Katy my now temporary roommate, and Katy, the awesome chick who was a barista at Little City. I saw her on New Years and slapped her with a Jimmy Johns Sandwitch at Midnight. It was meant to be a gesture of the most loving kind, but I think she didn't really know how to take it at first. She did dance with me some afterwards so It must have at the very least been "apology accepted."

April I was still working the same job, but my whole life was backwards. Chris had left RXR (he is in Europe now, gaining valuable and varied world traveler life experience) and we were sort of in a tailspin. I started playing a lot of music with Red, which eventually (about 100 bottles of wine later) "didn't work out." We both learned lessons the hard way, but I'm happy to say we can now once again enjoy being in the same room together. One thing I heard from a politician back at my job was an old Italian saying which is "after the game all the pieces go back in the same box" which I think means some Mafia dude is going to end everyones life, but maybe means you gotta love the one your with.

I was still in semi tailspin mode coming out of that, it was the low point of my year for sure, I was all messed in the head like after a bad breakup. But I was planning a tour and knew once it came it would bail me out. Summer in Austin got insanely hot insanely early and that was sort of a story there in itself. Everyone I knew was like "WTF is going on???" Then it was time for "Tuffin' Up 2k9" with the motley crew of Me, Dann, and Eddy. We killed that shit and returned to the land of good vibes.

After tour was over for the 3 of us (in Boston Mass) I had a little solo adventure over to Toronto (gorgeous city, first time out of States in like 3 years maybe?) and thru Ohio, culminating in a (semi-) memorable 3 day drunk in Athens, OH with Brian of the band Spooktober. It was ridiculous. His friends are all biker gang guys with guns from 100 years ago, and also random art school kids and hillbillies. Pretty sweet, although I was worried about random hooligans putting a brick thru my windshield for no reason (I heard about 3 windows smashed for no reason while I was chilling on his porch). It was a great time, followed by a 11ish hour drive thru 6 states down to Athens GA where I would spend the next 5 weeks playing guitar, reading, and helping on home improvement projects all damn day. That town is amazing and it will truly go down as an amazing time in my life. I got to go to the Blue Ridge Mountains and have a weekend up there with friends at an awesome vacation house, saw a dickload of free shows, and had my first experience being a door guy (at The Go Bar, a charming place. There is an Of Montreal song that takes place there and can be found for free performed in their daytrotter session.) Number one thing you notice is really nice people. Everyone is super nice, and also super into music. The whole town thinks they are 22, and its just music music music. Its great. Great friends, I cant wait to see them again, and go back to Athens again. It was such a perfect time to be there, the end of summer in Athens. I wonder if i can take a train there, and not put the miles on my car...

So then I got back from Athens Sept 15thish, just in time for the High Holidays and leaving myself just enough financial cushion not to have to immediately move into my parents house and beg for any job that would come up. The next period was marked most clearly in my mind by where I was living with and with whom. Living with Willard was so nice, he mentored me so good into being a man. Seriously. He is my guru. I learned a lot about space from him, and concentrating and shit like that. I made biscotti for my grandma's birthday, and me Willard and Dan Krinslock had some really good times watching Melrose Place. Those chicks are so catty!!! But great show, seriously. Willard really was the one who got me into home improvement building stuff. That house had great vibes. Next, I moved in with Mike a couple blocks from Rancho, and that was truly a Spiked Punch golden age as we wrote the first reggae set and were practicing and playing music pretty constantly for 4-6 weeks, something like that. I managed to make my move to a more pleasant couch situation at Rancho. Me and those ladies and the other 2 punker dudes living there had a pretty nice constant party going, which was another novel environment for me in a way. That was a Rancho Golden Age...they were going scorched earth with it bigtime and in a way it came back to bite them in the ass (neighbor problems) but in a way, it all worked out. Had a great trip to Houston with a couple of those ladies, originally to see Thee Oh Sees (who cancelled that and their Austin show!!! illness...)

November we finally found a place, me Mike and Julian, with a special guest live-in situation from Abe for the first month. There was a bit of static with that, but it was my best living situation in 4 months, so I wasn't really the one getting bent out of shape about it, and everything ended up working out. Thanks to Abe for hooking us up with a gorgeous small home, great location, and loooow rent. More good vibes, and Spiked Punch team unity, but in December Mike moved out, only to be replaced by our good friend Katy. Happy to report levels of House Unity to start 2010 are at an all-time high. I really enjoy all the roommate activities we are getting in, and I think everyone is pretty serious about enjoying the time we have together. So that is my year! I don't think I released any music (outside a tour-only odds and ends compilation "take it out of our deposit" which proved an all too prophetic title) but i did get much better at making it, and in a way get 2 bands off the ground, so that is cool. Here's to 2010 being a more productive year in regards to releases, I think it will be. Keep your eyes peeled for some extremely limited vinyl runs.

Late in the year I also got a sweet* (*it actually sucks, but the flexible hours are nice) data entry job and started doing shows at Club 1808. The shows have been going well and in case you were wondering I'm just trying to approach it one night at a time, making sure each night is awesome, because things that are awesome in this particular way in my experience, you never know how long they are going to last. The only way to make them last is to have them always be awesome and appreciate them while they are going on, so cheers to that, I have already seen a very high hit rate of awesome shows there.

Also, doing this blog has been alot of fun, I know its dropped off a bit lately, as bloggers pursue real life interests, but I think its a fun record for us all, and now that things are settling down a bit, I can see myself getting more into it.

mucho gusto, 2009 was some bad and mostly good for me. It was the people who made it good, and maybe the fact that none of my friends can get jobs in this economy really is a blessing in disguise because it means I get to hang out with them more.

xoxoxoxx Ervin Berlin

2009 Wrap-up

2009-12-31T12:41:00.003-06:00

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.

Moonset

2009-12-27T21:51:00.001-06:00

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.

The Reemerging Adventures of EMHU

2009-12-17T19:56:00.002-06:00

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

Adventures in Autotune episode 1

2009-12-15T11:24:00.003-06:00

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.