We ARE going out like that.

Where are Ludacris' hoes? Well obviously, they're in different area codes, but I want to know these hoes' locations in more familiar terminology, like names of cities and such. Don't you want to know, too?
Let's start by first tallying up the number of locales Ludacris has hoes in. In the song "Area Codes" Ludacris never mentions specifically how many hoes he has in each area code, just the number of area codes in which he can visit should he wish to visit a ho. We can safely assume therefore, that each area code has a minimum of one ho and if Ludacris has hoes in forty area codes, then he clearly has, at the very least, forty hoes.

In lyrical order.	In numerical order.
404 718 202 901 305 312 313 215 803 757 410 504 972 713 314 201 916 415 704 206 808 216 702 414 317 214 281 334 205 318 601 203 804 402 301 904 407 850 708 502	201 202 203 205 206 214 215 216 281 301 305 312 313 314 317 318 334 402 404 407 410 414 415 502 504 601 702 704 708 713 718 757 803 804 808 850 901 904 916 972

Using the numerical ordered list and referring to the list of North American Numbering Plan area codes on Wikipedia, we can quickly determine where Luda's hoes are. Or can we? Take a look at our first area code, 201. According to the NANP, the 201 area code covers Union City, Teaneck, New Milford, Jersey City, Hoboken, Bayonne, Hackensack, Ridgewood, and northeast New Jersey. Could Ludacris have hoes covering the entire area code or do you think he's more of a metropolitan guy who keeps hoes in a centralized location? For expediency's sake, let's assume that Luda likes it metro and for each area code we'll select the major/recognizable metropolitan center attached to it. In other words, area code 201 will count as Hoboken. Why not Hackensack? Because Hackensack doesn't have the word "ho" in it.
So according to the numerical order list, Luda's hoes can be found in:

Hoboken, NJ Washington, DC New Haven, CT Birmingham, AL Seattle, WA Dallas, TX Philadelphia, PA Cleveland, OH Houston, TX Rockville, MD Miami, FL Chicago, IL Detroit, MI St. Louis, MO Indianapolis, IN Shreveport, LA Montgomery, AL Omaha, NE Atlanta, GA Orlando, FL Baltimore, MD Milwaukee, WI San Francisco, CA Louisville, KY Albuquerque, NM Jackson, MS Las Vegas, NV Charlotte, NC Cicero, IL Houston, TX New York, NY (four out of five Boroughs, excluding Mannhattan. That's where Nate Dogg's ho* is.) Hampton Roads, VA Columbia, SC Richmond, VA Hawaii (all of it) Pensacola, FL Memphis, TN Jacksonville, FL Sacramento, CA Dallas, TX

201 202 203 205 206 214 215 216 281 301 305 312 313 314 317 318 334 402 404 407 410 414 415 502 504 601 702 704 708 713 718 757 803 804 808 850 901 904 916 972

From reading this list, and this actually seems a bit striking, we can see that Luda is pimpin' so hard that he has a ho on a military base, Hampton Roads, VA.
All joking aside, we are presented with a new dilemma. Because Dallas and Houston are mentioned twice (Chicago nearly was, but 708 covers Chicago suburbs, not Chicago proper according to the NANP list), we now have thirty eight (38) locales that correspond to forty (40) area codes. It must be assumed, then, that Ludacris has one ho in each of the aforementioned area codes, otherwise, why would he take the time to specify two different area codes for each of the greater metropolitan areas of Dallas (214, 972) and Houston (281, 713)?
And here's where the fascinating part happens: When you rearrange the area codes back into the order in which they appear in the lyrics, you see that Luda actually places Dallas and Houston next to each other twice. If this is to be read as a sort of schedule for ho visitations, Luda is willing to drive the two hundred thirty nine (239) miles over the course of three hours forty minutes to visit all four of his Texas based hoes.
But what if this song is a ho schedule? After all, Luda has forty hoes in thirty eight locales, and he doesn't seem to be scheduling things using any sense of logistical rationale. After all, instead of perhaps hitting both Dallas area codes in one shot and both Houston area codes immediately after that, Luda instead goes to one Dallas area code, one Houston area code, leaves for a while, returns later to another Dallas area code followed by a different Houston one.
If this is Luda's itinerary, here are the travel plans he can look forward to should he choose to travel by car:

From	To	Distance (miles)	Time (hr:mn)
Atlanta (404)	NYC (718)	885	14:06
NYC (718)	DC (202)	228	4:04
DC (202)	Memphis (901)	880	13:38
Memphis (901)	Miami (305)	1043	16:09
Miami (305)	Chicago (312)	1378	21:08
Chicago (312)	Detroit (313)	282	4:31
Detroit (313)	Philly (215)	582	9:34
Philly (215)	Columbia (803)	614	10:04
Columbia (803)	Hampton Roads (757)	695	6:25
Hampton Roads (757)	Baltimore (410)	225	3:51
Baltimore (410)	Albuquerque (504)	1874	28:00
Albuquerque (504)	Dallas (972)	648	10:42
Dallas (972)	Houston (713)	239	3:41
Houston (713)	St. Louis (314)	868	13:40
St. Louis (314)	Hoboken (201)	950	15:18
Hoboken (201)	Sacramento (916)	2818	41:00
Sacramento (916)	San Francisco (415)	88	1:33
San Francisco (415)	Charlotte (704)	2715	40:00
Charlotte (704)	Seattle (206)	2858	42:00
Seattle (206)	Hawaii (808)**	2803	342:00
Hawaii (808)**	Cleveland (216)	5210	378:00
Cleveland (216)	Las Vegas (702)	2079	30:00
Las Vegas (702)	Milwaukee (414)	1791	26:00
Milwaukee (414)	Indianapolis (317)	273	4:38
Indianapolis (317)	Dallas (214)	899	13:30
Dallas (214)	Houston (281)	239	3:40
Houston (281)	Montgomery (334)	633	9:32
Montgomery (334)	Birmingham (205)	92	1:28
Birmingham (205)	Shreveport (318)	451	6:38
Shreveport (318)	Jackson (601)	220	3:17
Jackson (601)	New Haven (203)	1282	20:10
New Haven (203)	Richmond (804)	412	7:17
Richmond (804)	Omaha (402)	1253	19:04
Omaha (402)	Rockville (301)	1131	17:48
Rockville (301)	Jacksonville (904)	718	11:05
Jacksonville (904)	Orlando (407)	139	2:13
Orlando (407)	Pensacola (850)	449	6:45
Pensacola (850)	Cicero (708)	915	14:39
Cicero (708)	Louisville (502)	302	4:56

Total mileage: 41,161 miles. Total time: 7 weeks, 1 day, 19 hours, 58 minutes.

And should Luda wish to make a return trip to his starting point, we simply have to add in...

From Louisville (502) To Atlanta (404); 421 miles; 6 hours, 32 minutes

Clearly, this is an awful lot of work for Luda to keep all forty of his hoes separate, especially when you figure that he just got kind of lazy in Dallas, Houston, and, to some degree, Chicago. Over forty one thousand miles and over seven weeks of travel time (excluding ho time) is an awfully long way to go and long time to be on the road for a little bit of booty here and there. From this, one could only surmise that each of the forty hoes in question has a particular trait or talent endearing enough to force Luda to take on such an ill-advised travel itinerary. Especially when you condsider one location is a fucking military port! Do you think the MPs at the gate are just going to wave Ludacris in!?

MP at the gate: "Hey, Sarge, there's a black SUV bumpin' some mad jams approaching. Please advise."
Sarge on the radio: "Open up the gate, nigga! That's Luda!"

And why, why, why is Ludacris fucking around with the Chicago suburb of Cicero? Have you been to Cicero? I've been to Cicero. I would not engage in any affairs requiring travel with a ho from Cicero. Im fairly certain that I would not engage in any affairs where I remained stationary with a ho from Cicero.
This is Ludacris we're discussing, though, and these are Ludacris' hoes; I'm sure he thought all of this through and has some well-thought-out reasoning to explain his ho choices and, by extension, each ho's spatial relation to each other. Until that reasoning is revealed, however, we must remain satisfied and secure in the knowledge that, should Ludacris forget the whereabouts of his hoes, we can help him find them again.

* For the purpose of this examination, we have excluded Nate Dogg's ho as he can't seem to remember if she is located in 212 (Manhattan) or 213 (Central L.A.).
** You wouldn't believe it, but GoogleMaps actually features driving and walking directions between Hawaii and the continental U.S. I understand that Ludacris will probably choose to fly.

Addendum: Upon closer inspection, the directions for oversea leg of the trip between the continental U.S. and the Hawaiian islands are for kayaking, not driving or walking on the ocean floor, which is what I thought they meant at first. I can see Luda in a kayak.

Robin Hood Hills in the studio

This morning I'm getting ready for work and I check my phone right quick to find that I have a new voicemail. With much dread, I decided to listen to it anyway and it turned out to be Scot T calling me at about 0830CST to tell me that the Robin Hood Hills were spending the day at the IPR studios and he was inviting me along, or something to that affect.
Unfortunately, I had to work, and then after work, I had to go to work (two jobs, bitches). Just the same, I was able to steal away an hour to hang out in the studio and watch the guys record bits and pieces of their four song EP, which Scot said he'll send me the audio tracks for so I can have a new little mix project.
Forgive the super-blurry shots. It's a camera-phone, not a Hasselblad.

Here are your resolutions.

Around this time of year, most people are putting together their best-of lists and making arm-length lists for the impending liquor store run. They're considering their "Ultimate Party Mix 2008" playlists for their iTunes or their Media Players, as opposed to a stack of mixtapes like (I'm assuming/fantasizing) it was done back in the day, they're considering their party invitees if they haven't been invited to any parties themselves, they're considering which channel to watch the ball drop on if they're not considering which bars they're going to crawl between, and, of course, they're considering their resolutions.
I watched CBS Sunday Morning this week and Mo Rocca had a segment wherein he detailed what others' resolutions should be. I think you know where I'm going with this. Sit back, relax, and prepare to commit to your new resolution.
Anders, Caesar, Domeir: Your resolutions are to call once and a while.
Clint: Your resolution is to listen to "Joed Out" by Barbara Manning and the San Francisco Seals on side 2 of No Alternative and like it. Because if you talk to me about noise rock one more time...
Daver: Your resolution is to return your calls a little more.
Georgie: Your resolution is to listen to death metal.
Gerbs: You kind of have things under control.
Hemminger: Your resolution is to steer the Kyle Sowashes tour through Minneapolis.
J-Do: Your resolution is to... well, you kind of have enough shit on your plate. You're cool.
Janis: Your resolution is to... huh, yeah, uh, you have a bunch of shit to deal with as it is.
Jimmie: Your resolution is to... Yeah, you have a bunch of shit going on, too, right now.
Joe: Your resolution is to quit Big Boy.
Kirian: Your resolution is to make more bootleg recordings in 2009 and provide reviews and samples.
McGarvey: Your resolution is to begin a series of articles about this crazy cat lady or whoever from Pennsylvania.
Scot: Your resolution is to not text me. If you need to get a hold of me, call me. But stop with the texts.
Todd: Your resolution is to grow a pair.
Tom: Beats me.
Tony: Your resolution is to pick one phone number and then keep that one phone number without changing it or getting a second number for the entirety of 2009.
Wendy: Your resolution is to start smoking.

Recent Loves

Been creating a bit of distraction from winter for myself, lately, particularly with ye olde latest listenings, starting with...
Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, Security.
Holy shit is this ever heavy, especially the ball-grabbing first song, "Beaten Metal". When I had to describe the low-end coming out of the brass section in this song to one of my blind dates these past two weeks, I explained it thusly: "It sounds like a herd of elephants fucking a herd of rhinos... on a submarine."
At the same time, folks who may or may not have more familiarity with the Afro Cuban Beat have alerted me that Antibalas is "really, really derivative". It was recommended that I check out one of a series of comps called Ethiopiques. And since that was the first I'd ever heard of them, you can bet your ass that it would be as though I were asking for Serge Gainsbourg's thumb in my ass when I asked them about it at the Electric Fetus. (US$32 for fucking In Utero on vinyl!? Are you fucking kidding me? Was the the shit pressed with shards of Kurt Cobain's skull stirred into the vinyl?) Which is where our next entry should come in handy in exploration.
Various Artists, Nigeria Special: Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds & Nigerian Blues 1970-6. Quite the find indeed, but since this is a new bit of exploration and I had to keep refinding my place on it because everytime I listened to it the phone would ring or I'd get sucked into some bullshit involving work or the landlord yada yada yada.
So far, though, this is an excellent comp and I highly recommend it to anybody looking to get into Afrobeat further than Fela Kuti. Just promise me that when you when you start co-opting it, that you maybe do something not so "clubby" as our next one...
Brazilian Girls, S/T. Seriously, just a little too clubby, and when I say "a little too" I mean "I need a shower", and when I say "clubby" I mean "because I fell into a dumpster full of Euro-trash".
"What is this?" you ask, "Charlie's hatin' in the 'Love' portion?"
Well, you see, I saw the Brazilian Girls live in Detroit a few years back at a Taste of Comerica festival, and through the haze of pot smoke, chin-stroking goateed hipsters, and dancing tattooed lesbians, I can recall that the Brazilian Girls made decent techno-reggae, though I thought it was ridiculous that the keyboardist looked like he was jizzing his pants every time he hit a long, sustained chord a la Yanni. And then they played the song most people know them for, "Pussy".
"Pussy" is the best song on this record not because of the catchy/naughty refrain of "pussy pussy pussy marijuanna," but because it's easily the most roots-based, non-club-beaten (That should fuck Dave's world up. Dave, if a song is affected by the use of a particular beat, can I say the song is "beaten"?), easy-going song on the whole record that doesn't make the band sound like the ecstasy-eating Jamaican Portishead. But because "Pussy" was never released as a single, I couldn't find cover art, and while that's never affected things before, I said "fuck it" because somebody had to say this shit.

OK, here's what happened. Again.

So! Internet dating. Yeah... um. Where to begin?
We've been through this, before, and I think I pretty clearly convinced myself that it would end there and not go any further than friends. What happened, though... Yyeeaahhuurrgghh, about that... well, I met her for a drink then we came back to my place and got to second base. I kept to myself that I hated her footwear, she put it right out there that she hated my taste in music, and I thought that it was pretty vapid for a twenty nine year old to be griping about "duder-bras" ([1], more commonly [2]) taking over "the scene". Further, I was weirded out by her history with religion, chiefly that her history with religion makes Georgie's history with religion look sane, and Georgie's got some fucked up religious history. Why do you think we broke up?
Anyhow, how does Charlie handle interaction with this woman he clearly has no intention of dating? He makes out with her. Good thinking.
Then there was last night. Last night, the hairdresser from the above story was still on holiday in Wisconsin, so I was freed up. I called up the bartender that told me she was "smitten" with me on account of my beard (which should have been a red flag, right there) and we met up for a drink. Then she says she wants to come over to my place to hear Gang of Four's Entertainment! I figure, "Why not?" She has no weird, vaguely fundamentalist religious history, she smokes, and she seems cool.
Before we go any further, and by "we" I mean "you, oh my little illiterati, and myself" I think I should tell you something.
She asked me point blank when we met online why I wasn't interested in long-term relationships. I told her it's because I don't plan on staying in the Twin Cities, or even this fucking state. I am not going to lead anybody on by telling them I'm available for something I'm not. That's sensible, right. There's nothing wrong with just looking for some fun if you say up front you're just looking for some fun, right? Some people honestly like to have non-committal sex. I enjoy it myself from time to time.
So I meet up with her at the first bar last night and we revisit the issue. I tell her that I don't like it here and I don't intend to stay here, so I'm not going to bullshit anybody into thinking I'm going to be around longer than... Well, any longer than the economy will permit. I think she gets it.
We get to the second bar, and she asks again. Again. So I figure, OK, and I tell her again, and I make sure to explain it to her in a way anybody could understand my clearly stating, not hinting at or implying, the following points.
That is to say that I said, out loud, these things:

• I'm not going to stay in Minneapolis.


• I'm not going to stay in Minnesota.


• I don't think it would be right to let somebody think that I'm going to be available for something "long-term".


• I'm not even interested in something long-term right now, anyhow.

I told her these things. Out loud. Bluntly. Not implying or using the Vulcan mind-meld.
So we get to my place, I put on Entertainment!, I offer her a drink, she's not thirsty, she has nothing to say, so I offer to eat her out, bing bing bing, fast forward to an hour later and I've got her knees to her ears for the second time.
Clearly, my course of action was the most well-thought-out one available to me at the time.
We're laying there cuddling afterward, and it's beginning to creep into my skull: I don't think she gets that this was just supposed to be a good time. I mean, I had to tell her three times, right? I had to constantly reaffirm this with her, right? I think I just did a bad thing.
A funny thing happens to the mind when it comes to having to conjure up the post-coital "This was just a good time, right?" conversation for the first time. You begin to stumble over your words, you start going in circles, you try to say adult things with a child-like naivete, and it's almost like you've turned into a stammering version of Mr. Rogers with a rubber still hanging off your noodle as it eases back into torpidity. And as she has her head on your chest and you're stroking the small of her back, you can hear the sound of her voice drift ever deeper into dismay. She says, "you're right", "that's a good idea", and a whole host of other things that indicate agreement when she decides to break out ye olde, "I don't want this to be one of those things where I fuck you and you never call me again."

Careful language choices, there. Examine:
"I don't want this to be one of those things where I fuck you and you never call me again."
As opposed to:
"I don't want this to be one of those things where we fuck and we never talk again."

They sort of mean the same thing, except that the way she phrased it indicated that she was doing me a favor or giving herself to me as opposed to the sex being a group effort. Further, instead of interaction being a two way street, she indicates that she's concerned that I will be the one to discontinue communication. If it were a case of "we"s, I'd be fine, but the way she phrased it, I have just been massively guilt tripped.
It's precisely because, though, that I established from my end that I thought she understood because she said she understood that I wasn't looking for anything serious, that this was one of those good time things. Good times. Good times. Kind of like "wham, bam, thank you, ma'am" but I'll take her out for breakfast as opposed to kicking her out.
Well, she decided to leave.
OK.
I walk her to the door. And I get the sense that I'm getting sucked into things I don't want to get sucked into. So I say, "Well, you have my email -"
"I have your phone number, too."
"Yeah, so, call me." You know, 'cause I'm OK with open lines of communication.
"No," she says, "that's on you." And she said it like she was pissed off.
"Are you OK?"
"Yeah, just tired." And she left.

When I woke up this morning, I deleted the account. I don't need anymore trouble. I have to get tested, now, too. Yeah, I used a johnny, but I'm getting tested.

Happy Boxing Day!

So, I didn't mean to try to end 2008 after Saturday's Year in Review, it actually went like this:
Sunday: I felt like taking the day off.
Monday: I was sicker than shit. Undoubtedly from Sunday's activities.
Tuesday: Realized that I must have picked up a bug because I still felt like shit. Then I did some recording.
Wednesday: Worked on the session from Tuesday. Then I remembered, "Oh, yeah, it's Christmas Eve. That means the liquor store is closed tomorrow."
Thursday: I treated myself to some Chinese food and A Christmas Story. And metal.
Besides, it's not like I wasn't a couple days ahead of things at the time, but allow me to make up for the absence with a new game: Let's play Ex-Fiancee or Internet Dater?
Both of these women have Cultural Studies degrees with a focuses on anthropology and Native American rights, Bettie Page haircuts, big asses, and obsessions with zombies and rockabilly music. There are only two differences: First, one has a kid, the other has a horse. Secondly, I used to put my penis in one and not the other.
To play, just roll your mouse on over a picture.

Daver is forbidden from playing because this broad freaked me out and I had to show somebody.

2008: The Year In Review

Number of times Tricky's name has been invoked this year: 24
Number of times Rupert Murdoch's name has been invoked this year: 13
Number of times "When the Levee Breaks" has been referenced this year: 6
Number of times Steve Albini's name has been invoked this year: 6
Number of times Dave outlined his grudge against Steve Albini: 1
Number of posts by Dave: 1
Number of times Charlie needed Dave to look up a word: 5
Number of times Kirian did Daver's job for him: 1 (When Charlie accidentally typed "failded".)
Number of posts Charlie had to make on Kirian's behalf: 3
Number of times Kirian appeared on the blogcast: 3
Most times a guest appeared on the blogcast: 8 (Upstairs Tom)
Number of stories Upstairs Tom didn't want left in the blogcast: 2
Number of times Upstairs Tom just up and walked out in the middle of the blogcast: 1
Bands that Charlie loved broken down by month:

• January: The Bird and the Bee
• February: Gang of Four
• March: Arcade Fire
• April: Big Black
• May: Wire
• June: The Creeping Nobodies
• July: Ella Fitzgerald
• August: Unsane
• September: Lucy Michelle and the Velvet Lapelles
• October: NOXAGT
• November: Oxbow
• December: Oxbow

Number of records reviewed this year: 43
Number of records reviewed this year that were released this year: 0
Number of records gotten rid of this year: 44
Most posts in a month: 46 (September)
Number of those posts that actually concerned music: 15
Number of those posts that concerned death: 3
Number of those death-related posts that concerned a human: 1 (Paul Newman)
Number of people that died this year that were half-ass-eulogized here: 3 (George Carlin, Paul Newman, Betty Page)
Number of times Charlie compared Paul Anka to a date rapist: 1

I am so fucking metal.

Last night, I watched Get Thrashed. This movie served two purposes:
Firstly, it reignited my love of the metal I listened to when I was a kid (besides Def Leppard). Not stoner, sludge, or doom metal, but speedy, thrashy, headbanging metal. When I tell people I grew up on metal, it was this kind of thing I'm talking about. I was into Megadeth, Biohazard, Fear Factory, those kinds of things. I didn't have their records and I didn't have their t-shirts, but I knew their songs from the mixtapes I had them on. Watching this (excellently executed) documentary on the thrash metal scene, I remembered, "Oh, yeah, didn't I mean to own that record at some point in my life?" at least four or five times in reference to four or five records. In particular: Slayer's Reign In Blood. Also, I had to hear this record based on the cover art alone. That is what record covers should look like. I don't care if you're in a fucking zydeco band, that is what a real record cover looks like. It is now my desktop.
Secondly, this movie reaffirmed my hatred of Metallica. Let's get the easy part out of the way: Kirk Hammett's command of English rivals my command of sanskrit. Before I explain that part, I have to backtrack a bit. You see, everytime somebody from Metallica opens their mouth in this doc, they're stroking themselves: "What we did that was ahead of our time -", "What we did for the scene -", "Why we were better than everybody else -", "Nobody did it before we did it -". Hey, Metallica, shut the fuck up! There's this band, that came wwwaaayyy before you and their name was Motorhead.
The funny thing is, though, that when Kirk Hammett talks about Metallica, he absconds with his pronouns and refers to Metallica as Metallica. This sounds like not a big deal, I know, but it starts to eat away at you. Kirk Hammett constantly referring to Metallica as Metallica; not "us", "we", "the band", "the guys and I", not even the grammatically incorrect "me and the guys". This begins fucking with you after a while, and you start to wonder if, when Kirk Hammett jerks off to a dirty magazine, he dirty talks to himself referring to his fantasy woman as "Penthouse May 2005 page 97" as opposed to "you".
(By the way, if somebody has access to the May 2005 issue of Penthouse, please scan and submit a copy of page 97. I think it would be a hoot to see what's really there.)
But Metallica's most flagrant crime against humanity is obviously allowing Lars to talk. Kirk may have spent the most time trying to convince us how great his ba- sorry, Metallica was, but Lars just brought the stupid. If Lars were a mathematical expression he would be written thusly:

Lars =

(Completely, unforgiveably full of shit)2 ("Special needs" child)

X Douche

Why? Because it's like this. At one point, Lars is talking about how Metallica got so big. It's a story we're all familiar with, because it's generally how it works. You see, back in the day, they had these things called cassettes - No, stay with me here, you need to hear this. You see, nobody knew who Metallica was, so the band got their name out there the way bands normally do, by playing a shit load of shows and (wait for it) tape trading.
Again: Tape trading.
Tape trading.
You know, what the kids used to do before there was an internet or MP3s. Lars said, and I'm paraphrasing here, but this is pretty accurate because so insensed was I that I burned those words into my cortex with a goddamned soldering iron:

"That might be the fourteenth generation tape, but you were automatically cooler than everybody else for having it."

Seriously, I'm probably only two words off, like the word "automatically". I can't remember if that was in there. But I can remember where Lars was a few years ago...

AT THE FUCKING NAPSTER HEARINGS!

For on whose behalf was Lars there? Come on, your memory's not shot: The RIAA. Metallica sued their fans for doing the exact same thing, albeit in a digital form with farther reach, that made Metallica the successful band they are today. Essentially, they sued their fans for loyalty. There is no real difference between dubbing cassettes and file sharing. There isn't. So, why, Lars, was this so different? These are both methods for transferring music to parties who have no intention of giving money to a retailer. Lars, seriously, that's like suing the studs that are mounted to your house's foundation. You fucking colossal douche.
And by the way, if it weren't for tape trading, I would have never made out with Carmen Tracy in high school. Normally, at this point, I would probably go beat off thinking about some broad I made out with in high school because we both liked the Stooges but, really, right now, not in the mood.
At least I ended things with a masturbation joke.

What were you expecting, you dummy?

The real problem with Minnesota winters is the local, well, really regional lore. It's not the cold so much as it's the constant reminder that things get cold up here; it's actually sort of a perverse tourist attraction.
When I first came to Minnesota in October 2005 (to get my bullshit degree), nearly everybody I knew commented on how cold it was "up there". My old man, Jimmie and Annie, half the day regulars at Howard's Club H, even my ex-fiancee's friend Heather who's from fucking Fargo reminded me: "You know it gets cold up there."
I had previously been to North Dakota over Christmas 2004, where the highs were regularly ridiculous bullshit like -7^oF. The picture to your left wasn't faked, that was the lowest high I'd ever seen in my life at that point and I wanted Angie to get a picture of me out there for one reason: So people would shut the fuck up about the cold.
It should be noted that that is not snow in the background, snow requires the occasional warm front to roll through. That's actually ice from the moisture in the damned ground freezing.
I probably had a lot easier time adjusting to Minnesota's variety of cold if only by virtue of growing up Ohioan moving further inland from Lake Erie as I got older, but the furthest from the lake was an hour inland. Custar, OH or at least the mile and a half I lived outside of it generally got hit with anywhere from a foot to two feet of snow every winter, and I'm talking about all at once. Every winter, mother nature would go on the rag and take it out on everybody by dumping thick layers of snow all through the Black Swamp region.
My parents' house sits on a one and one third acre lot. The driveway runs from Milton Rd to the garage. The garage, of course, sits at the back of the property. As I was the oldest son, the duty of shoveling the driveway, all sixty nine stinking yards of it, fell on my shoulders. Anything under a foot and a half of snow was mine. Anything over that, and my old man would curse his own existence in preparation for cursing at the 1940s Ford tractor he used as a snow plow when it wouldn't start.
These were the winters I knew, so it was that after I had heard all the warnings ad nauseum, after I took a taste of the industrial strength concentrated shit in North Dakota, that I got to Minneapolis and when winter hit two months after my arrival my initial reaction was, "This is pussy shit." The air had a noticable bite to it, the kind that hits your face and drifts down the neck of your coat creating a chill on the sternum, the kind that upon impact shuts your eyelids for you, but nothing more than that. You put on an extra layer and you go about your day.
If you've ever experienced a cold winter with snow, if it's ever dawned on you that Minneapolis is about four or five hours from the Canadian border, if it's occured to you that, in some parts of the world, winter is cold, Minneapolis winters are manageable.
I normally abhor the situations when, in the dead of winter, people come in from the cold and proclaim, "Whew! It's cold out there!" It betrays a sense of vapidity, superficial conversation starters, and a staggeringly clear grasp of the obvious. I hate it when people who live in climates such as these break out this godawfully troglodytic phrase, as though they had never expected, even with regularly occuring precedents for these periods of lower temperatures. I can't stand it. On the flip side of the coin, when people gripe about the heat in July, I want to smack the stupid out of them.
So it was that two nights ago at the hostel a woman from California and a woman from Texas checked in; the Texan was here on business, job interviews and the like. I don't know what the Californian was here for.
The Texan was a high maintenance sort, but her gripes at the hostel were reasonable. She was checking into a female dorm with a woman who horded dirty dishes and left them strewn across the other beds in the room. She also rarely bathed, and her odor combined with the odor of dirty dishes was enough to make the room undesirable, in addition to the draft in the room. Even with the thermostat set to 80^oF, the room was chilly and one that I would not want to sleep in myself.
I did what any good host would do: I moved the Texan to another, warmer, not stinky room that, while it was more expensive, I didn't charge her for. This didn't bother me. What bothered me was when the guest asked, in all seriousness, mind you, "Is it always this cold?"
I held my tongue. Instead of lashing out at her for being an idiot, asking her what she was thinking December in the north would be like, I played along, even spun her a little bullshit: "Well, generally, winters here are a lot colder." That was the bullshit part; a quick off-handed comment concocted without malicious forethought. Then the honesty part: "But I've been here three years, now, so I'm kind of used to it. I mean, you're here only two nights, so, yeah, it can seem a little different." That's true, I've become acclimated to the winters here to the point where 12^oF is open-jacket weather.
It was then that I realized why Minnesotans warn non-Minnesotans about the cold. It's not some heartland bravado, no half-polar-bear chest-thumping proclamation of how hardcore they are, it's that Minnesotans have nearly the same stance on bitching about the cold that I do: Everybody gets that it's cold. Stop bitching. So when some Southerner decides they want to make a trip up here for some sort of winter holiday, they are given ample warning in the hopes that they don't immediately get to town underdressed and immediately ask some hydrocephalic question regarding the temperature. "Is it always this cold in the winter?"
I told my old man this story and he said, "Jesus Christ. What were ya'xpectin', ya dummy?"
As I finish this pot of coffee, I'll compile the list of errands I need to run today and I'll make my rounds to the bank, the post office, the grocery store, etc. I'll feel the bite in the air on my walk and I'll probably let my mind wander to all the things I'm sure I'll probably have forgotten at the house and I'll get home and the only gripe I'll have about the cold is that my glasses fog up when I come in from the cold. Because that's annoying.

Winter Cleaning Episode 3

Three fatalities this morning in our hard drive clearing spree: 7 Year Bitch's Viva Zapata and Sick 'Em and Mission Of Burma's Vs.. I actually liked these records, I just never listened to 'em.

More Delays and Modulations!

So the latest project I took on this weekend, it had some problems.
First of all, I think we've gone through my thing on sampling ad nauseum, so it went without saying that I had to concoct new drums when I told you about it in the first place. You may remember that I used sounds of clicks and pops from the amp to build a drum kit. Well, I augmented these a bit with an additional click/pop for a kick and the sound of my old Fender spring tank for snare.
You probably also recall that I was automating some pretty hefty delay to get that classic dub-reggae "shoo-shoo-shoo-shoo". What I kept running up against was that I was get those "shoo"s at first, but toward the end of the song, the delay was making sounds more along the lines of "weeauw-weeauw-weeauw-weeauw". To remedy this, I figured, "Well, I gotta have a sample of white noise or amp hiss or something somewhere." (Seriously, I have shit like that for some reason. I'm thinking of putting together a sample pack of just various models of amp hiss. US$29.95, motherfucker, cough it up.) So I took the amp hiss, toyed with the fade in and out properties of the sample and ran it through a whole note delay with heavy feedback which yielded nice little eighth notes.
I also augmented the guitar part a bit with a different guitar track I recorded in the basement after having set up Goliath. I got the Jaguar to start generating feedback (I was able to make feedback! Loud feedback!) and hung it up in a position that would maintain the pitch. The Jaguar was plugged into the instrument input of the ring modulator. I then took the Duo-Sonic and routed that to the carrier input of the ring modulator to (you guessed it) ring modulate the two guitars together. Theoretically, the Jaguar was the carrier and the Duo-Sonic was the modulator, but they had to be realistically routed the opposite since I needed the Jaguar's feedback and you can't generate feedback by routing through the carrier in since the carrier delivers essentially a voltage that has to go through the bunch of candycane and toadstool fields populated by math gnomes that live in the ring modulator, therefore, I needed the to use the audio input to keep the feedback flowing.
Long and short of it: I used the Duo-Sonic to change the pitch of the Jaguar's feedback.
I then took a little bit of this recording out and then flipped that bit into reverse and brought it in behind the original guitar so that when one guitar chord faded out, a bit of modulated feedback faded in. When the feedback guitar faded in to its peak, the next chord from the normal guitar came in and then that faded out to allow for the next feedback guitar to fade in... Yada yada yada.
It should be noted, of course, that this is just one more dick-off project of mine to keep my brain busy during my down time, you know, while not working on a KRAKOA record, while not even my friends bands are asking me to record them, the usual shit.
Outside of that, man, I got nothing.

Blogcast 12/14/08

We wish you a merry... Oh, fuck it.

Host: Charlie Co-hosts: Upstairs Tom, Philandering Tom, Old Tom, Maran, Craig, The Reid Sisters Family Revelation Singers, Daver, Kirian, Karl the Landlord, and at some point, Steve V. laughs. Duration: 29 minutes. You can call it a holiday special. You can call it the B-Sides, rarities, and outtakes compilation. Just don't call it late to dinner. This blogcast contains the biggest hits by the biggest artists. Please sue me, I need the publicity.

Can we all agree on something?

Scat singing. It's baby talk.

OK, here's what happened.

So, McGarvey signed up for this free internet dating site, right? (Stay with me, here.) So, he starts goofing on half these women he's coming across and all of a sudden, ten other people from the EA forums or something close to that number sign up to see what he's going on about.
Now, I thought it was a joke. I seriously thought, "OK, I'll just sign up so I can see these profiles and get in on the joke." Seriously, I thought it was a fucking joke.
Next thing you know, I'm getting contacted. This broad who lives in my neighborhood wants to meet up. I don't know what the fuck to do. Would you know what the fuck to do? 'Cause I didn't know what the fuck to do. I said, "Sure."
So, we meet. It was... uh... awkward. And that's the nice way of putting it.
You all know that I'm a huge Music Nazi (second time today that word's been referenced for those of you keeping score at home), so very disappointed was I that she didn't know who the Jesus Lizard, Shellac, Big Black, or Sleep were. I can understand not knowing Oxbow; I didn't know Oxbow until last month myself; she gets a pass for that, but COME. THE FUCK. ON. Not knowing the Jesus Lizard!? The fucking Jesus Lizard!?
Seriously, man, the Jesus Lizard.
Fuck.
OK, admittedly, I've tried this before. I dated George and you know that worked out alright. I was exposed to some cool stuff and she has a few things in my library that she likes. Angie hated pretty much everything I listened to except for Motorhead which I believe was a passing interest. So, yeah, can't get too down on a lady because we don't have the same reference points.
But really, man: We're talking about the fucking Jesus Lizard.
THE JESUS LIZARD!
Can I say it enough!?

THE.
FUCKING.
JESUS.
LIZARD.

I should calm down, right? I mean, what did I expect? I was meeting someone from a goddamned dating website that I joined as a joke. What kind of expectations could I possibly have?
Urgh.
Maybe, maybe, (let me say it again) MAYBE, I 'll hang out with her some more. Nothing wrong with more friends, and it's not like this was a date. You can easily just meet people and be friends with them, right?
Really, man. She didn't know the Jesus Lizard.
(J-Do, back me up on this.)

The Basement Beat New Zealand

Check it out. I finally reinstalled Goliath. Can you handle the searing 60W of unbridled power through a 15 and two 12s? Them shits is loud as fuck even with the volume at "0".

Bettie Page, John Bonham's Dub Bossanova, and the Nazi High School Reunion.

When you've had three beers, you're bound to dedicate something to somebody. Sorry, Bettie, I'm sober now. You're gone but not forgotten, you sexy dead nutjob, you.

Yesterday, I started fucking around with a drum roll from outtakes of John Bonham's drums from In Through The Out Door. What I wound up doing was trimming down the roll and then matching the tempo to it, which came out to be 146.5BPM. Then, for shits and giggles, I degraded the wave content to sinewaves and slowed the fucker down to half the tempo, 73.25BPM. What came out of it, was something that sounded like a dub-reggae organ with some drums behind it.
Not really thinking, I picked up the bass and started mimicing the "organ" and then adding little flourishes and accents here and there until I had a dubby little trip hop bass part. Well, you know how one thing leads to another: I started recording again.
In the middle of recording the bass part, I heard something in George's room go "cling" while she was moving shit around, and the pitch was just right, so I mimiced that "cling" on the guitar and then started building on that until I had a bit of a finger-picked jazz guitar part. I opted to suck all the treble out on the amp's EQ and LP filter and the guitar's neck pickup. This was then treated with dotted eighth note delay with moderate feedback and automated gated dotted whole note delay with heavy feedback. This allows for the occasional dubby "shoo-shoo-shoo-shoo".
But because you know I'm a stickler about sampling, I had to concoct my own drum part, no matter how much I fucked with Bonzo's drum part. Instead of breaking out the drum samples, I instead sliced up the end of the guitar track where I was audibly unplugging things before turning the amp off. This yielded three sounds I dubbed [PUN!] "Bong Kick" (because it sounds like a bunch of bubbles in a bong), "Amp Off Snare" (a decent popping sound), and "Voltage Hat" (from the sound of the board being unplugged from the computer before I realized I hadn't stopped recording). Without a lot of fucking with the properties of these samples (all I had to do was normalize and reverse the kick), I organized these into a bossanova beat. Taking a cue from my last trip hop / dub / exotica / surf/spy experiment, I then ran this "electrical bossanova" track through a pair of automated glitchers for the occasional fill. Sounds pretty cool, actually.
The end result, I'm still working on, but I can afford to take my time as it's not exactly life or death to get this done. So into it was I, though, that I even took the laptop to work with me last night to mess with things a little more.

Anyhow, the last two nights have been populated with strange dreams involving the Third Reich to some extent. Night before last, Alec Baldwin was the head of a huge Nazi plot to burn all the fields surrounding my parents' house. After showing Gremlins 2 to a group of mute children in a huge, outdoor, concrete amphitheater, I traveled up to the top floor of Baldwin's Victorian-era high-rise to perhaps kill the psychic mute child at the root of all this. Baldwin turned out to be a double agent, but the old lady behind the strikingly tall judge's podium was pure Nazi. I watched the fields burn.
Last night, Daver, J-Do, my cousin Jenny (as Mrs. Do), the bad guy from Highlander, Laura Heringhaus (from highschool), and myself were all placed on a space ship to Jupiter for Nazis. The Nazis turned off the gravity (Daver loved this) and the heat so we all got into bed together. Laura Heringhaus let me cop a feel. Of course, I wake up this morning after the picnic scene outside the saloon was over to think, "Laura Heringhaus? I haven't seen her in nearly ten yea - Shit. I've got a high school reunion coming up."
I'm not crazy about the idea of my high school reunion, the amount of fun would be somewhere between a prostate exam from a porcupine and trying to drink boiling goat's blood. I'm fairly certain I won't get invited, though, as I have this vague suspicion that committees for these sorts of things are people like Student Body President, Home-Coming Queen, Yearbook Committee, Prom Committee, etc. Essentially, none of the shit I was involved with.
You see in any given highschool, there are two crowds: the in-crowd and the out crowd. At BGHS, these two crowds could each be easily broken into three sub-crowds.
The in-crowd was composed of jocks, cheerleaders, and preps. Preps and jocks were on the same hierarchal level as they could both date cheerleaders, but preps were simply not athletic. While jocks and cheerleaders both had involvment in athletics, they did not reside on the same level and not because of stereotypical gender roles: BGHS had a number of female athletes and one male cheerleader; athletes sat a little higher on the chart because their involvment in sports was more direct. I actually knew a few of the female athletes, but by "knew" I mean I had class with them, I didn't attend sleep overs, eat grilled cheeses with them, or call their moms "Mrs. [last initial]". The female jocks, however, were notably nicer and more humble than their male counterparts.
The out-crowd was composed of math-nerds, drama kids, and stoners. Since even by the nineties the goth scene had not fully struck BGHS, our one resident "goth" was stuck with the drama kid association, which kind of made sense because the year he went goth was the same year he quit drama club. At the time, you had to admire the balls on the guy since he was the only one wearing ripped fishnets on his arms and explored music beyond Marilyn Manson. As far as the math-nerds were concerned, they were satisfied with their lot in life and yes, they did quote the fuck out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Stoners are kind of self-explanatory.
Then there were floaters, which sounds nice, neutral, amorphis, but the meaning here is a little more Alighierian. These included band-geeks, who were associated with jocks by virtue of athletics and math-nerds by virtue of Monty Python. The male cheerleader was a floater by virtue of being a prep and a cheerleader. Me, I was a floater: I started off as a math-nerd, tried to join up with the drama kids (at least they acted like they were all getting laid) for about a minute, and became a stoner. Since I more or less resided in out-crowd territory, I'm fairly certain I'm safe from having to deal with invites to the blasted ten-year reunion. Though I'm kind of considering looking up Laura Heringhaus, now.

RIP, Bettie Page.

At 1841PST, Bettie Page's family decided to discontinue life support after she spent five days in a coma brought on by a heart attack.
In rememberance, Sound Design And Assembly will not be posting tomorrow.

New Zealand vs. the Basement

Wasn't I supposed to be holding a fundraiser on Fridays? What the fuck happened? Could it be that it's hard to hold elimination rounds when I've already selected a country? I seriously have no idea how to make this work into a regular thing every week, but I already made a thermometer for it so now Ive kind of obligated myself to do this.
Anyhow, I'm seriously considering putting the recording rig in the basement this weekend, finally dragging my amplifiers out of the vestibule and stacking them up again in a fashion that they have not been since 3303 NE. Essentially the DaVinci will be extended out to the two Fender cabs, creating a sort of 3/8 stack (once you figure that four speakers in a cab is a half stack), then perhaps a permanent set up for the Peavey and the Sears, so I could tri-amp my heart out, sort of like how I haven't been able to since 307 East. More than likely, though, I'll have to set up the Sears and Peavey in a semi-permanent fashion, since the basement is being sort of converted into a bit of an arts space for everybody, and I can't just go recording whenever the hell I feel like it if somebody else is already busy down there. On one side of the huge brick stove is George's drafting table and art set up, on the other side would be my recording set up. All of the recording gear will be set up on a wooden riser about four inches off the floor, so the occasional flooding shouldn't be a problem.
Really, the results of the recording done down there last weekend were too rewarding not to pursue using the space any further. The only drawback will be finding appropriate shelving for the rest of the recording rig. Cables I can hang from anywhere, but where would I set up the four-track and the laptop? This is going to take some thinking.
Click here for a layout of the fuck dungeon - I mean basement.

What has a thumb and isn't going to work today?

This fucking guy.

I think I've covered this before.

Scheduled city: Boston, MA
Actual city: Boston, MA
Distance differential: 0 miles
Previous City ~ Next City

Lono seeks bass (Boston)

---

Reply to: comm-xxxxxxxxx@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-12-08, 9:37PM EST

www.xxxxxxxx.com

management interested, booking agents in contact, full album in works. You just said that management firms can't do anything for you until you get a bass player, you know people who would book your show if you had a bass player, and you have an album's worth of material that would sound great if only you had a bass player. You guys do realize you fucked up, right? the ball of clay is made and rolling. The what of what is what and what? now is an amazing time musically for the band and we are on the brink of huge exposure. Without a bass player. You didn't really think this through.

Justin Chanselor, John Paul Jones, and John Entwistle are ideal candidates to blend together to make our bass player. Well, it's too bad two of those guys are dead.

Musically we have also been compared to the likes of Tool Boring., Faith No More I've only heard the one song., and Led Zeppelin Hobbit-rock.. We love to jam and improv. It's called "vamping".

OK, here's where it starts to sound familiar. I'll put it in bold for you. we would love it if you:

had your own rig (sounds crazy but some people don't) That's pretty standard.

knew how to play (sounds crazy again) Doesn't sound that crazy. I've played with at least one drummer off the top of my head who didn't know how to play. He just answered an ad I put up at Madhatter. I was actually relieved when he didn't call back.

had a good knowledge of music and your role as a bass player (way too many don't understand what a bass is) This part, and the reference I'm making was to an ad posted here in the Twin Cities this time last year as it turned out. What is it with December and bands demanding you know your role as a bass player?

Check this shit out (Again, I'll put it in bold.):

Date: 2007-12-28, 11:05AM CST
We are a newly formed Rock band looking for a bassist that understands the difference between guitar and bass guitar. A guitar has six strings. A bass has four strings. They're an octave apart.

Link to original post, you'll have to scroll down quite a bit to the one titled "Looking For Rock Bassist".

knew some theory but not necessary. PUNK ROCK!

transportation is nice but not necessary. First time I've ever seen that one. Seriously. Until now, I've never seen where a band was cool enough to give their band mates a ride. I feel like confetti and balloons and shit should be falling from the ceiling.

a love for this music and desire to help make it succeed.

We are all berklee grads and that often comes off as intimidating but we are all no ego guys. However means we know our shit and want you be able to hang. Daver, call Todd. I just found his new band.

Again from the same ad posted last year:

Statements like that make no sense to people that study music. Uh, hi, I studied music, and this makes sense.

For real, what is it with music students and this "this is what a bass is supposed to do" bullshit?

very often we've had bass players who've bitten of more than they could chew Like salt-water taffy? and not able to be involved with the project to the extent that it needs. We all do other side projects and there is nothing wrong with that. we just are requesting that you take this as more than a project, take it as your band. Fair enough.

Also, we've had issues with people who are like "oh i have to go cuz my girlfriend will get mad at me" or "i have a demanding girlfriend so I don't know how much I can do" Bullshit. If she's that demanding, why does he still have a bass rig? Homeboy should have sold that shit by now on the basis that she wants him to "grow up". I think he probably just didn't like the band.

if you intend on being successful with a music career That's got to be the funniest sentence fragment I've read in a week. you need to have your priorities straight and have a girlfriend who understands that the band has to do what the band has to do and sometimes she can't be around all the time. You just said, "Man up and tell the bitch that the band comes first." That's what you just said. Thus another first encounter: I've never seen a band actively try to cockblock a potential band member.

this isn't much to ask, I just want to get it out of the way before we have an audition. Look, if the bass player has no girlfriend, how is he going to pay his rent? There is no sense in wasting your time or mine.

If you find this to be something you can be a part of please email. If not, good luck on your search.

www.xxxxxxxx.com
www.myspace.com/xxxxxxxx

• Location: Boston
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 950595978

Phase Anomalies

Yesterday I decided to give recording in the basement a try, as opposed to the living room. The rationale wasn't so much based on experimentation or acoustics, rather it was based on that I wanted to get really fucking loud and Upstairs Tom was on only his first cup of coffee.
For this bout, I set up the amp on the couch in the basement and close mic'd it, then I took advantage of the space and set up another mic approx. 20' away. What this did, probably thanks to phase anomalies and whatnots, was actually create this drone of pronounced frequencies (probably just harmonics, but they're pronounced nonetheless) between approx. 600Hz and 2kHz that actually kind of sound like my voice in the background going "AHH". This is pretty interesting considering that the bit I was playing was a slow bit of stoner-metal sludge in Drop D and that the fundamental in this instance, because I tune a half-step down in the first place, is, according to an old MS Spreadsheet, 155Hz. According to a tuner I use, it's 147Hz. I say fuck it, split the difference and call it 151Hz. According to that same old MS Spreadsheet, this drone is occurring about two octaves up, starting between D4 (587.3Hz) and D#4 (622.3Hz). The highest harmonic of this drone ends somewhere between B8 (1976Hz) and C8 (2093Hz), which is kind of funny (OK, so it's funny to only me) when you realize that B is the M6 and C is the m7 of D# and that these frequencies appear to be three octaves out of the triad. Further, filtering out anything between 600Hz and 2kHz eliminates the drone. It's weird, but man if doesn't sound cool.

Feedbackotron

Yesterday's recording experiment yielded some cool results. In a way, it wound up sort of like building my own Mellotron. What I did was record each of my guitars feeding back into each of my amps for about a minute at a time. Feedback was attained by leaning the guitars against the amps facing away so as not to allow the top of the amp to fret any strings. All guitars were ran through a Big Muff π with the amp volume adjusted to the point where feedback occurred. The Peavey amp's on-board distortion was employed in conjunction with the Big Muff π.
The tracks were:

1. Cort into DaVinci
2. Cort into Peavey
3. Cort into Sears
4. Duo-Sonic into DaVinci
5. Duo-Sonic into Peavey
6. Duo-Sonic into Sears
7. Jaguar into DaVinci
8. Jaguar into Peavey
9. Jaguar into Sears

So now I had nine tones with which to build one huge-assed chord, but then it dawned upon me: What if I automated the faders?
To do this, I first locked the project tempo to the longest clip, which yielded 84 bars @ 126.275bpm. I then took the shorter clips and duplicated them, reversing the duplicates so that there would be no breaks in the drones. I then used dual-curve fader automation with 33% tensions to yield a two-bar sinusoidal movement on each tone. Each tone's sweep was set one bar after the previous tone's sweep so, if you collapsed all of the automation moves to one row, what you would see is something that looks like two sine waves offset by 180^o.
Thanks to the Fletcher-Munson curve and that different pickup and speaker combinations required different amounts of gain and volume to get some feedback going, I had to send all nine tones to one buss and strap a compressor across that. Because the sinusoidal fader movements yielded some empty spots, I decided to blur those empty spots by routing the buss to a delay. Just to be an annoying fuck, I selected an eight stage delay and set each stage to two full seconds. Yeah, I figured that that would be too blurry, so I mixed the delay in pretty low. The delay resulting time is thus:
(All numbers represent seconds.)

2
2	4
2	4	6
2	4	6	8
2	4	6	8	10
2	4	6	8	10	12
2	4	6	8	10	12	14
2	4	6	8	10	12	14	16

Just to make the fucking with even more annoying (or interesting, depending on how you see it), I panned each tone out so that things seemed to get progressively wider as you listened to the sequence of tones until you came to the last one, at which point the sequence would begin all over again.

Tone	Pan
1	2230
2	0130
3	2200
4	0200
5	2130
6	0230
7	2100
8	0300
9	Midnight

This results in a stereo image that increases until a particular point then collapses to mono, so by virtue of the sinusoidal fader automation traveling through the tones which are panned out increasingly wider across the sequence, we have a sort of sawblade stereo image automation. Pretty neat, huh?
I will say that, so far, the coolest feedback drone I got out of yesterday's experiment was Tone 1: Cort into DaVinci, which modulated itself from A♭ to F.
The only other thing I did to it? I decided to get even more droning by recording some bowed slide fuzz bass in the background.

Winter Cleaning Episode 2

Next up in our winter melee of deletion: Shesus, Ruined It For You.

Modern Carpentry Sound Visualizations

Upstairs Tom used Flash to build three really cool visualizations like you would find for Windows Media Player or (even cooler) what happened when you put an audio CD into a Playstation and hit select. Click a pic to be whisked off to a wonderful world of light and sound.

Left to right: Match stick visualizer, music by Bret Turner. Oscilloscope visualizer, music by Dosh. Circle visualizer, music by Modest Mouse.
Visit Modern Carpentry to check out some more of Tom's design work.

Fuck YouTube

Check this link, thanks to IPower.
Sound Design And Assembly hereby boycotts the pussy-assed money-whores at YouTube. While I am not normally (by "normally" I mean "at all") a vlog fan, that YouTube would go this route is... The link presents better reporting than I ever would.

I'm still listening to the fuck out of that Oxbow record, by the way.

Winter Cleaning Episode 1

Next to go in our Winter bloodbath: Epoxies, S/T.

Recent Loves

Oxbow, An Evil Heat.
Hot rats! This is everything I've been looking for. I know I probably say that a lot but let me have this one, OK?
In the last installment of "Recent Loves", I knew I pretty much went off about how these guys drew the blueprint for almost everything that has ever been cool, and I've been geeking out over the stuff they stream online for about a week, week and a half now. There're just not enough good things to say about this band. An Evil Heat, the fifth of the currently six Oxbow records is the one I had the most exposure to and I'm listening to the fuck out of it right now. This makes me want to go to work and pick up a whole row of cubicles and just massively fuck the place up. If people happen to be in those cubicles... well, shit happens.
Fender Jaguar necks.
Or at least the one I'll be buying from fellow EA poster Holmes for ₤60, which translates to a little under US$90. Hey, this one will, or at least damned well better, have frets on it. Not like Warmoth who want US$100 something for it and then charge again you for the frets.
Got-damn! Did I mention how much I love this fucking Oxbow record?
Anyway, when I get this neck (if I get this neck), expect a little pictorial coverage in Jaguar neck replacement. My Jaguar needs one bad, too. Last night, I notice that at some point in time, the nut slid around a little. So, we have the bat attack and a sliding nut, now. Fucking great.

In a little bit of winter cleaning, I finally ditched the Dresden Dolls' S/T and Tool's... what's that one with "Prison Sex" on it? Yeah, well I ditched that one chiefly because it is that forgettable. I held on to "Prison Sex", though.

The Vinegar Mystery

I think we've established before that I've spent too much time at work lately and not enough time making music, so today's post isn't so much about music as much as it's about coming home to a house that reeks of vinegar. This perplexed the shit out of me last night upon getting home, and it wasn't until I got out of the shower this morning to make coffee that I found the culprit.
Something brown and gooey had seemingly exploded all over the coffee maker. It wasn't coffee and thankfully it wasn't shit. While visually it was on the counter, on the coffee maker, and in the bowls and mugs that nobody else in the house has the wherewithall (Daver, check that for me) to clean while my Mrs. Garrett ass has been at work for two weeks straight, the smell was hitting me right in the face. This is George's cupboard.
I open it up and what do I find? A bottle of Balsamic vinegar on its side, the lid half-twisted off, a snail-trail from the area below the mouth of the bottle to the edge of the cupboard which is located directly above the coffee maker. Miss "I-Haven't-Used-The-Kitchen-In-Weeks" has some explaining to do. Thankfully, my coffee this morning tastes normal.

You gotta be fucking kidding.

Scheduled city: Providence, RI
Actual city: Doesn't really make a difference.
Distance differential: 4 yds, more than likely.
Previous City ~ Next City

This guy's going to put me out of a fucking job.

I AM THE GREATEST!!

---

Reply to: comm-xxxxxxxxx@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-12-01, 5:44PM EST

Drummer of all time!!! Bonham, Peart?? Yeah ok. Those guys suck. I practically reinvented the way drums are now played. Rock, Metal, Jazz, whatever. I am the best.

I AM THE GREATEST!!!

Guitarist: I've played songs, licks, hell, NOTES that have made people burn all of their Hendrix albums on the spot and swear allegiance to my cult of guitar. I have have shredded with such ferocity and brilliance that folks swore Dimebag Darrel was reincarnated right in front of them. Jimmy Page cleans my strats. And I don't pay him, and i don't allow him to look my in the eyes. I am guitar.

I AM THE GREATEST!!!

Bass player ever: Jaco? Entwistle? Flea? Bootsy? Put all those names together, strip it down and what do you get? Me, baby!! I have more rhythm than a metronome on hard drugs. I am so melodious, I'll rip a funky bass groove that will make you do the thriller dance on the spot. I play the stand-up with my dong, and jaws snap off and crush the tiles on the floor. AmAzInG iS I!!!!

I am THE GREATEST!!!

Vocalist of all time: Stevie, Aretha, Pavarotti, Freddie, that guy from nickleback, James Blunt?? yeah all trash compared to me. I have a 47 octave range. I can break panes of glass with my shrieks, I can seduce killer whales with my subsonic moans. One time a held a note for 23 days straight. Upon completion the audience combusted. My vibrato will cause the ladies instant orgasmic collapse.

Keys, Horns, Violin, Cello, Triangle, Bongos, Oboe and tap dance. I rule all. I am amazing. you can't stop it. So just join it.

Here's the thing. I've never made it out of my basement quite yet. I've got a few crappy recordings, but i just need a few other musicians who can basically play underneath the floorboards along with me so as not to even attempt to appear that they physically, musically or mentally are even anywhere near my level. Smarten up, junior. You're all on the ground floor, in the basement. I'm on the 478th floor, step in line you clowns. My immense, undeniable talent will make you rich. Who do you want to be? BRad Pitt, Hugh Hefner, Donald Trump, Oprah, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates? Latch on with me and taku your pick. you can be all of them.

Who wants to build the next empire and take over the world of music? Hit me up and we can obliterate faces with our mindmelding boogie jazz funk rock metal emo reggae whateva whateva I AM THE GREATEST.

PS - does anyone know how to get booked? Thanks. We're gonna need your assistance on that.

• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 941033922

See? I didn't have to do jack shit to this one.

Hiss Removal (What else could I call this one?)

I wound up taking the laptop with me yesterday so I could get some audio editing done which is all I could do since I was limited to using headphones and couldn't mix that way. The editing needed was minimal, so I wound up dicking off with the Fender Rhodes emulator for about forty five minutes until I came to the conclusion that I wasn't digging it.
The edits amounted to essentially creating fade outs on some long, sustained notes at the end of the song that devolve into static. There was also a hiss in there that had to be filtered out, mostly on the Moog tracks. I hadn't heard this hiss before and it was easily remedied by using a 12dB/8ve LP @ 4kHz. The slope and center frequency are a little more drastic than what I would normally do, but the oscillator in the moog wasn't travelling any higher than what looked like 2.5kHz or 3kHz any how and oscillators producing sine waves rarely present harmonic content above their fundamental frequencies. Employing a spectral analyzer to check the signal before and after filtering revealed that the before picture was full of all kinds of bullshit going all the way up to 20kHz. This was probably by virtue of running the Moog through the amp and recording it that way, as opposed to running it direct. The after picture scrolled by with (you guessed it) noticeably less bullshit, but bullshit remains, indeed.
The guitars also had a bit of hiss that was living in the same house if you will as the Moog's hiss. This required something a bit more crafty on my part, as I couldn't just knock out 4kHz and above or that would result in a complete loss of definition. My solution was executed in two steps.
First, I automated the EQ to go from on to off when the quiet part went to the loud part. The definition on the guitars would be needed much more in the loud part to cut through everything and hiss wouldn't be as pronounced as the signal-to-noise would increase in favor of signal then. I then automated the EQ to go from off to on when the loud part made its way to being quiet again at the end where the hiss would come back by virtue of the signal-to-noise ratio would favor the noise again.
Second, because I did want to preserve some jangle in the guitars, I set up the EQ thusly:

All HS EQs, all Qs set to 0.

Band (kHz)	Gain (- dB)
2	1.5
4	3
8	6
16	12

This resulted in a more parabolic (?) slope, especially with the Qs being set that wide. It's interesting to note, or at least for me it is because I didn't notice it until now, that the gain is three quarters of each band.
Of course, these changes aren't permanent since they were performed on headphones, but had I not used headphones, I'm pretty sure that hiss would've gotten away from me. I'm sure that once I put this up on the big speakers, the gain for each band will have to be brought back up.
Since I was using my computer and not the company's, I made an attempt to look at porn, too, but then found that I was really too bored to get interested.