Scott asks where Touring 2.0 is. Eventful's okay but he's right: it could be so much better. Things that suck about Eventful:
- It hassles people to sign up for Eventful accounts. People tell me it's required, but like for Louisville, Kentucky there are 13 demands but I can only see that 3 Eventful users are demanding it.
- Regarding the above -- how am I supposed to contact those other ten people if I wind up in the area? Why don't I see their email addresses? It can't be a spam thing -- they signed up!
- The Eventful interface is cluttered as hell, I never know where the hell I'm supposed to be looking for things. Could use some serious streamlining.
If it didn't annoy me in those ways I'd think about running my whole gig list off of them. But not if they're going to be all stingy and into the lock-in.
Peter Kirn has a good article on the Internet Radio Day of Silence, which is today. There's a huge service-killing hike in the pipe for web radio royalties.
I want to care about this but I don't listen to web radio, I'm not American, I think big music screwing themselves creates great opportunities for musicians like me, and I don't think protesting will do much good if they're determined to do it.
So I guess I'm a web radio dick, I'm sorry.
The 23 John Henry Bonham Drum Outtakes - I'm not sure how to verify these are actually him, but they're some nice drums regardless.
Holy crap: musical tesla coils. This would be a sweet live show. Here's the Super Mario Brothers theme on solid state musical tesla coils:
The theme from Weird Science:
Beetlejuice:
And here's the introduction and explanation:
13 Great moments in the co-option of hip-hop - seems like Run-DMC/Aerosmith "Walk this Way" should be on there, but a lot of great (awful) videos on this list.
The history of Vinyl Data has some surprises. I didn't realize there were artists encoding Sinclair ZX Spectrum programs into their records as far back as 1983 such as Pete Shelly from the Buzzcocks and the Thompson Twins. That's awful hardcore for 20+ years ago. I would say it beats the crap out of manipulating spectrograms.
Even more awesomely The Thompson Twins included an adventure game (called The Thompson Twins Adventure) where you wander around beaches and caves for no real reason:
You can actually play it online here. OH GOD I FOUND A BOTTLE OF SPICE.
My favorite of course is Urusei Yatsura's 'Everybody Loves Uresei Yatsura' album:
Examining the source for the program reveals the following comments:
"Hi Nick, is Robin there?""Judas Priest Satanic Message #3"
"What is sadder: a.) finding this b.) writing it"
Lick his cloven hoof.\m/ (via kotaku)
SOUNDTRACK - Rob aka thehipcola's new album set to drop October 31st.
Why I Love Power Chords - First issue of guitar teacher Rob Hampton's newsletter. His blog's packed full of info and I expect the newsletter will be the same. Worth checking out.
Here's a weird one for y'all: Brad Sucks - Tracker Array [10mb MP3].
As I've mentioned in a bunch of interviews I took classical guitar lessons when I was 8 or so but got bored of it. It wasn't until I came across trackers on the PC around 1993 that I got hooked on making music (and realized that song files were the future) and it's been downhill ever since. The trackers I spent the most time in were Scream Tracker and Impulse Tracker, though I did my time in Composer 669 and Farandole Composer as well.
Recently I came across one of many stashes of tracker files I had converted to MP3 years ago. I thought about putting some of the songs online as a joke -- some of the ideas are okay but the sound quality of the samples is so low it makes me gag. Instead I compiled them into one retro audio highlight reel. These songs are all from around 93-98 I think. You can picture me working in DOS, chatting on BiModem, running a Telegard BBS (Renegade is for lamers) and not getting much sun or healthy social interaction while you listen to this.
The show last night (first as a three-piece) at the Live Lounge was super fun, thanks to everyone who came out, especially Brad Sucks Live Show MVP Donna (I think) for dancing almost through the entire set!
Richard's bass amp died right before the show so we had to improvise, which sabotaged him for the entire show which I believe was the Lord's plan.
The three-piece was cool. Having only one guitar thinned out the sound, which I liked but some people didn't. But then other people had previously complained there was too much guitar before compared to the album. So I think I'll just... go die.
Getting ready for the show tonight, regular nerves, tequila shots, etc. Tonight will be the first show I've done as a three-piece, where I'm the only guitarist. My new bassist Matthew is unavailable so the previous bassist Richard is filling in. Our one rehearsal went really well so I'm feeling good about it.
I miss Rob, but so far it's been pretty fun to be the only guitarist. I mean I can't tell if it sounds good or anything but it's kinda cool when all the guitar noise that's being made is yours. Unless of course you're totally fucking up and then it's lame as hell.
The show tonight is being recorded though I'm not sure if it's a soundboard recording or what.
My Eventful page is going okay but the numbers are pretty thin and spread out all over the universe. Regardless I've been dutifully checking out airfare. Is it worth $600 to rock 5 people in Seattle? Maybe if the tickets are $120 each. They should have an Eventful exclusively for millionaires. How many millionaires would like to see a Brad Sucks show in Seattle? If it's one, here I come!
Guess I should post this here also (already in the forums):
The title of my next album, barring mind-changes, will be "Out Of It". I'm looking for album art & ideas.
I want to go with a different style from I Don't Know What I'm Doing, so nothing too cartoony or that looks like a kid drew it.
Stuff you've made (that I can use) or things found through the Creative Commons search would be sweet. Thank you!
Figure I should get a jump on it. Thanks!
MediaMonkey Review - found this great write-up on MediaMonkey (my MP3 player of choice) geared towards power-users and people wanting to trick out their MediaMonkey.
After the huge success that was my 30th birthday fireworks, my family decided to all pitch in and get an even bigger box of fireworks. I guess we're celebrating Canada Day on July 4th but due to scheduling issues this is the only weekend we could all get together so they're going off tonight. Anyway I decided on Kaboom Man's Hero Box:
A closer view:
The table of contents:
3 - Super Sonic Boom
2 - Ultra Sonic Boom
2 - Fireball Classic - 10
1 - Strobes
1 - Sonic Boom
1 - Jumbo Gold Comet
1 - Tornado Warning
1 - Psycho-Delic Fountain
1 - Crazy Aces
1 - Double Doozie
1 - Top Dog
1 - Crackling Satellites
1 - Killer Bee Candle
1 - Magic Dragons
1 - Party in Paris
1 - Flying Piranha
1 - Matrix
1 - Eye Of The Storm
1 - KABOOM Man
1 - Attack From Mars
1 - Pirate King
1 - 36 Shot Comet
1 - Ground Whizzer
We also got a free Psycho-Delic Fountain (which claims to last for two whole minutes), an additional Fireball Classic and a pair of crazy fireworks glasses for every $40 we spent.
I'm pretty excited about it. Everyone says that firework "cakes" are super cool but I have no idea what they are. This kit apparently has all the best ones that they sell.
Oh and we also got a whole bunch of giant sparklers so the kids can run around and burn each other. Hooray!
So for around two years there I had some awesomely crippling writer's block where I thought I'd never write a song again. It was very melodramatic and retarded and embarrassing to talk about but anti-depressants seem to have fixed me up. Now that my mental health is relatively in check I can start releasing all the crap I decided wasn't good enough during that period without having a heart attack. Here's Tell Me Something I Don't Know from 2004.
There are some things I like about the song, some I don't. The drugs tell me that's OK. :|
Reactee - I like the idea behind these Reactee t-shirts, though you have to really eye up the wearers' nipples to see the SMS info.
I'm hoping someone can point me towards what to buy to solve this problem.
For the longest time I've been using a mixing board as gain control and a headphone switch for my monitors. Here's the rough layout:
I've been aware using a mixing board for this small task is stupid (and a waste of desk space) for a while but I didn't know what to replace it with. The board's slowly dying now though so I need to figure out what to replace it with. Here's what I've thought so far:
- I could plug the Delta 66 sound card directly into the monitors, but then how do I switch to the headphones? I hate dicking around in software to change volume and settings every time I want to do something.
- I thought a headphone amp like the Behringer HA400 might be what I was looking for but I'd have to feed my sound card output into one of those headphone inputs and that seems sorta gross. Also I don't need the two extra outputs and would like a mute switch for the monitors.
Aaaand that's about it. Digging through Behringer's product list hasn't helped much. Basically I need two 1/4" or XLR inputs & outputs, two volume dials and a mute button in a wee little package.
LiveAPI is an open-source third-party Ableton Live API, so Ableton Live is now hackable via Python. Create Digital Music has a write-up -- very cool.
Here's my idea: let your audience control cowbell levels of your set via text message. Make millions off of cowbell volume fights. Retire.
Terminator Gene Ban Suggested in Canada - as someone in the comments puts it: "DRM for seeds". Amazing times we live in.