several pics from Saturdays drum recording session at Red Rockets Glare. im also trying out Wordpress' image integration to see if i like it... usually id just do it manually...
Duane with his head in the tom.
recording the drums was an intense and grueling experience.
in the background is Wendy the in-house recording engineer. thanks Wendy!
now we're going through the tedious process of reviewing our takes and splicing the drums into a coherent whole. i just put in an order for a Sansamp Bass Driver DI and an Art Pro VLAII Compressor. never mind the fact that i have next to nil audio recording knowledge and that none of us have a clear idea of what attack ratios or variable thresholds or flux capacitating exactly entails. thats completely beside the point. thats not looking at the big picture, kid. venceremos.
we're shooting for late August/early September as our target date for the EP. stay tuned.
fueled on red bull, gatorade, peanuts and banana chips, we tracked drums for 8 hours yesterday at Red Rockets Glare Studio. it went well, but a few more years of practice would have helped. pics coming shortly... today we're onto the bass...
i just did some minor updating of the website on the technical side. you probably wont notice anything different.
no shows as of this moment, my friends. lately weve been getting prepped to head to the studio to record our EP. we're shooting for an end of August date. maybe September? i guess we'll see. details will be forthcoming.
Friday was our first time playing Judo Chop, a monthly Japanese rock event in Little Tokyo at the 2nd St Jazz Bar in Little Tokyo. ive been to the jazz bar before and i distinctly remember there being a bottle of Santory somewhere in the shelves last time i went ("for relaxing times, make it Suntory time!"), but i forgot to check. cool venue, great host. thanks Judo Chop!
overall our set was alright with with some rough spots here and there, but we're still waiting to review the tapes. i saw a lot of new faces who havent been to our past shows, so thank you for coming out. we also had stickers but forgot to hand em out. the resident band Thee Out Mods rocked the house as well as drawing the moshing fans and the kid who got his t-shirt ripped in a fight and i got beer splashed on me -- so that means someone was doing something right.
below are a few pics. there were more, but the camera was accidentally set to full manual mode so a lot of them came out underexposed. sorry.
Judo Chop @ the 2nd St Jazz Bar in Little Tokyo.
Allen was bathed in a beatific glow while the band played on. note the synchronized movement of heads: "everbody look to their left... NOW!" -- thats discipline.
more shows? soon. we maybe heading into the perilous realm of demo re-mastering next.
ah well. it was a losing effort. i wouldn't mind so much if some of the finalists didn't consist of cheesy ads like the following. it makes me question the entire concept of democracy. i guess there's a reason why the "people's choice awards" isn't as relevant as the Academy Awards. note to self: next time use cute children and cheesy film techniques to maximize the tugging of heart strings. i actually like the second one. not because its a decent piece of work, but because it just makes me laugh. though im pretty sure that wasn't the intention.
we have a show coming up THIS Friday at Judo Chop in Little Tokyo at the 2nd St Jazz Bar.
the cover is $7. we go on at 830 PM. it's Friday, so dont worry about going all the way home -- just drop by after work with your briefcase and patent leather shoes, throw back some boilermakers and rock out.
below is the nifty flyer that Allen designed. i think those are the old tubes that i swapped out from my old bass amp earlier this year. thats what we're all about: reuse, recycle (for band pix) before we dump everything into the storm drain. Monolidic advocates sustainable resources.
other bands on the line-up:
SOULFISH
THEE OUT MODS
THE HOLOGRAMS
GHOST TOWNE
i hated our high school marching band growing up. even though they are/were easily the best high school marching band in California (only losing state once in the past fifteen years) and brought some notoriety to the school (something to distract observers from noticing the gang violence and almost 50% drop out rate), the noise from their nightly practices disrupted my studies. you could hear the band practices up to five miles away.
we've been spending the last couple weeks working on our timing. we finally started practicing with a metronome and have seen decent improvement. i recently ran into clips of our high school marching band from the year i graduated. i don't understand how they keep time with so much going on. it's hard enough keeping time with three other members of a rock band in a small room. i can't imagine keeping time with 140+ other marching band members on a football field.
