November 30, 2008
Often in the New York Metropolitan area, we take transit for granted. Its certainly the best in the country, I’m not too sure about the rest of the world. Even in my native Jersey City, the PATH train is just a wonderful thing. A while back there was something called PATHursdays at the Journal Square Station, I have no idea what it is, but Eric Tarn and myself always wanted a PATHursday t shirt. Last year while in brooklyn waiting for the A/C train, something random and wonderful happened. This big ass old train rolls through the station, painted all green, looking like it came from a long gone era, through the tunnel, and into the Hoyt Schermerhorn station. The doors never opened, it just slowed down long enough for everyone to ask “wtf is that!” then it sped off.
Since that day, its been a goal of mine to ride on this train. Imagine renting out one of the cars for a party, and just tearing it p on a 1930’s subway? If you can think of a better venue, I would like to hear about it immediately. Well….randomly one night, I saw a poster in a station along the F, for the “Nostalgia Train”, operating on sundays for a few hours in the end of November/beginning of December. THIS WAS IT!!!! They take out a vintage 1930’s train and run it for a day on t he V track! Oh man, I was so ready to tear this shit up. So, the girlfriend and I made a date, to meet on the downtown track of the V at Rockerfeller Center. Can you thinkup a better venue for a date? If so, again, I’d like to hear about it immediately.
So, I took the PATH in, got off at 14th street, transferred to the V to get to the specified station. What should arrive immediatley as I get there? Yep. The Nostalgia Train. I kind of felt like a douche, its like “OH HEY, why dont we do this cool thing? I’m gonna get there first though, and have fun before you get there, cool? thanks” But, all was well.
Seriously, it was fucking awesome. Check out some pics.
How cool is that? Each car was slightly different, most apparently from the 30’s, some a little later. They had the old school woven seats, ceiling fans, regular light bulbs in most (not this fluorescent shit currently happening) all sorts of wonderful things. The ads at the top of the car were from the era, you can see a few in the 2nd photo. I wonder if I could ever talk the MTA into renting one out. Lets somehow get this in motion. Best Channuka Party Ever?
The best thing though, was that everyone in the station who saw it, kind of looked on in amazement. The homeless dudes, the families, the really old grizzly dudes, the hipsters, the overdressed jersey looking girls, businessmen, everyone. The Subway: Uniting all the crazy people with very old trains. Yes, my career in advertising is sure to be a bright one.
Also, here’s a picture of the kids, its been a long time since a family photo, I’m not sure if the SG has been mentioned in these pages, but its a welcome new addition to the crew:
November 21, 2008
OK, Eric Tarn has once again inspired me to blog, the grand muse that he is. 2 topics today:
1. The Auto Industry
2. Guns N Roses
Lets start with Axl and co. I’ve been a fan of the GNR since I was a wee lad. I can distinctly remember going into my 4th grade classroom wearing my white Guns N Roses Use Your Illusion T shirt, thus becomming a lifelong fan. My mom wouldnt even let me buy the album, because of the “Explicit Content” sticker, fuck you very much Tipper Gore. Shortly after, the spaghetti incident was released, and shortly after, nothing happened for many a year. What was a fan to do? For one, we got on with our lives. We listened to new and exciting music, old and undiscovered jams, and many in between. What was Axl doing during this time? Fuck if i know. My point, before we get to the music is this- The process of waiting for this album was ridiculous. Ri. Dic. U. Lous. Velvet revolver made some good music and broke up in this time. I and Everyone I know entered middle school, high school, and college in this time. Children were born, who are now nearly driving cars. Its fucking stupid axl, come on. The pressure is huge.
But now lets get to the serious business, the music, which I have listened to steaming at Myspace.
Its not so bad. Its pretty good. Every review ever will say this, but its true- If we were able to remove context from this album, its pretty good. Better is a great song, it has that urgency of the better parts of Use Your Illusions. But my greatest concern lies in an obvious place- The Guitar Playing.
Buckethead….really dude…come on. Me and the TB and the DB have seen the Bucket many a time, and its always entertaining. He shreds like a fucking cuisinart on stun. But is it necessary ALL the time? no, its not. You dont need to play a billion fucking notes. Come on dude, just play at least a whole note SOMEWHERE, not everything needs to be like 128ths or something. For Cryin Out Loud.
I’ve heard some crazy ass stories about this record. The drummer Brain gave an interview with a recording magazine, talking about the recording process. Axl originally hired Josh Freese, a serious studio drummer, flawless, innovative, all around kickass. But in the process, he recorded all the songs with Freese, then changed his mind, hiring Brain (most well known for his work with Primus). So brain gets to the studio, the producer is Roy Thomas Baker (look up that guy, Night At The Opera Anyone?), and they say “i want you to play what josh played, but with your feel” so brain gets to it, and they stop him and say “no, play EXACTLY what josh played” This is not easy on any instrument, but for nuance, it might be most difficult on drums because strictly by listening, its not the easiest to separate the individual elements. So he takes the music to the Sony Classical division to transcribe, and practices for weeks in the studio (probably costing 2,000$ a day). Well, thats the kind of excess that went into this shit.
Also, the use of autotune is a little silly. Its no secret Axl uses that shit live, somewhere there is a video comparison of “Night Train” from the Use Your Illusion Tour and his most recent fake GNR tour, and on the recent version, its like an octave higher. Listen to “Street Of Dreams” the use of Autotune is just silly man, that sustain is just completely unnatural. When you think about it, this entire album was conceived and started, long before autotune even existed. Its gone through format shifts in recording technology so drastic, I cant even imagine the through process. It started on the earliest version of Hard Disk recording, and now you can easily alter the pitch and time of anything.
So in conclusion, I will buy the album, but I may not be happy about it.
OK, back to topic 1- The Auto Industry
I work closer with the automotive industry than I would prefer. I deal with these jackasses every day, from most manufacturers, making terrible commercials. Let me summarize TB’s point, then respond: The American auto industry is stupid as hell, the most innovative product they have is a hummer, and they spend millions on advertising to support a government bailout, rather than make new cars. I agree. Really, its a lose lose situation for everyone. These people are fucking stupid, they want to sell cars based on Patriotism, yet the cars suck. I’m not going to break down on the side of the highway going to work because I fucking love America, ok? My dad has been a Ford Explorer guy since i can remember, and last year, the transmission just went. Randomly, for no reason, and was not under warranty.
Really, do you know anyone who drives an American car? Only a jackass would buy a ford or some shit.
Now, allow me to get patriotic. This is fucking America. We’re the fucking best. America, Fuck Yea. We have a kick ass black dude for president, what more could you ask for? And we’re the worlds WORST auto maker? really???? We fucking invented the car and we’re the WORST at making it? WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SHIT? Can’t we give them a provisional bailout that says they can only have it if they stop making cars that run on gasoline? and if they come out with another Hummer, lets just take a collective shit on them.
November 4, 2008
WHEW. Well, that was a long marathon session of non blogging. Not blogging really tires you out.
ANYHOO. I’m here to discuss a very important topic to all of us on this day, November 4th 2008. And that is Digital Recording Technology.
Lets go back in time if you care to join me, to a time circa 1960-1979. We have some music to record, so we go into a studio. We prepare in advance, we write some songs, discuss sounds with an engineer. We purchase some Tape, which is kind of expensive, we get sounds, we record, we rewind the tape, do some punch ins (brief sections of recording within a master take), we do minimal edits, we mix, we’re done. Most of the day is spent playing music, arranging parts, rehearsing, getting the perfect take. Now, lets take out time machine and transfer this exact scenario to modern times.
There is one main variable thats different. The Tape. Its now a hard drive. Lets look at positives vs negatives.
Positives:
the hard drive can hold hundreds of hours of audio.
Negatives:
At any point, the hard drive can unpredictably die, losing all data with no warning, present odd errors when trying to open files, freeze up and crash, god knows how many other things.
This is my argument. While tape has its limitations (which some find to be advantages) It wont randomly disappear. It wont give you errors when starting up. It won’t refuse to load in a tape machine. It will be compatible with other tape machines. Some even say it sounds better.
The hours spent in a creative burst are precious, and sometimes rare. Anything can kill this creative spark. NOTHING kills that like having to wait for a session to transfer, or to troubleshoot file errors, or most importantly to lose an important take because of a drive failure. Maybe thats whats killing music. There’s less time to actually create. There’s less focus on the music itself, and more focus on the technical mishaps and advantages. there it is.
ON WE GO.
So its been a very long time since I’ve contributed any sort of music oriented review in this space, and there have been so many in recent months its impossible to recall them all, but last night I did see a particularly interesting event.
Myself and Ross The Sauce Krentzman, revived our lifelong tradition of seeing The Black Crowes. This was a somewhat special event though, they were performing an all acoustic set at Town Hall in New York. (the same venue used in A Mighty Wind!) The last time i heard of the Crowes doing an all acoustic performance, it was circa 1996. The album Amorica had just come out, I was 14. There was a secret taping of VH1’s Story Tellers at The Bottom Line, a now defunct classic West Village cabaret type venue. I was lucky enough to see many shows there in my adolescent lifetime, mostly older blues and folk type musicians. The only way to get in was through local radio stations- answering trivia questions on the air. And oh man, I called in hundreds of times. I knew the drinks were made by Johnny Wong’s in the liner notes to Southern Harmony. I knew Brendan Bud Obrian played organ on Shake Your Moneymaker, I was all over that shit. But alas, it was not to be, and I did not get it. Years later, I did get a bootleg video of an unedited camera perspective from the taping, and it was fucking fantastic.
Anyhoo, I had hoped last night would be an enhancement on the video watching experience. The band took the stage promptly at 8, all seated, 9 piece lineup, extra percussion, 2 backup singers, a very full stage. The sound was beautiful, we were all very happy to be there, you could feel a wonderful excitement as they opened with Under A Mountain, off the often neglected Three Snakes and One Charm, a brilliant, if somewhat depressing record. But oh man, was it wonderful. It felt great, I was transported to being 14 again, and rocking out to the mildly psychedelic sounds of this southern rock institution. Just as I thought it could not get any better, they went into Nonfiction off Amorica, the hands down best Crowes record. This is my favorite song, and I was floating. Never before had i heard an arrangement so close to the original recording, Luther Dickenson playing lap steel, Rich Robinson on a beautiful 12 string , could this get any better? No, the answer is definitely no, because it got worse. A Lot Worse.
He entered unassumingly enough, a guy in a neatly ironed white dress shirt, and a wide shiny tie that seemed to say “i sit at a desk making phonecalls all day, brokering high powered somethingorother without exuding enough energy to wrinkle my nicely pressed $300 shirt.” and oh my, did he look like a meathead. With the voice and girlfriend to match. Now, I’m going to try to imitate his voice with the following text, so imagine if you will the voice several octaves below my own and several decibels above:
WOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOO YEAAAAAH, SEE HONEY, THATS CHRIIIIS, THE GUY NEXT TO HIM IS HIS BROTHER RICH! YEAAAAAAH! LOOOK AT HIM WORK THOSE ELBOOOOWS!! (side note: he literally said this, and i have no fucking idea what he meant, everyone in the band was seated and barely moving) I JUST WANNA YELL OUT- I THREW CRAPS WITH YOU IN VEGAS!!!!! WOOOO!!!! MOST PEOPLE DONT KNOW I DID THAT, BUT I DID! SEE THOSE PEOPLE BEHIND THEM? THOSE ARE BACKUP SINGERS!!!
Well, this was not good. I wanted to tell him that the Jets game was on next door, they would be doing a play by play there if he’d like to go watch. Fucking frat guys. They really have no place in modern society. They fucked up our economy with their banking system snafus, they have ruined our cultural centers with their douche-baggy ways. Eventually we could not take any more of this shit, we asked him to quiet down, and for the most part, he did, at times bringing his voice back up giving his slut bag arm accessory the play by play, and also yelling SKOOOT! at the top of his lungs, which neither of us understood. I’m guessing it was some type of mating call to attract the Long Hairs on stage, which he might have confused for hippy chicks.
Besides that, the band performed well, some classic jams, some newer tunes, some oddly electric tunes for an acoustic performance, good sounds overall.