ThAmerica/New_York 10th 2007f September, 2007
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Atomic Love Bombs Darla Guitar Music In reverse order of importance, we had our last practice before my first gig with the Atomic Love Bombs, and Darla is pretty sick. It was a rough practice at first, due to the studio time interrupting real band practices, but things came together pretty quickly. I am stoked.
We’re playing First Street Billiards in San Jose on Friday the 14th. It would be nice if we could rehearse one more time, but I think we’ll do well enough without it.
ThAmerica/New_York 04th 2007f September, 2007
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Atomic Love Bombs Guitar Music We finished our three days in the studio, and man was it fantastic! All four of the songs we set out to record came together on Monday, and they sound great, even in a rough mix. Tim will be spending a time in the coming weeks doing some mix downs, and I can\’t wait to hear the final product.
Tim and I laid down some great background vocals (I think) for \”High Again\” and \”100 Mile Freefall,\” and Joe was kind enough to let me play a GREAT guitar line he came up for \”High Again.\” I think it really brings the tune together, especially below Dan\’s vocals and Michael\’s lead work.
I was particularly gratified to get some nice comments from the boys in the band for my contributions to our work. Being a new member, that means more than I can easily express.
ThAmerica/New_York 03rd 2007f September, 2007
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Atomic Love Bombs Guitar Music Another day in the studio! Fortunately, I was feeling a bit healthier than yesterday, and I laid down two (mostly) good tracks for “I can’t see you lasting much longer.” I also laid down a track for “100 Mile Freefall,” and “High Again,” but we’re starting over on that one, so it doesn’t matter.
One more day! Sure is cool to be able to do this stuff.
ThAmerica/New_York 02nd 2007f September, 2007
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Atomic Love Bombs Guitar Music Oi! It was our first day in the studio, and man, am I wiped! I’ve done LOTS of home 4-track recording (back in the day when that was cool), and a lot of home digital recording, but being in a hot studio (AC gets turned off on the weekends where we are!!!) for 9 hours when you’re sick is TIRING!
We laid down scratch tracks for four songs, and then did some very rough demos for 8-9 more. Next, we started working on the real guitar tracks for Early Grave, one of the four tracks planned for this weekend. We didn’t make a lot of progress, but I think we’ll do well on Sunday.
And hopefully I’ll be feeling a bit better, too!
Oh, and Joe and I worked out some guitar parts for some songs, and I really dig ‘em. These aren’t for our studio time, but rather some of the band’s repertoire where we hadn’t spent time on figuring exactly what I would be doing. It’s good stuff, IMNHO.
Lastly, I put Apple as a tag because we’re working on ProTools on a G5. My first experience with ProTools, but then I am not engineering it. That task falls to Tim, our bass player, who went to school for this sort of thing. w00t!
ThAmerica/New_York 22nd 2007f August, 2007
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Atomic Love Bombs Guitar Music Hmmm….41 and in a rock band. w00t! The Atomic Love Bombs asked me to officially join the band today, something I immediately said yes to. These cats make music that is not just right up my alley, it’s in an alley that runs behind the house I grew up in.
Or something. The point is that I love the tunes, I like the guys in the band, and I feel like a lucky duck to have a chance to work with them. The music is original, and I love their approach to it. Those who’ve known me for a long time will understand the band’s appeal to me if they listen to some of the live tracks on the site.
Heck, I am so excited, I might return to regular updates here!
ThAmerica/New_York 07th 2007f April, 2007
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Music I picked up John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band album this week. It’s an album I have never paid any attention to — probably because of my aversion to most things "Ono" — and I wish that weren’t so! It’s a great album, with some killer songs. "Well Well Well," ""Do the Oz," and "I Found Out" just rock, plain and simple, while "Working Class Hero" is a well-known classic. I love this album and immediately began listening to it repeatedly after buying it.
ThAmerica/New_York 04th 2007f April, 2007
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Music Pop Culture I have a few issues with Alanis Morissette — For one thing she had the misfortune of singing about giving blowjobs in a theatre at the same time that Poe was singing about blowing you…away. Frankly, Alanis just seemed lame in comparison, but is it really her fault that Poe is a goddess among mortals?
Be that as it may, she then went on to list a score or two of things she labeled as "ironic," but ironically, none of them were really ironic. And, while she conceded this point herself when asked in an interview, I have found it difficult to believe that she was being ironic when naming rain on your wedding day ironic.
Aha! But now she’s redeemed herself, at least in my eyes, and I am well aware of how important it was to her to do so. She’s covered Fergie’s "My Humps," and done so brilliantly. This was, as I understand it, an April Fool’s Day joke, but I think it’s absolutely fantastic. It’s not only well executed, it’s GREAT! I happen to enjoy the original in its proper context, but Alanis’ plaintive treatment of this tune is beautiful, even while it’s ironic.
Go figure.
ThAmerica/New_York 08th 2007f January, 2007
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Guitar Music Jamming With the All Stars
It’s that time again. Macworld starts this week, and that means it’s another gig with the Macworld All Stars (we rehearse once a year, whether or not we need it…). Being able to play with these guys has been not only an amazing pleasure, it’s been a huge learning opportunity over the years, and I will forever be grateful to everyone in the band for letting me be a part of it.
In the meanwhile, I think the rehearsal went pretty well, but not well enough to make the show night suck. We have a tradition of playing better during the party when the rehearsal was rough, but I think this one will be a fun performance. We’ve introduced several new toons, including at least one toon that was released this century!
::GASP!!::
And all the other songs are good ones, too. Well, except for "Taking Care of Business," but A.) I don’t play on it, and B.) Chuck sings it really well and the band makes even that song sound fun. :)
Oh, and Bob? When did he learn how to sing? Man, he sounded great. Night and day from years gone by, and I saw w00t!
I had trouble hitting a couple of the higher notes, and my voice was pretty raw on Sunday (rehearsal was Saturday), but I should be good to go on Wednesday. We’ll see. :)
ThAmerica/New_York 04th 2006f December, 2006
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Guitar Music The Beatles have had a sort of weird place in mind when it comes to covering them. Early stuff like "You Can’t Do That" (etc.) is pretty straight forward, and the hard part of it comes in not from the complexity, but rather from the deceptively-simple sounding, but not at all straight forward (Think "Close Your Eyes"), chords they worked into those tunes.
Their later stuff sounds so damned good — even after all these years — that I’ve had some kind of "I surely can’t play that because it must be hard" roadblock, even though much of it is even more straight forward than some of their early tunes.
Take "Come Together," a song that is so richly layered, I’ve never bothered trying to learn or play it. We’re doing it at this year’s Cirque du Mac party, however, so I finally set about doing so, and w00t! It’s pretty darned easy. Now, if the All Stars can make it sound 10% as good and smooth as The Beatles, we won’t frak it up!
ThAmerica/New_York 27th 2006f November, 2006
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Friends iPod Music The Beatles’ Anthology — how in the hell did I miss this collection? Dave Bonora played 30-40 tracks from this incredible collection during our drive to Vegas last week, and man-oh-man is it incredible.
When it was released, I had thought it was nothing more than yet-another-greatest-hits collection, but as most likely everyone else on the planet knows, it’s a collection of outtakes, alternate versions, live tracks, and even a dozen or so unreleased songs.
This is, of course, the kind of thing I enjoy more than just about anything else from the bands I love, but to hear this stuff from The Beatles is just incredible. "Because" without instrumentation (I had heard that long ago on a radio special), the grooviest and most awesome version of "Helter Skelter" (a 5 minute sample from what was a 12 minute jam on the song — I WANT THE FULL 12 MINUTES!), an acoustic version of "While My Guitar gently weeps" that is George alone, a wonderfully slow version of "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window," and a host of other amazing tunes.
Look for a full review of volumes 1, 2, and 3 at iPodObserver.com as soon as we get our music reviews working again, but if you have any interest in this, just go out and buy them now.
ThAmerica/New_York 21st 2006f August, 2006
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Darla Life & Times Music Top five favorite bands: The Who, Love & Rockets, The Church, David Bowie, The Beatles (not necessarily in that order at any given time).
With that as a background, Darla and I went to see The Church (their MySpace site has more information and is more up to date) last night in San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall. It was a great show. Absolutely fantastic. Steven Kilbey’s voice is as captivating, smooth, silky, and enrapturing (is that a word?) as ever — even if he does look more like Lemmy these days than the charismatic and removed figure of his youth — and the band’s chops have only increased with time.
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