Lovecraft in Brooklyn

Lovecraft in Brooklyn by the Mountain Goats

Black Dog

A variety of things are awesome about this video. Including, but not limited to, the number of actual black dogs featured.

This is a mashup of an (estimated) gazillion versions of "Black Dog" found on the Interwebs.

This is what I want

I just want a nice monster puppet for Tyrannosaurus Mouse. Here is some footage from an Australian version of "How To Train Your Dragon."

Do you know what is cool?

The Tyrannosaurus Mouse guitar pick is cool.
Does it make your guitar rock harder?
Yes.
Can you play better with a Tyrannosaurus Mouse guitar pick.
Absolutely.
Will you instantly become a guitar god with one?
That's what happens. Hey, I don't make the rules.
Are they less blurry in real life?
Once you have a Tyrannosaurus Mouse guitar pick, all of so-called "real" life is blurry. The Tyrannosaurus Mouse is the only thing that's real.
Where'd you get them from?
Clayton Custom.

American Ambulance

American Ambulance is Pete Cenedella's band. I went to high school with Pete. He was the first one to play the Dead Kennedys, Talking Heads, and the Residents to me.

We also played a one-time concert at our school. We played one song. Ask me about it sometime.

Do you like your music concrete?

Then you're gonna love Zambri!

Zambri : Glossolalia 11/8 Kanine Records (Long Version) from Johnny Woods on Vimeo.

Ridiculous Biographies

Ethan Rosenblatt was an original touring member of the Living Theater's Apocalypse Now where he played  underwater bagpipes and a self-propelled didgeridoo backstage.

Lou Clark toured Western Cleveland with the Crumbling Plastic Pantsnickers (on electric percussion) and Narwhal Saints before joining Tyrannosaurus Mouse in '68. After Tyrannosaurus Mouse he toured briefly with Thin Lizzy.

Arie Unterlinde managed the art-rock club "Minstrel's Gallery" in Philadelphia in the early 60's before the club was busted by vice police for violating civil code 609-2J "Operating a Motion Picture Machine for Aesthetically Dubious Purposes", he eventually left the promotion business and played keys with the touring version of the Narwhal Saints before joining The Tyrannosaurus Mouse Sound System in '69.

People Ask, I Answer

People ask me "Drew, what is about you that is just sooooo sexy?"
And I tell them.
"It's my Delicate Cutters T-shirt".

The Delicate Cutters

Then they nod knowingly and walk away.

Spencer Davis

The Spencer Davis Group are really quite something. I'd never really known anything about them other than their couplea hits. 

I was always a big fan of The Animals version of House of the Rising Sun, and you know, Nina Simone does a pretty good version herself. ;-) But I gotta give it up to the live version on Live at Blues Garage. Contrary to what you might imagine from the cover art, it was recorded in 2005. The sound of the song is very like the sound coming straight off the mixing board. Because you'll tend to mix drums a bit lower in a live environment (drums usually being plenty loud all by themselves) the mix might sound a tad old fashioned coming straight off the board (because records used to be mixed with quieter drums than they are now).*

As it turns out, Spencer Davis can play guitar. 

*And yes, there are tricks you can use to get a direct mix off the board to sound like you want it to rather than "off the board" but they involve auxiliary sends. 

Delicate Cutters

So I'm listening to my buddy Chance's band, Delicate Cutters, on Spotify (because my CD and T-shirt haven't come in yet.)
And yeah:

• I'll probably never open the CD case and just listen to them on Spotify.

But that's not the only thing I was thinking.

• Female vocals are a funny thing. Like violins. 

They sound they typically make doesn't "develop" until you get a few feet away from them.
But the popular way to record female (and, well, all pop vocalists) is to close mic them. And then kittywhump them with more compression than your grandma knows what to do with.
The effect of this is to make it sound like you're way down the vocalist's throat. You hear every tiny noise they make. This is especially true on ballads. I suppose it sounds "sexier". Perhaps that's because you never hear a woman's voice like that unless she's whispering in your ear in bed.
But Delicate Cutters don't do that super close-mic sound (which is frequently marked by pops on the letter "P" which sound -- to me -- like someone's kicking a mic stand). If I were producing a record like that I'd be inconsolably terrified of not sounding "professional". Which is ironic because even super-expensive albums by Sarah Mclachlan have both that "in your face" sound and some low frequency whumps that seem designed to smash your stereo.

• So where was I?

Oh right, Delicate Cutters. They don't get too close with the voice. And it sounds great that way. The band itself sounds like it's in a "room" and not in the sort of fake bombastic space most pop records seem to exist in.

Will We Have Puppets?

Stick-on customizable skins for drum heads. Chance says our drummer may want the option to remove the T-Mouse logo for some reason. I can't imagine why.

For our Tyrannosaurus Mouse concert I think we will end up performing at a volume level of around 85dB SPL A-weighted. That means we won't have to wear earplugs but the drummer will be "restrained". I don't know if that means brushes or not.

I need a way to let the guitar amplifiers drag on my signal. I'm finding that the buffering from my MXR analog delay is "hyping" my guitar sound too much for my pleasure. I might end up doing something strange there, I don't know what yet.

Will we have puppets?