PORTAL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emrBZZtGFgI ok so this show actually happened before the EHG god show but i wasn't moved enough to blog about it till after i gushed about EHG. In general i was pretty interested in seeing Portal play hearing how they were more or less the new "cutting" edge in death metal and what not. The show had lots of appeal too.. you know touring from Australia, and playing with Krallice at a small club i like (kungfu necktie) seemed like a winning combination. but at the end of the night i was sort of underwhelmed in general. The band wore "costumes" which to me is a huge lets hide we suck by playing Halloween with our dress up party. If you try to dress up the visual element and presentation of your band is that because i'm uninterested in what you're doing??? Back to EHG and one of the refreshing Black Flag elements of that band that i love is that they are what they are kids!!!! But anyway if you watch the youtube clip of Portal i agree that shits pretty impressive. Live maybe I'm underwhelmed because all that sick technical playing is sort of hiding by the lack of of it being conveyed in a shitty small club with a mediocre sound system. They had a pretty impressive mechanical Armageddon type of throb but what they are doing live i just don't think it translated enough in the setting i saw them play in.

post brought to you by even more Yuengling forgive all the bad grammar and spellings

NEW SHOWS

fuck yeah fuck yeah ... Eye Hate God/ Brutal Truth in Philly. 20 something years later EHG are pretty old hat but god damn they were just blistering in Philly last week. and all ages show at the church basement that i assume was sold out and sweaty and hot as hell. Amazing stuff heavy wild and even reasonably tight for EHG. I was thinking about this while they were playing that for a guy about my age and 5-6 years younger seeing EHG is more or less our Black Flag. just a totally different edge to them then every other band you're going to see these days. nothing seems premeditated and they truly seem dangerous and explosive on stage and un-contrived in anyway. and sonically they just smoking. Hats off to the sound guy/ mobile sound guy from the Church (John something or another). If anyone knows me they know i hate hate hate house sound men with a passion. laziest fuck heads in club who just want to get shit over so they can smoke out back. But fuck yeah dude had the balls to run guitars through the PA!!! Hats off!! recording is smoking you rule.

Beyond gushing about EHG Brutal Truth was pretty cool as well. I don't know though I'm not a huge grind guy, unless your Discordance Axis or something I'm generally unimpressed or mildly entertained.. I mean its nice as a change of pace to see some non-psych rock thing now and then and get some speed on but in general i'm like this is dumb.

Funny thing too prior to the show i was trolling online and saw some Sonosax recorder and it jogged my memory that i own one of these Sonosax sx-m2 mic pre's. basically its a portable phantom power unit that DPA recommends to be used with my mic set (4052's). I had been using the 48v phantom power that's built into the Sound devices 722 recorder that i use and its always been pretty good but lately I've been really bummed out when i can't use my millennium media tube preamp to run my mics. Something totally magically about tubes isn't their??? Anyway, so i remember i had one of those portable sonosax pre's that i used literally twice like 4 years ago. I tracked the thing down pulled it out and stopped at Home Depot on the way to the show to get batteries. ( fucker uses 2 9volts for about 8 hours of record time) rigged it all up in the uni-bomber bag i carry. So after the show on play back after dodging crazy stage diving and the chaos of the show recording totally smokes. It's not as sexy as the millennium tube piece i use when i have access to power, but fuck for a portable unit standing in a crowd running my music stealing device out of a bag it fucking kills. why wasn't i using that thing for like the last 4 years?? duhhhhhhh. awesome stuff

Then on the back end i get bummed about the label taking a total shit.. recording is so good, the band was so raw and gnarly, just a totally shame no one hears it?? Be cool to just do like a bootleg club for like a nominal fee like $5-10 to cover expenses and postage and have 50 people pre-subscibed to just get random CDR offerings in the mail of recordings. no copy write bullshit, just stuff that was cool and sounds great in minimal packs. No respect for what a band wants to do or any of that shit. I can post shit on the blog i guess but MP3's are such totally shit. (ok i wont go back to a rant on mp3's and the Ipod but fucking A compressed music sucks)

PS this Sunday night rant has been brought to you by yuengling

NP sisterfucker!!!!!!

PICS SORT OF RECENT SHOWS

From top to bottom

BIRDS OF MAYA MEGA BOOZE BAND from the jack rose Philly record release show, Harmonica Dan leading the way

FLAHERTY/ MOORE / CORSANO and others at the jack rose record release show

MIKE GIBBONS and NACHO GIBBONS at some horrible show in south Philly. the Bardo guys don't talk much about Nacho he's sort of like the brother they keep locked in the basement.

KRALLICE at the Mroom in Philly.
BLUES CONTROL art gallery show in Philly

STEVE GUNN art gallery show in Philly.. check out his pretty great record on Threelobed.

NOW PLAYING vulture club on Utech.. whatever happened to the follow up for this awesome disc????

EMAIL ABOUT PITCHFORK

some email correspondence i got about the pitchfork thing.

Hey,

Just read the article/interview on Pitchfork and was a bit disappointed to see that filesharing got blamed for the decrease in sales. I'm quite sympathetic to your frustration but I don't think it's directed at entirely the right issue.

The example of The Goslings / Warmth split not attracting the same amount of sales, for instance: for whatever reason, in 2009 the album didn't attract nearly the amount of hype and solid reviews that Grandeur of Hair did. Blogs and review sites lavished praise over it, while hardly any sites talked much about the split.

For instance, on RateYourMusic, a database of people keeping track of their MP3 or CD collections, you'll see that Grandeur of Hair has 329 ratings and Heaven of Animals has 16.

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/the_goslings/grandeur_of_hair/

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/the_goslings_and_warmth/heaven_of_animals/

If filesharing were to blame, don't you think there'd be the same level of interest generated, yet fewer sales? From what I've noticed, filesharing seems to be part of the marketing hype cycle of generating interest, especially in niche markets. Perhaps the fickle hype processes might be more to blame?

http://rateyourmusic.com/label/archive_recordings/

Michel

My reply

Hey didn’t know the article was up.. I just cruised it and I think its pretty well written.. I will say we did talk about a lot of things that have taken place in the market place and I would say there are a whole host of different factors on the table currently that can be linked to the more or less wide scale drop off in sales (this is the case with nearly every label I’ve talked to) He’s focused on the downloading file sharing for his piece, which I think might make up the lions share of the issue?? But certainly things like the fans fickle taste, current worldwide economic situation in the last two years, the over glut of product out there to consume, and maybe the people that used to buy my releases have just grown less interested in what I’m doing???

So I agree with your valid observation as noted below, but one thing I can tell you is the landscape is very different for me then it was two years ago, the ultimate reason is most like some type of combination of all of the above..

All good though life long music lover here and will stay that way.

PITCHFORK

http://pitchfork.com/features/columns/7804-the-out-door-3/ link to a pitchfork piece i was interviewed for.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/business/media/10audio.html?hp NYTimes article about the music industry that i found interesting also

old tubes

Picked up a old Melo ps1 phono pre-amp the other day in an estate sale through a third party.. awesome unit lots of gain, great tube sounds, flexible in use, and most importantly sounds really sexy. 20mins in the first listening session hmmmm whats that smell?? something burning? maybe some dust burning off the tubes from it sitting around for a while? dead... no sound? oppsss the separate offboard power supply fried. What the fuck. Ahhhh what can you do. A quick google search found a repair guy who works on the Melos units and knows the circuitry well enough so off in UPS it goes to Brooklyn. Hope it doesn't run me too much??



Saw Blues Control at an art gallery in Fishtown last week. Pretty good super nice folks also. wasn't super woowed but was a fun time all the same. Lots of drink at this gig



Went to the Alcest show in Philly which was on a Monday night. Was expecting like 3 people to be there but low and behold basically sold out. Seemed like a pretty lame crowd just by visual inspection of who was there. I had high hopes for the show but bailed before they even played.. too crowded, too hot.. and basically wasn't feeling it. I got this email the next day from Adam of Comoros strange psychic abilities you possess.alcest were terrible... beyond terrible, they were embarassing and emo and awful. how did you know? hahahaha pretty funny, well some times you win i guess??? Also bumped into the vocalist of OAK http://www.myspace.com/oakdoom at this gig. super nice guy lots of conversation about old metal. West coast heads keep an eye out they are trying to make out that way over the next few months. One of the best house shows i ever saw was them in South Philly at disgraceland. not so much drink at this gig.



Bardo Pond had a show at JB's back like two weeks ago. 2nd band that night CARLTON MELTON http://www.myspace.com/carltonmelton maybe a less freak out more rocking version of Earthless. really excellent stuff though. I didn't record though duhhhhhhh. I generally rely on good intelligence in these circumstances when an opening band is playing that i don't know and i didn't get "hipped" to these guys prior to them playing. Lots of drink had this night.

LATEST SHOWS

Caught a few gigs last week. Bardo guys finally playing some shows. First ones is months as far as i can tell. Always good to see those guys out and about. Saw a bunch of boring metal bands play with Krallice. I did enjoy Krallice though glad they opened so i didn't have to sit around through Tombs, Lucidra (spelling?? i forget) and Lair of Minotaur. the last three bands i mentioned were all ok but i just found them really boring and predictable. At least Krallice had some weirdness going on. Mick's abstract circular rhythms with variations mixed in. Kind of hypnotic for a metal band. Alcest play here on Tuesday so I'm fairly keen to see them. http://www.myspace.com/alcestmusic It's billed as French black metal or something but i don't think its that at all sounds more progressive then that to me. but we'll see??? Anybody else catch them on US dates out there???

BORIS AMPLIFIER WORSHIP

So i heard the Boris epic amplifier worship release is getting a vinyl pressing via southernlord. Stunner of a record recorded in 98. I think it was basically the record that launched Boris as more then just the Japanese melvins. I scored a promo copy of this record pre-release and i just remember being totally stunned the depth of the sounds, the drumming, the construction of the entire CD and how all the sections flowed together so perfectly with vocals matched to the right sections. Dynamics all over the place and what an amazing production. Master piece really.

I was thinking the other night while i seeing some bands how long its been since I've been totally awe struck by a band or a release? been a while now few years maybe?? I guess since the first time i saw OM at the knitting Factory in something like 2004-or 05 was the last time i was really dropped by something?

Anyway the picture above. I always found the layout for the Japanese pressing of Boris Amplifier Worship and Earth Pentastar sort of the similar in a subtle kind of way with color scheme and font and just very general makeup. Not in a rip off kind of way maybe more in an influence kind of way. Hmmmmm maybe I'm grasping for straws with that?? One of my fav. Earth releases as well.

WEED

Been despondent lately not listening to music and or going to shows for more then a few weeks. Skipped on fairly consistent bands like High On Fire and Acid Mother Temple during recent annual trips through Philly. Label sales have dipped off to next to nothing and I'm basically taking the label ceasing to exist sort of personally. Feels odd coming home from work and not having some details of a new release to work on, or mail orders to fill?? But anyway got back on the horse last night went out to the Khyber to see Weedeater play with Gates of Slumber, Black Tusk and some other band. Weedeater are a truly excellent band though. Maybe under impressive on record, and they don't invent any new new tricks so to speak but god damn are they an impressive band sonically, visually, and as a spectacle. A drunken Khyber crowd didn't hurt either to make the set come off as pretty much a total chaotic mess. Had a great time last night. Just like old times down at the Khyber to see some heavy ass band work through a set, record bootleg style, and I didn't have to talk to anybody that i didn't want to. Just good to see some great music, record, and go home.

HOTDOG ENCOUNTER

Amazing chance encounter today with the famous vintage Oscar Myer wiener mobile!! don't why but i felt extremely compelled to give chase and beep the horn?? ain't life funny

LAR'S LET US DOWN

So it's bad enough having a micro label these days with blogs postings coupled with sendspace and filesharing links floating all around message boards with your content on them, but dealing with download sites hosted out of Russia is just another totally different animal. I used to think that this stuff cant be controlled and not to worry about it. Further more its the label responsibility at this point to produce a nice and interesting physical presentation for the music and that the full size files are no substitute for owning a compressed mp3 faxed copy. At least i thought so but things have been so super stale i think i doubt that view point any longer and have quit more or less with trying to compete with my free self so to speak. I was talking with Max from the Goslings a while back about this topic and basically I'm like Max i don't want to press your music I'm not interested in losing $2000 dollars so a bunch of people can download load it for free after i sell 50 copies. We were also talking some and i told Max you know what if when all this downloading music shit first hit instead of Lar's from Metalica being all corporate and getting all businessman and lawyer on that napster kid what if he got some MIT techy nerd's to just write a bunch of nasty virus code and upload that shit as Metalica releases?? You download MP3 files and your harddrive blows up or windows gets whiped clean off your machine.. downloader beware!! damn that would have been fun!! would knocked that shit out at ground zero.

ANYWAY HERE'S AN INTERESTING ARTICLE I READ ABOUT THESE RUSSIAN SITES

Buying pirated music with credit cards: potentially risky
Downloading cheap songs from foreign Web sites raises concerns
By Craig Guillot

Few music fans like to think of themselves as thieves, but those who use their credit cards to buy songs from controversial Russian-based Web sites may be engaging in international piracy. At iTunes.com, the latest Alicia Keys album "As I Am" costs $9.99 but at the Russian-run MP3sparks.com, it's a mere $2.40. While there's no difference in sound quality at either site, the music industry says there's a big difference in legitimacy and legality.
A number of Russian-based Web sites such as MP3sparks.com, MP3fiesta.com and MP3skyline.com currently sell the latest downloads from Top 40 American artists for pennies on the dollar. Until its closure in June 2007, the site AllofMP3.com reigned as king of the Russian music Web sites and was often engaged in legal battles contesting its legitimacy. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Russian-based Web sites violate international laws by selling copyright-protected works without permission. In December 2006, RIAA slapped AllofMP3.com with a $1.65 trillion lawsuit for 11 million songs downloaded between June and October 2006.
RIAA was never awarded the sum, but it was instrumental in helping shut down the site. However, MP3sparks.com immediately popped up in its place and the Russianf government and RIAA have since played MP3 whack-a-mole. In the meantime, music fans enter a grey legal world when they use their credit cards to buy downloads at such sites. While MP3sparks.com offers the same quality downloads found at legitimate sites such as iTunes, RIAA and other music industry organizations say that downloading at such sites constitutes complicity in piracy and theft.
Eric Garland, CEO of the online media tracking firm Bigchampagne.com, says that the Russian MP3 pirate sites are unlikely to disappear anytime soon because they offer convenience and low

prices for the newest songs.
Since the advent of file-sharing and P2P networks in the late '90s, music fans have long debated the morality of downloading copyrighted works for free. Dan Cutler, a 24-year-old musician and radio production assistant from New Orleans, regularly downloads music through file-sharing networks. Like many Americans who download music, he doesn't know much about the Russian sites, but doesn't necessarily rule them out simply because of the legal status.
"I think I'm of the age when P2P file sharing was popular and not yet illegal, so I don't really have a crisis of conscience about it. Sometimes I use iTunes, but there is a bunch of stuff they don't have so I often look elsewhere," says Cutler.
Music fan Scott Sullivan from Highland Park, Ill., also regularly uses P2P networks to download music or try out the latest albums before he decides to make a purchase. Sullivan has been aware of the Russian sites for a while, but has not used them because he is concerned about using his credit card at a Russian-based site engaged in legal battles.
"You don't really know where your credit card numbers are going. I just think once you cross international boundaries, there is a big gray area and no one there to back you up if you end up with [fraudulent] charges," says Sullivan.
Paying at a site such as MP3sparks.com isn't always a simple matter anyway. After taking the standpoint that AllofMP3.com was engaged in illegal activities in November 2006, Visa and MasterCard both stopped accepting transactions through the site and set a precedent for dealing with future pirate sites. Many U.S. consumers report that their cards are declined on such sites, but the Russians respond by constantly running payments through new systems, front Web sites and new countries. Payment methods have become so complicated that there's even a message board where users can learn about new payment methods and how to skirt the system.
Shane Keats, a research analyst with McAfee SiteAdvisor, says that that sites hosted in Russia are among some of the riskiest on the Web. SiteAdvisor checks Web sites for "drive-by downloads," malicious scripts, spyware and other problems. Although SiteAdvisor ranked MP3sparks.com and most of the music sites as safe sites to visit, there isn't always a way to tell whether credit card information is truly secure. Keats says that while the sites may be engaged in copyright infringement, they probably have a vested interest in keeping credit card information safe.
"These sites have a real business model and I suspect that they treat credit cards reasonably securely because if they didn't, customers would eventually stop coming," says Keats.
As the credit card associations and music industry organizations clamp down, many consumers are seeing an increasing threat of lawsuits. Although the RIAA has filed thousands of lawsuits against file sharing users in the past, it recently had a monumental benchmark when it won a first case against Minnesotaresident Jammie Thomas in October 2007 for $222,000, or $9,500 for each of the 24 copyrighted songs she made available on the Kazaa network. Eric Garland says that while the end users of file-sharing networks have little risk in being busted, those who use Russian Web sites may be in more danger because they leave behind a paper trail with their credit cards.
"Somewhere there is a database and a record of these transactions and unless you can prove that someone had unauthorized access to your account, the presumption is that you could someday be a part of some enforcement or litigation," says Garland.
To comment on this story, write Editors@CreditCards.com.

http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-card-downloading-music-5125.php

PENIS SUBSTITUTE

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HARVEY MILK

Harvey Milk 3.6.10 KungFu Necktie Philly
-OBSERVATIONS
1- whose the fat chick on stage with the guitar.. ohh fuck that's Creston, slow down on the happy meals big guy
2- Goddamn Creston's sweat glands are out of control.. fucker is drenched in 5mins.
3-How come Tanner doesn't sweat? or hell even look like he's trying??
4-New record is going to be awesome, a lurching sludgy thing
5-Harvey Milk are always great live best bet in live music

A SUNNY DAY IN PHILLY

Philly's newest residences, can you feel the positive vibes??

KIDS BOOKS

spotted this kids book for recommended readers between the ages of 5-7 at the Barnes and Noble when i was there with my brat. I thought the concept of writing a story about a city that gets covered in lava burning all the people alive in an entire city made an odd choice for a kids book but what the hell do i know??

GUITAR AFICIONADO

So trolling the new stand the other day i grab the issue below and started to thumb through it when out pops a multi page spread with Devendra Banhart. Paraphrased taglines to swanky looking pics of ultra hip Devendra in thrift store duds "Photographed in cloths picked out by Devendra himself to show of his unique sense of fashion" Wonder if that guy has actually learned how to sing into a mic yet? Amazing how his shining little star just really took off out of nowhere. Also funny how in the grand scheme that the poster boy for "new weird America" has way eclipsed Michael Gira who really sort of put him on the map in the first place? And since I'm ranting on the topic of new weird American Joanna Newsom has a new triple CD out on Drag City?? are you fucking kidding me a triple CD of solo harp and vocal warble??

JACK ROSE DVD

OK so here's the full length trailer for the Jack Rose Glenn Jones DVD goes on sale as I'm told 4/6. The footage is pretty fantastic esp. the stuff capturing Jack in such a natural state in a sunlight loft in Brooklyn playing to a few friends. Note at about 4:53 you can see my bald head off to the far right side of the screen doing knob tweaking during the Philly live set. As a side note that Byron Coley guy does strike me as a smug little prick. I don't know the guy or anything but i have seen him do some "readings" before (big fucking yawn) and as far as i can tell he's mostly famous for being Thurston Moore's friend. What a fucking brilliant idea what famous clown can i latch onto with "friend" status to gain creditability for my stupid nonsense???

LURKER

Philly basement scuzz mess home CDR thing induced fuzz feedback and lo-fi fuckery
http://www.archivecd.com/image/DEEP%20POSSUM%20EDIT.mp3
enjoy the malaise

LOUDEST SOUND IN RECORDED HISTORY

Saw a show on some HighDef channel (I'm a sucker for anything on Hidef TV) about Krakatoa.

The loudest sound in recorded history occurred on August 27, 1883, just off the coast of Jakarta, Indonesia.
A volcano on the small island of Krakatoa was undergoing the cataclysmic stage of its months-long eruption. At 10:20 AM the volcano exploded with a sound heard, literally, around the world.
Scientists estimated the explosion's sound to be around 180 decibels, which is a great enough force to instantly kill all hearing tissue within a human ear.
For comparison, 180dB is about 13x as loud as a jet engine from 100 ft, or as loud as a rifle shot at point blank range. People 2,200 miles away in Perth, Australia could clearly hear the eruption immediately after the explosion.
The explosion spewed a cloud of lava and ash that killed all 3,000 people living on an island 8 miles away. Tsunami waves caused by the volcano crested at over 100 ft.
The eruption sent a shockwave of energy that traveled around the world approximately 7 times and registered on measurement instruments for 5 days after the eruption.
Tsunami waves reached the coast of South Africa over 8,000 miles away, and smaller waves registered on tidal meters as far away as the English Channel.
However, the English waves occurred too soon after the explosion to be remnants of the tsunami. Scientists believe these disturbances were instead a result of air displacement caused by the sound of the eruption

More nerdy sound factoid stuff.. dont know if this is true or not but sounds feasible i suppose

But if you're talking about sound in decibels at the recording source, it's a different story. The loudest sound possible in air is 194 decibels. What does this mean? It means that anything with a higher energy density cannot travel as a sinusoidal wave through air--the wave breaks down, causing turbulence and friction at the wavefront (like comparing smooth ocean waves to the breakers on a beach that happen when a wave gets too big). Such energy in air would turn into heat and even possibly light or plasma rather than sound; it only turns into sound under 194 decibels. You could imagine that in the first split second of a nuclear blast, the fireball has an energy density greater than the equivalent of 194 decibels, and instead of "sound" you get instant supersonic wavefront of destruction. Once the energy density breaks down, the shockwave travels out at the speed of sound, starting at 194 decibels and getting quieter as it radiates outwards. Probably the people who live to tell about nuclear blasts have heard sounds in the lower 100s of decibels or less. Recording equipement and ears actually get destroyed at sounds lower than 194dB, for example supposedly your hearing tissue gets destroyed pretty instantly at 180 decibels, and even 150 decibels will make you go deaf in a short while. So: loudest absolute sound is some sort of cataclysmic explosion volcano, meteor impact, big bang, etc. Loudest sound in energy density is 194dB and occurs at the edge of destructive events, such as major explosions, suicidal blue whales, supersonic aircraft, etc, but this sound is not heard or recorded by the observer; it diffuses by the time it is heard or else it kills the listener.

STEREOPHILE

Was trolling through stereophile http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/the_recording_angel/ and saw an article about some blind test with recorded music and live music and noticed John Atkinson's recording rig consisted of two different pairs of DPA mics the 4003 and the 4011's and Millennia media mic pre's.. good call John.. the past few years i've been running the DPA4052's (same family as the other 4000 series DPA mics minus a mic body) and the Millennia media M-2B tube mic... All of the bigjar books recordings were done with this rig and of particular note i think the Religious Knives CD came out particularly awesome sounding if i don't mind patting myself on the back too much.