Before installing all of the rackmount gear, I had to do some last minute touch up cleaning. Fun, fun, fun...
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Mr. Clean
Before installing all of the rackmount gear, I had to do some last minute touch up cleaning. Fun, fun, fun...
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Punch Drunk - Let's Simulate (Live)
This was shot on the second night of the mini tour that we (Any Questions?) did with PD. We had been working with PD at FFS on their first release, Hardtech Robocore when Allen Milletics (of PD) said that he'd lined up a couple of live shows. They wanted us to play the shows with them and they weren't going to take no for an answer. They didn't have to twist our arms very hard...
Punch Drunk's set of futuristic hardtech robocore music decimated the crowds at both shows. As you'll see, this night's rendition of Let's Simulate brought the crowd to a frenzied state and left them applauding for more!
Friday, August 28, 2009
TMA-0 Arrives
The National Council of Astronautics have granted us permission to examine Tycho Magnetic Anomaly 0 (TMA-0). This was recently found in Africa buried in ancient rock. I have yet to find a power source for this monolith but here are the components that I have identified (top to bottom)...Midiman Syncman Pro
Further analysis results to be uploaded at a later date.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
TMA-1 Discovered
Discovered on the Moon near Tycho Crater, Tycho Magnetic Anomaly 1 (TMA-1) has been excavated, returned to Earth, and is now being analyzed at the new FFS. Though I am still searching for the power source for this structure, I have identified the following components (top to bottom)...Dr. Heywood Floyd knows that TMA-1 is at the new FFS. His engineers were "at wits end" trying to figure it out so they called us into the project.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Any Questions? - Ruby Ruby
We came up with this song parody of Louie Louie while Scott (MC2P4) was working for Donnelley Directory Talking Yellow Pages in the Summer of 1991. Every year they would have an employee awards ceremony called the Ruby Awards. At the ceremony, they would serve breakfast and have drawings for prizes but the main purpose was to recognize outstanding work by employees during the past year. A Ruby Award was the honor that was given to each of the outstanding employees.
Scott thought that they needed a theme song for the awards ceremony so he told them that he was going to write one. They encouraged him to do so but we're sure that they never really expected him to deliver one.
Scott came back to the studio and told me what he had promised to do. He said that he'd already started to work on lyrics for it and had based them on the tune Louie Louie. He titled his song "Ruby Ruby". Though I was apprehensive about doing a parody of a popular song and, of course, thought that it was "beneath" us, we agreed that it could be fun to do if we did it in an "Any Questions?" way. So, we asked LTJTHC (Tim Harrell) to help us pull it off and away we went.
The recording session was quick and fun. For drums, LTJTHC played his Yamaha DD-5 which was MIDIed to my E-mu Pro/Cussion. I pulled out my Rickenbacker 4003 bass, which had been lying dormant since I was mainly playing synths by this point, and ran it through a nice distortion patch on my Korg A3. We recorded our tracks live to a Tascam 38 1/2" 8-track reel-to-reel machine that we had purchased from Larry Lee Fiber. I only have one version of Ruby Ruby on tape so, after rehearsing, I assume it only took us one take to record the drums and bass. I dialed in one of my signature A3 vocal effects for Scott and he sang his parody lyrics. We mixed it down and mastered it to cassette (this is before CD-R recording was common/affordable) and it was done.
Scott took the cassette in to work and, even without hearing it, his bosses said they'd use it for the awards ceremony. As the ceremony started, the Ruby Award Princess wearing her white dress, high heels, tiara, and carrying a Ruby scepter hit the catwalk. Our song, Any Questions? - Ruby Ruby, began to play and the employees erupted with applause for both the princess and our song.
Not too bad for a song parody! Check it out...
Monday, August 24, 2009
This Mistress - Music for Tents
Brian Eno released Music for Airports in 1978. Not to be outdone, This Mistress performed Music for Tents 10 years later in the Summer of 1988!
Seriously, one has absolutely nothing to do with the other but This Mistress did perform under a tent during the Summer of 1988 at a birthday party for Wynn Ruffin (sp?) - a professor(?) at Shippensburg University. On the outskirts of Newburg, PA (population 361 in 2008) and in the shadows of Blue Mountain, This Mistress hit the stage (or should I say grass) for one of their final performances. This line up included (from L to R) Matt Norcross - Bass, Scott McConnell - Synthesizer, Tim Harrell - Drums (obscured by Kevin and Ken), Kevin "Bart the Fart" Wilson - Guitar, Ken Chandler - Vocals, and Matt "Scrap Pap" Skirpan - Guitar (out of frame on the far right).
This was a fun performance with a lot of people in attendance (including Jennean Hunter - foreground center fan in picture). It also had a sort of "Battle of the Bands" vibe to it since there was another band set up at the other end of the tent facing us. Another memorable thing about the day was the presence of a mobile "head" shop which was attached to the trailer hitch of a vehicle. I guess you never know when you'll need a water pipe in the middle of nowhere! A 10th grade teacher of mine, who was in the other band, was sure glad the "head" shop was there...
Friday, August 21, 2009
Book Library Part 2
In an earlier post, I showed you one side of the Book Library. In this picture you'll see my 1970-1990 Topps Baseball, Football, Basketball, and Hockey card collections (in binders). I also have some oddball card collections like 70's Wacky Packages, Star Wars, Charlie's Angels, and Kiss. I even have a complete set of 1991 Desert Storm cards.The bottom two shelves of the middle bookcase houses my roleplaying games. Dungeons & Dragons books, adventures, playing aids, dice, etc. I mainly played D&D but I was also into Gamma World, d20 Modern, and Call of Cthulhu. Yeah, I had a lot of interests as a kid (and continues as an "adult kid"). I was a jock, musician, and geek (in no particular order) all rolled into one.
On the far right bookcase, I have my musical equipment manuals as well as music software, music theory and training books, etc.
On top of everything is my National Geographic magazine collection.
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