Fraud Pukes

When the whole thing with the Dime went down, I knew there going to be some assholes that were going to look to exploit it... so I went looking for blogspot domains that I could snatch up before some dipshit did... I managed to grab a couple like this one before some asspony got it... but most were already in use...

I was too late to grab one http://dimebagdarrell.blogspot.com -- in his origninal post, the guy even admitted that he "didn't know who Dimebag Darrell was..." which is basically my main gripe... So, I flamed his ass royally in the comments section... Not only have they deleted my comments, but they have removed the reference to the fact that they don't know who he is... and post this shit, acting like they are "informed" or something, with newsfeed links...

Shitbags like that makes me wanna puke... He deleted all my comments, so I posted more comments... so he took down commenting... because he's a chicken shit and doesn't want anyone else seeing that he's a piece of crap on the bottom of your shoe...

Listening to: Virgos Merlot

Kev

It turns out that Kevin is quoted in the new Newsweek magazine regarding his witnessing of the murder... because he's obviously cooler than you... but he was also featured in a big article:

http://www.otherpaper.com/cover.html

I'm not sure how long that link will stay the "active" link to the story (because hey, news changes), but I will update it as best I can...

Listening to: Virgos Merlot - "Signs of a Vacant Soul"

Dimebag's "Kasket."

Insanity

Well, as it would turn out, my first hunch was correct... Nathan Gale was an idiot... I mean, it's cool to like bands... it's even cool to really like bands... but to the point that you go shoot one of the members in the head a bunch of times onstage for "breaking up the band" (which my personal opinion is that Phil Anselmo had way more to do with Pantera not being around anymore than either of the Abbott brothers) -- well, that's just ridiculous.

The sad irony is that Pantera was probably going to get back together and do some shows... Unlike some bands, most of the members are adults, able to work out their petty bullshit...

Apparently, Gale had gone around showing people song lyrics he had "written" (but were actually Pantera songs) and said he was going to sue the band for "stealing his identity" and things like that. I don't think we need much more insight into the guy toknow that there was a problem... problems...

Probably the most disgusting thing of it all is watching the news about it. Some of the newscasters are the most uninformed, biased pieces of shit I have seen since... since... well, the Gulf War, anyway... To hear people talking about how "heavy metal music is so violent" -- I even heard a newscaster propose a theory that due to Pantera's stance on the reformation of marijuana laws, it could have been a "drug-related murder..." GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK, YOU BIG BUNCH OF FUCKING ASSHOLE IDIOT DOUCHEBAGS! It would look to me that you have confused heavy metal with hip hop... Heavy metal music is aggressive, yes, and Pantera was one of the more aggressive bands out there... but in about ninety-nine of a hundred cases, not "violent" at all (whereas there's countless numbers of hip-hop/rap acts that are extremely violent in their messages and their actions)... do a little research, why don't ya? Oh, wait... that would require actual work.

There were reports in papers and the news about how this "could have been prevented" by simply having a handheld metal detector... I have some news for you speculatin' fools... Mr. Gale jumped a wall to get in (he would have never been searched in the first place) and made a beeline for the band... According to my friend Kevin, some of the bouncers had to go take care of a person that was smoking in the club (Columbus has just recently outlawed public smoking in enclosed businesses) and that may have given Gale all the opportunity he needed to make his way to the stage... So, sorry to disappoint you guys, but a fifty dollar metal detector probably wouldn't have prevented shit in this instance...

I didn't really like the last Pantera album (Reinventing the Steel) at all... in fact, I thought it just about sucked... Sadly, there won't be a chance to do anything about it, anymore, thanks to the convoluted thoughts and actions of one twisted, sick fuck.

Inasmuch as the man is most definitely "tribute worthy," I don't look forward to all the bands that are gonna jump on the "we love Dime" bandwagon, like Evanescence and countless other so-not-metal bands already have... there will be more schlocky tribute shit out that you'll be able to stomach, I'm sure... Two words -- Pepto Bismol.

Listening to: Unified Theory (2000)

What the Fuck, People?

I didn't hear about this until my friend Jarrod woke me up this morning (and for a couple groggy minutes, I was totally convinced he was up to one of his goofy jokes)... It was a long evening and I'm never really much for the local tv news, but...

Damageplan was playing the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, last night - a place that I have seen way more shows than I can count - when a guy runs up on stage... and shoots and kills "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott and three others (one of whom had come up on stage and tried to help Dime) before police shot and killed the gunman...

I can all but guarantee that my friend Kevin from Voidgazer was there (he goes to five shows a week, it seems). I am interested in what he will have to say about this.

***
UPDATE: Kevin was at the show... He was an eyewitness... you can read his first thoughts here.
***

There is a videotape of the incident, but police will most likely have it under wraps for some time.

You can watch the local early news coverage here (please don't judge all Ohioans by the eyewitness accounts)...

I'm sure it's probably rather silly of me to theorize, but my first instincts tell me the gunman was a disgruntled Pantera fan, or a huge Phil Anselmo fan, or something totally whacked like that...

Okay look, people... I have had a really crummy week... incredibly massively shitty, in fact. Now someone has shot and killed one of my favorite guitarists on the planet... Enough already, okay?

Missed...

When one of your friends passes away, it's pretty rough... when they are younger than you, it's rougher... when two friends pass in two days, it's almost unbearable.

Tom King (March 26, 1976- Dec. 5, 2004)
Tom was a great guy... He had a rough fight with complications from malaria after working in Africa.
I met him when he was pretty young (he was dating my then-girlfriend's little sister) - he knew more obscure stuff about every band and more than everything about obscure bands than anyone I ever met... We were in the process of getting him back to a place where he could be happy - behind a drum kit - when this happened...

Rickey B. (Brandon) Gilliam (October 28, 1973 - Dec. 6, 2004)
I cannot begin to explain how much this breaks my heart. He was probably the only guy that could show up at my house at 3am and wake me up from a deep sleep, just to shoot the breeze, and not get cussed out and a door slammed in their face...

I will have more to say about them both, but for now, considering how I feel at the moment, I just want to have some time with my thoughts...

Listening to: Blind Melon - "Soup"

Rollins, TV Host

Former Black Flag/ current Rollins Band frontman Henry Rollins has done a lot in his career -- singer, spoken word, movies, radio... and now he can add TV host to the list.

Rollins is hosting a movie review show, Henry's Film Corner, on the Independent Film Channel.

Seems like an okay move for him... I mean, now he can go from being a critic in general to the more specialized film critic.

The show begins its run this Saturday (December 04) at midnight and will air the first Saturday of every month.

Listening to: Velvet Revolver

Amy Lee is Stupid

Evanescence singer Amy Lee can't ever seem to keep her mouth in check about other people, can she? In the latest edition, she takes on Velvet Revolver in Kerrang! magazine:

Kerrang!: Have you become cynical about your peers?

Amy Lee: "No way, but theres just so many new bands out there and I'm not motivated to see a single damn one, and a lot of the bands worth listening to are old and tired now. VELVET REVOLVER...I haven't seen them play live yet but that album really bores me! Maybe there's one song that's cool, but to me it's just not worth building a supergroup around."

So is she just trying to make as many enemies in the business as she can, or what?

Ms. Lee, maybe you should go see them live, so you can hear what actual live music sounds like when people are actually playing their instruments and there's not forty tracks of backing garbage in the way...

Listening to: Velvet Revolver (2004)

Kinda...

Okay... I've played this out in my head a few times and I need to do this...

Recently at the PMS newsgroup, there was an article posted regarding how one could/should go about recording an album "for free." I glossed over it, once... went back and read it again, and then had to go back and really read it a third time. It was, well, very interesting, to say the least. I've stuck it into a text file that you can read here, but for the sake of space, I'm going to just talk about some key points in the article.

Please, bear in mind that I'm not doing this to defame or discredit this person. I know him and I think he's a good guy and I think he means well by this article... but at the same time, anyone that might read his article that is "a little less experienced" in the art form needs to take heed to some things, and I would like to save potential readers any headaches that he or she might come across from this article.

Basically, the major theme of the article is that you can make an album for free... I am gonna let you in on a little secret - no, you can't. There's always (ALWAYS) going to be financial things involved at some point (sometimes BIG financial things, as well), somewhere, somehow... right down to the power you use to power your amps - someone is paying for it. Okay? Now that we've got that out of the way:

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"...and it cost us nothing because my sister was providing the pizzas from the restaurant she worked at! "

Well, okay. It didn't cost you anything... but it did cost someone something. The pizza place owner paid for the dough and the pepperoni and the cheese and the sauce and the oven and the electricity to make the pizzas that you ate... It may, in the end, have cost someone like his sister a job (pinching food from restaurants you work for and giving it to other people - not a good idea)... In general, though, if you can get a record done for the price of some pizzas, whether you pay for them or not, is a pretty cheap deal. If the offer stands, take advantage of it...

"...Sure, if you put the person behind a big elaborate board, they may be able to make magic happen. Put the same person behind their home equipment, they may struggle to get the same results."

I will go ahead and tell you -- they will struggle to get the same results from a little home recording thing as opposed to a fully-automated multi-million dollar setup. If someone thinks they're going to be able to take their crappy little six hundred dollar Boss home recording device, stick one of Phil Spector's engineers in front of it and make a Phil Spector record on it, they are, how you say, mistaken.
A good engineer is a good engineer. It doesn't really matter what you put them in front of. If they're any good, they'll make it happen with what they have... My friend, who is an amazing audio engineer, got started the same way a lot of amazing engineers did. He bought a four-track and tinkered with it, added gear, tinkered some more... He had the good fortune to be able to attend engineering school, came back and tinkered even more... and he can make a great sound out of a pile of wax and a Victrola when it comes right down to it. Yes, the finished product will be affected to some degree by many factors, including the equipment you have at your disposal, but a good tech is a good tech.

"Being cautious is the best way to make sure you get the best recording you can despite your lack of money..."

The only thing I will say here is what came to my head when I read it... You wanna get something for free - beggars can't be choosers. If someone offers, jump on it. If it turns out to suck, you can burn it and pretend like it never happened... Going through some big "screening process" like your the Rolling Stones, or something... well, the chances that you're gonna have engineers lined up, beating down your door to record you aren't that big in the first place, y'know?

"...nestled into the hills and hidden by the trees, lies a nationally accreddited recording school called The Recording Workshop..."

For the record, the Recording Workshop in Massieville (a.k.a. Chillicothe), Ohio is not a "nationally accredited" school of any type... That is, you will not be able to transfer your grades from there to any other school or get any federal financial aid to attend... The only thing that I am aware of that you are able to do there is take the engineering class for something like up to 12 semester hours as a part of a four-year media/communications degree at (I believe) Capital University in Columbus... but that's it.

"...While attending Ohio University in Zanesville, Ohio, I took advantage of the recording studio that they had. This studio was loaded with all the amenities that would make any musician's mouth water. Since I was a student, my access to this plethora of audio equipment was paid for with my tuition..."

Considering the tuition costs to attend practically any university, this would make recording an album in this way "incredibly not free." In fact, you stand to be paying for the recording long after it is still a timely one.

"...If you're looking to get into a college studio (such as the studio at Ohio University - Zanesville), a good bet would be to create a fliar advertising your need for studio time and hang it near the studio on campus..."

In most universities I have ever been to, it's "illegal" to post any bills/flyers without prior consent of the university, so try to do that before you leave flyers around with ways to find you and fine you, accordingly (yeah, campus security can and will hunt ya down and write you a ticket if it means $$$ for the uni) -- they'll most likely just rip it down and throw it in the trash, and you're hosed because you don't know it. Better yet, save yourself the paper and the potential headache and just go audit an audio class one day and talk to the professor, afterwards. You'd be surprised what an appropriate amount of schmoozing can get ya.

"...If you have a fast computer with lots of memory, you could easily create a great sounding recording right at home. But what if you don't have a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) such as Pro-tools or Adobe Audition?"

Okay, just so you are not confused... and this will probably be a little confusing... First, a "Digital Audio Workstation" is generally a stand-alone piece of gear that functions as a recorder/processor/mixer, etc. There are digital audio workstations that outwardly resemble a home computer, but they are not remotely anything like the computer you are most likely reading this on (for starters, most of the better ones are Linux boxes). There are these other things you can buy from places like Musician's Friend and other stores like that that are even more "stand alone" than the aforementioned computer-type recorders... and these things are complete and utter pieces of shit (thanks to things like terribly limited mixing/editing sections, poor on-board effects, poor sampling quality, etc.).
Secondly, "Pro-Tools" and "Adobe Auditon" are not "digital audio workstations." They are computer software that makes your computer function as if it were something not unlike a workstation (note: many of the Linux/Mac-type workstations are, in fact, Pro-Tools based)... but a computer is a computer, unless it's sole function is to record (i.e., if you're surfing for your porn on it, it's not a workstation)...
Also, in order to even use something like Pro-Tools on a home machine, you will need vast amounts of other equipment to attatch to/install on it before you can use it with desireable effect. The costs will be in the thousands of dollars before you have anything worth recording on, frankly.

"But don't I need to buy a new soundcard to record on my computer?" Well, answer me this. Can you listen to music on your computer? If so, then you likely will not need a new soundcard..."

You can listen to music on your phone if you want to. Also, you can listen to music on practically any soundcard (thus the name "soundcard")... but can you make music worth a shit on one? Well, no. You need to take into account things like input sampling rate capabilities (as well as output capabilities) for starters before you think you can just plug your guitar into your computer and come up with an album...
A rather big and obvious problem with a soundcard for a home computer is that, for the most part, they have extremely limited input capabilities... that is, you're not going to be able to hook something like a mixing board up to a computer and get sixteen tracks to pop up on your recording software. You need something called an "audio recording interface" to get stuff like that done... Basically, it's a very elaborate soundcard device that allows more than two channels (i.e. "left" and "right") to be recorded at once. There's tons of research that can be done on the Net... I'm not gonna waste any more space on it, here.
Can you record something effective with just a regular "SoundBlaster" type of audio card? Sure you can... but it will be a long and arduous affair. If you have the patience and the tenacity to record track by track, go for it (and you're still going to have big potential for trouble when it comes to recording drums)... I have recorded several bands in the past that have refused to record any way other than with a "live sound" (that is, most or all instruments being played and recorded onto various tracks simultaneously). In a nutshell, you can't do that on a regular soundcard... so unless you are pre-mixing your sound and have it nearly perfect (if you are recording all instruments live, that is), you stand to be a bit disappointed with the results, because you're dealing with just "left" and "right" and you're incredibly limited in any post-production capability.

"...according to MTV (in the mid-Nineties) No Doubt recorded their mid nineties hit record 'Tragic Kingdom' absolutely for free! They would go to a recording studio and lay down one song, then get out of there before anyone realized that they weren't supposed to be there!"

This is pretty much what you would call "legend..." no boubt about it (pardon the pun).

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Okay. I'm really glad I didn't post the entire article to go along with this because that would have made this post ridiculous. Anyhow, just try to realize that nothing in life is free... and recording an album is gonna cost you something (unless you have access to piles of free CD-Rs, laser printers, graphic artists, engineers, equipment, an endless free power supply, etc.). So start saving... now...
In the meantime, just make yourselves lots of friends. Go on, you can do it. Friends have friends that have friends that can hook you up, y'know? It might not be free, but it's better than paying $150 an hour for a studio, $60 an hour for an (average) engineer, and so on...

Listening to: The Who - "My Generation" (deluxe edition) (1965/2002)