New Mexicoe at Union Hall, August 18th

Meg Baird this past Saturday

Here's a song from Meg Baird's set at this past Saturday's Hanging Tender concert in Bovina, NY, along with some bonfire footage from the same event.

Marc Orleans on pedal steel. Dictaphone audio.

Band happenings this past week

We had band practices with three different bands this week:

New Mexicoe (Monday. I didn't bring a camera), and Pet Cemetery and Movie Night: The Band! (Wednesday, Thursday), which were dinner party & rehearsal get-togethers-- the best kind!




There might be a Speers rehearsal on Sunday, if we're still awake after Hanging Tender. I'm expecting to either see a lot of devil sticks at that one or none at all. Could go either way.

In any case, Movie Night: The Band recorded a cover of the theme to "Megaforce," Pet Cemetery recorded a bunch of new songs (with vocals!) and New Mexicoe booked its debut show:

TUESDAY, AUGUST 18th at UNION HALL. So far, we've got our friends Totally Dad on the bill. Still waiting to hear from the others-- including a possible SPECIAL GUEST!

More details and a flier for that one next week!!

Also: Chris from Movie Night: The Band! has a new blog that you should check out immediately.

Why use 500 words when 3 will do?

Check out the description of this 1969 Fender Dual Showman Reverb amp head.

The Mummies at Maxwells

This was a dream show for Jess and I--so much so that we almost bowed out of our participation in the new Iran-Contras record to attend the gig--which we missed by doing the right thing and flying out to Portland:




Yes, we made the right decision-- any Contras recording session is amazing, the new record(s) is/are great, etc., but were you there? Can we talk to you and relive the night through your stories?

Binary sequence

Trying to recreate one of the modules I got to play around with yesterday (the Blacet Binary Zone) with modules I already have:

I like the fact that you can build one from the sum of its parts (essentially), but I think I'd rather have one dedicated module that took care of this sort of sequencing all on its own. I still don't have an inverter of any kind (though I'm hoping to have one of these eventually), but I found pretty much all of the Binary Zone's other functions can be realized with :

a. an LFO
b. a clock divider
c. a polarizing mixer
d. a slew limiter

Cyclones fireworks and game talk from yesterday

"King Henry" is this guy.

What a day!

Yesterday, at the NY-area Muffwiggler meetup, I got to see, hear and play a Synton Fenix:


It's a massive machine with, essentially, three of everything-- three VCOs, three LFOs, three filters, etc., all of them slightly different (one of the VCFs is a 30dB/5-pole?!). Really, an amazing instrument and this was, as I'm sure is the case, the only time I'll ever be able to actually touch one.

(It belonged to Nicholas Kent)

After that, I met some friends at Keyspan Park to see a Cyclones game and, more importantly, heckle the other team.


It was a blast-- there were fireworks afterward! What a country! As it turns out, Keyspan is a great place to see a ballgame. I'd somehow never been and highly recommend it if you find yourself in town during the season. Bleacher seats: $8.

EDIT: here's a video that Scooter, the meetup's host, put together with moments from the afternoon:

Dinosaur Flash

I have had the same digital camera (a Cannon S50) for the past six years. It's bulky by today's standards, and is by no means a High Definition machine (5.0 megapixels!), but it's reliable and I like the quality of pictures and videos it takes, grainy artifacts and all.

But one thing I've always wished it did was store more pictures. Don't laugh, but it only recently dawned on me that I could solve this problem by just picking up a new, larger memory card.

Until earlier today, I had two Flash memory options-- a 32MB one and a "big" 128MB one, both of which are hilarious numbers to say out loud now (who uses megabytes anymore? I have a pen with a built-in 1GB USB stick), but in their day they got the job done.


So imagine my excitement when I found an 8GB Compact Flash card this morning! What a ridiculous upgrade! Now if only my battery would hold more than 20 minutes worth of charge...

Open thread: what turn-of-the-century pieces of technology do you have and should have upgraded from years ago but, for whatever reason, can't get rid of (first generation iPod, anyone)?

The Dustys are playing!

D.C.'s own The Dustys (featuring Peter H. of Thee Iran-Contras) are making their New York debut at Public Assembly in Brooklyn on Monday, August 3rd.

Pete has the keyboard/tambourine/Nastanovich role in the band, and should be a ton of fun to watch, cheer on and buy beers for. We encourage you to go to the show and do any combination of that list while there.

See you at the show!

Poisoned by food

I was sick yesterday. Really sick, in a gross way. All signs point to food poisoning, and most of those signs point to the cheap knock-off jar of peanut butter I bought on Wednesday:


Super A is a grocery store near where I work-- I don't know if it's a national chain, but either way, AVOID SUPER A PEANUT BUTTER. It will fuck you up.

On a related note, because of this, I missed last night's Handmade Music night at 3rd Ward, which promised to be the best one yet. Did you go? Have any stories to share?? I apologize to the people I said I would meet there who I did not get in touch with beforehand. I hope you had a good enough time for the both of us.

Doepfer A-118 Noise module

Here are a couple of videos of patches centered around the newest module in our synthesizer, the Doepfer A-118 Noise (& Random Voltage). It's a pretty simple machine-- two "tone" sources (white noise and blendable red-and-blue colored noise) with a random voltage output (which mimics the colored noise settings)). A lot of fun and much more useful than I thought it would be (I almost always have the Noise Generator on our Rogue switched off).

What should we get next? I'm leaning towards the A-134-2 Dual VC Crossfader, but am open to suggestions. In the meantime, on to the videos:

Charlie Slick hijacking parties

Charlie toured with our friend Patrick Elkins a few months back and put on what was probably the highest production value show the free stage at Pianos has ever seen. You should catch him live if you get the chance and, even if you're a hermit, get his records-- they're good.

Dead Moon Night

The next "Full Moon" night (see below) is August 6th. Pet Cemetery--as a werewolf gang--is going. Meet us there!!


(via the Cyclone blog)

I rode my bike to Coney Island earlier this week. Despite the fact that the batting cages have been taken down, it's still a great place to spend an afternoon:


And just because they're on my mind...

Pet Cemetery

Pet Cemetery (The Speers + Shannon & Kelly from The Dark Horses) had its much anticipated first practice last night in Bay Ridge. We recorded 8 new "songs" and should have an EP out on Colonial soon!

New Mexicoe "Second Rehearsal"

New Mexicoe's debut EP, "Second Rehearsal." 33 minutes.

Jess, Kyle, Lindsay, Peter, Scott

Audio: 6/24/09
Video: 6/26/09 (begins 1 minute in)

Songs:

New Mexicoe [by Rick Danko]
Street People [by Bobby Charles]
Touchdown
Over the Hill [by John Martyn]

This is Colonial Recordings USA #084.