Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.

- H. P. Lovecraft

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Daft Punk in LA - 21 July, 2007


Daft Punk continues to amaze me. They really do have this sort of control over the crowd that few electronic acts (outside of Underworld) have had to date.

We got to the venue just in time to catch the last 20 minutes of the excellent Ratatat. I tell you, these guys have really got something unique. Two guitars and a guy that does keyboards, sequencing and programming. The sound is just massive live, and people were screaming for them. It was one of the best crowd responses I've seen for an opening act. I'm not sure if the other two openers were the first DJ and the one that spun between Ratatat and Daft Punk, but the bill said four acts, and when Ratatat left the stage, they said, "Daft Punk's up next!"

After Ratatat, we stood in line for over 30 minutes to get two beers (not too overpriced at $7) and a water (at $3). We were pretty amped from all the Monster and Skyy we'd been drinking, so we should have really snuck in a pint of something to balance ourselves out, but eh. Lessons learned. We got out of line just to get a spot for Daft Punk, who started promptly at 11 with the Close Encounters of the Third Kind riff. Nice. They went into Robot Rock, then Technologic through a bridge of something from Homework (Oh Yeah?). The set was banging, and the entire crowd was on its feet and DANCING the whole night. Even the upper deck. ESPECIALLY the upper deck. Daft Punk actually sold out this gigantic venue. I think people are finally starting to "get" electronic music after all.

My one slight disappointment is that the set was almost identical to the one they did at Coachella. There were a few different bridges between songs, the tracks themselves were tweaked differently in a lot of places, but the order was pretty much exactly the same, so no surprises. I just went with it. They really did tear the roof off the place, yet again. When they got to Da Funk, near the end of their set, the whole place was pulsating as one giant, throbbing arm, pumping a fist in the air to the beat. I never saw anyone get pushed or anything like that during the entire night. It was a very respectful crowd.

After it was over, we started walking. We asked our friendly neighborhood police officer for directions to Hill Street, where our hotel was, and he pointed us in the right direction. We decided it would be too tough to fight off the other 16,000 in attendance for a cab, so we hoofed it up Hill. We asked a few musicians who were packing up if we'd be safe. They said, "Yeah, just stay positive." We soon knew what they meant. This was skid fucking row, people, rats, cockroaches, the homeless, you name it. But we really did feel pretty safe, all things considered. You can take the boys out of Detroit...

We ended up walking from the Sports Arena all the way to 818 N. Hill in Chinatown where our hotel was. Sadly, we didn't pass a single convenience store on the way, so we ended up beerless when we got back at around two. The excitement and lack of alcohol made us sit up and talk for hours, and when we finally realized it was almost 6:00, we decided to scrap the idea of sleep in favor of getting an early start home.

I finally got to sleep around ten Sunday morning, four hours of nearly-uninterrupted slumber. I'm calling it an early evening tonight. My one regret is that I didn't know if I could bring my camera in or not, so I only got a few pictures with my cel phone.

Friday, July 6, 2007

Life Imitates Darude


By now, I'm sure you've heard that a sand storm has enveloped an entire city in China. That's too bad. But it does bring to mind a certain song I remember a DJ Scott Powel caning back in the day (I am so kidding about that).

But I do think that Darude predicted this, and that he may be the new messiah. Has anyone tried to translate this into Morse code?

Another dead giveaway: my cat Boa ran when I shoved my laptop playing this song in his face. He usually loves it when I do that.

Dare you click my link? Muahahahhaahahaaaaaaa

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Reason 4 Enters Beta Testing


Reason, the reason (no pun intended) most of us electronic music producers can get anything done, is about to enter its next phase. Version 4 of the program is set to hit the streets, as usual, "when it's ready." This is what I love about Propellerhead Software, the company that makes Reason and ReCycle. They don't do anything half-assed. They consistently put out the most stable piece of software I've ever worked with, audio or otherwise.

I'd been haunting the site for a few weeks when the beta tester signal appeared. The company was ready for public beta testers at least a few weeks ago, and I've been privileged to be on their list for the last few days.

While I can't talk about my beta testing experience, I can tell you that before I started, I was very excited about some of the new features in Reason 4. These include the totally rebuilt sequencer that allows changing time signatures and tempos, as well as the new ReGroove mixer and the arpeggiator. I've used it for only a few hours, but I can't tell you how it's going.

I can tell you about how excited I am to fork out my $129 USD to upgrade from version 3 to 4. I see the promised features in version 4 as an even bigger improvement than version 3. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a huge proponent of Propellerheads, but if I was 100% ready to upgrade to version 3, I'm 10,000% ready to upgrade to version 4.

Check out their site here.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Mac v. PC Ads are Pissing Me Off


OK, so I loved the one with the bloated PC, because it's true.

Maybe I shouldn't hate the one I saw tonight about how "Macs don't get those cryptic error messages" as much as I do, but I have to tell you, I'd rather get an error message than nothing.

I say this because at the Mesa studio tonight, all I wanted to do was burn a CD of my ProTools project, and the stupid Mac not only wouldn't let me, but kept "not-crashing" - meaning it wouldn't crash, but it wouldn't give me an error either.

Is that really better?

I'd rather see something that let me know something was really wrong and KNOW I had to reboot than see a message that said, "Oh, hold on for an indefinite amount of time..." and then finally accept that I had to reboot.

Consequently, the much-touted Mac never did let me burn that CD.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

LTJ Bukem in San Diego Friday 20 April, 2007

From the Giant mailer, Drum n Bass legend LTJ Bukem is spinning at Belo this Friday night. Hopefully it will be a better experience than when Kaskade rocked the, um, plastic there about a year ago. My friend Tony called him out for not spinning a single record.

And hopefully he won't bring the awful, dreaded MC Conrad with him. Yee-uck.

LTJ Bukem
in San Diego -
click here for the discount list,

Saturday, April 7, 2007

Mesa Studio

I've been working in a studio at Mesa recently, and I have to say that it's actually pretty decent. I'm not big on Macs, nor am I very impressed with ProTools itself, but it's nice to work with a different platform. It's also really nice to finally have some validation on the stuff I've been doing in the studio for the last eight years. Also, it's nice to work with a Mackie board. It's got some nice features.

There have been a few moments in lecture where I've thought, "Ah ha! So that's what that is!!" Although those moments are few and far between these days. I think I learned more at the very beginning of the class and I'm learning less and less as time progresses. I guess that's ok. The one class I missed was all about electricity and how it travels, I really wish I would have been there for that one, but I think the prof did a good summary of that class at the beginning of the next one.

We finished our first project, a cartoon, complete with dialog. We didn't have a lot of time to add music, so it's pretty sparse on that front, but I'll post it here when I get a copy of it next week.

I'm excited for the next projects, both individual free-form, except that one has to use only Digital Performer 4 (and sound modules). Not sure what I'll do yet, but you can bet I'll post the final product here when it's ready.

Friday, April 6, 2007

Track - Conversations With God

I wrote and recorded this one in about two hours using:

Live 6.0.5
Guitar Rig 2
Battery 3
Absynth 3
My Ibanez locking-neck guitar

Dark, downtempo, twisted fun

Conversations With God