BTW, a really cool jukebox can make the place a real draw. There's a place here in Pittsburgh called Gooski's; it's not much more than a neighborhood bar where bands play on weekends, but they have the coolest jukebox in the city, full of punk, post punk and garage rock classics, along with a smattering of glam rockers.

Being fair to the bands. That reminds me. The person you have doing sound? Pay him or her from whatever the bar makes that night like you would any other employee. As a musician, I got screwed way too many times and then I found out why. Sound person got paid from door admission, FIRST. Ummm, nobody came to see him or her. And bands had to split what was left. Really? I pretty much started choosing only one place to play in town and that was the Funhouse. Only place where I knew the club payed the sound person like an employee and not a rental.

Okay, here's more. I meant to write more the first time around, but I got called away.... The biggest mistakes people make when putting a club together are cutting corners when it comes to the stage & sound system. C.B.G.B's was the biggest dive in town, however, Hilly was smart enough to invest in a great PA & very talented sound men. If you are a serious fan of music, that's where you should put your money. Everything else is a waste of money because it will just get trashed anyway. Face it, this kind of music attracts rowdy people. I've seen club owners waste money on fancy tile in the bathroom & six months later it's all covered in graffiti or cracked anyway. Stay away from cement floors, as Rod said, go with wood. Put as much wood as you can in the music room. Make sure the stage has enough room for at least a 5 piece band and that there are good monitors for the bands to hear themselves. (I agree a monitor behind the drums is also a good idea). Have a secure area for the bands to stash their gear in-between sets. Give the stage easy access for movement of gear from the parking lot to the stage. Ramps to the stage are preferable. Down time in between bands should be kept to a minimum or you an lose the crowd. So making it easy to move one band to the next is crucial. Have decent lighting so the band is visible for the patrons, but don't go overboard. Baking hot lights directly above a musician's head will kill the energy level onstage. Have enough electrical outlets for a full band on each side of the stage. A few fans for the musician's on the side of the stage can really help on a long hot summer night. Keep the admission price low & the drinks affordable. Especially in a recession. Once people are there, they will spend money on drinks but if the door price is too expensive they won't come. Be fair to the bands. They are what brings people through the door. Don't forget that. Make it worthwhile for them to haul all their gear to your club. Pay them & let them have some free drinks. Treat them with a little respect. You're all in this together. Have a DJ in between bands that plays good music that will fit the theme of that evenings bands.

John Carlucci said:

Windows & mirrors are the worst thing you can put into a club for acoustics. It makes for high end distortion.

i guess for cleaning purposes, most floors always seem to be cement or marble because they are easy to mop but they make for lousy sound acoustics. The Comet Tavern in Seattle , while not my favorite place to see shows, has a wooden floor with a light coating. Also, I think there should be some monitors hanging up just behind the drummer as well as what's hanging above the front of the stage. At the Funhouse in Seattle, it's really difficult to hear the vocals if you're right at the front of the stage or standing to the side. You have to be in the middle of the floor or further back to understand the singer and that's no fun. If there were some monitors a little further back, then maybe it would be more fun to be near the front of the stage. As it stands, if you're right underneath the monitors intended for the audience the vocals go right past you. That's my two cents.

I 'veen been playing guitar for many years.I own a hollow body,a peavey t-60 and a gibson sg 1961 reissue.So now its time for my surf guitar.At the beggining i was sure about tha jaguar.I said there is no question,i am just gonna get a jaguar.But the mosrite idea occured to me.They are pretty expensive but here's the deal.

I just noticed several free tracks by Dan Melchior& Das Menace over at the Free music archive http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Dan_Und_Melchior_Das_Menace/ - a few from his upcoming album Catbirds & Cardinals plus some "unreleased rarities." Not to mention the live on WFMU songs I'd already taken advantage of.

Thanks, Dan!

Rats are cool pedals. I reckon you'll be fine. You'll learn how to control the feedback by setting the gain levels on the rat and amp and work where you can stand to be able to control the feedback; proximity to yer amp will have a big bearing on the amount of feedback you'll get and how you can control it.

Petulant Child said:

I have a rat pedal and a peavy trans tube amp thats about 9 years old

Mardy Pune said:

Hollow bodies are great for feedback or bad for feedback depending on which way you look at it. Personally I love the feedback you can get out of a hollow body. What sort of pedal/amp setup are you going to use with it?

I have a '71 Harmony Meteor which sounds great overdriven. Really nice, controlled feedback with this one. It was really quite a find. I bought it back in '95 when I was trying to break into vintage guitar dealing along with my bandmate. Problem was, everything we were buying, we liked so much, we didn't want to turn around and sell any of it. I only paid $175 for it. At first I didn't like it much, and even after my friend did a bunch of work to it, it wouldn't stay in tune very well. It wasn't until I really decided one day that I was going to try playing it again, and often, that either one of two things happened, I developed a "touch" on this guitar, or it just needed to be played in order to be right. Either way it sounds awesome now, like a cross between an ES-335 and a Gretsch. Somebody mentioned Nugent; I guess you could also say it's a little like one of his Byrdlands, being that the neck is short and it's a thinline hollowbody. I played a cover of "Baby Please Don't Go" in one band with it, and the tone was strikingly similar to his . I play it through a '65 Fender Deluxe Reverb re-issue with an Ibanez Tubescreamer. I also have a Vox Distortion Booster which I used for leads.

I have a rat pedal and a peavy trans tube amp thats about 9 years old

Mardy Pune said:

Hollow bodies are great for feedback or bad for feedback depending on which way you look at it. Personally I love the feedback you can get out of a hollow body. What sort of pedal/amp setup are you going to use with it?

I have an EKO from the end of the 60's and think it's the ultimate rock'n'roll hard on!
Sounds like a frying pan and can't be tuned but it's great on distortion and fuzz! Feedback can be the only problem and before you gig with one you need to check your configuration on a high volume.

Hollow bodied guitars are awesome.I have one,check my profile.These things about not being good with distortion is lies.Check Ted Nugent.Unplugged though doesn't work too well.I mean there is no big difference with the electric guitar unlugged.They look great,they sound great and they feel great.You can go try one if you are not sure.I recommend you take her.

Hollow bodies are great for feedback or bad for feedback depending on which way you look at it. Personally I love the feedback you can get out of a hollow body. What sort of pedal/amp setup are you going to use with it?

I want to trade in my broken electric for a new one and really liked this 60's off brand hollow body.  It sounds good and I love the way it looks.  I am used to playing with distortion but would like to experiment with new sounds and also play at home unplugged..any thoughts as to your experience with a hollow body guitar would be great! does anyone play one with distortion?!

i don't know about folk punk, but this is some punk-folk: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/the-donegal-mafia/113945405297874

Maybe obscure isn't the right word. I think cover bands doing "indie" covers (as opposed to top 40) can still make money. But yeah, I get what ya mean.

Rockin Rod Strychnine said:

Really? The only way I can see a band getting paid well when doing obscure covers is if you're the opening band for a garage group who's now succesful doing originals and throwing in a few covers.

The Ills said:

Maybe its for the money, i think even doing more obscure covers, cover bands can still gig almost anywhere, and get a pretty penny for it.

Really? The only way I can see a band getting paid well when doing obscure covers is if you're the opening band for a garage group who's now succesful doing originals and throwing in a few covers.

The Ills said:

Maybe its for the money, i think even doing more obscure covers, cover bands can still gig almost anywhere, and get a pretty penny for it.

Maybe its for the money, i think even doing more obscure covers, cover bands can still gig almost anywhere, and get a pretty penny for it.

I bought my turntable at the Guitar Center of all places. They have some decent relatively affordable turntables & cartridges for DJ's in their live sound department. Mine has the pitch control you speak of. I also added a phono pre-amp I picked up at Fry's and I'm in vinyl heaven.

Rockin Rod Strychnine said:

I thought those two small buttons on the front near the left were what you used to change between 45 and 33. That knob with the red light? I remember some kind of turntable that had a pitch thing like that. When the red light came on, you knew youhad correct speed.

I think that you can still purchase a pair for about $600.00. They have them stored in their warehouse.

joan jett, shes got great pipes.

The (Dutch) Phantoms' version of "Roadrunner" from '66 is pretty demented, vocal-wise. 1st Elevators LP period Roky (drastically tamed down on subsequent records) gives me that kind of 'lose-touch-with-your-surroundings' wig-out vibe. Gerry Roslie, particularly on 'Psycho'. Dave E from The Electric Eels gets pretty out-there at times, esp. 'Agitated'. Nice scream in the Beaux Jens' 'She Was Mine', prefaced by the dude singing 'ah think ah'm gonna scream'...then he does, and it's a corker!!

Barry Stacks from The Grifs - keep dreaming "keep DREEAAAMMIINNNN!!!!!! just near the end of the song, Quality!

i have aLot of Iggy----except this one----- i wonder if any of theese tunes are on youtube!!!!!!!??????

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
November 5, 2010

Kill City is hardly Iggy Pop’s greatest album — not by a long shot. But this relatively obscure record, rereleased in October and credited to Iggy and his collaborator James Williamson, has a brand new mix and represents a point at which Iggy was desperately clawing his way out of the abyss.

Few bands in the history of the known universe disintegrated as spectacularly as The Stooges did.

The story’s been told a jillion times — how, following the release of the David Bowie-produced Raw Power, the drugs, music-industry frustrations, internal conflicts, and the craziness of life on the road caught up with the band, which went down in a blaze of inglorious glory, as documented on the live album/crime-scene document Metallic K.O.

In the immediate aftermath of The Stooges, Iggy Pop ended up in a Los Angeles mental hospital, the Neuropsychiatric Institute in Westwood. There, according to his 2007 biography Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed by Paul Trynka, he was diagnosed with “hypomania, a bipolar disorder characterized by episodes of euphoric or overexcited and irrational behavior succeeded by depression.”

However, Trynka points out that Iggy’s doctor now says this diagnosis, which reads like a review of a mid-’70s Stooges show, might not be accurate. Iggy’s mental problems back then might have just been a temporary condition brought on by all the drugs.

Whatever the case, in 1975 Iggy was at a low point. He was in the funny farm, his career was in shambles, and most of his bridges were burned. But not all of them.

Before checking into the hospital, Iggy had been hanging out and writing songs with Williamson, who had been the lead guitarist in the Raw Power-era Stooges. Williamson arranged for some recording sessions at the home studio of Jimmy Webb — yes, the man who wrote “MacArthur Park” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” Webb’s brother Gary engineered the recordings. According to Open Up and Bleed, Webb’s buddy Art Garfunkel showed up to the studio one night and watched one of the sessions.

Now there’s a Marvel Team-Up for you: Iggy & Garfunkel.

According to Ben Edmonds, a former Creem editor who was involved with the project, Iggy wanted to maintain the spirit of The Stooges, “but show people The Stooges could make something that resembled music.”

But by 1975 very few in the music industry were interested. Remember the state of the music industry at this point. True, The New York Dolls were making some noise on the East Coast and Patti Smith was riding her Horses to weird unimaginable places. But most of the “rock” you heard on the radio at the time was happy, poppy California soft-rock sounds like those of Fleetwood Mac and The Steve Miller Band.

Who wanted to hear some junkie mental patient bellowing harsh and ugly craziness like, “I live here in Kill City where the debris meets the sea/It’s a playground to the rich, but it’s a loaded gun to me. ... The scene is fascination man and everything’s for free/Until you wind up in some bathroom overdosed and on your knees ...”

So Kill City was shelved for two years. In the meantime, Iggy persevered and, with the help of his pal Bowie, achieved his big comeback with The Idiot and Lust for Life, both released in 1977. It was only after this that the independent Bomp Records released Kill City — on green-colored vinyl. The sound was terrible — “muddy” being an adjective frequently applied to it. That problem, after more than 30 years, has finally largely been solved on the new version through the magic of modern technology.

But still, Kill City doesn’t have the punch, the raw power of Raw Power — much less the fun of Funhouse. A lot of it is dark and pensive, perhaps a harbinger of the introspective moodiness of The Idiot. Garfunkel would have fit in on the mellow “No Sense of Crime.”

But there’s some inspired Stoogey craziness here. “Johanna” is a rocker The Stooges had performed. Here, it’s driven by John Harden’s sax madness. “I’ve been a dreamer, I’ve been a screamer,” Iggy shouts. And even better is the title cut, which is charged with Williamson’s stinging guitar and a chorus of “Give it up, turn the boy loose.” And Iggy proves he’s still a menace, declaring “I’m sick of keeping quiet and I am the wild boy/But if I have to die here, first I’m gonna make some noise.”

“I Got Nothin’,” another final-daze Stooges tune, is an angry cry of defiance from someone at the bottom. I think my favorite here, though, is “Lucky Monkeys.” It’s a put-down of L.A. scenesters trying to look like Bowie and be “as sick as Mick.” It starts off slow, like a lion sizing up a stray zebra. But then Iggy takes aim at himself and ends by shouting, “I was born dead in prison, in prison born dead.”

While this isn’t an essential effort, fans of The Stooges and or Mr. Pop shouldn’t pass it by.

"Port of Amsterdam" is my favorite. But the best version still is Dave Van Ronk's.

Van Ronk was the very first musician I ever interviewed -- 30 years ago!. I talked to him after the show and asked him why he didn't do "Amsterdam." He agreed it's a great song, but said, "After awhile, I just couldn't see all the moral outrage. It's just about a bunch of sailors who want to get laid."

True. But the way Dave sang it, I felt no "moral outrage." I just wanted to be there, towing sluts beneath the street lamos and eating fish heads and tails!