I don't know either, I gave up looking at it.

It's driving me crazy, I tells ya!

OK it's hard to discuss DJing. You pick ya track you que it up and press play. However there must be more we can talk about here. For example I am personally proud of finding a decent playable copy of "Night Of The Phanton" on Tiris which I bought for less than £100. What's your favaourite acheivement?
Lets talk about the things we love.

Bobbie Gentry 'Billy the kid'
Keith Kessler 'Don't crowd me'
Rita Mitsouko 'Don't forget the nite'
Donays 'Devil in his heart'
Shangri Las 'Wishing well'
Mary Weiss 'My heart is beating'
Voila!

Here's a quick review of The Len Price 3 and Graham Day & The Gaolers at The Dirty Water club (23/05/08). It's intended more as an introduction to these bands, hence the background info.

"Even chaos has some (anti-)order to it" - that's genius! You know your stuff man.

I throw on a Rites of Spring LP every now and then. I wish I knew what made them riot over it?

I like a lot of stuff, but sometimes I wish I could just narrow it down to a few things. I might be able to make something within a set style. I'm not pretentious enough to think I can take bits of everything and make something great. Maybe if I was pretentious I could actually do it? Haha who knows.
What do you think about the difference between being inspired by the huge amount of past music and just being weighted down by it all?

Do listen to Free/Out Jazz or Shronk? How about John Cage's music? Einsturtzen de Nuebatten or The Residents? How about those Butthole Surfers too. All unconventional stuff by schooled musicians who learned the rules then broke them. Even the great Igor Stravinsky caused a riot in Paris with his "Rites of Spring" when he first performed it in 1914.

Hell, You are right though, if you wanna play Electric Kazoo through a wah-wah and warble like Yoko Ono, that is perfectly all right too. Even chaos has some (anti-)order to it. If you like what you do then cool. Hopefully others will clue into it too. (wink)

I only offered what a simple song structure looks like in a rudamentary way boiled down to easily posted info. But hey, as they say, "Ignorance is Bliss!"

Vive l'Anarchie!

Give society the finger and write what you wanna write. This is music man, there are no rules no preconseptions and no set pieces. You want to put ten choruses and one verse then do it.
To start, you've got to love what ya doing, others will listen. My advise is take no advise and do your own thing. If your after writing fame, then go get an English degree!
- from your friendly short fiesty garage freak -

Not guilty with the weed thing but lock me up for the rest, Yeah I've switched heads but then I generally switch em and replace the bottom with a top head anyway (just tune it differently can't remember anyone ever noticing) Pitted skins - Guilty - the snares had a pit in it for years but it ain't near the centre and doesn't appear to effect anything (sounds the same recorded now that it did years back) Dirty heads - Guilty - the only clean bit is the bit in the middle which gets hit. Does it thud or thunk. Well if it had clean bright and new skins you may notice that it doesn't sound as clean or zingy as it could be, however, I did all this once and got them tuned by a shop and the kit lost all it's pounding oomph. Never done it since and now I only tune to the pitch I like (and not that often either). Finally, lack of tuning - Guilty. Strange thing is everyone always comments on how great the kit sounds at gigs or in recording! All respect to you though, you are giving the right advise and I know you'd probably set fire to my kit if you got hold of it, but for some reason I can't bring myself to change it.

:-)

Yamaha with Evans heads, big and deep! Blue jelleys help the overtones...

Y'know like guitars and strings, sometimes you gotta change your drum heads and tune them up once every few years. They build up crap on the heads and get pitted and dammaged with use too.

The thing I hate most in the studio is when a band comes in and says, "Oh I just flipped my heads over from bottom to top." Make sure you DON'T do that. Top heads have extra re-enforcement and are designed to be hit. Bottom head arent' always designed for that kind of abuse. Bottom Heads are designed to resonate with the top head and give that extra sympathetic ring/sound depending on the brand/style of head and drum you prefer. Just taking the bottom head off isn't always an option either, sometimes it can make a good drum sound like shit because it no longer has the sustain. It just goes THUD or THUNK (and sometime BWOMM) It is worth going to a Drum Shop and learning how to install and tune your drum heads on your drums. You can take a mediocre drum set and make it sing. I have seen/heard the proof.

One last pet peave of mine; I also really hate it when I see drummers use their Floor Tom and/or Snare Drum as a sorting table for their Pot! The residue from that ruins the sound of the drum and when they hit them the stems and leaves go all over the floor of my studio! Find some other place to do that stuff. Seriously!

I hope this helps.

Think you made a very good point here Jerk_Alert, new skins and a bit of tuning could make all the difference for Robin. That said I'd agree more with the comment that they sound better with age. I got my kit about '92 / '93 and have only ever tuned it properly twice. The toms just seem to have bedded in and stay in tune. And trust me they get hit pretty hard. Go figure.
In additon modern kits (or I should say expensive modern kits) are very well made and will last a life time but they sound to clinical to me. I feel they have to much technology behind them and sound like there made in labs - just not garag punk enough for me - sorry

I was thinking about getting a new drum kit for a long time but the ones that I think are awesome are also awesomly expensive. I played around with the idea of buying just a new base drum and floor tom but it is still pretty pricey. I finally decided on just cleaning up my old set, getting new skins and actually tunning them. I've been playing drums for about 14 years and just learned how to tune them(kinda)! My set sounds totally different and the way I wanted them to sound. I would recommend trying this before throwing down a bunch of money. Also, I've read that drums are supposed to sound better with age. Maybe that's all it takes to get our shit drums to sound decent. Who knows?

Hey man, I've got no access to any pics on this while I'm at work so I can't see if there's a pic of your kit here. I'm guessing this is a newer Gretsch (about 8 years old) which means (most likeley) you get the brighter tom sound than you'd get on an older kit. 24" Bass is pretty bold but you could end up with a brass band set up rather than a full on punchy kit. If you want big floor and big sound go searching for an old Jazz kit. If you just want big sound then go for an old Gretsch or Ludwig - good ones are always really loud. Lets face it they only sort after because they are such fantastic kits. Personally I use an old George Hayman kit and I love it for it's simplicity and tone (I'd still rather have a '66 Ludwig)

May 25th :

Haunted George Special:

Interview +

Haunted George : Panther Howl
Haunted George : Song For World Peace
Necessary Evils : Love Handles
Haunted George : Road Ghoul
Haunted George : Bone Hauler
The Beguiled : I Walk Alone
Haunted George : Graves In The Desert
Haunted George : Broken Hearted Gypsy
Haunted George : Howlin'
Haunted George : Swamp Witch
The Beguiled : Kitten With A Whip
Necessary Evils : Glory Hole
Haunted George : Pile 'O Meat
Haunted George : The Hangman

+

Eyehategod : Depress
Cute Lepers : Cool City
The Gories : There But For The Grace Of God
Terrible Twos : No New Thing
Detroit Cobras : Funnel Of Love
Black Radio : Time's Up
Jack Of Heart : My Love In Vain
Shindiggers : Baby Let Go
The City Kill : Love's Lonely Children
Brant Bjork : Punk Rock Guilt
The Fatals : Get Out Of My Life
CAPS : Six Finger Shake
Fe Fi Fo Fums : You Might Get Me
Alex Gomez : Devil Candy
Eddy Current Suppression Ring : Memory Lane
The Hangmen : Dark Eyes
Kill-A-Watts : Cheap Medicine
Lord High Fixers : Poppa Hoodoo
Jay Reatard : It's So Easy
Sun Ra : Sea Of Sound

We were talking about the Shin-ei earlier in this thread (a piece of Jap crap that is sublime in the way a dentist's root canal is sublime)... you can hear a great example of it on the song "Unlucky In Love" here: www.myspace.com/miketheravens2007 Tell me that doesn't set your teeth on edge...

Here is the website for Soft Science; http://www.softscience.us/ Tell Kevin (the owner), I sent ya!

I just posted this on my blog about a radio situation in Santa Fe, NM. Anyone else have a corporate vs. local horror story? I was happy to learn that a Santa Fe radio station has started to carry the syndicated Little Steven's Underground Garage. Hosted by Steve Van Zandt, it's a fine that I've often listened to online. I was happy, until that is, I learned when the show plays in Santa Fe -- Sundays, 10 p.m. until midnight. I'm always busy every week during that time, ON THE AIR WITH MY OWN DAMN SHOW, TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD, which, as faithful listeners know, is grounded in garage, psychedelic and punk rock. I'd like to flatter myself and think that the programming geniuses at KVSF think my show is so important that they had to bring the big guns in to compete, creating a McDonald's vs. Bert's Burger situation in the battlefield of garage-rock radio. But something tells me they probably aren't even aware of my show -- een though I've been doing my show at this time slot for more than 12 years. So my biased advice, if you want to listen to Little Steven online. (And for even cooler, edgier online garage sounds, check out the GaragePunk.com podcast jukebox.) But on Sunday nights listen to my show, the sonic equivalent of a Burt's chile cheese burger and a taco on the side.

http://twitter.com/maribelp

Thanks for the link, man. Yeah, nice straight-forward interview encompassing all the basics of Childish. I particularly found Billy's remarks about live concert sound interesting. It might not be well known by everyone that Billy's bands (since Headcoats times at least to my knowledge) refuse to be microphoned/mixed through a P.A. The last time I saw Thee Headcoats (Wild Weekend 1998 in London) the band set up at the side of the venue (quite a large venue, I might add) on two drum risers, using their own small P.A. for vocals only! I was amazed that a large number of the audience (which I perceived to be veteran Garage-Punkers) were very upset and disturbed by this. I even had the feeling that some in the crowd took it as a personal attack as if the band were cheating them by not using the proper technology available. Billy hit the nail on the head when he says that 'you are not aloud to have music from an origin, it has to be surround-a-sound'. I can imagine that most of the younger generation of Garage-Punkers were introduced to the great 60's Punk Nuggets via re-mastered CD's, pushed and re-amplified for modern ears, experiencing live music in modern venues equipped with monster P.A. systems. All of Billy Childish's art is about stripping things down to the basics. Three chord Beat music, non pretentious Van Gogh-ian-like impressionism (see Stuckism), and in-your-face prose/poetry/truism. Thanks for the link.

Posted at the Guardian UK website on May 21, 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/audio/2008/may/21/billy.childish I'm attaching an MP3 of it in case the link gets taken down/moved. Any thoughts about this interview? His new band? etc.?

I can dig it...now if they can throw garage tunes into every commercial I may start watchin' the tube again!

And yes beer came sprayin' out my nose when I first saw/heard the ad...the joy of surprise.

Don't cry until "Dirty Water" appears in a Tide commercial.

Another chance for young people to learn about great music;
I agree about the royalties tough; I hope sky gets some money;
As I recall he got zilch for Copland...