See The Boss Pedal, Be The Boss Pedal: An Argument For Digital Effects In Normal Conversation

July 17, 2015 — Leave a comment

As a clear sign that I have been driven mad, I have permanently effected the affects of this particular medulla oblogata with my recording within Dante’s digital pit, I have come to the realization that digital effects are not just for music.

Furthermore, I need to make a miracle machine (which is tricky as the dog ate my engineering degree) that puts digital effects where they belong: conversations. This may require we all walk around with permanent earphones on to get the effect (big and fat), but what are words worth? They are worthless unless you can EQ them to a listenable form and then blast them through BIG reverbs.

Effects will be the new punctuation. They will say. When I create the machine. I will be hailed as yet another distraction (like iphones and Instagram and insulin) that is keeping us from becoming the species we should be, in our most perfect and docile form.

Dull. Dullllllll. Im So Bored with your plain, simply heard speeches. Do me a favor…ask me that in Flanger. Phase me, baby.

Consider how it can really emphasize the conversations you are already having?

Don’t you feel cheated when you are angry and yell at someone and it simply dissipates? Try that with a big hall reverb. Now THATS angry and impossible to ignore.

What about ordinary dull conversations with people in the grocery line? Slip in some Digital Delay…and slowly build it, so your words leave your mouth and are suddenly bouncing, bouncing everywhere, every direction, every corner and crevice of the subconcious till theres no option for anyone but to turn away and look at the Star or People Magazine.

Late night and early morning? Need to talk to people but your too wasted to form words? Compression. Everything you say will have more impact, even if that statement is ‘I’m sorry I dropped the ball on the Perkins account.’. Your manager can only admire your honesty, forthrightness and deep sonorous tones. And this is how you get a promotion.

Tryin to explain away a prior bad act? Speak clearly through a Heavy Metal distortion. Raise the gain. Speak slowly and stare directly into their eyes and watch as they get confused, a little sad and go away.

Need a lil pickup in the bedroom? Ladies love a good Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, brother. Get all Issac Hayes and shit and lay it down.

My point being that we short change ourselves in terms of appropriate dramatics. Sometimes it takes a bit o’ science.

The REAL point being this record is killing me.

(dictated but not read in Vibrato)

Lessons Best Learned Via Parasite

June 15, 2015 — 1 Comment

It is NOT a dog eat dog world. If it was, there would be many more half eaten dogs laying about. It IS a dog eat dog food world. But as axioms go, it’s a bit thin.

No, the world itself is a dog. Domesticated, generally, but still a wild creature. Unpredictable. It will greet you with slippers almost everyday. But will occasionally bite you. Hard.

No, if you want a lesson within the dog dynamic, let’s call it for what it is: you can’t find a better teacher than the tick.

This doggy world has two types of travelers: the fleas and the ticks. The fleas are not particular in their needs. They have abilities to leap into different worlds (like perhaps your needs would be best served by taking up residence on an Irish Setter?). They have no commitment to this dog in particular. They are shallow and light as air. Bright light would shine right through them.

You know fleas. They generally come up in cautionary tales. Someone who had such potential but they lacked patience. So they bounce. And they will forever bounce until their short life span ticks down. And in those last seconds they wish desperately to come back in some next life as a butterfly or a Datsun.

They lack the courage of their convictions. They bite and run. They irritate and….well, flee. And ultimately the endless fleas become a memorial roll who you barely bothered attaching names too.

Be the tick. Focused. Visceral. Get your hooks in and feed. Become part of your doggy world; let its blood flow into you, become one with it. Own it, at last. Own it. Have no fears of the cigarette end nor tweezer. When they come for you, dig in. And if you can’t stay, can’t outlast, persevere, leave something deep down to remind them of you.

Infect this world. Ride it out. Don’t let yourself be thrown away.

Do not let go. Never let go.

This Blog Was Found Buried in a 200 Year Old Foundation

May 20, 2015 — Leave a comment

Good Day! My name is Jenn or Heather or Mickey or Ray. I am young or old or authentic or have secret bad intentions. Odds are good things will end badly for me, and certainly for my friends.

My single skill relevant for recording in writing is my ability to hold a camera steady while Im being horrifically murdered. Or lightly tortured. Or chased. I am the found footage camera man.

And I run this joint now.

Though my hand is shaky and my footage ultimately to dark, I am the ultimate in embedded. I know what you want. So when this film ends and I meet my grisly fate, Ill spit a lil blood into the lens so you really feel it.

I came this way. I started in horror (OK, factually I started in PBS Holocaust Films and Vietnam on my TV) at the right time. We’re a culture almost beyond scaring. We have access to 50 terrifying things before breakfast everyday. So old standards such as Poe just got a bit creaky, right? Whats a genre to do?

Go POV. Like porn, but less disturbing.

And ever since, I have been running from witches and zombie, aliens and serial killers, evil dolls, rabid dogs and one memorable time a shark. Which wasn’t pleasant but the sun felt good.

And when ultimately asked how I can keep feeling while all my friends are:
1) Infected
2) chainsawed
3) possessed
4) generally murdered

… my reasons are simple:
1) It makes this horrific reality seem like a movie so I need not feel it.
2) I must capture this FOR SCIENCE!

It’s is a heavy yoke I carry. When it all goes bad in a supernatural and general unpleasant sense, push the red button. Catch it all. Let it rest in the Everytown USA Police Department filing cabinet till the Resurrection. My final resting place.

But never the monster, who is a cash cow. Like we’ve learned from every True Hollywood Story, fame has teeth. Its a dog-eat-monster-eat cameraman world out there.

I started in horror. But I wont stay there. My found footage creations have crossed platforms, crossed over, infected all film genres now. Except westerns cause…well, duh.

Know me. I am you. OK, not you, your not fictional. I am the visual every man. I am dying for you.

Kisses!

Sell Your Soul!!! Ask Me How!!!

April 14, 2015 — Leave a comment

Is it still ‘too soon’ to talk about it? It’s something I believe that counts as a global reasoning, something we can almost see at times but slips away like sand in a colander. It explain the Unexplainable things about fame and celebrity and hell fire and getting hits on the radio.

Is it because the majority of people who actually do discuss this are kooks and crackpots and Ministry hucksters? Wasn’t John The Baptist considered a kook? (I actually have no idea. I was young then.)

Is it the whole ‘moral panic’ thing? Or the idea that by answering these simple questions, the following questions get much more difficult and directly related to the state of your eternal soul?

Are you such a Zeppelin fan that you cant see the mystical forest for the burning trees?

Well I’m going to talk about it. People have sold their souls to some Unnameable figure (likely in black, cause all knowing entities are so big on flash) and have benefited from it. And we all know their names.

You know the scene, and perhaps some intimately. A lone figure with a clothesline strap acoustic sits on the crossroads and waits. And in time, he is approached. A bargain is struck. Fame and fortune commences quickly followed by bad luck and an early death. And an idea of what comes next for that man with the guitar, but not a scene that can be painted without offending most of your major religions. But lets just say it gets sulfur-y.

Myth? Sure, can be. A bad ass myth that brings together pop culture and cosmology and the gut level fear that we need earn what we get, there’s no free lunch. It’s a beaut.

Now…come with me along this particular path. Let’s chat.

Do you ever get the sense that you just don’t understand how something can be beloved or famous? Do you ever find yourself watching a band that everyone swears by and you just feel like it’s a grand prank played on you by all your friends? (That’s my Guns and Roses experience. And really….consider THAT in this context.)

You feel like you just don’t get it. In your most paranoid moments, you feel there’s an affliction of love that you are the sole uninfected. It’s puts you in a place similar to looking at abstract art: there’s something there that clearly isn’t interested enough in you to teach you.

It’s not simply to say the celebs who are famous for being famous…though some have clearly bought low. It’s people in your record collection.

Waiting out the death of vinyl so the backwards will never be unmasked.

The Best Heavy Metal Record You Never Heard

March 28, 2015 — Leave a comment

When I consider this music, this band, it always brings me back to a specific moment: 16 years old, steering down blizzard conditions on foot, and marching forward. The wind made tangles of my too long, too unkempt hair, the crunching sounds of boot to ice muffled by parka and hat and headphones. Being removed from the aural added a nice effect to the movie of a life I felt I was directing / living. (I was 16, remember. Self importance and staging was my bread and peanut butter).

The image brings forth ideas of Shackleton or Hillary, but personally it felt like I was living in a Rush CD cover. White on white whipping winds with visibility so low it turned inward. I felt like a viking, left abandoned by his brothers for being toooooo bad ass. Or maybe a rebel taking my one man army to the kingdom. Blood beat in my ears, sweat flowed beneath multiple layers. The perfect ending was a bloodbath where I killed the King and claimed the Queen. And the people chanted my name.

Alas, the reality of it was a kid with a cassette Walkman (but no car) heading towards his shift at Finest Supermarket for Bulk Food duties.

This is the power of music, yes, but specifically the power of heavy music, heavy metal to out a name to it. This was a Mind Over Matter matter. I’m convinced this walk would not have been possible if not for what particularly I had in the Walkman. The music made me march, made me put myself into these terrible conditions cause I knew I could take it. I knew I was more than the sum of those parts. And any other music would have faltered and had me running back home.

‘Fifteen thousand feet, danger all around us
Mother nature fights, will she ever rest
What is there to prove, climbing up a mountain
Why do we do it, Why do we suffer?
Just because it’s there…’

Raven’s ‘Wiped Out’ (and their near perfect debut ‘Rock Till You Drop’) was a product of the NWOBHM era scene, in the year of our Lord 1982. For those who appreciate Metal, it was truly the last Golden Age (till the next).Saxon’s ‘The Eagle Has Landed’, Accept’s ‘Restless and Wild’, Motorhead’s ‘IronFist’, Scorpions ‘Blackout”, Venom ‘Black Metal’, Loudness ‘Devil Soldier’. Iron Maiden. ‘The Number Of The Beast.’

Look at Heavy Metal from that year. I could go on for hours.

Meanwhile…in Newcastle…a dirty and classic low budget label (that’s ‘Indie’ to you kids) named NEAT was recording something that would never be bested in terms of the amorphous but specif category of ‘Balls.’

Find a picture of Raven (the brothers Gallagher and Whacko) anD that paints the picture. These were not your usual British Heavy Metal stars. No denim, no leather. They looked like Soccer Hooligans. They looked absolutely insane. Not even including the football helmet Whacko wore to keep from continually hitting himself in the head.

This was a power trio that didn’t come with that vaguely souring Cream influence of endless soloing and the bottom falling out with every bass solo. They were jet fueled, nuclear. tight. Absolute Madmen, perfect for tying any PYT to a train track.

‘Wiped Out’ is a perfect Metal record. I should note ‘IMO’ or some similar disclaimer.

But No. This is definitive fact. Doubt me? Find it.

This record is a collection of some of my favorite things about NWOBHM:

Best opening cut of the era? Yes. It starts like a strange sci fi engine with special effects audio (surely discovered drunkenly) and the creep and still absolutely baffling ‘Listen here, Mission Control…Einstein Was Wrong….’ and then rips the time space continuum with ‘Faster Than The Speed Of Light’.

Now…lets dial back…..what sorta hogwash was that opening line about? It has puzzled me more than actual astrophysics (which I have no hope of understanding, so why try?)

Best Song To Play Out Your Droogy Fantasies? ‘Bring The Hammer Down’ The beat is a natural rhythm for dancing around the burning homes of the rich and privileged.

Best Riff In Metal: I gotta go with ‘Star War’. That’s a hard one….Ive listened to a lot of Maiden…..but I’m sticking with it.

Most accurate psychopath vocals: John Gallagher, the whole record. He sings like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family looks.

Just Do It:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuTdnkDflmE

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlwqOOszr-M

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Wiped-Out-Raven/dp/B00005V4UV

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