thee Electric Bastards: Official Web Log

"I ain't no dream, man"

2010-10-04T05:14:00.001-11:00

Upon drifting back to a fitful sleep I started to dream a most mundane dream wandering around my old neighborhood in Mission Hill. In my dream I was fully aware that I was dreaming and remembering the old adage that if you knew you were dreaming then you could control your dream. I decided to test this theory. So I went in to the nearest liquor store and unceremoniously dropped my pants in front of the handful of patrons and employees at the store. They reacted exactly as people would in real life. Becoming alarmed I quickly ran out of the store struggling to do up my pants. 4 people, 3 young black men and a white girl caught up with me and one of the males said, "Yo...I don't know what you're on...but you gotta give me some!" I replied, "No, no...I was testing a theory...I honestly thought that this was a dream!" They all laughed and the guy said, "You're crazy, man!" And I said, "No...I'm pretty sure that I'm dreaming right now." And the guy said, "I ain't no dream, man." To which I replied, "Is it possible that this is real for you...but its all a dream to me?" Then I woke up with the distinct impression that this is the very question that God would ask us if only we could understand her language.

J / Q Stylin' Cassingle

2010-08-24T12:25:00.003-11:00

Is available now on Limited Edition 'Blue Shell' Cassette and FREE Download. If you like thee Electric Bastards, I personally guarantee you will like this or you can return your mp3's for a full refund.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.jslashq.com/album/stylin"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Snow Day by J / Q&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Shiny Nuggets In The Mud

2010-08-15T16:01:00.006-11:00

Ok...here's the back story on this one: Its a Sunday. I'm home dicking around on the computer for a few minutes while my daughter takes a nap. I fire up the facebook to see who's posts are begging for my unique brand of sardonic commentary. Most of the people on this thing post the dumbest shit, but I have a few friends who are actually doing some interesting things, including a close friend who is involved in film. Yeah...that's right: I have friends in the film industry. I'm a big shot. Anyway, they are going back and forth on the subject illustrated below and I wasn't going to get into it, but I'm such an opinionated busy body that before I knew it I was crafting this long drawn out response that was only vaguely related to their original discussion. For reasons of length and questions of dubious relevance to the original discussion, I decided not to post it on the facebook. And here we will join the debate.

[Please note: The names have been changed to protect the innocent.*]

Ok...I can't resist...Voltron and White Lionel, I think that you and Geoff Emerick are 1000% correct about the limitations of the equipment leading you to make good decisions for your art in advance instead of what most bands seem to do now, which is to "shoot a lot of footage and sort it out in the mix." (Yes...we audio guys borrow that phrase from you visual folks) I hear this at the studio everyday and having been drunk on power from advancing from a 4 track cassette machine to a digital Roland 8 track to the infinity track (or so it seems) of Pro-tools, I've been as guilty of this as anybody. The problem is you end up with these really bloated recordings because EVERY single idea makes it onto the session...and as you start to get attached to those ideas as the process goes along, it takes a lot of discipline to start cutting. ("But...we CAN'T get rid of the glockenspiel parts! I'm the drummer and its the only thing I did on this recording!! Besides play the drums...") This is where the lost art of a good producer really comes in. DIY is a beautiful thing, and the affordability/user accessibility of modern recording equipment has been a godsend to 'basement tape' veterans (such as I consider myself)...but there's no substitution for professionals operating professional equipment. However, engineers tend to be very left brained, whereas talent tends to be very right brained and while Geoff Emerick is regarded to be one of the finest engineers out there it took George Martin to bring him into the fold and provide the balance between the artists and the technicians.

So...I guess what I am saying is: don't blame the gear. Times change, gear evolves, deal with it. Gear is gear. People were saying the same thing about multitracking when the Beatles studio team and others abandoned the 'four guys around a mic' technique and first started syncing up 4 track tape machines. "This is cheating!" they said of multitracking and “artificial” reverb just as we cry foul at adding samples and moving beats around and all the fun things that pro-tools lets you do. Tools are tools...you can use a hammer, nails and saw to build a house, or you can use them to smash somebody in the head, cut the body into pieces and nail the chunks to the walls. It is not now, nor has it ever been the tool’s fault. (I realize that this is an extreme metaphor, but listening to some modern recordings sometimes makes me wish someone would just hit me in the head with a hammer instead.) In the end it always comes down to the people operating the tools.

Back in the day, most engineers were REALLY engineers--Electrical Engineers. Those guys over at EMI were building that gear. A lot of engineers were communications guys--radio operators and such--in the armed forces. Military trained. The real deal. This is no longer the case. Nowadays...every dickhead in his basement with a two year degree (like the one I have) and a Digi003 is an "engineer." Some of them even make some damn fine recordings. Most of the time I find that if the song and the band is good enough, even the biggest joker operating the world’s worst gear can’t destroy it. Give me a good band playing a good song and I'll give you a good recording. Give me Geoff Emerick at the controls and I'll give you a GREAT recording. Give me George Martin in the producers chair with Geoff Emerick and a great band playing a great song and I'll give you a LEGENDARY recording. Ok...I know we are getting hyperbolic, but the point is that on the list of things that make a musical recording great, the gear itself is way down on the list. It's all about the people.

Part II

I think that what the perceived lack of quality in media art today really comes down to here, is what it ALWAYS comes down to....$$$MONEY$$$. Bands are on a budget. 2" tape is about $240 bucks a reel (excluding shipping) at 30 IPS will contain approximately 15 minutes of music. A good 500 gb harddrive is about $80-100 (and getting cheaper everyday) and you could probably put every album you've ever made on there. Plus there's the time. When we talk to bands about tape, we tell them that if they want to do that, you can count on about 20-25% of your studio time watching the tape rewind and fast forward and get switched over and heads get cleaned...all sounds fairly insignificant taken individually, but believe me: it adds up. Such is the way of linear media. Most bands don't have that kind of time to waste in the studio where every minute is costing you. Bands want to bang out 10 songs in two days. Throw production out the window, forget about tape. Fast, fast, fast...this is the name of the game in 2010. Even bands with "labels" have no budget. (And "labels" these days are usually one or two guys in their mother's basement with a couple grand burning a hole in their pockets). It used to be a producer/engineer would say, "that's ok...I'll work with you cheap and make it up on the back end because I really think you guys are good." Here is reality for the recording business today: there is no back end. So, you end up taking on bands that can afford to pay your rates...these are usually not the greatest bands. So, you've got a situation where your working for a band that has no money and no time and you still need to make it sound good because that is your fricken job and its pro-tools to the rescue.

Here's how it all backfired on us: When the advent of affordable recording equipment came in to being, fast on its heels was a means of proliferating the results of this equipment. The goddamned internet. Me and everybody else thought..."This is great!!!! We don't need record labels anymore!!!!! We don't have to spend a fortune making records anymore!!! We don’t have to depend on some greaseball A & R guy somehow finding us and elevating us to the status that our talent so richly deserves!! We can do it ourselves and put it right out there for the world to love and treasure!!!! YIPPY!!!!! We can make our own BIG BREAK!!!!" Yeah right...me and everybody else was right...and I still know I’m special, but most of those other people are deluded. Yep. Everybody had the same “good idea” at once. And the result...well...look at the mess we're in now. I get a headache looking for new bands. There's no filter. There's too much mud to sift through for those few shiny nuggets. I used to buy tapes and CD's and records every week. Couldn't wait for the new one to come out. Now I buy a few a year...and mostly old stuff that I want on vinyl. I haven't purchased a CD in years. All my old ones are on a harddrive, (which I also never hook up) and the CD’s are boxed up in the basement. And I know I'm not alone. I used to do a lot of mail order. I'd spend hours poring over the Touch and Go records catalog or the Lookout! catalog or SST or Revelation. Ordering 7" and CD's from bands I've never heard because they were on the same label as Shellac or Operation Ivy or Black Flag or Gorilla Biscuits. Those labels were my filter. I knew that if it was on Discord, it would probably be pretty good. Before that I was a little mullet head ordering metal tapes from the back of Circus magazine. Read a review of the new Testament album....hmmm...satanic imagery...sounds good! Can't get it at the shitty music store in the mall, so send my well concealed cash in the mail, wait a few weeks and bang! Here was this special, awesome thing that no one else in town had. Now, its all just a google search away...put in the album you want followed by words that didn't exist 6 years ago like "rapidshare" or "megaupload" and bang! Here is this faceless, generic thing that a thousand other people also acquired in the same minute as it took you. You want a band's whole catalog? Torrent. No real effort went into seaking this out, ere go, it is not special. It is something to be consumed and discarded. So many albums to download, so little time to actually savor them. And we're back to fast, fast, fast...get it down, get it out there. Why spend time making it sound good? People are just going to rip it down to a third of its sonic quality, anyway. Just make sure your kick sample cuts through at about 1k so they'll still hear it on their earbuds because there’s nothing happening below 100Hz on those things.

And now we come to the real, REAL problem: music is just not as important as it once was. Music as a social force is just about dead. There will always be idealistic 17 year olds, but do a long term study and see what happens. Hippies turned to yuppies who gave birth to punks who grew up to be yuppies who gave birth to slackers who are just hippies with no ideals to distract them from being completely self-absorbed, just as their grandparents did after the drugs proved to be more fun and a lot less work than "the cause." For a short time, music used to be a unifying force for a large part of our society. Whole generations. This is no longer the case. It will still be a unifying force in smaller groups, just as it was to tribes of peoples since the dawn of time. Too many genres, too many fashions, too many message boards...not enough songwriting. Not enough meaning. Whatever your gripe happens to be. All of the above, I suppose, though its all in your frame of reference. But, lets put all this high falutin' idealistic nonsense aside for a moment and realize that in the end, music is entertainment. Its an escape. Whistle while you work...distract you from the harsh reallity of day to day existence for 20 minutes a side, 3 and a half minutes a song. The fact of the matter is that there are many more options in the way of entertainment and escapism than there were just a few years ago. In our parents day...what were your options? Lets assume you didn't want to go outside and actually do anything. You could put on the TV. Or you could read a book, magazine or newspaper. You could do a puzzle or put together a model. Or you could turn on the radio or throw on a record. But...you only got 4 channels on your parents old 13" TV...and 2 called for a forecast of moderate to heavy snow. Reading was good for bedtime, but you can't get together with a bunch of your buddies and read. Working on puzzles or models was a bit too much like actually doing something. But everybody had a radio. And that new FM is just the most! Stereo-fidelic sound!! And this DJ (aka "THE FILTER") is spinning some really far out stuff!!! And Jimmy's dad works in the city and brings home some really ginchy records, so we could go over to his house to spin some 45's on the hi fi in the den. Flash forward 2010: 300 channels of high definition satellite cable broadband TV, movies, documentaries, game shows, sports, shopping, shark week, MMA....available at the push of a button to any one of the 5 flat screen tvs in your home. Hell...I can get it on my iPhone! Plus I’ve got it on TIVO, DVD, DVR, BluRay. Puzzles?!!? I've got Xbox, PSP, Nintendo Wii, MMORPG...oh wait a minute...did someone mention the goddamned Internet??? I've got ALL those things on that there Internet--PLUS e-mail, gmail chat, twitter, facebook, myspace, AIM, AOL, MSNBC, Yahoo fantasy football and of course, PORN. More porn than I would have ever thought possible when I was a young lad whacking it to the underwear models in the JC Penny flyer from the Sunday paper. So much porn that I don't even care about it anymore. (Apparently the cure for excessive masturbatory practices is a full blown porn overdose.) Oh yeah...and after I'm done with all this, or if I need some “background noise”...maybe I'll throw on a record or a CD. But that's a hassle...maybe I'll just open up itunes on my computer and listen to some stuff on these killer 1.5” inch speakers in my laptop.

In reality, we are operating at the end of the era where popular music was important. It really was a relatively short window....1950 to....well...some would say it ended right there, some would say its still going on. In my opinion the golden age of music as a major social force was between about 1951-1997. I believe we are entering an age where music will be a niche medium. As a musician, I like to tell people, “we’re portrait painters in the age of photography.” Don’t get me wrong, there will always be a perpetual revolving door of Top 40 artists for folks who just need that ‘background noise’...the kind of people that when you ask what kind of music they like, will say, “I just listen to whatever is on the radio.” And for the most part, that stuff is vapid, meaningless, self-absorbed garbage. More so now than ever...well...maybe about the same. The intersection of “Pop” and “Meaningful” in reference to music began and ended when AOR was the dominant radio format and CSNY was a band, not someone’s quick misspelling of a TV show acronym. But for those of us that spent endless hours poring over label catalogs and making long treks into urban areas to pick up records that we heard one time at ‘that wierd older guy’s house’, or as a little mullet head running home from school to watch Metallica’s new “Mtv World Premier Video EXCLUSIVE!!”, or jamming blank cassettes in the deck just in case that radio station way to the left of the dial that barely came in re-played that weird song you liked from a couple of weeks ago....well....there’s still good stuff to be found for those who really want to put forth the effort. There are still shiny nuggets to be had...you’ve just got to sift through a lot more mud to get to them.

That being said...be sure to pickup the new J / Q cassingle** due out next week.

*Which is a little ridiculous, because if you know the principles you can pretty much figure out who it is and that being the case, you are probably facebook friends with them and have already seen the real thread.

**seriously. I'll explain later.

A Savior Of My Own video

2010-07-20T13:22:00.003-11:00

"A Savior Of My Own"
Music/Lyrics: John Parker Northrup
Video: Morgan Gold
Audio Recorded Live in the basement of Camp Street Studios by Johnny
Video Recorded and Edited in "Sad City" Hartford CT by Morgan who (unfortunately) lives there. Morgan is very talented and should probably run screaming from Hartford, but apparently has family down there or a good job or something. I like people that work with what they have around them...people who's expression is enhanced by their surroundings instead of stifled by them. Morgan and the http://sadcityhartford.blogspot.com/ make Hartford interesting. And Hartford is a shithole. I wouldn't live there in a million years...but that's just me. (Actually..that's a lot of people.) Who am I to judge? My surroundings don't evoke enough emotion to be worthy of anything expressive. But then again, I'm new there. Still doesn't feel like home...feels like a place I go to visit my family on the weekends. Oh well. There's worse existences...count your blessings. See above.

J / Q

2010-06-24T10:54:00.006-11:00

Hey hey...long time, no see. I want to tell you about J / Q. As you know, Q and me have been working on some recordings at Camp Street Studios with Alex Hartman for a bit now. In the background, Q and I have been rocking together at Club Awesome on the regular for several months now and have formed a band. You can regard this posting as our official BFN. Being the creative genius' we are, we came up with the name J / Q. Our debut live performance is July 12th 2010...which is a Monday. You can do it.

In retrospect it was a good thing that we had that long to get ready, as we had to come up with an act. Which we did. The whole idea with booking the show was to just have some sort of a goal to shoot for, anyway. Most of the set are versions of the songs we've been working on in the studio, with a bit of trick gadgetry thrown in to fill up the space. Where is Jefrey with one 'f' when you need him? If you see him tell him that we are currently holding auditions. Regardless, we feel that you will be pleased with the results. We'll probably sneak one or two Bastards' tunes in there, as well.

So that's our story and this is our plug: come out to Zuzu July 12th...prolly nine-ish or so. The show is free...buy your lady a drink instead. It's on us.

It will mean a lot to us when you come out to the show. Thanks in advance. This is me hypnotizing you into feeling obligated to make an appearance. You can not combat my linguistic wizard powers.

Bad Grammar

2010-02-17T10:26:00.003-11:00

In reviewing these previous posts I see that I need to do more than a little bit of editing. The thing with the homonyms and the "their, there and they're"'s is getting unbearable. I promise to do better. I owe at least as much to the saintly Bonnie Gill, high school english teacher to the stars. Or she would be if I could just get famous. Why aren't I famous? Are you telling me there's no room in Hollywood for underachieving, mysanthropic, early 30 something year olds with a bit of extra baggage who's fashion sense is limited to concert t-shirts of his friends' bands and a single pair of ill-fitting Levi's jeans? I find that notion preposterous. Maybe I'll get a ringer to pose for the pictures in the new album. That's the ticket. Here's what thee Electric Bastards will be looking like in 2010:

Aren't we cute? That's me in the center. You like my 'Justin Beiber vs. Dee Dee Ramone' haircut? Because I do!! LOL tee hee hee. I think it'll work. It worked for C and C Music Factory in the 90's. Remember that 'Everybody Dance Now' video from back in the day that had this mega hot black chick dancing around, singing and carrying on? Turns out the real singer was this giant fat lady that they were ashamed to go parading around in front of the camera. You think Michelle Phillips from the Mamas and the Papas had any real talent? Hell no! But if you're going to take on that frumpty Mama Cass, you've got to balance it out with some serious eye candy. (Michelle Phillips and Sophia Loren alternate at the top of my 'Vintage Hotties' list, btw. Smokin'...both of 'em.) I'm going with this--the old switcharoo. Its bulletproof, too...because when it all comes crumbling down, no one blames the big fat talented people behind the scenes...they blame the lip syncing hotties prancing around on the stage to karaoke music. The lip syncing people are ruined. Ostracized. Ask Milli Vanilli. Wait, you can't...Vanilli died broke of an overdose and Milli is no where to be found. The unattractive people that put them up to it just slink away and go do another project...no one calls them on it, because no one has ever seen these people. I think I owe it to Bonnie Gill to be the next Milli Vanilli. I'm even going to go one step further...my ringers are all going to be attractive girls. People have told me I sound like a girl sometimes when I do my high voice....it'll work. Here's what thee Electric Bastards will look like in 2011:

Nice, right? You like my jugs? I'm the blond on the right. No, wait..I'm the blasian chick in the middle. Pretty sweet. Wait until you hear these Electric Bastards rip into "Robots Do Not Rock." Huge boners all around. Gold records up the wazoo. Same quality product...but MUCH better packaging = HUGE sales. Its the American way!!! And it sure as hell beats getting my big ass on a treadmill and dressing like Devandra Banhart...I mean Russel Brand...I mean Devandra Banhart...wait...I can't tell the difference. Oh wait...I remember--one of them is a comedian and the other is a joke. That's a good zinger...I think I'll go out on that one. Laters.

Producers

2010-02-12T16:01:00.007-11:00

Something's been bugging me since last post. I feel like I inadvertantly diminished the roll of a 'producer' in the creative process. Having a good producer on board is huge. For me, I feel good performing when I know the guy on the other side of the glass is going to tell me, straight up whether a performance is good or not and not try to coddle me or dick around. If I'm flat, I want to hear, "You were flat. Do it again." Because, usually I have a good idea, anyway, but its nice to be able to let go a little bit and just concentrate on invoking a good performance and trust the evaluation aspect to another guy. A good producer keeps the session organized and on track--make sure the beans aren't above the franks. To me, a good producer is primarily focused on getting the best performance he can out of the artist--not trying to shoe horn a million of his own ideas into the mix. A good producer is someone who the artist needs to trust, not only to have good ideas, but to know when the artist needs a bit of space to follow his own ideas. And, a good producer often needs to be the go between for band mates--especially when one is being critical of the other. The producer is the neutral party, the Switzereland of the session. Then again, sometimes the producer even needs to be the bad guy...tells people things they don't want to hear because its the right thing for the song. But, this is just the tip of the iceberg of what a producer does...it goes on and on. Some producers don't say a damn thing the entire session and you think they aren't even paying attention--until they say the one key thing at the exact right time to propel the song/session to the next level. Depends on what the band/project needs...and identifying just what exactly that may be is another duty of the good producer. Anyway, my point is that if it sounds like I was disparaging producers in my last post, that is not the case.

I think I take the idea of a producer for granted, probably because I fancy myself a bit of a producer and never understood why someone would need an outside person shaping a song for them. I'm too much of a control freak about my music for that sort of thing and I feel like there is a method to my madness that is particular to the odd way in which my songs are grown. (I've exchanged notes with other songwriters enough to have realized that my process is a bit unusual, but I'll bore you with a detailed breakdown of my songwriting process some other time). Actually, for a long, long time I didn't understand exactly what a producer did. It seemed kind of deuchy to think about some guy ripping your art apart and telling you what to do with it. Part of it too was coming up in punk rock and hardcore, where there was definitely an emphasis on independence..although inexplicably, we celebrated this sense of autonomy by all dressing alike, wearing some goofy uniform of some kind or another. Hollah at your Jnco's, son. Fucking embarassing, but we all got ass. Straight edge dudes have nothing better to do but go around banging straight edge chicks. Ummmm...not me, of course...just people I know. (Hey Nana...I see you're googling me again...don't read this.) Ahhh the 90's. That was a lot of fun. Clinton's America. Shit, I feel old right now.

What was I getting at? Oh yeah...producers. Never understood what a producer was for. Even when I was enrolled in Recording College for 19 Year Olds Who Don't Really Know What The Hell They Want To Do With Their Lives But Hey This Seems Cool and 23 Year Old Guys That Fucked Up College The First Time Around And Have Finally Figured Out That Jobs You Get Without Diplomas Are Either Really Hard Like Lifting Bricks Or Really Suck Like Working At Starbucks. Guess which applied to my old ass? The one with the brick lifting. And the Starbucks. Someday I'll tell you all about what went on at that Starbucks that me and Geoff Tarulli worked at....but that's a story for another time. The dudes that passed as "producers" at the derelict college I went to were guys that would make your drunk uncle with the tweed sport coat and bald spot look really cool and successful in life. I honed in on the small cadre of legit dudes in that place. Most of he professors were washed up hacks. Not even has beens--never were's. Guys who were never in the business for real and went straight from students to teachers with narry an actual career between. But there were a select few really pro guys that were working there because they needed insurance benefits that are hard to come by as a freelance engineer, and had actually done real shit in their careers before landing at this diploma factory. Mad respect to Al Shapiro and Pete Peloquin. Other dudes were the pits...I won't name names because I'm not trying to disparage people. If you go to this place, and your for real and not just one of the hundreds of dumb shit heads that show up every semester thinking their going to make mad beatz for a living or record their screamo band's shitty demo during studio time...you'll sniff out the good guys. Its not hard because the other dudes smell like bullshit. There's this one guy...I'll call him...Larry Narshall...and he's the king of B.S. over there. He's the guy clapping on the commercials...unbelievably cheesy dude. Takes himself way seriously.

I never knew what a producer was, but that's what I was trying to be. When I was a young dude coming up, I was the guy that had the 4-track. Every crew had a guy that went and got a four track, and he was the man. My first one was a Tascam Porta 03--the predecessor of the Porta 02, which actually has more features, despite 02 being one less that the 03. This thing had two inputs, so you could only do two tracks at once...then your had two more tracks to do whatever overdubs. So you just had two mics, and you'd hang them in what you perceived was a good spot in the basement and the band played the song. It sounded just a little bit better than recording on a boom box until you figured out some tricks--mastering the 4 track is all about tricking it into being awesomer, if you get my drift. Then you'd do vocals on the other tracks and maybe punch in a lead guitar or whatever. I got tapes and tapes of stuff off that machine. The Ritalins, early Pisscubes stuff. Its all there. It wasn't until my hiatus up in Maine in '99 that I even upgraded to the legendary Tascam 414 that spawned the early Johnny albums...the Maine album and thee Evil Elvis Ep (if you're reading this on www.electricbastards.com scroll down to find out more about these classic musical treasures). This thing was the balls...had Aux tracks, a Mid instead of just Hi and Low Eq's..the DBX switch which made things sound all weird...and best of all--you could record all four tracks at the same time! Or better yet...use 1,2, and 3...bounce them down to 4...badda bing...3 fresh tracks...6 whole layers of sound!! Sure..the bounce track sounded like hell, but if you were strategic about your bounce, you could work it. I would always make sure I stacked my bounce tracks with a really bass-y sound...like a bass, and a real high sound like a lead guitar or toy piano...that way I could use the eq's sort of like volume controls to balance out the sound. But this is all engineer stuff. The producer part came because I'd from an early age fancied myself a songwriter...I started trying to write songs before I could even play. And the songs always almost came out whole. So, I would always be in the position of trying to tell my bandmates my ideas of how they should be playing their parts to my songs--because it all made sense in my head. Needless to say...this did not go over particularly well...every, really, but especially early on. Who the fuck was I to be telling anybody how or what to play? I'd only been playing bass for about 2 months. This is based on a true story...my first "real" band..as in we could get through 25 minutes of material consisting of 3 originals and 6 covers of songs like, "Ain't Talkin' Bout Love" and "Man In the Box". It was the beginning of 10th grade (I know...late bloomer) and I'd been playing bass in my room for about 4 months and once or twice with a couple of other dorks from my school, this dude Derek and his girlfriend Allison--both on guitar, me on bass, no drummer playing 'Louie, Louie' and butchering just the intro of 'Master of Puppets, over and over again. I don't count this as a band. So one day in school, this older dude, Scott Santino comes up to me in the hallways. I was a reject alternateen at this point--I had that haircut where you grow it really long, but then shave the whole underneath. Scott was a big dude--catcher on the Varsity baseball team and sort of jockish, so I figured, "oh shit...what does this guy want with me? This can't be good..." So, he comes up to me and says:

"You John Northrup?"
I go, "Yup."
He goes, "You play bass?"
I say, "Yup."
"What kind of music do you like?"
"Ugh...all kinds. Nirvana. Alice In Chains. Metallica. NWA. Suicidal Tendecies. Jane's Addiction..."
"Yeah, yeah...ok. That's good."
"Yup."
"So you want to be in a band?"
"Sure."
"Cool. We practice at my house on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'll give you a list of songs to learn."
"Ok."

I don't even think I even knew at this point that Scott was the drummer. Turned out to be a real sweet guy--a gentle giant. His father passed away my senior year...very sad. Big Italian family...I went to the wake. I wonder what Scott's up to these days. Anyhow...the guitarist in the band was this dude, Petey Adams. Now Petey was the biggest dork on the planet...and everybody knew it except for Petey, who had a very high opinion of himself--especially vis a vis his ability to play the guitar. And do you know what? The prick really was pretty fucking good. He could absolutely shred the Hendrix version of "all along the watchtower" with that bad ass intro lead--"bwip bwoop bwedah" Petey had been in a a big local hardcore band in Plymouth, called TWT which stood for Time Will Tell. I should dig through my old tapes and scan in their logo--it was a hardcore X that looked like a clock and had the T W T in each section of the X...you know how they do it. Nick Brannigan from Close Call was the drummer, and he had the small town notoriety of being the youngest dude around to absolutely shred the drums...I think Nick was like 11 years old or something like that when that band started. Petey was older..all the dudes in the band were older. Our singer, Eddie, was like a million...I don't know what the hel he was hanging out with us for. Actually, I think Eddie O'Connor was 18 or 19 at the time, but to my 14 year old ass, that seemed pretty old. He was cool to me, though...took me a while to figure out that Eddie had some serious issues, which was probably why he was still hanging out with high school kids. Eddie loved Eddie Vedder and like thousands of other suburban deuche bags since then, tried to emulate Vedder's way of singing. I've come to call this meow rock, and if you see me, ask me why and I'll demonstrate--you need sound. So, the point of the story is that I'm going along with these guys..."Misty Haze" we were called, named after some sort of life sized beer-girl model cardboard cutout that Scott had in his basement where we practiced. Apparently that was her name. Not making this up. I know it was a crummy name, but hey...we were a crummy band. You've got to start somewhere--at the time I didn't have any other offers. So, I'm playing these guys' songs, and one day I get bold and say, "I wrote a song." And I showed them some song I had written and Petey was overplaying, as usual--I didn't even know what overplaying was at the time, but I knew what he was doing didn't sound right. So I told him so saying, "No man...it should really go something like this..." He got all bent out of shape and started ragging on me and my little songling, which was the wrong thing to do, because I was extremely nervous and self-conscious about trying to show these guys this song that I had written. So I threw my bass down and rushed him. I was a small dude and a year younger, but Petey was a string bean--the only dude in the band that I could have beat up. I smacked him a good one. I don't think he saw that coming. Scott and Eddie pulled me off him and Petey stormed out. So, that was my first attempt at trying to bring one of my songs to a band, and in essence what I was attempting to do was produce Petey. It didn't go that well.

This was a good lesson, though. You've got to build up a bit of a cache before people will take your opinions seriously. I feel like my friends and associates take me seriously when I have opinions about their music because they know me, they know I take song craft very seriously and they know that I can actually write a halfway decent song. The other day I was talking with Alex (Hartman, who is engineering...dare I say even squeezing in a bit of producing on the new album) about professional songwriters--dudes that make big money writing songs for cheesy pop bands--and I said out loud, "How do you get that job, anyway?" And he had the best answer, "You've got to write a hit." It seem retardedly simple, but that really is the answer. You don't get the job until you do the job. Otherwise, you can write all the songs you want, but you're just farting into the wind. I feel like producing is the same deal. If I could score a hit, I bet I could get some serious producing work.

This has been a long and winding post. By the way, I'm sorry if this blog is rather self indulgent. But hey, its my stupid blog. I didn't ask you to read this. If you're not interested in what I have to say, move on. Change the channel. It's 3:19 a.m. Saturday the 13th of February. For the first time in the last three nights my daughter isn't screaming right now. For some reason, the last couple of nights she completely freaked out for like an hour and a half straight around this time. I wonder if on some level her body remembers this time as being a traumatic time of the day as this is the time when my wife was attempting to squeeze her head into the world last Sunday. I think I'll go see what they're up to. At least I'm up to see the start of the Vancouver Olympics...I love the Olympics. I love wacky sports. That dude totally ate it on the luge, too...that was brutal. Man, I'm scattered. I've got to try to produce me some sleep. Love you guys. Night, night.

From Dude To Dad

2010-02-09T11:18:00.005-11:00

I'm a Dad. Yup...as of 3:44 a.m. Monday, February 8th, 2010, I...am...somebody's father. (Thank you, thank you...you're too kind...please, hold your applause until the end of the post). Its amazing how quickly you turn into a stereotype in this sort of situation. We brought her home today to get out of the hospital before tomorrow's impending snow storm, and I'm doing 40 on the highway swearing at drivers who have the audacity to get within 100 yards of my car with my new kid in the back. I'm seriously going out tomorrow to get one of those, "Baby On Board" signs for the car window...only I'm going to add my own sign below it, which says, "...so back the fuck off, dickweed or I'll memorize your license plate, drop my kid off at home, find out where you live, drive there, and smash every window in your goddamned car...oh, and Mr. Smartass Pedestrian, I will seriously end your life without a second thought if you step in front of my car and try to get me to stop short--crosswalk or no crosswalk." Any other folks preparing for this kind of adventure, you know how everybody you know that already has kids is telling you, "Get some sleep! You're going to need it!" with that sort of annoying, all-knowing look in their eye? Well guess what? THEY ARE NOT KIDDING. All last week, I knew she was coming any day now, so I went into 'Sleep Camel' mode whereby I tried to go to bed early and often to stock up on Z's in preparation for this sort of thing. Then, of course my wife's water broke (sorry...in the New Age we say, "her membranes released") at about 2:00 a.m. Sunday morning while I was dicking around with a new demo on the computer and we haven't really slept since then. The thing that kills me is that I actually passed out on the couch super-early that night, like 9:00 p.m., but I woke back up and instead of just going to bed and going back to sleep I decided I'd make a Saturday night of it and stay up. I bitterly regret that decision. At least my boobs don't squirt milk...my wife didn't sleep a wink last night...I was at least lucky enough to grab a few hours of shut eye on the dreadful hospital 'half couch/half chair/half bed' thingamabob they've got in there.

The birth itself was bananas. I'm going to take a minute here and brag about my wife, a.k.a. The Strongest Woman In The World...who brought my daughter into the world without any painkillers or artificial chemicals of any kind. My girl was born straight edge--baby sXe, represent. I keep telling people, "yeah...it was like a Civil War Birth," but my wife reminds me that I am exaggerating and tells me to stop telling people things like that. I swear, you are the last one I'm going to say it to...let's just keep it between you and I, ok? I'm not going to go into the grisly details, but you haven't lived until you've seen a tiny human head sticking out of a woman's vagina.

Too much? Sorry...light weight.

Both my ladies are sleeping right now...thank god. I've got the baby monitor going and all that jazz...celebrating with an ice cold bottle of PBR on the couch. It's goddamn delicious. Dad Juice.

What does this mean for the music of thee Electric Bastards? Not much, I don't think. The album is coming along just splendidly...I've got a whole cadre of talented contributors and I'm stoked on it. I am not impatient about it. I've been storing these hits in my head for so long while rocking with Clouds, Pet Genius, Octave Museum, Hydronaut and all of the other fantastic (if I do say so myself) bands that I've been lucky (and talented...ahem) enough to be a part of in the past 3 or so years since 'Live! at Club Awesome' hit the shelves. I see no reason to get all antsy about a new Bastards joint at this juncture. These songs are my non-human babies...they need to be grown and nurtured, not rushed into the world prematurely with the musical equivalent of a shot of pytosin. (If you don't know what pytosin is, you will find out if you ever have kids...the doctors love it, because it gets your asses out of their delivery room more quickly than Mother Nature tends to and one thing doctors seem to hate more than anything else is letting nature take its course.) I really want this album to be perfect. I want every line of every song to be perfect. I'm sick of bullshit music and bands that take short cuts with their lyrics and fucking meaningless cookie cutter garbage that permeates the airwaves right now because the people in charge are still running with the old, "Shove It Down Their Throats Until It Sticks In Their Heads" mentality of signing and promoting bands. (Read the Lefsetz Letter post titled, "Lunch With Lyor" currently residing here: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/page/4/ The final line reads, "The old way, of spending lavishly to jam crap down people’s throats…that’s history." Goddamn, if only that could be true.) And I'm not even talking Top 40 garbage like "Party In The USA" and whatever mindless dribble the Black Eyed Peas are selling to Verizon this week. The stuff that passes for rock music these days is just atrocious. Not that I consider this rock music, but I want to punch that Owl City guy in the throat. I should just pretend to be a Christian so a million people would buy my records, too. Worked for Creed...and those guys are terrible.

I'm not trying to say I'm the most super awesomest songwriter in the world, but hey...I'm no slouch. Test markets on these new tracks are through the roof. And goddamit, like it or not...at least I try. I try hard. And, I refuse to let producers, or what-have-you rewrite my music in the studio. You should see the shenanigans that go on in a pro studio. I'm not telling tales out of school, but by the time the drums have been aligned to a grid, the snare and kick replaced with samples, the bass notes matched up to the kick drum, the guitars re-amped, the vocals auto-tuned, the keys moved around to be slightly more behind the beat or whatever...barely any of what comes out the other side of the process was actually "played" by humans. Then, the manager guy and the record label guy come in and the song gets cut up and re-arranged and a new bridge is spliced in and the string section is added...in the end, who really wrote this song? Not the skinny shithead guitarist with the asymmetrical haircut and girl's jeans wrapped around his bony ass reading a book on the couch in the control room...and not his fat fuck scruffy-beard bass player either. (and I can say that because I am a fat fuck bass player). They'll lay claim to it, but the guys in the back of the room are winking at eachother.

And, for the record, I've got nothing against digital recording and modern studio techniques. I love Pro-Tools. Incredibly useful...and for the band on a budget (and who isn't these days?)...badda bing--bang for you buck. Tape ain't cheap...getting more expensive every day while hard drives get cheaper. Not even taking into account the time saved by not having to constantly rewind and fast forward things...and in the studio, time is most definitely money. Plus, digital recording is the greatest thing in the world for demos and writing...instant idea machine. That's when you do the cutting and re-arranging and bridge splicing...but by the time the red light goes on for real, I want to hear players playing the music that you will hear on the final version. Now, I'm not trying to lie...I'm hip to this modern world and if the whole take rules and there's one kick drum beat that is a train wreck in the middle of a golden performance, I'll move that sucker where it needs to go and be done with it. My rule is "everybody gets one"...as in every player on the track gets one flub corrected by the magic of the ones and zero's. Also, "if you can do it on tape, its not cheating." i.e. splicing different performances together to get that one magic take (what the digital kids call, 'comping'), or doing punches...go nuts. Sure, punching on tape is a skill whereas punching on the 'Tools is a no brainer, but I've done my time with the four track. There are no backsies when you punch on tape, but I can punch on tape with the best of them, so I lose no sleep punching the hell out of a take on the Professional Tools. What I hate more than anything is moving stuff around on the track to time it up better. Engineers are in love with this, but half the time, it kills the feel of the song...nothing 'honkys' up a track more than lining up every stupid note to be completely on beat. If I'm behind the beat, its because I goddamn meant to play behind the beat, otherwise, I'd call my own bad and redo it...so leave my bass track alone. Can't you see I'm trying to ebonize this song? Stop being such a cracker. Plus, if your takes are that off that some poor bastard assistant engineer has to sit in the B-room all day lining your shit up, you should get your ass back in the live room and do it again...and next time practice more before you waste everybody's time and money laying eggs in the studio. Like my good friend and fellow cranky, opinionated sonuvabitch Steve Albini said on the last Shellac album, "Be prepared!" And any "singer" using auto-tune should be shot on sight. That's amateur hour, in my opinion. I hate that crap. So you're a little bit out of tune? That's what reverb is for. Or just get in there and do it right. Or do it with so much emotion and pinache that nobody gives a crap if you're a tad bit sharp...they can feel where you're coming from. Is Neil Young the best singer in the world? Or Steven Malkmus? Or Cobain? Hell no! But they sing in a way that you can feel. In other words....keep it human. Don't let the computer play your songs for you. Unless you're going for the electronic thing. In that case, track everything to the grid, throw in some loops to go with your "live drums," filter the living bejeezus out of the bass and basically go bananas. I can dig that. I love me some Kraftwerk. Peaches rules, too...love Peaches...she's a musical genius. For real. Good luck translating it live, though. I don't know how people can go and watch some asshole hit buttons on his laptop for an hour, but I know people do it all the time. I guess a good light show would help. And drugs. LOTS of drugs. But as far as rock music goes...keep it real, son. People can smell your bullshit.

Speaking of smelling shit, I think this self-proclaimed Super Awesomest Artistic Genius Songwriter needs to take a break from ranting and raving about how much everybody else sucks to check on a certain special little girl's poopy diaper. Reality intrudes...even all the way up here on Mount St. Self-Righteous. I'm not really this much of an arrogant bastard...I promise. If anything, I feel that I've under sold myself in life. I've got friends that are terrific self-promoters...aka totally obnoxious. But they get opportunities that I don't because I'm not going around shoving my butt in everybody's face all the time. And apparently, in this world, that's how you get things done. So what the hell? I'll give it a shot. What have I got to lose? My integrity? Your respect? Pffft. I'll trade them all in a second for a fat royalty check and my moment in the spotlight. Just because I have artistic integrity doesn't mean I'm not gunning to sell out at the first opportunity. I've got mouths to feed.

Dick Moves, Music News and the Bastardization of the English Language

2009-12-16T19:31:00.004-11:00

I got a couple of karma smacks today in the form of vehicular dick moves. I was trying to take a left onto Cameron Ave. in Somerville/N. Cambridge at around seven p.m. and I had an opening and this lady in the oncoming lane revved up and cut me off to take a right. The thing that was weak is that..yeah, technically, she had the right of way, but I had the gap and she specifically sped way up to block me when she could have done me a solid by simply maintaining her original speed. whereby I would have busted my quick left and been out like a ghost--wouldna evenah brokeah her stride, as the men at work would say. But she sped up to cut me off and that was a dick move. We had that sort of standoff where I edged out and she stopped then I stopped and she looked at me then she crept then stopped then I crept and mouthed to her, "dude...are you serious?" then she hit the gas and charged because she realized that she had position and so got ahead of me...but I took the left (not made...took) and got on her tail piece, blazing the high beams in her mirror. I held that stance all the way down Cameron, but had to leave off to get to where I was going. Well played, ma'am...sweet dick move.

I 've got my own move for that left. People are always on the end of the street--Cameron--trying to take a left toward Teele Square and Broadway or a right toward Davis down Holland. If you're on Holland taking a left onto Cameron, there'll almost always be a car trying to take a left to go towards Broadway...don't put your blinker on or give any indication that you are going to take a left onto Cameron until you are past that car...then throw on the blinker--because its the courteous thing to do--and take your left if you've got the window from the oncoming traffic. This is definitely sort of a dick move--because you both have the same position in the traffic flow, that is, you need to bang a left and technically that car has the right of way if they arrived at the intersection first. It's also a strong move for road survival, though...because if that car senses that you both have an equally week position, he'll take your window and leave you sitting there like a chump watching a parade of headlights keeping you from home and glory. I can't stand when I feel like people are robbing me of my time...even if I spend my time doing bullshit. At least its my chosen bullshit.

So...yeah...what's up guys? Here's some music news: there is going to be a new thee Electric Bastards album. I've got about a bakers half dozen of tunes in the can already...the recordings are an interesting mix of hi fi and lo fi. I got the tascam 424 in the mix down at Club Awesome, but we've got some songs recorded in full super hi fi at Camp Street. Shout out as the kids say to my boy Alex Hartman for getting in on the jams and rocking the legendary Tweed. Aren't I urban with all this shout out business? Shout out to my boy Q for cold kicking some sick ass beats. My boy Stevie B for killing the licks on the guitz. Wow..that's annoying.

I was telling Q tonight...you know how I know I'm old? Because it drives me nuts when I go onto youtube and look at the comments and I see, "Dis b dat bitch dat sed sum shit 2 dat ho" It's not that its too urban---which is republican for ghetto fabulous--or that its moronically phonetic. And, that is if your model of phonetics was based on Ice Cube's crazy girlfriend in Friday..."You ain't got tah lie, Craig...you ain't got tah lie." Here's the issue...and Q even said it before I did...it takes just as much energy to write that phonetic alphanumeric code than to just to write correctly. Its like they are going out of there way to bastardize the English language. Is that the direction we're headed in? Then I felt shitty for being such a codger. So, I thought to myself, "Self...why are you so annoyed by this? Isn't language a sort of a living organism that changes and evolves with the times?" Its healthy for language to mutate...and it could be argued that there is some sort of weird genius to being able to break down a complex language into the absolute most basic form where whole words are displayed in one number and everything is basically monosyllabic...and yet they still get a message across.

I think in the end, you just have to choose a side in life. Are you with the youth brigade that says, "Hey man...this is the way we speak and write and we understand each other...so what's the big deal if we don't know how to really spell anything...writing out whole words is inefficient anyway when you can get your point across in four letters or less...get with the times...change is good...you have to embrace change." Or are you with the codgers...the preservation society that says, "Language is important. How we express ourselves and the language we use goes a long way toward defining us as both an individual and as a society as a whole. In a poetic sense, the English language specifically is one of the most expressive languages ever composed...the intricacies and subtle nuances in the English language provide the means for expressing complex thoughts and emotions in a way that is virtually unparalleled. Why would you want to appear ignorant by purposefully bastardizing the language?"

Both arguments have merit. I don't know what side I'm on. I'd like to think I'm a "conserve the language" kind of guy, but I definitely take a lot of liberties with the language. I'm brutal with homonyms for instance. And with sentence structure...and I have no idea where to put my commas...I think I use to many. It's for goddamned sure that I use too many ellipeses--I like the double dash aside, too. Obviously. I don't know. I think that if I thought the dude writing, "Dis be dat" was some straight up G from Brooklyn or something I'd feel better about it. However, I can't help but think its some dickhead white kid from Nebraska trying to act hard on teh internets. If it were the ghost of ODB, i'd be totally cool wid it. I definitely appreciate an authentic writer's voice. I like it when I feel a "writer's voice" is likely to be similar to how that person would conduct his end of a discussion in real life. Like that guy, Kevin Smith who did Clerks...or Tarantino. When you hear Dante and Randall in Clerks or John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson's characters in Pulp Fiction having those discussions, you can tell that it's really Kevin Smith and Tarantino speaking on both sides of those conversations. Good dialogue writers, both of them...if a bit heavy handed.

What am I babbling about? It's 2:34 a.m. Eastern. I've got to pee. I'm going to pee and then crash out. Dat iz all. Peas yall.

Hello Cruel World

2009-12-15T17:59:00.005-11:00

Let's call a spade a spade...it's a cruel world. I like to add to this. There are myriad ways to subtly and not so subtly fuck someone over while you go about your day. Driving around Boston offers one ample opportunity for this sort of thing. One of my favorite moves is for when I'm on a two lane street with a lot of stop lights--like Mass Ave between Porter and Harvard Square, for instance. If you are at the head of the pack at a red light, and you can sense the guy next to you is going to race out in front and try to get ahead of you in your lane, make sure you get the jump on him--you'll win because he has to get out a whole car length ahead of you and the distance between the lights is too short most of the time. Then, when he realizes that he lost and he has to pull in behind you to get in the lane, slow down so that the car behind you catches up to you and blocks him. By this time on the stretch of Mass ave, you will be at the next light and he will have to make a serious move to get over to your lane now that all the cars are stacked up waiting for the green. I do this all the time. Then I feel a bit ashamed of myself for being so petty...but then I'll do it again the next day. I don't know why, but it just annoys me that the dude thinks he can pull a power move and just get out in front of me and take the lane. You gotta earn the lane. Plus...if he's that desperate to get in the lane, if probably means he's going to have to make a turn coming up and that could really fuck up your day--especially if he's making a left.* Nothing worse than when someone speeds up, cuts in front of you and then slams on the brakes to bang a left across a double lane of oncoming Cambridge traffic. So I'm not pulling a dick move; it's more of a pre-emptive strike in my own defense. Me and Bush's America are pulling dick moves on the world because people might mess with us sometime in the future. Like the men at work said, "Ain't nothin' gonna breaka my stride..nobody's gonna slow me down!"

Just for the record...I'm not advocating pulling dick moves. I very much believe in the law of attraction and karma and garbage in; garbage out: you get back what you put in. So, if you, like me enjoy pulling dick moves, you have to take it in stride when someone pulls a dick move on you. Its just a game, after all.

Oh yeah...I almost forgot. This post was intended to announce the commencement of the grand opening of the brand new and improved Official Internet Web Log of thee Electric Bastards!!! I'll be your host...John Parker Northrup! But seriously, folks...you can call me Johnny!! We've got a really exciting post planned for you guys...tonight we will be discussing 'dick moves' and how to mess someone up in traffic for no real reason. Just scroll up to the beginning of this post and read along with our studio audience to join in on the fun!

*I don't know why I used the expression, "making a left." That's so not a Boston thing to say. We say someone's "taking a left," not "making a left." You're not out there with a bag of asphalt and a steam roller, painting left pointing arrows on the fresh pavement...we're not "making" anything. We're taking it, goddammit! That left is ours for the taking, and i'll be damned if the shithead next to me thinks he's going to pull a block move up here so I can't get in the lane and take my left.