Out of step

Though it's about three guitarists I'm not really fond of, I just saw It Might Get Loud... which bore investigating, because I love the documentary Dig even though I dislike both of the bands if focuses on and I love Comedian even though I don't find Jerry Seinfeld funny: I can like a movie without being enamored of the subject. However, It Might Get Loud is actually pretty annoying.

I get why Jimmy Page is in the movie. I've never liked Led Zepplin (sorry kids, it's me and Ben Weasel skipping merrily down this path), but if you're doing a movie about guitarists and their instruments, this guy is the 70's blues-rock lead guitarist. I don't like the stuff, but he's the king of that particular hill.

I actually hate U2, but from an interview standpoint, The Edge is an okay guy to have in the movie. He's an 80's superstar, so there's some generational contrast between him and Page's 70's thing, and he's pretty candid about his "riff" being absolutely nothing if he switches off his effects (Bill Bailey beat him to this punch, but it shows some self-awareness to have the guy actually demonstrate it).

After that, I think we should try to roll up all of the pretentious shit that falls out of Jack White's mouth over the course of this movie and beat him to death with it. I don't like the other two guys, but the whole Jack White thing is just bog-standard 70's rock... and Jimmy Page is already in this movie. Half the time I can't tell the White Stripes from any other classic rock revival band until the bassline fails to arrive. I don't think he's a bad guitar player, really, but a stunningly average one who (from what I've heard) has never done anything original and has a couple pop radio hits.

Seriously, was Jonny Greenwood not returning this movie's calls? They couldn't get anyone interesting? If it had to be an American (as opposed to the UK guys for the 70's and 80's), why not someone like Tom Morello? I know the Rage Against the Machine thing is way past its sell-by date, but at least he was innovative. Not only that, but if you'd add someone who had his push in the 90's and is still remembered, there's sort of a guarantee that you're not dealing with someone destined for the cut-out bin by next year.

Hell, I think Dean Ween and Larry LaLonde are better candidates... and they're bound to be less smug in front of a camera.

PSA: Gear is heavy

As Public Service Announcements go, this one's more of a note to self... but, as most every part of me is really, really sore today, the whole thing is burning bright neon in my frontal lobe.

ubik. is currently practicing at Crybaby Studios, and our show last night was one block away, at The Comet. One block! Hey, it's not that far! My brain whirled around bringing the van up to Capitol Hill, loading into the van from the practice space, trying to find parking by The Comet, loading into the club, and then driving around the neighborhood to find a place to park the van until the end of the show... at which time, we'd have to repeat the process (albeit, in reverse). It made perfect sense to just walk the gear over to the club.

I maintain that theoretically, it was a good idea. The whole thing got shakier when put into practice.

Gearwise, ubik.s basically pair of bass cabinets, amps, a pedalboard, basses, and a drum kit to move. Where guitarists can have a Vox or Fender combo amp (a single piece unit that has a handle on top... obviously meant to be lifted by one person), bassists like us are usually in a two-man-lift situation. The upshot is: these things come with wheels. Downside: the wheels are fine for moving across a room, or a hardwood floor-- nobody ever meant them for a long hall across cracked city sidewalks. Joel's cabinet, for example, is an Ampeg 8x10 that stands taller than Michelle: it's a large, heavy, upright rectangle with four little wheels on the bottom.

My pedalboard is its own challenge-- this thing also takes two people to carry (1 1/2" to 2" plywood, with its lid on, it looks like the world's cheapest junior-sized coffin), though I did decide to get it there on my own: I had Tyler help me lift it onto my cabinet, which is half as tall as Joel's, and then I rolled it over myself. That was actually my first trip, and I figured out it was a bad idea before I had crossed the street. Another note to self: it's easier to pull these things than to push. Luckily, two of us just grabbed a side and carried the board back for the return trip.

Crybaby provides a shopping cart just for the "let's wheel our gear over to The Comet" types of nights (that actually introduced the idea in my fertile subconscious), so we used it to load up all the cymbal stands and other small, heavy pieces. I wasn't part of the shopping cart experience, though I know it pulls to one side, but I did carry the kick drum over to the venue; while I have loaded that thing in and out of a show more than once, it does get heavier after half a block or so.

The whole thing was manageable, and it really wasn't the world's biggest hassle, but... I am definitely sore today. All in all, it wasn't my best idea... and yes, it was my idea. Next time, we're taking the van. A block is a lot longer when you're carrying one end of my pedalboard than it is when you're just walking around.

everyone's got their distractions

me, I'm an unrepentant pedalgeek. When the night drags on, I tend to click around (bandwidth permitting), and can spend a bit of time checking out video demos of pedals... which is a decent way of figuring out not just which pedals you're interested in (a good service) but also which gear you're just not interested in (absolutely invaluable). ToneFactor provides a lot of these videos and they sell a lot of these pedals, so their site can offer a lot of perspective on the kind of gear you can't find and test out at the local shops.

For example-- I got one of my favorite pedals from them:



That box is both the synth break in disrepair and the grinding dissonant lead in cyclocosmia (which will be online soon... it's being mixed). Neat, eh?

quality cheap instruments

I took my tenor home with me last week, so I could work out a few arrangements and practice a bit at home. This instrument, my stage bass for ubik, is a cheap piece of gear bought specifically for me to ruin it-- a luthier has routed the body, another has redesigned a nut, almost half the hardware on it is additional... I'd never buy a good bass and perform this kind of surgery on a beautiful instrument, so I am (for all intents and purposes) using a piece of crap gear.

There's a bit of mythos, however, about the player sweating mojo into an instrument after years of use, and... honestly, I have really come to love this instrument. It's still not a great instrument, but it's got a lot of personality, and it's been with me for so long... hell, I've done more than half the frankenstein modifications on it myself. For a cheap bass that I've all but destroyed, I enjoy playing this disheveled machine as much as I enjoy playing beautiful, tasteful instruments.

(and, for the record, I've played one of Mike Watt's basses, and he treats those things with the kind of reckless abandon that my poor monster of a bass receives)

been dead a long time

The foreword of the book I'm reading (which is an excellent diary of the making of a record in the major lables... very compelling, very funny) ends with this:

Music of conviction and personality will always go on, but in this artistic end of days, where Jimi Hendrix is sold as nostalgia rather than art, and rock and roll, once rebellious, is so establishment that there's a Les Paul in every doctor and lawyer's closet; the music that a lot of us grew up on has been so mollified we can barely recognize it.

Rock and roll is dead. Consider this its autopsy.

Strange thing that came of this-- it made me think of a friend's declaration: "The Beatles killed rock and roll," and my response "I never really liked rock and roll, anyway." Both statements could be provably true, as long as we define our terms.

Mainly the term "Rock and Roll."

As far as I'm aware, Rock and Roll is the thing that came up with Bo Diddley, took off with Chuck Berry, and was sold to suburban America by Elvis: rhythm and blues based, obsessed with I/IV/V, backbeat, and a hooky chorus. So, the thing that is Rock and Roll was gunned down by the Beatles around the Revolver/Rubber Soul era (when they started doing away with a lot of that formalism)... though it managed to crawl to LA, to slowly bleed to death.

By the year of my birth (1974), Rock and Roll only had the barest relation to its R&B origins... if the Rolling Stones worship Robert Johnson, so be it, but the music that was subversive in my grandparents' era was the mainstream in my parents' day. By the 8os, not only was rock dead, but its reanimated corpse was wearing a lot of make-up, teasing its hair, and donning spandex.

Generally, the term Rock is applied to just about anything that has an electric guitar involved... which is fine, so long as we all agree that we aren't actually talking about "Rock and Roll" when we're using the term. The great "rock" bands today (the ones that I think are great) have nothing to do with the 40's and 50's-- even those godawful retro rock acts that had a groundswell a few years back are dedicating their lives to unartistically copying the 1970s arena stuff (from Zepplin to AC/DC: the kind of thing I just don't like. Sorry: I don't like it). Seriously, though-- even the stuff they're aiming to emulate has got nothing to do with Little Richard.

Currently "Rock and Roll" tends to be either a nostalgia act or modern corporate programming: crap like Nickleback-- a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy... ad nauseum. Either way, I'm on board with Rock and Roll being dead... though I'm quite thankful that there's plenty of other music out there for the rest of us, the "music of conviction and personality" mentioned in the opening quote. I have no idea what to call any of it (though new, arbitrary names for anything we're listening to will be coined weekly by local, free papers), but it's everywhere, if you look for it.



P.S. "Pop" is not a genre. It is an abbreviation of "popular." It's only musical connotation is that it sounds like what most people are willing to buy.

theirspace

Before I dig too deep, I've got to say I appreciate that MySpace has been a boon for independent musicians-- it's still the default to find smaller bands, hear what the lineup for a show on any given night sounds like, etc. Even now, ubik.s booking is done as much through MySpace messaging as it is through email or phone. Yes, all the music on the MySpace players sound terrible, and yes it is an amazingly ugly system, but it's the default-- the first place people look when they want to find a band.

But... as they take their role as music disseminators to heart, the MySpace music front is actually the antithesis of a grass-roots, independent music system. Down here on the ground floor, we all use it the same way, but MySpace has big plans for itself, and it falls more along the lines of the corporate starfucking of mTv and Clear Channel radio.

Any time you sign in, someone's being promoted in the box on the left: "Today on MySpace," which, when it comes to music, is always used to promote people who don't need promoting: Disney sponsored, non threatening, emo bands... millionaire diva-tastic gangsta guys (seriously: extravagant furs and flamboyant jewelry? Elizabeth Taylor'd tell these dudes to take it down a notch). My last login displayed an invitation to Paris Hilton's birthday bash ("If you're in Vegas this weekend..."), which would be an awesome way to get the Stupid Spoiled Whore Playset autographed.

Similarly, the new MySpace music player allows MP3 sales through Amazon.com, which is fine for what it is... but that only works if you're in bed with the Corporations. For example, our digital aggregator has our album on Amazon.com (I prefer physical manifestations of albums, cover art and whatnot, but that's just me), but you will not find the Amazon "sale" button popping up on our MySpace music player... it's just not something they're giving us.

I find these things slightly frustrating because I know that the record industry is a vile, incestuous, corrupt system... but the internet has given musicians of all stripes a competitive edge and a DIY tool for personal success. That MySpace is acting more like the former than the latter is disappointing.

But I say "slightly frustrating," because after all: it's MySpace. All the little bands like us still use it not because of its quality, but because it'd be idiotic not use it. You can't be too frustrated by the site that was whoreish years ago becoming more whoreish over time, just sort of disappointed, and hopeful that, like Geocities before it, a change in standards will make it obsolete.

echoes, effects, and U2

Sadly, every echo enthusiast gets compared to The Edge (who did not invent the dotted quarter note delay. Honestly, people), for better or worse. To wit, Bill Bailey:

Thank You, Portland!

Well, the shows were excellent, but we learned a few things: Touring will be kind of tough, especially if you make a big party of it every night (and have to play again the following night). Also-- don't sleep at the party house. Or try to sleep there. Because you won't.

That aside, Portland crowds seem to stay out later, and are really receptive and responsive... which is awesome. They also paid us pretty well: if every night pays like these nights (merch and CD sales included) the tour will pay for itself completely, and that's a DIY touring wet dream.

The van survived yet another trip. All love to the van.