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That Eric Alper

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Skrillex on finding that perfect drum sound

Feb 15, 2015

I don’t want to be mysterious (and) of course I’m not giving away anything either—part of the fun of being a producer is having your own sound. But for me, the drums are simple. It’s all about the three pieces that make a really nice drum sound. You need a nice transient in the beginning, and then the note around the 200-hertz frequency that gives it that boof, and then a tail, which can be anything. I usually start with a 909 and compress it to get the harmonics of that 200-hertz note, and then take maybe one or two really good-sounding locked drum samples that don’t conflict with any of the harmonics in the 909. You want to tune it at about 200, and shave off a lot of that stuff above 200, and then you have this live-sounding hybrid 909. Then you take a clap or a china [sound] and shelve it off super high, and add some reverb to it and then print it as one. Balance it while you print it, and then you re-compress it from there and you have a snare drum.

There’s one thing about audio too. I think the biggest piece of advice I can give anybody about audio is don’t pretend to be a snob. — Skrillex, iZotope

Vintage Pepsi Ads From The 1960s

Feb 15, 2015

Pepsi took the common step in the 1960s to proclaim itself as the refreshing drink to use on a hit day at the beach. A few others have done the same, but Pepsi’s wholesome image is perfect with the brand, as seen here in their “Pepsi-cola Cold Beats Any Cola Cold!” campaign.

You Can Now Create Your Own Selfie Doll

Feb 15, 2015

Eternize yourself, your mate, or your entire family (Counting your pet as well)! The look-alike Selfie Dolls made by Mahinarium are made after real people, with keeping the characteristics of a doll as well! All you need to do is to contact them, send them a few pictures of the person you would like to have a look-alike of, describe him or her in a few sentences to make sure the doll mirrors him as much as possible. They make a raw concept, and send it to you in e-mail. The clothes and accessories on the body like eye-glasses are handcrafted, too. The height of the Selfie Dolls is 30 cm, but you’ll feel like a giant to have your own doll.

Jason McCoy of The Road Hammers: “Fans are #1”

Feb 15, 2015

Since he’s a performer at heart, it’s only natural that Jason McCoy’s career would have a a number of influences and subject matter. It was both the traditional country of Merle Haggard, Buck Owens and Charlie Rich, as well as the Urban Cowboy country of Mickey Gilley and Johnny Lee that set McCoy on his artistic quest, “Country music speaks to me,” says McCoy. “That whole Mars-Venus connection – what men want, what women want — just seems to be dealt with better in country music. What I really like about country is the classic period of the ’70s, that dealt with drinking, cheating and other things on a level of emotional honesty whether it’s better or worse. That’s who we are as people. Country is the new rock, it’s the largest format in the world right now. I’ve always listened to George Jones, Willie, Merle and all the classics growing up but started to get into more rock and roll when I was an adult in my 20s.”

Eric: A lot of these country artists that are your age or my age – our 20s [laughs], grew up with the classics artists like Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. But when you talk to country artists today, their influences are those, but they’ve added Led Zeppelin and AC/DC.
Jason: Old country is Garth. Which is cool, they’re born in a different year and it is what it is. For me, I look at country as the new rock and roll. I’ve been blessed to be able to do this closing in on thirty years and our music has evolved, but the thing that never wavers, no matter what the age or no matter what the fanaticism is or whatever the trend is in country is the nucleus of the country fan never changes. I don’t care if you were 30 years old in 1982. I don’t care if you’re 30 now, or 18. The country fan, the heartbeat of what country music is, it’s called the people’s music and there’s a reason for the. I don’t care if you’re talking about newer bands like Blackjack Billy or Doc Walker. Country music is a full encompassing genre and the fans who are into it like the stories of the songs.
Eric: Why do you think that is? When audiences go to festivals, like Boots and Hearts, just north of Toronto, they like everybody on the bill. Even Jazz isn’t like that, Jazz has divisions. You’d never get that in country music, you have it in Folk music. There’s a real sense of community.
Jason: You just said it, it’s community. A lot of people say this, but the reason we do it is because it is true. It’s about the fans creating that community or the party and we’re just the soundtrack for it. The country way of life is always there. This country is built on rural roots. It’s just the soundtrack for the common people and right now it’s the hottest format in the world because it’s crossed some pop elements in it’s production, etc. For us, speaking topically, we released this song “Mud” and it went gold. It’s a huge download and the reason being is because we get out there and we know that there are all these people who are 18 years old to 40 years old who have a jacked up jeep who love to get out and play in the mud. These are my neighbors! I live on a farm, I like that and so we’re like, we’re the soundtrack of what they like to do and what I like to do. Just common people stuff, that’s country.
Eric: Pete Townshend from The Who says that as well. The Who just held up a mirror to their audience.
Jason: Yeah, look at “Teenage Wasteland.” They were singing to their audience, right? I write all sorts of stuff that I want it to connect, from kids songs to rock and roll stuff.
Eric: Tell me about writing kids songs!
Jason: I’ve got two kids. 8 and 5. Daughter is 8 and my son is 5, and I write songs with them. I have a backhoe on the farm and my son who is 5, him and I wrote a song for the backhoe. They love it.

Eric: Let’s change gears a bit. The Road Hammers split up for a time.
Jason: I was a solo artist and had wonderful success at that and just started this is as a lark, for fun, to do a trucker album and CMT turned it into a reality show and the creation of a band and the thing debuted at #1 and turned out we’re the highest selling Canadian country band in history. It’s mind-numbing. It’s all just following our heart and having fun.
Eric: What do you think the band gave you that you couldn’t do yourself?
Jason: I like writing really aggressive rock and roll and rock and country stuff, and I can’t sing it. Clay, he’s all that. He’s the rock star. It’s great, because another thing it gives me is goal posts. I can write within the Road Hammer goal posts and I know exactly what a Road Hammer is and what it’s not. But talking about the band just exploded, it was amazing, took us to Nashville, and one thing led to another and the record label we were signed with eventually folded into another label, went bankrupt and then there were lawyers and were kind of hung up for a couple of years and our hearts go broken. We just had to take a break, that’s as simple as it is. The business eclipsed the creative and it just sucked the life out of us for a while.
Eric: When you got back together, was there an elephant in the room that had to be dealt with before you started working together?
Jason: No, it was gone. We were really lucky.
Eric: That must be so irritating when record label politics come into the business of art for you. It’s has to be so heartbreaking to know that the possibility of success has changed over situations out of your control.
Jason: We were ready to go ahead with another record and the label just got caught up in the paperwork of shutting down, it was owned by lawyers, we should have seen that coming. It just went into purgatory for a couple of years. It really did break our hearts because you can’t do anything. You can’t even dream of having the ambition of saying – OK, we’re going to record an album and when this is all over we’ll release it. At the time we were told, nah, you’re hung up forever. We’re lucky, we had something on the other side of it and it worked out OK. But some of these young artists get signed, it’s painful to watch. Really painful. But we’re back on the road. Fans are #1. Talk about amazing. Those fans are amazing.

The Road Hammers on tour
May 29 Grande Prairie Stompede 2015 Grande Prairie, Canada
Jun 19 Summer in the City Steinbach, Canada
Jun 26 Ciderfest Stoney Creek, Canada
Jul 04 Elliot Lake’s 60th Anniversary Elliot Lake, Canada
Aug 02 Boot Hill Country Jamboree Bothwell, Canada

1975 Pink Floyd ‘Comic’ Tour Book

Feb 15, 2015

In 1975, Pink Floyd sold a ‘comic’ tour book that has become a collectors item since it’s publication for the famous Dark Side Of The Moon tour. Here are the original pictures, and an added bonus, at the bottom of this page, you can download all the large images to view at your leisure while listening to the classic album.

You can download your own program here.

The Only Full Interview Tim Curry Gave About The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Feb 15, 2015

This is is the only full interview that Tim Curry gave regarding his portrayal of Dr Frank-N-Furter in the 1975 cult film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, reprising the role he had originated in the 1973 London and 1974 Los Angeles stage productions of The Rocky Horror Show. Recorded during the week that the film was released in 1975, he talks about his roll in the film and whether or not he would play the part again. Don’t try and adjust your computer – this was filmed in black and white. Today, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is the record holder for the longest theatrical release in history — it continues to play in theaters across the United States.

By the way, the show’s writer, Richard O’Brien’s original script for the stage musical The Rocky Horror Show was only 40 minutes long. The hit song “The Time Warp” was written to fill up space, according to co-composer Richard Hartley. Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger asked to play Frank-N-Furter in the film. The creative team turned him down in favor of the musical’s original star, Curry.

1985 Video On The Birth Of Compact Discs

Feb 15, 2015

This story is from 1985 and heralds the debut of the compact disc in the US. The host at the beginning of the story is former Detroit NBC Affiliate WDIV anchor Mort Crim, the same newscaster Will Farrell said the inspiration for Ron Burgundy.

Not even the music industry would have ever predicted by 2004, worldwide sales of CD audio, CD-ROM, and CD-R reached about 30 billion discs. By 2007, 200 billion CDs had been sold worldwide.

A few fun facts about the CD:

* The first public demonstration was on the BBC television program Tomorrow’s World in 1981, when the Bee Gees’ album Living Eyes (1981) was played.
* The first commercial compact disc was produced on 17 August 1982. It was a recording from 1979 of Claudio Arrau performing Chopin waltzes (Philips 400 025-2). Arrau was invited to the Langenhagen plant to press the start button.
* The first popular music CD produced at the new factory was The Visitors (1981) by ABBA.
* The first album to be released on CD was Billy Joel’s 52nd Street, which reached the market alongside Sony’s CDP-101 CD player on October 1, 1982 in Japan.
* The first artist to sell a million copies on CD was Dire Straits, with its 1985 album Brothers in Arms.
* The first major artist to have his entire catalogue converted to CD was David Bowie, whose 15 studio albums were made available by RCA Records in February 1985, along with four greatest hits albums.

Groovy Greeting Cards From The Swinging Sixties

Feb 15, 2015

Here we have a collection of groovy greetings cards from the swinging sixties that use music and being mod as a way to celebrate a birthday, Easter, or to get well.

Via Voices Of East Anglia

Iggy Pop Narrates This American Life Biography Of William S. Burroughs

Feb 14, 2015

This American Life host Ira Glass was never into William Burroughs. Didn’t get why people love his writing so much. Then he heard this radio story that changed all that, partly because it wasn’t very reverential about Burroughs. For Burroughs 101st birthday, we hear that story.

Iggy Pop, the documentary’s narrator, begins by listing some of the artists and artistic movements influenced by Burroughs: Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Steely Dan, Kurt Cobain, Lou Reed; punk, heavy metal. We hear from director John Waters on the impact on him of Burroughs’ open homosexuality and frankness about sex. Others talk about Burroughs’ heroin addiction and obsession with guns and weapons. Burroughs shot his wife to death in what he said was a terrible accident.

Iggy Pop picks up the story of Burroughs by explaining “Cut Up” — Burroughs habit of randomly jumbling, repeating and re-assembling words and phrases in his writing. David Bowie and others picked it up. We hear about Burroughs’ privileged childhood in St. Louis and his lifelong critique of exactly the world of power and money he grew up in. There’s archival footage of Burroughs and others reading his sci-fi stories, and finally Burroughs appearing on Saturday Night Live.

Great ASCII Visual of Led Zeppelin Performing “Whole Lotta Love”

Feb 14, 2015

From Film Cement:

New York based artist/musician, Yoshi Sodeoka has taken videos of rock luminaries such as Hendrix, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, and the Sex Pistols and replaced the music with cheesy midi tracks. He rendered the visuals in ASCII characters and created some seriously mind-melting little quicktime movies. I kind of imagine that this is what the world looks/sounds like in the heads of those old death-ray-eyed space robots from 50’s sci-fi films.