Since I've had love on my mind the last few days (see my last post) - I've decided to upload The Lovemakers set I taped a few weeks ago.

I'd never heard of the Lovemakers before I saw them open for Veruca Salt (the Louise Post only version) a month or two ago. Though I dont usually find myself impressed with opening bands, I was suitably blown away by the Lovemakers set. Invoking mid-80s new-wave chic, the Lovemakers take it a step further by being pretty damn dirty on stage.

Here's the bio from their website -

The Lovemakers make electronic/rock dance music with a passionate, sexually charged fury. At times aggressive and mythical, other times painfully honest, their music is rich in melody and drama with an underlying commitment to pop hooks.

The Lovemakers radiate pure love for what the do, not least of all in their mission to entertain, liberate and, yes, command audiences to once again dance to a rock band. Their live show was recently described by a (possibly intoxicated) audience member in their native Oakland, California as "a pink Ferrari driving through a mountain of coke." The unforgettable live performances are the product of a show intensely honed over the last three years. From unheated warehouses plagued by the police, to rock and dance clubs across the US and even Australia, they never give up until the party is drenched in sweat.

What this means is that Lisa Light plays in fishnet stockings and a bra thats reminiscent of Princess Leah in Return of the Jedi, and Scott Blonde takes his short off as soon as humanly possible. Oh and they make out during their songs. A lot.

Don't get me wrong though - this is pure stage antics. Its obvious these kids are about the music, and when I saw they were coming back for a solo show, there was no question on whether I was going to attend. Good times on a Thursday night. ;)

If you don't download anything else, check out "Set Me Free" which, for me, most perfectly captures the "I Love You, I Hate You" theme which seems to run through most of their songs.

Came home and you were on the phone with your girlfriend again today...
You're in my room tellin' her I love you I need you oh oh baby
Well isn't it time you moved away?

Intro
Hypnotised
Falling Apart
Internet Girlfriend
Times of Romance
Runaway
Shake That Ass
Dance
Set Me Free
Prepare for the Fight
Outro

So I went to Vegas for Christmas - heres some random shots...

this is my fanboy moment, aka - this post would have been aptly titled as, "all i want for christmas part 3"

I enjoy Christmas, the music, the presents, the time off work, and of course, getting to spends lots of time with my girl. But this year, for months now, I've been mostly looking forward to the new Christmas themed Doctor Who episode - the Christmas Invasion

Doctor Who is a Bristish show and is (by far) the longest running sci-fi show ever - first beginning in 1963. The BBC has an excellent breakdown of the history of the show so far starting with the 1st Doctor in 1963, the major enemies, the cancellation in 1989, the breakouts into books and audio adventures, back to the Doctor's TV resurrection a year or two ago - here.

For those of you who don't want to tread through a dozen or so pages here's my .10c breakdown:
The Doctor is an alien from the planet Gallifrey. The Gallifrians were amongst the first species in the Universe to create time travel - and thus christened themselves as Timelords. Eventually the Gallifrians adopted a policy of non-interference, and removed themselves from active interference in other races activities.

The Timelords eventually fell into a sort of stagnation or complacency - content to sit in their ivory towers and monitor the universe without ever becoming involved. Eventually one Timelord - known only as the Doctor - rejected this lifestyle and stole an antiquated time ship from his people. With his Grand daughter, Susan, in-tow - the Doctor left Gallifrey in his new ship - the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimensions in Space, which has the curious distinction of being substantially larger on the inside then the out. (Imagine being a kid and seeing that for the first time - a TV show where you see characters walk into a box, and the next shot is of them in a massive control room. Pretty awe inspiring ;)).

Rather then sit by idly, the Doctor and Susan wandered throughout time and space having adventures - and generally doing good in the universe.

After a few years the first Doctor - William Hartnell - decided to leave Doctor Who and rather then cancel a successful show the Producers made the decision to re-cast the lead, explaining that the Doctor could ‘regenerate’ a tired or injured body, taking on a new persona along the way. Don't you love Sci-Fi?

This went on, with each new Doctor taking on the mantle for an average of 3-4 years each. Of course, over the years the mythos grew - at the end of the 1st Doctors life we found out about his ability to regenerate, at the end of the 2nd we discovered the truth behind the Doctor's people, the Gallifrians, and their decision of non interference. Standing on trial for his crimes, the Doctor is forced to regenerate and is banised to Earth.

The 3rd Doctor spent the majority of his tenure unable to TARDIS to travel, and was in essence tied to early 1970's Earth in the employee of a secret military arm of the United Nations. Doing his tenure we discover more about how the Time Lords discovered the secret of Time Travel, and of the mysterious ancient Time Lords Omega and Rassilon who helped the Gallifreyians become the Lords of Time.

The 4th Doctor was the craziest and had the longest tenure as the Doctor - 7 years. The 1980s saw the 5th, 6th and 7th Doctors each taking the crown for 3 years each. I really discovered my love for Doctor Who under the Sylvestor McCoy - the 7th Doctor, considered the last Doctor of the "Classic Who" era.

McCoy brought a darkness to the show which hadn't existed since the 2nd Doctor days. Rather then randomly drop into situations, the 7th Doctor was presented as a manipulator - who played chess on a cosmic scale, slowly moving pieces into place and brilliantly executing his plans to get his desired results.

Though the show was abruptly cancelled in 1989, Virgin Books (part of the Virigin family of companies including Virgin Airlines and Virgin Records) picked up a license to continue the Doctor's adventures in a series of novels, dubbed the New Adventures. These books continued the 7th Doctor's adventures with his last companion, Ace (a childhood crush of mine).

It happened that the release of this line of books coincided with my move from the UK to the States. As a young lad living in Oklahoma, I yearned for something quintessiantially British and discovered the Virgin novals in a mall in Tulsa. Every month I'd go buy the latest book - and slowly grew my love of all things Who.

Fast forward 5 years. The New Adventures had been praised as expanding in Who in directions never imagined - and not possible on the small screen. The 7th Doctor had been firmly established as a master manipulator, and as something more then an "atypical" Timelord. He had become the "Champion of Time", and spent a good portion of his time fixing the problems he had caused himself in earlier adventures as his other incarnations.

Then a miracle happened. Fox and the BBC came to an agreement to create a new Doctor Who TV pilot for American TV. Not only would it be big bugdget and beautiful, but it would be canon (ie fit in with everything that had come before it), showing the 7th Doctor "dying" and regenerating into the "8th Doctor."

And it would air on my birthday. Can you say the best Birthday present ever?

The Pilot aired, but not to the ratings needed to "green light" a new series. It had some problems, but all things considered was pretty damn good Doctor Who. Sigh.

Virgins book license was coming to an end - and rather then renew it the BBC opted to pick up publication of new Doctor Who themselves underneath their BBC Books imprint. With a nod to the fans, the Virgin Doctor Who books dovetailed into the TV movie with the last novel setting the Doctor down the path he's travelling at the beginning of the movie. BBC Books then picked up with a new series featuring the 8th Doctor picking up from the TV movie.

Fast forward 7 years. The BBC range has made some dramatic shifts to the Doctor Who universe. They've introduced a future Time Lord cult known as Faction Paradox, bent on destroying the Universe through the creation paradoxes in time, and who have seriously jacked up the Doctor's personal timeline (which in turn provided a nice mechanism to "canonize" a lot of the seemingly inexplainable events in the Doctor's life, such as the 2 one off movies in the 1960s starring Peter Cushing as the Doctor, who is an explorer from the 23rd Century, rather then an alien from Gallifrey, as well as explain why the Doctor was referred to as "half-human" in the Fox movie, when he clearly was not before that particular incarnation.) They've also introduced many other "arcs" including a future Time War between the Time Lords and some unknown enemy, the Doctor becoming an amnesiac following his destruction of Gallifrey to save the universe from Faction Paradox and the unknown enemy.

Then the bomb dropped. Doctor Who had been recommisioned. And we're talking properly recommisioned - 13 episoders, $1million pound budget for each episode, an amazing actor as the Doctor, solid production team, and some of the biggest name Dr Who fans as writers of the new series.

Awesome. A year later, the new series began airing the UK to massive viewing figures, critical and fan aclaim, a new series of tie-in novels and general media hysteria in the UK. Though we never saw the regeneration, the new series did an excellent job of introducing both new and classic fans to the new Doctor.

After one series Christopher Eccleston, the 9th Doctor, opted to leave the show - and was replaced during the last minutes of the 1st season with David Tennant, the 10th Doctor.

And so we are brought to the present. About a month ago the world got their first proper look at the new Doctor in a 7 minute episode which aired as part of "Children in Need" charity fundraiser on BBC. This mini-sode bridges the few minutes which occur between the end of Season One, and the new Season Two which begins this March/April 2006.

Now that I've rambled on for a while - hopefully at least one or two of you are interested enough to go and watch some Doctor Who.

I've provided some links to allow you to check out the new episodes - but be sure to buy the Season One box set when it becomes available in February in North America.

Doctor Who Related Links:
The Christmas Invasion (700meg avi)
The Christmas Invasion (500meg avi)
The Pre-Christmas Invasion (75meg avi)
The Graske Invasion (Win & Lose Versions)
Season 1
Gallifrey One - Premiere Doctor Who Site
BBC Doctor Who Site

I love the Rilo Kiley community. Good people.

A few months ago one of the members of rilokiley.net (the premiere rilo kiley site - nuff said) proposed a web based fan tribute record - with different members of the board recording and interpreting Rilo Kiley songs.

How cool?

Wrapping up in time for Christmas, the Rilo community has presented "Somebody Else's Songs" a Rilo Kiley tribute. Lo-fi and glorious.

Check it out and download the tracks here.

My favorite song is Steph Snyder's take on "I Love LA"

Edit:
Also love Alyson's voice on "With Arms Outstretched"

Check out this thing. So I'm a big fan of sci-fi, but what you are looking at above is an actual fish - a part of our world, but as alien as anything I have ever seen.

I ran across this article the other day which described it and I found the pictures here

Thousands of salmon, tuna and other fish with electronic tags are revealing mysterious Pacific Ocean migration highways that may give clues about how to rebuild dwindling stocks, scientists said on Wednesday.

Marine experts also found 78 new species of fish in 2005 along with scores of other creatures ranging from a 3-metre (10 ft) rocket-shaped jellyfish in the Arctic to a tiny carnivorous sponge in the South Atlantic.

"Fish with chips" -- hi-tech implants that enable either satellite or seabed tracking -- were one of the breakthroughs to uncover ocean migration paths, scientists in the 73-nation Census of Marine Life (COML) said.

Amazing stuff out there in the oceans. Seeing this particular article was one of those relevatory moments, when you're reminded that theres things out there that you cant even imagine.

And I can imagine a lot of things ;)

One bluefin tuna swam the Pacific three times in 600 days according to satellite records -- an enormous 40,000 km (24,850 miles) or the distance around the world. That indicated that Japanese and American tuna stocks were one and the same.

Best Keanu Reeves impression here. Whoa. That is some stamina on that Tuna. I want that Tuna as part of my next Spicy Tuna Sushi Roll.

So Jude posted this on his website about a week ago, and in a fit of inspiration i started playing around with mashing up his Gay Cowboy track with the Brokeback Mountain trailer..

12/08/2005
...And yes, i know the gay cowboy movie is coming out, and no, i don't think they'll be interested in my song, but we'll track it next week, and then maybe one of you can dub it against the trailer or something fun.

Yes I am aware that its a brilliant and sensitive film... But for some reason, this song and trailer fit together like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz.. No joking, the timing of the lyrics to the flow of the trailer is about perfect.

For those interested, I sync'd up the line about "buy you a beer" with the shot of them drinking in the bar, and the rest of it fell into place - with the perfect placement of the chorus "I want to be your Gay Cowboy" to the shot of them snuggling in the tent, to the "Cause my woman is driving me insane" lining up with the montage of the boys with "their beards" (aka the women they are with to hide their true feelings - thank you Seinfeld)

But check it out for yourself and have a good laugh ;)

(right click and save kids - these files are 18meg each. They will not stream well. )
Gay Cowboy vs Brokeback Mountain WMV
Gay Cowboy vs Brokeback Mountain Quicktime

Jude probably has the most beautiful male voice of any Singer Songwriter out there today. Jeff Buckley fans, eat your heart out.

Here's a little background from his site - linked above

Jude Christodal was born outside of Boston where, aside from a few years in Washington State, he grew up. As a boy, he was sung to sleep by his father with a guitar he still plays.

Jude moved to Los Angeles sometime in '93/94. He took his degree in philosophy and applied it to several menial jobs while he played his music around Los Angeles, eventually catching the ear of BMG Songs and with his 1997 acoustic debut 430 N. Harper Ave., originally released on the Fish of Death label.

The inclusion of Jude's hauntingly beautiful "I Know" on the multi-platinum City of Angels soundtrack propelled him into the public consciousness. He followed with No One is Really Beautiful, his first album recorded with Maverick Records, which was released in 1998 and received a "Hell yeah!" from the music press. Jude hit the road with some other folks (Train, Ben Folds Five, Tori Amos, Better Than Ezra) in support of the album, then returned to the studio to do battle with the record company, who insisted on "putting their greasy fingerprints all over my songs." The result was King of Yesterday, which hit stores in September 2001, notably absent of "Cuba," a stand-out track telling the story behind the record.

In 2004 Jude released Sarah, a stark and beautiful cycle of songs describing a relationship from start to fall. People like it a lot. The record tops CDBaby's online chart for weeks. In April of 2005, Naive Records releases Sarah in France, where Jude will tour this year.

Jude weaves a unique experience at every show mixing his personal songs with spontaneous humor, storytelling skills, and his angelic, captivating voice. These days, he is busy in the studio preparing songs for film and television, completing the writing phase for a next record, and working on various group projects. Much more to come.

One of my lucky friends got to go see him in San Diego last weekend - at the North Park Vaudeville, an old fashioned Candy Shoppe and Theatre (that holds about 40 people!)

During my visit to San Diego a few weeks ago, I opted to leave my friend my Minidisc Recorder. It was pretty much killing me to know that I was visiting San Diego, and was going to miss Jude's performance by a few days. And even though I've seen Jude twice I've never had an opportunity to get a soundboard recording. Over the last few years he's played the majority of his shows at the Largo, a small and intimate industy showcase in Los Angeles. Though the Largo is a fairly amazing place to see a show, they've got a pretty asinine taping policy and my recordings from the shows I've attended are stealth'd and not the greatest.

Plus, I take every possibly opportunity to turn my friend to the Geek side (kinda like the Dark side but with a whole bunch of electronic toys/devices involved.) With these two thoughts in mind, leaving behind the Minidisc was a no-brainer.

I'm sure glad I did.

01 Intro
02 Indian Lover
03 You Mama You
04 Perfect Plank
05 Our Break-Up Song
06 I Do
07 George
08 Gay Cowboy
09 I Know
10 Money
11 Dads Ditty
12 In Between
13 Cuba
14 Your Eyes
15 In My Sweet Babys Arms

Labels: concerts, indie, live mp3s, North Park Vaudeville, san diego, soundboard mp3s

yes! Got a microtrack... $399 from Guitar Center, only 6 miles away.

I ended up getting it last Saturday.. one of my friends was visiting from Chicago and we ended up having some free time before Dinner and Capote (excellent film, check it out.).

We ran by Guitar Center and after 30 minutes we walked out with a little box that promised so many moments of happiness. From there to dinner - a Persian restaurant called Garson's, and then on to the movies.

The next morning I decided to immediately test out the Microtracks various recording options. As noted below the Microtrack has digital ins, 1/8th mic ins and 1/4 inch ins that can alternate between a line in and mic in. The unit even comes with a little stereo mic designed to plug right into the 1/8th!

Here's an MP3 of me singing and playing right into the provided stereo mic. I have to admit I'm fairly impressed with the quality - truly handy for those sudden bursts of inspiration. Oh and at about the 2nd verse I totally start making it up cause I blanked on the lyrics ;)
Something True

The 2nd day I had it I went to check out the Lovemakers with She Wants Revenge opening. SWR asked that I not post any of their set online - but here's Lovemakers track off the soundboard. Great sound guy too - it was his Birthday!
The Lovemakers - Prepare for the Fight

Though both of these tracks are MP3s the originals were recorded in 24bit, 48000k - and let me say, the dynamic range on them is truly awesome.

Good times ahead.

So its Christmas, that special season where religion and absolute materialism meet and shake hands.

Yes!

So I strive to be a better man, and deny the Consumer in me.


But - I know everyone's got a secret wish list of gifts they want to give themselves, and sometimes, every once in a while, I run across something I really love.

The M-Audio MicroTrack 24/96

I want one. I want it bad. This machine is the live recording enthuasists dream, and the definite replacement to my existing MiniDisc setup. It allows super high quality recording to Compact Flash. WAV or MP3 formats. Digital SPDIF and 1/4inch ins, and USB2 out - for high speed transfers to your PC!! No more real time dumps of shows to the PC.

I've been looking for a store in Houston that sells it, but have yet to find one. Hopefully I find one soon and it'll be my Christmas present to me!


The MicroTrack is a rugged high-fidelity mobile 2-channel digital recorder that records WAV and MP3 files to CompactFlash or microdrives—perfect for everything from professional field recording to corporate meetings, training, education and worship. Record via balanced line inputs or built-in high-fidelity microphone preamps complete with phantom power for studio-quality microphones. Connect MicroTrack to a PC or Mac via USB and simply drag and drop recordings to your computer for immediate editing or Web posting. Power derives from a lithium-ion battery, and the unit can recharge via the computer’s USB connection or USB power adapter. The MicroTrack combines quality beyond that of DAT recording with the convenience and cost-effectiveness of personal digital recorders for the ultimate solution in mobile recording.