StinkFight.com

http://www.squat.net

Site run by European squatters with (albeit small) photos of house squats, car squats, evictions, and more. Interesting resource of people living below the line.

Site is in German and English.

My new Zoom H2 Portable 2-Track SD Recorder
arrived today, and I’m totally psyched. I ordered this thing based on tech specs like three months ago, before the units actually existed. It shipped Monday, arrived today, and I love it.

The Samson H2 lists for 200 bucks. Comes with a 512 meg SD card, which I immediately swapped out for a 4-gig card, which worked fine. I was a little worried it wouldn’t, as the tech info only said “supports up to 2 gig SD card”, and I’d e-mailed the company asking about support for 4-gig cards, and they never wrote back. (I’m using it with a 4 gb Kingston HC SD card. It works fine, even though it’s not on the compatible card list.)

FUN WITH AUDIO
The Zoom H2 is about the size of a pack of smokes and looks like an electric razor. It runs on two AA batteries, and includes some good built-in microphones. It can record in stereo or surround. I’ve only tried the stereo mode so far, and have only tried the on-board mics, haven’t yet tried it with my external Giant Squid mic.

(Later note….the on-board mics are great. Don’t need an external mic.)

I tried all the different compression settings, limiters, higher bit rates, etc, and basically settled for loving the way it worked with none of that on, set at 44.1 hz 16 bit stereo WAV file recording. CD quality in my hand. Fine for portable recording and podcasting. (I do two podcasts and have pretty discerning ears. I have a decent home studio with decent mics and get a good sound. The H2 sounds almost as good as the studio stuff I do in the studio.)

I do like that there are four mics, two front, two back, and you can use either pair, or all four, and use all four to record stereo, or quad (which can be converted into 5.1 later.) The front pair of mics record 90 degrees, the back pair record 180 degrees. And there’s a little LED to show you which mics are on.

The H2 was easy to use out of the box. I tossed the directions in a closet and jumped in (as I do with most devices…I take the directions out later when I wanna go deeper into the sub menus). It took me a few tries to figure out that you have to press TWICE on the record button to start recording (the first press is to arm it, so you can set levels), but I got it. I had to look at the manual to figure out how to transfer data from the item to the computer, but that was no problem either.

The H2 comes with a screw-on stick that makes a cool handle. With the handle on the bottom, and the included pop filter on the top, the H2 kinda looks like an ice cream bar or a big lolly pop. (photos of Debra Jean Dean by Michael W. Dean.)

It also has a little screw-on table stand, so you can set it on a table. It looks like RsDs when you do. In that mode, we call it “H2D2″.

The controls are easy to navigate, the design is brilliant and I LOVE THE AUDIO QUALITY. This thing records CD-quality stereo WAV files, and sounds great. I took it on a 15-minute walking tour of my house, yard and to the post office. Edited the WAV, ran it through the Levelator, encoded to a 192 k MP3. Results are here for you to hear:
Clone The Homeless, episode 0049.
http://www.clonethehomeless.com/
direct 20-meg MP3 link:
http://www.askdollie.com/cth/Episode-0049-CloneTheHomeless.mp3

MEW!

You can also set it to record directly to 16-bit 44.1 hz MP3.

CONCLUSION: I’ve wanted something like this my whole life, and this thing delivers. I give it a ten out of ten for performance and price.
The H2 is my little friend. I’ll whisper my secrets to him and he’ll paint my thoughts on the ether. IT SOUNDS GREAT!

All in all the H2 is a great podcasting tool. And remember, server space is cheaper than a therapist. Yay! Compulsively disclose! Dig it!

–Michael W. Dean

OK, this one’s a few years old, but I don’t know that most of you have heard it.

Doug Hilsinger, one of the two guitarist extraordinaires from my band Bomb, and all around great guy, released an amazing record a few years back…A complete reworking of the Brian Eno record, Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy).

I loved the original Eno record from age 12, and still love it. It was one of my formative desert island discs my whole life. And I love Doug’s versions even more.

Doug arranged and recorded covers of the complete album. He plays drums, bass and guitar, and my buddy Caroline Beatty sang. I think it’s pretty amazing. And so does Brian Eno. Eno loves Doug’s record and even wrote the liner notes for the CD. Listen to an MP3 of Eno’s answering machine message to Doug here.

Listen to two minutes of one of the songs (”Burning Airlines Give You So Much More.)

Read about the CD and hear more samples.

Order the CD from Aquarius.

(How’s that headline for meta-nonfiction?)

The very nifty Xeni Jardin blogged today about the blog post I did about the YouTube videos about the KLF burning a million pounds and about their book “The Manual”.

BoingBoing post is here.

(photo from the Infinite Cat Project)

I’ve uploaded two short samples below, me talking with my new Rode NT1 anniversary model microphone!!! YAY! NEW GEAR!

One sample is with the ART MP tube pre amp, one without.

I think the preamp one sounds a little creamier but has a little tiny
bit of 60 hz hum I can’t get rid of, even using the power conditioner.

Which one sounds better to you?
Do you think the tradeoff is worth it?

Short sample with preamp:
http://www.askdollie.com/temp/Rode-with-PreAmp-Levelated.mp3
Short sample without preamp:
http://www.askdollie.com/temp/Rode-with-NO-PreAmp-Levelated.mp3

Please post comments below.
Thank you,
MWD

(By the way, we used the new Rode mic, and the tube preamps, on episode 0066 of SAC, if you wanna hear a longer sample of this test without the control group.)

(above “tail in search of a cat” pix of Peanut with the Rode is printable poster sized.)

I was messing around with the AltaVista Bablefish program. Bablefish is a Web page that translates from one language to another. It’s especially fun if you take something non-concrete, like lyrics, and put it English to French, French to German, German to Spanish, Spanish to Portuguese and back to English. You’ll be rolling on the floor, laughing.

Computers are amazing with math, but not yet great with language. There are too many variables, to much “human-ness” to it: i.e. logic circuits do not do well with idiom, sarcasm, humor, in-jokes, etc.

I tried AltaVista Bablefish with the lyrics to the Bomb song, “Madness” (link to MP3 of song) and put it through all five languages. Here is the original:

Anna takes me in her mouth and spits me out in catholic guilt. She would like to show me all the pretty things inside her room. But I don’t want to go in there cause all I see is madness. You gave me lies. On that I based a book. You wrote a couple songs for me but I always wrote the hook. You paid my rent. All I see is madness. I fucked your friends. Walking around here with Band-Aids on your eyes? Happiness abounds in cryptic fields where the muse is cheap - she’ll sleep with anyone. And children have nice names. And privates run the wars. Anna your child’s gone unto the Garden of Eden. Anna blast a hole into the Garden of Eden. Anna your child’s gone to the Garden of Eden. Anna don’t you know your secret’s safe with me?

and here is the round-robin Bablefish result:

Ana makes the relative examination the opening me and escupe of the external part in the catholic of culpability. He has wished to the exposure of the inner part to me to all the graceful things of the relative section. But all he has not wished to comprise a cause, that is a verruecktheit of sees. They had given the lies to me it. In me I have created a book. The songs of a connection for me had written, but I have always written the hooks. They had paid my leasing. A lot that the v, are verruecktheit. I have kissed the relative friends. It encircles here with dae (the dispositive automatic rifle of input) of the adhesive tape in the relative eyes? The fortune has the abundance in the hidden zones, where the MUSE is little expensive - when duer me without the material, of that one. And the children have pleasant names. And the those that prevail execute the wars. Ana relative boy IDO to the garden of Eden. Ana interests affinchè perforates in the garden of Eden. Ana relative boy IDO to.

The Beef People was a hard core punk band in the early 80s. The band were seniors at an all-boys boarding school in Dyke (!), Virginia. Their guitar player (Rob Buckingham) got kicked out for having a girl in his room. (I felt a connection as I’d been kicked out of a different all-boys school four years earlier, for calling the headmaster a “fat, bald overtly Christian old fart.”) I took Rob’s place in the band, and drove 40 miles each way to Dyke every time we practised. The band played less than ten gigs, put out an E.P. and then broke up.

That was a pretty common career trajectory for a punk band back then. I kinda like it. No way that gives someone a chance to get stale. Not even close.

I ain’t seen any of them except singer Brian Clilders since they graduated. He was in my band, Bomb, for a minute. Ain’t seen him now in ten years. Beef people was Brian on vocals, me on guitar,Willie McLean on bass and Jack Massey on drums. I sang on one song, “Kicked Out”, the one about the former guitar player.

God bless punk. (This record even has the obligatory straight edge song, “Come Back”.)

I think this record–12 minutes (total) of punk fury sounds fresh, even now. I haven’t listened to this in 15 years. Still sounds good. Kinda like Minor Threat meets Yes.

The thing at the end was me wanking in the studio. We had 8 hours booked, only took 4 hours to record and mix so I used up ten minutes of what was left making the guitar/keyboard jam.

Recorded at Inner Ear Studio.

This E.P came on Catch Trout records, the label run by John Beers of the Landlords. (Catch Trout also put out the Landlords and Baby Opaque LPs, as well as the early Happy Flowers records.)

Site to download the whole record

(Photos live at “Trax” bar in Charlottesville, Virginia. April 2, 1985. Photos taken by Ch’ARCHIvilleIST extraordinaire, Michael Buck.)

(This one of Brian and me is printable poster sized)

I’ve noticed a lot of websites (hosted by several different hosts) down lately, for a few hours at a time. I’ve noticed e-mails taking hours to arrive.

I asked my friend JP about this today, and he said, “Maybe it’s the beginning of the end. Maybe it’s companies illegally instituting anti-net neutrality intentionally. When we’re sick enough of it, they’ll say, ‘Well, if you’re willing to pay more money each month, we’ll make it right for ya’.”

Yikes.

Concerned? Check out SaveTheInternet.com

Or “Should We Worry About the Large Hadron Collider?”

A hadron is a subatomic particle. A collider is an underground racetrack that will propel this particle to near-light speeds. Still under construction in Geneva, the Large Hadron Collider is going to be the biggest particle accelerator in the world, with a circumference of 17 miles. Scientists hope to finally isolate the “Higgs boson,” a theoretical particle dubbed “the God Particle,” whose discovery could solve many mysteries of the physical world. Scientists believe this elusive particle could reveal what matter really is.

So why should we be worried? According to the venerable Wikipedia and the Lifeboat Foundation, a technophobe watchdog group, “People both inside and outside of the physics community have voiced concern that the LHC might trigger one of several theoretical disasters capable of destroying the Earth or even the entire Universe.” Apparently, when you energize particles to such high speeds, there are some safety concerns, namely the possibility of creating micro black holes and strange, unstable matter. The chance of this happening is infinitesimal, but not zero. I think the inadvertent destruction of our world would be a major bummer, not just for the Earth, but for the whole Universe. So until the Spring of 2008, we’ll keep our fingers crossed. Whether we unlock the key to the universe or destroy it, I say, “Let the colliding begin!”

By the way, the unofficial particle acceleration competition between CERN and Fermilab is the subject of the upcoming documentary film “The Atom Smashers.”

Hmmmmm……This may be a solution (but not THE solution) to Apple selling stuff that’s either DRM-crippled, or encoded at a lower bit rate.

As Jon Stewart said (and I’m paraphrasing, can’t find the exact quote): “Sure, Wal-Mart is destroying small-town America. But hey! Nine dollars for a refrigerator!”

From the article:

“The retail giant just began selling digital music free from copy protection today, at just 94 cents per song, versus $1.29/song on iTunes. Let the DRM-free price wars” begin!

Link

A number of YouTube.com regulars have put together the first of what they hope will be many issues of a zine related to the website they frequent. The zine is called “56K” and is available for order from their website: http://www.56Kmagazine.com

The “YouTube Community,” as it’s usually referred to, has spawned parties and gatherings from San Francisco to New York to Australia, so why not a zine? The zine is co-written by a dozen - some prominent, some not - YouTubers and covers everything from video cameras and file formats to Furries (people who dress up as animals as part of their sex life) to reviews of new YouTube features. At $5 per issue, it’s a little expensive for the zine format, but none of the 40 pages are wasted.

So, what do those spare components get on about when you’re not looking? What else?

While I do love the girl-on-girl piece (check out the adorable strap-on), my fav has to be the four-way - those filthy, filthy diodes!

Link

“Rock and roll without rent control!!!”

So, in 1985, my college roommates in Charlottesville, Virginia were a hardcore punk band called The Landlords. Well, they were in college, I was just a bum. But they rocked.

Released with permission of the band, here is their whole record, “Hey! It’s a Teenaged House Party” (named that even though they were in their 20s.) It’s great. Sounds sort of like “My War”-era Black Flag meets Minor Threat. Or something.

Except for “Nuns In Black Leather”, a great spoof metal song that is a straight-up rip of “Livin’ After Midnight” by Judas Priest.

Here’s the downloads:

–Single song: Nuns In Black Leather
–Single song: “Every Day’s A Holiday!”

–Side A of “Teenaged House Party” LP

–Side B of “Teenaged House Party” LP

(photos by arCh’VillEist Michael Buck)

Band members were

–John Beers: Vocals. Charlie Kramer: Guitar. Colum Leckey (as Eddie Jetlag): bass. Tristan Pucket: Drums.

John Beers (”Mr. Horribly Charred Infant”) and Charlie Kramer (”Mr. Anus”) were also in the Happy Flowers.

Landlords on Wikipedia

Dig the “circle R” logo on the back of the lyric sheet:

Great reveiw of $30 Film School:

“The other (and more important) piece of reference material I own is Micheal W. Dean’s book, $30 Film School 2nd Ed. If I had read this stuff in the 70’s, I would have avoided all the hassels and dissapointments that ended up killing my inner child. But I survived the decades, and now I do own the book, and it is, by far, the most useful, all-around handbook and reference I own. I’ve got so many bookmarks in it that I don’t even know what they’re for anymore. If I highlighted the “good” parts of Michael’s book, every page would be irridescent yellow. This, on the good side, is a must-have for anyone who is or is thinking about making a movie. (It covers just about everything, and is simply to the point. No fillers; no bullschmidt.)

“And thank you for adding me as a friend, Micheal. It’s an honor.”

–Chris

OK, this is friggin’ hot.

Michael Buck sent me a data CD of some high-rez scans of photos he took of me and my band Baby Opaque in 1984 (wasn’t I cute? What HAPPENED?)

(Photos are big enough to print, if you click on thumbnails.)

He also included an MP3 of a song called “Decisions” (DOWNLOAD HERE!) that is not on either our EP or LP. It kinda sounds like Joy Division if they were a jazz band from Iran.

Here’s the lyrics:

There are three things I’ve observed common to everyone.
One is a desire to run, far away.
One is a desire to stay. One related thing is not as common but seen occasionally.
It is a hidden hope for newness,
a yearning for a crossroads,
a need for an opening beyond.

I saw this thing in me today in me today in my bathroom mirror.
It caused excitement and terror simultaneously.
I tried to put it on my shelf,
but it simply would not fit.

It simply would not wait
a window had slammed shut on
any other possibility.

I had to run to catch my breath.

CHORUS:
Decisions, revisions,
in my daily
failing routine.
I need a change of things unseen.

I take the trash out of my house.
I take the food out to my cows.
I take the dust out of my brain.
I take inventory of my goals.

REPEAT CHORUS

The end is nowhere in site.
My goals are nowhere near.
I have to fight
to stay happy!

—–

I hadn’t heard this song in 23 years. Funny how I could remember most of what was coming next. I have no memory of recording it, but it sounds like a cassette four-track demo to me.
——

I told Michael Buck, :

> Thanks for being an archivist. I own NOTHING from back then.
> Seriously. I got my current Baby Opaque records one on eBay and one
> from my mother’s attic after she died.

He wrote me back,

I’m really glad that my pack rat tendencies can give
someone else something enjoyable, now and then. That
WTJU/Charlottesville time frame was pretty key in my
life, so I kept as much of anything related to it as I could.
I wish I had created something cool and lasting, like Baby
Opaque, or Happy Flowers, or Landlords, but it is fun to
be able to get you some pictures you haven’t seen, or a
demo track you haven’t heard for a long time. So, I
guess that’s my role.

BO’s last gig (at the C&O in Charlottesville, Virginia) was July 4 1985.

And Bomb’s first gig was July 4th, 1986, at the Farm in San Francisco. (opening for Flipper and Tex and the Horseheads.)

(more $30 Pre-Amp School…..continued from How could we BE any dirtier?)

Symon Michael bought one, at my suggestion, to use on his saxaphone. Here’s what I told him works for me:

Let it warm up for a half-hour or more before recording with it.
And the settings I use are:

–input and output knobs, both at 12 o’clock (straight up)
–20 db gain: in (on)
–P-Pwr: in (on) (Has to be on for condensor mics. Should be off for dynamic mics, and MUST be off for ribbon mics.)
–Phase Reverse out (off) (Should be off, unless you have an out-of-phase issue with another mic.)
–OPL: in (on) (This is limiting that keeps you from being too loud.)

I use the XLR mic jack in for the mic, and use the 1/4″ jack out to my mixer (the XLR out could blow a mixer or computer.)

MWD

p/s I just ordered a THIRD ART MP tube pre-amp. It’s to go with the RODE microphone I ordered last week. That way when DJ and I have guests in the studio, we’ll all have a nice condenser mic with a nice tube pre-amp to dirty and warm us up before feeding into the digital Über-Purity of my perfect happy snug little kick-ass laptop computer. The Rode will be a nice addendeum to my good-but-budget mic closet, already including two MXLV63Ms: 

(There’s a saying in China, “Old Cow Likes Young Grass”)

——

Why should you come to China…?

‘Cause I did!

A lot of people become expats, and believe me, we have ALL the fun!

I’m not just talking about sex-tourism, either….
But in fact I too came here 4 years ago, and it may have saved my life, at least psychologically. I’m finally Happy! Who wouldda thunk it?
Here’s the way I see it. America is going to hell in a handbasket , and you know that. Sure, I’m a little out of touch, but over the past 20 years I have seen the quality of life for most people decline, decline, and decline more. So the stresses and struggles tend to escalate while the face of urban amerika becomes uglier, and nastier.
But there is a way out, and you might try it. GO to China! I know;
it sounds way-out , but I can tell you how.

Three letters…ESL. English as a Second Language.

Would you like a part time job that provides a solid middle class lifestyle? Do you want to recieve a great deal of respect that you may not even deserve? Would you like to meet a beautiful young girl that really treats you right? You CAN have it all, and no experience needed.
I was Burnt Out, trying to start a small business while dealing with the heartache of not being upwardly mobile enough for the women that I loved. It was seemingly hopeless, until I simply googled teach+english+china, and soon I was on my way. A few months later I met the girl of my dreams, and she considered me to be a Rich and Handsome Man. Well that worked out just great, cause we are happily married. And my income has only gone UP.

Michael Dean sez 1,000,000 guys wanna be ME! Well I dunno ’bout that, but I sure do wish that more cool folks would do what I did. The other “foreigners” that I know here all feel that this plan dramatically changed their lives for the better. All you gotta do is teach “conversational english”, which involves hanging out in a room and making small talk, for the most part. Kids and adults alike here know some English, but they need to practice it. It’s not so hard, really. You make at least 5 times what a college graduate or even a university professor makes.

On top of all this, I play guitar in a band, and it’s also been a blast…way better than my years of begging for club gigs and playing for jaded punkers in the States.

I told you why, now just ask me How.

Take a stroll with me across the “golden bridge”.
Ah, so….ESL!

–Skip Lunch, China.

Sunday, August 26th is the 87th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. It was just the beginning, the first step for women to gain equal footing with men under the Constitution.

Generations later, we’re still waiting.

“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Text of the ERA, as proposed to the States in 1972 by the 92nd Congress.

The Equal Rights Amendment was originally penned by suffragette Alice Paul (pictured above) and introduced in Congress in 1923. It wasn’t passed until 1972, and then only with a deadline of seven years for ratification by the states. Even so, 35 states did approve the amendment, but before the necessary final three could approve it, Phyllis Schlafly and the moneyed forces of evil shot it down, with tales of doom and unisex toilets.

Many Americans are unaware that the ERA never passed. Today, women’s rights aren’t guaranteed by the Constitution, but instead rely upon various statutes like the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, executive orders, affirmative action, and court interpretations promising things such as equal educational opportunity. All of these could be dust in the face of the wrong political wind.

And let me tell you how that wind has been blowing: “Separate-but-equal” single-sex public schools are allowed for the first time since 1972. The new Roberts Supreme Court has already chipped away at Roe v. Wade, and limited women’s right to sue for pay discrimination. Both major political parties have dropped the ERA from their platforms; the Republicans in 1980, and the Democrats in 2004.

Ask your candidate when she stands.

Famous French writer Thierry Brunet asked me to sum up my life in exactly six words for something he’s writing.

I wrote:

Love. Drugs. God. Sex. Sober. Redemption.

Thierry’s blog: Nova Cookie & Frozen Hell

Great interview Thierry did a long time ago with Hubert Selby Jr

…or at least a professional musician.

(reprinted from Boing Boing):

Free ebook: Digital Music – DIY Now!

Page to download eBook free

Michael Dean (A MAKE contributor) and Chris Caulder are giving away their book Digital Music – DIY Now! A guide to making a living making music out of your backpack, from anywhere, and everywhere, as a Creative Commons-licensed PDF file. On his website, Michael has a lengthy explanation for why he’s giving it away: I came up with the idea for this book, Digital Music – DIY Now! in early 2005. I’d just finished writing three books by myself and making two movies and wanted to do something different. I wanted to write another book, not by myself, but with some really smart buddies.I wrote a proposal, pitched it to my agent, Matt Wagner of Fresh Books, and he secured a publisher, Que. Que is a well known publisher with a lot of decent tech books out, and they get their books into everywhere.

Que liked my idea of writing with several other experts, and I thought I’d enjoy the challenge of working with others. It seemed like a nice change from the isolation of writing a book by myself.

By was I wrong. It turned out to be a logistical nightmare.

=====

MWD update: This book got over 10,000 downloads since it came out last month.

Here’s a perfect example of my target demographic.

Video of a kid named Aaron “graduating himself” from $30 Film School. Really adorable. He’s so energetic, and SO A.D.D.
And he’s working on a zombie movie! And gives his pitch in the middle of his graduation speech! And stops in the middle of his speech to tell his mom “I’M TRYING TO MAKE THIS VIDEO!!”

He SO reminds me of a young me.

(I showed this earlier in passing, but had to mention as its own post.)

I’m writing the “three-level outline” my agent requested for my new book.
I’m in hell. I hate doing that shit.

I remember being in high school, being told to write outlines for term papers. I remember seeing those roman numerals and A,B,Cs and saying, “How’s this shit gonna help me in later life? I’m going to be a rock star and dead by 30.”

(me at 27 as a dying rock star)

Scientists can now drugtest a whole city by testing a spoon fulla municipal waste.

From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070822/ap_on_sc/citywide_drug_test :

“‘Wastewater facilities are wonderful places to understand what humans consume and excrete,’ Field said….

“…She said that one fairly affluent community scored low for illicit drugs except for cocaine. Cocaine and ecstasy tended to peak on weekends and drop on weekdays, she said, while methamphetamine and prescription drugs were steady throughout the week.”

“‘The EPA will ‘flush out the details’ on testing, Benjamin Grumbles joked.”

(Thanks Debra Jean for that one!)

By the way, I remeber reading where someone (I’m pretty sure it was either Ray Kurzweil, or Alvin Toffler) suggested toilets that analyze your leavings to monitor your health and make a doctor’s appointment for you if there’s a reason to.

I recently purchased two ART MP Studio tube pre-amps, a steal at 30 bucks each. They really give a nice, warm sound to recorded speaking (or singing.) They also have a built-in limiter option, which will keep you from distorting.

The idea of using tube pre-amps with digital audio is that the sound of modern recording has gotten so clean, that it can be helpful to “dirty it up” a tiny bit using old-type steampunk technology, so you throw a tube in the mix.

These have an actual tube, and a little window to view the tube, to see it glowing. You actually have to let them warm up for a half-hour or so to get a good sound. (Anyone under 30 years old has probably never experienced electronics that need to warm up….)

These creamy pre-amps also have an analog level meter, which I haven’t seen in any gear for about 20 years. It reminds me of a pressure gauge or an old speedometer.

We used these puppies on episode 0048 of the Clone The Homeless podcast and episode 65 of SAC, and will probably use them on every episode recorded hence (unless it’s recorded “in the field” with our iRiver or the Sampson Zoom H2 portable, which we ordered two months ago, and it ships this coming Monday. Look for a full review of that when it comes out. It records CD-quality audio and is the size of a pack of smokes.)

Erin liked the creamy sound of our tubed throats and wrote us:

>The tube preamps sound really good…warmer and “dirtier” as you say. i can’t imagine you 2 sounding any dirtier, but you’ve done it, lol!

by the way…if you click on the above photo, the big version makes really cool computer wallpaper. Very dark and spooky. It’s Peanut the Devil Kitty!

Download PDF of “The Manual” by The KLF.

The KLF are two cats from the UK, anarchist pranksters who strategically set about to try, and succeeded at, having a number-one hit. (”Doctorin’ the Tardis.” Horrible video here) This was despite the fact that they had very little musical talent, and even bragged about that fact.

They had their hit back in 1988 under the name “The Timelords” (and borrowed / sampled a few other better hits to do it.)

In 1989, they wrote a book (downloadable above) about how to have a number-one hit, which actually tells you, step by step, what they did, and very comically explains why you’re a friggin’ idiot if you even want to have a number one hit.

They had a few more top-ten hits, some acid house stuff, and the catchy club dance hit 3 AM eternal.

Then they set fire to and burned a million pounds cash (about 1.8 million US dollars at the time), most of their earnings, and filmed it burning for a documentary. Five-part video of that starts here.

I love KLF’s attitudes and ideas. I especially love the quote below, from “The Manual.” I agree with what they say here, a lot, and have talked to many drummers over the years who also agree:

“Black American records have always been the most reliable source of dance groove. These records down through the years have inevitably laid so much emphasis on the altar of groove and so very little into fulfilling the other Golden Rules that they very rarely break through into the U.K. Top Ten, let alone making the Number One spot.

“A by-product of this situation is that gangsters of the groove from Bo Diddley on down believe they have been ripped off, not only by the business but by all the artists that have followed on from them.

“This is because the copyright laws that have grown over the past one hundred years have all been developed by whites of European descent and these laws state that fifty per cent of the copyright of any song should be for the lyrics, the other fifty per cent for the top line (sung) melody; groove doesn’t even get a look in.
“If the copyright laws had been in the hands of blacks of African descent, at least eighty per cent would have gone to the creators of the groove, the remainder split between the lyrics and the melody.
“If perchance you are reading this and you are both black and a lawyer, make a name for yourself. Right the wrongs.”

–

When I showed drummer Michael Bérubé this quote, he replied, “Damn straight. One drummin’ nation under a groove– or, as (Flavor Flav of) Public Enemy once said, ‘Y’all can’t copyright no beats’.”

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(Thanks for turning me onto this, James Jose of Australia!)