StinkFight.com

Yay! My first snow in 23 years! DJ’s first snow ever! We had to go out walking in it and try out our new winter clothes.

It was magical and yummy.

This was a few hours ago. The ground is completely white everywhere now.

Short nice review of RIGHT ARM OF WYOMING in Belgian anarchist/libertarian webzine, Liberté Chérie (”Most Cherished Liberty”).

Here’s the original French:

Le groupe Right Arm of Wyoming fait du très bon punk industrial dans un esprit anarcho-capitaliste. Ca me rappelle un peu le punk de garage des années 80 et j’aime ce petit son rauque dans la voix donc je vous laisse aussi en profiter.

Here’s the English translation (via AltaVista BableFish, therefore not perfect, but you’ll get the gist):

Is Punk Libertarian?

The group Right ARM off made Wyoming of very good the punk industrial in a anarchist-capitalist spirit. Ca points out a little punk garage to me of the Eighties and I thus like this small raucous sound in the voice I also let to you benefit from it.

I just ordered some copper radio-frequency-blocking foil, to put inside my guitar electronics and inside my amp to help cut down on hum while recording.

I wonder if the moonbat feds monitoring my internet use think I’m using it to make a really effective tin-foil hat.

(not me and not my cat):

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385×378308

Loons. I’m a peace-lovin’ guy.

===-

By the way, I replied on that site, and got banned. In case they delete my post, here’s what got me banned:

My problem with leftists (or more correctly statists, which would include some Right-Wing types) is not what they say. It’s what they do. Government IS a collective hallucination, just like the stock market. It only functions when people put faith in it. (and lately neither are functioning well.)

I don’t care what people SAY, I care what they DO. And the current administration (and for the most part, the last administration - Bush was no friend of freedom) are shredding the Constitution and shoving a lot of “agendas” down people’s throats.

That’s what everyone’s upset about.

Government should not be looked at to solve problems. The free market would do it better. I mean, really, do you want to put your health care in charge of the people who run the POST OFFICE????

Our US Federal Government can only get so big before it drowns in the tar pits like the dinosaur it is. We are not terrorists, we are people saying “Look what you’re doing!”, trying to put some common sense breaks on things.

Obama is a charismatic “leader”, and you are all falling over yourselves to sniff his King George throne. He’s no friend of freedom. He’s a tyrant, just like George Bush was. He’s a smoother-talking George Bush.

UPDATE (Sept 28):

By the way, check out that Democratic Underground link again. They’ve deleted all the posts favoring my band, then said “We’ve alerted the authorities.”

Not very Democratic, those folks.

New song from Right Arm of Wyoming. Listen here.

Buy MP3s here.

(Cool new open-carry guitar pix of the recording of this song, here, if anyone wants to see a plump old guy jump around his paneled rec room with a guitar and a gun. lol.)

Lyrics:

GOVERNMENT IS A COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATION
Copyright Right Arm of Wyoming 2009
A census was worker was found hanging from a tree in Kentucky, with the word “FED” written on his chest.

Chorus:
GOVERNMENT IS A
COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATION,
BASED ON
FORCED “COOPERATION”,
WITH ROOTS IN INDOCTRINATION
OF KIDS!

From the cradle to the grave they wanna own you.
Socialist indoctrination - own you.
Can’t let you be free - own you.
Socialist indoctrination - own you.
Unconstitutional - own you.

Maybe the feds will supply each censless worker with his or her very own fed goon body guard. (To ensure their safety, but actually to make sure all the questions are answered.)

Remember, the census is how they knew where to find the Japanese, to intern them in camps in World War II.

CHORUS.

This hanging may be remembered as the first “shot” in Civil War 2.0.

This one won’t be about race (not that the last one entirely was.) This one will be about States’ Rights and rejecting tyranny (Like the last one mostly was.)

The feds wanna own you, from the cradle to the grave.
Turn this into England where steak knives
get you four years in prison.
De-claw and disarm,
until they can tax you 110 percent.

I think and fear that the US Federal Government
is tending more and more toward adopting
international law over The US Constitution.

CHORUS.

Thomas Jefferson said “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”
I like that. I like it a lot.

So let me ask you this, my young friends.
Will history repeat itself?
Will you go quietly to the showers?
Or will you risk your life when the moment comes?

CHORUS.

Brother against brother.
Son against mother.
I hate that it may come to this.
We’re generally peaceful people.
But good people can only be pushed so far.

And wouldn’t you rather “die on your feet than live on your knees?”

43 new kinda spooky dark photos of the recording of the Right Arm of Wyoming album. Here’s the link to see the rest of ‘em, and see ‘em big (click on the small ones once you’re there)

Song about Jimmy Carter’s “racism” remarks, Nancy’s idiocy, Ted Kennedy’s death (a good thing), and other stuff.

“Fakin’ the Race Card.” Listen on our profile player.

Get MP3 here.

(Radio and podcasts, contact us for an MP3.)

Thanks! Tell two friends!

– Right Arm of Wyoming

AWESOME cartoon from 50 years ago that predicts the mess we’re in now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O345SpRVcrU

Tell two friends.

New “Right Arm of Wyoming” song up now, called “GET OFF MY PROPERTY!”.

Listen here: http://www.myspace.com/rightarmofwyoming

Buy MP3 for 99 cents here.

Next song I’m working on is called “Fakin’ the Race Card” (it’s about the liberal media’s fake critique of tea party protests being all about race).

Here’s the short MP3 of middle-eight (going into verse):

http://www.rightarmofwyoming.com/MIDDLE-EIGHT_Fakin_the_race_card.mp3
I wanted to play something a little complicated and un-punk, in the middle of a punk song. Sounds like Greg Allman and Joe Satriani jamming with Mavishnu Orchestra or something.

I think I’m gonna croon over it like Barry White in my best “smooth black guy” voice.
“Please baby, please baby, stop fakin’. I hate it when you fake it, baby.”

From http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk

Neil Gaiman, the British writer behind the surprise film hit Coraline, is calling for a moratorium on vampires. “Let them rest in peace for a while,” he says. Meanwhile, studios are bidding to turn a short vampire movie called New Girl in Town into a feature. The red-haired auteur is one Emma Kenney, aged nine, who shot it following instructions in a book called $30 Film School and got it shown at the New Jersey International Film Festival. Sorry, Neil, there is no escape from the undead.

David Codrea did an excellent and concise blog post about the new music, on his hugely popular and influential pro-Second Amendment “War on Guns” blog, here:

http://waronguns.blogspot.com/2009/09/punkd.html

Also, check out his Gun Rights Examiner column today, “NV Senate candidate Sharron Angle also deserves gun owner support.”

It’s a good one!

It is usual logic that you should “print to tape” (old term, still used in digital) dry (no effects), because you can always add effects, but can’t un-add them.

But compression is the exception….it’s kind of a NON-effect. If you talk to a lot of pro engineers, or do some research in recording-nerd magazines (like Tape-Op Magazine), you’ll find that almost EVERYONE adds a little compression to vocals as they record. It’s how you get the dynamic range of vocals onto the track without distortion and other artifacts. Digital has a wider dynamic range than tape (which is often abused in mastering, in the Loudness War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
)

But digital still is helped by some compression “printing to tape” (printing to hard drive.)

The only time compression is not needed is if someone comes from a jazz or classical background, has years of mic experience and “riding the mic” (i.e. intuitively getting the right amount of further away when they get louder, and get closer when they get softer.) Doing this correctly is an art, as there are vast variations in the volume in singing, even within one word.

The best way to record vocals, hands down, and 99 percent of pro studios work this way, is:
–condenser mic (on a shock mount, with a pop filter an inch away)
–tube preamp
–a little compression.

It’s a formula that works, has worked for 80 years, and still works with digital.

It’s funny, digital is all about making the signal cleaner, but then it loses the “warmth” that tubes and tape added (yes, tape added some “compression”), so almost all pro digital studios still use tube pre-amps and tube compressors, especially on the vocals and drums.

MWD

TWO NEW “RIGHT ARM OF WYOMING” SONGS UP NOW. “Redistribution of Theft” and “Gun Control Gets Women Raped”

Listen here: http://www.myspace.com/rightarmofwyoming

Buy MP3s on Amazon, here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002LC92UY/www30dollarfi-20

So, I wanted to talk a little about my new kiddie guitar, 200 bucks for the guitar, amp, tuner and strap. IT ROCKS. I did these recordings with a 10 watt amp set on 4 (of 10, volume wise), dirty setting, no fuzzbox (that Line 6 thing I ordered turned out to be a module, not a free-standing effects unit. I returned it). Amp has a 6″ speaker, recorded at 3 AM, really quiet. Had wife go outside, she could not hear it at all in the middle of the night in our very quiet neighborhood. Our house is brick and the basement is completely underground. It’s nice…my own punk rock bunker.

Recorded three tracks playing exactly the same thing. Put one in the middle, panned the other two left and right 40%.

The amp is TINY, like 8 inches tall. I cranked it up, then overdubbed three times doing the same thing. (I threw away the DVD that came with it, called “How to play the guitar”)

My mic is as big as the amp!

Here’s one of the songs in the editing program (Sony Acid), as I’m creating it:

I wanted to show you pix of my “manhole” (”man cave”). Hank Hill has his garage. Dale Gribble has his basement (where he researches conspiracy theories on the Internet, breeds turtles and stores his alien urine collection in jars.)

I have my paneled basement studio, and my new vocal booth, with permanently miked baby guitar amp (with the HUGE sound) and vocal mic all set up in a claustrophobic cozy 15 square feet.

Outside the vocal booth (before I finished sound proofing it.)

Looking in (the lamp is LED, produces no heat, so no fire hazard):

Standing inside with the door closed:

Outside, with door shut. DJ asked why I had to cut such a big hole in the door for the wires, I half-jokingly said “Well, it fits the wires I have now. But I haven’t put in the video feed and the mini-fridge yet.”

Mission control:

Charlie grooms:

Charlie runs away:

Fuzzy says “Tour’s over. Get out!”

(and yes, that is a wireless security camera over on the floor on the right, pointing at all my gear, and uploading live to an unlinked web folder. I have ‘em all over the house.)

There’s a good new short (ten-minute) audio interview with me today on Podioracket.com. Interview show notes are here, MP3 direct link is here. My part starts at exactly ten minutes in.

- Michael W. Dean

I just ordered a guitar. It’s a beginner guitar for kids, comes with a tiny amp, tuner, cable, picks, and a “how to play guitar” booklet (lol), all for 200 bucks.

I would spend more, but I like to spend my money on guns and ammo and lobster. (DJ started her new job today, yay!, so I took her out for lobster.)

I’m primarily a singer and bass player, but I’ll bet I can make better recordings and songs with me playing this kiddie guitar than 99.9 % of the stuff on MySpace.

I’ll post a song when I get the guitar delivered in a week or so.

Songs recorded with this guitar here.

Bought it all on MusiciansFriend.com. I like them. They’re kind of the WalMart of music gear.

MWD