StinkFight.com

I decided to get creative. Check out the nifty 404 page I made today while the furnace cleaners were here.

Apparently it doesn’t work perfectly on all browsers. Click below to see what I’m seeing on my end:

Jesse Kidd liked the 22-year-old demo of me jammin’ with East Bay Ray from Dead Kennedys. It was recorded when Jesse was a baby before Jesse was born.

Jesse sat down in his room in Australia this week, added drums, and sent me the MP3. It’s cool. GRAB THE MP3 HERE.

So, John Beers mailed me the master tapes (multitrack and mix-down) of the Baby Opaque stuff the other day. Was really neat…first, I don’ have anything from back then, except my body, mind and spirit, and stuff that people who had a more responsible 90s than me, like John have saved. Thanks John!

Second, I haven’t seen multi-track tape in over ten years. Wow. Blast from the past. I felt like an archaeologist excavating my past, and the past…the analogue past.

Third, John also included a cassette I’d lent him. He included a short note apologizing for taking so long to return it, but I want to thank him for taking so long, because I’m finally stable enough not to lose things like that. Thanks John!

The tape was two songs of me and East Bay Ray jamming, around the time Dead Kennedys were breaking up. They had a few gigs booked that they were playing (including a series of shows in Brazil, and they didn’t want to pass that up, because they’d never been there), but they were kaput. Ray was looking to start a new band, as he put it, “A pop band to get on MTV.” He answered my “bassist seeks band” flier and we played music around that time, twice (we later played once more, when he played on my solo record.)

First time was at my friend Beau’s house, where I was couch surfing. That jam included was this first song “I’m Not Restless” (>>GET MP3.) It’s a Baby Opaque song that Bomb later recorded also (the only song both bands did, though Baby Opaque did not record it). The song is good, but this recording isn’t that great…I taught it to him, we played it once, then recorded it and moved on to the next song. (If any drummers wanna play to it and send me the track, I’ll remix and add it on here.)
Since I also sang, and not just played bass, he also gave me a tape that day of a song he’d written and recorded in his home studio. He played guitar, bass and drum machine on it. He asked me to write lyrics and melody to it and come to his house in Oakland the following week, and we did. I recorded the song, which I called “Drivin’ Fast” (>>GET MP3). Ray told me I peed too much, he gave me a rough mix, and I left. He called me the next day and said he was going a “different direction”.

He finally assembled a band, and I went to see them at the Firehouse (a.k.a the 16th note) club on 16th street. He was great, the band was horrible. Skinny pouser female vocalist, like Pat Benatar but not as good, adequit but boring drummer, bass player and keyboard (!) player, and Ray. Ray was fucking great (I love his playing and loved his muted stage presence and his cool look…like Ric Ocasek crossed with Roy Orbison). But the band made me sad.

So….there you have it, the story and the songs. The songs are not me or Ray’s finest work, by FAR, but “Drivin’ Fast” does have it’s moments. And it’s about the world killing itself at an exponential future-shock rate, with traffic and dependence on oil as the metaphor….Something that seems very relavant to me now. It’s also about finding your way in life. Hearing it is sort of like getting a postcard as a middle-aged man from myself as a young man. Neat! Especially since I haven’t heard it in 20 years.

I love the last line “is life the classroom, the waiting room, or the party itself?”

MEW

Michael W. Dean and Joseph Matheny chat on the phone and there’s no way these two talkers could interview one or the other. So they rap together, in a concentric hypertextual parenthetical way, TCP over IP, about how to make money by releasing things for free, the coming apocalypse, a secret underground lair, and much more.

Indie media mavericks Michael W. Dean and Joseph Matheny interview each other. (Part two of two. from alterati.com)

Get the podcast here.

 In this episode, Joseph Matheny concludes his conversation with Michael Dean (part 1 here), and discuss how to make money by releasing things for free, the coming apocalypse, a secret underground lair, and much more.

Joseph adds: “We’re hoping to make the G-spot better with your input, we’d dig it if you’d fill out the Standard Audience Survey to help us do that. As always, if you have questions, comments, rants or suggestions, call (213) 784-1035″

The G-Spot 31: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Clone The Homeless - get episode 0066
Indie media mavericks Michael W. Dean and Joseph Matheny interview each other. (Part one of two. Part two will be up on Greylodge in two weeks.) Fri, 11 April 2008

22 min. from CloneTheHomeless.com

RSS feed

Michael W. Dean and Joseph Matheny chat on the phone and there’s no way these two talkers could interview one or the other. So they rap together, in a concentric hypertextual parenthetical way, TCP over IP, about how to make money by giving away art, where the Internet is headed, changing views on changing protection of intellectual “property”, Joseph Campbell, suing Disney for intellectual property violation, how to self-publish your brilliant books, Tom Jennings, why control of your art is more important than lots of money, how to assemble your own vigilant army of the damned, The Pirate Bay, cease-and-desist letters, the Church of the Subgenius, BoingBoing, the WELL, Creative Commons, sex, cats, art and an incredible amount of more nifty stuff.

Part two will cover the coming collapse of the infrastructure of the world, why Catholics are killing the world with overpopulation, and why both of these guys just wanna do the judo master thing and step out of the world’s way, while still running it all from their rural bunkers.

Click to download the Beef People song “Lots”

Click to download the Beef People song “Industrial Jelly”

Of all things, a UK record label (Damaged Records) is releasing VINYL of the Beef People EP, combined with the unreleased tracks, which are great.

The owner, a cool chap named Welly, asked us to do a short interview. His questions and my answers are here:

Beef People interview for Damaged Records – Michael W. Dean’s answers

1. Where and when band formed, and how it came about? Founding members? Reasons for the name?

Formed in 1984 the Blue Ridge School in Dyke, Virginia.

(I think it was 1984, I wasn’t there at the start. Jack? Is this correct?)

Founding members: Brian Childers – throat Willy MacLean – bass Rob Buckingham – guitar Jack Massey – drums

I joined the band replacing Rob Buckingham on guitar, so I’m not the guy to ask about the very inception. But the line up was always the same as above, except I took over on guitar shortly before the EP came out. I was in the band less than nine months, then they broke up. It was one of those hardcore bands that were great, short lived, did an EP and dissolved….As it probably should be, based on a lot of reunions I’ve witnessed lately with sad old men who used to be my heroes more than 20 years ago.

The band name “The Beef People” came from “We’re the Beef People” the motto of a now-defunct supermarket chain in the American south called Winn Dixie. Our EP “Music for Men” was named after a choral sheet music series that the guys had in their music class at their boarding school.

Rob left the band when he got kicked out of school for sneaking a girl into his room. I had been kicked out of my own boarding school for calling the headmaster a “fat, bald, overtly Christian old fart”, so I immediately felt an affinity to the guy I was replacing.

2. Details on early gigs and early demo recordings?

The band played less than a dozen gigs as I remember (not counting a few gigs they played at their boarding school before I joined). Most were under attended, maybe between 15 and 50 people. Remember, this was Virginia in the early 80s.

I remember one gig for about 30 people in a place that held 800. Everyone was in the back of the room, and it felt like we were playing to the Grand Canyon. After a couple songs, I said over the mic, “I’m not playing another note until everyone in this room joins us on stage.” They all did. The stage suddenly became the whole concert, people were only a few feet away, and it got really intimate and fun. Brian had some electric hair trimmers and gave 25 cent haircuts (“money back guarantee!”) to about a third of the audience between songs. He also shaved my head, while I was doing a guitar solo. I was getting a slight electric shock in my scalp as he did it. It felt really exciting, and I didn’t need to sleep much for a few weeks after.

Our biggest gig was for about 100 people, when we opened for Battalion of Saints.

3. First record release, with any interesting stories or nuggets of information connected to it?

The only release was the EP, “Music for Men”, recorded in 1986. We recorded and mixed the EP, and the additional songs that Welly is now putting out along with the songs from the EP, in one session, in about 8 hours total (including a few overdubs), at Inner Ear Studios in Arlington, Virginia, in Don Zientara’s basement. Don engineered the record. John Beers put the EP out on his label, “Catch Trout Records”.

4. Tours, with details of where and who with, with anything that you may remember from them? The Beef People never toured. They were seniors at the Blue Ridge School in Dyke, Virginia, and broke up when they graduated. I was three years older, and drove from Charlottesville, Virginia (about an hour away) to rehearse.

All of our gigs were in Charlottesville.

The singer, Brian Childers, later played bass some and sang some on one tour in my band Bomb (from San Francisco), in 1989.

5. Record labels you dealt with, how the deals came about, and how they treated you?

We only did that one record on Catch Trout, and John Beers treated us really well. He paid for the record, gave us lots of copies, pressed 1000 copies, sent out a lot of promo copies, got it into stores nationwide, and probably lost money doing so. John loves music, and that’s why he had a label. He was never in it for the money.

Someone else put one of the songs out on a compilation, I forget what it was called, don’t think they had permission, and it doesn’t bother me at all.

6. Subsequent record releases, with dates and details or any story of interest?

None, none and none. Until now. Thank you, Welly!

7. Dynamics of relationships of band members. Any personality clashes or great friendships? Good or bad situations?

We all got along great in the Beef People, as far as every time I was with them. Brian and I clashed in Bomb a few times because I was a junkie by then. That’s why he quit Bomb. I’m sober now, many years.

8. Reasons for band break-up with dates and details? Band graduated from school. Not much details past that.

9. Proudest moment or achievement connected to the band? What are your thoughts on it looking back?

It was all a blast. I’m really proud of the guys, my time in the band, and love how well the music has held up after 23 years.

10. Any kind of reformation happened or due to happen? If so, details please.

Nope. Singer died. I’d sooner dig up my dead grandfather, prop him up on the couch and watch a baseball game with him than play a Beef People gig without Brian.

(Brian’s obituary that I wrote is attached. It’s from the March 2008 issue of Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll magazine. Feel free to reprint. I own it, and anyway, they reprint a lot of stuff without permission, say it’s “fair use under copyright law”, and they’re probably right.)

11. Any other bands or projects the members have worked on then or since?

I’m married, live in the suburbs, have lots of cats, make films and write books. I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life. My current CV is here: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/3220

– Michael W. Dean, Los Angeles

Watch my good friend Alan’s “50 things I’ve done in my life” video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjfL5WL4ZBQ

Then watch my response video with my own “50 things”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbZdcEoXeGQ

It’s a neat video of me “confessing my sins”. And remember, microphones and cameras are cheaper than therapists.

(Nice subtlety: there’s a photo of Brian Childers on the wall behind me, between the microphone and my head.)

Had an interesting conversation via e-mail with a chap named Ken Restivo. Ken wrote me out of the blue and asked me

Subject: Were you in a band that played in the 1990s and did this song?

By any chance, were you in a band that played at the Edinburgh Castle bar on Geary in San Francisco some time in the late 1990’s, that had a song with the lyrics:

“I don’t wanna die! I just wanna fuck her one more time!”??
-ken

It took me a while to place it (I do so much fucking art I can’t remember it all), but it was a song I wrote about suicide called “Golden Gate Bridge” (MP3 here.)

The band he saw was a short-lived project called “Strychnine Blotter Party ^* .” Only played seven gigs, and only once at the club he mentioned. And the line is “I don’t wanna die! I just wanna fuck you one more time!” But I must say I am DAMN impressed that he remembered the show/band/song/me from that one show. We only played that club once. Don’t know how he found me from that, either. (Please chime in with a comment if you’re reading this, Ken.)

So Ken and I hit it off and I told him a bit about my rock history in San Fran, and we got into a discussion of drugs. Specifically, why musicians gravitate toward heroin:

Ken Wrote:

….I am fascinated by how many musicians are so fucking high so much of the time, and how susceptible we-all are to addiction. MUCH higher than the general population– it seems to be a disease that targets musicians.
Michael W. Dean wrote:

Well, musicians have low self-esteem and huge egos, and heroin compliments that. lol…..

Ken Wrote:

It’s gotta be more than that. Politicians and CEO’s also have HUMONGOUS egos, and low self-esteem (which is really the same thing), and they don’t tend to get addicted to anything except money and power (and kinky sex).

Michael W. Dean wrote:
CEOs and politicians are wired differently and prefer cocaine. And when they like kink, it’s usually paying someone to dominate them, whereas musicians tend to like to dominate their lovers, and get it free. A lot.

Also…..what you say is totally true, but captains of industry have some real confidence, believe everything they do is right, whereas musicians are stunted adolescents, their bravado is that of a scared little boy whistling in the dark. All musicians…from Stooges-wannabe doods in leather jackets to crotch-grabbing gangsta rappers….musicians are riddled with self-doubt. CEOs are absolutely positive they’re doing the right thing with every step.

And remember, with anyone, the number of tattoos is inversely proportionate to the amount of self-esteem.

Heroin makes you feel warm and makes you dream. Musicians are dreamers. Coke makes you feel like you could kick God’s ass, which appeals to CEOs.

——–

(This is by no means me giving myself the “final word” on this….anyone who wants to chime in, please do so).

===========

* Fun little Strychnine Blotter Party side note. Sean Keefe, our fucking great drummer, went home to visit his parents back east, and we had a rehearsal scheduled the day he got back. He called me from the airport and said “Hey…can you pick me up a burrito please? I’m broke and hungry.” I said “Sure” (he was playing free as a sideman in my band where it was all my songs, so of course I fed him if he asked).

He said “I spent my last money getting a shoe shine at the airport. You know…if you don’t look good, you can’t play good.”

—-

And if you wanna see some of the most painful web design ever, here’s the Strychnine Blotter Party web page I made in 1997. I quickly realized “this is hard on the eye, but it was fun to make” and moved on to easy-to-read as my main rule for web design. Unfortunately, most people on MySpace have never realized this.

—–

And here’s the lyrics to “Golden Gate Bridge”:

(by the way, the song is not the usual ABABABC song structure. It’s ABCABC. Few songs are.)

Lyrics:
Standing on the Golden Gate bridge.
looking for the girl who did not like to live
look for the girl with the atropine eyes,
as she flies!

I’ve got cabin-fever
I’ve been in my head for far too long
my brains are blowing out from pressure-jealousy
my strings are melting and I’m sure that I can fly-
maybe I’ll try!

(pre-chorus):
It’s another fucking sunset and
I’m checking out tonight.
Slipping into sleep, your memory slaps me awake.
I don’t want to die.
I want to fuck you one more time.

(Chorus):
I don’t want to die!
I can hurt you more alive
if that keeps me here for one more day
it’s all I need to say
stumbling through this world with all my lies
failing comically at all I try
I feel I’d like to die
but it hurts even to try
why should I try?

nausea, sweet nausea
anticipate my bane
sanctify and vilify to keep us both alive
I’ll just go to sleep
tomorrow means another chance at being sane

(pre-chorus, chorus) out…

Hate Fed Love video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAUw2znLK-E

Bomb live in Houston in 1992, at Emo’s.

Bomb at the peak of their rockatude, and me really skinny and cute. And drinking beer.

More vids from this show:
http://youtube.com/dwarfbilly
all vids from this show:
http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=dwarfbilly&p=r

Shot on analog video by dwarfbilly (Glen Fader). Thank you Glen, so much, for shooting the many vids, for not losing the tapes like so many have done, and for putting on the ‘tube.

–

Note: unlike most Bomb shows, I remember this one well. And also remember that between sound check and the show, I got some paper and a pen from the bartender, sat outside, watched the sun set in the summer night, and decided, “I’m going to be a writer”, and began writing my first novel.

DEFINING MOMENTS IN MY LIFE:
–Read an entire book myself - age 5
–Heard the Partridge Family, fell in love with music - age 7
–Interest in science - age 8
–Molested by teenage boy - age 8
–Parents’ divorce - age 8
–Got into studying electronics - age 9
–Got into ham radio, realized there was a world out there - age 10
–Loved the local library - entire childhood
–Discovered sister’s Rolling Stones records - age 9
–Discovered sister’s boyfriend’s Frank Zappa records, realized the world wasn’t the way adults told me it was - age 10
–Stole a look at teacher’s grade book when she was out and learned that my IQ is 143 - age 10
–Smoked pot - age 11
–Read “Steal This Book” - age 12
–Got caught shoplifting, first and last time I did (stealing shotgun shells to make bombs, never made any) - age 12
–Had sex, started to play guitar, and took LSD - age 14
–Read “The Book of the Subgenius” (while tripping). Decided I wanted to start my own fake cult one day - age 16
–Had GREAT sex - age 17
–Kicked out of boarding school - age 17
–Discovered Dr. Gene Scott (while tripping) Reinforced my desire to start my own fake cult one day - age 18
–Became a father - age 19
–Discovered punk rock (from Skip Lunch), while on LSD, formulated “The Hum of the Universe” theory on the spot - age 19
–Left home, moved to DC , saw Dischord punk bands live, met them, hung out with them - age 20
–Put out first record - age 21
–Moved to San Francisco - age 22
–Started Bomb - age 22
–Discovered heroin - age 23
–Toured the US with Bomb - age 23-age 29
–Toured Europe with Bomb - age 27
–Bomb signed to major label- age 28
–Bomb broke up because of my drug use - age 29
–Got first computer (8086, couldn’t get online with it, but could write and edit) - age 29
–Learned to type (in one night, while shooting coke) age 29
–Got sober - age 30
–Went back to college - age 32-33
-Got on the Internet (on hand-me-down 386 from my other sister) - age 32
–got DSL internet connection - age 33
–Put on a suit, joined the corporate work force (but wrote my novel on their time) - age 33-37
–Self-published first book - age 35
–Relapsed on drugs, nearly died - age 35
–Got sober again - two weeks later
–Started making films - age 36
–Made my first feature film: age 37
–Moved to Los Angeles from San Francisco (it’s not uncool to be ambitious in LA Like it is in San Fran) - age 37
–Started to make a living as a writer and filmmaker - age 38
–Discovered D/s - age 41
–Met the woman of my dreams - age 41
–Daughter died from leukemia - age 42
–Got married, moved out to the country/burbs - age 42
–Discovered podcasting - age 42
–Started using BitTorrent to share massive amounts of MY media with the world - age 43
–got 10 Mbps fiber optic internet connection - age 43

===

Pretty fun stuff.

So, my friends, post your list as a reply.

107 MICHAEL W. DEAN SONGS

TORRENT HERE. MUST BE OF LEGAL AGE.

“Whoever dies with their art on the most hard drives, wins.”
–Michael W. Dean
Complete BitTorrent zip of all Michael W. Dean music, 1984-2008

110 MP3s (107 songs and three interviews), plus many images and text files of all bands. 856 megs.

Michael W. Dean is the director of “D.I.Y. OR DIE: How To Survive as an Independent Artist” and the author of “$30 Film School”, among other things.

Archive contains all BOMB records, both Baby Opaque records (with Ian MacKaye on backup vocals on one song - a cover of “Long Black Veil”), all Rolling Scabs, all Deal Machine, all Mother and the Fuckers, plus several Michael Dean solo songs, and loop WAVs for song production, looped from Bomb songs by Michael Dean.

From Wikipedia: “Bomb was a San Francisco-based rock band started in 1986 by singer/bassist Michael W. Dean, guitarist Jay Crawford, and drummer Tony Fag (Anthony Paul Short, A.K.A. Blind Tony Fag). Their first show was July 4, 1986, opening for Flipper. Bomb’s sound was deep, hard rock with melodic guitars, relentless tribal drumming (reviews referred to Fag as “The Human Drum Machine”), strong pop singing, and sometimes-cryptic lyrics. Common subjects of the songs were death, sex, drugs, girls, boys, love, loss, Satan, God, cross-dressing, girls, suicide, hope and girls.”

Bomb put out one EP and four LPs from 1986-1999, on Boner Records and on Warner/Reprise. The Warner Bros. record was produced by Bill Laswell. The band was a fans’ favorite, but crashed and burned from narcotic abuse and infighting.

“D.I.Y. OR DIE: How To Survive as an Independent Artist”

Free high-quality iPhone/iPod rips, from the director. Torrent and media served from a 24/7 fat pipe.

Torrent here.

(Or here on Pirate Bay).

DVD, and all extras of “D.I.Y. OR DIE: How To Survive as an Independent Artist”. Director Michael W. Dean is giving away the entire film, encoded in high quality (30 fps, 800 kbps mp4 file, 640×480 size, with 128-bit audio, and no DRM). It looks great on an iPod, iPhone, Zune, etc., and damn good full screen on a computer.

Seven extras from the DVD (including interviews with Ian MacKaye, Steve Albini, and Lydia Lunch) are included.

FILM DESCRIPTION:

This film is a celebration of the artistic underdog! FEATURING interviews and performances from: Lydia Lunch, Ian MacKaye (Fugazi), J Mascis (Dinosaur jr.), Jim Rose (Jim Rose Sideshow), J.G. Thirlwell (Foetus), Mike Watt (Minutemen), Richard Kern (Filmmaker), Ron Asheton (Stooges), Madigan Shive (Bonfire Madigan), Dave Brockie (Gwar) and more.

Dean says, “People keep asking me, ‘Why are you posting the whole film when it’s still selling well on DVD? Are you CRAZY?’” Dean’s reply (in part): “It’s my gift to the world. People write me every day and tell me the film got them off their ass. I made the film to spread a message, not make money. And somehow, it still made money. That’s how I do things - it’s how I pay my rent on planet earth.”

The film on IMDB

Film site: http://www.diyordie.org

UPDATE: I sold the monitor. For a quarter. Here’s pix of my satisfied customer:

(Original post): My friend gave me a flat screen monitor, so I’m getting rid of my clunky old CTR. But you can’t throw those out, they need to be taken to special centers.

To save me the trip, I just posted this on CraigsList:

====================

Working computer monitor - 25 cents.

(not 25 dollars, 25 CENTS!)

16-inch CRT ViewSonic A70 monitor.

I bought it last year on CraigsList for ten bucks. I just upgraded, so I’m willing to pass the savings on to you at ONE-FORTIETH THE ORIGINAL PRICE!!!

Must give me a one-hour window of what time you’ll be here.

Photos of me at age 3 and age 17:

Me at age 12 (stoned on pot):

Me at 16, in drag:

Me at 21 (on left. Brian Childers is on the right):

Me at 27 (in slip, with Bomb):

Me at 33:

Me at 39: (left of me is Ryan Brown, who edited Selby movie, on right is Robert Downey, Jr, who narrated):

Photo of me taken yesterday (age 43):

Great pix of our gay switchy littermate boy cats, Fuzzbucket McFluffernutter and Peanut McFluffernutter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAsI7mmM4eQ

By my friend Alan “Fallofautumndistro” Lastufka (Alan and I have a big very cool project together coming up soon. Will spill beans on it next week.) Debra Jean Dean did the voiceover, I engineered DJ’s voiceover.

It’s a takeoff on those stupid “Go to university online” commercials they play on TV every afternoon to attract unemployed losers and take their money.

I just got a new book deal with O’Reilly (will blog details next week.)

Update: I do NOT recommend U-verse!!!!

To celebrate, I just ordered an AT&T U-verse fat pipe….a a 10 Mbps fiber optic line.
Yay! With cable TV. From the phone company. 100 bucks a month, no setup fee, no contract commitment, (and it also comes with 100 TV channels). Ten times faster than a DSL line, at three times the price. And it doesn’t slow down when your neighbors go on like with cable modems.

Also ordered a third computer, which I’m gonna use dedicated to nothing but BitTorrenting huge archive zips of our podcast episodes:
LENOVO ThinkCentre A61E 641712U computer,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883108133

also got two 1-gig sticks of server RAM and got heat-sinks for them.

AT&T U-verse is not available in most of the country yet. Should be in a year or three. It’s available here:

* California: Corona, Los Angeles/Orange County, Riverside, Sacramento/Stockton/Modesto, San Diego, San Francisco/Oakland, and San Jose/Santa Clara
* Connecticut: Hartford, New Haven, New London, Stamford
* Illinois: Chicago
* Indiana: Anderson, Bloomington, Indianapolis, Kokomo, Muncie
* Kansas:Kansas City
* Michigan: Detroit
* Mississippi: Jackson
* Missouri: Kansas City, St. Louis
* Ohio: Akron, Cleveland, Columbus
* Oklahoma: Oklahoma City
* Texas: Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Round Rock, San Antonio
* Wisconsin: Milwaukee, Racine, West Bend

I had DSL in early 1997. I lived in downtown San Fran, and within 1200 feet of the phone company building. Mine was one of the first city blocks in the country that had it.

When I crawled off of dial-up onto DSL I felt like, as my friend Stephen Elliot put it, “It extended my lifespan.” I think Fiber Optic is going to feel like “Beam me up, Scotty” compared to DSL.

I’ll probably get rug burns from it.

I’m literally having trouble sleeping anticipating my 10 MBPS fiber optic line.
I get it Wednesday. Should have my new pooter (the dedicated BitTorrent one) by then too. Until then I have to suffer with this damn DSL. How very last century.

MWD

p/s

I remember a forwarded e-mail in San Fran in 1998 called “You might be a geek if…..”.
One of the things was “You might be a geek if…..Your apartment has more bandwidth than some universities.” With the fiber line, I’m finally there. They use the same size pipe for 200 computers on some university libraries.

…..Another one on that list was “You might be a geek if…..while hanging out at an industrial/heavy metal fetish club, you get in a fist fight with another guy about which flavor of Linux is best.”

Funny, but that was never me. I have always been a Windows guy, and always will be. I don’t like all that wrenching. XP just fucking WORKS. I’m running XP on both laptops and the new server computer has XP. (I actually had to pay a little more to not have Vista. How fucked is that????)

GET THE MP3.

Hilsinger wrote: On 9/4/94, Roger Water’s 50th birthday , we played a 9-song madley of Pink Floyd songs. The show was at Komotion Int’l, SF (r.i.p.), and included a custom lightshow of Mr Dean blowing cigarette smoke and waving a flashlight around in it. cool. We opened for GIFTHORSE and SUBLIME.

featuring members of BOMB, GIFTHORSE, HELIOS CREED, and M-FAKTER,
the band was:
Doug Hilsinger (lead gtr, bg vox)
Michael Dean (lead vox, rythm gtr)
Bean (bass, bg vox)
Chris McKay (keys)
Paul Delle Pelle (drums)
Jeff Mann engineered the recording live to DAT.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAnYj-iNrPQ
Little thing I made that shows examples of good and bad background music for use with talking. Is useful info for both video production and podcast production.

Goes with this O’Reilly article I wrote,
“Put Your Photos on TV, Part 1″:
http://tinyurl.com/2xxnvf

Michael W. Dean
Media Consultant

So, after decades of doling out free advice to anyone who asks, I’m hanging up a shingle and starting to charge. I have to do this, I don’t have time to answer all the “help me with my project!” e-mails AND have a life AND make a living.

My rates are reasonable, and negotiable. Sliding scale. Info here:

http://www.michaelwdean.com

MP3 of Supergoose by my old band Slish.

MP3 of The Web by my old band Slish.

MP3 of My God Is A Woman, by my old band, Slish

E-mail that I wrote to my buddy, Chuck:

You know, I’ve actually recorded at the Record Plant. Song is attached. (taken from cassette. The master sounded like God.)

Was my band “Slish”.
Michael Urbano (Smashmouth/Cracker/Cheryl Crow/John Haytt/Third (That guy is, by far, the best drummer I’ve ever played with. And try NOT to tap your feet to this! Dude is a hit maker)
Guitarists were me and David Immergluck (Counting Sheep, I mean Counting Crows.) I played slide.
Bass was my friend Bean, I sang, he sang backup, and we wrote the song together.

It’s about getting off drugs.
This band could have been huge. Except Bean and I were fresh off drugs, insane, and fought so much we drove everyone around us away.

was 1995.
God I love this song. Called “Supergoose”. Could have been a number-one hit. Commercial and great enough, but still fucking weird as hell.

–

We recorded these three songs in one day at the Record Plant, the day before Metallica locked it out for a year. Then did ovedubs elsewhere, some anon studio I forget the name of.

Was mixed at Hyde Street (By Michael Rosen, the guy who engineers Rancid’s records).
Was mastered at some other little home studio. That was the first time I ever saw a computer used to edit an audio file. We cut four bars out of the middle eight to make it more radio friendly.
Now that’s all I do, all day long, every day.
MWD
p/s regarding “…That was the first time I ever saw a computer used to edit an audio file.”

The edit we did? We cut four bars out of the middle eight to make it more radio friendly.

THE PLUMP BUFFET - a romantic kinky curvy cat cult comedy. (I really like this one.)

Subscribe FREE at Podiobooks.com

WEB:
http://www.podiobooks.com/title/the-plump-buffet/
RSS:
http://www.podiobooks.com/title/the-plump-buffet/feed/

(to subscribe in iTunes, go to “advanced / subscribe to podcast) and paste that URL into the little window.)

VALENTINE’S DAY RELEASE!
A Submission and Coffee production.

“The Plump Buffet” is a cast-production radio play about a sex cult in the desert, and they’re all cats.

WARNING: “The Plump Buffet” is comedic literature with sexual motifs. If you are not of legal age, you should not listen. You are also not to listen if you are easily offended by such material. But compared to network TV, it’s a wholesome story, no one dies.

TAGLINES:
–THE PLUMP BUFFET: it’s not a love triangle, it’s a love polygon.

–THE PLUMP BUFFET is “Fritz the Cat” meets “Showdown at Waco.”

–50 women aren’t 50 times the fun, they’re 50 times the hassle. And one of them always feels like killing you.

PROMOS:
2-meg MP3 promo: http://www.askdollie.com/temp/PB-PlumpBuffet-Promo.mp3
14-meg WAV promo: http://www.askdollie.com/temp/PB-PlumpBuffet-Promo.wav

Check out Danny Plotnick’s awesome new short film called “Out of Print” (LINK HERE).

It’s a beautiful little video poem to how hard and sweet it was being an underground art lover before the Internet. Narration by San Fran’s top gutter playboy gadfly, Bucky Sinister.

Oh, and by the way, I did a little post-production audio work on it (and am credited as “Audio Fluffer”.)

The film won a cool national contest, and is also out in time to promote Danny’s new DVD, Warts & All: The Films of Danny Plotnick

It has over 10 films, trailers, audio commentary for everything, tons of photos of the films, as well as fetishistic photos of the equipment used to make the films! You can read more details here.

Ordering
If you want a copy, you can order from my website, from Microcinema, or from Amazon. It’s cheaper through me & Microcinema.

New 90-second song the wife and I wrote and recorded called “Dick and the Debbies”. It’s like a theme show for the Archies, if the Archies did speedballs and had lots of unsafe sex with strangers in bathroom stalls.

It’s for the upcoming Podiobook, The Plump Buffet.
Download MP3 here.

Me: bass and vocal.

Wife: vocal.

London May: Drums.
Officer Hutsskew: Guitar.

Guitar and drums recorded over the Internet.

My wife, the singer!:

HERE’S A SHORT MP3 of a rough mix of a song me and the wife wrote and recorded last night, called “I Love My Little Bitches.” We wrote the lyrics together, I played bass guitar and drum loops, I produced, and “Marky The Sod” played guitar over the Internet. (NOTE: BETTER VERSION WITH NEW VOCALS WAS UPLOADED TO REPLACE OLD VERSION ON FEB 2. IF YOU DOWNLOADED BEFORE THIS, RE-DOWNLOAD AND HEAR HOW MUCH THIS SONG HAS IMPROVED.)

Song is from our upcoming Podiobook radio play, “The Plump Buffet”. In the story, the song is sung by a hot dominatrix cougar with a whip named “Mother”. (Picture Texas Terri, if you’ve seen her perform.)

Mother’s band is “Mother and the Fuckers”.

The guitar player, bass player and drummer are tough leather fags. The bar they’re playing in is called “The Slime Light”. (Picture the SF Eagle, with more drugs and even more sleeze.)

Mother is whipping her “Little Bitches” (femmy mice in slips and pumps) in the audience when you hear the whips.

I’m pretty impressed with DJ’s singing on this. It’s the first singing she’s ever had recorded.

It’s funny, two days ago, GeekDad from Wired Magazine mistakenly called DJ a “singer” on the Internet,
http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2008/01/ipod-plus-delca.html
DJ laughed when she read it. But by today, she is one.

MWD

(book cover image at top by F. Wertham)

Boss Sonova asked me:

Remember a Bomb show at the I-Beam w/Hilsinger on pedal steel, wearing a pope’s gold gown (and perhaps a miter?)

I replied:I don’t remember.

“If you remember a Bomb show, you weren’t there.” lol……..

Cory Doctorow Blogged on BoingBoing about Debra Jean Dean’s reading of the Declaration of Independence.

Yay! Spread the love.

13-minute high-quality MP3. Engineered by Michael W. Dean. Covered by Creative Commons.

 Page with info and link here.

Direct MP3 link. 

A very cool guy named Torodd Eriksen from a town called Kirkenes (in Norway, on the Russian border) asked me to come tour the region with DIY or DIE and do Q&A and filmmaking seminars. He wrote me:

And after Kirkenes and Norway - you do the same thing in Russia. Russian societies are so hungry for artistic and political impulses. Generally speaking Russia is a safe country, but still it is one of the most unsafe countries for journalists. For that reason alone the skills and tools of citizen-journalism and documentation is very important in Russia……..

Beautiful sunny downtown Kirkenes:

I replied:

Three years ago I would have jumped to do this, and probably would have tried to meet a pretty girl there, get married, and stay.

However, now I’m married here, really happy, and feel I don’t want to travel in an unstable region where journalists get kidnapped. I basically believe I would be considered a “journalist” by some people, because I write for this well-known media company O’Reilly, for the O’Reilly Digital Media site:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/3220

How about this. Why don’t you tour this region in my stead, show DIY or DIE, keep the money, and you can bring a laptop and I’ll do a Skype Webcam question-and-answer period at each show? You can hook me up to the video projector, you’ll take questions from the audience, translate to English, ask me, I’ll answer, and you can translate back.
Much respect,

MWD

I had Debra Jean read the Constitution of the United States. I produced and engineered (and used our wonderful new piece of rack mount creamy goodness.)

Her reading of it is available as a high-quality MP3 download here.

Anyway, Cory Doctorow blogged it on Boing Boing, here, and we’ve gotten about a billion zillion downloads of it today.

Posted by Cory Doctorow:

Debra Jean Dean has done a wonderful, expertly engineered reading of the US Constitution, one of the most inspiring documents ever penned. The reading is released under a Creative Commons license. Link (Thanks, We The People…!)

Debra Jean Dean reads the US Constitution:
http://www.debrajeandean.com/constitution/index.htm

Free Creative Commons audio book.

United States Constitution (with all amendments), read by Debra Jean Dean, engineered by Michael W. Dean

Audio file covered by Creative Commons, feel free to share and link.

“The best recording with the best voice of any free, non-DRM audiobook of
the US Constitution, anywhere.”

Get Episode 0062 of Clone The Homeless. (You must be 18 or over to listen to this episode!)

Mon, 14 Jan 2008

77 min.

HOW TO DIRECT ACTORS (part 1 of 3)

There’s no right or wrong way to direct, it’s a matter of choice and intuition. But in the first installment of this three-part series, MWD and wife have a tape recorder running in the room as they direct voiceover actress Estrus Godspeed in playing a number of sexy characters for an upcoming cat cartoon Podiobook of “Plump Buffet”.

(taglines:

“50 women aren’t 50 times the fun, they’re 50 times the hassle. And one of them always feels like killing you.”
and
“The Plump Buffet is “Fritz the Cat” meets “Showdown at Waco”.)

There’s some damn good stuff to absorb here, people.

Fire up your pod, sit back and enjoy being a fly on the wall (or a kitty in the corner) as this husband and wife enjoy telling some cute girl what to do, all night long, baby.

(Ignore the slight background noise, I forgot to turn the H2 settings to high, so had to boost a lot. The stuff we recorded directly to the computer sounds GREAT, as you’ll see when the actual Podoibook comes out. But this is a perfectly listenable document for learning.)

in the “How-To and Style Section”.

Should be up there for a week.

Got 25 thousand views the first three days.

Yay!

Review is here. From the River Cities Reader newspaper. (Paper serves Quad Cities, which is Davenport, Iowa, Moline, Illinois, Rock Island, Illinois and Bettendorf, Iowa).

excerpt:

…518-page tome sharing lessons from his hard-knock years touring with his band Bomb and the 12 records he’s created. Taking this further than his documentary film D.I.Y. or Die: How to Survive as an Independent Artist, his new book $30 Music School is just that – an all-inclusive exposé and explanation of the music business for the up-and-coming artist who wants to pull his own strings.

Ya gotta love it when a book that came out four years ago is still getting favorable reviews. Buy the book on Amazon.

Above: Diagram I made of how we soundproofed the window in our studio. It’s not only a useful document, it’s sort of my current view on the world. (Image covered by Creative Commons. Feel free to share.)

So, Debra Jean and I soundproofed the one window in the 10 x 10 foot room that we dedicate to our recording endeavors, and also use as our office (with side-by-side matching laptops. And now that we’ve got the rack mount gear blinking between us, we feel like we’re piloting a jet plane!)

We call our little studio “Casa de Llama” and “The Inter-Nest”.

Our neighborhood is mostly quiet, WAY quieter than where I lived in Echo Park. And we live alone in the house - no roommates (except cats, and they’re pretty quiet). But the studio window faces out to the street and there are cars…also occasional barking dogs, kids playing, and other detritus of suburban life.

The window is the one weak link in the chain of us having a quiet room to record (and think) in.

Above: BEFORE pix

We did some research and found that, other than a foot of concrete, the best simple way to make soundproofing is dead air between layers of wood.

We went to Home Depot and bought two pieces of 1/2-inch plywood. We had it cut to be 1/16 of an inch smaller than the inside of the window frame. We also got one piece of plywood five inches larger in both directions than the inside of the window frame.

We started by stapling the window curtain to one side of one of a piece of plywood:

This is so that from the outside of the house it looks like normal window with curtains:

(rather than the meth lab / crack house look you get with raw plywood.)

Above: someone’s house, but not mine.

We left little pull tab pieces of fabric in case there’s ever a fire or earthquake and we have to get out fast.

It would be nearly impossible to get in from the outside (and we have an alarm, we left the contact inside the window and ran the wire in), but I could pull this thing apart from the inside out in less than a minute with the claw hammer I keep hanging on the wall. We had to razor the bottom side off the fabric so the board would fit. Man, did it fit tight. Had to push it in slowly, tapping all around it with a rubber mallet.

SO…then we put weatherstripping all the way around the inside of the window frame, touching the back (studio side) of the first piece of plywood.

This provides sound deadening, as well as being the thing that will hold the next layer of plywood in place.

Then we put in the second layer of plywood, and more weather stripping on the other side of that.

We put synthetic, fire-resistant pillow batting in between the last two layers of plywood. We don’t have pix of that actually getting done because it took four hands. But here it is before we put it in:

It looked like a sheep exploded.

(Don’t pack it TOO tight, or it will actually TRANSMIT sound, not block it.)

This was followed by taking the piece of plywood that was larger than the window frame and nailing it into the window frame and wall with three-inch nails.

And over that we nailed carpet.

Voilà!

Looks like hell, but keeps out about 98% of the noise. We love it.

(Note, it also keeps OUR um…noises…IN. Nice. We make some odd noises sometimes.)

TOTAL COST: 60 bucks.

I believe this technique could be applied, on a lager scale, to an entire wall or even a whole room. You would have to build some wood frames, but it should work.

——

We also laid carpet on the floor and nailed it to all the walls and the ceiling.

TOTAL COST: 40 bucks. (We dumpster dived clean carpet remnants from behind a carpet store, and only had to buy the carpet glue, some nails, and one blanket to cover the closet.)

What we did to the window is soundproofing. What we did to the walls inside the room isn’t really soundproofing (it’s quiet in the rest of the house, we don’t need soundproofing inside), it’s sound conditioning. That is, it cuts out reverberation, and makes a nice dead-sounding room….Which is nice for recording. You can always add reverb later, but you can’t take it away. You want the purest sound you can get, that gives you more control if you wanna mess with it.

And if you don’t wanna mess with it, it just gives you a good sound.

(Also check out our quick-n-dirty sound treatment of our bedroom with our H2 bedcast setup).

–Michael W. Dean

So…..I have been lusting this piece of studio gear for some time:

I have a lust for rack-mount gear. Every time I see some in a documentary about scientists in their lab, in a sci-fi movie, or any time I’ve been in an actual high-end recording studio, I’ve had to excuse myself to masturbate.

A few months back I bought my first piece, a Furman power conditioner. It helps remove noise from the power in my home studio, but isn’t a signal processor. I still wanted some stuff to sweeten up the sound.

Enter the SM Pro Audio TB202 two-channel rack mount tube preamp / compressor /EQ with phantom power. I finally decided to buy one the other day (they’re only 225 bucks). But EVERY online retailer was back-ordered a month or more. Guess Santa delivered too many and has to have his elves make more. So I went on Craiglist and found one used for $125. We drove up to Santa Barbara (an hour each way), tried it out, and bought it.

When I got it home, it sounded good, but was a little crunchy on my mixer whenever we talked loud. So I ordered a new Tungsol 12AX7 tube for it, only 20 bucks with shipping. That made it sound GREAT!

First, the tube in it was old, but the guy swears he only used the unit on Sundays to record a little old lady in Pasadena at church. I have to wonder though, if that’s true, why is all the red paint worn off the front plate? That usually only happens from finger oils, from touching gear daily for a long time.)

(The guy didn’t seem particularly greasy to me. In fact, he was well groomed, and was a very polite young man.)

But the tube included by the factory is a generic Chinese 12AX7 tube. The Tungsol is a superior name-brand tube, manufactured in Russia.

When I opened the TB202 up, I was surprised to find it only has one tube in it. I think it’s interesting the manual says “hand tested 12AX7 tubes used” and it only has one tube. For two separate channels.

It looks like there’s a space on the circuit board for a second tube, but no socket for it.

I wrote the company and found out that the 12AX7 (the most common tube still being manufactured today) is a STEREO tube, with two-channel capability in one unit. The unit is made with only one tube. And both channels work fine.

Damn cool.

So, I recorded a test without the unit, and then with it. It makes a good difference, warms the voice, makes me sound more like the “voice of god”….creamier, and the compressor function clips the peaks without sounding unnatural. For only $145 bucks outlay (along with a $150 Alesis USB8 mixer/digital converter, and a $225 Rode NT1-A microphone), I have the capacity to do stuff at home that sounds like a high-end radio station. (Well, with all that gear, and my modest amount of voice and engineering talent.)

MP3 TEST IS HERE, with both before and after, back to back. (File is eight megs, 320 k 16-bit stereo MP3). You’ll really hear the difference with headphones, but it’s there on speakers too.

A FEW SUGGESTIONS: ***Use the XLR cables (not 1/4 inch cables) in and out. Will eliminate noticeable noise. Run your mic (or mics) directly into the unit, and then run the unit’s out into your mixer or digital converter. ***If you’re plugging it into a mixer, turn off the phantom power on the mixer, it might fry the TB202. The TB202 has switchable phantom power, so that will power any mics plugged directly into it that need them. ***Turn DOWN the input on your mixer. The TB202 has a pretty powerful preamp in it. ***Don’t use too much compression, it will sound unnatural. Start at about 1/3 total, and experiment. I put the attack and release boost buttons on (pushed in). ***Plug the unit in, turn it on and let it run for 10-30 minutes before recording. The tube has to warm up.

ANYWAY, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND the SM Pro Audio TB202. Order it now, get it new, when they start shipping in a month…then you’ll have the warranty, and also, it will look spiffy.

This unit is so cool, it will extend your lifespan.

–Michael W. Dean

This one’s mine. It’s shorter, and a little more fun. Essay, not multiple choice.  You’re not limited to five answers.

There’s a quote floating around the Interweb, mis-attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler. Wikipedia says the actual author(s) are unknown, but it’s an interesting quote.

Quote basically says that democracies fail after about 200 years (give or take) because the lazy bums in the society vote in people who will allow them to not work. (My father-in-law says at that point they become, at best, socialist, and at worst, dictatorships.)

Here’s the quiz. Do you think it’s true that:
A. Historically,  democracies fail after about 200 years
B. It’s because the lazy bums in the society vote in people who will allow them to not work
C. At that point they become, at best, socialist, and at worst, dictatorships
? ? ?
—–
Here’s the quote:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

 

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

 

From bondage to spiritual faith;

From spiritual faith to great courage;

From courage to liberty;

From liberty to abundance;

From abundance to complacency;

From complacency to apathy;

From apathy to dependence;

From dependence back into bondage.

http://www.politicalcompass.org
This is really good for a “take a test on the Internet” test. I usually hate those, but these questions were really deep, and I really had to think about some of them a bit.

It’s very much along the lines of the thesis of my post on Notes from a curmudgeon / book idea.

Take the test and post your results and comments below.

My results for the Political Compass test were:

Economic Left/Right: -3.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.62

Debra Jean’s was:

Economic Left/Right: -2.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.56

(which basically means we’re both left economically and libertarian socially. But she believes a tiny bit more strongly than I do that “people should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps” and I believe a tiny bit more strongly than her that “many people are idiots and need to be herded strongly away from impinging on the rights of others”.

Test opens with descriptor:

Welcome to The Political Compass

There’s abundant evidence for the need of it. The old one-dimensional categories of ‘right’ and ‘left’, established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today’s complex political landscape. For example, who are the ‘conservatives’ in today’s Russia? Are they the unreconstructed Stalinists, or the reformers who have adopted the right-wing views of conservatives like Margaret Thatcher ?

On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It’s not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political differences between them that the old categories on their own can’t explain. Similarly, we generally describe social reactionaries as ‘right-wingers’, yet that leaves left-wing reactionaries like Robert Mugabe and Pol Pot off the hook. ….