fixie back from the shop

Picked up the bike tonight. Looks good and rides nice. It will take awhile getting used to fixed gear. I scraped the toe basket when making a really tight turn, and I never realized how much I rely on freewheel on a regular bike. I think I'm gonna let the paint set up a little more before throwing it on the bus.

The squirrels in Land Park say

Future Spokes(wo)men

Took my 4 year old girl, Ethne, to the park today to "ride bikes" for the first time. We have a sweet hand-me-down bike from a co-worker with training wheels and we cruised the sidewalks for a good 1/2 hour. At first she had trouble with the coaster-break concept...and watching the road instead of her feet. After she got the hang of it she had a blast and pretty soon I was almost jogging to keep up with her. She had a couple slow-motion spills onto the grass but she got right back on.

I don't remember training wheels really. I think I went straight from a big wheel to standard bike. But it was cool to see her digging it.

No actual photos of the occasion, just this picture of Ethne's dream bike. The Hello Kitty Mach III.

Spokesmen vs. Watchmen

Burns double dog dared any of us to watch the Watchmen and actually like it. Sorry, but I saw it last night and enjoyed it. Give it a 8 out 10, very entertaining. Only thing I didn't care for was the set design for the "fortress of solitude" face off at the end. Favorite character was Rorschach... "you don't get it do you? I'm not locked up with all of you, you're all locked up in here with Me!"

Fight Nerds

• The first rule of Fight Nerds is that you can sometimes talk about Fight Nerds
• The second rule of Fight Nerds is that you only fight on even years

Please feel free to refresh us on the rest of the rules...

watership down on the water

watch

'on the water'

walkmen video

and weep

Notice:

Temple does not have food.

Fixify

I'm upgrading the free bike I've been commuting on to fixie. A friend of mine told me about a cool bike shop in Stockton where they customize fixies and cruisers on the cheap called Port City Cyclery. I checked em out last week and they seemed pretty down to earth, thought the bike was a decent candidate (old Raleigh). So I left my bike there and in a week or so I should have a new wheel set, cog, and paintjob. Apparently my cranks are short enough so I'm good there. They didn't try to sell me anything except for the bare minimum I would need to change it fixed gear. The front gears are bolt together so they're just going to take off the small ring. Brakes will stay too. Color will be a gray green with white forks.

I'll start out fixed and see how I like it. The wheel is fixed-free changeable but I haven't bought the freewheel cog yet.

Now I just need some man-capri's and loafers.

!esreveR

Bill,

This is the pedal I was telling you about with the reverse reverb function.

Bring me the wah of Bill Anders!

Bill, this is your reminder to bring your pedal to work.
I believe I will be receiving a shipment tomorrow with the correct item.

L.I.B. - Dreams Never End

Hot new offerings from Left Inside Breaks for Spokesman IV!
Click on the image for the download:



Matt just showed me how to hook up this link on the blog: 1 hour into it and I'm still mildly entertained.

I went into this song thinking I would take a different course than the last few covers and maybe change themes...maybe something clean and simple. That turned out to be harder than I thought. So I compromised and used no reverb...at least at first, and a simple drum machine loop (more bossa nova than pop unfortunately).

The concept was to make the vocals stand out but keep lyrics somewhat unrecognizable. And I've been wanting to try to hook the mic up to a delay guitar pedal and see if I could sound like Lux Interior from the Cramps. For the guitars, I was heavily influenced by a mix CD that burns gave me and a band called "the grass widow" and their straightforward driving style. The bass was going to carry the melody between verses so I cranked it higher than usual. Turns out I distorted it unintentionally, which was better than what I had planned i think. The squeaky guitar peeps in-between are a half-baked idea that might've improved with a few more tries, but that's all the time I had. All in all it still seems to count as a left inside breaks song.


The image is my pop's el camino. No real backstory there.

Sorry ladies, he's off the market.

Dreams Never Get Finished

Here's my submittal for Spokesmen Cover Song IV: Dreams Never End (original by New Order).

We got together at Bill's place this evening for a listening party, which only halfway materialized. However, the food, beverages, and company more than made up for the dearth of completed covers. Many thanks to Bill and Joanne, Ethne and Sophie for their hospitality!

Doctored photos of the event may be posted at a later date, once we have songs from Brian and Jason.

Anyhow, click the cover art for the download, and read below if you want an entirely uninteresting description of process, etc.



The band name "Freedom Club" derives from the cover picture, which I found linked on a design blog I frequent. So far the only person to correctly identify the (in)famous structure in the picture without prompting is Wes.

This was probably my sixth or seventh attempt at figuring out just what the hell to do to cover the song. If you're familiar with the original, it is almost two songs in one; a super long intro that eventually segues into the main verse/chorus part. Every time I had something in mind for the intro, I would get stumped at how to make the transition and eventually complete the second. There are some real mutants on the computer here, versions with everything played backwards and then reversed, really speedy Unrest-y versions, an intro that sounds like a (hamfisted) outtake from Long Division, and more, which will be seeing the business end of a delete key when I start running out of drive space.

A simple, slow approach ended up working best for this one, and I severely reduced the instrumentation from what I had originally intended. The main thing you hear throughout is easily one of my favorite instruments, and best thrift store scores: the Wurlitzer Electric Piano (Model 200; shown here with the cover off so I could clean it up a bit).



Found this thing at Funky Furnishings when it was still on Broadway for an insanely low price. One of these days I'm going to rig up a sustain pedal out of old hi-hat pieces. It has been on pretty much every piece of vinyl put out by that other band I play with, and when we had to downsize practice spaces, the Wurli came home with me. The electronics are really crackly, and so it took a good deal of judicious editing to get a track that wasn't static laden. You can still hear a few pops in the song that just couldn't be removed.

The bridge and then the balance of the song is a single track of guitar, and there's a bass that plays not one, but TWO notes. The over-reverbed tambourine was supposed to serve as the base for more percussion to come, but I ended up not wanting to busy the song up too much. And that's pretty much all that is one there. Thank god Hooky only sings about 3 notes in this song, so I didn't have to do 12 vocal tracks to mask my deficiency in that department.

OK, this is a boring read.
Off to my beverage!