i wrote that post so slowy everything in it was said in the meantime. shit man i need to pick up the pace. i havent read the big one above yet but i hope you didnt cover everything else i mentioned in it too

i thought you meant like something sexual or whatever. i dont know what to expect with you wild europeans

but we do some improv right? we did some improv am i wrong? at some point? it feels like it. sometimes you play songs without introduction and i am doing improvisation, so at least were half-jamming

but i guess jamming means more than just doing improv. it means like rocking out and drum solos and headbanging and shit. we rock out, ok, but i cant do drum solos and if i headbanged id poke my eye out with my stick

http://www.adastra.eclipse.co.uk/hitit.mp3

What's wrong with yan? What's a yan anyway?

whenever i read "Viktor II" i think of this guy

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Bisonalpha.jpg

I thought Sagat was called Viktor

haha, they are definitely not longing for the good old days. That would be insane. On the other hand, there is this story my mother was telling me - my grandfather and grandmother were actually ready to emmigrate, but they asked my mom annd aunt ( they were like teenagers) if they agree and my mom said no. So they stayed. It's really hard to decide how soon you get an idea there's something wrong.
I mean if I look back at the celebrations of May 1 - the celebration of working day, (and it was tied together with celebrations of Red Army 'bringing us freedom' - we all had to go and participate in the parades going through the biggest avenue in the town (kinda like St. patrick or Santa Claus parades in Toronto, you're just waving with the Soviet flags and scream 'long live the friendship of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet union' or ' we thank to our liberators' and such) and in the city center there was atribune with all the fat cats from the Communist party, who were waving back to us. Your participation was checked and it was too bad for you if you didn't show up, since this was a sign you might be sympathising with Western capitalists. But hey if you you're 6-9 years old, it's actually a big fun to take a part in that, as there's a lot of going on, school is called off and everyone's there, so what?

Do you actually know we're the biggest cottage nation in the world? We have no competition in the ratio of second homes to the size of population. Cottage Country in Ontario is nothing in comparison with what's going on over there. The reason for that is that there was a plenty of abandoned objects after Germans were ordered to leave in border regions after WWII, and it provided a great escape for most of the population - they call it 'inner emmigration'. They didn't leave the country, they just retreated for weekend to their cottage and that's where 'the life' was at. Government was actually aware of that and was supporting it, as it provided this possibility for people to realize themselves in non-harmful way to the communism system.

But it's fair to say the cottage phenomenon is going strong even by now.

haha, if this is the case, we're everything else but jamming ensemble.

I negrepped you for that. it's when he doesn't seem to get my name right

I blame Mr Bass

i honestly never head this term wang before. what would wanging look like? when i think of it i think of the sound it makes maybe, like wAANNGGG but really vibrato and hokey

i cant do it backwards either. its usually just kind of intuitive and ad hoc. you just have something and from that you decide what it needs. then you have that and from that you decide what that needs, or if it needs, and so on, but youre deciding on what it needs by making yourself aware about the, like i said, net experience, what everything so far, all the elements, add up to create. you can then see that it needs a little pinch here and twist there. otherwise you just kind of get lost in one idea, like making something sound "good" in itself, and the whole song suffers because of it. all i know is that whenever i try and imagine an exact finished product first and then try and realize it i always encounter failure. so ive kind of adopted the exact opposite approach where i just try and facilitate as much spontaneity and boundlessness as possilbe, just letting myself experiment freely. im always anxious about ceding that kind of control but its just because of the knowledge that results brought about organically or without exact planning are basically always better than some result that is exactly contrived and holy fuck i am probably repeating word for word what i said before in the emails... okay this topic is about as covered as we can make it. i declare it complete! 1/60230



and how did you meet these people? was your relationship to them always within that musical context or were you like friends for a long time? im just curious to know if the band kind of trampled all over that kind of stuff too. its interesting
i certainly like your approach more. i dont like this idea of something like fame fitting into the equation at that point. it is about just being good. for a lot of bands, evidently, its just about being mediocre and having good connections or working really hard on PR or shit like that, but thats really ugly and i could never sign on to something like that
and in a way i kind of relate. with the being asked to put forward money nonstop and to just acquire the hallmarks of good music without actually focusing on making that good music instead. its an easy trap to get caught in. from their perspective i mean, the perspective of the person buying all that shit and doing it as some kind of substitute for actual genuine progress. i totally get it


thats a shame. but you are still keeping up with it by yourself right? like do you ever plan on making sometthing serious?
i havent heard that jam, no. it does sound vaguely familiar, like weve talked about it or something like that. yousend that motherfucker
no i dont sing at all, i was just joking. im incredibly awful actually. i cant even like hum something correctly

its interesting that you mom decided things like that, at such an age. a really turning point event. for all you know she couldve immigrated to canada and you and i couldve been neighbours, jan. its all your mothers fault!

what if you were sympathizing with the western capitalists? what would happen to you? i thought the later decades were relatively benign, especially the further west you went. benign as in, you know, no show trials and shipment to the gulags and whatever. but thats awesome that you experienced all of those things. maybe awesome isnt the word, but its something. i saw photos of the parades that happened in the ukraine (is it "THE ukraine" or just "ukraine") in the same period and it was really, really absurd and felliniesque, i thought. the whole soviet union was felliniesque. the nazis were too. fuck so were the fascists. chuchill was also straight out of a fellini film. hell, who of these leaders werent? politics is just so hopelessly intertwined with gaudy showmanship and the grotesque. its no wonder political cartoonists have so much ammunition. its all so fantastical and perverse

haha realize themselves in a nice, safe way. thats great. but do people from surrounding nations also cottage there? i assume everyone cottaged in slovakia back in the czechoslovakia days, right? czech is really urbanized? not onyl relative to slovakia, i remeber what you said before, but just in general. slovakia seems like good cottage country. italy seems like the best cottage country. a tuscan villa mops the floor with some bohemian hut!

ive been checking this shit out and, i dont know about anyone else, but it really takes me back to the good old days.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...on-alpha31.jpg

this one is so charming
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../1d/Balrog.jpg

absolutely brilliant
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../52/Birdie.JPG


oh this sends me back
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...-capcomfix.jpg


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Rolento_FF.jpg

and i dont remember any of this motherfuckers. i think theyre from the more recent incarnations of SF, i dontknow


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...px-FF_Cody.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...x-SF3_Hugo.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...1/Sodom_SF.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...0px-Oro_SF.jpg

This was from the US artwork, right? I hated those

Yeah I guess it's onomatopoeic, or mimetic or whatever. You go WANG and it bounces around, not really vibrato exactly, more of a long shockwave or something. Actually I might need to explain something I just remembered - I started using 10 gauge strings on my guitar, but the tension was too high and the bridge ended up being lifted from the guitar body. So I took it to the local guitar shop and the guy put an extra spring in there for me. That kept the bridge in place, but it made the trem incredibly taut, so to actually bend it I need to put a *lot* of pressure on the bar. I have to physically push it into my body with the heel of my hand - I can do little shimmery vibrato things if I use my whole arm, but I usually bend chords and things with my fingers anyway.

But it means that I can get really physical with the guitar anyway, and lift it into the air by the trem bar and bounce the whole thing up and down, and really push into it, stuff like that. I guess that's where the wang comes from. It's good for noises

I see that other topic is complete!

Actually I met the singer guitarist dude through one of my friends - it was at some kind of party thing and he was incredibly excited to find out that someone else liked the Pumpkins (everyone else was into 'indie' music which isn't what it is now, here it means (or meant) Oasis, Cast, Shed Seven and a whole bunch of other bands you shouldn't bother finding out about). So we kinda hit it off from there, and decided to try playing together. This girl was going to play bass but she went to Australia, so singer dude's brother hopped on board, and they knew this drummer who was apparently a world-touring jazz drummer but actually wasn't (there were all kinds of magical stories in that band). As for the friends thing, the guy said that he wanted us to be 'a band first, and friends second' - all business right? He'd been in another band of friends who just goofed off so that's where he was coming from, but still I think there needs to be a balance there.

And as for fame, I mean all these bands that suddenly 'make it', 99.9999999% of them have been 'making it' for years before they get signed. It's not like A&R guys make a habit of hang out in dives watching bands' first ever shows - they sign established bands with a fanbase, people they know they can use to make money. I remember I was getting into The Dismemberment Plan at the time, and brought him a couple of CDs to listen to - a while later he was saying 'I don't want to be like them, I want to be successful' and when I pointed out they were successful, they had 4 albums or something and were able to play and sell music worldwide, he said he'd looked at their website and read that the big news was that they'd just been able to buy a new van. As though 'success' is marked by the number of customized tourbuses you own or something. I don't think he was very pragmatic in his outlook. And you're dead on about the 'buying stuff instead of creating stuff' thing, that's exactly how I saw it. Don't get me wrong, he catalysed or wrote most of the stuff for the band (as in, brought in initial ideas or full concepts or whatever) but it was bizarre - he bought an EH Memory Man, declared it the best thing ever. About a month later he had a Line 6 delay, and never touched the MM again. Stuff was there but not really used. I had a crappy multifx but I made good use of what I could do with it.

I play some stuff, but not electric as much these days. I need a decent amp to be honest, my practice one's rubbish and it's not exactly inspiring to play. I kinda go in and out of these things. I'm still crap though. People could say 'play something!' and I'd be all 'uh...' And don't worry, I can't sing either. We could have a band with conspicuously bad vocals.

this is like a secret thread

Semi-on topic, the Ukraine final numbers are in

But check this out - Yanukovich is pretty adamant the coalition should involve him
How responsible! But:

That 'all the issues that divide Ukraine' bit sounds really suspicious. If you tot up all the Orange party votes they obviously come out with the majority, but maybe he thinks he can represent that on his own, and that he needs to side with Yanukovich to form a party that can represent the entire country - even though everyone's expressing doubts that he'd actually wield any power in that kind of coalition. Sounds like either his pride's getting the better of him, or he's going back on his former ideals

yeah im a freak for bending and everything. with my fingers, sure, but mainly the neck of the guitar. i have this wicked, relatively tiny, guitar (duo sonic) that is pretty rickety and i can use the neck, which is like rubber, as a whole nother element in the music.
but it sounds like you should just get a longer whammy bar. unless you like it with such a high threshold as it has, which i could imagine being the case. longer it is the more of a lever itll be and the lighter youd have to press, i guess. id be worried about putting so much pressure on it. id always be afraid of it just snapping right off and flying in my face. i still kind of freak out when im tightening new strings and the high E gives some of those creaks and cracks. i always imagine just getting it right in the eye

i really do think it is effectively complete. thats a weird thing to believe, but we just agree and are basically finding new ways of expressing the same core idea. its not totally useless, as were getting a big more shading on the idea because of it, but its essentially done

guy sounds kind of flaky and opportunistic, if you dont mind my saying so. i just got that impression from your story. a real airhead careerist. i find those kinds of people to be utterly impossible to place any trust in

what do you qualify as 'making it' though? like just being on mtv or something? on that level? i mean obviously these preconstructed pop (or pop-rock now) bands kind of skew the whole thing, but i thought a lot of these non-constructed guys were just flukes or whatever. like do you know after one band breaks out with a new (for the sake of argument) style and then all of a sudden, magically, a million other bands pop up with a similar style? i thought that those imitators were kind of picked off from the farm league equivalent of the music industry, which are all those hard working, basically generic, but only locally successful bands that you were kind of talking about (sans the generic), who get pushed into conforming to a certain new style. i have a friend who interns at some music studios here and he can easily tell you how utterly insincere and cynical everyone, from the producers to the musicians, is. he has stories of even the most ingenuous appearing of indie bands (death from above, for isntance, who are perhaps a bad example because they dont even have the appearance of sincerity) ruthlessly and blatantly jacking whatever is going on out there. i find it hard to take anyone seriously

i guess i would have to know what you mean specifically with 'making it', but to me ive always believed, naively maybe, that the strength of the music is what everythign centres around, and that that music, if its good enough, can carry everything else. from that perspective, thats all i ever try and focus on. not necessarily with music, but its just a principle to follow. let your creation do the selling. i think i already have this selling-itself thing going in the last email, nevermind

i just think that having the prospect of fame in mind is counterproductive when it comes to actually making the music that will get you that fame. to me it seems like the opposite is more true. just focusing on the music and on making it as good as possible is the first, requisite step. thereafter other things can justly follow. the more you are detached from the consequences of your creation (will this sell or wont it? will my friends/scene like it?) the more freedom you have to really create something honest and complete, and therefore, hopefully, the more good itll be. people just want to cut every corner they can. its hard to blame them when theres such a big prize (fame, money, girls) dangling in front of their face every time they turn on a tv or something, but i dont even think they know what they want, let alone how to get there

i too hate those moments when somebody says "play something." in asking that theyre putting you in an entirely impossible situation. suicide is the only way out at that point, to speak from experience


i too am worried about yushchenko. he really seems like he'd forsake those "orange" ideals, if he ever even truly believed in them, at the drop of a hat if it means wielding more power. the ego on this guy is undeniably large and that was clearly evidenced in the whole break with tymoshenko. the prospect of playing second fiddle, let alone swallowing his pride and playing that second fiddle to someone he smugly booted out months ago, probably seems unbearably repugnant to him. this is a dangerous mood to be in and im not so sure he'll make the right choice. right now he really has the personal choice between pretty much no real power with an ex-ally, or probably more power or a greater stature with an enemy. he and tymoshenko differ on some significant policies and i can imagine viktor II sweetening the deal by making some room for his platform, or just otherwise doing anything he can to draw in yushchenko, which would necessarily ******* some food for his ego. viktor has no choice but to win over yushchenko, so he has nothing to lose and will, i imagine, go far in his efforts to achieve that. im very skeptical about all of these figures right now.

this was interesting:

but he does kind of have a point when he talks about governing the whole nation and not just half of it. the east really is overwhelmingly pro russian and i think whomever governs has to incorporate their interests somehow. ignoring them will just ferment all kinds of problems

Heh, the guy at the guitar shop had a Duo Sonic - it was a wreck. He showed it to me and said that it was his favorite guitar, like appearances were deceptive and to give it a try. It really was so nice to play too - smooth, and really really light too. I bend the neck sometimes as well, but I'm wary of screwing things up so I try not to do it too much or too hard. And dammit, I wasn't worried about the thing snapping until you mentioned it! Nah it's fine as it is - I'm used to the way it is and a longer bar would be too unwieldy anyway I think. Besides, even if it's easier to press you're still applying the same amount of torque, so it's just as likely to go off and kill everyone in the room

I wouldn't call him flaky and opportunistic, I honestly think he had an idea of exactly where he wanted to be, without compromising, but at the same time he lacked confidence in himself or the band. He kept saying we had shows coming up or that we'd contacted venue X or whatever when that wasn't the case - he honestly wanted us to be really big really quickly, I think just so there'd be this great story behind the band or something. 'Oh yeah, we were supporting so-and-so on our 4th show.' He just had a tendency to throw money at things in the hope it would create something great, whereas I just wanted to play more and have it come naturally. Like he wanted us to buy in-ear radio monitors. I just wanted to play, like a bunch of people picking up instruments and making music - sure there can be a logistical need for something like that when you're playing massive venues, but... I'm sure you get what I mean. We disagreed on other things too - like one time the bassist taught us a song he'd written, and it was really fun - a totally different way of doing things. He had my guitar, I had the bass, he'd teach us all parts and then we'd try it, then learn the next bit and so on. It went really well, and he was singing from the beginning. The real singer guy later said he didn't want to play it live since he didn't want people 'to be confused about what the band is' - like who was the singer, who was the bassist and so on. I like the idea of bands being a bunch of people making music together, swapping instruments if they like and just doing whatever it takes to produce it. More organic

With 'making it', I guess the general opinion is somewhere around getting recognition in more traditional media, like national music magazines or yeah, a video on MTV or whatever. It's obviously a personal thing and depends on your own goals, but I think most people would say it's when you get up enough momentum to potentially make a living playing music. But you'll see say MTV start talking about a 'new' band as the next big thing when in reality they've been together for years, writing material and slowly building up a fanbase through hard work and their own touring. They suddenly get more mainstream recognition but it's not out of the blue. But you're right about the 'sound of the moment' changing and other bands getting picked up on the basis of that. I think it depends on the mood, so a lot of them are picked for marketability and even put together from nothing (or other bands), but I know a lot of bands are signed and then made to fit this new sound - like the label will tell them to write a certain way, their producer will be chosen to make it sound a certain way, stuff like that. I just realized you basically said that, but yeah. It's a bizarre world, especially if you think about the way these people work with their deal memos and crap. But Green Day are a pretty good example actually - massively successful before they signed to a major, they go and 'sell out' but are able to make $$$$$$$$$$ doing it because they were actually in a good position to take that step and reap benefits from it. Most people who 'make it' by getting signed to a major end up worse off than if they hadn't 'made it' and put music out on an independent. That's why the whole thing seemed stupid to me.

And you're right, totally. If you want to make money in music become a session musician, or a producer or an engineer or something. If you want to make music then it's a pretty self-destructive attitude to have if you're only aiming for some kind of pedestal. I mean you can try and make music that will make you popular, but that changes so much how can you know what to aim for? It should be something you get something out of first, and hopefully people will click with that.

The best bit is 'can you play (song)?' "No" 'How about this one?' "Uh" It would be nice to be able to, but hell I just don't have the ear for it


Back in the U-U-Ukraine, I'm not sure if you're right about the balance of power in these coalitions (you asked for it, let's argue motherfucker!). I don't know if he'd have no real power with Tymoshenko, but I honestly can't see him having *more* power with Viktor - they're too diametrically opposed, and just in terms of numbers he'd have a better ratio of seats if he joined up with Tymoshenko. There may be animosity there but they are still coming from the same place idealogically, as far as I can tell, so at least they'll be working in the same direction. It's a nice idea that he could join with Viktor and cover the interests of the entire nation, but it's a dichotomy in so many important areas that I can't imagine too many good compromises being made. Pro-west or pro-Russia? Is there going to be a middle ground? Viktor has so much more power in the parliament and he's reportedly much more of a hardass (hell he rigged an election to get his way) that I really cannot see him giving way. Yuschenko will probably be given some ground on bullshit, unimportant issues and left to suck it up

I mean I'm assuming that he doesn't have any illusions about this kind of thing which makes it all the more bizarre, like he really is letting his pride get in the way of his judgement. I'm sure it's a little more complex than this and he'll have to be kept sweet to stop any coalition from dissolving, but I really can't see how Viktor looks like a better deal to him. Maybe he's holding out to see what he can get from this - he's the weakest of the three players but right now, he's the one with the power

yeah mine too is demolished. i just like how small it is. thats important to me. for example, have you ever played a gibson SG before? the neck on that thing is like a mile long and i cant understand why that would be enjoyable. my hands arent tiny, if thats what youre thinkig, i just like having things more compact.

alright fine, i have elf hands

in ear monitors? useful, surely, but thats really extreme. even if you guys had the money for stuff like that it would be hard to feel it justified. even if you made it or were rich or whatever itd still probably feel silly buying things whose desire to have comes after some kind of conscious decision that a band should have it, not the other way around. if you see what im saying. like instead of playing some shows, having recurring problems with the monitors, and then deciding that it would be worthwhile to have in ear monitors, its like "bands" should have x so therefore lets buy it. again, its useful, like im sure all kinds of stuff would have been, but that isnt really the question. it almost seems like he was trying to get as many financial investments from you guys as possible so that youre, you know, locked in. theres much more of a barrier to leaving and much more incentive to make the project actually go somewhere far and fast if youve already invested so much into it. you might as well have made the guy pregnant
so how much did you actually end up putting into this in terms of money? you mention being asked a lot for stuff but what actually came of it? what happened to things mutually bought when you split?
that story with the bassist is pretty revealing. that he really has that predefined end in mind at all times and is super image conscious


i of course recognize and agree that bands dont really come out of nowhere and are usually built by touring or whatever, but i also think that a band can get by (make it, win attention, whatever) sheerly on the strength of its recorded music alone
you misread or i misspoke or something. i mean, its true that you face better odds becoming a session player or engineer but i didnt mean that. i just meant just that mixing those two worlds (money and art) is usually hard to do without compromising the latter, so its better to just psychologically separate them, in an effort to both make good art and make money, because thats (i hope) what good art can do
yeah and by the time you end up copying whatever is big its practically already too late. these people are so hopelessly stupid. if youre into playing this game, the whole challenge, it seems, has always been to connect with the present and make something that is relevant to or reflective of it. but, you know, that present changes, so these people who just copy the products of that plugging in are doing it from a different time, so to speak. it can still be enjoyable or well done but its not in the same league as something that is truly and sensationally new

i was arguing all of that under the premise that yushchenko is driven first and foremost by ego and stature and pride, or by any other petty personal things, which is just the general image i get of this guy. i mean the fact that his party and viktor II's stand for a largely opposite set of principles can, it seems, quickly be lessened in importance if the will is there. it would be easy, as mentioned above, to sell it all off as a "national unity" kind of government where both sides, east and west, russian and ukrainian speaking and oriented, are represented (in the realm of foreign policy, as you pointed out, this would obviously be different). and the ideological differences between tymoshenkos and yushchenkos parties are of course smaller, but still quite significant in their own right. ive been reading about how, during the split up, a lot of bridges were burned not only between the two leaders but a variety of individual cabinet ministers and other personnel. so some kind of major concession is innevitable and, with this whole additional personal element with the two parties, and yushchenkos apparent pride, im nervous that the right choice wont be made. i just dont really believe in yushchenko or think hes too scrupulous a guy at all. under the premise that he has even the slightest decorum of honesty and fairness hed surely join with tymoshenko, but he hasnt really, since the elections, demonstrated too much of that. he made some empty words about orange this and orange that before but this is all tempered by other things he said and did. in the end i do indeed expect him to join her, just to be clear, but his pride and ego seem to just be stupidly large impediments to that end and my confidence in it working out is less that it reasonably should be

while were kind of on the topic, im thinking about buying this watch:

http://www.bestbuyclub168.com/a2lceo...h/SCG107-2.jpg

thoughts? i think its pretty cool
perhaps too hipster, i admit

you mean this specific model or Swatch in general? I used to have Swatch. But this specific design is kinda gay. I wouldn't play with you if you're drumming with this on your hand. We're making music for poor lost people. Image is everything.