Shock/Neff in Huntington WV - DAY 3

Rolled out of Crayola House pretty nice and early and started the drive into West Virginia, where I’ve never played before. Short stop at a Waffle House and into the mountains.

So, some more info about this tour van. Lance bought it a while ago for $900, put some new wheels on, got some other new parts, but there are still a few things that are a work in progress. For one, the gas gauge doesn’t work, so we’ve been doing some math to figure the mileage and trying to play it safe with fillups. Much figuring has gone into how much gas will be consumed, how much it will cost, and if there’s any chance of breaking even on the trip.

About 30 miles from our destination of Huntington WV, the engine suddenly starts sounding really weird. Just really erratic. Slowing down, we make a quick decision to pull into the rest area that’s right there instead of trying to get the extra mile to an exit. The engine sounds like it’s hopping around, sputtering and acting crazy. Then it dies out. Lance starts it again and while idling we open the hood and the engine is actually, physically jumping around erratically. Lance and I just look at each other and decide that is NOT RIGHT. Neither of us is an expert, but it seems something is seriously wrong. After a minute of this, the engine can be started but sputters out each time after a few seconds. It’s not going anywhere.

Lance calls Zack Kouns, who set up that night’s show and lives roughly in the area. We may need a rescue and a tow and then who knows. At this point I develop a theory. Maybe there’s something wrong with the engine, but MAYBE the reason it won’t run is that we’re out of gas! Lance is leaning toward the theory that the engine is totally fragged, but after thinking about how hard the van was working going up all those steep hills, we agree that it’s possible it’s out of gas. Zack says he can meet us in 2 hours. We can see a gas station just down the highway at that next exit and estimate it would take an hour to walk and return with gas, so we decide to do that.

I wrap a neon yellow shirt over my shoulders (for visibility) and we head down the highway, making contingency plans as we go. What to do if the van is dead: rent a U-Haul straight back to Philly or try to rent a van to complete the tour? If the van needs repairs but they’re expensive: abandon it or cough up the money? Meanwhile a few cars yell something at us out the windows, and I’m not sure what but I think one of them said “WEIRD!” Anyway, the lady at the gas station was friendly, we filled our gas can and hiked it back.

Moment of truth, gas goes in, and after a few tries the van starts running! Open that hood and the engine is purring and looking happy as can be. Just out of gas! No engine troubles at all! Best case scenario.

Call Zack with the good news and roll to the venue, Funky Towne, which is a house that holds lots of shows. They’re the one with the rainbow flag, and inside despite being a carpeted house-house, it’s partly set up to be like an art/community/liberal-anarcho-commune center with gender politics zines and a book & clothing swap near the door. Brandon, the soundman/resident explains that they’ve been doing lots and lots of shows and the scene has been pretty good. Apparently Huntington is a strangely DIY show friendly place, and even gives out noise permits to punk houses! There’s a flyer for my friends’ band Curse on the door. He also helps set up their totally pro P.A. – also odd for a house show. West Virginia is feeling really friendly.

Show time, I play first. Third show of tour is when things start to gel. I’ve debugged the issues with 3 pieces of gear, and put in a pretty good show I think. There aren’t too many people out, and we’re told there’s some competition from some kind of football event and I think another show? Always odd to me when sports are considered competition for a punk/noise show, but I guess even weirds love sports. Zack Kouns plays second, and does a KILLER set. I’ve only seen him do more abstract vocals and sax sets, but this one has electronics and songs. His cover of PJ Harvey’s “To Bring You My Love” was amazing! Dick Neff goes last and everyone is impressed.

Some resident of Funky Towne even baked a small pizza for us! I don’t even know who and didn’t get to thank them, but it was delicious. Thanks! People were still hanging and chatting, but I was still pretty tired so climbed into my sleeping bag on the couch and the resident cat, Prancy, promptly settled on my chest to sleep. Survived my first tour breakdown/not-really-a-breakdown.

END DAY THREE

Shock/Neff tour diary DAY TWO Harrisonburg VA

Friday, first day of REAL tour, is still a work day for me see, but I figure since it’s my last day ever I can have some leeway and spend the second half of the day working from the van passenger seat via 3G-wi-fi hookup. Noontime departure, takes longer than planned, some stops to deposit a final check that arrived by FedEx that morning, get gas, try to make this boombox work. The van has only AM radio and a busted speaker, which sounds pretty gnarly and cool actually (sounds kind of like Newton). Boombox won’t run on batteries and the van’s cigarette lighter power won’t work. No tunes!

On the drive to Harrisonburg, VA I’m trying to do some more work, send some files, update things. Lance’s van, known as the Crimson Juggernaut (and some other names) is huge. A Ford Econoline extended cab, there’s space for another whole rock band, even with all our stuff, including the Dick Neff drum kit and a couple big amps. It’s also pretty old and loud, and I find that the hot air blowing out of gaps around the engine is circulating and distributing a layer of rust grit on me. When we stop at a gas station with a shop vac, I’ll try to clear some of that out.

A combination of late start and several traffic slowdowns conspire to make us arrive in Harrisonburg pretty late. The show was set up by Billy of Buck Gooter, who are a pretty weird band. That’s what everyone says about them, and I guess it varies person to person whether that’s a compliment or an insult, but being a weird band is a good thing in my mind.

It’s a house show at a place called Crayola House and we pull up about 9:40. First familiar face inside the door is Terry Turtle, the elder member of Buck Gooter. He tells us that the show has been moved! We talk to some of the Crayola residents and Billy, and find out that the concept is that another house nearby was having a party and they have a fire pit, so the show is going to be held there. Billy seems a little bummed and opposed to the idea, but the Crayolites have the final word so we help Buck Gooter load their gear back into their van and head to this other house. Once there, all is really quiet and Lance, Billy, Terry and I all kind of try to peer in the windows and get some idea if we have the address right. It’s about 10:30 now.

Eventually some familiar people show up and it’s the place and lead us down to the basement. Despite the weird beginnings and late start, when each of us plays a little crowd of people come down to watch, so things turn out pretty good. The new Dick Neff sounds and songs are great! Radio Shock plays second, pretty much the same set as last night in Brooklyn, but with everything working a little better. Billy Gooter complains that I just played 3 songs, but each one has an improv intro and/or outro, so it’s really like 6 songs. Buck Gooter plays last, doing their heavy industrial protest rock thing.

We get some money, way more than expected from a house party donations scenario (I guess there were a couple of generous donators) and ride back to the Crayola House to sleep. Couch and pull-out sofa bed. My first good night of sleep in a week. END DAY TWO!

Shock/Neff TOUR DIARY: pre-tour day 1

Tour diary time. I know I started a recap of my west coast tour and didn’t get far into it, but now I’m launching into a realish-time account of this little trip to the Midwest and back. This time Radio Shock is travelling with Dick Neff, so since we’re splitting drive time, I’ve got some writing time.

Unofficial night one of tour was a show at Death by Audio in Brooklyn, a place that feels pretty much like home, since I’m there about once or twice a week on average. Life is pretty weird now. But that’s good. It just turned fall and I had this week tripped planned and a break planned from this real job. Then the company writing me checks decided to reorganize, please make new versions of all our website, logo, promo materials, etc. in time for this big event in a couple weeks – oh, and by the way when you’re done with that, you’re fired.

Seems like a pretty dumb way to go about things, but hey I’m not a corporate decision-maker. Just a coincidence this synchronized with start of a tour, but it’s made the last week crazy. Little sleep, didn’t even have time to practice or decide what I’ll be playing, barely got a handful of T-shirts made, and a show the night  before packing and getting out of Brooklyn.

The Death by Audio show was GREAT. Set up by Weasel Walter and featuring mostly bands that are amazing and famous-in-my-mind. I played promptly at 9 (:07) and still at the end of the short set there was a full room. Not packed, but enough people that I couldn’t see the far wall, which is where my standard for a “good crowd” is at. It was definitely a no-practice show, lots of punching buttons randomly, that device just makes a buzzing noise so can't play that song, let’s see how this song goes... but admittedly that’s kind of how it works even when I am really in practice.

Greg Fox and G. Lucas Crane Duo set was crazy and fun. Lance/Dick Neff commented that they should call this collab Fox and Crane, since that sounds like a kung fu movie. Lucas did his super-garbled/scrambled tape loops (plus extras) thing, and Greg did super-fast but loose as needed drums. The styles merged really well.

Xaddax are killer, Nick Sakes of Dazzling Killmen fame and Chryssie of My Name is Rar-Rar fame (-in-my-mind). Hard mathy punk/noise rock. Cellular Chaos, which is the noise-glam band where Weasel plays guitar. It was the last show for them with their current bassist Ceci, so maybe some of the crowd came out to see her off. And up last was Microwaves from Pittsburgh, legendary dudes who are super-skilled and play hard.

Actually, everyone else on the bill was a skilled musician, which is still a little intimidating to me. I don’t even know any chords. But aesthetically, all the bands were kind of on the same page, so it was cool.

There was a really cool contingent of kids at the show who were visiting from South Australia! (I forget the town name) and they were dancing for every band, which is AWESOME. They told me about how Lightning Bolt played in their town and it was the best thing ever and they were going to see Lightning Bolt play the All Tomorrow’s Parties fest later that week. I am SO glad they found our show. It totally made everything that much more awesome. They told me to check out a band called McDonald Duck Éclair, which I can just tell is killer from the name alone.

Lance/Dick Neff showed up for Microwaves’ last song in his enormous van, which is our tour vehicle: The Crimson Juggernaut. Dick Neff wasn’t playing because I just got myself added as the one-too-many-bands late addition myself.  We went back to sleep at my apartment, me for just a few hours, doing more work for my ex-job (why?) into the night and starting the next morning!

END DAY ONE.

Stay tuned for further adventures in which we find out where the Harrisonburg show was moved to and why, and whether Lance's tour van is totally busted or just out of gas! TO BE CONTINUED...

Radio Shock west coast adventures PART 1

...wherein I recount the events of the Radio Shock west coast tour as well as I can remember them. Forewarning: I may include menial details. I had never toured the west coast before and was determined to hit all the major cities inside one week (to keep on good terms with my employers in NYC) and I accomplished something like that. I had toured TO the west coast before, but only played in San Francisco and Oakland. This was a proper west coast tour. That's me, above, with my rental car, midway through one of the epic drives.

TO START, early morning flight on Saturday April 14th, which means I spend all night packing and don't sleep. Off to a great start, right? Layover in Salt Lake City I think and I land in Oakland, CA around noonish. My luggage made it intact. Yes, I actually flew with my Peavey Rage158 amp. I considered buying a guitar amp (and returning it or reselling it) when I got to California but found there was absolutely no way I could get away with one checked bag under 50 pounds anyway, so I went with 2 checked bags and just brought everything I'd need. Almost.

Car rental people tried to make me take a VAN, but after stalling and objecting for a while, I got lucky and someone pulled in returning a small car. First stop: Wal-Mart! Actually, that was kind of a dumb move, but I had to get a few things and knew they'd have everything. I live in Brooklyn, where stores are small, lean, and shoppers and cashiers are swift and efficient. Adjusting to giant Americans pushing giant shopping carts through a giant store at brontosaurus pace is painful. I got bread, peanut butter, bananas, trail mix, batteries, replacement prepaid cell phone, and - remembering past frigid tour experiences - an inexpensive fleece sleeping bag/blanket thing.

On to the first show in Davis, CA, a smallish city next to Sacramento and east of Oakland a short ways. From what I saw, Davis seems like an incredibly quaint college town and the area the show was at is like a downtown/college town so cute and perfect it almost looks like a movie set. The venue was Luigi's, which is indeed a pizza place with a large downstairs where shows are held. I got some FREE PIZZA, checked out the comic book shop next door, and set up. The crowd was very small, but (as was the case everywhere) the people and the bands were very cool.



This was set up by a cool girl named Sharmi who DJs at KDVS and does her own noise project called Beast Nest, though she didn't play this show. Seen above is A White Hunter. They played noise-rock of the variety with noises that are kind of blurred out and driven by hard drumming. I mostly only took photos of the bands on this trip, sorry. I only realized when I got home that I should have photographed more of the people and places too.



That's Buk Buk Bigups, which was pretty awesome, as you can probably tell from the photo. Just a real unique dude doing his thing, playing keyboard and singing in his own unique style.

The Radio Shock show went off well. All gear worked (an event which is notable enough to warrant mention) and though most of the audience were people involved with the show, it was fun and great meeting everyone. After pondering my sleep plans, I took an offer to stay at the house where most everyone else who had been at the show was staying (bands and residents). I got a comfy couch to myself and slept hard.

And that was DAY ONE.
... TO BE CONTINUED ...

only the most amazing Melvins videos

Just spent the whole evening watching Melvins videos - totally worth the time - totally inspirational. I made this playlist of the best stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=0B2F381D373A3527



Oh yeah, and that is totally the guitar I'm going to buy whenever I have a bunch of extra money.

International Noise Conference 2011 video playlist

HTML5 and the Canvas element will not "replace Flash" and here's why

I do some web design stuff and as internet technology develops I need to be more and more of a developer as well. Coming from the design side though, I love Flash as a tool for making great moving graphics. Along comes HTML5, which many observers and people on the coding side of the web keep claiming will "replace Flash" or "kill Flash." After looking into the issue, I can firmly say that these claims are nonsense.

Here is the short summary: Flash is a program for creating moving graphics. The things you can create in Flash can be output to a format called SWF (ShockWave Flash, often called a "swiff") and your web browser uses a plug-in to run the SWF files. Flash can also output to other (much less efficient) formats, like Quicktime's MOV or animated GIFs. The new HTML5 has an element called canvas which you can basically draw on and add moving and responsive graphics to using JavaScript coding. The browser does all the work, no plug-in needed.

I would bet that the next version of Flash (or a related product from Adobe) will be able to output to canvas and JavaScript too! In fact, Adobe has already claimed that some kind of software (Flash or something like it) will be able to create Apple apps for iPhone, iPad etc. It is certain that they will have some product for creating fancy moving graphics using HTML5 and JavaScript, and it will probably be Flash.

Will the canvas element replace the Flash PLUG-IN? Maybe, but not entirely for a few years because the SWF format is just pretty far ahead in terms of what it can do. And Flash, the program, will not be going anywhere. It has little equivalent competition for what it does and it is very intuitive and deep and works very well. Adobe also has a program called Dreamweaver for creating all your HTML, CSS, JavaScript and anything else a web browser can handle. You could type this code out yourself in Notepad instead if you wanted to, or use one of many other programs, but still Dreamweaver is very popular because it's a great tool for getting the job done. Likewise, you can use a ton of programs to make a jpeg, but Adobe's Photoshop is popular because it's simply the most powerful. The Flash program will be in the same position.

There's this other issue of embedding video, which HTML5 can now do, but again, it can't do everything that Flash can. Regardless, my point is that Adobe makes great tools for creating graphics and the final FORMAT is not going to influence the popularity of their tools. Someone will probably be using their software to make the videos you're embedding. In fact, the more the web can support nice graphics, the better Adobe will do.

The latest news is that Apple computers will no longer come "with Flash." What they mean by this is that the Safari browser will not automatically include the Flash plug-in for rendering SWF files. Of course you could add it, or if you download another browser, like Firefox, you'll get it. Suspiciously, this announcement comes right along with the announcement of an App Store for Apple's computers - supporting the conspiracy theory that the reason behind Apple's anti-Flash position is that they want to sell you games as apps instead of having you play them for free as SWFs in your browser.

Ultimately it won't make a difference because you'll be able to make games and animation in your HTML5 canvas - and you might be using Flash to do it.

I may as well mention that I can do Flash or HTML(yes, 5) work, and I am available for hire. My Flash-based website is here:

http://www.michaellockwood.org

</rant>