Shenanigans!

I recently rented Down & Dirty with Jim Norton, a short comedy series featuring a bunch of different comedians. I tried to get a screen capture of a scene in this movie that is so unbelievable my computer even denied it existed and refused to cooperate.

Between sets a DJ would throw down a few seconds of a rock track as the comedians changed up. Who was selected for this challenging role? None other then Lemmy from Motorhead. You read that right; Lemmy. This is not even the strange part as Lemmy wrote the shows theme.

The strange part was the equipment he was using. Being a DJ myself I was obviously straining to see what they gave him to cue up his tracks. A few times an overhead camera gave me a clear shot and what I saw blew my mind. As it happens the shows producers have no clue what a DJ actually does. Lemmy is standing in front of multiple stacks of guitar amplifiers and in front of him he had not one, not two but three DJ mixers. Thats it. Just the mixers.

Let me explain to you (and the shows producers) how a typical DJ setup works and what a mixer does. A mixer allows you to control a number of different audio inputs, maybe from a pair of vinyl decks, cd turntables or even samplers. Something that plays music. My mixer has two inputs, one for each turntable. Each of Lemmys three mixers had 6 inputs. Thats a total of 18 audio inputs (i.e 18 turntables) to play 15 seconds of one whole song and NOTHING TO ACTUALLY PLAY THE SONG. Thats like having three game controllers and no console. The shows producers even gave Lemmy a token pair of headphones that he (obviously) doesn't even use once. I have to wonder which mixer the headphones were plugged into, if any at all.

The crowning moment was when Lemmy was busted on film standing around while the music mysteriously cued up all on its own.

I realize that this is a comedy show, but seriously, who is that joke on?

Before Craigslist

Community pin boards are essentially primitive internet forums. They have rules, lots of useless posts and of course the odd troublemaker. This is an actual picture I took at a local mall and it inspires me to make a few of my own posts.

iTunes!

It has been goal recently to get my music up on iTunes and thanks to SongCast it is finally happening. Songcast is a service that allows artists like me to bypass the need for a record label in order to make our music available to the general public. As you can see on their site my music will also be on Amazon, Rhapsody, Napster and a few other online market places.

Get my music here:

Dub Fx

Dub Fx is a street artist operating out of the U.K. He is the latest artist to utilize a Loop Station in his work but seems to use it rather exclusively and with amazing results. Some other artists include Imogen Heap who also uses nothing but her voice to create a backing track, K.T. Tunstall who uses her guitar and what was until now my personal favorite David Ford who creates an entire band. Very creative stuff.

". . .?!"

Exec:"Okay people, we have some tough competition at this years car show. We need to make our display really stand out to give us the edge. Any ideas?"
Marketing:"Oh, I know! We could make a gigantic model of our car, so big it practically touches the ceiling!"
Exec:"Thats not quite . . ."
Marketing:"And instead of having wheels in the wheel wells, we'll have nothing. They'll be like tunnels."
Exec:"Why . . ."
Marketing:"And then we'll have the actual cars drive around in it!"
Exec:". . .?!"
Exec:". . .?!"
Exec:". . .?!"
Marketing:"And a hot babe."
Exec:"Do it."

Can We Fix it?

YES WE CAN!

Calahoo

I've posted a new song on my MySpace called Calahoo. This track marks a new beginning for me. I've always had trouble finalizing my work and making it sound good. To be honest its an infuriating and mind-numbing thing to have to do. So I've decided to invest the little bit of cash and have a professional do it for me at an actual studio. The result is amazing. I was so pleased with the end product that I decided to wait on posting it until its been released through a label and available for sale. A sort of new years surprise. As you can see, that didn't quite work out so well.

Either way, because I'm working on new material I decided to post Calahoo as a small example of things to come. The song itself was tailored specifically for the club and I can't wait to see the reaction it gets. The version I posted is the club mix (that I will use in my live sets) which is why there is such a long intro.

Kudos to Terry Bradstock at BEI Digital Studios for his amazing work mixing and mastering this track.

Hope you like it!
-John

myspace.com/djstraathof