Music Project and Bass Guitar

For anyone that knows me well..which is barely anyone, I've had a very unsuccessful music project called, "Them." Well, maybe a few people know it. Anyway, I never really decided on what direction to take it and I'm contemplating it right now. I've been on a recent binge of glorifying my bass guitar since in recent times I laid down the bass to pursue drumming. I didn't seriously think about playing the bass for quite sometime I was only trying to glorify the drums. I still enjoyed playing bass just not as much as before. That came from a lack of understanding what possibilities you could actually get out of the bass guitar and for so long I thought that every bass player wanted to be someone like, Les Claypool or Flea. That all there was to bass was complex placements of slaps and thumps. So, I strayed away from it when I started paying more attention to drummers, Dale Crover and Dave Lombardo.

One thing I've always found unique about myself that I'm sure other would find self-indulgence is that I face the fact I'm not an expert towards anything so that forces me to ask questions that wouldn't typically go together naturally with something. An example of this was when I read about in the early days of grunge, Dave Grohl would use his floor tom as a rack tom. I thought that was awesome and I couldn't think of any band this day and age that did that as far as I'd heard of. So, I took root and set out to accomplish that. Afterward I ended up with a 16" floor tom for my rack and a 18" floor tom. This left my kick drum awkwardly proportioned to the two drums. So, I go bigger and get a 26" kick drum and turn my old 24" kick drum into a flow tom, throw in a 19" and 20" crash, a 24" China, 24" ride and 14" high hat. Boom surely there are bigger sets but, this was mine and I loved it.



Earlier this year I began to play bass for my friends Kevin's band Robo. I picked up the bass once again, a little rusty at first but, I think I'm back at the potential I use to play at. I started paying more attention to styles like Jared Warren, Greg Anderson and Steve Tanner, who all prominently used Sunn O))) amps. I had a pretty decent bass cabinet from Kustom and a Peavy head with an octave controller build into it so I could easily shatter windows but, I wanted to begin to do more than just piss my mom off by being loud. I wanted to develop some character to my bass rig and get some unique tone and distinction. It started slow at first but in the past 2 weeks I've really started to roll with it. I played my first show with a Boss overdrive pedal and a a small 80 watt orange solid bass amp. It was loud and distorted and apparently caught the ears of some leach the was playing after us because he wanted to use my stuff. Second show, we did I used the big 650 watt Kustom and the Peavy head and by mistake left the octave switch on so the whole room shook. It wasn't until the end of the set I realized this was on when some members of a former local group we played with frequently said my bass was killer and I was a good addition to the band. I won't mention the third show I was playing like shit that night and the whole show was going to Hell.

I "studied" what pedals and equipment bands such as Boris and Sunn O))) used and also some stuff of Trevor Dunn's and listened to quite a number of their albums back and forth and picked and chose what kind of pedal board I wanted to set up. With the help of YouTube I got to hear these things in action and it helped me determine what I would start to build. I've been itching to play another show recently because I've been indulging these urges of progressing my bass skills and sound. I am now the proud owner of a Sunn O))) Beta Bass Head a solid state amp that is loud as fuck, and I couldn't be happier. I still have the Kustom cabinet but, hope to get a big old Ampeg. Just a few days ago I bought the bass to end all basses I hope to ever need which was a Rickenbacker model Diamond with active pick ups from my friend Juan Montoya. As far as pedals I've got a long way to go but, so far I still use my Digi-tech Whammy pedal and Boss overdrive and added a Dearmond Weeper with a stand Big Muff Pi. I plan to expand this board as I progress and will slowly reveal my master pedal board to achieve all the sound I choose to accomplish with them. No pun intended.

Here's what I often consider one of the best tracks I recorded in the early days of Them.

There's Something at My Window by Them

The Bride Screamed for A Small Turn of Human Kindness

The Melvins is a band who appreciates their fans way more than they let on to. They come out with a lot of goodies to keep their fans mouths wet with ambition, they tour at least once a year, and since 2006 have released a new album every two years at the beginning of the Summer. It was no doubt that the new release (the Bride Screamed Murder) was sure to not disappoint me or the rest of their fans. But, another favorite band of mine scheduled an unexpected release of their own. My home states native Athenians, Harvey Milk came out with A Small Turn of Human Kindness. Even though, I heard the Melvins album a whole month before I did Harvey Milks release. After much thought I actually prefer Harvey Milk's release over the Melvins' this time. The Bride Screamed Murder has all the formulas in which you would expect out of a Melvins song: scratchy guitar, fuzz drenched bass, and abnormal drum sequences. Talented is too little a word for it. But, as far as Harvey Milk's release I keep constantly referring to it as an unofficial score to theatrical movie. To be honest it reminds me of Melvins album Lysol, I think why there is so much appeal. Though they split the tracks up to be able to skip on the album there's no real need to the songs run together like it's a musical or one large track. Harvey Milk is a band that makes me proud to be a Georgian.

A New Direction

I stopped posting for a while on account my writing hadn't improved as much as I had hoped it would after starting this blog so, I've decided to give it another shot. My brother has started a blog of his own to keep his already superior writing skills sharp, so I should try improving mine. My initial purpose to starting this 'blog' in the first place was because I didn't see any good film blogs on the Internet at the time. I've since found some and it would be in my best interest if I didn't just do film reviews but, just do whatever.

On that note I just watched the second Twilight film, New Moon. A truly horrible film. I guess I can see the appeal to it if you were a teenage girl or a teenage boy who has the characteristics of a girl. The only funny feeling I get from watching these films are the embarrassment I get from the people who act in the these films. I understand every actor has to start somewhere but, Jesus there's better stuff out there. Viewing these films to me is the equivalent of watching Mr. Hands. Just the sheer shock of it.



I still have hope for Kristen Stewart though, She was in Adventureland and the Runaways. Just recently I she has been chosen to play in a film adaption of Jack Kerouac's On the Road that will either make or break her career once and for all.

Still Life (guest review by Nathan Loggins)

Roughly the last decade has seen the slow decline of some the biggest names in mainland Chinese cinema. Luminaries of the fifth generation of Chinese cinema like Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou have abandoned the simplistic and artful styles that made up films like Yellow Earth and The Story of Qiu Ju, and with perhaps an eye to China’s ever-growing foreign markets, have produced glossy, flamboyant period pieces that are nearly as foreign to domestic audiences as they are to those who flock to them in the West. This vacuum in art cinema has been filled by a new generation of directors who have focused their lens on daily life in a county that is marked by upheaval and perpetual social change that stems from breakneck economic development. The name that has received the most recognition as of late is Jia Zhangke, director of Unknown Pleasures, Platform and The World. His most recent feature length production, Still Life, has taken him from the margins of obscurity into the fold of world cinema, for which he received the 2006 Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival.
Shunning any form of adornment, Jia’s films focus on the daily lives of ordinary people in some of the most underdeveloped regions of China. In Platform, a performance troupe-turned-rock band tours the back towns of north central China, finally ending up in the same place they started. The World follows the daily routines of migrant workers at an ambitious theme park in Beijing where famous global landmarks are recreated in miniature form for Chinese tourists. Every film captures the mundane life of those people absorbed in a country changing by the minute, but held just outside the benefits which are purported to follow--an endless waiting for something new or something better. Jia’s films unfold slowly with a deliberate pacing similar to Abbas Kiarostami or Hou Hsiao-hsien, marked by understated gestures and austerity, a far cry from Hero or Curse of the Golden Flowers.
Still Life takes its setting in a small town on the Hubei/Sichuan border, currently under destruction for the massive Three Gorges Dam project, which will bring cleaner energy to thousands more Chinese citizens, but has in the process destroyed innumerable local ecosystems and cultural landmarks, uprooting hundreds, if not thousands, of local residents, the subject of a recent documentary Up the Yangtze. The film opens with the return home of one of the two main characters, Han Sanming, hailing a motor-taxi to his old address, only to find it completely submerged below water. He proceeds to find work with a local demolition crew as he searches for his estranged wife and tries in vain to re-establish contact with his daughter who he hasn’t seen for 16 years. Wandering amid the rubble and chaos is the film’s other protagonist, Shen Hong, who is also looking for her spouse who has been incommunicado for quite some time. Even in the same town, the two’s paths never cross, and when they finally accomplish their missions, the results are anticlimactic at best. In the meantime, they form ephemeral relationships with others amid the disarray that surrounds them. People wander in and out of scenes as in a Fellini movie: a young teenager singing saccharine love songs, a lackluster proprietor of a small prostitution ring, a civil engineer showing off his elaborate light display to a group of businessmen. All the while, there is the noise of sweaty demolition crews toiling in the humid haze, amid fumigators and crews marking new buildings for destruction and projected stages of future water levels.
The scenes that unfold, less like a movie than the titular style of painting, show a section of society crushed under the boot of so-called progress. Air conditioning here is either absent or useless in the sticky climes of southern China. The music emanating from old radios and television sets is from decades past. When not repetitively hacking away with sledgehammers, barely-clad men sit in idle groups, half-heartedly wiping sweat from their faces. There seems to be such a tacit acceptance of the tumult that has marked their otherwise monotonous existence, that no one seems to notice, or care, when a flying saucer wobbles in over the mountains and then exits as nonchalantly as it came, or when a building inexplicably rockets itself off into the hazy skyline. In a world coming slowly undone, these are minor details to be observed and then discarded before moving on to the next routine task.
But it would be too easy to attribute some air of condemnation to Jia’s projects. He never seems to be pointing the finger, or making a value judgment. He merely documents what he sees around him, and does so to aesthetically stunning effect. The subjects and themes may speak to the viewer in any number of ways, but they are, after all, just daily life in a country whose citizens make up over one third of the world’s population.

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Battle Royale

So far, before the night is over, I will have only seen this film once. I saw it shortly after the turn of the millennium in my brothers old apartment in Athens. At the time I was very big into gore driven entertainment in films and I had heard that this one was pretty messy, and it seemed to have a huge following in the underground circuit of Asian cinema on the Internet and from Nathan. I rented it from Vision video and watched it while my brother was out doing his paper route, at least I think that's the job he had at the time but, I could be mistaken. This film had a large impact on me emotionally and possibly because, I was still in high school and I wasn't prepared for such drama to pour out of a such a gore drenched film. I wasn't prepared for such a masterpiece to be laid out in front of me for my viewing pleasure. I didn't find myself intrigued with the amount of blood flow, I was captivated by the great amount of emotion I felt towards the characters in this film no matter how short their role or how little the audience was intended to see of a certain character. I hardly ever read manga but, I'd be willing to read these if I had an easier access to them. I only dare guess how much more story is covered or how much farther the drama is dragged out in the manga the film is based off of. And I'd only start reading manga due to a select few films that I've seen based on several films I'd seen that were originally manga and hopefully get around to reading the original book.

At the dawn of the new millennium, Japan is in a a state of near-collapse. Unemployment is at an all-time high, and violence among the nation's youth is spiraling out of control. With schoolchildren boycotting their classes and physically abusing their teachers, a beleaguered and near-defeated government decides to introduce a radical new measure: the Battle Royale Act Overseen by former teacher Kitano (Beat Takeshii Kitano) and requiring that a randomly chosen school class is taken to a deserted island and forced to fight each other to the death, the Act dictates that only one pupil is allowed to survive the punishment. He or she will return, not as the victor, but as the ultimate proof of the lengths to which the government is prepared to go to curb the tide of juvenile disobedience. Forty-two enter only one will leave and there's no telling what will happen to the other before victory is achieved by that one.

The film is full of dark humor, especially Kitano's character. The simplicity in which he executes his one liners in the film is just genius probably without him even knowing he had just done something incredible. Kitano's character is both ruthless and lovable all at the same intervals and some will hate that more about his character and some will ponder the thought, "He's not that bad of a guy is he?" As for the students morally one would watch this film and admit that not every single student deserves this horrible punishment. The ones that didn't deserve it are quickly knocked off the playing field by either committing suicide or being caught up in the cross fire of someones wrath. Nonetheless, it's a very powerful gripping story. It hurts me to watch these young boys and girls have everything they ever had hopes or memories with one another torn asunder by their friends. Hopes of growing old, living, going to a good school, love, just thrown away in the worst possible way. Whom ever comes out on top of the game will never live with themselves the same way again obviously so why even continue? What could possibly, if at all, keep the spirit of a kid who has just murdered every friend they could have ever made growing up live after that?

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Haze

At first I thought that I would never see this film because it only came around to festivals and it was on a region pal DVD. But, that's to the wonders of the internet I was able to see it with French subtitles. And because, I'm so incredibly hardcore I watched the 48 minute masterpiece twice. Once, to see it through the whole thing and twice, to translate on an online translator what an idea what the subtitles were saying. I got a pretty good idea. But, I do not doubt my ability any longer to find anything that I'm looking for on the internet. When it comes to obscurities such as a short film by Shinya Tsukamoto I'm going to go after it like a murder case. The quality wasn't bad it was ripped from a European DVD and it was a very relieving goal to check off my list. It only irks me that stuff like this is so hard to see for fans like me. They should at least have it somewhere to maybe pay a dollar to watch it online. It was a difficult task to find a copy of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Drawing Restraint 9 on the web just to watch these films.

A man wakes up to find himself locked in a tiny, cramped concrete room, in which he can barely move. He can't come to remember why he is there and where he came from. He has a large wound which hinders his movement around the corridors to his stomach and is slowly bleeding to death. He begins to explore the narrow confines of his prison and crawls around the maze-like room, only to run into dangerous mouse-like terrain and sees horrible visions of Hell waiting for him at each end of the room. Finally he gives up on the struggle and collapses in exhaustion. Then he begins to remember images from his past. Clinging to these images he creeps forward with the last ounces of his strength and meets a woman in a place that stinks of rotting corpses. The man and the woman both try to recall where they came from, but their memories are so uncertain that they are not even sure they want to return. The man is ready to give up but the woman insists on going forward. Neither of them can imagine the incredible end to the journey.

Not just because it was such a hard film to get a hold of and see and I'm not 100 percent certain what all was said, this was easily one of my favorite Tsukamoto films. The film is horrifying for anyone watching it. Combining all the worst elements you can put into a horror film or a real life situation: Darkness, confusion, bleeding to death, mutilation, grizzly images, claustrophobia, lack of air, not being able to move, indescribable noises. I find it fun to watch a foreign film and not knowing what is said completely and try and guess on my own what's going on. Truth is though, the characters in the film could have said nothing during the entire movie and you would have gotten the idea of what they were thinking or trying to say. Shinya Tsukamoto's 'horror' in his films are similar to the feeling that David Lynch's films give me. When a scare comes into view it stays with me forever and bothers me for hours or even days on end. It's not easy to get some of these images out of your head, and it scares me further to think that someone can think this up but, it's art right? An excruciating film to watch and a well thought out idea from one of the greatest film directors the world is ever going to know.

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Prepare for Halloween

For those who don't know I'm a big Halloween enthusiast. Before we know it, Halloween will be here so, I'm going to do what I do every year and watch all my old time favorite horror movies since there isn't shit going to be in theaters that's worth a damn to go see. As we all know there are the obvious essentials to watch like, Halloween, Night of the Living Dead, Frankenstein, etc. but, I'm going to pick a few of my favorites and then some I think some may enjoy if they haven't seen them already. So, sit back and let me indulge upon you some that will give you the mood for All Hallow's Eve.

Halloween (1978) & Halloween II (1981)



As Marvin Gaye is to putting the mood for love into people, Halloween is to setting the mood of how fall should feel to an individual. Crisp breeze with a hint of chill in the air. Dead silence only to be interrupted by the the winds rustling of leaves. Not only is it a glorious and immaculate horror movie it also brings back fond memories of how Fall use to be when I was little and there wasn't a moment this film wasn't being viewed during the that time. It was the first movie that scared me no matter how many times of it's viewing. The first film can almost immediately be followed up by it's successor for it follows the immediate story moments after the ending after the first so they go together. Many people think it tacky for these types of film to have so many sequels and the main reason artistically is that figures like Michael, Jason, and Freddy were considered the face of the Boogieman to certain individuals and it immortalizes that saying, "You can't kill the Boogieman." So every year he keeps coming back to get you. But, sadly the ugly truth is that Hollywood is out to make a buck.

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The Monster Squad



This movie seemed like it would be like a Goonies Halloween special. It has a lot of aspects of the Gooniesbut, it's the horror fans Goonies. It has all the nostalgia of being a young horror nerd and all your wildest fantasies of silver screen monsters coming to life. The story is quirky and classic and it has a good flow to it without rushing through the film. Seeing all the classics on one screen, Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Creacture from the Black Lagoon (a.k.a. Gilman), and the Wolfman (whom has nards) is an instant attraction so there are five different ways to enjoy the movie for fans of any one of them. It's not too cartoony to be just for kids and it's not too violent to where kids can't enjoy it to. The film just set of every electrode in my brain and set my imagination on crash courses when I was little. The film may be a little aged but remains one of the cult favorites of the horror genre forever.

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The Blair Witch Project



Scary as fuck if you know how to appreciate it. Also, an epitome Fall film to watch around this time. The dead leaves and the cold ground and then the legend of the Blair Witch. When I was little I would read every book I come across in our school library that was jam packed with short stories of the macabre and occult. And this story reminds me of some of the similar stories I would read from the libraries. It's 'artsy' some said, I never truly thought it to be an art film I got what they were going for. The build up of this film that it was an actual event and on top it was original. I soaked it in as much as I could and then when I finally saw it the effect it had on me was what I'm sure the creators intended to have in store for the viewers. Yes, this is one of the essential things to have during the Fall season along with Type O Negative's October Rust and pumpkin pie.

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Evil Dead II



To be honest this one has never moved from my top five list ever. It's got a good balance of comedy and a good balance of shear horror. Sam Raimi was always good at using noises to their fullest potential to make things the creepiest they could possibly be in the film. The whole bellowing howl that chases Ash around in the movie still haunts me if I'm alone walking in the dark and it alone has kept me from camping anywhere to this day. Sadly, I know that Hollywood is going to get it's cold dead fingers clinched around the throat of this masterpiece and toss it to and fro until they fuck it up. This one will always have a special place in my black rotting heart.

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Frankenstein



After careful investigations over the years I admit that Boris Karloff was the better actor than his rival Bela Lugosi. Though both are amazing Karloff just did a few more roles that were much more interesting and everlasting than Lugosi. Frankenstein is the essential horror story about man attempt to play God and the consequences that follow it. The Gothic tale only becomes more rich with age like a fine wine. It never looses it's spectacle or it's edge. It never wears on originality because it is the original. As well as this it's also good to watch back to back with the Bride of Frankenstein.

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