The Real Pat Blair

I hereby notify the world (read: the 3 people that read this blog) that I am starting pre-production for my full-length solo album. It will be a self-titled project, released under the moniker of Trainwreck McGee.
The album will be made up of songs that were not tried by Lone Strangers, didnt’ have the right sound, didn’t make the cut, or aren’t yet complete. It will sound nothing like the Lone Strangers, except for when it does. I anticipate that the sound will be in the pop-blues-country-rock-roots-hiphop-disco-U2 vein. I will do all vocals and play all instruments, except for the times when someone else plays and/or sings.
“Trainwreck McGee” will be released sometime in the next one to forty years, plausibly while I am still alive. If I pass away before it’s finished, I trust that you will piece together the tracks, have better musicians come in and replay the parts, then release it posthumously in my honor. Perhaps a CD release party at my funeral. Or 30th birthday party. Are they synonymous?
If the Strangers don’t play them first, I anticipate that it will feature tunes such as an ode to the stay-at-home Mom (”Obligatory Song About Heroine”), and conclude with my swan-song, “Ugly Duckling Song.”
Consider yourselves warned: Trainwreck McGee, derailing soon. Or later.

Thanks to all who came out for Cinco de Moustache IV - it was a great success, and a great farewell to Saint Radar. Let me just say that, when the time comes for the Strangers, I want our last show to be exactly like Radar’s, just with less swearing.
If you missed the show, shame on you. Here’s some video.

So, for a (prompt) follow-up to my last posts: The Lone Strangers took 1st place in the Veishea Wildcard Round (second year in a row) and 2nd place in the overall Battle (up one step from 3rd last year), and played the best outdoors-in-the-snow set that we have ever done. It was a lot of fun, and we’re always glad to get a chance to play.
Here’s a video of the show at the M-Shop… wait through the first 2 bands to see a full performance of Let You Go.

Finally, Cinco de Moustache IV: Quatro, Cinco, ‘Stache. Details below. It is Saint Radar’s last show, so don’t miss out.

Some quick announcements via my rarely-used blog:
a) We are playing a free show at 7pm this Tuesday night, April 8, at the M-Shop in Ames, IA. This is part of the VEISHEA Battle of the Bands Wildcard competition. It has also traditionally been the site of the Strangers’ best show each year. Crowd participation is always a key factor for the judges, and this is always ton’s of fun, so don’t miss out. Schedule of Battle and Wildcard is here, and is also useful if you want to do a case-study in bending time for the purpose of successful event management. Or, it’s just plain funny (”Each band will still have a 30 minute set time including set up and tear down. The schedule is as follows: 5:00- Wild Card 1, 5:25- Wild Card 2, 5:50- Wild Card 3…”).
2) Cinco de Moustache IV: Quatro, Cinco, ‘Stache. This year, Cinco de Moustache is being observed on Saturday, May 3. The official celebration, as always, will take place at the Bali Satay House. Joining the Strangers will be Ames indie/blues sensations Radio Moscow (this is one of a few local stops for them between their European tour and their summer US tour - seriously), and, for their final show ever, Saint Radar. Between the rock and roll and the facial hair, this is going to be one great time, let me tell you.
D) The Lone Strangers - Live at Zeke’s is coming. Soon. I swear. Keep an eye out at the new Strangers Blog for updates and details.

Note: if you skip this entire post, please at least watch the video at the bottom - it sums this all up in less than 2 minutes.

Put in a popular/rock CD that is 10 years old. Then listen to one from 5 years ago. Then listen to a brand new one. What is the first thing that you notice? Well, besides your fickle and slightly suspect taste in music? The difference in volume. It jumps out of your speakers. Literally. Well, it doesn’t jump, exactly, but you get my point. With the advent of the CD and subsequent digital mixing/mastering technology, music has gotten louder:

Levels have crept up over the last decade though, and alarmingly so. [Nirvana’s] Nevermind is 6-8dB quieter than, say, Hopes & Fears by Keane—to contextualise this, those 6-8dB will make Nevermind sound approximately half as loud… Keane should NOT be twice as loud as Nirvana.

So what does this mean to the average, untrained listener (you, for example)? Nothing initially. But has anyone ever got the feeling that music (or the world, in general) is just a little too… noisy?

Human brains have evolved to pay particular attention to loud noises, so compressed sounds initially seem more exciting. But the effect doesn’t last. “The excitement in music comes from variation in rhythm, timbre, pitch and loudness,” [Daniel] Levitin [professor of music and neuroscience] says. “If you hold one of those constant, it can seem monotonous.” After a few minutes, research shows, constant loudness grows fatiguing to the brain. Though few listeners realize this consciously, many feel an urge to skip to another song.

This is why older CDs, though you have to turn them up a little louder, often, when you pay attention, just sound GOOD (U2’s Joshua Tree). This is also why newer CDs, though the music, engineering, and technology are all better, don’t (U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb). This is also why the new Lone Strangers live album won’t be squished to death (though it will also probably be louder than Nevermind, which is just ridiculous).
The technical stuff will bore most of the people who usually read this blog, so I’ll skip it. If you’re interested, check out the Loudness War article on Wikipedia and this gem from Chicago Mastering Services, in addition to the other great articles that I’ve linked to. Most of you, though, are wondering how it affects you, and what difference it makes in terms of your daily listening experience.
The best example I can find is below. Even if you’ve skipped this entire blog, please WATCH THIS VIDEO! It says it all, and it will only take 102 seconds of your time.

Feel cheated? I do.

I know I’ve practically beaten the political horse to death, but I feel this is too important for me to not share:

More on stupid, digital things that are happening to music next week.

Transformers, the Movie
Universally panned by every critic for lack of plot, acting, and character development, and for being another lame, formulaic Michael Bay movie. Universally loved by nerds everywhere for lack of plot, acting, and character development, and for being another lame, formulaic Michael Bay summer blockbuster with massive, warring robots and ridiculous explosions.
Some quotes from around the internet:
“GIANT… ROBOTS BEATING THE TAR OUT OF EACH OTHER - it’s Shakespearian”
“Spoilers: They’re robots in disguise. Oh, and Snape kills Optimus Prime.”
Sounds like a dollar-theater movie to me!

Smashing Pumpkins - Zeitgeist
This album drops July 10, but they had it on their myspace for awhile, and I acquired a, um, beta version. Better than I had hoped. I was afraid that Billy Corgan would again drink the loudness kool-aid and make an over-produced album with no dynamics or punch (see: Machina). Upon initial review, that appears to not be the case. Yes, the CD should be listened to at the loudest volume possible for true impact, but it really packs a punch when it needs to, which is refreshing.
It’s definitely a Pumpkins disc, but the influences of Zwan (melodies, positivity) and The Future Embrace (cheesy 80’s synths) are obviously there. I am actually surprised by how much I am enjoying it. The only downside is that Billy Corgan is so powerful that no one can tell him to bury his vocals in the mix and cover them with effects (see: the ever-present chorus throughout Siamese Dream). Billy just does not have a great voice, and it should, under no circumstances, be mixed so highly above the guitars. The walls of harmonies are also ridiculous, and inappropriate for the Pumpkins.
But. The songs are good. The guitars are great. Jimmy Chamberlain’s drumming is phenomenal, as always. And, with the exception of the above, the mixes are awesome - huge drums, huge guitar, huge rock. There are a lot of “loud rock bands” out there right now that would do well to take a lesson or twelve from this music.
3.5 stars (out of 5).

Welmore Mile - Good Times & Pumpkin Pie
You can download this 2004 EP for free, and I highly recommend you do so. You should also read Peter Welle’s blog, The John Larroquette Project, on a daily basis. I rarely fail to laugh out loud at least once.
Same goes for the CD. It’s acoustical smart-alek musical awesomeness. Also, my sister was in tears the other night while listening to “The Bee Song.”

The Lone Strangers
…will ride again. Soon. Really.

John Mayer and Ben Folds will be in Des Moines on Monday, June 18th. Cost is in the $50 range. No last minute decisions for me - I am going. Anyone else want tickets? Comment, call, or email in the near future. I’d love to get a group together, but don’t think I won’t go alone if you all hold out on me.

For all you guitar-playing calculator-toting nerd-rock types out there… or really, for anyone who cares… or, for that matter, who doesn’t… here is the best explanation I have ever read for how sound/music - a guitar, specifically - works.

Most(not all, with the advent of CMI’s) musical instruments, and the poor bastards cursed with playing them, are integrated human controlled sound pressure transduction systems. That is, some guy stands in a room, straps on a guitar, picks up a plectrum, strikes a string(or 2 or 6), the string resonates in response to the applied mechanical energy at a frequency determined by a combination of it’s tension, it’s length, and it’s diameter(which partially facilitates it’s range of frequency vs. total tension)a pickup converts that mechanical energy into electrical current containing both frequency and amplitude, it passes down a guitar cable, into a pre-amplifier/Eq, onto an amplifier(these two are often an integrated system, as we know), and out to a speaker(or often a number of speakers in an enclosure) which excurse and create sound pressure changes at the same frequency(s) in the acoustic environ that those speakers are located in.
Those sound pressure changes contract and expand(the actual terms are compression and rarefaction) the air in the room, this energy zips into our eardrums, our eardrums resonate in sympathy and in turn convert these pulses into human electrical energy that gets loaded onto the ‘hellbound express’ and shipped right into the brain.
That’s when we go…. “Dude……YOU ROCK!!”.
Or maybe. “Doooooode…. YOU SUCK!”
Anyways.

I didn’t include a link because even the URL was somewhat vulgar, and also because it is a 79-page, 25,934-word text-file rant on how to record heavy electric guitars, which most of you probably aren’t interested in checking out. The whole mess started out as a post on a message board, grew out of control over the course of several months of questions, long recording sessions, and hallucinogens, and then went downhill from there, most likely because the writer has a tendency, much like my own, to wander aimlessly, like a unicorn through piranha infested waters. Or a top.
Oh, yeah, I didn’t even try to fix the spelling/grammar/typos.
I hope you enjoy this tidbit. I did. And if you don’t, well, doooode…