Categories
Boneheads Gigs

The Club Owner Who Thought He Could Fly

Club owner does many drugs. Club owner thinks he can fly. Club owner jumps off 5 story building. Club owner is dead.

Categories
Boneheads Musicians

“Becoming A Rock Star for Dummies”

I get tons of idiotic morons calling me with dumb questions about the music business. This one is no different.

On the phone this time is a grandma. She loves her grandson who is a musician very much. She wants to help him. So she calls and asks me for advise on how her grandson can become a rock star. I just tell her to go down to the local bookstore and buy him the book “Becoming A Rock Star for Dummies.” She excitedly thanks me and hangs up the phone…

Categories
Boneheads Gear Musicians Recording

Phony Tubes

Remember that band I wrote about whose bass player fell asleep in the mix? This is the companion story.

That same band had a cocky guitar player who thought he was hot shit…. Wait a minute. Most guitar players think that. Anyway, this guy’s amp was awesome. It had more tubes than any other I have seen. It practically lit up the room.

When I looked closer I realized the tubes were not tubes at all. They were blue lights setup to look like tubes. This thing was solid state all the way.

Categories
Boneheads Musicians Recording

Falling asleep in the mix

I recorded this really shitty metal band one time. Their singer was so bad, he would blow his voice out after singing 1 or 2 takes of a song. It wasn’t singing either, it was more like screaming remotely close to the key of the (bad) song.

So we finally get to the mix. We’re tweaking everything when I hear this strange noise. I stop the tape (yes, in the tape years) and I find that the sound is the bass player snoring on the couch. He was really sawing logs. I ran into the sound room and grabbed a great big large diaphragm microphone, placed it 1/4″ from his nose and hit record. Then we pumped his snoring through the main speakers and put a giant reverb on it. He sounded like a giant snoring in the Grand Canyon. He soon woke up.

Days later this bass player was bitching and moaning about how bad his bass sounded in the mix. I could only tell the dude that he might have gotten what he wanted if he was actually conscious during the mix. Typical bullshit we engineers go through. They sleep though the mix and blame you for their sound not being what they wanted.

Categories
Boneheads Rants

Please sign the STOP ASHLEE SIMPSON PETITION

A brilliant 18 year old disgruntled Ashlee Simpson fan has created a petition to make her stop. It’s up to close to 200,000 signatures as of this post. My signature is #171427. The site is very slow, surely due to the huge amount of bandwidth of thousands of people signing it, so be patient. If you can’t get through, try it later.

DO US ALL A FAVOR: SIGN THIS PETITION

To: Geffen/DGC Records & JT Simpson Entertainment

We, the undersigned, are disgusted with Ashlee Simpson’s horrible singing and hereby ask her to stop. Stop recording, touring, modeling and performing. We do not wish to see her again.

She cannot match the sound of her voice that can be found on her CDs, when she sings live. She simply yells the words (sometimes the wrong ones) into the mic.

We are so sickened by her “performing” that we are taking this opportunity to demand that she stop.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned