His name is Billie Joe Armstrong you fucking ingrates.
(Hopefully) it's October 1st when this gets out, but I've been seeing a lot of "WHUP! WE BETTER WAKE THAT GREEN DAY GUY UP"
I also say "And Also With You" on May The Fourth Be With You.
The song still gives me goosebumps every time. It was originally written about the death of Billie Joe Armstrong's father, as he died when BJA was only 10. Every time I hear it, I can't help but think of my own Dad, who got into Green Day around the time of 21st Century Breakdown and we went to both Madison Square Garden shows on that first tour. We also went both the Broadway showing of American Idiot, and the touring production when it came down here to Fort Lauderdale. So yeah, Green Day occupies a special place.
Despite all that, there's still some problems. The music video sucks. The track doesn't fit in with the story of "American Idiot", although tonally it makes sense where it's placed on the album. The endless-
OK, this one is kinda neat.
PALMCON? PALMCON!I'm playing 3:00 PM on Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY!!!!!!!
I've been told this is the "at least" one show "they know about", so keep your eyes on the event page for future updates!
THIS WEEK'S JAM:
I don't know what to think about this one... All the songs I've heard off this new album have been really tight and high-energy, but the lyrics feel disjointedand... kinda lame? It feels like they're written as what's expected of a modern Green Day song, with some really questionable phrasing. "Bang Bang" made a little more sense after learning it's about the mentality of a school shooter, but I this one leaves me wondering what "the deal" is.
At least they're still trying with this album, and the fact that there doesn't seem to be a "deal" greater than "Here's some songs we wrote", after the triple album thing was... eh.... has me really excited for the album, especially after frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said this:
"I think my role is to shut up and
listen," he says. "A lot of white people should shut up and listen. They
really don't know what the African-American experience truly is. When
you have people getting shot in their cars for no reason and being put
in fucking jail cells and it's for profit, we have a serious problem,
and the first thing you need to do is get educated. Don't try to do
this, like, 'Blue lives matter.' Don't try to do the 'All lives matter.'
Just shut up and listen to the experience. And then move forward after
that."
NEW TANK TOP!
I'm trying two new things out here: TeeSpring and Tank Tops! You see me wear them on stage, why not get one for yourself? I even have a super cool 80's design so you can show off those guns in the Florida (or your residential state) sun!
"HOMESICK"- A VOICE OF ALL
More on the recap this Saturday, but here's the first episode of the Kaladesh storyline. I play Dovin Baan, the Velkaden Planeswalker who was revealed yesterday and may or may not be this block's main antagonist:
Regardless, you can listen to it here!
Three months have passed since the Gatewatch defeated Emrakul. What have they been up to?
MIZUCON RECAP? ALREADY?
Yeah, weird, right? First, I'd like to thank the con chair for being such a chill guy and hooking me up with a show!
After I got a monitor so I can hear myself, the show went well, and the new song I've been playing (so far) only at cons has been really fun to play, and has gone over big! I don't plan on keeping it "live only", but I think playing it first to a much smaller crowd (i.e. Not The Internet) helps work out some of the kinks.
A group of people I see at a lot of South Florida cons and events is/are The 3000 Brigade. I didn't know what they were for the longest time, whether they were a podcast, an indie studio, a creative collective ala Chaotic Neutral, etc. However, I was able to catch their stage show Saturday night, a Super Smash Bros themed Telethon.
I learned two things that night:
1. They only play once a year at Mizucon, which is why a lot of the jokes were about the stage quality and low ceiling
2. They put on a damn good show with music, choreography and costumes, for what is essentially gonzo crossover fanfiction.
3. #DicksOutForToad
Mega Ran also performed that night, and as a rare treat was joined on stage by YTCracker. My only regret is that I didn't have something silly on hand for Ran to freestyle rap about.
FUN FACT: While Mega Ran was the first rapper licensed by Capcom, who were the other two to come later?
THIS WEEK'S JAM:
How did I go so (12 days) long with out mentionin Green Day has a new song?
It's all right. Heavier than their usual fare, got a kinda Sex-Pistols thing going on.
Now, what I'd like to draw your attention to is the name of Green Day's new album: Revolution Radio, which comes out October 7th.
There was a similar album released October 9th last year with a similar title...
YOU DIRTY MOTHERFUCKERS.
WHOOPING LIKE A MILLENIAL:
Normally any news article with Millenial in the title wants to make me punch my monitor and crack the spine of the old motherfucker who wrote it like I'm Bane:
However this article I think warrants some discussion, because the shift from the switch from the fifth to the third, or as the author calls it "The Millenial Whoop" is one of those things that once you notice it, you see everywhere.
"Whoa-oh Whoa-oh". Click the link to hear what I'm talking about, but it's a lot quicker than pop-punk whoa-ohs. Here's a supercut that's kinda what the author's talking about:
Though it's unfortunate that the example used is The Lonely Island's song, "Fuck Off" is the most clear (and catchiest) usage. There are a couple good examples he lists, like Katy Perry's "California Gurls" and Owl City/Carly Ray Jepsen's "Good Time", but the rest that come up aren't as solid. Some are songs made by people who came before millennials.
Overall, while it's an interesting trend, I'm not entirely convinced it's a Millennial Thing or a Whoop. It's more of a vocal HOPO (Rhythm Gamer term y'all!) then something that can be properly established.
Still, I'd love to see if there's something similar in previous generations where there's a similar vocal shift used in a lot of the same songs if there's any social externalities or influences from other popular genres outside the Top 40.
This week's jam is in no way influenced by the passing of very regressive Supreme Court Justice Scalia:
Instead it was influenced by two things: The first one, and most prevalent to someone who would be visiting the website of someone who bills himself as a Nerdcore Punk: DEADPOOL! While it has been 7 years since Origins and as long since I've been reading up on DP and wanting this movie. I even read the leaked script from 2010.
However, both me as a person and Deadpool's portrayal in pop culture have changed significantly those past 7 years. I've seen a shitton of cosplayers at cons, his being wedged into every intersection of things that are "nerdy" and "funny" with memes of him everywhere, and the idiotic videogame, at some point along the line, I was like "OK, this is too stupid for me". The ad campaign leading up to the movie didn't help either, and at certain point I was dreading the movie. Basically, I was going in expecting this:
The Ugly: Deadpool's face. Kudos to the makeup artists and the effects people for really going hardcore on some of the body horror stuff.
The Bad: The villain was really lackluster. Like, he could have just worn a white
morphsuit that just said "BAD GUY" on it and the effect would be the
same. It's also not as weird as I was hoping for. It's failry standard plot for an action movie, just with everything shifted around a little.
Also, remember two paragraphs ago when I said I read the leaked script? Yeah, it spoiled some of the bigger jokes for me.
The Good: Despite all of that, Ryan Reynolds's delivery sold me on everything. It was a superhero movie with small stakes made interesting, a romantic subplot where the couple got to know each other over a year,
Also there was a lot of shit in that script that thankfully got cut out. Spoiler: Running joke where Amy Winehouse almost dies.
ANYTHING ELSE? The big news this week was that I was interviewed for FandomMania's Geek Music podcast. Seriously, look how fucking rogueish I look in that picture.
THE MAGIC THING. Oh yeah! I went 2-1 at Game Day. and got a crapton of spare promos they had. Abzan did fairly well, my only loss was against a Black/Red Dragons deck. On top of that, there's a special offer when-
NO, DIPSHIT. THE SONG, WHERE'S THE SONG?!?!? Coming this Wednesday. I have everything written, and it's mixed, but there's some cuts I wanted to make, I want to get little production sounds decent, and make sure everything rolls along.
-Wolf from American Gladiators beating up Christian Finnegan:
-Me and Henry/Quinton Flynn from Umicon Daytona. Super nice guy, and the panel was actually pretty great. Him and a couple other voice actors in attendance were bullshitting for an hour or so, and mix in some Aquacadets with beer, and you got yourself one hell of a good time.
-Wolf from American Gladiators being relevant enough to star in Disaster Movie:
Though I do feel that Owen's suggestion for a Ghostwriter reboot would be relevant in the modern age, since you can have the ghost writer that lives in the cloud and knows everything, what with you kids and your Siris and sex robots.
Dark Souls 2 came out, and it got me playing Dark Souls 1 again. It's still hard, but I feel like going through it a couple times, and learning to level up my Warrior better definitely helped out a lot. I'm only mentioning this because I'm working on music again (HINT HINT).
Speaking of which, a couple of conventions are getting back to me, and I'll be sending out follow ups and registration papers, and all kind of other neat things, so I can get some live shows before... well, hopefully at one of them I'll have something big to announce regarding the album.
Now, this weekend, while I had some fun playing DnD, Magic and watching UFC fights, there were some sad times, and I feel like 2 Green Day songs cover the situation well:
Wayne Knight died in a- Oh, wait, he didn't? I was gonna play "Time Of Your Life" but I guess not.
"See You Tonight"- Nice little acoustic ditty, reminds me of something by Simon and/or Garfunkel. It's only a minute, so it doesn't outstay it's welcome.
"Fuck Time"- This was the song in the preview for "Dos!". Not a fan of the chorus, though. At least the solo's solid, and it is a nice departure from the usual Green Day fare.
"Stop When The Red Lights Flash"- That hook is really what drives the song, and comes in at just the right time. The solo's OK, a lot of bends.
"Ashley"- They're using the phrase "screaming bloody murder" a lot in these two albums. It's like the phrase "When the lights go out" in Danger Days: The Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys by My Chemical Romance. Of all the songs, so far this is the closest to something of Dookie.
"Lazy Bones"- "The silence is so deafening it's like picking at a sore"? Really? The intro is really close to that of "Give Me Novocaine", but at least they do something interesting with the progression.
"Wild One"- Eh, is all I can really say. Some good lyrics, but like "Oh Love!" from Uno! it plods on for way longer that it should.
"Makeout Party"- A song written by men who are all married and have children. As a song it fucking rules, but this fact kept going in the back of mind. Tre's drumming is really good in this at least, and the second solo acts as a nice cliff before the quiet bridge.
"Stray Heart"- I'M WORTH A MILLION IN PRI- I mean, it's a great beat and all, but wait- This sounds so much like Jet it's not even funny. Green Day's Power-Pop-Punk now I guess.
"Baby Eyes"- All right, now we're back to the punk! And it's about shooting babies!
"Lady Cobra"- Harkens back to the Foxboro Hot Tubs days, which I liked a lot.
"Nightlife"- Wow. They're really trying to get into the Top 40 with this shit. This must be the first time Green Day had a guest vocalist.
"Wow! That's Loud"- Like Lady Cobra, I'm getting the FBHT vibe from this
"Amy"- Pass.
So overall, it sounds a lot better than Uno!, which I put toward the bottom of the Green Day canon, but this I'd say resides in the top half.
I just want to introduce Jeff to the least sucky Christmas song:
As far as subject matter goes, this one I had trouble with, since I'm not a very aggressive person and are all like "this sucks that sucks". I keep all my hate on the inside.But my first thought when I hear a bad song isn't "Why did they do wrong?" it's "What didn't they do right?". Or turn it off.
One thing I didn't mention as my least favorite Green Day song: "Ha Ha You're Dead". You see, occassionally I suffer bouts of mental retardation, during one of which I thought the Deadpool movie would still be a thing someday, and looking through some Green Day videos on YouTube, I saw the title "Ha Ha You're Dead" and thought "Hey, this should totally be in the totally-gonna-happen Deadpool movie!"
At first it was all right, but every time it comes on my MP3 Player, the thing just plods along and doesn't live up to the hooks Green Day is known for.
Then again, it was off Shenanigans, their B-Side album, so it was practically a non-contender in greater context of their catalog.
-So the reason why Black Album was a major departure for Metallica was because producer Bob Rock worked on stuff that was more glam, like Dr. Feelgood and Slippery When Wet. Metallica still had to make the conscious decision to write the Black Album, but that certainly contributed.
-Musical Un-Intregrity was actually used on Wikipedia for "selling out" in reference to Metallica:
Exact definition for musical un-integrity:
Musical un-intergrity is a specific music industry term for when a band totally sells out and becomes super gay to listen to like all that faggy Justin Bieber shit. Like, when they do something all retarded and shit, and now they're all fuckin' lame and gay and retarded.
Also I'm 14 and just got into Metallica after listening to "One" in Guitar Hero 3 and hearing all the grown ups talk about it, so now I only listen to real music.
-One "BIG CHANGE" in music, at least relevant to me: The Aquabats and the lack of horns in their last two albums.
This video sums it up rather well:
I can see where they're coming from: They wanted to keep things lean, and while wanting bigger cuts might equate to selling out, Charge! and Hi Five Soup! are awesome and it's just a different sound, trading one inspiration (fellow ska bands), to another (New wave, ala Devo)
-Due to a conversation I recently had with Owen of Ozone Ent, who edits and hosts the podcast, I am now aware that a Buckner and Garcia song exists for a certain game I recently mentioned.
-The Walking Dead Episode 1 was really good. Like, Deadly Premonition but without those retarded wall crawling baddies.
As usual, I give a brief overview of what we talked about, and
-This should give you a basic guide for our discussion:
The comic is by Winston Rowntree, who does the wordy, but still well done comic "Subnormailty" This is from his Cracked.com sidegig, "Abnormality" which has a lot less words, and a LOT easier on the ol' bandwidth.
-We discussed how The Misfits and Bob Dylan get covered a lot, therefore if I were to be in charge of the List Of Standards, it would be all The Static Age and Blood On The Tracks.
-I was pretty silent during Garage Inc. discussion since I'm not big into metal, but holy shit this is life changing:
-So two bands that I love the shit out of (as you might be able to tell from reading this blog), Green Day and The Aquabats, have both covered "Knowledge" by Operation Ivy. It's a really easy song, and I've covered it live before. I think this was the answer to the question: Has any cover benefitted from slowing it down?
The Aquabats, Campfirin' it up:
Green Day, proving how simple this song is:
-Yes Mystakin, I WAS upset and I AM a Ramones fan >:(
Musically they're not the most interesting thing, but I gotta represent Queens.
-There exists a bootleg of me covering "Party Rock Anthem" at I-Con 31. It WILL surface eventually...
All right, some stuff that I forgot to write about during Advent 2010: -I saw American Idiot on Broadway! Full disclosure department: I've never listened to American Idiot in it's original form. I've heard in through GD:RB, and little by little, I'm enjoying it more than 21st Century Breakdown. The story feels more solid, and there's more straight up punk on this album. The play overall was very well put together, giving a hilarious and tense context to the songs of not only Idiot, but some B-sides and Breakdown songs as well. If you've heard the album, the plot is more or less the same: A disenfranchised youth, Johnny, (played by John Gallager Jr.), goes to the big city and falls in love with a girl (Rebecca Naomi Jones), but is distracted by rebel St. Jimmy (Tony Vincent). There's also two side plots involving his friends Tunny (Matt Caplan), who goes off to the Middle East to fight in the wars, and Will (Michael Esper), who stays home to take care of his pregnant girlfriend. Mostly it's just fill out the soundtrack, but they provide a good distraction. There's a ton of energy, with a company of all shapes and sizes. A fucking blast to watch.
-A friend of mine introduced me to Pulsewave at The Tank in NYC on December 18th. Pulsewave is a showcase for chiptune music. Honestly, I fell asleep at the concert. Not because I found it boring, but because it was so relaxing. I'm working on a chiptune song right now.
-Twitter has me down as Video Game News for some reason, so here it goes: 1. RBN2.0 is releasing soon, with the documents for authoring already available. Audition Mode for Rock Band 3 will be released sometime next week, with the newest version of Magma coming soon. After February 14th, the system will completely turn over. 2. In RBN news, Anamanaguchi's "Airbrushed" was in the pipeline, but will be released alongside RBN 2.0. It was vbreaking the boundaries between man and machine.ery fun to play, but it's clear that they were waiting for keyboard authoring. In other RBN song news, Devin Townsend's "Ziltoid The Omniscient" will be coming to Rock Band, 3. Taskmaster will officially be in Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
I have RockBandAide linked on the side there for a reason people!
That's it for now. I've got an Aquabats! album to get tomorrow.
Nobody watched, lots of stuff went wrong. But I still had fun messing around with my friend who came. We didn't have mozzareppas like I planned, but we had Molten Chocolate cake. It's like regular chocolate cake, but the middle oozes out when you cut into it.
Said Koltreg, "The sound is coming in choppy, and the video lags. I like the song." So, for next time, I should probably put the backing tracks on something that isn't the machine I'm broadcasting from, and take notes on which backing tracks come in loud. The only problem is that with the laptop I can change the volume of the individual instruments, and always make it louder. Or rather, keep the levels low, and crank it up on the amp.
99% of the time this blog is just me thinking out loud.
All right, let's do this (***- OK to *****-Great to *****G- Flawless Performance): SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?- ***** I couldn't find a backing track without vocals. It was fun to jam out on, and a relief not having to worry about singing as well.
FORCE-A-NATURE- ***** This was the song Koltreg liked. Played it twice. Once with someone watching.
HOLIDAY- *****G Played it a million times. This song never gets old.
AXE COP- *****G WITH SPECIAL GUEST. This song will always be fun, and it's a damn shame I haven't tried to promote it more. I'm serious, everyone I've played it for sings the chorus ("AXE COP! THat's what I said!") whenever I'm around. I legitimately work out to that song, and not skip it over like "AH I DID IT IT SUCKS I FAIL!!"
DAYMAN- ***** The lag and the transfer from the laptop to the amp warped the sound, but we pulled this one off. I've played it live before.
So, RL gigs are hard to get, and nobody gives a shit about online gigs. I've learned nothing and my Mom wants me to clean the basement.
Maybe next time I'll play Rock Band over the stream... When Rock Band 3 comes out?
At a screening party of my friends' internet show, Dino Hunter M.D., which is this Saturday. I dunno, I might be too tired by the time I get home to announce my announcement. So it'll be more like Sunday. My friends will be all over. So all you have to do is find out who I really am, and where I will be Saturday night. Also, I might be attending RockGamer Studios's Green Day Rock Band event tonight.
Som on Sunday, I will announce my announcement. AND IT WILL BE GLORIOUS!!!
The game is Rock Band, but with Green Day. Just Green Day. That's it really.
FINAL VERDICT: Ask yourself these questions- 1. Do I like Green Day? 2. Do I like Rock Band? If yes, get it. Nothing else I can really say.
Oh, you wanted MORE? Then all I can give are my impressions and experiences, and that's not a review. EVERYONE'S reviewed this damn thing, so all I can do is tell you folks a little story:
All right, so while my little brother was at work, I called a friend over and we jammed a little bit. Since my Dad would probably want to tear through 21st Century Breakdown, we decided to go through the Dookie campaign. I was an idiot and decided to go on drums, AND try to sing, while my friend played the guitar. It was fun, and whoever thinks that a punk band can't have difficult music is out of their mind. Either way, it was a lot of fun.
The one thing that stuck out at me was how appropriate all the motions seemed. Linear motion capture really does make a difference, and I think that's one of the few areas where the Guitar Hero franchise has an edge over Rock Band.
Sure, you can have the different camera cuts and all that, but it felt more "professional". There is the argument that Rock Band isn't supposed to be about that, but more along the lines of you jamming out with some friends, and they're not going to be doing all the fucking around the GH avatars do. Still, after playing for a while, the "standard" cuts and motions look samey, and sometimes don't fit the scene. Anyway, back to my rambling:
I was born in '88 (raised by the bastards of 1951), and never really got into that album (Dookie). I sort of got into Green Day during that odd period between American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown. I just started to pick up the guitar, and "Holiday" was he first song I learned. Then one day my dad heard "Brain Stew" on the radio and he though "I like these guys!", so the next day he got Bullet In A Bible and International Superhits!, and watching that DVD, it's a real treat to see these guys live. "Energy" is the defining word.
And they tried to bring that energy to "Green Day: Rock Band". For the most part it succeeded. There's still the limitations of it being a video game, so the animation appears stilted at some points, and of course the, "fingers go THROUGH the strings" trick.
As far as complaints go, they're not that big, but it's like the Uncanny Valley: so close to being perfect (for me at least), that all these errors seem gigantic. 1. Nothing pre-Dookie. As I have mentioned before, there's a handful of good songs they could have used, and helped beefed up the Warehouse venue. But none of those stems are digital, so that gets a pass. 2. Not a lot of venues. The songs for the "other" albums (Insomniac to Warning) could have easily made another stage. It felt kind of anemic after The Beatles: Rock Band 3. Which leads me to my next point. It could have been cool to see the 21st Century Breakdown and American Idiot albums played out like a story, with GD playing in the background. For a band known for its music videos as well as the live shows, this was a disappointment.
Either way, I had fun with it, and intend to play it again when my brother goes to work later today.
But there are parts like these: B----15-13-13-12-12------12---------------| G-12-------------------14----14-12-14-12--| D--------------------------------------------| A--------------------------------------------| E--------------------------------------------|
It's all in the same scale, but spread out over the strings. Guitarcardio.com had some exercises that address this, but it's riffs like these that make it much more difficult to learn real guitar.
But you know what? Even playing it slow, it feels good. That's one feeling I can never get from a plastic guitar.
1. As if you couldn't tell from Twitter, I plunked down the green to join XNA, and be able to play test songs.
Impressions: "Bang Camaro" and "Nightlife Commando" by Bang Camaro- They were still version 1, but on my run through, it seemed good. A couple inappropriate chucks were charted, but other than that it seemed OK. Hard, but OK. Bang Camaro brings up odd feelings inside me. I always worry about lyrics like "Will this make sense?" and "Does it convey what I want it to?" or "How does it fit in?"
"Bang Camaro" only had two words: Bang and Camaro. "Nightlife Commando"? More complex at a whopping 5 words: "He was a nightlife commando!" But as always, the guitar parts are not something us mortal men should attempt; they simply resonate forth from these holy guitars in machinations that can only be conceived with awe.
"493 Ruth" by Bomb The Music Industry- All I remember was screaming... and uh... that's about it. It was a fun song, but the sudden changes from two to three chords get a little disorienting. I think the vocals could have been mixed a lot louder.
2. Me and Akira The Don will be makin' green now that "Steven Wells" is in the system. I have a few thoughts on pricing and charging your client for charting, but I'll get into that another time.
3. Green Day Rock Band's demo is out for the PSN. Impressions? Why, yes! Harmonies: Me and my brother played through both available songs "Welcome to Paradise" and "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams". It felt really good, like we were more into the song because of it. I played through Beatles Rock Band with some friends, and it looked good, but I wasn't as familiar with the songs we did harmonies on. Mostly it was used as an alternate key in the event that we couldn't hit the "main" track.
Welcome To Paradise: Hard as fuck on guitar. Nothing insurmountable, but when Green Day's involved, don't go in expecting a chordfest. Halfway through the song I got the rhythm down, but then the bridge came in.
Boulevard Of Broken Dreams: Bass = boring. One thing I noticed is that they chart the delay in the opening as separate chords. This also happened in Dead Kennedy's "Police Truck".
4. What else is green? Oh, uh... All the weed I sell to childr- I mean, um... Hmm... You know, it would seem like in a blog, I could edit out all those "buying time" words. And that selling drugs to ch-, um, yeah... But Punk Rock, Don't Care.
What I love is how if you do it right, it will feel very natural (save for that last note). Start with the index on the fourth fret, and hammer on with the ring finger. Then play the next part using only your first two fingers. Return to the base position with the index on the fourth fret.
2. It's summer, kids! You know what that means, right? MUSIC FESTIVALS!!
4. Right, so other than that I don't have a whole lot. Just winding down for finals. I'm going to try to record some stuff over the weekend, but it's so hard to practice when the pressure kind of just, drains you. One thing I try to do is a couple exercises from GuitarCardio a day.
What do I think? Well, it's REALLY light on venues. Beatles: RB had all those cool dreamscapes, and it disappoints me that not only will this NOT have those cool effects, but it even has less venues. Also, there's nothing Pre-Dookie. There's a lot of older stuff I would have loved to played, and something like "Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?" or "2000 Light Years Away" would have been a blast.
There's still 2 months to go, but yeah.
However, it still has 3 FULL ALBUMS: Dookie, American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown. Those from outside these albums hit a lot of the big ones, except for "Waiting".
Also, this place has a .tk address, so it's a lot shorter.
WARNING! THIS SETLIST WAS PURE SPECULATION! THE REAL SETLIST IS ABOVE
Because it worked before in drumming up some traffic (seriously, I still get a hit a day), I'd give the ol' Speculation Machine a whirl.
So, what 47 songs do I expect to be in Green Day Rock Band? Well, 1,039/Smoothed_Out Slappy Hours Venue: Rod's Hickory Pit 1. Disappearing Boy 2. Paper Lanterns 3. Knowledge 4. Green Day
Keplunk Venue: 924 Gilman St. 5. 2000 Light Years Away 6. Who Wrote Holden Caulfield? 7. Christie Road 8. J.A.R. 9. Dominated Love Slave
Dookie Venue: Woodstock '94 10.Chump 11.Longview 12.Welcome To Paradise 13.Basket Case 14.When I Come Around 15.She 16.Burnout
Insomniac Venue: 17.Stuart and the Ave 18.Brain Stew 19.Jaded 20.Geek Stink Breath 21.Walking COntradiction 22.86 44. Stuck With Me
Nimrod Venue: 23.Hitchin' A Ride 24.Comeback 25.The Grouch 26.Redundant 27.Take Back 28.King For A Day 45. Nice Guys Finish Last
Warning Venue: Tokyo 29. Warning 30.Castaway 31.Waiting 32.Minority
American Idiot Venue: Milton Keyes National Bowl 33.American Idiot 34.Jesus Of Suburbia 35.Holiday 36.Boulevard of Broken Dreams 37.St. Jimmy 38.Wake Me Up When September Ends
21st Century Breakdown Venue: Madison Square Garden 39. Song Of The Century/21st Cenutry Breakdown 40. Murder City 41. Horseshoes and Hand-grenades 42.Peacemaker 43.Static Age
Just finished the first collection of Mike Hammer detective novels. Good reads, but the last line of the last book, Vengence Is Mine!, is a little WTF. It is paraphrased above.
So anyway, I have SO MUCH STUFF here, and not ONE of them a song update! This is why it's called the Rhythm Bastard Experiment and not the Rock Band Experiment. 1. Finally able to get my hands on Xbox 360 and try out the song in Audition Mode. There were a lot of MIDI errors the first go around. Most common mistakes: -Make sure all your lyrics and notes are ALIGNED. Shift+A does the trick. -NAME ALL THE TRACKS. Just put a little event before hand. -It can be easy to lose track of where stuff like Overdrive because it is so far removed from the rest of the notes, I got a shitton of "inappropriate note at XXX" errors. -EVERYTHING IS .WAV. NO EXCEPTIONS. -Set the SAMPLE FORMAT to 16-bit. The rate is the standard 44.1K, except for the dry vocals, which are 16K. -TURN UP SAID .WAVS LOUD. Otherwise, you won't get any lipsync, let alone hear the damn thing.
So, this weekend, as well as making another song and doing my lab report, I'll make those improvements and maybe dick around with the event settings.
3. MARCH 10th OPEN MIC NIGHT. There were only about 5 people there. Three I knew. Now, let me tell you all the stuff that went wrong: First, my tuning peg was fucked. Normally I'd have gone through all the work tuning it at the beginning and then pray it lasts through the night. NOPE. So, thank God my friend had an extra guitar he was able to lend, but I sat there awkwardly with the only 3 people who've yet to leave. Did I mention that? Yeah, it was pretty dead. Only one other guy managed to show up, so it was those people, two of my friends from the paper, and the guy who lent me the guitar. The show went on, and well, here's the breakdown... RADIO DAYS-*** Is it possible to forget the chords to your own song? Yes! I picked it up later, and the solo went on longer than I expected.
FORCE-A-NATURE-*** The chord changes in the chorus of "Force Of Nature" are pretty close together, so I messed that up, as well as the first part of the solo.
DAYMAN- *****G No video, but at the clapping part, everyone "Woo!"ed in that split second of silence. I think I might hate my friends.
ARE YOU GONNA BE MY GIRL?- **** In the video I took, I hated my voice, but I had so much fun doing it. I also played the opening riff in the wrong key AND waited too long for one of the verse breaks. Still, I had fun.
KNOWLEDGE- **** Forgot where I was toward the beginning because GENIUS ME COULDN'T FIGURE OUT THE VOLUME KNOB ON THE GUITAR, but other than that, I liked it. I based it more off the Green Day cover of the song, which has a lot more relaxed strumming pattern, like blues.
Vids will come up at some point, but I got another Open Mic on Tuesday. HOPEFULLY NOTHING GOES WRONG THIS TIME!!!!
Despite all that, it was like playing for all my friends. I felt a lot more comfortable, and my camera guy, Steve, is super cool, and we will jam in the future.
Hopefully this will actually work, unlike my previous band.
