its that time again
Thursday, December 17 2009
Posted by brockp

And by that I do not exactly mean Christmas, although it is certainly that time again as well. I am of course referring to the annual Nasco Christmas Party and the obligatory reassembly of the Ramones cover band.

This year's version features Dirty Kurt of Real McKenzies fame, as well as myself, Tim Hewitt, and the ringleader Zabo (aka Mike Price). Our first of two rehearsals (gig on Monday) was last night and we charged through about 15 Ramones hits, pausing only to tell Kurt a different key, or to um, learn the song with a community listen from the iPhone (thanks Tim).

Those of you who are of the opinion that Ramones songs are easy have obviously never tried this. Of course they ARE easy in a way, but just physically demanding to play properly. You've gotta do all downstrokes on the guitar, none of this uppy-downy strumming allowed (except when absolutely necessary due to torturous pain and cramping). High points of the evening for me were watching Kurt's facial expressions as he approached this point of pain, and getting past them myself.

Kurt has only just recovered completely from breaking his leg onstage in Germany. We asked him how in the world he did that and his response was, "Punk Rock Jump". Only guy I know who not only breaks his tibia onstage, but then finishes the song on his back AND the rest of the set while propped up on a stool. See it for yourself thanks to the wonders of youtube!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upNgY_aMyqc

next in line: the battle of the bull$hit
Wednesday, November 11 2009
Posted by brockp
Hey everyone.

If you have actually visited this page enough times to find that i have blogged again, welcome back. I think the last thing i wrote here was on Constructivism and Punk Rock, from back when I was in design school.

That leaves an awfully long gap in the sequence of events blogged about here. I realise also that as this site has bounced around from server to server, that the archives of past blogs are not exactly complete or accessible, and there may be a bunch of 404's lurking and so on.

For shame for shame. Anyways, its time to inject a little energy into this sphere. At some point I will prolly write more about what all has been going on with me over the last few years but for the moment, it is this moment that I am concerned with.

I have been working in the IATSE realm since July, on a TV show called Smallville. Its a Warner Brothers production which is in its ninth season. Up until recently I had never seen a complete episode, so I'd be surprised if any of you had either. It has been a welcome (though difficult) change from my life as a stagehand, a path I set foot on many years ago in an attempt to earn extra dough on the side to finance recordings and, well living expenses, etc. Those Doughboys royalties stopped rolling in years ago for me, and they were never exactly plentiful to begin with. Somehow, being a stagehand on the side turned into being a stagehand as a regular gig, and before you know it, I was doing less and less music, aside from the odd gig at the Nasco Christmas Party with Zabo and his Ramones cover band. While loads of fun (mostly) this was not exactly what I had in mind when I set out on the road as a skinny 20 year old, or enrolled in Berklee College of Music a few years later.

Somehow, the jump to working in film actually seems to have partially liberated me from the claws of resistance and creative lethargy. Its not much different from being a stagehand. In fact, at times it is harder than stagehand work: I'm no rigger, so the amount of calls I've had to show up for at 6am I can count on... well I never had to show up that early. There is also absolutely no connection to music whatsoever, unless you count the fact that we are still in the entertainment business, and a$$-ki$$ers still seem to get ahead. I think it might be this fact (no connection to music) that actually allows me to begin to consider that I love playing in bands and making records. Duh.

So as far as that is concerned, I am planning a contribution to a compilation that Aston is putting together in honour of Boss Tuneage's 20th anniversary of "fashionably not selling records". Johnny Stewart and I have been talking about doing something for a long time now, and since he also works on Smallville in LX, we seem to no longer have an excuse unless willing to finally concede to ultimate lameness. John also plays with 16mm and Black Halos, although I'm not sure if they are up to much these days.

Anyways, all this is kind of to say if you are still reading here, or are one of the many who have posted to my myspace, facebooked me, emailed out of the blue over the last few years, thanks. I've heard you, and hopefully you will soon be hearing me again too. Later!

-B

Constructivism and Punk
Thursday, March 13 2008
Posted by brockito

So I have been embroiled in school for the last six months, which is one of my excuses for not-so-frequent blogging during that time. Among other things, I have been studying Russian Constructivism as it pertains to graphic design, and this term I have been attempting to hybridize that style with the North American Punk aesthetic.

Last night was my final portfolio class of the term and I and my fellow student designers were asked to give a presentation of our work. As I scrambled to get everything finished, mounted, documented, etc., I was struggling through moments of feeling very ill with some kind of flu-type thing. Fortunately I had been given some kind of medicine—I don't know what it was but it seemed to work. I wasn't really able to eat so well though so by the time I got to school (late again) I was pretty light-headed and a little shaky.

While driving earlier this week, I had had the idea that the best way for anyone to get a feel for the look I was going for was to just play some music from that era while showing the images on the projector. So I brought some speakers from home and when it was my turn, I just played an excerpt of Naum Gabo reading the Realist Manifesto and then played Something I learned Today from Zen Arcade, followed by Black Flag My War.

Unfortunately I forgot to include some key images from my roughs when combining PDFs earlier so I got through most of what I had to show before Henry Rollins was going off with his, "You're one of them, Them, THEM !" so i had to skip to that part and then took the cover off of my mounted print. I guess I didn't feel like talking so much, so I just let the music and the images do the talking. At one point i looked up at some of the faces and I'm not really sure how to gauge the reaction. I think at least one of my two instructors was less-than-impressed. I guess in that sense it was a success, in that maybe some didn't get it, or felt alienated by it, or pissed off by it, or at least had some sort of reaction provoked out of them. I dunno. It sure felt better than trying to explain in a BCIT classroom what is punk about ANYTHING.

Here's one of my comps, trying to figure out how to let the Exclaim! type hang off the edge of the page size with some sketch marks...

Mike Conley Dead
Sunday, March 2 2008
Posted by brockito

I just checked my webmail a few minutes ago to see if my latest portfolio assignment was graded, yeah I know, I'm in school again—and along with "Just Added: Bold Spicy Flavour" from Sonicbids spam, there was a message from John K. I don't hear from John that often unless he is in town or something bad happenned, and unfortunately, this time he is not in town.

He was messaging to relay the news that yet another person we knew from the heydey of touring in a van with the Doughboys has met an untimely end. We first met Mike Conley in Sumter, South Carolina at a gig in some VFW hall or something. We were travelling down the east coast towards Florida at the time and were due to meet up with MIA and the Descendents for a bunch of gigs. Sumter was our first gig with MIA.

Now being from Montreal, this was my first encounter with California boys, and I think had we played just the one gig with MIA, I might have laughed at them and found their styley clothes and hair product kinda ridiculous.

Living in a van, I was quite amazed at how much attention went into the right shoes and clothes and so on. Drumming for them at the time was Chris Moon, whom we eventually just referred to as Moon. Last I heard he was married and selling vacuum cleaners or real estate in Vegas. There's a wild guess, vacuum cleaners OR real estate. Anyway, what I am trying to get at was these guys were all characters. Playing guitar was Mark Arnold, whom we eventually referred to as Santa, and on bass was Frank Daly. Frank and Mark went on to form Big Drill Car after this incarnation of MIA broke up, which was right after this tour if I remember correctly.

Anyways, Mike Conley was the ringleader, the lead singer and main songwriter. He and John K took to each other in a flash and their friendship lasted until yesterday when Mike was found dead in a Chicago parking lot. I don't really want to say much more right now but the link John forwarded me is here. Have a listen to Boredom is the Reason and think of him.

Goodbye Mike.

Lamb of Good ?
Tuesday, July 17 2007
Posted by brockito
That was what I overheard outside the CCC Friday night... I think I was taking off for a half hour dinner break after finally getting everything ready for doors to open and let the punters in. The kids were out in droves (1300) for another night of all ages metal featuring Lamb of God, with support from Hatebreed, Behemoth, and 3 Inches of Blood.

Usually by the time we're ready for doors, I'll have time for an hour or an hour and a half to go have dinner and relax a bit but this was the beginning of tour for LOG and we ended up helping with some pre-production tasks which kinda threw the normal timetable off. These guys are now on Ozzfest so they wanted to prepare a few things, like carts for their guitar cabs, snake looms, etc. The carts took an inordinate amount of futzing and time wasting.

LOG uses some absurd number of 4x12 and 8x10 Mesa Boogie cabs which are stacked three high and two high respectively. Each guitar cart has two or three loaded ones on the bottom (that means they have speakers in them and actually work) with six dummies on top. Dummies are basically props and have no speakers in them but look otherwise like a regular cab. Blah blah blah, so anyway, yeah, we were arranging some of these carts so the cabs would sit right on them when stacked and it involved a little carpentry project with circular saw, half inch ply and gorilla snot glue.

The end result was that at 4:30pm, no one had sound checked or line checked and we had three metal bands worth of gear and dead cases scattered around the hall, no barricade yet built. Amazingly enough, we did manage to bury all the deads, backline all the gear for all four bands, and find room for the remaining two drumsets before doors, even though doors were technically a little late.

A quick bite of pizza and some coffee and we were back at it. 3 Inches of Blood were really good, I thought, but they still had to cut their set a bit due to things getting a late start. We got the first changeover done and ended up striking drums in the area right between the room B which serves as band dressing rooms and dead storage and the side door into the hall.

I heard some commotion outside the door and then three bouncers suddenly plowed through the double doors struggling to contain some skinhead punter dude who had apparently already been thrown out once and had snuck back in. Now this was a pretty intense struggle and the blows were flying and landing. The four bodies all kinda linked together were moving around like a rugby scrum while me and Double Cheese and Sean scrambled to move the partly disassembled 3 Inches of Blood drum rack out of harm's way. Doouble Cheese was wide eyed and Sean was suddenly in the scrum and I was grabbing cell phones and radios dropped onto the floor. Before too long, the security guys had buddy pinned face down on the linoleum with his arms and legs twisted behind him like a pretzel and the cops were on the way. This kinda threw a wrench into our ability to finish striking 3 Inches of Blood and load them out since the security guys kept this guy pinned until VPD arrived, right where we were working.

As I walked into the production office I saw that first aid already had had some customers and there were already some kids with ice on their heads and noses and so on... Things were getting busy, and this blood stuff kept turning up all over, little blobs here, a smudged footprint there, mostly between first aid and the bathrooms.

Things settled down a bit after that and the next couple changeovers went fairly smoothly. Since we hadn't finished 3 Inches of Blood due to the scrum action, we had to load out Behemoth and them during the next change and while Hatebreed was on, so i didn't really hear much of how they were other than a far away din of warfarelike mayhem coming from the main hall. Greg later told me that the singer in Hatebreed was absolutely commanding the crowd.

They sure were hyped up and were making plenty of noise during the last changeover as we got Hatebreed off and LOG started linechecking. This all took quite a while due in part to the fact that LOG's FOH guy had only just picked up their Yamaha PM5D desk about two days earlier and was trying to make sense of it on the fly. Things eventually did get started but came to a screeching halt almost immediately.

I was hiding back in production having a snack or something when Hutch noticed there was no sound coming from the hall so I dashed off towards the stage to find the Rocky (house audio) guys rewiring stuff and searching for another subsnake, no band onstage anywhere. Things did not look good. I helped Paul find the subsnake and passed it over to LOG's guy behind the drums so he could repatch stage right inputs. I figured there was not much more I could do to help and it seemed like they had it worked out so I went back to production. When things still did not resume after a minute I headed back to the stage.

By this time the crowd was plenty vocal and none too pleased to be still waiting. As I stood offstage left looking at Paul in monitor-land trying to see what he was up to, the crowd started chanting, "Nickelback sucks" in response to my crew shirt with Nickelback 07 on the back. I had to laugh because this was the second comment I'd received already regarding that particular shirt. Now, I guess when you go to a Lamb of God show, you carefully select your black t shirt (the kilted guy with the "Jesus is a cunt" shirt for example) but when I go to work, Lamb of God or no, I take the top black t shirt from my pile of like 20 black t shirts. I could care less whther it was from a Nickelback or a Ministry show. I later wished I had egged the crowd on and launched my shirt into the crowd to be devoured in a feeding frenzy but I didn't think of that until a few minutes later. Come to think of it, I wonder if anyone at Switchfoot was offended by my Ministry/Revolting Cocks MasterbaTour shirt ? Who knows.

Now that guy with the "Jesus is a cunt" shirt was another story. His girlfriend had been concussed and needed to leave the show so she asked if we could tell her boyfriend.

"What does he look like ?"
"He's wearing a black kilt and a shirt that says Jesus is a Cunt"
(Peter adds later: "There are about ten guys that fit that description !!!")
Hutch goes to find him and says, "Hey, come here, i need to talk to you.."
Kilt dude turns and dashes off into the crowd at top speed...

Anyway, I digress. Alas it is nearly three am again.

So yeah, eventually Lamb of God got going again, but not after the entire stage had to be re-wired to the house FOH desk because of issues with the PM5D.

I've gotta rehearse with Shining Hour tomorrow morning at 10am so that's it for now...