HaterHigh.com
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This is the first time I've been aware that dorsiafilms video clips are available on your site...
While I appreciate you crediting the videos to dorsiafilms (though I don't remember being asked or granting the courtesy you have noted on the page), I'd rather you link to the pages on which they live versus downloading and hosting them yourself. It's a web etiquette thing.
In this way, I am able to make changes to these links without having to notify you of said changes, and your links will have less of a chance of being broken. Sound good?
While I appreciate you crediting the videos to dorsiafilms (though I don't remember being asked or granting the courtesy you have noted on the page), I'd rather you link to the pages on which they live versus downloading and hosting them yourself. It's a web etiquette thing.
In this way, I am able to make changes to these links without having to notify you of said changes, and your links will have less of a chance of being broken. Sound good?
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sour29
- Posts: 2056
- Joined: Tue Dec 09, 2003 7:53 am
- Current Heading: Ascending
- Location: Toronto, Canada
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OK, cell phone ring tunes are up, finally! I opened up a misc. downloads section for which I've stuck the cell phone rings under. I'll probably also put up a modest-sized photography section there, eventually. Anything else that should go up in this section? Anyone going to code JAVA-based Long Winters games, for example? ;)
The domain has transferred a very respectable 30 gigs of data in two weeks. I'm impressed! But that's still only 2.5% of my total allotted monthly bandwidth, so feel free to continue to go crazy! If you haven't noticed, a whole slew of iTunes-formatted videos have been posted -- snagged from the Toronto Tape Tree dvd. I'll probably be putting up a new batch in the next week or so, so grab them while they're hot.
The domain has transferred a very respectable 30 gigs of data in two weeks. I'm impressed! But that's still only 2.5% of my total allotted monthly bandwidth, so feel free to continue to go crazy! If you haven't noticed, a whole slew of iTunes-formatted videos have been posted -- snagged from the Toronto Tape Tree dvd. I'll probably be putting up a new batch in the next week or so, so grab them while they're hot.
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sour29
- Posts: 2056
- Joined: Tue Dec 09, 2003 7:53 am
- Current Heading: Ascending
- Location: Toronto, Canada
- Contact:
I'm just working on Western State Hurricanes lyrics. Don't get too excited, many are more-or-less the same as the songs that ended up on TWYCDIH, but almost all of them have slight variations or extra verses/bridges. Which I think makes it worthy of posting.
But the real point of this post is: does anyone has a copy of the Western State Hurricanes demo tape on this board? More importantly, can anyone scan or take a photograph of it?
Or, better still -- does anyone have a copy they'd be willing to part with? I'd throw down a chunk of change for one. Word.
EDIT: WSH and Compilation lyrics are up. Some of the WSH lyrics are spotty and/or questionable. If anyone can help with corrections or suggestions, it would be appreciated.
But the real point of this post is: does anyone has a copy of the Western State Hurricanes demo tape on this board? More importantly, can anyone scan or take a photograph of it?
Or, better still -- does anyone have a copy they'd be willing to part with? I'd throw down a chunk of change for one. Word.
EDIT: WSH and Compilation lyrics are up. Some of the WSH lyrics are spotty and/or questionable. If anyone can help with corrections or suggestions, it would be appreciated.
sour29 wrote:But the real point of this post is: does anyone has a copy of the Western State Hurricanes demo tape on this board? More importantly, can anyone scan or take a photograph of it?
Or, better still -- does anyone have a copy they'd be willing to part with? I'd throw down a chunk of change for one. Word.
I have a tape. I'll take a picture tonight, but I'm not willing to part with it for any price.
For the record, that's a copy of the earliest version of that tape, the one where I made the labels myself at Kinkos to save money, (coverart by Scott Musgrove). We made two hundred copies of that tape and sold them all at the first few shows. Later "repressings" included a sparkly WSH sticker made by Brian Taylor. I think we only ever made about five hundred copies of that tape.
At our Showbox show a couple of weeks ago, Ben Gibbard's dad gave me a gift-wrapped present. It was his copy of the WSH tape, sparkle-sticker version,which he bought at the OK Hotel when we played there with DCFC back in '98. I re-gifted it to Eric, who always wanted a copy.
The cassette versions of those songs were recorded in spring of '98 with Phil Ek at John and Stu's (later the Hall of Justice). I wanted to record an entire album's worth of songs in the five days we had booked, but Phil and Stephanie talked me out of it, encouraging me to spend more time on five songs so that our "demo" tape would attract "label interest". Oh, the stupid old late-nineties. I suspected then that Phil Ek didn't think we were very cool, and didn't want to make a whole record in five days with an "uncool" band, whereas making a "demo" tape was forgivable. It was one of the first times I'd been in a recording studio and Phil Ek was a big deal-- Built to Spill was one of our favorite bands-- so I gave his opinion considerable weight. A number of times during the recording session I would get excited about an idea and Phil would roll his eyes, presumably because my taste was too "classic rock".
The CD version of that demo came later, and is more of a hodge-podge. At the end of '98, having either messed-up or forgone our Sub Pop deal, (depending on who you ask), we decided to go back into the studio and make a full-length record ourselves. My bandmates continued to think we should make a "demo" of the full record, the better to entice some major label to sign us for big bucks. I had just turned thirty and had never made a real record, so I didn't care what we called it, I just wanted to record it.
Stephanie was working at the Trading Musician at the time, and one of her co-workers offered to record us for free in his "fully-equiped, professional basement studio". We agreed, certain that we had what it took to make a killer rock record wherever we recorded.
(Side note: at this same time, Chris Walla was entreating me to come up to Bellingham and let him record us in the original Hall of Justice house, where they all lived. At the time, as God is my witness, I was talked out of this idea by several "established" rock aquaintances who said, and I quote, that they didn't like Walla's "drum sound". I was then completely ignorant of the difference between one or another "drum sound", and I'm sorry to admit I was easily influenced by the supposedly conventional wisdom of various semi-famous people, and by the idea that a drum sound could make or break the sound of a record. Especially now, listening back to that first DCFC record and loving how it sounds, I kick myself. My regret over that decision has kept me on-guard since then whenever people express opinions about what is cool or uncool in production. Gated snares are uncool? OK, then bring out the gated snares! I think more than anything, realizing that I couldn't really rely on other people's production prejudices inspired me to learn how to do it myself.)
Anyway, we went into the "professional recording facility" in this guy's basement in the winter of '99, and spent a month there recording our long-awaited debut. The guy's name, I kid you not, was Scrappy, originally from Austin, Texas, and he was the most bumbling incompetent, mean-spirited, shit-headed recording engineer I ever saw or had the misfortune to work with. We couldn't start before noon and had to be done at six PM because his girlfriend wanted it quiet when she got home from work. The whole experience was a nightmare, and the end result sounded like total garbage. I was so ignorant of how a recording session was supposed to feel that I wasn't consciously aware how miserable the process was, or how terrible it sounded, until much later. I was just trying to make the music sound good, and I guess assumed that the bad vibes and lame sounds were all par for the course. Maybe we could "fix it in the mix" or something.
Two years after the fact, a mutual friend hired John Goodmanson to mix the aborted "Scrappy" WSH record. Goodmanson, after several days of trying, looked at me with pity in his eyes and said, "I can tell from the recordings that that experience must have sucked. There's nothing usable here. No wonder your band broke up."
Desperate to salvage something from the experience, I took the rough mixes of a few tracks to Rick Fisher, the mastering engineer, and asked him if he could give them any life. I didn't know what mastering was, exactly, but people had told me it was some kind of miracle process that made records sound good. Rick mastered a few tracks and we put them on a CD with some of the Phil Ek recordings. We were headed to SXSW for the first time and wanted some promos to give away to all the bigshot music-biznez people who would surely be crowding our "showcase". In the less than a year we'd been a band the cassette tape had finally been usurped by the CD. Every band had CDs for sale at their shows instead of cassettes and we needed to get with the times.
Of course the mastering didn't really change the fact that the "Scrappy" recordings were dogshit. The versions on Phil Ek's half-hearted demo sounded like Steely Dan by comparison. Still, we'd put so much work into the damn thing that I wasn't willing, or able, to give up on those tracks, so we took the best couple tracks and slapped them together with some Phil Ek tracks and made a CD. We manufactured about a hundred of those CDs, (the majority of which were actually mislabeled at the pressing plant, which was owned by one of Nabil's former Micro Mini bandmates), and gave them away at SXSW and on the tour with DCFC back up the west coast.
Hilariously, John Goodmanson remixed the Phil Ek recordings at the same time he was trying to make sense of the Scrappy tapes, and his remixes of Phil's tracks made them really come alive. Phil is a talented engineer and Goodmanson was able to unearth and highlight all the awesome "classic rock" flourishes that Phil tried to bury. Unfortunately I've never had occasion to duplicate the remixes in any way, and now I think they're lost in the bottom of a box in the basement somewhere. Maybe one day I'll dig em out.
So there are three published versions of WSH material: the first "palm tree" tape, the second musically identical "sparkly sticker" tape, (and there were dozens of slight variations in the stickers), and the third, "half-assed" CD demo. The entire Scrappy recording sessions still exist on 1/2 inch tape at the old Hall of Justice, which is now the DCFC practice space. Never to see the light of day.
At our Showbox show a couple of weeks ago, Ben Gibbard's dad gave me a gift-wrapped present. It was his copy of the WSH tape, sparkle-sticker version,which he bought at the OK Hotel when we played there with DCFC back in '98. I re-gifted it to Eric, who always wanted a copy.
The cassette versions of those songs were recorded in spring of '98 with Phil Ek at John and Stu's (later the Hall of Justice). I wanted to record an entire album's worth of songs in the five days we had booked, but Phil and Stephanie talked me out of it, encouraging me to spend more time on five songs so that our "demo" tape would attract "label interest". Oh, the stupid old late-nineties. I suspected then that Phil Ek didn't think we were very cool, and didn't want to make a whole record in five days with an "uncool" band, whereas making a "demo" tape was forgivable. It was one of the first times I'd been in a recording studio and Phil Ek was a big deal-- Built to Spill was one of our favorite bands-- so I gave his opinion considerable weight. A number of times during the recording session I would get excited about an idea and Phil would roll his eyes, presumably because my taste was too "classic rock".
The CD version of that demo came later, and is more of a hodge-podge. At the end of '98, having either messed-up or forgone our Sub Pop deal, (depending on who you ask), we decided to go back into the studio and make a full-length record ourselves. My bandmates continued to think we should make a "demo" of the full record, the better to entice some major label to sign us for big bucks. I had just turned thirty and had never made a real record, so I didn't care what we called it, I just wanted to record it.
Stephanie was working at the Trading Musician at the time, and one of her co-workers offered to record us for free in his "fully-equiped, professional basement studio". We agreed, certain that we had what it took to make a killer rock record wherever we recorded.
(Side note: at this same time, Chris Walla was entreating me to come up to Bellingham and let him record us in the original Hall of Justice house, where they all lived. At the time, as God is my witness, I was talked out of this idea by several "established" rock aquaintances who said, and I quote, that they didn't like Walla's "drum sound". I was then completely ignorant of the difference between one or another "drum sound", and I'm sorry to admit I was easily influenced by the supposedly conventional wisdom of various semi-famous people, and by the idea that a drum sound could make or break the sound of a record. Especially now, listening back to that first DCFC record and loving how it sounds, I kick myself. My regret over that decision has kept me on-guard since then whenever people express opinions about what is cool or uncool in production. Gated snares are uncool? OK, then bring out the gated snares! I think more than anything, realizing that I couldn't really rely on other people's production prejudices inspired me to learn how to do it myself.)
Anyway, we went into the "professional recording facility" in this guy's basement in the winter of '99, and spent a month there recording our long-awaited debut. The guy's name, I kid you not, was Scrappy, originally from Austin, Texas, and he was the most bumbling incompetent, mean-spirited, shit-headed recording engineer I ever saw or had the misfortune to work with. We couldn't start before noon and had to be done at six PM because his girlfriend wanted it quiet when she got home from work. The whole experience was a nightmare, and the end result sounded like total garbage. I was so ignorant of how a recording session was supposed to feel that I wasn't consciously aware how miserable the process was, or how terrible it sounded, until much later. I was just trying to make the music sound good, and I guess assumed that the bad vibes and lame sounds were all par for the course. Maybe we could "fix it in the mix" or something.
Two years after the fact, a mutual friend hired John Goodmanson to mix the aborted "Scrappy" WSH record. Goodmanson, after several days of trying, looked at me with pity in his eyes and said, "I can tell from the recordings that that experience must have sucked. There's nothing usable here. No wonder your band broke up."
Desperate to salvage something from the experience, I took the rough mixes of a few tracks to Rick Fisher, the mastering engineer, and asked him if he could give them any life. I didn't know what mastering was, exactly, but people had told me it was some kind of miracle process that made records sound good. Rick mastered a few tracks and we put them on a CD with some of the Phil Ek recordings. We were headed to SXSW for the first time and wanted some promos to give away to all the bigshot music-biznez people who would surely be crowding our "showcase". In the less than a year we'd been a band the cassette tape had finally been usurped by the CD. Every band had CDs for sale at their shows instead of cassettes and we needed to get with the times.
Of course the mastering didn't really change the fact that the "Scrappy" recordings were dogshit. The versions on Phil Ek's half-hearted demo sounded like Steely Dan by comparison. Still, we'd put so much work into the damn thing that I wasn't willing, or able, to give up on those tracks, so we took the best couple tracks and slapped them together with some Phil Ek tracks and made a CD. We manufactured about a hundred of those CDs, (the majority of which were actually mislabeled at the pressing plant, which was owned by one of Nabil's former Micro Mini bandmates), and gave them away at SXSW and on the tour with DCFC back up the west coast.
Hilariously, John Goodmanson remixed the Phil Ek recordings at the same time he was trying to make sense of the Scrappy tapes, and his remixes of Phil's tracks made them really come alive. Phil is a talented engineer and Goodmanson was able to unearth and highlight all the awesome "classic rock" flourishes that Phil tried to bury. Unfortunately I've never had occasion to duplicate the remixes in any way, and now I think they're lost in the bottom of a box in the basement somewhere. Maybe one day I'll dig em out.
So there are three published versions of WSH material: the first "palm tree" tape, the second musically identical "sparkly sticker" tape, (and there were dozens of slight variations in the stickers), and the third, "half-assed" CD demo. The entire Scrappy recording sessions still exist on 1/2 inch tape at the old Hall of Justice, which is now the DCFC practice space. Never to see the light of day.
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sour29
- Posts: 2056
- Joined: Tue Dec 09, 2003 7:53 am
- Current Heading: Ascending
- Location: Toronto, Canada
- Contact:
JR,
Glad you finally posted it. I really love these history lessons. I'll probably read that post six more times before the day is done. Thank you very much. :)
As for the WSH demos that are currently circulating
(1. Through With Love
2. Copernicus
3. Unsalted Butter
4. Medicine Cabinet Pirate
5. Samaritan
6. Carparts
7. Mimi)
I assume this is from the CD source that was handed out at SXSW? Which songs were from which sessions? Which songs were on the original tape that didn't make the cut to the cd? Which songs were recorded at the Scrappy session, but then...umm... scrapped? ... Sorry, I'm really hooked on these types of little tidbits.
And if it's the CD version that is in circulation -- the one that's half-assed -- I need to hear the original tape version. I still love those tracks. <3
Thanks again, for another intriguing history lesson!
Glad you finally posted it. I really love these history lessons. I'll probably read that post six more times before the day is done. Thank you very much. :)
As for the WSH demos that are currently circulating
(1. Through With Love
2. Copernicus
3. Unsalted Butter
4. Medicine Cabinet Pirate
5. Samaritan
6. Carparts
7. Mimi)
I assume this is from the CD source that was handed out at SXSW? Which songs were from which sessions? Which songs were on the original tape that didn't make the cut to the cd? Which songs were recorded at the Scrappy session, but then...umm... scrapped? ... Sorry, I'm really hooked on these types of little tidbits.
And if it's the CD version that is in circulation -- the one that's half-assed -- I need to hear the original tape version. I still love those tracks. <3
Thanks again, for another intriguing history lesson!
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No You Are
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