and time goes by
but i’ll have to sleep soon

listen to the steel string guitar
might not be real
but this one is pretty convincing

video, audio
back to old

rip [it] off the thing [on my desk]
i missed a tv show
i missed a bunch of tv shows
maybe tomorrow…or today

And that’s what I’ll do, under tags like “rant” and “journal”.

Woke up late and rushed to go somewhere. Had fun and came back. I’ll of course be voting tomorrow (later today – it’s 1 AM) and hopefully there’ll be great turnout. I just hope the Tea Party movement keeps going, even after 2012 (when Obama will lose

I honestly do not expect anything unusual from the upcoming Republican Congressmen and -women with regard to them being conservative or libertarian. Given that the neocons tainted Obama’s radical socialism and opposition to war, you can bet they’ll taint the Republicans again just as they did on 9/12/01. But we’ll see. All we can do is wait.

Think I’ll watch some videos and then go to bed. I did wake up late but am still tired, probably cause I went to bed very late. I might listen to college radio too. I started listening again after years, seems to now be just as top-down and commoditized as Clear Channel rather than college kids filling time slots with whatever they want. Though it isn’t always the case, there’s some feeling still left. But I doubt it will continue, too much money and power involved.

Bier, otherwise known as Madonna Wayne Gacy, sued [Marilyn] Manson for more than $20 million last year, claiming Manson siphoned off millions of dollars in band revenue.

The funds allegedly paid for drugs, assorted Nazi paraphernalia, the cost of [Dita] Von Teese’s engagement ring and the ex-couple’s 2005 wedding, and the interior decorating of Manson’s mansion, which features a stuffed grizzly bear, a pair of baboons and the skeleton of a 4-year-old Chinese girl.

Also, I took out Diablo and Diablo II after about 10 years. I don’t think I ever or barely played Diablo II, but it’s the only option now, being the latest (an expansion pack called “Lord of Destruction” came later, and Diablo III is on the way), and Diablo I has been rendered totally useless by hackers. (Diablo II has spamming issues but nothing too bad.) I was never a “gaming” type, but I forgot how fun these games were.

So once these tapes are transferred I’ll be back to blogging (and doing other things) more often.

Now it appears the same thing is occurring with STP. This band has existed since 1992 (1991 if you count the non-grunge Mighty Joe Young demo material)

Their first album in 1992, the grungy Core, has lots of hits played on classic rock stations, including “Sex Type Thing”, “Plush”, and “Wicked Garden”.

1994′s Purple (incorrectly considered self-titled as the word “purple” is written in Chinese) is very 70s rock sounding, Led Zeppelin-like. Two hits from Purple are frequently played by classic rock stations, “Big Empty” (also used in The Crow) and “Interstate Love Song”. (A heavier hit, “Unglued”, is no longer heard on the radio)

I was a fan of this band since I was in 6th grade. This was 1996, after Tiny Music was released. This had a more messy sound, wasn’t always heavy, and sounded similar to the Beatles at times.

In 1999, after a brief break-up (including terrible solo work by singer Scott Weiland), No. 4 was released. It was very heavy, kind of like Core, and there were a few softer Tiny Music-like songs, but also very messy, as there were psychological issues at the time, including Scott Weiland’s drug addiction.

Shangri-La Dee Da, released in 2001, was mostly acoustic. I didn’t like it and found it boring, but others disagreed with me. There were frequent obvious references to Courtney Love (Hole like most others had “sold out” at the time), including the hit “Hollywood Bitch” and the conspiratorial “Too Cool Queenie”

(note I can only find a session recording, if you are interested in the conspiracy theory click here for the lyrics)

A greatest hits album, 2003′s Thank You (from which the above video came from, as I am told, I do not have this album). The buy-this-anyway-hit was “All In The Suit That You Wear” (sounds kinda like a cross between No. 4 and Shangri-La Dee Da):

After another break-up, Scott joined members of Guns & Roses to found Velvet Revolver, which I didn’t like (nor do I like Guns & Roses). The rest of STP joined Filter’s singer Ray Luzier to form Army of Anyone, or, “The Rest of Shangri-La Dee Da”.

A few months ago, they came back with their self titled album, Stone Temple Pilots. This album was just plain excellent. IMO Shangri-La Dee Da is no way to end a career unless you’ve given up on music. The radio hit “Between the Lines”, which will probably be locked away in the ClearChannel vault, is heavy yet polished, with the bridge lifted from Nirvana’s song “Stay Away” Hopefully they will continue to release records and not break up with another Shangri-La Dee Da Here are some songs from the new album, and the Nirvana song for comparison:

Having heard all these songs, go check out the reviews on Amazon for Stone Temple Pilots’ new 2010 self-titled release. All of the negative reviews say “This isn’t Core or Purple“, as if this was STP’s third album released 10 years after being a one-hit wonder.

To put it another way: as classic rock and modern rock radio have become merged over the past 5 or so years, too many songs were lost, reducing great careers into one-hit wonders. Pearl Jam for instance had dozens of releases on old modern/alternative rock stations. Less than 5-8 of them are played now.

(I always thought they said “I Get High” not “I Can’t Hide”…)

However, often times people take advantage of the rarity of some CDs to sell unsuspecting (or, sometimes, desperate) people bootlegs. Often they are marketed as “(insert country here) Import” to increase the perceived rarity.

There is this one seller who operates under various names, usually Retrospect Records, but also Vegas CDs, Rock-it Records, or Adrian (sometimes Sam) McCaslin. He gets consistently high ratings on eBay, yet a Google search will prove his “metal/AOR reissue label” status illegitimate. Negative feedback exposing McCaslin results in negative feedback for you, with a rude tone, and a block from his future auctions. Check this thread at another label’s forum to see VegasCDs, a supposed lawyer with supposed knowledge of Russian export laws, in action – it’s really funny until he admits his faults.

Without doing appropriate research, I bought an “Italian import” of Lionheart, a 1984 out-of-print Iron Maiden side-project-of-sorts. I thought his username, which is repeatedly changed and at the time was something like “vegascds”, referred to a record store or eBay vendor based in Vegas. Instead, I got this:

(Click the thumbnails to see the full picture. Sorry for the blurriness, as I wasn’t concerned with staying still)

Seems fine…

This seems strange, “2005 Rock-It” without a copyright notice, and a phony UPC code which apparently belongs to “Perfection in Pain” by death metal band Corporation 187.

But the most obvious indicator:

Ummm…. yeah.

The audio on this CD was pretty low in quality, more evidence of a bootleg.

Fortunately we have ImgBurn, a “for advanced users only” software program (freeware) designed for burning ISO files to CD or DVD.

Here is a partial screenshot of the program:

Before we continue, it is important to note that there is a difference between CD-Rs and “real” CDs. Audio CDs and CD-ROMs are pressed in a factory, not in a CD/DVD-RW drive.

Click on the button entitled “Discovery”:

Make sure your CD is in the drive listed in the drop-down list highlighted in this picture, and note what comes after “Current Profile:”. I have circled the proof that this CD is a CD-R bootleg:

Proof this “rare Italian import” is a fake.

Now we will start with a real CD, purchased from a physical store sometime between 10-15 years ago. It’s the Foo Fighters’ self-titled album from 1995:

Now see what shows up in ImgBurn after I take out the Lionheart CD-R bootleg and replace it with the Foo Fighters CD:

I hope this has been informative. I think I’m gonna start doing similar instructional posts under a tag called “tutorial”.

This Fab Faux recording of most of side two of ‘Abbey Road’ is a live, in-the-studio performance for a two-camera video shoot. It was originally recorded for The Howard Stern Show and only the audio has been broadcast – until now. Howard and company were kind enough to let us video tape the session.

In the end, there were only three minor guitar fixes and each section was recorded in no more than three takes (most were two).
There are NO added overdubs within this performance.
The audio is pure – and mixed by Joe Chinnici.

Thanks to video director/editor Robert Noonan and assistant videographer, Luke Noonan.

Special thanks to Carl, Frank, Jeremy and Barre – our incredible crew.

Thanks to all at Sirius Radio and especially Howard Stern.

However, I can “tell” the difference between “–preset extreme” VBR and crap because the beat “feels” “louder” and not “muffled”. Ditto for FLAC, though my Zen won’t work with it, so I have to use the MP3s. (Fuck Apple

Something weird though. Anything at 160 sounds awful while 128 isn’t. It’s the weirdest thing that there’s an exception to the rule like that.

They say I got brains, but they ain’t doing me no good,
I wish they could
Each time things start to happen again I think
I got something good goin’ for myself
But what goes wrong?
Sometimes I feel very sad
Sometimes I feel very sad
Can’t find nothin’ I can put my heart and soul into
Sometimes I feel very sad
Can’t find nothin’ I can put my heart and soul into
I guess I just wasn’t made for these times

Every time I get the inspiration to go change things around,
No one wants to help me look for places where new things might be found,
Where can I turn when my fair weather friends cop out?
What’s it all about?
Each time things start to happen again
I think I got something good goin’ for myself
But what goes wrong?
Sometimes I feel very sad
Sometimes I feel very sad
Can’t find nothin’ I can put my heart and soul into
Sometimes I feel very sad
Can’t find nothin’ I can put my heart and soul into
I guess I just wasn’t made for these times
(I guess I just wasn’t made for these times)
I guess I just wasn’t made for these times
(I guess I just wasn’t made for these times)
I guess I just wasn’t made for these times
(I guess I just wasn’t made for these times)