I’ve obviously been in a maze mood lately. I found some old AiXeLsyD & Gasoline Dion themed mazes. At the request of a friend, I also made some AiXeLsyD & Gasoline Dion music available for download.
I’m going to have to make up an Ernie and the Berts maze! At any rate, print these out, and try to solve them while jamming to my extinct musical projects, and send me a photo or scan of the completed maze!
The downloads are zip files. If you don’t know how to unzip files, learn. Also, check out my other mazes if you liked these ones.
You’ve no doubt heard that Black Sabbath just announced that they were going to record an album of new material & tour with the original lineup…
You’ve probably also heard the news about Tony Iommi being recently diagnosed with lymphoma. The band told us not long ago via their website that you could send get well wishes to Tony via email at getwelltony@black-sabbath.com.
I did that.
From: me@myemail.addre.ss To: “getwelltony@black-sabbath.com” <getwelltony@black-sabbath.com> Sent: Friday, January 13, 2012 Subject: – ✠ \m/ ✠ –
Dear Mr. Iommi,
I’m sure you have a grasp of your influence in the musical world, and on guitar players everywhere. We look to you for not only inspiration as far as the most devastating guitar riffs on the planet, but also as a musician who’s resolve soldiered his band triumphantly through many decades. I have read countless stories of your humility & friendliness. I have several members of my family & great friends who have triumphed over the odds with various forms of cancer. I have no doubt that the prayers, thoughts, and general good vibes of millions of fans, friends, family, and your brothers from Black Sabbath will only serve to strengthen your own personal iron will to defeat this disease and come out a stronger man.
Your music helped me learn to play the guitar, and whenever any people get together to jam for the first time, inevitably someone starts playing a Sabbath song, then another, then another… I owe you a great many good times, sir. I will pray for your health, pray for strength for your family & friends, & pray for guidance to the medical team entrusted with your care so that you may continue to have many more good times yourself.
Sincerely,
-Eric
.seitilibasid gninrael fo nuf ekam ot ynnuf ton yllaer s’tI
This is the auto reply:
From: Tony Iommi To: me@myemail.addre.ss Sent: Friday, January 13, 2012 Subject: Thanks for the Get Well Email! Re: – ✠ \m/ ✠ –
A short automated note to let you know that your email for Tony Iommi has been received.
Due to the overwheming crush of outpouring for Tony since his announcement on Jan 9th, please note that your email cannot be individually replied to.
It will however be read, and both Tony, and those who represent him are grateful for your prayers and thoughts at this time.
This is awesome. That’s all. Not sure if this is the original source, seems to be everywhere. You may have seen it already. At any rate, I dig it, and I was compelled to share. You can find some of these at a higher resolution, but I haven’t found all of the close-ups. If you have more, please share!
I’m expecting two killer albums from two incredible bands this year. What do these bands have in common? Well, almost nothing I guess. (It’s 11 whole steps at BandToBand.com!) They’re both punk bands, but they really sound nothing alike. They are, however, in my all-time top favorites.
My wife tells me all the time that every band that I talk about is my favorite. But that’s how I am, I guess. If I like a band, I really like a band. I try to acquire all of their music. I get into side projects & related bands. I sometimes even look for live stuff & bootlegs. Snuff & Ann Beretta are bands that have that hold over me.
I got into both of these bands right around the time I started playing in my first real band, AiXeLsyD. I was really into buying punk compilations some time after 1995… and whenever ’98 or ’99 rolled around and AiXeLsyD was writing and playing shows, I was absorbing everything and these bands just lit me up.
I’m incredibly pumped for this, or anything that Duncan Redmonds puts out.
Ann Beretta
With Ann Beretta, I can pin it all down to one song. I heard “Bottlecaps” on Fueled by Ramen‘s Year of the Rat comp, and that was it. These cats are incredible. Hearing their songs is like being dropped right into the middle of a story, situation, or town that you know every inch of despite having never been there. I’ve seen them more than once in the ‘Burgh, and have even road-tripped to Cleveland to see them. I helped make buttons for them, and they crashed at my buddy (& fellow AiXelsyD bandmate) Andy’s place after a show one time at the Rex. The music is not unlike Rancid… without so much ska & snarl, but with honest Willie Nelson-like storytelling. These guys wear RVA on their sleeve, and certainly make their hometown proud. Their cover of All‘s “Long Distance” is incredible. (The original is of course flawless in its own right.)“Love’s Easy Tears” is one of the catchiest songs ever, and I love the chaotic ending. “Russ’Song” always gets me going, too. Inquisition, Sixer and Foundation are worth checking out too.
The major update on this front comes from the driving force behind Ann Beretta and Foundation, Rob Huddleston…. via Twitter:
You read about the Backallie Music Rock Music Awards before, and Ernie has been nominated for best “oh shit moment”! Thank you all for your help, we hope to see you at the awards show. We won’t be performing, but many other awesome local bands will be!
Check out their flyer…
Backallie Music 2nd Annual Rock Music Awards!
Buy your tickets now! We’ll see you there! Wish Ernie luck & hit up the Backallie Music Facebook Page and show your support for all of the nominated bands!
Band names have always been fascinating to me. They’re rather important for many reasons. They need to be memorable. They represent the band on flyers, album covers, in reviews, on T-shirts (& other merch), and anywhere else they can be printed or spoken.
This is why I’m continually surprised by local & national level bands choosing some inconceivably stupid monikers. (Especially local level bands.)
I realize that it’s a difficult thing to do. You’re sort of stuck with it once it happens. (Although, I’ve seen a few bands morph & rename themselves several times.) A lot of the good ones are already taken. Metallica is probably the best band name ever as it’s catchy, it’s not something else, and it describes the music. When you Google Metallica, there’s no mistake as to what you’re going to get.
Some friends & I like to think up band names. Sometimes we hear a phrase or sentence or word & think (or remark) “…that would be a cool band name.” It’s important to brainstorm. Throw all of your goofy ideas at a wall. See what sticks.
With the internet age upon us, I urge you to use all of the tools at your disposal when naming your band. Primarily, Google. Once you have thought of a band name or two, go to Google and type it in the search bar. Hit search. Have the idea?
If something comes up & a band is already named that, don’t name your band that. Seriously. It takes 3½ seconds to Google something. You can even use Bing or Yahoo. If you’re signing up for a website like Reverb Nation or Band Camp or Facebook or even Twitter… and there’s another band there already named what you wanna call your band, change the name of your band rather than having a goofy unmemorable and not even remotely cool url like one of the following:
reverbnation.com/[bandname]rocks
reverbnation.com/[bandname]1
reverbnation.com/[bandname]music
reverbnation.com/[bandname]_Pgh
I don’t care if you want to be a hit recording artist, or if you have resigned to just rocking out cover tunes in bars from not until the end of time. This has been happening since the days of the old MP3.com, MySpace and PureVolume …and it must stop.
Avoiding these things makes your band easily searchable online. People will give up if they don’t find you right away. We’re lazy as a species, apparently. Or we just have short attention spans.
Your band name has to be easily remembered, and your band should be easy to find. I was in a band called Gasoline Dion. Google that and nothing comes up except stuff about the band. Like the name or not (& “get” it or not), it’s easily remembered & easily searchable. That’s what you need to shoot for.
Maybe later I’ll blog about band name categories & give some examples.
The Clarks’ lead singer gets schooled at Shaler. I found it rather amusing, so will a bunch of my local musician friends because we’re all haters. No idea if this is real or not, but Mr. Madden was talking about it at the beginning of his show today.
Insanity. Chaos. Deafening yet hooky melodies. Beer. If these all seem like good things to you, you need to be at this show. Add this to your Google calendar, Yahoo! Calendar, Facebook Events, or whatever you do with Google+ or AOL or MSN or Compuserve or Outlook or whatever you’re using. Tweet about it. Get a car full of idiots and find a non-idiot DD.
Ernie would like to remind you to drink responsibly, tip your bartender, buy some of the various bands’ merchandise, and to wash your hands before returning to work or play.
Get the flyer below tattooed on someone’s ass that you see frequently, so you don’t forget.
“Someday” if I ever get the time, energy, & resources… I’d like to record a CD of some of my favorite songs with whatever kind of band I can pull together, or maybe even a varied assortment of musician friends. Some of them are by bigger bands, some by locals, some by bands I’ve been in.
I’m sure there are more I’d want to include. There’s no real reason to this, other than I think they’re all solid songs and it would be all kinds of fun. Well, add any of the songs from my Ramones/Misfits/related bands list, really.
If anyone has better audio links for any of these… or any link at all for ones that aren’t click-able, I’d really appreciate your sharing of such things.
(I’d actually like to re-record most of the AiXeLsyD & Gasoline Dion catalogs, just because I think a little more attention to production could really polish some of that stuff. – Reunion gig or 2 anyone? Ha ha.)
What songs do you dig enough to cover? Any of these? Ever hear of any of these? Ha ha. What would be on your album were you to do the same thing?
So, I entered 3 of my goofy beauties into the “Mutant Beauty Pageant” in Joe Gore‘s Tone Fiend blog at the Seymour Duncan website. I have had people tell me they’re ugly, I have had people that dig them. I’m just glad that we live in a world with so many available options. Guitar beauty (& awesomeness) is subjective, after all.
You can check out the entries so far by clicking the triple-headed turkey, and you can also read the original rules post. When you’re done with that, enter your weird guitar! Yeah, it’s got to be yours… not something you just found on the internet somewhere.
I’m really diggin’ Dr. Soda’s “calm like a bomb” Explorer custom …thing. I’d love to see some more photos. Is that circuit board 3D? I can imagine ripping my hand open on that… but then again, that would be one hell of a show.
Also, you’ll notice that Mr. Gore used my Batman guitar in the photo with the tri-topped turkey that I have dubbed “Cerberus, the Darkmeat Knight”. How cool is that? Funny part is, I just got a Seymour Duncan Distortion Humbucker to drop into it.
World (and Lunar) Domination 