iPod HiFi

It's all about the Franklins

Hidden Passageway makes secret rooms with secret doors, as in "push the secret book in the bookcase to open the secret doorway" kind of secret room-things.

Microsoft's "secret" Project Oragami. This video apparently leaked out before the official announcement. Looks like a more consumer oriented Tablet PC. Meh.

Dubya MySpace

Cool Korean movie site for collection of 3 new movies: "Three Extremes".

Why We Fight.

Yellowtail

It rained for a day here in Los Angeles. It was nice.

Posted by steveisaacs at 08:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Chuck Norris cannot love, he can only not kill.

You will never get the next hour you are about to waste back.

Fellatio must last at least 5 minutes.

The Dumpster - amazing flash info graphic pulling breakup stories from blogs.

Metronaps

Tom Judd's Everyday project

Cat goes off

This is pretty fucked up.

Posted by steveisaacs at 08:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

via Goldenfiddle and Joystiq

Posted by steveisaacs at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here is the tale of last week's trip to New York City to master our record.

Part Three: Tenacious "C"

Woke up in that damn fine cozy W bed. I had heard raves, and boy were they true. Got my act together and prepared for a walk through the cold streets to listen to the final mastered sequences. I still wasn't convinced that the 2 we got yesterday were right.

Bundled up in the lobby of the hotel. The wind had picked back up, and it was cold from the looks of people outside. I didn't have any cash for lunch so I stuffed my pockets with energy bars and crap from the minibar. Interestingly, that would be charged to the room, which would be charged to the record company, that we will in turn pay back. So in essence, those fucking Clif bars were mine anyway.

Got out into the world and started moving uptown, the plan was to hit Central Park and have me a little look-see. Just outside the W's front door, two New Yorkers were engaged in a very New York-y kind of loud public shouting match, that consisted of a few "you're an animal's" and "suck it's". I was in such an over the top New York appreciation mode, that I sat there for a second thinking "aww that's nice, how quaint... a real New York almostfight.".

I cot cookin' northward and stopped by Times Square and snapped some pix. A huge crowd flipped out and charged a group of black SUV's, as apparently Beyonce and some others came out of a play. As I walked, I had the realization that my feeling of unfinished business wasn't going to end until I tried to end it. I called up the mastering studio, and arranged to come down and have them run off one more sequence, the one I had been listening to on my first walk on the first night in NYC. It just felt like I had to at least have that one as well as the others to choose from when picking the "final" sequence.

Never made it to Central Park, it was back down to Chelsea, back to Sterling Sound, to drop them off a list, and they set to making a "C" version to be sent to the hotel later that night. I felt worlds better. By this time (5:30pm), Jared had left town, and Dave had just woken up and was ready to head out.

We went downtown and searched out an Italian place that would make pasta and pizza. "Last night in New York" kind of throwdown. Settled on a little place in the West Village, but the pizza was weak. Triscuit Pizza would have been better.

The Mercer hotel. Coffee. Coffee table art books. Phone calls. Switching tables.

Josh had plans for the evening and we eventually hooked up with him at a club called Marquis, where we sat on a couch behind velvet ropes watching Meadow Soprano dance.  Afterward we hit Bungalow 8 again which was going off.

At a certain point the unsatisfying "pizza-like experience" from dinner was too much to handle, and we took off to the West Village to Joe's to grab a few slices. Sadly, those slices apparently had been under a heat lamp since Clinton was in office, and our New York trip was destined to to be free of any kick-ass true New York pizza. Can't win 'em all.

Back at the hotel, we fired up the "C" version of the sequence. It sounded really good, sonically and sequence-wise. Finally I got that sense of resolution, of completion that I had been hungering for. Before the trip, I had envisioned coming back on the plane with a sense of relief, of the end of a huge phase in the life of this band, and now it looked like that feeling would happen.

The next day was departure day. Back to JFK, and an almost 2 hour wait in the food court. jetBlue offers up free Internet WiFi right in the center of the food court, so Dave fired up his laptop and "broke in" on his looping Spread Radio Live archived broadcast so we could go live from the airport. This was a blast. We were both running on maybe 3 hours of sleep between us.

We sat at a sushi place and they gave us a free sushi smorgasboard, while we babbled on the web radio. After the airwaves, we took to the air.

Once I was back home in L.A. I couldn't seem to shake the feeling I got in New York.

...that there is something out there for me.

Posted by steveisaacs at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Here is the tale of last week's trip to New York City to master our record.

Part Two: Snowballs and Eye Contact

Monday morning, the 6th. Dave and Jared had a couple business meetings uptown, so I could get my act together on my own clock. The mastering session wasn't until 4:30pm, so I had time to cruise around and work on the song sequence. The day was windy and cold, the kind of wind that sometimes you need to turn a corner and take a minute to let it blow by you before you walk a few more blocks. My plan was to walk downtown to visit a particular site, and end up in Chelsea at the mastering session.

As I walked down Park Ave. down into Soho, then into the West Village, I thought about one of the main differences between New York and Los Angeles. In the 30 minutes of walking I had done so far that day, I'd seen more faces, looked into more pairs of eyes than in a full week of living in Los Angeles. It's no secret that in L.A. you drive everywhere and can tend to live in a bubble of your own creation. Not so in New York. Just by going from place to place, you are forced to acknowledge the existence of so many other people. It's exhilarating to walk the streets and not keep your eyes down, to make eye contact and have those little moments of connection. So many lives and perspectives, so many backgrounds. Echoes of the world bouncing off the buildings, careening around the sidewalks.

After last night's walk by my old apartment, and into Times Square- the site of my old job, I continued my pilgrimage of past haunts, to the ScrapBar. Back when I lived in New York I went out almost every night. Most nights that meant starting at the ScrapBar. God, I loved that place. It was located on Bleeker Street at Macdougal, just a hidden door below street level accessible by a few stairs. Inside it was like a post-apocalyptic battleground, all wrenched tangles of metal and found objects, colored lights hidden beneath the wreckage, dim and inviting. A block of TV's always on behind the bar, and a bathroom that had seen more than it's share of illegal activity. When bands came through town on tour, they always would come by ScrapBar. It was usually packed, and full of my kind of people. I didn't know how much I missed those days until I was standing on the sidewalk above where it used to be, the door and the stairway now gone.

My favorite ScrapBar memory comes from my first winter in New York...

It was getting really cold and the sanctuary of the bar's heat was like paradise. Around 1am someone barreled down the stairs and through the front door yelling "it's snowing!". Everyone in the bar poured up the stairs and into the street which had been blanketed with about 3 inches of fresh snow. The bustling city street was quiet... I hadn't heard New York quiet yet. The light of the moon made the snow a pale blue. Taxis and other cars were scarce, and the street was open - perfect snowball fight conditions. We all pelted the shit out of each other with snowballs for about 15 minutes, without the fear of taxis coming by to ruin our fun.

Back to the future.

With no ScrapBar to visit, I settled for lunch across the street at the Figaro Cafe sitting with my music and sketchbook, still making sequence notes and tweaking my playlist, a table speaking French behind me.

The mastering time was fast approaching so I got moving west toward Chelsea. On the way I saw a cool statue, dedicated to the soldiers who fought in WWI from that neighborhood.

Got to Sterling Sound, home of our mastering guy Ted Jensen a little early, around 4pm. Sterling Sound is located at the Chelsea Marketplace. The ground floor is filled with farmers market-type storefronts and restaurants and the whole area has a cool rust and exposed brick architectural design vibe.

Josh and Dave showed up and we got to work on the master. The basic gig is this: Ted had the mixed versions of all 14 songs, and spent the first part of the day loading them into the computer. Each song has multiple versions, just in case we needed to swap versions at the last minute. After the final mastering effects are added, maybe the vocals seem too low? ...Then just use the "vocal up" version. Like that. His mastering suite faces the Hudson river and as the sun set, it made the river sparkle with the vanishing light. In the distance you can just see the statue of liberty. He has 5 large speakers placed around the room, each one shiny black, with an orb-like head, and each connected to it's own gigantic power amp. Ted applies a final selection of effects, compression, and limiters to make all the songs fit in together and sit in the same place sonically. We made a compromise between the sequence I had come up with and what Dave and Josh thought worked. A band is compromise, but just to be safe, I had him run off a slightly different "B" version.

The music sounded amazing in his room, but the only way to truly know how the mastering went would be to hear it wherever we usually hear music - in the car, at home, wherever. Ted was a nice guy, and we had a good time working with him in his little sonic lab with the insane view.

After mastering we all went to Nobu, the swanky Japanese restaurant for a celebratory meal on Jared's tab. Thank God, because I was still running on my initial 40 bucks, which would probably only have covered the bill for the water. We all decided to hit the town after dinner. Josh is not only a record producer but also we found, a skilled nightlife guide, so we let him create the evening's itinerary.

First, we went to the Mercer hotel bar to kill some time before the night really got cooking. I'm not so great at killing time, so I made myself a little quest to go get cupcakes at the Magnolia Bakery. The Magnolia Bakery is the place they name drop in the SNL "Lazy Sunday" rap, and I found out that they (like almost everything in NY) were open late. I hopped a cap there and got a bag of assorted goodies: cupcakes, snickers pie, butterscotch cheesecake, and chocolate mini-cakes... it's a celebration, bitches!

After hitting a hotspot called Bungalow 8 and rubbing elbows with the denizens of the night, we adjourned back to the W where Dave and I ordered some ice cream to go with our Magnolia stash, and made pigs of ourselves while watching a truly shitty move called "Two for the Money". As much fun as we were having, I still didn't feel much completion, much resolution, at least not as much as I had expected that I'd feel. Something seemed unfinished. Or maybe it was me.

Posted by steveisaacs at 07:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

Here is the tale of last week's trip to New York City to master our record.

Part One: Through the Black Hole

We had just finished mixing the new version of "Blue Bruises" on Saturday night. The last minute whirlwind of it's re-recording left us exhausted and a bit scattered. That all gave way to excitement as the prospect of venturing out to New York was just hours away. Sunday afternoon was a blur of cars, luggage, and me getting my ATM card sucked into a bank machine leaving me with 40 bucks for the trip. Good times.

Dave, our manager Jared and I took a jetBlue flight out of Long Beach airport to JFK. I'd heard how great flying jetBlue was, and now I see why. Having a little TV screen with movies and satellite TV mounted right into the headrest in front of you makes a world of difference on a transcontinental flight. I watched some poker TV, most of "Jaws", and then we all watched part III of that great sexual predators stakeout show on MSNBC. Most of the time though, I had my iPod on and was working out album sequences. Although I'd spent days working on the final sequence, the perfect one was still hidden from me. All that we were really sure of (or at least pretty sure of) were which two out of the fourteen we were leaving off. Playlist after playlist, arrangements scribbled on sketchpads, and still I wasn't quite sure. I had each band member's favorite track listing, and some input from a few select friends that I'd played the music for, but still wasn't 100% sure of what sequence would work the best. I was trying to remain open to the fact that there are other forces at work than my own focus, and that at some point they would intervene and make the right path clear.

We touched down around 11pm, and went right to the W hotel in Union Square. The hotel was really nice - really well designed and elegant. Our producer, Josh Abraham had taken an earlier flight and was staying there too. He, Dave, and Jared were all done for the day and wanted to crash. Not me- I was amped about being in the city, and preoccupied with discovering our final song sequence before the next days mastering session, when the order would be set in stone (or so I thought). I bundled up, put my headphones on, and pushed "play" on my current song sequence, hitting the streets around 1am.

I used to live in New York. Lived there for a couple years, and my apartment was on the same street as the W hotel -about six blocks up. I started my walk by heading back there. I saw the little deli where I would order BLT's for delivery in the middle of the night (one of my favorite things about New York life: all night deliveries). The streets were pretty empty. The bracing air was exhilarating and masked any feelings of fatigue from the journey. All I felt was excitement and a new wonder at how amazing the city was, and gratitude for the reason I was there. Above me I began to see the Empire State Building, ominously poking out above the upper reaches of the skyline, it's upper floors bathed in red light for the upcoming Valentine's Day holiday. I began to work my way westward towards it. At this point I was midway through our record, my current song sequence holding up pretty well.

In no mood to turn back, and getting used to the chill, I made my way northwest toward Times Square. As my walk went on, more and more memories of my time in New York came flooding back. The song sequence was coming to an end and just at the perfect moment, at the crescendo in "Listen", I turned the corner into Times Square.

All of a sudden I was awash in flashing, strobing, multicolored lights. The visual onslaught of the crossroads of the world hit me like an avalanche. I looked down at my legs and I had become multicolored being of reds, greens and blues. Changing. Transforming. I was actively alive and had passed through some sort of black hole, the music and the moment all mashing together to make a slice in time I will never forget. The thin brisk air, a warm world of light and color, and the climax of year and a half's work in my ears. The music ended, and I turned to walk back to the hotel, becoming human again.

I left Times Square changed.

Posted by steveisaacs at 04:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Posted by steveisaacs at 02:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Since my last post, when we had just finished mixing the record, it's been anything but calm. The only song that no matter how much we did in the mix to it, still sounded different when played next to the other songs , and that was Blue Bruises. Dave pushed to get us back in the studio to re-track it from scratch and make a better version before the final mastering date in New York this coming Monday. Josh and Ryan made the time, and we tracked the new version last Saturday and Sunday.

We tracked the drums at NRG studios, and spent the rest of the day adding guitars. We moved to Pulse on Sunday and I sang the vocals, Chris came in and laid down the final bass, and Stephen put on some Perkussion. The rest of the day was Dave, Ryan and I adding sonic spices to make "Bruises" sound as loved as the other songs. You may wonder why we decided to re-track the entire thing. "Bruises" was the only song on the record that we had done last summer when working with Howard Benson, and it just didn't sit in with the rest of the record, and contractually, we weren't free to change that version. It was a lot of work for two days, but I am super happy that we did it. We added some piano while at NRG that give the intro melody a kind of David Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes" feel. Dave totally re-approached the solo and now it's great.

Last night Dave and I went in to put the final tracking touches on the song. I re-sang some lines in the verses, and we got the song ready for today's final mix. We go to the Record Plant in a couple hours to hear what Ryan has cooked up, make our notes and changes, and then we will be DONE with the recording/mixing phase. We have to be, because we fly to New York City tomorrow for a mastering session on Monday, where we commit the final track listing and sequence. That's a whole other issue... I have been going absolutely nuts wringing by brain around what to leave off the record. In the next 48 hours, it must be decided.

Aside from the weighty decisions that have to be made, I am really excited to go to NYC. Hopefully I'll have time to tread around and see some of the city that I have come to miss so much.

Posted by steveisaacs at 05:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)