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“She’s a killer, she’s a thriller, Spookshow Baby” ~ Rob Zombie
I wish I could find the Youtube video I saw a while back. It was a vintage interview with White Zombie, in the early days. Rob ends up talking about “Lead Singers Disease” – meaning, the singer gets too “big” for the band. In the video – he seems to scoff at the notion that would happen to White Zombie.
[Edit: Found it]
Watching the White Zombie videos – from the box set, consecutively……..it does kind of appear that way. I mean, by the time you get to (I’m Your) Boogieman, if I recall, is the rest of the band even in the video? Unless maybe it’s subliminal? It’s all Rob.
To me, it’s funny because from down here (in the pit, or better yet – in the back by the bar), it looks as though LSD is exactly what happened. Now, I’m going to disclaim – I know bands are like marriages. There’s sides to every story, and sometimes, you just fade apart. Being in a band means compromise. Each member has their own compromises to make in order for the “whole” to work.
I am of the opinion that White Zombie was always a much better band than Rob’s solo work – and I’ve spent the last two days listening to Hellbilly Deluxe to see if I can understand why. There are parts I think I understand now. White Zombie had songs, grooves and riffs. Rob Zombie (solo) has riffs, and establishes an almost disco/metal rhythm. I haven’t seen them live, but other than raw blasting low E (or D, or C, or whatever they’re tuned down to) chords it seems to me that it would be more or less….uh….boring to play? There is much more dynamic movement in the White Zombie stuff – although Rob’s vocal style seems less dynamic. WZ has more of a swing, or groove, while the RZ stuff is just…..crushing? Relentlessly crushing? I bought Hellbilly Deluxe probably in 2005? Listened to it once and put it away. I’ve been cruising and listening to it yesterday. All the songs have their interesting sample hooks, and (again) crushing guitar. Horror-themed lyrics that make me want to grow dredlocks and wear sunglasses all the time. But I digress.
Not super odd or anything, but I like Scum of the Earth better. So does my twelve year old daughter. SOTE, to me, is the best substitute to WZ that I can find. Their first album is killer, but the second I’m so-so on. Is it because I’m a guitar player that I like more dynamic songs?Edit: 1/29/11 – I wrote this post well before Sean’s book “I’m in the Band” came out, and since it has, my thoughts were more or less confirmed. (Great book by the way.) For the end of White Zombie, it was mentioned in multiple interviews that more and more samples were brought in (ala Charlie Clouser) and less focus was on the live music . Though I didn’t say in my original post, with his solo career, it seemed like Rob Zombie wanted to be the Trent Reznor of low-brow metal. Put most simply, I guess I was right.
Edit: 5/15/16 – So now that I’ve read the (excellent) notes included with the really early recordings (remastered) from Numero Group, I’ll revise my stance on the whole L.S.D. thing. What I got from those notes is that White Zombie as a band was always a struggle. Even when they were super successful, it’s not like everybody was buddy-buddy. I read the liner and immediately thought to myself, “Well, the Ramones hated each other too, so I guess it makes sense”. Check out the set, the audio is EXCELLENT and the book is a great read – Numero Group. White Zombie was an amazing band, a band of its time. I doubt they could have made a third album without imploding in some way so I think it worked for the best.
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“It’s going to have to be at Torino, … If it isn’t, I think time will work against us.” Don Porter
Okay, second attempt. I didn’t work on the first song very much, but I’m taking a break from it for a day or two.
In the meantime, I came up with this (including samples!! whoo!!)
I’m getting better on the volume (I think). This went a lot smoother, and would go smoother still if I could actually play guitar.
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“He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.” Elbert Hubbard
This was possibly the most fun I’ve had recently (barring the burlesque shows) – I started cranking on this at midnight.
The levels compressed and the vocals came out a lot quieter than I expected, but I’ll redo it all. It’s rough, but you get the idea. It’s all pretty rough really, but it was fun. I had to use my octave pedal to turn my guitar into a bass. *Okay, Yes, I need recut a lot of it. I didn’t set the levels right when I recorded them and I can’t fix all of it in “post”*
All in all though, I’m REALLY happy with what I accomplished in 3 hours.
Lyrics:
She’s got a switchblade knife
You’re runnin’ for your life
Don’t let her catch you ’cause she’ll get her way
Yes I’m tellin’ you
It’s what she’s gonna do
You’re gonna wish you had run faster too
Awww – here she comes.
[solo]
I see she’s got you in her trance
She’s gonna watch you monkey-dance
Look out – she’s gonna take care of you.
This is a true story – names have been changed to protect the innocent.
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“Conscience, man’s moral medicine chest” Mark Twain
I ordered the above print from http://www.cooleycooley.com. One of the things that I find is the more cool art stuff that I go looking for, the more stuff I find that I want to put on my walls. Unfortunate but true.
Okay, I’ll confess. I bought an Apple product a few days ago. *Sigh*
I’m not an Apple hater. Really. My family had Apple products back in the 80’s before Apple was “cool”. After I saw Kevin Brown play with MacPaint, I told my dad that we needed to get one. I have many MANY fond memories of playing Infocom games for hours – and teaching me how to type in the process. We had a Mac 512, Classic, Plus. I didn’t start fooling with PC’s until the mid 90’s – when my (now ex) father in law got me into building them.
As a dude, I like being able to take something apart and fixing it. Not that I could have done that with the old Macs, but after learning how to do it, I like the control. So, I resisted for a long time on the iPod/MP3 player front. I’ve blown through a bunch of low end Creative MP3 players. I like them all, but when my Sony theater speaker system came with an iPod compatible dock – I couldn’t use them. It got put on the back burner for a while. I don’t have a CD player anymore for my stereo (other than my PS3) so after talking with my brother (who’s been using Macs for years doing graphics but oddly enough has a Google Droid phone) I picked up a used Nano compatible with the dock that I’ve got.
Despite the fact that I can’t stand the fact that iTunes jacks up if you don’t install it on the C drive – or it did, not sure if it’s still an issue or not – it was installed.
As soon as I installed it, I jacked up most of my media library as it took over and I was trying to do stuff simultaneously.
The iPod is totally cool. I get it. It works more better (mo-bettah?) than all my other MP3 players ever did.
Except………………
The normalization feature of iTunes SUCKS. So I had to go convert the entire library to MP3 and then run it through some 3rd party programs to settle down the volume jumps between albums/songs.
In other news, I rolled my sprained ankle yesterday while I was mowing the lawn. It wasn’t bad, but I screamed “OW”. None of my neighbors ran over to see if I had accidentally chopped off my own foot or something. I guess continuous screaming would bring them over.
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“The only cure for grief is action.” G. H. Lewes
I’m back from New York (state). Everyone, including me, always assumes New York City, but I was in the northwest part of the state.
My reflections of the trip, in part, will remain memories and reminiscence with my brother and daughter – whom experienced the trip along with me.
But, I will say that I feel a lot better having done it. It wasn’t creepy having the ashes over my TV, it was more of a nagging insistence that there was something I still needed to do.
With the conversations I had with my brother, and the strange (small) adventures we had, I came to realize that the trip epitomized everything that my father intended for us to do. Some of it IS the journey – not the destination. Apologies for being so cliche, but there are times when it comes in handy.
Today I spent most of the day cleaning up and getting organized. It’s becoming apparent that I need to prep my house for “party mode” again. I stalled out somewhere last year, but it’s time to restart it.
Also picked up my first Apple product (since our old 80’s Apple Macintoshes – which are only a distant relative to today’s machines). Managed to mangle up my music organization, which could have been prevented by reading some directions first (D’OH!).
But, the stereo is now prepped for “Party Mode”, which is a good start for working on the rest of the house.
Also, got some new booze. Which I have affectionately dubbed, “Glory in a Glass”.
Good shit.
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“I found my inner bitch and ran with her” Courtney Love
I’m stalling.
I’ve packed the ashes in my carry-on luggage. The bag that I expect to check is empty. I leave for the airport in seven hours.
As I have maintained, my sleep schedule is beyond unreasonable at this point. I suspect that waking up tomorrow will require two alarm clocks and my cell phone.
I’ve slowly weaned myself off the medications that have slowed me down as of late, which may be why I’m sitting here playing along to Foxboro Hot Tubs and having chord progressions and lyrics float around inside my thick skull.. (rather than pack, or even pretend to get ready).
It feels like the journey is nearly over. Even though I can’t bring myself to believe it was a journey in the first place.
Must be the denial.
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“I thought that our defense stymied them all day, and really played extremely well,” Les Miles
Never underestimate the power of outside influences to screw things up.
My sleep schedule has been inconsistent, to say the least. I was up until four last night. Knowing that I was expecting a delivery from Fedex today, I slept on the couch so that I wouldn’t miss the delivery. Unfortunately, rather than being a regular delivery, it’s a no-longer-available out-of-stock youth sized snowboard for my daughter. So, I needed to receive it today. With my impending travel plans, I couldn’t risk missing it.
So, I awoke at one, and checked the front door. No delivery. I would have heard if someone knocked and even had my home alarm off so that I wouldn’t set it off when I yanked the door open (as I have often done). So, I checked FedEx’s website and sure enough, it said it had been delivered!
The FedEx lady is usually pretty good. Long story short (and an hour later), I retrieved the snowboard from the house two doors down. *sigh*
In other news, I found a completely gorgeous neck-through Robin Machete – for a great price! But unfortunately, I’ll need to liquidate all my guitars (except two) to justify buying it. It’s a gorgeous guitar, but ….now….is….not…the….time. Must….resist!
*Edit* Couldn’t resist….now here.
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“Asked to explain Zen my puppy with the same name looks, and thumps his tail” Jay Hackett
As I fool around with inline CSS on the fly, I realize that I probably need to get a dog to keep me company. I swore that I wouldn’t get a dog until my fence is fixed….but does it really matter? A well trained dog won’t go far.
Of course, I have to remember that being unemployed is great for pets who love company – but upon my eventual return to the workforce, pets who get lonely tend to be troublesome. Although, if I find a puppy the cats can eventually learn to be friends. HA! Good thing they’re declawed.
Must think about this more.
I picked up a small UPS so that if my house should suffer a power drop (it occasionally happens) so that the cat’s auto-feeder doesn’t lose the time. It’s funny, it keeps all other settings, but won’t keep the time. It’s like my microwave. I didn’t discover this until my cats were near screaming at me a day after a quick power drop and I realized I hadn’t heard it drop food in a while.
So, if there’s a quick power drop, my cats will still get food. Success on that front. I can imagine being able to SEE the food, but not be able to get any of it. Of course, as soon as all the food runs out, they’re screwed anyway – but theoretically I wouldn’t be gone long enough for that to happen. I wish someone would invent a small inline UPS for occasions such as these. There’s not much of an economy for smaller things. The UPS that I bought is 200 watts which is WAY overkill for the purpose – but I couldn’t find anything (locally) smaller than that.
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“We are in the same tent as the clowns and the freaks-that’s show business.” Edward R. Murrow
My neighborhood does not have an HOA. I did that on purpose because getting bitch slapped by an HOA every other week didn’t sound too appealing. On one side, there’s always the risk that one of my neighbors can set up a bunch of cars on cinder blocks and make an absolute mess. But, so far I’ve been pretty lucky. I’m one of three homeowners on my street who….uh….isn’t as retentive about my lawn. So, both neighbors on either side of me are usually LAST when it comes to mowing their lawns. I’m somewhere in the middle – sometimes I mow before everybody else, but sometimes I mow near the end. With my ankle in wobbly condition, I knew I was going to have to put it off. The rain didn’t help.
My ankle was in reasonable shape this morning – so I went ahead and mowed my front yard. I was on a roll, so I decided to go mow my ex-father-in-law’s front yard. He DOES live in a development with an HOA and I’m positive he’s received a “nasty-gram” in his mailbox for his overgrown yard. They left last Tuesday and he hadn’t mowed before then. I stopped by to check on his reef tank on Monday (one day too late) and his son told me that he had already put water in the tank. Oops. But with the rain we’re getting off and on, I knew he wouldn’t have time to mow – so I went ahead and did it for them. My EFIL isn’t getting back until Thursday night (with my daughter) so at least that should give him a little break. Good deed for the day.
