Clang & Clatter

Maybe this is why K. K. quit?!

Connecticut PBS affiliate CPTV visited the workshop of luthier and Hamer co-founder Jol Dantzig to discuss guitar building on the station’s “Spotlight on the Arts” segment of All Things Connecticut. Hear Dantzig talk about what got him into guitars and how he is bringing new life to old electrical components.

Enjoy!

Here’s an interview with Ty Tabor and Doug Pinnick of King’s X from late 2001 shortly after the release of Manic Moonlight. The guys discuss everything from the songwriting process and the decision to use loops on the album to the cover design and how the album was named. They also talk a bit about the rigors of touring, working in the studio, and what they see as the problems with the music industry.

At one point the conversation turns to the internet and using it to promote a band’s music. Here’s what Ty had to say:

The internet is important but highly overrated still at this point… It just doesn’t come anywhere close to reaching the market yet… It will someday, but it’s nowhere close yet… [at] being actually really effective.

Remember, this was 2001, and while MP3 players had been around for awhile, Apple’s iPod had likely just been introduced to the market, so there was no iTunes or Amazon music store to speak of. For that matter, there was no Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Bandcamp, Soundcloud, or any of the other online and social media tools that bands use to market themselves these days.

I bet present-day Ty really wishes he could go back in time and have a talk with his 2001 self. Then again, after listening to him and Doug talking about being comfortable with where they are in the band’s career, maybe not.

Enjoy!

What was it about Valentine’s Day (and the few days surrounding it) that made so many bands show its fans some love this year? Ginger did it. The Mars Volta did it. And I just found out that Coheed & Cambria’s Claudio Sanchez did it, too—released new music that is.

Sanchez fired up his guitar cam to give us all an acoustic sneak peek at the new song he is working on for the band’s as yet untitled sixth album. The song is “Sentry the Defiant,” and the Coheed frontman says of the video version on the band’s YouTube channel, “This is literally the first time I played the song through in its entirety.” It will come as no surprise that the new release will be another concept album—does Claudio do anything else?—and will be another Amory Wars prequel set further in the past and “will hint and influence the pre-existing saga.”

My first impressions of the song? Freakin’ awesome. And how low can you tune an acoustic guitar before the strings go all flappy on you?

Enjoy!

So unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few years, you know that Dave Grohl is all over the place. The multi-dimensional, multi-instrumental Foo Fighters founder and frontman is no stranger to the spotlight. His band’s most recent Butch Vig-produced album Wasting Light debuted at number one in twelve countries (including the Billboard 200 here in the states), has sold in excess of 660,000 copies in the U.S. alone, and won him and his cohorts five of the six Grammys for which they were nominated this year. The Foos have toured massively behind Wasting Light, and they released the documentary Back and Forth chronicling the band’s career and which focused largely on the making of the new album. And then there’s that whole Them Crooked Vultures thing.

Now Dave’s making a movie. But not just any movie. A movie about a studio. And not just any studio, but Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California, which has seen its fair share of rock’s elite record there. As a matter of fact, seven of Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (a designation I’m not going to debate here) and 5 of Spin Magazine’s Top 40 Metal Albums of All Time (another argument I won’t get into) were recorded at Sound City.

And in true Dave Grohl fashion, the documentary will not just focus on the studio, but on a specific sound board that was used at the studio—the 1970s model Neve console that was used to track Nirvana’s Nevermind and that he acquired when Sound City announced its closing to the public in May 2011. Similar to his Probot side-project that saw him team up with some of the heavy/death/extreme metal heros from his youth, Grohl has invited artists that recorded at the legendary studio to collaborate with him to make music on the board one last time. And he’s filming the entire thing.

Here’s how Dave himself described the project in an interview with Rolling Stone:

When Sound City closed last year, it was a very sad day. That place was like a church. The list of people that recorded there reads like a virtual Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame… We recorded ‘Nevermind’ there back in 1991.

That funky old place had the best drum room in world. The drum sound at the beginning of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ — that’s Sound City.

I decided to make a film about that feeling you get when you put five guys in a room, hit ‘record’ and the hair on the back of your neck stands up. Expect some epic jam sessions.

The impressive list of artists on tap for the project includes Rick Nielsen (Cheap Trick), Lars Ulrich (Metallica), Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures), Tom Petty and Mike Campbell (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers), Stephen Pearcy and Warren DeMartini (Ratt), Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails), and Lindsey Buckinham, Stevie Nicks, and Mick Fleetwood (Fleetwood Mac). Watch the Sound City website for more information.

Enjoy!

Not that I keep up with the goings-on of The Darkness or anything, but I’ve heard the rumblings over the past year or so that Justin Hawkins was reforming the band with all the original members and that they would be playing shows and working on a new album. So I figured something must be coming soon when Hawkins popped up on a Samsung Super Bowl commercial pimping the electronic manufacturer’s new way-too-big-to-actual-be-able-to-use mobile-phone-with-stylus (don’t even get me started) to the tune “I Believe in a Thing Called Love.” What I didn’t realize is that the band had released a single (downloadable here for the low, low price of your email address), complete with obligatory campy video, and that they had finished recording the new album, which is set for an “early 2012” release.

And I’m not sure what look Hawkins is going for these days, but I doubt “sweet pirate” is what he intended. Enjoy!

Speaking of Anthrax, here’s the classic lineup (pre-first-split with vocalist Joey Belladonna) with a video of their cover of Joe Jackson’s “Got the Time” from the album Persistence of Time. Yes, that Joe Jackson. The song has become such a concert staple for the band that I associate it with them rather than Jackson, so I never realized how close their version was to the original, the main differences being crunchy guitars and the tempo cranked up a few of notches.

Compare for yourself, and enjoy!

Here’s the new Anthrax video for the second single from last year’s Worship Music, “The Devil You Know,” a mixture of in-studio and live performance footage. Look for a quick shot of Mike Portnoy trying to distract drummer Charlie Benante mid-concert from the side of the stage.

Enjoy!