J A N U A R Y 0 4
Brian Turner interview. Ferenczy breaks his spinal cord. Dave records three new songs. Review of Owsley's new album, The Hard Way. The Not-So-Nerdy Way To Make A Website. The first two chapters of the Okay Samurai Chronicles.
OKSMM Interviews Brian Turner
The Brian Turner Interview is now online. It was a great experience.
I don't think that I'll be able to finish the demo recordings this weekend due to schoolwork, but Eric Espiritu has been awesome in giving me some additional mixing help. Next Tuesday, I'll be attending a Creativity Atlanta event where the city's creative community will judge and discuss all of the Superbowl ads. Pepsi is an early favorite - look for the Britney Spears gladiator battle and the one with the kids who were sued by the RIAA.
Thursday, January 29 at 10:02 PM
Ouch, my spinal cord is all broken!
Ryan Seacrest is the biggest metrosexual in America, dawg...
(Dave replies: Hey Ferenczy, click here.)
Tuesday, January 27 at 10:34 PM
Journalistic Ethics Are For Communists
Friday will mark the first of the OKSMM Interviews. Every month, I hope to pick someone interesting to me and get to know them better. Today, I spent two and a half hours talking to Brian Turner, one of my teachers from last quarter. He was the co-founder of CNN International's design department and has worked with clients like Fox Sports and Cartoon Network, as well as making his own independent film. It was the single best conversation I've had in Atlanta. The interview is angled so that everyone will hopefully get something entertaining out of it. It's being edited now and I'll shoot some accompanying photos on Thursday.
If one more person uses the term "metrosexual", I'm gonna snap, and we're not talking fingers; we're talking spinal cords of the offending party. If ever there was a trendy word du jour, metrosexual is it. Do me a favor and karate chop people in the face when you hear it; that usually does the trick.
at 9:29 PM
Memories Blur With Imagination
Back To Blues and Hawaiian Treehouse are now available as free mp3 downloads in the music section. Aphelion, the final Atlanta Demo song, will be coming along in the next couple of weeks, and then it will be time to officially rock out. No matter what comes (or doesn't) from these recordings, the process has been a heckuva lot of fun. My room is a chasm of wires and instruments, with the old "OK SAMRI" license plate hanging above the door. If I had the recording knowledge of someone like Eric Espiritu, I don't think I could ever quit - I still have so much to learn. But since I don't have the money to record a studio-quality demo, I'm trying my best. This is as grassroots as it gets!
I wrote Back To Blues in 11th grade, and although Okay Samurai performed it in plenty of concerts, we never got around to recording it. The nebulous "jam" ending was always uncertain, where I would point to the guys onstage and we'd exchange solos. It follows a classic blues chord progression that makes it relatively easy to play guitar or harmonica along with. This version is extremely scaled back, but I think the excitement from the old days is captured fairly well. It's gonna be a fun one to play live, especially with the looper.
Hawaiian Treehouse is the song that means the most to me. The first version was recorded almost exactly a year ago - it's insane how much has changed during that time. If any song is "sway your cigarette lighters"-worthy, this is it.
The February issue begins next Sunday, but there should be at least one more big addition to the January issue - check back on Wednesday. Hope you enjoy the new songs.
Sunday, January 25 at 9:53 PM
Goooooo Leprosy!
Hey, that kid from the O.C. graduated from UVA a year before me. I've never seen the show, but Don is apparently a fan. I have been watching American Idol 3, though...Atlanta didn't look too great on Tuesday night. The tryouts are always the best episodes - the angry contestant splashing Simon with his own glass of water was hilarious. Scratch what was said two days ago - with luck and caffeine, the remaining three demo songs will be finished this weekend. Jeff, Katie, and Howard have been hooking a brother up with all sorts of new-to-me music lately. The songs sticking in my head are Cause A Scene by Format, The Boy With The Arab Strap by Belle and Sebastian, and Ce Matin-La by Air. Dawg dawg dawg, you're the best in America.
Wednesday, January 21 at 9:11 PM
You Silly Goose!
You're never going to get political commentary from me - being that I get my news solely from The Daily Show and Conan O'Brien - but this Bush In 30 Seconds contest appealed to me. MoveOn.org asked filmmakers to make anti-Bush ads, with the grand prize of TV airtime during this week - the week of Bush's State of the Union address. Celebrities picked the winning entry: the judges ranged from Jack Black and Moby to Al Franken and Michael Moore. One of my PC instructors entered the contest, and although he didn't make it to the end, his falling cowboy hat ad had a solid concept behind it. MoveOn.org has also raised over $8.5 million to play the "Child's Pay" ad during the Superbowl, but CBS is refusing to allow it. Oh Snap, CBS! Burn!
I got to do some freelance work last week through a friend at school. The old Second Nature snowmen characters were brought back to design a tee-shirt for a local Presbyterian Church Ski Trip. It was a lot of fun; maybe I'll look into pursuing more cartooning opportunities down the road. Back To Blues should be up by Monday, and a new Shoot will probably round out our January issue. I'm rocking my Dad's old 1980 Canon AE-1 for photography class now, defying all things digital. Sunny 16 and Hazy 11 Rules forever!
Tuesday, January 20 at 2:19 PM
Owsley - The Hard Way (2003, Lakeview)
There's only one reason I started listening to Will Owsley two years ago: the cover of his debut album. It's a photo of a guitarist jumping insanely high in front of a bland wallpaper pattern. If he's jumping that high, I thought, he must rock out pretty hardcore. So I listened and instantly fell in love with songs like Oh No The Radio and Class Clown (If you read this site regularly, you probably get sick of how many times I mention that I'm listening to Owsley). The first album was the very definition of a pop gem - catchy hooks, solid structure, and a feeling of raw excitement captured in the album cover. Critics loved it. It got a Grammy nomination for best engineering, because Owsley did most of it himself. The music from I'm Alright was used in a Nautica ad. It remains one of my all-time favorite albums and will never leave the CD tray in my car.
The Hard Way, Owsley's sophomore effort, is the logical progression from the first album. Bottom line - it's not as "fun" as the self-titled debut (and really, how could it be?), but it rocks in its own right and displays more maturity and even better crafted songs. He is a true musician's definition of rock star; the little guy that could. The guy who stopped fighting with the major label (Warner) to leave for the smaller one (Lakeview) so that he could make the music he wanted to.
Owsley knows how to make catchy, radio-friendly melodies that rock; he has it down to a science. There's nothing here you haven't heard before - electric guitars exploding through the choruses, distorted background vocals, and drum machines and keyboards sprinkled around the edges. But that Grammy nod proved that Owsley knew his way around the studio, meaning that he had complete control over how his music turned out from concept to execution. This album is louder and more aggressive than the first - more power, less pop. It doesn't pretend to be any deeper than what it is: catchy music to sing along to, best played with the windows down and the volume up. It's just good old-school rock music without the techno bells and hip hop whistles.
When I say Owsley's music is commercial, I mean it's a mix that satisfies both the artsy/indie people and the casual listener. Indie fans will enjoy the deceptive simplicity and solid song structure. They'll like the hidden cover of McCartney's Band on the Run and the transitions between tracks. The casual listener will be pulled in instantly by the hooks, find several "single"-esque songs, and add plenty of tracks to their next road trip mix CD. They'll enjoy knowing that Owsley used to be in a band with Ben Folds, and will probably hear some similarities.
The Hard Way has a few shortcomings. My biggest complaint lies within the song titles - She's The One, Dude, Undone - we've heard these all before. Even the lyrics are sometimes fairly predictable (stuff like "into the light / never has it ever felt so right"). But then again, the focus is on melody, so he could sing about organizing his sock drawer and it would still sound good. With only 10 tracks, there are a few okay songs - Rainy Day People isn't my personal favorite - but the rest more than make up for them. This is true pop/rock in the best sense, and I find it hard to believe that fans of the genre won't absolutely love this album. The intense focus on melody and structure can't be denied; you'll hear the wide variety of influences, from the Beatles to the Cars. You might miss the fun of the first album in favor of the maturity of the second, but there's no denying it - Owsley rocks.
Thanks to Lakeview Entertainment for sending us a promotional copy of the album to review. They've also been kind enough to offer me a chance to interview Will if he comes by Atlanta in the near future, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Sunday, January 18 at 7:31 AM
Magritte and Second Quarter
Rene Magritte (1898-1967) was a famous Belgian painter in the Surrealist movement. You know these guys - they made dreamlike paintings in realistic ways, like the famous melting clocks by Salvador Dali. Magritte liked imagining in this dreamlike world, although he believed that dreams only serve to wake us up. He is often called the most simple as well as the most disturbing of all the Surrealists. And he's also my assigned artist for this quarter's Intro To Design class.
Magritte has incredible paintings that could/should be as famous as his contemporaries - a castle on a rock hovering over the ocean (Le chateau des Pyrenees), eerie pre-WW2 aircraft made out of everyday objects like windows and a coat hanger (The Black Flag), a man with a floating apple covering his face (The Great War), and a simple beach scene with candles acting like snakes (Le Meditation). But Magritte had his idiosyncrasies too. He worked on the dining room table and cleared his paintings for mealtimes. He hated to travel and only owned a car for five days. He lived in Paris for three years with the other major Surrealists, got into a fight, and came home to burn everything that reminded him of Paris - even his overcoat. In a popular photo, he's wearing a tuba on his head. Quite the tortured artist.
So what's a typical Magritte painting? He used everyday objects in unfamiliar ways, like turning table legs into trees or setting a tuba on fire. He played around with interiors and exteriors - sometimes he'd paint an artist easel into his work and you're not sure where reality ends and the painting begins. He liked juxtaposing weird things, like a train coming out of a fireplace or a reversed mermaid with a fish head and human legs. He often covered up key elements of a picture with something strange like an apple - how are we so sure there's really a face behind it? He actually didn't want his paintings to make sense, although many of the recurring images can be traced back to his childhood.
Intro To Design is shaping up to be my favorite class this quarter. Taught by Shawn Brasfield, each student picks an artist from a paper bag during the first class (everyone from Picasso to Basquait). We're working on creating logos, letterheads, business cards, envelopes, posters, and more based on our artist. Today I got to paint a self-portrait in the style of Magritte using oil-based paints on a canvas. Pretty amateurish, but the process was a lot of fun.
My other classes are going well too. Actually, I have a photography/writing class that has yet to meet because the instructor is off somewhere snowboarding. But Typography II is taught by a German guy with long hair and an earring named Holger - he's the man. For Color Communication, taught by Martha Gill, I went out and took pictures of two places: a local music store called Earthshaking Music and a cool new coffeehouse called the Bear Rock Cafe. We're now in the process of creating a color palette that represents our establishment, which we'll later use to create a promotional mailout or series of postcards. And an Adobe Illustrator class rounds out the schedule on Thursday nights, which means I have Fridays off. Which means I really need to go to the grocery store because I just made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich using Eggo waffles.
A full-blown review of Owsley's The Hard Way will be up next Monday.
Tuesday, January 13 at 9:41 PM
She Invited Me Home... For Dinner
Over the Christmas break I got to play through early versions of Monochroma and this recording of it sounds great. Its funny to see everything come full circle as music from another Super Nintendo game makes an appearance. I expect the Grasshopper Suicide single any day now. Some of my coworkers have heard me rocking out the Possibility War cd so now I hear Yellow Dress references several times a day. Also, thank you Dave for the complimentary staff bio but now why would I want to write my own for the staff page?
New Year's Eve in New York was fantastic. I was about two blocks away from the ball, right between the German girls and the Eskimo. The ensuing partying sets a high benchmark against which all future new years will be measured.
In unrelated news, my car came in and I took the GRE's. I think that they just use made up words in the verbal section to make people feel inadequate about their vocabularies. Also, I never realized how wonderful it is to have a cd player in a car. When the only tapes you still have are Weird Al and Get a Grip by Aerosmith things get old pretty quick with just a tape deck. On a Mini Cooper the controls for the cd player and radio are all on the steering wheel. How cool is that?
Monday, January 12 at 11:11 AM
Specks of Black and White
The first track from the Atlanta Demo, Monochroma, is now in the music section as a free mp3. I've mentioned before that it's actually based on a recurring theme from Konami's Castlevania video game series. I got hooked on the basic melody (officially known as the "Bloody Tears Theme") while playing Super Castlevania IV in 1992, learned it on piano, and have always wanted to do something more with it. The lyrics were written over winter break (during a night when I accidentally fell asleep in the basement and my family thought I was missing). It's in Capo 3 A minor, for you guitarists out there. Manager Jeff and I had a meeting - well, a 99 cent Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger dinner at Wendy's - but we scratched out a basic plan of attack with the demo. Jeff is the man, by the way. I've got to work him into the show...maybe he can shake polaroid pictures or something. It's exciting to me that we'll be designing the demo packaging together; a real-world application of what we're learning in school! I'm doing research on cheap bulk DVD cases (preferably with the plastic sleeve) and CD-Rs - if anyone knows about a good deal on these thingamajiggers, please let me know. Now before I get labeled as only playing video game music, I better start recording Back To Blues. Dusting off the harmonica...maybe Espiritu could do a lead track...hmmm...
Sunday, January 11 at 9:30 PM
Monkey Mayhem
If you like sad singing monkeys, this site is for you:
www.rathergood.com/bananas
Yes, this is what I spend my time doing instead of grading my students' papers...
at 1:37 PM
Finalized Demo Plans
Recording for the Atlanta demo begins this Saturday. It will be simple acoustic stuff with some bongos or harmonica thrown in for good measure, but that's it. The final four will be Back To Blues, Monochroma, Aphelion and Hawaiian Treehouse. My goal is to finish everything up and play a show by my birthday. Just when I thought I was running dry of songwriting material, Don and I had a great conversation the other night about recent events in both of our lives, and the emotional floodgates (if you will) have opened. The latest musical influences have been Seal (for voice), Owsley (for rocking out), Matthew Burtner (for creativity), Belle and Sebastian, Spoon, Ryan Adams, and Wilco - have I gone indie? Oh well.
I'll write about school a little next week - these new classes are awesome and already extremely challenging. I'm not sure when I'll start writing chapter 3 of the OKS Chronicles, but thanks for all the positive feedback.
Thursday, January 8 at 1:21 PM
The Not-So-Nerdy Method To Making A Website ®
Personal websites, once deemed incredibly nerdy (now just semi-nerdy) and difficult to put together, are now becoming a lot more popular with the current online journal craze ("blogging"). It makes sense - features like written updates or online photos albums help friends keep in touch, and people can visit a website at their own convenience. I'm no expert in web design - there are millions of other people worldwide who know so much more about it and do it a lot better than me. But I think I've seen plenty of crappy/excellent sites and been through enough redesigns to have an idea of things that I believe people like. There are top ten lists about what you should and shouldn't do with your site all over the internet, so this is only one more, but it's directed at the non-computer-code-literate like me.
10) Copy and Cheat. You can look at the blueprints of any website by checking out the code that makes it up. Go to a website that you like and select something that sounds like "view source" from your browser's toolbar; it's usually under the aptly-named "view" menu. Although you shouldn't just copy and paste another website's code and claim it as your own, you can learn a lot from seeing how the big nerds like Microsoft lay out their pages.
9) Da Heck's A Blog? As of right now, I haven't found an easier way to make a personal website than through Blogger. You can choose how your site looks from a variety of templates, or copy and paste custom templates from a site like Blogskins. Then all you have to do is sign into Blogger anytime you want to update your site, write something or upload a photo, and hit a publish button. Blogger updates your main page and makes archive pages too, and you don't have to do anything nerdy.
8) Why Should Anyone Care? You have to give people a reason to keep on coming back to your site, which blogs do a pretty good job of if updated regularly. I also like using random images - like every time you visit this site, you have a 1/5 chance of seeing a certain right corner masthead and a 1/5 chance of seeing a certain featured ad. The site will rarely look the same way twice. And it's not hard to do at all - just keep reading.
7) Easy Umfundisi Resources. Sites like The Javascript Source or Dynamic Drive have thousands of codes that do tricks like making random images, photo album slide shows, or navigational menus for your site. You customize them and just copy and paste the code into your own site's template (here's where you CAN copy and cheat). Or you can always use a search engine to find what sort of thing you want to pull off - that's how I made the navigation buttons for this site.
6) Learn HTML. How can learning a programming language be in the non-nerdy list? Because HTML is insanely easy to learn. Webmonkey is as easy as it gets.
5) Buying Webspace Cheap. If you sign up with Blogger, they will let you publish your stuff for free at whatevertheheckyouwant.blogspot.com. But if you want to add pictures or not have an ad at the top of your page, you'll need a host. For about $5 a month, Blogger will let you do it with them. I use a company called Synergy Connect and they're great too. Bottom line - don't spend over $5 a month on webhosting for a small personal site. If you want your site to be something like whatevertheheckyouwant.com, that costs extra.
4) Interaction McGee. If you make your site interactive, it's just another way to keep people coming back. Adding the ability for people to leave comments after your posts is insanely easy to do and works well. At the very least, have a contact page or email address. But also think about trying to...
3) Pretend Everyone Visits Your Site. Don't care about how many people visit it every day. Make your personal website for yourself and consider it freakin' cool that other people care enough about you to visit it every once in a while too. I know a lot of people disagree with me on this one, but if you add things like counters and guestbooks, you might be discouraged about your visitors more often than not. If you give the impression that everyone in the world is visiting your site instead of just you and Mom, it gives off a better impression.
2) Do It, Rockapella. Get the word out about your site, whether it's submitting it to search engines or just adding it at the end of all your emails. I still think that word-of-mouth is the best way, especially through links from other pages.
1) Get Inspired. Check out creative sites made by creative people, like Phong or FullSail. Anything you can do to make your site different and stand out will keep people coming back. And if you ever need help with anything webpage related and need a non-nerdy answer, you can always feel free to ask me questions.
Tuesday, January 6 at 10:52 AM
The Broomball Chronicles - Chapter One
We lost, but I drank two beers and slid on the ice and got two penalties, so it was ok...
Charlie (The guy who now lives in Dave's old room) and I joined a broomball team. We played our first game tonight, unfortunately we lost in a disappointing fashion, losing a two goal lead in the third quarter. For those of you who don't know, which probably includes everyone from anyplace in the worlds besides Minnesota, broomball is sort of like a modified version of ice hockey. You play on the ice, except in sneakers, thus sliding all over the place. You play with a foam nerf type ball that's all icy so it's pretty hard. You use small sticks that sort of resemble broom handles. That's it. And you fall a lot. And drink beer. So that was fun.
Also, Charlie got a keyboard today. Perhaps we'll have to jam here again? I hope. All we need is a PA system.
I know you were in great suspense, but I finally beat Sim City, and I'm now on the last level of Final Fantasy for the original NES. 15 years later, it was one of the best $50 I ever spent. And just for fun, I named the black mage after our Nick, the infamous rhythmless roommate, because he is the founder and first chairman of the board of trustees of TSDU...
Dave, the Killer Bees better be included in the chronicles of Narnia/OKay Samurai. WOOHAA! WOOHAA!
Monday, January 5 at 7:48 PM
The Okay Samurai Chronicles - Chapter Two: Second Nature
When I look back on high school, I usually have pretty good memories. I wasn't a popular kid in the school government or a nerd who played Magic: The Gathering - I was happy sandwiched somewhere in the middle. My first big breakup with a girlfriend was in 11th grade, which fueled plenty of subsequent song lyrics (I thought I was so clever singing "feeling this pain" when it was actually written "feel, Lynne, this pain"). But I think that the main reason high school was so great was the band. It's the first thing that comes to my mind when I open up a yearbook or talk to an old Robinson friend.
Don started to learn guitar in school, but he was consistently late for his class because he would stop by to talk to me at lunch. Andrew took drum lessons in and out of school, but eventually quit when they were going to force him into the marching band. My piano teacher moved, but I kept playing on my own and continued learning video game songs. Once Don had a few chords and strumming patterns under his belt, we got a tape recorder and set it up in the Basement of Doom. And so began the earliest recordings of some of our "classic" songs. An instrumental called Hammock. A genre-bender called Ballad of the Strange Man. A truly horrible song called Bird Hats. The infamous Golfing With Fish and Instant Oatmeal Road. We would position the tape recorder away from Andrew, since he was the loudest, and then Don and I would spread out with our instruments. No 4-track mixing here, kids. We would tape five seconds of us playing, play it back and realize Don was too loud or you couldn't hear my vocals, and switch it up again. On the old tapes you hear that overdub click sound about twenty times before and after each song. We would also introduce each song with a recorded skit, like Andrew and Don having a back-and-forth about how to golf and fish at the same time. These were great times - Don seemed to come over every Friday afternoon and we would record three or four songs.
I'm going to delve into some family background for a second, but hold on - I'm going somewhere with it. My Uncle Charlie is a cool guy. He came oh-so-close to becoming a recording artist himself and has a great love of music, even if it's not the most profitable thing in the world for him. My Grandfather owned a farm in Linden, Virginia, and now Charlie lives there (and his wife has a vineyard on the property, in case if you've ever heard on Linden Wines). Charlie came over to our house one day and we played him the tapes. Charlie was extremely positive as he listened to us three amateurs scrape our way through original material. When all was said and done, he looked up and said, "You need a bassist".
We decided to hold bass player tryouts - but we only had heard of one kid in school who played bass - a guy called Eugene Jung. He was a friend of a friend at the time, but we asked him if he was interested. Actually, another guy we were starting to become good friends with also came to the tryout as a guitarist, which we didn't really think we needed at the time. Funny how things work out - it was none other than Jeff Chin, who would end up joining the band in college. Eugene was shy, but also a very talented bass player. He soon joined the regular Friday afternoon practices, and everyone would usually stay at our place for dinner. We began to hang out with each other at our lockers before school. I got Eugene out of almost being suspended in school by lying to a counselor. And then one day, all of the sudden, Eugene became cool. He'll even admit to it - it was a dramatic overnight change. One day he became insanely funny and multiplied his personality by ten. I've never seen anyone change so quickly since then. Eugene was officially part of the band.
Our stash of equipment was growing. I remember my Dad telling me, "We want to support your music just like we would if you were playing baseball or doing drama at school." I've seriously got the greatest parents in the world. They were extremely accommodating to our Friday jam sessions and didn't do the stereotypical "turn that rock music down" parent thing - they actually liked our music! They were there for most of our concerts, and Dad captured everything with his video camera. We got a PA system, better amps, another microphone, wires, and all sorts of music gear that I still use to this day. In the home video of me walking downstairs on Christmas to find out that Santa gave us a PA system, I fall face-first on the floor upon seeing it.
We still didn't have a band name other than Geui, which no one really liked. Then at lunch one day, Don noticed that the school napkins said "Second Nature is made with a bleach-free process." Second Nature sounded good enough, and it became official. The annual high school battle of the bands, Ram Jam, rolled around and we entered some of our recordings on a spliced cassette tape under the name "School Napkin". Apparently the tape messed up for the judges (guitar classes) and sped up, so we didn't make it in. It wasn't that big of a deal - most of us were only in 10th grade at the time.
Our first concert was Janine Mason's Birthday Party, who became Don's girlfriend for a brief period shortly thereafter (Don's history with girls could take up an entire chapter alone). We set up in her basement and played mostly original songs, except a covers of Glycerine, Cumbersome and a Candy Everybody Wants duet with Janine. It's humbling to watch this performance on video now. I wear a hat that completely covers my face and I stare at the ground as my voice cracks singing. Don's guitar is insanely loud and he messes up a Happy Birthday solo. Eugene was allergic to a cat and faced the wall most of the night. Andrew jumped in and out of time and missed a few cymbals here and there. But I say this all in retrospect - it was a great concert at the time. We switched instruments for one song and left Eugene to go get cookies while he did an extended bass solo. A few friends sang No Diggity after the show and another friend sat in on the drums for a song.
I decided to pick up guitar and started taking lessons at a local music store, as well as learning to play the harmonica on a cross-country road trip with my family. It wasn't long before we started talking about recording an album. Uncle Charlie had a recording studio room at the farm, and was excited when we asked him to help us. Within two or three trips down to Linden, we completed Grasscatcher, our first album. Ten songs made the final cut - Mind Defrost, Midnight Oasis, Fresh From The Farm, Hammock, Golfing With Fish, Henle's Loop, Pinecone, Setback, Raining In L.A. and Instant Oatmeal Road. It was a friendly and entertaining atmosphere recording songs while Charlie manned the mixing station, all in a small room with a great view of the mountains. We paid him with a 6-pack of beer and he handed us the DAT master tape. We took it to a company called Lion Recording, and they produced around 200 cassette tapes for us. I designed the cassette sleeve - our album cover was "Second Nature" written in sticks on a patch of dirt. We printed off 200 color copies of that sucker at Staples and spent an afternoon folding them up and placing them with our shiny green cassettes. We sold them for $5 each at school and later shows, and sales went fairly well - we eventually covered our costs. Reactions were positive, and we finally had something to show for all those countless band practices in the Basement of Doom.
A few more concerts started popping up around the Fairfax, Virginia area. We tried out for Ram Jam again, got in, and won third place. We played outside at the Burke Centre Fall Festival and got an anonymous donation of $100. We rocked out at a pool party and I remember starting a song when a kid jumped off of the high dive. We even put together an assembly at our old elementary school and rocked the pants off of those kids. Suddenly our senior year rolled around the corner, and Don and I were in the guitar ensemble class together. Jeff (the guy from the tryouts who would join our band in college) was also in it, as well as the child prodigy guitarist Eric Espiritu (who now writes for this site).
We all began to think about recording another album - a CD. At the time, CDs weren't burned like crazy as they are today. No bands at Robinson were making CDs. We decided that we didn't want to take up more of Charlie's time, and we had the finances to look into a professional studio. We found a fairly cheap one in Damascus, Maryland, called Rolling Hills. This was honestly one of the best experiences of my life. It was exciting to hear our songs played back with studio-quality sound. People ask me a lot if it's strange to hear myself singing, and yeah, it is - but being in a closed booth, head clasped in headphones, and singing into an insanely expensive microphone made me feel like a real superstar. Two brothers ran the studio, and these guys were professionals. We laid down eight tracks - Musicfest Orlando, Uncle Charlie's Song, Third, F#, Letdown, Navigator, Grassblade Smoke and A Tribute To Mr. Punhong. We had pizza every day for lunch, it snowed while we were recording, and we tried adding new things like a steel drum to our songs. We manufactured the CD through a company called Discmakers, which also gave us a free website - the very first incarnation of what you're reading this from today. At $10 each, we didn't sell as many as we would have liked to, and never covered our costs. But it was worth it in the end for me - we recorded a freakin' CD!
Our CD release party was held in a huge gymnasium at the Wakefield Recreation Center. We set up the concert ourselves by going to the Fairfax Government Center and pitching the idea through their recreation programs. We had several meetings in the large Government Center building, which always seemed so cool to me - four teenagers in tee shirts circling around in their swivel chairs inside a fancy-shmancy board room. This was when ska was exploding onto the American scene, so we got our friends "The Boys of Skabinson" (a play on "Robinson") to open the concert for us, along with some solo guitar guy named Clint Coo. The show went well and we brought in our biggest crowd yet. The concert had been announced on radio ads because of our connection with the Fairfax Government, and they had a budget for these sorts of things. I got to help design a cool flyer for the show too.
Two concerts didn't go so well during our senior year. They were the type of concerts where you feel like nothing went right and you just want to quit. In our last Ram Jam Battle of the Bands, we didn't even place. Eric Espiritu came up as a surprise guest and rocked the place with blazing guitar solos, and one judge wrote that he "played too many notes." But we took a long time in between songs helping Eric set up, and I think that was what hurt us the most. I remember listening to the judges announce the winners backstage and simply sinking my head into my knees when I heard that an absolutely crappy band called "Boot To The Head" had won. Then, at our high school's All Night Grad Party only a few weeks later, I lost my voice while screaming the lyrics to Third Eye Blind's Graduate - and that was our first song. I couldn't even finish the set and we played to a fairly empty room. I didn't enjoy the rest of my graduation night, and I was convinced that my musical aspirations were dead.
High school ended on an uncertain note for Second Nature. Andrew was still at Robinson, but Eugene and Don were on their way to James Madison University while I was planning to attend UVA. I felt that because of sluggish CD sales and a couple of bad concerts, music was definitely not my true calling in life. College was about to change everything - our name, our bassist, and my attitudes about music.
(The Okay Samurai Chronicles is the four-chapter story of our high school and college band. Chapter Three is on the way.)
Sunday, January 4 at 7:35 PM
Baby I Got Your Number
Eleven 50 is a theater from the 1920s converted into a dance club, and that's where we spent our New Year's Eve in Atlanta. They had a circus theme going, and filled the stage with everything - a guy in a bunny suit, people on swings, a cheerleading squad, a drag queen ringleader, several percussionists, a girl dancing with fire, a fat guy with a trumpet and a juggling clown on stilts. When that Kelis song Milkshake came on, they passed around chocolate milkshakes. Alison found a cell phone on the side of the street, and as we were looking through their stored numbers to find a home or family number, we noticed one entry was "Paris Hilton". We skeptically called and got a computerized message saying her answering machine was full, but a quick recorded name said "Paris Hilton" in her voice. So, in short, Alison has what we believe to be Paris Hilton's phone number, or probably someone who is impersonating her. We'll find out soon.
Chapter Two of the Okay Samurai Chronicles will be up on Monday.
Friday, January 2 at 7:15 AM
The Okay Samurai Chronicles - Chapter One: Geui
The story of Okay Samurai hits all the crucial marks that a band story should. Recording studio memories, certain landmark concerts, members leaving and joining, hundreds of practice sessions, buying new equipment, a small grassroots fanbase, and musical growth through our ten years together. We never focused on fame or money - the band was a hobby and an excuse to hang out. There have been hundreds of thousands of bands just like us, from high school all-girl punk bands to the more established frat party bands. This is just our story.
When my Mom was pregnant with me, she went to a Bob Dylan concert with my Dad. Needless to say, the air was saturated with a recognizable scent that you would expect at a Dylan concert. When I was born in 1980 (two hours before a leap year), I didn't cry. My widened eyes scanned the room, taking everything in. I have always been more of a listener than a talker, more reserved instead of outspoken, and relatively laid back - so I'd like to take the time now to officially thank Bob Dylan for all of that.
The earliest recorded video footage of me and my brother is from a wedding reception in the early 80s. We sing Great Balls of Fire. I think that Dad has shown it to just about every relative, girlfriend, neighbor and acquaintance of ours. But it's not really all that embarrassing - we loved to sing as kids. 1986 was a critical year - the year of Aunt Laurie's Radio Shack tape recorder present. Shortly thereafter, Andrew and I recorded the Songs of DAA - our first album! We had a fake company growing up called DAA (David And Andrew), and used it to make up all sorts of crazy construction paper things like our own TV Guide (The Lego Channel destroyed the competition in primetime).
Most of the recordings for The Songs of DAA were impromptu, or we rehearsed the choruses but made the verses up on the spot. Most of it was just singing, but my Casio monophonic keyboard made a few appearances as well. Songs like She's Wearing The Yellow Dress, Fatty In Scarf and Chinese Future were listed on a cassette sleeve with an orange cover scotch-taped to the edges. The album cover was a pencil drawing of the two of us singing on a stage with several hands reaching up from the crowd below. In addition, the tape recorder always came with us to our annual vacations in Bethany Beach, Delaware. Andrew and I recorded a DAA-sponsored radio show, and then we would turn it up to full volume and blast it out of our beach house window to the people walking by outside.
Andrew and I both took piano lessons during our elementary school days from a nice lady named Mrs. Evans. We played in several piano recitals and learned pretty fast after our parents bought a piano. Andrew stopped taking lessons after a couple of years because another instrument caught his attention - the drums. In fifth grade, Andrew joined the elementary school band and got a snare drum. I kept on playing piano and started to write my own songs after getting a new keyboard for Christmas. Andrew started to amass a collection of percussive instruments, like egg shakers and a small electronic drum pad.
When I entered middle school in 1992, I immediately became good friends with a guy called Don Simpson. He was in several of my classes and we started to hang out after school. I remember feeling awesome because I thought that Don was one of the "cool kids" - I would sometimes exchange messages between him and a girl in my typing class. He was interested in learning to play guitar at some point, and we started to talk - all the way back in seventh grade - about forming a band. I remember going over to Don's house once with my keyboard to write some songs using the preprogrammed beats and loops. We made a song called "Dis Dat Granny", which I have since forgotten and unfortunately (or fortunately) was never recorded. But then we started talking about the band at school, and everyone wanted in on the action. Nick Ovuka, Daniel Williams, Mike Walton, Chris Cox, Andrew, Don and I decided that we were going to make a band called Geui (pronounced "gooey"). I soon wrote our first song as a band - Grasshopper Suicide.
Video games were getting big in my life, and I started to learn my favorite songs from Super Nintendo games on the piano by ear. Grasshopper Suicide took the music from the first level of a game called Star Fox and made it into a rock song. I added nonsensical lyrics about how grasshoppers probably accidentally jump off of things like cliffs or buildings every once in a while. The song was a hit with Geui, which was now just our lunch table sans Andrew. I made a tee shirt with fabric crayons that said "Grasshopper Suicide Fever" under a cartoon grasshopper and I proudly wore it to school. But Geui died out with the end of middle school, mainly because most of our friends didn't actually play any instruments (yeah, harsh reality always crushes your dreams). Andrew and I could play music together whenever we wanted, and after I went on a mad cleaning frenzy one winter break, our basement became a new hangout and play area. We nicknamed it "The Basement of Doom" for no good reason. Our basement was unfinished, so the ceiling had steel braces and wood panels while the concrete walls were padded with insulation. We decorated the ceiling with old toys like Transformers and Care Bears, usually dangling from strings tied around nails or pipes. Andrew's drumset and my keyboard were the first of many countless other pieces of musical equipment that would one day call the Basement of Doom home.
My fifteen minutes of fame were used up early in my life, so I can't be deluded into thinking I'll ever be famous one day as a rockstar or writer or art director or whatever. Grasshopper Suicide was mentioned in the Letters to the Editor section of Gamepro Magazine in March 1994. They were the premier video game magazine back in the early 90s, and I wrote them a letter about the song and included a school picture in the envelope. In print, the text next to my photo reads "Here's an imaginative GamePro! Meet 14-year old David Werner of Burke, Virginia, who writes lyrics for video game music. He turned the music from Star Fox's Corneria level into a song called Grasshopper Suicide!" I felt so incredibly cool (even though I had actually appeared in Nintendo Power magazine during the previous month!). The magazine pages are hidden on this site somewhere...
Don and I agreed that we would be serious about "starting up Geui" in high school (at least that's what he wrote in my yearbook). Don was learning to play the guitar. Andrew got some new cymbals for his drumset and I got a small keyboard amp and microphone. High school would bring a new band member, two albums, and some unforgettable concerts. The rocking off of Robinson High School's collective pants was about to begin.
(The Okay Samurai Chronicles is the four-chapter story of our high school and college band. The second chapter is coming soon.)
Thursday, January 1 at 1:08 AM
Okay Samurai Multimedia is Dave Werner's personal site. I'm currently working at Minor Studios in San Francisco. Thanks for visiting! (more...)
Okay Samurai Journal (Subscribe RSS / XML)
Dave Werner's Portfolio (okaydave.com)
Archives (Cardboard Box)
Contact (Mailbox)
My Videos on Vimeo
My Photos on Flickr
Lars Amhoff: Kinkyform Design
Colin Anawaty: Cubed Companies
Chuck Anderson: NoPattern
Haik Avanian: HaikAvanian.com
James Bailey: The Kingdom of Sad Machines
Ben Barry: CarbonFour / Forced Connections
Dimitry Bentsionov: Arthero
Joshua Blankenship: JoshuaBlankenship.com
Casey Britt: CaseyBritt.com
Duncan Brook: Superfreaky Memories
Matthew Burtner: Burtner.net
Jeff Chin: JeffChin.com
Mary Campbell: Mary Campbell Design
Sarah Coffman: Minus Five
John Contino: drawings&co
Angie Cosimano: Angie Unit
Chris and Linda Doherty: Citizen Studio
Anne Elser: Annepages
Neil Epstein: Mediafactured
Bjorn Fagerholm: 3jorn
Dave Foster: Dave the Designer
Justin Genovese: JustinGenovese.com
J Grossen: Sugarcoma Labs
Audrey Gould: Aud's Blog
Greg Hackett: GregHackett.com
Sam Harrison: Zingzone
Todd Hammell: Solid Colors
Leon Henderson: LHJ Photo
Howard Hill: Fascination Streak
Peter Hobbs: Peter Hobbs Photography
Matt Ipcar: Ipcar Design
Michael Johnson: Michael J Rox
Melissa Jun: MelissaJun.com
Jiae Kim: Theme magazine
Zack Klein: ZackKlein.com
Katie Kosma: Flying Conundrum
Peter Lada: Proxima Labs
Josh Levin: Nothing Learned
Larry Luk: Epidemik Coalition
Mike Mates: Urban Influence
Alison Matheny: Life of a Harpy
Turi McKinley: Turi Travels
Alaa-Eddine Mendili: Furax
John Nack: John Nack on Adobe
Allen Orr: Anthem In
Scott Paterson: sgp7
Joe Peng: MacConcierge
Paavo Perkele: Astudios
Brian Perozo: Ephekto
Jason Puckett: Everyday Puck
Kate Ranson-Walsh: Thinkradical
Tania Rochelle: Stone's Colossal Dream
Angela Sailo: Peanut Butter Toast
Mohit SantRam: Santram.net
Dan Savage: Something Savage
Kevin Scarbrough: Thin Black Glasses
Scott Schiller: Schillmania
Jason Severs: JasonSevers.com
Anthony Sheret: Work By Lunch
Nick Skyles: Boats and Stars
Sujay Thomas: iSujay
Joe Tobens: JospehTobens.com
David Ulevitch: Substantiated.info
John Verhine: Verhine.com
Armin Vit: Under Consideration
Ian Wharton: IanWharton.com
Roger Wong: One Great Monkey
Clay Yount: Rob and Elliot Comics
Jack Zerby: Jack Zerby Music