Pro Sound Blog

A man woke up to find a woman giving him oral sex. He took her to court and won. She had to pay a $6,000 fine and go to jail. Does it really come that easy for some people?

FULL STORY–>

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There was about a 7-10 year period where my band was the hottest band in town. I’m not exaggerating at all. Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s we could sell out clubs 5 nights a week. We were making tons of dough every night. I slept until noon and didn’t do anything during the day. Then night would come and another fun gig with a huge crowd, tons of chicks and lots of craziness would ensue.

We played this one club that probably held about 500 people one night. We had that freaking place so packed it would take you 15 minutes to walk across the room to the bathroom. It was a fire code violation from hell.

We were excited to collect our money at the end of the night because we knew we’d be getting some major cash. So we hook up with the door man to collect. He sniffled a little and said “here you go boys” and hands us $200.00 total. We looked at this door man like he was from mars. “$200? That’s it?” we asked. With a sniff sniff and a few hyperactive wipes of his nose he says “yup.” “That’s bullshit man did you see how many people were in here?” We asked. “This is the door” he says with a sniff sniff and a wipe wipe.

The door man snorted all our freaking dough up his nose.

That was the last time we played in that club.

mediaguru Boneheads, Gigs, Musicians, Rants

For my 2nd article at The Apple Blog I’ve tested out the iMic by Griffin Technology. This is a neat little USB audio interface that is real cheap for the quality you are getting.

CLICK HERE to check out my article

mediaguru Gear, Recording

My posts here have slowed slightly as you may have noticed. Don’t worry. PSB will be going as long as I have stupid clients and experience the strange things that go hand in hand with being in the music business. That means I have a never ending stream of material.

I’ve been working hard on my golf blog: Hooked On Golf Blog and some other web ventures so my geek time has been split amongst a few different venues.

A new gig for me right now is as a contributor to a big blog which deals with Apple and Mac related items: The Apple Blog I’ll be posting regular articles there on Mac and audio related software and hardware. I won’t be able to post the same articles here that I do there (unlike my JamPod review), but I will be linking to them from here.

mediaguru Random

I’ve spent the last day or so changing the look of this blog and the forums. No more “standard” blue on either one.

This one is a little more “rock and roll”

mediaguru Random

There’s an armpit of a town about an hour north of here we play gigs in. This town is like the freaking twilight zone. It’s a combination of dumbass rednecks who love Lynard Skynard and mullet wearing city slickers who listen to Metallica. My band plays neither of those.

Strange thing about this town (among many) is that the clubs cycle crowds. One month a certain club is the hot place and sells out constantly. Next month it’s a ghost town.

Fortunately (I guess) we were at the hopping place and played a fairly successful gig. The stage is in the back of the club. There’s a back patio about 12 feet deep and then the parking lot. The load out is easy: off the stage, 12 feet of patio into trunk of car.

I have to pack my gear in a certain order for it to fight right. I loaded out my hardware case, ran back inside to grab a couple of drums, and when I got back outside my hardware case was gone. This had to be no more than 30-45 seconds.

Inside my hardware case are all the stands and pedals for my kit, drum sticks and about 300 pairs of ear plugs. What a haul for this asshole eh? For his efforts he gets a hi hat stand with no hi hats, a bass drum pedal with no bass drum, bass drum legs with no bass drum, a tom mount with no tom, a snare stand with no snare, a drum stool with no top and 300 pairs of ear plugs. How much crack can he buy after he pawns that useless shit at the pawn shop?

Much of that hardware had to be special ordered to be replaced…. Ever order a drum stool without the stool?

So to the asshole who stole my hardware case: I hope you got a great hit of crack. Maybe you got lucky, overdosed and choked to death on your own vomit.

mediaguru Gear, Gigs, Rants

A Marshall guitar rig can cost you upwards of $3000. What about a Marshall rig that mixes your guitar with thousands of your favorite tunes, runs off of a battery, weighs in at only a few ounces and fits in your shirt pocket?

For a mere 1% of the dough you’d spend on a Marshall ($29.99), you can pick up a JamPod from DVForge (www.dvforge.com).

Most musicians are gear freaks. As a Mac user I love cool gadgets that not only serve a useful purpose but look cool as well. The JamPod fits the “cool looking but useful” toy category a musician and Mac user would want.

The JamPod is a tiny guitar amplifier that plugs into the top of any Apple music player that has the 3.3 volt DC power plug. Since it gets it’s power from the iPod, there is no power cable. The JamPod lets you play your guitar, bass or other electronic instrument along with the music from your iPod, through your iPod’s headphones. You can also do what I did, which is plug the JamPod’s output into a stereo or sound system for monitoring.

The 2 foot cable included with the JamPod converts a standard 1/4″ guitar output to the 1/8″ mini needed. I would recommend a longer cable. With the included 2 foot cable, it’s easy to move and pull your iPod off the table onto the floor (like I did). The iPod and JamPod survived the fall just fine.

I jammed along with AC/DC’s “Back In Black” for starters. I adjusted guitar’s balance with the music by tweaking the iPod’s volume level. I was able to give my Stratocaster some distortion by turning it’s volume up high. Next was some old Who. I went for a little cleaner sound by backing my Strat’s volume down.

A regular guitar amp will have a “gain” knob which adjusts the level of signal going to the pre-amp. A low signal going to the pre-amp results in a “clean” guitar sound. Driving a high signal into the pre-amp results in a “distorted” signal. With the JamPod the volume knob on your guitar serves the same purpose as the regular amp’s gain knob. Adjusting the volume level from your guitar low creates a more “clean” sound. Cranking up your guitar’s output will drive the JamPod’s pre-amp harder, creating a distortion sound.

The JamPod’s distortion tone is good enough for a practice amp yes, but not suitable for studio or live applications. I don’t think Pete Townsend or Eric Clapton will be using it on their next albums.

The portability and convenience of the JamPod is great. I love having an iTunes library practice amp in my pocket or my laptop bag.

I’d love to see a guitar tuner built into the JamPod which uses the iPod’s display. I’d also love to see a future version of the JamPod that has some internal processing such as delay, reverb, chorus etc. Perhaps an even more fancy future JamPod could record to the iPod!

For $29.99 you can’t go wrong with a JamPod. To quote DVForge’s web site:
“If that’s not worth thirty-bucks, we don’t know what is.”

I agree.

mediaguru Gear

I had a last minute rush vocal job for this chick who called. She was in a big hurry.

I set her up in a sound room and did the recording. She was very impatient and never wanted to even give me time to set things up properly. She was a snobby, snooty, better than you kind of person who thought she was a hottie but she was hardly that.

When the recording was done it was time to mix. She didn’t have time to mix. She said “just throw it on a CD, I’m in a hurry.” I then informed her that if this project wasn’t mixed, it wouldn’t sound good. Simply slapping rough tracks onto CD would be for review purposes only. Not suitable for release to anyone. “Yeah, yeah. Just throw it on a CD.”

That was fine with me. It simply got that bitch out of my studio quicker.

That evening the phone rings and it’s the bitch. She freaks out on the phone about how terrible my work was. She goes ape shit over how bad it sounded. She insults me and tells me that my studio sucks.

You know you just can’t win. You try to explain to the bitch that the project won’t sound good until it is mixed. Then when you give her WHAT SHE AKSED FOR she insults you. No win situation.

I get home and tell my wife about this BITCH. My wife asks me what her name is… IT’S MY SISTER IN LAW!

She’s been on 2 or 3 TV ads here lately. I just about want to puke every time these spots come on. What a bitch.

mediaguru Boneheads

Remember my problem with this crappy company called awedeals.com?

They’re the assholes who sold me CDs that were so bad, some even had tire tracks in them:

The final report is in… I had tried to email, call, fax, send notes via pigeon to these assholes about getting a refund for the garbage the sold me. No reply.

So I called my credit card company and started up a dispute. They were cool and told me that my account would be credited provisionally while they investigate my claim. I gladly gave them awedeals’ phone number (which only has a message and doesn’t even give you the option of leaving a freaking message. Even if you could leave a message, they wouldn’t reply). I gladly gave them their mailing address. I gladly gave them their email address. I simply knew that if they tried to contact them at all, they’d get nowhere.

A couple of weeks later my bank informed me that I needed to ship back the bad product. No problem. I sent it off and gave the bank the tracking number. Then about two weeks later, the package I sent came back. These assholes at awedeals.com have f’ing the client over down to a science. Think about this: They don’t talk to you about returns. They simply have a standard email and page on their site instructing you to send your product back to a specific address, along with your order number. All these jerks do is simply refuse the returns.

I just got the final letter from my bank. After completing the investigation, my provisional credit is now FINAL! I can imagine what my bank went through. They probably tried to contact them a few times and just gave up.

So here’s a toast to awedeals.com. I got the last laugh you assholes. I got my money back. If they haven’t already, VISA will soon be yanking your merchant account. If they haven’t already, I’m sure the Better Business Bureau will be contacting you. Actually, they’ll be attempting to contact you. Oh, and I’m sure you’ll be hearing from the California State Tax commission. You see, me and a shit pile of your other out of state clients weren’t supposed to be paying California sales tax. Not only have you been illegally collecting sales tax from out of state, I’d be willing to bet that dough hasn’t found it’s way to the California state tax commission at all.

My friends and I have some work to do. We need to help keep other people from being screwed by awedeals.com. Friends, and awedeals haters alike please comment on this post.

mediaguru Rants

Playing a big gig one time and my kit was on a very small riser. Right at the peak of the grand finale song my drum stool leg slipped off the riser. I fell off the riser, the stage and back behind these big black curtains. Total fall and distance from kit: 15-20 feet. Fortunately I wasn’t injured.

The other guys in the band said “all the sudden the drums stopped, we looked back and you were gone!” They wondered if I had been abducted by aliens.

mediaguru Gigs