S.A. Sebastian: A View From The Bottom

This past Saturday I finally got my studio back in action, after being out of commission for over a year, due to flood damage. The NYC-band, Blueberry High Heels came in to record tracks for a demo. The band is fronted by Didi Delicious on lead vocals and bass guitar, with Dylan Mitchell (my band mate in Scratcher) on guitar and Greg Jacob (of the Rubber Room Rats and trip with the Teacher) on drums. The band describes themselves as, “a post-punk, powerpop trio of rockers cut from the old school NYC rock and roll cloth.” After spending several hours with them, I’d say that’s a fair assessment. Didi has long been a part of the New York City punk rock scene, seen regularly at CBGBs, Coney Island High, the Continental, Scrap Bar and more, either writing for NYRock.com and the NY Waste or playing with any of her different bands. So, for this session, we really wanted to capture the raw, punk-rockness of the band, so with Dylan taking the lead as producer, we decided to record the band old-school - all together in the same space, playing live, bleed and all, going back later and re-cut vocals.  You can hear the song “Dice,” recorded and engineered by me, and mixed by Dylan, on the band’s MySpace page. 

A week or 2 ago I went to an IK Multimedia demo of Stomp I/O at Guitar Center in NYC, featuring TM Stevens and his band Shaka Zulu, with Mike Carrasquillo. TM and his guitar player Mike were playing through the Stomp I/O, and sounded awesome. After the demo TM let me and Mike use his bass to play with the system. The product is basically a pedal board controller for the IK Multimedia line of Amplitube plug-ins crossed with a USB 2 Audio Interface. You can use the pedal board to control the suite of plug-ins, and even mix and match between plug-in sets, “without looking at the computer.” This thing is GTR on crack. And, just like GTR, you need to have the computer if you want to use it in a live setting.

The Stomp I/O sells for about $800 and comes with all the plug-ins, which is an excellent deal. But add the computer - they recommend a Mac Mini - for an additional $500 and you’ll have a crazy live rig. Although I am deeply entrenched in the world of DAWs and digital recording on computers, I really have no desire to bring a delicate item like a Mac Mini to gigs, especially on tour. Hell, I’m not Thomas Dolby or Howard Jones. I mainly play with heavy metal and industrial bands! I do have to replace my ART Nightbass since it is on it’s way out, but this may not be the solution. I’ll be checking out the Boss GT-10 and the GT-10B when it comes out.

Anyway, after GC started to kick everyone out, TM came over and congratulated Mike on some good bass playing, and points to me and said, “but he gots da funk!” and that he was “gonna have to call the po-po” (whatever that means). So, I gots da funk. Look out Boosty!

Saw Van Halen Saturday, November 3 in New Jersey. After seeing a bunch of the rehearsal footage I was very skeptical about the show being very good. I can honestly say I was very underwhelmed by Van Halen with David Lee Roth. Everyone has been saying for years how Dave is a “great performer” a “great entertainer.” Tonight David Lee Roth was neither, he was more like Ozzy Osbourne back in the Ultimate Sin era–old and rickety. Sure he did a couple of kicks, but he just walked slowly back and forth across the stage while Eddie ran circle around him-and Eddie has an artificial hip! He looked very uncomfortable and out of place.

The rest of the band was all very good, Eddie can still play a mean guitar, but he improvised some songs so much that they were unrecognizable. Wolfgang played all the parts as good as the record, and Alex was Alex. In order for Dave to sing some of the tunes they were done in different keys. The Fair Warning stuff, which is tuned to D flat on the album was done in E live. Eddie had a meltdown because his monitor was messed up. He spent 3-4 songs distracted and yelling at the monitor guy. He eventually pulled a Ginger Baker and threw the monitor off the stage at the sound man. (I saw Ginger Baker do this with BBM at the Marquee in London, only it was a 3 foot tall side fill, Eddie threw a wedge. Still very entertaining.)

Overall-good effort, good song selection, good musicallity, but they all looked like they were phoning it in. I bet they are still having problems and we won’t be seeing much of Van Halen after this tour. There were so many drunken fans at the show that loved it and saw nothing wrong or amiss. They might as well have been at home listening to their Van Halen albums and they wouldn’t have known any better. What would have made this concert great is Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony. They are loaded with energy, always having fun, something which is totally missing from the new old Van Halen.