The Onions Live Green Bay

Crunchy
Frog

Get Drunk Play Records #89

Get Drunk Play Records #89

Whats up?

lots of stuff going on lately.  working on a full sized arcade machine, have a new band rehearsing, and doing things around the house.

i got a youtube account again recently and put up a bunch of 90s trash rock.

this morning was fathers day.  i stayed up all night, and amber called in sick to work.  we played video games and went to ponderosa breakfast buffet.  then we drove out to cedar lake and i jumped in.

heres some video footage i took, also some morning gardening

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eev4UjfQK-E

LSOK 4 Track Mixes 1998

it wasnt long after we moved down to FL that everyone involved in LSOK other than RJ moved back to WI.  RJ would come back from time to time and we would play a few shows and record new material, most of which came out on vinyl in one form or another.

here are 10 more songs that are either unreleased or alternate versions that we recorded in 1998 with RJ on vocals/bass, brad x on guitar/bass, and trent on drums.  4 track recordings, some of the songs have the vocals ran through a distortion pedal.

these are fresh mixes off the original tapes, i just finished them.   high quality mp3s, a properly edited and tagged album, for free.  check out the cover art!

http://www.mediafire.com/?1m2m2yjzgmb

4 track mixes part 1

after landing on the cover of maximumrocknroll in december of 1996, ann and myself headed down to join our singer RJ in florida.

i switched to drums and we got a guitar player named james.

he was a tool.

we were hoping to find a drummer, because james could hardly hold down barre chords and i wanted to get back on lead.  there had been some new material, RJ wrote “Air Raid” and i wrote “Ready, Aim, Fire!”

after some concurrent practices we started to get pretty tight but didnt have anything to record with other than a boom box.  i was at a coffee shop RJ liked to hang around at one night, and a guy there mentioned he had a 4 track so i asked him to come over.  we told him he could try out on drums, but he couldnt really play at all so we just used his 4 track and recorded these songs.

i only had 2 mics at the time, so the sound is left and right room mics, with overdubbed vocals and lead guitar.  this was recorded in 2-97.  here are 8 songs we recorded that day.

http://www.mediafire.com/?dotnao2bqen

new file sharing info

i spent much of the last week mixing down old 4 track tapes, something i havent done at all since getting a decent 24 bit A/D converter.  some of these songs have been on records, but were mastered off CD-R converted on this same computer’s 16 bit sound card.

the sound on these latest mixes is great, theres alot of classic shit here, much i havent heard in years!  these are presented in album format, meaning whatever format you listen to music on, it will sound great and contains all the proper tags, track listing, and album art, when applicable.

the albums each contain 5-10 songs and are a relatively small 10-15 MB in total size.  in order to easily share these and future files as the individual songs they are, and to allow you the ease to skip through and use all the features your computer, ipod, mp3 player or CD player allow, i am sharing these as .zip files.  winzip and winrar work to unzip the folder, but i suggest free program 7zip if you dont already have one.

lots of new stuff coming soon!

cassette transfers pt 2

lets start with the inevitable LSOK.  several months after roy and myself had moved back to wisconsin back in 1997, he decided he wanted to start a record label.  the first release would of course be a Last Sons of Krypton single, and at the time, as RJ still lived with his parents down in Florida, we were performing and recording as LSOK with Jamie King on vocals.

Trent and Brent from the Bulge single were still in the band.  eventually Brent AKA “black girl” left, but Trent “banana ass” stuck it out and was drummer for most of my projects (that i didnt drum in) for several more years.

here’s a demo of one of our core originals at the time, “ground zero”.

http://blip.tv/file/get/Bradx-groundZero535.mp3

after RJ heard about the opportunity to make a record, he hopped a bus and headed back up to WI.  we kicked out the other band members and worked on some riffs, here’s the original demo for “screaming” with RJ on guitar and me on drums, recorded just minutes before we taught it to the rest of the band and recorded the teenage trash record.

http://blip.tv/file/get/Bradx-screamingLSOK624.mp3

Roy had to call united record pressing and have them delay the single while he sent a new master with the latest recordings.  both screaming and ground zero were the exact same band recorded in the same room with the same mics onto the same 4 track within weeks of each other, the only difference is singer and songs, yet the sound could hardly be more dissimilar.

after having his debut record shitcanned in favor of RJs on the spot teenage trash farts, we wouldnt hear from jamie king for awhile.  while RJ was still in town for the week to record, we picked out his replacements replacement.  there was even time for the whole group of us to pose for some pictures at the local cemetary.

nigel was something of a local legend, especially to me and RJ who pretty much learned to play guitar along with a live video of his band “thee insects” when we were kids.  he had played at my 16th birthday party.  later we became thee insects ourselves, and were his backing band at many early LSOK gigs.  i also took over some of the lead vocals, and i do this version of the still fresh “break my heart” which we had only recorded recently for the teenage trash record.  the other 2 songs, “nice boy” and “baby”, are nigel originals.

http://blip.tv/file/get/Bradx-lsokInsects930.mp3

around that time i met liz, who ended up being my girlfriend and bass player for about 2 1/2 years.  roy didnt want to play most of the time so i put her to work.  a few years later, after LSOK broke up and the smuts started, we moved down to FL to do music with RJ again.

it was late 1999 when we lived down there and recorded our side of the split  smuts/evolutions 7″, and that wasnt our only band.  we also had a surf band called “the eldoradoes” (with the exact same members).  it was the custom down there at the time for sound guys to record your set of you provided a cassette, so here is a soundboard recording. 2 instrumentals, one original and BATMAN!!!

http://blip.tv/file/get/Bradx-eldoradoesSurf838.mp3

eldoradoes didnt do smuts songs, but we did lapse into late set LSOK covers at times (we were, after all, the exact same band and singer that played the LSOK boredom single), this is from the brass mug, tampa FL.  I Want Action and Teenage Trash.

http://blip.tv/file/get/Bradx-eldoradoesLSOK578.mp3

i wasnt working at the time so i also had time to join another band on drums.  i found them through the local entertainment paper, and they were called “the other side”.  i walked in, set up my drums and the first song they tried me out on was “hang up”.  of course i knew the song so right away i had the gig.

the band was 2 hot blondes on keyboard and bass and a guy guitar player.  it was great, we didnt even need a demo to get gigs, all they had to do was check out the girls and we had no problem getting booked into some nice places.  at one of our first practices i set up a tape deck to make a recording so i could learn the songs quicker.  here’s several songs from that tape.  the first song is an original by the chick with the nice rack.  i dont remember her name, i wouldnt recognize the face if i saw it.  i do remember how her tits looked in a skintight top though.  second song is hang up, then an instrumental, and finally, an original by the guitar player dude.

http://blip.tv/file/get/Bradx-theOtherSide488.mp3

thats all for this installment, but stay tuned!!!!!!!!!!

new tape transfers

recently set up a new system for going through old tapes and converting them to digital.  here’s some early transfers and a bit of history…

to start things off, here are some excerpts from an interview Julie lindemann did with LSOK singer RJ, manty record store manager (now owner) Jimbo, and the Rev. Norb regarding the legend, the cover of maximumrocknroll (which had literally just happened) among other subjects.  this is immediately followed by an introduction by Timebomb Tom, and the earliest demo of our classic hit “Dad Rapes Me” (Yeah, Yeah).  like most of our early recordings, this demo is me playing all the instruments and RJ wrote some words and overdubbed vocals.  then i would make copies of the tape for other band members to learn from.  suffice it to say this recording was never meant to see the light of day, and i will let the song itself do the rest of the talking.  the interview is from 12-96, the demo from January or February of the same year.

http://blip.tv/file/get/Bradx-LSOKDemoInterviews871.mp3

fast forward a few years to 1999.  LSOK were still technically “together” though RJ lived in Florida and we only played about twice a year.  we had tried out several different singers, including myself, and one guy who was always around was Jamie king (Jamie evolution).

i first met Jamie back in junior high when he was backup singer in my first ever band.  manu, who you will meet in a few paragraphs was lead singer.  Jamie was the replacement singer in many of my bands because he was always around and did a fair job.  better than me, anyways.

in 1999 i had my first apartment without a girl, it was above a dentist office.  before that i had been living above a bar, and in general hadn’t been doing alot with music.  LSOKs last show was a few months before, though none of us knew that yet.  finally i convinced mark b to sell me his drums and i was ready to get a band together, but didn’t know what.

the dropouts literally started the day i dropped out of school.  the original lineup was Jamie on vocals, manu on guitar, and me on drums.  bass was played by whoever was there and felt like playing it.  that was early in 1996, and with LSOK writing and recording so many classics at that time, the dropouts were an afterthought at best.

over the years manu drifted in and out of the picture, and gradually a fella named Roy started being around all the time.  we picked him up as a part time bass player and eventually he tried playing some guitar.  that’s when Steve (smut), the latest LSOK groupie and hanger-on got handed the bass.

although me Roy and Jamie were all LSOK members, we were old enough at that point to realize it wasn’t the same band without RJ’s vocals, so already in 1997 we resurrected the dropouts.  because RJ lived in Florida it was the dropouts that played all the shitty parties and slogged it out in manty town so when LSOK did do our twice yearly shows at least there would be a couple people there.

anyways, back to 1999 and my first apartment on my own.  we had been the dropouts for almost 2 years at that point.  since we started out as a straight ahead punk rock band, we had begun to listen to endless GONER type shit and decided to ditch our ENTIRE set and start a new band (with the same people) with ALL NEW songs and THE EVOLUTIONS were born!

we made one recording before Steve got kicked out of the band and replaced by my girlfriend (at the time) Liz, who also played on LSOK’s “Boredom” single (the first songs she ever recorded) and the second smuts single(split w/evolutions).  the recording was done live with a tape deck.  the songs are both covers, psychotic reaction and busy kids.

http://blip.tv/file/get/Bradx-evolutionsDemos281.mp3

a few months later LSOK “broke up”, me and Liz headed to Florida to work on the smuts with RJ, and Jamie and Roy continued the evolutions and released their first couple singles.

only a short time later i ended up back in WI, only to return to FL yet again, this time with Steve smut and to continue the smuts band.  we had some adventures and recorded another single (CP-001 She Got Me Hot) before, you guessed it, coming back to WI during the summer of 2000.

if i may digress a bit, let me take you back to my high school days, pre LSOK.  mark b and ninja Paul were two of my friends, and we had some crappy bands together.  after high school they went into the military, and only maintained sporadic contact with their hometown friends.  upon returning home they found things had changed and people had moved on to some extent, and themselves as well.

steve also knew ninja paul, and he was an obvious choice for drummer as he was completely outside the “scene” we were becoming aware of at that point.  no ego, no bullshit, just crappy music for the sake of it.  we started a band called “ninja paul and the lickwid schitz”.  oblivians, persuaders, and reatards were the holy trinity.  we practiced in a barn with goats, we never put out a record.  we played weddings and parties.  it lasted for about a year, at one point we kicked out steve and mark b played bass until he freaked out and we got steve back.

here’s two songs from our demo tape, an original called “you’re crazy” and a cover of the trend’s “band aid”.  i recorded these on an 80s cassette 4 track.

http://blip.tv/file/get/Bradx-ninjaPaulAndTheLickwidSchitz982.mp3

ok, one more story and several more songs for tonight.  after returning to WI in 2000 i played drums for evolutions for awhile, quit, and was replaced by another guy we went to high school with, boner.  bone isnt a bad drummer, but they broke up in early 2001.

jamie and boner hooked up with manu from the original dropouts and they started fast eddie and the slim pickens.  they practiced and wrote songs together for several months but were unable to find anywhere to play live.  during the summer of 2001 ninja paul and the lickwid schitz broke up, because my new girlfriend (and now wife) could play a better drumbeat than paul, or at least i was convinced she could.  i listened to alot of gories at that particular time.  amber and me started a band called alpha 66, and we determined to do a split single with fast eddie and the nigs.  we all got together in our tiny upper apt. one night and recorded this masterpiece.

the first song is manu on vocals/guitar and he wrote it.  next is an alternate version of the evolutions classic “me and lee harvey” followed with a cover of culture vultures by wire.  its the first recorded version of what eventually became one of the highlights of the evolutions split 7″ with france’s fatals.

http://blip.tv/file/get/Bradx-fastEddieAndTheSlimPickens613.mp3

the other side of the record was supposed to be me and amber.  now we are the porch honkees, these are the recordings we made that night.  the first song is an original of mine, “free money”.  the second is a cover of John Lee Hooker’s “Shake it Baby”.

http://blip.tv/file/get/Bradx-alpha66Split827.mp3

b&w photos by shimon/lindemann

well, thats all i got for today.  stay tuned for next time, i still have another big box of tapes to go through sometime soon!!!

lots of new stuff on blip

keep up with my latest stuff on blip, vids and tunes

http://bradx.blip.tv/posts?view=archive&nsfw=dc

farfisa spinet chop!!!

my pal mark b recently mentioned he had gotten a farfisa at the local thrift store for $15. i assumed it was the relatively common pianorgan, a reed air organ. however, to my surprise when i visited him the other day it was actually an electric spinet!

i had brought some tools with me so i opened it up and sure enough, the internals are basically the same as my compact deluxe. i was thinking “lots of spare parts” so i offered him double his money, 30 bucks for it.

the problem being it was too big and wouldnt fit in either of our cars (he had it delivered to his house by truck). so, i returned to my house and grabbed a circular saw and some other tools, returned and did some rewiring, and eventually chopped the thing down!

the whole adventure was documented on video, from before i even saw it for the first time until its totally chopped in 6 minutes or so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHI1FMFppyA

well, tonight after work i was bored so i decided to try it out on a song. i did “dinah wants religion”, a song i have never learned or played before on any instrument, entirely from memory and without listening to the original.

http://blip.tv/file/get/Bradx-DinahWantsReligion833.mp3

here’s video of the internals

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82UElYTle_0