The Redding Brothers Blog: How to be a weekend Rock Star
A great, step-by-step, 10-step guide to becoming a rock star without quitting your day job.
-The Carpet-Meister
Archive for December, 2006
How to be a weekend Rock Star
Thursday, December 28th, 2006How to be a weekend Rock Star
Thursday, December 28th, 20061. Grow your hair long – but not long enough to get you fired from your day job.
Tuck it behind your ears during the day to make it seem shorter. Joke about how you’ve been too busy working to go in for a haircut.
2. Hold a full band rehearsal in your apartment. Without getting evicted.
Second-Best Method: Call in sick at your job so you can have the band over during the day when nobody else in the apartment is home.
Best Method: Recruit everyone on the floor below you for your new band. Voila! No one left to complain about the noise. Soon, they’ll all be jobless and penniless, and won’t care, anyway.
3. Get carefully cultivated fake tattoos.
Real ones would get you in trouble with the boss. But fake ones have no Indie Credibility (see point #5). To convince everyone they’re real, get really ugly ones. That way, everyone will think: “There’s no way he would be sporting that if he could help it!”
4. Get a Rock Star image. From a magazine.
As a bona-fide productive working member of society, you’re going to have trouble pulling off the rock star image. So you’re going to have to steal someone else’s.
Just sign up for one of those “free magazine” offers your annoying co-worker keep pushing at you, and get a subscription to Rolling Stone or Paste or Spin. Then just rip out some photos of rock stars, and copy their clothing exactly.
Next month, repeat. This way you’ll always be “cutting edge”.
5. Get Indie Credibility.
No one is going to believe you’re a rock star until you start talking like one. So do two things: rail against the music establishment, and claim to hate anything released in the last decade. Talk about the glory days of rock, before Kurt Cobain “sold out” and joined Nirvana. That’s right, even Kurt Cobain isn’t cool enough for you.
6. Use company stationary to book the big shows.
Want to open for Motley Crue? It helps if your request to open for them comes on the letterhead of a Fortune 500 company. Better yet, sign your boss’s name. Agents will be more impressed to hear from Harvey Jefferson III than from Jimmy the Intern.
7. Use your company copy machine to create fliers for your next big gig.
Just be sure to print a nice Excel report too, so you can sandwich your fliers between spreadsheets, and convince any passerby that you just printed off 500 pages of financial data.
8. Borrow your neighbor’s minivan to carry all of your band equipment.
Tell him that it’s for a “soccer emergency”. He’ll understand.
9. Tell your co-workers to come to your gig, but don’t tell them you’re the one playing.
Just tell them there’s this awesome band that’s been really hitting it big overseas. Let them feel the peer pressure burn.
10. Play to a Huge Crowd.
Simply sneak in to a Hard Rock Cafe about an hour before another band’s scheduled show and start setting up. Tell the manager that there have been some personnel changes lately, but you’re still going to “rock the house”. When the real band shows up, accuse them of stalking you.
If you follow all these steps, you will be well on your way to success as a weekend rockstar.
-micah
How to be a weekend Rock Star
Thursday, December 28th, 20061. Grow your hair long – but not long enough to get you fired from your day job.
Tuck it behind your ears during the day to make it seem shorter. Joke about how you’ve been too busy working to go in for a haircut.
2. Hold a full band rehearsal in your apartment. Without getting evicted.
Second-Best Method: Call in sick at your job so you can have the band over during the day when nobody else in the apartment is home.
Best Method: Recruit everyone on the floor below you for your new band. Voila! No one left to complain about the noise. Soon, they’ll all be jobless and penniless, and won’t care, anyway.
3. Get carefully cultivated fake tattoos.
Real ones would get you in trouble with the boss. But fake ones have no Indie Credibility (see point #5). To convince everyone they’re real, get really ugly ones. That way, everyone will think: “There’s no way he would be sporting that if he could help it!”
4. Get a Rock Star image. From a magazine.
As a bona-fide productive working member of society, you’re going to have trouble pulling off the rock star image. So you’re going to have to steal someone else’s.
Just sign up for one of those “free magazine” offers your annoying co-worker keep pushing at you, and get a subscription to Rolling Stone or Paste or Spin. Then just rip out some photos of rock stars, and copy their clothing exactly.
Next month, repeat. This way you’ll always be “cutting edge”.
5. Get Indie Credibility.
No one is going to believe you’re a rock star until you start talking like one. So do two things: rail against the music establishment, and claim to hate anything released in the last decade. Talk about the glory days of rock, before Kurt Cobain “sold out” and joined Nirvana. That’s right, even Kurt Cobain isn’t cool enough for you.
6. Use company stationary to book the big shows.
Want to open for Motley Crue? It helps if your request to open for them comes on the letterhead of a Fortune 500 company. Better yet, sign your boss’s name. Agents will be more impressed to hear from Harvey Jefferson III than from Jimmy the Intern.
7. Use your company copy machine to create fliers for your next big gig.
Just be sure to print a nice Excel report too, so you can sandwich your fliers between spreadsheets, and convince any passerby that you just printed off 500 pages of financial data.
8. Borrow your neighbor’s minivan to carry all of your band equipment.
Tell him that it’s for a “soccer emergency”. He’ll understand.
9. Tell your co-workers to come to your gig, but don’t tell them you’re the one playing.
Just tell them there’s this awesome band that’s been really hitting it big overseas. Let them feel the peer pressure burn.
10. Play to a Huge Crowd.
Simply sneak in to a Hard Rock Cafe about an hour before another band’s scheduled show and start setting up. Tell the manager that there have been some personnel changes lately, but you’re still going to “rock the house”. When the real band shows up, accuse them of stalking you.
If you follow all these steps, you will be well on your way to success as a weekend rockstar.
-micah
Are Polar Bears an Endangered Species?
Wednesday, December 27th, 2006
According to the article below, the White House is considering classifying Polar Bears as an endangered species.
The article points out that this is an issue because Polar Bears are loved for their appearances in Coca-Cola commercials, children’s toys, and now…the I Heart Polar Bears tshirt.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16361087/
This is an interesting thing for the Bush administration to be considering, as this is apparently a tacit acceptance of global warming. To me, the jury’s still out on this, and on whether global warming is a good thing or a bad thing. But then again, I’m not a politician.
-micah
Technorati Tags:
polar bear, polar bears, endangered species, endangered list
Farewell to the 8-foot poster of Miami Vice
Friday, December 22nd, 2006Today it drove away. Away to a new home.
It was an 8-foot by 8-foot, self-supported, huge cardboard poster of the new Miami Vice movie. We got it from the Teays Valley Cinemas as a victory trophy after our last concert there.
Doretta had packed it into the back of her small car (it had to be taken apart BOLT by BOLT), and driven it over 300 miles to get it to us.
It stood up in our apartment as a beacon of awesomeness and an icon of cool. It inspired us to create our own 6-foot by 8-foot poster, hang it on the front of the Miami Vice structure, and then drive the whole thing several states away to display proudly in the midst of Birmingham, Alabama.
But taking it down and putting it back up was a monumental under-taking. It probably had 100 bolts, 50 flaps that had to be inserted, and 40 different parts that had to be kept track of.
And then we discovered that we could just hang our banner on some posts, and not carry the Miami Vice poster across the US. So the Miami Vice poster was relegated to being setup in our apartment, displaying its awesomeness out the front window, to the world below.
But, as all things do, this eventually caused us to run out of room. Between the TWO drumsets, the musical equipment, a dining room table, and something that Gabe created out of foam that looks like a skate-ramp, there was simply no space.
So it had to go.
Fortunately, we found a good home for it. A guy living in ultra-small-town Tennessee who loved the movie. (I haven’t even seen the movie; the poster was awesome enough for me).
So today it was packed up into the back of another small car, and driven across the country-side. It was only fitting that today on Myspace, we release a song commemorating its exodus.
Farewell, ultra-large Miami Vice poster.
-micah
Technorati Tags:
songs, christmas, movies, miami vice, fun, band, music
Featured on Christmas Blog
Friday, December 22nd, 2006I just got word that my blog has been featured on Adam’s yearly Christmas blog-post, linked here:
http://adamsweb.us/blog/index.php/a/2006/12/21/carnival_of_christmas_ii
They picked it up because of my post about my favorite Christmas Carol.
He has an interesting post about lying to your kids about Santa. Ouch.
-micah
Technorati Tags:
christmas, carol
New medical study finds "Rock & Roll Linked to Saving the World", but further testing needed
Wednesday, December 20th, 2006In a surprise announcement on Saturday, scientists at the University of Doowap Regional Scientific Research Center revealed that a new study had been conducted testing the link between “rock & roll” and “saving the world” in lab mice. Tests were conclusive: 100% of lab mice both liked “rock & roll” and were interested in “saving the world”.
The scientists were quick to point out that they had not examined the effect the Kryptonite they put in the mice’s food had on this study. Nor have they conclusively proved that this connection exists in humans. After all, most humans don’t have the advantage of a third ear on their backs for listening to rock music, like these mice had.
The next step, these scientists point out, is to compare 15-year-old kids who listen to blaring rock music in their rooms all day, with a 30-year-old guy strapped in a room, forced to listen to Michael Bolton for 30 hours straight.
“Whichever one is more interested in saving the world at the end of this process is clearly the winner here,” the lead scientist orated.
The lab mice could not be reached for comment. They apparently couldn’t hear the phone ringing over their loud rock music.
Non-Modal Car
Wednesday, December 20th, 2006Aza Raskin (son of Jef Raskin, creator of the Apple Macintosh), posted the following puzzle over at Humanized.com:
http://www.humanized.com/weblog/2006/12/15/humanized_interface_puzzler/
An interface has modes if one gesture can mean different things, depending system state. Modes are at fault when you miss a call because your phones in silent mode. And there’s little worse than having the final bars of Appalachian Spring – with harmonies as delicate as frozen cobwebs – thrashed by a cellphone who’s owner has forgot to put it into silent mode. Perhaps there is something worse: having it be your cellphone. You can read all about modes, modes errors, catastrophic mistakes, and some solutions in our article Visual Feedback: Why Modes Kill.This is the challenge:
Is it possible to design a car that isn’t forward/reverse modal? If it isn’t possible, why? And if it is possible, how?
What he’s asking is, can we make a car that can reverse or go forward, but NOT USE THE SAME PEDAL TO DO BOTH. Using the same pedal for both leads to all kinds of problems for us humans.
Anyway, I went to post my answer, but their comment system wouldn’t let me, so here it is for you:
Make the steering wheel control acceleration and deceleration. As it is pushed/tilted forwards, it accelerates the car. As it is pulled/tilted backwards, it decelerates the car. Deceleration is understood to be the same as thrust in the rearward direction, and so reverses the car when applied enough.
I don’t think this would be modal, because it coincides with a fairly common mental model. However, if it would be, then this clarification should fix it.
Make a stick similar to a gear shift, positioned to the right of the driver. There are three positions: forward, centered, and backwards.
Pushing the stick forward accelerates the car to a degree proportional to its forward position. Pulling it back towards the center slows it down to a stop. Pulling it back past the center towards the back of the car reverses.
If needed in order to prevent accidental damage, there can be a button on the handle that must be pressed before the stick can go into the reverse position.
Either way, this is not modal because the stick’s position ALWAYS correlates to the same action of the car.
-micah
design, interface, cars, brakes, puzzles, puzzlers
SNOW CD Available Just In Time For Christmas
Tuesday, December 19th, 2006The SNOW EP was a project born of interestingness. It began as a concert that we planned to do in December of 2004 at “the Brickhouse”, a small hole-in-the-wall kind of venue in St Albans, WV. It would be a Christmas Show with all the trappings. And so we practiced, and we came up with all the Christmas Carols we could sing.
And then we attempted Carol of The Bells.
For people who are not familiar with this song, it is a ridiculously complex song. That is, if you’re trying to sing it with only three guys. But we were determined to try.
And that attempt led us to break down the song to its essential elements. The elements of intensity and passion and power, and…
…yippee-i-oh, yippee-i-oh-ay?
Yes, even that one.
It was a bold move, but one we were determined to make. And so we came up with our time-pattern-changing, genre-crossing, old-west-cowboy-rock-Christmas version of this song.
Unfortunately, the Brickhouse concert was delayed for a couple of months, and the genius of our song would not be revealed for another year. Instead, the next Brickhouse show was the record-breaking, history-setting, all-time favorite REDDING BROTHERS BRICKHOUSE show of March of 2005. Carol of The Bells would have to wait.
But only until the next Christmas. And in Christmas of 2005, the show was set to happen in the Teays Valley Cinemas theater of Scott Depot, WV.
It was the first concert of its kind; no one had played a show in the theater before. And so we decided that we needed to have a commemorative CD, an EP that would serve for all time to mark the point that a band first held a concert in the Teays Valley Theater.
And so SNOW was born. It contained “Carol of The Bells”, “Angels We Have Heard on High”, our own original “Lord of Winter”, the feel-good “Summer Girl Snow”, and a haunting piano piece named “Winter in F#m”.
“Lord of Winter” is an interesting track; an example of a song that dips deep into the well of the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” for a introspective take on the season. But that’s another story.
-micah
PS. Just in case you hadn’t heard, there’s one last chance for you to get the SNOW Christmas EP right before Christmas. It can still make it there in time! Listen to some of the songs here.
christmas christmas carol christmas carols carol carols carol of the bells
Rock & Roll Can Save The World
Saturday, December 16th, 2006In a World where Bland Music is the Order of the Day…
One band will take a stand against it all…
And Pay…
The Ultimate Price.
…
$12.99
…
Welcome to
…Rock & Roll Can Save The World…
-micah