Destruction Island

[Thomas]

Hey kids, I invite you to check out the band Destruction Island. No, it's not my band but it's chalk-full of great blokes, one of which is a good friend of mine. That's not why you might want to give them a listen though. They're doing pretty good stuff with sound these days: sculpting it into nice little songs.

 

It's basically members from two defunct Tacoma-based bands: Some By Sea and Pistol for a Paycheck. They've met in the middle ground for energy. I wish they had more songs on their MySpace gizmo.

 

Another favorite is "Putting Down the Dog." It's not on MySpace, but there's a live version on YouTube with crappy audio. Give it a try if you fancy:

[fisch]

First I listened to 'good reincarnations' and I was thinking, "Cool a little strokes mixed with a little talking heads.", but then I listened to Torso and woah, they took me some where totally unexpected. Geeze I don't know, a little Q.O.T.S.A. or Desert Sessions? But they got their own killer thing happening there!

 

Bad ass!

[Figbuck]

I started playing music in 1957. In the '60s I was playing in garage bands. '70s worked in bands, music major in college, played in the Army Show band in Europe, '80s playing jazz and fusion as well as hanging with my friends that I grew up with who were inventing the underground punk and metal scene in San Francisco.

 

I was lucky to have grown up in SF and been exposed to all the stuff that evolved into what we call music now. I began listening to radio when there was no "music business". It was just "Classical music" and "Popluar Music". there were no stations on the FM dial. There were no Beatles or Stones yet. Jazz to County was all considered Poplular music and got played in heavy rotation on AM Top 40.

 

Props to Bill Graham. I saw Dead, Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Cream, Hendrix, Traffic, Rod Stewart and Small Faces, Albert Lee, Canned Heat, Credence, Who, Doors, Steppenwolf, Birds, Deep Purple, Duane Allman, BB King, Albert King, Albert Collins, Buddy guy and Jr. Wells, James Cotton, Magic Sam, Miles Davis Bitches Brew band and I could go on and on. All before 1970.

 

We used to go to the Fillmore, Winterland or Family Dog at the Avalon and the Beach every weekend. Hey, you wanna go see Led Zepplin this weekend? Let me see if I can scrape together $3.25 for a ticket. Oh, and a buck fifty for 500 mics of Owsley and four bucks to chip in on an $8 oz bag of Mexican weed. Grab a Rolling Stone news rag on Haight Street for fifty cents and see what they say about these bozos.

 

I'm not trying to tell you that I know anything about music or that I know what is good or bad. Music ain't a stick and ball sport with a score or a race with a winner. What has happened, is that there is a music business now. Bands, artists, what ever you call them, used to make it because they connected through radio, records and touring. Now there is a music business run by corporations and I has dampened any real creativity. Every group now gets pigeon holed, so that they can market their product.

 

"Cool a little strokes mixed with a little talking heads." Gee, I guess I don't have to listen for myself and judge, that tells me what they are about.

 

I did listen. I made through about a minute of each track. I usually only make it through about ten seconds of indie stuff. Not ground breaking material. At least they had some basic musicianship going. But, isn't that a necessity? Maybe only for me.

 

While I'm ranting... it seems like anybody with rudimentary Pro Tools skills and the time, can manicure lame musical performance into something that resembles a mixed track. Recordings are just a snapshot in time. With digital techniques you can "Photo Shop" any sound into looking/sounding like something else. It ain't the real thing! Live performance is where the truth lives. I want to see performers stand flat footed on stage and show me who they really are.

 

Want to play music? It's easy. There are only twelve different notes, seven white and five black. They are named ABCDEFG. Now learn to count. 1234. That's all you need to know.

 

I have been playing and writing music long enough to have a real appreciation for the process. I try to come to new music with fresh ears and an open mind. I don't criticize just to be a critic or contrary. I have played in bars in front of three people and at festivals in front of thousands. There is so much... not good, but great music being performed now, that there is not enough time in the day to scratch the surface. After spending most of my life training my ear and analyzing composition, I can't justify spending any time rehashing the same tired old stuff.

 

What is Hip?

 

Hipness is what it is

Hipness is what it is

Hipness is what it is,

Sometimes hipness is what it ain't.

 

Tower of Power

 

Next... :)

[hang_510]

I grew up with who were inventing the underground punk and metal scene in San Francisco.

 

Want to play music? It's easy. There are only twelve different notes, seven white and five black. They are named ABCDEFG. Now learn to count. 1234. That's all you need to know.

^gotta have rythym too :cool:

 

your band name(s) in the 80's??? your not really jello biafra are ya??? :lol:

i could have seen you play, ever make it down to LA?

i was doing the same thing in hollyweird at the end of the 70's. i spent a lot of time between the 2 cities.

disco sucks :fu:

 

big :thumbsup: to bill grahm. too young to see the doors even though i was born/lived 6 blocks from morrisons house...

 

 

the music industry today isnt what it was just 15 years ago, the digital revolution has eliminated seeking for live music. or MTV :cursing:

 

if you wanted the latest, you had to ride your bike down to the local music shop and steal it, it too easy today to steal a 1000 songs.

12" vinyl always made the shirt look funny :sneaky:

[fisch]

Actually some would say it is an exciting time to be a musician. The internet has done alot of things including taking power out of the music studios hands.

 

You are not going to make alot of cash on recording today, so you have to get out there and tour to make a living. Heck I know of bands that give the music away for free so they can build their name and hopefully get people who wouldn't have heard of them to come to their shows.

 

Sure they control the radio, but I barely listen to radio anyway.

 

I love lots of music, but I am a big fan of Heavy metal. I mean the really heavy stuff. It used to be near impossible to hear that kind of music. Going to a CD store you pretty much had to just pick a metal album at random, and hope it was good, cause ther was no way to hear it first, and there is alot of crap too.

 

Now, not only can I track down an obscure band from Finland on line, and hear their songs, but there is internet radio, where I can hear all kinds of bands all day long that would never in a millon years get radio play. If my ears didn't decieve me there was stuff in that torso track that even touched on chain gang music. Mmmmm a little Clutch too. It is all tasty.

 

I think it is a good time for music, not necessarily the best time to be a musician for financial reward.

 

Anyway the same arguements get played over an over in the art world too. Lot of people hate modern art, but it was easily as big a revolution as music was in the 60's and 70's. Do I like it all? Nope. Not even close. And there is a saying in the art world that everything has already been done. All you can hope to do as a creator is combine some different things and get something interesting. i've got everything form Klimpt to Rembrant to comic book influences in my work. I don't do it on purpose, I am a product of my influences. I know alot of the rock and roll guys credit the blues guys.

 

It is a different world. But in ways, today is just as much like the wild west for music as the 60's was.

 

However I think it is really fantastic that you guys actually lived this stuff!! You saw history happening live. If you weren't too stoned to remember it!:D Awesome that you toured with the army band as I have a buddy who just toured with the airforce band last year on guitar.

 

I still think Destruction Island sounds pretty damn cool, and is a great mixture of influences.

[Cruzn620]

yeah, internet radio is the balls! i can't listen to it any more at this new job because of websense, but on internet radio, i discovered bands i would have never heard other wise. Manmade God, Bipolar, Audiovent, Breaking Point, Burn Season...ect. oh yeah, and if you guys are into prog music, check out Port Mahadia, they are on myspace too. My friend is their producer, and i am the "promotional correspondant" LOL...yeah, i call the radio stations and tell them that they need to play their stuff. anyway, its pretty good stuff for prog music (david ragsdale from kansas is on the violin)

[hang_510]

You saw history happening live. If you wewen' too stoned to remember it!:D

:mellow: thats why i saved so many stubs man!

 

i agree that its a better time for musicans, but they are staying at home, not getting out and performing.

LIVE!!! i want to experience the performance, ill travel(far) for something intresting.

this is where they are missing out. an audiance! its great they can get the music out to the masses, but then what???

well be stuck with 1 man electronica noise & hip-hop from dead guys...:rolleyes:

 

radio :lol: i remeber when DJ's could choose what they played=today its :poop:

 

 

travelling 5 deep in a breaking down van/bus, live the experience! :w00t:

 

my nephew just did his first shows(5) in LA (hes from CO) and wasnt pleased, he wanted to go home after the 2nd show...play in the basement and post on myspace :rolleyes:

[fisch]

:

 

my nephew just did his first shows(5) in LA (hes from CO) and wasnt pleased, he wanted to go home after the 2nd show...play in the basement and post on myspace :rolleyes:

 

 

So true hang! That fear stops ALOT of folks from achieving their dreams. I was not the best painter in artschool. But I am one of few from my class who has gotten to this level professionally (and I've a long way to go). And it is because I kept trying, didn't take no for an answer, kept getting my work in front of the people who needed to see it.

 

Way more goes into ssuccess than how good you are at something. You gotta have people skills, phone skills, be able to meet deadlines, the list goes on and on. Talent is great but isn't worth much if you can't follow through.

 

I have many friends who are fantastic painters, better than me, but I don't know if anyone will ever see their work, cause they don't get out there.

[ppeters914]

Winterland....Days on the Green...Frank Zappa on acid....ahhhh, my mis-spent youth....wheeeeeee! :D

[datsunfish]

I play in a metal band.Very brutal low tuned hyper speed shit.Playing tomorrow night in tacoma with 4 others.We have 2 independent demo's out.No label.

Its cool to hear everybodys backgrounds and appreciation for music.I have been playing guitar for about 16 years.I should be way better than I am but Datsuns took up about ten years of practice time.:rolleyes:

I try not to advertise here but if anybody wants a cd I would send it out free for a fellow Ratsuner that thinks they might like it.

Check us out here

http://www.myspace.com/benderrock06

[Figbuck]

Disclaimer: I am nobody. I'm an idiot... a figbuck. If I got claim to fame, I'm not hyping it here. I was was so smart, I would be rich and famous. You have to have a pretty thick skin to be an artist, performer or try to make money being creative. I don't really have skin thick enough to "Make It". I'm a wuss on some levels.

 

Ok, forums are like a bunch of guys sitting in a bar talkin

[Figbuck]

Hang_510;

[Thomas]

Music, as with any art, is a varied buffet laden with opinion. There are points I might agree with, but there's no such thing as correct taste. What makes music significant to one person is completely different for the next. For me, technical proficiency and uninfluenced originality [which I sincerely doubt exists] don't necessarily equal good music; they're just other people's principles. I find it erroneous to say the music industry has spoiled creativity. Sometimes that's an easy conclusion with songs heard over the radio and shows like American Idle. I can, however, definitively say in the case of my friend's band that they're not altering their vision to fit in a machine; I'd surmise the same for Ben's music. Hearing influence in music can also be a sign of how pervasive it's become in our society. And any true originality would almost have to bring with it a new genre label. As for technical proficiency, some of the best musicians I've ever seen have also played some of the most boring music I've ever heard. Compared to writing, being a grammar wiz doesn't mean your story is going to be interesting. Anyway, I respect all your opinions, and if you don't like Kye's band, well, no recipe fits everyone. ;)

[Thomas]

By the way, I meant to thank those of you who checked out my buddy's band. It seems all too often that even avid music fans are too apathetic to check out somebody's friend's band. So I appreciate that you guys gave him a taste test. :)

 

And Figbuck, you have some interesting stories there. I always figured those AC/DC guys would be, for a lack of a better term, douche bags.