2009 October Archive
Drum and Bass Jam
This was a jam that Chris and I had at practice, while Nicky was restringing his guitar. Enjoy!
East of East
This is the first song I ever wrote for thatwasthen… still carries weight.
EAST OF EAST
Well she went back east
Boarded a train
Said she wanted to see the country
Stood on the rocky coast
Stood on the tallest tower
But it wasn’t enough,
So she cried, “Mom!”
She said
IF I CAN’T BE ME
WHERE WILL I BE?
IF I CAN’T BE ME
HOW WILL I SEE?
Moved further east
Settled down in a flat in Brixton
And started work on her first novel
She took a look left and right
Took walks at night
Kept to herself and never asked for help
She’d stay inside with all her papers and lines
They’d say
IF I CAN’T BE ME
WHERE WILL I BE?
IF I CAN’T BE ME
HOW WILL I SEE?
Then she,
Moved further east to find inner peace
Checked her possessions and weapons
Then set her lessons down at the door
And she sat in silence
Cleared her head
Had the epiphany of a lifetime
What she wanted wasn’t what she’d got
She wanted everything, but had learned to live with nothing
“Well I guess I’ll go back West”
But west was so far west
That it’d be best reached
If she just kept on going east
I DIDN’T SEE
I RAN AWAY FROM ME
HOW WILL IT BE
TO FINALLY BE FREE?
thatwasthen – live @ the key club – “places to end”
HD footage provided by Elko weaver.
Pumpkin Carving with thatwasthen
Last year, thatwasthen and a group of their closest friends decided to carve a few pumpkins to get into the Halloween spirit. Here’s a quick video and some pictures from the festivities. Note the absolutely bad-ass PAC-MAN carving that Adam Young engineered.
If you had to choose…
If you HAD to have one of these stickers plastered on the back of your car permanently… which one would best fit you? I would choose the second to last.
~Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.
~Cover me. I’m changing lanes.
~As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in public schools
~Laugh alone and the world thinks you’re an idiot.
~Sometimes I wake up grumpy; Other times I let her sleep!
~I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather … … Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car…
~MONTANA — At least our cows are sane!
~I didn’t fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.
~Your kid may be an honor student but you’re still an IDIOT!
~It’s as BAD as you think, and they ARE out to get you.
~When you do a good deed, get a receipt, in case heaven is like the IRS.
~Smile, it’s the second best thing you can do with your lips.
~Friends don’t let Friends drive Naked.
~Wink, I’ll do the rest!
~Where there’s a will, I want to be in it!
~If we aren’t supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?
~Time is the best teacher; Unfortunately it kills all its students.
~It’s lonely at the top, but you eat better.
~Forget about World Peace…..Visualize Using Your Turn Signal !
~We are born naked, wet and hungry. Then things get worse.
~Always remember you’re unique, just like everyone else.
~Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.
~i souport publik edjukashon
~The sex was so good that even the neighbors had a cigarette.
~We are Microsoft. Resistance Is Futile. You Will Be Assimilated.
~Be nice to your kids. They’ll choose your nursing home.
~3 kinds of people: those who can count & those who can’t.
~Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie!’… till you can find a rock.
~2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
~I like you, but I wouldn’t want to see you working with subatomic particles.
~I killed a 6-pack just to watch it die.
~Sex on television can’t hurt you unless you fall off.
Walk a mile in my shoes…
“Walk a mile in my shoes” is a cliche beyond repair, I agree. It is also one that seems to have lost its popularity rapidly since long before I care to remember. With the holidays coming soon, I can bet anyone that the “grossness” factor of our society is about to rear its ugly head once again. But I am going to tell you how you might be able to avoid falling for this nasty and easily-adopted point of view. “Walking a mile” can be like a basic mental exercise for your soul.
Aside from the obvious reasons for me to tell you why you should “walk a mile” today, I want to encourage you to learn to “walk a mile” mentally and emotionally around the block. By this, I quite literally mean that you should stand on a sidewalk, wait for someone to pass, and watch them from the time they’re in sight to the time they are gone. (Try not to be too creepy about it; go for a casual stroll!) And in this time that you are watching this person, you should try your very best to imagine what they are seeing. Concentrate on their perspective first, what they can see with their own eyes. Imagine you can see down the bridge of their nose, and your feet pass, one after the other, across your belly line. You can hear and feel the breath in their lungs, inflating and exhaling. The warm buzz you emit as their heart pumps you along the sidewalk; the sidewalk across from where you’re watching them.
Imagine the terrain they are walking on, whether it is cracked and uneven, or flat and safe. This way you can begin to feel their step, the confidence with which they walk. If it is wet, they are cautious.
Imagine carrying their weight. Imagine wearing their clothes. Imagine feeling someone from across the street watch your every step from the time you see them to the time you leave, and choosing not to look over.
=*=
I feel like these are some of the most basic and fundamental ways to begin to understand art and an artist’s perspective. Many fantastic artists and songwriters and performers are so accustomed to tapping into these feelings and emotions that they barely recognize when they are doing it anymore. It is that fundamental.
From there, you go on to more advanced levels of understanding and imagination. You can choose to project where they are going or coming from. What they’re thinking, or what’s blasting through those iPod earbuds they’re listening to. There are an uncountable amount of events, feelings, issues, pieces of knowledge, people, places and doughnuts that have an unmeasurable influence on our daily lives. And there are so many of us!
Well here is one artist that draws a wonderful moving picture, and it paints insight in to so many different perspectives in such a short time. This woman, Kseniya Simonova, is a Ukrainian artist who uses her unique perspective and skills to interpret Germany’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine during WWII.
A day in the life of Benny Dacks
I’d like to give our fans a quick insight into what it’s like to follow me around for a day.
I recently revived this Apple iBook with a dirty hack that I like to call the Hackintosh – HotWire Edition. The power button was broken when I received it. It’s previous owner had broken the plug for the power button clean off the motherboard. This left two insanely close, bare contacts. Here are a few shots of the process.
Here is the 'new' one and my old iBook G3 it's replacing.
A random piece of metal I decided to exclude from the rebuild process.
hmm... Heat shield maybe?
This ladies and gentlemen is how true geeks start their computers.
Here is a time-lapse video of the new Hackintosh:HWE in action!
After a long day of ripping apart laptops and eating soup, I’ll head to our studio to lay down some bass. We have some really cool gear at our disposal.
I love this amp. It belongs to our rehearsal studio.
Inspiration comes from everywhere
As a songwriter, I constantly find myself questioning whether or not what I’ve created is original. Then I remember what one of my favorite film directors, Jim Jarmusch said…
Jarmusch is ascribed as having instigated the American independent film movement with Stranger Than Paradise.[30] Critic Lynn Hirschberg declared Stranger than Paradise in a 2005 profile of the director for The New York Times to have “permanently upended the idea of independent film as an intrinsically inaccessible avant-garde form”.[5] The success of the film accorded the director a certain iconic status within arthouse cinema, as an idiosyncratic and uncompromising auteur exuding the aura of urban cool embodied by downtown Manhattan.[48][49] Such perceptions were compounded with the release of his subsequent features in the late 1980s, establishing him as one of the generation’s most prominent and influential independent filmmakers.[50][51] In a 1989 review of his work, Vincent Canby of The New York Times called Jarmusch “the most adventurous and arresting film maker to surface in the American cinema in this decade”.[32]
- via Wikipedia
Victor Wooten Bass Genius
When I first started playing the bass, I researched many bassists to learn from their styles, vary my taste in music, and gain an overall well-rounded understanding of my instrument. In my research, I came across Victor Wooten. This guy is the definition of innovation on the bass guitar. His style unique and unorthodox however incredibly effective. Take a moment to appreciate the part of the music that we normally feel rather than hear.
