Benny Dacks Archive
State of Affairs
First and foremost, I’d like to say thank you to everyone who came out to The House of Blues on Saturday. We rocked one of our favorite venues to a packed crowd of fans, friends and family. It was truly an awesome night.
Consider this to be a “State of Affairs” concerning our band, thatwasthen.
We are currently in the process of booking shows for our gaps in March and April. We have begun to reach out to our fans in San Francisco and Santa Monica. We are open to suggestions as far as where to play and who to play with. If any readers out there would like to make a suggestion contact us.
We’ve also been writing a great deal of new material. If you were there on Saturday, you heard our latest tune: “My Mistake“. We decided to unleash this bluesy, Hendrix driven jam just one night prior to the show. We had the opportunity to rehearse for 3.5 hours and all agreed that it needed to be played. We’ve got a few more songs in the works which we will be debuting at our upcoming shows. We look forward to hearing your feedback, as always.
We are increasing our efforts to reach out to as many radio stations as possible by sending out press kits containing our music, photos, videos and a short biography. We will be contacting college based, national, and internet stations and DJ’s.
This website will have a store by the end of the month. I am currently testing the software needed to make it as easy (and cheap) as possible to purchase Digital Downloads, CD‘s, DVD‘s, T-Shirts, and anything else we think up in the mean time. This store will be the one stop shop for all your thatwasthen needs, allowing you to pay either with a major credit card or your PayPal account.
On a final note, I’ve been tweaking the server configuration files for the past 2 weeks. Hopefully, you’ll notice that our new design loads much faster now.
New Design Launched
As some of you may have noticed, there is a completely new look-and-feel to thatwasthenmusic.com.
Out with the old, in with the older... vintage!
For the past year we’ve had a dark background with light text. I’ve decided to change it up a little with what you see before you. I’m going to focus on getting our shop online in the next few days. Check out the new music player while you’re here!
Things to come:
- Track 2 from the DVD will be uploaded here (later this week).
- Pre-Orders for DVD, once the store is finished.
- Full screen ‘Orbit to’ section for boredom relief.
Also, don’t forget about our FREE (18+) show at the House of Blues this Saturday at 10:00pm.
Chorder
I will admit, out of the five of us I know the least about music theory. I’ve always learned by ear and simply by playing what I think sounds ‘right’. Initially, I learned by trial and error. One can argue the pros and cons of classical training versus teaching yourself, however I feel it is a moot point. If you can play, you can play. What goes on between your brain and the instrument is the true beautiful mystery that is music.
With that said, I’ve decided to make another attempt to learn the fundamentals of my favorite programming language: Sound. I’ve found a great site called ChordER. If you’re struggling with the basics, I suggest you check it out. Inside you’ll find a great interactive tool that will now only show you how to play chords, but what actually goes into the tonal structure of the sounds you’re creating.
Geek Poem
I found this amazing programmer’s poem today and thought I’d share it. The idea is to read each character as it would be read if by a programmer. For example the character ‘<’ would be read as ‘Walla’, and “!” as Bang. See the translation below if you have no idea what I’m talking about.
The text of the poem follows:
<>!*''#
^"`$$-
!*=@$_
%*<>~#4
&[]../
|{,,SYSTEM HALTED
The poem can only be appreciated by reading
it aloud, to wit:
Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,
Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma
CRASH.
SOURCE: INFOCUS magazine. Original authors, Fred Bremmer and Steve Kroese of Calvin College & Seminary of Grand Rapids, MI. [pligg]
Smog
I’ve been in Los Angeles for about two years and up until now I’ve never really considered myself to be affected by this foreign environmental anomaly that you Californians affectionately refer to as Smog.
"Smog, are you farting up some more death?"
Sure, I’ve seen it. How can one not? Now, you must understand that in Rhode Island (where I lived previously) we do not have smog. The air is much cleaner and is more or less free of the noxious amalgamation of carbon emissions, taco stand fallout and the homeless decay. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it doesn’t do what I’m about to explain.
A little about Los Angeles:
- Almost 15 million people
- 22,000 miles of roads
- 5 million licensed drivers
- who the hell knows how many un-licensed drivers
- and up to 3 dogs per house (the sidewalks are covered in dog-shit)
Al Gore: Inventor of The Internet and The Flamethrower.
When I step outside to take a walk, I breathe in my first breathe of air and almost feel as if I’m in an abandoned 15 week old sushi joint, upside down, with a small midget sending assorted raw beefs through a woodchipper in my general direction: sick. I guess it took a while to set in. Perhaps it’s gotten worse this year than last. I’m not Al Gore. I really don’t know.
One reason why I’m psyched we’re booking outside of LA:
- I will get to breathe clean air and feel the amps shaking the stage beneath my feet while rocking out for people who have no idea who we are.
Remembering Buddy Icons
AOL Instant Messanger.
Long before MySpace, eons before Facebook, and light years ahead of Twitter, AOL Instant Messenger was revolutionary in the way people communicated online. Spawned from the bastard hell-child that was the AOL client, the AIM client was thinner (faster), easier to use, and just was 99% of AOL’s users wanted, without the clutter.
Prior to the invention of the “Social Network”, there were only a handful of ways to interact with others online. Anyone who has used IRC knows it has been around forever and posses a steep learning curve. This was left to the elite and curious. AOL Chat rooms were riddled with pedophiles and spammers. People turned to AIM and Email as their main sources of text-based communication.
The AIM Dude.
No form of online communication is without it’s own ‘personal’ touch. For AIM it came in the form of the Buddy Icon. At first, Buddy Icons were very mild, often simply a picture of the user. As the user base grew, people started customizing their icon animations into small 10-15 frame cartoons. The common thread was that they all included the AIM ‘dude’.
Not before long sites such as Badass Buddy, Icon Hell and Iconator began to explode. Everyone wanted an icon that showed the rest of the world who they were and what they were about. Today we can store terabytes of information. In the days of Buddy Icons, data sets that large hardly existed. It’s amazing to think that pretty much everyone’s online persona could be summed up in only a few kilobytes each. I believe the maximum size used to be 15kb, at a total of 32×32 pixels.
I know some of you had and AIM account at one point;maybe some of you still do. Post your favorite buddy icon below if you still rock it! Remember, you can use the “Browse” button in the comment form below to upload images in your comments.
Bands we out-rank on Alexa
This site has been live for around 6 months. I wanted to give our users an idea of how far we’ve come since that beautiful day in June when out popped 7lb, 5oz thatwasthenmusic.com. To do this, I’ll use Alexa, the Internet’s popularity ranking system.
I’ve started to compile a running list of bands we’ve successfully dominated with our Spartan-like online army of fans. As of 12/14/09, our Alexa rank is 167,806 (it’s at the bottom of the page). To put this into perspective, Google is 1, Facebook – 2, Yahoo – 3… you get the picture.
Dominated:
Hootie and the Blowfish – 1,494,389
Sublime – 950,120*
Jeff Buckley – 824,499
Blue Oyster Cult – 877,418
Cheap Trick – 406,251
The Sex Pistols – 390,945 (beware, annoying video auto-plays)
Queens of the Stone Age – 320,125
Recently spanked:
Frank Zappa – 301,472
Alice Cooper – 263,008
Soundgarden – 235,138*
David Bowie – 231,589
Eric Clapton – 226,581
Currently pwning:
Aerosmith – 184,470
REM – 183,543
Guns N’ Roses – 169,236
I will try and update this every few months. If you spot any other good ones post them below!
Oh, and one more thing. (I won’t disgrace this page with a link to it)
RIAA – http://www.riaa.com/ – 142,463 You’re next, cockroaches.
* Indicates Unofficial or Fan created page. If no official page was found, the highest ranking fan site wins.
Going to California
I was born in Bermuda, grew up on the east coast, and now I live in California. It wasn’t an easy transition to make, leaving all of my friends, family, and band-mates past and present, but it was completely worth it. I’ve grown more in the past two years than any point in my life. I’ve met so many amazing and talented people out here. None of this would have happened if I had just accepted my situation and disregarded the urge to change my life for the better. This is what the song “Going to California“ is about to me.
.Led Zeppelin – “Going to California“
Lyrics:
Spent my days with a woman unkind, Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine.
Made up my mind to make a new start, Going To California with an aching in my heart.
Someone told me there’s a girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair.
Took my chances on a big jet plane, never let them tell you that they’all are the same.
The sea was red and the sky was grey,I wondered how tomorrow could ever follow today.
The mountains and the canyons started to tremble and shake
as the children of the sun began to awake.
Seems that the wrath of the Gods
Got a punch on the nose and it started to flow;
I think I might be sinking.
Throw me a line if I reach it in time
I’ll meet you up there where the path
Runs straight and high.
To find a queen without a king,
They say she plays guitar and cries and sings… la la la la
Ride a white mare in the footsteps of dawn
Tryin’ to find a woman who’s never, never, never been born.
Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams,
Telling myself it’s not as hard, hard, hard as it seems.
A Song For Employees
I used to work in an Office. Daily, it would drain the life right out of me. The day’s monotony beat me down over the course of a few months and I was miserable. If only I had a way to deal with the stress!
The next time you’ve had a rough day at the Office/Work you can hum this brilliant tune and nobody will be the wiser!
