Jill's Blather

Setting the bar to a new high

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The Industrial Jazz Group’s east coast ROCKTOBER tour unofficially began yesterday, as a few west coast members made their way into the eastern time zone. Yesterday I rented the smallest of the three tour vehicles: an “arrest me red” 2009 Chevy Impala. This afternoon the rest of the band flies in, and we head straight to our rehearsal in Brooklyn, and then we’re off to Pittsfield, MA to play as part of that city’s Jazz Festival.

This tour is our most ambitious to date; I just loosely mapped it out via Google Maps and this is what I discovered: This tour, from city to city, is just shy of 2000 miles. Insane, isn’t it?

That's a lotta miles: 1938 of them
That's a lotta miles: 1938 of them

Another new high for us is the hiring of an official tour photographer. Out of the many photographers we know, we chose Steven Noreyko of Austin, Texas. I freakin’ love his work, and his specialty is capturing people interacting with odd environments. If a 10-city, 10-day, 2000-mile tour with 17 people crammed in three vehicles and sleeping on floors isn’t an odd environment, I don’t know what is. I told Steve that he could do with us as he pleased, as long as he got at just one shot of us in front of an Applebee’s sign.

For tour updates, keep your eye on this here spot, as well as on Twitter. Durkin, Dan Rosenboom (our skeletor/trumpet master), Matt (our mirthmaster), Steve (our photomaster) and yours truly (the bee-master) all have Twitter accounts and will be keeping you up to date in 140 characters or less. We’ll be trying to use the #ijgtour hashtag, character-limit permitting. If you attend one of our shows, please use that tag, too! (Unless you hate the show. Then use #KennyG.)

To the Impala!

Jill's Blather, Shows

Turn it up, turn it down…

eh?When I was living in San Francisco, one thing I grew to appreciate was the ubiquity of earplugs at bars, music venues, and thumpy clubs. Just ask the bartender for a pair, or grab a set as you paid your cover charge and you were good to go. You could hear the nuances of the music just fine, but your ears weren’t ringing for three days post-event. Lots of people wore them, and it wasn’t considered dorky.

I always keep earplugs in my pocket or purse, because I never know when I’m gonna be in an emergency rock-and-roll situation– yessiree, that’s the life I lead. One minute I’m shopping for soup, and the next minute: METAL!!1!

Anyway.

Singing for a big band means that I stand in front of 14 other people playing their hearts out, which translates into ow-ow-ow-ow after the second song if I’ve forgotten mah ‘plugs. You should see the fabulous set Tany has– I bet she’d show you if you asked nicely. (Her EARPLUGS people, her earplugs. Tany will show you her fabulous set of EARPLUGS. Good lordy, you are that pig!)

Because some venues let audience members sit close to the stage, I can see folks cowering a bit during the loud bits, and relaxing more during the quieter moments. But let’s face it: Even when 16 people are all playing softly, it’s still loud.

Folks, we want you to be able to enjoy our music for many years to come, so you have to protect yourself. Practice safe listening!

You can do this by:

1) Not listening to shitty music
2) Buying The Industrial Jazz Group’s albums, either online, or at a show
3) Supporting the band by donating to our fund raiser (Honestly! This is scientifically proven to protect your hearing!)
4) Wearing your earplugs.

As a comfy, environmentally friendlier, low-cost, effective option, we like Argus Hexagonal Polyurethane earplugs. Hexagonal design means there’s less production waste than round or conical earplugs, and they expand comfortably in your ear canal just fine. Polyurethane means no latex allergy concerns. And we buy them in black, because black is the (non-)color of ROCK.

So this is why I, Jill Knapp, The Industrial Jazz Group’s Patron Saint of Hearing Protection, will make sure that earplugs will be available at our east coast shows this ROCKtober. Like I said, we want you to enjoy our music for many years, but you can’t do that if we make you all deeef.

Durkin mumbles, musical bits, Uncategorized

The “Howl” Remix Contest

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howlgrafitti

(Updated December 4, 2009.)

As another one of my crazy schemes to get the word out about this silly band, I offer up the first official IJG remix contest. Ever.

(Credit where it’s due: this was at least partly inspired by a similar contest conducted by Chris Schlarb back in 2006.)

The song I selected for the remix treatment is a “perennial favorite” (if such words even obtain in the land of Industrial Jazz) from our LEEF album: “Howl.” (If you have never heard it before, you can grab it from the ReverbNation player embedded there on your right.)

What we have here, first, is a breakout of every track that went into creating the Frankenstein version of the tune that actually ended up on the album. As explained in the album’s liner notes, said version was actually a combination of live Bimhuis tracks, plus a bit of studio sweetening (from a multi-tracked session that preceded the Bimhuis show). All of the tracks (except drums) are mono, and are taken from the mix that I made at home before lugging the entire session to engineer Nick Moon. Voila:

Soprano 1 / Soprano 2 / Alto / Tenor 1 / Tenor 2 / Bari / Studio sax 1 / Studio sax(es) 2 / Trumpet 1 / Trumpet 2 / Trumpet 3 / Studio trumpet(s) / Bone 1 / Bone 2 / Studio bone(s) / Bass / Drums (stereo) / Vocal

And just because I know (believe me, I know) how challenging it can be to mix that many tracks, and just because I know you may prefer to work with something more, uh, scaled down, I’m going to provide some simple stems as well:

High saxes / Low saxes / All bones / All trumpets / Rhythm section

*** UPDATE! *** In response to several requests for higher quality source material, I have now uploaded AIFFs of all tracks here. (And if you prefer WAVs, I believe that iTunes can do your conversion job.)

*** ANOTHER UPDATE! *** AIFFs have been re-upped here. Should be live until the deadline, but let me know if there are any more problems.

Total personnel (live + studio): Beth Schenck, Cory Wright, Evan Francis, Brian Walsh, Katharina Thomsen, Josh Sinton, Ariel Alexander, Damon Zick, Ryan Perez-Daple (saxes); Dan Rosenboom, Phil Rodriguez, Andre Canniere (trumpet); James Hirschfeld, Wolter Wierbos, Ron Christian, Mike Richardson (bone); Dan Schnelle (drums); Oliver Newell (bass); Jill Knapp (vox).

So. What are the specifics of this contest?

Consider it this way: I’m not particularly interested in hearing another mix of “Howl” that attempts to present the tune for “what it is,” and leaves the compositional elements more or less intact. What I am interested in is a true remix, something that re-imagines (indeed, improvises upon) the tune — say, by filling it out with some new voices, or by slicing and dicing its roadmap, or by mashing it up with the latest Christina Aguilera hit. You probably know my aesthetic by now — the crazier, and the more creative, the better.

We (the Industrial Jazz Group) will be selecting a winner based on that set of (admittedly vague) criteria. Said winner will receive $50, and will be given the option (if he or she so chooses) of having their creation included as a bonus track on the next Industrial Jazz Group recording (due out in 2010). He or she will also get a copy of said recording.

Need a deadline? Okay. How about we say that all entries are due by 11:59 PM on December 31 of this year (2009)? *** UPDATE! *** The deadline has been extended to 11:59 PM on January 31, 2010. You get a whole extra month! (Don’t you wish everyone was that flexible?)

(For the curious, entries will be posted in this blog space upon submission — barring any objections, of course.)

Questions and submissions can be beamed (or hurled) at the following email addy: industrialjazzgroup (at) gmail (dot) com.

Everybody ready? Go!

Uncategorized

Yo, Jimbo

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south africa dance

It’s Friday, and that means time for another upload from the vaults:

Yo, Jimbo

This was our encore at the aforementioned Bimhuis show.

Though most of the band had played the tune before, we hadn’t rehearsed it with this particular personnel configuration. Can you tell?

Speaking of “this particular personnel configuration,” I was quite remiss in failing to remind you of who exactly played in the Bimhuis band. Let me fix that now: Dan Rosenboom, Phil Rodriguez, Andre Canniere (trumpets); Wolter Wierbos, James Hirschfeld (bone); Beth Schenck, Cory Wright, Evan Francis, Brian Walsh, Katharina Thomsen, Josh Sinton (saxes); Oliver Newell (bass); Dan Schnelle (drums); Jill Knapp (vocals, dancing); Durkin (composition, conducting).

Once again: unmixed, unedited, would like to return to it someday, blah blah. Enjoy!

[Photo credit: crschmidt]

* * * * *

By the way, did you know that the Industrial Jazz Group is currently going berserk with our fall fundraiser, in support of our October tour? You can find out more, and contribute to the cause (for as little as $1!), here. Thank you!

So we’re not really industrial. Were The Beatles really insects?