My Love of Hockey

The NHL has long been an important shaping factor of my life. People often ask me how I got into hockey and in particular why an Ohio boy roots for the Anaheim Ducks.

Growing up, I unfortunately had to spend a lot of time at my Father's house. I say unfortunately not because of my Father's presence during that time, but rather the lack of it. From the ages of 8-12, I would go to his house every other weekend for visitation. However, owning his own business meant that he was off most of the time working on construction sites. This resulted in my being forced to spend most of this time with his second wife, Teresa.

The Barn

Teresa was mean and cruel in the truest of sense. She would tell me I was unwanted, she would call me fat, make fun of my acne, and she would directly tell me that I was what stood in-between my father and his new families happiness. She even gutted my bedroom, painted it with trashy-country stencils and redecorated it with creepy-as-fuck homemade dolls and pictures of her family (the bitch even owned a stuffed cat, only in Ohio right?). My point of explaining all of this is not for dramatic effect, but rather to explain that when I was forced to visit, I wasn't able to take refuge in my own room or even elsewhere in the house. I was forced to retreat to the barn and spend my days with my dog, Bullet.

I'm one of the few who enjoyed FoxTrax

The barn was a steel-building with a few rooms covered in saw-dust and a cramped little office area where I would hang out. In it was a TV that got 5 channels, a small refrigerator, some long-abandoned file cabinets, and an office-chair who's best days were 10 years prior. Sometime in the winter of '96 my dog and I were in there huddled around a space-heater when I came across hockey for the first time. It was a Pittsburgh Penguins game on channel 19 and FOX had just began using their glowing puck (FoxTrax). Having nothing better to do, I sat there mildly amused while attempting to decipher the rules of this game when something amazing happened... a fight broke out. 

The two guys had enough of whatever their issue was and went toe to toe, wailing on each others face. I couldn't believe it, I had never been a sports-guy, but I had no idea this was possible. The fight eventually settled down and no one really paid it much mind. My brain raced. How did they not make a bigger deal of this? Two men just fist-fought during a game and the announcers immediately moved past it like it was nothing? Is this what hockey is? It was at that moment that I fell in love with the idea of the game and it became my refuge. No longer was it painfully boring to sit in the office with just me and the dog... it was now enjoyable. Hockey gave me something to look forward to whenever I was stuck trying to avoid the pains of life.

One weekend not long after, I was hanging out with my aunt Teena* and we eventually got onto the subject of hockey. She wasn't entirely familiar with it either, so we both decided we should take a trip north to see what it was all about. Two weekends later we took the trip up to Cincinnati to see the Cyclones. We walked into the massive arena and I was immediately spell-bound. These people zipped around fast on my little TV, sure, but actually seeing the size, strength and speed of these guys in person was spellbinding.

Towards the end of the second period, we sat there in our seats about 10 rows up and a puck came flying into our area. The puck zoomed about four feet above my head, and as I turned to see who's face it would inevitably impact, a mammoth of a man reached up with his bare-hand, caught it like it was tossed to him, handed it to his girlfriend and continued watching the game like nothing had happened. At that moment, both on and off the ice, hockey came to symbolize to me a place where men are men.

*Bonus Story: One day my Aunt Teena had enough, showed up on Teresa's front door and beat the shit out of her!

For the next few years, I would continue to watch hockey whenever I could catch it on TV, but without cable and having no source of a TV Guide, that was harder said than done. However, when I turned 16 one of my friend's mothers started working at the local radio station 105.9 The Rebel. The channel had four season tickets to the newly franchised Cincinnati Mighty Ducks and would regularly give them away as promotions. The cool part was, whenever a listener didn't pick them up or they happened to not be gave away, my friends and I got them.

My leg

The Cincinnati Mighty Ducks, for those of you that aren't familiar, were an AHL team that acted as the farm-team to the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (and strangely enough the Detroit Red Wings as well). During the following two years, we regularly attended games at the Cincinnati Gardens and I fell deeper in love with hockey. If you think that NHL games can be brutal, the minor leagues are twice as fun. Tempers flare a bit more easily when the rules of fighting are relaxed. Hits were harder, punches were tougher, and the team was more ambitious. There for the first time I saw young and hungry players such as Corey Perry, Ryan Getzlaf, and Jean-Sebastien Giguere fighting for their right to be moved up in the ranks. These were amazing games and to this day I proudly wear a Cincinnati Mighty Ducks tattoo on my leg.

Around 2003, on top of having just graduated, I was also running a quickly-failing custom-guitar shop, working full time as a clerk, and prepping for my inevitable move to Fullerton, California. Thus, I once again fell out touch with hockey.

However, by 2005 I had my roots firmly planted in Fullerton, was attending school, and being a broke college-kid, had stolen basic-cable. It was there that I truly discovered (the team now known as) The Anaheim Ducks. Having ample free-time and nothing to do, I popped on a game. Low and behold what did I discover? The players I had watched in my High School years, Perry, Getzlaf, and Giguere were all playing on the same fucking team. In what was basically my backyard, no less. From that moment on, I was a die-hard Anaheim Ducks fan for life. I'd sit in front of the TV for every game I could catch and watch the amazing lineup of Selanne, The Niedermayer's, Getzy, Perry and more conduct clinics on how to play hockey. The next year I even watched them win the Cup.

Me and Brando

About this same time I helped form the original lineup of the band Piss N' Blood (in which I played bass). I didn't have a lot of friends in the area yet so I began to hang around with my band-members. At one of their parties, I met an arrogant, smart-mouthed guy in a Ducks jersey who just happened to have extra tickets to the next night's game. Of course I went with him, but the tickets weren't in the same seating area so thankfully I didn't have to see him the entire game. When we met back up at the end, for the life of me I still couldn't recall his name, but we went out drinking anyway. Somehow, this piece of shit hung around me long enough until he weaseled his way in and became my best-friend. We still go to games together and the bastard is like a brother to me (though to be fair, probably not one he wanted).

Hockey has done a lot for me. It provided an upset little kid some form of sanity, it provided a rebellious high-schooler with something to do that wasn't self-destruction, it provided a college-kid with a free way to pass the extra time, and it helped me connect with my best-friend. Even today, my wife and I watch every game together.

The wife and I

These days I live in North Hollywood and reside among Kings fans. This makes it really fun at bars when I wear my Ducks jersey and get to shit talk with the locals. We don't have cable at my place and thanks to local black out restrictions I'm forced to pay for NHL Gamecenter and forward my signal to another country to watch games happening an hour south of me (seriously in a world where even the government deregulates blackouts and knows it's a dated concept? Catch up NHL!). But all in all, it's a small price to pay to view my beloved team, especially when The Ducks swept the first round in four games! It's amazing to have your team on such an amazing swing, but, win or lose, I'll be here again next year and every year after that.
Go Ducks!!!

AntiCurrent Video Archives Vol 2- Urban Struggle: The Battle for the Cuckoos Nest

This is the second edition of the "AntiCurrent.com Video Archives" a collection of rare, out of print, or unreleased videos that I've chose to release through my blog. Click here to view a list of all past releases.

Urban Struggle:

Article On Cuckoo's Nest

Believe it or not, once upon a time, Punk Rock was as dangerous as it was interesting.

This release covers one of the best Punk Rock documentaries ever released: "Urban Struggle: The Battle for the Cuckoos Nest". This 1981 film is an unabashed look into the dawn of West Coast American Hardcore Punk-Rock and how the "powers-that-be" fought so hard against it. It chronicles the Costa-Mesa based club "The Cuckoos Nest" and it's owner Jerry Roach during his long-going fight with local authorities trying to shut his club down. Unfortunately, he fought the law, and the law won.

Featured throughout this are performances and interviews from quintessential punk bands such as Black Flag (in my personal favorite era with Henry Rollins), The Vandals (Stevo years), T.S.O.L., The Circle Jerks, and more.

Bootleg History:

Bootleg VHS cover

Legend has it that this documentary was aired on a local cable access channel at the time, and someone recorded it from TV. This sole recording is what birthed the generations and generations of bootlegs that came from it. Despite a lack of official release, "Urban Struggle" has long been traded in West-Coast based record stores, and that's where I had my first interaction with it. I found my VHS copy while working at Black Hole Records in Fullerton CA, and immediately fell in love with it. Not only is it an amazing document of music history, it also serves as an amazingly executed "us versus them" tale of authority meeting counter-culture. Coming in at only 38 minutes, this flick has as much heart, soul, and fight as anything Alex Gibney is putting out today, and that's saying a hell of a lot. My extreme compliments to director Paul Young.

Why It Hasn't Been Released:

The reason for the film never being professionally released is due to a long-ongoing conflict between Jerry Roach (who insists it's his product because he paid for and produced the movie) and Paul Young (a then local-area film student who insists it is his body of work and that Roach didn't actually contribute anything other than time and access). Which of these two is correct? Well, I sure as hell wasn't there so I won't begin to speculate* other than to say that they both are very passionate about the other being full of shit. For what incredibly little it's worth on the subject, Roach was nothing but extremely kind to me on Facebook and Young didn't accept my friend-request :-( or email (though I likely had the wrong email address). If you care to read more on the subject of Roach Vs. Young, OCWeekly did a great write-up of it HERE.

* What I will speculate on is the fact that the release could potentially be held up due to Black Flag's Greg Ginn having the reputation of being an enormously greedy dick. I'm told that's a big reason that the amazing "Decline of Western Civilization Vol 1" has never been released. Never met the guy personally, but that film needs a professional re-release and fuck him IF that is true.

Docs that pull from Urban Struggle

Unfortunately for us, this battle has led to the documentary never getting a full, professional release. Even so, extensive segments of it have been used for other punk-rock documentaries such as:

Clockwork Orange County: an insightful documentary that is extremely hard to watch due to the incredibly poor production-value that went into it.
&
American Hardcore: a documentary that I cannot recommend highly enough. Amazing interviews, amazing production value, done with much love and knowledge of the genre.

This Release:

Newspaper Clipping

As I stated, I recently I got in touch with Jerry Roach (who was incredibly kind to me in response to my long-winded questions) to attempt to get the best quality version of this possible. He was willing to give me access to an original print, so I immediately got to work about researching the prices to telecine the documentary into HD. I was extremely excited and was just about to pull the trigger when the local scanning companies got back to me with a $1200 figure to scan the 16mm film. As much as I would LOVE to spend the money on this, at the moment I cannot justify spending that kind of loot to post something for free on my blog. Perhaps one day.

After trading and re-trading various digital, DVD, and video versions of this, I finally found the cleanest copy I've seen off of a documentary torrent-based trading forum. However, this still had VHS color artifacts, tracking lines, was interlaced, and the black and white levels were all over the place. So I ingested the flick into After Effects, up-res'd it to 720p, de-interlaced the footage, desaturated it, added a slight sharpening filter, fixed the wrong aspect ratio native to the DVD, and adjusted the black and white levels to where to where I felt the footage shined. Every version I've ever seen of this (other than the trailer) is in stark, high-contrast black and white, so I made the blacks deep, and popped the whites out just as much as I could.

Final Word:
I wish this film would be professionally cleaned up and re-released. The second it does I'll happily delete the video (and if it's monetized that's because of a copyright claim by Black Flag, not me) and purchase a proper copy. But at the moment? This flick needs to be seen by anyone with interest, so please, enjoy.

My Appendix Has Declared My Body No Longer Inhabitable...Who Could Blame it?

Warning: This Post was written under the heavy influence of morphine.

Middletown Regional Hospital

During the ages of 8-12 I was hospitalized about 3-5 times a year due to my asthma and during that time I became well acquainted with the staff and surroundings of Middletown Regional Hospital. As a kid, I weirdly looked forward to it since they had a Sega Genesis that they would let you play, and seeing as how I only had an old NES, that was enough to excite me. Honestly, with all things considered, I don't really mind hospitals too much since I've spent so much time in them.

I always assumed the next time I was to be hospitalized would be due to an accident on my motorcycle. I'm a great rider, don't get me wrong, but as the old adage goes: There are two types of riders, those that have been down and those that will go down. At the moment I'm in the latter camp, thus I've always had premium motorcycle insurance, but...

I've spent the last 8 years without medical insurance (much to the discontentment of my mother) however once Liv and I got married, she made it her mission in life to find us the best insurance possible so that I could finally get on my regulatory meds for my asthma (that totaled about $220 a month without insurance). So she rallied the support of her parents and my mother behind my back, and had them help flip the bill for insurance. I was furious that she would go behind my back and talk to others about my well-being, and I viewed it as a breach of trust. Why? Because I'm a too proud idiot a lot of the time. 

Liv's been up in Ojai the last few weeks acting as production-secretary on a movie (and kicking ass at it) so I've been using the time to get a lot of writing done. Unfortunately, for me to sit in a room, by myself for hours and hours on end is not something I can do without the assistance of some type of substance to help me focus. Generally, this is alcohol. So I went on a bit of a bender of sorts, downing about 1/4 a handle of whiskey a night to myself and writing. My body is no stranger to Jim Beam, so I had only very slight hangovers in the morning and little else... until Thursday morning.

Wed. night activities

Thursday morning at 5AM I woke up in agonizing pain. If being on fire is a 9-level pain, this was an 8. So I laid in my bed for four hours, rolling around in searing, cramping pain hoping for it to go away on its own, It didn't. Out of desperation I was trying anything, and downed an entire bottle of Pepto-Bismol. When that didn't work, I convinced myself that if I could just take a shit (the pain was similar to that of the moments before diarrhea) I would again be fine. 

That's when my roommate knocked on the door to see if I could work on a project that day. He opened the door to discover me laying on the bathroom floor in my t-shirt and underwear attempting to make myself puke in desperation for anything to help. At that moment, I had convinced myself in my heart of hearts, that if I could only take a shit, everything in life would return to normal. So with a clouded mind full of pain, I begged him to go buy me an enema so that I could expel the contents of my stomach, At first he was reluctant, but the sight of me begging him half naked from the bathroom floor convinced him to do it.

Half hour later J.C. delivered a box with two enemas, wished me luck, and went to work as I got down to the deed. I read the instructions, got down naked on my hands and knees, inserted a cold plastic water-bottle up my ass, and squeezed the contents in. The process itself wasn't as bad as it sounded, but for me to get onto our small bathroom floor in the level of pain I was enduring was nearly impossible. I sat there on my knees, ass to god, and maintained the liquid inside me as long as I could. I then fumbled to the toilet, and although the water came out... nothing else did. So, I figured what the hell, I have two anyway, and I repeated the entire process again with the other enema.

Quickly running out of options and realizing that I must have actually hurt my body with alcohol consumption I looked at WebMD and attempted to self-diagnose my problem. Nausea? Check. Cramping pain? Check. Confusion? Triple check. The proposed-results horrified me, it was acute pancreatitis, a result of overdoing ones limits of drinking. I laid there, horrified that I may never be able to drink again and began to cry. As I did, I decided that if the pain wasn't any better in an hour, I was going to go to the hospital. Having time to kill and being me, I figured what the hell? Might as well distract myself. So I pulled up a website and jerked off for a half-hour in what was one of the least pleasing bouts of self-pleasure ever. 

In the midst of a painful afterglow, I knew that my time was up and I had to get professional help, so I lumbered myself into the shower, and sat there for 10 minutes unable to move due to my stomach's condition and attempted to clean myself as much as I could. I dried myself off, called my ever-dependable buddy Andrew, and told him I needed a hospital. He arrived ten minutes later with his wonderful girlfriend Ellyn, and away we went,

The ER

We arrived, Ellyn got me checked in, and we sat there enduring the emergency waiting room. ER's have to be the great equalizer in life as no one is there unless they have to be, and people from all walks of life are treated with the same disdain. I sat down next to a kid who insisted his chair was a drum-kit, watched Jeopardy, and waited. Eventually they took me back, I explained my symptoms and the woman agreed (after accusing me of being on drugs a dozen times), that my drinking days were over. The ER was overcrowded and no rooms were available, so the male nurse escorted me back to a section of the hallway that was to be mine for the next 8 hours. During said escort, the small little man made it a point to rub my nose in the fact that alcohol is a bad thing no less than 8 times in 8 different ways, thinking himself some type of holy messenger for those of us that were never told that excess can hurt you. Asshole.

The doctor eventually came and gave me the best news of my life, the location of my pain combined with a very heavily increased white blood-cell count meant that the culprit was NOT my liver or my pancreas, but was in fact, likely appendicitis! After he finished being wholly confused as to why I would celebrate such a thing, he then instructed me that I was to take a CT scan, which to me, screamed money lost. I argued that I could possibly be fine and there was no way in hell I was paying $1200 for some fancy x-ray. I asked for a form to release myself from care against orders, and Andrew, my amazing friend began yelling at me. "Listen you idiot, if it ruptures in you you'll be admitted for two weeks, how much do you think that will cost? Moron, get the damn thing." Thats when the doctor ganged up on me as well, grabbed my appendix and squeezed on the area making me squeel like a little girl. "That's not normal, listen to your friend."

My room

So I called my mom and asked her advice. Evidently, the insurance that my wife picked out was platinum and it covers nearly everything known to man, thus, the scan was $80. I'm a fucking idiot. The insurance that my parents-in-law, my mother, and my wife all bitched to me about getting was the same thing that was going to let me discover whether or not I'm about to have an organ explode. I got scanned, and they promptly diagnosed me with an about to burst appendix.

On the way out of the ER to be admitted into standard care, I passed the male nurse that gave me the 5 minute lecture about how I live my life, and stopped him. "Good news man! It wasn't the booze! It was just an appendicitis, I can still drink!" He stood, staring open-mouthed at me. "But I appreciate the lecture man, thanks!" They wheeled me past him and I cackled in a morphine ridden haze.

Andrew and Ellyn

Andrew and Ellyn sat with me all damn day. Andrew gave me advice, yelled at me when I was being an idiot, and made fun of all of the doctors with me. Ellyn memorized every doctors name we talked to, took care of all of my paperwork, and acted as my mother until Liv could get down from Ojai. They wheeled me into my little room, Matt and Sarah came to visit, and we all sat around laughing at what a fucking idiot I am. Eventually, they left and it was just Liv and I, I held her for a while, insisted I was going to be totally fine, and then somehow convinced her, though I was in extreme amounts of pain, that having sex with me was a good idea and we got down in the bathroom.

Blessed is a dumb fucking word, it implies that you are a victim of not having free-will, and that God has designed the things and people that are in your life, so I won't use that. I surround myself with good people that I would break my back to help out at any given point, but I am fortunate enough to have picked people that are willing to do the same for me. So thank you Andrew, Ellyn, Liv, Mom, Peter (father-in-law), Guee (mother-in-law), Matt, and Sarah for being amazing people who I don't deserve. And a special thanks to J.C. for enduring the shame of buying me an enema.

Piss N' Blood: 24 Hour Machine Music Video

I got bored today, so as I sometimes tend to, I went digging through my archives for footage to mess with. Deep in a series of subfolders I found footage of my old band Piss N’ Blood back when I played bass for them. So I said fuck it, took the audio from our single for "24 Hour Machine", and made a music video. Seeing as how I only had three camera angles to work with I’m pretty proud.

Building My Stage 3 Fender Jaguar: Adding a Bigsby, Caps, and a Diode Distortion Circuit

I’m a customization nut. If you look through my past blogs you’ll notice that merely owning something isn't nearly enough for me… I have to make it my own. I've written about customizing my sound rig, record player, motorcycle, and now? My guitar. Specifically my Black Fender Jaguar HH. I already had a Seymour Duncan P90 style Neck pickup and a Gibson Dirty Fingers (highest output passive humbucker made) installed and was delighted with the results, but that wasn't enough. So in this blog I’ll cover my Stage 3 mods which include:

Stock Jaguar HH

• Oil in Paper Capacitor in Top Controls
• Orange Drop Capacitor in Bottom Controls
• Passive on-board distortion circuit in bottom controls
• Shield guitar body using copper-tape
• Adding a Bigsby B5 Tremolo (utilizing a Vibramate)

Side Note: There is a TON of online arguments on whether “big money” capacitors are even worth the time/energy/money to install. I’m not going to get into that, but there are some amazing youtube videos that test the tone of different capacitors such as the one HERE.  Do yourself a favor and make up your mind up if they change the tone or not. It IS important to remember that the capacitor value has a much greater influence over tone than what type it is. Personally I’m a control freak and knowing that I was already opening up the cavity of my guitar, I had no problem spending the $6 per capacitor to ensure my own potentially placebo based happiness.

History:

Fender Jaguar Promo Image

The off-set waisted Jaguar was introduced by Fender in 1962 as the company was trying to steal customers from Gibson by giving the musician more control over their sound (some argue too much). The guitar (and its sister the Jazzmaster) did well in the surf-rock scene and bands such as The Beach Boys were seen playing it. However, it never took off in popularity and was promptly discontinued in 1975. This caused both Jaguars and Jazzmasters to plummet in value and by the late 80’s they were readily found at local pawn-shops for astoundingly cheap prices. It was at this time that musicians such as Kurt Cobain, John Frusciante, Thurston Moore and other 90’s mainstays began to use them, leading to a resurgence in their popularity which can still be seen today.

Personally, I grew up on Nirvana, thus I was enamored with the instrument from an early age. I vividly remember hanging out with my good friend Nick Dellaposta (From To No End) and pulling my first ’66 Jaguar off of a Guitar Center wall and plugging it in. Though the bridge/tremolo seemed to be a pain in the ass to deal with, this particular Jag had been outfitted with a Black Ice mod, which replaced the seldom-used mid-cut switch with a passive distortion circuit. The idea of having an on-board distortion has stuck with me for years, and last week I finally implemented it.

Basics: Switch Setup
First a bit about the controls of the stock-Jaguar. Keep in mind that all switches on the Jaguar are in the ON position when they are up and directed towards the player.

Top circuit
Switch A in the ON position activates only the top control circuit (just the neck pickup and the top Vol/Tone). In the OFF position, it activates the bottom system allowing you to only utilize the bottom control circuits (Switches B, C, & D as well as the bottom Vol/Tone).

Bottom circuit
As stated, when switch A is in the down position it activates the bottom controls. Switch B turns ON/OFF the Neck pickup and switch C turns ON/OFF the bridge pickup. Switch D in the ON position activates a capacitor (Caps as they're known cut certain frequencies) and acts as a mid-cut of sorts. The bottom knobs control Vol/Tone.

Getting Started: Shielding

Shielded

Since you’re already opening the cavity of your guitar, you've already done the hard part of shielding. Copper tape is the easiest thing on the planet to use, simply unstick the back of the tape and cover the entire cavity of the guitar as neatly as possible. Now you have to make sure that the metal tape touches the other which means getting around the adhesive on the back of the tape.

To do this simply take a needle and make small punctures in the tape wherever you have placed multiple layers of tape. In order for the shielding to be effective, you need the taped area to make connection to the ground. To accomplish this you can either solder a wire gently from it and to the ground (hard because the tape burns easily) or, since the back of your pickguard should already be shielded, just leave little pieces of tape overtop of the pickguard holes. When you screw it back in, this will branch the two points with a metallic connection. One word of warning, if you think paper-cuts suck, you've never experienced one as deep as caused by copper paper, be extremely careful because it hurts like a motherfucker.

Wiring: The Capacitors:

As for the capacitors they're pretty easy to figure out: Take apart your controls, unsolder the existing capacitor, and re-solder the new one in it’s place. As I previously stated, I added an oil-in-paper Russian capacitor in the top controls and a Orange Drop to the bottom. The only advice that I can give for this is to keep in mind that you’re dealing with very small cavities in the guitar so maximizing space is essential. The O-I-P nestles nicely in the area I show, but too much one way or the other may result in your not being able to place the controls back in the cavity. The bottom controls have a much bigger cavity, thus it is pretty forgiving with the massive area that the Orange Drop cap requires.


Wiring: Diode Distortion
Since I personally never, ever use the mid-cut switch (Switch D from earlier) so I wanted to turn this into a distortion circuit when activated. This can be one of two ways, either buy a “Black Ice” brick for $20, or make your equivalent circuit own using schottky diodes. Seeing as how diodes are INCREDIBLY CHEAP to buy, I went this route.

To make this circuit, connect two diodes together making sure that the black-color strips at the bottom touch the uncolored top of the other connect them together. To assure that these didn't make unwanted connections, I bought shrink wrap and covered them in it before wiring them together.

Remove the existing capacitor and discard it. Now that
you have an unused switch and your diode circuit, the rest is simple. The middle connection of the switches is effectively always on, so solder one end to where the capacitor was before. This will now activate the circuit when turned on. Next, solder the other end of the circuit to a ground (the one on the side is the easiest to get to).  It’s that easy.

Note: When activated, just a bit of volume is lost to the process. However with how strong my two pickups are it is relatively unnoticeable on my guitar.

Hardware:

Installing the Bigsby (via the Vibramate)
The Vibramate is one of the best little contraptions on the planet. It allows you to install a full Bigsby B5 without drawing any holes into your guitar. It’s a horseshoe looking little intermediary made of aircraft grade aluminum that sits between the tremolo and your guitar. Basically you just remove the tailpiece and replace it with the device with the two bolts supplied. This has four pre-drilled and threaded holes that allow you to insert the supplied 4 bolts holding it directly to the Vibramate. Past that, the rest is pretty self explanatory. The spring supplied sits quite obviously between the arm and the body of it and just sits there with pressure, there are a few supplied O-rings that allow you to slightly raise the arm of the tremolo if necessary.

Tailpiece Change

One thing to keep in mind with the Bigsby is that when it is applied you are putting a great deal of pressure on the nut and the tune-o-matic bridge. The tension on these is responsible for most of the concerns with the bridge not returning to the correct tuning afterwards. The easiest way to remedy this is to install a Graphite nut in its place and change out the bridge. Now there are two major options for the bridge, you can replace it with a roller bridge, which allows the strings to stretch over-top of a roller pin rather than sticking on a hard surface. The other option is using Graph-tech Stringsaver saddles, which is the way I’ve went.

Stringsavers for Tune-O-Matic

Stringsaver saddles are made of a Teflon like material that allows the string to more easily glide over the edge. I've been using Graph-tech Stringsaver Saddles for years and can vouch for them. I once broke one by over-tightening a screw on a Stratocaster, called them up and they replaced it for free. Good people.



Analysis:

Strung

I love the distortion option, its aggressive with zero sustain, but is very reminiscent of an original Big Muff Distortion (which makes sense because it's diode based as well). Plus it's WAY more useful than the mid-cut that existed before. It's fun to just flip a switch and have a dirty aggressive sound, but it's far from a proper overdriven sound. Going forward, I'm going to experiment with adding this to my bass as I think that would be a fun option.

I adore the look of the Bigsby, but in all honestly it's a bit more of an aestheic choice for me, but one I'm excited about and it does seem that if you don't overuse the tremolo, it does a fine job staying in tune. I can't really tell a huge difference with the Orange Drop capacitor, but the O-I-P does seem to make a huge difference when it's used with the tone dial on 5 or more.

Regrets:

Finished Product

The one thing I do regret and will soon remedy is not purchasing the Vibramate Spoiler. I've always read that Bigsby's are a pain in the ass and although I feel that is an over-simplification, the main issue seems to be with how hard it is to string. At the base of the Bigsby are little pins that you put the eye of the string into and it’s held by pressure.

This requires you to bend the string at a 90 degree angle towards the end. As you change the string you need to keep constant pressure on it which is a pain in the absolute ass. The Vibramate Spoiler mounts to the bottom and gives you easy access to change the strings. It too is held on by pressure, but it’s much easier to deal with than the stock Bigsby. Past that? I'm absolutely in love with this new configuration.

So that's my experience with my Stage 3 Fender Jaguar, I adore every change I've made and it's a far more useful and beautiful tool now.

AntiCurrent Video Archives Vol 1: The Complete Ghoulardi Collection

Ghoulardi

I've gotten a ton of feedback through the last few years about people digging my AntiCurrent.com Archives. If you're not familiar, A.C.A. is a series of bootlegs that are either out of print, hard to find, or that I personally have recorded. I release them here on my blog for free for the love of the subject material rather than personal gain (a lot of record stores charge a small fortune for these). Well, the popularity of it got me thinking... not only do I have a small library of rare albums, I also have a TON of bootleg VHS, DVD and digital recordings of often sought out material. So, here we go, the first edition of AntiCurrent.com Video Archives is of the Classic Cleveland Horror Host Ghoulardi.

Horror Hosts:
Back in the earlier days of TV, local networks didn't have the budget to carry only programs from the major networks. So in addition to normal programming, they also produced a fair amount of in-house entertainment for the local broadcast area. One of the most popular things to do to fill the midnight hours when only few were watching was to run and re-run old movies that were, quite frankly, atrocious. This was common practice because they cost very little to purchase the rights to air them. To draw in viewers to these programs, it became popular to have local, colorful personalities host these videos in funny and campy ways, thus, the Horror Host was born.

Ghoulardi:

Cleveland's Horror Host (or at least the first of them) was a character named Ghoulardi and was played by the notorious Ernie Anderson. Ernie had somewhat of a disdain for authority and brought a touch of that young rebellion to the beatnik inspired and beloved character. Every late Friday night for damn near 3 years WJW's Shock Theater aired the crappiest of Horror Movies which were openly scoffed at by Ghoulardi (Plot holes so big only the Swiss could love it!). But the movies weren't the only thing he mocked... he also openly made fun of the management for being cheap, neighboring conservative communities for being uptight (Parma!) and even the Mayor of Cleveland himself. Ernie lambasted anyone and everyone he chose to in the guise of Ghoulardi and it frightened the shit out of "the powers that be".

My Original Ghoulardi Poster

But beyond just pushing boundaries, he was also a massively popular character who cornered nearly every market of audience. Children stayed up late, both white and black adult audiences loyaly tuned in, and he even had a massive Cleveland marketing campaign featuring promotions at local restaurants and his face plastered on bus's (I own an original Ghoulardi Manners poster my Mom bought me in a Cleveland flea-market). The Cleveland Police Department even said that juvenile crime dropped 35% on Friday nights due to his show. His influence can be seen most predominantly by the band The Cramps who dedicated their genius album "Big Beat From Badsville" to his memory after Anderson died in 1997.

Letter from WJW asking Anderson to
refrain from riding his motorcycle
in the lobby.

Stories vary over Anderson's decision to discontinue the character, but many point to the WJW station management's constant bickering (even to the point of having to post a notice stating that motorcycles may not be rode in the building after Anderson apparently did). So he packed up, moved to Los Angeles to reconnect with friend Tim Conway, and had a huge career in announcing shows such as Star Trek and the Love Boat. It would seem that after years of creating well-deserved havok in Cleveland, it was just simpler to be a small fish in a big pond and make a boat-load of money.

Cool it with the boom-booms

As a personal note, my own influence from Ghoulardi can be seen in my second-short film from college "The Final Episode of WEBZ's Shock Theater" in which I have a horror host introduce a crappy Sci-Fi movie that we shot ourselves and contains commercials we also shot. In the background of all hosting segments, a Ghoulardi poster can be found. Additionally (also in college), I located digital encodes of old reel-reel tapes of Ghoulardi hosting "The Walking Eye" and animated the character to it which can be found here. Side, side note: I now live off of Oxnard Street! How cool is that! Ova Dey!

The Video:
As to this video, over the years I have purchased numerous Ghoulardi bootlegs and have a treasure-trove of digital bits. This is my attempt to take the best source of every nugget I have and put them end to end in one complete video for you to enjoy... and I hope you do. I imported all of my DVD's and VHS's into 1080p (overkill I know) then desaturated the black and white footage to remove annoying VHS color artifacts, added a slight sharpening filter, adjusted the white/black levels, and outputted it via h264.

 Stay Sick!!!

AntiCurrent Archive Vol 10: Jesse Wagner: Live and Uncut Acoustic

This is the tenth edition of the "AntiCurrent.com Archives", a collection of rare bootleg-albums I'm releasing through this blog. Click here to view all past AntiCurrent.com Archive Albums.

The Aggrolites (2012)

On April 14th, 2007 I attended a small venue in Downtown-Fullerton called The Alley where I saw a band that blew my mind. After a few amazing songs they started into one of their hits, but stopped it 10 seconds in. Then they started into another of their well-known songs, and stopped again 10 seconds in. They repeated this six more times, teasing the audience with one of their favorite songs, then ripping it away and laughing. It was the most amazing musicianship I've ever seen on a stage, the ability to stop and start on a dime like that before blazing into a song is something I’m never likely to see again. That band? The Aggrolites.

It is for this reason why I always insist that The Aggrolites are the best live band in Los Angeles. The band’s self-described style is “dirty reggae” but is akin to the Ska and Rocksteady sounds of Jamaica in the 60’s. (Not familiar with pre-Specials ska? Well I wasn't either but the band happens to be super nice guys as well. I once reached out to their now-former guitar player Brian Dixon about their influences and he offered me a plethora of Trojan Reggae Comps to check out.) There's not enough bands around anymore that transcend the musical scene of their day. The Aggrolites are truly one of those rare bands like The Pogues that can make old songs sound new and new songs sound old.

Bar One Flyer

Flash forward to February 2014, I read that Jesse Wagner (lead singer of The Aggrolites) was going to do a solo acoustic show with none other than Vic Ruggerio (lead singer of The Slackers) at Bar One, right down the street from my house. It was two guys, with two guitars at the top of their game playing in one over-sold little bar, and my wife and I were directly in front to watch. So of course, with booze in hand, we marveled over how fucking cool it would be if we could get them to play our wedding in July. We spoke to Jesse about it, and unfortunately Vic was not going to be in LA at the time, but I added Jesse on Facebook and he told me to contact him closer to the date to see if he would be in town. We did, and he agreed to play our wedding reception.

Now, the benefit of being “in the industry” is always having hands on deck to film important things at the drop of a hat. Enter my buddies Andrew Heaberlin and Matt Rowbottom. On the day of I had Andrew shoot a two camera setup of Jesse’s set and had Matt record the line-out from the mixing board, the result of which I edited into an amazing live acoustic concert that I posted on YouTube. However, the completest collector in me wasn't satisfied simply having video documentation of the show, I also wanted to have an album copy of it, hence this edition of AntiCurrent.com Archives.

Front Cover

Jesse arrived at the show with a list of potential songs that he prepared and had rehearsed to play acoustic. Of course by this point I was hammered and was unable to read without an amount of concentration I was NOT prepared to expend, so I told him to play whatever he felt comfortable with…. and then during the course of the show drunkenly yelled out the songs I wanted to hear. This of course means that he hadn't had a chance to practice some of the acoustic versions of the songs here, but it speaks volumes as to his kindness and his musicianship that he not only attempted every song we requested, he knocked them out of the fucking park.

Back Cover

A few gems on here for me are “Faster Bullet” (my wife and I’s shared favorite song as it reminds me of her, and quite arrogantly, her of herself ;-) and “White Man In Hammersmith Palais”.  Honestly, in all the bands that have ever covered the Punk Rock Warlords that were The Clash, this is my favorite cover of one of their songs I've ever heard. Be sure to watch the song on the video and see my drunken friends attempting to “dance” to it.

If you ever have a chance, please, please go and see The Aggrolites. They are honestly one of the few bands that can cross all race, creed, and age gaps. As always, this is a free download, but it is not meant to contend with any actual, purchasable album out there so if you dig this, go out and buy something from the band or the man himself. Trust me, you will not regret it as they have yet to put out a less than stellar record.

Download The Entire Album and Cover Art Here:
MP3 Zip Archive

The tracklist is:
01: Faster Bullet
02: Tear That Falls
03: True Love
04: Dream Came True
05: Willow Tree
06: White Man in Hammersmith Palais
07: Don't Let ME Down
08: Free Time
09: Mr Misery
10: Red Wine
11: 54-46 Was My Number 

Rodney Redbottom: Cast and Crew Screening

Cast/Crew Screening Poster

Hey folks! My new flick Rodney Redbottom is "in the can" as they say and we are having our cast/crew screening on December 6th 2014 at the Two Roads Theater in Studio City! It's been a huge undertaking and I'd like to thank every single person who supported the flick.

We'll have a trailer up in the coming weeks, but until then, I thought I'd take a second and offer you a chance to come and see the flick early! If you'd like to attend the only public screening that'll take place until our (hopeful) run in the festival market, we're going to give away 2 pairs of tickets to this invite only screening.

Not only that, but we're going to screen some MST3K shorts and two of my favorite movies of all time, Evil Dead 2 and Every Which Way But Loose!!! (subject to change).

How to you get them? Simply be among the first to email us at RodneyRedbottom@Gmail.com and ask! That damn simple!!!! Hell, we'll even give you a limited 11X17 poster of the film!

Be sure to watch here in the coming weeks as I'll be doing a series of articles on the behind the scenes decisions that went into making our little flick.

Stay sick Knif's!

Re-cutting The Evil Dead Franchise Into One Movie

It is a gross misunderstanding that Evil Dead 2 is a remake of The Evil Dead. It is in fact, a sequel. Now, yes, it does somewhat rewrite the events of the first movie. In the initial six minutes the viewer is given a Reader’s Digest summary of what had happened in the previous film. For the sake of time-length, the other characters from the first movie have been removed during this section, which is the source of this never ending confusion. However, if you were to remove that section of ED2, the two movies would line up quite nicely. And that got me thinking... what if you were to combine all three movies into one epic-movie.

AoD: Theatrical

First, a bit of background. One of my first memories is walking into the VHS rental shop in town with my mother and seeing the gigantic cardboard display for Army Of Darkness. A ripped Bruce Campbell with a woman at his leg, chainsaw as a hand with the tagline “Trapped in time. Surrounded by evil. Low on gas.” I mean, what a fucking fantastic piece of imagery (one that now hangs on my living room wall). Unfortunately though I did not watch this movie as a kid, as my mother was a bit self-serving with her precious VHS rentals. As she didn't have any interest in the film, she would tell me that it was far too adult for me, and instead would rent whatever even more horror/suspense film she wished.

AoD: Boomstick
Edition

Eventually I did watch the movies at a friend’s house in high-school and have been hooked ever since. So much so that I immediately went out and bought the entire collection on DVD. Unfortunately for me, I decided to look at DVD reviews of the series and come to find out, there were more than a handful of releases and each of them had differing bonus content. Well, some of them were too expensive so I gave up looking for them in stores (The Boomstick Edition for one), but I did discover that my neighboring Blockbuster had the best version of the original movie... one that was selling for $50 on Ebay. So, to save it from some cretin scratching a precious artifact, I did what any teenage fanboy would: I rented it and swapped the disc out with my own. Even though I have bought the movies at least a half-dozen times since then (thanks you quadruple-dipping assfaces at Anchor Bay ;-) that is still a version that I own and hold sacred, Blockbuster sticker on the DVD and all.

It is with this great passion that I have always wanted to see the franchise not just back to back (which I have too many times), but fully, without break in one continuing movie. How long would it run? Would the intentional comedy/horror aspects of Evil Dead 2 line up with the unintentional comedy of the original? And can you go from the tone of The Evil Dead to Army Of Darkness within one full sitting? Well it was these questions that I set out to find answers to.

Sources:

I took 1080p Bluray rips of each of the movies to work with (and yes, I used the dreaded 16X9 "black-box" version of the first movie to make the experience feel more solidified). That’s "The Evil Dead", "Evil Dead 2", "Army of Darkness", and "Army of Darkness: Directors Cut". After I scanned these movies a few times, it became apparent to me that simply starting off with Evil Dead was going to be too big of a jump to eventually end up within Army of Darkness… the tones are just too dissimilar. It was for this reason that I also dug up cut-scenes from the Evil Dead games: "Hail To The King", "Fistful of Boomstick", and "Regeneration".

Hail to the King, Fistful of Boomstick,
& Regeneration.

Side note: Hail To The King has horrible gameplay, but the story is worth checking out as Ash revisits the cabin years after AoD’s end. Fistful of Boomstick is a genius game that is a direct sequel to HTTK and the gameplay is great. Regeneration is a reimaging of the franchise where Ash didn’t get sucked into the vortex at the end of ED2. All three games feature brilliant performances by Bruce Campbell and are well-worth checking out.

Ingesting:

I then took all of the sources and brought them into Premiere. Although I am trying to use Avid exclusively these days, Premiere is the most convenient thing in the world and will transcode the footage in the background allowing you to get started right away. When doing a project of mixed formats of source footage, it is the only way to go. I knew when I started that I wanted this to be Ash’s tale, and the video games had some excellent voice-over that would allow me to do exactly that, but if you were to watch cut-scenes from a video game, it would take you directly out of the movie experience.

Editing:

That’s why I had to adopt the ending of the theatrical cut of Army of Darkness. This allowed me to use the footage of him in the S-Mart talking to Ted Raimi, use some videogame audio, and spin that as if we joined him as we had just began to regale the story to him. Unfortunately this also committed me to ending the movie back at the S-Mart, which although is a far inferior ending when compared to AoD-Directors cut, it was necessary.

Major Edit 1: Intro

I took the opening lines from the game HTTK, and then cut in a few more lines from FoB, from there I EQ‘d the two readings to make them feel a bit more similar. We open up to the S-Mart, establish the conversation, and get into the two main plot-points that drive the entire franchise: A girl and the book.

Both ED2 and AoD have a short synopsis of what the Necronomicon is, but I chose to use AoD’s as the budget was higher and it’s more visually interesting. As he speaks of his love, I chose to show Linda from ED2 because we will soon see a different actress playing her in ED, and I wanted the audience to be able to associate her as the same character. I leave her on screen for a romantic moment, but I don’t allow her to speak or really act. This keeps her in the audiences mind as an archetype, but not a character.

We then cut into establishing footage of the car driving toward the cabin in ED2. No characters are seen in this, but the production value of the car overhead is much better than anything in the original. As we see it, we then cut into dialogue from The Evil Dead. Now we’re into the meat of the first movie.
Here is a link to a downloadable Mp4 version of the edit

Major Edit 2: Listening to the tapes

To branch the first two films, I wanted to use a bit of footage from the second movie cut into the first. So as they sit down to listen to the tapes, I chose to take scenes from ED2. These not only look much better, but allow the viewer to leave the cabin and see the actual discovery of the Necronomicon. This additionally sets up the characters of Annie and Ed from the sequel, thus softening the blow of watching two separate movies as one.

However, I didn’t just want to remove an entire chunk from ED and substitute in the sequel, you still needed to feel as if you were in the moment with the original characters. To accomplish this, I cut in character reactions from the group, but I also cut in the section where they turn off the tape after the girls get freaked out as it builds tension. After the tapes played, we of course needed to be back into the original movie, which requires the tree coming through the glass. Now we’re off and running again until the end of the first movie.
Here is a link to a downloadable Mp4 version of the edit

Major Edit 3: Joining Evil Dead & Evil Dead 2

This is where we join Evil Dead to Evil Dead 2. Now there are a few points where this is possible, but in one way or another they always seem to screw up continuity (and not just because Ash ages years between movies). That’s why I chose the lesser of the Evils (pun intended) and placed the cut after he throws the last bit of dirt on the camera lens in the original, then we open up to the sequel as he puts the cross in the ground.

This however leaves Linda with a head, and when she emerges from her grave later she is decapitated. While this is unfortunate, it is better than having Linda switch actresses, and then switch back again, which was my other option. Also, when she pops back out of her grave later, it has bit more of a comedic element with the dancing that distracts the viewer from even noticing. Bam! Back into the rest of the movie we go.
Here is a link to a downloadable Mp4 version of the edit

Major Edit 4: Joining Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness

This one is a no brainer. At the end of ED2 we get to see him spat out into the mid-evil ages, but it doesn’t line up with AoD so out it goes. Both movies however display white flashes while he is about to exit the the portal, so that was my edit point. Now we've landed in the Directors cut of Army of Darkness.
Here is a link to a downloadable Mp4 version of the edit

Major Edit 5: Joining Army of Darkness: Directors Cut and Army of Darkness

At this point, I unfortunately have to have Ash wind up back at the S-Mart, which as I said earlier, is the lesser of the two endings. But, for our purposes, it does tie the entire trilogy up into one nice bow. Now the Theatrical cut ends with him riding off into the sunset and then it cuts directly back into the S-Mart. However, you get a little bit more with the Directors Cut as it shows him being sealed off in a cave, getting comfortable, then taking the sleeping-liquid (yes, I kept him ingesting one extra drop). I even let my cut run up until the emergence of him from that cave, and THEN we cut back into the S-Mart for the traditional ending.

As for the credits, at this point I could have joined all of the previous credits together and subbed in new music, but as that was not part of the experience I cared about, I simply left in the traditional Theatrical AoD credits.
Here is a link to a downloadable Mp4 version of the edit

Conclusion:

So is this a stronger movie now that we have eliminated the differing backstories? Yes and no. Yes, if you were to sit down and watch them back to back this version would make WAY more sense to you. But at the time they were made there were many years in between each of them. At that point you get a bit more artistic license to retell the previous story a bit differently. Honestly, maybe it’s just me explaining away several versions of stories that quite don’t line up, but THAT is how I’ve always viewed these movies: I feel these are Ash's stories, and since he is such a bad person, this is just a tale he keeps exaggerating and each time he tells again, he embellishes more of the story.

This sort of takes that away, and in my opinion, tells more of a story about a man who has had horrible things done to him. As a result, you watch him slowly disconnect with reality. He starts out honorable at first, then slowly twists to where he finds the Deadite interaction funny in ED2, then ultimately get’s so full of himself that he considers himself the savior of the world at the end.

In the end, I personally prefer the theatrical version of the movies, but it must be said, this is a new and different way to experience them and it runs 3 hours and 55 minutes.

This video is NOT meant to compete with purchasable version, so I encoded it a a very low bitrate for download from my website. If you'd like the full-res 720p version, contact me and we can arrange a trade.
Note: This is a h265 encode, so make sure you're using the latest version of VLC to watch this.
http://anticurrent.com/EvilDead/EvilDead-UltimateCut-h265.mkv

UPDATE:

Epic Edit Cover

Several people have emailed me and asked to purchase a copy of the movie. Let me stress that it is NOT for sale, but I'd love to get it to you. However in doing so, I cannot condone the filmmakers of these not getting paid.

So here's what I'll do. Anyone that wants the full 720p copy simply do the following:
1: Email me (address can be found easily on my website) a photo of you holding all three movies (any version).
2: I'll send you my physical address, you send me a USB (the file size is 13.3GB) with a self-addressed stamped envelope to send it back.
3: Within 24 hours of receipt I will send the USB back to you.

UPDATE: 5/19/15:
After numerous complaints, the downloadable version of this has been fixed. In order to make an easily downloadable file out of the four hour movie and have it watchable, I utilized the new h265 encoding format and it comes in around 500mb. In order to play it, make sure you have the latest version of VLC. The link can be found above.