Bike Training Pt.2

Another beautiful 75° California day. This ride felt longer and harder but it wasn't much more than last week. I had issues with the Every Trail iPhone app so I mapped this one on mapmyride.com when I got home. I still get a good map of my ride but I don't get all the stats, average speed and elevation etc.



Jan. 10 2010 - 42.22 Miles - 3 hours 15 minutes (includes breaks)

Food -
Before the ride I had one cup of coffee and one apple. On the bike I ate a half a package of Trader Joe's flattened bananas, and one black cherry almond Cliff bar. I didn't bonk out but I think I should have eaten more. Maybe that's why the ride felt a lot longer? Or the fact that I took 2 longer than usual rides home from work this week.

Music -

Ulver - Perdition City
This stuff is dark, ambient, trip hop, and so much more. This was great to start my ride with.

Dazzling Killmen - Face of Collapse
A great mid-west math rock band. Members also went on to be in Collosamite and The Mars Volta. These guys go hand in hand with Big'N, Oxes, Don Caballero, and Lustre King.

Intronaut - The Challenger
By now you know that we have a possibly unhealthy love for Intronaut. We have a side project with Sacha, he does guest vocals on our full length and Joe plays bass on our new EP.(pre-orders available at sawherghost.net) The 3 studio recorded songs on this EP are possibly my favorites of their entire catalog.

Keelhaul - II
I've acquired a huge amount of new music in the last couple of months and this is another band I've been hearing about forever but never actually heard until now. These guys kick some serious ass.

Ulcerate - Everything is Fire
Got this suggestion from the Blogronaut's year end list. I don't even know where to start with this one. Lots of people seem to be talking about these guys lately and for a good reason, they fuckin' slay!

Derek

Progressive Rocks Me Like a Hurricane

After some urging from Derek, I finally decided to post my first blog. Hopefully, I'll get around to posting more often after I get my life in order...

In 1981, at tender age of 6, my older brothers changed my life forever when they sat me down in our living room and made me listen to their favorite records by Rush, Iron Maiden, Pink Floyd and The Scorpions. Yes The Scorpions...fuck you hipster, I still love the classic Klaus Meine "Come On, Come On" jibberish yell.

Despite my long lasting affinity/guilty pleasure for The Scorp's classic tunes, the bands that really struck a chord with me were Rush and Pink Floyd. If you listen to NSL carefully, you can't deny the influence. I still consider Pink Floyd my favorite band of all time, especially after watching Pink Floyd at Pompeii a million times and listening to more of their pre-Dark Side recordings. As a guitarist, I've been equally influenced by both Syd Barrett and David Gilmour. Plus, I fell in love with the synthesizer because of my early exposure to Pink Floyd and Rush.

Although I been through a shit load of music fazes throughout my life, something always brought me back to Pink Floyd and early Rush. About 10 years ago, I began seeking out more music from classic prog bands. Since then Brian Eno and Robert Fripp have become as influential to me as Pink Floyd has been throughout my life. My prog obsession has now become full blown disease.

Here are my favorite prog records of all time:

Pink Floyd - Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Meddle, More, Obscured By Clouds, Atom Heart Mother, Animals, Wish You Were Here

King Crimson - In The Court of the Crimson King, Larks' Tounges In Aspic, Starless and the Bible Black, Red

Rush - 2112, A Farewell to Kings, Hemispheres, Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures

Brian Eno - Another Green World, Before and After Science, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (with David Byrne), Music for Airports, Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks

Hawkwind - Hawkwind, In Search of Space, Doremi Fasol Latido, Hall of the Mountain Grill, Quark Strangeness and Charm

Goblin - Roller, Suspiria, Zombi (Dawn of the Dead)

Tangerine Dream - Electronic Meditation, Alpha Centauri, Atem, Stratosfear

Prog albums that I love, but need more from the artists...

Yes - The Yes Album, Genesis - Selling England by the Pound, Le Orme - Felona e Sorona, Camel - Rain Dances, Amon Duul II - Yeti, Bo Hannson - self titled, Klaatu - 3:47 EST, Magma - Kohntarkosz, Soft Machine - Third

Finally, these are awesome psychedelic albums by classic rock artists that all happen to start with the word "The." A precursor to prog:

The Who - Sell Out, The Rolling Stones - Their Satanic Majesties Request, The Zombies - Odessey and Oracle, The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds/Smiley Smile, and of course The Beatles recordings from 1966 and later.

For more information on prog bands, check out ProgArchives.com and search for some cool prog rock videos on YouTube. Here is the first part of a BBC documentary:



Darin

Bike training pt. 1

Here it is, as promised, a blog of my bicycle training inspired by Aaron Harris of Isis' similar blog. My first training goal is Aaron's 100 mile ride.
I currently ride about 75 miles per week to and from work and now that the holidays are over I can get back to these longer Sunday training rides.

I ride a fixed gear Surly Steamroller with front brake and I wear a helmet. my gear ratio is 47 X 16. I'll post a pic of me and the bike next ride.

Jan. 3, 2010 - 40 miles - 3 hours (includes two 15 min breaks)

Food -
Before the ride I had a chocolate croissant and small cup of coffee. On the bike I ate one cashew cookie Larabar and one almond, black cherry cliff bar. I have a water bottle that I refill along the path, I think I refilled it 3 times.

Music -
The Faceless - Planetary Duality
I've been listening to this record non stop for about 4 weeks.

Gorguts - Obscura
I never heard this band until very recently. I can't wait to hear what these guys sound like with Colin and Kevin from Dysrhythmia. Brutal doesn't even begin to describe how they sound

Hurt Model - This Is You
We played our first show with these guys back in August 2006 and have played many more since. Back then they were a duo and the addition of a bass player has done them very well, he even plays cello on a track. (James- We'll be hitting you up to play some cello for us one of these days)

Russian Circles - Geneva
Another band I never heard until very recently. All I know about these guys is the drummer was is Riddle of Steel at one time and that Geneva and Enter are my favorites.

Pig Destroyer - Terrifyer
My favorite PD record. J. R. Hayes has the best scream in metal period.

by: Derek

Pre-order "The Fifth Ape" EP

Saw Her Ghost just launched pre-orders for our new EP "The Fifth Ape" and 4 other new SHG releases. The pre-order is $14 ppd and includes an exclusive T-shirt (art for both the EP and shirt are coming soon)
Pre-order here or paste this : http://sawherghost.net/sawherghost/?page_id=16

This Is New

Here it is straight from Sacha Dunable the Blogronaut.

"I have been writing and recording songs with my friends from the band National Sunday Law. We'll announce more details on this as things come together, but we have about 25 minutes of music so far."

It's true. We tracked drums for 5 songs yesterday. Like he said, more details tba.

TV

If you haven't heard of these shows it's time to start up your torrent searches and update your Netflix queue's.

Trailer Park Boys
I heard about this show from The Life and Times when they came through town a while back. It's a Canadian show on Showcase, it's filmed like a documentary which makes the show feel very personal like you're watching home video of Sunnyvale trailer park. The show mainly follows Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles. Three lovable stoned drunk losers who are always plotting the next "big dirty", one final scam that will make them enough cash to retire, buy the trailer park and get rid of trailer park supervisor Jim Leahy. These guys love kitties, Rush, pepperoni, chicken chips, piss jugs, and getting fucked up. Almost every season starts with them getting out of jail and ends with them going back in. One season Julian makes 8 grand selling potato vodka to all the other prisoners and guards. In season 5 the boys steal a ton of hash and hide it right out in the open by rolling it out on their driveway.

Ideal
Alex (who recorded our full length) found this one and passed it along to me. This show is on BBC3 and is still on, season 6 starts in Spring 2010. Much like TPB it's an ensemble cast show that mostly centers around weed. The entire show (with very few exceptions) takes place in Moz's apartment. Moz is a weed dealer and his best friend, and supplier, PC is a cop. With characters named Psycho Paul, Cartoon Head, and Stemroach you can't go wrong.

Breaking Bad
I don't remember how I heard about this show but it's on AMC. Another drug related show but this one is much more of a dark drama than a comedy, although it can be pretty funny at times. Brian Cranston (you may remember him as the dad on Malcolm in the Middle) is fucking amazing. he plays Walter, a 50 year old chemistry teacher who just found out that he has inoperable lung cancer, an unexpected child on the way and nothing to leave his wife and son who has CP. He decides to use his chemistry skills and an ex student to cook and sell crystal meth to make money to pay for his treatments and leave his family. oh yeah, his brother in law is a DEA agent.

Dexter
I think everybody knows about this show by now. Serial Killer stuff is always interesting to me. Each season gets better than the last. Don't waste your time on the books, the show is much better.

South Park
These guys are still making great episodes! I love how topical they are and how there's almost always a rational lesson to be learned. One of my personal favorites and probably the darkest episode is #69 "Scott Tenorman Must Die", not because Radiohead is in it but because of the cannibalism and the pure evil in Cartman. I've never been a fan of the first 3 seasons but I think I'll give them a try again soon because you can watch all that shit for free at southparkstudios.com. gotta love that.

Other shows you might have missed:
- Eastbound and Down
- I'm Alan Partridge
- Lucky Louie

Next on my list:
- The Wire

by: Derek

Corruption

We had every intention of doing our final mix down of the EP yesterday but Pro Tools didn't feel the same. For some unknown reason most of our audio files got corrupted, but have no fear we were smart enough to make a backup, but that was months ago thus all of our mixing progress is gone. Josh is starting new mixes and hopefully it wont take too long to build them back up again.