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Saw The Gossip and Panther last night at Neumo’s. If you’ve never seen either of these bands perform then I highly recommend that you check them out.

Panther is the solo project of Charlie Salas-Humaras, the frontman of The Planet The and all around awesome guy. He sings and dances to pre-tracked instrumentals for about 20 minutes and let me tell you, it’s nothing short of amazing. This guy’s got the moves and he’s not afraid to bust them out. I really wish I could have recorded his set with video because the audio recording is only half the story.

Panther – 2006-04-05 Neumo’s – Seattle, WA
Download: panther2006-04-05.at943.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: panther2006-04-05sample.mp3

The Gossip played an impressive set even with Beth Ditto being under the weather. She’s got pipes I’ll tell you what. Even with her having a nasty cold, her vocals were still blazing. I also like that there are still bands out there who are about advocacy and social justice. God bless Slim Moon and his label of great bands.

The Gossip – 2006-04-05 Neumo’s – Seattle, WA
Download: gossip2006-04-05.at943.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: gossip2006-04-05sample.mp3

Sometimes you go to a show and the opening band make your eyes glaze over as you wait for them to finish whatever the hell it is they’re doing so you can see the band(s) you paid money to see. This is why people show up at the venue two hours late. Not because they want to look cool but because they hate sitting through craptacular opening bands.

But every so often you show up to a show in time to see the first band play and it’s not a total let down. In fact, sometimes you catch a band that is just as entertaining if not more so than than the headlining act and, let me tell you friends, that’s a golden opportunity right there. The crowd isn’t jam packed full of people and you can actually enjoy being up front listening to some decent tunes.

Friday night I went to see These Arms Are Snakes at Neumo’s (Isis was headlining but… meh) and the opening act, Zombi, proved that the order of the show’s lineup is not indicative of how “good” the bands are. These guys fucking killed. They have a huge sound, epic drumming, and an all around smooth sound.

To describe their sound I will say this: You know those action movies from the 80s that always get shown on network tv on Sunday afternoon? The music that plays while the renegade cop storms the abandon factory that the criminals are using to traffic their drugs. That’s what Zombi’s music sounds like. Synth driven, drum backed, guns-out electronic music that is destined to impress.

Zombi 2006-03-32 Neumo’s – Seattle, WA
Download: zombi2006-03-31.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: zombi2006-03-31sample.mp3

(I also recorded These Arms Are Snakes’ set but I promised the drummer that I would not publish the recording or trade it with anyone until their new album is out. Sorry.)

I like the Sunset Tavern. For being a run-of-the-mill bar in the heart of Ballard, it has a certain charm and allure. Sort of cozy and fun. The soundsystem also doesn’t suck and they have enough equipment to mic a full drumset and all of a band’s instruments, so that helps me to like it as well.

The show last night was all around good. The opening band, The Lonely Forest, played to a small crowd of about 20 people (10 of which were their family and friends). They were obviously a young group of kids but the music was good… sort of Counting Crows-ish without the whiney vocals.

Following them was Kimya Dawson whose name you might recognize from The Moldy Peaches. Her solo set is very soothing and comforting to listen to. You know that White Stripes song “We’re Going To Be Friends”? Imagine a whole set of songs like that with funnier lyrics.

A lot of talkers during this set. I’m surprised it turned out as audible as it did given that she’s a very soft spoken singer whose only accompaniment is an acoustic guitar. Even still, the recording is good and worth the listen.

Kimya Dawson – 2006-03-28 Sunset Tavern – Seattle, WA
Download: kdawson2006-03-28.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: kdawson2006-03-28sample.mp3

Jason Collett and his band Paso Mino took the stage at 11 and played for a solid 75 minutes. It was nice to have a band play for more than 45 minutes and even come out for an encore (even though the place didn’t have more than 30 people in it).

That’s something I noticed and found rather odd. I came to the show expecting some kind of turn out given that Jason Collett’s other band Broken Social Scene has a huge following of hip kids. The Sunset even marketed the show on their site as “Jason Collett of Broken Social Scene” so I thought a lot of people would come out to the show just to hear what his solo stuff sounds like. To my surprise, the room never filled up as I had expected. I mean, shit, this venue had more people in it when Wolf Eyes played in October.

No big deal, his set was great and I enjoyed it a good deal. Comparing his singing to Dylan is unavoidable so I will say this: His vocals sound like Ben Lee doing an impression of Bob Dylan. This isn’t a jab or anything, just what popped into my head when he first started singing.

The recording turned out nice enough. Some talkers underneath my stand but whatever, I’m not in the business of telling people what to do at shows. I’m almost positive that Calvin Johnson ran the soundboard for this set as you can hear Jason say his name when trying to fix the microphone after the fourth song. After the show the bass player told me they were going to record at a studio “about a half hour away” which might have meant Johnson’s recording studio Dub Narcotic Recording Studios in Olympia (which is really about an hour and a half away from Seattle).

Jason Collett – 2006-03-28 Sunset Tavern – Seattle, WA
Download: jcollett2006-03-28.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: jcollett2006-03-28sample.mp3

I figure since I’ve got a new hobby and it’s pretty fun, I should start sharing the fruits of my labor with my best friend, the Internet.

I’ve been taping pretty regularly since January. The list of shows includes:

The Advantage
Animal Collective
Band Of Horses
Big Business
Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins
Minus The Bear
These Arms Are Snakes

Most of these recordings turned out pretty well. I’m amazed at how easy it is to set up my equipment and pull a pretty good tape without really knowing all that much about audio and not having spent thousands of dollars on my equipment. I’m also really getting into taping local bands at smaller venues. I don’t know why but it’s cool to record something like that… it feels more like I’m doing a service to the city’s music scene by preserving local shows than it does when I record a band that is just touring through town.

Bearing that in mind, I’ve decided to upload my recording from Saturday night. Part Man Part Horse opened up for some touring bands at The Funhouse and I captured the aural magic. Gary was in top form and stoned out of his gourd as far as I could tell. He ran around the venue, threw water at people, called the crowd “stupid” on multiple occasions, and generally did his thing.

And now it’s your turn to share in that magic.

Part Man Part Horse – 2006-03-25 The Funhouse – Seattle, WA
Download:
MP3 Sample: pmph2006-03-25sample.mp3

All of these files are in FLAC because that is how I roll. Mac users will have to decode to WAV in order to get them to work I imagine (just use xACT) and Windows users, well…. Foobar2000 ver .9 just came out so go and get that and ditch Winamp for a change.

I sure do like buying stuff. I don’t enjoy materialism without purpose, though. I like buying nice stuff that I can use (or that will be worth metric truckloads of money in the future) and, just recently, I did that.

See, my new hobby is recording live concerts. Like most hobbies I take up, I spent a few weeks reading hundreds of forum threads on the Internet until I had a good idea of what equipment I needed and what I could realistically afford.

For situations where I would need to record shows “on the downlow” (as the kids say) I built a “stealth rig” consisting of the following components:

1) Sound Professionals CMC-8 microphones

These mics use the Audio Technica 943 capsules and terminate with an 1/8″ stereo plugin. They’re also tiny as hell.

2) Sound Professionals SPSB-6 battery box

This 9v battery box powers the mics (since they can’t take be powered with 48v phantom power) and also has a bass roll-off option to cure the mics of being too boomy. I usually roll off the left and right channels at 107Hz.

3) Sound Professionals 1/8″ to TRS dongle

This dongle converts the 1/8″ termination of the battery box into two 1/4″ TRS (tip-ring-sleeve) terminations.

4) M-Audio Microtrack 24/96

This is the real beauty of the setup. The Microtrack takes care of the analog to digital conversion stage and records to compact flash or a microdrive (at up to 24 bit-depth and 96 kHz sample rate). It really is a versatile device as it can record through digital coax if you have an outboard A/D converter and can be powered remotely via USB if you need to record for hours at a time.

That’s my covert ops recording setup. I also dropped some cash on an “open rig” for situations where both the venue and the band are cool with people recording the show. With an open setup you can add more pieces of equipment to the rig without having to hide it in your pants and, hopefully, end up with a better sounding recording than if you were recording on the sly. Here is what I’m curently using for open-tape situations:

1) AKG C1000S microphones

These are very much the “newbie taper” microphones, but for the price they get the job done very well. I recorded a friend’s band with them a few weeks ago and was amazed at the clarity they provided.

Each microphone is mounted in an Audio Technia 8415 shock mount which suspends the mic in an elastic cradle in case the mic stand is bumped during recording.

For various microphone configurations (which, as I’ve come to find out, there are an abundance of) I bought an AKG stereo bar which will easily allow me to set up the mics in HRTF, X/Y, DIN, AB, etc etc. The stereo bar mounts on a 10′ air cushioned light stand I bought at Glazer’s. See my lack of mic config know-how here.

2) Edirol UA-5

This device handles the mic power, gain, and A/D conversion stage. It provides the microphones with 48v of phantom power and allows for individual control of left and right gain. It outputs analog via RCA or digitally via digital coax or optical.

I bought a modified version of this unit from the TapersSection.com used equipment forum. It was modified by Doug Oade to have a transparent gain stage and a lower noise floor. It also has the Oade Plus Mod which alters the power supply and analog stage of the unit to increase detail and decrease noise.

To power this unit in the field, I went to RadioShack (which is lovingly referred to as “Rat Shack” in the taping community. It’s like the Micro$hit of the taper world.) and bought a li-ion battery and some of their Adaptaplugs (B plug for the battery end, M plug for the UA-5 end).

3) M-Audio Microtrack 24/96

Once again, running into the Microtrack but insead of using the TRS inputs I can use the S/PDIF digital coax input (running digital out from the UA-5).

I’m powering the Microtrack using the same model battery that powers the UA-5, but I had to get a voltage regulator to feed the unit 5v intsead of 9v. A member of TapersSection.com makes such a unit he calls The Juicebox. I got a used Juicebox from a TS.com member and it works just great.

For all of this gear, I have a a Lowe Pro Nova 5 camera bag. I still don’t have a solution for storing the microphones, though. The C1000S is a lot bigger than most field mics so it’s hard to find something to store them in that is low-profile. Here is my bag all packed up (sans the XLR cables).