On Wednesday I went to see Thom Yorke play at The Fox Theater in Oakland with his new band Atoms For Peace. Thanks to Ting for the ticket! The band is a super-group with a very impressive lineup:

Thom Yorke - The  always-entertaining Radiohead singer on guitar and vocals.

Nigel Godrich – Radiohead’s mad scientist producer, out from behind the curtain to play guitar, keyboard and laptop.

Joey Waronker - A top LA studio drummer who has also toured with Beck and many more.

Mauro Refosco – A bad ass multi-percussionist with a a very impressive box of toys.

Flea - Yes, that Flea: The Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist, laying down funk-metal grooves for the foundation.

This was one of nine shows on the Atoms of Peace tour and quite possibly their only tour ever. As I waited, standing about twenty five feet back in the beautiful Fox Theater (the new APE venue which is very similar to The Warfield but much more grand), I thought for sure that this would be one of the top ten best shows I had ever seen.

Review:

Finally the lights went out and the band came on. Within minutes of the first song it was clear that this show would not make my top ten; not even close. For some reason I expected Atoms for Peace to be just as tight and well-oiled of a machine as Radiohead, a band of musicians who have been writing and touring together for over twenty years. That was foolish. No level of individual musicianship could ever equal the bond of twenty years of collaboration. In the end, Thom Yorke’s new band came off as exactly what they are: thrown together for a short tour.

It was still a great show. The drummers remained extremely tight and fun to dance to for the duration of the night. Maura Refosco played tons of different crazy instruments including hand drums, a berimbau and two giant shakers that looked like medieval maces. It makes sense that Thom would want a groovy rhythm section; he is a dancer. He danced for pretty much the entire set, and it was awesome.

Although he occasionally played keyboard swells and a bit of guitar, Nigel Godrich’s main job seemed to be running backing tracks off of his laptop. There were a lot of backing tracks, which at times was a bit of a bummer; too many tracks can make a set feel like karaoke. Most songs luckily had enough real musicianship to avoid this effect.

I wish I could have heard Flea better, but for most of the set the backing bass tracks were drowning him out and it was hard to tell what (or if) he was playing. Towards the end he had a few moments to shine where he came to the center of the stage and went into some funky bass lines. They were classic Flea, which was funny and somewhat out of place in the context of the rest of the band, but definitely something that everyone in the crowd was excited to see. He did it pretty well. Overall he didn’t groove as well as the rest of the rhythm section, but he did give an inspired theatrical performance (which sometimes also seemed out of place).

So did this concert make history?

The other night in Indianapolis, during a party Margot House, we started getting super geeky with music and looking up awesome internet music videos. It was really fun!

Here’s what we watched:

1. Jay Z on the MTV Video Awards

Even if you are sick as shit of this song you can’t deny that’s it’s one of the catchiest anthems to hit the radio in a long time. This live performance from the 2009 MTV Videos Music Awards is bad-ass. If you want to learn how to perform, you should take some notes from Jay Z: hands in pockets,cool as ice, straight killin’ it:

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2. Radiohead on the Grammys

Radiohead never ceases to apocalyptically blow my mind. In this performance on the 2009 Grammy Awards they joined forces with the USC Trojan Marching band for a high-energy spectacle that will raise the bar of award-show performances for years to come:
http://www.dailymotion.com/videox8b5rp

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3. Radiohead: “Jigsaw Falling to Pieces” music video

After watching one Radiohead video we knew we needed more. Although the music from this video comes from a recorded track, the footage is taken from a live studio performance. Embracing the lo-resolution aesthetic of youtube, Radiohead strapped light-weight security cameras to their heads to create one of the most imaginative and insightful live performance music videos of all time:

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4. OK Go, “This Too Shall Pass”

No internet music video session would be complete without an entry from OK Go. Their home-video treadmill dance routine for “Here We Go Again” changed the way that we think about music and film on the internet, garnering over 50 million hits views with a shoestring budget. Their newest video they for “This Too Shall Pass” may have topped it by effectively creating and capturing the most elaborate chain-reaction “Rube Golberg device” ever imagined. Skeptics claim that portions of this video are computer generated but the band denies it. Regardless of  the controversy, the creativity and ambition of this video alone will carve it an important place in film history:

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5. Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s, “Quiet of a Mouse”

Seeing as how we were partying with half of the old members of this band we really wanted to see at least one of their videos. This is the one that they said was the best. It’s a beautiful narrative animation of some very original art by Stacey Novak which must have taken hundreds of hours to put together. It’s amazing to see independent artists going above and beyond to make something unique, and just as amazing to count them as friends:

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6. Judgement Day, “Cobra Strike”

It’s always kind of lame to be the guy who puts no his own video at the party, but in the friendly, supportive context of the night it seemed appropriate. Here is our attempt at an entry into the world of fun, creative internet music videos:

South by Southwest 2010 is now over but it was an experience that I will never forget. Every band comes to the festival for their own reasons. Some bands come to showcase. Some bands come to party and drink free beer. Some bands come with no plan, just because they have heard that South by Southwest is a place where dreams come true. I think that Judgement Day fit into the latter category this year. Having never been to the festival before, we really had no idea of what to expect. We only had the faith that it would be an event rife with opportunities for our unconventional, independent string-metal band.

If you had asked me before our tour if I would like to showcase for a room full of music industry bigwigs I would have said, “Yes! for sure!” We definitely did not do that; there were no big record execs at our out-of-the-way, underground shows. After everything that I’ve seen and experienced this week though, I really don’t feel like we missed out. Instead of showcasing for record executives, we spent the week playing real shows for real people. We played on the streets for everyone walking by, and free parties where no one was turned away for lack of an official badge. We played an amazing party on Thursday night, put together by our tour-mates BATTLEHOOCH, in the overgrown back yard of a punk house for a crowd of artists, musicians, fans and friends. We had the time of our lives dancing our hearts out while the lawyers and managers typed away on their BlackBerrys at the official SXSW show across the street.

All week we handed out fliers for our big Saturday show but when the day finally came, the weather (which had been warm and beautiful all week) suddenly became brutally severe. Temperatures dropped into the 30′s and were accompanied by strong gusts of freezing wind. This was bad news for us because the road to our venue was quite a trek from the heart of the SXSW festival. It was 1.5 miles away across a giant bridge infested by over one million bats. We thought for sure that our show would be empty, but as we set up the room began to fill and when we played the house was packed. I cannot fully express our gratitude towards those who braved the storm to see us. I only hope that the show, in my opinion one of our best ever, was a just reward.

In the end, did our dreams come true? I’d say the jury is still out. I dream of the day when a band can find its audience without going through the lawyers and record executives. I definitely doubt that we will come away from this year’s SXSW with the ability to sell out The Fillmore, but I do know this:

We played on the streets of Austin all day long for three days straight and during that time there were not 5 minutes that went by without someone filming us. We may have been filmed over a thousand times. So far only one group has posted their video: NPR’s All Songs Considered. What will happen when everyone else posts?

-Anton

One highlight of sxsw was getting to meet and even play with other cello rockers. Break of Reality is a very heavy cello rock band from New York that are kind of like our east coast counterparts.  Zoe Keating is a Bay Area cellist who used to play in a band called Rasputina as well as many other really sweet groups and now has a solo looping project under her own name. She also has a ridiculous number of twitter followers. We all got together for a collaboration outside of the Austin Convention Center, which was very fun. First we played an arrangement of the funeral march from Beethoven 7 for 5 cellos that Zoe put together (Anton played a cello part). Then we traded off playing and improvising on each others music, and to finish we did a couple of completely improvised jams. Good times. Check out those bands here:

www.breakofreality.com
www.zoekeating.com
something else with the Beethoven:

lp

Riki Feldmann is the man. Not only did he engineer our record, he is also my favorite music photographer in the bay area. We did a shoot with him a little while back on Treasure Island and got some real gems. Here is my favorite as a downloadable desktop wallpaper. I have to confess that I am actually using it as my own desktop image right now. I love it.

pick your size:

1280 x 800 | 1440 x 900 | 1680 x 1050 | 1920 x 1200

Man,  I am exhausted. We played for at least 5 hours today and walked around for another 3. It actually was pretty awesome.

When we first arrived at around 2 pm there were already quite a few festival-goers out. We set up on a street corner in front of the Coyote Ugly bar and started playing. Our new battery-powered amplifier and bucket drum kit make for a pretty sweet guerrilla metal setup: within one minute we were surrounded by a large crowd of green-clothed music fans (it was also St. Patricks day today,) and by the second song there were multiple giant video cameras pointed at us. I have no idea what any of these camera people were filming for but they all seemed to be into it. All the while Brandon (our new drum tech / metal expert) was passing out fliers for our Saturday show, selling cd’s and generally hyping us up to every single person who stopped to listen. The response was great and for the rest of the day people kept coming up to me telling me that they liked it.

One thing that we found out which was slightly disappointing is that our big Saturday show is kind of far away from the rest of the festival. It turns out that South Congress is not the same as Congress. If you go to 515 Congress, which is right in the middle of the festival, you will be at a bank. That’s not where we are playing. We’re playing at 515 South Congress, which is about a mile away on the other side of the bridge. The place is really cool, but it is definitely a little bit of a hike. There were quite a few people today who were excited to come see the show, so I hope the distance doesn’t deter them. I guess distance is a good reason to do an “official” SXSW show. All of those ones are really easy to walk to. On the plus side, the bridge that you cross to get to our show also happens to be home to over 1.5 million bats and you’ll see them all flying out to hunt as you cross back over to the festival after our set. I have seen it before and it’s quite a site.
Some other good stuff happened today: we now have two more shows. They are both house parties and they are both tomorrow night:

9pm – 92 Rainey st w/BATTLEHOCH

2am – 3603 s 2nd st  w/?

So… tomorrow’s going to be another big day. I better get some rest. Bed time!

-anton

Normally I’d write all of my stories on this blog. This time I’ve been asked to write them for other blogs, so I’m just going to post a bunch of links:

Here is basically my first tour blog entry, which talks about our trip up through Tucson: http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2010/03/15/sxsw-judgement-day-315/

Here’s a cool little interview that Grant from Battlehooch and I both did talking about each other’s bands: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-20839-Exploring-San-Francisco-Examiner~y2010m3d16-Judgement-Day-and-or-Battlehooch

Here are a bunch of sweet videos from our San Diego show: http://www.sddialedin.com/2010/03/thank-you.html

Here’s my favorite from those videos:

What’s wrong with this picture?

Well, basically the problem is that our band is not called “EMPTY.”

Admission of guilt:
When we were shooting these photos Riki straight-up asked “are you sure you want that EMPTY sign right in the middle of the picture?” and I said “yeah, it will be fine. It will be cool.” I was definitely wrong.

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We weren’t sure what to do about this at first but then we had this idea to make an art project out of it!

Here’s how it works:

1. Download the Easy-To-Print 8.5″ x 11″ jpeg HERE

2. Print it out in color on 8.5″ x 11″ paper, preferably thick paper or card stock. (I printed mine at Office Depot and it cost less than a dollar).

3. Draw, Paint or Collage on it however you want!

4. Mail it to this address:

Paint the Empty
150A Laguna St.
San Francisco, CA 94102

5. Please include a note with your name and email so we can thank you!

Prizes

1. If you get your piece to us by March 4th, it will be displayed at the Art of Peacocks / Pink Monsters art show at The Space Gallery in San Francisco on Friday, March 5th:

2. We’ll scan and post all of our favorite pieces here on the blog.

3. We’ll make one of these paintings into our new press photo and then there’s a chance that your art will be printed in newspaper or magazines. If you want us to use your piece for this, you need to cover up the “EMPTY” and leave all of the band members visible.

That’s it! I’m excited to see what you come up with!

-anton

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GALLERY

Submissions so far:

About a year and a half ago I was walking around in the the toys isle of Walgreen’s when all of a sudden this awesome idea popped into my head: Violin Hero music video! I wasn’t sure how to do it but I really wanted to make this video. It would need green screen and animation and those are two things that I knew absolutely nothing about, so I started looking around for directors. I have a lot of friends who make films because I have worked for them as a composer. I talked to a handful of people who seemed interested, but then I found Zzalgern0n (as far as I can tell that actually IS his name – one name, like “McLovin.”)

Not only is Zzalgern0n an awesome, hi-energy, internet-savvy director, experienced with both green screen and animations; he has also beat Guitar Hero on Expert! It was clear that this was the man for the job:

Pre-production

There was quite a bit of pre-production on this project. Comic-book artist Brandon Redenius designed a Violin Hero logo and box. Zzalgern0n made a disc. My girlfriend Laura Weinbach from Foxtails Brigade made illustrations for the start screen and song-select screen. For the song-select screen we also consulted with musicologist Baker Peeples to come up with a list of the most shredding violin songs of all time in ascending order of difficulty.

Trisha Gum, who made the clay sculptures for Dark Opus now works making miniature sets for stop-motion tv shows on cartoon network. She built a miniature set for this video out of mostly cardboard and paper:

Production

Zzalgern0n wrote a very ambitious treatment for this video which included locations like Egypt, Japan and Hell. Obviously it was out of our budget to film on location, so we had to do what we could with the magic of special effects. On the first day of filming we built a sweet makeshift green screen in Lewis’ old bedroom at our parents’ house, where we filmed some violin students (thanks Keith and Sierra!) After that we went over to a couple of our aunts’ houses and filmed our cousins there. Lewis and I have 25 cousins of all different ages on our mom’s side (I am the oldest), and we have been making movies with them since we were little kids. It was awesome to carry on that tradition in this video!

For the band footage we went to LA, where Zzalgern0n’s friend donated the use of a real green screen studio. It was super fancy with all kinds of different lighting tools. I couldn’t believe that we got to use that place…. so awesome! Rebecca Fierro did costumes and makeup:

After that, Zzalger0n wrapped up the rest of the filming on his own in LA. He got a ton of awesome people to be in the video. Watch for hilarious cameos from:

Paul Rust (I Love You Beth Cooper)
Matt Braunger
Josh Fadem (30 Rock)
Josh Perry (Retarded Policeman)
BJ Averell (winner of The Amazing Race)
Matt Cornell (Extreme Elvis)

Post Production

This is where the real fun began. Zzalgern0n had literally hours of footage to condense into a 3-minute video. This was truly a monstrous task, but he did it! The final step was animation. For this we turned to Mike Mayfield (The Cleveland Show). To help him out, I did a colored transcription of the Cobra Strike cello part:

see how that works?

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Monday!

We premiered the video last weekend in LA and the response was off the Richter Scale! It’s going up on YouTube on Monday, February 1st and when that happens we need all of your help posting it everywhere! Here are some tips for posting:

-Join the Posting Day event on Facebook – http://tinyurl.com/postingday

-Post a link in your Facebook or Myspace status

-Post the link on Twitter and (if you’re into this kind of thing) call it #ViolinHero

- Email a link around your office or school or any kind of club you are in

Forums and Blogs:
If you have a blog or you post regularly on a forum, post a link there. If you really want to help us out, you could even sign up for some new forums and post there. These are the kind of sites that would be good:

-Band forums: metal bands, experimental bands, indie rock bands, classical composers anything!

-Music Blogs: again, any genre

-Sites that Post Amusing Videos: Digg, VideoSift, Fark, BestofYouTube etc

-Video Game Forums and Blogs: after all, this is a guitar hero spoof

-Comedy Forums and Blogs: We have so many awesome comedian cameos in this. Comedy fans will be interested.

-Any Other Topic You Can Think Of!

We worked on this video and we would love for as many people to see it as possible. With your help, we will make that happen. Thank you!

-anton

Our new record is coming out Tuesday, April 13th on itunes, Rhapsody, and every other possible digital music service that we can think of. It will also be coming out as a very special Collectors Book / CD, which will be available at our shows.  We are extremely proud of the record and very excited to share it with you guys. It’s called Peacocks / Pink Monsters.

We’re releasing it 100% independently, which means we’re counting on all of you guys; our friends and our fans to help spread the word! There are a bunch of cool things that doing to prepare for the release:

Posting Day! First Single and Music Video!

On February 1st, we are releasing the first single from the record entitled “Cobra Strike” as a digital download and YouTube music video. The video is AWESOME. I think it might be one of the coolest things we’ve ever done and I think people are really going to like it, and really like the song.

HERE’S WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU:
On the day that the video comes out we need everyone to POST THE SHIT OUT OF IT!  Post it on your Facebook feed! Post it on your Twitter! Post it to everyone in your office and everyone at your school and everyone in your family! Post it on every blog and every forum you can think of!

HERE’S WHAT YOU GET:
In exchange for your help we’re going to make Cobra Strike a FREE DOWNLOAD for the whole day on posting day, and for a couple of days afterward. We’ll post the download link on this Facebook Event and update everyone who has RSVP’d as “Attending” with the URL. This way all of our real fans and friends can get the song for free with some bonus material and anyone who discovers Judgement Day later from the video will just have to buy the regular download from our music page http://stringmetal.com/judgementday/music .

WHAT’S THIS VIDEO ABOUT ANYWAY?
It’s CRAZY! It’s RIDICULOUS! I’m not going to tell you everything about it right away because I want you to guess. (If you already know please don’t spill the beans!) Instead, I’m going to give you hints. You should all recruit people to the Facebook Event, and for every 25 new Attendees that we get there, I will post one new picture and/or hint about the video or the new record.

US TOUR!

We just started booking a record release tour, which begins on March 11th. Booking is going pretty well so far but we could definitely use some tips about cool bands to play with and cool clubs to play at, especially on the east coast. Check out the tour routing at http://stringmetal.com/judgementday/tour and if you have any ideas, please email us at judgmentdayband@yahoo.com

SHOWS THIS MONTH:
LA and San Francisco

Sun. 1/24
Los Angeles
Cinespace
Cobra Strike video release party. Free admission and free vodka until 10:30.
9:30 pm / 21+ / FREE until 10:30

Sat. 1/30
San Francisco
Bottom of the Hill (Winter Music Festival)
Presented by SF Indiefest and Talking House Records with BATTLEHOOCH and the Hot Moon
9pm / All Ages / $8

Alright! This is going to be fun!

-anton