Christian Death Metal

I was digging through some of my Microcassettes, looking for something blogworthy and I stumbled across this tape I had forgotten about.

Way back in 1997, I was singing for my High School's rock band. We entered a "Battle of the Bands" competition, and this is the first band that played. Needless to say, this blew me away (and not in a good way). I didn't know Christian Death Metal existed until I heard these guys. The singer was a fat balding guy with glasses that should've been retired in 1956, and yes, that's him speaking.

Although we didn't win the competition, we beat out these guys.

Songsmith is Stupid

Sorry about the lack of updates, but life gets busy sometimes.

So, Microsoft has this new piece of software out called "Songsmith". Basically, it will adjust the music to match the pitch of your voice. Sounds like a kids toy? Yeah probably, but I decided I wanted a couple of hours to fuck around with it.

The problem is getting to that "couple of hours". First, I primarily run Linux. Second, my Windows 2000 partition bluescreens about every hour or so. Third, it apparently requires Windows XP and higher to run. Fourth, the download comes as a .msi file instead of a simple .exe file. Fifth, it requires the .NET 3.0 framework. Sixth, it requires you to have Service Pack 2 installed. Therefore, achieving a simple couple of hours to play with a measley (100MB) piece of software is a challenge in itself. And people say that using Linux is too bloody difficult! The only reason Linux is so hard to use is that the geeks at the computer store install Windows for you! Microsoft products are also quite unfriendly to install, requiring one to babysit it because it will ask you questions throughout the install. At least I can browse the net while Ubuntu Linux installs. But enough bitching...

Anyway, I can't install Songsmith with WINE, I can't install it in Win2k, so I need to install XP on my spare computer, install the .NET 3.0 framework, SP2, and then install the 100MB file. Oh yeah, and it's only a demo copy which is crippled, causing me to wonder if all this pain is worth installing a piece of broken software simply to play with it. Oh well, I've done stupider things....

Songsmith's interface leaves something to be desired. What, I'm not sure, but it feels like an incredibly confusing kid's toy that took me about half an hour to figure out, yet the commercial boasts that it's easy to use.

When I click on the mixer button and try to change the nice Midi instruments into something else, the sound seems to fuck off whenever I select "electric guitar". The only way to get the sound back is to restart the program. In other words, it's your typical buggy Microsoft-ware.

So, was the result worth the time and pain of the installation? Check it out for yourself:



Songsmith sounds about as good as my Mom's Kawaii organ, manufactured in 1974 when Moog was the 'in thing'. As far as it being a musician's tool, it's fucking retarded. If you can't come up with your own ideas without a piece of kid's software, then you have no talent and shouldn't be writing songs.

Oh yeah, and thanks to Warner Fucking Music Group, This is my second attempt at doing one of these mashups. The original (Sherry by The Four Seasons) got nuked because the shit-heads at WMG decided they owned the copyright for this piece of shit I put together. WMG can suck a dick festering with genital herpes.

WMG Can Suck A Dick

I just wrote up a nice blog entry about Microsoft Songsmith, did up a video that tied up HOURS of my time, and the Warner Music Group has flagged my video as their content.

I'll try to get the video up on shitty PutFile and the blog entry up in the next couple of days. In the meantime, here's a nice video for the WMG:

Album Review: Charlene Prickett Does Floors

Came home with a stack of junk from the Thrift Store today. As per usual, most of it turned out to be crap (including a kids' Christian tape). But there was one item I picked up solely for nostalgic purposes, and it's worth mentioning here:


Charlene Prickett Does Floors

For those who don't know, Charlene Prickett has (or had) her own exercise show here in Canada, and when I was around seven years old, I used to follow along with it. Thanks to Charlene Prickett, I learned that I can't dance for shit, and probably never will. In her aerobic workout, she had these tricky "step in a box pattern" things and I always managed to fuck them up and do a faceplant into the floor.

I never knew Charlene did floors, nor did I know she did an album about doing floors. ...or at least doing things on the floor. Her voice on this album sounds nothing like what her TV voice did, possibly because she's doing the floors in the recording studio, and we know how they like to slick things up in the recording studio!

The best track on the album (and the only one worth listening to) is the last one on Side A, simply called "Bum". I honestly don't know what the hell kind of position she's in during this song, but it sure gets your imagination going!

Give "Bum" a listen:

My Favorite Maxi Pad Commercial

Last night, I came across a video tape that I thought I had lost in one of my moves. It has some very blogworthy material on it, and it contains one of my all-time favorite commercials. I recorded this sometime in 1995 or 1996: