so, on a side note, it sucks uploading pics. they're always too big, and resizing them is a huge hassle. jinx made 2 attempts at it for the above pics before flinging the laptop at me to finish it. hosting them is the obvious solution, but they always seem to disappear...or the link breaks when the host site makes some minor change. i know it's limited because of bandwidth issues, and I'm not really asking for change here. just bitching pointlessly. carry on.[/bitching pointlessly]

thanks for the video, lumberjim

Brilliant!
Thanks for the pics and video LJ - for those of us who haven't a chance of getting there it's great to see.

Pretty damn cool UT :)

my pleasure. truly

i hope you can make it out another night when you can stay longer and share a mug of suds!!!

It was only my stupidity that I didn't pay for your drinks on Friday. Next are all on me guaranteed

pah. no worries. 2.5 yeungling draughts in a plastic cup fit the budget nicely. and yeah, next time, jinx is driving, and i'm gettin' wit' the Captain. Just be warned.....I may stage dive. It'll have to be a Saturday night, so I don't have to go into work in the morning, too.

If you have trouble with pictures, email them to me and I'll massage them for you. The way I'm set up, it's a snap. :D

no real trouble, just a pain in the ass. having to resize, save, try to upload, resize and save again. as i said....pointless bitching.

Here's on easy way. In Irfan, save the orig as a new image.

Look at the status bar on the bottom of the image. Far left are the dimensions and the image size is the 4th section of the status bar.

Choose resize.
Pick 640 x 480 (99% of the time, this will work)
Save

Even tho you saved the image after making it smaller, the status bar does not update. However, if you click on File (as tho you were going to save it again), it will update the status bar with the new size so pick File then click elsewhere on the image to make the File dropdown disappear. Check the status bar again.

The max size for a Cellar image upload is 146.5Kb. If the number in the 4th box is less than 146.5 then save and upload. If not, resize using the percentage option and save again. Check file size and repeat until less than 146.5.

After you do this once or twice, it shouldn't take more than a few seconds to do it again after you get the hang of it.

It's even easier in Photoshop. ;)
Original at 94.6 Kb.
Copy at 53.7 Kb.

Another copy at 63.6 Kb.
I didn't take any time to smooth them out, but you get the idea. Why take up more room than necessary? :D

i think all pictures of our keyboard capture him in that same pose, very strange

He just parks one that one chord, right? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

cool cool cool... one of the days I'll get the g/f out of the house and we'll try to make it in that direction if ya'll are playing. she needs to see the 'big city' anyway :))

I have photoshop and paint shop pro but have recently decided to abandon both and force myself to learn Gimp. Except for quick edit stuff like resizing which I can finish in Irfan before Photoshop even loads.

Any gigs coming up?

TONIGHT!

Tonight will be a good one in fact - although some people don't go to the northeast, it's not that hard to get around on the Boulevard. Teh hours are a rare 9-1 -- instead of the usual grueling 10-2.

We have improved a good deal since you filmed us James - gotten tighter and we now have better sound, so we can hear ourselves, it makes a big difference imo.

that's cool. if i didnt already have plans...i'd come out again. you can borrow my camera and tripod if you want to sometime.

I'm sure this has been asked many times but what type of music do you play?

I also play bass and just joined a band a few weeks ago to play a bunch of covers and maybe make some of our own songs. Fun stuff.

The set list is at the website: phobicrocks.com

It is tuned to be acceptable to anyone 20-70 years old.

Damn, I'm 19.

Good variety of music. Everywhere from the 60s to 00s (probably even more spread out but I don't recognize a lot of the bands).

My beard is 38.

this raises an interesting thought....your beard, as a whole...as a theoretical entity, may be 38 years old, but the hairs....they cant be more than 8 or 10 weeks, most likely, as you trim it. now... a man that grows his beard without trimming it for 38 years can truly say that his beard is 38 years old...assuming the hairs haven't worn off at the end or something like that. So the statement that your beard is 38 is misleading......you could say that you've had a beard for 38 years......

eh...nevermind.

Cock

Ladies and Gentlemen, Phobic is in the semi-finals of WMGK's House Band Contest.

We have really worked hard and improved massively over the last six months, and this is the result of that.

Congratulations, UT! Give 'em hell, dude. :bass:

Congratulations, dude! What do you get if you win?

Woohooooo! You can't see it, but I'm clicking my lighter for an encore already!

When we win, we'll get $3000 cash for equipment, two free days in a studio, and 4 gigs as the "house band" for which we'll get $800 each time.

We have plenty of gear, it's the gigs that are meaningful, and the title. We need to bring more people out in order to get bigger and better bookings. This would accomplish that... probably.

I had no idea about the White Stripes "issue".

:lol:

...how would you guys use this? I mean, you can't release an album of cover songs without buying a completely different set of rights to the songs. Is the assumption that all the bands in this contest also have original material they're working on, or is it maybe useful to have recordings of yourselves not for sale but for promotional purposes?

We do have originals, but we'd probably record covers for our own demo purposes. In two days, we might be able to record 1 - 2 songs.

We recorded "25 or 6 to 4" in the loft of a barn to get into the semi-finals.

Phobic's link on the WMGK page is broken, not that you can do anything about that ...

Yeah, "under construction".

I'm getting "Server not found."

Hmmm I'm getting this and the language in the box changes every few seconds.

Congrats - UT

The Phobic link, on the MGK site, is working now.

You guys have an awesome list of cover songs. Something for just about everyone.

I actually bought and configured the misspelled domain name in case they didn't fix it.

Thanks jester -- that's the goal. (Actually the goal is to find the right mix of stuff that the drinking general public will like; it's the bar owners who eventually hire or fire us.)

Tomorrow, tomorrow, it's only a day away.

Our set:

25 or 6 to 4
Bye Bye Love
Takin Care of Business
Radar Love

"Business" is the required song for all four bands to play. We have developed our own arrangement that is faster and doesn't include the boring middle section where they repeat the words "takin care of business" until you want to vomit. We hope the other bands leave this section in.

Our 25 or 6 to 4 and Radar Love are very strong and we hope to open and close "big".

We will be winning this semi-final and moving on to the final in two weeks.

dude, good luck!

Best of Luck to you guys.

So very strange. Radar Love was in my head all morning as I was getting ready for work.

Good luck! Here's a very badly done encore light:

OK, we lost.

..and we wuz robbed! People said so. In one sense of it, the bands were 50-somethings vs 40-somethings vs 30-somethings vs 20-somethings, and the judges were a 40-something and 2 20-somethings, and thus the 30-somethings won.

But no bitterness, it was fun and we'll just have to win next year instead.

I wish I could have seen you guys. I'll bet it was quite an impressive display.

Oh bad luck UT, next year you'll win.

Every gig is an experience to learn something from.

I think learned the most by watching the 20-somethings be 100% full of themselves. They won the semi-final last year. They were not exactly gracious on stage. And they were most unhappy about losing.