Saturday, 27th December 2008: Here's hoping this bit of news finds you in the finest of frolicking festive funtime felicitations. Lordy but that was contrived!
This is a little note to say this website might be offline for a little bit. Hopefully it won't be at all and (even if it is) we should only be 'down' for a day or less.
We have been paying Lycos for our webspace but (possibly with the 'credit crunch' and all that) they are stopping providing webspace to people. Therefore, we'll have to pack up our virtual belongings (like a dungaree wearing mouse with a little bit of cheese tied up in a napkin on the end of a pole) and move virtual house. What does this mean to you dear reader? Hopefully bugger all. The normal www.BitchfinderGenital.com and www.BitchfinderGenital.co.uk web addresses will still function, once everything is sorted out, and you shouldn't notice any problems. 'Why mention it to us then, you jackass?' I hear you cry. Well, the reason is twofold; Firstly it's an explanation if you try to access this website and it doesn't seem to be working. There's no need to panic at not getting your fix of your beloved Bitchfinder Genital website. Everything should be fine. It's probably just us taking a bit longer to sort this sort of thing out than someone with a clue what they're doing would. Secondly, it may turn out that certain links etc. won't work properly after the move. If that's the case, please let us know and we'll sort it out. We'll try to test the parts of this website but there are so many links etc., it's impractical to imagine we could check them all. Even if we did, there's a chance we would be stupid and get some of it wrong. Your help in this is greatly appreciated.
Plenty of greetings to you at this festive time. Hopefully this website won't bugger up for a while but you know what's happening if it does. Oh, and don't forget you can still keep up with the MySpace, Virb, GigaHitz and Bebo pages even if this website isn't functioning.
UPDATE: It's done. We have 'moved'. All being well, this site should now be functioning properly. Fingers crossed. Let us know if there are any problems please.
Saturday, 22nd November 2008: From here on in (or until we change it again) Kirby Girl will no longer be known as Kirby Girl. Instead, we have ripped off the name Cora Flange (we're like children and it made us laugh) and she will be using it instead. You might not think it's a great nom de plume but it's a hell of a lot better than Kirby Girl was. It was absolutely dreadful. It was a kind of crap in-joke thing which didn't work and wasn't even funny if you knew the context of it.
If you wish to add the all-new Cora Flange to your MySpace friends or whatever, you can still use her old MySpace account. Of course, she only checks it about once every ten months so chances are you'll not hear from her anyway. She's not being deliberately rude.
By the way, if you don't recognise it already or the picture on the left doesn't give it away, the name comes from here. We plagiarise it with the utmost respect to the source material. Hopefully we won't get sued, especially as we don't have anything to sue us for.
So, all being as it is, Bitchfinder Genital is now made up of 3Ply Stagliano and Cora Flange. In reality, of course, it's not really made up of either of those people. We just thought it was fun to make up names for our efforts and not plaster the internet with our real names. Not that we're paranoid or anything.
Tuesday, 18th November 2008: Remember that picture (on the left) from two so-called news items ago? Whether you do or not, it heralds the arrival (How pompous is that?) of a new Bitchfinder Genital song.
Of course (as you'll know if you read the aforementioned news item) the new Bitchfinder Genital song isn't a Bitchfinder Genital song at all. Come to think of it, it's not even new. Hundredweight did it a year or two ago. Well, it's new to us and that's what matters and we like to think we've made it our own. Then again, you can probably make someone's toothbrush your own by sticking it up your arsehole in front of them. I doubt they would want it back after that but it's certainly no better as a result of being 'your own'? We don't think our cover of Barking Dogs will either remind you of someone sticking a toothbrush into their bottom or entice you to follow suit yourself. May we ask, if the need arises, please use a toothbrush which was yours to start off with. Toothbrushes and posteriors make strange bedfellows.
Wasn't there something here about a tune or what have you? Yes yes, that's right. Here we go. Here's the little player for the Bitchfinder Genital version of the Hundredweight song Barking Dogs:
You can hear the original Hundredweight version right here, if you're interested and we also recommend listening to their instrumental version, Prairie Dog, which is (at the time of writing) on their MySpace page.
As usual, you can also listen to/download our version of Barking Dogs in the Tunes section. Also as usual, we hope you like it.
Now where did I put that toothbrush...
Wednesday, 12th November 2008: This isn't even the contrived garbage we normally try to pass off as News but is, rather, a request.
As you may have noticed, we've tried to minorly spruce this website up a little with a new menu bit at the bottom of the screen (It 'should' be there). That's all good and well but the word About in it goes a bit odd if you refresh your webpage (It does with Mozilla Firefox anyway). Did you just refresh your page to see this 'incredible phenomenon'? How you now scoff at our inadequacies.
We don't want our words 'going odd'. It's not right and we won't stand for it. Do you know of any means how we can purge this 'oddness' and 'individualism' from our website? If so, please share your knowledge with us that we may once again be whole, wholesome and holier than thou. Let the wicked demon of 'oddness' be forever stricken out and never talked about again.
Thanks very much to anyone who can and does help. It's not a major problem (and you may not have noticed it if you hadn't read this) but it's eating into our brains gradually and that's to say nothing of the pressure it's applying to our tits.
Friday, 7th November 2008: Being the backslapping bastards we are, Bitchfinder Genital is going to do a cover of a song by fellow bedroom based popsters Hundredweight. The song in question is named Barking Dogs and the original version can be downloaded here, if you wish to have an mp3 of it. Alternatively, you could always listen to the original in the little player (just below this bit). It don't matter much to us none neither way. The song was featured on Hundredweight's 23rd Parallel CD, which they'll send you for free if you ask them nicely and they have any copies left. Just thinking, we didn't ask if we could post Hundredweight's song here. I hope they don't mind. They may not wish to be associated with us.
Should you wish to hear more of/know more about Hundredweight, please have a look at their website and their MySpace page.
If we don't give up because we think you'll just laugh at our version of Barking Dogs, it should be in the oven simmering soon and ready to serve within a couple of weeks. Maybe sooner.
In return, Hundredweight may be doing a cover of a Bitchfinder Genital tune but they might hear our version of Barking Dogs and punch us squarely in the face instead.
Friday, 17th October 2008: Not quite ready to curl up in their little straw filled cardboard boxes and hibernate for the winter just yet, Bitchfinder Genital has produced yet another semi-new tune. This time round, the paltry insult comes in the form of another remake. The tune getting 'the once over' on this occasion is none other than old much hated loved favourite Shellfish Nut. Remember it? Well now you won't have to as there's a new version.
As ever, we changed the name slightly in order to differentiate the two versions of the tune. Therefore, the new version is called Shelley Fishnuts. That was the direction we chose to take rather than call it Selfish Cun... I think we made the right choice. We may be juvenile but we try not to be that crass.
Rather excitingly, Kirby Girl (If that is her real name) debuts on bass on this one. That should help the general quality of tuneage somewhat. All being well, this should be the shape of things to come. Hoorah! Now all we have to do is get her a better internet/music pseudonym. Please forward any suggestions to us.
You'll know by now, you can listen to/download it in the Tunes section or with this little player (Below here. Be patient). Please do your best to enjoy our efforts. Thank you.
Saturday, 13th September 2008: Well whaddaya know? After all their inaction, Bitchfinder Genital has recently ambushed you with an explosion of sound. Not to let up just yet, here is yet another rehashed old new tune to torture please you with. What's more, this one doesn't start with the letter B, C or S. Wonders will never cease! This tune is a remake of the old piece of crap classic Froo Froo and, as we're dead witty, it's called New Froo. All being good and right in the world, you should notice it now has some vocals and is in a little better time than the old version was. We hope you like it.
You don't need us to tell you to look it up in the Tunes section (To play and/or download) or listen to it below. We hope you enjoy your listening. If nothing else, at least it won't cost you anything. Good old Bitchfinder Genital, fighting this new fangled credit crunch we keep hearing so much about through our ear trumpets.
Wednesday, 10th September 2008: Many many years after first writing the main bass riff for The Cheeses Please the Frozen Peas In Ways They Don't Foresee it's complete, or is it? Well, kind of. It's a bit different than it used to be and now has the slightly changed title of The Cheeses Tease the Frozen Peas With Tales They Can't Foresee.
As usual, you can right-click and 'Save as' (or whatever is right) here, to download The Cheeses Tease the Frozen Peas With Tales They Can't Foresee, go to the Tunes section to listen to it in the wee player thingamajig or use this little fella:
The old version still remains in Tunes as The Cheeses Please the Frozen Peas In Ways They Don't Foresee. Apologies for any confusion there. Hopefully the latter version is the superior one. Please let us know whether or not you feel that is the case. As we worked pretty hard on the new version, we'll cry if you prefer the earlier one but we'll gladly accept your comments to your face before belittling you behind your back when we're sure you can hear us and beat us up. It won't be to your face anyway as it's over the internet but let us not let that get in the way of a good ramble.
Right enough, we did put quite a bit of work into The Cheeses Tease the Frozen Peas With Tales They Can't Foresee. Well, quite a bit for us anyway. We've been working on it for a couple of hours a day pretty much since Surf's Down was uploaded here (The 29th of August). That's about a dozen days at an average of, say, two and a half hours per day (although some days were considerably more). Blimey! About thirty hours on one song is a lot for us. Gawd! It should really be better than it is. We probably shouldn't have revealed all that. If it wasn't for all the mistakes, it could probably have been done in less than half the time.
Babbling? Surely not. Now is the time to shut up and wish for your enjoyment of the new tune. We hope you like our Big Muff Pi (not that we're juvenile).
Friday, 29th August 2008: Bitchfinder Genital has created another tune. Is this something to rejoice about or something to cry into your tea over? Please have a listen and decide for yourselves. By the way, the name of this song is Surf's Down, in case you were interested.
It's a tune which started off with a, pretty cliched, surfy guitar riff on the Galaxie IV (A lovely sounding guitar and amazing for the price) and built up into something with little resemblance to its initial form. We hope we didn't ruin what might otherwise have been a good tune. All being well, we may have improved on the original. It's less 'surfy' now but we had already decided on the title so it's sticking.
Surf's Down is the first song we used the Roland kit on. Please let us know if you think it's an improvement. Honestly, we can't notice an awful lot of difference aurally but we're complete Philistines.
Before we go, here is a link to download it (Right-click and 'Save as' or whatever seems right). Thank you. As always, we hope you like it.
Saturday, 23rd August, 2008: Oh joy! Oh rapture! The world is a wonderful place and Bitchfinder Genital is very materialistic. Ah, but wait... ...any problems? Well, yes there bloody is. Although we have now got our lovely Roland 'TD9KX' electronic drum kit, that's all we've got. The rack it mounts onto (Now now, that's quite enough bawdiness) wasn't quite so forthcoming. Therefore, we've got three toms, three cymbals, a snare, a kick pad, a drum module and a load of wires and fittings without one of these! Aaaargh! Aaaargh again! As luck would have it, we still have our old faithful Traps kit and, with a bit of thought, we were able to fit the Roland kit vaguely onto it (Although the purpose built stand would be considerably more suitable for it).
On first impressions, the TD9KX is very impressive, lovely and does everything we could wish for, however, what it really brought home is that infamous 'law of diminishing returns'. For the money, the Traps kit is obviously better value. With absolutely nothing better to do on a Saturday night (Unfortunately this is completely true) here is a boring table, of personal opinion, comparing the two kits head to head:
Traps E400 and Alesis DM5 |
||
Manufacturer's Retail Price: |
£1449 |
About £515 combined |
Toms: |
3 x dual zone PD-85 pads with internal triggers and mesh heads. |
3 x single zone mesh head and external triggers (The triggers are fitted to the rim of the tom and overlap onto the edge of the mesh head). The toms are the normal kind of sizes one would find on a standard acoustic kit and each has six tuning pegs. Apparently standard batter heads can be fitted to use it as an acoustic kit, although Bitchfinder Genital would like to point out we have not done so and it's not our fault if you do it and it sounds like shite. |
Snare: |
PD-105 snare pad. Again, the rim and head make different sounds (Default seems to be, unsurprisingly, a rimshot for the rim). On first impressions, this is a really responsive snare and doesn't miss any beats (Although Bitchfinder Genital probably can't do a fast enough roll to truly test it). It is simple to use and very effective. Like the toms, it has an integrated trigger and is smaller than most acoustic snares would be. |
A 'dual trigger' snare. Dual trigger is in inverted commas as the DM5 doesn't appear to have a stereo snare input and, therefore, only produces a single snare sound. Legend has it that rimshots are possible with the Traps snare but nigh on impossible to do. Obviously they're completely impossible for Bitchfinder Genital as we don't have the technology in this kit. It's not a major loss but the simplicity of the Roland's rimshots is fabulous. Also (And this may be down to not setting the triggers and the DM5 up properly) we found it occasionally missed the odd beat (About one in ten) when we attempted to play quickly. At least we think it wasn't us... |
Ride Cymbal: |
CY-12R/C dual trigger cymbal. Wow! This is a great electronic ride cymbal. You can hit the bell, the edge and even choke it. I'm sure there's plenty of lewd remark to be made about all that but who cares? It's a hell of a cymbal. The mounts are good as they keep the cymbal from turning around, thus making sure the 'hit zone' is always where one wants it. Bitchfinder Genital likes this very much indeed. |
A pretty standard Traps ride cymbal. Actually, the ride, hi-hat and crash all look like they're the same cymbal and they probably are. This is where the TD9-KX holds a larger advantage over the Traps kit than with the toms. Each of the Traps cymbals is single zone ie. it sounds the same no matter when one hits it and it cannot be choked. It's not crippling (especially at the price) and the cymbals are pretty good to play but the Roland is definitely better here. The Traps cymbals have a tendency to turn round a bit during play but this could be remedied without too much bother, although it's obviously better not to have to. |
Crash Cymbal: |
CY-8 dual trigger cymbal. Again, although not up to the lofty standards of the ride, this is a super wee cymbal which does everything we could want. Two different strike zones and chokable. Super! |
A basic Traps cymbal. Good response and feel but no chokability and only single zone. |
| Hi Hats | CY-5 cymbal with an FD-8 controller. A good combination. Although it might not be to everyone's pleasing, the separate cymbal and controller works well for us. It lets one put his or her foot where s/he likes, rather than it having to be directly below the cymbal. Hopefully that makes sense. There are enough different sounds available to be reasonably close to an acoustic hi hat but not quite there. At our level and for our purposes, it's more than good enough. |
Another basic Traps cymbal housed on the Traps hi hat stand. This is where some people might prefer the feel of the Traps. The hi hat stand is an actual normal acoustic style hi hat stand with a little doohickey below where the cymbal is attached. This 'doohickey' has a small springy pipe coming out which gets compressed as the hi hats are closed and decompresses as the hi hats are opened. This lets them work in a very standard acoustic styled hi hat fashion. Alas, despite this, the kit only provides the sounds 'open hi hats', 'closed hi hats' and 'closing hi hats'. There is no 'partially closed' and the 'closing hi hats' sound is merely a trigger noise one is not able to control by, for example, closing slowly. Again, it's not crippling and is certainly an impressive enough setup for the price of the kit. |
| Bass/Kick Drum: | KD-8 kick pad. Very responsive but we found the back 'legs' wouldn't fold out enough to let it sit flat on the floor properly. The area where it connects with the kick pedal kind of sits up in the air and that's not good. It means it's not making a good enough contact with the rug it's on to keep it in place and it keeps wandering off. Making/getting something to put below the 'floating' area should remedy it but really one shouldn't have to do that with a kit which costs about £1449 (Or any kit really). |
Full diameter mesh headed kick drum. As with the other Traps drums, apparently this can be used acoustically with the right heads too but don't blame us etc. etc... |
| Drum Module: | Roland TD9. Fifty in built kits, recording facilities, good backlit display, user friendly buttons and menus, aesthetically pleasing, lots of funny tunes professing to be from different genres of music, metronome, compact, etc. etc... The TD9 can do quite a lot. Being able to record what one plays is super. It means s/he can drum an idea to a song and play it back whilst playing another instrument along to it. That is a huge boon to Bitchfinder Genital, where we all do as much as we can (Or attempt to do that which we can't). The sounds seem pretty damn good too. We're very impressed by this and we haven't even used the USB port or any of that palaver. |
Alesis DM5. It's a fairly basic drum module but it has loads of sounds, twenty built in kits, a basic backlit display and is pretty easy to use. One could gripe that it's a bit on the big side but it fits nicely enough onto the Traps kit and doesn't obstruct anything it shouldn't. It's not up to the standard of the TD9 but it's not even close in price range and, again, gets good marks for value at the price. It's a shame it doesn't have more stereo inputs to attach dual trigger toms, cymbals etc. As written above, it is kind of basic but it's, at the very least, functional and doesn't fail horribly in any area whilst not being truly amazing in any either. |
| Cabling: | Very neat, well labelled with 1/4" jacks for the kit's 1/4" jack sockets and a funny connector one might get on a computer for the drum module. All the leads are neatly held together and it makes things less messy than it would be otherwise. |
Kind of thin wire with 1/8" plugs for the 1/8" trigger sockets and 1/8" to 1/4" jack converters to plug into the drum module. Not as neat as the Roland's cabling but that could be remedied with a few cable ties and good use of the rack mounted cable tidies. Although it's kind of flimsy looking cabling with 1/8" jacks, we've never experienced even the slightest hint of a problem with it. |
| Kick Pedal: | None provided. Buy your own, you skinflint. After all, the kit only retails at one and a half grand. You can't expect that to include a kick pedal. |
Traps kick pedal. Not too shabby. It's fairly mid/heavy duty and works as well as most acoustic pedals we've used. Just remember to put the felt side of the beater against the kick drum head. The rubber one wears the head out and then you have to buy a new one and vacuum tiny pieces of rubber out of the inside of your kick drum. So we've heard anyway. Of course we wouldn't be stupid enough to do that, would we? |
| Rack: | MDS-9. We've no idea what it's like (yet) but it looks good in the pictures. EDIT [26.08.08]: Got the rack today and it's very comparable with the Traps rack. It seems like the tubing in the Roland rack is a little lighter and the cymbal stands don't seem as heavy duty (although better suited for their own kit) but it's firmly put together, easily more than strong enough for its purpose, stable and simple to adjust as it has little wingnut type knobs to tighten and loosen the joints. |
Chrome plated 1 1/2" steel tubing. Quite snazzy looking and reasonably solid. The only bit which bothers us is the unsupported 'arm' the drum module sits out on. We, of course, haven't ever had even a sniff of a hint of a rumour of a piece of bother with this but we're paranoid and would have liked a 'leg' at the 'far end' of it. We're stupid. The rack is plenty stable and seems to be surprisingly good quality, given the RRP/MRP. 'She has a lovely rack, to be sure'. One needs to make sure it's well tightened with a drum key. Thankfully Traps supply a good drum key for the cause. It's got an L shape and is Allen key at the end of the long 'leg' and drum key at the other end. It's a great little tool for use with this kit. |
| Overall: | The 'Roland TD9KX' is, we think, a better kit than the 'Traps E400 with Alesis DM5' but we would have been completely livid if that wasn't the case. It appears a big, well known company like Roland is able to charge a little 'over the odds' compared to Traps as the value of each kit isn't even close. The kits themselves aren't anything like as enormously different in quality as the price would suggest. In fact, the Traps kit has some parts which are better than the Roland kit. We really wouldn't have been surprised if a kit like the Traps one would have retailed for around £700. |
|
Gawd, that went on a bit. Well, there you go. We hope you enjoyed that particularly long and boring rant but can be sure you didn't.
Wednesday, 20th August, 2008: Flaming Nora! Those Bitchfinder Genital boys (That is to say one 'rapidly getting craggier/chubbier' male and a swankstress lady) have only gone and done it again. Two new songs in three days! That's pretty amazing for us. What's even more amazing is that today's song is actually a new song (Not a rehash of an old song) with lyrics and everything. Innit brilliant!
Today's burnt offering is called Nathan Grantham and, like Croc before it, was recorded about five months ago. Since then, it sat gathering dust until we got off our behinds and did some half baked attempt at production on it.
Did you listen to it? Can you tell what the subject matter of Nathan Grantham is? It's not big or clever and the picture on this news item is a bit of a giveaway to its geekiness. That makes for a couple of Bitchfinder Genital songs/tunes in this vein.
Monday, 18th August, 2008: You didn't ask for it and we imagine you sure as hell didn't want it but we've redone Croc. The only part of the original still 'standing' is the drums, which one may rightly question our decision to keep. We re-recorded this months ago, about the same time as the forthcoming DI Dick and Froo Froo remakes but totally forgot about it. Blatantly refusing to listen to public opinion, or lack thereof, this afternoon was spent cutting all the obviously hissy parts out of the recording, attempting to EQ it all in a very haphazard manner and shoving it onto a CD.
This version of Croc contains some very basic piano, EBow and funny noises.
We're not 'that' stupid and know Croc isn't exactly a beloved song. We know Bitchfinder Genital has more members than listeners and that includes when BfG only consists of one person but we hope you get some enjoyment from the new version of Croc and think it was worth spending the time reworking it. Fingers crossed that it's an improvement. As ever, please go to the usual source, listen to it and let us know your thoughts.
Tuesday, 12th August 2008: There is a few pieces of so-called news here but, as ever, some is more newsworthy than other parts. We'll start with the section which vaguely passes for news...
In addition to the MySpace, Virb, Bebo and (rather crappy) Last.fm webpages, Bitchfinder Genital now has a page on GigaHitz. Honestly, we hadn't heard of GigaHitz until Barry from Hundredweight was kind enough to spread the word about it. As ever, any tunes listed there are free to download and it contains some of the usual blethering you get here but with slightly different words. At the moment, Bitchfinder Genital is the only band listed under their 'Film Scores and Musical Theatre' category. It's as apt a category as any. We would love to do 'Film Scores and Musical Theatre' for anyone desperate and low budget enough to ask us. Generally, although not yet popular, GigaHitz seems like a good website so please take a look.
In other non-news type news, there should soon be a new addition to the Bitchfinder Genital fold. We have ordered a Roland TD9KX drum kit and are expecting its arrival towards the end of the month. It's not Roland's fantastic looking top end kit (or even close to approaching it) but it should be pretty good by our standards. Hopefully you'll be able to hear it featured on some brand new recordings in September. Now if only we could drum. Oh, and if you know someone interested in the old Traps kit and Alesis DM5 drum module, please let us know.
The mention of 'new recordings' above leads us to the last bit of non-news news. We recorded a couple of tunes in March, still haven't done the production (ie. blindly turning knobs and pushing buttons with our fingers crossed) on them and should get our arses into gear and stick those up soon. They are a remake of DI Dick, a remake of Froo Froo and a new song called Nathan Grantham. If fingers get removed from arseholes, you can expect them in the near future. We also have plans to knock together a few covers, not that we have any right/permission to do so. We may well call it Bitchfinder Genital Makes You Now Hate Some Songs You Previously Used To Like, or we might not. Once we get au fait-ish with the new drum kit, that should hopefully come together. All in all, you can expect considerably more output from Bitchfinder Genital in the last third of this year than the first two-thirds combined (Which wouldn't be tough).
By the way, we trimmed the fat and now all the pre-2008 News is in Old News. That should make this page load more quickly. Sorry for the delays in writing stuff up here and thanks for your patience my Bitchsketeers.
Tuesday, 17th June 2008: I (3Ply that is) ordered myself one of those EBow doohickeys and, as luck would have it, it arrived today. For those not familiar with an EBow (Including me up until a few days ago) it's a little device one uses, with an electric guitar, instead of a plectrum. With the guitar set to the neck pickup, one slides this little bugger along the string one wishes to play and it makes a funny noise a little bit like someone playing a bowed instrument (Although more like a lot of crackling and unwanted noise with me so far). You can hear some examples of the noises it makes on their website.
I've got to admit (Although I've no idea why I wouldn't want to, as I'm making it seem here) I was impressed with EBow's packaging. Normally I expect such items to come in a wee formed bit of plastic attached to a cardboard backing at best and, more often than not, either something akin to a sandwich bag or just the packing the shop has sent it out in. Well, in the EBow's case, that's not so. The outer packing is quite a thick shiny cardboard reusable box (While I know that's not fancy, it's better than one you've to rip to open and then chuck out) and inside the instructions are well printed in a couple of colours (Not the customary ropey photocopy or black and white misaligned printout). Additionally, you get a tiny little CD/DVD with software on it to demonstrate how to use an EBow (I've not looked at it yet), a 'no plectrums' badge, an EBow sticker (It pays to advertise) and a nice little felt style bag, with a draw cord, for keeping one's EBow in. I know it's not exactly amazing to get that kind of fluffy stuff but it impressed me and made me less 'hmmm' about the £70GBP I paid for it.
So far, I've only meddled with the EBow a little but it's very enjoyable. It provides a sound I've not been able to produce before with a guitar. A lot of it is to do with the volume swells one gets from moving the EBow closer to and further away from the neck pickup but there's more to it than just that. Something I've read mentioned on the EBow website is the expression 'infinite sustain' and I get what they mean now. I had some idea what it would be like before but it's more vivid in practice rather than theory. All it really means is the note you're playing keeps on and on and on and on and on etc. ringing out so long as the EBow is held over the pickup in the right place. It might not sound like much but it's an odd and, I hope, useful effect to have in one's repertoire. Also, more importantly, it's fun to use. In these early stages, I've found it easier to use with the thinner strings and particularly the g and b'. There are little grooves in the bottom of the EBow to line it up with the strings on each side of the string you're currently playing and, so far, I find it a bit tricky to use it with the E and e', with their not having 'each side strings' to hold the EBow against. I think this is something I'll find easier with a bit of practice. I'm generally pretty clumsy with it at the moment and think practice will help a lot. I've found myself kind of trying to strum with it or forgetting to move it towards the pickup to increase volume etc. It's not yet a natural device for me to use but it's more practical already than I thought it may have been. I don't think it'll take particularly long to be able to use to an enjoyable and reasonably tuneful level. I doubt I'll ever be any sort of virtuoso with it but that's more due to my fairly crappy guitar playing than any problem with the device.
Enough rambling. I'll leave it there. Just thought I would give the EBow a mention as it is (To me and probably very few other people) an interesting little fellow. Thanks for reading
3Ply
By the way, in other news, you might get a couple of new tunes soon. Keep your ears peeled, or whatever you do with your ears.
Friday, 14th March 2008: I've got slightly removed from the dark ages and begun incorporating a computer into the music Bitchfinder Genital will be making in the future. It's nothing complicated. All I'll be doing (At this point anyway) is using a laptop to run Korg Legacy Digital Collection as a sound maker. There is a phenomenal amount of sounds on it. I'm very impressed. Of course, none of Bitchfinder Genital can play the keyboards to any standard yet but don't worry, Piano for Dummies is waiting in the wings. By the time it has been thoroughly digested and the lessons therein learned, we hope to reach the high standards of play associated with the likes of Ray from 2 Unlimited.
Wittering my way back to the whole 'PC for music' scenario, I've been using a little Edirol UM-2EX USB MIDI interface with our PC but I'm not sure it's the best piece of hardware for the purpose. It was pretty cheap (About £25 or so) but it'll still be a shame to probably only use it a few times before changing it for something else. Its failing, for my purpose, is really the onboard sound card's too. The time between my pressing a key on the control keyboard and the sound coming out (aka latency) is just that little bit too much to make it as practical as I would like. It's something I could probably work round but would rather not have to. I'm sure it wouldn't be especially expensive to replace it with something which will perform more suitably. Any suggestions of suitable hardware would be greatly appreciated. For the moment, the little Edirol UM-2EX will have to do. I think it would be fine if everything was sequenced together but I'm a bit of a caveman and haven't got that far into technology yet. I've got a drummer's mentality but can't drum much.
As an aside, for anyone interested, I still haven't got my Stagg 3/4 size electric double bass. Sigh.
Wednesday, 20th February 2008: I'm not sure whether this passes for News, even at my level, or not but I've fiddled about with a crappy looking Last.fm page Bitchfinder Genital has had lying dormant for the last year and a bit. It's still not very good but you can download a couple of old Tunes from it anyway. Unfortunately it appears the quality of the mp3s I've been producing more recently is so shoddy, Last.fm refuses to let me post them up on their website. I think they want a bit rate of 120 Kb/s and a lot of mine only have 80 Kb/s. Can I tell the difference and do I even know what that means in practice? No but that's irrelevant and my not detecting it certainly doesn't mean there's no discernable quality dip. Hence, I've only got a couple of older tunes up there. If you're interested in looking at it, please left-click here.
Oh, while we're on the subject of Bitchfinder Genital's web empire, I see Tagworld page is going to cease to exist in its current form at the end of March (Yes, I do deem the name of a month important enough to put in bold type this time. Another time, I might not. I'm such a loose cannon! Woo hoo!). It's going to Flux (I'm not being rude, that's what it's called) and it doesn't appear they allow one to upload tunes to it. Therefore, it's pretty useless for Bitchfinder Genital purposes. Now, I know some of you might think it's better to have a Bitchfinder Genital webpage with no music on it but you can be polite and keep such opinions to yourselves.
Nearly forgot (Or rather did and then came back to it)... I ordered one of these fellows and should get it in early March (No bold writing this time. Never will you find a cannon so loose). I'm not expecting the quality to be anything special but it might be 'different' and 'different' is good. At least it's not a major financial outlay compared to the amount a lot of other people spend on instruments. I'm kind of amassing a load of cheap crap instead of a couple of good instruments and I rather like it that way. Obviously I would rather have a load of quality instruments but I think the stuff I've got is more than good enough for the level I play at and I couldn't possibly afford expensive instruments. Getting back to the instrument in question:- If you're interested in reading about this Stagg 3/4 size cheap electric double bass, please left-click here. Thank you. As it's a link directly to the Stagg website, you will of course get a completely objective description of the 3/4 size electric double bass and all their products.
Wednesday, 6th February 2008: In the interests of fairness/not making people feel left out and for my own personal reasons (I've got two 5 string basses, one with a low B, and one with a high b/c, depending on how I wish to tune it ) here's my version of my Helmholtz table for a 22 fret bass, including a low B, and a high c. If you're the sort of person who has a bass or guitar with more strings than that or uses funny tunings, chances are you know all this already and it would be useless to you. I need patronise such musical aficionados no longer.
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
c |
c# |
d |
d# |
e |
f |
f# |
g |
g# |
a' |
a'# |
b' |
c' |
c'# |
d' |
d'# |
e' |
f' |
f'# |
g' |
g'# |
a'' |
a''# |
G |
G# |
a |
a# |
b |
c |
c# |
d |
d# |
e |
f |
f# |
g |
g# |
a' |
a'# |
b' |
c' |
c'# |
d' |
d'# |
e' |
f' |
D |
D# |
E |
F |
F# |
G |
G# |
a |
a# |
b |
c |
c# |
d |
d# |
e |
f |
f# |
g |
g# |
a' |
a'# |
b' |
c' |
A |
A# |
B |
C |
C# |
D |
D# |
E |
F |
F# |
G |
G# |
a |
a# |
b |
c |
c# |
d |
d# |
e |
f |
f# |
g |
E, |
F, |
F,# |
G, |
G,# |
A |
A# |
B |
C |
C# |
D |
D# |
E |
F |
F# |
G |
G# |
a |
a# |
b |
c |
c# |
d |
B, |
C, |
C,# |
D, |
D,# |
E, |
F, |
F,# |
G, |
G,# |
A |
A# |
B |
C |
C# |
D |
D# |
E |
E |
F# |
G |
G# |
a |
If you would like a printable version of this, please click here.
Saturday, 26th January 2008: It's hardly News when I'm writing about something which has been about since the 19th century but it's news to me as I'm ignorant and hadn't heard of it before. The 'it' in question is the Helmholtz pitch notation system. I'm a bit of a nob and not really au fait with the intricacies of it but the main point is it now lets me know how to write down one note and show it's in a different octave from another. Before this, I had been writing, for example, 'A' and then another 'A' with an arrow pointing upwards or downwards or whatever made sense to me at the time. Sometimes it would be two arrows pointing down to denote two octaves down and other times I wouldn't write anything and would try to remember or would write 'two octaves down' beside a note. It was a bit clunky and random. The late Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz has (Along with Wikipedia) revealed a simpler method of writing notes. [NB Of course, simply being able to write musical notation would be considerably better still but I'll get to that in time].
Something I'm not sure about is whether the punctuation used to denote the different octaves comes before or after the symbol for a sharp or a flat. For example, is it c#' or c'#? So long as I know what I'm getting at, I suppose it's not particularly important but it would be nice to get it right. I'll probably chance across the correct way when I get round researching how to read and write music (The pitch in written music makes sense but I don't know much about it beyond that as I'm not entirely sure how long a quaver etc. lasts in real time).
NB To use g# as an example; A g# is the same as an a' flat but I didn't think I needed to write the flats on the tables as well as the sharps. In case you don't know (As far as I know and I could be wrong):- A# is the same as B flat (Normally written as, what looks like, a lower case italicised letter b eg. Bb would be B flat. In properly written music, the 'flat symbol' is normally written a little lower than the name of the note but I can't do that here as I'm a dullard and don't know how), C# is the same as D flat, D# is the same as E flat, F# is the same as G flat and G# is the same as a flat. This carries on upwards and downwards in pitch so, for example, A,,# is the same as B,, flat and a''# is the same as b'' flat. Hopefully I'm right about all that. Please contact me threatening to punch me in the head if I'm wrong. Sorry if that seems rather patronising to anyone or isn't explained very well. Sorry also if you found it all a bit boring.
Anyway, if I'm right, I think this should be the notation of a 22 fret (The numbers refer to the fret being played) four string bass guitar tuned in the standard E A D G (Or E, A D G using this system) fashion. If I've completely ballaxed this up, please let me know. Hopefully it's okay and yes, one of the main reasons I bothered putting it up here was to do the 'homework' of writing it out and reminding myself what it was.
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
G |
G# |
a |
a# |
b |
c |
c# |
d |
d# |
e |
f |
f# |
g |
g# |
a' |
a'# |
b' |
c' |
c'# |
d' |
d'# |
e' |
f' |
D |
D# |
E |
F |
F# |
G |
G# |
a |
a# |
b |
c |
c# |
d |
d# |
e |
f |
f# |
g |
g# |
a' |
a'# |
b' |
c' |
A |
A# |
B |
C |
C# |
D |
D# |
E |
F |
F# |
G |
G# |
a |
a# |
b |
c |
c# |
d |
d# |
e |
f |
f# |
g |
E, |
F, |
F,# |
G, |
G,# |
A |
A# |
B |
C |
C# |
D |
D# |
E |
F |
F# |
G |
G# |
a |
a# |
b |
c |
c# |
d |
Hopefully the following is right about a 22 fret six string guitar tuned to the standard E A D G B E (Or E a d g b' e' using this system, I think) setting. Again, please let me know if I've got it all wrong.
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
e' |
f' |
f'# |
g' |
g'# |
a'' |
a''# |
b'' |
c'' |
c''# |
d'' |
d''# |
e'' |
f'' |
f''# |
g'' |
g''# |
a''' |
a'''# |
b''' |
c''' |
c'''# |
d''' |
b' |
c' |
c'# |
d' |
d'# |
e' |
f' |
f'# |
g' |
g'# |
a'' |
a''# |
b'' |
c'' |
c''# |
d'' |
d''# |
e'' |
f'' |
f''# |
g'' |
g''# |
a''' |
g |
g# |
a' |
a'# |
b' |
c' |
c'# |
d' |
d'# |
e' |
f' |
f'# |
g' |
g'# |
a'' |
a''# |
b'' |
c'' |
c''# |
d'' |
d''# |
e'' |
f'' |
d |
d# |
e |
f |
f# |
g |
g# |
a' |
a'# |
b' |
c' |
c'# |
d' |
d'# |
e' |
f' |
f'# |
g' |
g'# |
a'' |
a''# |
b'' |
c'' |
a |
a# |
b |
c |
c# |
d |
d# |
e |
f |
f# |
g |
g# |
a' |
a'# |
b' |
c' |
c'# |
d' |
d'# |
e' |
f' |
f'# |
g' |
E |
F |
F# |
G |
G# |
a |
a# |
b |
c |
c# |
d |
d# |
e |
f |
f# |
g |
g# |
a' |
a'# |
b' |
c' |
c'# |
d' |
If that makes any sense to you, seems to be right (I'm making absolutely no guarantees about that) and seems like it might be of use to you, please click here for a version which won't use up all the green ink in your printer or print out all the other so called News.
Sunday, 20th January 2008: As with almost all the recent News, this is simply in relation to a website update and nothing musical whatsoever. Continuing from the earlier 'excitement' which was the new music player on the Tunes page, this is another tuneage update. I've changed the page so it's more stripped down. Rather than having loads of information on the page and a lot of scrolling, clicking on the -Info- links will now make a little window pop up with the spiel about the tune in it [Move the mouse pointer over the word Close to close the window when you've finished reading]. Go to Tunes and give it a go please. If you forget what that section used to look like, please click here.
If you have an opinion one way or the other, please let me know which way you prefer it. Old or new?
Do you miss the rambling information of the original or do you prefer the look and feel of the way it is now?
Will anyone ever reply to this? Probably not. Thanks if you do and a curse on you and your family if you don't.
Thursday, 17th January 2008: It's not much to talk of or write about but there's now a little comments box for you to contact us via. It's not fancy but it lets you contact us in another way and that's good, isn't it? As you might have already noticed, I've put a link to one at the bottom of the last couple of News stories. Please feel free to comment on the stories (Possibly pertaining to their lack of newsworthiness). The comments won't actually appear here but will rather be sent directly to us.
-
Do you think the comments box is a good idea?
-
Do you hate the comments box?
-
Don't fester in darkness any longer.
-
Comment and let us know why you love/hate it/us/everything.
Wednesday, 16th January 2008: This is a little behind the times but, as you may have noticed, Bitchfinder Genital's website is now located at www.BitchfinderGenital.com. You can still use the www.BitchfinderGenital.co.uk link to it if you like. Either way makes very little difference as the latter just forwards you to the former, which is exactly the same website as the latter was. There you go. I'm glad to have cleared that up.
The main contact e-mail address is now Info@BitchfinderGenital.com too but, as with the website, Info@BitchfinderGenital.co.uk will still work. Sleep well in your beds with that knowledge.
While wasting away the hours shifting the information over to the new address (It isn't as stressful as moving house but it's not as exciting either), I changed the Mailing List section so it's less clunky now. Please have a look and see what you think. Oh, and while you're at it, there are a few new photos up in the Images section too. if you're interested. It's all go here, isn't it.
Adding to the 'fun', I've just finished adding a new music player to the Tunes section. It's a bit less 'clunky' than the previous effort was. I nabbed it from somewhere and now can't remember where that was. Thanks to whoever I got it from anyway. It's fairly straightforward and shouldn't give any problems. It runs via the Adobe Flash software so you'll, I imagine, need that to be able to use it. Chances are (Something like a 96% chance) you've already got it. If not, you can click here to read about it and see if you want to download it. The software required (Flash Player) is free. That's good! Getting back to the Tunes, I hope everything works for you and you like the new format.
Sunday, 30th December 2007: As promised, I've cut a lot of the Old News out of this page. That should make this News page you're currently on download a bit more quickly. All the News from 2006 is now archived and can be found here. As you may have surmised, it can also be selected from the [Old News] link, at the bottom of the screen.
If you want back here after looking at the [Old News] just click on the News link, at the bottom of the screen silly!
Before I go, please let me take this opportunity to wish a very Happy New Year to y'all! Hopefully said new year will contain plenty of Bitchfinder Genital goodness. I'm still reading my copy of Home Recording for Musicians for Dummies and hope it'll be a regular Holy Grail type of discovery for me. More likely than not, it'll let me know the difference in a couple of types of lead and might mean I know what MIDI stands for but at least that's more than I knew beforehand.
Wednesday, 26th December 2007: What exciting stuff did Bitchfinder Genital get up to at Christmas, I hear you (not) ask? Given Bitchfinder Genital's status as social gentry, one would have imagined a week in the Bahamas or perhaps just a few days on the French Riviera. Not this year. Instead, I spent part of the day setting up a Bitchfinder Genital page on Virb. Just like when one smooches the ladies but does not request their moniker, 'That's living alright!' As you would guess, if you don't already know, Virb is almost exactly the same as MySpace, Bebo, Tagworld and all that sort of 'social networking' internet gubbins. It's a bit easier to use than some of the others are and probably looks a bit better but it's really just the same old thing. As usual, expect the odd bit of Bitchfinder Genital information on it but come here for the real meaty nuggets.
In other news, we bought a PA and what do you know, it turns out I can't sing. Dummies Guides to 'not being crap at everything musically' have been ordered. Only time will reveal their value. Hopefully Bitchfinder Genital will be to music what Barry Bethel was to weight loss. They sure ain't likely to make me much worse anyway. Three cheers for self-improvement.
Oh, and the only other bit is sticking the wee BfG 'stars' in-between the News bits, so it's easier to determine where one wittering stops and another starts. While I was doing it, I noticed what a huge amount of drivel there is on this page. I'm going to have to take all the old stuff off and archive it. It probably takes ages for this page to load fully. Sorry about that.
Monday, 3rd December 2007: Holy crap! There's a new song. Would you Adam and Eve it? Just when you thought it was safe to take off the earmuffs, those darned Bitchfinder Genital cads have only gone and done it again.
The new 'aural masterpiece' is called Frak!. The name is plagiarised completely from my nerdy youth (I'm still a nerd now but no longer a youth) but I'll not tell you where from and you can do the hard work of looking it up on Google for yourself. Long gone are the days of detective like searching to find out information from word of mouth and dusty old tomes. Thank the heavens for that!
As you will have no doubt become accustomed to, Frak! may be downloaded from the obvious links and from the Tunes section of this very website, doggone it! If anyone wants to use it to stick vocals to and send back to me, I wouldn't hate them for it. Like my normal self, it doesn't have any vocals. I really should write something for more my little tunes.
Something kind of newsworthy in a Bitchfinder Genital way is that I'm currently harassing Kirby Girl incessantly into playing the bass. She's being very patient with me (You really have no idea what a tit I am when it comes to this sort of thing) and progressing pretty well for someone with about a fortnight's bass playing behind her. Hopefully this means there will be another in the Bitchfinder Genital fold and it might stop me being so drab. Three cheers for not me! Hoorah! Huzzah! Some other cheer related word to bring it up to three!
That's about it for now. If I've nothing more to report beforehand, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone, whether it's a time you celebrate or not.
Wednesday, 3rd October 2007: Despite the lack of action from Bitchfinder Genital recently, I've still had the cheek to set up one of those Cafe Press shop thingies. Joyously, it's completely free and easy to set one up and only took me a few hours. Well, it took me an hour or two, then I discovered I had done it incorrectly and had to go back and stick all my images on it again. Ah well, it seems to be working now so please Click here to look at the Bitchfinder Genital shop. You can also left-click on the new link to it at the bottom of the Bitchfinder Genital website. In both cases, it'll open in a new window (Or a new tab if you've got that kind of web browser).
As I've never bought anything from Cafe Press, I can't comment on the quality or their service. Hopefully it'll all be good and you can get some stuff if you're interested. I'll be totally amazed if anyone does make a purchase but I would also be exceptionally happy. I'm not making a penny from any prospective sales whatsoever. All the items are at Cafe Press' minimum price and they're the only ones making any money out of it.
Monday, 2nd July 2007: This is yet another of those nothings which could be better described as 'rambling thoughts' than 'news'. Yes, it's also simply to let you know I'm still alive and planning on doing something in the future.
We got a lawnmower lately and, unsurprisingly, this means I have to waste away far too much of my life doing the mundane and tedious task of grass cutting. It's not that we've got a massive garden or anything, just that I find mowing grass to be less than enjoyable. Whilst doing this, I've noticed I tend to mull over life and its various parts. I guess it's not all bad then. How does this relate to Bitchfinder Genital and why are you reading this? In answer to the first question please read on and in answer to the second question, your guess is as good as mine.
During my last 'exciting' session of grass cutting I was listening to music by bands infinitely better than Bitchfinder Genital will ever be (See here, here and here for examples starting with the letter 'T' please) when I realised I don't listen to most albums from start to finish. I'm a fickle beast and listen to an album a few times, decide which tunes I like best and then ignore the songs I don't like as much by skipping over them. Chances are I'm not alone in doing this and, ticking away, my brain then got to thinking about how this relates to Bitchfinder Genital. See, it all begins to make sense.
Some of you may or may not have (All of you can for free) a copy of Eat A Slice Of Cake, the Bitchfinder Genital CD effort. If you do, or have listened to the Tunes off it, you'll know some of them ain't so brilliant. Most people will probably think they're all substandard but, in my opinion, the likes of DI Dick, Froo Froo, Comet and Cooperman aren't what they might be. It's not that I think they're all out and out terrible songs/tunes so much as I rushed the structuring and recording of them to the degree that they're not being shown 'in their best light'. They're okay as 'working tunes' for this website but not good enough to stick on a CD. What I should have done (And this relates to the point I was attempting to make) is put about half a dozen of the tunes onto a CD and worried about getting them right. Afterwards, I should have worked on the weaker tunes and done it as two EP length CDs rather than a single album length effort. In summary, I think I'm going to concentrate on throwing together CDs with something between a couple and half a dozen tunes on them rather than trying to take on too much all at once. Besides, it lets me give them all silly names and design the covers. Surely that's the best bit? Has anyone any thoughts on this matter? If so, please e-mail me.
Thursday, 3rd May 2007: Oh yes, the time has come at last. After over seven months of waiting I finally got my Music Man Stingray 5 today. So far I've hardly had the opportunity to play it (I'm usually not busy at all but had an exciting day of lawn mowing and talking to people about lawnmowers today as well as getting out for a cycle [Yay for my attempts to get less fat!]) but have been impressed with the little bit of fiddling about I got with it.
The case the Stingray came in is pretty good. I thought it seemed fairly secure for transporting one's bass in and hadn't suffered any in transit. Being the eternal pessimist, I was terrified something would happen to it during shipping and all my waiting would be for naught. Thankfully it appears to be alive and well. Hopefully I'll not encounter anything untoward about it.
One thing I thought was a little tight-fisted is that Music Man doesn't supply a strap with it. I know it's hardly a big deal (Especially considering they'll send me a free set of strings when I register my bass and they're more expensive than a strap would be) but I like getting an instrument specific strap with a guitar (Of any ilk) when I buy it. I think it's a nice touch. Still, I'll happily take their free strings and say thank you very much for that.
All being well, you should hear some recording with the Stingray in the not too distant future. Please keep your ears pinned back in anticipation but don't expect a lot.
Monday, 23rd April 2007: By now I can be sure you're familiar with the drill. This isn't news at all. It's nothing more than me writing to fill space pointlessly. Prepare for some boredom...
Some of you may have noticed I'm not quite up to virtuoso level on the drums yet. That may shock the majority of readers but I have to admit it's true. With that in mind, I have booked myself in for my first drum lesson this Saturday coming. Maybe I'm too far gone and have learned too many bad habits? Maybe the teacher won't be great? Who knows? However it turns out, I will be in learning on Saturday afternoon (For only half an hour) and we can all cross our fingers in the hope it's the start of a great improvement.
On the drumming topic, I've just bought myself a Sonor DP 492 SL left-footed double kick pedal (Which I picked up today after having to drive sixty miles out of my way because the little shit of a courier who was supposed to deliver it couldn't be bothered doing his job). Needless to say, I've no idea how one goes about using the blasted thing and was impressed simply by my being able to put it together. Oh, it came in a little gig bag too. Wasn't that nice! Yes, it was. If I had been right-footed I could have bought something similar for almost half the price but that's part of the 'joy' of being a sinistral. SG Specials for the same price as right-handed SG Standards (How come the 'standard' is better than the 'special' anyway?) is another 'great coup' of left-handedness. Why does the world persecute us so!?! Returning to the subject of the double kick pedal, it's an odd thing at the moment. Presumably (With the help of some instruction, if my lessons are good) I'll get used to it and be able to implement it somewhere in time but it's a strange beast at the moment. Good but strange. I'll be a metal drummer yet. [Disclaimer: I don't actually have any aspirations to being a metal drummer, although I would very much like to be able to drum as technically astutely as many of them]
Tuesday, 17th April 2007: Hi there Bitchsketeers! I know I've already mentioned this in my wittering MySpace bit but I'm not shy of writing information on th'internet for the sake of it and going on and on. Keeping up to my usual repetitive standards, here's 'the skinny' (I've heard 'the kids' say that in all the latest 'moving picture shows' down at the local 'picture houses') on what I'm babbling about...
Did anyone get a copy of Dadgad vs Bitchfinder Genital? If you did, you'll know you get a couple of free iron on patches with it. They allow you to show your allegiance to either Dadgad or Bitchfinder Genital in the form of stating your love on a piece of clothing. Amazingly enough, one of my friends actually used the patches (Rather than pretending he was going to and then not bothering like the non-cabin dwelling member of Hundredweight). Well, against his better judgment, he wore the Bitchfinder Genital t-shirt into his work and got an official complaint made against him. He didn't get in any level of trouble over it as it's hardly particularly offensive but the funny bit about it is that he works for the city council. Does that mean Bitchfinder Genital has been outlawed by the government? Is Bitchfinder Genital anti-establishment, a concentrated lump of anarchy and the true punk rock? 'The man' is trying to hold me back and stifle my music. Boo hiss! Actually, it just means they thought the words 'bitch' and (To a lesser extent) 'genital' were slightly too rude to wear on a t-shirt in their office but I like the premise of the government being against me in some major conspiracy much better. Still, I couldn't blame them with some of the crap I've tried to pass off as music...
Oh, by the way, there are some new Images too, if you're interested. I'll be back when the mood takes me again. All the best in the meantime.
Saturday, 7th April 2007: Goodness me! It's April already and we've been having some great weather. As a result, I've been out riding my bicycle (Just like Queen before me) getting some fresh air and trying to give myself an excuse for eating lots of buns. Thus, I've not been doing much in the way of tunes lately. The old joke here is that nothing I do has anything resembling a tune about it but that's been covered so many times before it's enough to make you barf now.
Despite my inaction, I've created a couple of noises for your listening pleasure. First is a song (Yes, as in an actual song with lyrics and everything) I had done near the end of last year (I think) and left very nearly finished. Well, as finished as they get from me anyway. It is called Croc and it's pretty obvious what the lyrics refer to when you listen to it, so long as my enunciation was good enough for you to be able to hear them. It's nothing clever or with subtle double-meanings. It's simply a tale about a little crocodile.
The second tune is called Strayed Albino and, in keeping with my usual stylings, it's purely instrumental. It features the first time I've used congas on a tune and it sounds a bit like I'm hitting cardboard boxes.
Please listen to, download or do what you like with both tunes. I only hope there's something in there you enjoy. As ever, happy listening!
Wednesday, 21st March 2007: Quick website nerdery here. Apologies to anyone trying to look at this site last night (Which was probably nobody) as some of it wasn't working. I was trying to upload new information and couldn't get it to work. As if by magic, it has worked okay today and I've been able to remedy that. Sorry again (Although I reckon I was probably the only person looking near it). The additional bit of web nerdery is my updating the Images section. Have a look for yourself. If it doesn't work properly for you, please let me know.
Sunday, 18th March 2007: Further to the little bit of information below, the cover art, insert gubbins and whole kit and caboodle is ready, willing and able. Dadgad vs Bitchfinder Genital has been stuck all together on a CD (Being technologically stunted, I grumbled and swore considerably whilst wasting many CDs attempting to do this, you'll be unsurprised to read), the packaging is complete and all that's left is for you to get in touch and get a completely free copy of it.
There's no 'trick' or 'scam' going on here. It really is as simple as you e-mail me and I post you out a copy of the CD. If you're not happy giving me your home address, get me to send it care of your work or to any address you can get it from. I really don't care so long as I get to fob off a copy of the CD onto you. It's not laced with arsenic, covered in asbestos or 'now with even more anthrax'. It's just a CD of four tunes by two so-called music efforts (Dadgad being the considerably more musical of the pairing) and you'll never have to pay a single penny for it. C'mon, what have you got to lose? You may hate it but you might find you like it so get in touch and get a copy of it. It's hardly a big risk to take.
Friday, 16th March 2007: Pull your knickers up you filthy slatterns, listen up and listen good. Those good and beloved pillars of modern society, Dadgad and Bitchfinder Genital, have quite the treat in store for you. After lengthy and rigorous negotiations (I e-mailed Splatt and asked him if I could stick a couple of his tunes on a CD and he replied saying 'Yeah, sure. Do whatever you want') an agreement has been hammered out to bring you mere pheasants peasants a split EP (ie. Very amateur CD) of Dadgad and Bitchfinder Genital.
Being artistic and creative, I've (After much hard thought) come up with the extremely original title of Dadgad vs Bitchfinder Genital. Please, there's no need to shower me with faeces compliments for my forward thinking. I can't help being a twat genius. At the moment, I'm attempting to come up with the finishing touches to the cover and CD 'art'. I've got the cover itself done and a bit of the inlay but still have to decide upon something for the interior of the cover and the actual CD itself. That should be finished in a day or two so please get in touch and get a copy of it if you would like. As with all Bitchfinder Genital tat, it's completely free. I wouldn't even dare charge you postage. Just e-mail me your name and address and I'll happily post you a copy of the CD. What have you got to lose? I get the pleasure of pretending someone might like what I try to pass off as music and you get to stick a free CD in your collection which absolutely nobody will have heard of and be 'Captain Grifty'. Everybody wins. It's probably better if you don't let them hear it but it'll make you seem like a great music knowledge to have it. You can always patronise anyone who expresses an interest by telling them they wouldn't understand it or wouldn't like it. That should add to the smugness.
The track listing for Dadgad vs Bitchfinder Genital is as follows:
| 1. | The Beets Go Off | Dadgad |
| 2. | The Beets Go Off | Bitchfinder Genital |
| 3. | Canned Goat | Bitchfinder Genital |
| 4. | Cup 'O' Tea | Dadgad |
Without meaning to go over old news too much, Dadgad vs Bitchfinder Genital came about when I sent a (Poorly played) drum track to Splatt so he could stick a tune to it. I then decided to write a tune for it myself (Although cheated and re-recorded it to make it the right length) and, without either of us hearing the other's tune until our own was complete, the two versions of The Beets Go Off were the result of our experiment. As two tunes are really two tunes too few to be worth sticking on a CD, we also shoved Canned Goat and Cup 'O' Tea on there. Besides, it gives you a bit more Dadgad and Bitchfinder Genital flavour to savour.
As I keep saying, it's totally free to get the CD so please please please get in touch and get a copy. Thank you!
Tuesday, 13th March 2007: It was like Christmas for me yesterday. Well, it was like a Christmas where I would have to pay for my own presents, not have them left by the courier (Despite being in) and had to drive a sixty miles long round journey to collect them from a surly man and slightly less surly woman. Nonetheless, I was very excited about getting my delivery from Thomann. and eagerly opened it with fumbling fingers like a teenager getting his hands on a sexy teacher's bosomuous occupied bra (Although I've never experienced that, alas) but with possibly a bit less sweatiness. Sadly, the tambourine turned out not to be bright orange (As the photo suggested) but is in fact red as advertised. Ah well.
The skins on the congas and bongos, I think, may be actual skin. That kind of grosses me out and makes me feel a bit bad about them but not bad enough to stop me using them obviously (Or buy them in the first place). At least I can cut round a biscuit tin with a Stanley knife on my back if I ever rip one of the skins somehow. I've washed my hands pretty thoroughly each time after I've used the congas so they should help with my personal hygiene a bit. That can only be good.
Having never played either instrument before, I'm not sure how one goes about getting a great variety of sounds and tones from congas and bongos. On first impressions, it seems there isn't a great variety of sounds to be made from a cheap set of bongos but I may yet discover I'm wrong. The congas seem to be more varied in terms of the noises one can create with them. Hitting (I'm sure that's not the right term) them at different strengths in different parts of the skin (Euch!) with open a closed hands and even my elbows seems to produce quite individual noises. I tried using some drumsticks on them too and that, of course, produced yet another noise (Albeit my mainly clanking the sticks off the side of the congas). I'm quite positive about the prospects of such percussion in future Bitchfinder Genital efforts. It may take some time to learn quite what is the best way to mic them up. I've still not learned how to mic up an acoustic drumkit properly so please be patient. As ever, thanks for reading this and have a great week.
Saturday, 10th March 2007: I've not done anything musical to mention here. The obvious question would be 'When have you ever done anything musical?' but that's besides the point. This little snippet is merely to mention a couple of website related developments.
Firstly, I've managed to nab another 50MB of webspace off my kindly father who doesn't use his. I'll (I think) be able to stick more cruddy music up there and won't have to go deleting tracks just yet. Depending on your viewpoint, that's good/bad news.
The second item I wished to mention is that I've stuck a few new pictures up on the Images section. They're nothing terribly exciting, just photos of me and some of my musical equipment. I think it's fair enough to refer to it as musical equipment. It's musical but I'm the weak link which lets it down.
Friday, 9th March 2007: After so much inaction, there's another Bitchfinder Genital song on the website now. It's called Canned Goat and I had been threatening promising to get it done on the old website about two years ago. At the longest of lasts, it is hastily hurried together finished and ready for you to listen to either here or in the customary location of the Tunes section. It's a bit of a cruel and unusual punishment at five minutes and thirty-four seconds long and features a haggis solo at the start. Please forgive all the mistakes enjoy!
It should (If Splatt agrees to all this. I really should ask before assuming) feature on a Dadgad/Bitchfinder Genital split very amateurish CD EP. Woo hoo! If that comes to fruition, at least half of it (ie. The Dadgad bit) should be good. As for the Bitchfinder Genital half? Maybe not so good. Ignoring my self-depreciation, I hope it does come together and you get joy from it. As you would imagine, I'll let you know as soon as it comes to pass.
Oh, a quick note to say I'm running out of my free webspace and am too tight-fisted to shell out money for some. This being the case, I might have to start taking a couple of the tunes off the Tunes page in the near future. I'll take off the tunes on Eat A Slice Of Cake first as you can always get a copy of the CD if you wish to hear them.
Wednesday, 7th March 2007: Again, this isn't much of news par se but it's getting a mention anyway so learn to live with it. Like an oaf possessed, I foolishly had a quick look at Thomann's marvellous web store thinking I might buy a cheap pair of headphones for using when I'm playing my electronic drums (I think I may already have screwed up my decent headphones. Grrrrr, sob). Idiotically, I did so just after listening to the exotic passionate rhythmic magic of Carmen. Carried away by the pulsating exoticism of their flamenco/prog rock beats, I got caught up in the moment and ordered myself (Going with the cheapest option, as normal) a set of congas, bongos and (Wait for it) a bright orange tambourine. I also ordered some sticks, cheap headphones, a drum stool (Have you ever seen the price of bloody drum stools? Blimey! It's robbery!) a Joe Satriani (Ooh!) guitar strap. I might not like his music but the Planet Waves guitar straps he designs are very good, I think. Just on that subject, I find Planet Waves' leads very good too. Hurrah for them!
Back to my percussive orders, I hope they're able to help give some variety to the percussive sections of future Bitchfinder Genital tunes. Whilst I'm not professing to be like Michael Shrieve or any of his percussive counterparts, I hope I shall be able to implement them to at least an amusing level. Here's hoping it's not total shite (Which it may well be).
Monday, 5th March 2007: This one isn't musically related at all (No obvious remarks there please). It's a quick note to say there's a little menu on the Tunes page now so you can get to the tunes you loathe desire more easily. There are also little links at the bottom of each tune's information to get you back up to the menu again. Goodness me but I'm kind to you.
As ever, please let us know if there are any 'dead' links or you have any problems with anything on the new menu. I think I've tested it reasonably thoroughly but our connection here is acting up a bit and I'm never the most reliable at the best of times. Happy listening true believers.
EDIT: Breaking news which will help you sleep more soundly and securely in your beds at night coming up here. I have just put little scrollable information sections (The same old same old as in the Tunes section) into the pop-up music player windows (If you click on '-Listen-' in the Tunes bit, you'll see what I mean) and (You can breathe comfortably in the knowledge of the forthcoming revelation) made it so the links in the pop-up players don't underline when you hold your mouse pointer over them any longer. Phew! We really dodged a bullet there, didn't we? By the way, doing it was even more monotonous than it sounds believe it or not. No, I don't know why I bothered either. Hopefully I'll have a new song soon to have some remotely music related news here, instead of geekery pokery. I guess it's all part of why I call Bitchfinder Genital's music 'nerdcore'.
Sunday, 4th March 2007: Unwashed heathen that I am on the sabbath day, I have just added The Beets Go Off to bits on the Bitchfinder Genital MySpace and Tagworld pages. That is all. You may now go back about your business citizens.
EDIT: You can now add Bebo to that list too. I see Bitchfinder Genital is causing quite a stir there now with a whopping seventeen 'hits' on the Bebo space. That's probably about twice the amount this website gets, sigh. Just on that topic, if anyone actually does ever read this, please let me know. I'll be pleasantly shocked if I get any e-mails from anyone saying they've read this.
Saturday, 3rd March 2007: As you'll know, if you read my stuffs, I recently got a cheap electronic drum kit. Despite my inability on it (It never stopped me trying acoustic drums, keyboards, bass, vocals and guitars so why should it stop me on electronic drums?) I came up with a quick little drumbeat and e-mailed it to Splatt so he could put a tune to it. For an experiment, I've stuck a tune to the same beat (Although I re-recorded it so it would fit into the length of tune I wanted) and, without hearing one another's efforts first, we have just finished and revealed our tunes. You can hear/download them both on the Tunes page (As is normally the way here) or you can click here for my version and here for Splatt's version. Doing so will make them open in pop-up windows but don't worry as it's nothing sinister. Well, I hope you don't think it's anything sinister anyway. That probably wouldn't be a complimentary term about one's musical efforts.
Funnily enough (Although there's an obvious difference in the level of playing ability with me coming off very much second best) we ended up writing two vaguely similar-ish tunes despite each of us not having heard anything from the other until we had completed them. Go figure! By the way, if you're listening to them, Splatt's tune is considerably louder than mine (I'm sure it's something I'm doing wrong. That's normally the way) so be careful if you're turning your speakers up high to be able to hear my efforts. It's not going to make you go deaf or damage your speakers but I thought I would fill space by warning you anyway. It seems like the right thing to do.
It's funny that I post a new tune only a couple of days after writing about how Bitchfinder Genital hasn't been doing anything. I'm nothing but a bloody hypocrite!
Thursday, 1st March 2007: Gosh but it's been a while since I last wrote anything here. Christmas and the New Year have been and gone and Bitchfinder Genital has been up to pretty much nothing. Much as I would like to lie and claim I've been feverishly working away on forthcoming material, that would be nothing but a lie. Truth is I've been a complete nerd spending my time playing videogames. Damn you Oblivion and your time sucking and damn me for being nerd enough to let it take up so much time.
Wretched laziness and nerd admissions asides, one thing I have done musically is get a new instrument. No, it's not the Music Man StingRay 5 I prattled on about before. I'm sorry to say I'm still waiting for it. Five months now. Ai ai ai! All things being well, I'll have that within the next month. Now what was my wittering related to again? Oh yes, I got a Traps E400 electronic drum kit (With an Alesis DM5 drum module) a couple of days ago. It seems to be far and away the cheapest all-mesh head electronic drum kit one can get and, being a cheapskate, that's what I went for. I'm sure Hart Dynamics and Roland kits are superior but I didn't fancy paying over twice as much to get one. Given my level and lack of ability, it made sense to go for the cheap option and see how it works out. If it all seems great, I can always change parts of the kit as I go on.
So far I'm not really sure what I think of the Traps kit. Being used to (Although not proficient whatsoever with) acoustic drums, it seems very odd to be playing something which doesn't make the sound itself. There's also a tendency to go with that caveman thought of 'Ug. Me hit drum hard. Drum make more noise. Must hit hard ' and that only rings true to a minor extent with an electronic kit. Once it has reached its peak, there's no point in hammering the beejayzus out of the thing, especially as it is not as sturdy as acoustic kits are. I find it rather strange to play the kit with headphones on and have the sounds coming out (Sometimes and sometimes not) from the opposite headphone speaker to where I'm hitting the drums. It's a crazy mixed up world this electronic drumming. Hopefully I'll become more au fait with it sooner rather than later and be able to make some music. It's good to have the options in sounds an acoustic kit can't offer and recording is great; All I have to do is plug two leads into my multitrack and record. There's no bleed and no need for gates, compression, phasing, mic setup or anything like that. It couldn't be any more straightforward. I wish setting the kit itself up was as straightforward really. It's been a bit hit and miss for me in terms of attempting to configure the kit as I would like to. It's kind of awkward getting the toms and cymbals all into the position I would like. It can be done but it's a bit of a job to do it. Once they're in position, of course, they can happily stay there and need never move. I think that's more my lack of experience with rack kits than anything, although a ball joint here and there wouldn't have gone amiss. Well, better go and try to get more accustomed with it. Wish me luck!
Thursday, 7th December 2006: As ever, this isn't Bitchfinder Genital or News related but it won't stop me from writing about it. By now you should realise that only too well.
I've been having terrible trouble trying to record my off-time attempts at drumming. I know they say 'one cannot polish a turd' but badly recorded and set up poorly played drums sound even worse than well recorded badly set up poorly played drums. Thanks to a couple of gents, who know a lot more about recording than I'm ever likely to, I've managed to improve my drum recording a bit. Now I'm not going to say it's approaching being what it should but it's better than it was. Being the complete luddite I am, it was easy for them to give me tips. I know nothing.
For starters, I learned it's good to use a pair of pencil condensers overhead (left and right). Whilst this may seem pretty obvious, I had been using them in a slightly odd manner. One was a kind of half-overhead (Only a foot or so above the ride) for my ride, splash and cowbell and the other was directly above the crash. As you can tell from the results with this setup, that wasn't always as effective as one may have desired. It certainly didn't give the feeling of stereo which it should have.
Secondly, I'm enough of a goof to (Until recently) not having a clue about what mics being in and out of phase meant. When I looked up information on it online, it's simple enough. If mics are pointing in different directions, put one of them 'out of phase' with the other. For example, if you've got half a dozen mics pointing directly downwards (Overhead mics, drum head mics etc) and one pointing upwards, you put the mic pointing upwards out of phase. I'm sure there's more to it than that but that's as much as I know. Having read this, I have since put the Samson Q-Snare mic (Which I have on the underside of the snare) out of phase and it works wonders. The snare has regained its 'rasp' and now feels more emancipated and less emasculated (Although it is still in touch with its feminine side).
Lastly, and this is one I've still to work out properly, I was told about 'gates' (Hence the obvious picture). Being totally ignorant, frightened of technology and likely to be one of the torch bearing mob chasing Frankenstein's monster, I had no idea what a gate was. I knew it could be an outside door but I had no idea about its musical connotations. Apparently a musical gate is an effect which works much like its real life farmer's friend by allowing certain sound through and shutting out others. It would seem one can set a gate so only noise above a certain level is recorded and/or (I'm half-guessing here) only noise below a particular level gets recorded. Looking at my multitrack recorder, it turned out it does indeed have gates on it. I was pleased and it let me put a gate on my toms, thus getting rid of all the crap like cymbals etc. which used to bleed terribly into the tracks I was using for the toms. As I mentioned, I've not got it totally sussed yet. I think I need to widen it a bit so it records a bit more tom than it's doing now but it's going to be a fine line between getting enough tom and letting all the other rubbish clog up the track.
Well, that's about it for now. I just wanted to give these a mention in case anyone else is experiencing similar difficulties to me and chances across this website. I hope it's of some use and, while it's not strictly Bitchfinder Genital related, it has obvious uses for future Bitchfinder Genital recordings. Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Wednesday, 1st November 2006: One day late Halloween best wishes to anyone reading this. I hope you had a good Halloween and didn't blow the front of your face off being stupid with a firework/small explosive. Like all good pseudo-goths, 'misunderstood' teenagers and general misfits, I do like me some Halloween. Hopefully you do too and have enjoyed it marvellously. Unfortunately, I'm a slack-jawed yokel who lives in the middle of nowhere and don't get the pleasure of ruining the teeth of children by fobbing off cheap sweets on them. However, that balances out by not getting set fire to by the same children's older siblings. Anyway, this isn't anything to do with Bitchfinder Genital, so now onto something vaguely news-ish...
The threat of a 'new' Bitchfinder Genital song is looming on the horizon. Please bear with me while I witter on a tedious overlong story of my thoughts and eventually mention the bit about the song in the last few words of the last sentence. It's what I do best.
As my last non-newsworthy piece of news mentioned, I have purchased an Epiphone (far too stingy for a Gibson) Les Paul Standard recently and, other than a bit of buzzing when the low E is played open, I'm very pleased with it. It offers me completely different tones than my Telecaster, to such an extent even a tone deaf buffoon like me could notice. Most obviously, it's a lot smoother and jazzier when clean and a lot heavier when distorted (I wanted to write 'dirty', rather than 'distorted' but it wasn't really true) or overdriven. Easily impressed as I am, this is wonderful for me and leads me off into song types I previously might not have attempted eg. cock rock and AOR (Both of which are lies). Now where was I? Right. Moving onto the point about the 'new' song, I'm reworking Bronx Cheer at the moment and should start recording it within the next few days.
In a totally different mindset from Eat A Slice Of Cake's tunes, I'm going to try to structure my next few tunes beforehand and have a good idea exactly what I'm doing, rather than improvise a whole big load of it (Shouldn't there be an 'sh' at the start of that last word?) as I did before. Hey, I might even attempt to find out what compression is this time and do some of that when recording so it doesn't sound like a garbled mess.
Just on the subject of recording and music in general, isn't it funny how the cheaper manufacturers seem to pick crappy names to go with their lower end produce? For example, Stagg and Samson aren't names synonymous with a piece of high quality hardware and couldn't be no matter how well made the product was. M-Audio is kind of middling in that it doesn't sound great but mightn't be quite as bad and Behringer and Dixon are acceptable enough as names go but make cheap stuff. Do you notice something else all these makes I'm belittling have in common? I've bought stuff by them all and use it. What's more, I'm happy with it. What a hypocrite I am! Still, Stagg and Samson. What awful names! It's like calling your company 'Studd' or ' Hercules'.
So, yes, there we go. I'll have a new version of Bronx Cheer together (I hope) sometime in the not too distant future. I'm always toying with the idea of eventually getting Canned Goat done at the longest of lasts. I seem to recall promises of mine to have it done about a year and a half ago. I've not touched it since. Goodness me! I'm not just a hypocrite but a downright barefaced liar!
Monday, 16th October 2006: This isn't News at all. It's just me wittering (as usual) and letting you know I've not forgotten about this website or stopped doing it. It's just that I've really not been doing anything vaguely musical lately (Some may say 'ever') and haven't had anything to write.
Regardless, I'm going to fill a bit of space with an absolute nothing of a story about my forthcoming purchases. Of course, the Music Man StingRay 5 is the one I'm wetting my knickers (Although they're really manly pants) about but I'm also going to get an 'ebony' (ie. black) left-handed Epiphone (Not to be confused with the similarly named day Christians like) Les Paul Standard in the next week or two, depending on how long it takes to ship it out to me.
Like a big child, I'm excited about this purchase. I get so caught up in the euphoria of waiting for something to arrive in the post. Of course, it's miserable when you miss the courier and end up having to wait half a week while it's sitting in some parcel company's warehouse, getting stood on by inconsiderate louts. I know it won't be the equivalent of a Gibson Les Paul and, being about an eighth of the price, I wouldn't expect it to be but, then again, I'm too ignorant to notice much of a difference. Hopefully it should be pretty much at the other end of the spectrum from the Telecaster I've got and should allow for more difference in my guitar sections. That's my foolproof plan anyway.
Splatt (Who I regularly mention as a part-time Bitchfinder Genital member) bought an Epiphone Les Paul Standard some time ago and seems rather pleased with it. In fact, he was initially annoyed by how little difference there was in quality between it and his SG, which is a good sign for me. Like the plagiarist I am, I'm copying him (only not in colour or 'handedness'). Well, I'm not going to get an SG as they're wildly expensive for left-handers unless you're Tony Iommi and get paid for using them (Or so I imagine). Gibson seems to really crucify one for being left-handed and yet, oddly, Epiphone doesn't. As they're part of the same company, that's a strange one to me. Still, I'm not going to complain and will happily go with the cheap option. If I'm not entirely convinced by it, I can always stick a pair of Bare Knuckles in it (Or plead with my Dad to do it so I don't destroy the guitar/burn a hole in my hand/both) anyway. Chances are I'll be happy enough with the pickups it'll have as standard but I'm not stuck if I don't like them so much.
Enough of my sharing my purchasing glee. As I wrote earlier, this is mainly to let you know I've not abandoned this space. I just haven't had anything to write (Hence this contrived nothing of a story). Take care now y'all...
Tuesday, 26th September 2006: Didn't you get a Bitchfinder Genital badge yet? You're very behind the times as not only do we have the original badges but now we've got a second run of badges with the 'BFG Star' design (To your left) on them. If you contact me for a copy of Eat A Slice Of Cake, of course I'll pop a few badges in with it. Even if it's only because you're a fan of Roald Dahl and want to use the new badges to display this, please get in touch and get some free badges.
Whilst I'm rabbiting on, it's worth a mention that (Sometime Bitchfinder Genital member) Splatt has set up a Bebo webpage now too (I've been hassling him to do this stuff). At the time of writing this, he didn't have any tunes up on it yet but I'm sure he'll get round to it with enough of my badgering him into doing so. Oh yes, you'll probably want the address of his Bebo page then, won't you. Okay, here it is...
Dadgad/Splatt at Bebo - http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=2097397429 (Not the catchiest URL)
I should probably mention that Bebo is running very slowly at the moment. Don't be surprised if you find this to be the case if you're looking at it. I believe the Bebo bigwigs are working on it day and night and should have it remedied sooner rather than later. Sorry for any slowness in the meantime.
Monday, 25th September 2006: Woo hoo! How excited am I! Why? It's because I've just ordered a new bass. Okay, it'll be 'up to six months' (The guy in the shop I'm buying it from reckons three is more likely but it could be the full whack) before I get it but I'm dead excited about it. It's going to be a left-handed Music Man StingRay 5 in a colour they call Egyptian Smoke (The colour shown to the left is Blue Pearl as they didn't have any photos of a Stingray 5 in Egyptian Smoke), with a plain black scratchplate, maple neck/fretboard and a headstock which matches the body colour.
I'm ordering it via a shop (Based in Truro, Cornwall) called Modern Music and, on first impressions, I like them. They strike me as people who know what they're talking about and will set up an instrument properly and welcome customer comment and opinion, rather than simply take your money and get rid of you. I imagine (If my instincts are right) they get a lot of return trade. Hopefully I'm right in these first impressions. I've found so many music shops to be absolutely appalling. It would be nice if one was good. I guess I'll know within half a year.
Woop de doo! If this is how excited I am now, what'll I be like in the 'up to six months' time when it arrives?
Here's hoping I can do the instrument justice when it arrives. I'll have to cram and practice solidly for 'up to six months'. Hmmm, I'm not so sure that's going to happen. Well, so long as it is a fun instrument to play.
Enough of my gloating. I should be ashamed of myself (Although, as you may have gathered, I'm too excited to be) and my space fillers masquerading as news. Still, I can't help being excited. Woo hoo (again)!
Friday, 22nd September 2006: In keeping with the MySpace and Tagworld web nerdery I've already done, I've set up a Bitchfinder Genital section at Bebo. On first impressions, Bebo doesn't seem as good as the other two. I shouldn't grumble too much because it's free but that won't stop me. One thing I find rather irritating about it is a difficult series of menus to navigate. This is something I find in general with such websites; The menus aren't often set up in a manner which makes an awful lot of sense to me. They seem to take a lot of looking through to be able to do the action you wished, be it uploading songs/images or simply changing the text of part of the webpage. That brings me onto another gripe: On Bebo (unless I'm mistaken) one cannot put links in for external websites. Whilst I understand they want to keep people looking at their own pages, I would like to get a link to this website (ie. the website you're looking at right now) from it and attempt to get more people looking here or maybe stick a link so people could click on it to e-mail Bitchfinder Genital. It's not entirely implausible that I've missed something and you can put such links on it but I didn't see any trace of being able to do so initially at least. Also, it doesn't seem as if you can choose fonts, set text out in different layouts (justifying it, aligning etc.) or even make up your own backgrounds. I had to use a ready made background, rather than one of my own design. I felt a bit wrong doing that as I wanted something Bitchfinder Genital specific. There seems to be an option to create backgrounds but I think that's for general usage as opposed to one's own section.
[UPDATE: Despite my belief to the contrary, you can make up your own backgrounds and choose your own text colours on Bebo. I didn't realise this initially and now must admit my stupidity. Having written that, it's not very clear where one goes to do so. I mean, the link to create your own 'skin' comes from going (from 'Homepage') to 'Change Skins' > 'Become a featured skin artist' and then having to create and upload a number of images of certain specifications. It's not 'that' contrived but 'Become a featured skin artist' doesn't say 'Change the appearance of your webpage' to me]
Despite all my griping, please have a look at it. I'll be attempting to keep it reasonably up to date but I (currently anyway) prioritise in the order of this site first, then MySpace, then Tagworld and lastly Bebo so don't be surprised if some of them are more up to date than others.
If you would like to know the web addresses of the three websites I mentioned (I don't know why but there may be some reason), they are as follows:
- MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/BitchfinderGenital
- Tagworld - http://tagworld.com/BFindergenital
- Bebo - http://BitchfinderGenital.bebo.com
Vaguely linked to all this jibber jabber, I should have mentioned that sometime Bitchfinder Genital member Splatt has a few tunes of his own up now at MySpace and Tagworld. I alluded to this a while ago but I didn't give it a fully fledged mention. As he's pretty much my musical best buddy (ie. the person who makes music with me most and who I go to asking for advice) and helps out in Bitchfinder Genital musically it's only fair to give him a proper nudge. He calls himself Dadgad for the purposes of music. Given his love for folk music, that's hardly too much of a surprise. He can be found at:
- MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/dagdad (Yes, I know it says dagdad and not Dadgad but that's the proper URL, for some reason)
- Tagworld - http://tagworld.com/Dadgad
I just wish he would spend less time trying to make his pages look so damned fancy, the blasted showoff. Happy listening!
Friday, 15th September 2006: Here it is! It's the day you've all been waiting for. Eat A Slice Of Cake is now available (free of course) to anyone who wants a copy. For those unfamiliar with the subject I'm wittering about, Eat A Slice Of Cake is the first in (hopefully) a long line of Bitchfinder Genital CDs (I wouldn't call it an album, even if it is by definition, as that seems too grandiose). It contains the songs listed here and I've spent the last while putting it down with every opportunity I get. It's probably just some mechanism to stop me feeling bad if/when people tell me it's crap. It'll be like I've already prepared myself for it or something. Gawd knows. Maybe it's something more obvious such as my simply not being happy with it. Then again, even if I thought it was one of the greatest collections of music of all time, I probably still wouldn't like it and feel I should do better. Having written that, I know it's not one of the greatest collections of music of all time. Rather, it's a messy first effort and a starting point with plenty of room for improvement. Still, here's hoping you get in touch, get a copy and enjoy it.
If you like anything on it, please let me know. For the bits you don't like, it's probably best for my ego if you keep that to yourself.
Wednesday, 13th September 2006: Ooh, Wednesday the 13th. Surely that's bad luck somewhere? Before I go on (and I most likely will, for no good reason) yes, I am writing this simply to fill space and to keep this website more up to date looking.
Eat A Slice Of Cake is that little bit closer to completion. Well, I've done all the tunes, got annoyed with them, redone infinitesimally small parts of a couple of them over again, redone the mixes on a couple of them, discovered it was no better than it was originally, got even more annoyed, designed the home printed covers (cheap and it shows) and eventually stopped before I get absolutely furious and give up on the whole thing and it's almost ready now. It's certainly not perfect but I've promised I'm going to cease and desist in slagging it off all the time. Sure, it's kind of lazy and that comes through in it but it's just the first in (I hope) a load of stuff I'll be doing and it's a starting point to work from in the future. At worst, I can learn from it. At best, it might bring some pleasure to someone. My technical abilities in recording and playing will improve with time and I should hope future offerings are less limited by this.
The other day, I was listening to Eat A Slice Of Cake (still driving myself mad about the levels) and some proper music by proper bands afterwards and I think I made a breakthrough. I think I spend too long listening to stuff I've done and getting annoyed with what's wrong in it. Whilst it's good to recognise what's not good in one's own work and try to improve upon it, that's not what I was doing. I could recognise the faults in my own stuff but couldn't see 'the light at the end of the tunnel' to improve them and I think that's because I had become too subjective and bogged down in some form of musical self-deprecation. Rather than continue in this downward spiral, it seems better to listen to other people, hear what's good about their music and (without totally plagiarising it) cram some of that into my own efforts. Anyway, those are my thoughts (as opposed to news, despite their being in this section) and that covers my wittering for the day.
Just to finish, I'm being a little poopy and still have to get paper to print the Eat A Slice Of Cake covers on. That's not like I'm getting special fancy impressive paper, just that the paper I've got at the moment isn't suitable. If I get off my bottom and get round to that, Eat A Slice Of Cake should be done within a few days. Wow!
Tuesday, 5th September 2006: Here's a fairly pointless update on the progress of Eat A Slice Of Cake. I've got the final mix done of the tunes. It's not pleasing to me but I can't seem to get it anything like passable anyway and I'm going to stop putting myself through the misery of attempting to do so. I'll school myself more on recording and production and try to get something better for my next efforts. In writing of schooling (as I did) I'll mark this one as 'Could do better'.
Now, getting away from all the personal put downs I'm so addicted to, I was writing about the progress of my tune collection. The tuneage on Eat A Slice Of Cake has changed from the list below. I've dropped a couple of the tunes on it and added a few more, so it's now:
| 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. |
Scraping the Barnacles DI Dick Competitive Indigestion Shellfish Nut Froo Froo Schmoo Shanty Displaced Hat Bear Bottoms Comet Ulmunshketayfa Cooperman Revenge of the Whelk |
It makes for a dirty dozen if ever there was one, with more of a marine flavour than I had planned on. I attempted to shove the shorter and longer tunes in turn about so you won't have to suffer two 'draggers' (ie. Displaced Hat, Froo Froo and Competitive Indigestion) in a row. Then again, maybe you'll surprise me and enjoy them. Besides, to me, a tune I do which is over three minutes in length is one I regard as a long song. Funny how much I likes me prog rock and yet I write skittery little tunes with two riffs in them if you're lucky.
I've reproduced some of the tunes from the version of them you can download here and had to re-record a bit of guitar in Comet and the bass for Shellfish Nut (which was a pain in the ass to mix down). Hopefully the effort in reproduction for some of the tracks was worth it. I know I'm always overly negative about these tunes but I hope you get in touch to get a copy of Eat A Slice Of Cake and get some enjoyment from it. It is free. You can't grumble about that. Well, you can but it would be a bit unfair of you.
The cover/packaging is pretty much completed. It's only something I'm doing myself on a cheap printer (ie. single sided printing on ordinary printer paper) so it doesn't look amazing but it was fun doing it. It was kind of like doing an art project at school only I put more work into this and didn't get any qualifications for it.
By the way, if you've read the About section, you'll have seen a mention of my good buddy Splatt. He's got a few tunes up on MySpace now (Who doesn't?). If you would like to hear them please left-click here (or on his name). Just on that subject, do you think he sings a bit like Tom from McFly in the song Must Try Harder? He may not be pleased when I tell him that. Maybe that's why people I was in bands with don't bother with me any more? I probably shouldn't have called Rock Danger 'Big Lanky Wank the Dog' either in that case.
Monday, 4th September 2006: Well, it's closer to the revelation which is Bitchfinder Genital's first collection of tunes. I wouldn't call it an album as that sounds too professional and this pretty obviously is not very professionally done.
I've spent the last couple of days doing multiple mixes, none of which pleases me, of Eat A Slice Of Cake. It's funny how many frigging times one can listen to a tune when mixing it (using headphones and monitor speakers) and yet it seems so totally different the first time it's played on a stereo. Gawd but it's almost as frustrating as my pathetic attempts to play the drums.
No matter how many times I played the tunes and tried different mixes, there was always something unpleasant about the final version. Not simply due to the tunes and recording being substandard but rather that it seems to be an exceptionally difficult task to get the mix 'just right'. I think it's partly due to my using unsuitable sounds, EQ-ing poorly and general misuse of recording equipment. By the time the sounds have reached the 'mixing' stage, it's probably too late to get them to sound like anything other than a horrid mess. Still, it's given me plenty of room for improvement. I should probably read the manual for the multi-track I've got.
Getting back to Eat A Slice Of Cake, it should be available within the next fortnight. Despite all my putting it down, please contact me for a free copy and I'll gladly post it to you when it's done. You can also stick your name on the Mailing List and get any free Bitchfinder Genital stuff going that way. Hopefully you'll not be as negative about Eat A Slice Of Cake as I'm and may even enjoy little bits and pieces of it. With your not having just listened to it dozens of times to try to get the mix right and still not managing it, there's probably a decent chance it won't annoy you the way it's annoyed me. Still, nobody is making me do it and it's all a learning experience I can use to my advantage when doing other musical efforts in the future.
Wednesday, 30th August 2006: Your worst nightmare just came a step closer as I've ordered myself a (cheap) printer which can print onto CDs. It should be here in about a week and that means Eat A Slice Of Cake is coming closer to being a reality. Whilst a lot of the music on it isn't necessarily something I'm either happy or proud of, it was fun to make and (here's a running theme for you) I'm way too lazy to re-record and restructure the songs I've done. At best, I might re-record some sections of them and mix them down again.
One part I'm definitely planning to re-record is the distorted guitar (panned so it's coming out the left speaker) in Comet. It's really wishy washy sounding and not pleasant at all. It's just a fuzzy mess and I'm made unhappy by it every time I listen to it. Still, I continue to listen to my tunes and get annoyed by them. Work that one out if you can. In general, Comet is a tune I'm unhappy with. I had such high hopes for it but it's fallen totally flat on its face. In my mind, it was going to be this swinging jazzy tune with a heavy metally/punky bit in the middle, a messy stop and then more jazzy bits again. Unfortunately, whilst I tried to do that, it just doesn't work anything like I had hoped it would. I think my tempo is more than a little questionable on it. I don't mind the end bit being slower than the start but, in general, I think it's too fast. In fact, the end bit is probably around the right speed and everything up to that is wrong. I might not stick it on Eat A Slice Of Cake after all. It's a tune I wrote about a dozen years ago and, now I'm eventually doing it, I would rather get it (what I deem to be) right than shove it on a CD (which nobody will hear anyway) when I'm not happy with it. The same goes for The Cheeses Please The Frozen Peas In Ways They Don't Foresee too. It's another old tune I've only eventually started doing and I would like to get a better version of it than its current form. Now I'm on a self-depreciating roll, all of the tunes probably merit better recording and playing than I've done but that's only saying how bad my recording and playing is. Enough of that. I'll stop this one here.
Saturday, 26th August 2006: Aaaaaaaargh! I spent all last night and today redoing Comet. First I did it last night (staying up to about 2am to do so) and decided it was too slow then got up this morning, re-recorded everything and worked on it for about six hours straight (I know that's not much for most people but it is me we're referring to here) only to discover the new version was too fast. Well it was bearable for the main bit (although that was considerably better in the slower version too) of it but it didn't work at all when it got distorted. It just sounded like a really weedy mess of distortion and was absolutely horrible. After many hours, sweat, swear words and wasted CDs, I eventually plumped on using the slower version of it I had done a the previous evening. Oh shite on my face for it's all I deserve! Needless to say, I'm well pissed off about wasting my time doing that load of crap only to use the slightly less poopy version I did originally. I'll just go and stab myself in the balls as it couldn't be any greater waste of my time than all my recording was.
Friday, 25th August 2006: As you'll know, I'm no webmaster but I've attempted to add a new section to this website in the form of a form. That seemed a more clever piece of wordplay at first than it does now. Anyway, I've got a Mailing List section here as of today (which you may well have noticed already).
The name gives its purpose away but let it never be said that I passed up an opportunity to babble on about something self-explanatory. I mean, why make things simple when they can be convoluted?
As one would imagine, the Mailing List section is so you can stick your name on the Bitchfinder Genital mailing list(s). You've a few options available to you when doing so. For starters, you can choose to put yourself on either or both of the e-mail and the postal mailing lists.
If you stick your name on the e-mail list, obviously, you'll get e-mail updates from Bitchfinder Genital letting you know when there are new songs to download or anything Bitchfinder Genital related I deem worth a mention. E-mail can be sent to you in one of two forms; Plain text and HTML. Plain text e-mail is, as the name suggests, in a text only format and not terribly fancy looking. HTML e-mail can have pictures in it, different fonts, sounds etc. and looks better but takes longer to download and might not work with certain e-mail accounts. I'll send the e-mails to you in whatever format you choose. If you don't know, I'll try sending in both formats and you can let me know if it works properly and which you would prefer.
The postal mailing list doesn't need much explanation at all. Jot down your address and I'll post stuff out to you. I'll not charge you for any of it and definitely won't be asking for any bank details or anything like that. You're probably wondering what kind of crap I'm likely to send out in the post. To be honest, I'm kind of wondering what it'll be myself. In the near future, it'll most likely be CDs and badges but I'll try to see if there's anything else I can think of which might tickle your fancies. It'll not be anthrax, letters about secure loans or offers to Tarmac your driveway. You have my word on that.
Apologies are due to you for the amateurish manner in which the whole Mailing List system works. If I can find out, with minimum effort, how to make it a bit slicker I'll be sure to do just that. It all looks okay-ish until you click on 'Submit'. It's once you submit the form when the true lo-fi level of the piece is revealed. Rather than simply sending the information to me without you having to do anything more, in some browsers (I know it does this with Firefox and believe it brings up an overly ominous looking little warning window instead in Internet Explorer), it needs you to send the information as an actual e-mail. All you have to do is click on whatever you normally do to send e-mail but it's a bit of a bugger that it doesn't do it automatically once you've pressed the 'Submit' button. If anyone knows a bit of code to remedy this (if it exists) please share it with me. It would function preferably if this was the case.
Wednesday, 23rd August 2006: How fancy a Dandy am I? I've got little javascript windows which open on this website now. Well, it's actually the software I'm using which does all the work but I like to take the credit. What it actually means is that you can now listen to the tunes on this website without having to open a new big ugly browser window. If you left-click on the normal links to the songs/tunes, it'll still open the tune in a big ugly window. The reason I kept these links was partly that some people seem to hate javascript (although I don't know enough about computers to know why) and mainly because it gives you the option of right-clicking and choosing to save the tunes onto your hard drive, which the javascript links don't.
Here's an example of the little music player which opens in the window (only it'll start automatically and this one doesn't):
You'll really only have to use the two little buttons to the left of the slider (grey circular 'button' which moves from the left to the right of the bar as the song plays) and the slider itself and, for the uninitiated, here's how it works. The little picture of a speaker (with 'sound lines' coming out of it) on the far left controls the volume. Just left-click on it (holding your button down) and a 'vertical slider bar' should appear. Still holding the left mouse button down please place your mouse pointer over the 'vertical slider bar' and move it up (to increase volume) and down (to decrease volume). I think we all know which direction you're likely to be moving it and it rhymes with clown. To the right of the volume control, is the play/pause button. This works in the same manner as on most home stereos, in that you press (in this case left-click) on it once to play and again to pause etc. ad infinitum. To the right of play/pause is the slider. When you first open the window, the little bar will fill up, showing how much of the song has been downloaded. Once it's completely filled, you know the song has finished downloading. With most modern connections, it should be quick enough to download the song faster than you would naturally (ie. without fast forwarding) listen to it. Even our connection is fast enough to do that and we're hicks who live out in cannibal country. If you want to fast forward through the song (which is understandable with some of the longer ones at least) you can left-click on the grey circular 'button' on the bar, keep your mouse button held down and slide it over to the right. Needless to say, you can do the same, only sliding to the left, to rewind the tune if you're a glutton for punishment. The buttons to the right of the slider don't really have any bearing for my tunes but click them if you're nosey anyway. Hopefully that was of some use to someone who hasn't used it before and I've not managed to cloud and complicate something clear and uncomplicated by describing it in a wittery contrived manner. Jeez, I hope nobody thought I was being a patronising twat either. Sorry if you did.
Here's what the link to the individual tunes looks like (as if you couldn't tell for yourselves) only it's cut down in size here and doesn't link to anything:
If I was less lazy, I could have done an image for each song instead of writing 'tune wittered about in the paragraph above' but I am lazy and you can't fight natural instincts.
I could have stuck the players on the Tunes page itself but it would have automatically downloaded them all when you looked at the page (like it did with Bear Bottoms on this page) and that would have been both time consuming and exceptionally annoying for you. I made the mistake of doing something like that on a nerdy website I did a few years ago and it took forever to look at the page the tunes were on.
By the way, for those with something akin to my lack of computer knowledge, javascript is something I don't understand which lets you do fancier stuff in relation to opening windows than the more basic code I had been using up until now. It'll be Flash next (Only it won't as I've neither the aptitude or the patience to use it). Something worth mentioning is that pop-up stoppers might not let you open the little windows when you click on the links. There should be an easy means of bypassing it (It should say how in the software you use's manual/help file) for this website. They're not adverts or anything suspicious, so it's definitely safe to let them open. Well, I say it's safe but that depends what you think of my music. Maybe your pop-up stoppers are simply trying to save your ears from the torment.
UPDATE: Continuing with my recent aural diarrhoea, I've got another new tune. This time, it's Schmoo Shanty. I know I say it all the time but I hope you like it.
Tuesday, 22nd August 2006: I've done a new version of DI Dick but I'm not sure how happy I am with it. For starters, the recording quality isn't as good as I might have liked. I feel the old version sounded warmer and generally better than this version and that's kind of disappointing to me. Also, the old version was a little bit faster. Not much (3m 15s as opposed to 3m 27s) but enough to be noticeable. I might do the new version over again; the drums are too bland (Even by my standards) and, in general not much about it makes me smile. Regardless you can listen to it by left-clicking here in the meantime. Despite all my moaning, I still hope you like what you hear. Maybe it'll grow on me.
In other news, I found a song I had totally forgotten about and finished it (In as much as I finish songs) today. It's called Displaced Hat and please feel free to download it, listen to it, save it off etc. as you see fit. Sorry if you think it's overly long, drawn out and tedious. Hopefully you'll like it okay.
I bought some M-Audio Studiophile BX5a (ie. cheapest available) monitor speakers today, so I'm hoping it'll help with my mixing of tunes. Prior to that, I found the bass response very low on my headphones. I pray (or would if I was even remotely religious in any form) it'll help me sort that out. It was driving me absolutely mental, as Kirby Girl would vouch for. While I was getting them, I got one of these too. To me, the snare sound I had been getting with a Shure SM57 wasn't 'raspy' enough and (Having been impressed by the Samson CO2 mics, especially for the price) I thought it might make for a better snare recording mic. Then again, it might not and I may end up going back to the SM57 again. Keep your fingers crossed for me and my efforts to get things sounding a little less awful please. Am I imagining it or is this as much of a (As 'the kids' call it) 'blog' as news? I guess it's a combination of both. Maybe I should rename it 'Insignificantly Minor Pieces of News'?
Monday, 21st August 2006: There's a new (rather twee) Bitchfinder Genital song up and about. Well, I say it's new but I wrote it around four or five years ago and only remembered about it the other night when the lyrics fell out of a book onto the floor. As it was just me there and nobody was around to tell me otherwise, I decided to record it and hence you can now listen to Cooperman. You can listen to it directly from here or on Tagworld. If clicking on that link doesn't work for you, please try copying and pasting http://tagworld.com/bfindergenital into your browser window. For some reason, the link sometimes takes me to the Bitchfinder Genital page and other times it takes me to Tagworld's homepage. Go figure. I'm far too much of a country bumpkin to understand any of this new fangled technology.
As I'm always pleading about, if you know of it, please inform me of anywhere cheap/free where I can post up tunes and link them directly to this website. It's kind of useless having to be so careful about the number of tunes I can stick up here. I'm afraid my lack of computer expertise and internet knowledge is a bit of a downfall for me on that front. Anyhoo, please contact me if you can assist in my search for free/dead cheap webspace and you're not some gouger trying to wangle cash out of me. Thank you.
You quite possibly won't and are perfectly entitled not to (That's very big of me) but I hope you like the song Cooperman. If you want to download it, just right-click on the link (The song title) and choose 'Save As' (or whatever option applies) to keep a copy. I'll be absolutely over the moon if you like it enough to want a copy. Please don't be backwards in letting me know if you like it enough to do just that.
Tuesday, 15th August 2006: Here's the first piece of Bitchfinder Genital news for you. At long last, it seems Bitchfinder Genital might come up with the goods (Or some might say 'the bads') and cobble together Eat A Slice Of Cake. This is a so-called EP we've been slabbering on about forever and which seemed like a horrible lie up until now. Now, it's almost a horrible truth.
We've got enough hastily recorded ditties to make up a small EP now. Actually, it's probably a large EP and maybe a little more like a really crappy mini album. To me, it seems more than a bit grandiose to refer to this collection of tunes as either. In the good old days, I would have called it a demo but that's not really right either as we're not demonstrating anything to anyone and aren't attempting to use it to grab the attention of some talent scout who can realise the well hidden gem we are and make us rich and famous beyond the dreams of mere mortal men (Such as those sentenced to travel among unknown stars, until the reach the Kingdom of Hades, whilst their crew members' bodies remain as lifeless as stone).
Getting back to Eat A Slice Of Cake, I'm going to attempt to knock up a new cover for it ASAP. I think I'll copy the front cover of the Fu Manchu album Eatin' Dust. It should be fairly easy to steal the design premise and it'll save on ink if I ever have to print any copies off. We're such gyps, we'll probably only stick a crappy bit of paper in the front of one of those skinny little cases you get cheap CDs in. Still, it's not as if we're going to charge for our CDs, so it'll be decent value.
So far, it's looking like Eat A Slice Of Cake will have the following tunes on it (Although not necessarily in this order): Bear Bottoms, Bronx Cheer, The Cheeses Please The Frozen Peas In Ways They Don't Foresee, Comet, Competitive Indigestion, DI Dick, Froo Froo, Scraping The Barnacles, Shellfish Nut and Ulmunshketayfa. Wow! Ten songs in total. That makes it sound like an album's worth was it not for the fact quite a few of our songs/tunes don't tip the scales over the two and a half minute mark. Still it's worth the money for nothing (and the chicks for free?).
When it eventually gets done, please don't hesitate to get us to post you a copy of it and we hope you'll enjoy it.
Oh, and this new website is news too. Hooray!