To All Who Sent Music and Art

To All of you who sent in music and art... Thank You. There was a lot of music and visuals sent my way. It is great to see that so many people are finding time to make art! Don't stop! I plan on listening and looking over the next 3 weeks. I will keep you posted.

Love, KB

Fancy Space People

Here is a little bit of information on Fancy Space People. Look for music in February and a film to follow.



xoKBox

I Want To Hear Your Music

I want to hear your music, band, soundscapes, sonic art....and visual art..... I want to see it please...... . Leave a link here or send me stuff in the mail at Coldwater Studio 12930 Ventura Blvd. #927
Studio City, CA 91604

xoKBox

New Music 2010

Happy New Year.... A quick update on the Pumpkins recordings for Teargarden By Kaleidyscope: We have 5 songs mixed and another song is tracked and ready to be mixed. Song number 2 should be ready for download within the next 2 weeks. I will let you know when we have a solid date.

Billy and I are happy to announce the birth of our record label! The name of the label will be made public soon. (We need to make sure that we have the name rights before we can announce it.)

We are very excited to be collaborating with amazing artists that have made a huge impact on the underground music world... From the psychedelic garage rock of the 60's and the punk rock insanity of the 70's and 80's to the post-punk Pleiadian power-pop that is now.

This year we plan on releasing new songs from the following bands:
.
Fancy Space People- We are currently in the studio recording 3 songs... These songs are slated to be our first release, also keep an eye open for the upcoming Fancy Space People film.
http://www.myspace.com/fancyspacepeople
http://www.youtube.com/user/fuzythorax

The Germs - In the very near future we plan on recording two songs that Darby Crash wrote with Pat Smear. "Out of Time" and "Beyond Hurt - Beyond Help" Darby committed suicide and the songs were never recorded. The original line up will be recording these "new" songs: Pat Smear (guitar), Lorna Doom (bass), Don Bolles (drums) and Shane West will be singing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germs_(band)

The Electric Prunes- Get the Visine ready for your third eye! Two new songs are in works with an E.P. to follow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Electric_Prunes
http://electricprunes.net/

The Strawberry Alarm Clock- We are in the writing/demo stage right now and hope to be in the studio soon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry_Alarm_Clock
http://www.myspace.com/strawberryalarmclock

YaHoWha 13- Music channeled from the Divine...Looking forward to getting the family back in the studio.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya_Ho_Wa_13
http://www.yahowha13.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABKupvqyWeU


Starchildren- Get ready for something new?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starchildren

I will be getting back to you soon with more updates on all the sonic goodness. Hope the new year is treating you well.
KB

Effect Pedals Used on Early SP Recordings

BILLY TALKS ABOUT THE EFFECT PEDALS USED ON EARLY SP RECORDINGS:

'My first mental recognition of the 'power' of the Big Muff came one night when i just happened to drop by a Catherine band practice. Catherine was Kerry's band in the 90's, and we used to share the same rehearsal space (they were the only band we trusted not to steal our shit and vice-versa). So i walked in and i just heard this tremendous ROAR and i thought to myself 'how are they making that sound?'. Each of the 3 guitarists had Big Muffs and the sounds was very Sabbath-like, just throwing this tremendous low drone buzz into the room. I knew that the band Mudhoney used Big Muffs but honestly they weren't using them like Catherine did. So i owe a debt of gratitude to Catherine for showing me the purple fuzz light. We used to try to use the pedals live but it was impossible for there wasn't enough clarity. We did use other Electro-Harmonix pedals live, like the Electric Mistress. We only had one of these in the beginning and James and I used to take turns over who would use it on a given night. Since we were mostly playing clubs we were looking for anything to take your head off and separate the sound of the guitar from the incessant din. The Big Muff pictured is 'the' one from Siamese Dream, the fuzz that launched a 1,000 other dreams i suppose. Almost all the heavy tracks were recorded thru this, solos included. Many songs would have as many as 8 fuzz guitars going at once. It was very difficult to record the tracks with this sound, but once it went right it was BLAMMO, a huge, huge sound. The settings you see in the picture are the exact settings for if you look close enough you can still see the pencil marks on the volume and tone. I had all sorts of theories of how to best use this pedal, including the idea that it only sounded its 'best' when used with a battery (as opposed to a power supply). I'm not much for going backwards but it is tempting to crack out all the old gear sometime and give it one more go. Maybe somewhere in amongst the 44 songs of Teargaden by Kaleidyscope I can find one such moment to do so. The sound of the combo of the Bat Strat, the Big Muff, and the Soul head with Mars cabinet is still unmistakable.

One quick funny story: I used to shop at this music store in San Francisco, and in the early 90's they were selling these pedals back then for about 40 bucks because nobody wanted them. About a year after Siamese came out, '94 i guess, I went to the same store to see if they still had any. The guy behind the counter knew me from before, and told me, 'yeah, i got a couple.' I said 'ok, how much?' '200 bucks' he said casually (which at that time was A LOT for a vintage pedal. '200 bucks!!!! Why are they so much?? Are they rare or unusual?' He said, 'no, but ever since you talked about using them we've sold about 75 vintage muffs. Sorry man, they're all looking for your sound!'. What he didn't know was they were really looking for the Catherine sound.

B.C.

I am laughing as I watch this video for many reasons. I remember asking Billy if he had some clothes I could borrow to wear for the video. So that would be Billy's heavy, furry coat I'm wearing, not sure where the Hershey's Kiss hat came from!

Love, K.B.

Billy talks about one of the first S.P. guitars

Billy talks about one of the first S.P. guitars





I bought this guitar around 1989 or 1990 because I needed a spare for playing live, and wanted an almost identical sound to go with my main one at the time which was an early 70's Strat (yellow that I hand painted). THAT guitar was the featured guitar on Gish and was probably my favourite guitar ever. It was stolen in 1992 out the back door of St. Andrews Hall in Detroit and has never resurfaced. I would still pay good $ to get that guitar back, no questions asked. So THIS guitar is the last remnant of that period of my life, and I really cherish it. It was painted ala Eric Clapton's cream era guitar by my friend crazy Nick. As you can see it's taken a bit of a beating back from a time when I used to throw my guitars around like candy. The history of this guitar is its a 1978 'bullet' Strat with the flat pickups (as opposed to the staggered pole pieces). I preferred these pickups at that time because it allowed for maximum gain by running the pickups up really close to the strings. This guitar does have some recording history of note, as it was the guitar I would use for solos as it seemed to just have more cut than the main one. So all the solos on Gish were done with this guitar. It has a vicious attack as you can hear on songs like 'Tristessa', 'I Am One', 'Rhinocerous', and 'Siva'. I'm fixing this guitar up now and I hope to use it again soon. I've started using more old-school amplification, like my 1969 Marshall Super Tremolo head (currently ailing) so guitars with this kind of cut are what I'm looking for. It makes me laugh that I'm sort of back to where I started when it comes to gain and attack. I see the BC Dimarzio pickups as more the modern application of gain, and the older type pickups as a more vintage approach to the use of gain.

Behind the Guitar Sounds of Gish & Siamese Dream

THE BODY AND SOUL BEHIND THE GUITAR SOUNDS OF GISH AND SIAMESE DREAM. This is the guitar amp and cabinet used on The Smashing Pumpkins debut album Gish recorded December 1990-March 1991 at Smart Studios, Madison, Wisconsin and the quadruple platinum Siamese Dream recorded December 1992- March 1993 at Triclops Sound Studios in Marietta, Georgia.

We fired up the old SOUL yesterday and it was amazing how instantly, without EQ "that" guitar sound just filled the control room.

I talked with long time friend and technician Mike Rubano about the magic combination of this amp and cabinet.

KB: What kind of amp is this?

Mike: Marshall JCM 800 100 watt head. James also used a JCM 800 but his was the 50 watt model.

KB: I asked Billy how he came about this combo and he said you would have the scoop?

Mike: Billy had a Roland Jazz Chorus amp he wanted to find something that would push more air to fill bigger rooms and cut through Jimmy's powerful drum sound. He was looking for a more aggressive sound. So he found an ad for a used JCM 800 and Marshall slant cab in town and asked me to go with him to take a look at it. We went to the sellers apartment where we found an empty room with just the amp, the cabinet and the seller. There wasn't a bit of furniture in the room. It was a bit creepy. As Billy worked out a deal with the seller I took the amp apart and checked it out. It looked great, we tried it out and is was decent sounding. So he cut a deal and we took it home.

KB: So I heard from Billy that changing the tubes really added to the punch of this amp?

Mike: To get it ready for the road I wanted to make sure the tubes would hold up and I had no idea how old the current tubes were, so I ordered new ones. We didn't have much money back in the day but I was able to find a good deal on KT88s at Antique Electronic Supply and ordered a set. When they arrived I tossed the old tubes, installed the new ones, biased the amp and I gave it back to Billy. He just loved the way it sounded. In fact over the years as the band had more money to spend on gear we tried "better" more expensive tubes and he always had me go back to the KT88s from china.

KB to Billy: What are your memories about the amp?

Billy: When I first bought the amp in 1989 from this stoner guy, I thought it sounded ok but I think I was more excited to just be playing thru a Marshall. I realized after a time that I wasn't that crazy about the sound so I asked Mike to look at it and see what he could do. After he changed the tubes to the KT88s the amp just sprang to life, and it was the body of the amp that I used to drive insane amounts of distortion into to get 'that sound'. Butch Vig and I were so sold on the sound of the amp that outside of a few select parts, I would say that 98pct of all guitar parts on the first two albums were done thru this amp/speaker combo. In order to change the sound, the Stratocaster parts would be recorded through a shure 57 on the bottom right speaker, and the Les Paul parts would be recorded through a Sennheiser 421 on the top left speaker. This subtle difference between what speaker we would use created the sense of playing thru a different amp set-up even though obviously I wasn't.

Love KB