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casiotony
Feb. 9th, 2007
08:57 am - Thoughts on Nova-ing
Got a nice message from a like minded soul from that otherwise internet-fleapit of MySpace. Here is my response - I thought to make it public because the message made me put down in txt some things of CasioNova nature.
Greetings XXXXXX,
Thank you for the message. Very lovely to get in these dark times of double a failure. Fret not about playing a Yamaha SHS - it took me years to ween myself off that beastie to be 100% casio. In fact you have made a wise decision - yamaha offers much more in playability and instant - 'hey look i'm doing music' -bility.
"no longer shall i simply be a comedy act with some musical direction"
ha! That is the refrain that has been inhabiting my dreams and nightmares for years. In fact it is a phrase that one wakes up in cold sweat from sometimes.
I guess we are lucky, we started with the comedy. Imagine starting with the music? Jeepers, that would be way tooooo scary - there is so much amazing music already out there, if all one did was music one would say to potential listeners, 'hey don't listen to me - go get yourself a fab Dick Hyman record - now that cat is REALLY cool'.
I've yet to touch the realms of real music - the only reason I dont play covers is that I am tone deaf and have zero technique and it is a million times easier for me to make something of my own up. This will change soon -- once I have learnt my own material and can play it confidently in a forty minute set then I will sit down with a music book and actually learn something.
It is a real battle for me, I have no groove either - I'm literally programming my songs into muscle memory. It is insanity, I have no music aptitude and my instruments aren't real instruments. The consequences aren't pretty - reallife for casionova is thoroughly dull and unpleasant. Probably would be okay if I was much younger. The one thing that keeps it going is curiosity - to find out if it really is possible.
The gestation for this act was in a supportive environment, that quickly ended and I have since been in very unsupportive environments ever since - it is the support of the audience while doing the act that sustains it. So I'm very grateful for messages like yours. It is bleak and lonely - thats the nature of doing obscure comedy things, or perhaps it is the bleak and lonely people are the ones that can do obscure comedy things.
I've been meaning to write a little about the next stage from playing music for ones own amusement to making sounds in public. You've almost propelled me to write that article but since I now have a very crappy manual labour job in the morning I can't. Actually that's a salient point - to pursue any artistic endeavour with integerity involves a vast amount of time, something that is in deep conflict with the overriding ethos of our society. Having a crap job that kills braincells and makes one exhausted stops an artistic practice. Since the dole is no longer an option and many of us are outside the labour market due to demographics ... so what to do... oh to be landed gentry! Wealth is sooo wasted on the rich.
Back to the other thoughts ... its really just a confidence trick - that getting up on stage thing, and being honest is the only way to go - the stage is a magnifier of personality. One has to be oneself or to present a facet, even an exagerrated one, of oneself onstage or it simply does not work. The ideal for doing music is to play without looking - nothing more dull than seeing a 'shoegaze' (because they are looking at their fretboards) indy band or email checking laptop noise act. I guess that's why I haven't gotten around to learning music properly yet - too busy learning my stuff so I can do it without looking.
When I do get around to learning it will be with this fab book I found called 'Learn to Play the Portable Electronic Piano' by Morton Manus. very out of print and only in second hand stores if your super lucky. It has cartoon psychedelic electric piano superimposed over a couple walking on abeach on the cover. Seriously - it is the best I've found for learning the essentials quickly - and real keyboard players have agreed. People also say LESSONS are the best thing EVA, but who can afford them?
I heard a great quote on Radio National last year from 75 year old concert violinist, something to the affect of, "Well, I HAVE been playing since a young age, I started when I was sixty". So there is hope for all of us who havent been doing music since the crib.
May your batteries never die.
CasioLove,
CasioNova
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drainedFeb. 7th, 2007
07:22 am - Brisbane Shows in March
14th of March at Rics w/ Dollface (drum+organ duo)
17th of March at the Columbian with Monster Zoku Onsomb!!!!!!!!! (crazy ass drill & lounge fiends)
Did another duel to death between a a Casio MA-120 and Casio MT-520 tonight. The MT-520 still wins on the drums.
The neat thing about the MA-120 is that has got a keyboard split - rare for a small casio, and the word 'casio' printed on the back.
Day jobs suck. Particularly the brainless droid lifting things ones. Leaves one exhausted AND kills braincells. Mind you it is good to have both because the sound of braincells dying is wishing that one was dead and at the end of the day one is too tired to stuff around with ropes and pills. So it kind of works out. Plus you have money ( a muted 'yay...')
The internet can get stuffed. I'm going to lose my OTHER backup domain name, same ol' tactic - companies not processing the payment for the names, then never answering emails until the name has lapsed. So the casionova.com stuff i've mirrored at http://casionova.tickityboo.org/ is going to disappear next week. Crap - spent days reinstalling it all and moving over to wordpress 2. *whinge mode off*
Feb. 3rd, 2007
06:44 am - Convergence
If I was to nominate one band as the best band in the world it would be Finnish blues-rockers, 22-Pistepirkko. The appeal of 22-Pistepirkko to me is that listening to their records is listening to something created by a collective of individuals utterly devoted to creating the best work of the collective. They seem to have no fear of subsuming personal egos for the sake of the song and for 22-Pistepirkko, and no fear in utilising whatever sounds and ideas that are necessary for creating new work. I just got this from their bio which sums up 22-Pistepirkko:
"22-Pistepirkko was founded on the ashes of a punk rock band called "Matti Mätä & SS" at Utajärvi, a small village in Northern Finland, in the year 1980. The basic principles were surprisingly clear from the very start: Make it your own way; become professional; have an international career; try to stay open for new things and keep your act straight but adventurous; compose songs; write stories that are strong, funny, sad, happy, weird... and play them to people."
1980! and still producing astounding albums.
I've been exploring their back catologue and just came across their first album - and the first song on the first album of the greatest band in the universe, 22-Pistepirkko is called 'Kellarissa' and is performed on a Casio VL-1 !!
My mind is blown, 22-Pistepirkko's first recorded song of over 20 years of output was on a Casio!
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tiredFeb. 1st, 2007
04:44 am
Finally heard back from the domain name company, a nonsensical reply - 'we noticed you are overseas so we are allowing you access to your control panel'.
Well the control panel showed that I owe them $185, from this time LAST YEAR that I ALREADY PAID. Did a bit of digging and they actually OWN casionova.com, so even if I pay their ransom they will own it forever.
So my only option is to let it expire (and hope they dont, or another unscrupulous company, jack the domain name') and somehow be the first person to register it. This time through a decent registration company - that will have the registration in MY name and not THEIRS.
My site is semirestored at http://casionova.tickityboo.org/
The net is full of crooks. Stuff 'em. I'm not gonna pay. I'm a nonentity anyways, so now is as a good as time as any to disappear from the web.
Jan. 30th, 2007
05:14 am
casionova.com is now gone.
the problem is that the billing department of the people I registered the domain name yonks ago have a problem with my credit card details - this happened last year, and if i remember it was a typo, it would have HAD to be rectified last year but now - site gone and I cant log onto the regristration site because there is 'a problem with the credit card'. so in spite of having the right username and password I cant get to my account to rectify the credit card details problem. I have emailed over and over the billing department (that the support department said I have to take it up with) and have not gotten a single reply. its been over four days now.
okay ... so once casionova.com has lapsed for 60 days it is up for grabs again. that is my only chance is to wait till then and hope the other casionova's out there dont nab it.
perhaps this is an ideal time to change the name of the act ??? although I use 100% casios, and the casio corp., (of old) was quite an amazing company for a variety of reasons, primarily that their coporate practice was so out there and uncorporate like that it could serve as a model for artistic practice. (thats another post!)
-- calling myself 'casionova' I imagine limits the potential for myself to play in corporate or governmental arenas. - having 'one' particular company's name embedded (in a punny way ) in mine.
i have already had to think about this as there is another casionova in the uk (a dj) who is (as claimed) getting quite a profile, we made a gentlemans agreement to keep our names and to us a locale suffix if we stray near others territories, as is common in the music biz. CasioNova (AUS)
Also the next stage of this show is making it palatable for schools - having 'casio' in the title would not be recommended to get those kind of gigs.
The real casio corporation I have noticed is pretty much the only large corporation on the planet that doesn't send attack lawyers on those who appropriate it's name. (Yet another reason that casios are frikken awesome - unlike, say, Panasonic)
If I was a hardcore band I would call myself 'Rom Pack', but I dont think the schools would buy that ;)
As for site: I wasn't going to renew the other domain name I had but I have since it is now the ONLY domain name I have and have just started putting the contents of casionova.com into the subdomain of tickityboo.org
http://www.casionova.tickityboo.org/ind
The blog might be back up tonight too - once I get wordpress going on the other server.
In the long run this might be good - as the tickityboo label idea is worth pursuing, and having all my web stuff and projects under one banner is less stressful.
Funnily enough I'm not toooo pissed , (apart from every email, website registration etc etc is to my casionova.com site - sheesh) as myspazz in this world controlled by baby boomers reliving their youth through their children is now pretty much the only www place for bands to be. I think myspazz puss, but there you go.
addendum:
more crap -- I have to get a new ebay account as I registered with ebay before there was an australian ebay - so when I change email address it goes to the UK site, and to verify my identity it has to take a credit card - but 'UK' is FIXED for the country of your address that has to match ones credit card address. grrrrr.
so since I live in australia i cant change my email address for ebay.
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workingJan. 26th, 2007
06:28 am - I keep getting served
Due to my website being in the control of several companies - and that the site was created years ago with a long lapsed email account and someone elses credit card, this time of the year is always a right royal PITA.
I was going to shift companies - but my current one hasnt been reponding to emails. I'm thinking of going offline all together.if this weeks hell keeps on.
oh and my email doesn't work. So email is best sent to casionova at gmail dot com. I think I will stick to gmail as it has POP so I can still use sylpheed-claws mail program on my computer (geek mode off).
Why get rid of casionova.com ? Well I was going to revamp the whole thing anyways -- and there was the problem I was having of everytime I would upload new casio info it would get swiped and put onto a another site. For gig listings people tend to use myspace, so that only leaves a place for people to download songs - might as well do that somewhere else too - where the listeners actually are.
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stressedJan. 23rd, 2007
04:52 am - Details of Live Rig for this Saturdays Show [super dull]
This will be my first attempt at really doing 100% casios 100% live.
A few numbers will be two casios played at the same time, with no backing. I will be opening with the 'hit' This Is Not The Future - on a Casio MT-520, which is an autochord late 80's machine, with very digital drums (a lot of drum variations on this model) with the little VL-5 doing the lead line. First time in many years playing this song live, since I could only do it on a yamaha.
Other solo casios are the MT-40 and the SA-5 will provide drums for a guitar number and saxaphone number, oh and of course the VL-1 for a song that is about the VL-1. (that old casio calculator that was used on 'da da da (cant be bothered typing rest of song title)).
Now for THE rig that comprises my 'backing band':
There is a certain amount of irony in that I use a YAMAHA QY70 sequencer to control my casios, but this will be replaced soon with a casio midiplayer. The QY70 controls a Casio VZ8M one rack unit high sound module. This is an exceedingly spectacular synthesiser - though I do prefer the tones of the CZ series and earlier analogue casios, the VZ8M is the most practical for me because it is small. It is multitimbral - one output I use for bass sounds and this goes into a ZOOM TriMetal distortion pedal, the most underated distortion pedal ever built. The other output is untreated and used for other backing instruments.
The drums have been a bugbear for me - I LOVE the kits I have built in the Hydrogen drum machine in my Linux computer, made up of various casio drum sounds, mainly from early models. I originally was going to use a hardware sampler - but since getting a CASIO GZ10M sound module I am using that - so it really is a casio making the drum sounds in realtime. The GZ is a minute general midi sound module - so it has seven or eight kits to play with. It is way too modern for me so i run it through a $100 multi effect unit - Korg AX3B, which I think is a piece of crap but I've found a use for it.
My main live instrument is either a Casio MT-40, an early nice sounding casio keyboard, a Casio EG-5, a real electric guitar or a Casio DH-100, the casio digital sax. These are plugged as the song dictates into a ZOOM G2 multi effects pedal - which is an incredibly compact and awesome pedal. I use multi-effect pedals for saving space and so I can call up a patch with one foot press. Sure a bunch of boutique effect pedals would sound nicer, but I can't afford that and I can't carry that.
Back to the midi-rig - the QY70 also controls a Digitech Midi Vocalist - a one rack unit high midi vocal harmoniser from the 90's. What does that do? Well - it lets me sing! A tune! In pitch! Less obviously robot sounding than a vocoder, which was an option I was playing with for ages but ditched when I found that sound didnt sit well my songs, the Digitech is a lot more subtle. It has become my favourite way of treating my voice and it is teaching me to sing, so maybe one day I won't need it.
For the songs that aren't sequenced the Digitech is set to detune the vocals so I have to attempt to sing properly and the device thickens the vocals. I run a line out of the Digitech to the house mixing desk, so if there is an engineer they can EQ and reverb to their hearts content.
The other outputs go to a little Behringer mixer that I will one day upgrade to a Yamaha MX10. I also use a Behringer A/B switching footpedal - this saves me from needing an extra couple of channels on the mixer. All the midi gear is a 6 unit high rack case - upended so the controls are at my fingertips - I have a micstand attached to the case. The mic I use is a Nady Bushman - great sounding, cool looking and very cheap microphone.
That's about it. I read somewhere it is suicidal to use midi to run your backing tracks - hey, everyone did it back in the 80's ... what could possibly go wrong .... (stay tuned to find out)
I'll make a diagram of it all sometime - much easier than reading the above description!
Jan. 22nd, 2007
09:18 am - First Post - kind of
My third blog - first one was here at LJ - Casionova, but the email account associated with that is long gone - along with my memory of the password, so I am started anew with CasioTony.
In the interim was my blog on my website, which was more of an easy way to add content on the site than typing thoughts - after dealing with trolls I've stopped blogging there, and will revamp that site sometime in the future.
So here is the more personal thoughts of the guy behind the CasioNova/CasioTony act, a peek backstage, a visit to the greenroom, a look at how the act is created. It won't be pretty, and if you are here as a fan you will be shocked by how creepy and dysfunctional I am in real life and at how creepy and dysfunctional the business of show is.
I also promise it will be very very very very very dull.
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indifferent