VERY EXCITE!!!111!!

I’m not even going to bother writing. I’m just going to sit back and reap what we worked so hard sowing, as will you:

No Worries:

The very scary thing is that Dave confessed to having “rushed” through this shit. I have his word that the actual demo itself (for which we’re giving him all the time in the world to mix) is going to be much, much better in terms of audio quality and whatever else he’s responsible for here. As if I can even conceptualize that.

With that, my friends, I leave you with these parting words:

The takeover, the break's over nigga
God MC, me, Jay-Hova
Hey lil' soldier you ain't ready for war
R.O.C. too strong for y'all

My thoughts exactly.

Christmas Eve Except Better

I got a call from Dave at Machinehead Studio yesterday informing me that the mastered versions of the two radio edits for the tracks “No Worries” and “Soul Playin’” will be ready by Wednesday (tomorrow) night.

Once I come home from the studio with the CD, I am uploading its contents EVERYWHERE. The old tracks are coming down from our SoundClick; it’s time for serious spring cleaning, baby, groundhog or no groundhog. Prepare for sexy times.

In all honesty, I’m not sure you really understand the enormity of the situation; I’m not going to lie, there’s a wet spot in my boxers dedicated to the anticipation of this moment.

You will know the minute I do.

Every Reason Why You Should Start Paying Attention To Us

Word on the street is that the radio tracks we have to send off to Kozy (tour administrator) for the pre-tour promotional CD will be ready by the end of this week. To make a long story short, these tracks are going to be part of a compilation of tunes from every band/artist joining us on this Ontario tour (comprehensive list to come as I find out) in an effort to promote the tour, to get the music out there to draw crowds for the shows we’ll be playing before we actually get there. I’ve heard rumours that there will be radio play and promotion in each of these cities, as well as a promotions team delegated with the task of announcing our imminent invasion by passing around flyers and putting up posters all over the place. I’ve never been too sure about how organized promotion works, or if it even exists, but I could care less; as long as it means getting our name out there, I’d give the green light to putting the SOUL PLANE name and our logo on a line of refurbished dildos.

As far as progress as a band goes, we seem to be making some: the master of the demo is slated to be in our hands by the end of February, and I’ve begun recording the vocals of my own demo as well (the intention of which is really just so that the five-track Soul Plane demo isn’t the only music-related item on sale at our merchandise stand on tour). My solo demo will feature myself, Blythe, and Nickie (former Soul Plane vocal understudy for Blythe), so I’m still very much keeping it within the family, so to speak. Even beat-wise, I’m rapping over beats I made myself, with one exception that was a custom/exclusive Deuce beat. To top it all off, Gideon co-produced one of the beats I am rapping on. But I digress.

Once Soul Plane’s demo is ready, our tracks will go up on the current website, and shortly thereafter the real (non-blogger) website will become accessible as well. Obviously, I’ll be worrying about this after the demo goes from my hands to Conor and anyone else who wants to know if we’re ‘bout it. Once all that is up and running, we will be getting shirts, hats, tuques, badges, and hoodies pressed with the Soul Plane logo on it for merchandise purposes. The band itself is currently working on a 12-13 song repertoire so we don’t bore ourselves to death playing the same old shit over and over again. Despite creativity levels having slowed down a bit due to the shifting of our focus onto prodding Dave to get the demo done, everything we come up with keeps blowing the last thing we came up with clear out of the water. Seriously, though, all this has to (and will) happen before mid-June, which is alarmingly close to the first show date of this tour.

The demo is definitely going to be what gets the ball rolling on our end: in terms of shows, we’ve been stagnant for the last several months as a band because there is simply no way of getting shows using Countdown to Launch, our first demo, as a promo tool – too much has changed: Dan Paiken is no longer with us, so there go the male vocals and lead guitar. Gideon switched from bass guitar to lead, we got a new bassist in Patrick, and Kevin no longer plays keyboard (two of the songs on Countdown to Launch had keyboard in them). Let’s face it; no one is signing us based on a demo that was made just under a year ago with a completely different sound than what we can produce today. You can’t shit on a cupcake, call it icing, and expect people to dig in, right? Now, thanks to our demo, we have an accurate representation of our band and its music. Once we put it in Conor’s hands, as long as we do our part musically and meet the guy halfway, I’m more than positive that he will be able to hook us up with more shows than we can handle, just like he did last summer. And we’ve only stepped our game up since then.

So, all this being said, get the wax out of your ears and the sand out of your vaginas, because once we take off, it’s smooth cruising at 20 000 feet. We may decide to never land.

Hibernation is over. And we’re real hungry.

Reasonable Doubt

The day of reckoning had come.

We rolled through the Machinehead Studio parking lot four-deep like a hit team dispatched by Vito Genovese. Ramming through the newly-installed glass-paned doors in the comfort and sturdiness of Kevin’s station wagon, we unloaded automatic rounds all over the lavishly-renovated foyer, filling the freshly-painted walls so that by the time Dave pulled his pants up and emerged from the beautifully-furnished bathroom to join his consigliere Harrison in the control room, we were hopping out of the car inside the very-recently-destroyed Machinehead Studio. It was on.

“Whoa. What the fuck?”

It was the only thing Harrison managed to utter as he came out of the control room to see what the commotion was about. Setting aside all instincts to exercise diplomacy and eloquence, Aaron punched him square in the mouth with frightening speed and agility. As Harrison reeled backwards into the multi-thousand dollar, state-of-the-art, still-in-the-packaging console, smashing it and sending broken parts of it everywhere, Gideon drew his shank. Several quick jabs into Harrison’s side later, Kevin was dousing the helplessly slumped-over studio co-owner with gasoline. The entire process had taken less than ten seconds. Out of nowhere, a Zippo lighter appeared in Aaron’s hand. All eyes on Dave. At the sight of his first-string henchman bleeding all over the exquisitely-varnished hardwood floor to death, about to be mercilessly set on fire, Dave resigned himself to fate and took a seat, resting both hands on what was left of his mixing board, in plain sight.

I looked at Dave intently. He was clearly trying to maintain a cool exterior, but his eyes betrayed him: inside, he was positively shitting himself – any man would have been. Having grown up on the streets, Dave knew that it was only a matter of time before we caught up to him and brought him to justice for running off without first handing us our demo by early February, as per our agreement. Dave also knew that the breach of any such agreement could result in a death penalty. This was Family business. Beads of sweat were appearing on his forehead as the distinct possibility that he might be next crossed his mind. I said calmly:

“Dave, Dave… why did it have to come to this? Why did you have to run away? Had you come to me like a man and told me that you couldn’t give us our demo in due time, we would have forgiven your trespasses. After all, we are reasonable men, aren’t we? But reason is a two-way street, my friend. I can’t very well be reasonable if you choose to throw reason out the window yourself by running away from us and breaking our deal, now can I?”

Dave started to speak, but Kevin held up his hand to silence him and said:

“The best thing you can do would be to mix our demo. Now.”

Dave looked at him, bug-eyed. He swallowed, and then looked at what was left of Harrison. He must have filed that one under “obvious foreshadowing.” Shaking, stammering, he spoke:

“Hey man, there’s no way…”

At the word “no”, Kevin untucked a machine pistol from his belt and held it firmly against Dave’s rapidly-pulsating temple.

“Now.”

True story.

Okay, not really. But imagine?

The good news is we’ve made human contact with Dave; he’s alive and well, but from all the renovating and the mixing and the renovating and the mixing, he’s also aesthetically reminiscent of Saddam Hussein when they found him just chillin’ in that bunker some time ago. I mean, he looks okay for someone who just came out of a coma, but not so okay for a heroin addict with AIDS. No doubt about it, homeboy is a mess, but he’s alive, and we’re all happy for that. Keep on trucking, man, our music needs you.

The bad news is that we came out of the studio empty-handed: he’s in the middle of renovations so things are a little slow – we’ve at least been able to inform him that Kozy (tour promoter/organizer) is looking to get two of our most radio-marketable cuts like, half a month ago for promotional purposes. Dave has promised sincerely to get right on top of that. The other thing I’ve been able to get from Dave is a ballpark date as to when this demo will finally be finished, and I quote: “Oh, way before March, man.” And I believe him. We all do. After all, we’re reasonable men.

Blue Balls Bawlin'

Dave (Machinehead Studio’s Prime Minister) hits us with yet another irrelevant update on the blog of Machinhead Studio’s MySpace page:

Monday, February 04, 2008

STUDIO MAKEOVER! Pt. 3 hi guys! i haven't been able to keep you guys updated because we have been so busy trying to get this place ready to go!!!! all the hard work really paid off. the place looks amazing, especially the bathroom! we did a complete rebuild including new floors, paint, acoustic, furniture, mics, gear and even a new little closet in the hallway! there are still some little things to do here and there. i realized i'm going to have to do a bit more work to the control room than i had previously thought, so i have that to do. plus there is still new gear on the way!!!!! but despite that we are up and operational!!!!!!! the new live room looks and sounds awesome, we rented a gretch kit for the open house and it rocked. so back i go... to tweak and perfect and go insane and drink coffee and ramble on incoherently for no apparent reason. oh ya check out the new pics :) dave

For the love of God, Dave, please stop putting up renovation details nobody gives a shit to know on a blog nobody gives a shit to read, and hurry up and give us our demo that nobody gives a shit to listen to.

Soul Plane is alarmingly close to besieging and invading Machinehead Studio. Final warning.

No but seriously, we beg you. Like, on our knees. We can’t take it anymore. We’ve never sat around for so long doing so much of nothing. But no rush – whenever you’re ready, man, whenever you’re ready. We’ll be waiting outside the studio in Kevin’s station wagon. In fact, we’re there right now. Outside. Freezing. Windows down as a form of protest, posting this from a laptop currently connected to your wireless internet router. So… you know. Whenever.

Flight Delay

How does that saying go again? Is it something along the lines of, “Nothing worthwhile happens overnight?” Why isn’t there an equally true proverb stating that “Anything that takes forever is automatically deemed worthwhile?” If that were the case, Soul Plane’s upcoming demo release Black Box is going to be worth so many whiles you’ll spend your whole life bumping the shit.

Because hot damn, we thought we’d have our demo in our hands, ready to distribute by like, two days ago. Cut scene to the winter holidays, shortly after too much snow stopped us from doing not enough work (see Mother Nature 1, Soul Plane 0 blog). I had called Dave (owner/head engineer at Machinehead) the day of in hopes that we could reschedule our recording session for as early as possible, because Blythe had a lot of vocals to record. He told me that we’d either have to do it right away (in a week’s time), or wait until after the heavy-duty renovations to the studio that he would be starting in mid-January were finished.

Since I am a man that goes deaf when he hears “no” until it somehow becomes a “yes” (like that Corleone guy), I intuitively tuned out everything Dave said after he gave me the “right away, in a week’s time” option.

Cut scene to the middle of January, no more than a week or so after the final session we had at Machinehead Studio to record Blythe’s vocals, no more than two after I had blocked Dave’s studio renovation plans out of my head, Kevin and I got talking and we decided that it would be best if we sat in on the mixing and mastering process. I called Machinehead Studio and got no answer. I left a message. Several days later, when I still hadn’t had my call returned, I called again, and was surprised to see that their voicemail box was full. This was not good.

I started worrying that they had shut down and boarded the place up. I started worrying that the time, money, and energy we spent on recording this entire demo was in vain. I started worrying that maybe the reason Dave made Harrison co-owner at Machinehead studio was so that he could bail out, declare bankruptcy, collect whatever insurance, and pin the blame on Harrison. Poor, poor, Harrison, he didn’t even see it coming. I started worrying that I’d have to commit crimes to get back what was rightfully ours. I started worrying… and then Kevin told me to check the website.

“I did, you idiot. You don’t think I would have done that first? They didn’t update anything.”

“Is that a MySpace link there? Maybe they’ve got something there.”

Two blogs on Machinhead’s MySpace answered all of our questions:

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

STUDIO MAKEOVER! so here is our first blog! and what a blog it will be... we have some big things going on. currently we are doing (ahem) minor renovations. and man is it going to be awesome. the best part is!! i don't have to do any of it! lol i've set up shop in my room to get the mixes done while harrison, alex and the boys get'er done. you can check out our photos to see up dates. i will try to update the pictures and the blog on a daily basis! check back for more later!!!!!!

Thursday, January 24, 2008

STUDIO MAKEOVER! Pt. 2 so here is update 2!!!! things are moving along great, as you can see in the pictures. all of the flooring is done for the control room which is good because the custom desks are arriving today! all the slate has been put down in the bathroom and it look awesome with the green. when its all done that is going to be a bathroom you would be proud to poop in! so hard at work, the boys are staring on the live room now, priming and painting! just wait till you see what we have planned for in there! so that's it for me today, i have to get back to my basement cave (which i posted pictures of) currently i'm juts getting things ready to be mixed, so when everything is done and the gear is in i can blast out some awesome mixes. so look out for some amazing tunes from SWEET NIGHTMARE - THEORY:ASTRAY - RUSSIAN RULLET and SOUL PLANE.. dave

Okay, so maybe he wasn’t running away to Mexico after all.

Sit tight, ladies and gentlemen; despite unforeseen delays, Soul Plane will still be taxi-ing off the runway momentarily.