Isaac Priestley

Isaac Priestley, originally uploaded by AlisterBlake.

World Racketeering Squad logo concept

Possible WRS logo, originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

WRS Photos: Panic in the Studio!

Panic, originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

Photo array of World Racketeering Squad recording "Panic" at Arlen Studios in Austin, TX.

World Racketeering Squad at Carousel Lounge

Here's the full video of our gig at Carousel Lounge. Enjoy!

Isaac

World Racketeering Squad live at Conan's, Trophy's

This was a busy week for us. Three gigs in a row! Here are the videos from Conan's Pizza, on Monday, Nov 19, and from Trophy's, on Tuesday, Nov 20. At Trophy's we decided to mix it up and play one of our newer songs, "Screwed You", as practice to play it at Carousel Lounge the next night. It actually came out better at Trophy's, in my opinion.

Isaac

Gig report: Carousel Lounge, 11/21/07

Terrific show at the Carousel Lounge last night opening up for Blue Squeezbox.

It was fun and inspiring, lots of our friends showed up, and the guys in Blue Squeezebox were enthusiastic and very cool. 

Both Reed's folks and my Mom showed up, which was nice!  Reed's folks came to his Halloween party but my Mom hadn't seen us play, she had only heard a few recordings.  The crowd that had showed up by the time we started filled the Carousel Lounge on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, so we consider that to be decidedly awesome.  Lots of our personal friends showed up, and people we haven't seen in a while, who heard about it through other friends or through our mailing list.  Blue Squeezebox had a decent contingent, but we'd been promoting the show like mad since we found out, so I think that helped our turnout.

As for the show itself, our strong points are our energy and our sense of fun.  We're doing stuff that nobody else seems to do on stage, a variety of styles and attitudes that combines to create a pretty unique and entertaining show. 

Musically, we have a ways to go.  My main bugbear right now is playing too fast.  We're looking for a rhythm section, but right now it's just my electric guitar and Reed's voice.  Watching the video, pretty much every one of the songs we played was too fast, and in some cases it really hurt the song musically.  I get so amped up with energy that I rush through the songs like it's a race.  I've been working on it, but it's really a huge priority for me right now, I just cannot continue playing like that.  Must be smoother, tighter, and combine being more relaxed on stage with projecting an infectious energy.

After the show, Reed took our mailing list around to find that one of our fans had already sent it around the room and we had a page and a half of new entries!  Reed picked up some stragglers that came in late, and we got a sizeable addition to the list out of it.  He also travelled the tip jar, which returned considerably fuller than it started, marking the first time we've ever made money from playing music!   

Blue Squeezebox played two terrific sets afterward, we hung out and enjoyed the evening.   After the show we posted a short videoblog about it and some of the videos of the songs.  The rest will be up soon.

We'll be at Conan's Pizza and Trophy's this coming Monday and Tuesday, and back at the Green Muse on Thursday.  Things are going great!

Isaac

Gig report: Trophy's, Tues 11/20/07

Things are moving fast! More new developments in the ongoing saga of the World Racketeering Squad.

Picked up an EH Big Muff Pi pedal on Tuesday. We don't really even have that many songs that call for fuzz, but I'm trying to build up a pedal set and it's flashier than the compressor or BBE Sonic Stomp that I want. Ironically I've already got terrific fuzz sounds from my new AD30VT amp, but there you go!

Our big gig is tonight, but last night we played the open mic at Trophy's Bar & Grill, smoky little bar with a folky crowd, mostly a scene from the Kerrville Folk Festival. They have a showcase performer in the middle of the night and several open mic slots for 2 songs each before and after. A couple of weeks ago after our set I asked the host, curmudgeonly Bill Davis, what we need to do to get a showcase slot. He laughed and said "Get better." So I resolved to do that and get a slot, and put the idea in the back of my mind, to be brought out much later.

Then last night, only two weeks later, Bill Davis approached us and said "I haven't asked y'all to be a showcase yet, have I?" and committed to giving us a spot early in 2008. He also had some other projects in the works he wants to talk to us about.

Bill Davis is also a singer/songwriter with a really intense energy on stage, who draws a devoted crowd when he plays. He's completely different in style from us, not whimsical or esoteric in the least. So it's blowing our minds to have him so enthusiastic about us!

Now I'm just trying to decide how much to practice today before the gig tonight. I don't want to overdo it!

We've decided to play with my little Kustom amp and effects unit, the way we've been practicing our set for weeks now, but I'm dying to use my AD30 and Big Muff!

Isaac

Gig report: Conan's Pizza, Monday 11/19/07

Back at Conan's Pizza on Monday, first show with the new amp. This was a rough one.

I've had some serious noise complaints from my upstairs neighbor who apparently thinks he should be living over a family of church mice, as he calls the apartment management or the police any time I plug in my amp or strum my acoustic with anything thicker than my thumb. So that had me in a mood from early on in the day.

We've got a psychedelic song called "Needful Things", and I've been changing the electric guitar part from simple strumming to a more colorful approach with melodic runs and riffs. It's not quite show-ready yet, though, so I practiced it literally all day long, playing it at 60 bpm, at 80, at 100, 120, and its regular speed of 145bpm, just to get it down.

Until now I've been playing with a cute little padded Kustom amp--

--but I'd always dreamed of having a larger amp. I bought a Vox AD30VT off Craigslist on Friday, so I was really looking forward to trying it out.

Boy, was I ever not ready to use that amp!

I normally use a Zoom G2.1u effects unit and have my sounds programmed, but I decided to use the built-in modelled sounds of the Vox from now on. I mapped out which presets sounded best with each song and built a custom channel for "Needful Things". I figured it'd be simple enough to switch settings between songs.

Thing is, because I'm in an apartment I had no idea how loud this amp would be. I'd never been able to turn it up before! So the first song was too soft, the second song too loud, and I don't think we ever hit "just right" for the whole show!

That was the first challenge tonight. Also, I was nervous about using the new one and didn't get focused enough to know what I was doing, so when I activated the UK 70's model for our rocking tune "Heartbreaker", I neglected to click the "Preset" button. It just used the settings I had on the knobs, and I had the gain way down. I cranked the volume and that helped, but it was nowhere near the sound I wanted and I had no idea why!

Still, the audience reacted really well to it and we got some names on the mailing list we just started. Everybody had a good time, so it worked out well in the end!

Also, we've decided to take the Kustom amp to play with us at our first big gig at the Carousel Lounge on Wednesday. We figured, this little amp has been working its tail off with us for a long time, and it deserves a chance to shine before it gets replaced by the larger model! We just want to have as few unknown or uncertain variables as possible, we want to have a tight, solid show.

We'll have the videos of this show on YouTube soon.

Isaac

Isaac Priestley portrait by Alister Blake

isaac_priestly, originally uploaded by AlisterBlake.

Can't wait to see this finished!

Join the World Racketeering Squad mailing list!

Now that we're playing more around town, we're getting our mailing list together to let fans know where we'll be and what we're up to. Just pop in your email address and you'll be informed anytime we've got a show coming up!

We won't sell your email to anyone, we'll just send you great gig announcements :)
Jeff

Link

World Racketeering Squad's first studio recording: Panic!

Every Monday we play an open mic at Conan's Pizza, where the host, Billy, is really friendly and always does a great job on our sound, especially for what is basically a funky little PA system set up in a pizza shop!  He makes it sound terrific.

Anyway, last week he asked us if we'd be interested in recording a song at a studio and of course we jumped up and down a lot and said sure!  We recorded our fast punky song "Panic" with some friends on drums and bass and it went really well, very quick and tight recording session and very easy.  They suggested it might sound nice with acoustic guitar, but I really didn't want it to have acoustic on it.  I relented and gave it a shot, came up with a little lick and pattern that was decent.  We recorded a couple of takes but I still wasn't feeling it on acoustic, so I played it again on electric, a more distorted lead part.  The whole thing was an excellent experience.

Tonight we went by a party with some folks who work at the pizza shop.  I didn't even know Billy was there, but suddenly Reed gets my attention and I listen to what's playing over the speakers at the party.  It's our song!  Billy had mixed and mastered Panic and people were bopping to it and getting down.  A bunch of people complimented us on it and Billy played it twice!

Listening to the track, Billy had done a lot of creative mixing to our very simple punk song.  The electric guitar is cut out in the second verse, and he used some of my acoustic lead work that I hadn't expected to hear again.  He said he mixed the acoustic and electric lead licks in the rest of the song as well, because they matched up. 

He fixed a notable error late in the song--there's a driving verse, then suddenly a sharp hit, and everything cuts out for a couple of beats before it all comes back in again.  The drummer had kinda flubbed the lead-in to that part, and we hadn't re-recorded it to get it right.  Billy took that part and cut everything out for two successive hits, which sounds even better than one!  He just did a lot of stuff that wouldn't have occurred to us, but which sounds great.

The final version of the song "Panic" is up on our myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/worldracketeeringsquad

And on our Virb page:
http://www.virb.com/worldracketeeringsquad

Now I'm working on the sounds with my new Vox AD30VT amplifier, which sounds WAY better than my Zoom G2.1u effects unit, in fact I think I am going to put the Zoom to the side for a while and play with just the Vox.  I just want to get used to its versatility and its sounds are beautiful.  And we're playing our regular open mics on Monday and Tuesday before the big gig on Wednesday. 

Oh, and I finally started teaching guitar lessons!  Had my first lesson today and have two scheduled for next week.  Things are just going great all around.

Jeff

We got a gig!

We got our first proper gig!

We've been playing at open mics and we've gotten to know a local band called Blue Squeezebox, led by a really charismatic frontman on the accordion.

Last night after they played, our singer Reed congratulated him on the set, and they started to chat. He asked if we ever gig, and Reed said we haven't but we're looking to. The accordionist then asked if we had six songs and wanted to open up for them at their show on Wednesday night!

We've been honing our repertoire a lot this month, focusing on getting just a few songs really solid, and as of Tuesday that set adds up to six really tight songs. We'll be practicing this weekend and making sure everything's ready, and then playing our first proper, non-open-mic gig on Wednesday, Nov 21!

We'll be at the Carousel Lounge, here in Austin, TX, Wednesday Nov 21, at 9pm.

Jeff

Link

Filmmakers try to justify He-Man movie to themselves, the world

LOL. I just have no words for this:

“There are no invented new characters plopped into it-and if we and Mattel have our way there will never be. We’re talking about the He-Man mythology. So what we’re talking about doing, in the same way as Batman Begins, we’re going back to the original thing, let’s build it from the ground up again. How can we find our way in? How can we jump into Adam’s life at an interesting point where new audiences will respect him? It’s an Adam origin story, and it’s a Skeletor origin story. We want to see where both of them come from and how they got that way. If we don’t see the humanity and the truth in what Skeletor’s trying to do, then the story’s not compelling.”

Shape up, people. We're talking about the He-Man mythology here! This is important!

Link

Video: World Racketeering Squad at Conan’s Pizza 11/12/07

We had a terrific show at Trophy's last night. Video will be up this weekend. Meanwhile, here's our set from Conan's Pizza on Monday. Enjoy!

Jeff

World Racketeering Squad live at Trophy's, Green Muse Cafe

Fellow Racketeers!

World Racketeering Squad rocked the house late in the night at Trophy's on Tuesday, and here is the video:

We'll be back at Trophy's next Tuesday, November 13. We're going to make our very best effort to go on between 10pm and 11pm, the gods and the signup sheet willing.

We'll also be at Conan's Pizza at S 1st and Stassney on Monday night, where we will assuredly be playing between 10 and 11, doing a nice long, rocking set.

World Racketeering Squad also played live, as usual, at the Green Muse on Thursday, and we have the video of that. This show marks our first time ever appearing with a live bass player, which was exciting for us!  And a little unnerving in places.

Those are all the shows from this week, we'll be posting more next week as we continue our schedule of playing out 3 nights a week:

Monday night: Conan's Pizza, S 1st and Stassney
Tuesday night: Trophy's
Thursday night: Green Muse Cafe, S 1st and Oltorf

We may have some other exciting secret news to announce next week, so stay tuned for more announcements!

Jeff

New YouTube channel for World Racketeering Squad live videos, demos

We've been getting into video recording our performances and demos lately so I've created a new channel on YouTube to feature World Racketeering Squad specifically and organize all our videos:

http://www.youtube.com/worldracketeer

We'll have a playlist grouping each of our shows into one set of videos, and we have a playlist called "Demonstrations" which features all the little demos we record as we're writing songs. If you're interested in how we come up with songs or what they're like before we perform them, that's the place to check.

If you're on YouTube, we encourage you to subscribe through our channel so you can be notified whenever we post a new video. We'll blog about it too, of course!

Jeff

New rock opera demo, "Omega and the Just-In-Times"

This week we started working on a new crazy idea for a set of songs about Omega and the Just-In-Times, a "quantum band" who appear whenever there is enough demand. We've got two songs about them in progress so far:

"Omega and the Just-In-Times"

And "Omega in Love versus the Supermonsters":

These and any other new demos we create will be included in our "Demonstrations" video playlist on YouTube.

Link

World Racketeering Squad live at Green Muse 10/11/07

Here's the video of one of our first sets at the Green Muse Cafe here in Austin, TX. This was the first performance we've recorded on video, and also the first time we took the keyboard to an open mic.

World Racketeering Squad live at Haunted Housewarming X

World Racketeering Squad live at Haunted Housewarming X in Austin, TX, on October 27, 2007. Founding Racketeer Reed Oliver was celebrating the tenth anniversary of his traditional Halloween bash, so the band played our first long set of songs--13 songs, a little over an hour. We've decided since that a 30-minute set probably would've suited the party atmosphere better, but we wouldn't have known that if we hadn't done it! It was a lot of fun and we both learned a lot.

World Racketeering Squad live at Green Muse, 11/1/07

Joss Whedon, Eliza Dushku announce new series, "Dollhouse"

Didn't see this coming:

Echo (Eliza Dushku) [is] a young woman who is literally everybody's fantasy. She is one of a group of men and women who can be imprinted with personality packages, including memories, skills, language—even muscle memory—for different assignments. The assignments can be romantic, adventurous, outlandish, uplifting, sexual and/or very illegal. When not imprinted with a personality package, Echo and the others are basically mind-wiped, living like children in a futuristic dorm/lab dubbed the Dollhouse, with no memory of their assignments—or of much else. The show revolves around the childlike Echo's burgeoning self-awareness, and her desire to know who she was before, a desire that begins to seep into her various imprinted personalities and puts her in danger both in the field and in the closely monitored confines of the Dollhouse.

Link