Stormcellar Band Home Page

At the Royal Hotel in Bondi, this Saturday night from 8:30

BTW this artwork has nothing to do with the gig but what the heck, it's what I got.

With big thanks to Michael Lynch at Shoehorse Sound, Dirty Work is back from Mastering.

We're releasing 3 versions - an instrumental, the full version and a radio edit with a shortened ending.

Ok, so what gives?

Well, the short answer is that we've reset the lyrics to Steely Dan's 'Dirty Work' from the 1972 album 'Can't buy a thrill' to a new rockier melody.

The music in this new version is ours but the words are theirs, and that can create a copyright nightmare that only lawyers can solve and I am given to understand that Mess'rs Fagen and Becker (love you guys) don't mess around..

I mean, look what they wrote when You Me & Dupree came out and they thought Owen Wilson was ripping them off - even worse, they wrote to his BROTHER. FFS.

Click here for the full text http://www.steelydan.com/heyluke.html

In our case, the best we could think of was to release the instrumental version under our copyright and then release the versions with lyrics as a 'cover'.

The last few tracks we have released in the Curious Assembly project have been up on this site for free ( go on search for'em, they're here if you know their names) but obv with a cover we can't do the same thing, except for the instrumental version.

Here's the version that shouldn't get us in trouble:

{play}/media/sweet_addy/DWB-instr_lf.mp3{/play}

and for comparison, here is the original

Howdy Folks.

It's been a while since we released a videoclip. Sadly I crashed and burned miserably on my last three attempts. I have a half built robot, some paper cut outs and a polite refusal-for-filming from a particular location. 

ARGH! 

Ok fine, so I cant shoot anything outside, in a place, with people.

Or cameras.

Or props.

Or the Band.

Right. Fine.

Ok computer old buddy, it's just you and me.

Er..

Um.

I wondered if I could make a simple visualisation of one of our songs, so I started doing some research into Music Visualisation and found Much Heap Cool Stuff.

This is a visualisation of vivaldi courtesy of Stephen Malinowski, and his  Music Animation Machine (spotted this on brainpickings.org)

(CLICK THE FULL SCREEN OPTIONS IN THE CLIPS FOR MAX COOLNESS :-)

From scientific to the artistic, this is the amazing work of Matthias Müller

I have been working though his playlist and the stuff is incredible.

Music Visualisation - Georges Bizet: 'Habanera' from Steven Harding on Vimeo.

If you, Dear Reader, like so many folk, have an itunes or winamp or Windows Media player, you can activate or download little add-ons that spin graphics out in time with your favourite tunes. It's a world of wonder we live in.

I have no idea what this could be used for in one of our clips, but it really has me intrigued. Yep, I like shiny things :-)

Howdy Folks.

Just got a contract in for an upcoming gig and and noticed the following conditions listed at the bottom of the contract.

Songs NOT to be Played        

‘Ever gonna see your face’

‘Livin’ next door to Alice’

LOL! Management does not like the Angels (might be the refrain of 'get @^&#ed' that some people sing along with that song) but living next door to Alice? I can't say I'm familiar enough with the song to know why it's Verboten.

Don't worry, Dear Venue, we only have 4 covers in our repertoire, two of which are Little Walter numbers (Hate to see you go and Up the Line), some Sonny Boy Williamson (Help Me), a little Canned Heat and the occasional Allman Bros moment. Ok, that's 5 covers.

Nonetheless, none of our songs feature the words @##$, %^^&, &@*#@ or @&*#(#)!*&#&$#(!*#&!(#&&*(#@.

I'm not even sure what that last one was, I made it up.

I might add that there's a 5 cent charge at the moment for each use of the term !@^&@ as an adjective during band conversations. Mr Wizard gave me $10 and told me to let him know when his credit expired.

I have pointed out that we have Literary Standard to maintain. I like the use of pejoratives and expletives as much as the next bloke, but really, it limits your rhyming couplets to sentences that include Truck, Luck, Muck, Duck and Stuck and a few others that shall not be listed for fear of having to pay myself 5c.

UPDATE - I just went and googled Living Next Door to Alice and couldn't find a @&*# or a !)@_)##, so I guess this must be a matter of musical preference. Fair enough, I've been to plenty of Blues Jams with the words 'NO MUSTANG SALLY' listed above the sign up sheet :-)

5. Car horns

4. Chinese 7th Chord

3. Sounds like The W------ (redacted by Rosie)

2. Woof.

1. Try coming in on notes that exist.

Harmony is a harsh mistress :-)