Praise the Lord...

...and pass the ammunition!

American Bubble is finally available to download at our website!

See the preceding post for everyone we need to thank... don't wanna re-type it. You know who you are and we appreciate it.

Happy Independence Day!

American Bubble Mixed and Mastered

So, it's been nearly a year since our last post and not-so-shockingly, that's how long it took for us to finish American Bubble. The members of Free Rob G haven't been in the same room since about the same time, but we're all excited about releasing this album. We still need to get some artwork done and get www.freerobg.com back up and running, but we hope to have it out before August.

Here is the final track listing...

1. Don't Stop
2. Silver & Gold
3. American Bubble
4. Sunrise (f. Rymz Well)
5. Devil Woman
6. aMuse
7. Iron Lion Zion (f. Rymz Well)
   
8. Dirty Daniel
9. Daytripper
10. City Lights
11. Seventy Seven

In case you don't remember Rymz Well from our shows, check out his Myspace page.

Also, I've got to take this opportunity to thank some others who contributed to this album as well:

• Nicolas Zagorin from Ardent Audio Productions for all his hard work recording the instrumentals, and mixing and mastering the tracks (of course, having to deal with all of our varying opinions on the songs).
• Daunish Aboobaker for engineering the vocals, providing his studio to us for free, and for nearly killing me with his cats. Recording in Seattle is awesome. Oh, and he sang on the last lines on Don't Stop.
  
• Will Nelson for flying up to Seattle to help with the vocals and for his harmonies... I'd list the songs, but he sang on a bunch of them and you'll just have to wait for the liner notes to know which ones exactly.
• Jessica Devin for her harmonies on Dirty Daniel and Seventy Seven.

It's been a long trip, but the music is finally done. Once we get the acoutrements all ready, we'll share it with y'all.

Ardent Riffs and Dingly Solos: A Photo Essay

So, I'm currently in the control room at Ardent Audio watching as Bert and Gary lay down the bass and guitar for Daytripper. When this is done, we get to eat some delicious greasy spoon diner food and spend the rest of the afternoon adding all sorts of fun bells and whistles. Literal bells and whistles.

Nick manning the mixer
Pacifico bottle resized to show magnitude of disaster

Immediately prior to recording this Gary was in the studio talking to Nick, our sound engineer. Gary wanted to know if the main recording studio command console/mixer was the single most expensive piece of equipment in the room. This question is made more poignant by the fact that Gary spilled a beer on it yesterday which brought on about a half hour of frantic, heart-pounding cleaning, button wiping, and function testing. Luckily, we've avoided any major debacles today and have been quite productive.

Bert manning the bass
I swear, I have an identical picture of Bert from when we recorded at Pike

Gary in his room
The lighting is, by Gary's terms, 'sexytime' lighting

James manning his chair
James slept for 12 hours and yet, was still sleepy the whole day

Recording at Ardent Audio Productions

So, we're nearing the end of Free Rob G , but we're going out with a bang. No, not a show, but an album, tentatively titled American Bubble. We've recorded drum tracks and plan on recording guitar and bass (and probably some other fun stuff like keyboard and percussion) next weekend. We've been recording at Ardent Audio Productions in Torrance with Nick Zagorin as our engineer.

Then, I get to go up to Seattle in July and record vocals for a week with Daunish at his studio. Then Will Nelson is gonna come and help with some production and harmonies.

We all have a lot of ideas, so plan on hearing some of our tracks as you've never heard them before.

Oh, and Gary's excited too... about... something... couldn't quite make it out.
drspliffer: super sokted about recorind next weekend

Grant & Green Show and Pirate Cat Radio

So, we'll be kicking off our Northern California tour a small acoustic set and interview on Pirate Cat Radio (89.7 FM) at about 5 PM on March 22.

Then we'll be heading over to the Grant & Green, where we'll be playing from 11 pm until they kick us out, so be prepared to hear a bunch of covers in addition to your old favorites and some new songs we've been working on. Tell your friends, because this is going to be a wild party. Expect Bert to spill gin and tonics and beer all over himself and his amp, Gary to probably fall off the stage at some point in the night and James to be barely visible on Grant & Green's tiny stage.
The show is free, the drinks are cheap, and the music is rocking.

March 22 - 11 PM
Grant & Green Pub
1371 Grant Ave. (@ Green)
San Francisco, CA 94133

Come, drink, be merry, and rock!

NorCal Tour and Promised Brewco Songs

So, it seems like it's been a long time since you've heard from us, but I promise we've been busy working hard on worthwhile pursuits, like getting Obama the nomination, applying to law school, and starting our side project Dücks With Güns (on Rock Band).

However, you'll be happy to hear that we will be playing some shows again soon. We're in the midst of booking an end of March Northern California tour so all of you northerners that have been missing us for the last 2 years get an opportunity to see us again. We will be playing in San Francisco, Chico, Sacramento, Vacaville, and perhaps Tahoe so be sure to come out and represent your city. So, keep the weekends of March 21-23 and March 28-30 open!

Also, as promised we do have some recordings of our last show (Nov.10th at Brewco). You can listen to them on our media page or right here.

Dirty Daniel (f. Chalice Serrano)



Seventy Seven (f. Chalice Serrano)

Nov. 10th Brewco Show

So, we played a show at Westwood Brewing Company on the 10th and I think the hangovers of both band and audience testify to the fun that we had. We also got a good recording of both audio and video (thanks to the people below), so be looking for that media whenever Yaniv and Patrick get it to us (July 2018). Since there are a bunch of people that helped make this show happen, I'm going to take a cue from the Internet and put it in a list format, since apparently that is how humans process information now.

The Top 9 People(s) That We Want To Thank

1. Chalice Serrano for having a really good voice, putting on a hell of a show, being a lot of fun, and learning so quickly to make fun of everyone in Free Rob G
2. The Brothers Landau for playing an awesome set (as usual), for mocking the "Hey There Delilah" song (even though some members of Free Rob G might not agree with me), showing us that this IS how you do it, for being a band that our guitarist's girlfriend actually likes
3. Patrick for recording us, putting up with constant demands from each of us to turn our channels up, not complaining that I roofied every beer I bought for you, taking my request to play porn on your computer seriously, and being there the whole 10 damn hours of it
4. Yaniv and Edaan and other Israelis whose names I don't recall for videotaping us, making sure to linger the cameras in the crotchal region, and getting us an edit as quickly as possible (July 2018)... here is Yaniv's response "Omer Dagan was shooting with the other cam. The other Israelis were just there in case of an Arab attack. Edaan was checking for beards at the front, Ziv was making innapropriate comments at women, and Gal was simply there to account for the Israeli quota of curly hairs, body odor, and gold jewelry. Between the four of us I'm pretty sure we had the Holy Land represented to a tee. Thanks for the gratitude. Hopefully we won't have to bomb your country."
5. Kristina Bigdeli for taking still photographs (which you can see here), providing scintillating conversation, and showing up earlier than everyone
6. Rachel Fore making me have a show when she was in town (see what I did there?) and being born in November and again for when she chanted "Free Rob G" at the UCLA Battle of the Bands a long time ago
7. Tamber for coming to the show, having a birthday in November, not hitting anyone, and especially for not calling me white
   
8. Everyone that showed up randomly at the show, especially the large group of Asians that came up the back stairs looking befuddled and then ended up staying and having a good time (well, it looked like they did anyway)
   
9. Anyone that walked to the show, drove 400 miles to get to the show and were forced to sit at Brewco all day while we set up, those who didn't hook up with the girl that they wanted to at the show, and those of you that spent all Sunday nursing a hangover

It was a hell of a lot of fun to play for you and we hope you enjoyed it.

For those of you that didn't make it here's some more of what you missed:

We're Going To Be a Band That Plays Shows Again Soon!

Arbi: hey z
Z: Hey Arbi.
Arbi: how come i dont get free rob g spam anymore
Z: Because we've been on hiatus.
Z: Because stupid James likes Obama.
Z: And stupid me had to go to stupid Sacramento.
Z: And stupid Gary and Bert are just.... um, Jews.
Arbi: o
Arbi: bummer
Z: Indeed.
Z: But we will be starting up again soon.
Z: We had our first practice in a long ass time last Sunday.
Z: And I think Gary has booked us at this place in the valley and is going to book a Brewco show.
Z: So, if you're in town you should come and get belligerently drunk.
Arbi: nice
Arbi: i feel pretty confident about my ability to do that
Z: I believe in you.

I feel fully confident that this man will do us proud.

Soooooo, we are going to start playing shows again soon, so be prepared.

DO Stop

Maybe it took a couple of things of wine to realize this, but Don't Stop is a pretty emo song and pretty terrible therapeutic advice. So, kids and friends, DO stop looking back until you can't recognize the details of your past. Then you'll be looking at everything through the soft lens of selective memory and will remember everything as fuzzy and happy.

Holden Caulfield thought about it way too early.

Don't be like Holden Caulfield.

" About all I know is, I sorta miss everybody I told about. Even Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that goddam Maurice. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
-The Catcher in the Rye

Can't Quit (Don't Stop)

So, this is yet another song that I sent to James and everyone to listen to and with everyone's input, we were able to piece it together pretty damn well. We had a 40-fueled practice and put this song together. Be prepared to hear the difference between what's below and what we'll rock your faces off with at one of our next shows.

This is "(Can't Quit) Don't Stop."

You know it as "Don't Stop."

Mind you, this is a scratch track for me to mess around with harmonies and some stuff. Also, remember this is recorded with Audacity, which is open source and more importantly, has a significantly smaller memory footprint than ProTools. I can get about two mono tracks open in ProTools before I run out of memory. Plus, Audacity takes about 2 seconds to load as opposed to about 20 for ProTools.

So, I feel that Audacity's pros outweigh its cons or namely, it's one huge HUGE con for what I'm trying to do is that the tracks don't sync automatically. There is latency and unless you record an extremely short clip it's not going to sync, so you have to line it up manually and, if there are precision tools, I haven't bothered to find them. Plus, I like the slight temporal difference for the vocals... it's just on this song, for the guitar part, it's sparse and short and you can hear how off sync that part is.

(Can't Quit) Don't Stop

Take a moment and listen
To the sound of it all
Try to picture my thoughts now
Can't quit! Don't stop! Don't stop!

She's a silly sad girl
And that's her everslow clock
I'm addicted to her
Can't quit! Don't stop! Don't stop!

Don't stop looking back
At the tracks
Sealed in wax
Don't stop looking back
At the tracts that somehow you forgot to write

Ever murdered for profit?
Compromised for a buck?
It ain't bad so get off it
Can't quit! Don't stop! Don't stop!

She's a really rich lady
Not that I give a fuck
She could take up collections
Can't quit! Don't stop! Don't stop!

Dirty Daniel

So, now James is back and I'm gone. Soon... soon all of Free Rob G will be back in LA and ready to rock.

Well, the title of the song may seem a little autobiographical, but it's really not (though I'm sure I could find some connection to myself). The lines in the song were either going to be "Mighty Majnoon" (from the Iranian tale of lovers Layla and Majnoon, best known in the west as the story that Eric Clapton reminded Pattie Boyd of in order to seduce her away from George Harrison) or "Dirty Dreamcoat" (I mistook the biblical Joseph for the biblical Daniel). This may make more sense with the lyrics first.

Dirty Daniel

Every time I think about it, then I begin to doubt it
She sits on her oily throne, which begins to creak and "Mine," she croaks
And rarely did she grin so gaily, until the day when sons Israeli
Climbed up on Jacob's ladder and fell before heaven, but it didn't hurt

Them no
Head gold
Feet stone

Heart? No

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who'd been asked to leave that place of sand
Won't she? Won't she?

And if your boss men count to three
And you wonder just if history
Could be discreet. Accept deceit.

Mighty Majnoon\Dirty Dreamcoat\Dirty Daniel sits in his room, telling me stories of doom
Of salt and sand and marching bands, and the virus that has gripped his land
Split the desert, walk on through, this charade is enough for you
And please don't make me applaud, my praise is mine, it's kept for..

God no
Don't roll
That stone
Just yet

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who'd been asked to leave that place of sand
Won't she? Won't she?

And if your boss men count to three
And you wonder just if history
Could be discreet. Accept deceit.

Now this song is very referential and I tried to make it deliberately so. Going back to what I said in an earlier post, this definitely falls more on the scale towards the obscure. However, I enjoy it when I read something or hear something or see something that compels me to further research the topic. Regardless of the validity of that which is compelling the research it is at least serving a productive purpose by encouraging people to look into the topic further, which I think, at least in the way I see the world, is a good thing. Sorry if that sentence was convoluted, because I'm saying it while thinking of a a web film I saw today in the vein of "Loose Change" (9/11 conspiracy theories stuff) and while this does rehash a lot of the same things, it at least was captivating and interesting in a Da Vinci Code sort of way. And, furthermore, it did, in fact make me look up the events and the people that they were referring to. Some of my impromptu research made me agree with the movie... some of it (a lot of it) made me disagree... however, I liked the fact that it was referential, simply because it stimulated my interest and made me discover something I might not have discovered otherwise. OK, tangent's done. (If you want to see the movie, it's here... http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/)

The main theme of the song is the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar that the prophet Daniel (who's being kept in Babylon as a Jewish advisor to the king) not only interprets for him, but also recalls (the king had forgotten it upon waking, but knew it was important). The basic gist of the dream is that there's a big statue and the head is gold, the chest and arms silver, the torso and thighs copper, the legs iron, the feet iron and clay. And they represent all the kingdoms of the world. Then all of a sudden there's a stone and it rolls down and smashes the statue, then it grows larger until it encompasses the whole world. The stone is God. God is a stone.

So, that's the song. And here are two other facts:

1. The title of the text file I have the chords written in is percybysshe.txt
2. Originally all I had were the first two lines and here's what was at the bottom of the text file (the (were?) was added later):
   
   These are (were?) terrible lyrics and I am ashamed of them. I blame drugs.

Keeping with the list aspect, here are things I like about the song:

1. 1) The words.
2. The little "Them no/Head gold/Feet stone/Heart? No" 7th chord and vocal pattern.
   
3. The part at the end where I am reading from the Book of Daniel in reverse.

Here's what I don't like:

1. The rhythm
2. Everything else

So, Gary and James and Bert need to get in there and funky or rock or cha cha or riff it up brother and make it work.

Songs by Wikipedia(c): Atalanta

So, it seems like we've been on hiatus forever now. James is off exploring the world and supporting Obama and we're stuck here in podunk LA. However, I have been working on some music and last night sent him a bunch of scratch tracks I made. I'll post some of them here as well.

The original idea for something concerning the subject matter of this song was The Long Walk, a novella/short story by Richard Bachman (Steven King's pseudonym). I wrote a song when I was first living with Gary and Bert in homage to the short story, but the song was terrible. Almost as terrible as you would expect me writing a song in homage to a short story would be. However, I still reserve the right to base song lyrics on short stories by Steven King... Hollywood does it and so can I. Yet, this isn't that song.

I had a harmonica (Carter's harmonica, that is) and wanted to play with it, so I decided to write a song in C major (because that's the key the harmonica was in). I started just plucking the C chord and then picked up the harmonica and started blowing and sucking (yes, I deliberately said it like that to make you feel uncomfortable) and the first words that I thought in my head were, "When the people/Walked upon the land/She ran"

I decided to not have original thought and instead base my female runner on a figure from Greek mythology, Atalanta. The lyrics are below. They're from the perspective of a suitor that really, really loved her, but wasn't fast enough (there's probably some lame sex joke in there somewhere, but I'm too tired). Oh, also, in the song, the harmonica has a phaser on it in certain parts.

Atalanta

Back when people
Walked upon the land
She ran
She ran

O Lord, she ran so fast that day
Towards sentiments of promises
Of mine
I tried

She's Georgia <-born-> from Papa's scorn
She loved me once, my shoes are worn
She's off
I've lost

My feet are bloody
My mind still clear
She's running past
She's running past
She's running, she's running, running, running past (did she look back?)

When the people

Walked upon the land

She ran

She ran

They're coming now, I can't away

My love ran past and here I stay

She's gone

I'm lost

A Watershed Moment

First of all, thanks to all of you that came out and saw us last night at the Cat Club. I think it was a kickass show and we were all pleasantly surprised by how many of you showed up. Also, I hope you enjoyed our performance. I can tell you one person who certainly did... me. Not to make too big of a deal out of it, but we practiced this set (as we do with almost all of our sets) several times before and each time we played it (with slight changes and shifts in song arrangement and placement) I was happy with the result. Happy enough in fact, that I told James, Gary, and Bert that if we had had an audience there, I would have been happy that they heard it. So, basically the show wasn't a fluke, the good rehearsals weren't a fluke (even though James the Pessimist thought we might suffer from the dreaded "good rehearsal, bad performance")... we basically can now play a set and rock it if we so choose and all of the other shit that before might have influenced or messed up our performance (like nerves, it just being a bad night, or whatever) doesn't have a noticeable effect anymore.

So, basically, though this might seem trivial, I think it is a watershed moment at least for me, because now I will ask people to come to shows because I really think they will like what they hear. I'm not saying that wasn't true before, because I do think we were making good music, but we certainly have come a long way as a band. Whereas before you might come to the show not only to hear some music, but also to support us as your friends, NOW you should come because we're going to be good. I hope.

So, Bert, James, Gary, that was an awesome show and we should have many more to come. The rest of you, thanks for coming out; thanks for supporting us before this point and continuing to support us after. Some of you have been coming to shows since our "shows" consisted of us playing in the basement at Pike and I really appreciate it. I think it's finally starting to pay off now. Also, everyone should check out Seeing Blind who played before us and continued to rock at the afterparty and made me really jealous because their band has a cellist. Bert, you really need to buy that cello.

~Z

P.S. We have harmonies now. Kick ass job Bert.

Only Gary Shlifer could say it:

I just had to share:

"impersonate my nuts in your mouth sister sister.....dont get confused when ur seeing double after the deep dicking little suzie....get there girlie"

-Gary Shlifer

Zs drunken mumblings threaten our integrity

Z's moving into a new spot soon, but as nice as it must be to get into a better place, moving sucks. Luckily, Silas found me a $100 couch at salvation army, and it seems to have done the trick. My living room is now completely reorganized so I get all the benefits of moving to a new spot without any of the drawbacks. Interior decoration is an under-rated art.

Explanation of a Guest Blog

The same person who is responsible for the ear pussy nonsense is responsible for the preceding entry (the one involving ejaculation).

I really think that's all that needs to be said.

PS: Sorry to make the blog sophomoric again James. Your explanation of how you mic'ed everything made it high brow, but then I pulled it back down again.

~Z

A Guest Blog

i ejaculated the cd rom...hehe

Recording Drums

Patrick Mullen, who was the vocalist in Hipster with me a few years ago, has been helping us get started with the recording of our new album. He has access to a recording space at Caltech and plenty of amazing gear, so we asked him to help us lay down some drum tracks for the full length album we plan to release in september.

We've spent about 4 days recording, and have the drum tracks for about 10 songs down.

After several tries we settled on the followig mic scheme.:

- SM57 about one inch above the snare, one inch in, about 15 degrees down
- Royer Ribbon Mic snare bottom about 5 inches away
-SM57 about the same as snare on the tom
-Audix Dynamic Mic for the floor tom, about two inches above the drum, 4 inches in and angled 45 degrees from horizonatal. This drum was really acting up and had some really bad transients. This micing seemed to diminish those while still giving it a nice thud.
- Two AKG C-414 Condensers on Cardiod Over my head Not quite in X-Y. this gave the best mix of snare sound to cymbals that we could find.
-Rode Condenser as the room mic, about 15 feet to the right of the drum kit.
-Bass Drum mic whose brand I don't know positioned so that the front of the mic was just barely outside of the 4 inch hole cut in the front of my bass drum
-SM57 placed under the snare about 1 inch away from the location where the beater strikes the bass drum head. (credit card taped to bass drum head at that location for songs where extra punchiness was desired)
-AKG 414 Condenser about one foot away from high hat, 30 degrees above the cymbals

You'll be able to hear the results pretty soon.


- James "One Take" Hansen

Bands Have Slogans?

So, today I received this message (the sender will remain anonymous) and thought I'd share with you. He is talking about some promotional ideas for Free Rob G.

Warning
Wear headphones if you're at work or something.

The word he stumbles over is "ear pussy"

There's really no more to be said...

~Z