What's Crackalackin

I recently purchased a new snare off of ebay.
It's a beautiful 5" x 14" 8-play maple Pork Pie with a honey-amber finish.

A little over a decade ago I used to own a 5" x 10" power piccolo snare by Pork Pie.
That was the loudest, highest, ear-drum shattering crack I had ever heard. I loved that thing.
I was really into Tim "Herb" Alexander (Laundry, Attention Deficit, Uberschall, The Blue Man Group, A Perfect Circle) back then, he was mostly known for his insanely wacky and mind-blowing drumming for the band Primus. I was never one of those guys who worshiped the Neil Pearts, the Terry Bozzios, or the Carter Beaufords of the drumming world. Those flashy, showy, bajillion piece drum set, drum stick twirling kind of guys have never been my cup of tea. I was more into the guys like Keith Moon, John Bonham, Chad Smith, and of course Tim Alexander. The thunderous-loud rock drummers who threw down the beats that made you bob your head and throw your rock fist into the air.
Tim Alexander was in Modern Drummer Magazine, back in 1991 when Primus released the album Sailing the Seas of Cheese. In the article Tim mentioned he was playing drums by a company called Pork Pie.
I loved the sounds of Tim's drums and wanted to find out more about the company with the funny name. It wasn't that easy to do back then. It wasn't like now where everyone has access to the Internet. I had to deal with the pot-smoking-neanderthals who worked at Guitar Center.
I also didn't know anybody who was playing them or, for the most part, had heard of them.
I ordered it on blind faith and I could not have been happier. It made buying the new one much easier.

The snare was hand-made and signed by Bill Detamore, creator of Pork Pie.



In 1987, Bill started making drums as a hobby. This hobby quickly evolved into a full service drum company. Each drum is signed by Bill Detamore with the date it was made. Pork Pie drums are made by hand in Canoga Park California. Bill still is a hands on owner. He still cuts every bearing edge and does all of the paint jobs on the drums.

I stripped the snare down, polished it up, put it back together, gave it some new heads, and tuned it up. The snare has a nice beefy crack. I'm very happy with it!

The Sam Keenan Collaboration

Some exciting news for Crash Effect.
We will be collaborating with Twin Cities local music legend Sam Keenan.

I've known Sam for somewhere in the ballpark of 22/23 years?
When you were a kid, do you remember when you were friends with a someone and you thought their older sibling was the coolest person in the world? For me that was Sam.
He was one of those music prodigy kids who could sing, play guitar, piano, cello, and pretty much anything he got his hands on in a skilled and precise way. He is one of those guys where you are like "you're so talented that you suck!"

I spent my adolescence following Sam like a little puppy through the Twin Cities music scene during the nineties. Sam was always cool. He'd say I was with the band (Liquid Ernie) to the door guy or bartender so I could catch them and other local bands at venues I wasn't old enough to get into at the time. Now that I think about it, in the beginning of Liquid Ernie, Sam probably wasn't old enough to get into some of the venues they'd play either. I lost contact with Sam for quite a few years after they broke up.

A little over a year ago I was introduced to this phenomenon known as myspace.com. During a family get together my sister-in-law mentioned she had a profile on there and that it was a great tool to get into contact with people you've lost contact with. She told me about a bunch of people that we both knew that were on there. So I figured meh... why not look into it. I punched in my sister-in-law's myspace URL and I saw one of her friends was this guy:

Whoa! Sam's gotta myspace page! I saw that he had a show that night at Lee's. (landmark hole-in-the-wall in Minneapolis)
I went his show and was blown away by his music and spent sometime catching up with him. We started corresponding through myspace and I've caught a few of his shows over the last year, fast-forward to now, Sam will be engineering, mixing, and performing on the upcoming Crash Effect album. He may sit in on a few of our shows while we are in the studio with him.

Kudos Magazine Sampler

Very excited about this one folks! Still not sure how they came across us but I'm ecstatically happy that they did! Kudos Magazine, the very stylish and hip lifestyle magazine has included the track "Bomb" on their first volume of their Rising Stars music compilation. I'm excited about the exposure Bomb will receive across Europe and the digital world we live in. I'm also very excited about being on a compilation with some heavy hitters in the indie music world. You're probably familiar with Walkie Talkie Man by Steriogram via the iPod commercials. This compilation is available for free when you download Issue 6 from Kudos.

BOMB available on iTunes

Crash Effect is now available on iTunes Music Store.
Check out BOMB : the Radio Singles and while you are there subscribe to our podcast.
It's a wonderful feeling to be on iTunes. There's not much to it to get on there. Virtually anybody can do it, but there seems to be another level of legitimacy for Crash Effect having our music available there. There's something about having your music available to everyone on the planet that feels good.
As Michael mentioned in a blog entry on the Crash Effect Site through the month of April (2007) we will donate 20% of all sales on iTunes to our ongoing partnership with UNICEF. This is something that I am VERY excited about.

BOMB on CDBaby.com

Yeah baby! BOMB available on CD Baby, baby!
...um... maybe...one too many babies...
Bomb: The Radio Singles is now available to purchase online at cdbaby.com. After being on there for less than a week we have already sold a copy to a gentleman in Spain. Thanks to the wonders of digital distribution, and promotional monsters like myspace, Crash Effect's music can be introduced and purchased by anyone around the world.
Sometime in the next thirty to sixty days Bomb will also be available on iTunes, Rhapsody, Real-Player, Napster, Tower Records (online), Best Buy (online indie section), MSN music, Buymusic, Verizon Wireless and a few small odd ball online shops.

Dropping Bombs

The BOMB EP has arrived! Our first studio project is completed and ready for your listening pleasure. It has 6 tracks:
1. Beauty Queen
2. Bomb
3. You
4. May Day
5. Do You Know
6. Bomb - war room remix
The CD also contains bonus media content.
There are extra tunes from our rehearsals, video from our first show (scary), and much more.
We are very proud of the hard work we poured into this project.
The project is a bitter-sweet for us. The day Michael brought BOMB to our rehearsal for us to see, Kris and James had a bomb of their own to drop.
Both Kris (bass) and James (guitar) have decided to formally leave Crash Effect due to "musical differences". It was a bit of an odd conversation at the time because the EPs had arrived and were sitting on the coffee table in front of us in their shiny-new reflective cellophane wrapping and you could still smell the ink. After talking it through with them, and coming to a general consensus that it was for the best for all parties, Michael and I went over to Caribou to talk about the departure and figure out what to do next. It was kind of poetic sitting in the exact same Caribou where Michael, Jamison, and I had conceived the concepts that would become Crash Effect. It felt like square one, back to the drawing board. I have come to know this to be true; If you spend enough time at a Caribou with a Wireless-Internet connection eventually you will come up with a brilliant concept. That was exactly what happened for Michael and I as we formed the band, came up with foundation for the band, and what direction to go with the band from here. It seemed to be one of those blinding flash of the obvious moments now in hind site. The foundations had already been laid. We didn't need to reinvent the wheel. Crash Effect is about community. It always has been with our work with charitable organizations. We are now going to take it one step farther. We are going to push on as a two piece incorporating the musical community around us. We want to collaborate with fellow musicians who can add to the music and join us in the humanitarian aspects of the band on a project-to-project basis. This enables the musical community to be apart of Crash Effect, add their contribution, and leave their fingerprints on the music and community so-to-speak. It is likely that we will continue to work with Kris and James on a project-to-project basis in the future. I'm sure you will see them on stage with us or their name in a CD insert from time-to-time. Michael and I will operate as principals as we work with musicians to make a mosaic of music. Although Crash Effect has always been community based we now are kicking open the floodgates to a larger community to be apart of. We are excited for what the future holds and the amazing opportunities we will have. Kris and James leaving may be the closing of a chapter but there is now a blank page before us. We have already been hard at work with a new look, sound, and vision. As we are so appropriately named, the Crash is not stopping or even slowing down but changing course and picking up speed and more rhinos!

Concert Mad Libs

We decided to have a fun little experiment at our exclusive
New Year's Eve show.
A Group Mad Lib with audience participation.
The video below shows our results:

Should we make this a semi-regular part of our shows?

Crash Effect Biography: Winter 2006/2007

It's said that rhinos can't see much beyond a hundred feet and can run up to forty miles per hour—bad news for anything in its path. When a crash of rhinos have a target—regardless of whatever it may be—they'll barrel toward it full on without fear, hesitation, or reserve.
Crash Effect is a gritty, greasy acoustic rock band with an objective to create great rock-n-roll and make the world a better place—and like the rhinos, they aren't holding back.

Formed in August of 2006, they've quickly assembled a large arsenal of quality original songs, completed their first EP and have already achieved substantial recognition with music lovers across the Twin Cities, around the country, and across the pond.

But what sets Crash Effect apart from other bands is their core values behind the music. From day one, the band decided that ten percent of all their earnings
(i.e., merchandise sales, concert earnings, and royalties) would go straight off the top and into the hands of humanitarian charities—local, national, and around the globe.

Mahatma Gandhi was right when he said, "you must be the change you want to see in the world." The boys of Crash Effect are doing just that—taking their gritty, greasy acoustic rock and becoming agents of positive change in their world. Now that's a band worth supporting—music with heart and conscience.

www.crasheffect.com

CrashEffect.Paul

So if you are at least as cleaver as a walnut you may have guessed
that I'm in the band Crash Effect. I am the drummer.
Translation: I beat things rhythmically and play music
with three other guys who actually know what they are doing.
Music theory? uh... what?
The guys speak in a language that is foreign to me at times.
Sometimes it's a series of letters put in non-alphabetical order.
Sometimes it's number patterns that don't go in an order I'm familiar with.
If it's Kris giving his input in the songwriting process
there are words that I didn't know existed .
Yup, it's pretty cool. I get to be in an a amazing band without
knowing what is going on on a technical level.
All I do is lay the greasy funk down and everyone is happy.
Rock on.



www.crasheffect.com