kettleblack
no way to compare when less than two revisions
Differences
This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.
Last revision | |||
— | kettleblack [2019/05/16 20:42] – created admin | ||
---|---|---|---|
Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
+ | ====== Kettleblack ====== | ||
+ | Industrial Rock\\ | ||
+ | Chicago, Illinois, USA | ||
+ | |||
+ | The Kettleblack as told by Glen van Alkemade on eBay: | ||
+ | |||
+ | "A life-long lover of music, I wanted to try my hand at making my own, but one thing stood in the way - the necessity of learning an instrument. A bad childhood experience with a flute left me with the conviction that I could/would never learn to play anything. Then I discovered the wonderful world of MIDI. Convinced the right gear could eliminate the need to actually learn to play, I bought this Yamaha synthesizer, | ||
+ | |||
+ | Then I met my friend Mike Canzoneri, who actually has a degree in piano performance. He became my input device. We set to work on Beethoven' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Then Mike moved to Colorado and I joined a religious community in Chicago. My MIDI gear was squeezed in behind my dormitory door. Back to hunt-and-poke. A year or two later, my friend Don Hill invited me to join his new post-industrial rave-up hip-hop band, Kettleblack. I was flattered. I told him I did not think of myself as much of a musician. He said, "Well, it's me on bass, Dave Canfield on vocals, and you on everything else. We need your gear." :( | ||
+ | |||
+ | We piled into my dorm room for our first songwriting/ | ||
+ | |||
+ | We needed a rehearsal space, and Roy Montroy offered us his, on condition he could join the band. Roy had many qualities we coveted: an air-conditioned closet-size rehearsal space in the basement behind the incinerator; | ||
+ | |||
+ | We started writing. While I was trying to sequence the drums for our first song, Don was describing our sound to his industry contacts and fishing for gigs; and Dave was planning the cover artwork for our retrospective boxed set. I thought they were crazy. I splurged on the ESI-32 sampler and a Rane line mixer. Dave and I had great fun sampling sound bites from " | ||
+ | |||
+ | Then Dave, who was music editor of // | ||
+ | |||
+ | Gigs!!! But I was still a hunt-and-poker! I told the guys the only way I could gig was with my entire PC setup. "Just let me operate the sequencer," | ||
+ | |||
+ | What to do? I had to come out from behind the computer keyboard and step up to the piano keyboard. I decided to cheat. I arranged all the tunes to give myself the easiest parts. Still I found that if I ever took my hands off the piano, I could not find the right place to put them back. I bought the X-15 Ultrafoot and configured it so that I could execute all my patch changes for an entire concert with my feet. After the opening chord, my hands would never leave the piano until the end of the show. Really. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I bought the SKB case and stuffed all my gear into it. I got a lighted Juice Goose power thing, because my eyesight is lousy and I figured I needed every bit of help I could get. We gigged at a coffeehouse in Aurora Illinois. I carried my piano on my lap. A 15 year old volunteer carried it up the stairs for me and called me " | ||
+ | |||
+ | We headlined a youth rally at a suburban church. The youth generally failed to materialize. Those who did left with the opening act. | ||
+ | |||
+ | We played an incredible club in Milwaukee called the Roadhouse, opening for a then-popular band. Our sound check was done long before show time. I looked at my setup and in my ignorance and inexperience decided it wouldn' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Show time, the house is packed (actually, the bar and the pool rooms are packed; the dance hall is pretty sparse). We start our show with a goofy sound bite from some crazy 50's kids movie that I've never seen: a nice lady's voice intones " | ||
+ | |||
+ | Catastrophe? | ||
+ | |||
+ | The next day was a busy one. Brett' | ||
+ | |||
+ | That was the end of Kettleblack. I ditched the 386 for a laptop and got a Midisport to run all my gear into it, but the glory days were over. Before we split, I sampled all those guys, but it wasn't the same. The equipment sat idle for a while. I joined a world music orchestra, playing hand percussion. I don't have to read patch numbers under varied light conditions, and I can usually find my instrument again even if I take my hands off it to scratch my nose. I realized someone else should be using my MIDI gear, and having as much fun as I had during the one year and two weekend history of Kettleblack." | ||
+ | |||
+ | Don Hill was also involved with [[Porteur de l' | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===== Discography ===== | ||
+ | |||
+ | | 1995 | Look Into My Eye | | ||
+ | |||
+ | ------ | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== Look Into My Eye ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | 1995 Independent | ||
+ | |||
+ | Glen van Alkemade - Keyboards, sequences, percussion\\ | ||
+ | Roy Montroy - Guitar, sequencing, drum programming\\ | ||
+ | Don Hill - Bass, percussion\\ | ||
+ | Dave Canfield - Vocals, percussion | ||
+ | |||
+ | - Cartouche | ||
+ | - Hidden Rift | ||
+ | - Seems So Real | ||
+ | - Step Outside My Skin | ||
+ | - Medicine Man | ||
+ | - Creation | ||
+ | - My Rose | ||
+ | |||
+ | ------ |
kettleblack.txt · Last modified: 2019/11/16 02:10 by admin