I am listening to some old school beats, trying to get into a mood to use my drum machine sounds on something.

It isn’t something that I just jump into.

I have to be in the right mood for drum machines, I guess.

Without a reliable drummer, this is the best that I can do, I suppose.

Growing up in Detroit, during the birth of Hip Hop and Techno, it should be no surprise that this had an influence on me.

As kids, many of us would tape The Electrifying Mojo off of the radio at home and then breakdance to it during recess.

Breakdancing!

Remember that?

Daft Punk and Fatboy Slim are the closest things to it that I listen to nowadays.

I just don’t hear much happening in that genre that interests me much, lately.

Thirty years ago, it was much, much, different.

I still like all of that stuff and the groups that inspired it (Kraftwerk, Parliament-Funkadelic, etc.), although by and large I am pretty much a punk rocker at heart.

I first got into Faith No More around when Introduce Yourself came out.

Punk rocker Chuck Mosley stood in stark contrast to the professionalism of the rest of the band.

They were a tight musical group, with this strange guy who could barely sing as their vocalist.

I loved it.

He had replaced Courtney Love as lead singer a few years prior.

Can you imagine what that must have sounded like?

Courtney Love?

Anyway, the difference between when he was replaced by Mike Patton is night and day.

It is like two totally different bands.

In turn, he replaced HR of the Bad Brains a few years later.

I think he was an excellent fit right there.

But, I guess it didn’t work out between them for some reason.

Like the David Lee Roth / Van Hagar dispute, Chuck showed me how important a lead singer can be.

Even if the vocalist isn’t very good, it is extremely difficult to replace them.

So, I always tried to take the lead singer position, when it was available.

Not that I have a great voice.

But, I couldn’t afford any instruments, at first.

As long as I was in tune and sang in the correct key, I felt that bands would have little reason to get rid of me, despite my personality flaws.

True, I was never kicked out of any bands.

But, people quit a lot.

Damn.

While I was still a teenager, performing in shitty cover bands, I tried to teach myself to sing like Mike Patton.

He is a damn good singer, with lots of range and diversity.

How many other vocalists can blend Frank Sinatra with Sade and Justin K Broadrick of Godflesh / Napalm Death?

Unfortunately, I just don’t have the pipes for it.

I have always hated my voice.

I am told that it is because I use cheap microphones.

But, I guess everyone’s voice sounds weird to them when they hear it played back to them.

I think that I am finally beginning to get used to it.

The less I try to sound like someone else and just be myself the better that the results are, I believe.

Still, it is good training to mimic something, at least at first.

I used to be an excellent mimic of voices and sound effects.

I did a lot of impressions as a kid.

Maybe it does help your singing voice.

I have always hated my voice.

Not that I am exactly a bad singer.

I can hit the right notes if I try.

It just sounds kinda high and nasally, in a Neil Young kinda way, to me when I hear it played back from recordings.

I have tried learning from female singers how to improve it, with some moderately good results.

I am told it would sound a lot better if I used higher-quality microphones.

That is always a possibility, I suppose.

I have never been able to afford much more than the cheapest junk available.

I still use a beaten-up Radio Shack microphone that I bought secondhand in 1985!

Sometimes I sing a little deeper, off-key, deliberately.

Almost an octave down.

I kinda like it better that way sometimes.

But, that it is just me.

I started playing bass guitar in the late 1980’s, around the same time as the funk punk / funk metal craze was beginning to gain popularity.

I wasn’t deliberately trying to imitate anybody in particular, although I did get compared to Les Claypool and Flea quite a bit.

I don’t slap nearly as much as they do, just a little bit… as an accent.

But, admittedly, funk music is part of my repertoire.

I grew up on bass players in the 1970’s like Rick James, Bootsy Collins, Larry Graham.

Hell, even the Bee Gees had some good songs.

Add to that funky punks like Mike Watt (Minutemen / Firehose), Rob Wright (NoMeansNo), Larry Boothroyd (Victims Family), and Jah Wobble (Public Image Ltd.), then it is no surprise that I sometimes got lumped in with guys like Flea & Claypool.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are okay, I guess.

They have always had a great rhythm section.

Without Flea, their band is nothing.

The RHCP’s songwriting, though, has always been kinda…. mehhhh.

Most of it kinda sucks.

A weird thing about them is that their best albums are usually released just after they have replaced yet another guitarist.

They use them up like batteries, sorta, and have to keep changing them to be any good.

Honestly, Anthony Keidis and Flea are the Beavis & Butthead of the group.

Keidis is an annoying asshole and Flea is an idiot, like his retarded friend.

Maybe their personalities suck the life out of guitar players.

I dunno.

I gotta respect Flea as a musician, though.

He did evolve over time, grew as a player, and was never half bad to begin with.

The dynamics of their guitars, created by original guitarist Hillel Slovak, has always been impressive too, no matter which replacement has copped his style.

The Island of Misfit Noise went through many permutations during its original 15-year run.

MarshaKat and myself were the the only constants of the group, a bassist and keyboardist who both played some guitar.

The name changed a few times before we finally settled on the IOMN.

Now, it is not as much of a real band as it is a recording project, with many contributors coming and going.

I still wish that I could have made it work somehow.

One element that I wanted very badly was having two drummers, who could play some interesting rhythms that would be impossible for a single percussionist.

I dug bands that had double-drumming lineups, like Grotus, the Melvins, the Butthole Surfers, the Boredoms, … Hell, even the Grateful Dead, the Doobie Brothers, the Allman Brothers, and James Brown’s backing band the JB’s all had two drummers.

Unfortunately, finding any drummers around the Detroit area who are into that sort of thing was nearly impossible.

We had it going like that a few times.

It was great while it lasted.

But, they always quit before we could accomplish very much together.

Finding even a single drummer was sometimes difficult because, as one guy put it, my ideas were “too big and weird.”

I guess projecting a bunch of surreal film footage on a wall behind the band is too ambitious for some.

I eventually built my homemade ShitKit drumset because it didn’t look like we were getting anywhere without a dedicated percussionist.

I preferred the clunkiness of hitting pieces of scrap metal over the sound of commercially-bought cymbals anyway.

But, I am a shitty drummer and I know it.

For awhile, we had one guy named John Pirog – who’s only job was breathing fire and smashing shit up, like old TVs and guitars.

It was pretty cool, while it lasted.

But, he left to go make independent horror movies instead.

I thought it would be cool to maybe have three guitarists, one playing a classic Gibson SG through a Marshall amp, one playing a modified Les Paul with a Line 6 Variax installed inside hooked up to a really good quality Line 6 guitar/amp/effects emulator rackmount, one playing a Roland-Ready Fender Stratocaster with a bunch of Roland guitar synths and emulators, etc.

Either we could have had guitarists double on keyboards & samplers or simply had a dedicated keyboardist.

Currently, I kind of make-do by making sound collages on tapes and playing them back on my Dictaphone machine.

Will the IOMN ever be a real band again?

I dunno.

It is always possible I guess.

Will it ever be what I have pictured in my head?

Probably not.

It will just be whatever I am able to scrape together at a given time.

So, I will have to get-by, doing what I can alone, recording lots of stuff and maybe performing what I can as a one-man-band.

It sucks.

But, that is life.

Three Little Bops!!! from Márcio Leal on Vimeo.

Where can I get a prescription?

I first heard the Melvins back in the late 1980’s, around when Ozma came out.

This was wayyy before they became professionally-known as the “Godfathers of Grunge” or Kurt-Cobain’s BFFs.

Hell, no one even knew who the Hell Nirvana were back then.

My first impression was that they sounded kind of like what-if Black Flag were chopped-up in a food processor and reassembled wrong.

I totally dug it, immediately.

Well, a couple years later, as Nirvana-mania was finally dying down a little, I got to meet them.

Our paths have crossed a couple of times ever since.

In 1994, the Melvins were getting their 15 minutes of fame, being interviewed on MTV and in all the big name glossy magazines.

They had released Houdini on Atlantic Records and, as King Buzzo would say, they became a “flavor-of-the-nanosecond.”

This was just a week or two after Kurt Cobain’s dead body was found.

So, I imagine that they were still reeling from the news of this, being old friends of his.

I was going to see them perform at Saint Andrews, in Detroit.

I showed up early and went inside St. Andrews, looking for a pop.

The bar wasn’t open.

No soda machines.

The place was still mostly vacant.

I asked the guy at the door if I could leave & re-enter.

He said “sure.”

So, I went out in search of somewhere to get a Diet Pepsi.

As I crossed the street,  happen to notice the Melvins and their entourage heading toward a Greek restaurant, to eat.

“Cool,” I thought.

I got back to the club.

But, the same asshole who said I could come back wouldn’t let me in! Bastard.

I wondered if the Melvins were still at that restaurant, and sought them out.

Sure enough, it was them, the other bands, and (pre-Foo Fighters) David Grohl.

I told them about my dilemma.

They were totally cool about it.

I ordered another pop and waited for everyone to finish their dinner.

Buzz gave me a backstage pass and we all headed back to the club.

David Grohl introduced himself to me and everyone else that he met, “Hi, I’m David.”

I thought, “Well, no shit. You’ve been on the cover of every magazine for the past three years.”

He was a really positive nice guy, though.

Dale Crover was very friendly too.

I got to stick my pass up to the guy who wouldn’t let me back in.

Everyone seemed to have guests with them, besides the bands themselves.

The band let everyone eat what they wanted from the deli tray.

I was too young to drink.

So, they wouldn’t let me have a beer.

I had a good time.

It was a little surreal though.

David Grohl told us stories about bowling in Germany.

I vaguely wondered if Allen Funt was hiding behind a door and that I was really on Candid Camera.

Anyway, it was a good show.

Like I said, we’ve crossed paths a few times since then.

A few years later, I was supposed to appear as an alien in their music video for Mombius Hibachi.

But, because of time and budget, my part got cut and they used “Goober” of Goober and the Peas (Jack White’s old band) instead.

Oh well, you win some you lose some.

I’m kind of in the mood for some Residents today, some psychedelic bunny-hop music.

My favorite era of theirs is the 1970’s-1980’s, up until the death of “Snakefinger” (Phillip Lithman).

Fingerprince is probably my favorite album from that time.

They made few public appearances during this period, spending most of their time recording albums quite prolifically.

I first saw them on the fledgling MTV, back when it played music videos all day (remember those?).

The Residents, literally, invented the music video.

I feel like their songwriting suffered a bit as they relied increasingly on new technologies and spent more time on the road touring.

The death of Snakefinger was also a crushing blow to the group.

I am not sure if they ever really recovered from it.

But, even to this day, I still enjoy their creative output.

They never stopped making more and more music & art, of every possible medium.