Category Archives: Boneslinky

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN: Pre-Order Our Album And Be An Amazing Human

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FINALLY! Our CD Release is this Friday at The Windup Space. So while we’re alerting the proper authorities, our very serious thoughts about band marketing (aka: how to get free shit just by being a big enough jackass to walk around in public in a children’s costume) are on hold just for this week.

In the meantime, help us out by contributing to our Kickstarter fund (click on the funny pic on the right!). This helps us cover the costs of creating the album and keeps us doing what we do best: making offensive wannabe art rock.

So far, the contributions to our Kickstarter fund have been amazing. Our friend and fan Jon Cook graciously gave us a hundred bucks to throw a show at his house. And some dude by the name of “Jesus” gave us $50 and wanted nothing in return. Weird.

Even $5 helps us out immensely and gets you a download of the album, which in my opinion has to be one of the best albums any costume band from Baltimore has put out in the ’10s.

See you folks at the Windup Space this Friday at 9pm. Oh yeah, in case we didn’t mention it, it’s a Baltimore Beer Week event, and there will be some phat specials on Raven Beer all night!

OH NO THEY DIDN’T: Flute Squad Releases A Full-Length Comic Book

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Stealing a move from our mentors in selling out (KISS), The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad is taking on yet another segment of the media. This time it’s comic books. We’re releasing Livelihood: Billy Jump featuring The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad in tandem with our new album Boneslinky! And if you are lucky enough to jump on this early you can nab a real physical version of this limited 27-page comic book release.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to, you know, see myself in a comic book. It seems very surreal to say the least. It’s looking like this is going to be the first of many, as we have about six scripts in the vault with plotlines that will match up with songs from Boneslinky! This 27-page comic harkens back to the origins of the band and is a prequel to DMFS’s 2005 zombie comedy flick “Livelihood” (click the link to put it in your Netflix queue.)

If you’re in to reading books and comics on your computers, readers, or whathaveyous, you can purchase it on WOWIO for a whopping ONE DOLLAR. WOWIO was kind enough to name Livelihood as the Featured Comic of the Month in their monthly newsletter.

If you are a HUGE fan of comic books, please hit us up in the comments section. We’d love to get feedback of the comic from a real comic book fan and maybe get some ideas on where to send it for review.

BONESLINKY! PRE-ORDER : Yup, We Still Need Money

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Well that didn’t take long. Within a week of posting our Kickstarter fundraiser, to fund the physical production of Boneslinky! we reached our small goal. Kickstarter is definitely a great tool for music promotions.

We are truly grateful for people who have donated and purchased the new album before hearing even a few tracks of the finished product.

Even more astonishing is that a few people decided to give us a little bit more to have a pizza and Raven beer party at their place while playing a few tunes. That’s pretty fucking awesome if you ask me.

BUT WE STILL NEED MONEY! Well, we’re not begging or anything (yet) but if you plan on buying the album, this is probably the most bang your going to get for the buck. Check out the page. We have a ton of cool prizes for different levels of donations. But at the very least you get the album and free entry to our Baltimore Beer Week release party!

CHASING BENNY: Email Strategies To Get Famous People To Notice You, Even If They Ultimately Reject You

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Benny said “Thanks but no thanks.”After spending the last 5 years of sending out cold emails for a business I co-run while doing the same to get shows for The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad and Wild Bonerz, I‘ve come up with a some guidelines for writing effective emails when requesting something actionable.

There are 3 rules to know when requesting a stranger to take action:

  1. Assume that they are busy. In fact, assume that they have reached a level of busyness that you can’t even begin to understand.
  2. Assume that they are reading your message amidst hundreds of others. Assume that they read their email on their phone. Make your request as short and direct as possible. Don’t fill your message up with a litany of details.
  3. No response IS a response. Follow-up politely but after about the third time with no response just move on.

With this in mind, posted below is the transcript of emails that led to Benny Mardones listening to Innocent Night. After recording the studio demo, I researched Benny to see what he has been up to. It turns out that he had just released a new album on a label called Warrior Records. I contacted the Jim Ervin, president of Warrior Records to see how we could get Benny on the album.

Subject: Information regarding Benny Mardones

Hi Jim, I am interested in featuring Benny Mardones in a new song by indie rock band The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad. Please let me know if this is at all possible and who to contact to investigate further.

Thanks, Nikc Miller

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Hi Nikc,

You would contact me.  Please feel free to forward any potential details.

Regards, Jimmy

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Jimmy,

Thanks for getting back to me.

Basically, we are a rock band that happens to be huge fans of Mardones and “Into the Night.” We wrote a song and recorded a sort of tribute to that song called “Innocent Night.” There is a bridge to the song that is 6 lines and wanted to get Benny to sing it. Along with that, the song would be listed as “Innocent Night featuring Benny Mardones” on the album.

We own a studio, or can do it remotely which may be easier since we are located in Baltimore, MD.

Please let me know how to proceed.

Thanks again, Nikc

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Hi Nikc,

Yes, Benny’s vocals would most likely happen remotely here in Los Angeles.  Is the song in a ProTools session?  Do you have a recording of “Innocent Night” that he may hear first?  Regardless, I will be happy to take this to Benny, but unless there is up front compensation offered it probably will not happen.

Please advise, Jimmy

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Jim,

The band discussed it and has decided to offer $500 up front for Benny to record vocals for the entire song. Please let me know if this is possible and we can discuss further. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to correspond with us.

Thanks again, Nikc

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Hi Nikc,

Benny has looked at everything, but he does not feel that the song is right for him.  Regardless, he did ask that I pass along his thanks and appreciation in considering him for the project.

All the best, Jimmy

We knew it was a long shot, but had to at least try. Of course when making our offer we forgot The Golden Rule Of Mardones:

“[Mardones] still lives quite well on the royalties received from ["Into The Night]…” (source: Wikipedia)

Obviously $500 isn’t gonna cut it for Benny. The point is that we got Benny to actually listen to and consider performing on this crazy child-molester song that alluded to his own biggest hit. For us, that’s a huge win in and of itself.

By the way, Andrew Warner recently wrote a similar post about email strategies. His site Mixergy is a collection of hundreds of interviews that he conducts with the world’s most powerful CEOs and entrepreneurs. So he is constantly requesting the attention of the unreachable. Check it out!

If you like this post check out:

CHASING BENNY: Listen To Songs You Hate For Song-Writing Inspiration: The story behind “Innocent Night” and about how this song was inspired by Benny Mardones’ hit “Into The Night”

CHASING BENNY: Listen To Songs You Hate For Song-Writing Inspiration

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It’s no secret. When I wrote the lyrics to “Innocent Night” only one person was in my mind, guiding me with beautiful musical inspiration: Benny “The Voice” Mardones.

Benny’s epic “Into The Night”  had recently been brought to my attention by soft-rock afficionado and Flute Squad lead guitarist Father Ryan O’Graham. I later realized this very song that began with the line “She’s just 16 years old, leave her alone, they say…” had tortured me time and time again during the seven years I spent stocking shelves in my neighborhood grocery store. I mean, who was this dude? Why was he singing about a 16 year old chick? Why is he not listening to everyone around him who tells him to leave her alone? How could everyone in America not see through what I saw as a blatant admission of pedophiliac date rape?! I absolutely could not stand it.

Alas, I wanted to write a hit, so I begrudgingly looked to Benny for guidance. He’s the man that should know, right? The album featuring “Into The Night” ironically entitled Never Run, Never Hide is virtually unknown. In fact, Mardones is widely considered to be a one-hit wonder. But his one-hit topped charts TWICE (once in 1980, and again in 1989). Future songs of this chart-topping caliber became known as being “Bennyized” or having “The Mardones Touch”

I wanted that kind of power. I wanted “The Mardones Touch”. Wikipedia (which never ever lies) sums up what I am in interested in quite nicely:

“[Mardones] still lives quite well on the royalties received from this song… ”

So, I grabbed my pen and paper and locked myself in my bedroom with a song I absolutely hated playing on repeat. I swore I wouldn’t come out until the evil elixir of this song had seeped into my subconscious and forced me to write lyrics that could top the charts at least twice. 

But I had to figure out the “it” factor that led to “Into The Night”’s great success. Was it the moody bassline, the infectious groove? Could be. But then again, so many other songs have these elements but never even break through the top 100. In fact, I’m not even sure Benny knows, otherwise he’d write another hit (he’s still making albums you know).

After two long weeks of eating crumbs off the same floor I had been defecating on, I figured that sooner or later I had to let myself out of my bedroom or I was going to die! Then it hit me:

AMERICA LOVES PEDOPHILIA!

How else could you explain the seemingly unsolvable murder case of Jon-Benet Ramsey, the never-ending infatuation with a total freak known as the King of Pop, or the millions of Americans that still go to boring Catholic church every Sunday?

Mardones had tapped the cultural sub-conscious , and I was to copy his success. But what to call it…hmmm… Into The Night…. Int-i-mate Night?? Into The KNIGHT?!?!?! Wait…..I got it… INNOCENT NIGHT!!

I quickly scribbled down a nasty little story. It was about having to confront a friend on his annoying habit of being a child molester. I mailed the song to the Kashgrab Records hit factory, and a new Benny-ized epic was born.


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Up Next: Email strategies to get famous people to recognize you, even if they ultimately reject you. No for real, we actually approached Benny Mardones about singing on Boneslinky!


BONESLINKY! PRE-ORDER : The Boneslinky! Kickstarter Fund

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We did it. With just months to go before the Boneslinky! release on October 8th, we decided to jump on the Kickstarter band-wagon.

If you’re unfamiliar with Kickstarter, it’s this cool site where artist-types connect with fans to raise money for cool projects. It’s worked tremendously well for friends of ours like Baltimore filmmaker Chris LaMartina.

If you’re even vaguely considering purchasing Boneslinky! this is a great way to do it. Not only do you help us complete the final phases of production, but we decided to offer some kick ass bonus items as our “thank you” for helping us before you’ve heard the final product.

At the lowest level of donation you recieve the full version of Boneslinky! and a full length bonus CD featuring all of the demos of songs included on the final album. At the highest or “pimp-status” level, you’ll get a trip to Disney World to see The Flute Squad play in Orlando. In-between donation levels include private shows and even an opportunity for Father Ryan to produce your album!

SAVE THE DATE: “Boneslinky!” Album Release Party On October 8th!

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Before the album art has been finished, a track listing has been created, and even before the pre-mastered version has been sent out to beta-testers (again contact me if you’re interested)  The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad has locked down a location and date for the Boneslinky! album release party.

The party will happen at (a place we our pretty much calling our home these days) The Windup Space on October 8th 2010! Semi-confirmed acts include:
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The Rock n’ Roll Freakshow: A staple of our best shows. These guys perform a series of stunts involving fire-breathing, hanging heavy objects from testicles, and eating broken glass.

Bobby E. Lee & The Sympathizers: An insane hillbilly rock troupe that is sort of Flute Squad meets Wild Bonerz meets a crazy shit talking southern Baptist preacher.

The Go Pills: A quirky pop band side-project of our friend and Baltimore film maven Skizz Cyzyk!
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Perhaps most exciting of all is that will be an official Baltimore Beer Week event, featuring specials on The Raven Lager all night.

This just came down the pipeline, so I hate to say it, but more details are to come. If you plan on coming or have an ideas, or even if you are a band that REALLY wants to play at this thing the best way to hit us up is to leave us a comment or hit us up on our Facebook!

GOALS UPDATE: Reflections on Q2

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David Allen Gets Things Fucking Done

At the beginning of the year I posed some pretty gawdy goals on this blog. The thing about goals is that they shift as situations change.

Let’s check in and see how we’re doing:

1. Obtain $10,000 in revenue for all three bands

The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad : Nothing’s really changed here. We played two shows at the front of the year, and don’t really plan on playing any more until Boneslinky! is released in October. At that point, we should be back to playing on a regular basis, setting the woods on fire and buying new yachts with our gig revenue!

Wild Bonerz: WB has now managed to lock down about $3000 in gigs this year. This is a great, and it seems like we are certainly on a roll. If I did the math ($3000 * another 6 months) it looks like we might come up significantly short on the $10k mark that I set. But it’s never too late for certain opportunities to roll around and help the cause.

The Hilltop Hightops : HTHT is still on a brief hiatus. You can still buy our AWESOME album though. Super Galactic Space Banana will teach your kids a number of things about space, history, science, and math. But probably the best lesson it teaches is how to ROCK!(!!!!!!!!!!)

2. Finish and release The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad’s Boneslinky!

Last week I listened to the near-finished mix of the album and have to say that even I was blown away by Boneslinky! “Of course you fucking were!” you might say. But, let me tell you, it’s not particularly easy to just sit back and love ourselves. After hearing these songs for several years, then recording them in several back-to-back sessions, then hearing the rough mixes, then arguing about what’s cool and what’s not, and then realizing that you created a tracklist that ranges from funk to rock to olde-timey, with topics ranging from transportation, abortion, mythical creatures, violence, titties, and beer, well it’s really hard to tell what the fuck is going to come out of it all. I really do feel like it’s Die Humpin! on super-steroids.

I am happy that we enlisted the help of several people to make this happen (ranging from musicians who are way more talented then us, to a room full of girls screaming “Spend It! Spend It! Spend It!”[also more talented than us]). We’re continuing this collaboration by beta-testing the album with several volunteers before we get it pressed. (Contact me by leaving a comment if you want in)

3. Post every week NO MATTER WHAT!

If you remember this goal used to be : Create 30 posts related to goal-setting. I can’t imagine how boring this blog would be if I stuck with that goal. Sometimes goals shift and become better. By shifting from the “30 posts on one specific topic” to “Weekly posts no matter what” we greatly improved our content structure. And now our readers can rely on content being posted on the site at the same time every week.

We have maintained this weekly schedule. Posts go up on this site every Tuesday. One improvement we have been working toward is posting tactical articles on Tuesdays, and leaving band news and updates to Thursday posts.

4. Obtain an official endorsement from Party City

At the end of Q1 we had made no attempt to get an endorsement by Party City. In fact it seemed like it just wouldn’t get done. There wasn’t a whole lot motivation or reason for Party City to get involved with us. I’m thinking about changing this goal now. We’ve made several significant strides in the endorsement department, starting with our great endorsement by Raven Beer. I’d like to obtain more endorsements that range from music equipment, food, bars, whatever (as long as we think its cool.) But our goal in all of this is not to keep tacking on logos to this page, but instead to really do work to improve the brands that decide to invest in us.

So far I think we’ve done a good job with Raven and it’s just gonna get better. We will be participating in tandem with Baltimore-Washington Brew Works for Baltimore Beer Week (October 7th – 17th). We think this is a win-win for both Raven Beer and the Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad, as we plan to play our CD release show for Boneslinky! during this week.

5. Build our Facebook fanbase

This shifted last quarter from Build our mailing list to Build our Facebook fanbase So far I’m quite happy with the results of this goal but still feel like we could do better.

Some improvements we’ve made since the beginning of the year:

a. Always be active on Facebook.

We don’t just let our page float by and then stop in once a month to leave an update that says: “Wow, stay tuned guys, our new album is sounding AMAZING!” I hate bands that do that. Nobody cares about that. In fact I should say this now: If you are band who does what I just described, STOP IT! NO ONE GIVES A SHIT!

People do happen to give a shit about thoughtful posts. Or posting cool stuff that you found on the web or whatever. It’s funny, a Facebook fan page happens to work alot like an individual’s Facebook page. You wouldn’t just post “Hey guys, I’m at my job at the office, you should come by and check me out!” once every three months. You just wouldn’t have any friends if you were that brand of tool.

b. Give tons of shit away.

I give a ton of shit away through our Facebook page. Not just band stuff either. For example, after I was done reading David Cross’s book I Drink For A Reason, I wanted to sell it on Amazon. But I found out I could only get like 3 bucks for it. So I decided to just give it away on Facebook.

c. Leave no comment unanswered

This goes with the blog comments too. If you leave a comment on our Facebook or blog we’re gonna answer it, no matter how petty. I just really hate it when I dig someone’s post, decide to leave a comment and the author doesn’t have the appreciation to respond. What the hell is that? Do you think your blogger-ass is some sort of rock star or something!?!?!?!?!

So hmm, are we about half way there? It seems that way, but FluteSquad.com certainly has our work set out for us if we’re gonna see these goals through. We’ll check back in on these in 3 months!

***

If you like this post check out:

Band Goals For 2010: Our initial post announcing our goals for 2010.

Reflections on Q1: Our goal progress check-in from January to March of 2010

YOUR LOUD MUSIC IS ANNOYING: Introducing The Loudness Wars

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It’s been well-documented on this site that The Flute Squad is no fan of pointless high volume onstage.  But did you also know that we have a major beef with loudness in recorded music?!?!

I can see the first comment now:  “Hey fuck you guys on your high-horse!  I’ll play my music as loud as I want until you make something of yourselves just keep being pussies!” or some other equally incoherent rant.  But calm down, buddy, we’re not talking about the actual playback volume here.  If you want to turn your speakers up to 11 and blow your eardrums out, then you’re only harming yourself, which is pretty hilarious.

What we’re talking about here, however, affects EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO LISTENS TO RECORDED MUSIC!  This insidious phenomena has come to be know as “The Loudness Wars”, and it is destroying the music that all of us listen to on the radio, on CDs, or online.  And not only new music, but through the <sarcasm>magic of remastering</sarcasm> it is also destroying all of the old music we’ve known and loved for years.  And that, incoherently raving commenter, is much more annoying than your loud amp or expensive guitar.

The Basics: First a band records an album, tweaking the mix of each song so that everything sounds as good as possible.  Then they send the entire album off to a Mastering Engineer (ME) whose basic job, at least in the past, was to ensure a good flow to the album by making sure each song has similar spectral balance (i.e., equal amounts of treble and bass), similar volume levels (so you don’t have to turn your stereo up and down for each song), and appropriate fade-outs and spacing between tracks.  Actually, in the distant past their main job was to make sure the bass in a vinyl record didn’t cause the needle to jump out of the groove.  But luckily everyone except for hipsters have stopped using vinyl so most ME’s don’t have to deal with that problem anymore.

However, in recent years the ME has been tasked with another job: making the album as loud as all fuck through processes such as compression, limiting, and clipping, referred to altogether as loudness maximizing.  The theory being that when people are listening to the radio, the loudest song is going to jump out from the rest and as a result will be a bigger hit.  There is also some very conclusive evidence that when presented with two similar audio samples, people instinctively prefer the louder one, at least initially.

The problem is that this fight to have the loudest album has gotten so out of control that it is starting to make the actual music sound like complete and utter shit.  Distortion galore (and not the good tape/tube kind), snare drums that are almost inaudible, no difference between quiet and loud parts of songs, and a general harshness result in an incredibly fatiguing and unpleasant listening experience.

This all came to a head in 2008 when Metallica released Death Magnetic.  People who listened to it admitted the songs were pretty good, so they couldn’t figure out why they felt compelled to shut it off after about 10 minutes.  But then the same tracks were released for Guitar Hero, and they sounded much, much better, and people began to realize that the Guitar Hero tracks had not been loudness maximized!  There was a general uproar, calls for Metallica to re-release an un-maximized version of the album, and the whole issue actually hit the mainstream media and became a widely talked about hot-button issue.

Watch this video to hear (and see) the very clear differences between the loudness maximized and un-maximized versions of Death Magnetic:

So you’d think after all of that backlash people would have stopped mastering their albums so loudly.  And for a while, that actually happened.  Axl Rose released Chinese Democracy with little to no loudness maximizing, and Judas Priest actually released a completely non-mastered album.

But now it seems people have already forgotten about the Metallica debacle, and the loudness wars are actually getting worse than before!  Bands are now having their albums mastered to -4.5dB RMS (average loudness), which even in the hands of the best ME results in music that simply sounds terrible.  For comparison, albums just 10 years ago songs were mastered at around -14dB RMS at most, and that was mostly done by hitting tape really hard, which produces a more natural compressed sound.

The worst part is that now everyone, including indie bands, want their albums to be as loud as the pros, so every mom-and-pop low-budget studio is getting into the mastering business and trying to replicate this loudness without having any idea what they’re doing.  As a result we’re hearing more and more local and indie music that is loud as fuck but sounds absolutely horrid.  The scary thing is that bands actually release these turds to their fans, instead of smacking their faux-ME on the back of the head or at the very least sending it off to a proper mastering facility to get it butchered by a pro.

The first clip is our lightly-maximized version of “Show Us Your Boobs (Buy Me A Beer)”, coming in at -12.4dB average RMS.  The second is what you’d likely get back from a low-budget studio if you asked them to master it as loud as the most recent Green Day album (this example is actually -5.96dB compared to Green Day’s -4.6dB).  Sure it’s loud, but it sounds like shit.

DMFS promises not to punish our fans by ruining our music in the mastering phase (we do just fine ruining it in the songwriting stage).  For our new album, Boneslinky, we’ll keep average RMS levels at -12dB or lower.  We also won’t just slap a limiter on the final mix and call it a day, but will use multiple high-end “Pro ME Secrets” to assure a minimal amount of distortion, a wide stereo field, punchy dynamics, and an overall exciting and non-fatiguing listening experience.

Summary:  To help DMFS fight the “Loudness Wars” against the evil infiltrating the music world, all you have to do is buy a shitload of copies of our new album and tell everyone you know how great it sounds, which will snowball until we get massive radio play with multiple hit singles and Grammys.  In return we promise not to stop caring about “The Loudness Wars” just because we’re busy spending our cash on hookers and blow (it’s actually the booze and fast cars that will make us stop caring).

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Your Loud Music Is Annoying is written by Ryan Graham, producer for The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad. If you like this post check out:

Your Expensive Guitars Are Annoying Too!: A comparison of name brand guitars with their much more affordable knock-offs and why you should save your money and go cheap!

The Axl Rose-meets-Chicken Lady-meets-Diane Rehm Voice

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One of my favorite scenes in the documentary Dig! is when Dandy Warhol’s frontman Courtney Taylor is laying down vocal tracks for the Dandy’s soon-to-be hit “Bohemian Like You.” He wasn’t doing anything particularly annoying in that scene, just singing his vocal lines, but somehow came off as a total douche and it’s hilarious because he’s oblivious.

In many ways this scene encompasses the golden rule of recording: Everybody looks like a fucking tool when recording vocal tracks.

It’s a fact of life, and just knowing this sad truth can make you 100 times more effective in the studio. Unless you’re Pavarotti, singing the way you do live just isn’t enough in the studio. Recording several different overdubs and harmonies helps, but even THAT isn’t enough. Alot of times we’ll record for hours and hours testing different voices with different mics until we find a sound that we like. But here’s the tricky part: the vocals that sound good in the mix, usually sound like shit when they’re being recorded.

Case in point: I call it the Axl Rose-meets-Chicken Lady-meets-Diane Rehm (or Axl Rehm®) voice. In addition to about six other go-to voices, singing in the Axl Rehm® is part of my vocal duty for each song that I am featured on on the upcoming album. This means, going into the studio to record my vocal takes is not as simple as going in and singing the way I do live. That is definitely part of it. But an even bigger part is where Ryan (our producer) yells at me to “Sing it in your screamy voice!”, “Sing it your Axl voice!!” “Sing it in your Dire Straits voice!!!” I cry deeply, then follow suit.

The process is harsh on the ears:

But the results are worth it:

Notice how little of that shit is actually in there! It’s added in toward the end for dramatic effect. The track sounds more “barbershop quartet” than “Appetite for Destruction” but I guess we would have never figured that out if we all just clammed up in the studio. It really is worth it to experiment with different vocal sounds. Go balls deep and act like a total spazz when the mic is on and the spacebar has been pressed. SHAME IS FOR THE WEAK!

By the way, Ryan told me that I’m letting his mixing secrets out into the world by releasing just the vocal tracks. I guess that’s somewhat valuable to studio nerds. I’d be really impressed if someone took that track and made something with it.