Robbie Thomas
New Track Troubles and A Band Called Raptor
Made two tracks recently with the Super Human Intelligence Towards Exile name, they are Generation QAnon and Centralia. Generation QAnon was released last Monday and I ran into a problem with that release. Before putting songs out in the public sphere, I listen to the song on my CPU. And in my car and on a pair of Bluetooth Headphones. I skipped on the Bluetooth headphones and released the song on SoundClick. I was in some kind of a hurry to get Generation QAnon out there.
Then, I later listened to the song on Bluetooth headphones and it sounded like shit. One of the samples I used had a more screechy sound. I tuned the volume down on that and also removed that sample in some parts of the song, making it more “minimal.” The last minute-and-a-half of the song is something “minimal” and I liked from the beginning, so I pushed that for the most of the song. Generation QAnon does present Majorie Taylor Greene with her crazy talk.
My mistake with Generation QAnon had made think of a big mistake I made in 1996 when I was 13 going on 14. When Grunge made it to my ears at 11 years old (in 93), I often daydreamed that I could be a singer/rhythm guitarist of a popular grunge band. I remember in 5th grade, sitting in class daydreaming of me and a few of us 11-12 year-olds up on stage at the MTV Music Awards accepting our Moomman and telling the folks how our song rocks. Wishful god damn thinking, eh?
Going into 1996, I was a fan of the band The Presidents of the United States Of America. I also had an acoustic guitar I got in Xmas of 1995. The problem was I wasn’t intrested in lessons and didn’t spend much time attempting to learn other songs. I wanted to create my own songs, so I spent more time learning guitar tab. Also, in 1995-96, I was mainly a Special-Ed student. Most of my classes in Middle School were smaller class sizes with all of us Special-Ed students in the 7th grade. One of my fellow Special-Ed friends got an electric guitar for his birthday in February. Although we both seriously didn’t know what the hell we were doing, we both had that same dream, getting a band together.
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At the time, I thought PofUSA (Presidents Of The United States of America) had two guitar players. Turns out that they have a Basitar and Guitbass. The Basitar, which Chris Ballew played, has three guitar strings and two bass strings. The Guitbass, played by Dave Dederer and later Andrew McKeag had three guitar strings. Here’s an old web page about those two great instruments.
One of the things PofUSA had was a drummer, we did not. We looked for one but that didn’t work. Drummers were few and far between in our neighborhood, plus the few that were in our school said no to us. At the time, I thought that the ones not willing to work with us were bastards. But now as I think of it, they probably didn’t want to work with two Special-Ed kids. Don’t blame them now. We called our band Raptor. Also, the title of a popular PC game at the time.
After looking for about a month with mainly my impatience of waiting, we decided on this being a two-man band with me at acoustic guitar and lead vocals. My pal on electric guitar and background vocals. I had a shitty $25 Radio Shack cassette recorder and on March 96, we made about ten short songs (none of them passed the four minute mark). Some of the songs were diss tacks on people who me and my friend didn’t like at school, or people we knew. Other songs were intended to be silly, like how PofUSA would do. I designed the cassette cover and inlay with Microsoft Publisher.
The friend I mentioned earlier said he liked our demo, but other friends of his who didn’t like me so much told me the hurtful truth. They said our demo sucked. It really did, it was two Special-Ed kids who didn’t know how to play their own instruments making stupid diss tracks and trying to be like PofUSA. But I was in denial and thought I was actually good at what I did. I remember one guitar player in my grade asking me all these questions about music theory and guitar chords. Both things I didn’t know at all at the time and I was dumbfounded. He pretty much said I sucked at the guitar, but I said I wasn’t. And said something along the lines with, “I don’t suck at the guitar, I’m good.” He was right and I was wrong in the end.
What’s worse? We made a second demo called “Disconnected Ferris Wheel.” Yuk! I wish I could travel back in time and stop my 13-14 year old self from making these two pieces of shit. I think we invented Retard-Core.
It’s interesting that I haven’t thought of my first band in years. It just rung a few bells when I heard the crap version of Generation QAnon. I really need not to rush my music out from now on, but I likely will again. Really, I’m a Electronic Musician, we aren’t so talented. I throw most of my stuff through a sequencer and overdub some samples I made to make them sound good. I make my own beats or buy or use royalty-free samples.
