Thursday, May 9, 2013
I hear Tony say it at every show: “This next one is a love song… about the apocalypse“. I take it as my que to count us in to Cities on Fire, a truly EPIC song that reminds us to fight for love. As an impending apocalypse may are may not be on the horizon, it never hurts to be prepared. To that extent, and most likely with only earthly bound vehicles at our disposal, it makes sense for everyone that wants to survive to learn HOW to survive by driving like a crazed yet controlled maniac. Sam Sheridan recently did just that and not only wrote a book about it Disaster Diaries: How I learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Apocalypse, but also a cool article on Jalopnik that you should definitely check out.
Happy Thursday,
-erik
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
It’s a great time to be alive. Very soon we civilians will have the opportunity to go to space. Of course at first it will cost a pretty penny to do so, but in time the price will drop and make it more accessible to all of us. This week Scaled Composites successfully completed a cold-flow test of its rocket nozzle on SpaceshipTwo over the Mojave desert. This test proved the flow-path of rocket fuel and is another step in the process of getting SpaceshipTwo ready for powered flight tests.
For those that do not know about SpaceshipTwo, its all really awesome. Spaceship Two will be flown to a height of roughly 50,000ft where it will be released from the “mothership” WhiteKnightTwo. Once dropped SpaceshipTwo will ignite its rocket engine and blast into sub-orbital space. Peak altitude will be about 68miles above the Earth’s surface where passengers will get to experience about 5minutes of weightlessness. Smart Martian Maniacs will note that just because you’re weightless, doesn’t mean you don’t have MASS! Perhaps coolest; Passengers will officially be “astronauts” when they pass the 62mile mark. RAD! Passengers will also get to travel at roughly 2500 mph, or over three times the speed of sound. How cool is that?!?!
All of this madness is being operated by Virgin Galactic and flights to space are currently priced at $200k. So when you slap down the mega-bucks ($$$) to become and astronaut and take that space flight be sure to crank Deserts of Mars in your headphones as you make history and leave the bounds of this earth. For each step we take is one more step towards an epic rock concert on Mars and that is damn cool.
Perhaps most importantly, this flight will change your life by changing your perspective on life. Seeing earth from space will give you a new perspective on how fragile life is, how we are all connected, and how awesome a rock concert on Mars will be! Richard Branson has a nice post on this topic dubbed “The Overview Effect” with a link to a cool video on his blog.
Rock On!
-erik
You can read more at : http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/04/17/virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwo-makes-stunning-leap-toward-private-spaceflight/
Thursday, April 11, 2013
We just uploaded some pics to VISUALS of us from the show last Saturday in Waco. We had a blast sharing the stage with Orthodox Fuzz and HellGoat. Both bands are on top of their game and are a blast to see live. If you get a chance you should check them out for sure! Really a bunch of solid guys. We were honored to share the stage at Fast Eddie’s with them and look forward to the next time we can ROCK together!
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Mars is going to be closer than you think real soon. A team at the University of Washington is building a fusion engine that could get us to Mars in just 30 days! They’re doing super cool things like using solar energy to generate electricity that powers magnets to compress lithium or aluminum metal bands around a deuterium-tritium fuel pellet to initiate fusion. BOOM! That is so awesome. For comparison sake it took the Mars rover Curiosity roughly 8 months to make the journey to Mars.
Check out the full article.
We’re for one are looking forward to rocking our home planet soon!
-DoM
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
On Monday (April 8th, 2013) Bob and I headed up to Kempner, TX to meet with the amp genius Gerald Weber and his team. Bob’s Marshal amp needed some work and there is no better place to get a tube amp serviced than by Kendrick. We hung out for a while in their work-space and talked about music, guitars and amplifiers. This picture is of one of the “Kendrick-Kats” hanging out with Bob’s now gutted Marshal amp. Believe me, when we get that amp back its going to be better than new!
On the main assembly table were a slew of custom amps they are making for the Blue Man Group. I remember back in the day when I worked at BMG in Las Vegas. We used Vintage Orange amps for the Zither in the show and would blow them seemingly every other month. We had three of them and one was always in rotation to Gerald for service, one live in the show, and one for back up. Gerald sent us his prototype for a “Blue Man Amp” that would out perform and out last those Vintage Orange amps. We beat the crap out of that amp for two shows a day every day and it held up without fail. It just never went down and never sounded bad. Of course we ordered more for the show and replaced the Orange amps.
Gerald had that original prototype amp in his shop and told Bob and I that since we had it in the show in Las Vegas it had done tours of duty in the Chicago, Orlando, and New York shows… it never went down EVER. He mentioned that he dosen’t even think they had to re-bias the tubes on that original amp. Gerald and his crew are now building copies of that amp for every show in the Blue Man eco-sphere including the new show in Brazil. I’m telling you. If you need a KILLER tube amplifier you’ve got to check out Kendrick Amps.
Bob got to play a few Kendrick guitars through a few amp/speaker combos and we both really fell in love with their 7-watt studio amplifier played through a closed-back cabinet. It was one of the purest, most beautiful guitar tones we had ever heard. Really unbelievable. That little 7-watt amp is even being used by live players as it is unbelievably loud for its diminutive size and really sounds incredible.
We didn’t get to hear it, but Gerald showed me the new 300 Watt bass amp he’s working on and it’s a BEAST! I can’t wait to go back soon and hear that thing make the thunder. Tony’s going to HAVE to get one for his DoM arsenal.
We cannot stress it enough; Do yourself a favor and check out Kendrick Amplifiers.
Rock!
-erik
Deserts of Mars
