A short song... Maybe it is finished, maybe not. Probably it is. For now... Recorded January 25, 2012.
Once a band, now a blog... But for how long? The dead shall rise again! Someday. Maybe...
Showing posts with label Retrovirus Lab. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Retrovirus Lab. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Yes. I am a whore. And you can be too!
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| From 2011-10 (Oct) |
Actually, going through and checking out a lot of bands through processes like this over the last few weeks has actually led to some great discoveries...
And I am not sure if this would upset Zuckerberg or turn him on.
E-mail from Ditto...
From: Ditto Music
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 6:37 AM
To: (Me, duh!)
Subject: Zuckerberg would be upset if he knew
Hi
Helping other artists may seem a bit counter productive, but...
Helping other artists may seem a bit counter productive, but...
How about if by doing this, YOU
were the person benefitting?
On sunday night a lightbulb went
off somewhere in Liverpool HQ and we decided to conduct a Facebook
experiment.
We started a new thread
and here are the rules....
1. Stick your Facebook Fanpage
address/URL down in the thread
2. Everyone who comes into the
thread has to 'Like' everyone else's page on the thread.
That was it. Quick and
simple.
In the last 24 hours we have now
had 100 artists post their Fanpages,
That means you get 100 new
fans, JUST for posting your fanpage address.
Disclaimer- It will
take you a good 20 minutes to go like everyone else's page. I'm sorry but we
can't do the work for you.
But once that is done, you can
sit back and watch your own fans go up, and up and.... you get the
point.
If that kind of instant social
media superstardom is something that you could be into, then come join
in.
But be quick. we are going to
close the thread off in the next 24 hours.
Come join us, and get your
likes
Good Luck!
Lee
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Photo of the Day by the King of Spamalot & "Mountain Cats" by Talkdemonic
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| From 000-FB Photo of the Day |
View this photo and buy prints on deviantART.
I am the King of Spamalot. I just had an email go out through ReverbNation to about 56 people I know about being a part of a mailing list I am putting together (though will probably never use). I didn't think much of it, since it is to people I know.
A few minutes later, though, I realized that my name might not be on it anywhere, just Retrovirus Lab. So yeah, that was me. Let's see if I just got myself kicked off that service!
On top of it, as I am connecting with some other groups through these sites, my social networks are getting pretty jammed up with notices. I am trying to keep them on the Retrovirus Lab page, not on my regular Facebook page, but they tend to go their first before I can get them off. Only leaving the really good ones up there.
Good ones like these folks below. Here is a song, just for the hell of it... Discovered them on my travels through the interwebs today... Probably won't get to a picture today, either. So I threw one up at the top of this post and am calling it the Photo of the Day.
Meanwhile, everyone was home sick today. Everyone, but me, is feeling better now. Blah. Maybe that can be my excuse...
Cross posting this everywhere...
Retrovirus Lab: A Brief History
So, I suppose the first question, one that I've been asked recently, is this: Am I getting the band back together? This was asked not so much in the literal sense, as in actually tracking down former band members from all over the country and actually playing together again, but in the figurative sense... Am I really looking at diving back into this music thing?
Well, for now, the answer is no. Beyond, maybe, when I have some time, if I ever have any time, remixing some of the material from 2008 and, an even bigger maybe, recording some mostly spoken word solo type of stuff even further down the road, I cannot really see getting too much back into it at this point in my life. Hell, I can barely keep up with the current elements of my life, let alone trying to throw a band into the mix.
However, it is something I would like to do later on. Someday... maybe.
So, what is going on with all these band sites and what not? Just sticking my toe in the door, keeping the name preserved, and having the online infrastructure in place in case I do decide to throw in again.
But, for now, this is a blog about music, not about a band. And that is what I am happy with right now.
Here is some old profile information on Retrovirus Lab:
Retrovirus Lab Resurrection? Part One: A history of Seattle band inbreeding (2008)
So the history works like this… Once upon a time there was a fun little city called Seattle...
First I was in a basement band called Taramarteau (the spelling may not be correct here, but I do not think it matters much). One of the songs I am working on now, "Filler," actually dates back to this old band in 1992. This band never played anywhere but the basement, but it was my first time out as a singer, and I am glad that there is no surviving evidence from this warm up period.
Mary the bass player and I fled the suck and started a new band, which was Koan. Musicians were wanted in The Stranger. Koan went through two incarnations, the first with Mary, Jason Roberts, Brad Haug (who was one of the founding members of Faith & Disease), his buddy Andy, and a cute redhead whose name I cannot remember right now on keyboards. There was drama. One show was played at the Rendezvous, I believe, rapidly followed by more drama and the collapse of the band.
Jason and I kept the name, added his friend J. D. Jarmer, and eventually Ryan Kingsbury on drums, with a number of other musicians rolling in and out here and there, live and in the studio. "C Chaos" comes from this period, based on a song originally titled "Squirting Chaos," as does "Four Minute Barrier," "It Could Really Be Murder," "Thresholds," and "My Soul Is Free." Essentially, these are covers of old Koan songs. I am reclaiming them for this new project since I wrote the lyrics and had the lead vocal duties on these songs.
This incarnation of Koan lasted for a while, put out a demo tape, kroatoan, played quite a few shows at places such as the Off Ramp and, of course, the Lake Union Pub. We lived at the Jam Box rehearsal studios, and then up near Northgate in a garage. Jason and J.D. were students in Shoreline's audio engineering program (as was I, for a couple of quarters), so we parked up in the college's 16 track analog studio for weekends at a time. We were briefly popular in Salt Lake City due to the strategic location of a stack of band stickers that used The Sisters of Mercy font, and due to the fact that no one in SLC had ever heard our music… We were a part of the NW Goth Coalition for a while, even though we were not really a Goth band, and we also hung out with a lot of the guys playing in bands in the NW Industrial Coalition. Cleopatra signed almost all of those guys.
Eventually, everything got weird (I'll take quite a bit of the responsibility for this), and we broke up. During the break up, live in the middle of a set at the Lake Union Pub, I was thrown out the back door of the establishment and told to never return. It was quite a remarkable feat, getting 86ed from this old punk dive, one that I am strangely proud of. This was 1994.
Two weeks later, the original Retrovirus Lab made its debut back at the Lake Union Pub. Mike Tune on bass, Ryan Kingsbury on drums, Cliff Braten on guitar, and I was handling the vocals and playing quite a bit of sax.
Back at the Jambox, a rehearsal space was shared for a few weeks with The Reactors, but due to wide spread band poverty, Retrovirus Lab only had about three or four rehearsals there before we became homeless. Still, with three or four solid songs and the loose seeds of a few more that were used as the foundation for some long improvisational jams, we boldly set forth once more into the Seattle music scene.
That first show at the Lake Union, two weeks after I was catching air out the back door, had the same bartender loading us up with free beer at closing time and going off on how we were the best fuckin' band to play that shithole in a long time. We were on to something. The pub pretty much became our rehearsal space and we played there every week or two for the next year, as well as a number of other shows around the Seattle club scene.
Current Artist Bio (2011)
In 2008, A. F. Litt revived the name Retrovirus Lab for a solo project that resulted in a number of songs being recorded in his living room. This material consisted of reworked Retrovirus Lab songs from the 1990s, reworked songs from an earlier band of his, featuring several Retrovirus Lab members, called Koan, and several new songs.
While currently on hiatus, Litt is planning on remixing much of the 2008 material for release late in 2011 or early 2012 and recording new material for release sometime in 2012.
What It Was Like (Living Room Rough Mixes) by Retrovirus Lab on Soundcloud & ReverbNation
All right... Here is some music, rough and ugly. See the bio information above... It is not for everyone. It might even be just for me. But I like it for what it is, scraping off fifteen years of rust and playing with some clunky new, cheap toys back in 2007 and 2008.
Thresholds by retroviruslab
Thresholds by retroviruslab
Sunday, October 2, 2011
RVL: Now on Facebook
Just opened a Facebook page. Is that the right phrase, "opened?" http://t.co/cEUgPmCE
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