EDIT: Here are the other members of the Mustachathon providing their own personal brand of mustachitude.

Thanks to all the mustache pioneers for making this day possible, here are just a few of the greats: Tom Selleck, Burt Reynolds, Weird Al Yankovick, John Oates, Ned Flanders, Mario, Freddie Mercury, Wilford Brimley, Cap’n Crunch, The Nuge, Frank Zappa, Gene Shalit, Sam Elliott, Salvador Dali and Yosemite Sam.

Thanks to the amazing audio provided by Orchestral Movement of 1932, Dave Patrikios, James Santiago and Yumenomado, I was able to cut, remix and shape their samples into the song “Cassettes” this evening. Hope you like it.

Cassettes – DOWNLOAD – Lyrics

More songs will follow in the coming weeks.

You send me audio. I remix and sing. Together we make an album.

Even though 40 people were nice enough to get involved with this collaboration project, I still don’t have enough audio samples to create an entire album of music. How about you get involved in this super-fantastic open source music project and submit some samples of your own? That would be great!

Join the likes of Tim Godwin (he played in Air Supply, for chrissakes), Dan Friel (Parts & Labor), Dave Patrikios (of the kick-ass yet now-defunct band The Realistics), Chris Fudurich (producer for Nada Surf, Sophie B Hawkins, Rx Bandits), and a bunch more talented and creative people who you don’t know but absolutely should:

* Bill Belina (a bunch of guitar parts)
* Brian Page (a ton of phat drum beats)
* DJ12XU (super noise)
* Chris Fudurich (piano, drums, loops, wurlitzer!)
* Dan Cohen (geetah)
* Dave Patrikios (guitar, piano, synths)
* Eric Pokorny (guitar, vocals, screaming kids)
* James Santiago (supah guitar parts, samples)
* Jeremy Starpoli (a ton of trombone)
* Terry Burton (guitar)
* Fluffy (synth, bass)
* Jon Eric (noises)
* Nate Quinn (drums, djembe, conga, sax)
* Jeremy Quinn (ebow guitar, noise)
* Tim Godwin (guitar)
* Brent Stansfield (songs, guitar, vocals)
* Matt Larsen (piano)
* Dan Friel (noises)
* Orchestral Movement of 1932 (drums, bass, gtr)
* Artemis Strong (noises)
* Yumenomado (synths)
* Wyatt (synths)
* Bartley Hinson (guitars)
* Steve Rydz (guitars)
* … and more

Send me drumbeats, noises, guitar parts, a cappella vocals, accordion, part of a song you never finished, spoken words, screaming, your cat. Whatever you’re inspired to send. I will merge, tweak, remix and piece together all of your samples and make an album. Be a part of open source music. Your audio submission will get used. Everything you send will be incorporated in to the album. Do it now.

Thanks and good evening.

I have hundreds of these old cassettes just sitting in milk crates and plastic tubs, most of them contain songs I’ve finished, songs I didn’t finish, songs that my friends an I worked on, guitar ideas, horrible synth ideas, live jams, spoken words, songs I love, songs I hate, skits I did with my sister and brothers when I was a kid.

They contain a lot of memories. But they just sit in the closet. Taking up space. Taking up mental space.

I must have spend thousands of hours recording stuff to cassettes. Started with a portable Panasonic recorder, recording what I thought were awesome piano ideas, and incredibly retarded 7-second improvised a cappella songs. I moved up to my mom’s boom-box, and did some crude multi-tracking by playing one tape recorder while recording to another. Sounded amazing, as you may have guessed.

Then finally the day came and I bought a Yamaha MT120 4-track. Came straight home from school every day and sat in front of this machine for 12 hours straight. I must have at least a thousand songs in various states of completion, just sitting there as magnetic particles encased in plastic. From the looks of it, I have at least 100 tapes that I recorded on my Yamaha 4-track, and another 100 tapes that I recorded on a newer Yamaha MT8X 8-track. And at least 60 in my series of “Tune Tapes”, where I’d just record skeleton ideas, musical sketches, guitar parts, keyboard ideas.

What the hell should I do with all of this music?

Let it sit and slowly degrade and demagnetize? Or spend months and months listening through all of this stuff to find the gems? Import the cassettes to my computer? And then do what with it? Now they’ll be sitting on a hard drive instead of in a milk crate.

I could upload unfinished stuff to ccMixter and see if anyone wants to remix it. I could do some sort of strange performance art piece where I do perform the music of one tape per week in various locations around the US. I could actually finish some of these songs I never finished when I was sixteen. Or I could just throw everything away.

After all, they are just memories. Like the photos of my childhood that sit in a shoebox. I look at them every few years, and it refreshes my memory. But it’s also a time that has passed, a time that is getting less and less significant with each passing second.

So, on my last day on this earth, do I really want to still have a crate of cassettes by my side, just to remind me of my past?

Untitled Instrumental
An instrumental I wrote when I was 17 or 18

Q
Wrote this for my friend Scott in ‘97

Wrong Planet
My idea of a song, in 1984-ish?

Midnight Cowboy
My friend Adam and I did a cover of Midnight Cowboy (in the style of Faith No More), sometime in high school…

Weggy Wah Solar Neutrino
I like this one. Not sure how to explain it though.

Here is his winning remix:

Jasinski – Fell Out Of The Sky

And here are the runner up remixes:

S:t Vital – Fell Out Of The Sky (Analog Overdose Remix)
Yumenomado – Coming Down
Vynil Rob – Out Of State
700P3D – Fell Out Of The Sky (700P3D.de Remix)
Silenx – Fell Out Of The Sky (Silenx Renaissance Mix)

And, here are a couple more really sweet remixes that have been added to ccMixter.

Here’s a crazy mashup of This is Old — DJ Vadim vs. State Shirt:
Caujito Ben – Saturday Is Old

And a kick ass trance-y version of Fell Out Of the Sky by Khaustic:
Khaustic – Fell Out Of The Sky

StrangerOnEarth put together a nice flowing Don’t Die remix:
StangerOnEarth – Don’t Die

Cool 1980’s/DrumNBass/Synth Pop version of This Is Old:
Sloan – This Is Old (Hartkern Reassembly)

And you can find a ton more here… I’ll be updating the remix page soon with all of the new remixes that have been made.

Which one is your favorite? Is there a State Shirt remix you’ve found that isn’t posted on my site? Comment here!

MP3 of the song “I Am A Target”

Here’s the music video/remix video. Click here to watch in HD!

Long story long:

The last week was a unique learning experience for me. I had just heard Steve Porter’s remix of the Slap Chop infomercial. It’s pretty great. That got me thinking, how do you even create a youtube video remix? It took a few minutes playing around to realize that Ableton Live is a great place to start.

So I just kinda started piecing together parts of the original Slap Chop commercial, and found that some of the voice samples were downright somber when taken out of context. Started to write a song around the samples and quickly realized that this track could work out well as a SongFight entry. After some guitar, piano, synths, drums and vocals, the song was finished in a few hours.

Then some weird-ass crazy shit happened. I must have gone to sleep and had a crazy dream about being an infomercial salesman or something, because I woke up knowing that I needed to buy a blue apron and a shitty 13″ television in order to build a music video for the song. Total budget = $26! I borrowed a sweet Panasonic HVX200 and started shooting. Angela Heine shot some of the outdoor footage. Editing was done in Final Cut.

Overall it was a pretty fun experience to put together a song and accompanying video in just one week. Weird thing is I didn’t set out to do any of this, it just sorta happened. I need a beer (or four) now.

Hey, FrostClick posted a rather sweet review of This Is Old. “…it has quickly become one of my favorites this year with heavy rotation on my iPod”. head on over there to check it out. Thanks to Gabriel for posting a link to my store… yes I have some nice t-shirts, you want one.

:: Listen to the AcidPlanet remixes!

And a bunch more great remixes have come in through ccMixter.

:: Check out all State Shirt ccMixter remixes!

Today I qualified 23rd out of 27 cars (whoo hoo, not last!) and I think I managed to finish 19th. Had fun bump drafting and battling with Brandon Johnson, who managed to stay in front of me for most of the race even with a bad clutch, but I was able to finally get around him on the last lap. Today was the first day I’ve ever bump drafted, here are a couple highlights below. I guess I’m no longer a bump drafting virgin.

I was the first to arrive in the garage on Thursday night, so I got a few nice shots of my car:

Ok, ok. So they just hold microphones above my drums so I can go on making my little songs. But wait, you see, the last 2 years of my life has been a never-ending spree of breaking these little fuckers.

Let me just say this. Do not ever, EVER buy the Samson DMC100 drum mic clip set. I made the sorry mistake of buying two 3-piece sets. I’ve gone through 6 of these. Every last one broke. You know, doing simple things, like, attaching it to the fucking drum or attaching a fucking microphone to the clip. If you like to start recording a drum track and get rudely interrupted because your SM57 is now dangling by your feet, then please go right ahead and buy these abysmal pieces of shit. In fact, I just broke one now trying to carefully remove it from my snare drum. I thought it would at least be worthy of a backup, but it can’t even manage to do that. (Oh, and the Audix mic clips suck too).

Finally, I found a set of drum mic clips that someone actually put a little thought into before manufacturing them. They’re rugged, sturdy, and very adjustable. Please, if you record drums and are in the market for a drum mic clip, buy the Shure A56D. It’s a beautiful thing. And yes, I am actually excited.