Ebay makes Okie life sweet

A pair of antique vacuum tubes (from the 1930s I believe) that I bought off Ebay arrived in today's mail. I had never seen engraved base, globe glass, mesh plate 56 triodes before and when I did, I had to get them. They test fantastically strong, just as the seller advertised and they are going in my soon to be finished homemade preamp.

Feast your eyes people:

Why Kim Deal is the real deal!

Kim Deal, of Pixies fame, is putting out a new album this spring with the Breeders after a 5 year absence. This is great news as the previous Breeders albums, Title TK, The Last Splash, and Pod are excellent and still often played favorites of mine.

In this interview with Pitchfork, Kim gives some insight in that great Breeders sound:

"there's an actual band, and I own actual instruments, and actual tubes have to be replaced, and people actually have to fly in, and they have lives, and you have to go over the song-- because remember, this is tape. It's not like, "Uh...here's the idea of the chorus. We're going to use the Pretenders drums from the first record, 'cause they sound so good," you know? That's not how we do it. Jose [Medeles], the drummer, has to fly in, and we actually have to write a song from beginning to end that sounds cool. And if it doesn't sound cool at this part, it's not like we can just go, "Yeah, let's rearrange that in ProTools," you know? It's just a totally different way of thinking.

I'm not the quickest, most prolific writer either. I would never pretend to be. I don't think prolific-ness is equal to quality at all. I would rather have one song that people actually like than 15 songs that they can barely stand. But that's just me."

Tube amps? No ProTools? Analog tape? Wow! Wow! Wow!

Quality over Quantity? Double Wow Wow Wow.

You go Kim!

(here is a link to a song from the new record)