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FUZZY WARBLES for your mood organ: CHRISTMAS SHOPPING WITH HYPERBUBBLE

Jeff from Hyperbubble — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 15:39:53 +0000

Do elves make MicroKorgs?

Jess with a box of Christmas vinyl surprises!

Crank up the Christmas tunes! Hyperbubble are going shopping this weekend!

Besides the crucial visit to Toy Joy in Austin, we’re doing a lot of buying on the internet this December.

If you’re at a loss for space age holiday ideas, you’ll find a dozen swell ideas right here! Who knows, if you’re on Hyperbubble’s Christmas list…and if you’ve been nice…you may even find one of these goodies stuffed into your stocking.

To find out more about the presents, just click on the links to see the details….Okay, here we go…

ahem….

On the twelfth day of Christmas, Hyperbubble gave to me:

Bis singer, solo artist, and Hyperbubble collaborator Manda Rin's 'Cover Versions and Other Hits' art series features Devo, Kraftwerk, Blondie and more collectable prints and originals!

twelve Manda Rin prints…

FINALLY! The entire JEM animated series on DVD! Eleven day-glo discs contain the ultimate new wave sci-fi girl group cartoon, including the legendary STINGERS episodes! Truly-uly-uly outrageous

…eleven Jem DVDs…

For the Funkateer who has it all: The gatefold LP version of MOTOR BOOTY AFFAIR with cut-out Atlantis diorama and paper dolls.

…ten P-Funk LPs…

The hours and hours and hours of music in the 'La Vie Electronique' series will leave your brain saturated in Klaus...and there's more on the way!

…nine Klaus Schulze CDs…

Help! Riverdale has been ZOMBIFIED! The deluxe edition comic featuring 4 alternate covers (one for each KISS member, of course) includes a total of 8 books!

…eight Archie Meets KISSes…

Pefectly crafted Indiana Jones jams for dashing through the snow, or cuddling up in front of an open fire.

…Seven and the Ragged Tiger…

A Santa's workshop full of doits, zwarngs, zorps, and squiggles.

…six synthesizers…

Yes, you can get one in pink.

…FIVE DRUM MACHINES…

Click on the link to see Hyperbubble's Bee Gees Christmas video on YouTube

…four Brothers Gibb…

Hands down, the coolest instrument in the universe.

…three Theremins…

Bring a smile to your favorite surfer girl's face, with this double disc, button, and poster set!

…two Beach Boys…

Apparently, after Han went solo, Chewie got his Giorgio on, and did his own thang...

…and the new album by the Wookies.

Thanks for reading and listening to Fuzzy Warbles this year. Have a fantastical holiday season, and a musical 2012!

Jeff

FUZZY WARBLES for your mood organ: MAKE MINE MAGMA!!!

Jeff from Hyperbubble — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 13:00:36 +0000

Just ask Ian Faith. Playing in front of large stone formations provides that extra nudge of cosmic vibration that sends a performance well over the top. Backpackers from around the world gather to witness this ultimate fusion of mystical, musical, and electrical power. Are the musicians actually drawing musical inspiration from the rocks? Or does it just look cool, dude? Well, yeah, it totally looks cool, dude. Just ask these guys.

Pink Floyd put the Pomp in Pompeii. Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii features a 1971 perfomance in a 2,000-year-old amphitheater. The movie is regarded as a classic because of it’s snazzy camera work, inspired performance and fantastic audio recording quality. My favorite moment is ‘A Saucer Full of Secrets‘.

Now, I like ‘Money‘ and ‘Another Brick in the Wall‘ and “Comfortably Numb” as much as the next guy, but at this point in time, when I’m stuck in a car with only the FM radio for entertainment, I really wish the classic rock stations were playing Saucerful a thousand times a day, instead of those songs.

Just imagine the drive to work:

“Alright, San Antonio…that was George Thoroughgood and The Destroyers gettin’ Bad to the Bone….and now here’s some Floyyyyyd:

‘bummmmm…..bummmmmmmmm…..bummmmmmmmmm….buh-duhmmmmm…..Wurrrrrrrmmmmmmmmm….wooooooommmmm…..woooooooooom…..brummmmmmm….strummmmmmm….wwwwwweeeeeeuuuuuueeeeuuuuwwww…..bwannnnhhhhhhh…..SHRAWNNNNGGGG!…..wwwwwuuummmmmmm…..eeiiiieiieiieiiiiieeeeeeee….EEEIIIIIIEEEEEEEIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE…..MWAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!……SSSSHHHHHMMMRRWWWWWNNNNnnnnnnnsssssshhhhhdwwooooooooSHRMASHHHH!!!whahahahahahahahnhnhnhnhnhnhnhnSHMRASHHH!!!!eieieeiiiieeeeeeiEEEEWAIIIIIIIIIEEEEEIIIIAIIAIIAIIAIAIIAIIAIEEEEAEAEEAIIIIEIEIEIIEEANNMMMWWWWAAAAAAHHHHHHHNNNAAAAIIIIIIIISSSHHMRREEIEEIEEEEEEEIIIIIIISKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!”

Pompeii Progsters Pink Floyd

Squeaky organ and guitar feedback jack your nervous system like a 10 dollar cup of Starbucks. The Floyd know that driving is serious stuff: Now is the time to be aware, so prepare for liftoff…Space warrior drums roll in just as your steel chariot battles its way through the cosmic highway…a steady bass line cools things out as you take the exit ramp, and as you triumphantly arrive at the parking lot, David Gilmore belts out with as much power as his weed-stained lungs can muster: “AHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” You made it. You’re there.

Magma...scary.

Another volcano-inspired prog rock group, France’s Magma, is shrouded in mystery, legend and controversy. Are they visitors from another planet with musical abilities far beyond that of Earthmen? Or are they simply a nutty musical cult under the rule of a mad dictator? Rumors abound: Coltrane-worshipping bandleader/superdrummer Christian Vander rehearses with an underwater drum set for the extra resistance… Mike Oldfield, who was reportedly at the recording session for Magma’s Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh album, ripped off their Orff-ish riff and tweaked it into ‘Tubular Bells‘… Magma’s live performance of their epic space opera, all sung in their own invented language of Kobaïan, occasionally slips in creepy fascist messages… Before being allowed to wear the Magma emblem, band recruits must learn Kobaïan, and take the following pledge:

‘To create music which defies time, we have pledged our material and immaterial being to Magma, to Unïwerïa Zekt, and to the Kreuhn Köhrmahn for the rest…‘

…And my own rumor: Magma’s vocalists are actually all Elementary-school choir teachers gone vigilante.

Heads up, Hawkfans!

Spinal Tap aside, tons of bands have played at Stonehenge, but no performance is more appropriate, or more memorable, than Hawkind‘s legendary 1984 Solstice show. Thankfully, it was immortalized on video. Nik Turner perfoms his space ritual in an outfit consisting of a pair of long johns, a modified bicycle crash helmet, and your grandma’s nightgown., wearing make up like one of the girls in that Flock of Seagulls video. Farrah-haired space maidens clumsily dance about, as the rest of the band giggle away at the ridiculousness of it all:

Spacerock with Julian.

And now to top off this lovely morning, a sweet little ditty called ‘Stone Circles and You‘, followed by a true stoner anthem, ‘S.P.A.C.E.R.O.C.K. With Me‘, by ex-Teardrops Explodes singer, solo artist, Arch-Druid, and author of KrautRockSampler, The Modern Antiquarian and The Megalithic European, Julian Cope:

NEXT WEEK: I WAS A TEENAGE FREAK-A-ZOID

FUZZY WARBLES for your mood organ: TRANSFORMER MEN, SPUD BOYS, and LAWYERS

Jeff from Hyperbubble — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:16:36 +0000

Neil 'Cylon' Young and his vocoder

In 1983, Neil Young‘s record label sued him for 3.3 million dollars for not sounding like Neil Young. So what was the deal? He got the MTV mullet just like Geddy Lee and Eric Clapton. They were probably happy about that. But he also got his hands on a Sennheiser VSM-201 vocoder and was fraternizing with those weirdos from Devo. Worse than that, he recorded an album full of unsellable, synthesized ROBO MUSIC! And even worse than that, he made it the soundtrack to an even more unsellable weirdo movie that nobody understands!! Then he had the gall to play his unsellable weirdo robomusic soundtrack for the better half of his HBO concert special!!!

Gotta love the guy. But Trans wasn’t just some quick sell new wave gimmick made to confuse the masses and slap David Geffen in the kisser. Nope. Trans was a creative work which mirrored what was going on in Young’s world at the time. Which was most likely, let’s see… gettin’ high…hangin’ out with Devo… and spendin’ a good part of the year with his son, Ben. In fact, Neil claimed one of the inspirations behind his using a vocoder, apart from it sounding way cool and Kraftwerky, was to reflect how Ben’s cerebral palsy impeded communication between the two.

To be fair, Trans isn’t all indistinguishable cybo-rock. As part of the album’s concept, the vocals and music shift back and forth between sounding like good ‘ol Neil (Little Thing Called Love/Like an Inca/Hold on to Your Love) to sounding like a chorus line from Battlestar Galactica (Sample and Hold/Computer Cowboy AKA Skycrusher/Transformer Man), climaxing in a fusion of both styles, with a cover version of The Buffalo Springfield‘s “Mr Soul“, which is given the Devo-Satisfaction-Treatment.

Now, for both Neil Young fans and Devotees, here’s ”Sample and Hold” live in Berlin, and a beautifully mutated version of ‘Out of the Blue Into the Black’, from the movie Human Highway, featuring the Spud Boys themselves, along with Neil Young totally shredding on guitar, and Boogie Boy on synthesizer and lead vocals:

Neil Young & Devo

Paul | Myspace Video

NEXT WEEK: BRING ON THE SPACE MAIDENS!

Short Film: A Story of Fiction

Mission Control — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 05:19:15 +0000

This short, directed by Samuel Garcia and starring Christopher Elizondo, is puro San Anto. A Story of Fiction follows a boy’s attempts to ignite his superhero powers. I’m sure we can all relate.

The Darkness: Good People

Paul Vaughn — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:19:03 +0000

Good People is a 2009 short film from The Darkness, a San Antonio-based special FX and production company. They specialize in a variety of products from Custom Masks and Props, Special FX and FX Makeup, Haunted House Consulting, Video Production, and Post Production & Editing. They provide Hollywood quality work and products at reasonable and affordable rates.

Check after the jump and you can see more example of The Darkness at work.

This is the 2008 demo reel from The Darkness.

San Antonio ACM SIGGRAPH: Computer Animation at UIW

Paul Vaughn — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:01:16 +0000

If you are interested in the field of computer graphics, Thursday is your opportunity to see some cutting edge animation from the 2008 SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival. This will be the first meeting of the San Antonio ACM SIGGRAPH professional chapter and they will be watching the shorts on Thursday, February 18, 2010 from 7:30pm – 9:30pm at the University of the Incarnate Word (UIW), 4301 Broadway, San Antonio, TX 78209 in the Bonilla Science Hall, room 129.

The only place you can see this reel is by attending an annual or local chapter SIGGRAPH meeting. SIGGRAPH is an annual convention put on by the ACM SIGGRAPH (Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) organization. Check out the trailer below for some flavor of the event.

Watch the Skies: UFOs in San Antonio, Texas

Paul Vaughn — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:21:11 +0000

While we’re all about the Missions Unknown, there are other unknowns in San Antonio…and some of them are in the skies. Check out this compilation of UFO footage taken in San Antonio during 2008 and 2009 by SAUFOTX SKYWATCHER. Did you see any of these? Was that your saucer? Fess up.

Public Access Flashback: Bob the Superhero vs Tin Foil

Paul Vaughn — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 05:01:49 +0000

Come with us now on a journey through time and space as we look back to the heyday of San Antonio’s cable public access programming. This short was from the sketch comedy show The Doppelgang. In case you cannot tell from the clothes and hairstyles, this show aired around 1989 or 1990. Enjoy the antics of Robert, Kimmy and David, but remember…never, ever microwave tin foil.

You can read more about the Doppelgang on the Doppelblog.

SA48HR: Gone in a Flash

Mission Control — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:54:57 +0000

Today we present Gone In A Flash, the official SciFi entry from the 2009 San Antonio 48 Hour Film Festival. This short was created by Kat and Kyle Solana, and directed by Kat Solana. They were required to work in the term “I’ll go back and check,” the character “Frieda Flash, human encyclopedia,” and a cookie as a prop.

Note: The language might not be acceptable for your workplace.

Made in SA: The Brain That Wouldn’t Die at the Overtime Theater

Mission Control — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 07:00:23 +0000

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die shows at the Overtime Theater in San Antonio through Halloween night, October 31, 2009. This original musical production was written by Jon Gillespie and directed by Michael Burger and the cast includes Christie Walheim, Robert Jerdee, Jules Vaquera, Cary Farrow and Roy Thomas. We sent the Missions Unknown cameras to the Overtime and spoke with the brains behind The Brain.

Catch the show tonight, Saturday, Thursday or next weekend only. Sample a slice of brain during intermission while trying not to lose your head like Jan in the Pan. It’s a perfect Halloween-themed date. The Overtime Theater is at 1216 West Avenue (at Olmos). Call (210) 380-0326 or visit www.TheOvertimeTheater.net for tickets.