How do top the largest album in your career?

“Don’t ask me”, says recording legend Anthony Anselmo. Who’s last album of mixes “No… Really” was considered his epic masterpiece. On the tailend of this great accomplish comes six years of work on his latest album “Going for the WhatNot”.

As before where Anthony would be mimicking a Phil Collins cover, this one mimics the famous Yes cover with Anthony himself providing what he calls his most ‘revealing album ever’.  The Answering Machine/Voice Mail saga that started with five comedy cd’s and morphed into now a trilogy of musical remixes Anthony says completes the story of his life for the past eight years.

“All of these songs were a work in continual progress for eight years, then finally I got tired of the space taking up on my hard drive and decided it was time to finish this.” Says Anselmo now renown for both his media achievements in both the Podcast and web art realm.

“Going for the WhatNot” is the latest in his musical mix achievement, with both music that is progressive, pop and the standard Anthony’s standard polticial song.

The CD itself starts where “No… Really” left off, with the opening of a door and the emergence of the sound coming out from the depths of probably his dark mysterious mind. The pounding bass of “Answering Machine Messiah” points directly to the core of what Anselmo is trying to accomplish. The political “Gay Marriage” follows pointing to the hypocrisy of the religious right. We are also featured to a full extended version of the songs from Anthony’s various podcasts and finally the epic 20 minutes “Awaken” bookends the whole saga nicely.

“Each song tells a story from about 2001 till now,” says Anselmo “It was a bitch to finish but we really spent extra time to make sure this one, (if the final one) would be the best.”

And produced this compliation is state of the art, as it included numerous new techniques to provide the latest and greatest sound to the listener. Anselmo has grown with his talents and both the production quality and content quality really shine here.

Where his former epics “No Case Required” and “No… Really” would sometimes stray from direction, there is defintely a coherant story being told here, and some may even consider this a ‘concept’ album harkening back to the days of old Progressive music that is rarely heard anymore.

With huge promotional plans in the works Anselmo is constantly busy producing and preparing. Working 60 hour work weeks is the normal as producing art in any form is his drive. GFTWN has already received huge critical acclaim from both fans and critics which surprised Anselmo himself.

“The last album was sort of considered the second album, and no one expects that to do well. By the time the third album comes along you really have to bring it all to the table and I’m glad that this one is being as well received as it is.”

Will this be the last of his musical mixing genius? Anselmo states that since this one was so hard to finish he would like to put this one to rest and continue with some other projects or other forms of music.

“This may be viewed as a closure to the series or a transition album. If I do do another one, that will be completely different from this. This is it… FiN (laughs)”

If this is the completion to a journey then it defintely has been a creative one…

Omlesna Ynohtna reporting for the Anselmo Press…

ALBUM TRACKS AVAILABLE HERE

My Niece

Congratulations to my Sister Beth and Brother-In-Law Zach for the first baby of the family!
Click here to see video.

I tried using Drupal for my homesite and while it gave new appreciation for the amount of work one must go through for… well hell who am I kidding, Drupal is a pain in the ass!

Put it this way, Drupal is like Microsoft and Wordpress is like Macintosh. One is way over complicated and a pain in the butt to configure, and the other is just easy and simple. Wordpress proves to me once again that good interface design can go a long way! Where Drupal makes things way too complicated, has too many features and still doesn’t provide you with some basic functionality in some areas, Wordpress has gotten cleaner, meaner, leaner with every release.

As such I’ve decided to switch my personal website over to Wordpress. However there’s no real easy way to convert all my past content (another flaw I have with Drupal), so bringing online some of this content may take some time. My apologizes to everyone who needs to re-register on this new system. Hopefully this will be the last for a long time.

Hey folks check out my new Podcast atTFormers.com. TFormers.com has been nice enough to allow me to do their weekly podcast, allowing me to add my voice to the Transformers Universe! Its wickedly cool so go check it out! Special thanks goes out to BACon and Gravity for letting me use their music! Go To TFormers.com and Enjoy!

Speed Racer will probably be regarded in many years to come as a cult classic. I can see this as being considered what we now consider 2001: A Space Odyssey to be, a masterpiece!

How do you take a very badly animated cartoon and make it a movie? The Wachowski Brothers had a lot of live up to.  There are several ways this movie could be taken, completely comical and off the way or completely serious. Both of this approaches would have completely ruined what turned out to be a fantastic work of modern art.

Speed Racer carefully blends the dynamics of a well thought out script, with amazing on your seat action and incredible special effects. Yes there are some times where your head will be spinning and anyone who experiences seizures should be warned. But all in all I found this movie completely amazing. Touching in many parts, incredible mind blowing in others and all in all good fun for the whole family (and not just families who watch NASCAR.)

What is even more amazing is that is captures the essence of the cartoon perfectly without being overly hooky. This could of turned out as bad as one of Will Ferrell’s movies, but the comedic bits that are dashed in just enough to give you that laugh you need, nothing more.

The style of this movie is completely nothing we have seen before. Years from now it will be regarded as one of the ground breakers of modern movies. No more will we have to endure boring movies with nothing special added to it. We are living in the age of the Payback, 300, SIn City and now Speed Racer. This is the next stage of viewing entertainment and Speed Racer just raised the bar even higher!

Been wanting to write about this one for a while but just haven’t gotten around to it.

Figures that after a bit of turmoil of firing lead singer Steve Perry Journey actually produced probably their best album to date and something that could compete in this era of modern music. The last album with lead-singer Steve Augeri was probably their best with him to date, and sadly Steve was left go after having voice problems during their 2004 tour. (For more of this drama just visit the Journey Wikipedia, although note I hate wikipedia for several reasons, long story…).

Generations is purely classic Journey, and like Green Day’s American Idiot there isn’t a bad song on the album. What’s nice is the other members of Journey finally get to bust out their chops and take on a song or two. Drummer Deen Castronovo also provided some great songs, and some argue that he sounds more like Steve Perry than Augeri does. However Augeri really does shine on his album with both the opening track ‘Faith in the Heartland’ and ‘Beyond the Clouds’. Neal Schon, Jonathan Cain and Ross Valory all contribute on vocals making this probably the most enjoyable Journey album since Trail By Fire.

Once again Steve Augeri was let go due to voice problems which is sad because I think he could have recovered easily from this and from what I’ve seen new lead singer Arnel Pineda isn’t going to bring much to the table other than a pretty face. I think Neal Schon needs to either wrap it up, or make amends with Steve Perry. Yes, a reunited Journey tour might not sound AS good as the old days, but as we learned from Genesis and the Police if it’s possible to put on a semi-decent performance the fans will show up for the memories of the good old days.

Your products are a pain in the butt. No seriously, a real pain in the butt. I had the most incredibly frustrating time trying to get your products into my car.

I had an original Sirius Sportster. I never liked the way I had to suction cup attach it to the window of my car but it worked fine.

I have a cobalt LS, not my first choice of cars, but it was what was available to me at the time I needed a car.

One day not too long ago my Sirius Sportster simply stops transmitting data. It would turn on, but I received no sound from the Radio station. At first I thought it was a bad antenna so I called Radio Shack and asked if I could buy a replacement antenna.

They guy on the phone told me they don’t make antennas for that model anymore, however, I could buy a whole new unit for the price of the antenna that I could find on ebay.

Wow I thought a whole new unit for under $30, well what it turned out to be was a smaller, less featured packed unit. However I was going on a long road trip and I needed the radio so I bought the Starmate unit. What I found was it was impossible to find a station to listen with the unit. Every station I tried either had overlap at some point or the sound quality sounded worse than AM with horrific static!

I even went on the website to try and find some stations I could use in my area and even those seem to have overlap. With that the unit itself did not seem to be producing enough power to overcome the standard FM signal.

So I decided at this point to try and put a whole new radio in my car. I figured I might as well get this done right. I called Best Buy and asked them if I could purchase a unit for my car, that would give me satellite radio and get it installed that day.

They of course said ‘yes’.

I went to Best Buy, walked in the front of the store, bought a Pioneer radio, bought the Sirius tuner, and walked around back to get my radio installed. After the guy at the store gave me a weird look he told me that he needed a special adapter that he would have to re-pin to get the radio into my car. This added to the cost of the installation. After agreeing to this, I left my car and I didn’t get more than 4 minutes away on foot before he called me and indicated that they did not have the part for this re-pin and would have to special order it.

Disgusted I went home and tried calling around for this part and no other store has this special harness. I called another Best Buy store they not only told me it would cost more, but that they used different parts?

I decided to call Columbus Car Audio and see what they could offer. The guy on the phone indicated he would have to look at the car to get an idea on what was needed. I also called two Chevy dealerships and neither knew how to install a radio into a Cobalt, and one even said it might be impossible to be done.

After going to Columbus Car Audio they indicated they could do this install, but once again it required special equipment. In fact the adapter for the radio, required an adapter.

At this point my total cost for this project was coming to just under $800. Disgusted I took all the equipment back, canceled my special order and called Sirius to cancel my subscription because the device was useless.

The woman on the phone indicated that yes the new radios were less powerful due to the FCC and that what I could do is get a FM direct adapter to the radio. This would directly into the antenna of my car and override the FM signal. However investigation proved once again that I needed an adapter, FOR the adapter just because my car was the Cobalt.

Granted my amount was now $140 instead of $800, but seriously how hard is it to get a simple radio in the car. I became completely frustrated and disenchanted with this process. It shouldn’t be this hard to take out radio, and put in another. I cannot express to you the amount of frustration of not being able to put anything compatible into this car to get this radio system to work!

After talking to some friends at work, I was told that the general way cars work now is that the radio stores most of the computer logic for the car. The one guy at work even showed me how easy it is to install this FM adapter myself. Saving me over $200 in labor!

First off, both your companies should basically sue the FCC for inability to have your product. Second you both could learn a lot from Apple in terms of design. I would image that some better design on the cars and radios would provide a much better way for someone to install a radio. I hate the outside radio attachment, it just looks ridiculous, and really wanted something internal and built into the radio. I found this impossible and was told over and over again that the Chevy Cobalt seems to be the one car that you can’t do ANYTHING with.

I am definitely NOT buying Chevy next time, and I purchased a FM transmitter for my iPOD to play my music. After purchasing a FM transmitter for my iPhone I found that it had auto seek and was able to find stations that were available in my area, but even this FM transmitter has better sound quality and more power than my Sirius Starmate radio.

I don’t wish to place blame, but I highly recommend you take these problems and frustrations I have into consideration with your products and work to make them more suitable for buyers. All I wanted was commercial free radio in my car, and it became the biggest ordeal I ever had to deal with.

Sincerely,

Anthony S. Anselmo

Last October I wrote about an amazing band I saw open for Dream Theater, called Gravity. A quartet of kids producing some truly amazing stuff. Recently Gravity released their first full length CD featuring 12 amazing, ground breaking songs!

I was forunately enough to get a copy of this CD recently and there is simply no words that can provide you with the explanation and how amazing the music is, how technically proficient these kids are, and uplifting and envigorating these songs are. Into Oblivion includes several new tracks, and new versions of their songs featured on there previous Visions Within. Since their first CD the boys have horned their skills, polishing their tunes to make this a complete well rounded trip around the sun within a musical fantasy that is simply unbelievable!

Once again, the fact that music this good is coming from 3 high schoolers and now 1 college freshman is unbelievable. Some of the bands that inspired this progressive music can’t even play this well. Listening to the CD, each song has a distinct feel of a particular band that will make you think ‘Oh that sounds like Yes, now that sounds like Genesis, Dream Theater etc…’ Yet the entire piece is completely individualistic and groundbreaking, as well as catchy enough to stick in your head throughout the day. You simply won’t be able to get these songs out of your head, and the CD will never leave your CD tray in your car!

Gravity is the future of what music can be, as I see more and more of the younger generation striving for music that is beyond that standard radio pop trash. To see this amazing works of art come out of these very talented (and also very humble) kids, it just a relief for all the progressive musical afficionados out there. If you get a chance grab their latest CD from gravity-store.com and enjoy the journey into the mind!