Get To Know Your Gear: Episode 1 from Blorp Corp on Vimeo.
Sometime around 1996 I was living in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn (actually I was in Midwood). I came home from a European gig to find myself locked out of my apartment. My keys wouldn’t open the door as they did many times before. I quickly realized someone had tried or possibly succeded in breaking in. I called the police and six officers entered my small one bedroom. I was told to remain in the hall. The female officer of the group came and and told me, “It’s not pretty in there. You’re going to be a little upset.”.
That was the understatement of the year. Everything was gone except my DAT (Wikipedia: DAT Recorder) tapes and Electrocomp-101. Now when I mean everything I mean everything. They took my food, underwear, soap and bed too. Gearwise two TB-303′s and a ton of other pieces you would find in a typical 90s techno guy studio were gone including a loved Roland Juno-106. So this morning I smile knowing I’m safe, I have my old tunes on DAT tapes and my Electrocomp is still as large and heavy as ever. Needless to say all my studios since have been armed and alarmed.
Related post: Secure your recording studio from thieves.
This entry was written by , posted on May 4, 2009 at 4:14 am, filed under business, hardware and tagged Brooklyn, DAT, electrocomp, Juno-106, roland. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Last September I did a post titled, “A look at Daptone Records Studio in Bushwick.“. They are a great label and studio who keeps a candle brightly lit for pure analog recordings. Unfortunately some hard news came my way today:
“Friends and associates,
As you may have heard through the grapevine by now, Daptone was broken into last night. Unfortunately, there was a lot of equipment (mics, pre-amps, monitors, turntables, guitars, amps, computers, etc.) stolen and damaged. It is going to take us a while to go through everything and take full stock of what was stolen, and we are not supposed to touch anything until the cops come back to collect fingerprints so we can only guess what’s missing from some mic drawers and cabinets.
And, no, we did not have insurance. We had been shopping around with different companies earlier this month but had not signed a check, so nothing was insured. We are working on replacing the gate in front, installing an alarm system, and getting insurance, but it is President’s day so it’s not going as quickly as we would have liked.
Nydia’s computer was stolen (which wasn’t backed up) and the modems/ phone system was ripped out, so we’ll be relatively out of commission for a few days.
I would like to ask for everyone’s help first in keeping an eye out for all of our stuff showing up on ebay/craigslist/local music shops, and secondly (and more realistically) keeping an eye out for good deals on headphones, mics, pre-amps, etc. I could really use a heads up on any kind of studio package for sale or studio equipment to be possibly bought or borrowed as soon as possible. We have a session scheduled for Friday to lay down some music for (I know this sounds surreal) Rod Stewart, and I’m going to have to get the studio running by then. I know I’m going to need to find headphones, cables, mics, and pre-amps by then. I’m not sure what else yet.” – Gabriel Roth, Daptone
I’m actually building my new studio in Manhattan and spent $2500 on steel doors and another $1900 on the alarm/surveillance system. I know that money and the moola going to insurance is well spent. For a list of tips every studio owner (large and small) should check click this: Secure your recording studio from thieves. Remember if someone breaks in and your inside: Shoot to kill!
For a list of what was stolen from Daptone: click here
This entry was written by , posted on February 17, 2009 at 2:36 pm, filed under business and tagged Brooklyn, Bushwick, Daptone, robbery, thieves. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
By now we all have a bunch of old spare controllers lying around so why not hack the hell out of the them? Luckily Brooklyn native Moldover has posted this video showing us exactly how to do it. You need controller (duh), a screwdriver, some plastic, rubber, scissors, glue and a permanent marker. The marker is optional because it’s only to make things, “look cool”.
The hilarious thing is all he does is pull out some keys, glue rubber on the rest of them, draw on the case and assign controllers to stuff. I have to say this is completely stupid and awesome all at the same time!
Related post: To perform live with controllers: Controllerism
This entry was written by , posted on August 9, 2008 at 3:40 am, filed under hardware and tagged Brooklyn, Controllerism, M-Audio, mod, Moldover, Oxygen 8. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I was just checking out this post on the Brooklyn Vegan blog about a gig Matthew Dear had last week. Apparently he was playing at Galapagos, a club/art space in Williamsburg (Brooklyn) and someone pulled the cable out connecting his external hard disc and ran with the drive. Of course his set crashed and the gig was over.
Matthew, who was celebrating his birthday yesterday, had been playing a killer set for 2 hours or so. Suddenly he got a message on his computer saying that his hard disk drive was unplugged… The music stopped, he checked and found out that the drive was actually missing… basically someone STOLE his hard drive in the middle of his set and ruined the all show!!! – brooklynvegan.com
There is also a long thread over at the Ableton Live forum about it. You can find lots of colorful comments 
including the expected “he was spinning MP3′s he deserved it”. A more useful comment I found from Ableton forum from member “hambone1″ was that he should have had a Kensington Lock. Agreed! Check out the thread: here
I have all my music equipment insured even when it’s on the road. I also state in my booking contract that the organization is responsible for security and any losses I incur. I usually ask whomever I put on the guestlist to keep a watch out for me (yes I am paranoid). My old music studio was just a few minutes from Galapagos. Williamsburg is an increasing great place but as the rents rise people of lesser means are pushed out. I always though this caused a clash especially when you throw drinking, drug dealing and nightlife into the mix.
photo credit: 100five
This entry was written by , posted on April 12, 2008 at 11:19 am, filed under live performance, political and tagged Brooklyn, insurance, Matthew Dear, security. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
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