The Gil Reunion Tour: Recap!

Here's a few choice moments, captured on film this past weekend as The Chop headed Eastward, over treacherous mountains, through Reno backalleys, across the Salt Flats, and into the sparkling sprawl of Salt Lake City:

Reno Party Time!

James before he "does his face"

Our name on the marquee in SLC!

A summary of what we ate and/or almost ate on this trip:

Arby's (almost! Tom's Arb-dar was on the fritz for the first couple of hours), In and Out, Arby's, Broasted Chicken (almost! It would have been an extra 45 minutes!), Arby's, $0.75 tacos, Dum Dums, lots of Michelob and some desert-heated whiskey straight from the bottle. 

The Chop needs vegetables.

Download The Chop's New Record FREE!

Dear Everyone,

It's been a long road.  There were many setbacks, many triumphs, and many lessons learned.  It is here:

Please download it, enjoy it, and share it with everyone you know.

Thank you,

The Chop

No, no, don't worry! I have a Ding King!

Dear Chumleys,

When I returned home from a short vacation two weeks ago, I went out to check on my car (my beloved 1998 Honda Civic) which had been parked outside my apartment for the duration of the trip.  I was less than pleased to learn that someone had kicked it.  Just kicked it, for no reason.  Some jerk was walking by and just decided to give it a boot.  I came home to a huge dent (on the sidewalk side of the car) and a visible boot print in the accumulated car-dirt.  The car is getting on in years, and I'm no longer able to concern myself with every small dent or scratch that it incurs, but this was a particularly well-aimed tolchock which connected with "Vickie" at a sweet spot directly in front of the passenger side door, rendering the door unopenable.  Well actually, to be fair, the door was openable, but not all the way, and opening it more than 6 inches caused the dent to get even denty-er.  I was disheartened but not un-optimistic when I biked over to the Kragen Auto Parts store later that week, fully believing that if I could only obtain the right caliber of "As-Seen-On-TV" product, I could make an easy fix of this problem.  This is when the "Ding King" entered my life.

At first I was a little skeptical. The DIY dent fix kit I had envisioned involved a high-powered magnet.  The Ding King uses hot glue instead, but not that wuss-level, fashion-design-school-dropout, high-energy-Surprise-Rock-band-makes-their-own-T-shirts-style opaquely white glue...the Ding King hot glue gun uses balls-to-the-wall black glue.  The glue of Hades!  I figured it'd be worth a try.  One thing that slowed up my use of the system was the fact that I needed an outlet (to heat the glue gun) within reach of my car.  This is an impossibility at my apartment, and so the job waited another week before I took it over to Phil's place, where he, Jimbo and I finally got to it this Sunday late afternoon.  

Amazingly, the Ding King worked!  

Yeah it took some figuring out, and yeah we had to use it repeatedly, and yeah we finished the job with Philby's silverware sub'd as a makeshift crowbar, but it must be noted: the task was accomplished in huge part due to the design and execution of the Ding King DIY dent removal kit.  

Also--though the instructional video (above) makes no mention of removing the black glue spots from your car, we were able to do it with boiling water and a small plastic scraper! Yes!

Just before we got done with it, I did manage to give myself probably the worst burn I've ever had (hot glue really really really hurts).  

And only hours after a manicure!

Once the passenger side door became fully functional again shortly thereafter, I considered the "thumb slug" a fairly reasonable downside to what was actually a financially triumphant situation (a $20 fix for a $300+ problem!).

Damn was I ever proud of myself and my friends for being so resourceful and frugal and even innovative.  And as a patted myself on the back for a job well done, I scoffed at my own skepticism about an awesome product like the Ding King.  Billy Mays: Rock Onward, my friend.

If you have a "ding" that needs some "kinging" you should definitely talk to me.

Then last night after the Islands show up in North Beach and some pretty killer Indian food in the Tenderloin, as I'm driving Jimmy and Ariana back to Potrero, some guy broadsides us at a four way stop and manages to hit the exact spot of the original boot-induced ding. Everyone's OK, but the car is hurting bad.  The Ding King definitely cannot handle this one.

Owner of a lonely heart, 

robbie "my fleet of cars is dwindling" kassees

Best of Tour Photo!

Patriots of the Mark,

Finally---I present to you The Chop's long-awaited "best of tour" picture:

This gem was taken in Dunsmuir California, up past Mount Shasta somewhere on the way to Portland.  We played at a bar in Sacramento, and drove about 3 hours north to camp on a Thursday night.  We were able to close our eyes for approximately 2.5 hours before Jimmy Southbound's ringing phone woke me up at 6AM Friday and I kicked the C-Team into action.  We ate a sweet breakfast here in Dunsmuir, cursing and sniping at each other (but polite, always polite America) across our eggs.  We did garner some stares.  The waitress, for her part, was able to deduce that we were in a band, and once our cover was blown--we headed out.

Apparently, Dunsmuir (the town) is a pioneer in the civically-minded technique of "Organized Stalking."  It's their way to get undesirables to leave town, most notably vagrants, sex-offenders, and scruffy-looking city-kids with gleams of hope in their eyes.  They employ a nonviolent (aka "softball") form of harassment to methodically purge their peaceful hamlet (population: ~2000) so as to keep their streets clean and their children pure.  Seriously, this is taken directly from the Wikipedia article on Dunsmuir.  I'm sure if we had stuck around a little longer we could have gotten some better sense of these techniques, but alas the gods of Rock urged us northward!  

We pulled into Marty's house in Portland that Friday afternoon and staked our claim to his land.

Marty is an awesome guy who I'm sure will someday have a big, beat-up, blue van, but fuck that!  We managed to get one first!

That's right!  In case you did not know--we bought a van!  

Hooray for us!!!

It didn't end there, friends...no it did not!  But I grow weary of typing.  

Apoplecticly yours,
rob-otic hand is playing oboe like a champ!

5 Simple Steps For Playing The Worst Gig Ever

We at The Chop do not believe in self-deprecation. We feel it is unbecoming and anti-productive for any rock band to hold their own music in anything but the highest regard. That said we all encounter trials in our lives and can, from time to time, learn from these sub-optimal experiences. It is with that in mind that we at The Chop bring to you five simple steps for playing the worst gig ever. This list works as both a "how to" and a "things to avoid" list for all you budding rock bands out there...good luck.


Step #1 - Forget Your Amp
Lou Reed said, "All you need is three chords and an attitude". He never said anything about the audience hearing those three chords.

Step #2 - If You Do Bring An Amp, Blow It Up 2 Songs Deep
The only thing cooler than not brining an amp at all is bringing a totally boss amp and then not being able to use it, because you blew it up.

Step #3 - Don't Sound Check; Not Even A Little Bit
Pussies check sound, men just roll with it. This goes back to Steps #1 and #2. Though it may seem counter-intuitive, sound quality and rock and roll are unrelated topics.

Step #4 - Set The Bar High, Really High!
By playing right after an awesome band you can make a lower quality performance come off as a downright awful performance. A good way to go about this is to play with a band you have gigged with before, but not in a long time. Through this you will know that your sounds are compatible (and therefore comparable), but you will have no clue how much better they have gotten. Hopefully for you they are WAY WAY WAY better than the last time you played with them.

Step #5 - Documentation
If you are going to follow the aforementioned steps to the worst gig ever why not take it to the next level and get that puppy on tape? Be a man, get audio and video. This is VERY important, if you get rock solid sound and video from the show so you can stew in your own suck for years to come.


- Philly "34 year old tube amps are totally legit gig amps" Matarese

Million Dollar Bash

Hey Jealousies,

Thanks so much to anyone and everyone who trekked all the way out to The Retox Lounge last Friday night for The Chop show.
Who knew the 22 line went so damn far?

The stage at Retox is in the basement, which reminded us of Delaware since San Francisco doesn't really have basements. It felt very much like the basement in your parents' house; the one where your memories of playing Milan's Secret Castle on NES or watching hopelessly-scrambled softcore pornography occur. There was even a fridge in the back with a couple cases of Pabst, and some Hot Pockets in the freezer.

Goodbye Nautilus had their show debut and they killed it...nice style on these guys. Warren Teagarden was having a CD release and the night was going along smooth. Then The Chop came out and made a mess.







Then James got really somber and started feasting (somewhat insatiably) on the flesh of the living. It seemed a little out of character for him...but we all just went with it.



no pRoblem

History in the Making: Part 2

DONE!!!!

We rolled into our makeshift studio for the week (Tom's room) and killed it dead.

Except it's ALIVE!

and also DONE!

The long months of recording in closets: done. Working around the noise of the N-Judah (every 10 minutes!): done. Crazy buzzing from the improper voltage in our bedrooms: done. Bemoaning the voodoo curses which periodically plague our gear: DUH-UNN. There'll be no more debating who gets kazoo credit, or which of the stereo glockenspiel tracks to use, or whether the black tambourine is better than the red tambourine (it is, by the way...don't ask me why). These things are FINISHED! Never again will we improvise harmonies on a whim and then fight tenaciously to keep them in because they've always been a part of our "vision" for the song. DONE! DOUBLE DONE!

Here's some pictures illustrating how fucking done we are:











Thanks to everyone who helped us out with this thing over the last 8 months...but particularly thanks to the girls (Jen, Ariana, Shannon, Nikki, Jade, and Jenny) who lent their voices to The Chop last Sunday for some timeless backgrounds.
We're gonna push it through the next two stages (mixing and mastering) as soon as possible, and have a finished product in about 5 weeks.

Commencing countdown, engines on....

Ashes to Ashes-era Rob