SmithBits TalkRadio

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

breakmyfall




Everybody dances! That’s the number one rule for edgy new band, breakmyfall, who brings enthusiastic energy and delivers unique music that’s real and relevant to their audience. Pablo Bonilla, lead singer, bass guitar, and songwriter; Kenan Shalz guitars; and Justin Bonilla, drums are breakmyfall.

Pablo describes the band’s rule this way: It doesn’t matter if you’re eight months pregnant, eight months old, or eight months dead; everybody dances. We get people moving. When we are on stage dancing and getting the people involved, we become one.

Expression of shared energy is the channel breakmyfall uses to connect to their audience on a deeper level. “We become vulnerable as we pour our hearts out,” Pablo says. “Our goal is to create music that is real. Anyone can write songs about vodka fueled nights at the club and hooking up with random girls, but these things are temporary. Heartache, loss, pain, love, hope…these things are real. These things are what people experience on a daily basis, so why not be relatable?”

The trio cites Relient K as their chief influence, but also points to a number of other influences ranging from U2, House of Heroes, Muse, The Bravery, and all the way back to The Beatles. The brothers started playing together after winning an 8thgrade talent show and added Kenan five years ago. Since then, breakmyfall has been performing every chance they can get.  That included opening for Manic Drive and Pillar at the Downpour Festival.

Everybody dances! That’s the number one rule for edgy new band, breakmyfall, who brings enthusiastic energy and delivers unique music that’s real and relevant to their audience.“We become vulnerable as we pour our hearts"

Band Name: breakmyfall
Album Name: Filthy Hot Mess
Email Address: steven.bonilla@q.com
Website Address:
Music Style: Rock
Influences: House of Heros

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

R&B singer Chris Brown's probation revoked after D.C. assault charge

R&B singer Chris Brown's probation revoked after D.C. assault charge

LOS ANGELES Mon Dec 16, 2013 11:03pm EST



(Reuters) - R&B singer Chris Brown had his probation revoked by a Los Angeles judge on Monday, but he was not taken into custody because of good reports on his progress in a court-ordered rehab program.
Brown, 24, had his probation revoked by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James R. Brandlin during a progress hearing, after he was charged with assault in Washington, D.C. in October for punching a man who was trying to get a picture with the singer.
Brown pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor assault after the altercation left a 20-year-old man with a broken nose. He voluntarily served a two-week stay in a rehabilitation facility for anger management after his October arrest, but Brandlin ordered Brown to complete a 90-day substance abuse and anger management program in November.
The singer was set free without bail on Monday and was given praise by Brandlin for "doing well" in the program. Brown was told to refrain from medical marijuana use until his next Los Angeles hearing on February 10.
The Grammy-winning singer is due in court in Washington D.C. on January 8 for a status hearing on his misdemeanor assault charge.
The singer was sentenced to five years' probation, community labor and domestic violence counseling in 2009 after assaulting his then-girlfriend Rihanna.
Since then, Brown has been embroiled in highly publicized altercations with rapper Drake and his entourage in a New York nightclub and R&B singer Frank Ocean in a parking lot in West Hollywood.
The "Look at Me Now" singer had his probation revoked in July after he was charged in a May hit-and-run traffic accident, but it was reinstated by a Los Angeles judge in August after Brown agreed to complete an additional 1,000 hours of community service.
(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; editing by Mary Milliken and Cynthia Osterman)

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Kenny Smith Recorders

HOLLYWOOD, CA (IFS) -- Kenneth Howard Smith lead a double life in 1975.


While he worked with Lee Rogers at Platinum Sound Productions and helped to established several recording labels including Soul N Rock, Platinum Sound and Coleman Kestin and Smith Records, also known as CKS Records.  Smith had his very own personal recording studio in Hollywood with an Ampex four track that was simply known as KSR.  Smith expanded his little recording studio to a 2 inch -16 track recording facility, that he sold and moved his combined operation into the D-Town/Platinum Sound Recording Studios in North Hollywood.


In the community of recording giants.  Smith's next door neighbors included then Ray Parker, Jr., George Tobin's studio where he records Tiffany.   Other studios around the area was MCA Whitney, Warner Bros., any many others.

Smith also was establishing his presents in Seattle, Washington at this time.

In time, the large recording studios would become a thing of the past, with these old machines, with dials, knobs and lots of hiss and "ghost sounds" in the mix were beginning to become obsolete.  Smith decided to close up shop and move to Colorado.  Later he reopened a small studio in the barn of his ranch in Elizabeth as a digital facility.  By the middle of 2002, Smith had completely closed all of his studios in both Seattle and Hollywood.

Thomas Dolby Gets Personal In 'Lighthouse' Ode

Thomas Dolby Gets Personal In 'Lighthouse' Ode 8:00 AM PST 11/26/2013 by Chris Willman 2 9 1 0 0 Email Print Comments (.) The "She Blinded Me With Science" singer melds screen with sound on latest tour. Thomas Dolby live 2013 P Chris Willman As arguably the most innately talented figure to emerge during the synth-pop explosion of the mid-‘80s, Thomas Dolby was ahead of his time in plenty of technological regards. So the news that he was centering a tour around a film he’s made, The Invisible Lighthouse, suggested that he might be planning to blind us with multi-media science. But, light rigs and sophisticated keyboard triggers aside, the show he brought to the Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever Cemetery for two shows on Friday night was just a little bit closer to a guy nostalgically narrating his home movies than a dazzling immersion in futuristic tech. To his credit, Dolby used the experimental format to blind us with his most personal, and personable, side. OUR EDITOR RECOMMENDS Adam Ant, New Wave Pioneer, Makes Triumphant Return -- Puffy Shirt and All: Concert Review Lisa Vanderpump's New Wave Past Revealed UCLA Stages Multimedia Concert of Fellini and Nino Rota's Italian Film Classics The 40-minute film that kicked off the show was narrated mostly by an in-the-flesh Dolby, although occasionally he spoke up on-screen, too, with tantalizing snippets of existing songs dropped in as the singer spoke about the upbringing that inspired tunes like “Europa and the Pirate Twins.” The title of his movie is no metaphor; Dolby really is a lighthouse freak, and the film exists largely to commemorate the passing of the one that literally and figuratively illuminated his English childhood. It was recently switched off because the coast in his Suffolk homeland is eroding and the tall structure is in danger of tumbling into the sea (along with the off-limits, supposedly ordinance-filled military testing ground that surrounds it). PHOTOS: Stage to Screen: A Brief History of Contemporary Concert Movies Global warming got a token mention as one likely reason the tides are swallowing up the marshy areas around his once-and-present home, but Dolby didn’t spend too much time making “The Invisible Lighthouse” an environmental tract. He’s more interested in the constructs of memory -- trying to decide what he remembered about that revolving beam and his childhood in general was true, and to figure out how to keep the legend of the lighthouse alive after its (and maybe his) passing. He even manages to find some sad suspense as he captures the tower’s final burst of light from afar on his iPhone. Dolby is the very model of an articulate British raconteur, so for those of us who might be Anglophiles of a certain old-fashioned order, it’d be enjoyable just to hear him intone the Suffolk phone book, although hearing him talk his way through the scripted equivalent of a VH1 Storytellers episode was particularly pleasing to the ear and spirit. And he is not so precious about his film’s nostalgia-laden concept that he can’t devote a “[bleep] art, let’s dance” moment in the running time, escaping from his despondency over the dying lighthouse to include the EDM-style dance music of “Spice Train” near the end. Q&A: Erasure on Shaking Up the Holiday-Album Formula with New Release, 'Snow Globe' After the film, Dolby did a joint Q&A with his one accompanist, Blake Leyh, who’s been a sound designer on film from The Abyss to Black Nativity and music supervisor for Treme. Leyh’s main role during the film was to provide percussion and some amusingly visible foley effects like footsteps. The show ended with a round of Dolby’s greatest ‘80s hits, to which Leyh was enlisted to add rhythm guitar, an instrument that he warned the audience he’d only taken up five weeks ago, at the singer’s behest. Leyh’s funk licks on the finale of “Hyperactive” were confident enough to prove that he’s a quick study. Dolby’s one-and-a-half-man-show version of “She Blinded Me With Science” was what got the Masonic Lodge crowd on its feet, of course, though the introductory anecdote about how he enlisted astronaut Buzz Aldrin to do the speaking parts at a recent Smithsonian appearance was an arguably bigger highlight. The too-short show would have been even better served if Dolby had managed to toss in a tune from his latest album, 2011’s under-heard A Map of the Floating City. But fans weren’t about to complain about getting a full-on ‘80s set as a reward for coming to see his 2013 memories of a lonely British coastal life in the 1960s. Wistful and “Hyperactive” are a good combination in a multi-media show, if you can get ‘em. Twitter: @chriswillman Chris Willman