Just so you know, JSFF is still alive and kicking. I do most of my blogging on Forged Demon right now. But I'm still working on JSFF when time permits. I've got several songs in the the early stages. I've got a lot of basic rythyms, basslines, and so on that I'm trying to work into songs.

I doubt I'll have much time in the next few years to work on JSFF, but I'll certainly be trying. Law school starts in a week, meaning I'll be pretty busy, not to mention low on cash for buying new gear.

At this stage, new gear is really what we need. I've discovered the many limitations in the stuff we're using, and they're making it difficult for me to get the sounds I want. I also am fairly unhappy with the quality and assortment of synth and drum samples that I'm using.

So I suppose that's good, meaning that the band is growing and that I'm getting somewhat better at this whole mess. We even got a sorta-kinda offer to play live the other day. So keep checking Mperia, here, MySpace, and music.download.com for more songs.

Okay, regular readers will know we're a bit of a self-deprecating bunch here in JSFF. We don't have much of an ego. But compared to these wingnut clowns, we fucking rule. What a steaming pile of crap. The song is like a straight rip-off of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire." I hope this thing gets huge, because it's as embarrassing as that "Condolezza will Lead Us" song that came out a few years ago. You have to watch the video. It's hillarious to see the cameraman try to squeeze the lead singer's piggly, sweaty face into the frame. And they're trying to look all tough and bad-ass while playing Monica Lewinsky to Dear Leader. If this is the future of propaganda music, I couldn't be more thrilled. The kids will never come near this shit.

So, I'm all up for starting a band feud with these, or any other trashy right-wing "musicians." Any takers? C'mon, step up! JSFF will take y'all on, musically or otherwise. You know we didn't start this fire, it's always been burning since the world's been turnin'.

JFK - Blown Away! - What else do I have to saaaaaaayyyyy.

On the upside: I just got 2 Ministry/RevCo tickets for giving a $30 donation to my local liberal radio station, WMNF. How sweet is that?

Atrios writes:

Trust me, there's probably nothing funnier than hearing George Bush's favorite senator, Droopy Dog Lieberman, say "I'm not going to let them get away with it."

Someone needs to work this into a club song.

Sounded like a good idea at the time, so I wrote one. You can download it from Mperia (I'm not gonna leave it up there too long - Lieberman cramps my style - so get it while it lasts) or listen to it using the Mperia player on the right. The song is called Joementum [Nedrenaline Mix]. Let me know what you think.

Update: Greetings, Eschatonians. The comments for permalink are fucked up. So if you want to leave a comment, you can go to the home page (jsff.carvedangel.net) and click "say it."

Update 2: So we've gotten almost 4000 hits from Atrios. Very cool. But no comments! If you like/hate the song, let us know. Also, you can download or stream all of our songs for free from music.download.com/junksickfuckfest. There's also our Mperia player/artist page (though they force me to charge for songs there) and our MySpace page. All our songs are political in nature (we've got songs about terrorism, New Orleans, corruption, the villification of liberals, etc.). So if you're a left-leaning political junkie and into industrial/electronic music, you might enjoy them.

Junk Sick Fuck Fest now has an artist page on Mperia. Mperia is a neat service that let's you put a player on remote Web sites containing all your songs. You'll now see a nifty Mperia player on the left side nav bar that you can use to listen to all of our songs while you read the blog. There is also a link to the JSFF Mperia artist page and a buy now link. Now, regular readers will know that JSFF is Open Source Music - meaning we don't charge for our stuff. Well, Mperia won't let you give tracks away (they want to make some money in exchange for all the bandwidth they're giving away), so I set the price at the lowest available - $0.25. There's no reason you need to pay this though, because all JSFF songs are available for free on music.download.com/junksickfuckfest. But if you want, you can consider your payment as a donation to help keep the truly useful and novel Mperia fiscally solvent. They get 30% of everything we make, which is pretty generous actually. And they are providing a great service for many musicians out there. Hope you enjoy the new player.

- sohei

After months of slogging through Tu2's piano roll editor and formulating the keyboard parts mostly through trial and error, we finally got ourselves a real keyboard! Amazing, I know. It's a Casio WK 1300. We bought it used - the model is out of production now. It cost only $170 and included the stand, AC adapter, and gig bag. The WK 1300 is (was) one of Casio's high end models. It actually has far more features than I suspected it did. It has a synth programmer, loads of built-in sounds, reverb, drum machine, pitch bend, touch response, MIDI - loads of good stuff. It's nowhere near as powerful as a Korg or Roland professional synth, but it will work for our purposes. Mainly, we want to use it to sound out melodies (which we'll then transcribe in the piano roll editor) and maybe record it for some lead synth parts. The preset sounds are actually pretty good, so I won't mind using them (after requisite application of distortion, filters, and delay).

Gish is very excited and is learning to play as we speak. I've just finished goofing around on it for about 2 hours. It doesn't have a manual, so I'm trying to figure out all the functions (especially the song memory, which is killing me).

Who knows how much we'll actually end up using the thing. But it's good to have one (finally). And if worse comes to worse, we'll at least be able to use it as a MIDI controller. So enough carrying on. Listen for the Casio's appearance in a song sometime in the near or distant future.

- sohei

Terr0r [Godless Mix] is now up on music.download.com/junksickfuckfest for your streaming/downloading/rating/reviewing pleasure. Check it out.

On another note, I just watched "The Handmaid's Tale." It's a sci-fi movie about a future where right-wing fundamentalists take over the country and relegate women to second-class citizens. It's a perfect theme for a new song I'm working on - an experiment in downtempo inspired by Merry Go Down and tranquilatwist.

Finally! We've posted a new song. It's a remix of our first song, Terr0r. The word "remix" doesn't really do this version justice. We've learned a lot since Terr0r's first release. It's gotten a major facelift, with a new bassline, new drums (including some sweet reverbed snares), extra vox, new structure/progression, new parts, different media samples, the works. It's really quite different and worlds better (IMHO) than the original version. The godless mix is heavier, harder, longer, faster, and more danceable. If you listened to Terr0r [Heresy Mix] and liked it, then you've definitely got to give this new mix a listen. If you hated the last version, then give the new one another chance - I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. In case you can't tell, we're really proud of this mix and are psyched to share it with you. We think it's our best work to date.

P.S. I had some trouble with volume leveling issues, so you might need to crank up the volume a little. Oh, and if you miss the old version, it will be appearing on the b-sides page shortly. It's also still posted on http://music.download.com/junksickfuckfest.

Two Minutes Hate [Goldstein Mix] is now up on music.download.com. Check it out and give us some good ratings.