# Organical Live: The Picstory (56k: 127 pictures and 2 videos)



## eleven59 (Feb 19, 2008)

It was Family Day, and there was a quest to be had. I contact Budda and it begins.






I prepare for the harsh weather conditions.





But I'm on the 3rd floor...if only there was something that would bring me to ground level...Ah, there it is.





I call it forth to myself, using my Jedi button powers.





This should be the one I'm looking for...





...yes, that seems to have worked.





Out into the Canadian wilderness.





Hark, a squirrel!





My chariot awaits.





The tools I will need for my journey.





GPS secured.





Key in ignition.





Time for some tunes...oh wait...I grabbed an empty case, the CD is upstairs in my apartment, and I have the bonus DVD with me 





Oh well, listening to the radio's "Family Day" contests where they have you guess the connection between two songs (a Nirvana song and a Hole song, can't remember which ones), I head out.





Weather's kinda grey, but not as bad as yesterday. At least it's not raining.





I pass the Western Fair grounds. There's an RV show going on at the Agriplex 





GPS says I'm going the right way.





I pass the Regional Mental Health Care Center and Public Health Laboratory.





I also pass a large field full of soccer goals, puddles, slush, and snow.





It's about this time I notice a disgusting mess on my sleeve. I'm not sure what it is, or where it came from 





I arrive at my destination.





I ring the bell, but find that Budda is already lurking on the other side of the door.





He's been warming up.





The camera took too long to warm up between pictures, and he became frustrated 





He packed his Blackjack into the case for his Tokai, assuming it wouldn't fit. When it did, we were both surprised. I didn't get a picture, but I did get a reenactment 





Pack everything into the trunk, Budda included.





Back past the other side of the Western Fair grounds.





We arrive back in my parking lot.





Budda climbs out of the trunk.





And stretches his legs.





The elevator was on the second floor, but then went up to the top floor, before coming back down to the second floor, and finally picking us up.





Back in the apartment we find Laura.





We jam.






Afterwards, we come out and find Laura playing a video game.





Ah, it's .Hack 





We load out the gear, and prepare to head off on our journey.





I let Budda ride up front this time 





We are perplexed by a billboard for a country music radio station. It shows a man's crotch and says "Ten In A Row".





We drop the gear off at Budda's house.





Here's the Tokai, wondering where its case went, and who is inside it.





Back outside, with music in hand.





This guy will be very helpful on our quest, it turns out.





:Canadianhighwaytruckin:





There's not a whole lot to look at on the side of the 401.





GPS says we're on course. And when I say it says it, I mean it shouts it in a commanding sort of way, sounding like a woman with a half-British accent 





We're hungry, so we make a pit stop in Brantford.





It's pretty cold outside.





But warm inside Wendy's 





At least one of us deserved a hot juicy burger. Budda's drink makes ours look tiny even from a table away.





Laura's burger is crumbling under the pressure.





Should have had a fish burger, apparently they're "Off The Hook"





Oh good, a place to tie up my canoe 





We need batteries for the camera. After wrestling with the GPS, which led us past 4 other convenience stores, we find this place.





And purchase the required power cells.





After discussing whether or not it's possible to take a picture of us changing the batteries in the camera, we settle for a shot of the dead cells.





Night has fallen.





The weather takes a turn for the less good.





It's a little snowy/slushy and traffic slows down. Good thing we left nice and early as we were expecting something of this sort.





After a few unplanned detours resulting from wrong turns and the GPS yelling at me about how dumb I am, we reach Scott's place.





Sure is snowy.





Hark, what do we have here?





Ah, it's Scott!





Being as he's taller, he demotes Budda to back seat.





Back out on the highway. :blurtruckin:





We find a parking spot, and see this on the van next to us. I had nothing to do with it 





We made it safe and smooth 





We dig through our pockets for change and pay the robotic parking nazi.





This is an attempt at a picture of our parking stub in the windshield.





And we have the venue in sight.





Ah, yes, it is the right place.





However, we are horrifically early. 





We're pretty sure doors open at 8pm though, and Scott needs some cash, so we wander in the direction of a bank we saw on the way in. Only to be momentarily distracted by some guitars in a pawn shop. Mostly cheap, no-name crap, but there were a couple interesting finds. Scott's disappointed by the lack of lefty gear.





Waiting for the light, we see some artwork on a nearby building.





We decide the bank was too far down the road, and settle for this coffee shop.





After getting some cash, and being surprised by the $2 service charge, we head back to the venue. We're still quite early, so I take pictures of some interesting things around us.





Apparently they have some sort of tower thingy in Toronto. 





Deciding to find a way to kill more time, we head down the street to Pizza Pizza since Scott hasn't eaten yet. We're pretty sure someone short enough could rob this place and get away with it, as their height chart is inadequate. 





Budda reads the comics in the Toronto Sun. 





This one was pretty funny, as was the Garfield above it.





We head back to the venue a little after 8pm, and are told that doors open at 9pm. We choose to sit in the lounge for a couple drinks while we wait.





We feel slightly underdressed 





I think this is Scott's "Budda sure does take a lot of pictures" face 





We are amused by the artwork on the wall behind us.





And even more so by the movie playing on the screen across the room. With no sound, we are left puzzled as to what exactly is going on 





We sit, and drink, and watch.





The guy has some homemade wings. We figure this won't turn out well, and are completely absorbed into the film. He ends up handing off the wings to a minion for a test flight, who promptly plummets to his death. We are amused.





After waiting a half hour for our bill, we finally get downstairs to wear the show will be. They also had a free pasta buffet of some sort that was pretty much gone by the time we got there. 





Some gratuitous gear shots. Organical's bassist's and singer's rigs, including the laptop that ran their samples. I'd love to get a breakdown of these two rigs, including the pedalboards. Also curious as to the story behind that bass, it seems tiny, but sounded pretty huge.





The drums on stage. Not sure which band these belonged to, as they were used by all the bands. Sounded great though.





Darren's pedalboard, which was having issues. Due to either a faulty cable or possibly a bad DI box the piezos weren't working in their usual way. It's unfortunate we didn't get to hear his usual, blendable rig, but things sounded great regardless.





Darren's JP7 and amp rig. We were all plotting ways of stealing that guitar after the show 





The first act takes the stage. This guy was amazing. Yes, that's a ukelele, yes he had it plugged into a DI box. His songs were hilarious and brilliant.
MySpace.com - The People Of Canada - Toronto, CA - Other - www.myspace.com/thepeopleofcanada





The second act was also pretty good. Didn't catch his name, but apparently he worked there. Had a great tone (running that Gretsch through a Line6 DL4 and a Fender combo if I recall). 





Organical takes the stage. This was supposed to be a shot of Darren looking at his pedalboard and scratching his head, but I missed the shot  Either way, technical difficulties or not, the show went off without a hitch.





The band is prepping for their first song.





Hopefully Darren can explain more, but the baby doll head on the singer's pedalboard actually does something  It seemed to work in a theremin sort of way, hooked up to some of his other pedals, not sure at all what was going on, but it involved some sort of flashing light and some really cool sounds 





Organical, melting faces.


































Budda, possibly thinking "how'd they do that" or "how can I steal that guitar and get away with it" 





We all hit the merch table and loaded up.









I really have no excuse for this next shot, as I wasn't drinking at all 





During a bathroom break, Laura discovered these plastered all over the walls (they were in the mens' washroom too )













After unloading gear, Darren comes to chat about how the show went.





And we get in a group shot.





The next act to go on was a singer/songwriter by the name of Allie Hughes who impressed all of us. So much so that Budda was trying to find her to talk to her all night, and Scott referred to her as his future wife until Laura pointed out that she was dating the drummer and ruined his evening  We all bought her CD too. 
MySpace.com - Allie Hughes - Toronto, CA - Melodramatic Popular Song / Indie / Pop - www.myspace.com/alliehughes





Her guitarist was playing a Godin hollowbody through a borrowed Fender amp. Sounded pretty good, but it would have been nice to hear him on his own amp as he didn't get much time to tweak the amp he was using.





The last act we saw before leaving was a lefty, so Scott was happy. He said to say that his was the only CD he bought, but I think I already blew his cover  Sorry Scott.









I attempt revenge for the earlier picture, but screwed up my aim and only got the top of Laura's head 





His guitarist was playing a really nice Gibson hollowbody with a beautiful top through a bunch of really nice pedals and a nice Fender amp. 





Seeing as it was getting late, we skipped the last band (Budda saw them drag out a Marshall Valvestate combo and decided we couldn't get out of there fast enough  ). We said goodbye to Darren on the way out, and were back on the road, apparently at warp speed.









We say goodbye to Scott back at his place.





Apparently I forgot to slow down fully before letting him out.





And with a final message for all the right-handed people of the forum, Scott returns to his home.





On the way home we stop for food again. Laura and I hit McDonalds...





Budda grabbed some Tim Hortons.





But it wasn't enough to keep him awake 





We were too tired to remember we had a camera on the way home, but other than some snow for the first half of the trip, it was relatively uneventful. We did, however, listen to one of Organical's CDs and the Allie Hughes CD on the way.


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## Lee (Feb 19, 2008)

Epic  Looks like you guys had a good time


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## Apophis (Feb 19, 2008)

Awesome  this picstory is HUUUUUUGE


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## D-EJ915 (Feb 19, 2008)

>


this reminds me of a kid waiting for the school bus for some reason


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## darren (Feb 19, 2008)

Awesome, and most epic!

Mind if we post some of these pics and/or video to our band blog?

Thanks for making the journey, guys! It's most appreciated. And thanks for frequenting the merch table... we raised a good amount of funds to go towards our "buy a more reliable stage computer" fund.

I'll post more about our various rigs later... gotta do some work and get some sleep.


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## eleven59 (Feb 19, 2008)

darren said:


> Awesome, and most epic!
> 
> Mind if we post some of these pics and/or video to our band blog?



Nope, don't mind at all


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## Jason (Feb 19, 2008)

eleven59 said:


>



 HIS SHOEZ HAS FUKIN LAZRS!!!!!!!!


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## Scott (Feb 19, 2008)

You should have seen it man! I blasted right up to the door!

Yeah, it was a fun night. All these pics make me look like a chick though....


....with facial hair.



And yes, Laura ruined my night. She couldn't just keep it to herself that Allie was unavailable. 

And thanks for leaving out the part where we exited PizzaPizza.


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## budda (Feb 19, 2008)

lmfao. the height thing at pizza pizza was supposed to be a jab at noodles lol

can someone link this to where more people will see it? lol

I'm on youtube now apparently.. cool.

twas a great night! Darren, I'm listening to some Organical as i type/peruse the forums


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## budda (Feb 19, 2008)

Scott said:


> And thanks for leaving out the part where we exited PizzaPizza.



haha i totally forgot about that. let's also not speak of entering PizzaPizza as I had the same issue 

as for Alli.. I didn't know she's taken! what? damn it!


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## noodles (Feb 19, 2008)

Holy fuck, that was epic! 

Darren, could you maybe loan your singer a seven? Seeing him playing an AX just hurts.


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## Scott (Feb 19, 2008)

That is a 7


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## eleven59 (Feb 19, 2008)

Scott said:


> And yes, Laura ruined my night. She couldn't just keep it to herself that Allie was unavailable.



Laura says she's sorry


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## Scott (Feb 19, 2008)

UNACCEPTABLE!!


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## eleven59 (Feb 19, 2008)

noodles said:


> Holy fuck, that was epic!
> 
> Darren, could you maybe loan your singer a seven? Seeing him playing an AX just hurts.



It's an AX7521 I believe, and sounded pretty good. Due to the unbalanced mix he was a bit louder than Darren from where I was standing, and Darren's piezos were basically turned off as far as I could tell.


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## D-EJ915 (Feb 19, 2008)

Scott said:


> That is a 7


it's still an Ax though


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## metalfiend666 (Feb 19, 2008)

Cool picstory. Scott's much skinner, younger and all round less Scottish than I was expecting. It must've been a bad day when he had the avatar picture taken.


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## Scott (Feb 19, 2008)

D-EJ915 said:


> it's still an Ax though



It's also still an Ibanez. In the end, it's still a 7 though. 



metalfiend666 said:


> Cool picstory. Scott's much skinner, younger and all round less Scottish than I was expecting. It must've been a bad day when he had the avatar picture taken.



I was going through a bad breakup when that pic was taken....Food was my only friend.


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## budda (Feb 19, 2008)

no one cares that I was the one tryign to find Alli? haha


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## Scott (Feb 19, 2008)

Trying, is not doing....
























...Stay away from her


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## budda (Feb 19, 2008)

hey I didnt know she was upstairs until we got out, ok? 

and no, YOU stay away from her! im sure she digs rights more anyway.. and once you go black you never go back ROFL


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## darren (Feb 19, 2008)

Steve's AX7521 is pure awesome. It's unbelievably light, and has a nice thick, throaty sound that works beautifully with his rig, and in contrast with my sound, which tends to be slightly scooped.

And in a funny twist of sevenstring.org irony, it used to belong to zimbloth.

We definitely had sound issues on stage. It was very boomy/woolly up there, and we all had a hard time hearing anything but the drums. The monitors were pretty weak. Something went kablooie in my piezo rig... don't know what. At some point it just started putting out an insane hum, even though it soundchecked just fine. So me and the sound guy did a mad scramble to isolate it and fix it, so we only got to do a quick level check in the house mix.

I wasn't happy with my stage sound... my rig just sounded really raw and harsh. Very strange, because in our rehearsal space, it sounds warm and punchy, and the room itself was pretty decent.


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## budda (Feb 19, 2008)

it sounded good to me from out front :shrugs:

got any more gigs lined up for the next few months?


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## noodles (Feb 19, 2008)

darren said:


> Steve's AX7521 is pure awesome. It's unbelievably light, and has a nice thick, throaty sound that works beautifully with his rig, and in contrast with my sound, which tends to be slightly scooped.



Ah, I just assumed it was a AX7321, which is a total POS that weighs nice thousand pounds and has a neck like a boat oar.


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## Abhorred (Feb 19, 2008)

It's the first time that I actually recognize some of the places and/or roads in someone else's picstory. 

The baby head is badass.


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## Shawn (Feb 19, 2008)

Awesome picstory! Looks like a fun time.


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## darren (Feb 19, 2008)

We've only just started gigging again, so nothing on the radar just yet. We'd like to venture outside of Toronto more, because the market here is so saturated, and it's really hard to get people to come out.


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## budda (Feb 19, 2008)

I'm sure london would have fun


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## eleven59 (Feb 19, 2008)

If we get a band going we'll have to invite you down for a show, and come up there to play a show with you guys


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## budda (Feb 19, 2008)

brilliant, watson!

PS: andrew and dave bought a mini keg, im not drunk but im in a good mood


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## eleven59 (Feb 19, 2008)

budda said:


> brilliant, watson!
> 
> PS: andrew and dave bought a mini keg, im not drunk but im in a good mood


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## Scott (Feb 19, 2008)

That reminds of when we were upstairs getting drinks.

Waitress: "I think i'm gonna need to see some I.D from you"

Me: "Heheheh"

Waitress: "I should probably check all of you."

Me: "Awe!"


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## Psychoface (Feb 19, 2008)

Two things:

1).... 401 kicks ass \m/

2) nice pic story bro!


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## eleven59 (Feb 20, 2008)

Scott said:


> That reminds of when we were upstairs getting drinks.
> 
> Waitress: "I think i'm gonna need to see some I.D from you"
> 
> ...



Yep 

Waitress turns to me: "Oh hey, you're the oldest of the bunch"

Me: 



And I'm pretty sure she thought your ID was a fake


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## budda (Feb 20, 2008)

I always expect to get ID'd, even if i havent shaved in weeks haha

the waitress was cute, and the guy who took our glasses was fun to talk to once he seemed to get over the "you guys arent in suits  thing 

aaron, i see you have a gold bar.


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## darren (Feb 20, 2008)

eleven59 said:


> Some gratuitous gear shots. Organical's bassist's and singer's rigs, including the laptop that ran their samples. I'd love to get a breakdown of these two rigs, including the pedalboards. Also curious as to the story behind that bass, it seems tiny, but sounded pretty huge.


It is indeed a short-scale "junior" Fender Precision bass. Ed has small-ish hands, and he's more comfortable playing on the short scale, though he does bust out a really nice Jazz bass (with a Geddy Lee neck) when he build up to playing full-scale. It does sound pretty huge, and a lot of that is probably due to the fact that he's plugging it into a Massive/Boobies Ass 400+ (Mesa/Boogie Bass 400+). Surprisingly, he even downtunes it to C# for _Automatic Writing_, and it holds together.

Ed also has a bunch of effects he uses... chorus, dynamic filter, a couple of different distortions and a SansAmp. Our current favourite distortion to use on bass is the Ibanez Phat Hed bass distortion. You can also see the FCB-1010 we use to trigger samples off the laptop using Ableton Live.

In the rack, top to bottom, we have a power conditioner, a patch bay, a line mixer (which we use to send a mono mix out to a powered monitor for our drummer), and an old Zoom multi-effects unit we use for Steve's distorted vocal line. Then there's Ed's bass amp. The cab he's using is an old Yorkville 1x15 combo that's had the amp gutted out of it. He also has an SWR cab that we use in our rehearsal space, but we don't take it out to every show because it weighs a frickin' TON. The rack is also pretty heavy and cumbersome, mainly because of the Mesa/Boogie mounted within. Ed really wants to sell the Mesa/Boogie and pick up a vintage Ampeg SVT.



> The drums on stage. Not sure which band these belonged to, as they were used by all the bands. Sounded great though.


This is actually the house kit. With some of our cymbals and our snare. John is in the process of building a new kit for himself (he uses an electronic kit at home for practice) and has acquired a set of late '50s Gretsch toms and parts to piece together an old snare. I can't wait to hear it... we all love the tone of a Gretsch kit.



> Hopefully Darren can explain more, but the baby doll head on the singer's pedalboard actually does something It seemed to work in a theremin sort of way, hooked up to some of his other pedals, not sure at all what was going on, but it involved some sort of flashing light and some really cool sounds


A few years ago, Steve bought one of these (affectionately known in the band as "Mikey") and we've never had much opportunity to use it up until now. His op-amp also blew for some reason and he wasn't working for a while. Ed is an electronic genius (despite having quite a bit of "bad luck" with electricity) so he popped the old op-amp out of its socket, sourced a replacement and got Mikey back up and running. Mikey now sits in Steve's pedalboard where Steve uses an A/B/Y switch to pop Mikey into the signal chain in front of all of his guitar effects. This is especially useful when changing guitars... just turn Mikey on and let him wail away while swapping guitars. And he is light-sensitive, so if you see us shining a flashlight into the top of his head, you'll know why. The light amplitude controls his pitch, so by moving the light closer or further away (or using your hand to block it) you can get some cool pitch shifting/stuttering effects.

Steve also has some rather bizarre effects in his board, or at least ones that he uses in bizarre ways. Our favourite distortion is a BOSS bass overdrive, which sounds wickedly thick. He has a Behringer digital delay/reverb pedal that has some really strange modulation capabilities as well, which sound really cool when you start twiddling knobs on the fly. He's also got a whole series of old Korg effects, but he only has one of them in his pedalboard at the moment.

His amp setup is pretty sweet (and all Canadian, too!) From his pedalboard, he's running into a 1970s-era solid-state GBX preamp, and then into a vintage Garnet tube power amp, which drives a GBX 412 cab. We snagged the cab for free (it was empty) and have put a pair of Celestions in the top compartment (it's split into two separate chambers). I think they're G12T-75s. We were in a rehearsal space once that had a GBX amp in it, and we were blown away by its tone. A couple of years later, Steve stumbled across various GBX components and started building his rig. They're unique and little-known amps, but sound like nothing else. With the Garnet power section running it, it's just incredible.


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## eleven59 (Feb 20, 2008)

Very cool, thanks for the details


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## budda (Feb 21, 2008)

thanks for the details, darren!

so what exactly is that grey box beside mikey that steve kept fiddling with?


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## Drew (Feb 21, 2008)

Awesome!


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## darren (Feb 25, 2008)

Sorry, made a mistake. The gray box on Steve's pedalboard is an old Alesis ModFX effect unit, not a Korg. He bought a set of three of them. They're really strange and unique and can be chained together via built-in jacks. They don't have presets, and aren't particularly roadworthy (the cases are plastic) but they make some pretty out-there sounds, which is what you hear when Steve gets down and starts tweaking on the fly. I *think* that might be the Bitrman module.

I spent the afternoon troubleshooting my rig yesterday. The trouble wasn't with my pedalboard, it was with my frickin' INSTRUMENT CABLE!

It must have gotten stepped on right where it splits from the stereo to the two mono cables, and the ground connection broke. That introduced a deafening hum into the signal path. I clipped out the joint and re-did it, and i'm going to have to find a better way of protecting that vulnerable point in the cable. It's a little bulky where all the solder joints are.

BTW, we made a live recording using Ed's ZOOM H4. It sounds really good (the drums are especially thunderous!) but you can tell that they're not used to having loud guitar-heavy bands like us in that venue. The mix is definitely biased towards drums and vocals, and the bass and guitars are just swallowed up. If we can salvage the sound from the recordings and bring the guitars out a bit more, we may post a live clip or two.


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## budda (Feb 25, 2008)

sounds good!

hey, at least the cable sounds like an easy fix! i dont know how to fix cables, so i seem to be buying a new one every year or so.. mine died as soon as i moved for school, borrowed a roomie's for 5 months, then finally bought 2 of my own


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## Shotglass (Feb 26, 2008)

It was pretty epic. I'm just glad that no one took pictures of me sleeping on the way there. I'm not pretty when I sleep.

I'd love to do it again though. I liked meeting Scott and Budda, and briefly Darren. And that GPS thing was great. She sounded so angry, I kept half expecting her to move into some awkward, angry sex talk.


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## Popsyche (Feb 26, 2008)

darren said:


> His amp setup is pretty sweet (and all Canadian, too!) From his pedalboard, he's running into a 1970s-era solid-state GBX preamp, and then into a vintage Garnet tube power amp, which drives a GBX 412 cab. We snagged the cab for free (it was empty) and have put a pair of Celestions in the top compartment (it's split into two separate chambers). I think they're G12T-75s. We were in a rehearsal space once that had a GBX amp in it, and we were blown away by its tone. A couple of years later, Steve stumbled across various GBX components and started building his rig. They're unique and little-known amps, but sound like nothing else. With the Garnet power section running it, it's just incredible.



GBX, eh? My neighbor's guitarist had the GBX pre and a powered 4x10 cabinet in the '70's. It sounded mighty good for the songs of that era. 

Great pixstory BTW!


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## darren (Feb 26, 2008)

Yeah, the GBX really has a unique tone to it. It sounds so thick and meaty!


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## eleven59 (Feb 26, 2008)

darren said:


> Yeah, the GBX really has a unique tone to it. It sounds so thick and meaty!



 That's definitely how it sounded to me.


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## skinhead (Feb 27, 2008)

It took me like 10 minutes watch all the pics. Epic picstory.

First time I saw Scott and Darren in pics. Darren is Dr House


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## budda (Feb 27, 2008)

no he's not!

but now that i think about it, i can see where you got the idea  (I hope darren reads that comment haha)


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## darren (Feb 28, 2008)

Heh. 

And i strive to be just as much of an asshole, too!


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## darren (Feb 28, 2008)

BTW, Aaron, you need to clean your frickin' camera lens. Everything's got that 1970s "vaseline on the camera lens" Playboy pictorial look to it.


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## eleven59 (Feb 28, 2008)

darren said:


> BTW, Aaron, you need to clean your frickin' camera lens. Everything's got that 1970s "vaseline on the camera lens" Playboy pictorial look to it.



Yeah, I probably do. Probably doesn't help that it's not a great camera, and that I wasn't using a flash for most of that


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## budda (Feb 28, 2008)

clean it up for the BM picstory shootout? lol


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## Leon (Feb 28, 2008)

nice! next time, play on a saturday or something?


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## Naren (Feb 29, 2008)

That picstory was HUUUUUUUGE, but very entertaining.


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## budda (Feb 29, 2008)

*bows* I try


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## eleven59 (Feb 29, 2008)

budda said:


> *bows* I try



 It's true, budda did take a lot of those pictures


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## Scott (Feb 29, 2008)

They wouldn't let me hold the camera


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## Shotglass (Feb 29, 2008)

Scott said:


> They wouldn't let me hold the camera



Only for fear that you might try to use it as a bartering tool to get Allie back.

(I'm sorry, it's just too easy  )


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