Gibson or Fender? The great Twitter debate!

This morning I shot out a tweet about an age old argument...Gibson or Fender? Both? Neither? We had some great responses. It might be safe to say that the bassists out there prefer Fender over Gibson. A lot of Fender guitarists chimed in, but I feel like there are plenty of Gibson loyalists. And to further the muck, any other company out there is a copy of either of these two. If it really boils down to it. I am being totally general about that statement, but it is kind of true. Here are some of our awesome Twitter responses.

BassmanFoster Keithen Foster 

@monocase Uh Oh o_O

2 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

samsify Samantha Low 
GIBSON RT @monocase: Ok this one might start a fight. Gibson or Fender? Go!!!
2 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

danpmusic Dan Phelps
@monocase What? No "other" category?

2 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

whitstiles whitstiles 
Both! I carry a Les Paul and Strat in my Mono. RT @monocase: Ok this one might start a fight. Gibson or Fender? Go!!!

2 hours ago Favorite Reply

davidagreco David Greco 
“@monocase: Gibson or Fender?” The answer is "Yes!"

1 hour ago Favorite Retweet Reply

ryansaranich RyanSaranich
@monocase I'm a big Strat and Tele fan entirely. Jag is not bad either. Also a HUGE fan of the J Bass.!

1 hour ago Favorite Retweet Reply

Bazan on the road again.

Summer tour dates for David Bazan are out. Make sure to book a date when he's in your town.

06/01 Wed – Salt Lake City UT – Kilby Court
06/02 Thu – Denver CO – Hi Dive
06/03 Fri – Kansas City MO – Record Bar
06/04 Sat – Council Bluffs IA – Westfair Amphitheater w/ Bright Eyes
06/06 Mon – St Paul MN – Turf Club
06/08 Wed – Chicago IL – Lincoln Hall
06/10 Fri – St Louis MO – Old Rock House
06/11 Sat – Columbus OH – The Basement
06/12 Sun – Akron OH – Musica
06/13 Mon – Pontiac MI – Pike Room
06/14 Tue – Toronto ON – Lee’s Palace
06/15 Wed – Ottawa ON – Maverick’s
06/17 Fri – Ithaca NY – The Haunt
06/18 Sat – Hamden CT – The Space
06/19 Sun – Cambridge MA – TT the Bears
06/22 Wed – New York NY – Bowery Ballroom
06/23 Thu – Philadelphia PA – Johnny Brenda’s
06/24 Fri – Washington DC – Black Cat
06/25 Sat – Chapel Hill NC – Local 506
06/27 Mon – Orlando FL – The Social
06/28 Tue – Atlanta GA – The Earl
06/29 Wed – Birmingham AL – The Bottletree
06/30 Thu – New Orleans LA – One Eyed Jacks
07/01 Fri – Baton Rouge LA – Spanish Moon
07/02 Sat – Houston TX – Fitzgerald’s
07/03 Sun – Denton TX – Dan’s Silverleaf
07/05 Tue – Austin TX – ACL Satellite Sets
07/07 Thu – Phoenix AZ – Sail Inn
07/08 Fri – San Diego CA – Casbah
07/09 Sat – Long Beach CA – Alex’s Bar
07/10 Sun – Los Angeles CA – Troubadour
07/12 Tue – Visalia – Cellar Door
07/13 Wed – San Francisco CA – The Independent
07/15 Fri – Portland OR – Mississippi Studios

davidbazan.com by David Bazan

Sweet Tuesday - Stanford Guitars

I just got word about these guys. Excellent guitars with Czech luthier Frantisek Furch and designer Toni Goetz at the helm. They take all the great designs from very traditional acoustic guitars and make them better through modern technologies. These seem like player guitars where affordability and value are going to be high on the list.

It's obvious that Martin has a big influence on the acoustic market, that's a known fact and Stanford definitely follows suit. Their Performer series offers some really great bang for the buck, while their artist series will rival their inspiration. If you're in the market for something different but with that same old world feel I would look into these.

Stanford guitars are going to be hard to find here in the States, you might have to do some searching for one.

Cut Copy on Fallon for the win!

Performing their song "Take Me Over" from the newest album. I love Cut Copy, they are the gap from everything great about those 80's new wave bands to today's quirky habit forming party rave groups.

How we start our morning.

We ran an inter-office and twitter poll. The question was...your favorite bowl of cereal. Naturally we got all kinds of crazy awesome answers. We'll start with our office poll.

The Culprits:

Daniel Kushner - Founder/Design Director, Drummer, Part-time Vegetarian.


"Mom would not let us have it. But dad would! Pops - the forbidden fruit. So sticky and good..."




Brett Zadlo - Wholesale Director, Bassist, Loves big ass fish.


"This my favorite cereal that I never buy (available at Wholefoods). Once I open the box...it's gone."



Randy Couvillon - Global Account Manager, Shredder, Once had locks that flowed like the Niagara.


"When I was younger it was..."


"Now that I'm a week a way from a mid-lifer the only thing colorful is my bowl."


Patrick Chen - Artist Relations/Product Support, Guitarist, and also loves big ass fish.


"Come on, who didn't like a huge bowl of Count Chocula when they were 8 years old?"



Twitter posts to come...

Metalliance Tour

YES!!! More metal shows, and this time with our favorite Helmet. Some of my favorite riffs of all time come from Page Hamilton's guitar and there is no doubt the influence this band has had on current metal.

This tour has a band I am dying to experience live, Crowbar. I've heard great things about this band and am super eager to see them. They'll be hitting our backyard in early April at the Mezzanine in San Francisco. We'll have to get the whole MONO gang out there. Make sure to check the Metalliance page for more shows.



And I would love to see some Strap It On era stuff like Blacktop:


And of course FBLA 2 will definitely be played:

Sweet Tuesday - Traktor S4

Native Instruments has been blowing our minds since 1996 with revolutionary software and hardware designs for electronic musicians. Their newest innovation has the whole DJ world turned upside down with the Traktor S4.

Check out DJ TechTools review for some really in depth looks at the S4.

Here's Shiftee showing off his mastery.

The Big 4.

Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax . . . the rumors are true! This is going to be insane, I also know that Palladia has exclusive rights to broadcast the Live from Sofia Bulgaria show. Set your Tivo's people, does that even exist anymore?

I read that Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian will be making some of the shows at the beginning of the tour. Read about it here: http://anthrax.com/NFWS/pages/scottIanStatement.asp

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Belong

Belong is going to launch in over a week and the band has just allowed streaming of their 2nd LP right off their site. The band will also be following up this album with a pretty extensive tour to support it. Catch a show why don't you?

Still can't get over this soundtrack...

Ok ok ok. I am lame, just saw Inception. Yeah I know it's been almost a year since it's release, but give me a break. Things were pretty busy at the time and I never got to the theatre to check it out. I am still geeking out over the soundtrack and I love the part where Hans Zimmer describes how he envisioned his orchestra to emulate synths. So it's synths that are cloning strings that the strings are cloning the synths to...yeah kind of blows your mind...just like the end of that movie. Plus Johnny Marr plays guitar on it. Enough said.

Pop Chart Lab: Haircuts

The good people of Pop Chart Lab are devoted diagrammers. From breweries to video game controller evolution, they have documented some of pop culture's most critical phenomena. This latest piece is our favorite:

A VISUAL COMPENDIUM OF NOTABLE HAIRCUTS IN POPULAR MUSIC
From the pompadour to the moptop to the metal mane to whatever it is Lady Gaga has atop her head, here is a history of popular music as told through the notable haircuts on this signed, limited edition print.

They'll even give you ten bucks if you successfully point out someone they missed.

Check it.

Inu and it's band of robots.

Live @ The Independent 1/19/2011 San Francisco, CA.

Inu is crazy. What they're doing onstage I don't think has ever been done before. Here's footage so you can see for yourself and then a little blurb about how they achieve this. Remember people, this isn't someone clicking buttons for them offstage somewhere. These triggers are all programmed and then mixed live!



The audio from this is actually recorded and mixed on stage by the band. The Inu live show uses some serious programming trickery in Ableton Live, Guitar Rig, Kontakt, and Battery, enabling the band members to perform multiple parts at once. The exact sounds and settings from Inu's album were used for the keyboard, bass, and guitar. Each individual drum hit from Inu's album was painstakingly sampled at each velocity layer, then and loaded into Battery for performance.

Battles - Ice Cream

So Ty left Battles to work on solo stuff...I'm cool with that. He was an integral part of the band but a man's got to do what a man's got to do. So the trio of Ian, Dave, and Stanier are now manning the band. Who was going to replace Ty? DJ Matias Aguayo, also associated with Kompakt.fm is now taking over some of the recording pleasures off of Battles 2nd LP "Gloss Drop". I wonder how influential Stanier's love for Techno had on conjuring up a discussion with Aguayo and what kind of sway there was between the two. This gets me thinking.

The album drops in June, which is WAY TOO FAR FROM NOW! But I leave you with a taste of what is to come. I can't wait.

Battles - Ice Cream (Feat. Matias Aguayo) by weallwantsome1

Shiftee.

Tracks & Remixes by Shiftee

2 Time DMC World Champ+Dancefloor Destroyer + Harvard Math Grad + Producer = DJ Shiftee. This is straight from his "about" page taken from djshiftee.com. That seems like a pretty neat equation, but come on now...this dude be bad assssssss.

Boundless Radio Presents: DJ Shiftee from Kellen Dengler on Vimeo.

Shiftee represented our great country in the 2009 DMC World DJ Finals and he crushed it. Like no competition. Gold Technics tables and all totally destroyed the competition. 07' was no joke either as Shiftee became the only American DJ on the planet to have won Battle for World Supremacy title. This took Shiftee international.

We met Shiftee while doing our rounds in NYC during a meeting with Dub Spot where he currently has a residency as Native Instruments Specialist & DJ Instructor. He has taken a liking to the Flyby and we hope he likey.

Cinnamon Chasers - Science

Totally on todays playlist y'all. Cinnamon Chasers hails from London, where they be making bridges fall down especially with their latest "Science". LP #2 released over a month ago, but we just got it here in the studio and it's 9 tracks of indie electro genius. It has winner winner chicken dinner written all over this one with dancy beats and sub 80's synths adorning every nook available. The melting of retro to future is overwhelming in the least...it's like a Nintendo SNES made love to a Sony PS4 and gave birth to the megatron of consoles. All the hipsters will dig with a few 30 something year olds shaking some ass.......raises hand?

Cinnamon Chasers - Science (LP) Released 25th January 2011 on CD & Digital by cinnamonchasers

Meshell plays Prince.

Meshell is currently on the West Coast for 3 spot dates covering Prince tunes. So far all shows have been sold out. If you've got tickets consider yourself lucky, hold onto those. Chris Bruce, Deantoni Parks, and Keefus Ciancia will be joining her. These cats need no introduction, they are beastly on their respective instruments.

SXSW is here?

Wow that crept up kind of fast. March is here already??? In the midst of college basketball brackets and Dick Vitale going bonkers over some Cinderella team, in Austin for about a week is this grand festival of music and film called South by Southwest. The lineup is deep, really really deep. For those about to rock this event you will be needing a personal assistant with you at all times to remind you to keep up with the schedule. This is a pretty daunting task especially with 6 days of music all day long.

You're also SOL if two bands are playing different venues at the same time. You must choose wisely. One day MONO will represent itself in the great city of Austin to partake in the March madness...SXSW.