S-chick

Tue - June 24, 2008

Release Day

:::: ROCK WHAT YOU GOT E-CARD ::::
All of my work from the last couple years comes to a focus today. The record is out. You can preview it at the link above.

Posted at 01:11 PM

Mon - June 2, 2008

80s flashback

Thought you guys might like a peek. We love 80s movies. Reese described this as Studio 54 meets Charlie's Angels and I thought that summed up our whole album nicely. I've done so many photo shoots that I'm tired of how similar they all look. If I see another artist in an abandoned building I'm going to scream. The illustration is from my friend Jody Nilsen. I haven't been a designer in years, so I was feeling totally rusty as I tackled the album artwork and all the marketing posters and stickers and whatnot. Fortunately Inpop's new designer Breezy has been around to bring me back up to speed. The last time I was a designer, the scene was all about typography and Raygun and Bikini ruled the day. Also we had to walk to school in 2 feet of snow. Uphill. Both ways.

The album comes out June 24th. I can't believe it's almost here. Also, in theory, my RED camera is almost here.

Posted at 02:32 PM

Mon - May 12, 2008

It ain't over till it's over

One of the added complications of doing a record, is the convergance of everything else that needs to be turned in. Packaging, photography, radio edits, the bio and all matter of promotional whatnot clamors for attention. I remember getting an email once that said "guys at this point the packaging is MORE important than the record." It's not entirely a ridiculous statement if you understand that the people who print the booklets need them ready before the plant that presses the CDs. At the time however it was difficult to turn in all the lyrics because the lyrics hadn't been finished yet. Magazines, advertising, artwork and release schedules all get set in stone months in advance so if you push your records till the last minute like I do, you find yourself beset upon all sides by a small army of requests. As I told Breezy who's the new designer at inpop, our lives are now ruled by deadlines. You don't ask yourself whether you'd like to surf or celebrate mother's day over the weekend, you just find the thing that's most on fire and pee on it. Than you find the thing next most on fire....

Adding to the fun is that I'm handling the photography and the packaging on top of the record, so even though the record is done, I'm still up to my ears. Still I rather like this shot. :)

Ben Frank did the compositing and he's my best kept secret for making a photo pop.

Posted at 07:39 AM

Thu - March 6, 2008

In Utero.

Most of the vocals are done and now we're trying to squeeze in all the random stuff I hear in my head; cellos, french horns, marching band, cheerleaders, kazoo... we won't get it all, but we do what we can. Here we are recording the "gang vocal" at matt's place. All of the girls could really sing and it turned out great. Tricia gave away most of my studio secrets explaining things like : "when max says it's a good start he really means that's it's bad". It's interesting to put that many girls in one room because at one point we definitely had to delay a take for a discussion that involved the word "uterus".

Dave shot this since I was busy doing the actual recording and saying of things like "it's a good start girls".

Posted at 01:45 AM

Thu - February 28, 2008

Melissa again

I'm a fan of movie posters from the 80s, which were mainly the work of Drew Struzan. He did Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Goonies to name a few of our favorites. The promotional stuff for this next record pays homage to that era. My talented friend Jody Nilsen is doing all the artwork and I just wanted to share this test sketch she did of melissa. Pretty sweet huh? The poster is going to be amazing.

On a recording update, vocals are mostly done, now we're trying to get as much on the tracks as we can before tour. We mix in a month.

Posted at 12:53 AM

Tue - February 19, 2008

Vocals

We're cutting vocals in our last crazy month of tracking. Trish is yelling so loud on these songs that she needs to rest her voice in between days, so I am alternating vocals with guitars. The girls sound the best they've ever sounded. This record will rock.

To clarify: The picture is of Melissa, not Tricia. Although today, Melissa is at home with the flu.

Posted at 02:42 AM

Mon - January 7, 2008

Hard at work

Sorry about the frequency of the posting, we have been hard at work getting this new record whipped into shape. Here's a shot of the guys laying down some fat tracks. Actually, it's a shot of the guys playing the video game Rock Band. But we are working really hard on this new record. Promise.

Posted at 11:55 PM

Mon - November 12, 2007

Inked

Melissa is getting some new ink done. It's not a sleeve exactly, but it's going to cover her full arm. I can't show it to you quite yet, but here's a sneak peak. Hopefully her parents don't read this blog. If they do, "Hi Mr. and Mrs. Brock, Melissa has something she wants to tell you....."

Dave and I took our Ducatis down to music city tattoo to see Melissa get tatted up and we had a nice chat with one of the owners who was also a Ducati rider.

For those of you who have been asking about the removable tattoo ink I posted about earlier, I have more info, it's called Freedom-2 and should be out in December. It works by encapsulating the ink in tiny plastic balls. Should you want to remove the tattoo, a pass of a laser will break down the balls, letting your body absorb the ink.

Posted at 10:51 PM

Mon - November 5, 2007

Born to be wild

Well the motorcycle bug bit Dave and Melissa who both got their motorcycle licenses recently. Melissa bought a Rebel and Dave was so fascinated by my Ducati Monster that he promptly bought himself one. Dave's actually had his first laydown with almost zero damage to the bike and none to him. Here's a shot of him channeling the Fonz.

For you shooters, this is my same old same old, nikon sb800 into umbrella. You'd think I'd move on to another technique by now...

Posted at 02:01 AM

Mon - June 4, 2007

Rachel's Illustration Final

Well, I've been drawn as a cartoon character, a manga, rendered in legos and made into a bobblehead. Now joining the plethora of max multi-media is this clever image created for Rachel's illustration final. If you look carefully, you'll notice she even got ahold of one of the rare karaoke superstar promotional CDs. I'm really quite impressed with Rachel's art work here, but I can't help wonder why she didn't choose someone more visually appealing than me... like say Brad Pitt or Orlando Bloom or Tricia or Shrek....

thanks rachel. hope you scored well on your final!

Posted at 01:07 AM

Sat - April 14, 2007

Dreams that come true.

Those of you that read this blog know I have several dreams. Not the Martin Luther King kind of dreams, but the more mundane variety... like being drawn as a giant fighting robot. Since I've been drawn as an anime character and seen my own bobblehead, I thought I'd already gotten as much as can be expected for any man.

Until now.

To the person who rendered our We Live music video in legos. I just have to say. You made my year. Let's talk. Hit the feedback button.

Watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whx9hDJQj70

My only disappointment is that I didn't have a wee lego mohawk. But that didn't stop me from grinning like a madman for 3 whole minutes while it played. Bonus: spiderman cameo. Honestly, this is better than the original music video that Columbia spent lots of money on.

Posted at 07:57 PM

Tue - October 17, 2006

Chart action.

Thanks guys, that's the third #1 from this record.

Posted at 01:50 PM

Thu - October 12, 2006

Where's max?

Melissa wanted a t-shirt for the people at shows asking "where's max?". She didn't forget like I'd hoped, so I was in the awkward position of shooting some self portrait action. I can't really imagine who'd want a max t-shirt, but for my friends who read this and haven't seen me in awhile here's a pic from the session. (This is a rare max sighting on my own blog...) Shara took this picture since the old set-the-timer-and-run is tricky (even for those of us who grew up in asian families). I think the caption's being considered for the shirt are: "I saw max", "where's the DJ?" or simply: "who's this max guy anyhow and why should we care?". Apparently there's been people showing up in homemade "where's max" shirts so if you don't feel like making your own shirt, you can now get one already made in a sweatshop by asian children. Well at least one asian anyhow.

I think these are the 2 candidates. If you're wondering how to make the picture look like this, it's a photoshop command called "threshold". It's pretty tricky to dial in the level that gives you the perfect amount of detail, so I usually make several duplicate layers, threshold them at different levels and then use the erase tool to pull the parts of each layer that I don't like out. This typically works best if you shoot intentionally for this purpose thinking about where you want the shadows to define the image.

The answer to the question "where's max" is I'm not on the road cause I'm in the studio writing the next superchick record. Or trying anyways.

Posted at 11:58 PM

Mon - September 18, 2006

Cartoon Network

In which superchick makes a trip to see the toon factory.

Columbia set up an opportunity for us to play 2 songs on the cartoon network. There's a concert series on Friday, where they feature live music and being a fan, I was amped to be there. They placed us in a garage set (we couldn't have asked for a more appropriate location) and decorated it around us. It was a lot of fun for us and I love sharing airtime with batman, powerpuff girls or the justice league. The studios at turner are amazing and the only way I could capture what we experienced when we walked in there was to make a panorama. With some help from my buddy Tim who ironically works at dreamworks, we've got it up here:

http://www.tollinc.com/max/

It's a little slow to load since it's a big image, but it's worth it. Use your mouse to scroll around and you can see how they have one central area for cameras and audience and then sets surrounding it like petals of a flower. I wish I'd shot up too, since there was a giant lighting grid above us. I managed to catch the director of the show in a cameo, he's the distinguished looking gentleman holding the coffee. It's my first 360 panorama, thanks to steven and tim for helping me work it out. The software I used to stitch it together is called PTGUI and it's very intuitive.

The kids were great, having been primed by the stage manager and here's a little secret; when you see people waving signs in the audience, most of the time, the signs are handed out and created by the studio interns. Ours was no exception and I appreciated the messages someone had taken the trouble to write out: "matt is phat", "dave behave" and the one that made us all blow milk out of our noses when held up by an 8 year old girl: "max, you're my world."

you can see us in action oct 20th at 7 EST on the cartoon network.

Posted at 02:50 PM

Mon - August 7, 2006

Melissa

Melissa was over to do some writing the other day, she's always fun to shoot, she just gets cuter every year.
Got this in my email this morning. It's always nice to get more placements:

Superchick’s “It’s On” will be the featured music over the climatic battle scene in Columbia Picture’s “Zoom” starring Tim Allen. The film opens this Friday, August 11. You can view the trailer at http://imdb.com/title/tt0383060/trailers.

Superchick will also see this same song featured in the upcoming ABC television movie “Relative Chaos”.

Viewers of MTV’s Cheyene, Laguna Hills, The Real World, and Making The Band have seen multiple Superchick songs featured over the last two months.

Finally, look for Superchick’s music in the upcoming release of the Electronic Arts video game NFL Street 3.

UPDATE: thanks everyone for reminding me that the ABC series "Brothers and Sisters" also uses "We Live" a lot.

Posted at 01:01 AM

Thu - July 27, 2006

My first vinyl

Being a DJ and a remixer, you'd think I'd be swimming in my own vinyl, but thanks to digital decks I don't own a single piece with my name on it. Until now. My fellow sonic monk and I cranked this ThumpMonks VS. Superchick club remix out for Columbia/Sony and it's going to clubs all across the country. Vinyl is always exciting to me and now I can cross one more thing off my list of things to do before I die. All that's left is to be in a video with giant fighting robots.

And then maybe we could make action figures...

Brian I got your copy sitting right here.

Posted at 04:54 PM

Tue - July 4, 2006

DCLA 2006

I rejoined the band for a show in DC and while it's not fireworks, I grabbed this shot of Brandon during setup. It looks like Brandon is preparing for his role in the superchick holiday on ice extravaganza. Our boy symz was running lights and he's really got his stuff together these days. Go symz. Happy July 4th everyone.

Posted at 03:44 PM

Tue - May 16, 2006

Belle and the dragon

Melissa and Belle dropped by the other day. Belle got a new haircut which I believe was a bit of a miscommunication, so to make up for Belle's rather streamlined look, Melissa bought her a dress. Sharp eyed viewers will notice that Melissa is sporting a black eye, which is from wacking her guitar into her face while leaping off of Matt's bass cabinet in a show. It's not rock and roll till someone bleeds.

We Live is going for ads at pop radio this week. cross your fingers everyone. The next 2 months decide whether we break through or not, so we're all watching the charts clutching our little hearts in our hands.

UPDATE: more dog advice from amber:
Poor Belle. I just gave my dog a haircut today. I don't take him to the groomer because I'm afraid of "miscommunications" like the one that happened to Belle. If you take a dog to a groomer that is busy, they're likely to go too short because they'll use an electric razor for time's sake. Also, if they use a razor, they don't have to worry about detangling, they just shave it off. It takes longer to scissor a dog, but it looks much nicer. I think the best thing to do is avoid the "chain" groomers, like at PetsMart, or any groomer that seems to take a lot of drop-in clients. Or, just like a hairdresser, go to the same place so they become familiar with you and your dog.

Amber has a well written dog oriented blog that's rather amusing here:
http://spaces.msn.com/ispeakdoglish/

Posted at 12:32 AM

Sun - May 7, 2006

We come in peace, take us to your leader.

Grabbed this shot while we were setting up for a show last week.

Posted at 12:22 PM

Mon - May 1, 2006

Fox Sports Promo

Well it was starting to feel like something from the surreal life when last Wednesday I was surprised to find myself on the beach in Los Angeles with none other than Holly McPeak, Kerri Walsh, Rachel Wacholder, Stein Metzger and Mike Lambert. They're among the best of the best for beach volleyball and have more than a few olympic medals between them. This reminds me of a story I heard about someone who wanted a Pele signature at the Doves and was stopped by a nashville security goon backstage who had no idea about soccer legend Pele and after a lot of explaining he managed: "so he's like Earnhardt then..." Well these people are like Earnhardt but for beach volleyball. Fox sports is using our song it's on for a beach volleyball promo and they had us jumping around on the beach. We offered to play the olympians an exhibition match but Fox sports wasn't interested in filming it. I dunno why....

Posted at 02:31 PM

Fri - April 28, 2006

Whiskey a No No...

Well Tuesday we played the Whiskey in Los Angeles and I saved our road manager's life. Well not really, but let's just say that I stopped him from going 3 rounds with a bouncer 70 pounds heavier and 90% likely to pound him. I'll give Zito points for fearlessness but deduct points for knowing when to walk away from a certain beating. The staff at the whiskey were much like russian mafia but not nearly as efficient or polite. When you combined the near violent encounter, the bouncer's hassling us to get our gear off stage quickly and the cop harassing us about getting our gear in the sidewalk I was so frazzled that by the end a mother commented to me: "grumpy people don't deserve attention". And she was right. Grumpy people don't deserve attention. I'm sorry mam.. I wasn't really grumpy, just really frazzled. All in all, I'd still love to play the whiskey again... about as much as I'd like bamboo splinters under my fingernails. Thanks for coming out everyone, sorry if I didn't stop to say hi or if I seemed grumpy.

Posted at 11:41 PM

Thu - April 27, 2006

Photo shoot - reel 3

So this is the last of the photo shoot stuff, which is good since blogs are piling up behind this like a traffic jam in china town... There are a lot of shots of Frank in action because well... I'm a huge fan of his work. I wasn't able to pick up a lot of his secrets, since at that level of talent, it's really all about experience, but I was able to get a sense for how he lights, which at least for us was typically one medium sized gridded softbox just above the camera. He uses profoto strobes and a dizzying array of cameras, but I think my next set of portraits are all going to be lit ockenfels style to see if I can learn his kung fu just a bit. The shot of Dave is particularly good because he was jumping off a crate for his individual portrait. On the particular jump pictured though, the crates shot backward leaving Dave in the surprising position you see above. The expression on his face is rather priceless. The last picture are the wardrobe team Paula and Matt and I included it in here because well...we love them. I decided Paula was an IT girl, one of those people who just own a room and I told her so. In her lovely British accent, she confided to me: "you know what it is darling? you just stop caring what other people think."

Posted at 01:39 PM

Wed - April 26, 2006

Photo Shoot - Reel 2

There's actually enough shots for 3 posts so here's reel 2. We actually went through 6 setups in this wonderful old club that Frank found. A lot of shooting is actually the location and I've definitely shot in some old places where it was almost hard to shoot a bad picture. Paula and Matt were our wardrobe stylists and after they'd gotten to know us on the music video they really dialed in our personal style and found us some wonderful clothes and shoes. All of the stuff on the racks and the shoes were bought for the shoot. At the end of the day they bring the stuff that wasn't used back to the stores and they usually give you a lot of the stuff you wore. It's a nice perk, but in the back of my mind, the magic word: "recoupable" always goes through my mind. If you're a starting artist, it's the single most important word you could possibly learn, so make sure you know what it means when you start negotiating. I did go home with some neat clothes and a jacket that I think I'll wear for the rest of my life... They didn't do a lot of makeup on us boys, but we got our eyebrows tweezed and while it doesn't hurt that much, it's not something I would volunteer for. I think I'm ok with my bushy eyebrows...If you've been with this blog for awhile, you know my thoughts on photoshoots and the glamour business, but if you're new to this, check out my very original post on photoshoots.

Posted at 02:03 AM

Tue - April 25, 2006

Photo Shoot - Reel 1

Today we had a photo shoot for our Columbia/Sony release and we were privileged to work with Frank Ockenfels 3, who I consider one of the best music photographers ever. He's shot every major artist for every major magazine. He was fantastic to work with. We carried over our wardrobe/make up team from the music video so it was a very fun day with a very talented team..

Posted at 02:58 AM

Sun - April 23, 2006

On the road again - ATF with GRITS

We just did an ATF concert in San Diego with southern hip hop duo GRITS whose song: Tennessee Bwoys is what you hear when the Tennessee Titans take to the field.

Don't forget, see ya at the whiskey on tuesday if you're near L.A.

Posted at 12:24 AM

This is your anthem tour - eleventyseven

This is your anthem tour - KJ52

on the road again...

Superchick at the bowery

Sharing the love

Playing hookie with graphic design

How to break a keyboard