Tag: Booster Patrol

RIP John Bradley

John Bradley, the longtime member of this community who was the founder, producer, and lead guitarist of Booster Patrol, died on March 20. He was 61.

I couldn’t think of a better way to pay tribute to the man who was both a bandmate and a friend than to write a song for him in the style of which he was a master. You can hear the first mix of the song here; when I finish it properly, I’ll put it up on Unauthorized in the Booster Patrol section.

Johnny B laid down his burden late on a Friday night
With the music of his band still ringing in the fading light
Saint Peter met him at the gate, said Son, we heard you play
Leo Fender built this gold guitar and he saved it for this day
The choir’s been singing acapella ever since the world was new
They need someone who knows the sad notes, they say that man is you

He wrapped his hands around that neck, felt the weight of holy gold
Every fret a year of sorrow, every string a story told
He hit a chord that shook the heavens, the angels stopped to hear
A tone so long and lonesome that Saint Matthew shed a tear
Peter said “We don’t need pretty, son, we’ve got harps here by the score
We want to hear that swampy sound that kept ’em coming back for more

Now every night in Heaven there’s a sound they never had
A solid gold Fender wailing every note both beautiful and sad
The choir hits the chorus, the Almighty taps His feet
And Johnny B is boosting live up on that golden street
He played the broken-hearted blues from Beale Street to Monsignor
Now he’s jamming up in Heaven and he couldn’t ask for more.

Lay it down, Johnny B
Make that sound, Johnny B
Hit that chord
Lay it down, Johnny B
Make that sound, Johnny B
For the Lord

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Booster Patrol Backers

All of you should have received an email now containing a link to download all of the high-quality, fully-licensed covers that we promised you nearly three years ago. If you haven’t, please email me and I will get it to you. If there are additional rewards owed, such as the promised cover of When The Man Comes Around, rest assured the band will get one recorded and delivered to you.

On a related note, I plan to launch a very small crowdfunding campaign next week for the Soulsigma album, a 10-song collection of original music which I wrote and produced using AI technology and digital audio tools, on FundMyComic, which graciously added a Music category at my request yesterday. Soulsigma is very different than the Booster Patrol covers and Vibe Patrol tunes which you’re accustomed to hearing, being more in the hard alternative rock category. This isn’t a major community project, so don’t feel any pressure to back it if you’re not genuinely interested in the music. The big campaign for which we’ll be hoping for massive support will be at the end of March and I will soon have some very exciting news about that.

I understand that a lot of people are either skeptical or openly derisive about AI music, and understandably so in light of what we’ve seen from ChatGPT, but they simply don’t comprehend that there is a massive difference in the degree of difficulty in producing meaningful text and meaningful music due to the way in which music is much more easily reduced to numbers and numerical patterns. The three best musicians I know, world-class musicians who compose in three very different genres, are uniformly excited about the possibilities being created for them on the AI front, and to be honest, theirs are the only opinions on the matter I take seriously.

I’ve just never had much patience for the buggy whip crowd. Even in these early days, the quality of what can be produced is much better than what was being professionally produced by the record labels in the 1990s, and it’s only going to get better as the technology improves and is further refined. The fact that the particular form of the evolution happens to favor lyricists at the moment only makes it more interesting to me; as we learned from games, the earlier one gets in and masters the development technology, the more one can reasonably hope to accomplish.

Anyhow, if you’re a UATV subscriber and you’d like a taste of the coming campaign, this is one of the alternative mixes of a song that is on the album, the Midnight Ride mix of Ride and Die. UATV

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Pure Hopium

Just in time to gift it to all of your Democrat friends and family, and in preparation for the inauguration, the soundtrack to the second coming of Donald Trump to the White House has been released. MAGA Thunder has released SEVEN (7) different mixes of its FOUR MORE YEARS single celebrating the recent US presidential election.

You can listen to all 25 minutes and 48 seconds of pure political hopium on Youtube. The MAGA Thunder masterpiece is also available on Spotify and iTunes.

Four More Years – The Storm 4:43
Four More Years – The Real America 4:42
Four More Years – The Man is Back 3:13
Four More Years – Red State Country 3:23
Four More Years – 47 Seconds to Trump 3:12
Four More Years – Lightning Strikes Twice 3:22
Four More Years – Alpha City 3:13

Unauthorized subscribers can also listen to Four More Years – Rocket Girls which was not released to the public since it’s a little too brilliant for the average individual to comprehend, as well as Four More Years – Health and Human Services. A Booster Patrol cover is also in the works for the inauguration, which will take the level of awesome to eleven. Be sure the share the love this Christmas season.

You knew that he was coming back,
The man you couldn’t stump.
You knew you couldn’t stop him,
The man named Donald Trump,

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Four More Years, Four More Songs

People are threatening to stage an intervention, but I refuse to even slow the aural assault. After introducing not one, not two, but THREE new editions of FOUR MORE YEARS on last night’s Darkstream, including the specifically-requested Health and Human Services mix in honor of the new appointee, I followed up with what may well be the best edition yet.

We may have to record that one with Booster Patrol in addition to the Storm mix we’re already doing just because the guitars are so amazing. We may put some of them on Spotify and whatnot eventually, but they’re already available for Unauthorized subscribers in the Voxiphonic section.

That’s not all of them, those are just the four new versions. This may seem a little strange, but I’m simply just continuing the old Psykosonik tradition of providing a ludicrous number of remixes of our singles; after our second single, Welcome to My Mind, was released, the singer of a local band called HALO congratulated us on what he thought was our new album, saying that he really liked how we’d gone with what he thought was a themed approach to the CD. But his confusion was justified; about the only similarity between the Anaesthesia mix and the Sonik Bender mix were the lyrics and the choral vocals.

UATV is just getting better and better. Come join the party. Tell me which one is your favorite on SG. And since I forgot the Japanese name of the song, here’s my favorite flute solo that I referenced on the Darkstream as well as the autism study inspired by The Irrational Atheist that was mentioned.

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Embrace the Hopium

I’m announcing a video competition for FOUR MORE YEARS (Storm mix). One week, put together the most absurdly triumphalist Trump video for it that you can, send me the links to download them, and I’ll review the entries on the Darkstream and we’ll put it out on YouTube, Rumble, and so forth after announcing the winner on Arkhaven Nights.

We’ll also use clips from those video entries as the basis for a GOD’S GONNA CUT YOU DOWN-style video featuring everyone in the community who is interested in going on camera when the full Booster Patrol version is ready. Sing, play a guitar part, the bass part, the drums, it’s all good. But don’t record yourself with this version, because there will be, at the very least, some minor changes going from the digital world to the analog one.

And when I say “absurdly triumphalist”, this is the sort of thing I’m talking about.

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Four More Years and More

We’ve created two new channels on UATV for subscribers. Both are music channels and feature both listenable and downloadable MP3s as well as viewable videos. One is dedicated to Booster Patrol, the other, called Voxiphonik, is comprised of my various AI music experiments in a variety of genres, including A Drink with a Coconut, Seas of Blood, and Four More Years (Bright Future mix). Which, of course, should not be confused with Booster Patrol’s Four More Years (Storm mix). There are only a few songs up there now, but more will be uploaded over the next month.

FOUR MORE YEARS (Storm mix)

I woke up in the morning
In the real America
The sun was shining brightly
The new era had dawned

It felt as if the last four years
Were nothing but a dream
From nightmare to insanity
And nothing in between

Hey hey hey na na nay
The man is back in town
Hey hey hey na na nay
The second time around

Four more four more four more years
Four more four more four more years
This time he’ll do it right
Four more four more four more years
Four more four more four more years
The future’s looking bright

You knew that he was coming back
The man you couldn’t stump
You knew you couldn’t stop him
The man named Donald Trump

You stole four very precious years
And spent them all on war
So now we’re drinking up your tears
We’re coming back for more

Hey hey hey na na nay
The man is back in town
Hey hey hey na na nay
The storm is coming round

Four more four more four more years
Four more four more four more years
This time he’ll do it right, this time he’ll do it right!
Four more four more four more years
Four more four more four more years
The future looks so bright you’re gonna need shades!
Four more four more four more years
Four more four more four more years
This time he’ll do it right, yeah yeah
Four more four more four more years
Four more four more four more years
The future’s looking bright, Hell yeah!

Hey hey hey na na nay
The man is back in town
Hey hey hey na na nay
The second time around
Hey hey hey na na nay
The clowns are going down
Hey hey hey na na nay
The storm is coming round
I said the storm is coming round, yeah!

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Booster Patrol Goes Pro

If you’re a backer of Booster Patrol, we’ve completed the necessary permissions to get the 10-song e-album out to you. As part of that process, we put some of those songs on Spotify, so if you happen to use that app, you can now fire up some proper boosting on demand now. The available songs are:

  • Possession
  • Don’t You Want Me
  • More Human Than Human
  • God’s Gonna Cut You Down
  • Thought Contagion
  • Wow

That’s pretty much more guitar solos than were recorded in the 1980s, so it should keep you a while. I understand our first original effort may be done soon, which features Rachel on vocals, so you’ve got that to look forward to as well. In case you missed it, there’s now a video for Wow, which is a very boosted cover of the Kylie Minogue song.

In other music news, here’s the first live performance of Babymetal and the two guys from Polyphia playing Brand New Day, which is a really nice and well-written song in the From Dusk Til Dawn vein.

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