When I got my first record deal in 2005 I managed to convince the label (which took a lot of finagling) to give me a chunk of the recording budget directly (rather than it all going to their recording studios), and used it to buy a bunch of equipment and make my own home studio.
This came in very useful a year later when they decided they didn't want to release the album I'd recorded for them as it was - due to lyrical content they objected to - and I decided I didn't want to change it, so I bought the album back with the money I'd gotten from having one of my songs in that My Super Ex-Girlfriend movie, and carried on recording 100s and 100s of songs with that equipment I'd finagled.
I'm still using the exact same mic I bought then, an AKG 414B, which has been all over the world and is responsible for the vocals on about 95% of my records.
Anyway, I just discovered, after seeing one listed on Reverb, that it is now considered a "rare vintage mic", and that people pay 1000s of dollars for one!
So the lesson is
If you want rare vintage gear
All you have to do is buy stuff when you have an opportunity
Then look after it for a couple of decades
And you will eventually have
Rare vintage gear.
AMAZING.
MEANWHILE!
I have been editing the new DUNEWAVE music video, and it has almost finished rendering so, that will be live SHORTLY!
Speaking of which, The album, DUNEWAVE: ODYSSEY, releases on September 22, and because you’ve been asking me for LITERALLY YEARS… We’re making it available - FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER IN MEANINGWAVE HISTORY - on CD and Cassette!
LUXURIOUS CD DIGIPACK! WITH FULL COLOUR 24-PAGE LYRIC BOOK!
(https://www.meaningwave.com/products/cd-dunewave-oddysey-akira-the-don-danika)
BEAUTIFUL CASSETTE! WITH FULL-COLOUR LYRIC FOLD-OUT AND GLITTERING SPICE-INFUSED CLEAR GOLD CASSETTE SHELL!
(https://www.meaningwave.com/products/cassette-tape-dunewave-oddysey-akira-the-don-danika)
We also have a wealth of luxurious custom-designed DUNE apparel including hoodies, pants, and a zip-up bomber jacket, amongst other garms of greatness.
(https://www.meaningwave.com/collections/dunewave)
Apparel is shipping immediately, and the CD and cassette will ship on the week of the album’s release on September 22nd.
GET YOURS NOW WHILE YOU CAN!
(https://www.meaningwave.com/collections/dunewave)
LOVE! TO! YOU! AND! YOUR! FAMILY!
Akira The Don
Don Studios Playa Del Carmen MKII, September 2023
Timelapse of me drawing my new avatar
Tools: Procreate on iPad with Apple Pencil
Own the NFT at https://opensea.io/akirathedon !
BACK WITH ANOTHER BANGER FROM BERTON AND THE DON!
TELL THEM NOW!
With lyrics adapted from Berton Braley's poem of 100 years hence!
STREAM https://go.meaningwave.com/TELLTHEMNOW
Art by me!
Own the NFT! https://opensea.io/akirathedon
I worked in a bunch of factories when I was 16/17, after I'd left home.
Sauce factory. Cardboard box factory. Car door handle factory.
The former was the hardest because I was working in the freezers, packing bags of sauce for 12-hour shifts with nothing but local commercial radio and the speed-addled ramblings of my co-workers to entertain me.
The cardboard box factory was the most fun because I got to slide down this three-storey chute into a skip full of cardboard and jump up and down in it to squash the cardboard down. I'd always leave the place shredded with paper-cuts, but that made me feel like a warrior.
The car door handle factory was the worst because it was the most boring - literally just picking a spring out of a greasy bucket and jamming it into a wedge of plastic then passing it to the old lady to my right, for 12 hours, in a giant air-hangar looking-ass hall with a great big clock looming over us, that ticked with all the lugubrious lurching urgency of a ketamine zombie outside a ...
“Why shouldn’t the soul of a mortal be proud?
Life goes, it is true, like a swift-flying cloud
But while it's still going before he has died
A man may do many things worthy of pride”
With lyrics adapted from Berton Braley’s poem of the same name, MEANINGWAVE is proud to present a new single…
WHY NOT
(https://go.meaningwave.com/WHYNOT)
Why Not? (https://go.meaningwave.com/WHYNOT) is but one of hundreds of poems written by the perennial zone inhibitor and Appreciator Of The Wonder Of Being, and published in magazines and newspapers between the 1910s and 1940s. It is classic Braley, an anthem for the glory of man and all his achievements, past, and yet to come. And now you can sing it.
Oh, and that cover art there? That’s a picture of me back in ‘91 when I was around 11, which is my son’s age.
WHY NOT (https://go.meaningwave.com/WHYNOT) is out now. Download (https://akirathedon.bandcamp.com/album/why-not) or stream on your platform of choice now ...
Been in the studio since 4am, guess what album I’m working on?
I shall be sticking to this new schedule ‘till the album’s done, at least, and then we’ll see. Heck, maybe I’ll like it. I liked it today, I gotta say. There’s something magical about going to the studio in the dark, getting an amazing new song mixed while most people are still sleeping, then stepping back outside to find the sun rising. Oh! What a glorious thing!
(https://go.meaningwave.com/OhWhatAGloriousThing)
I worked till 10:30, then cracked open a White Monster - another experiment - and walked down to the gym in the blazing Mexican sunshine. Jamie was leading a Crossfit class, and happy to see me as ever, and I was happy to find the entire squat/bench area unoccupied, and got some work in on my lifting. I don’t know if it was the early start, or the new song, or the White Monster, but despite having been away from the gym for ten days due to a cold that I had no desire to disseminate, I was able to lift slightly heavier ...
