goh - 2010 blog

2010 blog

friday, october 22nd

well what do you know? we have a shaker app for your iphone! we've been messing around with this for a while, it's great to see that it made it to the apple app store. shake away!

our paid app in itunes
our free app in itunes
our paid app in the browser
our free app in the browser

check our goh labs pages for more details.

wednesday, september 22nd

we were saddened to hear that ed lyons passed away today. he was part of the kendall cafe family that so warmly welcomed us as we first started playing out and playing the open mics there. yes, the kendall was a place to play at, and a place that would book us... but it was so much more. it really was a family to us... and our friends and family became part of the kendall's family and that circle of people became part of our circle of people. ed was part of that family... as well as being part of eric's "normal noises" on lead guitar. we were lucky enough to have gotten to play with ed a few times... he recorded some great parts on our "wimp farm" record and played our boston (actually cambridge) cd release show with us at the lizard lounge too. sad, so very sad.

saturday, september 4th at burning man - black rock city, nv

we had been working on adapting a calvino story for "the man who couldn't tie his shoe" for quite some time now. in this case, working meant talking about it and doing nothing. so we figured the playa would be the perfect place for this. we headed out with frank and joel (our stars) and actually made it happen. it seemed like it was a lot of work just to get started... but once we got going, it all fell into place.... and the playa rocked... in the end, we were basically in the middle of a dust storm. it fit in so well with the script. it will probably be a while before we have this ready for viewing because we need to overdub most of the lines thanks to the wind and we still have to edit it down and put music to it. but we got the shots we needed and had a great morning doing it. then we had some breakfast and coffee... and maybe a drink. :)

saturday, july 31st - hop jam - hopkinton, ma

another year of hop jam! we added a little art this year... jay and mo made a pac man and a ghost, frank and erin painted a bag-o game with the bunnies done for our flyer (that frank made)... and chris and jay made a banner with frank's bunnies for behind the stage. we weren't sure how many people would be there this year... it seemed like everyone showed up a little late, but they all came at the same time... and it was packed! it was great to play, hear sand machine play, re-unite willie bernstein again (perhaps this will be an annual tradition now), and there was some actually jamming this year... different people sat in with different people and there were some bands that semi-formed on the fly. the jam was certainly there in hop jam this year. thanks to greg harris for snapping these pix!

friday, july 30th at sally o'brien's - somerville, ma

we were glad to be there for the last mercy james gang show... the retirement show. since chris is in the band and jay is the #1 fan (or at least up there... no need to fight for the title amongst all the other #1 fans), we would have been there no matter what. for us, it was good to have the hagen-brothers back in the crowd... both steven and brian were there, which doesn't happen too often since they live in virginia and alaska (and we don't play out too much these days). steve bremen sat in with us on bass... totally a lot of fun... we practiced enough to have our "goh" energy... but not enough to be polished, which goes without saying.

tuesday, may 25th - arlington, ma

another new tune for you... "bubbles". we finished it up, giving it the final mix this evening. another xylophone part for chris... it's all over the kids record. that's him whistling too!

tuesday, may 4th - arlington, ma

we finally mixed "isn't she ecstasy". this song has been a work in progress for a few years and most of that time we simply sat on it and did nothing. it started out amongst the clutter in jay's basement and moved over to chris' basement where we had gordon come in and record his violin part (and all of chris' parts). we don't want to bash cakewalk/sonar, but it gave us a lot of grief tonight... constantly crashing. we simply saved a lot and got better at dealing with the crashes. it also kept peaking on us to add to our troubles. so it's doubtful that there will be any remixes of this. to make ourselves feel better, we also mixed down "too young" from the upcoming kids record.

thursday, april 22nd - arlington, ma

"little bee" was inspired by a trip to the park... my son mo got stung by a bee and this song fell out of me. after i biked like a madman home and made sure he was alright, of course. one of the coolest things about this recording for me (jay) was that i used my grandfather's upright bass that he bought new in something like 1937. he previous instrument, the tuba was becoming old school and getting phased out, as he put it. the bass still has a crack in it from when it fell out of his frozen hand on the way home from a gig... they didn't have room for it in the car, so he held it up on the roof... i guess it was winter and you can only hold on for so long.

saturday, april 17th - arlington, ma

sometime around 6,000 years ago in second grade, jay learned the song "don gato". it's been with him ever since. tonight we finished recording it. here it is... "don gato"

thursday, march 25th at the burren - somerville, ma

we got together with frank to have a few brews and to come up with goh and goh labs ideas. out of this, we may build a robot... it's certainly on our to do list now. a few random things we need to get out of the way, like actually releasing our iphone app first. after that, we're building a robot! (or at least we'll drink and talk about it some more)