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Custom skins in action
If you’re on our mailing list you will have received my message last week requesting any photos of your custom skins from customskins.co.uk in the wild! If you’re not on our mailing list then quit playing hard to get and join using the box thingy in the right hand panel.
Anyway, the response was brilliant. We’re in the process of adding a ‘live shots’ gallery onto the main website, but in the meantime please see below for some of the best pictures we received:
Nice use of the 4″ white holz on this two-tone design 
This drum head was Unbelieveable! 
Love the sparkly green OCDP 
Got your own recording studio? Then get a custom skin! 
A great use for dead leopards. Isn’t dead leopard a tribute band?!? 
This picture just doesn’t need a caption. 
Hole in the roof? At least the drum head is Fully Funktional. 
Jet black and sinister. 
Sparkly buddy rich on a sparkly kit. Why not? 
Blue Print used this clever drum head at a gig at Lords Cricket Ground. Hence the raindrops on the skin. 
I wonder if the drummer uses Kentucky Fried Chicken drum sticks as well? 
Custom skins. The center of any good publicity shot. Will let you know when the proper live gallery goes up – in the meantime feel free to email your pictures (tim@customskins.co.uk) or throw them in the comments!
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Fantasy Festival
Now that the new year celebrations are a distant memory and the year 2k9 is moving faster than a Keith Moon solo, everyone is starting to talk festival season. Who will be headlining Glasto? Can I afford to go to Reading as well? At which band do I throw my biggest bottle of piss at Download? But I want to move away from the reality of this years festivals and for 15 minutes live in a world of make believe while I introduce you to the game of ‘Fantasy Festival’…Fantasy Festival is a chance to design your perfect festival. What you say goes. Here’s how it works…
There are 8 slots up for grabs.
1. The Show Openers – who gets to blow away the cobwebs on the first day of the show for you?
2. New Band – any band that have realeased a maximum of one album qualify for this slot.
3. Back from the Dead – OK they don’t need to be dead! They just need to be a band or artist that can no longer be seen playing.
4. Pop Act – here’s your chance to admit to it! we all have a soft spot for a pop act…don’t we?
5. Saturday night ‘twilight’ spot – the spot that they all want, just as the sun is setting before the Saturday night headliners do their thang.
6. Friday Night Headliners – explains itself
7. Saturday Night Headliners – as does this…
8. Sunday Night Headliners to close out the show – and probably this one too.So here’s how my Fantasy Festival would look…
Show Openers – INTERPOL – They get me going everytime I hear them, so I’ll give them a chance to get my festival going too.
New Band – RIOT NOISE – who I hear you say? That will change I’m sure. I was lucky enough to stumble upon them supporting Duff McKagan and man they kick ass.
Back From the Dead – MANSUN – Yes I could choose to see The Beatles or Jimi Hendrix, but your favourite band of all time are your favourite band of all time, Mansun it is.
Pop Act – GIRLS ALOUD – Easiest category of the lot!
Twilight spot – MUSE – I still say I knew about Muse before anyone else!! I saw them pre any releases in Devon years and years ago. It was all thanks to me!!
Friday Headliners – THE CURE – Every song a hit. A pure beauty that will send me back to my tent on day one a very happy camper.
Saturday Headliners – RADIOHEAD – ‘its just slit your wrists shit’, ‘they’re too depressing’ on the contrary, they’re almost too inspirational.
Sunday Headliners – OASIS – Growing up in the brit pop years means the Gallagher brothers have a special place in my heart, and at my festival.
OK now I wanna hear your line up! alternatively you can slate mine or tell me that I’m a fantasy festival god! Get your thinking caps on…shit I left out Coldplay…
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Drum Clobber in ’09
The NAMM show in Anaheim, California is an annual January fixture that allows all the major music manufactures to peddle their tat… sorry, launch their state of the art new gadgets, gizmos and the like.So, what does 2009 have in store for us tub-thumpers? What will be the new thing?
Over the past few years we’ve seen some incredible finishes, alternative drum shell materials becoming slightly more commonplace and some bonkers bits of hardware capable of suspending an anvil or two, should the need arise.
Something that was launched a short while ago that was sure to divide opinion was the DW 23” bass drum. ‘What !?!?’ I hear you cry. Well if it did pass you by then yes indeed you can now get a 23” bass drum for all the times you want something with more balls than a 22” but are still too lightweight to go for some big boy drums 😉 There will of course be the issue with bass drum heads. Remo supply them for the drums but how many shops are likely to stock them! Unless, of course, the 23” B/D is taken up by other manufacturers and there is a sudden demand for 23” heads. The reason I doubt this is that you really do not see many 9” or 11” toms that were introduced some years ago….all probably stashed in lofts with busted heads…
Okay some ‘odd sizes’ have become the norm, 13” toms and the less popular 15” have somehow worked their way into set-ups but why those? 10,12,14,16 etc does seem to make more sense. So lets see if 2009 has every major drum maker falling over themselves to get the 19” jazz/d’n’b/hybrid/electro bass drum out and the 21”…oh, you get the idea.
One thing I have checked out is Pearls new DEMON bass drum pedal which has a promo trailer like Die Hard 6. It surely looks an astonishing piece of kit with the emphasis on smooth and fast, fast, fast. I’m not sure how fast they want everyone to play (or even how fast it is physically possible to play) but I recon if we hooked up a bunch of metal drummers and these new pedals to some sort of dynamo the worlds energy shortage may be over……….
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Pure solid gold blunt
Today we’ve been printing a drum head for James Blunt. It’s got a mirror gold finish and if you have eyes you can see a snapshot of it above. Later Arthur the Interlink man will collect it and take it to Helsinki.Now, we’re fans of Blunt here at customskins. Not really for his music which, as you probably know, is wetter than the Pacific Ocean. Nope, more for the man himself. Would there be anyone better to be on a world tour with? Not only would you be surrounded by supermodels, but security is unlikely to be an issue since James Blunt famously led the entire British Army into battle, armed only with an adjustable spanner.
Should the world ever be invaded by hostile aliens Independence Day style, you can forget about Will Smith. Blunt will take on the entire population of the Planet Zark single-handedly, and still have enough energy to shag Giselle afterwards.
Most of all though, I reckon he’d be a great touring buddy because he doesn’t take himself too seriously. You can imagine sitting in a Russian bar, vodka in hand, Blunt holding court with tales of battles and conquests, all delivered with his characteristic self-deprecating wit.
Oi, Klum, get a round in!
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Roadshow? Eh?
If, like me, you’re a jobbing drummer (just waiting for that big gig to come in) then with any luck you may have had a few gigs around Christmas! Even with the current financial gloom (I’m avoiding using the vile term credit crunch….bo****ks, I just did) you still need a top quality band knocking out ‘Hi-ho silver lining’ at the Christmas ‘do’ so that Kevin from accounts gets to dance with his tie around his head whilst Beccy from reception gets hopelessly pissed and falls over doing her best Pussycat dolls impression.What you may have noticed is the DJ ? In fact, sometimes they are rather hard to miss because whilst many bands are trying to downsize their PA systems by getting new gear that promises powerful, crisp sounds in small boxes, these guys are buying up all the surplus gear! Anything large, square, black and obnoxiously heavy seems to be the order of the day.
On a recent gig, during soundcheck I noticed this chap (and no spring chicken I hasten to add) cart in on an old sack barrow, load after load of speakers, amps, lighting stands/rails etc that put our clobber to shame. It looked like he expected the rear doors of the venue to open to reveal 6000 more seats (rather than the staff car-park).
There was space by the stage but he still grumbled ‘ I’ve hardly got enough space to put my full Roadshow up!’
He then set about constructing his ‘roadshow’ (something I thought disappeared somewhere around 1983) dressed in a set of brown overalls! Obviously a true professional he didn’t want to get his evening wear dirty, were it not for him taking off his Grange Hill Janitors outfit to reveal some casual ‘slacks’ and an old t-shirt……
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No need to play the drums naked anymore…
Good news for drummers, even better news for audiences! Naked drumming is a thing of the past, thanks to customskins.co.uk.
We’ve teamed up with Vistaprint to offer a free T-Shirt with every custom drum head ordered. Of course, nothing in life is actually free, so you have to pay Vistaprint around £3 for shipping, but since you get to upload your own design for free it’s pretty good value.
Anyway, to enable you to get hold of the T-Shirt without actually having to order a drum head we thought we’d put the link up for a couple of days as a special ‘Blog Offer’ – it’ll be taken down on Friday so if you want to take advantage do so asap. Band logo at the ready….here’s the link:
Get me a free T-Shirt so I don’t have to drum naked anymore!
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NAMM 2009 Report
When you’re told you’re being sent to The NAMM Show you have 2 choices…do you tell people that you’re ‘off to NAMM’ or do you say ‘I’m off to Hollywood baby!’? Personally I tend to choose the second as it makes my friends jealous and generally makes me sound cool! However…I know from experience working at NAMM is one tough slog of work hard, play hard…sleep bad! This year’s show was no different, but I wouldn’t change it for the world!
This years trip to NAMM…sorry I mean Hollywood baby (jealous?!) gave me a great chance to see the numerous drum kits, cymbals, hardware, accessories and even some new mittens for drummers that will be hitting your stores in 2009. It would be impossible to pick out favourites but I can assure that all you drummers out there are going to have some great kit to show off your brand new customskin drum heads.
As always the stars were out in force and I was lucky enough to meet copious amounts of world class Drummers, yet all of these Drummers put together couldn’t match my excitement when I was in a Beverley Hills bar and saw Ron Jeremy standing to my right!! I quickly plucked up the courage to ask him for a photo (which he was more than happy to do) and then plucked up even more courage to put my arm around his shoulder for it!
One thing that we noted about the Ronster was that he had a really crap old phone…he obviously went for a career which gave him job satisfaction rather than good money!
Another highlight of The NAMM Show was undoubtedly calling home and hearing about the weather! ‘its minus 12 at night here’ were my Mum’s words when I checked in after landing – at this point I was standing under a blue sky and bright sunshine…would you hate me if I told you I even started saying that it was too hot?!?!
One of my colleges/best mates is a massive Guns N Roses fan which meant I was lucky enough to be one of only 500 people to see Adler’s Appetite play at The Key Club on the Saturday night of the show…and man can Steven Adler still play drums. I was in a group of 8 peeps in the VIP balcony right on top of the stage and we were all completely blown away! I know that the guy has got some stick over the years (not meant as a stick pun!) but he was world class as were the whole band. For 2 hours we were all in 1988 watching GnR on sunset strip. Thought – do you think Adler purposely called his band a name that would give them the initials AA given his past drink related problems?!?!
Right I’ve run out of words so I’ll quickly say that Ray Luzier of Korn and John Fred Young of Black Stone Cherry are two of the nicest guys you could wish to meet!
So that’s it from me, hopefully I’ll be back soon (if the customskin boys let me!!)
Take it easy chicken
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J’aime la musique + drumming
Once in a while, us musicians get a nice gig come in that (almost!) makes up for some of the crappy ones. You know, the ones where no-one shows up, the PA breaks down, the van breaks down and the bass players girlfriend breaks down when she hears how much you did (or didn’t) make!
Recently however, I was lucky enough to be part of a DC recordings night in Paris and an excellent time was had by all. A great venue, ‘La Fleche d’or’ is a disused railway station complete with front of train and a slightly strange lifesize golden horse and rider attached to the ceiling. The lights/ PA were a treat with 2 extremely capable and thankfully fluent English speaking engineers. (the limits of my French extending to ‘ordering a kilo of potatoes’….proved not very useful during soundcheck.) And great hospitality.
It struck me as it had done on previous musical outings in Germany, Italy and Holland how much better you, as a musician and band member, are treated once outside of the UK ! There still seems to be general appreciation of live music and a respect for performers that seems to have all but disappeared from many UK venues and this in turn translates into a smooth running event with a relaxed atmosphere. I really can’t imagine having a decent meal provided and some top red wine before many UK club gigs on the ‘original’ circuit! Okay, so maybe it is too much to ask, but wouldn’t a few simple refreshments make things that bit better. And whilst we’re at it, how about a changing room with a toilet? Rather than a changing room that is the toilet…..Anyhoo.
Whilst in Paris the band took the chance to visit the famed Pere Lachaise cemetery that ‘homes’ Chopin, Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison & Oscar Wilde amongst others. Whilst the guitarist got a bit teary at Fred Chopin’s grave I noticed that right beside him is the grave of jazz pianist Michel Petrucciani. If you don’t know him then I urge you to check this:
If you need anymore incentive, Steve Gadd is on drums. Need I say more?
Until next time.
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About time?
Welcome to the customskins.co.uk blog!
After 4 years we've decided it's about time we started writing about general goings on at Customskins HQ, along with other drumming/music related stuff, and probably a fair bit of unrelated nonsense as well.
To ensure balanced and comprehensive coverage we've enlisted the help of a Richmond, our 'gigging drummer', to take a more in depth look at the world of hitting dead cows with wooden sticks.
Richmond first picked up drumsticks at 18 months, had a break till age 9 and has been obsessed ever since, playing, studying, selling, constructing, repairing, and teaching drums. He started gigging regularly aged 13 and has been inflicting his drumming on anyone who would listen ever since. Richmond has done over 500 live performances all over the UK as well as France, Italy and Germany. The 'Houdini of the drum world' currently performs with 'ZiPPERFACE' (a theatrical metal band) The Mardi Gras Jazz Band (New Orleans/Swing/Dixie) and Higamos Hogamos (D.C. recordings) amongst others.
In addition, we'll be publishing guest posts by other people involved in the industry. If you're interested in contributing let us know.
CUSTOMSKINS HQ 