Monogram Custom Trike Kit - That Never Was (Packaging Sample)

Custom Turbine Trike Kit (That Never Was)

Tom Daniels was a really cool designer in the early 1970s.  Monogram stopped him from starving and gave him a real job designing 1/24 scale model kits.

I had a few, and this is a Megacurve Metal design in that packaging style. The "It's Outrageous...The Grooviest Machine You've Ever Seen" was on the Baja Bandito Custom Kombie V8 Van Kit.

A Nostalgia Inspired Package Design Sample.

For other works and samples, contact Art & Technology.

Unfinished Cover - Copperhead Road

The track on SoundCloud :   Megacurve - Copperhead Road (Unfinished Demo)

An interesting story to why I even started this, Country Song.

Was watching one of the Topgear repeats and it was a USA trip, and had a lot on the history of NASCAR and the south.
Clarkson had ruined the tires on his Merc at a disused Nascar banked track. They were in a tire place, not getting far with replacements when Copperhead Road came on the radio, and the city Mayor started dancing and they talked about it being about running moonshine. NASCAR came out of the  moonshine runners testing their fast cars.

Seemed an interesting car, fixing a car, racing connection...... so I started, but didn't finish, a non country version of this one Saturday Morning shortly after.
It doesn't use much of the original, other than the mandolin chords and most of the lyrics. I went for a different much heavier feel. The Music Press called the original "Metal Twang", and there isn't much Twang left in this one.  The Southern accent is gone by the end too.

I think the originals bagpipe like organ intro and use just weird.  Works in AC/DCs "long way to the top", but not here, for me anyway. Not on an American country record.
The middle solo is nothing like the original and very over the top with the flanged guitar lead. Going for a psychedelic feel, with the Vietnam and drug references. The vocals need fixing (mistakes ), the reverb is too high and the 3rd verse does need more, such as an organ part, but more likely synthesizers.
The original speeds up all the way through, and this doesn't.   I had the original as a reference track while recording. I had done a different mix where you can actually hear the bass part, and it had less vocal reverb, but I prefer the first original quickly done version.

I think this song is all about the words anyway.... so here it is.   About 4 hours work.  All Di'ed guitar into Reaper.  Mic is an Audio Technica At2020 into a Behringer MIC100 tube preamp.

We haven't put up any of our other covers before. We stick to original work that we own and can do what we need with.  Covers are a good way to learn something new, and I think this was an interesting exercise. It is really more of a spoken story than a song, with really long verses, and not much in the way of a chorus.  Don't think it is worth finishing. 

The vocal starts with a southern accent.  As a kid I was a huge fan of  the 1969 MotorMouse and AutoCat cartoon, essentially a supercharged Hot Rod version of Tom and Jerry. The mouse had a southern accent, something I copied a lot as a kid.

Thanks for your time.

Custom Motor Sport Car Cartoons and Caricatures

Martini Porsche 917LH car cartoon

We have done various types of motor sport caricatures and cartoons.  This page shows a few 1970s prototype sports and Can-Am cars.

And yes, the fan did come off a Martini Porcshe and fly away.......

Gulf Porsche 917LH car cartoon

The Gulf Oil sponsored Porsche 917s dominated LeMans with the long and short tail versions.... and then they were banned.

Gulf Porsche 917K car cartoon

The machines resurfaced in the CAN-AM series, and soon dominated there, before getting banned...

Shadow DN2 Can-Am car cartoon

UOP Shadow, even with a new designer,  with the DN2 here, took a while to win....

Porsche 917/10 Turbopanzer Can-Am car cartoon

Denny Hulme, being THE McLaren driver at the time.

McLaren M20 and Denny Can-Am car cartoon

Just got too expensive for anyone else, McLaren in particular, to compete, so they banned them.  They series then lost excitement and sponsors, so it didn't end well.

Porsche 917/10 Pink Pig car cartoon

And they had a sense of humour back then too. Pork cuts!

But we do all types, like this old school Nitro rail.....

Old School Front Engined Fuel Dragster car cartoon

And all these images are on Art & Technology, but putting them here seems to make it easier for Google to Index!!

Google Image Search Broken Again (Nov 2012)

Another skimming site carcabin  has confused the Google algorithm again.  Like wn, and many before, the Google algorithm gives preference to a skimmer site rather than the source site.  This was fixed 12 months ago, and it is back again.

Means the source sites get way less hits, and again punishes the publisher of original material, and promotes sites that just copy content.

The skimmer sites are usually heavy with Adsense and so make money from Google without generating any new content.  Doing pretty much what Google itself does.  The algorithm is broken in that it ranks copies of material put in one place higher than the originals at multiple sites.

Really hate this, as it makes has made another fall off in page hits over the last 12 months.

 
The upside is that all our material is now watermarked, so finding the original isn't difficult and those actually contacting us hasn't dropped off.

I would prefer they didn't break what was working, but that is programmers for you.....

Records not a living any more- Brian Eno

"I think records were just a little bubblethrough time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time..."

"It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you'd be stuck with your whale blubber."

"Sorry mate – history's moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it."

- Brian Eno in The Guardian

Now this isn't just file sharing, but also Spotify and iTunes pays little. 

Was speaking with an Audio Researcher yesterday and he mentioned something from Facebook, where people said they saw a good coffee as much greater value than a music track.  They would pay for the coffee, that took seconds to make and no time to drink, but not for an album track, that had a significant investment of time, talent and money to produce.

A brave new world.