big description coming soon. Too tired after making this video to write one right now.

Here is a link to download the audio file I made for the bumper. It's a bass jam called "French Fried Potaters".

http://www.lrrgtube.com/audio/ 13/french-fried-potaters

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Well, this is it! My new collaboration band, MetalForceFive, has released our first video. This opening act had to be one of our favorites, Iron Maiden. The chosen tune...Where Eagles Dare off of Maiden's Piece of Mind Album (1983).

Go to this link to download the audio file:
http://www.lrrgtube.com/audio/ 6/iron-maiden%27s-where-eagles -dare-performed-by-met

To be honest, when I chose this tune, I only had PDX and satch in the collab that I knew of, so I picked a song that had a lot of music and very few vocals to mix in. Before I knew it, PDX lined up a drummer and a vocalist and we had a band of sorts. The magic didn't really happen until we mixed the instruments for the first time....it was sweet, let me tell you (I'm the guy who mixed it, so I had the privilege to hear it first).

Expect more....much, much more. This line-up is fairly permanent. The next tune is Ozzy Osbourne, from the Randy Rhodes years.

Kudos to Scream4Vengeance for the awesome video editing. In the future, we plan on improving the quality even more from the first run. I am learning more about mixing, plus I gave Priscilla an overhaul since this vid was made for a cleaner sound. Also, I have purchased a green sheet so I can join PDX in the cool posing with backgrounds.

Here are the channels of my collaborators. Give them a visit...every one is an excellent musician in their own right.

PDXGuitarfreak (formerly PDXguitar legend):
http://www.youtube.com/user/PD Xguitarfreak

satchbooggy (the King of Tightness and our eternal invisible man that we know and love):
http://www.youtube.com/user/sa tchbooggy?blend=1&ob=4

TheDrumChannel (Possesser of the cymbals of precision):
http://www.youtube.com/user/Th eDrumChannel

Scream4Vengeance (Our vocalist extraoidinaire and master showman/video guru):
http://www.youtube.com/user/Sc ream4vengeance

And here is the channel for our band. We will be only posting future videos there, so be sure to subscribe if you wanna see 'em when they happen.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Me talForceFive

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This is the individual video I made for our huge collaboration project. Be sure to check out that video, which I am releasing right after this one.

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OK...I know what you're saying. WTF is Zodiak doing playing some one-hit wonder from the 80's? Well, if you study my video history, you can see that I make occasional forays into cheesebag 80s tunes, and my favorite of these tunes are the ones that have no bass to begin with. Gives me room to explore the tune. Not every tune qualifies, of course. I like the ones that are geekier, and this one is no exception.

Actually, I love the groove of this song. Thomas Dolby was quite the musical genius.

Some of you may know that I make my living as a scientist, so what attracted me to this tune should be obvious.

For other 80's cheese that I've played, look for Major Tom, Mexican Radio (on my Myspace page), and my two Police Songs.

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An epic diddy off of Megadeth's best album, Rust in Peace. First off, apologies for the errors in this video, both technical as well as flubbed notes. They can't all be hits, hehehe, and my ear playing doesn't help things. I set the bass for a different EQ setting in order to bring the mid-tones out enough to be heard for this one...that way you can tell where I am hitting the notes...and I suppressed the lows a bit so it does not rumble when I am playing fast. Typically I would not do this sort of thing in a live situation, relying on the guitars to carry the punctate part of the band's tone.

As a way to pick on myself, I counted my big mistakes in this tune. There were quite a few, and no surprise they are highly-concentrated towards the last part of the tune. What can I say? My hands get tired by the time I get to the end when it gets ridiculously fast, and I had been playing stuff all day, so I was a bit winded to begin with. And I am doing Mustaine's part on that as well as Ellefson's...blah blah blah. I know...excuses, excuses.

Anyways, I hope y'all enjoy this. As an aside, the "Virtual Maiden" band that I was involved with last year has been revived with a new drummer and a vocalist (same guitar duo with better sound!). Our first video should be out soon, and it is a barn-burner from the Piece of Mind album. So watch for it!

DISCLAIMER: This video is not made for profit but is instead made for educational purposes as well as discussion and critique, and as such falls under the fair use provisions of US copyright law. No violation of copyright is intended. Tribute is not theft.

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Hey y'all. Well, I cannibalized my other bass to get the Dean Markley strings back on Priscilla, and amazingly enough, she still has her volume back (although she is a bit muddier, now...gotta fix that). To celebrate, I invited a few youtube friends of mine to play along with some maiden, and I shot my part of that collaboration this morning.

however, I know that project is probably a few weeks from completion, and so in the interest of not leaving y'all without a new video until then, I whipped this one up to let y'all know I'm still alive.

This tune is off of Iron Maiden's first album, Iron Maiden, and it is their self-titled song off that that self-titled album. I do not know if this is a fact, but I deeply suspect that this was Steve Harris' first song. It's got a lot of breaks in it, and some disjoined parts that do not fit together all that well. not to mention the lyrics are a little---well---less scholarly than "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son". In short, this tune is written like I write songs...heh. It also has a punky flavor, too, thanks to Paul Dianno (whom I still think was just as good as Bruce in his own way) .

Maiden ALWAYS plays this tune live, and they often pull out Eddie for it. Steve has changed the bass-line of this song a zillion times depending on his mood.....it's just a great crowd-pleaser, and a bit silly, as well.

So....Iron maiden is gonna get you, no matter how far! But the good thing is youtube won't get me for this tune because Iron Maiden is under the province of EMI music, whom we LRRGs owe a thanks to for being cool about us playing their songs here.

This video is for education and commentary and is of a non-profit nature. As such, it falls under the fair use provisions of US copyright, blah blah blah.

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After many, many countless hours in front of my animation program, I have finally put together a video for one of my more popular originals, "Schoolyard Bully". This tedious project features animated characters much like that seen in my "Vowel Song" video, but I spent a lot more time on them, so the quality is a bit higher (certainly not high quality animations, but better than last time).

The song comes from 1994, and was originally written in a horse barn in Seabrook, TX. It depicts the story of one young lad who is tormented by the local bully and the events that surround such torments. In the end, though, the protagonist makes out better than the bully.

I play the guitar on this tune, perform all of the vocals, and of course play the bass. The drums were programmed in Acid Pro, but very closely resemble the original drum beat.

PS. No, I have not stopped making covers. I just have been involved in a lot of originals projects lately.

Animations were created using characters generated with South Park Studio http://www.sp-studio.de/.

You can download Schoolyard Bully here (as well as my other originals):

http://www.mp3.com/artist/zodi ak-ironfist/songs/?tag=tabs;so ngs&om_act=convert&om_clk=artt abs

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Hey y'all. One great thing about LRRGs is that not all of us are strictly cover musicians. There are LRRGs that are great at writing tunes, as well. One such LRRG specimen is Adje1960, a classic Ramones-style punker from back in the day ( http://www.youtube.com/user/Ad je1960 ). The tunes he writes are catchy, punky, irreverent, and awesome, and I was lucky enough to be invited to help play bass on one of them. Look at him...he even stands like a punker.....so cool.

So here are the results of our little collaboration. Adje performs all of the guitars, sings, and programs the drums and synth parts (all while raising a son and working like a dog). All I did was write a bass part and play along with the tune. Turned out pretty well, if I say so myself.

If you like this vid, please visit Adje's channel and let him know (my featured vid on my channel page is his posting of this video). He's the one that deserves 90% of the credit for this tune, not to mention that his video-making capabilities are pretty cool, as well. HINT: he has a song he wrote about LRRGs on his channel that is a MUST listen.

Oh...one more thing: I have spent the last week working on ym video for Schoolyard bully. I am nearly half-way done, now. For a hint on how that video will be, check out my video on the Vowel Song. I am using South-Park style animations, and that is what is taking so long (about 3 hours of work per 5 secs of video). The tune is about 6 minutes long, and you can hear it on my Myspace musician page.

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Since y'all liked my first SHT rendition video, I decided to expand the selection a little bit. Not only that, but because I still cannot play Primus, SHT makes an excellent replacement for playing much the same style of bass.

The first tune is off of SHTs first self-titled album. If you play bass and like funky jazzy music, you should get this album. The bass player, Fima Ephron, had a very interesting style that interspersed small pops in interesting places within the beat....a very hard bass player to replicate for me. Where I fail to follow his style, I add my own, but playing this music is definitely an exercise in using lots of different techniques, so I highly recommend it. Anyways, "Hope" is pretty finished, but there is still something wrong with the chorus....I've tried probably 10 different ways of playing it. This one comes the closest, but it is probably still short of perfect by a half step here and there. Some weird harmony going on there....which is typical of Dave Fuiczynki's music.

The next tune, Mr. Softee's Nightmare, I did just on a lark, having learned it in a 30 minute session this morning. It is off of their new album (released 2005). I just could not help myself...the song was so goofy that I had to give it a go. Listen carefully to the lyrics, they are hilarious! Unfortunately, my G string went a little out of tune from being pulled so much, so forgive that discrepancy...seems to happen a lot with a slammer like me.

Oh, I forgot to tell you. Priscilla's pickups have finally had it, at least as far as I can tell. As a result, you will be seeing Wulfgang for a while until I can figure out how to return Priscilla's growl. They say pickups last about 20 years before they go bad, and mine are now 35 years old!

DISCLAIMER: This video is published under "fair use" under US copyright law. Exclusive rights remain that of the copyright holder, and no violation of copyright is intended. The purpose of this video is to demonstrate bass playing skill, and is intended for criticism, commentary, and educational purposes.

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OK....how can I say this? This is my absolute favorite extant band (meaning: band still putting out albums) in the whole world. This is the band that got me back into metal music again. I had come home to my parents for Christmas with my wife, and since I am a homebody, I stayed home one Saturday night while my wife went out with her friends. I turned on the TV, and there she was.....Angela Gossow....grunting like I had never heard a woman grunt before! I was transfixed!

When I got home, my wife bought me Arch Enemy's "Anthems of Rebellion", and I must have played it 500 times in a row for two weeks straight! I loved it! And not only that, but my favorite death metal guitar player from Carcass, Michael Amott, was playing in the band, as well.

So here it is....a couple of Arch Enemy tunes to pay tribute to these great Scandinavian melodic death metal masters. The first tune is off of their new album, Rise of the Tyrants....awesome guitar licks and good feeling. The next tune, Dead Bury Their Dead is a crowd-pleaser from their Wages of Sin album...the album that debuted Angela's awesome growls. She growls better than most men, and that is why I love her.....talent cannot be ignored!

As usual, I put a whole lot of my own stuff into these tunes and nearly wore my right hand to the nub.

By the way, this song is tuned to C. Very, very low, and it was hard to get Priscilla to sound like anything but mush at that tuning. Strangely, the original bass player uses a Rick with a pick, as well.

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This is a great band that no one has heard of. why are they not heard of? Well, for one they play funk-jazz fusion, which would have a limited audience as-is, but also, they have an unfortunate name that more belongs to a death metal band than a funk-jazz fusion band.

Nevertheless, this band is one of those bands that I qualify as Primus-ish even though they do not sound very much like Primus. They are progressive, discordant, uncompromising, and amazing musicians. It is a pleasure to pay homage to them.

Their guitar player, Dave Fuiczynski, is an incredible player that reminds me of Larry LaLonde with greater skill. Great stuff, and if you have a chance to check out their album, please do so....especially you Primus and Red Hots fans. These guys are awesome.

I flub up a bit at the end of this video...wish I had a couple of notes of the little solo back. Oh well, when you make a vid, something is bound to go wrong somewhere.

This video is, of course, for educational purposes and to promote discussion and/or criticism and falls under "fair use" provisions. No violation of copyright is intended.

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People ask me all of the time if I write music, and so I decided to make this video as a public service announcement to announce that I do indeed have original tunes. What I write is punk-funk-comedy music, and I had a co-writer or two along the way (Erik "Fancypanys" and Adam "Loaf"). The music is a combination of Primus, Munitemen, and Dr. Demento. This video shows those interested where to go to get my original music (and bassey remakes of a couple of old tunes). The video also gives you a taste of what is there and shows you how some of the basslines of the tunes are played.

All of this music was recorded on my laptop in my living room (the true spirit of LRRG). I play all of the instruments except the drums, which I custom program with one-shots (Mick Fleetwood is my drummer...LOL). Yes, that horrible sounding creature that sounds like "lounge singer meets Les Claypool" is me doing the vocals. It's an acquired taste I'm hoping Primus fans out there understand.

So download my crap! (if you want)

Here are the links again (the direct ones):

http://www.myspace.com/zodiaki ronfist

http://www.mp3.com/artist/zodi ak-ironfist/summary/

http://www.audiostreet.net/art ist.aspx?artistid=61257

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